Wednesday, December 13, 2006

In discussing Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Michael Kinsley does not manage to address the "rigid system of required passes and strict segregation" Carter mentions in his comment article (Israel, Palestine, peace and apartheid, December 12). I would also point out one glaring inaccuracy in Kinsley's article. He writes: "No one has yet thought to accuse Israel of creating a phony country in finally acquiescing to a Palestinian state." In fact, that is exactly what organisations such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been accusing Israel of for years.

Ehud Barak's "generous offer" was a state with no control of its own borders, fragmented by a network of settler roads for Jews only, designed to allow them free movement between settlements which appropriate the water resources requisite to a viable state. Bantustan is a word that has often been used.

Kinsley also asks "where is the Palestinian Mandela?" It is no argument to defend the systematic oppression of a community of people by lamenting that they don't behave as well as you feel they should under that oppression. If human rights were restricted to those people fortunate enough to be led by someone of the stature of Nelson Mandela, we'd all be in trouble. But again, just for the record, Mandela did endorse a bombing campaign, and our own prime minister of the day described him as a terrorist (while Israel sold guns to South Africa).

But if the Israelis are desperate for a Palestinian Mandela, how about Marwan Barghouti for a candidate? Now where is the Israeli De Klerk?Qasim SalimiLondon

Madam, - Last Friday, I landed in Dublin a few hours after my article appeared in The Irish Times("Traditional Jews Still Oppose Zionist State", December 8th). The following morning, as usual for an observant Jew, I walked to the nearest synagogue to celebrate the Sabbath and to say publicly a thanksgiving blessing that is recited after crossing the ocean.

However, when I attempted to do so, two synagogue officials blocked my way to the bimah (platform from which the Torah is read and public blessings are recited) and prevented me from reciting the benediction. Visibly angry, they whispered: "You will not be allowed to say blessings here". When utterly surprised I inquired why, I was told "You know why". Apparently, they deem hostile and illegitimate even writing about the history of Jewish opposition to Zionism. Mindful of the serenity of the Sabbath, I preferred to leave rather than to provoke tension.

All over the world, from Cochin in India to San Francisco in California where I have spent the Sabbath in my frequent travels, fellow Jews have invited me to say this blessing of gratitude, to share meals, have offered help and hospitality. Welcoming guests is an important commandment in Judaism and an honoured part of Jewish life. The only explanation of the anomaly I encountered in Dublin comes from the observation made by a reviewer of my recent book, A Threat from Within: a Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism (Zed Books, 2006), who expressed his hope that it "will force many Jews to come to terms with the contradictions between the religion they profess to believe in and the ideology that has in fact taken hold of them". Apparently, some Dublin Jews are yet to come to terms with these contradictions.

Since Zionism seems to have eclipsed their Judaism, it would be logical to expect some of them to attend my public lectures in Dublin and to contribute their views to the discussion of the relationship between Zionism and Judaism. To my regret, this did not happen.

My article in The Irish Times quotes the Israeli philosopher, Joseph Agassi, of Tel-Aviv University, who argues that "to recognize the legitimacy of religious anti-Zionism is crucial for an honest debate about Israel and Zionism - which remains stifled since the Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, deny all legitimacy to anti-Zionism." Dublin Zionists also prefer honest debate to remain stifled.

Conversely, in Israel such debate is more open. It so happened that last week two major Israeli newspapers, the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, gave prominent place to my book on Jewish opposition to Zionism and conducted public debate in English about its topic. This openness should inspire those who seek to support Israel from beyond its borders. Otherwise they risk appearing hopelessly irrelevant by becoming "more Catholic than the Pope". - Yours, etc,

As the dust begins to settle from the mid-term elections, popular thinking is that, over the next two years, the Democrats will force the Bush administration to edge away from the unilateral militarism that has entrapped the nation in two open-ended wars.

Don't bet the rent on it.

Indeed, if you are putting down a wager, the odds are better than even that the United States will attack Iran in the next two years, and the assault will have a great deal of support from both sides of the aisle.

The political decision to take on Iran depends on a number of factors. Washington continues to focus on extracting U.S. troops from Iraq. And a resolution of the Iraq debacle requires some regional approach that includes dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Dems, in other words, have a choice. They can get sucked into the war that the administration wants with Iran. Or they can put forward a bold alternative that can not only prepare for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq but restabilize the Middle East as well.

Iran in the Crosshairs

The Bush administration's bombast on Iran is well known. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the United States “may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,” and administration officials have called it everything from “the nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism” to a “threat to world peace.”

Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force Colonel and strategy teacher at the National War College, the Naval War College, and the Air Force War College, says President Bush is determined to attack Iran. Gardiner says Bush compares himself to Winston Churchill and “talks about the Middle East in messianic terms, and is said to have told those close to him that he has got to attack Iran because even if a Republican succeeds him … he will not have the same freedom of action that Bush enjoys.”

According to Seymour Hersh, during a recent discussion on national security, Cheney said that the Nov. 7 election “would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran.”

Neocon supporters of the administration are already revving their engines. Joshua Muravchik, writing in a Foreign Policymemo, puts an attack on Tehran at the top of the neocon to-do list for the administration's next two years.

The Democrats' Dilemma

Some of this U.S. and Israeli rhetoric has been echoed by Democrats, particularly incoming Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi. In 2005, she told a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that “the greatest threat to Israel's right to exist … now comes from Iran.” AIPAC has long been associated with some of the more extreme sectors of the Israeli political spectrum. The organization has been particularly aggressive in lobbying for war with Iran, a war that polls show the U.S. public strongly opposes.

The Democrats' close ties with AIPAC and the Israeli government are already causing problems. The Democrats won the election on a platform of getting the United States out of Iraq, but AIPAC and the current Kadima-Labor government strongly support that war.

Following an hour-long meeting with President Bush last week, Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert told the press, “We in the Middle East have been following the American policy in Iraq for a long time, and we are very much impressed and encouraged by the stability” that the war in Iraq has brought to the Middle East.

U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), a reliable supporter of Israel, retorted that Olmert's comment was “a very unrealistic observation. Most of us here understand that our policy has been a thorough and total disaster for the United States: we have blundered ineptly into an area that our administration does not understand, and for which it has no plan on how to extract us.”

Although several other Democrats were similarly angered by the comments, Pelosi so far has remained quiet.

For all their rhetoric, the vast majority of Democrats does not want war with Iran, but under our system of government, the president has enormous powers. According to Rice, the administration has already been authorized to attack Iran under powers given it by the congressional legislation on the war on terrorism.

Iraq and Palestine

The problem for the Democrats is how to extract the United States from Iraq, and few observers think that can be done without addressing the Israeli-Palestinian question. In a recent editorial, the Financial Timesargued that Israeli expansion on the West Bank “is what constantly threatens to set the region alight.”

A recent survey by Israeli retired Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, a former assistant to Israel's Defense Ministry, found that the IDF and West Bank civil authorities are suppressing what the newspaper Haaretz calls “the systematic illegal expansion of existing settlements … in blatant violation of the law.” The newspaper called the survey—which is yet to be reported in the United States—“political and diplomatic dynamite.”

Yet Pelosi explicitly rejects the argument that the occupation has anything to do with the current crisis between Israelis and Palestinians. “There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,” she told the AIPAC audience in 2005. “That is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.”

Aside from AIPAC, the Bush administration's neocons, and the Israeli right wing, few would agree with that formulation. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently argued that an Israeli-Palestinian settlement was “the core” of a broader effort for peace in the region. Indeed, elevating the conflict to a matter of Israel's survival plays into the hands of extremists on both sides.

Israel and Iran

AIPAC and Olmert also link Israel's survival to defeating Iran. Yet, although Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's has threatened to wipe out Israel, his bluster is not backed up by any ability to do so. As Scott Ritter points out, Ahmadinejad has no authority over anything pertaining to national security, the armed forces, the police, or the Revolutionary Guard. He is, as one former Iranian president commented, “a knife without a blade.”

In any case, according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Israel has between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, while Iran is several years away from producing even one. An Iranian attack on Israel would be tantamount to national suicide. Plus, while the Israelis routinely describe Iran as a threat to peace in the Middle East, Iran has not invaded anyone in 250 years, though it has been the victim of several attacks.

The authority to go to war rests with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in May 2003 offered to open up Iran's nuclear plants for inspection, rein in Hezbollah, accept a two-state solution, and cooperate against al-Qaida. He also issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons. The initiative was shot down by Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

In terms of Iran's nuclear threat to Israel or the world more generally, Seymour Hersh says the CIA has “found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

Linking a possible conflict with Iran to the survival of Israel or to broader nonproliferation goals is in the interests of neither Israel nor the United States. Such arguments from the Bush administration and the Israeli right wing will condemn the region to decades of endless war.

The Democrats are going to have to make some hard choices to keep the loyalty of those who voted for an end to the Iraq War and military adventurism. For starters they must call for an immediate end to Israeli's expansion of settlements in the West Bank. To end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Dems should push hard for immediate negotiations with all Palestinian parties culminating in full Arab recognition of Israel and a full withdrawal from all occupied Arab land. The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should pledge to defend Israel within its 1967 borders. To guarantee regional peace, the United States should support a regional conference, including Iran, Syria, and all elements in Iraq, to reach a peace accord and the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the region.

The Bush administration is mustering arguments and support for its solution to the Middle East crisis: an attack on Iran. Democrats and their dissenting colleagues across the aisle must offer a feasible alternative. It is time to go to work, Madame Speaker.

Israel is in crisis. The recent Lebanon War has heightened all its internal and external contradictions. Gabriel Ash looks at the economic and political foundations of this deeply militaristic and ideological state. The recent military defeat, brewing class divisions and political polarization from within, have made Israel more unstable than ever.

To understand where this current crisis might lead Israel, a little historical context is needed. From the twenties on, Zionism was a project of colonial development. As economists Nitzan and Bichler brilliantly showed, the so-called Labor party was Capital’s best friend, providing cheap labor and a captive market to attract overseas investors. The establishment of the state in 1948 led to the strengthening of ties. Israel was ruled by a tightly knit junta of generals, industrialists and bankers who quickly transformed the country into a very profitable operation. The “seed” money obtained from selling indulgences to a penitent Germany (and later to guilt-ridden wealthy Jews) was invested in military buildup. Soon, Israel began exporting its principal product—regional instability—to the colonial powers, first to Britain and France, and then to its largest and most loyal customer, the US.

By the 1980s, the economy built purely on international transfers and militarism was showing its age. The 1973 war debacle destroyed the political monopoly of the Labor Party, leading to the rise of Likud and the first appearance of the Israel’s Jewish underclass, the Mizrahi, or Arab Jews, on the political stage. A decade later, the unpopular first Lebanon war broke the bond between the leadership and the middle classes. Then, the first Intifada came soon afterward, transforming the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza from a cheap labor gold mine to a barely affordable burden. Between these three wars Israel also experienced a debilitating period of stagflation (inflation coupled with low growth and high unemployement) that culminated with an almost total banking meltdown.

Capitalist interests

Inspired by US capitalism, the Israeli ruling class responded to the long crisis with a religious adoption of neo-liberalism. The state was privatized and social services and wages were slashed wherever possible. The shekel (Israeli currency) was unmoored. The junta sliced up the different public enterprises and floated them on the financial market, which were duly liberalized. Israel became an open neo-liberal haven, albeit dominated by a tiny number of leading families.

As the roaring 1990s came by, Israel fed Wall Street a long stream of technological start-ups built at taxpayers’ expenses. US capital and Israeli capital intermingled, becoming a seamless web of personal and financial connections straddling the globe. Take for example Haim Saban, former Israeli music producer and now West Coast tycoon. He is the owner, among other things, of Israeli telecom, the Japanese Power Rangers trademark, and a German satellite broadcaster. He is also a personal friend of all former Israeli prime ministers and the largest donor to the Democratic Party, as well as the paymaster of former US ambassador to Israel Martyn Indyk’s salary at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington. Saban epitomizes the new Israeli ruling class. The prostitute who used to live next door to Saban in Tel Aviv (according to his own “rags to riches” account) is equally symbolic—Israel is today the second most economically unequal society in the industrialized world. Less than two-dozen families own more than half of the value of Israel’s stock market.

But unlike in the US, where war is always far way, the relation between financialization and militarism in Israel is complicated. The two ideologies complement each other culturally, both promoting a similar macho coarseness, lack of empathy and instrumentalization of the human world that are hollowing out Israel’s society as surely as a worm makes its way through an apple. Both, of course feed each other through military contracts, war exports, and other forms of corporate welfare. But the neo-liberal insistence of measuring all in dollars poses a growing challenge to a military culture that depends on undeclared waste and relatively high wages.

The internationalization and diversification of capitalist interests created a powerful demand not as much for peace as for the absence of war. There was also demand for shrinking government services, lower taxes, and the conservative and rationalized management of state finances. The pressure to cut costs and to boost growth collides with the unquantifiable goals of completing the cleansing of Palestinians. The clash has been feeding into a growing institutional culture of corruption.

A contradiction also exists between the dependence of military Zionism on a semblance of Jewish social solidarity that neo-liberalism scorns. Israel’s public broadcasting service used to erase the color from foreign films in solidarity with those who did not yet own a color TV set. Class power existed, but it was artfully camouflaged as long as elites raked their dividends through the state. The overtly selfish consumer culture imported from the US, together with privatization, eroded the military’s ability to demand the time and loyalty of thousands of reservists—whether for the exceptional war or for the daily maintenance of the occupation. The scions of the cosmopolitan middle classes dream of a career in investment banking rather than in the military. The destruction of the social safety net threatens the nationalist cohesion which binds the Mizrahi poor to the state and reconciles them to their abject class position.

Regional destabilizer

Israel cannot become Palo Alto. Not only is the military Israel’s largest exporter and largest employer, but Israel’s role as regional destabilizer remains essential as ever to its relation with the US. The military, which sees itself as the keeper of the Zionist flame, is still the incubator for most leadership positions and a formidable institution whose power within Israeli society is unrivaled. The military consumes around 8-9% of Israel’s GDP, totaling close to $10 billion, including over $2 billion in US direct military aid. The ruling class thus cannot do without militarism, which is both the foundation of its rule and the umbilical cord that ties it to the US. But the military, and especially its use in full-scale war, is a growing financial drain that can no longer be hidden in a globalized economy, as well as a potential threat to Israel’s rich upper crust’s trans-continental financial interests.

The second Lebanon war follows the pattern of the second Intifada as being driven primarily by concerns over the military itself. The military began planning the second Intifada as soon as the Oslo agreements were signed. When the occasion presented itself—Sharon’s visit to Haram al Sharif—the army seized it, responding to unarmed Palestinian demonstrations with the shooting of over a million bullets, precipitating the transition of Palestinian resistance from street protests to suicide bombs. The generals’ dislike of Oslo was rooted in the correct understanding that Oslo represented an attempt to outsource the military. Rabin and Peres believed that maintaining the direct occupation was becoming too expensive, and sought to “cut the middleman” by paying Palestinians to repress themselves. But the middleman, in this case the Israeli army, fought back—and won.

With the winding down of the second Intifada, the Israeli elites accepted the demise of Oslo and the imperative of continuing the colonizing project through the Israeli military. Therefore, the end of the uprising led to a lowering of the tensions surrounding the role of the army in relation to Palestinians. The birth of the centrist Kadima, free of any ideological commitment separating “left” from right within the traditional terms of Zionist politics, represents this moment of elite unity. Kadima is the party of the star politicians and is mostly beholden to the two dozen leading capitalist families in Israel, who have all generously funded its electoral victory.

But the collapse of Sharon, the last of Israel’s first generation military heroes, and the rise of the civilian Olmert was also a sign of the times, and not totally auspicious for the military. The internal power struggle did not die with Oslo. After the Iraq war, with the fall of Saddam and the presence of the US marines in Iraq, Israel’s need for such an expensive military became less evident than ever. Whose armies was Israel preparing to fight in a traditional battlefield? Even the Bush administration has been pushing for slimming down Israel’s defense budget.

In the last elections, a new threat materialized from the “left.” Peretz, a Mizrahi with trade unionist credentials, took over the leadership of the labor party on a (quite weak) commitment to reverse some of the excesses of neo-liberal policies. The protest vote of the disaffected middle class was captured by a new, and quite bizarre, party—the pensioners’ party, led by a former Mossad agent who made a fortune in Cuba. Peretz was appointed Defense Minister thanks mainly to his lack of military background and to his so-called “social” agenda. The first “qualification” ensured he could not outshine Olmert. The second would defend neo-liberalism from the brewing popular discontent.

Shock and fizzle

As defense minister, Peretz would have to fight for the military’s bacon, and thus be forced to sacrifice his voters or risk alienating the people who could make him fail in his job—the generals. But his appointment left the army under two inexperienced and weak politicians. When Hezbollah supplied the pretext, the military submitted its readymade plans, which were more marketing plans than war plans—a demonstration of the army’s awesome powers and political usefulness—shock and dazzle. If the war in Iraq was supposed to be a cakewalk, the war in Lebanon was supposed to be a power-point presentation, reminding the Israeli public, Olmert and the capitalists behind him, and finally the US paymasters, what the army can do for them. Except that it turned out as shock and fizzle.

The war exposed the command of the Israeli military as incompetent, and the troops as untrained, undisciplined, badly supplied and not always willing to fight. The Israeli Air Force (IAF), on the other hand, proved its ability to cause massive civilian destruction. Since this is, despite constant denials, the normal mode of Western colonial warfare, the IAF’s display of lethality was in fact a partial success, undermined only by the unrealistic expectations that the military commander Halutz and Olmert created. However, there is nothing that the IAF can do that US and NATO jets cannot do, and probably better. Thus, the surprising failure of the ground forces should resonate a lot more with US strategists than the IAF’s performance.

The defeat was a particular blow to the neo-con/Pentagon faction, giving a boost to Rice, who even dared float a balloon criticizing the “daily humiliation” of the Israeli occupation. To be sure, the US is not going to end its support for Israel soon, but pressure is mounting in Washington for a public relations boost through exacting some unpleasant concession from Israel.

The army has therefore handed itself a defeat, severely weakening its prestige and therefore its bargaining power within the Israeli and US power game. On the other hand, precisely by weakening Israel and rekindling Arab dreams of military victory, the military can point to a new urgency for increasing, and certainly for maintaining, the military budget. The budget cuts that were scheduled for 2007-08 have been already rescinded, and negotiations are apace over budget increases the army is demanding for the long term. There is new interest in reviving various high tech anti-missile programs that were shelved in the last few years, probably for lack of funds rather for their inherent inability to deliver.

Apartheid system

True to form, the military leadership has engaged in a significant operation in Gaza, arguing that Hamas is arming itself with the intention of emulating Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the political echelon is paralyzed by the fallout of the Lebanon defeat, and looks content in waiting for Fatah to finally deliver the Palestinian civil war Israel has been dreaming of for the last twenty years. The “convergence plan,” Olmert’s proposal to formalize a unilateral apartheid system in the West Bank and Gaza, is clinically dead.

The most interesting news, however, comes from Steph Wertheimer, who unofficially suggested launching an expensive reconstruction project in Gaza’s refugee camps. While the half-baked political balloon floated by Israel’s richest oligarch is not important in itself, the intervention may suggest a revival of the internal conflict within Israeli elites over the role of the military. That is bad news for the army and may be one more incentive for precipitating the next war.

The Lebanon War also laid bare the government’s abdication of responsibility for civilian defense and the dismal conditions of poor Israeli border communities. There was no plan for even supplying water to northern residents caught in stinking and badly maintained underground shelters. The affluent residents escaped to Tel-Aviv and the care for the mostly Mizrahi population was left to charity and individual initiative. The exposure of the government’s callousness is feeding the anger against the neo-liberal policies of the last decades. But it is the nationalist right, not the left, who is best able to capitalize on this anger, recasting social solidarity as essential ingredient of national security.

Additionally, the war exacerbated tensions between the Jewish majority and the sizeable minority of 1948 Palestinians. The latter suffered a significant death toll from Hezbollah rockets, due to lack of shelters in Arab communities and the military penchant for placing military installations in their proximity. Many of the community leaders criticized the war from its inception (practically alone in Israel), blamed the casualties on Israel and sympathized with Lebanon and even with Hezbollah. That has incensed most Israeli Jews, who resent the refusal of many 1948 Palestinians to reconcile themselves to their second-class status.

Already, the mood of the Jewish electorate shifted decidedly to the extreme right, with Netanyahu’s Likud and Lieberman’s “Israel Beiteinu” the major winners. If the financial elites shift, as could very well happen, to a more dovish position that would also be bolstered by a more realist US, the center will not hold. But that is far from given. An alternative compromise that would soften the internal rivalry could involve, for example, a privatization of the non-combat functions of the army.

The internal polarization, both within the Israeli elite and between the elites and the larger society, may end the honeymoon of Zionist unity created by the second Intifada. Its fate, however, depends as much on the future of the larger circles of conflicts that have all been intensified by the Lebanon War: in the Occupied Territories; in Lebanon between nationalists and capitalists; in the Middle East between the Saudi-Egypt-Jordan Axis and the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah alliance; and globally, between the US and Iran, Russia and China. The second Lebanon War cut across and hardened these layered conflicts. While nobody can predict the exact future interaction between all these tensions, the likelihood that they will all pan out in Israel’s favor seems low.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gabriel Ash is an activist and writer who writes because the pen is sometimes mightier than the sword and sometimes not. He welcomes comments at: g.a.evildoer (at) gmail.com

There's a remarkable op-ed piece in WaPo today, written by Gen. Barry McCaffrey. McCaffrey is currently teaching international affairs at West Point.

The op-ed spells out a list of things the USA should do to avoid catastrophe in the Middle East. I'll summarize Mccaffrey's ideas below. You've heard them all before.

The amazing thing about the op-ed piece is the way he finishes it. McCaffrey admits that, if the USA can't find the will to do the things he says we must, then we need to pull out of Iraq now.

If it turns out we CAN'T find the will - and McCaffrey admits the US public has given up on the war - he says we - "we" being the American people - must "search for those we will hold responsible in Congress and the administration."

To my knowledge, this is a first. A well respected, retired US Army general, teaching at our leading military university, is pretty much calling for impeachment.

Here is McCaffrey's objective, followed by his 3 point plan to achieve it.

"Our objective should be a large-scale U.S. military withdrawal within the next 36 months, leaving in place an Iraqi government in a stable and mostly peaceful country that does not threaten its six neighboring states and does not intend to possess weapons of mass destruction."

COMMENTARY. Fair enough. That's a fine objective. There's no way we'll achieve it, but at least he's stated his goal. McCaffrey admits openly that Iraq is a mess. And he says:

"We could immediately and totally withdraw. In less than six months, our 150,000 troops could fight their way along strategic withdrawal corridors back to the sea and the safety provided by the Navy. Several million terrified refugees would follow, the route of our columns marked by the burning pyres of abandoned military supplies demolished by our rear guard. The resulting civil warfare would probably turn Iraq into a humanitarian disaster and might well draw in the Iranians and Syrians. It would also deeply threaten the safety and stability of our allies in neighboring countries."

COMMENTARY. This is the "it could be worse" scenario that is supposed to scare us into keeping the war going. McCaffrey tells his readers how to avoid this disaster.

POINT #1. "There is a better option. First, we must commit publicly to provide $10 billion a year in economic support to the Iraqis over the next five years. In the military arena, it would be feasible to equip and increase the Iraqi armed forces on a crash basis over the next 24 months (but not the police or the Facilities Protection Service). The goal would be 250,000 troops, provided with the material and training necessary to maintain internal order."

COMMENTARY. Translation: we spend more money, wait around for the Iraqi army to get its shit together, and everything might work out. Spot them 2 more years. Well, that sounds like old ideas. Tried that already, right? Didn't work. How you gonna sell that one, general? What's the carrot for the American people? McCaffrey's answer - draw down the number of US troops.

POINT #2. "Within the first 12 months we should draw down the U.S. military presence from 15 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), of 5,000 troops each, to 10. Within the next 12 months, Centcom forces should further draw down to seven BCTs and withdraw from urban areas to isolated U.S. operating bases -- where we could continue to provide oversight and intervention when required to rescue our embedded U.S. training teams, protect the population from violence or save the legal government."

COMMENTARY. This, of course, is pure fantasy. We can't control Iraq with current troop levels. How can anyone expect us to control it with fewer troops? For good measure, McCaffrey tosses in the idea of getting US troops out of the cities and onto isolated operating bases - outposts in the desert. This is more fantasy. It would protect US soldiers, for sure. But it would also hasten the descent into outright civil war in the cities. McCaffrey recognizes that this war needs a political, not military solution, so he adds this:

POINT #3. "Finally, we have to design and empower a regional diplomatic peace dialogue in which the Iraqis can take the lead, engaging their regional neighbors as well as their own alienated and fractured internal population."

COMMENTARY. What the fuck? It's the "regional neighbors" who are keenly interested in fracturing Iraq's internal population even further. See Iran, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. This is nonsensical. Next, in a bit of anger, McCaffrey unloads on Rummy.

"We are in a very difficult position created by a micromanaged Rumsfeld war team that has been incompetent, arrogant and in denial. The departing defense secretary, in a recent farewell Pentagon town hall meeting, criticized the alleged distortions of the U.S. media, saying that they chose to report a few bombs going off in Baghdad rather than the peaceful scene he witnessed from his helicopter flying over the city. This was a perfect, and incredible, continuation of Donald Rumsfeld's willful blindness in his approach to the war. From the safety of his helicopter, he apparently could not hear the nearly constant rattle of small-arms fire, did not know of the hundreds of Marines and soldiers being killed or wounded each month, or see the chaos, murder and desperation of daily life for Iraqi families."

COMMENTARY. I would argue that the entire IDEA of invading Iraq was insane. It likely doesn't matter much WHO implemented that crazy scheme. It was doomed to fail. But whatever. McCaffrey goes on to caution against the Baker-Hamilton ISG Report's advocacy of more US advisors.

Then comes the real kicker. I was pretty surprised McCaffrey would publish this in WaPo.

"All of this may not work. We have very few options left."

COMMENTARY. McCaffrey, whatever bad ideas he may hold, is NOT saying "Clap louder!". He's admitting that his 3 step plan may fail. Later on, he sadly admits it likely WILL fail, because of lack of political will.

"In my judgment, taking down the Saddam Hussein regime was a huge gift to the Iraqi people. Done right, it might have left the region and the United States safer for years to come."

COMMENTARY. In English this means "I supported the IDEA of the war, but these guys fucked it up. Don't blame me".

"But the American people have withdrawn their support for the war, although they remain intensely committed to and protective of our armed forces."

COMMENTARY. McCaffrey can't resist the tried and true "We would've prevailed if our Army had not been STABBED IN THE BACK!" crap-o-la. Blame the civilians for losing nerve. Those who use this argument have forgotten that the soldiers ARE civilians, and that the voting public goes against war to protect its children and its neighbors' children, when it becomes clear that the war's benefits fail to outweigh its costs.

"We have run out of time. Our troops and their families will remain bitter for a generation if we abandon the Iraqis, just as another generation did after we abandoned the South Vietnamese for whom Americans had fought and died. We owe them and our own national interest this one last effort."

COMMENTARY. This is almost like Greek tragedy. McCaffrey fought in Vietnam, and lived through the long years of darkness in the US military after our defeat there. He can't stand the idea of another such defeat, so he calls for "one last try". Then, this amazing final line:

"If we cannot generate the political will to take this action..."

COMMENTARY. Of course, it's a done deal. The goose is cooked. McCaffrey has already admitted, "The American people have withdrawn their support for the war". He has already said there's no will for more war. This whole plan is a non-starter. He concludes:

"...it is time to pull out and search for those we will hold responsible in Congress and the administration."

That's the final line. WE must search for those we will hold responsible in Congress and the administration.

We can't just chalk this up as "good idea, bad execution - NEXT!"

McCaffrey is calling for the American people to hold their elected officials reponsible for this disaster. In an op-ed piece, in one of our nation's leading papers, he's calling for us to investigate and punish the politicians who gave us this war.

It's not just the lefty fring calling for impeachment. Retired, war-hero generals teaching at West Point are calling for impeachment, too.

Critics for years have described the bipartisan U.S. House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct as a joke. Last week the panel issued a lengthy report on the circumstances surrounding the misconduct of former Florida Congressman Mark Foley with House pages and removed all doubt about the House's inability to discipline itself.

Although the investigation found numerous instances in which House leaders had willfully ignored complaints of Foley's inappropriate e-mail contacts with teenage male pages, the committee somehow concluded that no rules were violated and no disciplinary action was justified. This, despite the probe's determination that evidence indicated House Speaker Dennis Hastert and staffers were told about the continuing problems with Foley's sexual interest in the pages but failed to intervene.

Retiring Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., was told by a page about sexually explicit e-mails and counseled the young man not to tell anyone. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, caught criticism for simply passing on information about Foley to Hastert's staff and then dropping the matter. A Democratic Caucus official, Matt Miller, took some of the compromising e-mails and circulated them to the press rather than turning the documents over to authorities.

The report also indicated Foley's questionable contacts with pages went beyond computer messages. In two incidents dating back six years, Foley went to the page dormitories late at night, one time turned away while apparently intoxicated. In another incident, he showed up at an end of year party and drove off with two pages.

Yet out of all the documented failures of elected officials and their staffs to take effective action to stop Foley, the report chose to close its probe without even admitting ethics violations had occurred: "The requirement that Members and staff act at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on the House does not mean that every error in judgment or failure to exercise appropriate oversight and sufficient diligence establishes a violation" of House rules.

With that elastic definition of what constitutes unacceptable conduct, it's not surprising that the House ethics committee has been a nonfactor in a year in which scandals drove five GOP members, including Majority Leader Tom DeLay, from Congress. Several members pleaded guilty to criminal violations.

When the FBI raided Louisiana Democrat William J. Jefferson's Capitol Hill office in search of evidence in a bribery investigation, House Speaker Hastert denounced the raid as a violation of the separation of powers. The ethics committee did not launch an investigation of Jefferson, a member of the committee at the time.

A longtime ethics in government activist, Fred Wertheimer of the group Democracy 21, expressed amazement that the committee could conclude that wrongdoing occurred in the Foley scandal, but hold no one responsible for it. Given the committee's recent history for dodging responsibility for delving into members' ethical lapses, the real surprise would have been if it had taken strong enforcement action.

If the House really wants to clean up its badly tarnished image, it should consider creating a semi-independent, nonpartisan inspector general's office. A credible investigator would probe alleged misconduct by members, compile reports and make recommendations that could then be considered by the full legislative body.

Congress might still choose to whitewash its own, but at least every representative would be on public record to be held accountable by constituents.

At the end of the just concluded summit of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ( Nato), the US dominated -driven defence alliance appeared to be in disarray and confused over its enemies and objectives . Held in Latvia's capital Riga, the first time on the soil of former Soviet Union Republic, it was a sort of rubbing in the West's victory in the Cold War.

US Neo-cons' hubris driven unilateral policies which sent US led invaders bulldozing into Baghdad against the UN Charter and the world opinion, and till the Iraqi quagmire stared US in its face , with the now disenchanted and a wiser US public punishing the Republican party and handing over the Congress to the Democrats in November elections, Nato saw the entire world as its theatre of operations , enticing former Russian allies into its umbrella and rolling back Russian influence in East Europe , Caucasus and even Central Asia .

Russia is the only power which even now can thwart US moves and military power. But it was the Iraqi resistance in Iraq which exposed the limits of US military power sending a resounding warning to aggressors and occupiers of other people's lands .A resurgent Talebans with Pakistani acquiescence are doing the same to embattled Nato forces in Afghanistan. While other subjects were discussed at Riga , Afghanistan has now became Nato's major preoccupation and a veritable hot potato.

US President George Bush, who has claimed Afghanistan as his success story in nation building and democracy ,after his party's debacle , was cautious on Nato's achievements in Afghanistan ."Afghanistan is NATO's most important military operation,'' Bush said. "By standing together in Afghanistan we will protect our people, defend our freedom and send a clear message to the extremists — the forces of freedom and decency will prevail.'' More or less the same old 'stay the course' mantra , as in Iraq.

But British Prime Minister Tony Blair even proclaimed some success, "I think there is a sense that this mission in Afghanistan is not yet won, but it is winnable and, indeed, we are winning." Jaap de Hoop Scheffer , the Secretary General of Nato was another optimist and echoed Blair , "There is not the slightest reason for gloom over Afghanistan." The mission "is winnable, it is being won, but not yet won". While André Flahaut, Defence Minister of Belgium , which contributes little to the Nato forces , brought out worries about the Afghan mission into the open .He told the media that at the Riga summit, "we (must) finally reflect on an exit strategy".

The US bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) report presented to the US Congress on 6 December said that "it is critical for the US to provide political, economic and military support for Afghanistan, including resources that might become available as forces are moved from Iraq." "Some but not all of the extra soldiers could come from units withdrawn from Iraq, ". In a section arguing for dialogue with Tehran over Iraq, it also notes that Iran and the US have cooperated over Afghanistan.[Yes, Shia Iran dreads the return of the extremist Sunni Talebans)

Afghanistan has seen this year a record numbers of suicide attacks and roadside bombs, a booming drugs trade and almost 4,000 deaths including 190 foreign soldiers.

The ISG report warned "The huge focus of US political, military, and economic support has necessarily diverted attention from Afghanistan. We must not lose sight of the importance of the situation inside Afghanistan and the renewed threat posed by the Taliban. If the Taliban were to control more of Afghanistan, it could provide al-Qaida the political space to conduct terrorist operations ..."

Most Nato members now realize that any visions of victory in Afghanistan are far fetched. They are reluctant their troops becoming cannon fodder or blasted by IEDs and other new techniques imported from Iraq. There have been more than a hundred suicide attacks so far this year. Somewhat like the delusions of the US Neo-cons of ruling Iraq , the region and the world as laid out in the 'New American Century ", Nato's plans to emerge as " a veritable 21st-century global political and military organization that would sit in arbitration over the emergent world order, no matter what the role of the United Nations,' are likely to prove misplaced .

Apart from members restricting their troops to non-combat areas , the alliance was not even willing to provide the 2,200 extra troops that the US and British commanders badly needed to fight the regrouped Talebans now with increasing support from the population . The US, British, Canadian and Dutch would continue to bear the brunt of the fighting in the deadly southern and southeastern regions of Afghanistan.

The Riga Summit reaffirmed that "the Alliance will continue with Georgia and Ukraine its Intensified Dialogues which cover the full range of political, military, financial, and security issues relating to those countries' aspirations to membership, without prejudice to any eventual Alliance decision,"

At a news conference the host, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said that the alliance has encouraged Georgia, "which made a tremendous efforts" on its way of reforms. "But in terms of invitations the countries in the Balkans [Albania, Croatia, Macedonia] are further along in that process and those are the ones that could be expecting to have an invitation by the summit of 2008. It will be too early yet for Georgia at that time, but the encouragement is certainly there."

The long awaited rapid reaction force (NRF), a brainchild of former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is now fully ready to take on missions ranging from high end combat in far off trouble spots to humanitarian relief. It could field troops from a pool of up to 25,000 troops at a few days' notice and would be the flagship of NATO in post cold war era.

The Summit declaration also "encouraged nations whose defence spending is declining to halt that decline and to aim to increase spending in real terms", but it omitted any specific reference to the NATO target of maintaining defence spending at or above 2 percent of national income, something only six or seven of the 26 allies achieve. Only US is doing so relying on massive trade deficits!

It was agreed to "increase the operational relevance of relations with non-NATO countries" as part of a U.S.-backed plan to boost ties with countries from Asia to Scandinavia that have contributed troops to alliance operations. But there was no mention of plans to create any new partnership arrangements with such countries. France led members are opposed to Nato attempts to set itself up as a "mini-United Nations" .Countries like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea remained skeptical of the value of formal ties with Nato.

French President Jacque Chirac floated the idea of a 'Contact Group' for Afghanistan in a newspaper article before the Summit stating that "the establishment of a contact group encompassing the countries in the region, the principal countries involved and international organizations along the lines of what exists in Kosovo is, I think, necessary to give our forces the means to succeed in their mission ... ". He also argued that Nato develop a "trusting relationship" with Russia and stressed the need to avoid the "creation of new fault lines." [ Europe relies on Russian gas supplies , which will increase , an alternative source is Iran!]

The "new reality of Europe" required a "more substantive strategic and political dialogue between the US and EU" .The latter's voice must be heard in Nato ie with the EU members "consulting between themselves within the alliance" in an institutional format so that Nato was transformed into a "mutually supportive alliance in which North American and European allies will be able to ... work side by side", upholding the "principles and objectives of the UN Charter". The United Nations should remain the "sole political forum with universal authority". Chirac's proposal reflects the growing unease about the Anglo-American 'Cabal' also controlling NATO's war in Afghanistan.

During a recent debate in the UN General Assembly on Afghanistan, the Russian dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) issued joint statements underlining their relevance and objectives. CSTO and SCO have become important as part of Russia-China led counter moves , along with other central Asian Republics , after US franchised street revolutions , which installed puppet rulers in Georgia and Ukraine , after the first successful experiment in Serbia and then tried it in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The SCO countries closed ranks and said enough is enough, with Russia and China holding for the first time massive joint military exercises , with others being planned to counter Nato aggressiveness and the ingress into Russian strategic space. Washington tries to ignore these organizations and their objectives. Apart from Russia , China :India, Iran and Pakistan ( last three have observer status in SCO ) and others have a stake in the stability of Afghanistan .

Anglo-Saxon policies create chaos as they did in Afghanistan in 1980s and then left, except that from there emerged the Al Qaeda , which stunned the world with their 11 September attacks. US policy makers, mostly with corporate , legal or lobbying house experience have short term perceptions limited to annual balance sheets and of cutting costs , as shown in their planning and execution of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and earlier in Afghanistan. In any case they are selected by US corporate interests, whose policies they implement, peoples medical and pension interests be damned.

USA also did not recognize the resistance in Iraq for long and still calls the popular political and social movement Hezbollah , with members in Parliament and ministers in Lebanon , a 'terrorist organization , but the heroic fight by its militia against Israeli aggression and destruction , gave a sense of pride and confidence to the Lebanese people.

Commenting on the Riga Summit , German magazine 'Spiegel ' said that "It's more than probable Germany's NATO allies will request its support [ for troops]. But Berlin is already demonstratively warding off all requests for the deployment of German troops to the Kandahar region--Approval in principle and polite refusal in each specific case is likely to be the German military's response to requests for support." German troops getting involved in combat operations in southern Afghanistan, would have been difficult to sell to the German public. So Chancellor Angela Merkel was pleased with the results –and stoically absorbed the criticism of Germany's NATO allies.

"The summit has shown clearly that NATO lacks a common strategy. While NATO leaders emphasized the non-military aspects of their mission during the summit, the fact remains that the war in southern Afghanistan could still be lost. The rhetoric about networking security and reconstruction may sound good, but security remains primary with every kind of reconstruction work.

"But there was one thing that could be relied on: The media staging of the summit. All member countries confirmed that -- the absence of genuine decisions notwithstanding -- the summit was a success. In spite of talk of "clear progress" , it would have been difficult to demonstrate more clearly that the statements made at the end of NATO assemblies have little to do with reality", concluded Spiegel.

Nato's History;

Founded in 1949 as a defence alliance against Communist expansion in Europe , Nato's first Summit was held in Paris in December 1957. For many years no further Summit meeting was held . The next Summit then took place in Brussels in May 1975. Subsequent Summits were held in London (May 1977), Washington (May 1978) and Bonn (June 1982). The next four meetings were held in Brussels in November 1985, March 1988, May 1989 and December 1989 respectively.

In July 1990, Nato held its first Summit in London after the end of the Cold War. Three more Summits took place in Rome (November 1991); Brussels (January 1994); and Madrid (July 1997), setting out the basis for the transformation of the Alliance and its adaptation to the new challenges of the post Cold War era.

Under US President Bill Clinton, the Washington Nato summit in 1999 decided to intervene in Yugoslavia and succeeded in breaking up into pieces Russia's traditional Orthodox Slav ally with help from West European nations. US and Nato promoted breakaway Montenegro to secede from Serbia but object to similar move by Abkhazia from Georgia .The Summit also succeeded in NATO's eastward expansion in the post-Cold War era , in spite of objections from a weakened Russia ,with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joining the alliance.

NATO's Prague summit in 2002 invited seven countries , mostly from the former Soviet block to begin accession talks, heralding the biggest ever expansion of the alliance. The summit also decided to have its own Rapid Force.

The whole world then appeared to Nato ready for its onward march to any where in the world , Afghanistan ,Pakistan and the so called Azad Kashmir , central Asia , where the newly independent republics were offered subservient positions. Russian apprehensions and resistance to Nato expansion slowly increased, after the departure of a mostly drunk and drugged Boris Yeltsin. China too became apprehensive, with US bases for it so called 'War on Terror', in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan ( with a puppet ruler , where US had the run of the country ), adjacent to its turbulent Turkic speaking province of Xinjiang .

Afghanistan became the major focus for NATO at the 2004 summit at Istanbul. While the Iraqi quagmire had been discerned by keen observers, USA and the West were still full of confidence in setting right the world , of course in their vision of the manifest destiny. The Summit brimmed with optimism with NATO raring to go in, sort out even the Afghan problem, a country shattered by US Soviet rivalry in 1980s and then neglected, but never subdued for long in its history by any outside power . The British ought to know it.

Forgetting past differences on Iraq , Nato members like FRG , France and others even agreed to help Washington in strengthening its illegal occupation of Iraq , by training the armed and security forces of the US installed Iraqi governments .

Pre Riga Summit optimism;

In Washington, General James Jones, supreme commander of the NATO forces, claimed in May , 2006 that it would be a crucial year for the alliance, with its focus shifting "180 degrees in terms of its military capabilities and culture", ie from a "reactive, defensive, static alliance to become "more flexible, more proactive", to take on future conflicts any where .US troops had already reached Georgia and Azerbaijan under bilateral training programs and to guard Baku –Tbilisi- Ceyhan oil pipe line , therefore it was envisaged that NATO would patrol the Black Sea and even the Caspian. Russian troops would be ejected from Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova. NATO even talked of settling the many conflicts, mostly 'frozen', in the Caucasus and Eurasia, arising out of the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union .

In spite of the presence of the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol, Brussels encouraged Ukraine's accession to Nato , even if all conditions were not fulfilled , as well as of Georgia's. US troops even landed in Crimea for joint exercises with Ukraine but were forced to retreat by pro-Russian population in the region .Soon after pro-US ruler Victor Yushchenko in Kiev lost the Parliament elections , reducing his ability to toe the US line.

Nato spokesmen offered new partnership agreements to the Asia-Pacific region to Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, and why not to India too. NATO even saw a role in the Middle East to safeguard energy supplies for the West.

Everything appeared rosy and hunky dory , but for the worsening quagmire in Iraq, defeat of Israeli ground forces by Hezbollah in South Lebanon and defiance by Iran and Syria , supported by Russia and China , including sale of arms and help in UN.

Russian retort;

In Belarus , next door to Latvia , the summit of the 12-member Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), created in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union was held around the time of the Riga Summit .Russian President Putin lifted sanctions against Moldova and indicated an early end to a gas row with Belarus. Putin has used gas prices and trade sanctions against its recalcitrant neighbours like Ukraine , Georgia , Moldova and even friendly Belarus .USA does it every day .( Under India-US agreement on nuclear power , US Congress wants to control India's Iran policy among other constraints). In Riga , Bush could not help but have a dig at the heavy handed regime of Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko ( while Washington itself supports dictators all around the world).

On the eve of Riga Summit, combative Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov retorted at frequent US lecturing at Moscow. "The current situation in Afghanistan is indeed very reminiscent of the late 1980s when the Soviet Union was involved there. It is painful to talk about it, but even with its 110,000 elite soldiers, the Soviet Union never managed to gain control over the entire Afghan territory, " he said.

"I am firmly convinced that the security situation will never improve until you are able to very effectively monitor the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan ... [But] it's also difficult because Pakistan is a US ally, and because, at the same time, it is not an entirely democratic state, and is a state that possesses weapons of mass destruction and is even involved in proliferation - to North Korea, for example", he added.

Message from Pakistan;

Ivanov was not wrong .The message from Pakistan , USA's major non-Nato strategic ally in the war against terrorism was quite deflating. On the eve of the Riga summit, Lt Gen David Richards, the British General and Nato's force commander in Afghanistan, and the Dutch Ambassador Daan Everts, its chief envoy there, who were in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad ,urging the Pakistani military to do more to reign in the Taliban, were told by Pakistani Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri in private briefings that the Taliban were winning the war in Afghanistan and Nato was bound to fail. He advised against sending more troops. Stunned Western interlocutors said that "Kasuri is basically asking Nato to surrender and to negotiate with the Taliban."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has since long claimed that the Taleban sanctuaries and logistics bases lie in Pakistan .Gen James Jones, the Supreme Commander of Nato, told the US Congress in September that the Taleban leadership was headquartered in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Lt Gen Ali Mohammed Jan Orakzai, Governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province has openly declared that the Nato 's mission has failed in Afghanistan. "Either it is a lack of understanding or it is a lack of courage to admit their failures," he reiterated recently. Gen Orakzai , a Pashtun himself ,maintains that the Talebans represent the ethnic Pashtun population, which straddles Afghanistan's and Pakistan border provinces and they now lead a "national resistance" to expel Western occupation forces from Afghanistan (as in Iraq.)

Gen Orakzai was the prime mover in the "peace deals" signed between the Pakistan army and the Pashtun tribes on the Pakistani side of the border. Gen Orakzai has recommended that Nato and the British Army sign similar agreements in southern provinces of Afghanistan like Helmand province. It is believed that the Talebans from Pak controlled areas continue to attack Nato forces inside Afghanistan .

Pakistan ( wannabe US allies might note) , which Washington threatened to bomb to stone age if Islamabad did not jettison its Afghanistan policy of strategic depth against India and join US in the invasion of Afghanistan, has become more vocal after the deepening US quagmire in Iraq. During his recent visit to Washington and London , Pak President Gen. Pervaz Musharraf , apart from using the opportunity to market his book ( with some help from Bush at the White House media meeting ), clearly told his Western audience that without Pak support ,Nato and the West would fail in Afghanistan. (Musharraf had to be bribed by USA so that the Presidential and Assembly elections could be held in Afghanistan peacefully) Commando Musharraf , living one of his many cat's lives is awaiting a regime change in Kabul , where Karzai is protected by a private US security drill and his writ does not extend beyond the capital city of Kabul.

It may be recalled that when US rained bombs on Afghan territory and people in its 2001 December war , Al Qaeda and the Taleban leadership and cadres escaped to fight for another day and now live along the rugged border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan .Like a rabbit from his hat Musharraf produces a minor Al Qaeda operative from time to time ,when pressurised by USA. Osama ben Laden and his aides keep on sending out regular video and audio messages . Kabul was entered and taken over by the fighters of the northern Alliance of late Gen Masood .

Ahmed Rashid an expert on the region ,wrote recently that ," In southern Afghanistan, the Taliban have learned to avoid U.S. and NATO surveillance satellites and drones ,collect up to 400 guerrillas at a time to attack Afghan police stations and army posts and then disperse before U.S. airpower arrives , hide their weapons and merge into the local population."

"In North and South Waziristan, the tribal regions along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, an alliance of extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda, Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, Central Asians, and Chechens has won a significant victory against the army of Pakistan. The army, which has lost some 800 soldiers in the past three years, has retreated, dismantled its checkpoints, released al-Qaeda prisoners and is now paying large "compensation" sums to the extremists.

"This region, considered "terrorism central" by U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, is now a fully operational al-Qaeda base area offering a wide range of services, facilities, and military and explosives training for extremists around the world planning attacks. Waziristan is now a regional magnet. In the past six months up to 1,000 Uzbeks, escaping the crackdown in Uzbekistan after last year's massacre by government security forces in the town of Andijan, have found sanctuary with al-Qaeda in Waziristan."

Hundreds of Pakistani Pashtuns are joining the Talebans in their fight but NATO has adopted a head-in-the-sand attitude, pretending that Afghanistan is a self-contained operational theater without neighbors and so declining to put pressure on Pakistan to close down Taleban bases in Baluchistan and Waziristan.

Analysts say US failure to send sufficient troops to Afghanistan in late 2001 was a blunder. "American policymakers ... misjudged their own capacity to carry out major strategic change on the cheap," said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert, in a recent report.

"Instead the US military relied on alliances with friendly warlords to exert control and help in the hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives. But as the US moved its military and intelligence assets out of Afghanistan in preparation for the invasion of Iraq, the same warlords were already undermining the democracy that George Bush wanted to nurture, "says the Guardian

"The warlords built drug empires, engaged in widespread corruption and undermined the president, Hamid Karzai. The Taliban skillfully exploited the situation this year through intimidation and propaganda aimed at largely illiterate southern Pashtuns."

Suicide and roadside bombings targeting foreign troops and government officials have increased fourfold this year, up to 600 a month, with violence recorded in all but two of the country's 34 provinces. Officials say nearly 4,000 people have died in insurgent-related violence this year, including at least 186 coalition troops. Many times Nato jets end up killing civilians , much to President Karzai's public anguish and chagrin. It does not help winning Afghan hearts.

In 'Afghanistan after democracy' Dr. Mohammed Daud Miraki , an Afghan says that ,5 years on, the Afghan population is still devastated by relentless poverty ,one in four children born in Afghanistan cannot expect to live to age 5, close to 50% of the population cannot expect to live to age 40 with the lowest life expectancy in the world. More than 70% of the population is chronically malnourished, less than a quarter of the population has access to safe drinking water, the electricity supply is accessible by only 10% of the people. Fifty to seventy mothers die every day from birth complications according to the 2006 World Health Report .There is one physician per 7,066 Afghans but one soldier per 742 Afghans. And 86% of American aid is phantom aid , with corruption in high places and soaring crime in three areas: (1) drugs, poppy growth is up (2) kidnapping for ransom, bodily organs and trafficking (3) prostitution and murder and rape of Afghans by the military. Under the Taliban, poppy growth was eradicated in 96% of the country. But under Nato protected Afghan President Karzai , opium production has soared back to pre Taleban level.

A recent survey indicated slump in Afghans' perceptions of their future specially in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the scene of intense fighting between Nato and Taleban forces. Now, only four out of 10 there think things are heading in the right direction, barely half the figure of a year ago. Eighty percent rate their security as poor.

According to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity "more than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years, donated more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush — a little over $500,000 — than to any other politician over the last dozen years.

Critics counter that the Bush administration's overemphasis on military spending versus reconstruction aid has hamstrung efforts to win hearts and minds. By some estimates, military operations have cost US$ 82.5 billion since 2002, compared with $7.3 billion spent on development.

There is no doubting of some progress, concentrated in Kabul, but why did billions of dollars in aid and thousands of foreign troops not make more of a difference? There is too much of corruption and not enough on state building exercise, on institutions like the judiciary and the police.

Lakhdar Brahimi a former UN envoy to Afghanistan , said that he and others were wrong not to bring the Taleban into the political process as early as 2002." We are too late, too bureaucratic, and frankly we spend too much money on ourselves rather than developing the skills of Afghans."

In 1971, when posted at Ankara , after the Pak military did not allow nationalist Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rehman to form the government in spite of his party National Awami league having secured a majority in the Pakistani Parliament , Bengalis had revolted . A Bengali diplomat from the East wing told me about a chapter in a book on ancient history of Pakistan .It was titled 'Alexander invades Pakistan '.He quipped impishly that with Alexander being from Macedonia , which was a republic in Yugoslavia , the chapter could have been titled ,' Yugoslavia invades Pakistan '. What the Pakistan writer did to history, Nato seems to be doing to geography to undermine United Nations importance. Making North Atlantic omnipresent ! Where North Atlantic begins and where it ends! The Nato troops are certainly in for a hard lesson on Afghanistan's rough geography and its history of fierce resistance against foreign occupation.

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. Copy right with the author. E-mail Gajendrak@hotmail.com.

HYRUM - If only for a few minutes, Maria felt like an ''illegal alien'' in her homeland - the United States of America.

She thought she was going on break from her job at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant here on Tuesday, but instead she and others were forced to stand in a line by U.S. immigration agents. Non-Latinos and people with lighter skin were plucked out of line and given blue bracelets.

The rest, mostly Latinos with brown skin, waited until they were ''cleared'' or arrested by ''la migra,'' the popular name in Spanish for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), employees said.

''I was in the line because of the color of my skin,'' she said, her voice shaking. ''They're discriminating against me. I'm from the United States, and I didn't even get a blue bracelet.'' Maria was one of hundreds of plant employees targeted by federal agents. But she and her husband were the lucky ones - later Tuesday, they returned home to their three sons. The federal agents raided the Swift & Co. meat processing plant early Tuesday morning after arrest warrants had been issued for 60 workers, part of "Operation Wagon Train," a nationwide investigation involving undocumented immigrants using stolen Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens to gain employment.

The northern Utah plant is among six Swift facilities that were raided by immigration agents in Cactus, Texas; Grand Island, Neb.; Marshalltown, Iowa; Worthington, Minn.; and at the company headquarters in Greeley, Colo. In Utah, ''Operation Wagon Train'' started in August at the Swift plant, formerly owned by E.A. Miller, when the company complied with a subpoena asking for a list of about 1,200 employees, according to an arrest warrant filed in 1st District Court in Logan. Federal investigators compared the list with documents from Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Texas, California and Puerto Rico. In October, agents snapped photographs of license plates of all vehicles parked at the plant and compared vehicle registrations with the suspect target list and documents.

Swift has more than $9 billion in annual sales and is the world's second-largest processor of fresh beef and pork. Swift President and CEO Sam Rovit said operations at the six raided facilities have been suspended. He denied the company knowingly hired illegal workers. On Tuesday, as early as 8 a.m., agents began taking employees, many of them undocumented workers, away in white and black buses. Most were being held at a federal facility in Ogden.

Federal officials declined to disclose the location of the facility or the number of actual detainees.

In Cache County, minorities make up 12 percent - Latinos are 8 percent - of the population of 98,000 people.

Women were crying as they were handcuffed with plastic ties and put on the buses. Some weren't allowed to get their belongings from their lockers. Maria, who declined to use her last name, argued with an agent because she was getting the coat for her 34-year-old niece, Blanca, who was arrested.

''She [the agent] told me, 'Do you think it's going to be cold in Mexico?' '' Maria said, holding back tears. ''I've never seen people get treated como animales.''

Maria was able to give Blanca a goodbye hug and promised to pack up her trailer. Gloria Alvanes looked for her husband at the plant. He called a relative before he was arrested and taken away. She said she is upset because she doesn't understand why the government is treating undocumented workers as criminals when most of them are just here to work. Alvanes has been married to her husband for five years, but he hasn't become a legal U.S. resident because the immigration process is taking longer than they expected. Now, she and her daughter, Marilyn Cornejo, a high school junior, are worried because they have a tight budget, it's 12 days before Christmas and there is no money for an immigration lawyer. "What do they want us to do?" Marilyn asked. "Do they want us to drop out of school and get jobs?" At five schools in Cache County, counselors comforted students who feared their parents had been taken into custody. Some school leaders explained to Latino students what was happening and made sure there was someone at home.

Latino leader Rolando Murillo, who happened to be at Mountaincrest High School in Hyrum, talked with about 100 students, including children whose parents are in this country legally but who fear "la migra."

"La migra is a nightmare for them," he said.

Father Clarence Sandoval of Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church said church leaders called schools and had them give out the church's number if somebody needed help or child care for kids whose parents were arrested. As of Tuesday night, he hadn't received any calls. ''It takes away from being together for Christmas,'' he said of the raid. ''The problem with the raids is they don't [consider] the impact on the families, especially the children.''

After news of the ICE raid broke, U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman called for a meeting Tuesday afternoon with Latino leaders in Salt Lake City. The leaders asked Tolman to expedite the meat-packing plant workers' cases.

For Maria, it's not about immigration status, it's about ''being brown.''

She said she hopes the authorities are not targeting Latinos.

And she hopes no one ever has to live through an immigration raid, especially on the Day of the Virgin Mary celebrated by Catholics, which fell on Tuesday.

''My mom says, 'The raid was just a way of La Virgin de Guadalupe picking up all her people and taking them home to Mexico, where they'll be safe,' " she said.

Where to call * Immigration officials have set up a toll-free telephone number, 866-341-3858, for families to contact for information on where their relatives are being detained. Operators speaking English and Spanish are available.

Official: Saudis to back Sunnis if U.S. leaves Iraq

Story Highlights

•NEW: AP says White House rejects report on Saudi plan to act in Iraq if U.S. leaves•Source says Saudi king "read riot act" to Vice President Dick Cheney about Iraq•Saudi Arabia would support Sunnis in Iraq if the U.S. pulls out, the source says•King Abdullah also is said to oppose talks between the U.S. and Iran

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has warned Vice President Dick Cheney that Saudi Arabia would back the Sunnis if the United States pulls out of Iraq, according to a senior American official.

The official said the king "read the riot act" to the vice president when the two met last month in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The New York Times first reported the conversation Wednesday, saying Saudi support would include financial backing for minority Sunnis in the event of a civil war between them and Iraq's Shiite majority.

Violence between the two sects has exploded in waves of revenge killings since February's bombing of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

The White House dismissed the report.

"That's not Saudi government policy," press secretary Tony Snow said in Washington, according to The Associated Press.

"The Saudis have made it clear that they're committed to the same goals we are, which is a self-sustaining Iraq that can sustain, govern and defend itself, that will recognize and protect the rights of all, regardless of sect or religion," Snow said, the AP reported.

Cheney's November 25 visit marked his fourth trip to Saudi Arabia as vice president. An official with Cheney's office said the one-on-one meeting lasted two hours.

The Saudi king told Cheney that his country would be forced to step in and support "like-minded Sunni Arabs" if the situation in Iraq fell apart and the Sunnis' safety was in jeopardy, the senior U.S. official said.

The monarch said he would "intervene aggressively on one side absent an American presence," the source said.

The source said the king did not mean to imply that Saudi Arabia would support al Qaeda in Iraq, but rather tribal groups. However, some of those groups overlap with insurgents who are fighting Americans, the source conceded.

Saudi fears

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group that reported to President Bush and Congress said last week that money from Saudi citizens is funding Sunni insurgents in Iraq, although the Saudis may not know exactly where their money is going. (Watch how Saudis may be helping Iraqi insurgents)

Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution said Saudi Arabia has a reason to take sides.

"They're terrified that Iraq is going to fall into civil war. They're terrified that civil war will spill over into Saudi Arabia. But they're also terrified that the Iranians, backing the various Shiite militias in Iraq, will come out the big winner in a civil war," Pollack told CNN.

However, the king's tough words to Cheney don't mean Saudi support for the United States is wavering, said Richard Murphy, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

"This has nothing to do with the Saudi-American alliance," Murphy said. "What it has to do with is the Saudi concern that we will quickly evacuate Iraq and that the Shia majority will take revenge actions against the Sunni."

In his meeting with Cheney, the Saudi king voiced strong opposition to talks between the United States and Iran, which has a majority Shiite population. The Iraq Study Group called for engaging other countries in the region, including Iran and Syria, in the search for solutions in Iraq.

According to the senior American official, the king told Cheney that Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, believed that talking to Iran was dangerous.

The Saudis are "nervous about giving Iran any more legitimacy or any more influence in Iraq," Murphy said.

"[Iraq is in] everybody's backyard -- Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran," he said. "And they all have interests, they're all watching each other very closely lest one get an undue advantage over the other. And it's going to take an extraordinarily skillful, wide-ranging regional diplomacy on America's part to cope with that."

A senior U.S. official said the conversation between Cheney and King Abdullah reflects the "anxiety about the situation" and the Saudi concern about being left "high and dry" if the United States leaves Iraq.

But the official said leaving Iraq is a "doomsday scenario" that will not happen because the United States isn't going to withdraw.

To be successful in overturning our elitist plutocratic system we should add economic apartheid to our semantic arsenal. Better than economic inequality, economic injustice and class warfare, because apartheid is loaded with richly deserved negative emotions. Sadly, in South Africa, economic apartheid has taken over from racial apartheid.

How ironic that the Bush administration successfully talked up the global threat from terrorism while it pursued domestic and foreign policies promoting economic apartheid, a far greater and more pervasive threat to national and global stability.

The human race on planet Earth, taken as an aggregate mass abstraction, may be getting richer. But a new report from the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University shows that wealth creation is remarkably – one might say criminally – unequal. Follow this hierarchy at the top of the wealth pyramid: The richest 1 percent of adults alone owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000; the richest 2 percent owned more than half of global household wealth; and the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. That leaves very little for the remaining 90 percent of the global population. Could it be any worse? Yes, the rich are still getting richer, more millionaires are becoming billionaires.

As to the world’s lower class: the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1 percent of global wealth, defined as net worth: the value of physical and financial assets less debts. Over a billion poor people subsist on less than one dollar a day. Every day, according to UNICEF, 30,000 children die due to poverty – that’s over 10 million children killed by poverty every year! Global economic apartheid is killing people.

Here are data showing some of the variations among nations. Average wealth amounted to $144,000 per person in the U.S. in 2000, not as good as the $181,000 in Japan, but better than most others: $127,000 for the U.K., $70,000 for Denmark, $37,000 for New Zealand, $1,400 in Indonesia and $1,100and in India. Averages, of course, are very deceiving.

As to wealth inequality, the richest 10 percent of people in the U.S. have 70 percent of the wealth, compared to 40 percent in China. In other words, China has much more economic equality, though that is changing quickly.

To be among the richest 10 percent of adults in the world required $61,000 in net wealth, and more than $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1 percent, a group with 37 million members worldwide according to the study. Recall, all these data are for 2000, and would be much higher now, because of the steady trend of the rich becoming richer.

The statistical measure of inequality is the Gini value, which measures inequality on a scale from zero (total equality) to one (complete inequality). For income, it ranges from .35 to .45 in most countries. Wealth inequality is usually much greater, typically between .65 and .75. This reflects the greater difficulty in accumulating wealth (capital) than increasing income. Two high wealth economies, Japan and the United States, show very different patterns of wealth inequality, with Japan having a low wealth Gini of .55 and the U.S. having around .80. The incomes of the top fifth of the Japanese population are only about three times that of the bottom fifth, compared to more than nine times in the U.S. Japan has little economic apartheid compared to the U.S. Yet both countries have a huge number of wealthy people. Of the wealthiest 10 percent in the world, 25 percent are Americans and 20 percent are Japanese. These two countries are even stronger among the richest 1 percent of individuals in the world, with 37 percent residing in the U.S. and 27 percent in Japan. The point is that despite high numbers of very wealthy people, economic apartheid is absent in Japan and abysmal in the U.S.

We can explain the difference between Japan and the U.S. People can save and accumulate wealth for future economic security, or can borrow and spend like mad to accumulate possessions. According to a 2006 report, only 41 percent of American families save regularly, making wealth creation difficult. America’s national savings rate -- which includes corporate savings and government budget deficits -- is only about 13.6% of gross domestic product, compared to 25 percent in Japan.

Global wealth inequality is higher still. The study estimates that the global wealth Gini for adults is .89. The same degree of inequality would be obtained if one person in a group of ten takes 99 percent of the total pie and the other nine share the remaining 1 percent. To a limited degree, elitist powers can engineer modest improvements in income among the global poor, but stark wealth inequality will probably worsen, considering the political power of the rich. As worldwide communications increasingly make the obnoxious wealth of the upper class more visible, even modest increases in income are unlikely to satisfy the vast majority of the global population without wealth.

U.S. economic apartheid shows that a self-proclaimed great democracy with considerable personal freedoms can risk deep social instability from class warfare as it approaches a two-class system. We need to see economic apartheid as lethal and repulsive as racial apartheid.

How much proof do you need? Here are some recent examples of economic obscenities:

The Tucson-based Miraval Life in Balance Resort is now completing a 41-story wellness tower community on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Three-bedrooms in the new luxury development will run from $1.4 million to $3.65 million, with monthly maintenance charges almost twice the Manhattan high-rise average.

If Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street financial giant, distributed all its compensation dollars equally among the company’s 25,647 workers, every employee in the firm would have received just about $500,000 so far this year. But compensation at Wall Street’s biggest firms gets divided anything but equally. A new federal report says the top-heavy income distribution is squeezing out the middle class. Wall Street’s top 1,000 investment bankers will average somewhere between $2 million and $3 million in bonuses this year, more than 10 times their $100,000 to $250,000 salaries.

Is overpaying CEOs a crime? A five-judge panel in Germany punted on that question by accepting a settlement in the first case ever to bring criminal charges against corporate directors for lavishing excessive pay on company executives. Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann, Germany’s most powerful banker, will pay out of his own pocket a $4.2 million fine, without having to plead guilty to charges that he helped engineer a $31 million bonus six years ago for Klaus Esser, the top executive at Mannesmann, a German mobile phone company. Ackermann and other directors at Mannesmann, prosecutors charged, had violated their fiduciary duty to watch out for shareholders. If convicted, Ackermann could have faced 10 years in jail.

An impressive new study by IRS and Ernst and Young researchers has produced reliable new data on how things have changed for the worse in recent years. Back in 1979, a mere $233,539 placed an American taxpayer in the rarified air of the top 0.1 percent. By 2004, things had changed considerably – it took a whopping $1,639,047 to rate in the top 0.1 percent, an over 600 percent increase above the 1979 threshold. Wealth shifted. The share of nation’s income going to the top 0.1 percent more than tripled, from 3.28 percent in 1979 to 10.49 percent in 2004. Disgraceful!

In 2004, another analysis of IRS data found the 130,500 U.S. taxpaying households that made up the top 0.1 percent averaged about $4.9 million each in income. The 300,000 Americans in these top 0.1 percent households took home significantly more pretax income combined than the poorest 120 million Americans. In 1979, by contrast, the 120 million Americans at the bottom took home three times more than the 300,000 at the top. Economic apartheid is really all about economic slavery, even if the slaves don’t quite comprehend their terrible situation. After all, that’s why the elites gave them Wal-Mart to pacify them.

Though the United States economy has seen GDP growth averaging 3.1 percent annually from 1980 to 2005, the benefits of this growth have gone overwhelmingly to the richest 10 percent of families, and among this group, disproportionately to the richest 1 percent.

And let’ set the record straight about upward economic mobility. The United States has the lowest share of low-income workers that exit their low-income status from one year to the next (29.5 percent). This perpetuates economic apartheid. The corresponding rates in several European countries are greater than 50 percent: Ireland (54.6), the Netherlands (55.7), the United Kingdom (58.8), and Denmark (60.4).

We should be asking: Why are Americans at the top of America’s income distribution raking in so much more income today than they did a generation ago? The American Bar Association reports that “fewer law school graduates are going into public-interest law or government jobs.” In medicine, where doctors can now make millions evaluating drugs for bio-tech start-ups, the Medical Group Management Association “says the nation lacks enough doctors in family practice, where the median income last year was $161,000.” “The bigger the prize, the greater the effort that people are making to get it,” sums up New York University economist Edward Wolff. “That effort is draining people away from more useful work.”

The December 1, 2006 New York Times editorial, When the Joneses Can't Keep Up noted:

“…the very richest earners are increasing their earnings at twice the rate of their onetime peers, and the average-rich are taking resentful note. Investment bankers are jealous of hedge-fund wunderkinds and, from the sound of it, almost every last person in Silicon Valley is envious of the founders of YouTube (with the likely exception of the Google billionaires who bought their company). …Neither policymakers nor society at large need sympathize with the longing of millionaires to become billionaires. But we do need to worry about the effects on society as a whole when members of the educated elite think they are grossly underpaid. The more they feel as if they are losing ground against their peers, the more likely they are to ditch professions in which the pay is only good — like delivering babies — in favor of less useful careers in which the compensation is off the charts — like eliminating lines from wealthy people’s foreheads.”

The Education Trust charges in a new study that the nation’s top public universities are rapidly becoming “enclaves for the most privileged of their state’s young people.” These flagship universities’ spending on financial aid for students from families that make over $100,000 a year jumped 400 percent between 1995 and 2003. Over that same period, spending for students from families making less than $40,000 increased just 20 percent. The financial aid grants that major state universities are now handing students from $100,00-and-up families — $3,823 on average — larger than the grants given to students from low- or middle-income families. How’s that for economic apartheid?

Families with over $1 million in nonresidential assets — make up a tiny fraction of the world’s population, less than a hundredth of 1 percent, but hold 28.6 percent of global wealth. Thank you globalization.

How long will the vast majority of people stay submissive and peaceful as American and global economic apartheid keep worsening? Here in affluent America there are 37 million people living in poverty, 35 million could not put food on their table at least part of the year, and over 45 million lack health insurance. Dr. Gar Alperovitz says that top 1 percent of our population now own 98 percent of the nation’s wealth. There is a war on the middle class, and it is going well.

Dr. John David wisely observed recently: “Without an internal economic restructuring, the nation now at war in Iraq will evolve into a nation at war within itself. Economic apartheid will not create a sustainable society. Violence will increase and democracy will fail unless this issue of increased wealth inequality is addressed.” What is wrong has been known for a long time. Plutarch wrote almost 2000 years ago, "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

Is anyone listening? Can we learn from the Japanese? Or is the Second American Revolution being nucleated now?

As compulsive consumers, Americans are spending their way deeper into economic apartheid. The more that Americans spend, rather than save, they make the rich richer and themselves poorer. How smart is that? Freedom to spend is not the same as political freedom; not with two-party control of our elitist, non-populist political system and democracy.

If Americans take back their government and economy and end their economic apartheid, then they can work on erasing global economic apartheid. That’s a big IF.