Of all the total non-stories reported by the British media since 9/11 - the brutal Afghan winter, the non-existent Jenin massacre - has there ever been a bigger waste of space than the column inches devoted to "Bush: God Told Me to Invade Iraq"? That was the Independent's headline. The Guardian, like the Indy, led with a front-page picture of the President aglow in his own personal halo, but preferred the caption: "George Bush believes he is on a mission from God." And my old comrade Mark Lawson piled on with a full columnar sneer at the President's "Manichean convictions".
The source for this story was essentially a BBC press release for a forthcoming documentary. Nabil Shaath, the so-called Palestinian "foreign minister", told them (the BBC) that Bush told him (Shaath) that God told him (Bush) to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. The White House said this was "absurd" and the only other Palestinian present at that meeting, Mahmoud Abbas, has denied Shaath's account of the conversation. As evidence of Bush's "Manichean convictions", the whole thing's a lot of Manichean piss, as the Belgians would say.
One suspects a few of those excitable British editors realised that, even as they stampeded to the picture desk to work up some shots of the President looking insanely beatific under the "It's Official: Bush 'Religious Nut' Says Respected Palestinian Intifada Apologist" headlines. One day, when they're sifting through the ruins of post-Christian Europe, archaeologists will marvel at the energy expended on the gleeful mockery of open religiosity.
Well, not all religiosity, of course. If there's anything worth jeering at or condescending to about a certain other big-time religion much in the news these days, the lads at the Guardian and Independent seem far less eager to lead the charge.
Now why would that be? In the Cold War, the elites at least felt obliged to genuflect toward the theory of "equivalence". This time round, who needs equivalence? "Bush is more religious than Saddam," pronounced Martin Amis two years ago. "Of the two presidents, he is, in this respect, the more psychologically primitive." Of course.
If Britain is under threat from anybody's "Manichean convictions", it's surely not evangelical Christians'. To recap from seven days ago: last year I made a joke about banning Porky Pig on the grounds that a porcine cartoon was grossly insensitive toward Muslims, only to discover the other week that Dudley council has banned Piglet as part of its pre-Ramadan crackdown on cultural insensitivity.
So last Tuesday, in the course of a column about Piglet, I made a joke that British Muslims ought to complain about having to put up with a grossly offensive head of state who is an uncovered woman. And lo and behold, in that very morning's Daily Telegraph, I find an item that the English flag - the cross of St George - has been banned from prisons because it might be "misinterpreted" as a racist symbol.
So, for the moment, I'm holding off on any gags about the first imam to be made Archbishop of Canterbury or the Queen demonstrating her commitment to multiculturalism by becoming the fourth wife of a Saudi prince. Official Britain seems to have lost all sense of proportion and one doesn't want to give them any more ideas.
The prohibition of England's flag in England's prisons was put in place by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, who is concerned about the "lack of cultural understanding" at Wakefield jail.
As far as I can tell, specific examples of "lack of cultural understanding" were confined to an insufficient range of hair products for black prisoners and the display of the offensive national emblem: "We were concerned to see a number of staff wearing a flag of St George tiepin," she wrote in a report on Wakefield jail. "While we were told that these had been bought in support of a cancer charity, there was clear scope for misinterpretation."
There always is, isn't there? The other day, a state-funded imam at Werribee Islamic College in Australia told his students that the Jews were putting poison in bananas and that Muslims shouldn't eat them. Allowing Aussie greengrocers to continue to display bananas offers "clear scope for misinterpretation", too. But misinterpretation is in the eye of the misinterpreter, and pandering to it ensures there will be a lot more.
We hear endlessly about "systemic racism" in British institutions, but the really rampant contagion seems to be systemic auto-racism, a psychologically unhealthy predisposition to believe the worst only about one's own culture. And the trouble with the Anne Owers school of pre-emptive misinterpretation is that the perpetually aggrieved interpret it all too accurately.
Thus, Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, already feels Ms Owers's ban is insufficient. The cross of St George, he explains, is offensive to Muslims because it was carried by English crusaders in the 11th century.
Hmm. Would that be the 11th century that ended nine and a bit centuries ago? When a fellow's got hang-ups about things that happened a millennium ago, there's no point trying to assuage them; he'll only unearth some earlier grievance, demanding the Natural History Museum be dismantled because some stegosaurus was disrespectful to Muslims back in the Jurassic era.
So Mr Doyle wants England to find a new flag which "is not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with". How about we simply swap with the Yanks? Give Crusader Bush the cross of St George and England can have the Stars and Stripes? The stars would be the 50 shards of a pork scratching crushed underfoot by a Dudley council official, with 13 horizontal yellow streaks representing the prostrate backbones of the nation.
Why is George W. Bush's utterly unremarkable evangelical Christianity so self-evidently risible but complaints from British Muslims hung up over the 11th century are perfectly reasonable and something we should seek to accommodate? Where is the secular Left's "insensitivity" when you need it? No doubt the bien pensants will still be hooting at born-again Texans on the day the House of Lords gives a second reading to the Sharia Bill.
It may be time to open a book on when precisely that will be. Any guesses? Whoever is closest wins a one-way, first-class air ticket out, with complimentary in-flight bacon butty and Zionist banana.
h/t Lucianne
During the Reagan years, and even during the Gingrich years, the central complaint about the mainstream media by conservatives was that they misrepresented the substance of our policy proposals. A 4.5 percent budget increase (after adjusting for inflation and the size of the beneficiary class) of the hot-lunch program was characterized by the media as a cruel cut in the program that would leave poor little children hungry and with empty tummies, thus causing empty minds. (The second part was true, but that was due to the damage caused by National Education [sic] Association â not the government-provided nutrition programs.) A guarantee that the current-law traditional Medicare program would remain available for any beneficiary who wanted to participate in it was called an end to such benefits. Increases in spending were called cuts. Guarantees were called broken commitments.
President Reagan's war efforts to defeat Communism and create democracies in Central America were called support for fascism and brutal right-wing regimes.
(Funnily, the effect of his "support of fascism" resulted in an unprecedented blossoming of democracies in Central America.)
Oh, for the good old days. Then, at least, the media cared about the substance of our proposals â even if they lied about them. (Of course they also calumniated the personalities of conservative leaders, but that was only part of the coverage. We should have been grateful.) Today, big media has lost interest in policy substance almost altogether.
Analysis of major policy announcements is viewed almost exclusively through the prism of polling numbers.
If the president were to call for two plus two to equal four, the media would report that such a proposal had the support of only 42 percent of likely voters, and a slippage of even conservative support from 87 percent to 63 percent. Perhaps on the jump page, in the 38th inch of the story in the New York Times, they might get around to quoting a professor of mathematics from MIT to the effect that in fact the president was right that two plus two still equals four. But for television and radio break news, the story would end at the polling result: bad news for the president.
What brings this melancholy observation to mind was the grotesque non-reporting of President Bush's arguably historic remarks last week concerning the nature of the enemy in the "War on Terror," that until last week was the enemy of which we dared not mention the name.
For the first time the president of the United States named the enemy: "Islamofascist" and "radical, militant Islam." He compared it to the Nazi and Communist ideological threat of the previous century.
I and others had been calling for precisely such language. From what one had heard, there had been a powerful debate going on within the administration for over six months on the advisability of such verbal boldness. So long as political correctness blocked even the president from naming the enemy, he â or future presidents â would be unable to provide leadership to the nation.
If a president could not name the enemy, how could he provide the vital war-leadership of explaining the danger and advising the public on the necessary strategies? How could the progress or lack of progress be rationally discussed with the public? And in this shadow war that lacks the classic war battles that told previous war generations of victory or defeat, how could the public begin to even understand that in fact there is nonetheless a battle raging that may define their lives and safety for generations to come?
There were serious arguments against such language being used. Reasonable people feared that any mention of Islam in the context of the war on terror might needlessly outrage and estrange countless millions of non-radical Muslims around the world â thus driving them into the enemy camp.
Countering that argument, I and others made the case that, to the contrary, by defining precisely and explicitly the enemy as only the radical, jihadist, fascist element, we were narrowing the scope of our definition of the enemy. And anyway, even unstated, doubtlessly millions of people falsely had assumed we thought we were at war with an entire religion â rather than only with those who espoused and acted on their violent ideology.
But million-dollar nincompoop television news stars led with the absurdly ignorant observations that there was "nothing new" in this speech, and that the President was not likely to improve his reduced 35 percent public support for the Iraq war.
Having decided that the speech (which they manifestly did not substantively understand or report) was not going to make the president immediately more popular, their reporting trailed off into a rehash of his other current political problems.
One doesn't mind, so much, mainstream journalists being b*st*rds. It's being such dumb b*st*rds that one finds so irksome. Heh. Tony has a real knack for plainspeak.
#1
"Today, big media has lost interest in policy substance almost altogether. Analysis of major policy announcements is viewed almost exclusively through the prism of polling numbers."
There is no doubt "Mainstream Media" often attempts to influence opinion through their carefully crafted narratives. But an equally troubling trend is how todayâs public opinion influences what will be tomorrows news. Media organizations are sincere when they say, "We care about what you think." It's not that their consumerâs opinions substantially matter. It is simply a tool to tell lazy undereducated journalists how to frame their "news" to have the most impact.
From Huffington:
It's still three years away but Hollywood is already starting to choose sides for 2008. And two very distinct camps have started to form: those backing Hillary, and those desperately searching for the anti-Hillary.
Hillary is descending on L.A. this week, with a small Democratic strategy session planned for Thursday at Ron Burkle's home with, among other Hollywood players, Haim Saban and Rob Reiner, and a trio of fundraisers Friday and Saturday at the homes of Reiner, Bruce Cohen, and Marta Kauffman. The devoted Hillary-ites include deep-pocket donors like Saban, Steve Bing, and Alan and Cindy Horn.
The Hollywood insiders who are not going the Hillary way are not ready to go public yet (I'm sure some of them will even be at the Hillary fundraisers this weekend). But, in private conversations, a growing number of them say they are determined to find another candidate to support. Even though they backed both of Bill Clinton's White House runs and Hillary's Senate campaign, they've had enough of Hillary's attempt to rebrand herself as a fence-straddling DLC Dem. They're tired of the relentless strategic triangulating, the all-too-predictable attacks on video games (Sistah Soljah, meet Grand Theft Auto), the willingness to go along with President Bush's missile defense fantasies (one of only six Dems to do so), and the endless photo-op-ready partnerships with the likes of Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich.
But most of all, they are put off by her bellicose support for the war in Iraq -- which has, at times, left her sounding more like a White House shill than a viable opposition candidate.
Exacerbating the problem is that, when it comes to Iraq, Hillary is telling Hollywood donors whatever they want to hear.
One major party donor, who is supporting Hillary even though he is against the war, told me that Clinton had assured him that she, too, was "against the war" but believed that there was no way a woman could ever be elected president while being against the war. "She is convinced," the donor told me, "that she'd be attacked as soft on defense and unable to deal with national security and the war on terror. And I think she's right. I'd rather she be anti-war, but I can't argue with her reasoning."
But a growing number of Hollywood insiders are refusing to buy into this "wink, wink," "I'm just saying it for the yokels" routine.
Hillary is having the same problem with the DU crowd and a lot of the young MoveOn followers.
"The old 'say one thing and do another' bit isn't going to fly this time," a politically active producer told me. "We're not ready to go through another experience where we back a candidate not ready to speak the truth. We kept our mouths shut and fell behind Kerry but, to quote the Who, 'We won't get fooled again.'"
The big question then becomes, who will be the candidate of the anti-Hillary crowd? Russ Feingold's out-front stance on Iraq has earned him some early attention from, among others, Brad Whitford and Tommy Schlamme. Norm Pattis of Westwood One Radio had a fundraiser for Joe Biden. But more and more, the Hollywood buzz is centering on Al Gore.
Run, Al, Run! Bwahahahaha!
"He's been strongly against the war since the beginning," a big Dem donor who is hoping to convince Gore to run told me, "and with gas prices going through the roof and killer hurricanes wreaking havoc, he's the gold standard on global warming, alternative energy, and the environment. What's not to like?"
I'm sure Karl Rove agrees
And Lawrence Bender, who after producing "Kill Bill" is now producing what I hear is a killer documentary featuring Gore and his fight to get our country to take action on global warming, told me that the former VP "would be a hell of a candidate. Unlike 2000, he's now clearly very comfortable in his own shoes. Bold, passionate, committed, and very funny. It's been amazing working with him." For now Gore is focusing on Current TV, and delivering yet another combustible, populist speech.
The idea of Gore vs Clinton in 2008 certainly presents a wealth of delicious story lines: The former Number 2 running against his Number 1's wife. Gore taking down Hillary as payback for the pall Monicagate cast over 2000. Gore as "the new New Nixon" (Gore will be the same age in 2008 as Tricky Dick was in 1968). Automaton Al remaking himself as progressive firebrand. Passion vs. polling.
Hilldabeast vs AlBore, git your popcorn while it's hot!
The purpose of the meeting at Ron Burkle's home on Thursday is to discuss how to best implement the Democrats' new party platform and make sure, as one of the movers and shakers who will be at the meeting told me, that Democrats "stick to our themes" and "all speak with the same voice."
But will that voice sound like Hillary -- or will it sound like Al?
The story would not be complete without looking at a few select comments:
"She is simply too polarizing a figure and will have serious difficulty winning in the swing states the Democrats need to win the Presidency.
In addition, she helped Bush lure America into the Iraqi qagmire and continues to be an enthusiastic supported of the war."
"Al Gore, on the other hand, should seriously be considered. His positions have been vindicated by history. He opposed the war from the beginning. He has been a strong advocate of energy conservation for a long time. He understood the need to avoid government deficits, etc.
And, of course, he has shown he can win, having already won one Presidential election."
**Splutter** Needed a beverage alert for that quote, Steve.
"It would be a deliciously nasty trick to pull on the right wing ideologues if after the huge amounts of resources they have devoted and are devoting to bashing Hillary, the Democratic candidate were someone else than Hillary, like Al Gore."
"She's really arch-conservative, always has been. Gore isn't really any better, though. Again, no real choices. But, better to vote Gore and place a one-ton weight on his nuts so he doesn't stray after being elected. Time to institutionalize crawling-up their asses with an oversight microscope."
Posted by: Steve ||
10/12/2005 13:51 ||
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I read this earlier today and it was an eye-opener to me to read all the anti-Hillary comments. They really do see her as a conservative and they just can't accept the fact Gore lost to GWB.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/12/2005 15:41 Comments ||
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"It would be a deliciously nasty trick to pull on the right wing ideologues if after the huge amounts of resources they have devoted and are devoting to bashing Hillary, the Democratic candidate were someone else than Hillary, like Al Gore."
Yeah, because no one's ever done opposition research on Al Gore before!
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
10/12/2005 15:43 Comments ||
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It would be a deliciously nasty trick to pull on the right wing ideologues if after the huge amounts of resources they have devoted and are devoting to bashing Hillary
I, for one, have barely even started. I assure you madam that when we really get going you will know ALL about it. If you consider what has happened up to this point "huge amounts" you need to get out of the Marin Hills more often.
But, better to vote Gore and place a one-ton weight on his nuts so he doesn't stray after being elected. Time to institutionalize crawling-up their asses with an oversight microscope.
Why do liberals always use phrases like "crawling-up their asses?" Did they all take holistic proctology courses at UC Santa Cruz or something? There must be a hundred different ways to vocalize that sentiment that doesn't involve putting anything up anyoneâs ass. I will say this, though: you know the moonbats are waxing furious when things start going up peopleâs rectums.
#8
They also neglected to mention that Bill was an utter bully to Al, and that Bill and Hill treated Al and Tipper like stupid servants. "Boy, go get me a coffee! Haw-haw!", can create unimaginable burning hatred.
And Hillary's treatment of Tipper was so humiliating that Tipper literally refused to get anywhere physically near Hillary.
Last but not least, remember that Al's daddy was also a US Senator, and one known for dirty tricks, brawling and double-crossing.
#9
boy, that AU6535 is sure clever. I'll never recover from such insightful dissing. Sure hope AU6535 doesn't call me a cracker. That would devastate me
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/12/2005 19:10 Comments ||
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Mike, you stole my line.
Its really pitiful that in this great country these are who 45% of the voters believe are the cream of the crop.
#11
Crak....naw, I wont go there. What's Al to do, carry Zwahiris' letter around in his pocket for the next three years? At least Hillary can claim plausible deniability on Al Qaida talking points. Memo to all Democrats: Hollywood is built on fantasy.
Posted by: john ||
10/12/2005 19:43 Comments ||
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Iff one believes that Hillary still desires not only to be POTUS, but also POTUS o'er America's first all-female POTUS-VPOTUS led Admin., and still desires 8 years of Bill-style geopol "quiet" and "properity", and also knowing that most American voters includ adult females STILL do not want a woman in the WH during times of war andor national stress, then one must accept that as long as the WOT goes on Hillary, etal. will still need to achieve her "power" behind PC male personage. DITTO FOR TERESA, JUDY, NANCY, and BARBARA, or even TIPPER!? Will say again that hubby Bill has unilaterally and pre-emptively destroyed any claims the Dems and US Left have on the national prosperity of the 1990's such that all she and the Dems have are hopes for new 9-11's or greater ags America. UNLESS DUBYA-CHENEY-RUMMY-CONDI THEMSELVES PUBLICLY ADMIT TO BEING DE FACTO TRAITORS TO AMERICA ANDOR PART OF 9-11, HILLARY & THE DEMS HAVE LITTLE TO NO CHANCE FOR 2008 SHORT OF MUSHROOM CLOUDS, AND THEY LIKELY KNOW IT.
h/t Lucianne
What is perhaps the one thing the left-wing DailyKos.com and the right-wing RedState.org, both political blogs, agree on? That when it comes to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold), the government has no business telling them what to do. The Federal Election Commission has tried to keep this anti-free speech legislation out of the Internet, even after a federal judge ruled that it must apply the law equally to cyberspace. The judge's ruling, however, has put the FEC in the unfortunate position of rewriting the rules so that a blogger can still do what he wants without angering the campaign-finance police.
Some members of Congress are rightly pessimistic that the FEC will be able to do that. Lawmakers ranging from Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Texas Republican, on the right to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on the left have drafted legislation to shield bloggers and political news sites from McCain-Feingold's "public communications" clause, which regulates political advertising coordinated with political campaigns. Essentially, the Online Freedom of Speech Act would grant bloggers and political sites the media exemption McCain-Feingold bestows on such outlets as The Washington Post.
But while The Washington Post editorial page claims sympathy for the free speech of bloggers, it nevertheless thinks an unregulated Internet is "dangerous" and the popularity of the OFSA legislation "disturbing." "The concerns about the potentially corrupting influence of six-figure donations apply just as much if that cash is spent in cyberspace," The Washington Post editorialized yesterday.
But The Washington Post's analysis displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how blogs and political sites operate. Political blogs aren't widely read because they are funded by some multimillion-dollar company through political advertising. As Michael Krempasky, director of RedState.org, testified before Congress last month, money has very little to do with it. "Bloggers don't have influence because they start with large chunks of capital -- in fact, most if not all start out as relatively lonely voices with tiny audiences. By delivering credible, interesting, and valuable content, their audience and influence grows over time, " he said. In other words, blogging is an endeavor subject to the rules of the free market. Inside this unbridled exercise in free speech, the good rise to the top, while the hacks and frauds go ignored or quickly disappear.
Arianna Huffington's recent foray into the blogosphere reveals, if anything, that having millions of dollars at your disposal and a celebrity roster on hand could still result in a lousy blog. But applying McCain-Feingold to the Internet, even if diluted to protect bloggers, would mean that only millionnaires like Mrs. Huffington, or those funded by them, could afford to start a blog. Everyone else, like those who pay nothing for a site at Blogger.com, would have to have some way of knowing if their blogging is violating the briar patch of campaign-finance laws which only lawyers know how to navigate. Forcing a potential blogger to hire a lawyer would effectively kill the blogosphere as we've come to know and appreciate it. That would be a far more "disturbing" scenario than The Washington Post envisions.
#1
Business opportunity: establish blog hosting service in Canada (or Poland, or Bangladesh, or ...) for bloggers to anonymously post discussion on US political matters.
Oct. 12 marks the fifth anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole. Seventeen American sailors were murdered in the attack. They were casualties of a war with radical Islamic terror that America hadn't yet declared and which the mainstream media still refuses to acknowledge today.
Too many of us were blind in 2000 â unable or unwilling or simply too uninterested to connect such blood-stained dots as al Qaeda's 1993 World Trade Center bombing attack, the 1996 Khobar Tower bombings, the 1998 African embassy bombings, and the attack on the Cole. After Sept. 11, 2001, all of our eyes should have been pried wide open to the evils of Muslim extremism that exist among us in both organized and freelance form. The watchdogs in the national press, however, insist on clouding our vision.
Since 9/11, I've reported on the media's reluctance to highlight the convicted Washington, D.C.-area snipers' Islamist proclivities and journalists' refusal to call Egyptian gunman Hesham Hadayet's acts of murder at the Israeli airline counter at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4, 2002, "terrorism."
Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes noted how quickly the media sought to whitewash the bloody bus-hijacking by Croatian illegal alien Damir Igric a month after 9/11. Although the incident "echoed similar attacks by Palestinians on Israeli buses," Pipes observed, the "media attributed the violence to post-traumatic stress syndrome."
National Guardsman Ryan Anderson (a.k.a. Amir Talhah), a Muslim convert who allegedly attempted to pass sensitive military information to al Qaeda over the Internet, rated barely a blip on the media radar screen.
Similarly, press accounts have downplayed the disruption of terrorist cells on American soil: The Lackawanna Six were just nice Muslim boys led astray. The Virginia Jihad Network was just a group of weekend paintball enthusiasts. Those indicted imams in Lodi, Calif., are just misunderstood "moderates." Terror suspects deported on immigration charges are just victims of discrimination.
Now, many of my readers wonder why the MSM won't touch the strange and troubling story of the University of Oklahoma bomber, Joel Henry Hinrichs III. On Oct. 1, Hinrichs died on a park bench outside the school's packed football stadium when a homemade bomb in his possession exploded. The Justice Department has sealed a search warrant in the case. The university's president, David Boren, is pooh-poohing local media and Internet blog reports of possible jihadist influences on Hinrichs. The dead bomber was, we are being told, simply a depressed and troubled young man with "no known ties" to terrorism.
Never mind that, according to local news reporters, the bomb-making material found in Hinrichs' apartment was triacetone triperoxide â the explosive chemical of choice of shoe bomber Richard Reid and the London 7/7 subway bombers.
Never mind the local police department's confirmation that Hinrichs had attempted to buy ammonium nitrate a few days before his death.
Never mind the concerns of Oklahoma University student journalist Rachael Kahne, who told me this week in a call for the media's help:
"I've been working on this story since the night it happened, and have been stonewalled at every turn. . . . Minutes after the explosion, police busted into a student's apartment and arrested four Muslim students who were there for a small gathering (the president of the Muslim Student Association assures me this was in no way a "party"). Among those arrested [and later released] was Fazal Cheema, Joel Henry Hinrichs' Pakistani roommate. I was baffled when I heard this. I didn't know how police would be able to identify who Hinrichs was, where he lived, who his roommate was, and then find where his roommate was in a matter of minutes. Something isn't adding up, and I've been wracking my brain for the past week trying to figure out what happened here. OU isn't saying anything more than the typical PR spin, and the FBI won't talk."
Nothing to see here. Move along. Islam is a peaceful religion. Stop asking so many damned questions.
Such is the attitude of the national media, which seems to believe that 'tis better to live in ignorance and indulge in hindsight later than to offend the gods of political correctness.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/12/2005 09:42 ||
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Michelle,
Maybe someday people will WAKE THE HELL UP!!!!!!!
Nick Blanford, Lebanon Correspondent for The Times, explains why Syrians will doubt that their Interior Minister, Ghazi Kanaan really committed suicide today
"In Syria the plot is king. Even if Ghazi Kanaan did commit suicide, most Lebanese are going to jump to the conclusion that he was murdered.
"His death seems to kill two birds with one stone. The Syrian regime can now use Kanaan as a scapegoat over the UN investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. It also eliminates a potential challenge to the current regime and the presidency.
"Kanaan was a very powerful figure from the Alawi sect which is at the core of the Syrian regime. After 21 years as the effective ruler of Lebanon he went back to Damascus and the following year was made Interior Minister. "He was one of the old guard from the time of former president Hafez Assad, whose son, Bashar, has slowly got rid of his father's generation. Now there are only a couple left. Kanaan was nonetheless a very powerful figure.
"He was a strong-willed man, very sharp and intelligent, who had weathered many crises over the years from the mid-1970s throughout Lebanon's civil war. He dealt with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s, the chaos and disorder, and he was able to survive all this and come through unscathed.
"He was a very capable figure and it doesn't make much sense that at this stage in his life he would kill himself just because he might be implicated in Hariri's assassination. That wasn't very likely anyway. He had a good relationship with Hariri, after working with him for a number of years. "Like Hariri, Kanaan opposed extending by three years the mandate of the pro-Syrian Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud.
"He was one of the old regime figures who were more realistic and correctly foresaw that extending Mr Lahoud's presidency would cause problems. He warned that Syria was in enough trouble with the US as it was.
"Kanaan was seen as a potential alternative to President Bashar al-Assad, which made him something of a threat. There have been rumours for some months that Kanaan was going to be kicked out of government.
"I have just been talking to a very prominent Damascus analyst, who predicts that Kanaan will be blamed for the Hariri assassination.
"This would lift the international pressure off the Syrian regime, and avoid the risk that Kanaan might launch a coup backed by the US and take over the presidency."
Posted by: Steve ||
10/12/2005 13:48 ||
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That sounds very optimistic and contradicts much of the "structural" arguments. I wonder what informed people's opinion is on this?
Seventy dollars a barrel? Relax, it'll come down.
We keep hearing the word "bubble" to describe industries with rapid and unsustainable rising prices. Hence, the Internet bubble, the telecom bubble, stock market bubble, and now, some analysts believe, a housing bubble. Yet for some mysterious reason no one speaks of the oil bubble--though prices have tripled in two years to as high as $70 a barrel.
Reviewing the history of oil-market boom and bust confirms that we are in the midst of a classic oil bubble and that prices will eventually fall, perhaps dramatically. Despite apocalyptic warnings, the world is not running out of oil and the pumps are not going to run dry in our lifetimes--or ever. What's more, the mechanism that will surely prevent any long-term catastrophic shortages in energy is precisely the free-market incentive to make profits that many politicians in Washington seem to regard as an evil pursuit and wish to short circuit.
The best evidence for an oil bubble comes from the lessons of America's last six energy crises, dating back to the late 19th century, when there was a great scare about the industrial age grinding to a halt because of impending shortages of coal. (Today coal is superabundant, with about 500 years of supply.) Each one of these crises has run almost an identical course.
First, the crisis begins with a spike in energy prices as a result of a short-term supply shock. Next, higher prices bring doomsday claims of energy shortages, which in turn prompts government to intervene ineffectually into the marketplace. In the end, the advent of new technologies and new energy discoveries--all inspired by the profit motive--brings the crisis to an abrupt end, enabling oil and electricity markets to resume their virtuous long-term downward price trend.
The limits-to-growth crowd has predicted the end of oil since the days when this black gold was first discovered as an energy source in the mid-19th century. In the 1860s the U.S. Geological Survey forecast that there was "little or no chance" that oil would be found in Texas or California. In 1914 the Interior Department forecast that there was only a 10-year supply of oil left; in 1939 it calculated there was only a 13-year supply left, and in 1951 Interior warned that by the mid-1960s the oil wells would certainly run dry. In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter somberly told the nation that "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade."
We can ridicule these doom-and-gloom predictions today, but at the time they were taken seriously by scholars and politicians, just as the energy alarmists are gaining intellectual traction today. But as the late economist Julian Simon taught, by any meaningful measure oil (and all natural resources) has gotten steadily cheaper and far more bountiful in supply over time, despite periodic and even wild fluctuations in the market.
If gasoline cost today what it cost a family in 1900 (relative to income), we would be paying not $3 but $10 a gallon at the pump. Or consider that in 1860 oil sold for $4 a barrel, or the equivalent of about $400 a barrel in today's wage-adjusted prices. The first of a continuous series of innovations, in this case the invention of modern drilling techniques in 1869, cut the price by more than 90%--to 35 cents a barrel.
Fifty years ago people would have laughed out loud at the idea of drilling for oil at the bottom of the ocean or getting fuel from sand, both of which were technologically infeasible. The first deep-sea oil rig went on line in 1965 and drilled 500 feet down. Now these rigs drill two miles into the ground--and miraculously, the price of extracting oil from 10,000 feet deep in the sea bed today is approaching the cost of drilling 100 feet down from the richest fields in Texas or Saudi Arabia 40 years ago.
This spectacular pace of technological progress explains why over time the amount of recoverable reserves of oil has increased, not fallen. Between 1980 and 2002 the amount of known global oil reserves increased by 300 billion barrels, according to a survey by British Petroleum. Rather than the oil fields running dry, just the opposite has been happening. In 1970 Saudi Arabia had 88 billion barrels of known oil. Thirty-five years later, nearly 100 billion barrels have been extracted and yet the latest forecast is that there are still 264 billion barrels left--although the Saudis have never allowed independent auditors to verify these numbers.
In this industry, alas, bad news tends to crowd out the good. When Shell announced earlier this year that its oil and gas reserves were down by 30%, there was a global outcry. But when Canada announced in 2004 that it has more recoverable oil from tar sands than there is oil in Saudi Arabia, the world yawned. There is estimated to be about as much oil recoverable from the shale rocks in Colorado and other western states as in all the oil fields of OPEC nations. Yes, the cost of getting that oil is still prohibitively expensive, but the combination of today's high fuel prices and improved extraction techniques means that the break-even point for exploiting it is getting ever closer.
The energy Malthusians counter that China, India and other nations will satisfy their growing appetite for oil by driving demand and prices ever higher. In the short term, yes. But over the longer term, as the Chinese become more prosperous through free markets, China will become vastly more fuel efficient and also help discover new sources of energy.
America produces twice as much output per unit of energy consumed as it did 50 years ago. Liberals who say we need government to intervene in the energy markets, to patch the alleged failings of the free market, fail to comprehend that the command-and-control economies of the last 50 years have been far and away the biggest wasters of energy (and the biggest polluters). South Korea produces about three times as much output per kilowatt of electricity as North Korea does.
This is no call for complacency or inaction in the face of very high energy prices; it's a call for realism. Higher prices for gas and fuel for home heating have cost the average U.S. family about $1,500 to $2,000 a year. (Thankfully the Bush tax cuts have given back about precisely that amount in lower tax payments to the IRS.) The tax on the American economy from higher oil prices has reached $300 million a day and has chopped nearly a percentage point off GDP growth.
Our point is that the constraints on our ability to find and extract new oil are not geologic or scientific. The real constraints on oil production are barriers created by government. Myron Ebell, an environmental analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, notes that roughly 90% of the oil on the planet rests under government-owned land and these resources are abysmally managed.
In the U.S., environmentalists have erected myriad barriers to drilling for new sources of oil. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that there are at least 100 billion barrels that are fairly easily recoverable in Alaska and offshore that oil companies are not permitted to exploit. Once, we could afford the luxury of not drilling there. Now, thanks to a witch's brew of unforeseen circumstances--political turmoil in the oil producing countries, China's surge in demand, and hurricanes that have knocked out Gulf refineries--it's an economic and national security imperative that we do.
Here's one simple idea to increase the domestic supply of oil: Have Uncle Sam share its oil-drilling royalties with the California government. If Californians realized they could go a long way to solving their deficit and overtaxation problems by raising billions of these petro-dollars, the aversion on the left coast toward offshore drilling might well begin to subside.
We will assess at another time the many dreadful ideas--price controls and "windfall profit" taxes--that Congress is considering to deal with the energy crisis. But for today it is sufficient to note that the free market will deliver oil, electricity and other forms of energy at declining prices in the future, if only the government will let the market's benign and productive forces work their magic.
#4
Seems reasonably on the mark. There's a staggering amount of oil that can be produced north of $30-40/bbl. Right now we're in the midst of the largest oil exploration/drilling boom since the Arab Oil Embargo of the 70s. Prices will come down as fast as they went up but it may be a couple of years before that happens. There'll be better Hummer-buying opportunities next year. ;)
Excellent, note the notion that french arab policy is said to be very personal, Chirac having many ties with the arab world (notably strong familiy ties with Morocco, cf. his new grand son), and this is also true for other big players. See link for notes.
This is possibly to be seen in perspective with the Eurabia Grand project as analyzed by Bat Ye'or and Robert Spencer, or am I too conspiracy-oriented?
For a *remarkable* ressource on french arab policy, see the following blog (in french) : http://politiquearabedelafrance.blogspot.com/
Why French Foreign Policy Is Pro-Arab
There are a number of domestic and historical factors that contribute to the French government's increasingly skewed Middle East policy. High among them is the changing nature of French demography. At least 10 percent of France's sixty million residents are Muslim. Given the discrepancy between the Muslim and non-Muslim birthrate in France, demographers estimate that by 2030 at least 25 percent of the French population will be Muslim.[3]
In the past decade, the Islamist element among French Muslims has grown rapidly, overpowering more moderate Muslim voices. Many young French Muslims are influenced by extremist organizations such as the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. They hail bin Laden as a hero;[4] during demonstrations in Paris, marchers recently shouted, "Death to America and the Jews."[5] Since 2000, France has experienced its greatest wave of anti-Semitism since the 1930s. According to the Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l'Homme, whose statistics are used by the French government, anti-Semitic incidents jumped from 69 in 1999 to 970 five years later.[6] Demography has changed, and French political figures hesitate to criticize members of their largest religious minority. In January 2004, a French Jewish singer was performing at a gala attended by, among others, First Lady Bernadette Chirac when young French Muslims in the first rows interrupted the performance with shouts of "dirty Jew," "death to the Jews," and "we'll kill you." Rather than condemn the blatant anti-Semitism, Mrs. Chirac remained silent.[7]
France's historical legacy is also important. Colonial control of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon has marked the French psyche. France occupied Algeria for more than 130 years, withdrawing only after an eight-year war, which cost at least 300,000 Algerian and 20,000 French lives.[8] Upon Algerian independence in 1962, more than one million French residents of Algeria returned to France; many had been there for generations, and some had intermarried with the Arab and Berber population. As the various French colonies and mandates achieved independence, Parisian politicians had trouble letting go. Today, French officials act as if they never lost their empire. The Quay d'Orsay, where the Foreign Ministry is housed, for example, continues to promote the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (International Francophone Organization), of which fifteen out of forty-nine states are Muslim, as a way to bolster the community and cohesion of former French colonies. Under Chirac, French policy has gone beyond special treatment for the French-speaking Middle East, though, and embraced even the most rejectionist Arab and Islamic regimes while simultaneously working to criticize and isolate Israel, oppose the war on terrorism, and undercut the emphasis on democratization.
The Evolution of French Policy
The Middle East policy espoused by Chirac and his appointees bears little likeness to that espoused by French decision-makers in decades past.[9] The shift in policy is most clear with respect to Franco-Israeli relations. Paris supported Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. Until the mid-1950s, France was Israel's chief if not only ally. Shimon Peres maintained an office at the French Ministry of Defense while serving as an aide to David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister.[10] Israeli and French interests converged. In 1956, the Israeli Defense Force cooperated with the French and British militaries in military operations at Suez. According to Yuval Neeman, a former Israeli minister of science, Paris provided Israel with weapons in exchange for information about Egypt, which was helping the Algerian insurgents.[11] The two states also cooperated on nuclear issues.[12]
The French approach to anti-Western figures and revolutionaries extended to provision of safe-haven to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the most prominent opponent to the Iranian regime of the pro-Western Mohammad Reza Shah. Khomeini used his time in France to engage the Western media and broadcast calls for revolution. The French approach backfired this time, however, for after reaching power, Khomeini sponsored terrorism on French soilâfor example the wave of bombings in Paris in 1986, which killed eleven and wounded 275 and the 1991 assassination of Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last premier under the shah.[16]
Beginning in the late 1970s, Lebanon became the focus of the French government's activism in the Middle East. In 1978, the French government made a contingent of troops available to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, created to monitor the Lebanese-Israeli border in the wake of Israel's Litani River operation.[17] The French role in Lebanon increased in 1982 when 800 French troops joined an equal number of U.S. soldiers and 400 Italian troops to supervise the evacuation of the PLO from Lebanon and serve as peacekeepers. However, following the October 1983 bombing of the U.S. and French marine barracks, an attack that killed 241 U.S. and 57 French soldiers, Paris, along with Washington and Rome, withdrew its troops.[18] However, the French government remained engaged. Paris participated in the 1991 liberation of Kuwait, even though its defense minister, Jean-Pierre ChevÚnement, resigned in protest. The French air force also helped enforce the no-fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan although it later ceased its participation in order to maintain its lucrative trade relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Throughout this period, the French government maintained cool relations with Israel, joining with the Arab League in condemning Israel while refusing to affix its name to resolutions condemning terrorism against the Jewish state. For instance in 2004, out of eighteen United Nations resolutions condemning Israel and vetoed by the United States, France voted thirteen times in favor and abstained five times.[19]
Upon assuming the presidency in 1995, Chirac sought to readjust the status quo in French policy and shift Paris's sympathies further toward the Arab world. Speaking in Cairo in April 1996, Chirac declared, "France's Arab policy must be a dimension of its foreign policy. I wish to give it a new boost."[20] The French government expanded its trade and cultural exchanges with the Arab world. By 2002, France was among the top three trade partners for most Arab countries: first in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Saddam's Iraq, second in Lebanon, and Syria, and third in Egypt. France was also first among foreign investors in Jordan.[21]
Ahmed Youssef, author of L'Orient de Jacques Chirac, argues that Chirac's policies have made inroads with the Arab states:[22]
As soon as the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians deteriorated, Chirac appeared, in the eyes of Arab opinion, to be the only Western leader that could counter the unconditional support of the United States to Israel. Chirac then became more popular than certain leaders or kings in the Arab capitals.[23]
Many in the Arab world also admire Chirac for his charm, especially when working crowds. On October 22, 1996, Chirac sought to mix with bystanders while walking in a predominantly Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem. When Israeli security would not allow the crowds to approach too closely, he shouted, "This is not security; this is pure provocation, what do you want me to do? Fly back right away to Paris?"[24] His theatrics won him friends among the Palestinians.[25] His comments symbolized resistance to Israel, even as Chirac knew that he had put the Israeli security detail in an impossible situation.
His popularity has further grown as he has repeatedly juxtaposed his pro-Arab stance with Washington's support for Israel. When the White House and State Department condemned Palestinian terrorism, Chirac would often exculpate the bombers with talk of root causes.[26] His popularity has become so great in recent years that a number of Palestinian families have named their sons "Chirac."[27] During Ramadan in 2003, merchants in Cairo named the best quality datesâthe traditional food with which Arabs break the sunrise to sunset fastâ"Chiracs" to honor the French president.[28] A May 2004 Zogby survey conducted in six Arab countries, found Chirac at the top of the list of world leaders in Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco, and third in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.[29] In contrast, the same polls found U.S. president George W. Bush the least favorite world leader after Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.
The basis of Chirac's outreachâand perhaps a cause of itâhas been the development of close personal relationships with a number of Arab leaders, including not only Arafat and the late prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik al-Hariri, but also with the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, his son and successor Bashar, as well as former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. These personal relationships have become the backbone of French Middle East policy.
Chirac and Saddam Hussein
Perhaps Chirac's deepest friendship has been with Saddam Hussein.[30] The two first met in December 1974 when Prime Minister Chirac visited Baghdad to negotiate trade agreements, including the delivery of a nuclear reactor[31] later destroyed by an Israeli air raid in 1981. When Hussein visited France the following Septemberâhis only visit to a Western country[32]âthen-prime minister Chirac said, "I welcome you as my personal friend. I assure you of my esteem, my consideration, and my affection."[33]
Resigning from government in 1976, Chirac founded the Rassemblement pour la Republique, which would soon become France's largest political party. There remain persistent rumors that Hussein helped finance the party, supported by allegations by Lebanese arms merchant Sarkis Soghanalian[34] and by various Iraqi politicians. In 1992, Saddam reportedly threatened to expose French leaders who had earlier accepted his largesse. "From Mr. Chirac to Mr. ChevÚnement, politicians and economic leaders were in open competition to spend time with us and flatter us," the Iraqi leader reportedly said. "We have now grasped the reality of the situation [of France's support for the 1991 Gulf War, a betrayal in Saddam's eyes]. If the trickery continues, we will be forced to unmask them, all of them, before the French public."[35] According to an aide, Chirac's friendship with Hussein was such that he would stop for a night in Baghdad whenever he traveled between Paris and Asia.[36]
Baghdad rewarded Paris for its loyalty. Throughout the 1980s, Iraq bought US$25 billion worth of arms from French concerns, including Mirage fighters, Super Etendard aircraft, and Exocet missiles.[37] The Iraqi government also picked French companies to build Saddam International Airport in 1982.[38] The relationship between Chirac and Hussein went beyond the norm in Franco-Iraqi relations. When Chirac again became prime minister in 1986 after a decade out of power, the relationship once more blossomed. The following year, reports surfaced that Chirac had offered to rebuild the nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel in 1981. In 1994, French oil companies Total and Elf won contracts worth billions to develop southern Iraqi oil fields upon the lifting of the sanctions regime.[39] When Chirac became president in 1995, his government began lobbying the United Nations to ameliorate if not lift sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.[40] The United Nation's Oil-for-Food program, inaugurated in 1996, allowed the Iraqi government to sell its oil in order to purchase food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies.[41] Saddam Hussein rewarded Chirac's government for his support. France quickly became Iraq's chief trade partner, a position it maintained until 2003.[42]
Hussein's investment in Chirac proved fruitful for the Iraqi leader. In 1998, when asked how patient he was prepared to be with Saddam Hussein, Chirac responded, "When it comes to humanitarian affairs, France's patience is limitless."[43] In the months preceding the 2003 Iraq war, French resistance to sanctions or military action against Baghdad grew. According to The Sunday Times of London, French officials regularly "kept Saddam abreast of every development in American planning and may have helped him to prepare for war."[44] In January 2003, a French company sold aircraft and helicopter parts to Iraq for its French-made Mirage fighters and Gazelle helicopters.[45] On October 26, 2003, rockets struck the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad during the visit of U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz. Subsequent investigation showed these to be French-made Matra SNEB 68-millimeter. The pristine condition of those left behind suggested manufacture after the imposition of sanctions.[46]
Several French officials benefited personally from their close ties to Baghdad. Documents unearthed in the wake of the Iraqi regime's collapse suggest that French officials accepted lucrative oil vouchers from the Iraqi government in exchange for diplomatic favors. According to the September 2004 Duelfer report, titled Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, said he "personally awarded several French individuals substantial oil allotments." Aziz told his interrogators that both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift U.N. sanctions or through opposition to U.S. initiatives within the Security Council."[47] Also, according to an Iraqi intelligence service memo, a French politician met in May 2002 with an Iraqi official and "assured the Iraqi that France would use its veto in the UNSC [U.N. Security Council] against any American decision to attack Iraq."[48]
Among the French officials indicted are several members of Chirac's inner circle, including Charles Pasqua, his former interior minister. A May 17, 2005 report released by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded,
Documents created by the Ministry of Oil during the Hussein regime and interviews of high-ranking Hussein regime officials conducted by the Subcommittee provide substantial evidence that Charles Pasqua was granted oil allocations for 11 million barrels of oil from the Hussein regime under the Oil-for-Food Program in return for his continued support.[49]
Documents reveal that the Iraqi government also gave fourteen million barrels of oil to French businessman Patrick Maugein, whom it considered "a conduit to French president Chirac."[50] The French judiciary has begun investigating leads on the Maugein connection.[51] While citizens of many other countries are involved, few are as senior or as well connected to their governments as the Frenchmen involved. The level of oil-for-food contacts reflects both the high-level of Franco-Iraqi ties, as well as Saddam Hussein's belief that the Chirac administration was an easy target for a campaign of influence.
Chirac and Arafat
Jacques Chirac's relationship with the Iraqi dictator was not an exception but part of a pattern of embracing Middle Eastern rulers hostile to international norms of behavior and in conflict with Western democracies. Soon after assuming the presidency, Chirac sought rapprochement with Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat. On March 13, 1996, for example, Chirac told Arafat, "When you have a problem, call Doctor Chirac."[52] Arafat inculcated the message. Later that year during a joint Ramallah press conference with Chirac, Arafat declared, "We need Doctor Chirac to save the peace process."[53]
When French foreign minister Michel Barnier began his first Middle East tour in June 2004, he scheduled a meeting with Arafat, foregoing a meeting with Sharon to do so. Barnier's visit tried to undercut the efforts of Bush, Sharon, and other Western leaders, who were seeking to isolate Arafat because of his support of terrorism. Barnier said that the French government wanted to reaffirm Arafat's indispensable role in the Middle East and said that Israel's isolation of Arafat was disgraceful.[54] Chirac reiterated this criticism during the June 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul saying,
Arafat is probably the only person capable of imposing on the Palestinian people compromises, particularly of a territorial nature, which could not be imposed, today at any rate, by anyone else. This is why I believe that wanting to isolate him isn't very prudent or very much in line with a strategy of restoring peace.[55]
The French government's outreach to Arafat led it not only to turn a blind eye to his role in terrorism[56] but also to twist the historical record to exculpate him for previous failures to negotiate. Following the collapse of the July 2000 Camp David II summit between Arafat and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, President Bill Clinton blamed Arafat for refusing the peace deal arrived at by his negotiators.[57] In a June 2004 interview with right-wing daily Le Figaro, Hubert Vedrine, French foreign affairs minister between 1997 and 2002, suggested that the fault was not Arafat's and that Clinton, as an American politician beholden to the U.S. Jewish lobby, had no choice but to criticize the Palestinian politician.[58] Such suggestions flew in the face of the historical record but nevertheless proved popular with an Arab audience that wanted to admit no responsibility.
As Arafat's health deteriorated in his Ramallah compound, Chirac interceded for the Palestinian politician. French taxpayers footed the expense not only for Arafat's transportation but also for that of his entire entourage. Chirac placed several Palestinian officials in a five-star hotel at French government expense.[59] The red carpet treatment ensured French favor among the Palestinian street. French flags and posters thanking Chirac dotted the Ramallah square outside Arafat's headquarters.[60]
In a partly handwritten October 28, 2004 note to the ill Arafat, Chirac said, "I wish that you could resume as soon as possible your work at the service of the Palestinian people ... [France] will always stand next to you."[61] Le Figaro commented that Paris had become the capital of Palestine for the thirteen days of Arafat's deathwatch.[62] Upon Arafat's death, the stoic Chirac had tears in his eyes as he eulogized him as "a man of courage and conviction."[63] The embrace of Arafat through his final days got Chirac what he wanted: to be the center of attention of the world and bolster French influence in the Arab world.
In October 2000, the city of Lyon picked Aleppo, Syria's second largest city, as its sister city. In 2001, the Ãcole Nationale d'Administration, the prestigious Parisian school in which almost the entire French political class, including Chirac, former president Giscard d'Estaing, current prime minister Dominique de Villepin, and former prime minister Lionel Jospin studied, began to train Syrian professors in order to tie together future French and Syrian officials. In 2004, the Ãcole Nationale d'Administration furthered its outreach to Syrian officials by opening a branch in Damascus,[66] adding to branches already operating in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.
Chirac has long embraced Hezbollah. Former U.S. senator Bob Graham (Democrat, Fla.), relates how, upon arriving in Damascus in July 2002, he saw an Iranian cargo plane on the tarmac. He asked a U.S. diplomat what it might be carrying. The embassy aide replied, "Probably arms and ammunition, other military equipment for Hezbollah. This is the primary point of delivery."[74] Such matter-of-fact concerns regarding Hezbollah's commitment to violence did not factor in Chirac's decision to embrace the group.
Prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than any other terrorist group; it still has the distinction of having killed more Frenchmen than any other terrorist group outside of the Algerian war for independence because of its bombing of the French marine barracks in Beirut and subsequent kidnapping of sixteen French citizens. Nevertheless, in October 2002, Chirac invited Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah secretary general, to attend the Francophone summit in Beirut. Their meeting bestowed legitimacy upon the group, whose raison d'être disappeared upon the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon two years before. The French government has continued to resist calls not only from Washington and Jerusalem but also from some within Europe to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization,[75] preferring instead to categorize the group as a "social" organization.[76] The one concession the French government has made to other Western governments has been to ban Hezbollah's Al-Manar satellite channel in December 2004.[77] The move came under tremendous pressure from French politicians and public alike, outraged at the station's flouting of French laws banning anti-Semitism.
Chirac's consistent support for Hezbollah has won him the group's favor. In April 2005, Nasrallah published a commentary in the Beirut daily As-Safir in which he welcomed a French role in Lebanese reconciliation and declared that the "Lebanese do not like to see France held hostage to the savage and aggressive American hegemony."[78]
Does the Chirac Doctrine Work?
Chirac may have several reasons for extending French embrace beyond mere sympathy with the Arab world to uncritical support of rogues regardless of their rejectionism or support for terror. Part of his embrace of Saddam Hussein, Yasir Arafat, Bashar al-Assad, and Hassan Nasrallah may be due to a desire to undercut U.S. objectives in the Middle East and thereby bolster French prestige at U.S. expense. His personal antipathy toward Israel and desire to please his Muslim constituency may also contribute. When terrorists killed French Jews in Israel, French officials often failed to express condolences. French diplomacy continues to show total disdain for the Jewish state. The French ambassador to the United Kingdom, for example, called Israel "that little shitty country" at a dinner party hosted by Daily Telegraph columnist Barbara Amiel.[79] The new French ambassador to Israel labeled Sharon a "rogue."[80]
From Chirac's perspective, though, his policies have bolstered French prestige. A close friend of Chirac explained, "For 1.2 billion [Muslim] people, France exists."[81] The importance of Paris may have declined within Europe, in the trans-Atlantic relationship, and even among many of her former colonies, but within the Islamic world, France retains some of her former stature. Yet, preservation of such prestige may come at a high cost. In December 2003, a blue-ribbon panel reported that increasing Islamism within the French Muslim community threatened French secularism.[82] The 1905 law on the separation of church and state constitutes a pillar of the French republic. Chirac supported a March 2004 law banning head coverings, including scarves and hijab from public schools. In doing so, he incurred the wrath of Islamist radicals in France and abroad.[83] Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi warned that Chirac's "extremist decision is against the citizens' rights and will tarnish France's image in the Islamic world."[84] On January 2, 2004, Iranians chanting "Death to France" interrupted a sermon critical of the French decision by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a close associate of Iranian supreme leader âAli Khameneâi.[85] Sheikh Mohammed Qabbani, mufti of the Lebanese republic, accused the French government of showing "a hatred of Islam."[86]
It remains unclear whether Chirac's pro-Arab policy has translated into real influence among the most radical segments of Arab society. When the Iraqi Islamic army insurgent group seized two French journalists just outside of Baghdad in August 2004, French foreign minister Barnier appeared on Al-Jazeera to reiterate Chirac's pro-Arab policy and to thank the Arabic satellite channel for support.[87] The kidnappers demanded that the French government lift its ban on headscarves. Protestors marched in support of their demands in Lebanon and Bahrain. Several months later, the group released the journalists unharmed after 124 days. Their captors declared that their "liberation occurred because of the numerous calls of Muslim organizations along with the appreciation of the French government's position on Iraq and that of the two journalists regarding the Palestinian cause."[88]
The deaths of Hafez al-Assad, Arafat, and Hariri, as well as the ouster of Saddam Hussein suggest that the political benefits of the Chirac doctrine may be fleeting. Developing relationships takes time. The new Iraqi government resents the French embrace of Saddam Hussein. If other Middle Eastern dictatorships succumb to the tentative wave of democratization, there is no guarantee they will embrace Paris or honor commercial accords made under dictatorship. But growing Islamist pressure inside France may, nevertheless, push Chirac and his successors to pursue an even more pro-Arab policy. The legacy of the Chirac doctrine, though, may not be the French grandeur that Chirac and his allies seek, but rather a reputation for cynicism, hostility to democracy and reform, and association with the worst excesses of Middle Eastern society.
Olivier Guitta is a Washington, D.C. freelance writer specializing in the Middle East and Europe.
The last time the Pakistan army rode to the rescue of its citizens after a massive natural disaster, the result was a civil war and the loss of half the country.
That was in 1970, when half a million people in what was then East Pakistan drowned as a result of typhoons and floods, and the delay of the army in launching a relief effort led to enormous public anger and the eventual creation of Bangladesh.
The same army is once again in control of the country and of the desperately needed relief effort after an earthquake that in a breath has taken away 40,000 people - half of them children.
Western governments and Pakistanis will be looking closely at the political fall-out for President Pervez Musharraf, who remains a key Western ally, army chief, the supremo of the country and chief relief organiser. Will Gen Musharraf, like George W. Bush, have his Katrina moment, when the public turn against their leader?
For a country repeatedly facing monsoon floods, overflowing rivers, devastating storms and minor earthquakes, the army has been remarkably ill-prepared to face the current crisis.
Moreover, this is Azad Kashmir, where Pakistan has fought three wars with India, and invested trillions of rupees in military infrastructure to maintain 100,000 troops along the Line of Control.
Even though Azad Kashmir is supposed to be a model of development to expose the poverty in Indian-held Kashmir, the actual investment in social welfare and infrastructure such as roads and bridges has been minimal. The issue here is all about how much Third World governments are prepared to invest in their own people and disaster preparedness.
So far the army has been woefully slow in reacting to the disaster. Its much vaunted Crisis Management Cell - set up after 9/11, run by army officers and modelled on America's National Security Council - has itself been an abysmal disaster. Management on the ground has been superficial at best. Stories abound, such as the one about a 72-man team of Spanish rescuers and their sniffer dogs being kept waiting for 48 hours at Islamabad airport before someone told them where to go. But as the army operation kicks in, bolstered by foreign aid, money and helicopters, public anger will recede.
One may well ask why the seventh largest army in the world is holding its hand out for helicopters and tents when America has supplied dozens of helicopters since 9/11 and the country is one of the largest tent manufacturers in the world.
The army itself holds thousands of tents in stock, along with tens of thousands of tins of foodstuffs and blankets - which do not seem to have been released. Perhaps this is because the army continues to fight an insurgency in Balochistan and al-Qa'eda remnants in Waziristan along the border with Afghanistan. These operations are on-going even as the army runs the relief effort.
It has not gone unnoticed among Western intelligence agencies that the epicentre of the quake is also the epicentre of the camps run by Pakistani extremist groups affiliated to al-Qa'eda, where hundreds of Kashmiri militants and Afghans are being trained.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pointed the area out to visiting Western leaders on a map as being the centre of Taliban resurgence. The Kashmiris trained in this area still cross the Line of Control to ambush Indian patrols. The army, wishing to continue to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan, has turned a blind eye to these activities. While the army is likely to be wary of allowing Western aid agencies running pell-mell all over Azad Kashmir, it will now be impossible to keep these camps hidden and to continue training.
One positive result of the earthquake may be greater international and Pakistani civilian pressure to close these camps, thereby speeding up the peace process with India.
India has to respond to the tragedy not just by sending relief goods, but also by showing a greater willingness to start discussing Kashmir with Pakistan. So far India has refused to do so - insisting that many years of "confidence-building measures" are needed before it will discuss Kashmir.
But now that there are at least three million Kashmiris homeless on the Pakistani side and countless more on the Indian side, it's about time that India took the Kashmir issue seriously and both countries stop using these now totally destitute people as pawns.
Meanwhile Pakistan's political parties have rallied round the government in its hour of need. The Islamic fundamentalist leaders who have proclaimed that the earthquake was a result of God's anger at Musharraf cosying up to America and Israel have, thankfully, been completely ignored.
Once the relief effort is in place and the long, hard slog of rehabilitating millions of people starts, the heightened political awareness that catastrophes always bring in their wake will emerge.
For many Pakistanis, their first questions are likely to be: how long does their authoritarian military leader plan to rule over their lives, and when will they get a responsible elected government that is accountable for its failures?
In a few weeks, Musharraf will get back to the political business of trying to find a way to get himself elected as president in 2007 while staying as army chief. But he may find, just as President Bush did, that disasters make people much more reluctant to accept the status quo.
Posted by: john ||
10/12/2005 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
