Opinion
Artilleryj
"Usurped powers cannot withstand the
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INTERNATIONAL
Click
on a headline from the archive or scroll down through the stories below
it.
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November,
2008
October,
2008
September,
2008
August,
2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Women in
Afghanistan?
Not so much progress there
From TomDispatch
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Palestinian village
to be demolished
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Fallujah fall
guy
From Foreign Policy In Focus
Friday, August 22, 2008
Hopeful signs from
local
initiatives in the
Middle
East
From Foreign Policy In Focus
Thursday, August 21, 2008
What now for
Georgia?
From Foreign Policy In Focus
Upheavals in the polls
and
Afghanistan
From Informed Comment
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The fall of Bush's
man in Pakistan
From Informed
Comment
Monday, August 18, 2008
When
did Bush and Putin
agree to split up
world energy?
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Prime minister may attack
Sunni
Awakening Councils
From Informed Comment
Friday, August 15, 2008
We lack understanding
of Russian dynamics
From Foreign Policy In Focus
Bush abandons
old ally Musharraf
From Informed Comment
More Iraqi women
becoming suicide bombers
From
Foreign Policy In Focus
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Mexican oil debate flying
under media radar
From
Foreign Policy In Focus
Thursday,
August 7, 2008
What the world
needs now
is
more and better
food aid
From
Foreign Policy In Focus
Sunday,
August 3, 2008
Corporate
media missing out
on a gas of
a story
From TomDispatch
Thursday,
August 7, 2008
Sudan's
truth
unwelcome
at Beijing Games
Olympic
Focus:
sports
and foreign policy
From Foreign Policy In Focus, a
series
exploring what impact
the Olympics will have on China,
the role of
sports and politics, and
what governments and social
movements hope to
achieve at
this year's Games.
|
Thursday, July 31, 2008
It's time
to talk to the Taliban
From
Foreign Policy In Focus
Monday, July 28, 2008
Neocons want
Turkey
to play along on Iran
From
Foreign Policy In Focus
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Juan
Cole: A Social
History of the
Surge
Thursday,
July 24, 2008
Juan Cole: Obama's
Afghanistan policy problematic
From
Informed Comment
Wednesday,
July 23, 2008
Obama
risks backsliding
on
Colombia trade deal
From
Foreign Policy In Focus
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Nuclear-armed nations
coming
to a sobering realization
From
Foreign Policy In Focus
Friday,
July 18, 2008
Keep
your scam-baiting
straight from dumorrage
Thursday,
Juky 17, 2008
Economic
powers opposed
effective
climate action
From
Foreign Policy In Focus
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Opinion Artillery special
forum on Oil and Irag
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Iraq may insist on
troop withdrawal deadline
Monday, July 7, 2008
Oil's
role in Iraq war
becoming harder to hide
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Just
what is
U.S. up to in Iran?
|
June, 2008
May,
2008
April, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Practicing diversions,
not diplomacy
Saturday, April 12, 2008
To be continued:
the war for Iraq's oil
March,
2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Is the surge going sideways?
|
Opinion
Artillery's Recommended Links
Informed Comment
Read the award-winning
blog of Juan Cole, professor
at the University of Michigan,
author, and expert on the
Middle East.
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TomDispatch
Insightful articles
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and a wide array
of guest authors.
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Friday, September 19, 2008
One more war
before Bush goes?
Part
2 of 2
John Beckett, Opinion Artillery
On
Monday, Pakistani security forces backed by helicopter gunships and
heavy artillery struck
suspected hide-outs in Pakistan’s Bajur tribal region, killing 32
people, including three women.
The region, where Osama Bin Laden may be, has been the scene of what
the Associated Press reports
is “a bloody military offensive that has reportedly killed hundreds of
people in recent weeks.”
The Pakistani government said last month that it would cease military
operations in Bajur for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, although it
reserved the right to retaliate against insurgent activities. That
operation in August forced a reported 300,000 people to flee to
neighboring regions. But the cease-fired announcement led many to
return.
“Now,” the AP says, “people are again fleeing. One resident, Abdul
Malik, was heading Sunday to the Dir area north of Bajur with his wife
and three children. He said they were trying to return to the relief
camp they'd vacated upon hearing of the Ramadan suspension. ‘This is
more fierce fighting than before, and we don't know who is killing
whom, as no big figure has been killed as yet, only innocent
civilians,’ Malik said.”
This is probably not the best way to convince people you’re on their
side. Which helps explain why, when two U.S. helicopters tried to land
troops in a rural Pakistan region Monday, they were forced to go back –
not just because the Pakistani Army was firing on them, but because
local civilians were joining in on the firing.
Since July, U.S. policy has been to make it easier for troops to enter
into Pakistan – or to fire missiles into Pakistan – in pursuit of Al
Qaeda or Taliban fighters fleeing into that country from Afghanistan.
But in his usual lone cowboy manner, President George W. Bush enacted
this policy unilaterally. He did not pave the way diplomatically by
garnering support from the Pakistani government. He merely told his
generals, in essence, to plunge ahead without worrying what Pakistani
authorities might say.
The rather predictable result – we pause here to say “duh” – is that
our incursions have angered the Pakistani military and the government,
not to mention countless Pakistani common people. But that’s not the
only negative result. Essentially, this policy tells (or shows) the
Pakistani government that if it doesn’t get tougher on militants, we’ll
just cross into its country and do it ourselves. This may sound good in
a Rambo-like way, but it doesn’t do much to build a working
partnership.
Instead, it forces Pakistan – if it wants to keep receiving U.S. money
– to take more aggressive military action in the areas bordering
Afghanistan. But while this may sound good to many Americans tired of
militants finding safe haven in Pakistan, it’s no easy task for those
who have to carry it out.
Continued from Home
>>
For
one thing, the Pakistan government and military only had nominal
control of these remote areas to begin with. For another, Pakistani
loyalties are split. It seems that most Pakistanis are no fans of Al
Qaeda or the Taliban. But many of the country’s nearly 200 million
Muslims aren’t cheerleaders for the U.S., either. They dislike the
fundamentalists, but they dislike the U.S. just as much.
In fact, according
to Bruce O. Riedel, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution
and a former high-ranking CIA and Pentagon official, “There's been a
poll in Pakistan in last several days that say the majority of
Pakistanis think the violence in their country is the result of the
United States. And only a handful of Pakistanis think that it's the
result of al-Qaeda and its allies. And in that kind of charged
political atmosphere, these kinds of operations can easily incite even
further anti-Americanism.”
Sending our troops into their country, or firing missiles into it,
whenever we want does not make these people like us more, especially
when innocent civilians so often get caught up in the fire. This is not
exactly a recipe for stability. Yet that is exactly what we need in
Pakistan, according to
Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, NATO General Secretary.
“Greater stability in Afghanistan means greater stability in Pakistan,
but the opposite is also very true,” he said. “The likely outcome of a
more unstable Pakistan would mean a more unstable Afghanistan. Given
the fact that Pakistan is a nuclear power, I don’t want to elaborate
any more here except to say that the words Taliban and nuclear do not
go together very well.”
Our current strategy carries the very real risk of undermining popular
support for the government in a country that has seen two military
coups and two impositions of martial law in the last 50 years.
The overall Pakistani economy, meanwhile, is in shambles. Pakistani
society is riven with disparity. Many Pakistanis, especially those in
cities, are forward-thinking. But many who live in rural areas are
decades, if not centuries behind. Their lives are governed by
traditional tribal loyalties, and they have little or no loyalty to a
central government that doesn’t even provide elementary schools for
many of them.
“In the 1980s, we backed an insurgency against the Soviets (in
Afghanistan) from Pakistan,” Riedel said. “We know from that
experience – those of us that were in it – that you cannot lose that
war as long as you have your sanctuary in Pakistan. You may not be able
to win in Afghanistan, but you can't lose, because you always have a
place to regroup and you can make life miserable for the ruling
government in Afghanistan. And it's paralyzed in Afghanistan as long as
you have that sanctuary.
“The next president has to find a way to reverse Pakistani attitudes
about America, to get the Pakistanis to change from being half-hearted
supporters – or not being supporters at all – of our struggle against
the Taliban. We have got to get them on our side. There is no
unilateral American solution to the problem of these sanctuaries in
Pakistan. We cannot hope to invade and occupy all of Pakistan to
cleanse it of the Taliban and al-Qaeda since Pakistan is a nuclear
weapons state. We just simply cannot occupy the entire country. We need
to get the Pakistanis to work with us.”
Riedel notes that American support of various Pakistani dictators over
the past 50 years or so has left many Pakistani people angry at us. He
says the key objective for the U.S. should be acting “to reverse the
distrust and the lack of faith in America that has accumulated ... That
can be done, I think, if we work with the civilian government, show
them we want democracy in Pakistan, if we increase our assistance to
Pakistan, especially in economic areas as Sen. Joseph Biden and Sen.
Richard Lugar have proposed. We should also be sensitive to some of
Pakistan's diplomatic needs.”
We can hope – and I think we can reasonably expect – that as president,
Barack Obama would handle this tinderbox with more skilled diplomacy
than Bush or John McCain. As Riedel mentioned, Obama running mate Joe
Biden long ago proposed that the U.S. focus more of its aid to Pakistan
on economic development that would benefit the people of the country,
not just its military and political leaders. Whether a President John
McCain and Vice President Sarah Palin would come up with a similarly
enlightened approach is, well, let us say doubtful.
Besides, whoever is the next president will have to start from wherever
Bush leaves them – and there are troubling indications that Bush has
not yet finished making messes that others will have to clean up.
In a Thursday post on RussiaToday,
Evgeny Belenkiy reports that in Afghanistan, the U.S. military is
bringing in planeload after planeload of tanks, a weapon that the
Soviets found to be practically useless during their fruitless attempt
to conquer rugged, mountainous Afghanistan:
I remembered
that early in August CNN had started showing U.S. generals who cried
for more troops and hardware for Afghanistan which, in their opinion,
was rapidly becoming a more intensive conflict than Iraq.
Shortly after
that, a phone call came from a college friend who had just come back
from Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he had seen American battle tanks
being unloaded from a Ukrainian-registered Antonov-124 "Ruslan", the
heaviest and largest cargo airplane in the world. The friend asked if I
had any idea what tanks would be good for in Afghanistan, and I said I
didn't. It's an established fact from the Soviet war in Afghanistan
that tanks are no good for most of the country's mountainous territory.
They are good for flatlands, and the main body of flat land in the
region is right across the border in Iran.
Later in
August there was another bit of unofficial information from a Russian
military source: more than a thousand American tanks and armored
vehicles had been shipped to Eastern Afghanistan by Ukrainian "Ruslans"
flying in three to five shipments a day, and more flights were
expected. ...
(Thursday)
the U.S. media reported that there had been a leak from the Pentagon
about a secret Presidential order in which President Bush authorized
his military (most of which is currently on Afghan soil) to conduct
operations in Pakistan without the necessity for informing the
Pakistani government. The U.S. military in Afghanistan - or shall we
say in the whole region neighboring Iran - is getting a freer hand by
the day. And it is getting more and more hardware to play with.
Looking at a physical map of the area quickly shows why tanks would be
of very limited use along the mountainous border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda and the Taliban (and Osama Bin Laden) are
thought to be holed up. Mr. Belinky looks west and sees Iran. I look
east, and I see that Pakistan’s terrain looks as tank-friendly as
Iran’s.
At TomDispatch, Tariq Ali
writes that some NATO leaders favor a strategy that “implies a
permanent military presence on the borders of both China and Iran” as a
geopolitical counter-weight to those emerging nations.
In Afghanistan, we are unloading tanks.
And I wonder which direction we’re headed.
Thursday,
September 18, 2008
Danger Signs:
Disaster
looms in Pakistan
Part 1 of 2
John Beckett, Opinion Artillery
The most dangerous place in the world right now is not Iraq. It’s not
Iran, or Georgia, or even Afghanistan. The world’s most dangerous place
right now is Pakistan, and it’s very dangerous indeed. It has been made
that way by its own government’s misfeasance and malfeasance, by
political strife and turmoil, by Muslim extremists and tribal rivalry,
and by the misguided policies of the George W. Bush
administration.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Monday, Pakistani troops reportedly turned back two U.S. helicopters
carrying Navy Seals who presumably were chasing, or searching for,
extremists involved in the war in neighboring Afghanistan. Tuesday,
Pakistan's army said its forces have orders to open fire if U.S. troops
launch another raid across the Afghan border.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s prime minister and president, angered by recent
U.S. incursions into their country by American troops and missiles,
were consulting by phone and vowing to defend their country’s
sovereignty. And more or less while this was going on, Pakistani F-16
jet fighters were flying closer and closer to U.S. unmanned drones and
U.S. fighter planes near the Afghan-Pakistani border. And the U.S. was
firing more missiles at suspected militants in Pakistan, and while
those missiles were reportedly killing some bad guys, they also were
killing some innocent civilians.
Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan are so tense that Admiral Mike
Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Pakistan Tuesday
and Wednesday to meet with Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff, General
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani.
Afterward, the U.S. embassy in Pakistan released a statement saying it
respects Pakistan's sovereignty and will further U.S.-Pakistani
cooperation.
That may soothe Pakistanis’ heated and hurt feelings for a while. But
it’s a little like raking a pile of burning leaves. You can spread them
out and stop the fire momentarily, but add a few more leaves to the
pile, or get hit by an unexpected gust of wind, and suddenly the fire
is back, bigger and harder to put out.
In the last six years, the U.S. has paid Pakistan more than $5 billion
to buy its support in the so-called war on terror. But we did little to
make sure that the money was well-spent, and apparently even less to
cultivate ties to various segments of Pakistan’s political community.
Bush backed Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s quasi-dictator, right up until
the people of Pakistan democratically deposed him. Now Musharraf is
gone and we don’t seem to have a clue about who to reach out to, or how
to reach out to them.
Thursday, the New York Times revealed that
Bush issued an order in July allowing American troops to cross into
Pakistan to attack Afghan militants without seeking Pakistani approval.
As you might expect, staging such attacks on the soil of an “ally” is
rather unusual, and the Pakistani government and military are not
pleased. Nor are the Pakistani people.
“Unilateral action by the American forces does not help the war against
terror because it only enrages public opinion,” said Husain Haqqani,
Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington.
Yet, even as our influence declines and the situation verges on the
catastrophic, we keep selling Pakistan more and better arms and planes.
In July, the Bush administration sought to shift $226.5 million in U.S.
counter-terrorism aid for the F-16 upgrades.
As The Times of India reports:
The United
States is suddenly faced with the uncomfortable scenario of confronting
the very same weapons and military hardware, including F-16 fighter
jets, it has armed Pakistan with for decades.
The Pentagon maintains that upgrading the F-16s will make them more
accurate and reduce collateral damage. And Pakistan maintains such aid
is vital, saying it flew nearly 100 missions during three weeks in
August that produced some 500-550 Taliban casualties. But, as the Times of India notes, “There is a
great deal of skepticism about Pakistan using F-16s against militants,
and the body count it keeps producing. Several accounts from the region
describe friendly, fraternal ties between the Pakistani military and
Taliban fighters.”
One such account was a recent New
York Times Magazine story
by Dexter Filkins. It paints a very unsettling picture of how Al Qaeda
and the Taliban have united in Pakistan and, while still making plenty
of trouble in Afghanistan, are increasingly becoming a threat to
Pakistan itself.
Filkins makes a strong argument that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are
financing their growth partly with money from the U.S. Money that we
pay Pakistan to fight terrorists wends its way through Pakistani
corruption to end up in the pockets of those very terrorists –
sometimes as bribes to keep them from attacking the Pakistan military,
many of whose members sympathize more with the terrorists than with
Americans, anyway.
“It’s a game,” one Pakistani official told Filkins. “The U.S. is being
taken for a ride.”
In a way, this is no great surprise. From the very beginning, the U.S.
has buttressed its war on terror through the tried but decidedly untrue
method of buying “loyalty.” After Iraq, Pakistan has been perhaps the
biggest “beneficiary.” In return, Pakistan has delivered only
occasional and small results while allowing militant Muslims to take
over the country’s northern provinces and suffering defeat on the rare
occasions when it actually confronts the fundamentalists.
Now, Filkins writes, high Pakistani officials are worried that things
could be getting out of hand. Not only do Al Qaeda and the Taliban
control the northern frontier, they have begun making inroads into
other parts of the country. They have staged an attack in the country’s
capital city, Islamabad, and they are suspected in the assassination of
presidential candidate Benazhir Bhutto.
Like junkies, corrupt Pakistani officials have become dependent on the
money they’ve been siphoning from U.S. aid. The country’s intelligence
service is widely regarded as a cesspool of corruption and mixed
loyalties. Two of its officers were killed in a U.S. raid on a Taliban
location. Billions in aid haven’t made the military a reliable U.S.
ally, either. Not when U.S. raids kill not only Taliban but civilians –
and even Pakistani troops.
As Filkins reports:
Late in the
afternoon of June 10, during a firefight with Taliban
militants along the Afghan-Pakistani border, American soldiers called
in airstrikes to beat back the attack. The firefight was taking place
right on the border itself, known in military jargon as the “zero
line.” Afghanistan was on one side, and the remote Pakistani region
known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, was on the
other. The stretch of border was guarded by three Pakistani military
posts.
The American
bombers did the job, and then some. By the time the
fighting ended, the Taliban militants had slipped away, the American
unit was safe and 11 Pakistani border guards lay dead. The airstrikes
on the Pakistani positions sparked a diplomatic row between the two
allies: Pakistan called the incident “unprovoked and cowardly”;
American officials regretted what they called a tragic mistake. But
even after a joint inquiry by the United States, Pakistan and
Afghanistan, it remained unclear why American soldiers had reached the
point of calling in airstrikes on soldiers from Pakistan, a critical
ally in the war in Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism.
The mystery,
at least part of it, was solved in July by four residents
of Suran Dara, a Pakistani village a few hundred yards from the site of
the fight. According to two of these villagers, whom I interviewed
together with a local reporter, the Americans started calling in
airstrikes on the Pakistanis after the latter started shooting at the
Americans.
Obviously, America is failing to win the hearts and minds of the
Pakistani people, no matter how much we’ve paid their leaders. But
Bush’s stepped-up aggressiveness has, of course, only made things even
worse. There have been more incursions into Pakistani territory, and
more civilians have been killed.
Bush’s strategy would seem to be two-fold: Allowing U.S. troops to
pursue Al Qaeda and the Taliban into Pakistan will not only increase
pressure on them, it will force Pakistan’s government to step up to the
plate for fear of, at best, losing U.S. aid or, at worst, being drawn
into war with the U.S. – despite all the examples offered by Iraq, if
not history in general, that although such tactics may make governments
bend to foreign will, they are much less likely to persuade peoples. In
fact, such tactics tend to turn the governed against the very
governments we support. That’s especially important in Pakistan, a
country with a traditionally tenuous hold on democracy.
“The track record of civilian government in Pakistan is pretty
depressing,” said
Bruce O. Riedel, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. "On the
other hand, the track record of military dictators is also equally
depressing. The country's caught in a cycle of failed civilian and
military regimes. And that's a cycle which is progressively taking the
country downhill.”
In such countries, unpredictable things can happen. Things like coups
and revolutions. Things like the fall of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran
30 years ago. For the past several years, American leaders have fumed
over Iran developing nuclear weapons. It’s long past time to pay more
attention to Pakistan, a country of 200 million people, 97 percent
Muslim, which already has them.
Tomorrow: One more Bush
war?
Monday.
August 18, 2008
Bush
and Putin
On which visit to Crawford did Russian, American leaders decide
on
energy
split?
 By John Beckett -- While
President George W. Bush uttered repeated pleas to please play nice,
the Russians invaded Georgia. Bush responded by heading off to his
Texas ranch, where he has spent more than a year -- 450 days -- of his
presidency. And I was reminded of pictures of Russian Prime Minister
Putin in earlier years,
visiting Bush in Crawford. They tooled around the ranch, Bush always at
the wheel, Putin sitting next to him, wearing an expression that spoke
volumes, like those T-shirts that read, "I'm With Stupid."
Or maybe their expressions were just those of two guys who were
relaxing after a hard day of dividing up the world's energy spoils.
If the government of George W. Bush has accomplished anything in
the
BBC photo past eight years, it has helped Vladimir Putin cement his role as
Russian dictator
and
enabled
Russia to
re-emerge as a global superpower. So much for the great
strides made by that Republican icon Ronald Reagan. While off chasing
terrorists and thinking of the world as an episode of "24," the Bush
administration has helped foster a climate in which Russia, the chief
enemy of the United States for 40 years, could regroup, catch its
breath, look ahead, and plot a strategy to regain what it feels is its
rightful role in global supremacy.
Terrorism? Russia knows a thing or two about it, and Russia was gaining
that knowledge long before 9/11. Consider that in 2001, Russia was
trying to deal with Chechen terrorists while still reeling from the
fall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the USSR, a losing war in
Afghanistan, and a massive makeover of the Russian economy, as
communism gave way to limited capitalism. At the time, Russia's
prospects looked rather grim. In fact, in
August, 1998, things were so bad that Russia defaulted
on its debt.
When Putin heard Bush focusing on a "global war on terror," it must
have sounded like music to his ears. The "evil empire" was more than
willing to yield the spotlight to the "Axis of Evil." Especially when it was obvious that North
Korea was thrown into the axis only to make it seem non-demoninational.
The Russians knew who the true targets were: Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan
in particular and Muslim extremists in general. U.S. bellicosity toward
Iran was problematic because of the latter's role as a Russian ally,
but that concern was outweighed by the prospect of the U.S. taking out
Muslim extremists, like Osama bin Laden, and Arab leaders, like Saddam
Hussein, who weren't viewed kindly by Russia. Islamists were already a
problem for Russia in Chechnya and other regions, and anything the U.S.
could do to lessen their influence was almost as good as found money
for the Russians.
Almost
as welcome to Putin was the Bush administration's human rights agenda.
Preoccupied with securing human rights for Middle Easterners while
stripping them from Americans, this was one administration unlikely to
make waves over the assassination of the occasional journalist or
increasing control over elections and free expression. So as the U.S.
turned a blind eye, "Russian authorities were increasingly intolerant
of dissent or crticism," Amnesty International said in a 2007
report
that mentioned "a crackdown on civil and political rights ... activists
and political opponents of the government were also subjected to
administrative detention ... the number of racist attacks that came to
the attention of the media increased ... the European Court of Human
Rights ruled that Russia was responsible for enforced disappearances,
torture and extrajudicial executions ... torture was used by police
against detainees ... "
 As for money, Russia wasn't exactly awash in it
before 9/11. But there was a light at the end of the
tunnel,
if only Putin could hold the country together long enough to reach it.
That light was Russia's wealth of natural gas, and the enormous and
largely untapped petroleum and gas fields of the Caspian Sea Basin. No
less an authority on energy than U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, in a 1998 Washington, D.C. speech to
oilmen, said, "I
cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to
become as strategically significant as the Caspian."
Russia did not contribute soldiers, or much of anything, to the
U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Unencumbered by such
concerns, Russia was free to pump up its capabilities as
oil and natural gas supplier. The timing couldn't have been better.
Rising prices of those commodities have provided the Russians with more
Bush
isn't the only
cowboy.
and more money even as the American
economy bleeds.
AP
photo
Russia's location
butresses its re-emergence. As the main supplier of natural gas to
Europe, Russia is in
prime position to influence European policy. Dr. Brenda Shaffer, an expert
on the Caucasus from
Haifa University, told Haaretz.com:
"Natural gas, which the
Europeans find very attractive because it is more environmentally
friendly than oil, has so far traveled from Central Asia to Europe only
via Russia. ... Massive projects have been planned in recent years,
such as the Nabucco Pipeline, to bring Central Asia's natural
gas by way of the Caspian Sea and Georgia to the Mediterranean. We can
forget about that project now. Russia has made that very clear. Russia
did not invade Kazakhstan, but rather a small country that is a
bottleneck between Central Asia and the West. No one will want to take
the risk of angering the Russians again."
Russia also is ideally located
to serve the exploding numbers of customers in
China and India. If it can be the supreme
influence in the Caspian Sea Basin, and
countries like Georgia, and ports like Poti, it should be assured of
having plenty of product to sell and the routes to ship it.
I
really have to wonder. At one of their meeetings after 9/11, did Bush
and Putin sit down and look at a map of the world and carve out a
"world energy plan"? Putin could have said, "Here's how we'll do it.
You take
on the Arabs, and get their oil. We'll handle the Central Eurasians,
and get their oil. Both places are filled with Muslims, so we'll both
kill our share, and then they'll be less troublesome. We'll stay out of
your wars and you stay out of ours, and when it all ends we'll both be
riding high. Russia and United States on top, the way it's supposed to
be."
And Bush could have replied, "World without end. Amen."
|
Thursday,
August 7, 2008
Sudan's
truth not welcome at Beijing Games
So
much for a friendly
welcome to China. And so much for China's pledge to host the Olympics
in an enlightened manner. American
Joey Cheek was
the United
States Olympic Committee's Sportsman of the Year just two years ago,
but he is persona non grata at the Beijing Olympics,
which open Friday.
 On Tuesday,
China notified Cheek, an Olympic gold-medalist in
speed-skating and an outspoken advocate for
ending the genocide in Darfur, that it has revoked his visa. It also
has revoked the visa of former
UCLA water polo player Brad Greiner. He and Cheek are the co-founders of Team Darfur, an
organization of 390 Olympic athletes attempting to draw attention to
human
rights violations in Darfur. Cheek
was featured in an Aug.1 story
about
Team Darfur on this website.
Speaker
of the House Nancy Pelosi called China's action "reprehensible" and
called on President
George W. Bush, who called Cheek “a wonderful example for us all” in
2006, to
"secure the entry of Joey Cheek and
other U.S.
citizens who
have been barred
from attending the Olympics
because of
their beliefs, advocacy for the people of Darfur and human rights in
China and Tibet."
Joey
Cheek
Don't hold your breath. And don't expect the USOC or the International
Olympic Committee to do anything, either. But give a cheer for our
Olympic athletes. They chose Lopez Lomong, a refugee from Sudan who is
a member of the U.S. team (and a member of Team Darfur), to be the flag-bearer
for the opening
ceremonies. As actress Mia Farrow, also an activist for Darfur, said:
"It appears that U.S. Olympic athletes have a far better sense of the
Olympic spirit than the USOC or the Olympic host ... The USOC and
Beijing can learn a lot from these athletes, if they are at all
interested in what the Games are supposed to be about."
|
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Juan Cole: A Social History of the
Surge
Posted Thursday, July
24, 2008 on Informed Comm | |