16 November 2004
Team Players
It appears that the Bush Administration was being told what it wanted to hear by team players who were in charge of critical aspects of intelligence. Certainly, George Tenet sculpted the CIA’s briefings that he presented to the White House to fit its pre-conceived notion that Saddam was behind the continuing threat of terrorism to the security of the U.S. Condoleeza Rice also followed the party line without critically challenging the credibility of evidence that Saddam had or was even developing nuclear weapons.
The New York Times article about Suspect Iraq Arms Intelligence (3 October 2004) points out that the Department of Energy was guilty of the same sycophancy. Thomas S. Ryder used the discredited report on African yellow-cake to back his conclusion that Saddam was building a nuclear capability, even though his own agency argued against the claim that the Iraqi regime’s stockpile of aluminum tubes was suitable for nuclear centrifuges.
It is notable that the use for which the aluminum tubes were supposedly intended – building rocket launchers – was probably outlawed by U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Although that self-admitted and incontrovertible violation justified collective action against Iraq, apparently the Bush administration thought it did not justify unilateral pre-emptive action by the U.S. and its Coalition partners.
Getting the U.N. to take collective enforcement action is not easy. In Bush’s own words: “It’s hard work.” But how can engaging in that hard work compare in value to doing the work of Bush’s reelection in 2004? His administration prefers to crusade against its serendipitous enemy, global terror, whose attack on the U.S. cleared the road to redemption for the Bush Presidency in the 2004 election. That crusade has captivated a wide group of team players throughout the parts of government that the 9/11 Commission and many of the rest of us have always believed should be above partisan politics.
Now that the Bush team has been re-elected, the pre-eminent team play, Condoleeza Rice, has been nominated to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State. Mr. Powell, too, was a team player. Note his performance at the United Nations Security Council in early 2003. However, he was reputed to be a voice of moderation in the Administration before carrying out the will of the President. Ms. Rice, on the other hand, is a hard-line crusader and the chief yes-man in Bush’s coterie. Her confirmation hearings, of course, won’t challenge President Bush’s desire to surround himself with team players. That was something the electorate should have known and considered as grounds to defeat him earlier this month.
It appears that the Bush Administration was being told what it wanted to hear by team players who were in charge of critical aspects of intelligence. Certainly, George Tenet sculpted the CIA’s briefings that he presented to the White House to fit its pre-conceived notion that Saddam was behind the continuing threat of terrorism to the security of the U.S. Condoleeza Rice also followed the party line without critically challenging the credibility of evidence that Saddam had or was even developing nuclear weapons.
The New York Times article about Suspect Iraq Arms Intelligence (3 October 2004) points out that the Department of Energy was guilty of the same sycophancy. Thomas S. Ryder used the discredited report on African yellow-cake to back his conclusion that Saddam was building a nuclear capability, even though his own agency argued against the claim that the Iraqi regime’s stockpile of aluminum tubes was suitable for nuclear centrifuges.
It is notable that the use for which the aluminum tubes were supposedly intended – building rocket launchers – was probably outlawed by U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Although that self-admitted and incontrovertible violation justified collective action against Iraq, apparently the Bush administration thought it did not justify unilateral pre-emptive action by the U.S. and its Coalition partners.
Getting the U.N. to take collective enforcement action is not easy. In Bush’s own words: “It’s hard work.” But how can engaging in that hard work compare in value to doing the work of Bush’s reelection in 2004? His administration prefers to crusade against its serendipitous enemy, global terror, whose attack on the U.S. cleared the road to redemption for the Bush Presidency in the 2004 election. That crusade has captivated a wide group of team players throughout the parts of government that the 9/11 Commission and many of the rest of us have always believed should be above partisan politics.
Now that the Bush team has been re-elected, the pre-eminent team play, Condoleeza Rice, has been nominated to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State. Mr. Powell, too, was a team player. Note his performance at the United Nations Security Council in early 2003. However, he was reputed to be a voice of moderation in the Administration before carrying out the will of the President. Ms. Rice, on the other hand, is a hard-line crusader and the chief yes-man in Bush’s coterie. Her confirmation hearings, of course, won’t challenge President Bush’s desire to surround himself with team players. That was something the electorate should have known and considered as grounds to defeat him earlier this month.
Palestine Solution
The lofty price of crude oil has made it possible for richly endowed countries in the Middle East to narrow some of their economic divergences that create political unrest, threatening the ruling elites. These royal families (or would-be dynasties) are consequently better able to maintain order in their societies, hopefully preventing terrorism as the method chosen by the underprivileged for expressing dissent. This may only be a successful strategy in the short-run. On the other hand, ruling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE do not have the luxury of taking the long view. They must first preserve their continued existence for the foreseeable future. Their best hope for survival may be to co-opt the common members of their societies with an expensive welfare state.
The West, China, India, and Japan are the largest consumers of the Arab countries’ hydrocarbon wealth. They are collectively paying for stability in those societies through elevated prices for oil and gas. An incontrovertible principle of international markets is “What goes up must come down.” When oil prices inevitably decline, will those societies fall again into chaos?
The control of potentially disruptive terrorism in the Arab and wider Muslim world may be worth the cost of permanently financing an artificially high oil price. Moreover, the other source of resentment that foists international terrorism, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, may also be resolved by striking the same deal with the regimes that have been the most reliable financial backers of violent resistance to the Jewish state.
After all, the creation of Israel was supported by the West at the expense of the Arab residents of Palestine as a form of redemption for the horror of the holocaust. That position was adopted because the West did not wish to offer a homeland to European and Middle Eastern Jewish refugees in their own territories, at their own expense. The Arabs, of course, were never justly compensated for this expropriation. The violent resistance they resorted to now takes the form of terrorism.
The West must try to strike a deal with Arab regimes to finally repay that debt. A high price for the oil and gas exports of those regimes, or any Muslim regimes that participate in the deal, would be subsidized by Western importers, in proportion to their purchases. The revenue it generates for those regimes could be used by them as needed to preserve order in their societies, but only as long as they also include the Palestinian state in their welfare programs. In addition, they will have to impose order on that Palestinian state and satisfy the prerequisites of a peaceful outcome to the “Two State Solution.” Likewise, the West will have to tame West Bank expansionism by the Israelis.
Many details would have to be worked out in order to guarantee the oil subsidy tax revenue actually accrues to the oil producers who participate in the program. At first, though, there must be agreement that the Muslim, primarily Arab, world will impose order on Palestine, and the West will pay for it.
The lofty price of crude oil has made it possible for richly endowed countries in the Middle East to narrow some of their economic divergences that create political unrest, threatening the ruling elites. These royal families (or would-be dynasties) are consequently better able to maintain order in their societies, hopefully preventing terrorism as the method chosen by the underprivileged for expressing dissent. This may only be a successful strategy in the short-run. On the other hand, ruling regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE do not have the luxury of taking the long view. They must first preserve their continued existence for the foreseeable future. Their best hope for survival may be to co-opt the common members of their societies with an expensive welfare state.
The West, China, India, and Japan are the largest consumers of the Arab countries’ hydrocarbon wealth. They are collectively paying for stability in those societies through elevated prices for oil and gas. An incontrovertible principle of international markets is “What goes up must come down.” When oil prices inevitably decline, will those societies fall again into chaos?
The control of potentially disruptive terrorism in the Arab and wider Muslim world may be worth the cost of permanently financing an artificially high oil price. Moreover, the other source of resentment that foists international terrorism, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, may also be resolved by striking the same deal with the regimes that have been the most reliable financial backers of violent resistance to the Jewish state.
After all, the creation of Israel was supported by the West at the expense of the Arab residents of Palestine as a form of redemption for the horror of the holocaust. That position was adopted because the West did not wish to offer a homeland to European and Middle Eastern Jewish refugees in their own territories, at their own expense. The Arabs, of course, were never justly compensated for this expropriation. The violent resistance they resorted to now takes the form of terrorism.
The West must try to strike a deal with Arab regimes to finally repay that debt. A high price for the oil and gas exports of those regimes, or any Muslim regimes that participate in the deal, would be subsidized by Western importers, in proportion to their purchases. The revenue it generates for those regimes could be used by them as needed to preserve order in their societies, but only as long as they also include the Palestinian state in their welfare programs. In addition, they will have to impose order on that Palestinian state and satisfy the prerequisites of a peaceful outcome to the “Two State Solution.” Likewise, the West will have to tame West Bank expansionism by the Israelis.
Many details would have to be worked out in order to guarantee the oil subsidy tax revenue actually accrues to the oil producers who participate in the program. At first, though, there must be agreement that the Muslim, primarily Arab, world will impose order on Palestine, and the West will pay for it.
13 November 2004
Counter-Superpower Humanitarian Programs
The U.S. government must not lure NGOs and humanitarian idealists (humanists) into misguided interventions, such as the imposition of democracy on Iraq.
According to Global Development Briefing (12 Nov. 2004), Medecins Sans Frontieres has announced it will shut down its operations in Iraq, citing the escalation of violence in the country and the consequent danger to its staff. "It has become impossible for us, as an international humanitarian organization, to guarantee an acceptable level of security for our staff, whether they are expatriates or Iraqis. We deeply regret that we are no longer able to bring medical aid to the Iraqi people when they need it the most," MSF-Belgium director general Gorik Ooms said in a statement. Aside from the security factor, MSF spokeswoman Eva van Beek also cited the organization's concerns over the actions of the coalition forces, which "have severely limited" their space where it can operate. Van Beek told AFP, "It generally can be said that from the very beginning the coalition forces regard humanitarian organizations as a force multiplier, in other words, to meet their political and military goals. And we cannot accept this at all."
The mission of the U.S. government’s primary non-military cross-border organ of intervention, the Agency for International Development, has been distorted from economic transformation to managing the performance by non-government organizations of the “humanitarian” tasks of superpower domination. The appropriate role for NGOs is to assist the victims of a conquest such as is occurring in Iraq. Unfortunately, in a unipolar world, there is no countervailing agency that will or can protect NGO personnel from being subsumed by the superpower or from harm by the terrorist resistance it provokes.
NGOs are partially at fault by being so easily co-opted for this purpose. They have willingly lent a veneer of respectability to the interventions of the U.S. government. One reason may be that performing that task has provided income to support their activities overseas. Perhaps MSF is less compromised because it is less dependent on U.S. government contracts for its budget. Therefore, it is freer to pull out of Iraq than other NGOs. However, the humanitarian task it can perform still needs to be fulfilled.
Finding a sponsor for counter-Superpower humanitarian programs will not be easy. However, terrorism is making that objective increasingly important. This may be attributing rational nationalist goals to terrorism that, at least in the case of fundamentalist Islam, may not be deserved. Nevertheless, if the resisters in Iraq are grounded in Arab resentment of Western mastery, their allies, the NGOs, should demand sponsorship from the hitherto obsequious governments of the Middle East.
The U.S. government must not lure NGOs and humanitarian idealists (humanists) into misguided interventions, such as the imposition of democracy on Iraq.
According to Global Development Briefing (12 Nov. 2004), Medecins Sans Frontieres has announced it will shut down its operations in Iraq, citing the escalation of violence in the country and the consequent danger to its staff. "It has become impossible for us, as an international humanitarian organization, to guarantee an acceptable level of security for our staff, whether they are expatriates or Iraqis. We deeply regret that we are no longer able to bring medical aid to the Iraqi people when they need it the most," MSF-Belgium director general Gorik Ooms said in a statement. Aside from the security factor, MSF spokeswoman Eva van Beek also cited the organization's concerns over the actions of the coalition forces, which "have severely limited" their space where it can operate. Van Beek told AFP, "It generally can be said that from the very beginning the coalition forces regard humanitarian organizations as a force multiplier, in other words, to meet their political and military goals. And we cannot accept this at all."
The mission of the U.S. government’s primary non-military cross-border organ of intervention, the Agency for International Development, has been distorted from economic transformation to managing the performance by non-government organizations of the “humanitarian” tasks of superpower domination. The appropriate role for NGOs is to assist the victims of a conquest such as is occurring in Iraq. Unfortunately, in a unipolar world, there is no countervailing agency that will or can protect NGO personnel from being subsumed by the superpower or from harm by the terrorist resistance it provokes.
NGOs are partially at fault by being so easily co-opted for this purpose. They have willingly lent a veneer of respectability to the interventions of the U.S. government. One reason may be that performing that task has provided income to support their activities overseas. Perhaps MSF is less compromised because it is less dependent on U.S. government contracts for its budget. Therefore, it is freer to pull out of Iraq than other NGOs. However, the humanitarian task it can perform still needs to be fulfilled.
Finding a sponsor for counter-Superpower humanitarian programs will not be easy. However, terrorism is making that objective increasingly important. This may be attributing rational nationalist goals to terrorism that, at least in the case of fundamentalist Islam, may not be deserved. Nevertheless, if the resisters in Iraq are grounded in Arab resentment of Western mastery, their allies, the NGOs, should demand sponsorship from the hitherto obsequious governments of the Middle East.
