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Wednesday
Mar112009

War on Terror Watch: You are the Millionth (Suspected) Terrorist!

watch-listI'm hoping it's me, and I'm hoping there's a super-duper prize (which doesn't involve rendition, detention, and/or "enhanced interrogation"). From USA Today:

The government's terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, up 32% since 2007.

Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations....

"We're continually trying to improve the quality of the information," says Timothy Edgar, a civil liberties officer at the intelligence director's office. "It's always going to be a work in progress."
Wednesday
Mar112009

Top Iranian Children's TV: Ahmadinejad and the Stuffed Monkey

amoo-pourangAccording to The Guardian:

So there is this kids' programme in Iran called Amoo Pourang (Uncle Pourang), watched by millions three times a week. The presenter is talking to a young caller, who says his father has given him a stuffed monkey for good behaviour.

"What is the monkey's name?" asks the presenter.

"Well, my father calls him Ahmadinejad."

Result? After a seven-year run, the final episode of Amoo Pourang will air next week. It has been cancelled because of the "high financial and spiritual damage" it has caused, including the incident in which "a child in a live telephone line compared its doll to one of the well-known authorities and managers".

The monkey named Ahmadinejad may have been the breaking point for Amoo Pourang, but it pales in comparison with another incident. This time, the well-meaning presenter asked a child to hand the phone to his father or mother.

"They are in the shower," was the reply.
Wednesday
Mar112009

Pakistan: On Eve of Political Showdown, Hundreds Arrested

zardari1From this morning's The Times of London:

Pakistan has arrested hundreds of opposition political activists in an overnight sweep before a planned protest rally, as a looming political showdown presents the most serious challenge yet to the year-old government [of President Asif Ali Zardari, pictured at left).

The story continues:
Most of those arrested belong to the popular Pakistan Muslim League (N) led by Nawaz Sharif, the former Prime Minister, and Tehrik-e-Insaf, the party led by Imran Khan, the former cricket captain.

A senior politician in the Pakistan Muslim League (N), Raja Zafarul Haq, was placed under house arrest and this morning police were hunting for Imran Khan. Scores of other MPs and lawyers have gone into hiding to avoid detention.

A ban has been placed on public gatherings across the country and heavy contingents of police and paramilitary troops sealed off the capital Islamabad where opposition parties and lawyers plan to stage a sit-in outside the parliament building on Friday.
Wednesday
Mar112009

How Israel Limits US Foreign Policy: The Not-so-Curious Case of Charles Freeman

Related Post: Charles Freeman’s Letter Withdrawing His Nomination
Related Post: Charles Freeman’s Speech on the Middle East and Israel (October 2006)
Related Post: Coming Next in the Intelligence-Policy Battle - Iran’s Uranium

us-israel-flagsFor many people, this story will never be known. They will not have heard of the American diplomat, Charles Freeman, or the National Intelligence Council, which he was nominated to lead. The withdrawal of that nomination yesterday will not make CNN Headline News or the front pages of US newspapers.

Make no mistake, however. As a story of how US foreign policy is limited and re-structured --- courtesy of Congress, a network of private groups, and American political culture --- it offers an essential lesson. "Israel" continues to set limits on the "acceptable" in US foreign policy.

Charles Freeman has moved between US Government posts, beginning in the State Department, and influential think tanks for more than 40 years. He was posted in China and China, worked as the lead official for African affairs, and was Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992. He moved to the Pentagon in 1993, as Assistant Secretary of Defense. He has been involved with Institute for National Strategic Studies and the United States Institute for Peace and served as President of the Middle East Policy Council.

In short, when it comes to the US and global affairs, Freeman is at the forefront of officials with experience and expertise. So, when he was nominated to lead the National Intelligence Council, a body created in DATE to co-ordinate and assess the intelligence gathered by US agencies, it looked like a shrewd choice.

Only one not-so-problem: for many concerned that Washington maintain the "right" position on Israel, Freeman was on the wrong side of the line. His long service in Arab countries and his work with the Middle East Policy Center, which receives money from the Saudi Government, made him a suspect. So did Freeman's diplomatic and analytic approach, to which you can give the general label of "realism", which did not start from the assumption for US foreign policy of a strategic reliance upon, and a cultural alliance with, Israel in the region.

Within days of the nomination, the chatter against Freeman's selection began on the Internet. It was taken up as a cause by magazines such as the Weekly Standard, looking for a bit of payback after its promotion of the overseas disasters of the Bush years, and the staunchly pro-Israel New Republic.

By the start of March, the campaign was given further legitimacy by a featured opinion piece, written by the New Republic's Jon Chait, in the Washington Post: "The contretemps over Freeman's view of Israel misses the broader problem, which is that he's an ideological fanatic....Realists are the mirror image of neoconservatives in that they are completely blind to the moral dimensions of international politics."

The irony at the heart of the campaign, highlighted by Chait, was that it often did not mention Freeman's position on Arab-Israeli issues. Instead, there was a wild, flailing assault upon "realism", which somehow had become the real danger in US foreign policy, and the highlighting of one incident in Freeman's long career. In 1999, he sent an e-mail to a discussion list about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre:
[T]he truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China.

That judgement may appear cold-blooded, but it is a practical assessment: had the Chinese Government acted at the start of the crisis, it might not have had to put down a very heavy fist when the demonstrations threatened its stability. Fewer lives would have been lost, and political reform could have proceeded with the small but gradual measures being taken by the ruling Communisty Party.

Freeman's analysis does raise serious and troubling issues, particularly when he slipped into his own normative judgement --- "I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government." The narrow but important point, however, is that the serious and troubling dilemma he highlights has to be confronted. The promotion of human rights confronts the reality that ruling authorities, backed by police and military power, will invoke "order".

The wider point is that Freeman was not nominated for the National Intelligence Council to cast moral judgements. The NIC's function is not to make policy prescriptions but to offer a collaborative assessment of intelligence, thus avoiding disasters such as Iraq 2002/2003, for both short-term and long-term issues. Moral judgement is not, and should not be, in the NIC's remit.

The widest point, however, is that the China incident was always a diversion. Instead, it is that Freeman's position at the NIC threatened an assessment of Middle Eastern issues which did not begin from a founding assumption --- often a very "moral" assumption --- of support for Israel. Assessment might throw up complexities, highlight difficulties of an unchanging course on issues from Palestine to Iran to Syria. It might lead to debate amongst policymakers on those complexities.

There will be no debate, at least drawing upon the analysis of a Freeman-led NIC. Seven Republican members of Congressional committees on intelligence, using the China pretext and the "financial irregularities" of Saudi money behind the Middle East Policy Centre, came out yesterday in opposition to Freeman. The Obama Administration didn't fancy a fight, especially as it could complicate any initiatives that it might pursue now or later in the Middle East, so Director of National Dennis Blair withdrew Freeman's name.

Between 2001 and 2003, many of the State Department's Arabists were pushed out the door because their expertise was an unwelcome hindrance to the Bush Administration's plans on Iraq and the Middle East. The intelligence services saw their information and assessments skewed to fit political agendas, with their agencies taking the blame when the Administration's "intelligence" --- for example, on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction --- was proved wrong. The Obama Administration had tried to promote a revived intelligence community, for example, through the highlighting of Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and indeed Freeman's selection, and the raising of the State Department's profile (and spirits) under Hillary Clinton.

What it has just learned, if it didn't sense this already, is that such ambitions --- and indeed the policies beyond them --- have to accept the limits set by "Israel".
Wednesday
Mar112009

Coming Next in the Intelligence-Policy Battle: Iran's Uranium

Related Post: How Israel Limits US Foreign Policy
Related Post: Charles Freeman’s Letter Withdrawing His Nomination
Related Post: Charles Freeman’s Speech on the Middle East and Israel


dennis-blairThe Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair (pictured) ---- on the same day that the Obama Administration had to withdraw the nomination of Charles Freeman as Chair of the National Intelligence Council --- has just set the scene for another political battle in Washington.

Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday:
The overall situation -- and the intelligence community agrees on this -- [is] that Iran has not decided to press forward . . . to have a nuclear weapon on top of a ballistic missile. Our current estimate is that the minimum time at which Iran could technically produce the amount of highly enriched uranium for a single weapon is 2010 to 2015.

Blair's assertion that Israel was envisaging a "worst-case scenario" about Iranian plans for nuclear energy was echoed by the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Michael Maples, "The Israelis are far more concerned about [the Iranian programme]."

With his testimony, Blair is both reinforcing and clarifying his statements, made to Congress in January, about Iran's nuclear capabilities. On that occasion, he hedged on the clear statement by the US intelligence services that it had no evidence that Iran had resumed an nuclear weapons programme, which Washington claimed had been started but suspended in 2003.

This time, Blair made no qualifications. So don't be surprised if, after the forced withdrawal of Charles Freeman's nomination, there is another battle between between Congress and the US intelligence services.

The Obama Administration lost Round One (some would say "caved in"). Does it dare lose Round Two?