Syria

DAMASCUS, Syria, Feb.  read more »

Doni Remba, a peace activist, disputes my claim that the progressive voice in Jewish life has been marginalized by the neocons. He has some evidence: he says he's getting traction in the Jewish press for his view that there has to be a progressive lobby, to push for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. His post follows, below.

I have one important quibble, ahead of time. Remba reflects the conventional leftish pro-Israel view that the dog wags the tail. I.e., that Israel is a client that does as the imperial U.S. wants it to do. The U.S. doesn't want Israel to talk to Syria; so it doesn't. His view of the Israel lobby is that it is merely seconding rightwing choices that the U.S. government is making. And so he says:

American choices heavily constrain the Jewish state, eliminating options and creating the environment in which Israel must make its own now far more limited and difficult choices.

That's where I demur. I believe that Israel has made its own choice not to speak to Syria, for years, and that its friends in Congress reinforce that line here. I feel like a lot of lefty Jews want to think the dog wags the tail: the Stephen Zunes line, that neocon Zionist Jews have had only minor influence over a rightwing administration. Or here is Shlomo Ben-Ami, in the latest Commentary, making the same point (I'm afraid it's not online yet, but I just got my issue in the mail):

"[T]he interplay of factors that truly make up American foreign policy [are] strategic considerations, imperial ambitions, oil, the arms industry, corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, ideology, and, last but not by no means least, the political and intellectual profile of the president. Bush's moral certitude and self-imposed divine mission makes [sic] utterly redundant the need for an 'Israel Lobby' to teach him the political gospel it wants him to follow in the Middle East."

I think Ben Ami is wrong, that he is blinding himself to a multitude of sins under that little word "ideology," that George Bush had little idea of anything when he came into office. I.e., that neocons are smart guys with a highly-developed belief system; and they also had agency here (yes, along with a lot of other fools who pushed this war).

In fairness, Remba does go after Jewish "communal leaders" choices. A nice way of putting the fact that neocon beliefs about the Arab world have gained wide currency in the erstwhile liberal Jewish leadership. But read Remba's post (which he was not able to post; problems again, sorry folks):

You write: "I do question the political will of the body of American Jewry; if they feel misrepresented by the Israel lobby and their congressmen, they ought to rise up against them. George Soros says he's going to start an anti-occupation lobby. Good for him, I'm in his camp. Will he get numbers?"

I'd like to offer two of my recent articles on this subject for your and your readers' consideration. The first, published in the English edition of Ha'aretz, "Wanted: A Moderate Pro-Israel Lobby," can be read in Ha'aretz or on my blog at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2006/11/haaretz-wanted-moderate-pr... The new dovish pro-Israel peace lobby is not a Soros initiative, but an cooperative effort of many liberal/progressive Jews from various Jewish organizations, think tanks, liberal Democratic political activists and funders.  read more »

How many supporters will we get? Watch and wait. Many of us are working on it.

Should the United States attack Iran, which side would the Iraqi government support?  read more »

With the Democrats now in control of Congress, Dennis Kucinich, one of Washington's most committed opponents to the war in Iraq, plans to unveil sometime over the next few days what he calls a "comprehensive plan" to withdraw American troops and bring an immediate end to the war.

The Ohio congressman, who is mounting another presidential bid, has been on the fringes of Congress' war critics, going so far to call for immediately cutting off funds for the war. He estimates that the war costs about eight billion dollars a month, and that of the $70 billion appropriated for the war in October, roughly $46 billion is left over. "The next question is what do you use that money for," Kucinich said. "Do you use it to dig a deeper hole or to get out. What I am advocating is to use the existing funds to brings the troops home."

Kucinich's plan depends, somewhat fantastically, on the cooperation and active involvement of an international community that to say the least seems extremely reluctant to help stabilize and rebuild Iraq.

"That money can also be used to set in place a security transition an international security force organized with the help of the UN," he said. "If you want a new direction you have to reach out. And that includes Iran and Syria. The money is there to help fund an international force. The money can also be used for reconstruction, and reparations for Iraqis who have lost family members."

That plan is unlikely to go anywhere, but the question of what to do with the next emergency supplemental funding request sent by the President, now expected to be as much as $160 billion, is very much up for discussion among Democrats.

--Jason Horowitz

I don’t know how the poet Horace managed to get an advance copy of the report of the Iraq Stud  read more »

I don’t know how the poet Horace managed to get an advance copy of the report of the Iraq Study Gr  read more »

As someone who has never displayed any great aptitude with words, President George W.  read more »

As someone who has never displayed any great aptitude with words, President George W.  read more »

A lot of people have had trouble posting comments. I apologize, we're trying to work out the bugs. If you're ticked about it, email me and I'll get it on the blog.

Here is something that Richard Silverstein, whose progressive Jewish blog I recommend (Tikun Olam, http://www.richardsilverstein.com) tried to say about the question of Israel talking to Syria.

Responding to the comment: "Let Israel give up the Golan heights when you, Lester, Gene, and the rest of the Hasrallah/Hamas cheering sections move yourself, wives, children, and pets to the foot of the Golan heights, within artillery range."

No, how 'bout little Bill you move yr loved ones to Beit Hanun & suffer under IDF bombardment for a few nights to really whet yr appetite for those uber-Israel views of yours.

And btw, since you seem too ignorant to know otherwise, those Syrian Golan artillery batteries have been silent for 40 yrs. If Phil followed yr orders he & his loved would sleep well in their beds knowing that Syria was maintaining the peace on the Golan border. Richard Silverstein

Public broadcasting stars Terry Gross and Judy Woodruff have both now paddled Jimmy Carter for the "provocative" title of his book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. In each case the gentlemanly grandfatherly prez bore up beautifully under the treatment, stuck to his guns. I chose the title deliberately, Carter said, because Americans don't understand the situation in the Occupied Territories. In fact, he went on, conditions in the West Bank are "worse" than apartheid. Which is just what a South African church worker told me on my visit to Hebron last summer. I.e., the word "apartheid" is not provocative, but descriptive.

While we're on provocative matters, let's talk about Robert Satloff, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Kenneth Pollack, of Brookings's Saban Center, holding forth on television about Syria. Satloff all but dismisses the idea of engaging Syria. Pollack says (with his usual indirection), There will be a high price for the U.S. to pay.

Syria may finally be the Elian Gonzalez moment I've been waiting for on the Israel lobby—the moment when U.S. interests and Israeli interests part sharply, for all to see. It is now a commonplace to hear Republican congressmen saying We should talk to Syria. I.e., any idiot knows we should be talking to Syria, to try and save lives in Iraq.

It may not be in Israel's interest to talk to Syria. That is, Israel has time and again declined Syria's overtures in the last few years. For whatever reason, foolish arrogant or visionary, because they don't want to part with the Golan, or think they have pulverized Hezbollah, Israel's leaders don't want to talk to Syria. Their call.

This is a good line in the sand: Israel doesn't want to talk to Syria, the U.S. maybe does. Where do you stand, Ken Pollack, of the Saban Center (a thinktank funded by an Israeli)? And Satloff of WINEP, hirer of Israeli generals? Are Israeli and American interests always congruent? Now that's a good question for public broadcasting.

The midterm election was decisive—the election of 1874, that is.  read more »

I left Israel last summer with the awareness that the people there live in misery. I was moved by a friend's grim summary of the situation: "The Arabs don't want us here, they just don't. So we have to accept that there will be one war after another." One war after another? That's misery.

David Brooks got the same quote I did, in a column a week ago (September 28) from a "veteran of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." How long will our war with the Arab world last? "This is forever."  read more »

Surely this is how many (maybe most) Israelis think. But there are two huge problems in parroting these thoughts, as Brooks did, to guide American relations with the Arab world. 1, is the widespread Israeli belief that Israel deserves no share of blame for the 60-year history of violence with "an existential foe," as Brooks says. It's simply wrong: "nationalist propaganda," in the words of Simha Flapan, one of the Israeli "new historians" who have in the last generation transformed historical understanding of the Middle East. 2, and more dangerous, is the conflation issue: Brook's neoconservative claim that Americans should think about the Arab world as Israelis do "who have more experience with Islamic extremism." Why? Why must we recapitulate the experience of an ally in the Arab world?

On Friday, the Nation magazine hosted Yizhar Be'er, who directs a media monitoring organization in Israel called Keshev. (The group's president is David Grossman, the writer, who lost his son, a tank commander, in Lebanon last month.)

The theme of Be'er's comments was the danger of unilateralism—the policy of going it alone in the Middle East, undertaken by both the U.S. and Israel. Be'er spoke of a false attitude in Israel toward its neighbors that is scarily reminiscent of American attitudes: "we are under continuing threat and the other side only understands the language of power." The Israeli media had helped create that attitude by "strengthening the feeling of threats and paranoia through a process of demonization and delegitimation of the other side."  read more »

JERUSALEM, Israel, DATETK?--Fresh from the battlefield in southern Lebanon, disgruntled soldiers fro  read more »

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 18—The road to Damascus was bombed again early this morning, the seventh day  read more »

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 18—The road to Damascus was bombed again early this morning, the seventh  read more »

In a pro-Israel rally yesterday outside the Permanent Mission of Syria to the U.N., Observer contributor John Koblin reports, Anthony Weiner and Eliot Engel both singled out Syria for enabling Hezbollah's recent missile attacks.

Weiner began his speech to the crowd of more than 100 demonstrators by citing a Damascus connection to the missiles that struck Israel over the weekend, while Engel urged the international community to "isolate Syria."

Rabbi Avi Weiss, who organized the event, explained that the choice of Syrian Mission as the day's venue mostly came down to simple logistics: he had actually wanted to stage the event outside the Iranian consulate, but it was too far from the Israeli Permanent Mission, where the rally ended.

A much larger demonstration in support of Israel is scheduled today for 12:00 outside the U.N.

-- Josh Benson

PBS's "Frontline" aired a documentary last night called The Dark Side about the manipulation of intelligence by the vice president's office in the runup to the Iraq war. This is now an old story, but it was well-told. Frontline assembled a number of former intelligence analysts to show how the CIA's usual standards of accuracy were overrun in order to produce the result Cheney wanted.

Aluminum tubes... Yellow cake from Niger....Chemical labs in train cars....All the warmongering claims duly parroted to the world by George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell, thereby damaging themselves forever.  read more »

One of the things I love about blogging is you can't talk down to your readers, they're as smart as you are (smarter!). I've gotten more comment about a post I did a few days ago on my impressions from a trip to Syria earlier this year than anything else I've done. When I posted my impressions, I announced that I was going to seek an expert's take: Joshua Landis, a professor at Oklahoma U. Landis has lived in Syria, is married to a Syrian, and has the leading blog on Syria.

Landis began by echoing my general impression that life in Syria is pretty good.

"You go to Syria as an American and you're expecting Saddam's Iraq. A Mini Saddam. You discover it's not a totalitarian state. It's authoritarian, it's a dictatorship. But Syrians are forthright with you. There's not much feeling of surveillance. That said, had you gone as a journalist you would have been followed around."

My impression of "the Arab street" post-Iraq was also accurate, he said.  read more »

A few months ago I went to Syria as a tourist, to visit my wife's cousin, who is teaching in Damascus. I had a very good time (in stark contrast to an unpleasant trip to Morocco) and since then I've been trying to sort out my experience. What have I to say about that most controversial of matters—the Arab world, and an Arab dictatorship—based on my personal experience as a tourist? What does my truly enjoyable trip mean, compared, say to the neoconservative view that Syria is evil (put forth by Paul Berman in Terror and Liberalism, and by David Frum and Richard Perle in An End to Evil)?

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to post an entry now on my impressions of Syria. Then I'm going to post an entry in which I talk to Josh Landis, a professor at Oklahoma U. who is on my side (the left, though more centrist than me) and one of the leading experts on Syria, having lived there and married a Syrian.  read more »

So. My impressions:

Andrew Sullivan is once again horrified by reports of widespread American torture, this time from Amnesty International.

Whatever else this administration has done, whatever other mistakes it has made, this abandonment of long-standing American honor and decency in the military is an unforgivable offense. It is an attack on the meaning of America by its own president. It must be forever attached to his name and to that of his vice-president. The stain is deep. And it has stained us all.

Sullivan has been dedicated on this issue, but I've always found his tone here to be overwrought and legalistic. A big supporter of the invasion of Iraq, as essential to our national security, Sullivan seems to be saying, If only this war could have been fought more cleanly, on moral and military grounds. Once he wrote that he wanted to cry over the abuses. He doth protest too much.

War is horrifying, and torture/abuse is inevitable, to one degree or another. Some of that torture is surely practical and tacitly approved, the movie version: You have caught an insurgent who you believe knows where a live IED is set to go off; what do you do? But that is a small part of it. If you are brutalized, as so many of our troops are, and always will be by war on this scale, there is going to be torture. Sullivan writes fatuously of "long-standing American honor and decency." Read Charles Lindbergh's memoirs on the Pacific war in '43 (The Wartimes Journals). Such a just war, yes—but Lindbergh was angered by what other pilots and soldiers (under General MacArthur, a rectitudinous commander if ever there was one) were doing to Japanese captives, and implored them not to abuse or kill these men. He didn't have much effect. Those pilots were inflamed by reports of what the Japanese had done to American pilots they had captured. Starvation, medical experiments. And water tortures of the sort we now see in Iraq. Round and round the circle of violence we go. War selects for Lynndie England types. If intellectuals have a role to play in war, so do the desperate people who so often distinguish themselves at the front. Again to refer to New Guinea (the only war I've closely studied), when the Japanese poured down through the Pacific after Pearl Harbor, the first thing the Aussies did was empty the New Guinea prisons—and arm the felons.

I am not trying to justify this; these are observations. But it seems to me naive not to recognize that this is an inevitable aspect of the larger violence, of which Sullivan approved. As for that larger violence, I suppose he looks on the collateral damage to innocents of an airstrike or a not-so-smartbomb as somehow necessary. And so he cries for the Iraqi general suffocated by an abusive interrogator, but not for the innocent family incinerated mistakenly/rashly by our forces at a roadblock. I'm not so sure that the Iraqi families who are crying in a different way over these deaths would see the distinction in our actions. This war has been a brutal thing, as we on the left said it would be. It has churned innocents like ants, and not-so-innocent prisoners too. Look at the horrifying photographs on Juan Cole's website. Cole says 200,000 civilians have died. Lately in Syria, I met two of the tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees who had fled to Syria, at a bar. "Iraq is a coffin," one said to me. Then he added, with rage, that American soldiers fire indiscriminately into homes after insurgent attacks. (Collective punishment. Ala Israel's occupiers). There are many things going on in Iraq that would make a person cry.

I'm no pacifist. I supported the war in Afghanistan. But war is an extreme measure, something the utopian planners and cheerleaders for this war deluded themseves about. (And still do; it would have gone perfectly if we'd only had half a million troops...) None of them had to go there. Few of them seem to know war. The older ones had declined an education in the matter during the Vietnam War, for instance by getting a political appointment to the Texas Air National Guard.

Sullivan is right when he assails the Administration's policy of countenancing torture. But he is off when he wrings his hands and imagines a clean war, edges trimmed legally. I imagine that he feels guilty about that larger horror, and has displaced it on to this issue, and so has come to fetishize a tidy legal cutout to put his guilt down on, amid the nightmare. If you need a code, why not try the one that those other savior/interveners have—doctors: First, do no harm.

The winds of freedom that now sweep the Middle East are bending the cedars of Lebanon.  read more »

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Now that the United States is at war with Saddam Hussein, the hard questions that have divided Ameri  read more »

TEL AVIV–January is not the high time here, not even in the year 2000.  read more »

Attention, drinkers: When was the last time you got a buyback?  read more »