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Wednesday, November 17, 2004
How Hoover Used Joe McCarthy, Liberalism's Crisis
THE SNAKE THAT SWALLOWED ITS TAIL: LIBERALISM TODAY; HOW HOOVER USED JOE McCARTHY TO HIDE FBI FAILURE
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The Snake That Swallowed Its Tail: some contradictions in modern liberalism
Mark Garnett Imprint Academic, 96pp, £8.95
ISBN 0907845886
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Reviewed by John Gray |
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One of the curious features of the present time is that, even though we are all liberal, there is no agreement about what liberalism means. Some people will tell you that the core liberal value is personal liberty, but others insist it is equality. Some say that liberal values require multiculturalism, while others believe they demand a common culture based on personal autonomy. For some, liberalism is a strictly political theory that applies only to the structure of the state. For others, it is a whole way of life.
These are not just minor differences. They extend to the basic concepts of liberalism itself and to the underlying philosophical beliefs in line with which they are interpreted. If some liberals see freedom as mere absence of interference, others view it as a positive ability to act. For some liberal thinkers, justice requires protecting private property; for others, it means redistribution. Underlying these differences are even larger divergences: some liberals are ardent supporters of rights, while others are defenders of utilitarianism; some are devotees of social contract theory, and yet others are partisans of value pluralism.
What all liberals have in common is a touching certainty that they are right. Liberalism is a missionary faith, and proselytising zeal is not normally conducive to sceptical inquiry. Whatever the core values of liberalism, they can surely conflict with one another - and with other goods such as social cohesion. Yet it rarely occurs to liberals to ask themselves whether their values - however vaguely or inconsistently defined - are viable in the long term.
It is this last question that preoccupies Mark Garnett. In The Snake That Swallowed Its Tail, he argues that a highly individualistic type of liberalism - "the philosophy of the short term, of the speed-dating, cold-calling society" - has come to pervade political life in Britain. In the past, thinkers such as John Stuart Mill had a vision of liberal values in which altruism was prized. As Garnett sees it, Mill's "fleshed-out" liberalism was displaced in the Thatcher era by a "hollowed-out", Hobbesian philosophy in which self-interest is at the centre. Liberalism of this latter kind is ultimately self-undermining, he believes: it can end only by "swallowing its tail", at which point a reaction in favour of saner values will set in.
Few academic writers know enough about the business of politics to be able to write intelligently about the tangled links between theory and practice. Garnett is one of the few, and his arresting and often amusing account of the political history of postwar Britain as a transition from fleshed-out to hollowed-out liberalism will be read with profit by anyone interested in the role of ideas in politics.
This does not mean that his account is always convincing. Like many critics of the narrow version of liberal individualism that has shaped politics since the 1980s, Garnett portrays it as a deeply pessimistic philosophy that owes a great deal to Hobbes. To my mind, it is precisely the opposite. In so far as Margaret Thatcher and her disciples had anything resembling a coherent political vision, it was of a neoliberal utopia.
Thatcher believed that the British economy could be revolutionised, and that at the same time Britain's culture could remain unchanged - or revert to the norms of the 1950s. She never understood that the ideology of choice and innovation she promoted in the economy would inevitably spill over into other areas of life. She believed that unfettered choice would somehow be virtuous, and completely failed to foresee the anomic, crime-ridden society that has actually developed. Like other neoliberals, she seems to have imagined that freedom is the natural human condition - a view Thomas Hobbes scorned heartily, and rightly so.
If The Snake That Swallowed Its Tail has a positive message, it is "Back to Mill" - the embodiment of the fleshed-out liberal philosophy that has supposedly been abandoned over the past generation. No doubt Garnett is right in thinking that Mill's was a superior form of liberalism, but it is hard to see how it can be revived today. He tells us that it will return only "once Britain has been entirely hollowed out". However, to adapt a well-known adage of Adam Smith's, there is much hollowness in a nation - and in liberalism. Most likely Britain will drift on much as it does at present, a country where everyone believes in liberal values, yet no one knows what they are.
John Gray's latest book is Heresies: against progress and other illusions (Granta) |
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence But Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years
By Athan Theoharis. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002. 307 pages.
Since the 11 September 2001 attacks by al-Qaida, the FBI has taken on a counterterrorism function that more closely resembles espionage and counterintelligence than traditional law enforcement. The Bureau
has had trouble managing this transition from “cop” to “spook,” and it undoubtedly will encounter more problems now that its counterterrorism responsibilities have grown under the new homeland security legislation. Counterintelligence and counterterrorism share many operational characteristics, as well as a sense of urgency and a high frustration factor that can lead to procedural corner cutting. While we construct a new domestic security apparatus to help fight international terrorism, we should pause to examine Athan Theoharis’s Chasing Spies, a useful, although at times tendentious, cautionary tale about how the FBI conducted counterintelligence against the Soviets from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Theoharis—a historian at Marquette University and a prolific scholar and critic of the FBI—wants us to be aware of what he sees as the FBI’s checkered record on hunting Soviet spies during those years, when, he argues, counterintelligence quickly mutated into (often unlawful) surveillance of dissidents, nonconformists, “unfriendly” politicians, and sundry “radicals.” As Bureau investigators threw their nets farther and wider to snare Kremlin agents, they became seized with finding “the enemy within” because their superiors, especially J. Edgar Hoover, pursued an ideological agenda that subordinated law enforcement to anticommunism. That history, Theoharis suggests, provides a lesson for us in the current climate of anxiety and suspicion: Counterterrorism directed at mysterious foreigners with alien creeds could easily lapse into the same excesses that anti-Soviet counterintelligence did not so long ago.
Although Hoover is gone, Theoharis argues that his legacy of politicized counterintelligence may endure. With the cases of Wen Ho Lee, Robert Hanssen, Timothy McVeigh, and the Ruby Ridge militia in mind, the author has observed, in interviews about homeland security, that: “If you are going to give agents broad authority, how do you keep them from roaming far afield? The history is not pretty.” [1]
In Chasing Spies, Theoharis uses mostly FBI releases secured under the Freedom of Information Act and declassified decryptions of KGB messages to move the discussion of Soviet espionage in America into territory familiar to him: what the Bureau did about Kremlin spying, and why. According to his research, the FBI’s investigations of Soviet espionage in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were far more extensive and intrusive than we have previously known, yet few spies were caught and even fewer tried. Possible reasons are: (1) The Bureau was incompetent; (2) Democratic administrations, out of indifference or partisanship, inhibited the FBI from investigating Soviet espionage; (3) Soviet operational security was very good; (4) there were not that many Soviet spies to catch; (5) the Bureau’s information was collected illegally and could not be used in court; and/or (6) the FBI was using its counterintelligence capabilities for purposes other than finding Kremlin agents and their supporters. Theoharis’s assessment: mostly (5) and (6), with a bit of (3) and (4) thrown in, as he concedes that “Moscow rules” were tough to work against and he tends to play down the scope and effect of Soviet espionage in America.
Between 1936 and 1952, the Bureau’s budget ballooned from $5,000,000 to $90,000,000, and the staff went from 1,580 employees to 14,657. According to Theoharis, FBI managers used some of the new money and personnel to conduct not only standard investigations but also an unprecedented array of then-illegal operations—break-ins, wiretaps, bugging, and mail opening—against American communists and communist sympathizers. [2] But all that detective work was mostly for naught, the author concludes. “From a law enforcement or legitimate counterintelligence standpoint, the information accumulated . . . had little value . . . because [it] either was illegally obtained . . . thus negating prosecution . . . or did not document the violation of a federal statute.” [3] Or at least not a federal espionage statute—under the Smith Act’s sedition provisions, Communist Party leaders were indicted and convicted for conspiring to overthrow the US government by force or violence.
In some instances, the FBI’s only information came from the ultra-secret decrypts of Soviet communications from the VENONA project, which had to be protected. Los Alamos physicist Ted Hall provides the best example of the FBI having a spy dead to rights, but not being able to arrest him because it needed to conceal its source. If collateral information were available, as with the Rosenbergs, then prosecution could go ahead. [4] Most of the Bureau’s dilemma was of its own making; the problem was less one of compromising sensitive sources than of having to disclose that the incriminating information on which a case hinged was acquired illegally. In short, improper methods impeded law enforcement; investigatory means took control of justiciary ends.
Theoharis presents another reason why the FBI was better at catching criminals than at tracking spies. Its “massive monitoring of the American Communist Party and other left-wing political and labor union organizations from the 1920s on . . . focused not on espionage but on Communist influence in American society.” For example, a large program that targeted the Communist International apparatus in the United States showed that American communists advocated radical political, social, and economic change, and received money from their Soviet sponsors, but that very few committed espionage for Moscow. Even when they had, they could not be prosecuted because the information against them was acquired illegally. Most of the few “real spies” the FBI uncovered had stopped their clandestine work by the time they were caught, but the Bureau—trapped in another counterintelligence dilemma of never being able to prove the negative—kept investigating Soviet fronts, leftist organizations, and Stalin apologists in the off-chance that it might find a stray agent or two.
The reason for the FBI’s persistence, Theoharis writes, was political and ideological. Hoover was more concerned with educating the American people about the “Red Menace” than about putting Soviet spies in jail. As depicted in Chasing Spies, Hoover was less a conservative anti-communist than a reactionary countersubversive. [5] He passed on derogatory information about the radicals his agents had under surveillance to a network of ideological kinsmen in politics and journalism whom he cultivated assiduously. Through FBI officials’ covert alliance with selected congressmen, congressional committees, and reporters and columnists, the Bureau had put itself in a win-win situation. [6] It could hide its counterintelligence shortcomings behind a wall of secrecy and national security while Democratic administrations got blamed for not doing enough to stop Soviet espionage and communist subversion. [7]
Although Theoharis has compiled a troubling account of FBI abuses, he overstates the extent to which the Bureau still operates in Hoover’s shadow. Potential targets of FBI counterterrorism investigations probably have more to fear from xenophobic vigilantes than from Bureau superpatriots. Undoubtedly FBI agents will make mistakes, especially in the frenzy after a major attack, but the vast majority of its errors seem more likely to result from bureaucratic inertia, institutional culture clashes, outdated technology, and a steep learning curve than from any ideological fixation.
Theoharis did not set out to write a comprehensive history of FBI counterintelligence from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s, but his focus on the Soviet Union nonetheless leaves some important questions unanswered. He could, for example, have usefully compared the Bureau’s anti-Soviet operations with its work against German, Japanese, and Italian spies and “fifth columnists” in the United States during World War II. By all accounts, Hoover’s G-Men shut down Axis espionage and subversion networks quickly using traditional detective methods that led to prosecutions and convictions. Why was the FBI more successful against those targets? Why did it not have to use the same battery of illegal techniques against the fascists that it did against the communists? Were the Axis nations’ operations run differently, or were the Soviets’ activities harder to uncover and interdict, or did the Bureau apply a double standard in dealing with the respective threats?
Chasing Spies is much more effective at detailing the FBI’s transgressions than at dealing with the massive and incontrovertible evidence of Soviet espionage in America during the 1930s and 1940s that has accumulated in the past decade. [8] Theoharis goes awry when he tries to find a historiographical peg on which to hang his latest research on the Bureau, which can stand well enough on its own. In a semi-polemical preface, he takes some unwarranted shots at post-Cold War studies of Soviet spying that are based on VENONA decrypts and documents from KGB and Comintern archives. (The GRU’s archives remain closed.) [9] It is true that parts of this genre have a score-settling bite and a “we always told you so” smugness, and occasionally the writers overreach when interpreting vague or limited evidence. Overall, however, they have demonstrated conclusively that Moscow had seeded the United States far and wide with spies and sympathizers whose theft of secrets and influence on policy damaged US national security, a conclusion that Theoharis himself actually shares. [10] In counterpoint to this scholarship, some left-wing historians and what may be called “VENONA deniers” have accused the post-Cold War espionologists of flawed research and assorted political biases—“liberal anticommunism,” “right-wing triumphalism,” and, worst of all, “McCarthy rehabilitation.” [11]
Theoharis accepts that the Americans so prominently accused of spying for Moscow—Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, et al.—were guilty. He does not try to obscure the issue, as VENONA’s most dogged critic, Victor Navasky of The Nation, has by saying that they were “innocent of whatever it is people mean by espionage.” [12] But some of his reasoning follows the general progression most VENONA deniers have undergone: First, resist accepting that Americans did much spying for the Soviets; next, when presented with evidence that they did, carp at the details, stress any inconsistencies or ambiguities, and urge caution at reaching conclusions based on one source; finally, when shown corroboration for VENONA, claim “what’s new?” and argue that the spying had little effect on anything important.
This “so what?” argument—that Soviet spies did not steal much of value, so we should not have worried so much about them—is fallacious. Besides assuming that the secrets stolen were not that valuable, the argument is flawed by ex post facto reasoning. How could we have determined what damage Soviet agents caused without investigating them? Even granting some of the “so what?” view, the deterrent effect that the US government’s counterintelligence work had must be taken into account. If the Soviet espionage network had not been so badly disrupted by the late 1940s, future spies might have done much greater harm than those who got caught.
In attempting to discredit the work of the revisionists, Theoharis sometimes argues like a defense lawyer trying to keep incriminating evidence from a jury. Especially when discussing some of the celebrated spy cases of the early Cold War—for example, Hiss, Elizabeth Bentley, and staff members of the journal Amerasia—he places more emphasis on the questionable means used to acquire the information than on what it reveals: that the accused were guilty as charged. Illegally obtained facts may not be admissible in court, but the Bureau’s methods and motives should not deter historians from using all information to reach their conclusions. The evidentiary standards of legal proceedings and historical writing differ.
In the mid-1990s, ahead of the wave of books informed by VENONA and Soviet documents, historian Maurice Isserman wrote: “That espionage has suddenly emerged as the key issue in the debate over American communism probably has as much to do with marketing strategy as with any reasoned historical analysis.” [13] The voluminous new information on Soviet espionage in America before, during, and after World War II has disproved Isserman’s observation except to a dwindling band of ideological holdouts. Theoharis, through his industrious mining of that and other material, now adds an important perspective on a troubling manifestation of official anti-communism in those years. Chasing Spies offers a worthwhile admonition against politicized law enforcement and counterintelligence—and, in its few less scholarly moments, against politicized history, also.
Footnotes:
[1] Bill Miller, “Ashcroft: Old Rules Aided Terrorists,” The Washington Post, 31 May 2002, p. A13; Edward P. Lazarus, “At the F.B.I., It’s Always Been Washington vs. the Field,” New York Times, 11 August 2002, sec. 4, p. 4.
[2] The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and the Patriot Act of 2001 expanded the FBI’s authority to use those techniques in counterintelligence investigations. The US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review affirmed the Bureau’s powers in a November 2002 decision.
[3] Chasing Spies, p. 140.
[4] This dilemma has been well described in what remains the best book on the FBI and counterintelligence: Robert Lamphere and Tom Shachtman, The FBI-KGB War (New York, NY: Random House, 1986).
[5] Theoharis’s portrayal of Hoover resembles that by Richard Gid Powers in Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1987) and Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism (New York: The Free Press, 1995).
[6] Chasing Spies, p. 198.
[7] On the last point, Theoharis asks, “Did President Roosevelt’s indifference make possible Soviet espionage, and did President Truman’s partisanship or indifference foreclose FBI investigations of Soviet espionage activities that could have ensured the prosecution of guilty spies?” He answers both questions, “No.”
(Ibid., p. 33.)
[8] In this respect, Theoharis’s book is an FBI-centered case study that complements Ellen Schrecker’s more expansive treatment of official anti-communism during the “Second Red Scare” of 1945-1955, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1998).
[9] Major works in this group include: Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel Albright, Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy (New York, NY: Times Books, 1997); Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999); Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939-1957 (Washington, DC: National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, 1996); John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, VENONA: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Kathryn S. Olmsted, Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2000); Jerrold and Leona Schecter, Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002); Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers (New York, NY: Random House, 1997); Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York, NY: Random House, 1997); Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era (New York, NY: Random House, 1999); and Nigel West, VENONA: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (London: Harper Collins, 1999).
[10] Useful evaluations of the above-cited literature are: John Earle Haynes, “The Cold War Debate Continues: A Traditionalist View of Historical Writing on Domestic Communism and Anti-Communism,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 2:1 (Winter 2000), pp. 94-113; Hayden Peake, “The VENONA Progeny,” Naval War College Review, 53:3 (Summer 2000), pp. 195-206; Thomas Powers, “The Plot Thickens,” The New York Review of Books, 11 May 2000, pp. 53-58; and Jacob Weisberg, “Cold War Without End,” New York Times Magazine, 28 November 1999, <www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/19991128mag-weisberg.html >.
[11] The Nation has been the principal venue for criticism of the new history on Soviet espionage; see, e.g., Ellen Schrecker and Maurice Isserman, “The Right’s Cold War Revision: Current Espionage Fears Have Given New Life to Liberal Anticommunism,” 271:4 (24 July 2000), pp. 22ff; and Victor S. Navasky, “Cold War Ghosts: The Case of the Missing Red Menace,” 273:3 (16 July 2001), pp. 36ff.
[12] Quoted in Weisberg, “Cold War Without End.”
[13] Ibid.
David Robarge is a member of CIA’s History Staff.
Posted at 11:30 pm by Psychomike
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Osama Prepares Nuclear Strike Against U.S.
Why do I think the following is true? Well, some Middle Easterners said it was wrong to do the 911 attack- without warning America first so they had time to convert to the Moslem faith. Laden went to a religious leader and asked if he could use WMD against the U.S.- he was told that was fine if the American people had been warned. We have been. First when Al Qaeda websites said blue states would be safe but red ones would be attacked, then Laden released a tape also warning people. They have given us what they think are fair warnings.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1101041122-782068,00.html=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1101041122-782068,00.html
Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004
Bordering On Nukes?
New accounts from al-Qaeda to attack the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction
By ADAM ZAGORIN
Try 4 Issues of TIME magazine FREE!
A key al-Qaeda operative seized in Pakistan recently offered an alarming account of the group's potential plans to target the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, senior U.S. security officials tell TIME. Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near Pakistan's border with Iran and Afghanistan, has told his interrogators of "al-Qaeda's interest in moving nuclear materials from Europe to either the U.S. or Mexico," according to a report circulating among U.S. government officials.
Masri also said al-Qaeda has considered plans to "smuggle nuclear materials to Mexico, then operatives would carry material into the U.S.," according to the report, parts of which were read to TIME. Masri says his family, seeking refuge from al-Qaeda hunters, is now in Iran.
Masri's account, though unproved, has added to already heightened U.S. concerns about Mexico. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met publicly with top Mexican officials last week to discuss border security and smuggling rings that could be used to slip al-Qaeda terrorists into the country. Weeks prior to Ridge's lightning visit, U.S. and Mexican intelligence conferred about reports from several al-Qaeda detainees indicating the potential use of Mexico as a staging area "to acquire end-stage chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear material." U.S. officials have begun to keep a closer eye on heavy-truck traffic across the border. The Mexicans will also focus on flight schools and aviation facilities on their side of the frontier. And another episode has some senior U.S. officials worried: the theft of a crop-duster aircraft south of San Diego, apparently by three men from southern Mexico who assaulted a watchman and then flew off in a southerly direction. Though the theft's connection to terrorism remains unclear, a senior U.S. law-enforcement official notes that crop dusters can be used to disperse toxic substances. The plane, stolen at night two weeks ago, has not been recovered.
With reporting by Syed Talat Hussain
Posted at 10:58 am by Psychomike
Secrets Of History: Who Started McCarthy Era?
One of our more popular features here are the SECRETS OF WAR posts. With this post we tackle a historical myth, the McCarthy era, and over this coming week you'll find out more on this subject and also what I believe to be the truth from a source no one will be able to deny. Although the review that follows my comments are told from a leftist bias, most likely not deliberate but taught, there are statements made I strongly disagree with. However, these misgivings will all be dealt with in upcoming posts. First some comments, followed by info on WASHINGTON GONE CRAZY.
When George Orwell wrote 1984, he had abandoned his leftward beliefs. His original title was 1948. It was a critique of the west during the war years and the ugly side of the left. In specific, the west's support of Stalin, the purges, the mass murders that went far beyond Hitler. (One of Stalin's last acts was a plan to send all Jews in Russia to Siberia to work in forced labor camps. Most historians believe that drove those around him to kill him).
Nowhere has the left triumphed more in our society than in the telling of history. How many have been won over to leftist thinking on beliefs that bear no relation to facts? From the truth about Joe McCarthy, to supporting Stalin's spies and defenders while to this day condemning any of Hitler's (they still clearly support Stalin- they don't attack his supporters, plays,etc) they have made our history books worthless.
In 1984 the left constantly changed events and actions. It does to this day. It's motives, to win people to it's side, may seem important enough to them to destroy our history. But if it is really true that we shouldn't forget history, what they have done is the most shameful legacy of the left.
Michael J. Ybarra has written a book that will shock many. WASHINGTON GONE CRAZY is the story of Senator Pat McCarran. He was the man who not only started the red scare as it is known now, but he went much further than McCarthy ever did. He actually passed laws against them. McCarthy did not, and contrary to popular belief, McCarthy refused to support banning the Communist Party.
Senator Pat McCarran, the man who started the communist hunt and set in place the strengths and weaknesses of the anti communist movement long before Joe McCarthy ever gave a speech-
was a Democrat.
When you begin to ask yourself how he could have been forgotten- the guy who started it all, when you go back to original sources as the hero in 1984 does- you will discover the truth. Perhaps this book will make others question, "the wisdom of the day".
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
In July 1950, Stewart and Joseph Alsop, two of this city's social and political insiders, wrote an article titled "Why Has Washington Gone Crazy?" for the Saturday Evening Post. Two months later, one of President Truman's close advisers handed him a note warning that the country was "on the verge of hysteria." And the next month liberal Sen. Paul Douglas mused nervously to himself that "there seems to be a mood of near madness in the country."
Things were obviously getting a bit frenzied. For starters, the Soviets had figured out how to make an atomic bomb, China had gone communist, and at home politics were being whipped into a froth by charges and countercharges of "un-Americanism." Like most historians since then, the Alsops blamed much of the era's craziness on Sen. Joe McCarthy, who a few months earlier had launched his anti-communist smear campaign in Wheeling, W.Va., by brandishing a bogus list of "subversives" in the State Department.
But the causes of the hysteria were much more complex than that -- and began long before the term "McCarthyism" was first used in print (by Herblock in a 1950 Washington Post editorial cartoon). Looking back from half a century later, Michael J. Ybarra, a former staff writer for the Wall Street Journal, borrowed part of the Alsops' title for his richly researched, endlessly entertaining chronicle of what might have been the 20th century's most tragic, self-destructive politics. He traces the origins of the period's hysteria to "a conservative reaction" to the new deal fueled by "rural rancor toward urban elites, nativist dread of encroaching minorities, fundamentalist anxiety over the spread of secular values" and Jeffersonian scorn for a growing and activist government."
In Ybarra's telling, no one embodied these fears and antipathies more than Sen. Patrick McCarran, a Democrat from Nevada who wielded extraordinary influence as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. His corrupt, sometimes crazed, hopelessly reactionary career is the centerpiece of Ybarra's tale.
"Years before Joe McCarthy ever opened his mouth in public," writes Ybarra, "McCarran believed -- really believed -- that the Democratic Party was controlled by the Communists and that one mysterious person especially had managed to exert a malign influence that could be felt at the highest levels of government." He once told a friend, "If I . . . eventually find that one, I will have served my country well."
The senator's early years gave no hint of the direction his life would take. The son of illiterate Irish immigrants, he started out as a populist, the law partner of a socialist and a friend of the working class. Correctly viewed as an outsider in Nevada's feudal political circles, he had a painfully sluggish beginning in politics. Once elected as a Democrat, he maintained just enough party allegiance to keep federal boondoggles coming to Nevada. In 1944, he became chairman of the Judiciary Committee and thereby one of the most powerful men in Washington. Four of every 10 bills had to go through his committee. He also controlled the subcommittee handling budgets for the State and Justice departments.
He ruled like a sultan. One year he cut State Department funds by $20 million because it circulated Herblock cartoons ridiculing him. He used FBI agents as chauffeurs and tourist guides for his wife and five children. The senator was apparently too powerful to be indicted even though he clearly committed perjury when, despite wiretap evidence to the contrary, he repeatedly swore he had never dealt with mobster Bugsy Siegel. There were serious stories of McCarran's being paid off at fixed roulette tables for blocking a federal tax on gambling.
"From the oversized chair in the Judiciary Committee room," writes Ybarra, "McCarran ran a virtual government-in-opposition, even while his own party controlled the White House and both wings of the Capitol," and he used his power ruthlessly. He turned Truman's attorneys general into puppets, driving the president into such a rage that he declared Nevada was a meaningless "hell on earth" that "should never have been made a state." He had a point. McCarran represented the least populated state in the nation. He needed only a piddling 35,000 votes to be elected, yet Senate rules gave him the power to cripple major portions of the federal government and shred the Constitution.
Laws that McCarran wrote and pushed through Congress made it easy to fire federal employees without telling them why or giving them a way to appeal and set up concentration camps in this country for imprisoning left-wing dissidents during "emergencies." With the end of World War II, there were seven million Europeans homeless and adrift. McCarran considered all immigrants to be potential spies, and he hated Jews. Using the McCarran-Walters Immigration Act and his Internal Security Act of 1950 to tighten immigration, he limited the number of refugees to only half a million over a two-year period -- fewer than 10,000 were Jews.
In 1951 McCarran created the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee "to investigate subversive activities" and named himself chairman. Although the House Un-American Activities Committee got much more publicity, the SISS was a goon squad, "the most fearsome of the congressional investigating committees in mid-twentieth century America." In 1954, McCarran keeled over dead from a heart attack in the middle of a political gathering. Thousands, including seven conservative senators, were there for his funeral in Nevada and for the valedictory speeches that followed. Sen. Styles Bridges, who had been McCarran's point man in many a witch hunt, said: "Any person with a personality can acquire friends, but only great men with the characteristics of Pat McCarran acquire enemies. I admire him for a great many things, not the least of which was the cluster of enemies he had."
It was a rather large cluster. Perhaps speaking for it was a local reporter attending the same event. Ybarra tells us he grumbled, "McCarran was a son of a bitch alive and he's a son of a bitch dead."
Reviewed by Robert Sherrill
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
From Booklist
The infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy served as the poster boy for America's anti-Communist crusade of the 1950s, but this long-overdue biography makes clear that the real force behind that crusade was the little-remembered Senator Patrick McCarran. In disturbing detail, Ybarra establishes that while the Wisconsin demagogue was capturing headlines, it was the implacable cold warrior from Nevada who--with much less fanfare--turned anti-Communist paranoia into harsh legislation and draconian public policy, thus chilling debate, abridging civil rights, and destroying careers. McCarran emerges as the man who forged the legislative and procedural weapons for fighting Communism, without which McCarthy could never have even started his legendary witch-hunt. Indeed, by scrutinizing the way postwar politics evolved before McCarthy stepped onto the stage, Ybarra shows readers how McCarran almost single-handedly turned the threat of Communist infiltration into the justification for a monomaniacal campaign, waged with both guile and fury. Though far from sympathetic with McCarran's objectives, Ybarra marvels at his skill in dominating Congress, defying Democratic and Republican presidents, and outmaneuvering senior bureaucrats. And unlike McCarthy, whose influence ended as soon as the Senate censured him in 1954, McCarran inscribed his politics of fear deep in America's public policy, leaving behind dubious laws still in force as late as the 1990s. An eye-opening portrait of a largely forgotten twentieth-century titan. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Booklist
"An eye-opening portrait of a largely forgotten twentieth century titan."
Review
"Ybarra's book might become a classic of the biographical genre, given its awesome research, compelling narrative and fluid writing style."
- San Jose Mercury-News
A "richly researched, endlessly entertaining chronicle of what might have been the 20th century's most tragic, self-destructive politics."
- Robert Sherrill in the Washington Post
"This outstanding book will provide an excellent introduction to the turbulent 1940s and early 1950s in America." - Library Journal
"A brilliant new biography...McCarran was a complex man, and Ybarra captures that complexity." - Las Vegas Mercury
"(boxed, starred review) An eye-opening portrait of a largely forgotten twentieth century titan." - Booklist
"A Chilling testament to one well-placed man's destructive influence over foreign policy and domestic liberty. By favoring careful documentation over demonization, Ybarra's hefty account offers a welcome new prespective on the origins of the Cold War."
- Publishers Weekly
“A truly landmark study.” — Douglas Brinkley
Library Journal
"This outstanding book will provide an excellent introduction to the turbulent 1940s and early 1950s in America."
Los Angeles Times
"Thanks to Michael J. Ybarra's magisterial and beautifully written book, McCarran's disquieting place in our history is restored."
Robert Sherrill in the Washington Post
A "richly researched, endlessly entertaining chronicle of what might have been the 20th century's most tragic, self-destructive politics."
San Jose Mercury-News
"Ybarra's book might become a classic of the biographical genre, given its awesome research, compelling narrative and fluid writing style."
From the Inside Flap
IN THIS SWEEPING, monumental work of American history, journalist Michael J. Ybarra tells the story of Senator Pat McCarran’s extraordinary career for the first time, and he vividly re-creates a passionate era of politics that reshaped America and echoes to this day. Brilliantly researched and energetically written, Washington Gone Crazy makes a significant new contribution to our understanding of the United States in the twentieth century.
McCarran was one of the most shrewd and powerful — and vindictive — lawmakers ever to sit in Congress. Joe McCarthy gave his name to the cause of zealous anti-Communism, but it was McCarran, a lifelong Democrat, who actually wrote the laws, held the hearings, and bullied the State and Justice Departments into doing his bidding. McCarran was consumed with looking for Communists in Washington and his obsession almost consumed the country.
The son of illiterate Irish immigrants, McCarran was born in 1876 in Nevada, where he grew up to be a sheepherder who taught himself the law around the campfire, becoming a legendary defense attorney and judge. After struggling for years against the local Democratic political machine, McCarran rode Franklin Roosevelt’s landslide into the U.S. Senate in 1932 — and broke ranks with Roosevelt during the New Deal’s first week. But it was President Harry Truman who would become McCarran’s real nemesis. A master of parliamentary procedure, McCarran turned his Senate Judiciary Committee into a virtual government within the government. McCarran worked with J. Edgar Hoover to undermine the Truman Administration before McCarthy even got to Washington. He created the most far-reaching anti-sedition law ever enacted in America (the McCarran Internal Security Act), which filled Ellis Island with immigrants alleged to be subversives and set up concentration camps to hold suspected traitors in the case of a national emergency. McCarran’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee cowed the State Department into sacrificing the careers of diplomats accused of helping the Communists take over China. McCarran virtually blackmailed more than one attorney general into carrying out his policies. From Capitol Hill to the United Nations, from union halls to Hollywood, McCarran’s wrath broke careers and lives and ultimately, in a self-destructive fit of pique, cost his party control of the Senate. Ybarra’s even-handed narrative shows that McCarran was ultimately half right: There really were Communists in Washington — but it was the hunt for them that did the real damage.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1586420658/102-1313641-4088929?v=glance
Posted at 09:02 am by Psychomike
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Why Did Democrats Vote For Bush?
Tammy Bruce is a columnist and talk radio host. She was the youngest chair of the Los Angeles NOW chapter, and doubled their membership in one year. She describes herself as a lesbian by choice. Her website address follows this piece. When Bush won, he doubled the number of Blacks that voted for him. He increased his standing with women by a huge amount. Now we all know why the Republicans are trying to make immigration deals with Mexico- he swept Latino communities. Yet some, trying to blame the country rather than ask themselves why their candidate lost, blame religion. So why did so many registered Dermocrats vote for Bush? I think this piece, written before the election, is a far better explaination that blaming religion.
Why Democrats Should Vote for Bush
Tammy Bruce
Friday, Oct. 29, 2004 As a Democrat and a pro-choice feminist, it’s time for me to explain why I support the president, and why other thoughtful Democrats should join me in doing so.
I can’t tell you how many e-mails I’ve received from other Democrats either condemning me for not toeing the line, while others write who are genuinely curious, after all the hate-mongering and demonizing of Republicans and the president specifically, they hope I can ease their fears about what their inclination to vote for the president means about them. The simple answer? It means you’re a confident liberal, a thoughtful person who realizes that game of party loyalty takes a back seat to the safety of your family and this nation.
It also means you take the slogans of “choice” and “radical individualism” seriously. Isn’t it ironic that there’s nothing more radically individual these days than a liberal who doesn’t conform?
For me, Authentic Feminism is rooted in making it possible for people to make the choices that best suit them.
If you have recognized the weakness of John Kerry, and know in your heart a vote for the president is the right thing to do, join me and do it! It can be done with a clear conscience as you embrace the radical individual inside you that attracted you to liberal causes in the first place.
Because some things simply transcend party lines, when in front of that Early Voting touch screen, I stood there as an American first, and voted for George W. Bush. This nation, our lives, and the lives our children require nothing less.
I explain to detractors and supporters alike that President Bush is the man who will keep this nation safest.
The president and I hold dramatically divergent views on a number of social issues of importance to me, and yet for the 3,000 people who died on September 11th, abortion rights and same-sex civil unions mean absolutely nothing to them now.
These issues, while important to me and ones on which I will continue to speak out about, are luxuries in the face of a world war where the enemy is a stateless savage who hunts children and cuts off people’s heads.
We have a responsibility to leave this nation as great as it is to the next generation.
We all know, and must reflect on, the fact that the joy we have in our lives today is due to the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of other Americans who died fighting for this country. Those soldiers did not die because they were promised 72 virgins in the afterlife, they fought not for themselves — they died in the most noble of American causes — so future generations — us — could live in freedom.
I do not take that action for granted, and I have learned that generosity of spirit and commitment to freedom is inherent in each of us, and a duty we cannot shirk.
Those of you with children have a more immediate concern, which is the literal safety of the light of your life.
That little face looks up at you as you tuck her in, and sleeps gently knowing that Mommy and Daddy are there.
That same face stares at you in the morning, with a heart full of hope, limited only by her imagination because you confront, for her, the harsh realities of every day. And these days it’s not just about making a living, it’s about the Beslan school massacre, it’s a new al-Qaida tape threatening Americans at home, it’s about war and mad savages who have specifically targeted children.
I voted for President Bush because having a Pacifist Internationalist in the White House will only embolden those who salivate at the sight of our blood.
Having a man in the White House who stands for nothing will only excite Islamic Fascists who revel in torture and the cutting off of heads. I do not want a man in the White House who is so cold, when asked by a New York Times reporter how September 11th changed him, answers “It didn’t change me much at all.”
While I know a Bush presidency makes my work as a feminist more complicated and demanding, I will love and be grateful for every day I have the luxury of working on those issues. And frankly, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have a president who encourages social activism on issues.
Liberals make the mistake of thinking a Democrat president is indeed Daddy, who can be trusted in all things. Apathy soon follows that false comfort.
Bill Clinton showed us the decline of the Democratic Party into a gang spouting slogans to make women, gays and blacks feel Daddy was in the house, to our grave regret. What did we get? A sexual compulsive who put Monica Lewinsky on her knees instead of cutting bin Laden off at his.
Yes, there were plenty of Democrats, feminists, gays and blacks in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on those fateful flights. I’m sure you would agree that in their last moments their literal lives were more important to them than party affiliation.
I want a president who will be strongest making sure tomorrow comes, that this nation not just survives, but emerges from this war like the others we have fought, in a world that has been transformed for the better. I want a president who understands this is war, not a “nuisance.”
I know George Bush has made many in the world angry, and frankly, I am dismayed at the hard feelings. A recent poll of Europeans revealed their general belief that Bush has made the world a more dangerous place.
Upon hearing that, I remind myself of the time President Reagan increased arms production and installed more Pershing Missiles in Europe as we faced down the Soviet Union.
President Reagan grappled with European polls, anger and resentment, all of which evaporated when the Soviet regime collapsed.
Yes, they hated Reagan, but he plodded on, never swayed by those polls or made doubtful by others’ hatred. His resolve freed Europe from the shadow of a bear which had no mercy and the blood of tens of millions on its paws.
As a man of faith with a love of this country, Reagan stayed the course, and did what he knew had to be done. He was a leader, and I’m proud to say, one that only America could deliver.
Today, President Bush faces the same polls, the same anger, and the same resentment as he, too, recognizes and engages a rabid enemy of civilization, Islamo-Fascists.
Europeans felt Reagan was leading them to Armageddon, as they now insist Bush is doing. We can’t know what it’s like for Europeans to see such a young nation doing so many things, but one thing Europe will find, again, is that while we may be wild, young and even cowboys on occasion, we have a pretty good track record of making the world a safer and better place.
With George W. Bush at the helm, this time will be no different.
I voted for President Bush because he has freed 50 million people, 25 million of which are women and girls. The feminist establishment, in a shameful exhibit of their hypocrisy, has ignored that fact.
As a feminist, I thank the president with my vote, in solidarity with the millions of Afghan and Iraqi women who now, courtesy of the president and our astounding military, finally have hope, liberty and freedom.
Like all of our presidents, George W. Bush is quintessentially an American. He’s a Cowboy. A Texan. He will never be mistaken for a Frenchman. He’s a Yalie. He’s a man of faith, a husband and father. He’s a man who has fought with and overcome addiction. He’s a man of strength and character.
And while he is also wrong on some issues, if I have to work harder on social issues, I want it to be against a man whom I can admire, who I know, despite our disagreements, honors me in his work to keep this nation free and great.
For those of you who are Democrats and liberals — and I know through my years as a leader in left wing causes, including feminist and gay activism — we all have gone through a sort of conditioning that makes dissent or difference a frightening prospect.
Republicans and conservatives have been decidedly demonized in your circle—perhaps by your own friends and family.
Let me tell you this - voting for the President does not change who you are or what you stand for. I stand for the classical liberal concepts of personal liberty and individualism, and have spent a great deal of my adult life working for those causes. I have found that “Choice” and “Individualism” are only slogans if you never act on them. Sometimes being yourself means straying from the expected, standing apart from your crowd.
November 2nd is a good a day to be a Democrat who’s an American first.
For more information please visit www.tammybruce.com
Posted at 08:10 pm by Psychomike
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Don't Blame Jesus For The Election!
QUESTION:
It's just hard to imagine that Americans love living under the spectre of constant fear, love the only President to presided over a major terrorist attack on America soil, love a President that has LOST jobs on his watch, love a weak economy, love a poorly ran war, love freedom limiting legistlation.
There has to be another reason.
ANSWER:
Well there are lot's of reasons.
Way back at the start I said that calling Bush Hitler was a huge mistake. There are plenty of polls that show negative attacks can reach a backlash level.
I said that ignoring the South was a huge mistake.
I mocked polls by saying a football game's outcome was more important than any poll. Turned out, I was right on both counts. Both outcomes were equally wrong.
I said that Kerry had failed to define himself.
But it didn't matter to my Democratic friends. They couldn't even hear themselves. They never said why Kerry was better. In fact, many said he was lame! They had only one reason to vote for Kerry. They hated Bush. And I have said and written over and over that this was not a reason at all.
This is the time for Democrats to ask themselves what they think they screwed up on. Yet the vast majority, like Kerry's wife barely being able to hide her contempt of the masses, can't do it.
You see, his wife and the left have something in common. They love the romantic image of the poor. The workers. But they hate the actual reality of that group. The left will attack police and throw bricks through STARBUCKS windows yelling that jobs have left for Asia and Mexico. But if those same states don't buy what they are selling at election time the workers are stupid, they have low IQ's, they should be kicked out of the country,they are too religious, they are garbage.
The Democrats traded away labor for mobsters and celebrities a long time ago.
The Democratic Party fooled you hook, line and sinker. How does it feel to have thrown your vote away? You could have made it mean something. If Nader had gotten 3 or 4% more votes than last time he might have landed in a debate next time. We need a third party. Even I say we need to drop the electoral college. Why can't we vote on Saturday instead of a week day?
So instead the Democrats call the people witches. Idiots. Fanatics. Keep that attitude up. For at least three years. The election map, which looks the same as the time before, will look the same a third time. Do you think they can't hear or read you folks saying this stuff?
What kind of ego does it take to think you lost a match, but did nothing wrong?
This is a good article:
Myths of the Republican Mullah-cracy
You can't blame Jesus for the voters' choice
It took only a few hours for media talking heads to come up with an explanation for why the tax-cutting, war-mongering ignoramus George W. Bush got re-elected on Tuesday. It couldn't have been, they agreed, that the electorate truly wanted four more years of Republican domestic and foreign policies. After all, didn't John Kerry win every substantive point on the issues that really matter? Wasn't Bush an accidental, illegitimate president in the first place? Another explanation had to be found.
Quickly scanning the exit polling, pundits spotted that 22 percent of voters had said "moral issues" were the most important in the race, and they broke heavily for Bush. A-ha! Now they had a talking point: evil mastermind Karl Rove had used the same-sex marriage issue to turn out so many religious conservatives that they overwhelmed everyone's likely-voter models and became a disproportionate share of the 2004 electorate.
The initially unspoken, but soon loudly proclaimed, implication of this fact was that Bush and the Republicans had bamboozled these voters, whose real economic interests lay with the Democrats. They didn't truly support Bush on substantive domestic and foreign-policy issues. They were just anti-gay bigots. As the spin got more frenzied Wednesday and Thursday, words like "jihadis" and "mullahs" got attached to these deluded and dangerous Bush voters, whom Democrats and sympathetic analysts described as something akin to a bizarre and perversely fascinating lost tribe just discovered in the rain forests of Borneo. By weekend, an inevitable backlash against the frenzy had set in.
The problem with all this is that, while comforting to many Kerry supporters and exhilarating for some social-conservative leaders, the notion that Bush won primarily because religious voters turned out for him does not seem to be backed up by any real evidence. Few reporters or commentators appear to have gone back to examine the 2000 exit polls, which would seem to be necessary if one wishes to assert a trend.
I did. I found that the percentage of voters sampled who said they attended church at least weekly was the same—42 percent—in both 2000 and 2004. The percentage never attending church was also the same, at 15 percent. The middle group, those attending occasionally, was, you guessed it, 42 percent each time. Interestingly, while Bush slightly improved his standing among frequent churchgoers, by about a point in 2004, his support grew by 3 to 4 points among those attending seldom or never.
Yep, it was the atheist vote that really put Bush over the top in 2004.
There could be other ways to salvage the myth of the Republican mullah-cracy. For example, one might argue that it is unfair to equate church-going with religiosity or cultural conservatism.
Another potential proof: More people identified themselves as conservatives in 2004 (34 percent) than in 2000 (29 percent). But there are all kinds of conservatives, including quite a few who are socially conservative and hawkish and in favor of privatizing Social Security. Sorry, this doesn't prove anything other than people are increasingly willing to label themselves as conservative rather than moderate.
OK, what about issue positions? In 2000, about 40 percent of voters in the exit poll said that abortion should be mostly or always illegal. In 2004, it was 42 percent. Not exactly a huge jump. And we don't know how many of those are single-issue voters on abortion. Both parties have significant minorities who disagree with the official party position: about a quarter of pro-lifers voted for Kerry, while around one-third of pro-choicers picked Bush. On same-sex marriage, the issue was not polled in 2000 so it is impossible to say with certainty how the two electorates compare, but it is unlikely that this year's voters were significantly more conservative on it. In fact, the public's position is more nuanced here than the insta-spin would have you believe. About as many favored civil unions but not official marriage (35 percent) as favored neither (37 percent), and Bush was preferred by both groups over Kerry.
Well, perhaps there was no national trend but it happened in selected states such as Ohio. Nope. In the 2000 exit poll for Ohio, the percentage of frequent churchgoers was higher (45 percent) than in 2004 (40 percent). Bush did win a larger majority of religious Ohio voters in 2004 than he did four years ago, but there were fewer of them proportionally. Besides, saying that the religious-vote affect mattered in a few key states changes the nature of the media spin, which has been trying to assert it as a sweeping national "explanation" for Bush's popular vote.
That leaves the initial assertion about 22 percent of voters citing moral issues as most important, higher than the share citing terrorism, Iraq, the economy, or other issues. When I looked more closely at this question, however, doubts immediately presented themselves. For one thing, the answers were broken out in ways that biased the analysis. While the poll did not attempt to distinguish the various moral issues that voters might be thinking about—abortion, marriage, wars for oil, etc.—it did list "taxes" and "the economy" separately, as well as "terrorism" and "Iraq." Of course, for many voters, these are not separate issues. You may disagree with them, but most voters sampled in the exit poll said that the war in Iraq was part of the overall war on terrorism. And many right-leaning voters see tax policy as inextricably linked with economic growth and job creation (at least a few freedom-loving folks even see tax cuts as a moral issue—imagine that!)
In short, the question is flawed and the answers easily misunderstood. Moreover, it doesn't compare well with the 2000 exit poll, in which "moral issues" was not listed as an option. On the other hand, you can track the impact of foreign policy over time. In 2000, only 12 percent said that "foreign affairs" was the most important issue in the presidential race, and they broke 54 percent to 40 percent for Bush over Gore. In 2004, a combined 34 percent identified foreign policy (either Iraq or the war on terrorism) as the most important, and they appear to have broken for Bush by 59 percent to 40 percent. Put it all together, and the increase in salience and small increase in Bush preference for foreign policy constitutes a gain of 13.5 percentage points in the Bush vote in 2004.
Obviously, he didn't win by that much. He lost ground on economic issues, because of the recession. But without his edge on war on terrorism, Bush would have lost. And that proposition—unlike the "it's all about gay marriage meme"—is testable and fits the available data. Voters worried about partial-birth abortion, same-sex marriage, and other cultural issues are obviously an important constituency within the current GOP majority, but they are no more responsible for Bush's national victory on Tuesday than voters motivated by other issues to re-elect the president.
John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation, a public policy think tank in North Carolina, and a syndicated columnist and radio host.
http://www.reason.com/hod/jh110804.shtml Posted at 11:38 am by Psychomike
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Think Again: Yasir Arafat
By Dennis B. Ross |  |
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In 1974, Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), declared before the United Nations that he came “bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun.” Nearly 20 years later, the world still does not know if Arafat is a statesman dedicated to peaceful coexistence with Israel or a resistance leader dedicated to armed struggle. As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict enters a tenuous new phase of peace negotiations, understanding Arafat’s true motives will be essential to fostering a lasting agreement.
“Arafat’s Goal Is a Lasting Peace With the State of Israel”
I doubt it. Throughout the Oslo peace process, everyone involved—Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Egyptians, Saudis, and other Arab leaders—shared the belief that Arafat wanted peace with Israel. It seemed logical. After all, Arafat had crossed the threshold and recognized Israel, incurring the wrath of secular and religious rejectionists. And he had authorized five limited or interim agreements with the Israelis. Although Arafat held out until the last possible minute and strived for the best deal, he eventually made the compromises necessary to reach those interim agreements.
Unfortunately, such short-term progress masked some disquieting signals about the Palestinian leader’s intentions. Every agreement he made was limited and contained nothing he regarded as irrevocable. He was not, in his eyes, required to surrender any claims. Worse, notwithstanding his commitment to renounce violence, he has never relinquished the terror card. Moreover, he is always quick to exaggerate his achievements, even while maintaining an ongoing sense of grievance. During the Oslo peace process, he never prepared his public for compromise. Instead, he led the Palestinians to believe the peace process would produce everything they ever wanted—and he implicitly suggested a return to armed struggle if negotiations fell short of those unattainable goals. Even in good times, Arafat spoke to Palestinian groups about how the struggle, the jihad, would lead them to Jerusalem. Too often his partners in the peace process dismissed this behavior as Arafat being caught up in rhetorical flourishes in front of his “party” faithful. I myself pressed him when his language went too far or provoked an angry Israeli response, but his stock answer was that he was just talking about the importance of struggling for rights through the negotiation process.
But from the start of the Oslo negotiations in 1993, Arafat focused only on what he was going to receive, not what he had to give. He found it difficult to live without a cause, a struggle, a grievance, and a conflict to define him. Arafat never faced up to what he would have to do—even though we tried repeatedly to condition him. As a result, when he was finally put to the test with former President Bill Clinton’s proposal in December 2000, Arafat failed miserably.
Is there any sign that Arafat has changed and is ready to make historic decisions for peace? I see no indication of it. Even his sudden readiness to seize the mantle of reform is the result of intense pressure from Palestinians and the international community. He is maneuvering now to avoid real reform, not to implement it. And on peace, he does not appear ready to acknowledge the opportunity that existed with Clinton’s plan, nor does he seem willing to confront the myths of the Palestinian movement.
“Arafat Missed a Historic Opportunity When He Turned Down the Clinton Proposal”
Yes. It is true that Arafat did not “reject” the ideas the Clinton administration offered in December 2000. Instead, he pulled a classic Arafat: He did not say yes or no. He wanted it both ways. He wanted to keep talking as if the Clinton proposal was the opening gambit in a negotiation, but he knew otherwise. Arafat knew Clinton’s plan represented the culmination of the American effort. He also knew these ideas were offered as the best judgment of what each side could live with and that the proposal would be withdrawn if not accepted.
To this day, Arafat has never honestly admitted what was offered to the Palestinians—a deal that would have resulted in a Palestinian state, with territory in over 97 percent of the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem; with Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of that state (including the holy place of the Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary); with an international presence in place of the Israeli Defense Force in the Jordan Valley; and with the unlimited right of return for Palestinian refugees to their state but not to Israel. Nonetheless, Arafat continues to hide behind the canard that he was offered Bantustans—a reference to the geographically isolated black homelands created by the apartheid-era South African government. Yet with 97 percent of the territory in Palestinian hands, there would have been no cantons. Palestinian areas would not have been isolated or surrounded. There would have been territorial integrity and contiguity in both the West Bank and Gaza, and there would have been independent borders with Egypt and Jordan.
“The offer was never written” is a refrain uttered time and again by apologists for Chairman Arafat as a way of suggesting that no real offer existed and that therefore Arafat did not miss a historic opportunity. Nothing could be more ridiculous or misleading. President Clinton himself presented both sides with his proposal word by word. I stayed behind to be certain both sides had recorded each word accurately. Given Arafat’s negotiating style, Clinton was not about to formalize the proposal, making it easier for Arafat to use the final offer as just a jumping-off point for more ceaseless bargaining in the future.
However, it is worth pondering how Palestinians would have reacted to a public presentation of Clinton’s plan. Had Palestinians honestly known what Arafat was unwilling to accept, would they have supported violence against the Israelis, particularly given the suffering imposed on them? Would Arafat have remained the “only Palestinian” capable of making peace? Perhaps such domestic pressure would have convinced Arafat, the quintessential survivor, that the political costs of intransigence would be higher than the costs of making difficult concessions to Israel.
“Arab Leaders Stand Behind Arafat”
Reluctantly. I have never met an Arab leader who trusts Arafat or has anything good to say about him in private. Almost all Arab leaders have stories about how he has misled or betrayed them. Most simply wave their hands dismissively when examples of his betrayal of commitments are cited—almost as if they are saying, “We know, we know.” The Saudis, in particular, saw his alignment with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 1991 as proof of his perfidy.
But no Arab leader is prepared to challenge him. All acknowledge him as the symbol of the Palestinian movement, and no one sees an alternative to him. But no one is prepared to go out on a limb for him, either.
Many suggest that in the absence of broad Arab support, Clinton’s proposal was too hard for Arafat to accept. Furthermore, some argue, since the United States failed to secure the support Arafat needed, it bears some responsibility for his inability to say yes. That argument is more myth than reality. First, if Clinton’s offer was so hard to accept, why has Arafat never honestly portrayed it? Why not say he was offered 97 percent, instead of Bantustans or cantons? Why not admit he would have had Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of the state, instead of denying that?
Second, we did line up the support of five key Arab leaders for Clinton’s plan. On December 23, 2000, the same day that President Clinton presented his ideas to Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, he called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, and Jordanian King Abdullah II to convey the comprehensive proposal he had just presented to the parties. Shortly thereafter, he also transmitted the ideas to King Mohammed IV of Morocco and President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia. All these Arab leaders made clear they thought Clinton’s ideas were historic, and they pledged to press Arafat to accept the plan. However, when Arafat told Arab leaders he had questions, they backed off and assumed the position they had adopted throughout the Oslo peace process. They would support whatever Chairman Arafat accepted. They were not about to put themselves in a position in which Arafat might claim that President Mubarak or Crown Prince Abdullah or King Abdullah was trying to pressure him to surrender Palestinian rights.
There is a lesson here for today: Getting Arab leaders to fulfill their responsibilities—to be participants and not just observers—is essential. On existential questions in which concessions on the Palestinian side are required, Arab leaders will likely restrict their pressure to private entreaties. But that is not where real leverage is to be found. Pressure in public would be pressure as Arafat defines it. Arafat’s great achievement for the Palestinians has been putting them on the map, producing recognition, giving them standing on the world stage. He embodies the cause, and that is why Arab leaders find it so hard to criticize him in public. Yet he cannot afford the imagery that he and the Palestinian cause are separate. If Arab leaders would say that his being only a symbol and not a leader threatens Palestinian interests, then Arafat’s very identity would be called into question. That would move him.
“The World Must Deal With Arafat Since He Is the Palestinians’ Elected Leader”
Not necessarily. The United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations have adopted this position. An election in the territories in 1996 made Arafat the chairman of the Palestinian Authority. But the international community does the Palestinians no favor when it emphasizes Arafat’s popular election as justification for dealing with him. It is important to remember that anger on Palestinian streets before the eruption of the Al-Aqsa Intifada was directed against Israel and also against the corruption and ineptitude of the Palestinian Authority. Now that the dust is settling after Israeli military operations and massive reconstruction is needed in the West Bank,
Palestinians are demanding reform. They are demanding elections, rule of law, an independent judiciary, transparency, accountability, streamlined security services governed by standards (not by Arafat’s whims), and an end to corruption.
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Palestinians are not looking to oust Chairman Arafat. They simply want to limit his arbitrary use of power. Given the pressure he is under (from within, from among Arabs to stop manipulating violence and to assume responsibility, and from the international community), it is not hard to see why Arafat is trying to seize the mantle of reform. Yet he cannot be permitted to speak of reform and at the same time avoid its consequences. Otherwise, the momentum will be lost. True reform is an essential part of any political process designed to promote peace. The more serious the reform, the more the Israeli public will see that Palestinian behavior is changing—and the more likely Israel will accept the possibility of partnership again. If Arafat is allowed to escape pressure for genuine reform, the Israeli government will be under no pressure to resume political negotiations.
One could argue that the world must deal with Arafat because he is the symbol of the Palestinian movement, because he is the only address available, and because he is the only one who can be held responsible for Palestinian behavior. That would be a more honest explanation than saying he is the popularly elected leader of the Palestinians. However, Arafat’s role as a symbol is not the reason the U.S. government recognized him in the first place. The United States made the decision to deal directly with Arafat in September 1993 when, as part of the Oslo documents, he formally agreed to renounce terror, to discipline and punish any Palestinian violators of that pledge, and to settle all disputes peacefully. Suffice to say, Arafat has not abided by those commitments.
No one but the Palestinians can choose the Palestinian leader. But the rest of the world can choose not to deal with a leader who fails to fulfill obligations. Governments can tell the Palestinian public they recognize it has legitimate aspirations that must be addressed and that those aspirations can only be addressed politically, not militarily. But those aspirations will not be satisfied until Palestinians have a leadership—whether it is Arafat, a successor, or a collective body that limits the chairman’s power—that will fulfill its responsibilities on security and declare that suicide bombers are enemies of the Palestinian cause. When a Palestinian leadership lives up to those commitments, the Palestinians and the Arab world will have an American partner determined to help ensure that Palestinian needs are met.
“Arafat Can’t Control the Militants in the Palestinian Authority”
He can, but he won’t. Arafat has demonstrated in the past that he can prevent violence—most notably in the spring of 1996 when he cracked down on Hamas and also in the first year of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s administration, when Israel, for the only time in its history, had a year in which it did not suffer a single fatality from terror.
Yet from the beginning of the peace process, Arafat made clear he prefers to co-opt, not confront, extremist groups. This approach reflects his leadership style: He never closes doors. He never forecloses options. He never knows when he might want to have a particular group, no matter what its ideology or purpose, on his side. This strategy has certainly been true of his dealings with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In 1996, he suppressed extremists because they were threatening his power, not because they carried out four suicide bombings in Israel in nine days. Even then, the crackdown, while real, was limited. Arafat did not completely shut the door on either group.
In the past, whenever Arafat cracked down or threatened to do so, the militants backed down. But that stopped in September 2000 with the eruption of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Those who say Arafat cannot carry out his security responsibilities because Israeli military incursions have devastated his capabilities fail to recognize that Arafat didn’t act even before Israelis destroyed his infrastructure. In the 20 months leading up to May 2002, he never gave unequivocal orders to arrest, much less stop, those who were planning, organizing, recruiting, financing, or implementing terror attacks against Israelis. Whether one thinks—as the Israelis believe recently captured documents demonstrate—Arafat directs the violence or that he simply acquiesces to it, the unmistakable fact is that he has made no serious or sustained effort to stop the violence.
If nothing else, it is time for Arafat to use his moral authority to make clear that armed struggle only threatens the Palestinian cause—that those who persist in the violence are not martyrs but enemies of Palestinian interests and needs. Let him make such declarations consistently, rather than repeating the pattern of the past as when he called for a cease-fire on December 16, 2001, only to call for a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem shortly thereafter. Pressing Arafat to speak out consistently does not relieve him of the need to act. Nor does it relieve the Israelis of finding a way to meet their legitimate security needs without making the Palestinians suffer. Ultimately, keeping the territories under siege is self-defeating. This approach only fosters anger and a desire to make Israelis feel comparable pain. The Israeli military has succeeded in creating a necessary respite from terrorist attacks. Now Israel should seek a political path that builds on that respite and gives Palestinians an interest in making it more enduring.
“The Time Has Come to Impose a Peace Deal on Arafat and Sharon”
Absolutely not. Nearly two years of conflict, the spiraling violence, the deepening sense of gloom, and the seeming inability of the two sides to do anything on their own give credence to the argument that now is the time to impose a solution. If an imposed solution were possible and would hold, I would be prepared to support it. But an imposed solution is an illusion.
No Israeli government (not Ariel Sharon’s, not Ehud Barak’s, not Benjamin Netanyahu’s, not Shimon Peres’s) has accepted or will accept an imposed outcome. It goes against the Israeli ethos that a partner for peace must prove its commitment by directly negotiating an agreement. Paradoxically, the very terms Israeli governments might find difficult to accept if imposed would probably be acceptable if Israelis believed they had a real partner for peace. Those who argue for an imposed solution claim no Israeli leader can make the hard decisions, such as giving up settlements, most of the West Bank and Gaza, and the Arab part of East Jerusalem. Yet Barak was prepared to do so; and before the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the Israeli public was ready to support him. In a recent trip to Israel, I found a far-reaching consensus—encompassing the left and the right in Israel—for acceptance of a Clinton-like solution, provided the Palestinians are truly prepared to forsake terror, violence, and the right of return to Israel.
Trying to impose a solution that the Israeli government will not accept—and the Sharon government will surely not accept Clintonesque ideas in the current environment—will only result in strong resistance. Even if the United States could pressure the Israelis to reluctantly accept an imposed outcome, would it endure? I doubt it.
Arafat would certainly go along with an imposed outcome. He has always preferred such an option. It would relieve him of the responsibility to make a decision. He can outwardly acquiesce, saying he has no choice. But inevitably, Palestinians will oppose at least part of an imposed outcome. Will new issues—what we might call Palestinian “Sheba farms”—suddenly emerge? Recall that Israel withdrew from Lebanon in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 425 and that the U.N. secretary-general certified this withdrawal. Yet Hezbollah now claims that the Sheba farms area of the Golan Heights is Lebanese and that lasting “Israeli occupation” justifies continued armed resistance, including Katyusha rocket attacks. Will there not be a Palestinian equivalent of this situation after an imposed solution? And given Arafat’s poor track record, how can anyone expect he would defend the existing peace agreement against such newly discovered grievances?
If one overriding lesson from the past persists, it is that the Palestinians must make decisions and bear the responsibility of those decisions. No enduring peace can be reached until the Palestinian leadership levels with its public, resists the temptation to blame every ill on the Israelis or the outside world, assumes responsibility for controversial decisions, and stands by its decision in the face of opposition.
An imposed solution will only delay the day when all sides, but especially the Palestinians, have to assume real responsibilities. Consequently, an imposed solution would be no solution at all.
Ambassador Dennis B. Ross is director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was the lead negotiator on the Middle East peace process in the first Bush and both Clinton administrations. | |
Posted at 11:18 pm by Psychomike
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Life After Arafat
Palestinians' choice of a new leader, if they can agree on one, will determine the future of the peace process.
Jeff Fleischer
November 06 , 2004
While reports of Yasser Arafat’s medical condition have varied in the past few days, the seriousness of his illness and the likelihood of his imminent death mean the Palestinian Authority is arriving at a crossroads. For the first time since the peace process began, someone other than Arafat will be heading the Palestinian cause, and how that vacuum is filled will determine the future of statehood.
So far, the transition away from Arafat has occurred without major incident. On Wednesday, the PLO executive committee transferred more authority to Ahmed Qurei, giving the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority some of Arafat’s responsibilities for administrative, financial, and security concerns. At this point, former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas is in line to succeed Arafat as head of the PLO, and is expected to handle political negotiations once he is allowed to. (Under the law, no such negotiations can occur while the president is abroad, and Arafat is still the president). In the event Arafat dies, the Palestinian Basic Law requires the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council would fill his role on an interim basis until a new president is elected. As the Council on Foreign Relations notes, "the current speaker is Rawhi Fattouh, a little-known politician who experts say is unlikely to exert much power if he ascends to the post," leaving Qurei and Abbas to handle the most high-profile decisions.
There will soon be an election to replace Arafat, but little about it is certain (Arafat never named a chosen successor). A general Authority election, including one for the presidency, was already scheduled for the spring, and that will be moved up. Qurei and Abbas -- both experienced politicians from the first generation of Palestinian leaders -- are expected to run, and both have gained some international currency with their calls for reform within the leadership. But as the CFR points out, "neither Abbas nor Qurei -- both of whom have long operated in Arafat’s shadow -- is considered a popular figure among the Palestinian people."
One danger for the future of Israeli/Palestinian relations is the probable entry of more radical elements into the electoral fray. One likely candidate is PLO foreign minister Farouk Kaddoumi, who stayed behind in Tunis when the rest of the PLO leadership relocated to the West Bank and Gaza in 1994. The Jerusalem Post reports Kaddoumi issued a warning this week "to ambitious Palestinian officials, who are jockeying for power" (ostensibly meaning Abbas and Qurei), and wants to succeed Arafat himself. That would be disastrous for peace prospects. Kaddoumi views the two-state solution of the Oslo accords as a "betrayal," has voiced support for Hamas, is ambivalent about statehood and reportedly has close ties to Syria and Iran.
Another possibility is Marwan Barghouti, who the Council on Foreign Relations calls the most popular politician other than Arafat, according to polls. He’s a member of Arafat’s Fatah party, and is a generation younger than the aforementioned men. The problem here is Barghouti was convicted in May for three terrorist attacks, and is serving five consecutive life terms (plus 40 years) in Israeli prison. Not only would he have to govern from prison if elected, but his long record of anti-Israel violence (he has been acquitted of 33 other murders because of a lack of evidence, and was a leader of the first intifada) would be a severe barrier to any sensible negotiations.
There’s also the possibility that an Islamist group like Hamas could take power. As al-Jazeera reports, Hamas official Ismail Haniya has already requested the formation of a "collective" Palestinian leadership to replace Arafat until elections are held:
"We will not allow any chaos or disunity to occur and the best way to realize this goal is by formulating a united national leadership that would lead the Palestinian people to the safety shore and prepare for elections in which all Palestinians would participate."
What Haniya’s plea doesn’t mention is that the current Palestinian leadership has nothing to gain by inviting Hamas into such a coalition, other than sparking Israeli anger and/or giving Hamas leaders governing credibility they could use in the coming election. Hamas has become an increasingly powerful political force, particularly in Gaza, and a split vote among more moderate candidates could provide an opportunity for Hamas. While Hamas officials told al-Jazeera the organization
No matter who becomes the new Palestinian leader, he won’t have the same often-teflon authority Arafat commanded as the "father of the nation." There’s a danger that Palestinian leadership could undergo the same wild back-and-forth swings from pro-peace prime ministers to hardliners that have marked Israeli leadership since a right-wing extremist assassinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
There’s also the issue of how Israel and the Ariel Sharon government respond to the transition of power, as Sharon has long argued he has "no partner for peace" with Arafat at the helm. Sharon’s plan of withdawl from the occupied territories could be affected, with speculation that Israeli conservatives will use the transition as an excuse to push for delay -- and that the Isralei left will see it as an opportunity to push for a full peace plan instead of the withdrawal détente. As policy analyst Ze’ve Schiff argues in Ha’aretz:
"Arafat's demise will certainly increase the pressure on Israel to put off the disengagement plan from Gaza and northern Samaria. The reality after Arafat requires the opposite response -- to keep or even escalate the disengagement timetable.
"Even more important, Arafat's departure opens a possibility to turn the disengagement from a unilateral Israeli move into a fully coordinated one with the new Palestinian leadership. Israel does not know whether the new reality will cause a deterioration and anarchy in the territories. Such deterioration could strengthen Hamas and turn it into the only Palestinian address."
To this point, Sharon has ordered members of his Cabinet to avoid public speculation on Arafat’s health. As noted here this summer, Israel officials have already studied a list of worst-case scenarios for what might happen after Arafat’s death. Now that the moment seems on its way, and the whole world is watching what happens next. Israel (and the United States) have refused to deal with Arafat in recent years, and should take the transition as a fresh opportunity to negotiate a fair, peaceful two-state solution. Palestinians’ choice of leadership will play a large part in whether that’s possible.
Posted at 03:04 pm by Psychomike
What Osama bin Laden Wants
what does Laden want?
 Last held by the Ottoman Prince abdul Mejid II, the Caliphate has been empty since its abolishment in 1924. Caliphate ( khalifa) literally means "Successor of the Prophet", but the position of primary Caliphate is that of ruler of a unified Islamic nation. It is the goal of Al-Qaeda and the various terrorist organizations working either under the umbrella of Al-Qaeda or in concert with it to fill this void. And if Al-Qaeda has their way, the position will be filled by a Wahabbi Caliphate, Osama bin Laden.
In order to understand that the militance and radicalism perpetuated by groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Front of Salvation is not representative of modern-day Islam, one must come to understand that just as there are different "denominations" of Christianity, there too is such in the Islamic religion. Just as the Catholicism that fueled the Crusades was not indicative of all Christian believers at the time, the fanatical Islamists do not represent all Islamic believers.
The radical Islamic beliefs followed and taught by Al-Qaeda are considered part of Islamism. Islamism is a broad term encompassing all forms of Islamic fundamentalism. Included in these movements are the Shi'ites, certain Wahhabis (in particular in Saudi Arabia), certain Deobandis (in India), the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Hamas, the Hizbulla, Islamic Jihad, Jama'at Islamia and Sunni Islamists. Al-Qaeda represents a conjoining of the Saudi Wahabbis, via Osama bin Laden, and the Sunni Islamists.
Unlike the tolerance and coexistence which can be found in the modern -day Islamic world, Islamists believe that Islam requires a theocratic political structure which dictates all aspects of life. They believe in an Islamic state in which all are governed by Sha'ria, which is Islamic law, with strict observance of the Qur'an and religous observances. They believe there should be no foreign presence ( nonbelievers) within this Islamic state, and that this unified Islamic nation should be ruled under a re-established Caliphate. In order to re-establish the unified Islamic nation and the Caliphate, Jihad is necessary to free the believers of Islam currently ruled by "non- Islamic" rulers. (To be clear, a "non-Islamic ruler" is defined as any ruler who is not currently ruling his country in accordance with Sha'ria.) Any country previously under Islamic rule should be brought back under Sha'ria and the Caliphate by Jihad. This Jihad, they believe, is mandatory and actually can be viewed as a sixth pillar of Islam, according to the Islamists.
quote:
The ultimate goal of al-Qaida is to establish a Wahhabi Caliphate across the entire Islamic world, by working with allied Islamic extremist groups to overthrow regimes it deems "non-Islamic" (ie non-Wahhabi Islamist).(3)
quote:
The organization's main immediate goal is the overthrow of what it sees as the corrupt and heretical governments of Muslim states, and their replacement with the rule of Shari'a (Islamic law). Al-Qaeda is intensely anti-Western, and views the United States in particular as the prime enemy of Islam. Bin Laden has issued several "fatwas" or religious rulings calling upon Muslims to take up arms against the United States.(4)
In order to understand the regions that could fall into the category of "previously ruled by Islam" it is necessary to examine the boundaries of the prior Caliphates.
First the Arab Empire of c. 750:
And the Ottoman Empire of around 1580:
But it should be noted that substantial regions of India also can be considered previously under Muslim rule and therefore fall into the regions targeted in a Caliphate-driven Jihad.
quote:
“If the disbelievers occupy a territory belonging to the Muslims, it is incumbent upon the Muslims to drive them out, and to restore the land back to themselves; Spain had been a Muslim territory for more than eight hundred years, before it was captured by the Christians. They [i.e., the Christians] literally, and practically wiped out the whole Muslim population. And now, it is our duty to restore Muslim rule to this land of ours. The whole of India, including Kashmir, Hyderabad, Assam, Nepal, Burma, Behar, and Junagadh was once a Muslim territory. But we lost this vast territory, and it fell into the hands of the disbelievers simply because we abandoned Jihad. And Palestine, as is well-known, is currently under the occupation of the Jews. Even our First Qibla, Bait-ul-Muqaddas is under their illegal possession.” - Jihaad ul-Kuffaari wal- Munaafiqeen
As pointed out by Dr. Nayyer Ali in an article written in June of 2004 in the PakistanLink, the Jihadis have evolved from the heroic fight against invading Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980's through a phase of "fighting the corrupt regimes" in the 1990's that targeted the Egyptian government, the Saud Family, and the rulers in Sudan. By the late 1990's the focus of attention of Al-Qaeda, the prominent jihadist force in the region, had become "the presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia, the sanctions on Iraq, and the occupation of Palestine."
But according to Dr. Ali, after 2001 the jihadist movement transitioned to nihilistic tactics aimed at any one who opposes it, including westerners, Shias and moderate Muslims. They have been consumed with the teachings of Khomeini, Mawdudi and Qutb and the goal of re-establishing the Khalifa which will rule with Sharia.
In an August, 2002 review of Peter Bergen's Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden Parshotam Mehra states:
quote:
Bin Laden has two principal grouses against the USA. First, the very mention of the name, he admitted, provoked "disgust and revulsion." To start with, by aligning itself with the Saudi regime, Washington had committed "an act against Islam." He was determined to unseat the Saudis and, by implication, beat down the Americans.
That was not all. The USA was responsible for all those killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. It was against these acts of "aggression and injustice" that he had declared jihad. The end-goal was to drive Uncle Sam away from all Muslim lands.
Bin Laden was convinced that the end of the Cold War and the eclipse of the Soviet Union had made the USA "ever more haughty and arrogant." Not that this deterred him in the least. His answer to globalisation was the restoration of the Khalifa and the caliphate. Which, ominously, was to begin from Afghanistan with the swath of green eventually spreading all the way from Tunisia to Indonesia. [Emphasis added]
At any given time, the Khalifa may be chosen in three ways:
quote:
1. By selection. The Khalifa is selected by a group of the best, most Islamically knowledgeable people in the society (not by a general vote of everyone). This groups is called the Majlis-Ash-Shura (Arabic for "consultative council"). The members of the Majlis-ash-Shura are chosen from experts who are learned in Islam, and they in turn choose the Khalifa.
2. By nomination. The current Khalifa may nominate his successor, the next Khalifa (as Abu Bakr did with Umar). The people have to accept him just as in the first case.
3. By force. If the current Khalifa forces some one on the people to be the next Khalifa, but that person is righteous, the people must accept him as long as he remains righteous. Similarly, if there is no Khalifa (again, the situation today), it is permitted for someone to forcibly seize power and declare himself the Khalifa if he guarantees to abide by his responsibilities under Islam.(8)
It is worth pointing out that bin Laden has assured himself two of the legitimate avenues to Caliphate by establishing his own maglis al shura (Consultation Council) within Al-Qaeda, thereby insuring the council's choice to either be himself, or some one approved by him and/or the leadership of Al-Qaeda. But lest this peaceful plan should fail, there is always force.
quote:
It is part of Islamic tradition that the title of Khalifa may be attained by conquest if the incumbent is not fulfilling his duties -- or if there is no incumbent. Under shari'a law and hadith, the umma (the consultative assembly of the elders of Islam) is required to recognize as Khalifa anyone who is able to fulfill the duties of the position and demonstrates the sanction of Allah by mobilizing the Dar -al-Islam in successful jihad. Jihad, here, is interpreted broadly; a war of consolidation that united a substantial portion of the Dar-al- Islam under a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy would do it.
In other words, since 1924 the position of Caliph has been waiting for a Man on Horseback. Or, for you science-fiction fans out there, a Muad'Dib. The Ayatollah Khomeini could never quite make this nut; first, because he was not a plausible warlord, and second because he's part of the 10% Shi'a minority branch that disputes the Khalifal succession. The next Caliph, if there is one, will have to belong to the 90% Sunni majority.
Osama bin Laden has behaved precisely as though he intends to fill that role. And in doing so, he has frightened the crap out of the rulers of the Arab world. Because he's played his religious and propaganda cards very well in Islamic terms, barring the detail that he may well be dead and buried under rubble in an Afghan cave.
On 9/11, bin Laden took jihad to the symbolic heart of the West more effectively than any Islamic ruler has managed since the Siege of Vienna was broken in 1683. By doing so he caught Arab rulers ( especially the Saudis) in a neat theo-political trap. They have been encouraging hatred of Israel and the West, and hyping the jihadist mythology of fundamentalist Islam, as a way of diverting popular anger that might otherwise focus on their own corrupt and repressive regimes. But Bin Laden has trumped and beaten them at this game. He has acted out the Koranic duty of jihad in a way they never dared -- and in doing so, seized the religious high ground.
The sheikhs and ayatollahs now have a dilemma. If they support jihadism, they must either start a war against the West they know they cannot win or cede their own legitimacy to the Caliph-claimant who is leading the jihad. But if they come out against jihad, bin Laden or his successor can de-legitimitize them simply by pointing to the Koran. The possibility that the semi-mythical "Arab street" would revolt behind local Khomeini-equivalents hot to join al-Qaeda's jihad is quite real.(9)
But we need not rely on the words of authors, analysts and pundits concerning the claims of bin Laden's goal being al Khalifa. We can rely on the words of the jihadists themselves.
In Bin Laden's Sermon for the Feast of the Sacrifice published by MEMRI on March 5, 2003, the following statements are made by bin Laden himself:
quote:
Prayers and blessings of peace upon our Prophet Muhammad, who said:'I was sent with a sword in preparation for the Day of Judgment when God alone will be worshipped with none beside him. He assigned me a livelihood under the shadow of my spear and he assigned humiliation and lowliness to those who disobey my command. He who makes himself resemble a community of people, is one of them.'[8]He also said: 'Expel the idolaters from the Arabian peninsula.'
quote:
One of the most important positive results of the raids on New York and Washington was the revelation of the truth regarding the conflict between the Crusaders and the Muslims. [The raids] revealed the strength of the hatred which the Crusaders feel towards us, as the two raids peeled the lamb's skin off the back of the American wolf and revealed the hideous truth. The whole world awoke from its slumber, and the Muslims were alerted to the importance of the [Muslim] principle which states that positions of alliance or hostility may be taken [only] for the sake of Allah. The spirit of religious brotherhood among Muslims was likewise strengthened, which constitutes a great step forward along the road towards uniting Muslims under the banner of monotheism in order to establish the rightly-guided Caliphate, God willing.
This speech, in fact, is rife with reference to the "Nation of Islam" and to the previous Caliphates.
But bin Laden is not the only Islamist leader to bluntly state the intentions of Al-Qaeda to establish the Caliphate. An article on the modern day meaning of "jihad", written by the Islamist Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, who is leader of the Al-Muhajiroun movement, rejected the Al-Qaeda definition of jihad as calling for the "violent removal of 'impious regimes' in Muslim countries" along with the jihad against all that is Western, declaring this definition un-Islamic.
Sheikh Bakr states:
quote:
"The question of whether Jihad can be used to remove existing regimes is a relatively new issue which must be addressed. The Muslim Ummah has never before been in a position where we are divided into over 55 nations each with its own oppressive kufr [infidel] regime ruling above us. There is no doubt therefore that the vital issue for the Muslims today is to establish the Khilafah [caliphate]. Allah (be He praised) makes it clear in the Qur'an that there is no compulsion in the Deen ["religion", i.e. Islam] hence we do not fight the Kuffar [infidels] to become Muslims."
"There is also ample proof from the sayings and the actions of the Messenger Muhammad (may Allah pray for Him) that non-Muslims have sanctity for their lives unless they are at war with the Muslims either determined by the Khalifah (Caliph) in his foreign policy or ( as in today's situation) they are violating the sanctity of Muslim land, honor or life. Much advice has also been given by the Messenger Muhammad (may Allah pray for Him) on Jihad which makes it clear that this duty is pro-life as opposed to anti-life, such as not killing women and children, not killing the elderly or monks, not targeting the trees or animals, etc..."
"Hence, although foreign forces occupying Muslim land are legitimate targets and we are obliged to liberate Muslim land from such occupation and to co-operate with each other in the process, and can even target their embassies and military bases, there is no divine evidence for us to fight against Muslims who are part of the regimes in Muslim countries as a methodology to establish the Khilafah. Rather, we urge our Muslim brothers in Islamic Movements who are engaged in this violation of the Shari`ah to look at the evidences and follow that which is based on Yaqeen (indisputable legal knowledge) and may Allah (be He praised) guide us all to the best."
MEMRI summarizes:
quote:
Significantly, Sheikh Bakri argues that the well-known Islamic concepts of Dar Al-Islam versus Dar Al-Harb no longer apply. This means that the implicit obligation of Muslims to wage war on Dar Al- Harb ("The Abode of War," i.e. territory ruled by non-Muslims) is no longer applicable. Sheikh Bakri argues that the concept of Dar Al- Islam implies the existence of a Khilafa (Caliphate) and that because there is no Khilafa nowadays (since the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in March 1924), there is no Dar Al-Islam and, consequently, no Dar Al-Harb.
Sheikh Bakri's contentions bear the importance of the establishment of the Caliphate to legitimize the jihadis' efforts.
In an interview with Al-Hayat in January 2004, Nabil Sahrawi (a.k.a. Abu Ibrahim Mustafa) who holds a leadership position in the Salafi Group for Da'wa and Fighting in Algeria, stated:
quote:
'The rulers of the Muslim lands today are a gang of apostates [and] criminals, the most evil creatures created on the face of the earth, whose crimes are known to all, and they are a paradigm of treachery, deceit, misleading, and repression. How many commitments have they given their people, only to then fill their graveyards and prisons with them? They have replaced Shari'a law, and they rule Muslims with the laws of Europe and America. They have shed blood and violated the religious prohibitions. They have wasted the property of the Muslims on forbidden things. All that interested them was their bellies and their enslavement to the West. They are not [protected] by any pact. Anyone who wants a lesson [on the results] of dialogue with the apostates, let them learn the lesson of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the lesson of the Islamic Front of Salvation in Algeria … and so on.
"The Salafi Group for Da'wa and Fighting is fighting the regime in Algiers because of its unbelief and apostasy… Fighting the apostates takes precedence over fighting others from among the original infidels, and the punishment of the apostates is harsher than that [of the original infidels], both in this world and in the hereafter. Pacts must not be formed with these rulers; they must not be given security; there must be no reconciliation with them, and there must be no truce with them. We will accept from them either repentance or the sword…"
When asked of his group's connection with Al-Qaeda, Sahrawi offered the following:
quote:
Our connection to Al-Qa'ida and the other Jihad organizations in the world is based on two things:'
"First, the operation of the Salafi Group for Da'wa and Fighting in the realm of preaching and Jihad is an operation integrated with that of the other groups, because as noted in the [organization's] charter … the Salafi Group for Da'wa and Fighting is a phased means aimed ultimately at establishing a group of Muslims – the Caliphate – and it sees this as a sacred goal that all Muslims must strive to attain…
"Second, one of our goals is also to educate the Muslims about the principle that loyalty to Islam and to the Sunna must take precedence over loyalty to all the other frameworks… The Muslim is the brother of the Muslim, even if their countries are distant from each other. Every Muslim is entitled to the support [of other Muslims]… We support those who support Allah, His Prophet, and the believers, and we act with hostility towards those who act with hostility towards Allah and His Prophet, even if he is from among the closest of the close."
In the 2001 trial concerning the indictments against top Al-Qaeda leadership, including Osama bin Laden, during the testimony of the state's witness Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, the following information was divulged about the intent and teachings of Al-Qaeda:
Testimony under direct examination from February 6, 2001:
quote:
Q. Were you present for any conversations where Usama Bin Laden stated what he was going to do after the Russians left Afghanistan?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you tell us what Usama Bin Laden said he was going to do after the Russians left Afghanistan?
A. He thinking about making group.
Q. Can you explain to us anything else you recall about what he wanted this group to do?
A. To be ready for another step because in Afghanistan everything is over.
Q. And did he explain at that time what that other step was?
A. They say we have to make Khalifa.
Q. Can you explain to the jury what a khalifa is?
A. Khalifa mean we need one Muslim leader for the whole Muslim in the war.
Q. Continue with what else you recall Usama Bin Laden stated he wished to do after the Russians left Afghanistan.
A. He say also we want to change the Arab government because there's no Muslim government in the war, so we have to make Muslim government .
Testimony under cross-examination from February 13, 2001:
quote:
Q. Isn't it true, sir, that Jihad can only be in defense in the cause of Allah? I mean, there are other reasons; that's one of them?
A. Jihad is so many different roles. So one of the Jihad to make Jihad, being make the whole country Muslim.
Q. Is another of these reasons when led by a spritiual leader to accomplish these goals?
A. Khalifa.
Q. Now, you went to a camp in Khost, isn't that right?
A. Yes, Khost area.
Q. And there again, they talked to you, various people talked to you about religious issues, didn't they?
A. Yes, in Farouq camp.
Q. And one of the things they talked to you about was something I think you referred to as a khalifa, right?
A. Khalifa. Al khalifa, yes.
Q. And "khalifa" means that all of the Muslim world should be united into a single -- I'm going to use the word country, but it really means a single entity?
A. You're right.
Q. And you believed that, didn't you?
A. Yes.
Q. You believed, for example, that whatever country you were from, in your case, the Sudan, wasn't as important as the unity Muslims should have for one another?
A. I don't understand that.
Q. Well, Sudan is a nation, right?
A. Yes, it's country.
Q. Egypt is another nation?
A. Another country, yes.
Q. Somalia is another country?
A. Yes.
Q. But when you talk about khalifa, what you say is all Muslims should be joined together?
A. You're right, under one man.
Q. Under one man, a khalifa?
A. Yes.
Q. And that was one of the goals of al Qaeda, wasn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. And it was a goal you accepted?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. At some point the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan, were they not?
A. Yes.
Q. And that was a tremendous victory for Muslims around the world?
A. Yes.
Q. But after that victory there were a number of men who for years had been fighting in Afghanistan and had no cause left to fight, isn't that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Those were called the mujahideen?
A. Yes.
Q. And those people, those mujahideen, had been fighting for so long that that was the only thing they really knew how to do, wasn't it?
A. You're right.
Q. So it was at that time, at the end of the war in Afghanistan, that Bin Laden decided to start al Qaeda?
A. Before him, another people.
Q. But it was around the time the war ended in Afghanistan, wasn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. And he began that in part to work towards this khalifa, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, you were one of the very first people involved with Bin Laden, weren't you?
A. Yes.
Q. So, for example, at one time Salim gave a speech in which he quoted from the Koran where it said there should be no other religions in our islands, do you remember that?
A. In Arab islands.
Q. What do you mean by that?
A. In Arab islands: Yemen country, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Muscat, Jordan, Palestine, this is Arab islands.
Q. And he meant, did he not, that the khalifa should take those Arab countries and make sure that they were completely Muslim, Arab countries for the Muslims, right?
A. It's for Prophet Mohamed. He say Prophet Mohamed says they not allowed to let two religions in Arab islands.
In a rather low-profile CNN article in June, 2004, the results of a poll conducted with more than 15,000 Saudis were reviewed and the summary statement was:
quote:
Almost half of all Saudis said in a poll conducted last year that they have a favorable view of Osama bin Laden's sermons and rhetoric, but fewer than 5 percent thought it was a good idea for bin Laden to rule the Arabian Peninsula.
Indicating the still present effort to promote bin Laden as the modern-day Caliphate for the region.
References
1. http://www.fact-index.com/c/ca/caliphate.html
2. A Concise History of Islam and the Arabs
3. http://www.fact-index.com/a/al/al_qaida.html
4. Inside Al-Qaeda
5. The Religious Sources of Islamic Terrorism
6. What Do the Jihadis Want?
7. A walk through tunnels of hate
8. The Muslim Khalifa
9. What Al-Qaeda wants
10. Bin Laden's Sermon for the Feast of the Sacrifice
11. Islamist Leader in London: No Universal Jihad As Long As There is No Caliphate
12. Interview with Algerian Terror Leader Associated with Al- Qa'ida: The Islamic State Will Arise Only Through Blood and Body Parts
13. http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/pdfs/binladen/060201.pdf
14. http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/pdfs/binladen/130201.pdf
15. http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/pdfs/binladen/indict.pdf
16. Poll of Saudis shows wide support for bin Laden's views
Posted at 12:07 pm by Psychomike
Monday, November 08, 2004
Shocker :Poverty Not Cause Of Terrorism!
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| Alberto Abadie: 'In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but ... when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism ... but ... also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin.' (Staff photo Jon Chase/Harvard News Office) |
Freedom squelches terrorist violence
KSG associate professor researches freedom-terrorism link
By Alvin Powell
Harvard News Office
A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation's level of political freedom.
Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks.
Abadie, whose work was published in the Kennedy School's Faculty Research Working Paper Series, included both acts of international and domestic terrorism in his analysis.
Though after the 9/11 attacks most of the work in this area has focused on international terrorism, Abadie said terrorism originating within the country where the attacks occur actually makes up the bulk of terrorist acts each year. According to statistics from the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base for 2003, which Abadie cites in his analysis, there were 1,536 reports of domestic terrorism worldwide, compared with just 240 incidents of international terrorism.
Before analyzing the data, Abadie believed it was a reasonable assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty, especially since studies have linked civil war to economic factors. However, once the data was corrected for the influence of other factors studied, Abadie said he found no significant relationship between a nation's wealth and the level of terrorism it experiences.
"In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism, as previous studies have shown, but perhaps more surprisingly also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin," Abadie said.
Instead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable.
Like those with much political freedom, nations at the other extreme - with tightly controlled autocratic governments - also experienced low levels of terrorism.
Though his study didn't explore the reasons behind the trends he researched, Abadie said it could be that autocratic nations' tight control and repressive practices keep terrorist activities in check, while nations making the transition to more open, democratic governments - such as currently taking place in Iraq and Russia - may be politically unstable, which makes them more vulnerable.
"When you go from an autocratic regime and make the transition to democracy, you may expect a temporary increase in terrorism," Abadie said.
Abadie's study also found a strong connection in the data between terrorism and geographic factors, such as elevation or tropical weather.
"Failure to eradicate terrorism in some areas of the world has often been attributed to geographic barriers, like mountainous terrain in Afghanistan or tropical jungle in Colombia. This study provides empirical evidence of the link between terrorism and geography," Abadie said.
In Abadie's opinion, the connection between geography and terrorism is hardly surprising.
"Areas of difficult access offer safe haven to terrorist groups, facilitate training, and provide funding through other illegal activities like the production and trafficking of cocaine and opiates," Abadie wrote in the paper.
A native of Spain's Basque region, Abadie said he has long been interested in terrorism and related issues. His past research has explored the effect of terrorism on economic activity, using the Basque country as a case study.
Abadie is turning his attention to the effect of terrorism on international capital flows. Some analysts have argued that terrorist attacks wouldn't have much of an impact on the economy, since unlike a war's widespread damage, the damage from terrorist attacks tends to be relatively small or confined to a small area.
In an era of open international capital markets, however, Abadie said terrorism may have a greater chilling effect than previously thought, since even a low risk of damage from a terrorist attack may be enough to send investors looking elsewhere. Posted at 08:30 pm by Psychomike
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Arafat Has Been Dead Since Friday!
Paris Tells Palestinians to Remove Arafat
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
November 7, 2004, 12:42 AM (GMT+02:00)
French president Jacques Chirac’s patience with the Palestinians’ desperate maneuvers to cover up Yasser Arafat’s demise has run out. DEBKAfile’s Paris and Washington sources reveal exclusively that Friday, November 5, exactly a week after Arafat was admitted to the Percy military hospital near Paris, the French president put in a call to the White House and informed President George W. Bush that it was all over.
Paris and Washington both then swung into action.
An American delegation, organized at top speed by US Middle East diplomats, called on Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia in Ramallah on Saturday, November 6,
and asked him how Washington could help expedite a fitting end to the episode. The visit was more a token of support than a practical offer of help.
In Paris meanwhile, Suhah Arafat sacked the PLO ambassador Leila Shahid, the Palestinian spokesperson who issued almost daily bulletins after Arafat arrived in Paris.
What happened next was that Christian Estripeau, spokesman of the French military health services, informed Mrs. Arafat that he would issue no more bulletins on Arafat’s condition; neither would Percy hospital. She was given to understand that the hospital had kept her husband artificially alive as long as it intended to. The conversation followed a decision by a top-level conference of French officials, attended also by the president, to disengage from the pretence that Arafat was still alive. They realized it was no longer tenable without compromising the military hospital’s ethical position and medical credibility.
They also decided to settle the Arafat problem before November 12, because that is when Ramadan ends with “Orphan’s Friday” and moves into the three-day Eid al Fitr festival, during which no business of any kind can be contracted with Muslim authorities. If the Palestinian leader can be buried by Wednesday or Thursday, the French government reckons, the days of mourning can be wound up in time for Muslims to celebrate the festival and get started on the post-Arafat era.
Howwever, French efforts to unload Arafat by mid-week have been stymied by the lack of any accredited authority willing and able to organize the funeral or even determine the Palestinian leader’s final burial place. No Arab or Muslim leader will attend a funeral in Gaza or Jerusalem because it would entail transiting through an Israeli international port as well as risking his life in a Palestinian terrorist battle zone such as the Gaza Strip.
An earlier suggestion to overcome this difficulty, by Arab and European leaders attending a lying-in-state ceremony in Paris before the coffin’s transfer to Cairo, fell through. According to DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources, three governments - France, Egypt and Jordan – refused to allow any part of the final ceremonies on their soil. Paris then asked the Tunisian president Zeit bin Ali for permission to hold the central ceremony in his capital, so that European, Arab and Muslim leaders could pay their last respects in safety. The coffin would then be flown to Cairo and on to the Gaza Strip for burial.
The Tunisian president agreed. The Egyptian government firmly declined, as did Jordan.
In Ramallah, the power vacuum is widening.
Prime minister Ahmed Qureia and his predecessor Mahmoud Abbas are losing ground in their attempts to assume the interim reins of government.
1. Saturday, Qureia went to Gaza City to try and negotiate a temporary halt in terrorist attacks with the heads of 13 Palestinian factions – at least until after the funeral. They turned him down. Hamas demanded that first a unified Palestinian leadership be established with a place for itself.
2. The Gaza-based Palestinian Authority secretary Tayeb Abu Rahim Qureia humiliated Qureia at Saturday’s session of the Palestinian national security council by declaring angrily that nothing in the Palestinian constitution provided for the prime minister to step in as acting PA Chairman in Arafat’s absence. That prerogative, he said, belongs to another Gazan, the Palestinian legislature’s speaker, Fathi Rouh.
3. Then, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s politburo chief, Farouk Kaddumi, who turned up in Paris Thursday, questioned Abbas’s constitutional credentials to stand in for Arafat as chairman of the PLO central committee. Kaddumi claimed that he was the rightful chairman and Abbas, who is listed as one of two deputies, must report on his every action to Kaddumi as his subordinate.
http://www.debka.com/article_print.php?aid=932 Posted at 07:13 pm by Psychomike
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