Monthly Archives: September 2024

US Democrats will regard an Israeli invasion of Lebanon as election interference

This op-ed was published by The National on September 26, 2024

Just six weeks before a highly consequential election, Washington is scrambling to avoid a full-scale war in the Middle East that could be triggered by an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. US President Joe Biden’s domestic policy and legislative achievements have been remarkable, but his handling of the Gaza war has been woeful. Now US policy faces a meltdown, not at the hands of adversaries like Hezbollah and Iran, but Israel.

The Biden administration adopted a focused policy of conflict containment of the war to Gaza, hoping to manage the strategic fallout from anything deemed plausible inside Gaza. This reflected deep anxiety about the war spreading, particularly into Lebanon, which might spiral into a regional conflict potentially drawing in the US and Iran, and even setting them directly against each other.

Some in the Biden administration have long harbored suspicions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might hope to manoeuvre tensions over Lebanon to eventually, and at long last, secure the direct US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities that he has been demanding, without success, for almost two decades.

The Biden administration’s de facto carte blanche for Israel, particularly in the first few months of that savage war of vengeance against the entire Palestinian society in Gaza, was developed for numerous reasons. But an important factor was the belief that by supporting Israel strongly in Gaza, the Biden administration effectively positioned itself to block any Israeli impulse to unnecessarily spread the war into Lebanon.

That calculation appeared to play out precisely on several key occasions.

As early as October 12, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and other hawks began pressing for an immediate and massive strike against Hezbollah. One of the key factors thwarting this effort was a forceful intervention by Mr. Biden telling Mr. Netanyahu and others that such an attack was unnecessary, unwise and would not be supported by Washington. Similar scenarios played out on at least two other occasions in the subsequent months in which Mr. Biden was able to restrain Israel.

However, if things pan out over the subsequent days and weeks, an invasion of Lebanon could expand the Gaza war not just to Israel’s north but also potentially into an uncontrolled regional conflagration. Yet, at the time of writing, neither Israel nor Hezbollah had indicated any interest – at least in public – in a three-week pause in cross-border attacks that was being proposed by Washington and other regional and international governments.

The current standoff goes back to the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks, when Hamas demanded that Hezbollah and other militias in the Iranian-managed “axis of resistance” intervene with full force against Israel. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, disappeared into virtual hiding, and when he emerged after two weeks, he clarified that while the organization would be intensifying its military activities, they would be directed at the Lebanon-Israel border area and, supposedly, in the interests of liberating two Lebanese towns still occupied by Israel.

The answer to Hamas was no, but Hezbollah did feel the need to ramp up cross-border attacks so as not to appear completely docile. But since that opening salvo, Israel has been able to establish escalation dominance, because even cautious Israeli leaders can see potential benefits from taking on Hezbollah under current circumstances.

In particular, they hope to inflict significant costs to Iran and its Arab regional militia network, which they believe have benefited virtually cost-free from the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. They would also be hoping to restore the domestic credibility and legitimacy of Israel’s national security institutions that were badly tarnished by the military meltdown on October 7.

Neither Iran nor Hezbollah see any point in a major war with Israel under current circumstances. Hezbollah’s main regional role has been to protect Iran from Israeli or American attacks on its homeland, and particularly its nuclear facilities. Tehran and Hezbollah have had no interest in a war over a place, Gaza, which has little strategic, historical or religious significance to them, or to rescue an organization, Hamas, which has proven to be an unreliable ally of the “axis of resistance” in the past (Hamas broke it over the Syrian war between 2012-2019).

The main American point to Israel all along has been that this war is unnecessary and avoidable because the other side does not want to fight one.

Israeli ambivalence appeared to decisively dissipate after the pager and walkie-talkie sabotage detonations last week. Reports suggest that Israel wanted to use those explosions in the earliest stages of a potential ground attack on Lebanon, but growing suspicions about the malfunctioning or badly performing devices prompted a “use it or lose it” analysis in Israel. Therefore, if these reports are true, the explosives were detonated independent of a specific policy goal or broader strategy.

Yet predictably enough, a cycle of escalation immediately followed.

What Israel seeks from a ground invasion is not clear, but it potentially ranges from the establishment of a new occupied “security barrier” in southern Lebanon to an all-out effort to smash the infrastructure of Hezbollah similar to that conducted in Gaza against Hamas. Either way, Lebanon has once again been dragged into a conflict that has absolutely no connection to any Lebanese national interest. Yet Israel’s escalations may help obscure that, instead restoring Hezbollah’s popularity and the perceived legitimacy of its resistance.

For the Biden administration, an Israeli ground operation in Lebanon constitutes the ultimate failure of its Gaza war policy. The conflict will have spread despite Washington’s best efforts and because of Israel’s bellicosity rather than that of Hezbollah or Iran.

Mere weeks before a US election is hardly the time any administration is going to get tough on Israel. The Israelis know this, and they are taking full and cynical advantage of the Biden administration’s priority of securing the victory of Vice President Kamala Harris over former president Donald Trump.

Indeed, a ground offensive, if it were to happen, with no urgent need and just six weeks before the US presidential election, will be regarded by many Democrats as shocking and intolerable election interference on behalf of Mr. Trump. Relations between Mr. Netanyahu and Democrats may never recover.

It could also accelerate the advent of a deeper schism between the US, or at least Democrats, and Israel in general. That’s been a long time in the making, and Mr Netanyahu appears determined to make such a bitter reckoning inevitable, and perhaps imminent.

Meanwhile, his policies could leave Israel fighting ongoing insurgencies against renewed or intensified occupations to the south in Gaza, to the north in Lebanon, and quite possibly to the east in the West Bank. Israel’s only calm border would be the Mediterranean Sea. If that’s a formula for security, it’s hard to imagine what dangerous insecurity might look like.

Harris is impressing audiences, while Trump’s views remain fringe

This op-ed was published by The National on September 24, 2024

It’s raining cats and dogs of conspiracy theories and paranoia in the U.S. election campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris has opened a small but significant lead in the latest polls, ranging from one to six points nationally and in a number of key swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and even the prize of prizes: Pennsylvania. Former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, are responding with an intensification of wild allegations devoid of fact and racist fabrications.

This week the specter of political violence once again raised its ugly head, as Mr. Trump survived an apparent second assassination attempt. Another deranged gunman was apparently hoping to kill him at his golf course in Florida, but he was thwarted and captured by the Secret Service. No shots were fired at Mr. Trump.

The former president was quick to blame Democrats, once again claiming that “they” were trying to kill him. The suspect appears to be another deranged individual with a largely right-wing political history, plus some donations to Democrats. There is no evidence that either would-be assassin was inspired by warnings from Democrats that Mr. Trump is a threat to US democracy and constitutional rule (which, given his actions and statements, is an unavoidable fear).

On social media, Mr. Trump posted: “Because of this communist left rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse.” In addition to yet again smearing Ms. Harris and other Democrats as communists, there is an obvious thinly veiled threat at the end of that sentence.

The assassination attempts don’t seem to be helping Mr. Trump much in the polls, for an obvious reason: it is he, and not the Democrats, who has consistently deployed the rhetoric of political violence – and its reality on January 6, 2021 – in the American political scene.

Democrats reacted to the latest assassination attempt impeccably, by denouncing political violence absolutely, expressing relief that Mr. Trump is safe, and calling for an investigation of how the threat emerged and urging greater Secret Service protection for the former president. Mr. Trump and his sons, by contrast, continue to mock and make light of the hammer attack on the 80-year-old husband of former House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, and have specialized in violent rhetoric unheard-of at this political level in the modern US.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance also continue to harp on the fabrication that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, despite the insistence of the mayor, police and governor that there is no evidence of this ever happening. In a recent interview, Mr. Vance, who could not identify any victimized pet owner, admitted the story may be fabricated, but said: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually has to pay attention to the suffering of American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

The result has been devastating to Springfield, which has been inundated with violent threats that have resulted in the evacuations of hospitals, schools and threats to the safety of the family of the mayor. Yet Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance continue to insist that the legal Haitian immigrants in that city are stealing and consuming pets.

This sort of anti-immigrant rhetoric isn’t new. Exactly these charges were made against Vietnamese immigrants in the 1980s. But horror stories about food and pets, the essence of American domesticity, get repeated because they’re effective. Another new target is pop superstar Taylor Swift, who endorsed Ms. Harris, prompting thousands of new voter registrations. Mr. Trump responded by posting in all caps: “I hate Taylor Swift.” It is, to say the least, unusual conduct from a former US president.

Mr. Trump is now carefully and ominously laying the groundwork for a repetition of his refusal to accept his defeat in 2020. He’s once again denouncing the “terrible” US election system.

In his 16th interview with a particularly loopy conspiracy theorist called Wayne Allyn Root, Mr. Trump insisted that the recent presidential debate (which he claims to have won, although it was a fiasco for him) was “rigged”, and that even the US Postal Service is “rigged” against him. He’s back to insisting that postal voting is inherently rife with fraud, a fixation for which there is no evidence whatsoever.

Mr. Trump’s lurch to the extreme fringe of the US political spectrum is personified by his latest close adviser, the hatemonger and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. She is an intolerant, homophobic and Islamophobic extremist who has called, for instance, Islam “a cancer”, while insisting that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were a US government “inside job”.

Her closer-than-ever association with Mr. Trump began with her accompanying him to the recent debate. This so alarmed some of his most right-wing allies in Congress that Thom Tillis, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lindsey Graham issued a joint statement denouncing her influence on Mr. Trump. She responded by describing all of them as his enemies and making scurrilous claims, subsequently removed, about Mr. Graham’s supposed preference for the company of men.

Yet Mr. Trump continues to back her, saying she is a “free spirit” entitled to say anything she wants. But she has quite clearly emerged as his chief enforcer.

Mr. Trump’s paid adverts are making the politically normal case that Ms. Harris is responsible for a surge in border crossings and inflation that has bedeviled the Joe Biden administration. That could win him many votes. But in “earned media” appearances, Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance appear uninterested or incapable of moving beyond the “cat-eating” level of highly dangerous racist and anti-immigrant calumny. It’s off-the-wall but on-brand and, unfortunately, not ineffective in creating its intended fear and hatred and keeping immigration – and themselves – in the spotlight.

All this prompted the influential and apolitical magazine Scientific American to endorse Ms. Harris, pointing out that the election now pits reality-based policies against the politics of fabrications, phantasms and flimflam.

Mr. Trump’s pivot to the most extreme conspiratorial fringe may remind many key swing voters what bothered them enough about him that they elected Mr. Biden in 2020. Between that and her outstanding debate performance last week, it’s no wonder that Ms. Harris appears to be slowly but surely moving ever closer to the presidency.

Harris shines in the debate, but Trump remains a potent candidate

This op-ed was published by The National on September 11, 2024

The presidential debate performance on Tuesday night by US Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t perfect, but the glitches were rare and unimportant, as she executed a well-crafted, relentless attack on her Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump. He could certainly still win the election. But he was constantly, and most unusually, on the defensive.

Ms. Harris is now bolstered by a crushing victory that accomplished virtually every goal – many in complex tension with each other – that the occasion demanded. The campaigns are battling for a few remaining persuadable voters in six or seven swing states. It’s unlikely many switched to Mr. Trump after his dismal performance.

Ms. Harris faced especially daunting challenges. She had to demonstrate “presidential” mettle by standing up to him, yet avoid seeming snippy, obnoxious or unpleasant. This is especially challenging for women, who are typically judged harshly for assertiveness often considered admirable from men.

She rattled him immediately, confidently marching into his stage space and forcing a handshake that he evidently neither expected nor enjoyed. It was a subtle exercise in the physical dominance Mr. Trump well understands. She initially overdid her incredulous facial expressions at his rhetorical excesses. But even these became increasingly effective, almost seeming concerned for him, in stark contrast to his scowls and smirks.

 

TV debates are often best evaluated on mute. Ms. Harris appeared relaxed and confident, while Mr. Trump looked alternately irritated, infuriated or uncomfortable, a stereotypical grumpy old man. She smiled broadly as he fell into trap after trap. Her attacks were so effective that she essentially transformed him into the incumbent, and herself into an upstart challenger, even though she’s in the White House and he isn’t.

She launched stinging salvos against his criminal convictions, dependence on lies, and key vulnerabilities such as reproductive rights. She consistently baited him, so successfully that he sometimes appeared to lose his temper, barking “quiet!” at her and several times being reduced to shouting.

Ms. Harris was clearly well prepared, continuously pivoting to directly address voters, explaining what she would do for “you”, while insisting that Mr. Trump has nothing to offer “you”. He seemed unprepared, although when she lured him into relitigating the 2020 election, he apparently suddenly recalled that was a mistake, quickly affirming the past is unimportant. It was an unconvincing correction.

The debate was predictably short on substance, but Ms. Harris made the only serious efforts to talk about policy ideas, and several times appealed for a discussion about their proposals. Mr. Trump variously claimed she has no plans, that she intends to “destroy” the country, and even, mystifyingly, that she has now embraced his governing philosophy. The incompatibility of the three appeared lost on him.

Mr. Trump returned almost compulsively to his signature issue, immigration. But he handled it clumsily, relying on outlandish hyperbole and even regurgitating a racist urban legend about Haitian migrants eating other people’s pet cats. When moderators noted that officials in Springfield, Ohio – the purported site of this mythical feasting – flatly deny the fabrication, he responded that he had seen it on TV. He thereby botched a potentially potent issue.

Ms. Harris, by contrast, gave an artful response regarding Palestinians and Israel, a dangerously divisive issue among Democrats. She denounced the Hamas attack of October 7 and pledged to defend Israel against Iran or its proxies. But she bemoaned the suffering of Palestinians and strongly endorsed a two-state solution, insisting Palestinians must enjoy “self-determination, freedom and the dignity they so rightly deserve”. That gave as much to each side as plausible. Mr. Trump’s response – claiming that she hates Israel but also hates Arabs – was incoherent, ad hominem and hostile.

Mr. Trump tried to corner Ms. Harris on the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, but he ended up defending his own record of dealing with the Taliban. He refused to say that he wants Ukraine to defeat the Russian invasion. And he repeatedly praised and cited the “strongman” Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.

Ms. Harris repeated her convention pledge to maintain the US military as “the most lethal” in the world, hawkish phraseology atypical of Democrats but appealing to many independents.

She hammered him on issue after issue, didn’t “lose” a single exchange and carried most of them decisively. He appeared particularly irked when she questioned the size and enthusiasm of his rally crowds, once again demonstrating his predictability. Indeed, one of her strongest selling points is that she offers something new and different, an opportunity to turn the page on a political environment defined by Mr. Trump, US President Joe Biden and their generation.

Stylistically, despite her determination to demonstrate “strength” by being assertive and even combative, she managed to be forward-looking, offering voters a new era in US politics. A glowering Mr. Trump, by contrast, was unrelentingly negative. Swing voters may prefer her optimism and the opportunity to move away from ongoing divisions, although economic discontent could prevent that.

She was especially effective in her response to his attacks on her mixed ethnic heritage, urging Americans to put racial and other divisions aside and unite as a single people. This is something Mr. Trump has never even hinted at in his political career, which has been based almost entirely on dividing the country.

The closing arguments summarized the evening: Ms. Harris appealed to Americans for unity and optimism for a new future, while Mr. Trump bitterly denounced his opponent, her administration and the supposedly “failing” and wretched state of the country.

Mr. Trump suffered a devastating defeat, and he knows it. He’s claiming he prevailed despite it being “three on one”, suggesting that the moderators were biased for occasionally correcting some of his falsehoods. When someone is complaining about the moderators, they know they’ve lost.

Mr. Biden’s meltdown on June 27 demonstrated that debates can reshape elections. If Ms. Harris wins in November, this debate may be recalled as a key inflection point moving late-breaking voters into her camp.

She clearly won the debate. That doesn’t mean she’ll win the election. But her chances seem better than ever.

If nothing else, Ms. Harris has just executed one of the finest and most effective debate performances in US political history.

Trump’s flip-flop on a woman’s right to choose is an electoral liability for him

This op-ed was published by The National on September 6, 2024

In US presidential elections, early September initiates a typically combative, fluctuating last two months. Vice President Kamala Harris has a small lead over former president Donald Trump, but the race remains a toss-up, ripe for daily intensification.

This campaign stage typically features accusations of flip-flopping, interrogating how and why candidates have altered their previous positions.

Ms. Harris has clear exposure but also some protective padding. Most of her independent positions predate becoming President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020. She has shifted on several important issues, such as petroleum extraction through fracking (which she now supports), single-payer public health care (now opposes), and immigration (now much tougher).

Ms. Harris and the Democratic Party in general have shifted significantly to the center. On immigration, in particular, it was stunning to watch her convention pledge to sign the “Langford bill” – a virtual wish list for Republicans on border issues – greeted with thunderous cheers by a Democratic crowd. And she is using Mr. Trump’s cynical opposition to the bill as a powerful rebuttal on border-related criticism.

Confronted with such so-called flip-flops in a recent interview, she acknowledged some of her views have changed, but insisted her values haven’t. She suggested that she’s learnt a great deal after almost four years in the White House, and developed a keener appreciation of the need to “build consensus”, a clear nod to lessons from Mr. Biden who has championed bipartisanship. Spending the past four years perforce supporting Mr Biden’s positions allows her to insist that his popular policies will continue but his unpopular ones won’t.

Mr. Trump’s relationship with political, or other, consistency is far more tenuous. Despite decades as a public gadfly in New York and almost 10 years in national politics, it’s much easier to list the few issues on which he’s held firm: opposition to immigration and free trade, plus a long track record of racist and misogynistic words and deeds.

But on most policy issues, he’s highly flexible. He began as a liberal Democrat (except on racial matters), dabbled with libertarian and independent platforms, and is now a conservative Republican. But the public and the media have largely given him a pass on his pre-2015 stances.

It’s pointless to look for such consistency because Mr. Trump doesn’t “do policy”. He does politics, and he appears mainly guided by how he thinks his base will react to developments in a 12-hour news cycle. In 2020, the Republican Party dispensed with issuing a platform altogether, simply affirming support for any of his positions – apparently because they couldn’t anticipate what he might come to favor.

This free-form flip-flopping is virtually priced into his political persona. For instance, few voters are likely to learn or care that he now supports decriminalization of marijuana in his home state of Florida, though he was a hardline anti-drug president.

Nonetheless, he’s having extreme difficulty with the policy surely most associated with his presidency: prohibiting abortion.

Evangelical and other conservative Christians were initially skeptical, but in 2016 he persuaded them that he was serious about appointing Supreme Court justices who would prioritize ending almost 50 years of constitutionally protected access to early-term abortions. They eventually became the rock-solid cornerstone of his adoring base.

Through good fortune and cynical Senate chicanery, he appointed three of the nine current justices, and in 2022 that court indeed overturned the constitutional right to choice for American women. Mr. Trump then spent years boasting that he was personally, if not single-handedly, responsible.

But in 2024, that’s all become a liability.

The court ruling, and widespread pushback against abortion access (and other vital women’s healthcare provisions) in conservative states is so unpopular that, ever since, in every competitive election in which reproductive health care has been a major issue, liberals have won (even in hyper-conservative states such as Alabama). Yet the new Republican party platform suggests that embryos do, or should, have unspecified constitutional rights, signaling a nationwide total abortion ban.

Mr. Trump is clearly nervous, and with good reason.

Eyebrows were raised when he insisted that another Trump term would be “great for women and their reproductive rights”. But his implication that he might vote for a referendum in Florida overturning the state’s highly restrictive six-week limit (when women often have no idea that they’ve become pregnant) made many of his anti-abortion supporters livid.

Inundated with criticism, he “clarified” that he would vote no, falsely claiming that the referendum would allow abortions through the ninth month. Such hyperbole is nothing new, since he has been wrongly insisting for years that Democrats support and allow for “after-birth abortions”, which is murder and unlawful everywhere.

Just as Mr. Trump has failed to develop an effective counter to Ms. Harris – his latest nickname for her, “Comrade Kamala”, unsurprisingly isn’t catching on – he hasn’t found a stance that accommodates his existing and possibly epoch-shaping anti-abortion policies while attenuating the price at the ballot box.

His main strategy in recent weeks has been to advocate leaving the matter to each state. That hasn’t appeased anyone, and it’s annoyed many on his side.

He even recently suggested universal coverage for in vitro fertilization, which is considered murderous by much of his base. But it’s likely to prove one of his offhanded trial balloons, like his recent suggestion that graduating international students at US universities be given green cards, that end up on history’s cutting room floor.

The Harris campaign is so invested in reproductive rights that it’s highlighting them through a 50-stop national bus tour, beginning near Mr. Trump’s home in Florida.

The candidates are bound to vigorously confront each other at the upcoming debate. Mr. Trump would be wise not to again accuse Ms. Harris of flip-flopping on her mixed racial identity by suddenly “turning black”. And she’s best advised to foreground women’s health care and force Mr. Trump to either stand by or backtrack further from his strong restrictionist track record. His instincts for throwing red meat to his strongest supporters could help her task, although he’s likely to stick to his “leave it to each state” formula.

Flip-flopping accusations are largely ineffective political cliches. But Mr. Trump’s close association with one of the most unpopular socio-political upheavals in recent history is almost certainly the biggest liability facing either candidate this year.