Eideard

The U.S. Secret Service is looking into a controversial column by an Atlanta Jewish newspaper publisher that mulled the assassination of an American president.

Andrew Adler, owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, wrote a January 13 column about the threat of Iran to Israel. He posed three options for the Jewish state to counter the Iranian regime.

One of them called for a “hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence.”

“Give the go-ahead for U.S. based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

U.S. Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie told CNN Saturday, “We are aware of it. We are taking the appropriate investigative steps…”

“The suggestion by anyone, in this case a Jewish newspaper publisher, that Israel should consider assassinating President Obama is shocking beyond belief,” said Dov Wilker, director of the American Jewish Committee in Atlanta.

“While we acknowledge Mr. Adler’s [eventual] apology, we are flabbergasted that he could ever say such a thing in the first place. How could he even conceive of such a twisted idea?” said Wilker. “Mr. Adler surely owes immediate apologies to President Obama, as well as to the State of Israel and his readership, the Atlanta Jewish community.”

The White House declined to comment Saturday on the column.

I guess this proves that fundamentalists needn’t be Christians to be nutballs.

The Chinese president has resisted US arguments about why China should let its currency strengthen, saying the dollar-based international currency system is a “product of the past”.

However, Hu Jintao admitted that it would take a long time to make China’s yuan (RMB) a world currency.

“China has made important contribution to the world economy in terms of total economic output and trade, and the RMB has played a role in the world economic development,” he told two US newspapers in a written interview ahead of his visit to the US next week. “But making the RMB an international currency will be a fairly long process…”

Hu said arguments that allowing the yuan to appreciate would curb inflation are too simplistic, adding that China is fighting inflation with a range of policies including interest-rate increases.

While inflation in China hit a 28-month high in November, Hu told the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post that prices were “on the whole moderate and controllable…We have the confidence, conditions and ability to stabilise the overall price level,” he said…

On other issues, Hu struck an upbeat tone about ties with the US. “We should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality,” he said and “respect each other’s choice of development path.”

The president suggested co-operation with the US in areas like new energy sources, clean energy, infrastructure development, aviation and space…

The Chinese leader, who is expected to step down as president and general secretary of China’s Communist Party in 2012, arrives on Wednesday in Washington for his first and last state visit.

I chose this article from Al Jazeera deliberately to offer folks a middle-of-the-road view from outside the United States and most Western yes-men. Certainly, the content of the interview isn’t altered; but, presentation is still linked to American domestic politics – and that includes foreign policy.

The Washington Post article is somewhat neutral. The NY Times reflects their policy of being as hawkish as any Cold Warrior when it comes to economic and commercial challenges to the United States.

When the president decided to send more troops to a distant country during an unpopular war, one powerful senator had enough. He warned that the U.S. military could not create stability in a country “where there is chaos … democracy where there is no tradition of it, and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life.”

“It’s unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or idea while neglecting the needs of its own people,” said Sen. J. William Fulbright, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in 1966 as the Vietnam War escalated.

Fulbright’s warning is being applied by some to Afghanistan today. The U.S. is still fighting dubious wars abroad while ignoring needs at home, says Andrew J. Bacevich, who tells Fulbright’s story in his new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path To Permanent War.”

As the Afghanistan war enters its ninth year, Bacevich and other commentators are asking: When does it end?

They say the nation’s national security leaders have put the U.S. on an unsustainable path to perpetual war and that President Obama is doing little to stop them…

Bacevich has become a leading voice among anti-war critics. He is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, a former West Point instructor and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He’s also a Boston University international relations professor who offers a historical perspective with his criticism. He says Obama has been ensnared by the “Washington Rules,” a set of assumptions that have guided presidents since Harry Truman.

The rules say that the U.S. should act as a global policeman. “Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland or Detroit,” Bacevich writes.

His solution: The U.S. should stop deploying a “global occupation force” and focus on nation-building at home.

RTFA. He offers an understanding of history similar to what I grew up with. Especially my studies in military history with veterans of WW2. I was “lucky” – I got to follow it as it happened, not just read about it.

Detail, analysis, and that old American bugaboo – history for people who neither wish to study history or learn from history.

A firm affiliated with the former Blackwater security company has been awarded a contract to provide protection to U.S. consulates and diplomats in the Afghan cities of Herat and Mazar-e Sharif, a U.S. State Department official has confirmed.

The official said U.S. Training Center got the contract on Friday. It is part of Xe, the new name of Blackwater Worldwide.

Blackwater became the target of widespread outrage in Iraq after its contractors were involved in the September 2007 shooting at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square that left 17 civilians dead and 24 wounded, straining relations between Iraq and the United States.

The deal is a one-year contract with an option to extend up to 18 months. If the contract is fulfilled for that entire period, it would be more than $120 million.

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, said on Saturday she was “extremely disappointed” over the deal and that the former Blackwater shouldn’t be receiving more U.S. contracts.

“This is a company whose cowboy-like behavior has not only resulted in civilian deaths; it has also jeopardized our mission and the safety of U.S. troops and diplomatic personnel worldwide. Instead of punishing Blackwater for its extensive history of serious abuses the State Department is rewarding the company with up to $120 million in taxpayer funds,” she said in a statement.

The congresswoman has introduced legislation that would phase out the use of private security contractors.

“Though the name Blackwater has become synonymous with the worst of contractor abuses, the bigger problem is our dangerous reliance on such companies for the business of waging war.”

Sooner or later, the easy rationale for the Obama Administration – things at the departmental level are still being run by Bush leftovers – will have to run out.

Responsibility for stupidity like this will have sit alongside Obama and Hillary at one of their press conferences. Presuming someone from the Washington Press Corps will ask the question.

Thanks, Mr. Justin

Daylife/Getty Images

US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House’s Middle East policy.

The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel’s reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians…

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama. The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations.

The lobbying came despite critics saying Netanyahu has consistently failed to commit himself to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The letter calls for the maintenance of the status quo…It says the US “must be both a trusted mediator and devoted friend of Israel”.

The last part has been the minimum description for generations. The Israeli government hasn’t had to concern itself with democracy, veracity or honesty in decades of dealing with either the American people or any other nations in the region.

It’s time to throw away the rubber-stamp.

Daylife/AP Photo

The United States and Cuba should normalize diplomatic relations then sort out their differences, said the head of a delegation of U.S. lawmakers on a visit to Cuba.

“Most of the members of our delegation believe we need to actually normalize relations and then the details of what that means would follow,” Representative Barbara Lee, who is also chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said at a news conference.

The seven member delegation of Democrats, made up mostly of African-American lawmakers, met with Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez in what Lee said was an effort to improve relations between Washington and the communist-ruled island.

They also toured various Cuban facilities, including a genetic engineering and pharmaceutical complex, and planned to visit churches on Sunday.

The United States is the only country in the hemisphere, other than El Salvador, that does not have normal diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba.

El Salvadoran President-elect Mauricio Funes has announced he will establish both when he takes office in June…

While Obama could ease diplomatic relations with Cuba, lifting the embargo would need congressional approval.

I suppose I have to become accustomed to rational statements [and policies?] coming from members of Congress. This whole change thing may be getting out of hand – if we’re actually supposed to expect our elected officials to start making sense.

Daylife/AP Photo

First for the good news: Pakistan is not about to explode. The Islamic militants are not going to take power tomorrow; the nuclear weapons are not about to be trafficked to al-Qaida; the army is not about to send the Afghan Taliban to invade India; a civil war is unlikely.

The bad news is that Pakistan poses us questions that are much more profound than those we would face if this nation of 170m, the world’s second biggest Muslim state, were simply a failed state. If Pakistan collapsed, we would be faced by a serious security challenge. But the resilience of Pakistan and the nation’s continuing collective refusal to do what the west would like it to together pose questions with implications far beyond simple security concerns. They are about our ability to influence events in far-off places, our capacity to analyse and understand the behaviour and perceived interests of other nations and cultures, about our ability to deal with difference, about how we see the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

Do these schoolchildren count as much as Israeli schoolchildren?
Daylife/AP Photo by Anja Niedringhaus

The Obama administration’s candidate for a top US intelligence post has withdrawn, after his past criticism of Israel came under heavy fire.

Charles Freeman had been named to head the National Intelligence Council, which produces security assessments. But his comments about Israel, as well as links to China and Saudi Arabia, had enraged dozens of US lawmakers…

Some observers are interpreting it as a test case of the Obama administration’s willingness to stand up to powerful pro-Israeli forces in US politics.

Mr Freeman has served as a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, a senior diplomat in China and an assistant secretary of defence. His background and past statements had caused dozens of members of Congress – mainly Republican – to question his appointment.

Among their stated concerns were remarks attributed to Mr Freeman in 2007, in which he said: “The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli occupation shows no signs of ending,” and “American identification with Israel has become total”

In a message posted on the website of Foreign Policy magazine, Mr Freeman said he believed the “barrage of libellous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office…

He said the incident showed “Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance”.

Nothing new, of course. American foreign policy in the Middle East has been supervised by the Israeli government for decades.

Afghan children wait for Bundeswahr target practice to end – to collect ammo casings
Photo from Daylife/Reuters Pictures

U.S. intelligence agencies conclude in a draft report that Afghanistan is in a downward spiral and they doubt whether the Kabul government can stem the Taliban’s rise. The classified report says corruption inside President Hamid Karzai’s government and an increase in attacks by militants operating from Pakistan have accelerated the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan is a difficult place. It has made progress since 2001. We have all talked about new circumstances that have arisen there and we are doing a review to look to see what more we can do,” Condoleeza Rice told reporters.

We are looking to see where some of the strengths are and how we need to support those strengths and also how we can help the Afghans where there are weaknesses,” Rice said.

The New York Times said the estimate, or NIE, is set to be finished after the November elections [No kidding] and will be the most comprehensive U.S. assessment in years on Afghanistan.

A senior official said last month estimates for many parts of the world were being updated for use by the next U.S. president, who will take office in January.

Hopefully, that next president will have a broader view of the world, an understanding of history, an appreciation of cultures beyond Ivy League failures and neocon ivory towers.

I speak with a bit more than native cynicism – over 50 years worth of watching bi-partisan greed and lies – when I say I hope for a qualitative change in American foreign policy.