Beck, Palin tell thousands to 'restore America'

By Amy Gardner, Krissah Thompson and Philip Rucker
The Washington Post
Sunday, August 29, 2010; 12:08 AM

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck on Saturday drew a sea of activists to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where he championed a religious brand of patriotism and called on the nation to recommit itself to traditional values he said were hallmarks of its exceptional past.

On the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, steps away from where it was delivered, Beck and fellow "tea party" icon Sarah Palin staked a claim to King's legacy and to that of the Founding Fathers. They urged a crowd that stretched to the Washington Monument to concentrate on the nation's accomplishments rather than on its psychological scars.

"Something that is beyond man is happening," Beck said. "America today begins to turn back to God."

The event was billed as "nonpolitical," and Beck steered clear of the partisan commentary that has made him a hero to many conservatives and a nemesis to many on the left. But political overtones were unmistakable, and the rally drew an enormous crowd - including many who said they were new to activism - that was energized and motivated to act.

The effort by Beck and Palin to lay claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement drew protests from the Rev. Al Sharpton and others who marched in a separate and much smaller event, to the Mall from Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington, to commemorate King's speech 47 years ago.

"The 'March on Washington' changed America," Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said at the Sharpton rally, referring to King's speech. "Our country reached to overcome the low points of our racial history. Glenn Beck's march will change nothing."

The simultaneous rallies rendered the country's political and racial divisions in stark relief.

Sharpton drew a mostly black crowd of union members, church-goers, college students and civil rights activists. The Obama administration weighed in, too, with Education Secretary Arne Duncan speaking of education as the "civil rights issue of this generation."

The Beck crowd, meanwhile, was overwhelmingly white, and many in the crowd described themselves as conservatives with deep concern about the country's political leadership and its direction.

But the mood was peaceful and calm at both events, and by the time the Sharpton march arrived on the Mall, the crowd from Beck's rally had largely dispersed. Despite the potential for tension, the events appeared to produce none of the politically damaging imagery that emerged from some earlier tea party rallies.
Numbers game

The attendance at Beck's gathering promises to be a subject of contention. Crowd sizes on the Mall are often controversial and notoriously difficult to estimate, so much so that law enforcement agencies have stopped providing numbers. At one point, Beck joked he had "just gotten word from the media that there are over a thousand people here today." Later, he told the crowd he heard it was "between 300,000 and 500,000."

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), speaking soon after the Beck rally at her own impromptu event nearby, said: "We're not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today - because we were witnesses."

Beck, a Fox News host, has developed a national following by assailing President Obama and Democrats, and he warned Saturday that "our children could be slaves to debt." But he insisted that the rally "has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with God, turning our faith back to the values and principles that made us great."

King's niece Alveda King, an anti-abortion activist, addressed Beck's rally with a plea for prayer "in the public squares of America and in our schools." Referencing her "Uncle Martin," King called for national unity by repeatedly declaring "I have a dream."

Many in the audience said they had come because they fear that the country is at a perilous moment. They spoke in stark political terms. They carried "Don't Tread on Me" flags - an emblem of the tea party - and wore t-shirts with such messages such as "I Can See November From My House" and "RECESSION: When your neighbor loses his job. DEPRESSION: When you lose your job. RECOVERY: When Obama loses his job."

Others said they were motivated more by their deep appreciation of Beck, whose talk-radio show is the third-most popular in the country and who heavily promoted "Restoring Honor" on radio and on his television program on Fox News.

John Sawyers and Linda Adams said they flew in from Colorado because they are frustrated at what they call the "ruling class," at the health-care bill they say few supported, at schools that no longer require that students say the Pledge of Allegiance, and at elected officials who run on one platform and govern on another.

"We want our country to get back to its original roots," said Adams, 52, a university administrator who said her ancestors were on the Mayflower and fought in the American Revolution.

"It's not anger," said Sawyers, 47, an engineer who grew up on a farm in Virginia. "It's more, 'Guys, why are we going this way?' It's time for the silent majority to say it's wrong."

Sawyers, a registered Republican, and Adams, an independent, said they were moved to attend by Beck's theme of honor.

"Both of us are unhappy with the perception Obama is apologizing for everything we ever did," said Adams wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Does the Constitution say we the sheeple?"

"We feel the United States is the greatest country," Adams added. "And we felt we had to do something."
Military theme

Saturday's event came on the heels of a primary election season that has emboldened tea party activists - and with even more crucial midterm elections looming in November.

In Palin's home state of Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a member of the GOP leadership, is trailing in a primary behind a political neophyte whose underdog campaign was propelled by Palin and tea party groups. After Tuesday's primary, Persian Gulf War veteran and lawyer Joe Miller leads, although no winner has been declared and vote-counting continues.

Still, Democrats attempted to find political advantage in the rally by launching an offensive designed to link it to the Republican Party, and thereby portray Republicans as extremists beholden to the tea party agenda. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, assailed Republicans for pursuing a "destructive agenda" and called out the tea party movement for pushing the GOP to the "extreme right."

The event had a strong military theme, with Beck paying tribute to three soldiers. The rally was paid for through donations to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which funds scholarships for children of service members killed in action. During the rally, Beck announced that the foundation had raised $5.5 million for the event; he did not say how much would go toward event costs and how much to the causes the foundation supports.

The crowd erupted when Beck introduced Palin, a tea party heroine and a former Republican vice presidential candidate. Palin said she was speaking not as a politician but as the mother of a combat veteran.

She said the military is "a force for good in this country, and that is nothing to apologize for." She honored three military veterans, hugging them onstage, and told people to look to them as inspiration, even when the nation's challenges might sometimes seem "insurmountable."

"But here today, at the crossroads of our history, may this day be the change point," Palin said. "Look around you. You're not alone. You are Americans! You have the same steel spine and the moral courage of Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King. It is in you. It will sustain you as it sustained them."

The crowd responded with chants of "USA! USA! USA!"

Beck's marriage of politics and religion raising questions

By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 31, 2010; A1

A few weeks before organizing a massive rally on the Mall that had the feel of a religious revival, Glenn Beck sought the blessing of some of the country's most prominent conservative Christian leaders.

The Fox talk show host wanted their support as he shifted from political commentary to a more spiritual message, he told the group of about 20.

This is where God is leading me, Beck declared, according to Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, who was there, along with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.

Land said most in the group found Beck's faith genuine and heartfelt, although not everyone agreed to embrace him publicly.

"We walked back to the hotel after and said, 'That was extraordinary,' " Land said of his conversation with Dobson after the dinner in Manhattan. "I've never heard a cultural figure of that popularity talking that overtly about his faith. He sounded like Billy Graham."

Two days after Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally drew a crowd that stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the World War II Memorial, many Americans were still trying to figure out if the commentator had just seized the mantle of the religious right.

Conservative Christian talk radio was crackling with debate about Beck's Mormonism. Religious progressives were assailing his attacks on President Obama's Christianity. Scholars of religion and politics were analyzing Beck's evangelical-like talk of being saved from drug and alcohol addiction. Some pastor-bloggers were bemoaning what they consider the conflation of celebrity, politics and spirituality.

"Politically, everyone is with it, but theologically, when he says the country should turn back to God, the question is: Which God?" said Tom Tradup, vice president for news and talk at Salem Radio Network,which serves more than 2,000 stations, most of them Christian. "How much of this is turning to God? How much is religious revival and how much is a snake oil medicine show?"

In a matter of hours, Beck went from a hugely popular media figure - a 2009 Gallup poll listed him as the fourth most admired living man in the country - to a spiritual player, embracing a new and overtly religious rhetoric that made him sound like an evangelist.

Yet the Mormon convert seems an unlikely leader for conservative Christians, many of whom don't regard Mormonism as part of their faith.
Political anger

Even as the event was billed as nonpartisan, and attendees were told not to bring political signs, it was impossible to untangle the Fox News commentator from the political anger of the "tea party" movement and the bitter 2010 campaign season. GOP leader Sarah Palin was a guest speaker, and Beck was interviewed after the rally characterizing Obama's faith as being dominated by an "oppressor-victim" paradigm.

"People aren't recognizing his version of Christianity," Beck said on "Fox News Sunday."

It wasn't the first time he had derided Obama's faith. In the days leading up to the rally, he characterized the president as an adherent of "liberation theology," which Beck said represents "a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it."

To those who embrace it, liberation theology is a means to empower the poor, the weak and politically oppressed. The term became politicized during the 2008 presidential campaign because it is used by Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

To some, Beck's show of his faith was a calculated political effort to unite religious and social conservatives as the midterm elections approach.

"No Republican is going to win the White House if those two aren't united," said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who studies evangelical Protestant leaders. "Here's a chance to infuse the tea party with religious rhetoric, and extend an olive branch to those not as engaged with financial issues."
'Divine Destiny'

Longtime Beck-watchers said he has always made references to his faith journey, his conversion from Catholicism to Mormonism, his crediting God with saving him from drug and alcohol abuse, professional obscurity and "friendlessness." But in the run-up to Saturday's rally, Beck talked publicly and privately about God working through him, calling a pre-rally event Friday "Divine Destiny" and lining up evangelical pastor John Hagee and other religious leaders to appear with him.

"I'm a little nervous about that kind of talk," said Janet Mefferd, a nationally syndicated Christian talk show host who said most callers Monday wanted to talk about Beck. "I know he means well and loves this country, but he doesn't know enough about theology to know what kind of effect he's having. Christians are hearing something different than what he thinks he's saying."

Although he doesn't consider Mormons to be Christians, Land said he agrees with Beck's basic premise that American society must be "rebuilt from the bottom up." Land accepted an invitation to be part of a group of more than 200 clergy members whom Beck calls his "Black Robed Regiment," a reference to pastors from the Revolutionary War who stirred up opposition to colonial rule.

Asked who would be considered conservative Christian leaders today - with Graham in his 90s and the recent death of Jerry Falwell - Land said that "leaders are leaders because people follow them. Obviously, Glenn Beck is a leader. He's in a category by himself. He's not a minister, he's not a politician."

Conservative Christian leaders of the future, he said, are less likely to be clergy members, because it's harder to be an overt partisan and keep your tax-exempt status. Among those considered top leaders, he said, are former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R).

This isn't the first time Beck's faith has been scrutinized. Prominent Mormons have occasionally criticized him as being an entertainer, not a theologian. After an interview in 2008 with Focus on the Family, the article was pulled because some of the group's supporters thought it was wrongly validating his conversion experience.

Is Glenn Beck's rise good for Mormonism?

By Felicia Sonmez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 2, 2010; 11:08 PM

Like conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Stephen Owens is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His in-laws traveled from Utah to Washington last weekend to join Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

Owens, however, said he has always "kind of rolled my eyes" at Beck's views.

And when the Salt Lake City lawyer read that Beck publicly questioned President Obama's "version of Christianity" the day after the rally, he was so angry that he wrote a letter to the local newspaper.

"I think it's arrogant of anyone to say whether someone is a Christian or not," said Owens, a 42-year-old Democrat. "My view of that is, if someone says, 'I follow the teachings of Jesus Christ,' then they're Christian, and who am I to say, 'No, you're not,' let alone [to] the president of our country? I was offended at that."

Owens's comments reflect the mixed opinions that members of the Mormon Church have of Beck's higher profile. Some see his rise as a sign of Mormonism going mainstream, while others worry that he is a divisive figure who does not represent Mormon values.

Michael Otterson, managing director of public affairs for the church, said that opinion of Beck is just as divided among Mormons as it is elsewhere.

"Views on Glenn Beck would be right across the spectrum," he said. "It depends on where individual Latter-day Saints are. Some would embrace him completely and others would no doubt be at odds."

Otterson also noted that there are more than 6 million Mormons in the United States and that prominent Mormons in the political arena run the ideological gamut - from Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R).

"It really underscores that members of the church are free to have their separate political views and express them whatever way they like," Otterson said, adding that Beck "would be the very first person to say that he does not speak for the church."

Philip Barlow, the Arrington chair of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University, said that Beck is "something of a polarizing figure" in the Mormon community.

Barlow noted that Beck's statement that the Constitution is an "inspired document," his calls for limited government and his emphasis on not exiling God from the public sphere "have considerable sympathy in Mormonism."

But he added that Beck's claim that social justice is "a code word for Nazism and fascism" as well as his some of his more inflammatory remarks about his political adversaries have turned off some members of the church.

"One wouldn't describe Glenn Beck as always being civil in his descriptions of his opponents," Barlow said, noting that the Mormon Church recently issued a statement calling for "civil discourse" on immigration.

Mormons have faced considerable obstacles when it comes to politics and perceptions among the American public. A Time magazine poll released last week showed that 29 percent of Americans hold unfavorable views of Mormons, compared with 43 percent who had unfavorable views of Muslims, 17 percent who felt unfavorably toward Catholics and 13 percent who viewed Jews unfavorably.

During Romney's 2008 presidential bid, some viewed his Mormon faith as a liability. A Pew survey at the time showed that 25 percent of Americans - including 36 percent of evangelical Republicans - expressed reservations about voting for a Mormon for president.

And while Mormons consider themselves Christians, key tenets of the Mormon Church are disputed by mainstream Christian denominations - a disparity that critics say adds to the irony of Beck questioning another person's Christian faith.

The Mormon Church recently began an advertising campaign in nine markets nationwide featuring 30-second TV spots in which members of the church talk about their lives in an attempt to dispel myths.

There are more than a dozen Mormon members of Congress from across the political spectrum, from Reid on the left to Sens. Orrin G. Hatch and Robert F. Bennett - both Republicans from Utah - on the right. But Beck, whose Washington rally last weekend drew upward of 87,000 people, may be the highest-profile Mormon on the national stage.

In public appearances and on his Fox News show, he has made religion a central part of his message, although he rarely refers to his Mormon faith. (One such mention came in the "Fox News Sunday" appearance last week during which he took aim at Obama's religious beliefs.)

Barlow also said it is possible that as Beck's profile rises, so, too, will the views that Mormonism is synonymous with Beck's brand of conservatism.

As Barlow put it, "There might be a few maverick Harry Reids out there," but ultimately moderates and those on the left "are going to be seeing Mormonism running somewhere between Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck."

Owens expressed concern that some may come to see Beck as representing the views of most Mormons.

"I know he doesn't speak for the Mormon Church. And yet everyone seems to know he's LDS," Owens said. "And when he's so outspoken religiously, that bothers me, because I'm worried people in the public will mesh the two - Mormonism and him as a political commentator."

Owens said that should Romney run for president in 2012, Beck could prove to be more of a liability.

"If I were Mitt Romney, I would think that Glenn Beck would be hurting my cause, because presidential candidates want to be liked, and he's so divisive," Owens said.

He added: "I wouldn't want to be associated with someone who's such a controversial figure."

My name is Glenn Beck, and I need help

By Kathleen Parker
The Washington Pos
Wednesday, September 1, 2010; A17

Despite all the words spilled in evaluating Glenn Beck's tent-less revival last weekend, the real meaning may have been hiding in plain sight.

Beck's "Restoring Honor" gathering on the Mall was right out of the Alcoholics Anonymous playbook. It was a 12-step program distilled to a few key words, all lifted from a prayer delivered from the Lincoln Memorial: healing, recovery and restoration.

Saturday's Beckapalooza was yet another step in Beck's own personal journey of recovery. He may as well have greeted the crowd of his fellow disaffected with:

"Hi. My name is Glenn, and I'm messed up."

Beck's history of alcoholism and addiction is familiar to any who follow him. He has made no secret of his past and is quick to make fun of himself. As he once said: "You can get rich making fun of me. I know. I've made a lot of money making fun of me."

Self-mockery -- and cash -- seems to come easily to him.

Any cursory search of Beck quotes also reveals the language of the addict:

-- "It is still morning in America. It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding, hung-over, vomiting-for-four-hours kind of morning in America."

-- "I have not heard people in the Republican Party yet admit that they have a problem."

-- "You know, we all have our inner demons. I, for one -- I can't speak for you, but I'm on the verge of moral collapse at any time. It can happen by the end of the show."

Indeed. After the hangover comes admission of the addiction, followed by surrender to a higher power and acknowledgment that one is always fallen.

These may be random quotes, but they can't be considered isolated or out of context. For Beck, addiction has been a defining part of his life, and recovery is a process inseparable from the Glenn Beck Program. His emotional, public breakdowns are replicated in AA meetings in towns and cities every day.

Taking others along for the ride, a.k.a. evangelism, is also part of the cure. The healed often cannot remain healed without helping others find their way. Beck, who vaulted from radio host to political-televangelist, now has taken another step in his ascendancy -- to national crusader for faith, hope and charity.

It's an easy sell. Meanwhile, Beck has built a movement framed by two ideas that are unassailable: God and country. Throw in some Mom and apple pie, and you've got a picnic of patriotism and worship.

Wait, did somebody say . . . Mom???

Sister Sarah, come on down!

Yes, Mother Superior made an appearance. Sarah Palin, whom Beck sainted a few months ago during an interview in which he declared her one of the few people who can save America, came to the Mall not to praise politics but to honor our troops.

Palin is the mother of a soldier, after all, and God bless her, and him, and all those who have served. Unassailable. As Palin said, whatever else you might say about her, she did raise a combat soldier. "You can't take that away from me."

Who you? Oh, that's right, The Media. Never mind that Beck is one of the richest members of the media. Or that Palin has banked millions primarily because The Media can't get enough of her. But what's an exorcism without a demon? And who better to cast into the nether regions than the guys lugging camera lights?

Covering all his bases, Beck invoked the ghost of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who stood in the same spot 47 years ago to deliver his most famous speech. Where King had a dream, Beck has a nightmare: "It seems as darkness begins to grow again, faith is in short supply."

Really? When did that happen? Because it seems that people talk about God all the time these days. Even during the heyday of Billy Graham, most Americans could get through 16 or so waking hours without feeling compelled to declare where they stood on the deity.

And the darkness? Creeping communism brought to us by President you-know-who. Conspiracy theories and paranoia are not unfamiliar to those who have wrestled the demon alcohol.

Like other successful revivalists -- and giving the devil his due -- Beck is right about many things. Tens of thousands joined him in Washington and watch him each night on television for a reason. But he also is messianic and betrays the grandiosity of the addict.

Let's hope Glenn gets well soon.

kathleenparker@washpost.com

At Mideast peace talk, a lopsided table

By Hussein Agha and Robert Malley
The Washington Post
Thursday, September 2, 2010; A23

Israelis and Palestinians will be sitting at the same table on Thursday, but much more separates them than the gulf between their substantive positions. Staggering asymmetries between the two sides could seriously imperil the talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is the head of a stable state with the ability to deliver on his commitments. Celebrations of supposed institution-building notwithstanding, Palestinians have no robust central authority. Their territory is divided between the West Bank and Gaza. On their own, Palestinians would find it difficult to implement an agreement, however much they might wish to. Israel controls all material assets; Palestinians at best can offer intangible declarations and promises.

Netanyahu operates within a domestic consensus. On issue after issue -- acceptance of a two-state solution; insistence on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; rejection of a full settlement freeze including Jerusalem; refusal of preconditions for negotiations -- his stances resonate with the Israeli people. Neither the right, from which he comes, nor the left, whose peace aspirations he is pursuing, denies him the mandate to negotiate. Netanyahu is heading on his own terms to negotiations he has demanded for 20 months; Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is being dragged there without any of his preconditions having been met.

The Palestinian leadership has never been more vulnerable. Participation in direct talks was opposed by virtually every Palestinian political organization aside from Fatah, whose support was lethargic. Abbas's decision to come to Washington is viewed skeptically even by those who back him. Netanyahu's is supported even by those who oppose him.

Palestinian views are well known. There is little to no distinction between their public, opening and final positions. Yet no one truly knows the Israeli stance. Netanyahu can start with maximalist positions and then climb down, exuding flexibility next to what inevitably will be couched as Palestinian obstinacy. Palestinians are likely to be frustrated, and the atmosphere poisoned.

Palestinian negotiators have logged countless hours on final-status questions since the 1990s. The reverse is true on the Israeli side. From Netanyahu down, only one leading figure has seriously tackled permanent-status issues, and it is unclear what role Defense Minister Ehud Barak may play. This disparity should favor the Palestinians; the experienced trumps the novice. But they will also be prisoners of their well-worn outlook, whereas the Israelis will be free to introduce new ideas. Yet again, Palestinians will confront the maddening task of beginning from scratch a process they have undergone on multiple occasions.

Neither Israel's mounting isolation nor its considerable reliance on U.S. assistance has jeopardized its ability to make autonomous choices, whereas the Palestinian leadership's decision-making capacity has shriveled. Most recent Palestinian decisions have been made in conformity with international demands, against the leadership's instinctive desires and in clear opposition to popular aspirations. Despite such deference, Palestinian leaders cannot count on international support. They feel betrayed by Arab allies and let down by Washington. In contrast, Israel has defied the Obama administration without endangering close ties to Washington. Palestinians will have to take into account the views of Arab and Muslim states; Israel can negotiate by and for itself, without reference to an outside party.

What happens should negotiations fail? The status quo, though sub-optimal, presents no imminent danger to Israel. What Israelis want from an agreement is something they have learned either to live without (Palestinian recognition) or to provide for themselves (security). The demographic threat many invoke as a reason to act -- the possibility that Arabs soon might outnumber Jews, forcing Israel to choose between remaining Jewish or democratic -- is exaggerated. Israel already has separated itself from Gaza. In the future, it could unilaterally relinquish areas of the West Bank, further diminishing prospects of an eventual Arab majority. Because Israelis have a suitable alternative, they lack a sense of urgency. The Palestinians, by contrast, have limited options and desperately need an agreement.

In any event, Abbas will return to a fractured, fractious society. If he reaches a deal, many will ask in whose name he was bartering away Palestinian rights. If negotiations fail, most will accuse him of once more having been duped. If Netanyahu comes back with an accord, he will be hailed as a historic leader. His constituency will largely fall in line; the left will have no choice but to salute. If the talks collapse, his followers will thank him for standing firm, while his critics are likely in due course to blame the Palestinians. Abbas will be damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Netanyahu will thrive if he does and survive if he doesn't. One loses even if he wins; the other wins even if he loses. There is no greater asymmetry than that.

Hussein Agha, a senior associate member of St. Antony's College at Oxford University, has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian affairs for four decades. Robert Malley is Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group and was special assistant to the president for Arab-Israeli affairs from 1998 to 2001.

As Mideast talks begin, Clinton urges Israelis, Palestinians to seek 'future of peace'

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 2, 2010; 11:10 PM

The Obama administration formally innaugurated its foray into Middle East peacemaking on Thursday, bringing together the Israeli and Palestinian leaders for face-to-face talks and securing their pledge to meet every two weeks to pursue an end to the decades-old conflict.

At a State Department ceremony, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton evoked a history of failed efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, warning that these negotiations will be no easier. Her husband's Democratic administration and that of Jimmy Carter invested extensive time and prestige to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, as did Republicans George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Although some came close, none succeeded.

Clinton encouraged Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who flanked her at the head of a large, U-shaped table, to work through the "sabotage" and other challenges that will probably batter the talks in the year ahead.

"By being here today, you each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change and moving toward a future of peace and dignity that only you can create," Clinton said. "So thank you - thank you for your courage and commitment."

Clinton's remarks began what is planned to be a year-long negotiation to resolve the conflict's most vexing issues, including the status of Jerusalem, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes inside Israel and the future Palestinian state's final borders.

Israelis and Palestinians broke off direct talks in December 2008, and the Obama administration has spent more than a year working to bring the two parties back together.

But many obstacles to a peace agreement remain, and President Obama emphasized Wednesday that "years of mistrust will not disappear overnight." Administration officials, along with the Middle East leaders who have traveled to Washington this week to launch the talks, have sought to manage expectations while also injecting a measure of urgency into the process.

The Palestinian national movement is deeply divided between Abbas's secular Fatah movement and Hamas, the armed Islamist group that killed four Israelis in the West Bank on the eve of new talks. Hamas rejects Israel's right to exist and opposes peace talks.

Netanyahu is managing a fragile governing coalition that includes parties ideologically opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on territory they claim as the Jewish ancestral homeland.

Within weeks, he must decide whether to extend a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank. Some of his coalition partners have threatened to leave his government, potentially collapsing it, if he does. Abbas has said he might withdraw from the nascent peace talks if Netanyahu doesn't.

The ceremony of the past two days now gives way to what Obama called the "hard work" ahead, facilitated by the United States.

"We believe, Prime Minister and President, that you can succeed, and we understand that this is in the national security interest of the United States that you do so," Clinton said. "But we cannot and we will not impose a solution."

After the morning remarks, Abbas and Netanyahu met with Clinton and Obama's special envoy for Middle East peace, George J. Mitchell, in the secretary of state's outer office. Afterward, the two leaders met alone for an hour and a half.

An Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because both sides have pledged to keep the talks confidential, said the first meeting went "fairly well." He said Netanyahu and Abbas are determined to "extend a certain commitment to the president at the moment," noting the time and effort that Obama has put into reviving the direct talks.

"He's put a lot of political capital into this, and to see it blow up in a fortnight's time would be very damaging," the official said. "I think both leaders understand this."

Mitchell said the leaders agreed to meet Sept. 14-15 in the Middle East, although the location has yet to be determined. Clinton and Mitchell plan to attend those talks.

Abbas and Netanyahu pledged to meet every two weeks after that to maintain momentum behind the negotiations, which both men have said could be completed within a year.

Mitchell said the leaders decided, as a first stage, to draft a "framework agreement" that will outline the compromises each side must be ready to make to reach a peace agreement.

"You cannot separate process from substance in these negotiations," Mitchell said.

In his opening remarks at the State Department, Netanyahu said, just as Abbas expects Israel to recognize an independent Palestinian state, "We expect you to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people."

He called such "mutual recognition" - not only of Israel's right to exist, but to exist as a Jewish state - an "indispensable" element of a final agreement.

About 1 million Israelis, or about 20 percent of the population, are of Arab descent. Abbas has previously resisted the idea of recognizing Israel's Jewish character as part of negotiations, arguing that recognizing its right to exist as a nation is enough. The Palestine Liberation Organization, which Abbas heads, recognized "the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security" in 1993.

Abbas, who negotiated several earlier Palestinian agreements with Israel, said the two sides are "not starting from scratch" this round. He called on Netanyahu to "move forward with [Israel's] commitment to end all settlement activities and completely lift the embargo over the Gaza Strip," where Hamas is in power.

Clinton and Netanyahu both cited the recent shooting attack in the West Bank as a reminder of the threats that negotiations will face in the coming months, as groups such as Hamas seek to disrupt the process.

Addressing one of Netanyahu's most pressing concerns, Abbas said security "is vital for both of us, and we cannot allow for anyone to do anything that would undermine your security and our security."

In briefing reporters, Mitchell said one thing he learned from studying previous U.S.-mediated Middle East peace efforts is that "at least in a couple of instances, time ran out."

Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush began serious pushes for peace with a year left in office. Clinton was still attempting to forge a deal as a lame duck.

"This president, I believe, will succeed," Mitchell said. "But, as he said yesterday, neither success nor failure is predetermined or guaranteed, but it isn't going to be because time ran out at the end."

The broadening backlash against American Islam.

Creep the Faith
The broadening backlash against American Islam.
By William Saletan
Slate
Posted Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010, at 9:20 AM ET

Two months ago, Rick Lazio, the leading Republican candidate for governor of New York, challenged his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, to investigate a proposed Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero. When Cuomo replied that the issue was religious freedom, Lazio insisted that his concerns were strictly about who would fund the project and what its imam had said about 9/11. "It's outrageous, honestly, that Andrew Cuomo is raising [the] issue of religion here," Lazio told a TV interviewer. "This is about security."

Last week, Lazio began running a new ad. It concluded with these words: "Call Andrew Cuomo and tell him a Ground Zero mosque is wrong."

A Ground Zero mosque. Not a mosque funded by radicals. Not a mosque run by somebody who said something controversial about 9/11. Not a mosque that recruits jihadists. A mosque—any mosque—near Ground Zero is wrong.

This is the latest frontier in the expanding campaign against the mosque. The initial allegations about money and extremism have receded to the background. In their place, candidates around the country are drawing a bright, categorical line against an Islamic house of worship near Ground Zero. It is a line based entirely on religion.

"Ground Zero is the wrong place for a mosque," says Rick Scott, the Republican nominee for governor of Florida, in a TV ad. "The 9/11 site is hallowed ground, and it is too painful and divisive to build a mosque there," says Roy Barnes, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia. "It is insensitive and disrespectful to locate a mosque/Islamic center at a site that was damaged on 9/11," says Rep. John Shimkus, Republican of Missouri. "The construction of a mosque near Ground Zero should not, and must not happen," says Steve Chabot, the former Republican congressman running for his old seat in Ohio. "Building a mosque near Ground Zero is insensitive, an affront to the victims of 9/11, and it lacks respect for the general public's feelings," says Richard Hanna, a Republican candidate for Congress in upstate New York. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican running for Congress, says President Obama "is wrong to offend the memories of the September 11th fallen by voicing support for building an Islamic mosque on Ground Zero."

The GOP's U.S. Senate candidates are nearly unanimous. Carly Fiorina of California, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Linda McMahon of Connecticut, and Len Britton of Vermont all emphasize the mosque's location as their concern. "It is divisive and disrespectful to build a mosque next to the site where 3,000 innocent people were murdered at the hands of Islamic extremism," says Marco Rubio, the party's nominee in Florida. "It is disrespectful to the families who have lost loved ones on 9/11 to build a mosque on that sacred ground," says Rob Portman, the nominee in Ohio. "It is provocative in the extreme to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero," says the campaign of Pat Toomey, the nominee in Pennsylvania. "It is insensitive and inappropriate to build a mosque near the ground zero site," says Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia. "I do not support the building of a mosque at Ground Zero," says Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says "the prospect of a mosque right near this site of reverence and respect for lost loved ones from the attack shows a serious lack of sensitivity. In fact, the majority of the country is strongly opposed to building a mosque at the site of the most tragic terrorist attack on America."

Vitter is right about the polls. In the latest survey, released Tuesday by Quinnipiac University, a majority of New York State voters, 53 percent to 39 percent, agrees that "because of the sensitivities of 9/11 relatives, Muslims should not be allowed to build the mosque near Ground Zero." Yes, you read that correctly: A mosque should not be allowed. So when Republicans go around saying that "the general public's feelings" and "the majority of the country" should govern the mosque dispute, they're talking about a majority that's willing to mess not just with the mosque, but with the Constitution.

And they're flirting with something much more dangerous. In New York, a man was indicted Monday for allegedly slashing a taxi driver on Aug. 25 after finding out the driver was a Muslim. In Tennessee, FBI agents are investigating a suspicious fire, apparently set Friday night, that damaged construction equipment at the planned site of a local Islamic center. In Seattle, a man was arrested last week for allegedly punching a convenience store clerk in the head and telling him, "You're not even American, you're al-Qaida." And last week, a brick was thrown at the window of an Islamic center in California. Outside the building, somebody posted a warning: "No Temple for the god of terrorism at Ground Zero."

Ground Zero was just the beginning. The case against a mosque there has shifted from extremism to Islam. Now Republicans say their no-mosque rule extends only to Ground Zero, or three blocks from Ground Zero, or whatever exclusion zone the majority feels is appropriate. But the fire of enmity has already spread from terrorism to religion. I don't think New York can contain it.

Clues to Obama's Muslim Problem

Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience Managing Editor
LiveScience.com
Wed Sep 1, 2010

Perhaps the belief that President Obama is a Muslim has nothing to do with him and everything to do with us, a new study suggests.

While some conservative groups have continued to suggest the president is a Muslim, and polls have shown many agree with the Obama-Muslim belief, scientists are trying to tease apart reasons for the erroneous link between the Islamic faith and Barack Obama and what that belief means.

"There's a general tendency to think, 'Well, people are ignorant,'" study researcher Spee Kosloff, visiting assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University, told LiveScience. "We've had plenty of time to get informed, and our research suggests there's something in addition" to ignorance, he said.

The new research, which involved mostly white non-Muslim college students, showed that people are more likely to accept falsehoods like this one when subtle clues remind them of ways in which Obama is different from them, whether due to race, social class or other ideological differences.

"Careless or biased media outlets are largely responsible for the propagation of these falsehoods, which catch on like wildfire," Kosloff said. "And then social differences can motivate acceptance of these lies."

In one study, 64 college students (33 Obama supporters and the rest John McCain supporters) had to decide whether or not a string of letters flashed on a computer screen made up a real word by pushing one of two keys. Before that string of letters came up, either "McCain" or "Obama" flashed on the screen, followed by either a non-word, neutral word, Muslim-related word (such as "Islam") or senility-related word (such as "dementia").

Obama supporters primed to think about McCain identified senility terms more often than those primed to think about Obama. McCain supporters identified Muslim terms more quickly after the Obama prime than the McCain prime. The results suggest supporters of Obama and McCain held implicit associations between the opposing candidate and words related to "smear campaigns."

In another study, participants read false blog reports arguing that Obama is a Muslim or a socialist, or that McCain is senile. Before reading the blogs, participants had either circled their age group or their race. There was also a control group not primed to think about race or age at all.

On average, McCain supporters said there is a 56 percent likelihood Obama is a Muslim. But among those who were primed to think about race, the likelihood jumped to 77 percent. Since the participants were primarily white, Kosloff said this shows that simply thinking about a social category that differentiated participants from Obama was enough to get them to believe the smear.

Similarly, participants undecided about the presidential candidates said there is a 43 percent chance McCain is senile - a number that increased to 73 percent when they were primed with age. Since they were college students, thinking about age equated with thinking about a social category that differentiated them from McCain.

Undecided participants who read about Obama being a socialist believed the smear about 25 percent of the time - a number that jumped to 62 percent when they were primed with race.

"Even though being a socialist has nothing to do with race, irrationally they tied the two together," Kosloff said.

The findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Iraq war in figures

BBC
1 September 2010

All US troops must be out of Iraq by the end of next year

The US has formally ended its combat operations in Iraq, marking a new phase in the seven-year conflict which has cost billions of dollars and many thousands of lives.

The onus of ensuring Iraq's security and rebuilding the devastated country now rests with Iraqi leaders, even though they have yet to form a new government almost six months after an election.

Almost every figure related to the war is disputed, with none more keenly debated than the total number of Iraqi deaths. This is a summary of some of the key numbers and the arguments surrounding them.

CASUALTIES

Over 4,000 US service personnel have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom since the invasion started on 19 March 2003.

At 26 August 2010 the latest figure from the US Department of Defense stood at 4,421 of which 3,492 were killed in action. Almost 32,000 have been wounded in action.

The UK has lost 179 servicemen and women, of which 136 were killed in action.

Continue reading the main story

Other coalition countries account for 139 deaths according to the icasualties website.

While coalition troop fatalities are reasonably well documented, deaths of Iraqi civilians and combatants are more difficult to track because of a lack of reliable official figures. All counts and estimates of Iraqi deaths are highly disputed.

The organisation Iraq Body Count has been collating civilian deaths using cross-checked media reports and other figures such as morgue records.

According to IBC there have been between 97,461 and 106,348 civilian deaths up to July 2010.

The most bloody period for civilian deaths was the month of invasion, March 2003, in which IBC says 3,977 ordinary Iraqis lost their lives. A further 3,437 were killed in April of that year.

The group says the difference between its higher and lower total figures is caused by discrepancies in reports about how many deaths resulted from an incident and whether they were civilians or combatants.

Other reports and surveys have resulted in a wide range of estimates of Iraqi deaths. The UN-backed Iraqi Family Health Survey estimated 151,000 violent deaths in the period March 2003 - June 2006.

Meanwhile, The Lancet journal in 2006 published an estimate of 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths related to the war of which 601,027 were caused by violence.

Both this and the Family Health Survey include deaths of Iraqi combatants as well as civilians.

An unknown number of civilian contractors have also been killed in Iraq. Icasualties publishes what it describes as a partial list with the figure of 467.

COST

The financial scale of the war is another area in which figures vary widely.

The respected and non-partisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the US will have spent almost $802bn on funding the war by the end of fiscal year 2011, with $747.6bn already appropriated.

However, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard's Linda Bilmes put the true cost at $3 trillion once additional impacts on the US budget and economy are taken into account.

The UK has funded its part in the conflict from the Treasury Reserve Fund which is extra money on top of the normal Ministry of Defence budget.

Whitehall figures released in June 2010 put the cost of British funding of the Iraq conflict at £9.24bn ($14.32bn), the vast majority of which was for the military but which also included £557m in aid.

A summary of how the war was funded was also presented to the UK's Iraq Inquiry in January 2010.

TROOP LEVELS

US troops led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, in coalition with the UK and other nations.

The numbers of US "boots on the ground" have mostly fluctuated between 100-150,000 apart from during the period of the "surge" in 2007.

This was President George W Bush's drive to improve security in the country, especially in the capital Baghdad, by sending in 30,000 extra troops.

Continue reading the main story

UK troop levels in Iraq

• End of May 2003: 18,000
• End of May 2004: 8,600
• End of May 2005: 8,500
• End of May 2006: 7,200
• End of May 2007: 5,500
• End of May 2008: 4,100 (in southern Iraq)
• End of May 2009: 4,100 (in southern Iraq)
• End of Jan 2010: 150

Source: MoD

Barack Obama made withdrawal from Iraq a key pledge in his presidential election campaign of 2008 and troop numbers have steadily fallen since he took office in January 2009.

On 19 August 2010 the last US combat brigade left the country, leaving behind 50,000 military personnel involved in the transition process, who are due to withdraw by the end of 2011.

British forces peaked at 46,000 during the invasion phase and then fell away year on year to 4,100 in May 2009 when the UK formally withdrew from Iraq.

There are now around 150 British military personnel serving in the country with a further 1,500 assigned to the operation but not in Iraq itself (such as Royal Navy staff in the Gulf).

DISPLACED PEOPLE

Sectarian violence in the conflict began to grow from early 2005. But the destruction of an important Shia shrine in February 2006 saw attacks between Sunni and Shia militias increase dramatically. This caused many Iraqi families to abandon their homes and move to other areas within the country or to flee abroad.

The International Organization for Migration, IOM, which monitors numbers of displaced families, estimates that in the four years 2006-2010, as many as 1.6 million Iraqis [pdf] were internally displaced, representing 5.5% of the population.

Of that total, nearly 400,000 people had returned by mid 2010, primarily to Baghdad, Diyala, Ninewa, and Anbar provinces, according to the IOM.

Direct talks déjà vu

Stephen M. Walt
FOREIGN POLICY
Monday, August 30, 2010

President Obama is hosting a dinner for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sept. 1, in order to kick off the new round of direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. As regular readers know, I don't think this effort will go anywhere, because the two sides are too far apart and because the Obama administration won't have the political will to push them towards the necessary compromises.

Furthermore, there are now a few hints that the Obama administration is about to repeat the same mistakes that doomed the Clinton administration's own Middle East peacemaking efforts and the Bush administration's even more half-hearted attempts (i.e., the "Road Map" and the stillborn Annapolis summit). Last week, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth provided a summary of a conference call between Obama Middle East advisors Dennis Ross, Dan Shapiro, and David Hale and the leaders of a number of influential American Jewish organizations. According to the article (whose accuracy I cannot vouch for), the goal of the direct talks will be a "framework agreement" between the two sides that would then be implemented over a period of up to ten years.

Excuse me, but haven't we seen this movie before, and isn't the last reel a bummer? This idea sounds a lot like the Oslo Accords, which also laid out a "framework" for peace, but deferred the hard issues to the end and repeatedly missed key deadlines. Or maybe it's another version of the Road Map/Annapolis summit, which offered deadlines and bold talk and led precisely nowhere. Or perhaps what they have in mind is a "shelf agreement" -- a piece of paper that sits "on the shelf" until conditions are right (i.e., forever). It is this sort of charade that has led veteran observers like Henry Siegman to denounce the long-running peace process as a "scam," and Siegman is hardly alone in that view.

Here's the basic problem: Unless the new "framework" is very detailed and specific about the core issues -- borders, the status of East Jerusalem, the refugee issue, etc., -- we will once again have a situation where spoilers on both sides have both an incentive and the opportunity to do whatever they can to disrupt the process. And even if it were close to a detailed final-status agreement, a ten-year implementation schedule provides those same spoilers (or malevolent third parties) with all the time they will need to try to derail the deal. I can easily imagine Netanyahu and other hardliners being happy with this arrangement, as they would be able to keep expanding settlements (either openly or covertly) while the talks drag on, which is what has happened ever since Oslo (and under both Likud and Labor governments). Ironically, some members of Hamas might secretly welcome this outcome too, because it would further discredit moderates like Abbas and Fayyad. And there is little reason to think the United States would do a better job of managing the process than it did in 1990s.

The great paradox of the negotiations is that United States is clearly willing and able to put great pressure on both Fatah and Hamas (albeit in different ways), even though that is like squeezing a dry lemon by now. Fatah has already recognized Israel's existence and has surrendered any claims to 78 percent of original Mandate Palestine; all they are bargaining over now is the share they will get of the remaining 22 percent. Moreover, that 22 percent is already dotted with Israeli settlements (containing about 500,000 people), and carved up by settler-only bypass roads, checkpoints, fences, and walls. And even if they were to get an independent state on all of that remaining 22 percent (which isn't likely) they will probably have to agree to some significant constraints on Palestinian sovereignty and they are going to have to compromise in some fashion on the issue of the "right of return." The obvious point is that when you've got next to nothing, you've got very little left to give up, no matter how hard Uncle Sam twists your arm.

At this point, the main concessions have to come from Israel, simply because it is the occupying power whose presence in the West Bank and whose physical control over Gaza makes a Palestinian state impossible. Some readers may think this characterization is unfair, but the issue isn't so much one of "fairness" as one of simple practicality. How do you possibly create "two states for two peoples" if Israel doesn't withdraw from virtually all of the West Bank?

As a few Israeli leaders have recognized, Israel can preserve its democratic and Jewish character and avoid becoming an apartheid state only by allowing the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own. Moreover, given the inherent disparity of the basic outcome (78 percent vs. 22 percent), the rest of the deal cannot be Carthaginian. By necessity, it will mean sharing Jerusalem in some fashion and withdrawing tens of thousands of settlers from the West Bank (even if some existing settlements are accommodated via mutual land swaps and border modifications).

Indeed, the more that I think about it, the more baffled I am. Why has Obama made such a high-stakes gamble with so little prospect of real success? By now he must know that he won't be able to push Netanyahu very hard without facing pressure from AIPAC and Co. and squawks from influential Democratic Party insiders. By now he must realize that Netanyahu doesn't see himself as the Israeli De Gaulle (who got France out of Algeria), or the Israeli De Klerk (who ended white rule in South Africa). By now Obama should also have a realistic sense of the likelihood that Egypt or Saudi Arabia will help him impose a one-sided deal (they won't), and he may even suspect that excluding Hamas completely isn't likely to work either. Well, if any or all of this is true, then why is he committing his own prestige and getting everyone's hopes up again? Isn't the climb-down he had to pull after the Cairo speech enough damage for one term?

My guess -- and that's all it is -- is that Obama is doing this because he said repeatedly that he'd do something, and because he also knows that the conflict continues to damage America's strategic interests and it isn't going to get better if the United States does nothing. Plus, his natural political instinct is to play the long game. Like Dickens's Mr. Micawber, he is hoping that "something will turn up." I hope he's right and I am wrong, but when something "turns up" in that part of the world, it's usually an unpleasant surprise. In any case, it's hard for me to see this as wise statecraft at this moment in history.

But you don't have to believe me. Instead, here's a selection of things you can read if you'd like to get some other views.

You might start with Martin Indyk's more optimistic take in the New York Times last week. Indyk certainly knows a lot about how not to make peace (having been a key player in the Clinton administration's ill-fated stewardship of the Oslo process), but he now believes "the negotiating environment is better suited to peacemaking today than it has been at any point in the last decade. The prospects for peace depend now on the willpower of the leaders."

Well, maybe, but the "willpower of the leaders" is a pretty thin reed upon which to rest one's hopes, especially when you consider the domestic obstacles that all three leaders face (and that Indyk downplays or ignores). Indyk also assumes that Netanyahu genuinely wants a fair deal, as opposed to either a set of dismembered Palestinian "statelets" (which is as far as he's gone in the past) or maybe just the illusion of a peace process. One can't rule that possibility out completely, of course, but there's no hard evidence that Netanyahu has changed his views. Nor does Indyk suggest that the United States use its considerable leverage to force a deal; all we get is a call for Obama to exercise skillful "statesmanship." And as Rabbi Brant Rosen notes here, there are some pretty profound omissions in Indyk's account.

For some practical suggestions on how to make progress, see Brian Katulis and David Avital's "Learning from Past Middle East Mistakes," at Politico. I wouldn't say they are wildly optimistic, but they do see certain positive features in the present situation and they outline how Obama & Co. could use them to avoid failure. So if you're looking for a more upbeat assessment than mine, the Indyk and Katulis & Avital pieces are a good place to start.

For a gloomier view, check out Josh Ruebner "Top Ten reasons for skepticism" on the Mondoweiss website. And if you still retain shreds of hope, follow that up with David Gardner's even darker reflections from the Financial Times, where he refers to the entire peace process as "poisoned."

For a neoconservative take, you can read Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard, who says that the people who really need to be protected from the peace process are the Israeli settlers who have been occupying the West Bank for decades. As Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress pointed out in a telling riposte: one of the main motivations behind the whole settlement enterprise was to "create facts" on the ground, so that it would be difficult-to-impossible to remove them later. Ironically, Barnes's paean of sympathy for the settlers merely highlights the domestic constraints that may make it even harder to craft a deal than Ruebner and Gardner and I think.

Next, be sure to look at Ali Abunimah's Sunday New York Times op-ed on the dangers of excluding Hamas from the peace process, where he makes an interesting comparison between the U.S. approach to the peace process in Northern Ireland and the very different approach that it has adopted in the Middle East. (And while you're at it, check out FP colleague Jim Traub's rather different but no less pessimistic discussion of the Northern Ireland analogy here.) I think engaging Hamas is a trickier business than Abunimah does, and I've long thought that it would be easier to do this if a serious peace process were in motion and Hamas was afraid of missing the boat (a point that Indyk also makes). But his broader argument is probably correct, and kudos to the Times editors for running it. Alas, because reaching out to Hamas is the last thing Obama will do at this point, there's even less reason to think that the new talks will get us anywhere.

Finally, I'd like to second FP colleague Marc Lynch's tweeted endorsement of Robert Malley and Peter Harling's "Beyond Moderates and Militants: How Obama Can Chart a New Course in the Middle East" in the latest Foreign Affairs. It's a fascinating article, and I'll need to read it again before I grasp all of its implications. But their main message strikes me as on-the-money at first reading: U.S. Middle East policy reflects an outdated conception of the region as divided between two camps: hardline, anti-American radicals and pro-American moderates. Instead, the policy choices of most actors in the region reflect more complicated calculations of interest rather than rigid religious or ideological categories. (Needless to say, I'd argue that means they are acting more-or-less the way a realist would expect). Malley and Harling recommend more flexible and pragmatic U.S. policies that take these new complexities into account, while retaining certain long-standing commitments: Money quotation:

The alternative is for the United States to play the role of conductor, coordinating the efforts of different nations even as it preserves its privileged ties to Israel and others. For example, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, together with Qatar and Turkey, could spearhead efforts to bring about Palestinian national reconciliation consistent with a continued U.S.-led peace process. Turkey, assuming that it mends its ties with Israel and maintains its newfound credibility in Arab countries, could serve as a channel to Hamas and Syria on peace talks or to Iran on the nuclear issue. Under the auspices of the United States, Iraq's Arab neighbors and Iran could reach a minimal consensus on Iraq's future aimed at maintaining Iraq's territorial unity, preserving its Arab identity, protecting Kurdish rights, and ensuring healthy, balanced relations between Baghdad and Tehran. Washington should intensify its efforts to resume and conclude peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, which would do far more to affect Tehran's calculations than several more rounds of UN sanctions. Syria also could be useful in reaching out to residual pockets of Sunni militants in Iraq."

Sounds right to me, and it would be a clear departure from our current approach. Don't forget that Malley was an advisor to Obama during the 2008 campaign, until he got dumped when his contacts with Hamas (undertaken as part of his non-governmental job at the International Crisis Group) were thought to be a electoral liability for Obama. Which tells you all you need to know about the prospects for a genuine breakthrough. Unfortunately.

Civil liberties groups challenge constitutionality of secret U.S. program to target terror suspects for killing

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 30, 2010; 7:13 PM

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the U.S. government's authority to target and kill U.S. citizens outside of war zones when they are suspected of involvement in terrorism.

The civil liberties groups sued in U.S. District Court in Washington after being retained by the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a radical U.S.-born cleric who is in hiding in Yemen.

The CIA placed Aulaqi on its list of suspected terrorists it is authorized to kill earlier this year; the cleric had been on a separate list of individuals targeted by the Joint Special Operations Command.

"The United States cannot simply execute people, including its own citizens, anywhere in the world based on its own say-so," Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a written statement. "That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law."

The groups said that the Constitution prohibits targeted killings absent a trial and due process, except as a last resort to prevent specific and imminent threats of death or serious injury.

As part of the suit, the groups have sought a preliminary injunction to halt the U.S. practice of targeting American citizens. Separately, they asked the court to order the government to disclose the standards under which it places individuals, including U.S. citizens, on target lists, noting that it remains unknown how many Americans or other people are on such lists.

"Whatever people think about the merits of the program, we think at a minimum Americans have a right to know under what circumstances the government has the right to impose the death penalty without charge or trial," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.

The public response to the Obama administration's extrajudicial targeting of terrorism suspects has so far been relatively muted, unlike the controversy generated by the Bush administration's efforts to detain enemy combatants without charges or trials.

But Jaffer said that both policies illustrate the ways in which the fight against al-Qaeda - which the government has said has no boundaries - threatens to undermine human rights.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Obama administration "is using every legal measure available to defeat al-Qaeda, and we will continue to do so as long as its forces pose a threat to this nation."

The Justice Department declined to comment on the specific allegations, but spokesman Matt Miller said Congress has authorized the use of "all necessary and appropriate force" against al-Qaeda and its allies.

"The U.S. is careful to ensure that all its operations used to prosecute the armed conflict against those forces, including lethal operations, comply with all applicable laws, including the laws of war," Miller said. "The government has the authority under domestic and international law, as well as the responsibility to its citizens, to use force to defend itself in a manner consistent with those laws."

U.S. authorities have said that Aulaqi played a direct operational role in the attempted bombing of a Northwest airliner en route to Detroit on Christmas Day. Intelligence officials think he is also increasingly involved in the operations of al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen.

The Treasury Department named Aulaqi a "global terrorist" on July 13, a designation that made it illegal for lawyers to assist the cleric without obtaining a license. The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit earlier this month to challenge the requirement that they obtain a license.

Within days, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a statement saying its policy was to broadly allow pro-bono legal services, and granted the groups specific licences to do so in Aulaqi's case.

Abbas, Palestinians should die: Israeli rabbi

Sun Aug 29, 2010

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An influential Israeli rabbi has said God should strike the Palestinians and their leader with a plague, calling for their death in a fiery sermon before Middle East peace talks set to begin next week.

"Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth," Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual head of the religious Shas party in Israel's government, said in a sermon late on Saturday, using Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's popular name.

"God should strike them and these Palestinians -- evil haters of Israel -- with a plague," the 89-year-old rabbi said in his weekly address to the faithful, excerpts of which were broadcast on Israeli radio on Sunday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from the comments and said Israel wanted to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians that would ensure good neighborly relations.

"The comments do not reflect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's view or the position of the government of Israel," Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

The Iraqi-born cleric has made similar remarks before, most notably in 2001, during a Palestinian uprising, when he called for Arabs' annihilation and said it was forbidden to be merciful to them.

He later said he was referring only to "terrorists" who attacked Israelis. In the 1990s, Yosef broke with other Orthodox Jewish leaders by voicing support for territorial compromise with the Palestinians.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Yosef's latest comments were tantamount to calling for "genocide against Palestinians." The rabbi's remarks, he said, were "an insult to all our efforts to advance the negotiations process."

Arriving at Netanyahu's office for a weekly cabinet meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai of Shas declined to comment when asked by reporters about Yosef's sermon.

Netanyahu and Abbas are due to resume direct peace talks in Washington on Thursday, the first such negotiations in 20 months in a peace process that commits both sides to avoid incitement, which has included anti-Jewish sermons by Palestinian clerics.

Fire at proposed Tenn. mosque site probed by feds

The Associated Press
Sunday, August 29, 2010; 1:04 PM

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Authorities are investigating a fire that damaged at least one construction vehicle at a Tennessee site where a new mosque is being built.

Federal investigators won't say whether they believe the fire early Saturday was intentionally set at the suburban Nashville project, which has faced vehement opposition.

Still, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro said the fire has frightened the area's Muslim community.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesman Eric Kehn said Sunday the investigation was still in an early phase. The FBI and local sheriff are also investigating.

The center has been in the community for decades, and the new facility represents an expansion. Opponents, while citing traffic and parking issues, have also implied the center would be a haven for terrorists.

Five myths about mosques in America

By Edward E. Curtis IV
The Washington Post
Sunday, August 29, 2010; B03

In addition to spawning passionate debates in the public, the news media and the political class, the proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York has revealed widespread misconceptions about the practice of Islam in this country -- and the role of mosques in particular.

1. Mosques are new to this country.

Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of Mecca; it needn't be a building. One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon, a cattle driver, would regularly steal away to the woods there for his prayers -- in spite of a white boy who threw dirt on him as he made his prostrations.

The Midwest was home to the greatest number of permanent U.S. mosques in the first half of the 20th century. In 1921, Sunni, Shiite and Ahmadi Muslims in Detroit celebrated the opening of perhaps the first purpose-built mosque in the nation. Funded by real estate developer Muhammad Karoub, it was just blocks away from Henry Ford's Highland Park automobile factory, which employed hundreds of Arab American men.

Most Midwestern mosques blended into their surroundings. The temples or mosques of the Nation of Islam -- an indigenous form of Islam led by Elijah Muhammad from 1934 to 1975 -- were often converted storefronts and churches. In total, mosques numbered perhaps slightly more than 100 nationwide in 1970. In the last three decades of the 20th century, however, more than 1 million new Muslim immigrants came to the United States and, in tandem with their African American co-religionists, opened hundreds more mosques. Today there are more than 2,000 places of Muslim prayer, most of them mosques, in the United States.

According to recent Pew and Gallup polls, about 40 percent of Muslim Americans say they pray in a mosque at least once a week, nearly the same percentage of American Christians who attend church weekly. About a third of all U.S. Muslims say they seldom or never go to mosques. And contrary to stereotypes of mosques as male-only spaces, Gallup finds that women are as likely as men to attend.

2. Mosques try to spread sharia law in the United States.

In Islam, sharia ("the Way" to God) theoretically governs every human act. But Muslims do not agree on what sharia says; there is no one sharia book of laws. Most mosques in America do not teach Islamic law for a simple reason: It's too complicated for the average believer and even for some imams.

Islamic law includes not only the Koran and the Sunna (the traditions of the prophet Muhammad) but also great bodies of arcane legal rulings and pedantic scholarly interpretations. If mosques forced Islamic law upon their congregants, most Muslims would probably leave -- just as most Christians might walk out of the pews if preachers gave sermons exclusively on Saint Augustine, canon law and Greek grammar. Instead, mosques study the Koran and the Sunna and how the principles and stories in those sacred texts apply to their everyday lives.

3. Most people attending U.S. mosques are of Middle Eastern descent.

A 2009 Gallup poll found that African Americans accounted for 35 percent of all Muslim Americans, making them the largest racial-ethnic group of Muslims in the nation. It is unclear whether Arab Americans or South Asian Americans (mostly Pakistanis and Indians) are the second-largest. Muslim Americans are also white, Hispanic, Sub-Saharan African, Iranian, European, Central Asian and more -- representing the most racially diverse religious group in the United States.

Mosques reflect this diversity. Though there are hundreds of ethnically and racially integrated mosques, most of these institutions, like many American places of worship, break down along racial and ethnic lines. Arabs, for instance, are the dominant ethnic group in a modest number of mosques, particularly in states such as Michigan and New York. And according to a 2001 survey (the most recent national survey on mosques available) by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, they represented the plurality in only 15 percent of U.S. mosques.

4. Mosques are funded by groups and governments unfriendly to the United States.

There certainly have been instances in which foreign funds, especially from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region, have been used to build mosques in the United States. The Saudi royal family, for example, reportedly gave $8 million for the building of the King Fahd Mosque, which was inaugurated in 1998 in Culver City, a Los Angeles suburb.

But the vast majority of mosques are supported by Muslim Americans themselves. Domestic funding reflects the desire of many U.S. Muslims to be independent of overseas influences. Long before Sept. 11, 2001, in the midst of a growing clash of interests between some Muslim-majority nations and the U.S. government -- during the Persian Gulf War, for instance -- Muslim American leaders decided that they must draw primarily from U.S. sources of funding for their projects.

5. Mosques lead to homegrown terrorism.

To the contrary, mosques have become typical American religious institutions. In addition to worship services, most U.S. mosques hold weekend classes for children, offer charity to the poor, provide counseling services and conduct interfaith programs.

No doubt, some mosques have encouraged radical extremism. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who inspired the World Trade Center's first attackers in 1993, operated out of the Al-Salam mosque in Jersey City, N.J. But after the 2001 attacks, such radicalism was largely pushed out of mosques and onto the Internet, mainly because of a renewed commitment among mosque leaders to confront extremism.

There is a danger that as anti-Muslim prejudice increases -- as it has recently in reaction to the proposed community center near Ground Zero -- alienated young Muslims will turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques. So far, that has not happened on a large scale.

Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.

Edward E. Curtis IV is millennium chair of liberal arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He is the author of "Muslims in America: A Short History" and the editor of the "Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History." He will be online on Tuesday, Aug. 31, at 12 p.m. ET to chat. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.

For recent Outlook coverage of the New York mosque controversy, see Matthew Yglesias's "Anchor babies, the Ground Zero mosque and other scapegoats," Neda Bolourchi's "A Muslim victim of 9/11: 'Build your mosque somewhere else' " and Karen Hughes's "Move the New York City mosque, as a sign of unity."

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Christians must reject "Burn a Quran Day"

By Jennifer S. Bryson
http://www.jenniferbryson.net/ is Director of the Islam and Civil Society Project at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, NJ.

"Burn a Quran Day" is how a church in Florida is preparing to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11. So far the Christian response to this in America has been nearly dead silence.

The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has issued a press release opposing Burn a Quran Day. This is good, but it is basically just a statement to assure non-Evangelical Christians that Terry Jones does not represent authentic Evangelical Christianity.

More direct are efforts by John Rankin, an Evangelical and President of the Theological Education Institute, to reach out Pastor Terry Jones in person. In addition, Rankin has initiated the "Yes to the Bible, No to the Burning of the Qur'an" collective affirmation. So far, however, John Rankin seems to be a voice in the wilderness on this.

Since 9/11 many American Christians have been asking why Muslims who oppose Islamist radicalism don't do more to counter it. Today I suspect more than a few Muslims are looking at Christians in America wondering why Christians don't try to dissuade the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, led by Pastor Terry Jones, from hosting Burn a Quran Day.

What is the responsibility of religious believers in a given faith to engage fanatics advocating ideologies of hate while claiming to act in the name of this faith?

Quran burning does not equate with murdering thousands in terrorism. However, these are similar in being ideological expressions of hatred which identify themselves with Abrahamic faiths better known for their emphasis on God's mercy toward all humans.

Both are independent movements evoking the name of far larger, broader religions. The Dove World Outreach Center is an independent church. Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda is an independent movement. Just as millions of Christians peacefully attend churches with no affiliation with the Dove World Outreach Center, millions of peaceful Muslims have no affiliation with al-Qaeda and associated movements.

Among Muslims there are emerging efforts beyond press releases to engage Islamist fanatics and Muslims, especially young Muslims, at risk of radicalization. Examples include the Quilliam Foundation, a Muslim counter-radicalization think-tank in the U.K., and the video Believers Beware: Injustice Cannot Defeat Injustice, released this summer by the Muslim Public Affairs Council based in Washington, DC, featuring Muslim leaders speaking Muslim-to-Muslim against religious fanaticism.

This video is not a press release to assure non-Muslims that al-Qaeda does not represent authentic Islam. Rather, the video targets fellow Muslims.

The target audiences for countering Burn a Quran Day and Islamist fanaticism need to be, precisely, co-religionists, and in particular the enthusiasts of hatred and violence.

We need to reach inside our faiths across the lines of specific religious movements and denominations to engage those who promote and even act on hatred in the name of faith.

In the Believers Beware video, Imam Zaid Shakir of the Zaytuna Institute in California observes, with a passion emphasized in his repetition, that as for the "advocates of extremism...advocates of indiscriminate violence...advocates of killing civilians, where are they successful? Where are they successful? You just see one mess after another, one mess after another. And it is time for us to start cleaning up those messes..."

There is a mess brewing inside Christendom. Some American Christians might be thinking, "Terry Jones and his church - ahem, his "church" - have nothing to do with me because I am Catholic/Methodist/fill-in-the-blank." And yet the only thing a flood victim in Pakistan, likely Muslim, is probably going to hear about this story is, 'American Christians put their energy and resources into Quran burning, not into helping us in our hour of dire need.'

Moreover, if American Christians don't try to reach out to Terry Jones, then who will? Press releases will not be enough.

We need intra-faith dialogue. Those of us inside of a given faith may be most likely to have the credibility, or at least understand the dispositions of the heart and the substantive arguments, which can counter doctrinal fanaticism.

American Muslims and Christians are people with a publicly professed interest in serving our Creator. "Cleaning up those messes," inside our own homes, may be a great way to start doing just that.