http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Aug/06/New-neocon-committee-makes-last-ditch-effort.ashx#axzz2axJWowPa

In an effort to shore up their waning influence on United States foreign policy, especially towards the Middle East, a group of neoconservative political figures have launched a new organization, “the Committee Against the Present Danger.” Many of its members represent the most belligerent trend in American politics towards the Arab world.  Its chairman, former CIA Director James Woolsey, for example, has called on the United States to engage in “World War IV” against not only Islamist extremists like al Qaeda, but also the Shiite religious government of Iran, and the “fascists” of the former Iraqi regime and Syria.

Neoconservative views have been increasingly discredited in Washington as the occupation of Iraq has run entirely counter to predictions of a small and deteriorating opposition to coalition forces, a quick transition to democracy, and a transformation of political landscape of the Middle East.

Neoconservatives have also been particularly blamed for faulty assessments of Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and alliance with Al-Qaeda,both of which are now widely recognized as having been highly exaggerated.

Even within the Bush Administration, policies advocated by neoconservative officials in the Defense Department and Vice-President’s office are seen to have increasingly lost out to more multilateral approaches pushed by Secretary of State Colin Powell and others.

The new CPD is led by honorary co-chairs Senator Joseph Lieberman, one of the few prominent neoconservatives in the Democratic Party, and Republican Senator Jon Kyl, who has strong ties to right-wing evangelical organizations.  In a July 20 article in the Washington Post introducing the group, Lieberman and Kyl wrote that the CPD was formed because the “bipartisan consensus [in favor of neoconservative foreign policies] is coming under growing public pressure and could fray in the months ahead.”

The formation of the new CPD seems to confirm that neoconservatives are recognizing the crisis of credibility they have suffered due to the severe difficulties facing the occupation in Iraq, and have prepared a broad-based organization to advocate from outside the corridors of power.  The very real prospect of a John Kerry presidency, in which neoconservatives are unlikely to occupy important positions, has combined with the sense that President George W.Bush has largely abandoned the unilateral and hyper-aggressive approach that characterized the build-up to the invasion of Iraq.

“This is what you do when you are preparing to go into opposition,” a leading Republican supporter of President Bush told the Daily Star, “its what you set up if you think you’ve lost the presidency.  These guys don’t think they’ll get their way again no matter who wins in November.”  “You set this up so that if Bush looses you are team B and everyone has to join you, and if he wins, you have a base even though everyone is sick of you starting wars,” he said.

The addition of Senator Lieberman as a Democratic patron for the group is a crucial indicator of the need many neoconservatives now feel to expand beyond their home in the Republican camp.  This is in fact the third incarnation of a “Committee on the Present Danger,” the first being aimed at militarizing the confrontation with the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and the second taking an even more aggressive line on the cold war in the 1970s, led by hawkish Democratic Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson.   By its very name, the new CPD recalls the original home of many neoconservatives in the Jackson camp of the Democratic Party.

Many traditional conservatives, foreign policy realists and other Republicans have become outspokenly critical of the neoconservative influence on Bush Administration policies and seem set to blame them for any defeat by Kerry.

Reacting to this increasing pressure, journalist and leading neoconservative ideologue William Kristol told the New York Times in April that the movement has “as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives,” and that “if we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me, too.”

Kristol, along with several other prominent neoconservatives, has not been listed on the CPD membership list, which also has a striking lack of almost anyone with Middle East expertise.  However, a quick glance at the 41 CPD members reveals deeply alarming attitudes, which range from the sinister to the absurd.

Perhaps the most hawkish is Norman Podhoretz, editor-at-large of Commentary magazine.  He was the first to dub the project World War IV, and calls for “regime change” in a whole list of Middle Eastern states, governed by both pro-and anti-American regimes.  He argues that the U.S. needs “the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated parties.”

Another CPD member, Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute, has blamed the former Saddam Hussein regime not only for the attacks of September 11, 2001, but also for the first World Trade Center Bombing of 1993 and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh in 1995.  Old Washington hands recall, however, that until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Mylroie was chiding the United States for not providing Iraq with sufficient military aid, and arguing it was in American interests that all power in Iraq be concentrated in Saddam Hussein’s hands.

Not that the rest of CPD’s membership, as represented on the organization’s website, could be accused of understatement.  The threat is “a unprecedented challenge to international peace and stability” (Peter Brookes) and “as potent a threat to our freedom as? communism” (Henry Cooper).  The foe is “every bit as dangerous as a Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, or Stalin” (Victor Hanson), “the greatest threat to the US homeland in nearly two centuries” (Ed Meese), and “the greatest threat this country has ever faced in its entire history” (Norman Podhoretz).  Moreover, it is “an unconditional and existential threat not only to America and Israel, but also to Judeo-Christian culture” (William Van Cleave), and “what is at stake? is the survival of our civilization ” (Stephen Solarz).

The CPD mission statement refers to “a global Islamist terror movement,” but gives no clear definition of who or what is included in this beyond Al-Qaeda and its allies.  The definition of “the threat” on CPD’s website evinces further confusion, claiming that, “In the Middle East, Sunni extremists in Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza strip have organized into Asbat al-Ansar and the more widely known Hamas and Hezballah?”  The last group, of course, is a Lebanese Shiite political organization, again raising the question of how little expertise and even basic knowledge will be informing CPD’s efforts to “educate the American people about the threat posed by a global Islamist terror movement.”

Perhaps even more ominously, CPD’s statements continuously refer to “regimes that support” the terrorist movement, without mentioning any by name.  The Daily Star invited CPD’s communications director Geoff Freeman to identify these regimes, and he declined to do so, saying, “at this point the committee has not identified those regimes.”  “It’s perfect for these guys,” the leading Bush supporter told the Daily Star, “with formulations this vague it could be anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Aug/05/A-clarion-call-for-Arafat-to-step-aside.ashx

A leading Palestinian-American activist condemned Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and said Palestinians faced the prospect of civil war at a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington Tuesday.

Ziad Asali, president of the American Task Force on Palestine and former president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told the standing room only audience that “the core issue is the occupation, but the question then is, how do you deal with that occupation, how do you bring it to an end.”

“A Palestinian civil war, or more accurately wars, is a matter of time if a drastic change in direction and leadership does not take place in the near future,” Asali said, given that “Palestinian political fragmentation has resulted from years of a harsh occupation policy.”

The speech was unusual in that prominent figures in the Palestinian and Arab-American communities in the United States have generally been hesitant to criticize or second-guess the Palestinian leadership, preferring expressions of solidarity to serious evaluation let alone outright criticism.

Asali said that “Edward Said and others have always been critical of the leadership, so this is not the first time that criticism, including sharp criticism of the leadership, has come from Palestinian-Americans.”

He added that “there is a certain urgency because of the impending withdrawal from Gaza and the need for the leadership to confront this issue at all levels to see to it that this succeeds. A serious withdrawal from the West Bank is not in the cards in the foreseeable future if Gaza becomes a fiasco in my view.”

Asali said Arafat was the founder of modern Palestine. “Credit for this achievement is forever due to him.”

“No position can be a greater accomplishment than this and it should suffice,” Asali said, suggesting that an honorable way for Arafat to step into a ceremonial post “like the Queen of Britain, without governing authority” should be found.

He said that in the past Arafat, “knew what the Palestinians wanted, but what they need now is a leader who understands not only the Palestinian people but also the world around them.”

Noting that it was Arafat’s 75th birthday, Asali said, “There is something sad about a 75-year-old man refusing to relinquish power.”

He said he was particularly disturbed to discover that the Palestinian Authority and leadership had “no plan whatsoever, nothing at all” to deal with the aftermath of a proposed Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, adding that such a withdrawal was “inevitable, it is going to happen in my judgment.”

Asked why any Palestinian would cooperate with an arrangement unilaterally imposed by Israel not agreed to through negotiations, Asali said that in his view, “like it or not this is going to happen, this will be the reality, now are we going to deal with it or not?”

He told the audience that, “A failed Gaza after the withdrawal, descending into chaos, extremism, or violent confrontations will put an end to the possibility of a West Bank withdrawal in the near future.”

The extremists in Israel will point to Gaza to explain to the world why Israel should not withdraw from the West Bank, he said. “In this case, rather than reacting to a catastrophe or event, the Palestinians can in fact exercise a measure of control over their own destiny by planning seriously for it.”

“The question for the Palestinians is not whether they negotiated this with us or not, but how do we plan to run this place when they withdraw,” Asali said.

“There are three disturbing possibilities after withdrawal: one is chaos; two is a takeover by extremists and uncompromising people; third is a series of persistent wars and civil conflicts.”

None of these are appealing, he said, “all are to be avoided by planning, and this planning has to be done by the Authority that is in charge now because nobody else is capable of doing it.”

Asali praised a new generation of Palestinian leaders, who he called “Young Turks,” these are “all graduates of the first Intifada and Israeli prisons.

“They are tentative and not very sure they can run the place,” he said. “They know the realities, they know the consequences of words said and of actions, and they want to save Palestine.”

“They’re serious people, and taking high sounding positions and playing to the theater is not part of their game anymore,” he said. “That’s very refreshing, I think.”

Some audience members criticized Asali, saying supporters of Israel would point to such criticism to justify Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral policies and refusal to negotiate.

Asali said that “Israel has been propping up Arafat in order not to negotiate, and I say Israel should be forced to negotiate on the principles of the ‘roadmap’ it already accepted.”

“It is much too convenient for Israel to decide that there is no partner and then do what it pleases.  This is just unacceptable,” he said.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Jul/24/Arab-Americans-unsure-about-Kerry.ashx#axzz2axJWowPa

Although the appeal of Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry has been eroded by some of his Middle East policies, his campaign is continuing to receive substantial support in the Arab-American community.

Concern about these policies is even being echoed by senior Arab-American Democratic Party activists who have delayed the official introduction of an “Arab-Americans for Kerry” organization in hopes of gaining clarification on the candidate’s policies toward Israel and the Palestinians. A serious effort to address these concerns has yet to emerge from the Kerry campaign.

A group of influential Arab-American Democrats met in May with senior leaders of the Kerry campaign, including campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and national security adviser Rand Beers, the first such meeting the Kerry team held with an ethnic group. Participants said they felt that the campaign had acknowledged the community’s perspective and the need to make outreach efforts to Arab-Americans.

A number of subsequent developments have given rise to the new concerns.

Particularly damaging were talking points attributed to Kerry’s adviser for Jewish affairs, Jay Footlik, which took an extremely pro-Israel stance somewhat at odds with Kerry’s previously stated positions.

Several of the Arab-American Democrats who attended the meeting have reportedly sent a letter to the Kerry-Edwards campaign stressing the importance of the Arab-American vote in key swing states and expressing concern about the positions outlined in the talking points.

According to several people familiar with the process, about half of those involved in the meeting with the Kerry campaign declined to sign the letter because they did not feel it contained sufficiently forceful objections to the talking points and other policy statements, and seemed to pledge support for Kerry regardless of his positions.

A July 15 survey of Arab-Americans in key swing states conducted by the Zogby International polling firm found the Bush-Cheney ticket winning only 26.5 percent support, with Kerry-Edwards at 51, Nader-Camejo at 11 percent, and 13 percent undecided.

It is widely believed, especially among Democrats, that Nader’s strong showing in 2000 drew votes almost entirely from Vice-President Al Gore, costing him the election.

Mary Rose Oakar, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and a veteran Democrat who served 16 years in Congress said, “So many are disenchanted with (George W.) Bush that Kerry has been getting a lot of attention among Arab-Americans, and on civil liberties they can see a clear difference, but on foreign policy he has to do better to be assured of the Arab-American vote.”

James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute agreed that the talking points were “worse than a mistake, it was hurtful. A handful of formerly supportive community leaders have said they no longer want to be involved.”

He said that while the Democratic platform was unlikely to help win Arab-American support, “there are other things they are working on that I hope will help, and that I’m telling them have to be done. A lot of the support out there is not

as enthusiastic as it could be.”

While “Arab-Americans for Kerry” is on hold, and his supporters continue to search for more effective arguments to appeal to Arab-American voters, a number of individuals in the community are providing significant aid to the Democratic nominee. Arab-American businessman Hady Amr was a co-host on July 16 of the largest Democratic fundraiser in Virginia’s history, which raised $1.7 million for Kerry. And a prominent Arab-American professor of political science is known to be advising the campaign on Middle East and Islamic world issues.

Kerry supporters in the community point to his presumed sensitivity to civil liberties, since Democrats such as Senators Russ Feingold and Edward Kennedy have been among the strongest critics of measures like the USA Patriot Act. They also cite foreign policy concerns, pointing out the absence of neoconservative hawks in the Kerry team. The ideological tendencies that informed the strongest advocacy within the Bush administration in favor of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and that envision additional wars in the Middle East, came from a faction that seems to have no links to Kerry or John Edwards.

These arguments have been complicated by the increasingly pro-Israel positions adopted by Kerry as he has tried to fend off appeals to Jewish-Americans by President Bush, and the fact that, as senators, both Kerry and Edwards voted in favor of a resolution granting the president authority to use force against Iraq. Even Kerry’s pronouncements on civil liberties have been vague, leading to skepticism that his administration would in practice be more respectful of individual rights than the current Justice and Homeland Security Departments.

Zogby, who played a major role in organizing this week’s letter to the Kerry campaign and who is likely to be a leading figure in trying to organize Arab-American support for the Democratic ticket said, “I told the campaign they couldn’t expect me to do the job … without the right tools, and to date they haven’t given us what we need to work with.”

Ongoing reservations about Kerry’s Middle East policies notwithstanding, his campaign seems set to obtain significant support among Arab-American leaders and voters.

The online Democratic Party paraphernalia website, DemStore.com, is already selling “Arab-Americans for Kerry” buttons featuring the group’s blue and white logo with a dove and olive branch.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Jul/19/Kerry-walks-tightrope-on-Middle-East-policy.ashx

The campaign of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry has been struggling to articulate a consistent position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention, which will be held July 26-29.

Confusion over where the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee stands on this issue reflects both the sensitive nature of the issue in American politics and aggressive efforts by the campaign of President George W. Bush to make inroads with traditionally Democratic Jewish voters and donors.

The Bush appeal to single-issue pro-Israel Jewish Americans has played on the close personal, ideological and political ties between the present administration and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, implying that as long as Likud is in power, Republicans will be able to forge closer links with Tel Aviv.

In essence Kerry is trying to walk the tightrope of outbidding Bush on Israel to protect an important element of his own base, while not appearing to be irresponsible and unreasonable to the rest of the party and the public or tying himself to policy commitments that will be unworkable in office.

An additional danger is that inconsistency on this controversial issue plays into the most powerful Republican critique of Kerry’s political style: that he flip-flops on major issues, saying whatever is necessary to appeal to any given audience. As one popular new GOP bumper sticker has it, “John Kerry: for and against everything.”

There have been at least three major policy statements from the Kerry campaign on the conflict in the past year, all of which are difficult to square with each other, especially on the issue of Israel’s separation barrier in the occupied West Bank.

In an October speech to the Arab American Institute in Michigan during the primaries, Senator Kerry condemned the wall as an obstacle to peace.

“I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the decision to build the barrier off the Green Line – cutting deep into Palestinian areas,” he said. “We don’t need another barrier to peace. Provocative and counterproductive measures only harm Israelis’ security over the long term, increase the hardships to the Palestinian people, and make the process of negotiating an eventual settlement that much harder.”

A “talking points” memo sent to Jewish organizations and leaked to the media in June, which was attributed to Kerry’s adviser on Jewish affairs, Jay Footlik, seemed to reverse this formulation, stating that “John Kerry supports the construction of Israel’s security fence to stop terrorists from entering Israel. The security fence is a legitimate act of self-defense erected in response to the wave of terror attacks against Israeli citizens. He believes the security fence is not a matter for the International Court of Justice.”

In a statement issued after the ICJ ruling that the wall is illegal, Kerry was described as “deeply disappointed.”

The final draft of the 2004 Democratic National Platform, which was agreed to in Miami last weekend, avoids the issue of the wall altogether. It is at pains, however, to repeat the formula that Bush used to endorse Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, stating that it is “unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”

Unlike the talking points, the platform endorses “the creation of a democratic Palestinian state dedicated to living in peace and security side by side with the Jewish State of Israel.” When this passage was adopted in Miami, the committee meeting was interrupted by one of the few outbursts of spontaneous applause during the weekend, several delegates told The Daily Star.

However, it adds, in language again similar to that used by Bush in his endorsement of the Sharon plan, “the creation of a Palestinian state should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.”

A spokesman for the Kerry campaign, Jin Chon, declined to comment on the talking points memo or clarify which aspects of it may or may not reflect positions of the Kerry campaign, saying “those are not official campaign documents.”

An increasingly exasperated Chon told The Daily Star: “The bottom line is that the position of the Kerry-Edwards ticket is what is in the Platform.”

In what appears to be an effort to reinforce elements of the talking points, Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins on July 8 introduced a bill to “provide funds to eligible joint ventures,” beginning with $25 million, with Israel on security issues and promoting technology transfers. The talking points had promised that as president, Kerry “will act to jump-start the high tech sector working to adapt many of the innovative ‘technologies’ Israel has invented to combat terrorism. He will work to strengthen the US homeland while simultaneously strengthening the Israeli economy.”

In a further effort to solidify pro-Israel Jewish support, Kerry’s brother, Cameron Kerry, who converted to Judaism when he married, made a trip this week with Footlik to Israel. The Israeli daily Haaretz called him “a surrogate to reassure Israelis that the Democratic candidate was as strong a supporter as Bush.” The Kerry brothers discovered 15 years ago that their paternal grandparents were Czech Jews who had converted to Christianity before immigrating to the US. The low-key Cameron is reputed to be a close adviser to his brother and deeply involved in the campaign.

Until his recent drive to outbid Bush on support for Israel, Kerry had been among the Democrats most critical of administration policies on the issue. In December, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, he accused President Bush’s policies of “jeopardizing the security of Israel (and) encouraging Palestinian extremists.”

The Democratic Platform promises: “Under a Democratic administration, the US will demonstrate the kind of resolve to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that President Clinton showed,” an implicit criticism of the Bush administration’s half-hearted and fitful attempts to find a solution to the conflict.

Many observers expect, as this passage of the platform suggests, that a Kerry administration would in practice adopt an approach similar to that of former President Bill Clinton, and might even see the return of figures associated with Clinton’s diplomatic efforts in the region.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Jul/17/New-book-by-senior-US-intelligence-official-slams-Bush-administration-policy.ashx#ixzz2axSTnXhz

An anonymous author identified only as “a senior US intelligence official” has published a new book, “Imperial Hubris,” blasting the Bush administration’s Middle East policies. It joins a long list of other critiques of the administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the US from former senior officials, including former counterterrorism chief Richard Clark and a formidable group of retired ambassadors and four-star generals.

These attacks have increasingly undermined the main thrust of US President George W. Bush’s re-election strategy, the argument that Americans have been well-served by and should continue to rely on his approach to counterterrorism.

The book is extremely unusual in that it has been written by a senior and still serving intelligence officer, leading to accusations that it was produced at the behest of the beleaguered US intelligence services, or at least a faction within their leadership.

The author dismisses these charges as silly. “Imperial Hubris” is, by any measure, the strongest of these attacks, stating that because of administration policies, “the US remains Osama bin Laden’s only indispensable ally.”

The invasion of Iraq, it says, was “bin Laden’s gift from America, one he has long and ardently desired, but never realistically expected,” and “like our war on Mexico in 1846 – an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages.” The official’s controversial analysis places bin Laden not at the margins, but rather at the center of political discourse in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and shows little regard for other political trends and tendencies.

“Bin Laden has exploited a political situation in the Muslim world that has been on auto-pilot for some 25 years, a total void of leadership” the intelligence official told The Daily Star. “Every culture needs heroes and the leadership of the Islamic world has been nothing to write home about – who else is out there – this makes him a leader by default,” said the author, who, breaking with almost all trends in American discourse, describes bin Laden as “a dangerous and worthy foe” rather than a madman or criminal.

“What we need to do is to undercut his ability to grow in influence, and to me his ability is defined by our policies,” he said.

“Imperial Hubris” argues that these policies include support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and alliances with corrupt and dictatorial Arab regimes “from Rabat to Riyadh.” According to the senior intelligence official, “victory … lies in a yet undetermined mix of stronger military actions and dramatic foreign policy change; neither will suffice alone.”

He argues that without major Middle East policy changes, the US is left with no options other than “relentless, brutal and, yes, blood-soaked offensive military actions until we have annihilated the Islamists who would threaten us.”

“I am not advocating this,” the official explained to The Daily Star, “but we have left ourselves only one option because our policies are detested, and a great power needs to defend itself, but in the long run it is counterproductive to approach things in a strictly militarily way.”

The author said: “We will have to attack when the opportunity presents itself and destroy completely what we attack – we should have destroyed as many of the Taleban foot soldiers as we could. Our opponents looked at the supposedly most powerful army in world history and said: ‘Shit, we rode that out, we’re still here, we can still attack them. These people are not serious about killing us, and probably won’t be serious about protecting their allies in the long term.'”

“Some exemplary use of force by the US is necessary in the Middle East,” he said.

He added that the US was being failed by its “feckless” military as well as its political leadership. “I don’t think we have generals any more, we have bureaucrats, they don’t want to lose people, they don’t want to hurt people, and it’s a terrible situation. We should not waste troops on half-measures.”

He cited the aborted US siege of Fallujah in Iraq as a “dreadful loss” that reinforces in the minds of “a lot of our enemies in the Middle East that the United States does not succeed because we are afraid of casualties.”

Asked about the rebuffing of efforts by Syria and Iran to establish anti-Al-Qaeda cooperation with the US, the official agreed these were “appalling missed opportunities,” saying: “Better relations with Syria or Iran are impossible because of our Israel policies, it’s just a nonstarter. These things need to be debated but, if you so much as mention them, you will be cast aside as an anti-Semite.”

The senior official is deeply critical of the influence of Israel on US policies, writing that “surely there can be no other historical example of a far away, theocracy-in-all-but-name of only about 6 million people that ultimately controls the extent and even the occurrence of an important portion of the political discourse and national security debate in a country of 270-plus million people that prides itself on religious toleration, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech.”

“Imperial Hubris” has generated considerable attention not just because of its provocative arguments, and the fact that it has been written by a still-serving senior intelligence official, but also because of the anonymity of its author.

On June 30, the ace freelance journalist Jason Vest published an article in the Boston Phoenix identifying him as Michael Scheuer, and arguing that the forced anonymity was an attempt to limit the impact of “Imperial Hubris.” But on July 11, The Washington Post published excerpts from the book, claiming: “At this point, his name is about the only basic biographical detail (about the author) that hasn’t become known.”

The author said: “I would have preferred to use my name, and I dislike the idea that I am hiding behind anonymity, but I was asked not to by my employer, and I agreed.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Jul/12/Fahrenheit-911-misses-mark-on-conspiracies.ashx

The first-week run in the United States of Michael Moore’s polemical documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” has shattered all box office records for a documentary, redefining the commercial possibilities of the genre. It has already earned $80 million, more than twice the total made by the second most profitable American documentary, Moore’s last film, “Bowling for Columbine.” But Moore has much broader ambitions for his new film than simply to increase his already considerable fortune. He says his intention is to damage President George Bush’s chances of re-election. Although much of “Fahrenheit 9/11” is devoted to attacking the Bush administration’s foreign policy – especially the invasion and occupation of Iraq – the film may only add additional layers of confusion about the Middle East in American popular culture, and reinforce crude stereotypes and broad generalizations.

Moore has presented a detailed account of the Iraq war without mentioning Israel in any way, without using the word neoconservative and without any reference to the massive paper trail demonstrating a pre-existing agenda, which placed the overthrow of the Iraqi regime at the center of both US and Israeli policies.

Moore’s audience never hears about the 1996 “Clean Break” paper presented to then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by several people who are now influential policymakers in the Bush administration, including Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, and their guru, Richard Perle. Nor are they told about many other key documents, such as the 1998 Project for a New American Century letter to then-President Bill Clinton demanding “military action” from the US to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The letter was signed by current administration figures Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad and, of course, Paul Wolfowitz.

Rather than investigating the actual and well-documented agenda that led to the rapid shift away from a war against Al-Qaeda to a war against Iraq, Moore proposes an implausible and extremely confused conspiracy theory.

At the heart of Moore’s film lies the malevolent influence of “the Saudis,” a phrase that in the US is increasingly spat out with utter contempt, reminiscent of the tone reserved for “the Jews” in anti-Semitic discourse, ascribing to millions of otherwise heterogeneous people the same menacing and hostile essence. In a great deal of contemporary American discourse, any group of Saudis – including the government, security services, and any collection of citizens, not to mention Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001 – all represent “the Saudis.”

Moore depicts the invasion of Iraq as essentially a cover-up designed to hide the Bush family and its supporters’ deep financial links to “the Saudis.” Among the more disturbing passages of the film is a long segment featuring a succession of unidentified Arabs in traditional Gulf attire shown in friendly diplomatic and commercial encounters with associates of the two Bush family presidencies; as if these encounters and the political and business dealings they represent were by definition unwholesome.

Moore repeatedly asserts that the Saudi royal family, the bin Laden family and others, over the past 30 years invested $1.4 billion in the Bush family and its business interests.

This is the only explanation proffered by “Fahrenheit 9/11” for the invasion of Iraq. The film’s logic is as clear as mud, but the implications are unmistakable: a parade of sinister Saudis purchased the president and his cronies and, somehow or other, are behind both the attacks on the United States and the attack on Iraq.

As for the Iraqis, they are portrayed, not to say objectified, simply as innocent victims, yearning for revenge. Pre-invasion Iraq is depicted as a happy, peaceful land, and there is a notable absence of any Iraqi perspective on the conflict other than howls of suffering and rage.

If the villains are Bush and his supposed Saudi masters, the film’s victims are the American soldiers sent to die in a needless war. Its most powerful emotional punch comes from the story of a once-idealistic mother whose son’s death in Iraq leads her to question her patriotic illusions. Moore comes close to emotional pornography in his extended depiction of her pain, but these are exactly the passages that have given the film much of its appeal to a vast and receptive audience in the American heartland.

Using a heady mix of skillful humor and anti-establishment demagoguery of the kind normally monopolized by right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, Moore seems to have found a formula which allows blistering criticism to come across as not only acceptable but even patriotic to a public accustomed to trusting their leaders’ motivations when it comes to international affairs.

Moore may or may not affect the election, but he has certainly succeeding in bringing to a great many Americans the most powerful critique of US foreign policy they have already heard, albeit one that rests on a bizarre and incoherent conspiracy theory and which confuses at least as much as it enlightens.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Apr/30/Chalabis-star-falls-as-US-seeks-scapegoat-for-post-war-problems.ashx#ixzz2axT5SGTB

Before the war, no Arab was more influential on US policy toward Iraq than Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and a favorite of the hawkish neoconservative faction in and around the Bush administration. Now Washington is placing its complete confidence in Lakhdar Brahimi, the veteran Algerian diplomat and UN special envoy to Iraq.

The two have been engaged in an open spat that reveals much about the evolving US strategy in Iraq, and about power struggles within the Bush administration.

As Brahimi has been slowly unveiling aspects of his plan for an Iraqi transitional authority to be installed on June 30, it has become increasingly clear that there will be a concerted attempt to exclude some figures – especially Chalabi – who serve on the Iraqi Governing Council which is to be disbanded.

Chalabi has responded by dismissing Brahimi as “an Algerian with an Arab nationalist agenda” and “a controversial … not a unifying figure.” Though Chalabi still has supporters in the administration – some in the Pentagon and vice-president’s office are said to continue to advocate a major role for him – his falling star indicates a clear deterioration in the influence of neoconservative thinking on Iraq.

To some extent at least, Chalabi represents pre-war attitudes in Washington; simple certainties about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), Saddam Hussein’s links to Al-Qaeda, and the prospects for a stable, democratic, pro-American and pro-Israeli Iraq emerging soon after a US invasion. Brahimi’s rise reflects a deepening recognition of more complex realities and greater challenges; a growing sense that the United States must deal with existing circumstances in Iraqi rather than attempting to quickly reshape the country in its own image.

These changes indicate the strengthening of State Department and CIA attitudes toward Iraq, which always viewed Chalabi with skepticism and advocated a greater role for multilateral institutions and regional figures.

Andrew Cockburn, a journalist who has written extensively on Iraq, told The Daily Star: “Chalabi is a victim of the shift in power in Washington, and the complete collapse of the American agenda in Iraq – the other example being the ascendancy of Brahimi.”

Supporters of both sides have been making furious attacks in the US media. The pro-Israeli New York Sun featured an anti-Brahimi story entitled, Bush’s Iraq Man Betrayed the Lebanese to Syrian Regime. The Los Angeles Times quoted a Republican congressional staffer as calling the story “character assassination.” The neoconservative Wall Street Journal made a similar attack asking: “Whose side is Brahimi on?” The opposite attitude was summed up by Nicholas Kristof in a recent New York Times column demanding that the administration “dump Chalabi and other carpetbaggers. They are US stooges who undermine the legitimacy of any government they are in.”

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst who is among the most influential commentators on Iraq at the moment, urged the committee to investigate what happened to intelligence files of the former regime entrusted to Chalabi early in the occupation.

“My expectation is that you will find Chalabi systematically destroyed records incriminating him and his cronies, and used other records to bribe and blackmail people in Iraq into supporting him, and probably even fabricated others that implicated rivals of his in activity supportive of Saddam Hussein’s regime,” Pollack told the committee.

Nothing endeared Chalabi more to his neoconservative supporters than his assurances that Iraqis in general – other than Saddam Hussein – had no problem with Israel, and his trip to Israel in the mid-1990s to visit then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By contrast, Brahimi recently identified Israeli policies as “the greatest poison” in the Middle East, prompting howls of outrage from Israel’s US supporters, but no diminution in Washington’s virtually unconditional backing for him.

Another clear sign that the Washington is changing course on Iraq is its reversal on the “de-Baathification” program, which Chalabi heads. The US civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has acknowledged that the policy of banning all members of the deposed Baath Party excluded too much of the technocratic Iraqi middle class, and that the program had been run in a corrupt and unfair manner.

Faisal Istrabadi of the Iraqi Independent Democrats and a legal adviser to Adnan Pachachi agreed, telling The Daily Star: “There was no greater advocate of de-baathification than I, but on-the-ground realities meant that, as it was done, it was too comprehensive and too rife with corruption. The policy failed as a result.”

Chalabi has also been widely blamed for concocting bogus information from Iraqi “defectors” who, in the drive toward war, spun elaborate tales of WMDs and terrorism ties to US government agencies and journalists, most notoriously Judith Miller of the New York Times, in exchange for millions of dollars from the Pentagon.

Cockburn said simply: “Chalabi’s outlived his usefulness – he’s signally failed to deliver any puppet regime in Baghdad.”

“When the neoconservatives were in ascendance,” Cockburn said, “he was a useful appendage and good for dealing with credulous journalists. His sponsors have failed to produce the goods in the war and now, rather unfairly, seek to blame him.”

One of the most vocal supporters of both the war and Chalabi in Washington, journalist Christopher Hitchens, told The Daily Star: “Since there cannot be an inquest into what has been going wrong in Iraq that would blame someone in the US government without it turning fratricidal, and though (Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul) Wolfowitz and (Secretary of State Colin) Powell might like to blame each other, both have hostages from each other’s camp, so to speak, so the best bet seems to try to blame poor old Ahmed.”

“He makes a pretty easy scapegoat,” Hitchens argues, “because in fact the original charge against him – that he is a puppet of the Bush Administration – isn’t true. He’s come athwart everyone, and this allows him to be blamed for everything that has gone wrong.”

Some continue to argue that if only more weight and support had been thrown behind Chalabi, the United States might have avoided many of the travails it now faces in Iraq.

This was among the thrusts of a gloomy internal Coalition Provisional Authority memo recently exposed by investigative reporter Jason Vest, who told The Daily Star: “The support shown to Chalabi in the memo sums up the self-deluding quality of those determined to press on with the original administration agenda in the face of clear and recognized evidence of its folly.”

Even given the obvious shifts indicated in the move away from Chalabi and toward Brahimi, Washington still seems to be looking for the panacea for the ills of Iraq to come from an individual Arab, and is still hoping to discover the formula for a rapid – almost magical – transformation of that society.

In the meantime, of course, the United States has made it quite clear that the transfer of “sovereignty” on June 30 will not entail a redistribution of real authority in Iraq.

As Cockburn put it: “All of this seems to me to be slightly beside the point, since Iraq will in fact continue to be ruled by General Sanchez or some other US general after June 30.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Apr/29/Television-exposes-Washington-to-Palestinian-plight.ashx#ixzz2axTUSciW

Elderly Palestinian priests gingerly place a crucifix on the hood of an Israeli military vehicle, while a voiceover solemnly explains how Christians living under occupation are prevented from going to Jerusalem to pray.

Israeli troops in watchtowers sporting the Star of David glare down at impoverished children playing in the bullet-riddled squalor of a Gaza refugee camp.

These are hardly familiar images to American television viewers, but starting last week, audiences in the greater Washington area have been exposed to four television advertisements which powerfully argue aspects of the Palestinian cause.

The ads, running on the Cox cable service, one of the main providers in the capital, are the first sustained effort to promote the Palestinian issue in the same way that American politicians and companies have traditionally sought to influence public opinion – television.

They carry a more powerful message to a much larger audience than newspaper ads and billboards that had, until now, been the highlight of pro-Palestinian public education in the United States.

The ads are the brainchild of a grassroots group of young Americans called Imagine Life.

A gala fundraiser to inaugurate the campaign held at the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia on April 19, included representatives of partner organizations including Cecilie Surasky of Jewish Voice for Peace and Adam Shapiro of the International Solidarity Movement.

In an emotional presentation, Surasky said that she and many other Jewish-Americans were appalled by the treatment of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, and that an increasing segment of her community is standing up to the Israeli government and pro-Israel organizations, saying: “You don’t speak for me. You are not doing this in my name.”

According to Russ Rands, a spokesman for Imagine Life, “The purpose of these advertisements is to humanize the Palestinian people and communicate important realities about their suffering to the American public.”

He added: “We hope that this educational campaign will fill a giant void in the American conversation about the Middle East – a realistic understanding of the Palestinian experience.”

This is not the first campaign of its kind that has been planned – only the first that has actually been broadcast.

In the summer of 2001, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) contracted for the broadcasting of a series of ads featuring Palestinian-Americans from many walks of life identifying themselves proudly, and referring people to a website where they could learn more about the suffering of their brethren in the Middle East.

The ads were scheduled to begin airing on Sept. 12, 2001, but the terrorist attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001, led to a quick decision to postpone the project indefinitely.

Imagine Life’s ads are not generic, as ADC’s were. They tackle specific issues facing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and pro-Palestine advocates in the US.

The ad highlighting the suffering of Palestinian Christian communities directly counters a number of themes in pro-Israeli propaganda: that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict pits Muslims against Jews in a religious war, and that Christians in the United States should stand by Israel.

This discourse elides the very existence of a Palestinian Christian community and, when it does acknowledge it, blames the Palestinian Authority, not the Israeli occupation, for oppressing them.

The millennialist theme in pro-Israel advocacy in the United States has been expanding in recent years, as the evangelical Christian right has moved away from anti-abortion activism to making support for the Israeli far-right its main political platform. Influential preachers such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham have increasingly abandoned defense of the unborn fetus in favor of defense of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon.

By highlighting the suffering of Palestinian Christian communities, Imagine Life is directly challenging one of the most powerful tendencies which blur distinctions between American and Israeli interests and even identities.

Playing on the strengths of television as a medium, the ad uses powerful visual imagery (such as confrontations between clergy and Israeli soldiers), along with music and effective sound bites – “Palestinian Christians suffer under occupation just as Muslims do,” “the vast majority of Christians here are Palestinians” – to undermine the assumptions that many Americans have about Palestinians, Israelis and the conflict.

Of course, the challenges facing pro-Palestinian advocacy go far deeper than evangelical religious sentiments. The European Jewish and Israeli historical narrative, with the Holocaust as its climax and the founding of Israel as its redemptive denouement, is part of the consciousness of most Americans. The Palestinian narrative is almost entirely unknown, and its main features, the nakba of 1947-48 and decades of exile, dispossession and occupation, are either unknown or hotly contested.

And then there is the generalized negativity about the Arab world and Islam that has become an increasing feature of American popular culture since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Imagine Life’s campaign bears some comparison to other grassroots public-relations efforts such as the influential website ElectronicIntifada.net (EI), an online clearinghouse for information and media criticism on the Palestine issue.

EI co-founder Ali Abunimah, told The Daily Star: “We start from a position where Palestinians are seen first of all as Arabs and Muslims, which means in negative terrain in terms of US public opinion.

“Indeed,” he continued, “most Americans have been conditioned by their general cultural background to identify with Israelis and give them at all stages the benefit of the doubt, whereas Palestinians often encounter the opposite bias.”

But Abunimah is optimistic, saying: “On the other hand, I’ve found it’s no problem to convince Americans that Palestinians have a case once they’ve decided they’re willing to listen.”

He believes that “our rhetorical strategies in fact do work, for the most part, but we lack the resources to communicate them to a wide audience on a sustained basis.”

Imagine Life is aiming at just such a sustained effort and is working toward moving beyond the Washington area. A second phase of issue ads is already in the works, and the group is eyeing markets such as South Carolina, New York, Los Angeles and Boston.

The long-term goal is clearly to affect not only American discourse on Palestine, but American policies as well.

Another leader of the Imagine Life campaign, Nina Ghannam, explained: “Our hope is that these advertisements will be an important contribution to promoting responsible and fair US policies that will enhance the prospects for peace.”

Few harbor any illusions about how difficult and protracted a struggle this will be, and even given their ambitious start, the Imagine Life activists are already expressing concern about the funding needed to expand and even sustain their campaign.

Abunimah agreed, saying: “Ultimately, the skill and passion of people who are throwing themselves into this effort with all of their might cannot suffice until we get the Arab and Arab-American communities to invest in what is being done now on too small a scale and to train emerging generations for the coming challenges of the future.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/Apr/24/US-court-ruling-on-POWs-may-cast-long-shadow.ashx#ixzz2axTkAK8D

In one of the first major post-Sept. 11, 2001, cases to reach the United States Supreme Court, the nine justices this week heard arguments in a case brought by some detainees held in Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The legal issues are narrowly drawn but the implications and stakes, for both domestic and foreign policies, could hardly be more far reaching.

The case examines the jurisdictional issue of whether US courts have any oversight of the government’s handling of the detainees. The plaintiffs, citizens of Australia, Britain and Kuwait, are among about 600 inmates at Camp X-Ray, most allegedly captured during the invasion of Afghanistan or in Pakistan. The prisoners sought redress from civilian American courts on the lack of any mechanism by which they can challenge their detention and status as “enemy combatants.”

Even if they prevail, the case will not decide what kind of hearing process they should be afforded. The decision is likely to hinge on highly technical issues such as whether US law applies in Guantanamo, which has been under American control for over 100 years based on a perpetual lease which makes Cuba the “ultimate sovereign,” and whether there is a distinction in access to American courts between citizens and non-citizens detained outside the US.

However, the court’s ruling, which is expected by the end of June, is widely anticipated to set the tone for how it will view future civil liberties and human rights challenges to the George W. Bush administration’s “war on terror.”

It is the first in a series of contests in coming weeks and months pitting traditional American ideas of civil liberties and due process against the administration’s assertions of wartime exigency and executive authority. Next week the court will hear arguments involving the detention of US citizens as “enemy combatants,” and further difficult issues that lie beyond that.

The Guantanamo case is as much defined by its political context as its legal content, with the administration presenting itself as defending an embattled US up to the limits of the letter of the law but not beyond, and its critics charging that it has gone too far.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson encapsulated the administration’s appeal in the first sentence of his presentation: “The United States is at war.”

Olson’s presence in the court was itself a reminder of the horror of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, as his wife, the wellknown commentator Barbara Olson, was a passenger on American Airlines flight 77 which struck the Pentagon.

John Gibbons, lawyer for the detainees, argued that by denying US courts have any jurisdiction in Guantanamo Bay, the administration has set up a “lawless enclave,” and believes its “actions are absolutely immune from judicial examination.”

Many observers were struck by the degree of skepticism a number of the justices showed in their questioning of Olson. Justice John Paul Stevens immediately countered Olson’s invocation of war by asking if his arguments would be the same after the war is over. When Olson said they would, Stevens observed: “So the existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue.”

Justice Stephen Breyer summed up doubts about the administration’s claims when he told Olson: “It seems rather contrary to an idea of a Constitution with three branches that the Executive would be free to do whatever they want … without a check.”

Not surprisingly, advocates of both sides claim to be upholding established legal norms.

Mark Moller of the libertarian Cato Institute told The Daily Star: “The Bush administration’s position is out of line with historical practice. Since the start of the Republic, courts have accepted habeas petitions from non-citizens in time of war and the federal habeas statute does not make such a distinction either.”

“History and geography suggest that such a complaint cannot be made,” countered Paul Rosenzweig of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“There were never such hearings about detainees in Vietnam, and the US Constitution never applies outside the United States.”

According to Rosenzweig, “the only laws that apply in Guantanamo are international law, insofar as the United States has agreed to it, and US domestic law, to the extent the government says it does.”

Lee Casey, a Washington attorney who was part of a group of private legal experts who submitted a brief in support of the Bush administration, went further, saying that if the court asserted jurisdiction over foreign nationals held outside the US, “such a ruling could open the floodgates for individuals detained all over the world.”

Another friend of the court brief, filed by a group of US military veterans, sided with the detainees and urged the justices to consider what kind of precedent for Americans captured in conflict was being established by the treatment of the Guantanamo prisoners.

These concerns reflect another subtext to the case – international perceptions that Camp X-Ray represents an unacceptable violation of legal norms. Even the closest US allies, such as Britain and Australia, have expressed deep concern that their citizens are being held at Guantanamo without any legal protections, since their “enemy combatant” identification places them beyond the Geneva Conventions which apply to prisoners of war or any system of domestic laws.

Critics of the administration are quick to identify the foreign policy implications of the case. Professor David Cole of Georgetown University pointed out that “it is in the United States’ interests to deal with the detainees in a manner the world perceives as fair and just, and so far we have failed to do that.”

Rosenzweig acknowledged these concerns, but insisted “international perceptions have to take a back seat to security. If the choice is between annoying the French and keeping our country safe, I opt for the second.”

While Americans have been more sensitive to concerns of European allies about Camp X-Ray, international dismay over the detentions may be most damaging in the Middle East.

The identity of most of the Guantanamo prisoners is not known. As a Human Rights Watch report said, “the public still does not know who the detainees are, what they have allegedly done and whether and when they will be charged with crimes or released.”

It is believed that many of the detainees at Camp X-Ray are Arabs, since the US military operated under the assumption that foreign fighters in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan were Al-Qaeda members, and were regarded as posing a far more serious threat than locals.

Many Afghan troops were assumed to be low-level Taleban members, and were detained in Afghanistan. In many cases, they were simply disarmed and released from custody.

According to a survey by United Press International (UPI) published on April 2, “At least 160 of the 650 detainees acknowledged by the Pentagon as being held at … Guantanamo, Cuba … are from Saudi Arabia.”

UPI added “the other top nationalities being held are Yemen with 85, Pakistan with 82, Jordan and Egypt, each with 30.”

Jumana Musa, of Amnesty International’s Washington office, had a different view, telling The Daily Star: “It is thought that about one third of the detainees are from Yemen, but we can’t be certain of course.”

The spectacle of hundreds of Arabs being held under what are widely regarded as arbitrary and onerous conditions, plays strongly into the notion that the US war on terrorism is fundamentally unjust and involves a disregard for Arabs basic rights.

Growing perceptions in the Middle East lump the Guantanamo detentions with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, US support for the policies of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon and support for human rights abuses by Arab governments as evidence of a general American hostility to Arabs.

Moller argues that the Guantanamo detentions are particularly problematic “given our role in Iraq and our stance of democracy promotion in the Middle East.”

Many observers concluded that this ruling would be determined by the positions of centrist Justices Sandra Day O’Conner and Anthony Kennedy.

Cole, who has argued a number of important civil liberties cases before the Supreme Court, told The Daily Star: “It’s clear that at least four justices were decidedly sympathetic to the detainees’ arguments, and both of the swing justices expressed at least some sympathy.

“Many people walking out of the courtroom would predict that it will be close, but perhaps five-four in favor of the detainees.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Analysis/Apr/19/Election-concerns-most-likely-behind-Bushs-flip-flop.ashx#ixzz2axU103Hj

Political observers in Washington are virtually unanimous that domestic US election concerns drove President George W. Bush’s decision last week to endorse Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for “unilateral disengagement,” agree that Israel will not have to return to the borders of 1949, and declare that Palestinian refugees will be resettled in a Palestinian state “rather than Israel.”

At first glance, these positions seem a stunning reversal of decades of US policies holding that Israeli settlements are illegal or at least “obstacles to peace.” They also appear to contradict the president’s own “road map” which reserves issues including “borders, Jerusalem, refugees, (and) settlements” to be determined through Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at an international conference.

On the other hand, Bush supporters have been quick to point out that his positions  mirror those which informed President Bill Clinton’s efforts to broker a Middle East peace at Camp David and Taba in 2000.

Some say Bush is merely formalizing long-established understandings that Israel will not have to leave all its settlements and that Palestinian refugees will not be permitted to return to Israel in large numbers, in the same way he was the first president to formally call for the creation of a Palestinian state.

It is widely believed in Washington that both Bush and his father see the elder Bush’s challenge to Israel over settlements as a major factor contributing to his loss in 1992 to Bill Clinton, and that Bush junior is determined not to repeat this mistake.

A Republican insider close to Bush agreed that election concerns played a role in the his shift, but said privately: “Bush continuously returns to the theme of the creation of a Palestinian state.”

He suggested that if Bush is re-elected, he would likely rethink some of the implications of his recent statements, saying, “after the election, there will be more options for dealing with Israel, and more ways of getting leverage.”

“The bottom line is that the only thing permanent about this is that the Israelis will leave Gaza,” he added, “everything else will be subject to change.”

The administration official who has pushed most forcefully for Bush to embrace Sharon’s plan is Elliott Abrams, the senior Middle East policy official at the National Security Council and a strong supporter of the Israeli far right. Abrams and other pro-Israel neoconservatives in the administration have presented this strong tilt toward Sharon as part of a strategic vision for the future of the Middle East. They argue that if Sharon pulls out of Gaza with US support, Palestinians will be able to construct effective institutions there which can pave the way for ending the occupation in much of the West Bank as well, setting the stage for at the creation of a Palestinian state.

At an April 14 briefing orchestrated by Abrams, a “senior administration official” was spinning furiously in that direction: “There’s nothing in this paper, in what the President said or his letter, that changes our policy on settlements. What’s new is that Sharon has decided to abandon settlements, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. We think that is a very positive precedent.”

But even those sympathetic to these strategic arguments see signs of election-year calculations at work. The Jewish Telegraph Agency quotes David Makovsky of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy as saying “Iraq points to the need of the administration for some achievement,” and that it “will want to showcase the Gaza pullout as an example of its success in the region.”

Many in Washington have expressed skepticism that the president’s embrace of Sharon’s unilateral plans will enhance the administration’s aura of being in control of developments in the Middle East.

Theodore H. Kattouf, until recently US ambassador to Syria and a State Department veteran, observed, “There may well be some who hope that this will lay the groundwork for a two-state solution and force the Palestinians into what they regard as a more realistic approach to peacemaking.” “But,” he continued, “it does not appear the Administration gave enough weight to how such a dramatic tilt would affect vital US interests in the region, especially Iraq, at such a difficult and sensitive time.”

Kattouf suggested election concerns were indeed at play, saying “senior officials are aware of the contretemps that surrounded the Bush (senior) when he took a stand against further settlement activity and … reduced loans to Israel on a dollar-for-dollar basis.”

But Kattouf said there were strategic as well as political motivations for the policy shift, as Bush and his advisers “almost certainly see the value in having the architect of the settlement movement dismantle some of those settlements, (and) establishing a precedent the importance of which should not be underestimated.”

“The real question,” Kattouf said, “is, did they overpay for something that most Israelis wanted to do in any case? I would argue they did.”