The Rag Blog

Long-time readers of my commentaries will know that I do not subscribe to the liberal notion that our main problems in the Middle East derive from our blundering in without really understanding the peoples and cultures of the region – any more than I believe that the situation in Iraq right now derives from our lack of understanding that “Shi’a and Sunni have been killing each other for 14 centuries in Iraq.”

Instead, I believe that the significance of “our” failure to understand “them,” enormous as that failure is, pales in comparison with that of “our” failure to understand “us.” Instead of a deep analysis of the Shi’a-Sunni question in the Middle East, even a basic understanding of what we did in the Vietnam War, and why we did it, would have served us in much better stead in deciding whether or not to go to war.

Still, it is shocking, and not of minor importance, that over 5 years into the “war on terror,” we understand so little about Islam and Islamic cultures.

The proximate cause of this commentary is the recent flap over right-wing attempts to smear Barack Obama through claims that, while living in Indonesia as a boy, he attended a “madrassa.” In our current climate, this is much like claiming that the Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth.

The claim originated with a magazine linked to the insane megalomaniac, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, fellow traveler with numerous right-wing terrorists beloved of an earlier era of U.S. foreign policy. John Gibson of Fox News immediately jumped on it, speculating over the effect of radical Islamic indoctrination on Obama. CNN, with at least a modicum of actual journalistic sensibility, sent a reporter to Indonesia, who found that it was a normal public school.

Liberals then jumped to defend Obama, saying the claim he attended a madrassa was a lie.

Throughout the whole thing, we were told by countless ponderous TV pundits that a madrassa is a Saudi-funded school for religious fanatics that teaches Wahhabism and terrorism. Never mind that there was precious little Wahhabism in Indonesia over 35 years ago, when Obama was in school there. The word “madrassa,” after all, means what it means.

Except, of course, that it means no such thing. It is the most generic word for “school” in the Arab world, and in some other Islamic countries, where the language is full of Arabic loan words. It means a place of studying or learning. Considering everyone who has been to a madrassa as a terrorist in will then require that we take on the whole Muslim world.

This sort of ignorance is widespread. Jeff Stein, a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, found that numerous figures in the FBI and Congress did not know the difference between Sunni and Shi’a; more shocking, many did not know whether al-Qaeda and Hizbullah were Sunni or Shi’a – including the incoming Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

To get slightly more sophisticated, Nicholas Kristof, one of the supposedly more intellectual regular columnists for the New York Times, developing the bubble-gum-wrapper historical theory that Islam needs to go through something like the Protestant Reformation, wrote a column several months ago called “Looking for Islam’s Luthers.” If he understood anything about Wahhabism, he would know that its founder was Islam’s Luther, and that more recent extremists like Sayyid Qutb were similar to founders of other Protestant sects. They are protesting the corruption of Arab leaders who are cozy with the West and getting paid hand over fist for it just like Luther and others criticized the medieval Catholic Church for its cozy relations with princes and potentates and its sale of offices and indulgences.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress has the power to end the war in Iraq, a former Bush administration attorney and other high-powered legal experts told a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Facing mounting opposition over his Iraq troop increase plan, President George W. Bush insisted it would be “too extreme” if lawmakers pass a resolution condemning his Iraq policy.

Four out of five experts called before the Senate Judiciary Committee said Congress could go even further and restrict or stop U.S. involvement in Iraq if it chose.

“I think the constitutional scheme does give Congress broad authority to terminate a war,” said Bradford Berenson, a Washington lawyer who was a White House associate counsel under Bush from 2001 to 2003.

“It is ultimately Congress that decides the size, scope and duration of the use of military force,” said Walter Dellinger, former acting solicitor general, the government’s chief advocate before the Supreme Court, in 1996-97.

The hearing was frequently punctuated by outbursts from more than a dozen anti-war protesters, who were asked several times to be quiet but not thrown out.

It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.
2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq’s security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.

U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city’s population and the front line of al-Sadr’s campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr’s militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they’ve trained and armed.

“Half of them are JAM. They’ll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night,” said 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, using the initials of the militia’s Arabic name, Jaish al Mahdi. “People (in America) think it’s bad, but that we control the city. That’s not the way it is. They control it, and they let us drive around. It’s hostile territory.”

The Bush administration’s plan to secure Baghdad rests on a “surge” of some 17,000 more U.S. troops to the city, many of whom will operate from small bases throughout Baghdad. Those soldiers will work to improve Iraqi security units so that American forces can hand over control of the area and withdraw to the outskirts of the city.

The problem, many soldiers said, is that the approach has been tried before and resulted only in strengthening al-Sadr and his militia.

Amid recurring reports that al-Sadr is telling his militia leaders to stash their arms and, in some cases, leave their neighborhoods during the American push, U.S. soldiers worry that the latest plan could end up handing over those areas to units that are close to al-Sadr’s militant Shiite group.

Alastair Macdonald is about to end an assignment of almost two years in Baghdad as the Reuters Bureau Chief for Iraq. In the following story, he reflects on the difficulties of covering Iraq and on the work of the Iraqi colleagues he leaves behind.

By Alastair Macdonald – Witness

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – There is good news in Iraq.

For Reuters journalists, this week’s high points were the safe return of two colleagues seized by a death squad which shot two other hostages and the survival of the teenage nephew of another employee who was kidnapped and tortured in Baghdad.

The lows, as I complete nearly two years running the news agency’s operations in Iraq, were sending condolences to the family of our former driver Ismail Ibrahim, who was gunned down in Mosul this month, and trying to find out from U.S. forces why they seem intent on detaining our reporter in Ramadi for a third time.

All in all, as I write to the sound of mortars rattling our windows in central Baghdad, it’s a routine week, four years into a war that has turned into a bad dream for millions of people — and in which I discovered a cure for nightmares.

More on that later.

BAGHDAD, 29 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – In a series of articles, IRIN documented the levels of violence and consequent needs of the population in six different areas of Iraq: Anbar province, the southern provinces, Baghdad province, Kurdistan, Kirkuk province, and Salah ad-Din province.

Anbar province plagued by violence

ABU DHABI, 29 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – “My family is from Baghdad where we have been living for a very long time. My daughter Retaj is four years old and has been diagnosed with Ichthyosis [a dermatological condition caused by genetic abnormalities] since birth. Her outer skin is dry and exfoliates like a fish and then after it exfoliates, her skin sticks out of her body and swells.

“Since I found out about her disease, I have never left her. I have always tried to find treatment for her. Doctors in Iraq don’t understand what it is. Because there is no treatment, she gets worse by the day. The disease took over her face and her body.

“From her birth until today, I’ve only been using Petroleum Jelly. It eases her symptoms somewhat but it is not the solution. In Baghdad, I can’t leave my house because of the violence. I can’t go and see a doctor. I can’t even go to a nearby clinic.

“Sometimes, I can’t even go outside to buy Petroleum Jelly, which is Retaj’s only means of getting relief. I have left her without any treatment or Petroleum Jelly for seven months straight before because we were not able to leave our homes.

”No one wants to have children anymore because they don’t want the children to have to suffer from untreatable diseases caused by all the wars and their effects.”

“The worst thing in Iraq now is that the air is highly polluted. I can’t take her outside at all now. I believe that the weapons that have been used by US troops have affected the weather immensely. These weapons have affected the weather and the weather has affected our children.

“Breathing in Iraq is very difficult. You always smell burning from the fighting and from explosions. This intensifies the air pollution and affects the most vulnerable, our children.

“I have had enough. I am continually stressed and am on the brink of a nervous breakdown because of what is happening to my daughter and because of everything that is happening in Iraq – it is a 24-hour war zone.

By “car-free”, I mean that Peggy and I haven’t owned a car since January 31st of 1997.

So, what is the difference between a person who, through denial, apathy, illness, or self-loathing, commits suicide by ignoring their addictions, and someone who hastens the destruction of a planetary life support system through denial of their addiction and its consequences?

The only difference I see is that people who commit suicide through substance abuse are just hurting themselves, and those who care about them.

But people who would poison an entire planet because they refuse to face their own addictions, are not only suicidal, but homicidal, genocidal, and biocidal as well.

Are we that oblivious to reality, and to our own responsibilities?

Do we just not give a damn, or do we feel too hopelessly addicted to our old habits? Or, are we just in denial that there is a real problem, and that each one of us is a big part of it?

Of the thousands of cars which drive by us every week, blowing exhaust in our faces as we walk around Big Bear, how many of the drivers ever think about what they’re doing, or about our health, or the stench they’re spewing into rarefied mountain air belonging to everybody?

Why is something like that legal?

Should it be legal for me to shit all over everyone and everything?

What’s the difference?

Legal or not, it’s most certainly immoral!

Todays’ infernal combustion automobile is probably the worst of our addictions, because of the magnitude of its destructiveness, but our disease goes much deeper than that.

How often have you heard the term “for the benefit of mankind”?

Humankind, blinded by its own cleverness, and imagined self-importance, values each technology primarily for the benefits to mankind.

Wouldn’t a species with the slightest bit of common sense, and some desire for long-term survival, assess technologies primarily on their benefits to all life on Earth and the long-term health of their ecosystem?

Isn’t survival considered a benefit to mankind?

We have grossly overpopulated the planet through the invention and use of technologies which supposedly benefit mankind. Yet it is becoming clearer every day that those very technologies may soon render our planet uninhabitable for those who would breathe oxygen, including the mankind they allegedly benefit.

Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller responded today to Gov. Rick Perry’s decision that schoolgirls in Texas must be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

“Today’s decision by the governor is not just a positive step forward in efforts to promote women’s health. It is also an important acknowledgment that health and science should not be held hostage to politics and ideology.”

BAGHDAD — Alarmed by rising tensions between the United States and Iran, Iraqi government officials fear their country is in danger of being dragged into the middle of a new conflict between its two main allies.

In the past week, the Bush administration has ratcheted up pressure on Iran, saying it has evidence that Tehran is arming Iraqi insurgents and pledging to hunt down Iranian agents operating in Iraq. That has fueled concerns in Baghdad that Iraq will become the battleground in a showdown between Iran and the U.S., Iraqi officials say.

Iraq’s Shiite-led government has warm relations with neighboring Iran, and it does not want that relationship compromised by an increasingly strident posture by Washington toward Tehran, Iraqi officials say.

“We want to maintain good relations with our neighbors, especially Iran,” Iraqi government spokesman Ali al- Dabbagh told a news conference Thursday in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone. “We have long borders with them, we have local interests with [them] and we would like to have this relationship not in the shadow of the others.”

Iraq also wants to maintain good relations with the U.S., he added, stressing that Iraq does not condone attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. “We want good relations with everyone, whether Iran or the U.S.,” he said. “The problems between the U.S. and Iran must not get solved in Iraq.”

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated sharply in recent weeks, with the dispatch of additional U.S. warships to the Persian Gulf and the deployment of upgraded Patriot missiles to Gulf Arab countries, fueling speculation across the region that the U.S. is gearing up for a war with Iran.

Bush administration officials insist they do not intend to go to war with Iran. They have defended the targetting of Iranians in Iraq and other moves in the region as necessary to counter Tehran’s backing of Iraqi insurgents, which coincides with U.S. efforts to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

“We’ve been very clear we don’t intend to strike into Iran, in terms of what we’re doing in Iraq,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told National Public Radio Thursday.

But Iraq’s concern is that the U.S. is taking advantage of its presence in Iraqi territory to rein in Iran’s rising influence in the region, Iraqi officials say. Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. Air Force is preparing to undertake more aggressive patrols along the Iraq-Iran border to disrupt insurgent supply lines.

PARIS (Feb. 2) – International scientists and officials hailed a report Friday saying that global warming is “very likely” caused by man, and that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level “would continue for centuries” no matter how much humans control their pollution.

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, called it a “very impressive document that goes several steps beyond previous research.”

A top U.S. government scientist, Susan Solomon, said “there can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities.”

The 21-page summary of the panel’s findings released Friday represents the most authoritative science on global warming. The panel comprises hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments.