The Wrong 'World War'

By Derrick Z. Jackson
Boston Globe
February 17, 2007

IN THE November elections, Americans made it clear that scintillating rhetoric over an incendiary Iraq was now shallow, shrill, and senseless. That did not stop a parade of hysterical House Republicans from trying to prop up President Bush's proposed Iraq escalation with still more allusions that we are fighting Nazis.

"We are in a world war now against terrorism," said Representative Dan Burton of Indiana in opposing the symbolic resolution against the escalation. He said America had to "stand up so that we don't face a major holocaust down the road." He said the result of no one listening to Winston Churchill was that "62 million people died."

Then there was Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida. She said, "The threat of Hitler did not appear suddenly out of a vacuum."

Top House honors for Best Dramatic Performance for a Deranged Policy went to Sue Myrick of North Carolina. She said, "Iraq is just one battlefield in this multigenerational struggle against radical Islamist jihadists. But it's a very important battlefield. This is the beginning stage of a multigenerational worldwide struggle that will last throughout our lives and likely our children's lives. . . . they will not stop until all lands from India to Morocco and Spain to Russia are governed by radical Islamic law. In 1938 Adolf Hitler told us what he was going to do and we refused to pay attention, and we cannot afford to repeat that historical mistake. . . . We must understand that we are fighting the first battles of a war against radical Islamist ideology that will be waged for the next 50, maybe 100 years."

Is that Armageddon or what?

It has not registered on these folks that we hanged the "Hitler" of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and last year, according to the United Nations, 34,000 Iraqi civilians still died in civil war. They are oblivious to the growing boomerang effect of their rhetoric. They keep invoking comparisons to World War II, but it does not seem to have dawned on their desk calendars that our nearly four-year invasion and occupation of Iraq has already passed the span from Pearl Harbor to Japanese surrender.

But unlike World War II, which had a global coalition of the willing to answer the global cries of the unwilling, the current "world war" has always been a unilateral US affair based on false pretenses with bit parts played by Great Britain and a handful of nations. The State Department Iraq Weekly Report this week lists "25 Countries With Forces in Iraq" to go along without 138,000. But the total forces amount to 15,371. On the face of it, that is an average of only 615 soldiers per country. But with Great Britain accounting for 7,000 of them, the United States ever more stands isolated.

The dwindling nations of the coalition have connected our disconnect. What is the point of this "world war," especially when non fighting Americans (who starkly include the children of the politicians most railing for the war) are more obsessed with Super Bowl commercials, Oscar nominations, and Anna Nicole Smith than the fate of the planet? What is the point of war in oil-rich Iraq when Chrysler was reportedly talking with General Motors to team up for yet another SUV like the Chevrolet Suburban or Tahoe? It was further reported yesterday that DaimlerChrysler is in talks to sell Chrysler outright to GM.

It took a while, but even Americans began connecting the dots by giving the leadership of the House and Senate back to the Democrats. In some kind of morbid poetic justice, the two countries that destroyed Iraq in order to save it now rank as the worst developed nations in which to be a child, according to UNICEF. In the Associated Press story on the study, one of its researchers, Jonathan Bradshaw of the University of York in Great Britain, said his country and the United States -- despite their immense wealth -- had "very high levels of inequality, very high levels of child poverty, which is also associated with inequality, and in rather different ways poorly developed services to families with children."

The UNICEF study said the United States was dead last in child health and safety, including the incidence of bullying. That makes the Hitler hysterics even more inane. The United States is in a "world war," spreading democracy by kicking sand in the world's face. At home, its own children are bullied into despair, falling into the hell of disparity.

Let's help Egypt get democratic

Bush administration already has the leverage to make this Mideast country a success story
BY HALA MUSTAFA AND AUGUSTUS RICHARD NORTON
Newsday
February 16, 2007

The irony of President George W. Bush's project to promote a metamorphosis of Iraq into a free and open society is that he chose a country that is arguably one of the worst regional candidates for such a transformation.

Under the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, civil society was decimated, independent political parties were nonexistent and the economy was ravaged by war, international sanctions and the predatory intrusions of the dictatorship. What's more, Bush administration officials convinced themselves that Iraqis were predominantly secular and nationalistic. So they initially underestimated the power of tribe, ethnicity and sect to frame identity.

By contrast, in Egypt - one of the most important Arab countries of the region - there is a strong tradition of political debate and a vibrant intellectual life. There also are an extensive civil society, a judiciary intent on sustaining its autonomy and integrity, and a durable secular liberal tradition. Yet, rather than playing a much more active role in giving shape to a freer political life in Egypt, the United States has soft-pedaled reform there. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in mid-January, she did not say a public word about it

This is a particularly opportune time to instill real reforms in Egypt precisely because the United States has an opportunity to deftly affect the terms of reference under which any future Egyptian president assumes office. President Hosni Mubarak, 78, has been in power for more than a quarter-century, and Egyptians are debating the post-Mubarak era.

The president's son Gamal is being positioned to succeed his father, but this is hardly inevit-able. Whoever the successor may be is less important than expanding the substance of freedom in Egypt.

Across the Arab world there is one common preoccupation in discussions about U.S. policy in the region: that the United States is far closer to failure than success. Egypt affords the United States the chance to achieve something important that will counterbalance somewhat the calamities it faces elsewhere.

The expansion of political freedom will not necessarily lead, soon at least, to a viable liberal democracy in Egypt. Elsewhere, in Iraq and Palestine, the United States expected the diplomatic equivalent of instant gratification, as though an election could magically transform a political climate and compensate for decades of autocratic social engineering. In contrast, the United States has the clout through its foreign aid to encourage a much larger role for Egyptian secular liberal intellectuals and reformers who espouse values friendly to the West.

One of the dirty little secrets of Egyptian politics is that government squashes secular opponents while allowing Islamist opposition (and leftist groups) freer rein, including privileged access to the media and more scope to campaign for political office when there are carefully controlled national elections.

The Islamists are unlikely to be seen by the United States as a palatable alternative to the regime, so who cares if they are given space in the arena of ideas? Government officials wag their fingers at the Americans, mumble "Hamas" and ask: "Is that what you want?"

Egyptian officials are inclined to speak of the country as a developing democracy, so a good start would be to at least insist that Egypt adhere to its asserted respect for basic political freedoms. This means there must be a wide scope for freedom of expression.

The lifting of the emergency laws that have been in effect since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 would be an important step, but there are other crucial benchmarks as well. One would be a constitutional provision [CORRECTION: An Opinion essay on Friday misstated a point made by writers Hala Mustafa and Augustus Richard Norton. They suggest the revision of an article in Egypt's constitution that says Islamic law is the "primary source" of law in Egypt. Because of an editing error, the essay did not include the word "revision." PG. A13 ALL 2/17/07] that Islamic law is the "primary source" of law in Egypt. The provision has often been used to justify the curtailing of basic freedoms, including the rights of women, minorities and intellectuals.

The United States must not simply stand on the sidelines, frozen in place by Mubarak's elixir of stability. The United States should insist on palpable evidence that the Egyptian government is committed to significant structural reform. Some may consider this colonialist meddling, but it needs doing.

Without a freer realm for a vibrant secular liberal debate, there will be little more than cosmetic change. An obvious litmus test for reform is not just that responsible challenges to arbitrary government are possible without retaliation, but whether respected liberals will be placed in significant positions within the regime.

At a time when the United States seems to be losing its way in the Middle East and confronts difficult choices in Iraq, the Bush administration might enjoy a notable success by renewing its commitment to political reform and freedom in Egypt. This would be widely noticed in the Arab world and would buoy precisely those forces predisposed to support the values that the United States wishes to exemplify.

What we are suggesting is not an alternative to a realistic approach to the region but a crucial component in a credible policy.

Hala Mustafa is editor of the Al-Ahram Foundation's quarterly journal, al-Dimuqratiya (Democracy) in Cairo. Augustus Richard Norton is a professor at Boston University whose new book on

Lawmakers Don't Want War On Iran

By Michael McAuliff, Daily News Washington Bureau
New York Daily News
February 12, 2007

WASHINGTON - No one in Congress sounded ready to go to war with Iran yesterday, even as U.S. officials argued Iraq's neighbor is arming insurgents with lethal bombs.

According to reports from Iraq, Iranian-made devices called "explosively formed penetrators" - EFPs for short - have killed 170 American troops in Iraq.

"We should take actions to try to stop them," Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said yesterday on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"You do that by interdiction, though. You don't do it by invasion."

Democrats were suspicious yesterday that the military's claims about EFPs - which can punch through a tank - were part of a White House push to lay the groundwork for an attack on Iran.

"I'm very skeptical, based on recent past history about this administration leading us in that direction. It worries me," Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd said on CBS.

One ex-Bush administration official agreed, telling Newsweek that hawks in the White House want an excuse to hit Iran.

"They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for," said Hillary Mann, the former National Security Council director for Iran.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on "Fox News Sunday" there is no such talk. "There's no indication that any of this has to do with going beyond Iraq," he said.