Steve Weissman : How Should We Respond to Ahmadinejad

Ultra-conservative Rabbi Moishe Arye Friedman, left, shakes hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during international conference questioning the existence of the holocaust in Tehran, Dec. 12, 2006. Photo by AP.

Using the word 'pretext' to describe Jewish suffering during World War II recalled the views of Holocaust deniers like Robert Faurison, Ahmed Rami, and Frederick Töben who went to Tehran in Decemeber 2006 for Ahmadinejad’s 'International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust.'

By Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / April 24, 2009

In his April 20th speech to the conference on racism sponsored by the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad raised many valid criticisms of Western imperialism and the war in Iraq. But what he said about the founding of Israel compacted history in some very strange ways, echoing his earlier flirtation with those who deny the Nazi holocaust. As a secular Jew who rejected Zionism over 40 years ago, I found his remarks silly, misleading, and offensive. As an activist who has consistently struggled against both racism and imperialism, I found it self-defeating for anyone to take Ahmadinejad as our spokesman.

His strangely compacted history boiled down to this: that “a number of powerful countries … resorted to military aggression” to make the Palestinian people homeless. And that they did it “on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and in misusing the Holocaust.”

Using the word “pretext” to describe Jewish suffering during World War II recalled the views of Holocaust deniers like Robert Faurison, Ahmed Rami, and Frederick Töben who went to Tehran in Decemeber 2006 for Ahmadinejad’s “International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust.” Iranian officials insisted that the conference sought “neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust … [but] to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue.” But that’s the same disingenuous dodge that Holocaust deniers have used ever since they started their rehabilitation of the Third Reich.

Simply stated, there is absolutely no doubt that the Nazis tried their hardest to systematically exterminate Jews -- as well as gays and Gypsies. To deny this is nothing short of immoral and idiotic. It also undercuts our ability to fight against racism and for a Palestinian state. Get “pretext” and Holocaust denial out of the way and there’s no question that Zionists used the reality of Jewish suffering to win support for the State of Israel, just as we now use the reality of Palestinian suffering to build support for a Palestinian state.

Ahmadinejad’s compacted history similarly denies the historic reality of political Zionism. The powerful countries on the U.N. Security Council did not create the Zionist movement. European Jews, mostly non-religious, did, and they had to fight the Great Powers to do it. Where in Ahmadinejad’s simplistic anti-imperialist narrative is the very real nationalist movement that had to smuggle weapons and Jewish refugees into Palestine against the best efforts of the British Navy? Where are the attacks by Jewish “terrorists” against British troops? And where are all those Jewish communities that have lived continuously in Palestine for over 2500 years?

None of this, in my view, ever justified dispossessing the Palestinians, a large number of whom were themselves undoubtedly descendants of the ancient Israelites. But to deny the Jewish story in Palestine, as Ahmadinejad does, is silly. Worse, it lays the groundwork to deny the humanity of the Israelis for whom all this history remains very real.

Where Ahmadenijad is undoubtedly right is his contention that the unfairly constituted U.N. Security Council confirmed the creation of the Jewish state. But where does that leave those of us who are anti-imperialist? If we follow Ahmadinejad’s logic, as many in Hamas now do, we must fight to undo over 60 years of history, and that will be a fight to the death. The call to eliminate the State of Israel, while not explicitly a call to kill Israelis or other Jews, will sound to them as an incitement to genocide, and they will fight it without mercy. Tens of thousands of people, both Israeli and Palestinian, will die. And, in the end, who will win? I would not bet on the Palestinians. It’s certainly not fair, but the best I would hope for is a two-state solution, and that will be a difficult enough.

One final question: Should we join Ahmadinejad in calling the Israelis “racist perpetrators of genocide?” I would not. The long-standing Israeli policy of seeking “more land and fewer Arabs” is horrendous. But it is not genocide, at least not until Avigdor Lieberman has his way. And it is not essentially racial, but increasingly religious, denying people first-class citizenship because they do not share the dominant faith or identity. To me, that is every bit as pernicious as racism, whether in Israel or any number of Islamic countries.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he writes regularly for The Rag Blog.]

Please see:

• Ahmadinejad dropped Holocaust denial from speech by Bradley S. Klapper and Alexander G. Higgins / AP / Yahoo News / April 21, 2009

Also see:

• Ahmadinejad: Iran Hands Israel a Gift By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler / Terraviva Europe / The Rag Blog / April 23, 2009
• Dissecting Ahmadinejad's Address to Durban II By Nima Shirazi / Wide Asleep in America / The Rag Blog / April 20, 2009
• Israel: Cousin Aviel the Terrorist by Steve Weissman / truthout / April 25, 2004

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Obama Plays Nuclear Chess with Iran

President Obama discusses talks with Iran in Geneva, at White House Oct. 1, 2009. Photo by AFP.
Is Obama putting Ahmadinejad on the defensive?
The complex question of Iran's nuclear plans

By Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / October 4, 2009

Neo-con pundits demand regime change in Iran. Israeli president Bibi Netanyahu makes no secret of his hopes to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran in 2010. And many in the left-leaning blogosphere accuse Washington of making phony claims that yet another Middle Eastern country is moving toward weapons of mass destruction. But a closer look suggests that Barack Obama may be playing a nuanced game that could severely restrict Iran’s capacity to build nuclear weapons.

Start by asking the telltale question: Do the Iranians have a program to build a bomb? In a November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, the U.S. intelligence community concluded “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” But British, French, German and Israeli spy-masters have increasingly come to believe that American intelligence got it wrong and that the Iranians either restarted or never stopped their efforts to design a nuclear warhead.

The dispute, often quite heated, revolves in part over test data, reports, diagrams, videos and other documentation that the media mistakenly calls “the laptop.” According to the highly-respected Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), German intelligence had recruited an Iranian agent who passed the documentation to his wife just before the Iranian government arrested him. He is believed to have died in custody, but in 2004 his wife smuggled the information into Turkey, where she gave it to U.S. authorities.

The IAEA has repeatedly asked the Iranians about the information, but has not given them copies of the documentation itself in order to protect where it came from. The Iranians claim it is all a forgery and have refused for two years to answer the IAEA’s questions about the underlying information.

Several senior staff-members at the International Atomic Energy Agency believe the documentation to be authentic and cited it along with other information in a secret working report titled “Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program.”

The ISIS website has published portions of the report, which concludes that the Iranians have the know-how to put a workable nuclear warhead into one of their Shabab 3 missiles. The Associated Press wrote about the report on September 17, and the Sunday New York Times headlined it on October 4.

The report remains an unfinished document, and the IAEA’s outgoing director-general, Nobel Peace laureate Mohammed ElBaradei, has argued strongly against its release. But, the publicity surrounding the report raises damning questions that Iranian negotiators will have difficulty evading.

Which brings us to a second question: Did the Iranians try to conceal their enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, as Obama accused them of doing?

Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his defenders argue that he fulfilled his legal commitment to the IAEA by reporting the plant’s existence on September 21, which was more than the required six months before introducing nuclear materials into any new facility. Iran had agreed to give this standard six-month notification when it signed its original safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

The Obama administration and Dr. ElBaradei say no, Iran subsequently agreed to notify the IAEA of any new enrichment facility when they first decide to build it. This was in the “additional protocol” or “modified Code 3.1” that Iran signed in December 2004.

The legal dispute arises because Iran never formally ratified the new agreement and withdrew its promise to observe it in March 2007. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and others argue that this absolved Iran of any legal obligation to report the Qom plant before it did. The IAEA’s ElBaradei, normally a good friend of the Iranians, believes that they had no legal right to withdraw their promise to the IAEA and were “on the wrong side of the law” in not reporting the Qom plant from the start.

Whoever has the better legal argument, the lack of transparency on the Qom plant added to suspicions that the Iranians were looking to turn their legal stockpile of low-enriched uranium into high-enriched uranium for weapons. They could do this simply by withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and IAEA inspections, which they have threatened to do.

The U.S. intelligence community appears to have had this in mind in their 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, when they determined “with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.” Should it decide to exercise that option, the NIE declared, “Iran probably would use covert facilities -- rather than its declared nuclear sites -- for the production of highly enriched uranium for a weapon.”

By dramatically “revealing” the Qom enrichment plant only days after Tehran reported it to the IAEA, Obama put the Iranians on the defensive, which the Americans and their allies probably intended. Happily, Tehran responded by quickly agreeing to accept IAEA inspections starting on October 25, which should help move their nuclear program into greater transparency and make any secret bomb-making a great deal more difficult.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts,Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. A former senior editor at Truthout, he now lives and works in France. For previous articles by Steve Weissman on The Rag Blog, including those about Iran and the "Green Revolution," go here.]

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Steve Weissman : U.S. and Iran: Nonviolence 101

Was there meddling in the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2004-2005?
Iran: Nonviolence 101

Washington's promotion of nonviolent resistance in other countries is already casting suspicion on a number of activists and thinkers who, wittingly or not, have allowed themselves to become pawns in open -- and covert -- programs to 'promote democracy.'

By Steve Weissman / June 22, 2009

Peter Ackerman and Ramin Ahmadi called the revolution on January 4, 2006, in an article in the International Herald Tribune with the prophetic title "Iran's Future? Watch the Streets."

"Against all odds, nonviolent tactics such as protests and strikes have gradually become common in Iran's domestic political scene," they wrote. "Student activists have frequently resorted to, and the violent response of the regime and repeated attacks of the paramilitaries have not succeeded in silencing them."

Iran's medical professionals, teachers, workers, bus drivers and women were also using non-violent tactics such as protests, industrial action, and hunger strikes in their fight for equal rights and civil liberties, the authors reported.

These "uncoordinated actions" had created "a grass-roots movement ... waiting to be roused," urged Ackerman and Ahmadi. But, "its cadres so far lack a clear strategic vision and steady leadership."

Where would the Iranians find this vision and leadership?

"Nongovernmental organizations around the world should expand their efforts to assist Iranian civil society, women's groups, unions and journalists," the authors wrote. But, they left out a salient fact. In a chilling mix of Mahatma Gandhi and James Bond, Ackerman and Ahmadi themselves were already working with the United States government to engineer regime change in Iran.

A Wall Street whiz kid who made his fortune in leveraged buy-outs, the billionaire Ackerman was chair of Freedom House, a hotbed of neo-con support for American intervention just about everywhere. In this pursuit, he has promoted the use of nonviolent civil disobedience in American-backed "color revolutions" from Serbia to the Ukraine, Georgia, and Venezuela, where it failed.

Ahmadi teaches medicine at Yale and co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, using initial grants of $1.6 million in 2004 from the U.S. Department of State, according to The New York Times. Washington reportedly continued its open-handed support in succeeding years, allowing the center to publicize the abuses of the Ayatollahs in English and Farsi.

Ahmadi and the center also ran regular workshops for Iranians on nonviolent civil disobedience. These were in Dubai, across the straits from Iran. Some of the sessions operated under the name Iranian Center for Applied Nonviolence and included a session on popular revolts around the world, especially the "color revolutions."

According to The Times, at least two members of the Serbian youth movement Otpor participated, as did the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which Peter Ackerman founded and chaired. The sessions taught the Iranian participants how to use Hushmail, an encrypted e-mail account, and Martus software to upload information about human rights abuses without leaving any trace on the originating computer.

"We were certain that we would have trouble once we went back to Tehran," said one of the Iranians. "This was like a James Bond camp for revolutionaries."

No one should question the value of nonviolent civil disobedience for those who would bring down an unpopular government. Nor does the American training deny the very real grievances felt by the millions of Iranians who have taken to the streets -- or by the lesser numbers of middle class women who banged pots and pans as part of earlier CIA destabilization programs in Brazil and Chile. Even more important, no one should doubt the courage and commitment of anyone who would stand up against the Ayatollahs and their repressive state power.

But the presence of American involvement adds several dynamics of its own, which Ackerman and Ahmadi failed to explain to their Iranian trainees.

First, the Americans decide where to put their efforts -- and when to stop them. Washington does not fund or provide training and technology for non-violent revolutions against regimes it backs, as in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel or Colombia.

Second, the American meddling makes it easier for the Ayatollahs to build support within their own ranks and among a large majority of the population for whatever repressive measures they finally decide to take.

Third, the nonviolent participants know nothing of other moves that the dark side of the American government might be making at the same time, whether staging acts of provocation, or supporting terrorist activities by breakaway groups such as the Baluchi Jundallah. Nor do the vast majority of participants know that American intelligence regularly uses training sessions of all kinds to recruit individual agents.

Fourth, the Iranian activists want to win. At least some in the America government might prefer to provoke a brutal defeat, a Tiananmen Square, to further isolate Iran and bring pressure within the Obama administration for a military response to the Iranian nuclear program.

Fifth, nonviolent tactics and organizational discipline offer ways to win the support of soldiers and police officers, isolate would be provocateurs, and avoid giving the government any easy excuse to bang heads and kill people. The same techniques also give the organizers ways to turn off the protest, as appears to have happened during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

One other dynamic has more lasting effects. During the Cold War, the CIA funded and manipulated a number of liberal and social democratic intellectuals, labor unions, civil society groups and publications. The CIA-run Congress for Cultural Freedom and its vast network were perhaps the best known. When journalists at Ramparts and elsewhere exposed the CIA's hand, many of these individuals and groups became discredited for having allowed Cold Warriors and dirty tricksters to use them.

Washington's promotion of nonviolent resistance in other countries is already casting suspicion on a number of activists and thinkers who, wittingly or not, have allowed themselves to become pawns in open -- and covert -- programs to "promote democracy." Nonviolent activists everywhere need to draw a clear line against cooperating with governments of any stripe in this foreign meddling.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France. He is also a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.]

Source / truthout

Also see Iran and the USA: Who's Diddling Democracy? by Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / June 21, 2009.

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Steve Weissman : Chinese Revolt Exposes Washington's Folly

Rebiya Kadeer" : Her skirts are hardly snow white. Photo from the Sunday Morning Herald.
Chinese Revolt Exposes Washington's Folly

Rebiya Kadeer, the fascinating woman at the center of the cock-up, would never be taken for a modern-day Mata Hari.

By Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / July 23, 2009

As the People's Republic of China brutally puts down unrest among the Uyghurs, a Turkic people in the Central Asian province of Xinjiang, the Obama administration is facing a diplomatic balls-up.

Like the neighboring Tibetan Buddhists, the Uighur Muslims have fought for centuries against their mistreatment by the Han Chinese, whose massive immigration into Xinjiang now threatens to swamp Uyghur culture and identity in its ancient homeland on the Silk Route. But, as much as one may sympathize with the Uyghurs, as I do, it hardly helps that their expatriate leaders turn out to be all too publicly on Washington's payroll.

Just how will Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explain that to Beijing? Even more important: Did Mrs. Clinton even know that we were funding the Uyghur rebels? Did President Obama and his national security advisors? Or did they all leave key aspects of our foreign relations with China to Radio Free Asia, which the CIA created at the start of the Cold War, and the National Endowment for Democracy, which President Reagan created to handle CIA activities whose cover had been blown?

Rebiya Kadeer, the fascinating woman at the center of the cock-up, would never be taken for a modern-day Mata Hari. A grandmother in her sixties with a long graying braid down to her waist, she is a former laundress whose investments in real estate and department stores made her, in her own words, China's richest woman. She now lives in exile in a northern Virginia suburb, thousands of miles away from Xinjiang, or East Turkestan, the historic name that Kadeer prefers to use.

The Chinese accuse Kadeer and her World Uighur Congress of using telephones and the Internet to "mastermind" the biggest threat to Beijing since the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. Taking a leaf out of George W. Bush's "War on Terror," the Chinese also claim that Kadeer works with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which the U.S. State Department has listed as a terrorist group.

Kadeer rejects both charges, but her skirts are hardly snow white. Like a government-in-exile, her World Uyghur Congress claims that it "represents the collective interests of the Uyghur people both in East Turkestan and abroad." The group actively promotes the right of her people "to use peaceful, nonviolent, and democratic means to determine the political future of East Turkestan."

Such a future would likely lead to complete independence, which the Chinese see as separatist and seditious. Kadeer herself denies being "a separatist," but said just this month that China's actions over six decades have forced every Uighur to want independence.

The problem for Washington is that our official National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds Kadeer's activism. In 2008 alone, NED gave $146,000 to the World Uyghur Congress, $269,000 to the Uyghur American Association, which Kadeer also leads, and $134,805 to the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation, which Kadeer found in 2005 after serving nearly six years as a political prisoner in China.

NED makes no secret of its support for Kadeer, whom it celebrates as "the Mother of All Uyghurs." Just last month, NED cosponsored a conference on East Turkestan, at which the group's long-time president Carl Gershman gave a speech praising Kadeer and her work. A left-behind neocon, Gershman regularly uses his official position, however shadowy, to encourage on-going embarrassments for Beijing.

Washington's Radio Free Asia (RFA) similarly engages in ad hoc foreign policy-making. On the Internet and in broadcasts in Uyghur and other languages, RFA features Kadeer and gives its audience detailed instructions on how to get around Beijing's Internet blockage and radio jamming. Significantly, Beijing turned against Kadeer after her husband Sidik Rouzi left China and went to work for RFA.

Gershman's NED and the RFA reach back to the Cold War, and their ideological zeal has remained part of the not-so-secret policy of previous administrations. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lobbied the Chinese to free Kadeer from prison in 1995, and President Bush met with her privately and publicly praised her at a conference "on democracy and security" in Prague in June 2007.

The all-too-obvious goal was to brand Kadeer as the Uyghur Dalai Lama. This should bring to mind the game nations play, as when President Bush first met with the Buddhist leader in Washington and then turned his back on Tibet at the opening ceremony of last year's Olympics in Beijing.

Whatever individual Americans think of Rebiya Kadeer and her remarkable life story, what sense does it make to continue tying Washington to a breakaway movement in China? What will Obama and Clinton do if Kadeer's efforts truly gain traction within China? And, pardon the obvious, how would our leaders respond if Beijing started putting its money and propaganda broadcasts behind Puerto Ricans, Texans, Alaskans, or Native Americans who wanted independence from the United States?

All this arises just a month after the Obama administration refused to allow 17 Uyghur detainees from Guantanamo from settling in the United States. American officials had long ago cleared them of being terrorists, but Obama sent them packing to Bermuda and Palau.

If, as he often says, the president wants America to lead by example, he should reverse his earlier policy and invite the Uyghur detainees to live in the U.S.A. Nothing would do more to promote our commitment to human rights and to removing the knee-jerk terrorist stigma from Muslims of all nations.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France. For previous articles by Steve Weissman on The Rag Blog, go here.]

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Steve Weissman : The U.S. Role in Iran's 'Green Revolution'

Photo from BrooWaha.com.
Iran: Seen to Be Meddling

Our multimedia meddlers sought... to help mobilize the millions of Iranians who had already turned against the regime of Ahmadinejad and were questioning the theocratic rule of the ayatollahs.

By Steve Weissman / July 7, 2009

Between threats from hard-line ayatollahs to execute protest leaders and the media frenzy over the death of Michael Jackson, Iran's "Green Revolution" appears to have stalled. But, it's far from over.

Unless President Obama or Congress cut off their funding, our official radio and TV services, the shadowy National Endowment for Democracy and the State Department's "democracy-promoters" will all keep fighting to the last Iranian, while the CIA and Pentagon continue sending their state-sponsored terrorists into Iran. Then, as likely as not, the meddlers will hand off to the "bomb Iran" crowd, whose solidarity with the Iranian protesters extends to blowing them to smithereens.

Covert action does not go away just because TV cameras turn away. And neither should its critics, who need to explain more clearly what Washington and its allies have been doing in Iran. For most people, one question stands out: How could outsiders possibly call millions of gutsy Iranians onto the streets?

The answer is basic. Outsiders could do nothing if not for the very real discontent within Iran and the courage of Iranians to protest. Even in its heyday, the CIA had trouble making something out of nothing, though it came close in Iran in 1953 when it paid protesters to take to the streets against the nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossaddeq. That was truly a rent-a-mob.

Now in the digital age, our multimedia meddlers sought instead to help mobilize the millions of Iranians who had already turned against the regime of Ahmadinejad and were questioning the theocratic rule of the ayatollahs. Much of this target audience fell among the young urban middle class, who were savvy about online, mobile and digital media. To these people, Washington provided what Peter Ackerman and Ramin Ahmadi called "a clear strategic vision and steady leadership."

This strategic vision and leadership included several elements, some of which I highlighted in earlier columns: Training sessions and field manuals on nonviolent tactics. A vast infusion of new media, especially Twitter and Facebook. And the coordinated messaging of the big western bullhorn, especially the BBC's Farsi language services, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Radio Farda, and Voice of America's Persian Service, which before the election, according to CNN, "bought extra satellite paths into Iran to avoid any government jamming."

Expatriate Iranian satellite TV, mostly from the Los Angeles area, would add to the cheerleading, as would most of the commercial mass media.

With all this in place, Washington had to answer a truly divisive question. Should the meddlers support Iranian opposition groups who wanted to boycott their country's presidential elections? Or should they covertly back former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had taken part in the creation of Lebanon's Hezbollah and the killing of Iranian dissidents? In democracy-promotion American style, Washington gets to pick which "democrats" to promote. The nod went to Mousavi.

A week before the election, Voice of America's (VOA) Persian Service reported that a hard-line ayatollah had issued a fatwa authorizing election supervisors to change votes to make sure that Ahmadinejad won. Whether the fatwa ever existed remains a mystery. But the extensive coverage that VOA gave the story laid the groundwork for the "Green Revolution" that was to follow.

Mousavi gave the signal to start. Hours before the voting ended, he loudly declared himself "definitely the winner," suggested that the government was trying to steal the election, and opened the door to major protests. This was the script, to which Mousavi stuck in the days that followed.

The Iranian government responded that Ahmadinejad had won an overwhelming majority, and the battle lines were drawn. Foreign scholars might debate whether Ahmadinejad or Mousavi won and by how much, providing ammunition for pundits on all sides. But to Mousavi and the Western meddlers, as to Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the actual vote no longer mattered, if it ever did.

The big Western bullhorn quickly spread Mousavi's claims all over Iran and the world, as did the new media, churning out tens of thousands of messages saying that the government had stolen the election and calling for huge protests in the streets. Facebook and Twitter offered an added advantage. Anyone could anonymously post messages, and who would know whether they came from Tehran, Dubai, Jerusalem or Washington?

With continuing support from both the Western bullhorn and the new media that Washington had worked so hard to promote, the "Green Revolution" took to the streets. Naturally, the protests took on an ebb and flow of their own that no one could predict or control. They are now in an ebb, but the protesters will return in time, likely with industrial action and a general strike that Western meddlers will continue to support.

But, we have an alternative. Just think how much more credibility the protesters would have with their own people if, before the next round, Washington publicly pulled the plug on all our many bureaucracies that intervene so blatantly in other countries.

President Obama has famously said that he did not want "to be seen to be meddling" in Iran's election. He would do better if, as he tried to do with torture, he made absolutely clear to Americans and the world that we should not and will not meddle, whether seen or not.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.]

Source / truthout

For previous articles by Steve Weissman on The Rag Blog, including earlier posts on this subject, go here.

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McChrystal Clear : More Boots on the Ground

Gen. Stanley McChrystal: Repeating the cliches.
Do the numbers:
500,000 troops for Pashtunistan?

McChrystal repeats the clichés of classic counterinsurgency... American generals used the same vintage phrases in Vietnam, where efforts to 'protect the population' led to forcing rural peasants into fortified 'strategic hamlets.'

By Steve Weissman / October 8, 2009

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, talks of winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. He sees the need to get beyond standard military thinking and understand the political, religious, social and economic context. He also knows that kicking down doors, destroying homes and killing civilians turns the Afghans against us and creates more insurgents than we could ever kill.

"If the people are against us, we cannot be successful," McChrystal told CBS's "60 Minutes." "If the people view us as occupiers and the enemy, we can't be successful and our casualties will go up dramatically."

In his report to President Obama and in endless interviews, the four-star general talks about persuading the Afghans, protecting them and making them secure from the Taliban. "Our every action must help secure, mobilize and support the Afghan people and their government to defeat the insurgency and establish effective governance."

How to "establish effective government" in a country that has never known one, McChrystal does not say. Nor does he tell us how he would do it with an Afghan leadership made up of war lords, drug barons and a president -- Hamid Karzai -- who won re-election by creating hundreds of phony polling stations and stuffing ballot boxes in wholesale fashion.

Undaunted, McChrystal repeats the clichés of classic counterinsurgency, or COIN, as refurbished by his boss, Gen. David Petraeus, head of Central Command. American generals used the same vintage phrases in Vietnam, where efforts to "protect the population" led to forcing rural peasants into fortified "strategic hamlets."

With only slight variations of emphasis, French generals spoke the same lingo earlier in Vietnam and Algeria, while British generals became the gurus of counterinsurgency from Malaya to Kenya to Cypress. In these conflicts, one problem stands out: The counterinsurgents most often lost, as did earlier invaders in Afghanistan, from Alexander the Great to the British Raj to the former Soviet Union.

But why let all this history get in the way? "Each historical moment is different," the learned Obama warned us with a flourish from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. "You never step into the same river twice."

Forget history, then, and stick with military thinking. The new counterinsurgency manual that General Petraeus produced calls for "a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1000 residents" in the area of operations. Afghanistan has a population of some 30 million, which would require 600,000 to 750,000 counterinsurgents, including American, allied and Afghan troops.

Frederick Kagan, the neo-conservative military strategist who advises both Petraeus and McChrystal, talks of limiting our counterinsurgency to the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, leaving the Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and other of the country's ethnic minorities to fend for themselves. Kagan estimates a Pashtun population of some 16 million, which would bring the counterinsurgent troops needed down to somewhere between 320,000 and 400,000.

Either way, having enough troops in no way guarantees victory. But, according to Pentagon doctrine, having too few would make it almost impossible to subdue a determined insurgency, especially in Afghanistan's mountainous terrain.

America now has some 68,000 troops in Afghanistan. Obama has already authorized another 21,000, and General McChrystal is asking for 40,000 more. This would bring the American commitment to 129,000. Allied troops number 35,000, and the Afghans currently have 88,000 soldiers and 82,000 police. This would bring the total to 334,000, if McChrystal counts on the Afghan forces, which most experts do not. Washington is asking for more troops from our reluctant allies, while McChrystal plans to increase the Afghan total to 400,000 by 2014.

Would this be enough to win? Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is reportedly having second thoughts. "Even 40,000 more [American] troops don't give you enough boots on the ground to protect the Afghans if the north and west continue to deteriorate," one official told The Wall Street Journal. "That may argue for a different approach."

Gates has previous voiced the fear that too many foreign boots on the ground will only encourage more Afghans to join the insurgents, as the Soviet learned.

Others, like Sen. Russell Feingold, fear that foreign boots in the Pashtun area of Afghanistan will force more of the insurgents into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where they would meld into a population of over 25 million Pashtuns. How many more troops would General McChrystal need then?

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts,Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. A former senior editor at Truthout, he now lives and works in France. For previous articles by Steve Weissman on The Rag Blog, go here.]

Source / truthout

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Iran's Covert Nuke Sites : How Many Are There?

Uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom in Iran. Photo from Reuters.
How many secret nuclear sites does Iran have?

Secret facilities that evade the IAEA’s cameras and measuring devices can have only one purpose -- to create nuclear material that would be available for a bomb, whether or not Iran has made a final decision to build one.

By Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / October 1, 2009

In November 2004, the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that Iran was digging a secret tunnel for a uranium enrichment facility near an existing site at Natanz, in Isfahan province. The Natanz facility was -- and is -- monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Truthout, for which I was a senior editor at the time, published a summary of Der Spiegel’s story, though only after some late-night soul-searching. Der Spiegel had gotten its information from an unidentified intelligence agency, which could have been spreading disinformation to whip up support for Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign to bomb Iran. But, on balance, the story fit with what we knew and our responsibility was first and foremost to bring our readers significant news reports from around the world.

Last Friday at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, President Barack Obama revealed that Iran was building another secret underground enrichment facility, this one in a mountain on a military base near the holy city of Qom, some 100 kilometers southeast of Tehran.

Iran had failed to report the facility to the IAEA until September 21, claiming that it would be only a small pilot plant with a maximum of 3,000 centrifuges. Washington and its allies countered that this was big enough to produce one bomb’s worth of highly enriched uranium per year.

According to the New York Times, US intelligence officials acknowledged that they had no evidence that Iran has taken the final steps toward creating a bomb.

American, British, and French intelligence officials told journalists that they had known of the site “for a few years” through satellite reconnaissance and “multiple human intelligence sources.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, German and Israeli intelligence services began looking for a hidden site as early as 2002. They had been analyzing Iran's nuclear purchases, and found items that the Natanz facility would not have needed.

"We knew the site existed, but at that time we didn't know where," a European intelligence officer told the Journal.

All of which raises a troubling question. Did Der Spiegel and Truthout get the story wrong five years ago? Or does Iran have a third enrichment facility yet to be acknowledged?

The world needs to know. Any nation with facilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium can in time produce a nuclear weapon. The IAEA’s monitoring of those facilities and their output offers the only safeguard that other nations have under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran has signed.

Secret facilities that evade the IAEA’s cameras and measuring devices can have only one purpose -- to create nuclear material that would be available for a bomb, whether or not Iran has made a final decision to build one.

An unmonitored enrichment plant would also give Iran an added advantage. The facility at Natanz could produce low enriched industrial grade uranium without creating any problem with the IAEA. The secret facility could then further enrich the uranium to create weapons grade material.

This is why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not simply channeling Colin Powell at the United Nations in warning that Iran is moving toward weapons of mass destruction. She is right to insist that Iran prove to the world that all of its facilities are fully open to inspection.

The Iranians must "present convincing evidence as to the purpose of their nuclear program,” Clinton told CBS' Face the Nation. “We don't believe that they can present convincing evidence, that it's only for peaceful purposes, but we are going to put them to the test."

Clinton would do better to drop her schoolmarm tone and “the West knows best” attitude. A little adult diplomacy might help the Iranians back down from their past lack of transparency. But, their past lack of candor makes it imperative for Iran to embrace full nuclear transparency in the talks in Geneva this week.

Nor does the need for transparency stop with Iran. The United States is currently allied with three other nations in the region -- India, Pakistan and Israel -- that have major nuclear arsenals, but flatly refuse to sign the NPT or accept full-scale IAEA monitoring. If the Obama administration means what it says about Iran and the threat of nuclear weapons, it is well past time for American officials to make the same demands on New Delhi, Islamabad and Tel Aviv that they are now making on Tehran.

Obama would also do well to get beyond repeating yet again that “all options are on the table.” The Iranians clearly know that the White House has just requested $88 million in emergency funding to modify our B-2 stealth bombers to carry a newly developed bunker-busting bomb that can destroy hardened underground targets.

That is more than enough saber-rattling, unless Obama wants to find himself forced by public hysteria to do to Iran what Dick Cheney never got to do.

[Steve Weissman is a former senior editor at Truthout. A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France. For previous articles by Steve Weissman on The Rag Blog, including those about Iran and the "Green Revolution," go here.]

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Steve Weissman : Obama Speaks. Will Palestine or Pakistan Decide?

Barack Obama's speech drew huge audiences in the Muslim world. Photo by EPA / Telegraph, U.K.

A bigger problem for Obama's relations with the world's Muslims will be his military escalation in Afghanistan and his ever-deepening involvement in Pakistan.

By Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / June 5, 2009

From his first "greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum," President Barack Hussein Obama showed how to use the bully pulpit. Some listeners might have found him pedantic or even preachy, but he was delivering his sermon to American and Israeli audiences as much as to the world's Muslims. "As the Holy Koran tells us," he set the tone, "be conscious of God and speak always the truth."

Nowhere was his truth more nuanced, more powerful and less applauded by his Egyptian audience than in his declaration of America's unbreakable bond with Israel, tying it directly to the Holocaust.

"Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich," he said. "Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve."

These were strong words in a part of the world that continues to spread the anti-Semitic venom of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and regularly denies that the Holocaust happened, as Iranian President Ahmadinejad had done only the night before. Yet Obama found it equally "undeniable that the Palestinian people -- Muslims and Christians -- have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.

"For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation," he declared. "Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation."

The Palestinian plight is "intolerable," said Obama. "America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own."

At a time when huge numbers of Israelis and Palestinians have lost faith in a two-state solution, the president of the United States was personally committing himself to meet the aspirations of both sides "through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security."

"That is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest and the world's interest," he declared.

How do we get from here to there? By the Arab states taking new steps beyond the Arab Peace Initiative, he urged. And by Palestinians and Israelis meeting the obligations they have already accepted under the Road Map.

"Palestinians must abandon violence," said Obama. "Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding."

Israel, he insisted, must acknowledge the Palestinians' right to their own state, take concrete steps to help resolve the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank, and put an end to Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

"The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," said Obama. "This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop."

Whether Obama can make his vision stick remains to be seen, though cynics will remain a dime a dozen. But, the success of the speech in Cairo will make it that much harder for Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to use his allies in Congress to soften Obama's demands on Israel. Obama added little new about how he hoped to bring Hamas or the Iranians, who supply Hamas, to accept a two-state solution.

A bigger problem for Obama's relations with the world's Muslims will be his military escalation in Afghanistan and his ever-deepening involvement in Pakistan. In his speech, he defended both as a response to al-Qaeda and other violent extremists "who pose a grave threat to our security" and who are "determined to kill as many Americans as possible."

The question he did not address was whether American intervention would subdue that threat or recruit more Afghans, Pakistanis and other Muslims from around the world against the United States. The evidence so far is that an overwhelmingly military response is doing far more harm than good. Why doesn't Obama see that? Why doesn't he heed his own advice to the Palestinians?

"Violence is a dead end," he told them. "It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered."

One need not be a nonviolent activist to hear the wisdom of Barack Hussein Obama's words, especially as American drones continue to kill innocent Afghans or Pakistanis.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.]

source / truthout.

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Steve Weissman : How Washington Learned to Love Nonviolence

The use of nonviolence for covert intervention

Sharp was talking 'about seizing political power or denying it to others,' and doing it without having to break things or kill people.

By Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / September 29, 2009

Nonviolence can be a major force for democratic social change, but not when it becomes a tool for covert intervention.

A close-cropped, no-nonsense infantry officer, Col. Robert Helvey was studying at Harvard's Center for International Affairs on an Army fellowship. One day in 1987, he happened upon a seminar led by Gene Sharp, a draft resister imprisoned for refusing to serve in Korea and a systematic scholar of the kind of strategic non-violence that activists of my generation had helped to develop in the free speech, civil rights, and anti-war movements of the 1960s.

"I had an image of nonviolence as being a bunch of long-haired hippies," Col. Helvey recalled. But Dr. Sharp had come a long way from his Gandhian roots, and Helvey quickly realized that the older man's approach had "nothing to do with pacifism." Sharp was talking "about seizing political power or denying it to others," and doing it without having to break things or kill people.

The idea fascinated Col. Helvey. He invited Sharp to lunch, spent time at the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), which Sharp had created in Cambridge in 1983, and came to see his new mentor as "the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement." An energetic disciple, Col. Helvey would in time become president of AEI and a forceful champion of nonviolent conflict as a weapon of American intervention in other countries.

Were these interventions good or bad? In my opinion, they had elements of both, at least at the start. But they have become a major danger to democracy, not least our own, and an increasing threat to the lives of those that the United States and its allies encourage to make nonviolent revolutions.

The art of political defiance

Col. Helvey's first intervention was in Burma, where he had served as military attaché, reporting to the Defense Intelligence Agency. In December 1987, while still a serving officer, he invited two Burmese expatriates to spend several days talking with Gene Sharp about how best to overthrow their country's brutal military rulers. According to Helvey, the activists went back and explained Sharp's thinking to other of the regime's opponents.

Retiring in 1991 from thirty years of active duty, Col. Helvey took up a new career, traveling to the Burmese jungle village of Mannerplaw to run the first of a long series of intensive training sessions in nonviolence for the Democratic Alliance of Burma. Gene Sharp helped design the courses, which Helvey renamed political defiance. With armed struggle, he taught, you attack the generals where they are strongest. With political defiance, you look to hit them where they are weak.

”He used his military skills in strategic planning for nonviolent protest methods," one of Helvey's trainees later told Reuters. "Everybody was fascinated by Bob, because he was a military man and was applying that to non-violence."

Training the Burmese opposition was a small-scale operation, and Washington paid for it largely through its National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, which the Reagan administration had created in 1983 to take over the funding of foreign interventions formerly handled by the Central Intelligence Agency. Washington's interest in Burma was obvious, given its proximity to China and its enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.

Bringing down a dictator

In March 2000, Col. Helvey scored his biggest coup, running a 4-day training session at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest for more than 20 militants from a Serbian student group called Otpor. Helvey's purpose was to teach the militants how to undermine the authority of Slobadan Milosevich, "the Butcher of the Balkans."

"His presentation was something that I had never seen in my life, and I have seen maybe 200 trainings and maybe performed 200 or 300," recalled one of Otpor's founders, Srdja Popovic. "I am really experienced. But he is a miracle!" Returning to Serbia, Helvey's students became the backbone and creative masterminds of a multi-million dollar nonviolent revolution financed and stage-managed by Washington, its European allies, and George Soros's Open Society Institute.

The overthrow of Milosevich in the former Yugoslavia led Washington and its allies to finance and organize similar efforts all around the periphery of the former Soviet Union. These included the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and 2005, and the Pink or Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. In these interventions, Otpor veterans taught what they had learned to militants in the other
countries, while hundreds of thousands of ordinary people risked beatings, jail, torture, and even death. But, once the nonviolent protestors brought new governments to power, Washington and the Western Europeans used their influence to extend NATO eastward, push for economic privatization and strengthen Western sway over the oil, natural gas, and pipelines from the Caspian Sea, Caucuses, and Central Asia.

Less publicly, Washington and its allies made Optor a permanent part of their arsenal, as described by STRAFOR, a private intelligence newsletter available by subscription. "Otpor strengthened its connections with Western governments and nongovernmental organizations, which provided the group with funding and limited amounts of intelligence about potential weaknesses in regimes they were already targeting," STRATFOR explained.

"The tactics used in the crucible in Belgrade were 'marketed' in documentaries and training manuals. Otpor became more than 'just' a student group and transformed itself into the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). Among the group's strongest allies are Freedom House and the Albert Einstein Institute and, through them, the US Agency for International Development and the US Department of State."

CANVAS itself has been anything but transparent about its funding and intelligence ties to Western governments. But the group proudly put the STRATFOR analysis on its website, while Freedom House confirmed in its annual report for 2001 that it received funding from NED, USAID, and the State Department and, in turn, continued to fund the Otpor students. In 2005, the U.S. Institute for Peace provided a grant to CANVAS to publish Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points by Srdja Popovic and two other Otpor veterans. All of which put the lie to the group's oft-repeated claim that "CANVAS does not accept any governmental funding."

When a military coup fails

In April 2003, Reuters reporter Pascal Fletcher went to a university campus in east Caracas. On a closed classroom door, he found a sign that read, "Seminar on strategic marketing." Inside he found "representatives of Venezuela's broad-based but fragmented opposition, who are struggling to regroup after failing to force Chávez from office in an anti-government strike." According to Reuters, they were meeting with Col. Robert Helvey, "a consultant with the private US Albert Einstein Institution." Another AEI staff member, Chris Miller, also participated.

Opponents of Chávez had previously met with Gene Sharp in Cambridge after the failure of the U.S.-backed military coup against Chávez in 2002. These contacts continued after Col. Helvey's visit to Caracas and included a privately funded workshop in March 2005 in Boston, in which two Otpor veterans took part. The Center for Applied NonViolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS) in Belgrade then trained five student leaders from Venezuela in October 2005, and another four in October 2007. CANVAS also set up an office in Venezuela in latter part of 2007.

"Another color revolution may be forming -- in Latin America," wrote the sympathetic STRATFOR. "When you see students at five Venezuelan universities hold simultaneous demonstrations, you will know that the training is over and the real work has begun."

Signs of this "Marigold Revolution" became visible in May 2007, after Chávez refused to renew the broadcasting license for the privately owned Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), which had openly backed the military coup in 2002. The newly created Venezuelan Student Resistance took to the streets in their thousands, proclaiming their nonviolence and dedication to free speech. The student resistors then staged dozens of marches throughout the country to oppose Chávez in a constitutional referendum in which he tried to remove term limits so that he could run for president as many times as he wanted.

Mostly middle-class and leaning to the right, but including some on the left who found Chávez autocratic, the protestors openly acknowledged their debt to Otpor and the thinking of Gene Sharp. They painted their hands white to show their innocent intentions. They put flowers into the rifle barrels of the security forces. And, they staged street theater to mock Chávez and the constitutional rewrite he was promoting. The students made a significant impact on the December 2007 referendum, which Chávez lost 51% to 49%, one of his only electoral defeats.

Chávez put much of the blame on Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Foundation for attempting to overthrow him with "a soft coup." In a personal reply to Chávez, Sharp offered his usual disavowal. "Our work," he insisted, "has not been backed by powerful political or economic interests in the United States or internationally."

Washington and its nonviolent allies are already preparing similar, if smaller, interventions against populist governments in Ecuador and Bolivia and will likely use the same tactics against post-Castro Cuba.

Iran's Green Revolution

Nowhere has Washington's encouragement of nonviolent revolution caused greater grief than in Iran. While President Obama publicly appeared above the fray, his State Department used its Persian language radio services and its considerable influence with Twitter and Facebook to back the election campaign of the tainted reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi and to spur on the popular protests against Ahmadinejad and the hard-line ayatollahs that back him. I have previously written at length about the intervention itself. Here I want to consider what it means, especially to those of us who support the aspirations of so many Iranians for a freer and more democratic country.

Many friends hated that I raised the issue of American intervention. Few denied the facts I presented. They simply preferred to turn a blind eye. All they wanted to consider were inconclusive arguments that Mousavi had won the election, which many reputable scholars still dispute, and the need to stand in solidarity with the protestors, with which I agree. But, unless we explicitly acknowledge and condemn the American intervention, our solidarity will end up pouring more money into the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA, and the State Department's propaganda radios. Do we really want to do that?

Other friends have argued that most of the money for training Iranians in nonviolent protest came not from Washington but from private sources, primarily Wall Street financier Peter Ackerman and his International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. This could be true, though the funding of much of the training remains secret. But what difference? Once Washington unleashed its propaganda radio and Internet resources, it made little difference who trained the non-violent protestors.

Finally, and most important to me, the undeniable evidence of Western intervention, both private and governmental, has made it far too easy for Ahmadinejad to crack down on the Iranian protestors. We should clearly condemn the crackdown and attempt to defend the activists. But our greatest show of solidarity would be to stop Washington's continuing intervention.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France. For previous articles by Steve Weissman on The Rag Blog, including those about Iran's "Green Revolution," go here.]

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There Is More Than One Way to Interpret Ahmadinejad

On Ahmadinejad and Progressive Myopia
By Nima Shirazi / The Rag Blog / April 29, 2009

Please see links to previous Rag Blog posts on this subject, Below.

Whenever Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes a public appearance, the airwaves, papers, and Internet become flooded with outraged and self-righteous opinion pieces. He is called everything from “evil,” “racist,” a “blowhard” and a “hatemonger” to “ridiculous,” “ignorant,” “silly,” and a “clown.” His speeches are described as “diatribes,” “rants,” “screeds,” and “tirades.” Whereas this reaction is obvious and expected from those both in the mainstream media and on the Freedom Fries end of the political spectrum, these same epithets and denouncements are often found coming from a most surprising and disappointing source: so-called “liberals” who proudly identify themselves as anti-imperialist progressives.

Many recent critiques of Ahmadinejad’s speech at the Durban II conference in Geneva last week, written by peace activists and left-leaning analysts, have concluded that, even though the president may have uttered some painful and important truths, his understanding of Middle East history was reductionist, his speech poorly timed, and his words were, if twisted the wrong way by faulty analysis, an offensive, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying incitement to genocide.

This reaction is not new. The character of President Ahmadinejad himself has been consistently caricatured as some sort of Persian court jester by Western progressives: one who may speak truth to power, but who does so crudely and without requisite tact. These same progressives label him as the domineering leader of an oppressive regime and he is therefore deemed unsuited to voice the opinions of the Western anti-imperialist cause. Something about glass houses and stone-throwing follows, perhaps.

While these forward-thinking, long-time Cheney-haters have never been fooled by the bogus search for WMD or the torturific term “enhanced interrogation,” they seem to have a hard time believing that the country of Iran isn’t some Israel-threatening hotbed of hostile anti-American activity, lorded over by apocalypse-happy clerics, eagerly spinning centrifuges with the intent to destroy the Western world. This image of both the country of Iran and its current President is frustrating, and never more so when it comes from those who should be better informed and leading the fight against these very misconceptions and mischaracterizations. If the progressives among us don’t tell the truth, then who else will?

Yes, Ahmadinejad condemns Zionism. What is not explained in right-wing harangues or progressive criticism is that he views Zionism as a political ideology separate from Judaism, a distinction all informed people should make as well. He has consistently called for a free and fair referendum to determine the representative political structure of the whole population - a vote by all inhabitants of the land of historical Palestine. There is no call for the return of Palestinian land at the expense of Jews - only that justice be served and self-determination by the residents of the region be respected. He has never threatened Israel with military force or aggression (and isn’t even in a position to make such threats, considering he’s not Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian military). In fact, he attempted to quash constant accusations of the Iranian leadership’s anti-Semitism by telling Larry King last fall, “we don't have a problem with the Jewish people.” Ahmadinejad further clarified his government’s political position towards Israel during a press conference in September 2008: “We are opposed to the idea that the people who live there should be thrown into the sea or be burnt...We believe that all the people who live there, the Jews, Muslims and Christians, should take part in a free referendum and choose their government.”

It should also be made perfectly clear that Ahmadinejad does not condemn Israel for claiming to be a “Jewish” state. He believes that the decision to pick a political system should be left to the people who have to live under that system. He has stated that Iran will recognize and accept any resulting governmental system once it has been voted on openly.

The progressive left, when discussing Ahmadinejad’s position on these matters, often resorts to accusations of pot-calling-the-kettle-black-isms. It is dismissive to claim that no Iranian politician should have a problem with the ethnic or religious nature of the Israeli governmental system when Iran itself is an Islamic Republic. This can only be seen as hypocrisy by the uninformed. The Iranian Constitution, which came into force less than a year after the collapse of the Shah’s dictatorship by popular revolution, was adopted by national referendum. It established (in Chapter I, Article 1) the government of Iran as an Islamic Republic, a political system combining and integrating elements of both religious doctrine and representational democracy. The Constitution was approved by an estimated 98.2% of the Iranian voting population (and yes, that included women).

By contrast, Israel has never written or adopted a formal Constitution of any form. Israel’s own unilateral declaration of independence on May 14, 1948 stated that a constitution would be formulated and ratified by the state no later than October 1, 1948. The adoption of a democratic constitution was also a requirement of the General Assembly Resolution 181, which even supported the establishment of a “Jewish” state. Nevertheless, no constitution was ever drawn up, voted on, or adopted. Instead, Israeli constitutional law has been established piecemeal over time by Knesset-approved legislation that gained legal ascendancy by a Supreme Court ruling in 1998. These “Basic Laws,” which establish the roles of various governmental institutions and offices and affirm certain human rights to its citizenry (including the ironically named, “Freedom of Occupation”), have never been subject to popular vote or referendum by the Israeli people, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. And this is what people call the great democracy in the Middle East?

The Iranian Constitution, on the other hand, established a governmental system that was approved by the overwhelming majority of the population of that country. Iranians were not colonized or made to accept a system with which they disagreed or that would endanger their lives. Did Native Americans or African slaves get a vote regarding the US Constitution, which holds non-whites to be valued as less than a whole person and affirms the continuation of slavery, or Manifest Destiny that saw the genocide of tens of millions of people? I don't believe that Black South Africans voted for Apartheid. As such, progressives should all agree that many laws set up by colonial governments, such as Israel’s “Law of Return,” are, at the core, racist and unrepresentative.

Is Iran a perfect bastion of freedom of expression and human rights? No, certainly not. But to claim that criticism of another country must be in direct proportion to the troubles or issues facing your own country is an absurd concept. Were that the case, Barack Obama, the current embodiment of the US government, shouldn't ever open his mouth regarding anything having to do with a just foreign policy, the rule of international law, or anything else, ever. It is the US that is currently occupying two foreign countries and that has over 700 military bases overseas. It is bankrolling and supporting Israeli aggression, occupation, and continued colonialism and expansionism. Black kettles, anyone?

There is also umbrage taken at Ahmadinejad’s condemnation of the Zionist movement in Palestine - a movement that preceded World War II and the Holocaust by decades. In his Durban speech, critics argue, Ahmadinejad condenses history so as to ignore the anti-imperial elements of the pre-state Zionist militias and assigns blame to the fledgling United Nations for validating Jewish nationalism only after World War II. Personally, I do not believe that President Ahmadinejad arrived in Switzerland with the intent of giving a lengthy history lesson. Nor do I believe that his historical analysis is simplistic or reductionist. Speaking at the UN conference, Ahmadinejad discussed the UN’s role in displacing over 750,000 indigenous people from their land and the immorality and injustice of using the horrors of the Holocaust to justify such deliberate ethnic cleansing. The bombing of the King David Hotel by Irgun occurred after the Holocaust. The 1947 Partition Plan came after the Holocaust. The Deir Yassin massacre came after the Holocaust. The Nakba came after the Holocaust; this is what Ahmadinejad refers to in his speech. Since the Western powers did not support the Zionist cause before World War II, it is clear that pre-State Zionism is irrelevant to Ahmadinejad’s point.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, in his critique of Ahmadnejad’s speech, ascribes reductionism and error to the Iranian President’s truncated description of history. He claims that the Arab aversion to the implementation of Zionism in Palestine was a “misunderstanding,” explaining that “Palestinians saw the Jews as an invading force that would uproot their own Arab society. Yet most Jews coming to Palestine were fleeing oppression, and simply could not understand how Palestinians would view them as agents of a Christian West.” This viewpoint as presented by Lerner clouds the truth, intentionally or not, about Zionist thought from the very beginning.

As far back as 1898, Theodor Herzl recognized that, in order to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, the Arabs who were living there would have to be removed. He proposed the following solution for such an inconvenient indigenous population:

“We shall try to spirit the penniless population (i.e. Arab) across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.”

Israel Zangwill, the sloganeer behind “The land without a people for a people without a land,” also knew full well that Palestine was already inhabited. “There is, however, a difficulty from which the Zionist dare not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it. Palestine proper has already its inhabitants,” he wrote in the Voice of Jerusalem in 1904. “The Pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to every square mile, and not 25 percent of them Jews; so we must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did, or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan [i.e. Muslim].”

Vladmir Jabotinsky, in his 1923 Zionist manifesto, The Iron Wall, spoke directly to Lerner’s erroneous claims when he wrote,

“…there has never been an indigenous inhabitant anywhere or at any time who has ever accepted the settlement of others in his country…And so it is for the Arabs. Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains. I flatly reject this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs…We can talk as much as we want about our good intentions; but they understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile. This childish fantasy of our “Arabo-philes” comes from some kind of contempt for the Arab people, of some kind of unfounded view of this race as a rabble ready to be bribed in order to sell out their homeland for a railroad network.”

Jabotinsky continues,

“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized…Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population…As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left.”

To claim that peaceful coexistence was the goal of Jewish nationalism is to rewrite history in order to assuage the consciences of those who regret the consequences of colonialism but insist on justifying it anyway.

Furthermore, in his article regarding the Durban II speech, Steve Weissman writes, “If we follow Ahmadinejad’s logic, as many in Hamas now do, we must fight to undo over 60 years of history, and that will be a fight to the death. The call to eliminate the State of Israel, while not explicitly a call to kill Israelis or other Jews, will sound to them as an incitement to genocide, and they will fight it without mercy.”

Sound to “them”? It appears that Mr. Weissman may hold more contempt for the Palestinian and Arab intellect than Jabotinsky. First of all, Ahmadinejad is not the leader of Palestinian resistance. Hamas certainly does not take its cues from his speeches. But it is also important to realize that Ahmadinejad’s words do not inflame the Muslim people of the Middle East, they enrage the white people of the West, those who boycott or leave international conferences without even a hint of embarrassment. In fact, the prior agreement by European delegates to walk out at the first mention of “Israel” proves that these undignified dignitaries would have missed anything he wound up saying anyway and wouldn’t have taken a lengthier, more nuanced discussion any more to heart. It is not that the historical and current reality isn’t known well enough; it’s that the imperial powers in support of the ongoing Israeli Occupation and aggression simply don’t care.

Some critics, such as Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler, have accused Ahmadinejad of bad timing, delivering this particular speech at a time when American and Iranian relations may finally be rekindled. These analyses tend to focus more on the eagerness of Israeli leaders to attack Iran, using as an excuse Iran’s wholly legal nuclear energy program and the repetition of the mistranslation of Ahmadinejad’s supposed threat to “destroy Israel,” than on Ahmadinejad’s speech itself. These critics appear to blame Ahmadinejad for not kowtowing to US and Israeli rhetoric and capitulating to its demands in the face of grave and imminent danger posed by two nuclear-armed states. How is this Ahmadinejad’s problem? Is truth supposed to tremble in the face of adversity? This argument infers that the illegal threat of attack or annihilation should silence all debate, thereby entirely subverting even the most basic of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist ideologies.

Additionally, it clear that Israeli leaders are not interested in establishing peaceful relations with their immediate Arab neighbors, let alone with Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu took the opportunity afforded to him by misrepresenting Ahmadinejad’s speech to state that any renewed peace talks with Palestinian leaders was contingent on the removal of the “Iranian nuclear threat.” Meanwhile, Iranian leaders speak only of the need for “mutual respect and justice” and the upholding of international law in order to resume diplomacy. And yet, which nation does the United States call upon to unclench its fist?

The Iranian Constitution is quite clear with regards to international relations, explicitly stating that “the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based upon the rejection of all forms of domination, both the exertion of it and submission to it, the preservation of the independence of the country in all respects and its territorial integrity….” The document forbids any agreement that may result in foreign control over the natural resources, economy, military, or culture of Iran and affirms Iran’s commitment of “non-alignment with respect to the hegemonic superpowers and the maintenance of mutually peaceful relations with all non-belligerent States.”

Furthermore, the Constitution declares that, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has as its ideal human felicity throughout human society, and considers the attainment of independence, freedom, and rule of justice and truth to be the right of all people of the world. Accordingly, while scrupulously refraining from all forms of interference in the internal affairs of other nations, it supports the just struggles of the oppressed against the oppressors in every corner of the globe.”

Thus, to allow the threat of Israeli aggression or potential of renewed American diplomacy to muzzle him, President Ahmadinejad would have done a great disservice to himself, his government, the Iranian people, their Revolution and their Constitution.

The tone of much progressive criticism of Ahmadinejad’s speech seems to say, "He should've been more tactful… It's unhelpful to say things so bluntly… He should be more understanding, more wishy-washy, less specific, more diplomatic." Pardon me, but when did outrage over injustice have to be nicely stated? Ahmadinejad should be "nicer" when speaking out about the murderous policies of the US and Israel while Iran hasn't threatened or attacked any other country in centuries? Why is it Ahmadinejad’s responsibility gently walk on eggshells when addressing a room full of historic and current colonialists, occupiers, militarists, and imperialists, who consistently attempt to degrade him by namecalling? This smacks more of Western Caucasian apologia than progressive tenderness and tact. If you're not furious about what Israel is doing on a daily basis, then you're not paying attention. Well, Ahmadinejad is paying attention and he doesn't feel compelled to coddle the European (and American) imperialists who brought the world to this point, the same people who supported the repressive tyranny of the Shah's dictatorship in Iran.

Are these critics truly suggesting that the Iranian guy in the room should practice deferential diplomacy with Western powers? Is he their butler? The elected president of a country whose democratic government was aggressively overthrown by a CIA coup at the bidding of Britain, an historically imperial and colonial country, should be sensitive to the delicate sensibilities of the Western governments that have demonized and ostracized that country for thirty years? Why should imperialists be handled with kid gloves? So that their delegates won't storm out in a pre-planned huff like so many frustrated toddlers?

At the end of his critique, Weissman writes, “One final question: Should we join Ahmadinejad in calling the Israelis ‘racist perpetrators of genocide?’ I would not. The long-standing Israeli policy of seeking ‘more land and fewer Arabs’ is horrendous. But it is not genocide, at least not until Avigdor Lieberman has his way. And it is not essentially racial, but increasingly religious, denying people first-class citizenship because they do not share the dominant faith or identity. To me, that is every bit as pernicious as racism, whether in Israel or any number of Islamic countries.”

When it was founded in 1948, the United Nations defined genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Is this really such an outlandish description of what Palestinians have been subjected to for the past hundred years and what continues to befall them on a daily basis? Thoughts of cancer patients denied travel permits and mothers forced to go into labor at West Bank checkpoints, as well as the hundreds upon hundreds of slaughtered innocents in Gaza just four months ago, prove the point quite easily.

Also, is the “Islamic racism,” mentioned by Weissman, intended to implicate Iran? If so, he should elaborate. Even Ayatollah Khomeini, whom progressives still love to demonize as an extremist and a zealot, always made a strong distinction between Judaism and Zionism. When Khomeini returned from exile in 1979, he met with representatives of Jewish communities and issued a religious decree, ensuring the safety and protection of Jews in Iran during and after the coming Revolution.

President Ahmadinejad’s speech at Durban II doesn’t really need my defending. His words speak for themselves. However, when progressive commentators treat Ahmadinejad as a pariah, they wind up speaking for the very imperialists they’re supposed to be opposing.

There’s already plenty of propaganda out there. I think it’s time for a little truth.

[Nima Shirazi is a writer and a musician. He was born and raised in Manhattan. Now living in Brooklyn, he writes the weblog Wide Asleep In America under the moniker Lord Baltimore. He can be reached at wideasleepinamerica@gmail.com.]

Please see previous Rag Blog articles on this subject:

• Steve Weissman : How Should We Respond to Ahmadinejad by Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / April 24, 2009
• Ahmadinejad : Iran Hands Israel a Gift by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler / Terraviva Europe / The Rag Blog / April 23, 2009
• Dissecting Ahmadinejad's Address to Durban II by Nima Shirazi / Wide Asleep in America / The Rag Blog / April 20, 2009

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Steve Weissman : Netanyahu Offers a State and a Half

Binyamin Netanyahu speaks on Palestine. Could he become the Nixon of the Middle East? Photo by AP.
Israel Offers a State and a Half

To bring the Palestinians and their Arab supporters back to the table, [Obama] will have to find something new, and he will not find it in Netanyahu's speech.

By Steve Weissman / June 15, 2009

Could Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu become the Richard Nixon of the Middle East, as Barack Obama invited him to do? Could he break with his hard-line past and reach out to the Palestinians the way Nixon did with the Chinese? Or will he pay lip service to peace even as he does everything he can to keep the Palestinians from ever getting a viable state of their own? Watching it on TV Sunday night, I came away deeply depressed by the spirit and substance of Netanyahu's speech, though the Obama White House diplomatically welcomed his acceptance of a Palestinian state, however limited, as an "important step forward."

Netanyahu was uncharacteristically clear and straightforward about what his coalition government would and would not accept. "The territory in Palestinian hands must be demilitarized in other words, without an army, without control of airspace, and with effective security safeguards..." he insisted.

"A fundamental condition for ending the conflict is a public, binding and honest Palestinian recognition of the state of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people."

Netanyahu set these as the primary preconditions for his acceptance of even a limited Palestinian state.

"If we receive this undertaking, for demilitarization and the security arrangements required by Israel, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people," he declared, "we will be prepared for a true peace agreement, to reach a solution of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state."

On other contentious issues, Netanyahu would refrain from seizing any more land claimed by the Palestinians, but would continue to allow the 300,000 Israelis living in the West Bank to expand existing settlements within their current borders. He would refuse to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes within Israeli borders. He would never negotiate with Hamas. And he would deny the Palestinians the right to have their capital in East Jerusalem.

As Netanyahu and his advisers might have intended, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas immediately rejected his preconditions. They did not find his belated acceptance of a Palestinian state as the great bargaining chip he wanted it to be, since earlier Israeli governments of Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert had already accepted the principle. Even more, the Palestinians recoiled at his arrogance in attempting to impose strategic and ideological preconditions before the talks had even resumed.

"Netanyahu's remarks have sabotaged all initiatives, paralyzed all efforts being made and challenges the Palestinian, Arab and American positions," said Nabil Abu Rudeinah, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"His speech is a slap in the face of all those who have opted for the choice of negotiations with Israel," said senior Hamas leader Ismail Radwan. "What needs to be done immediately is to sever all ties with Israel."

Underlying the Palestinian response was a rejection of the way Netanyahu tried to lay down the law. Negotiators could have worked through many of the "details" in subsequent negotiations. But no self-respecting Palestinian leader could accept them in advance as a fiat from the Israelis.

Take the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes they abandoned during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war. Over the years, various Palestinians have suggested a compromise that would include an affirmation of the right of return along with compensation for the vast majority of the refugees who have no desire to live in Israel.

A serious compromise might also include compensation for Jewish refugees who fled Arab lands in which they had lived for centuries. But no Palestinian leader could reject the right of return, which is enshrined as a principle in international law.

Netanyahu's demands for ironclad guarantees of Israel's security could find similar solutions. But the Israelis would have to accept reciprocal limitations on their own sovereignty, including a good measure of international intervention. Again, these should be details for good-faith negotiations, not a dictate that the Palestinians accept half a state in advance.

Jerusalem presents a different case. As most observers acknowledge, the Israelis will probably end up having to accept a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, which is home to the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest site in the Islamic faith. "A united Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people in the state of Israel forever" plays well to Zionists, but the Obama administration will not likely let the demand stand in its way.

Much the same is true of the Palestinians having to recognize that "The State of Israel is the national homeland of the Jewish People and will remain so." This is the central tenet of Zionism, and Netanyahu is essentially demanding that the Palestinians affirm Zionism, which would mean rejecting their own belief that the land is historically their own.

Netanyahu makes the demand in part because he knows that the Palestinians will have to reject it, just as he would have to reject any demand that he recognize the West Bank -- the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria - as the national homeland of the Palestinians.

Hopefully, the Obama administration will laugh the whole business away. Washington does not demand that anyone recognize the United States as a Christian country, or as a secular country or as anything else. Nor do the French demand that anyone but school kids recognize their country as the land of "our ancestors the Gauls."

So, where does that leave "the peace process"? Back in Obama's lap. To bring the Palestinians and their Arab supporters back to the table, he will have to find something new, and he will not find it in Netanyahu's speech.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France. He is also a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.]

Source / truthout

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