More angst - Three views of cartoon controversy that shook the world

By Flemming Rose; culture editor of Jyllands-Posten.
This commentary also appeared in the Washington Post.

February 26, 2006

Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people's religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech.

I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages. So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.

But the cartoon story is different.

Those examples have to do with exercising restraint because of ethical standards and taste; call it editing. By contrast, I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The Bidea wasn't to provoke gratuitously – and we certainly didn't intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter.

At the end of September, a Danish stand-up comedian said in an interview with Jyllands-Posten that he had no problem urinating on the Bible in front of a camera, but he dared not do the same thing with the Koran.

This was the culmination of a series of disturbing instances of self-censorship. Last September, a Danish children's writer had trouble finding an illustrator for a book about the life of Muhammad. Three people turned down the job for fear of consequences. The person who finally accepted insisted on anonymity, which in my opinion is a form of self-censorship. European translators of a critical book about Islam also did not want their names to appear on the book cover beside the name of the author, a Somalia-born Dutch politician who has herself been in hiding.

Around the same time, the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by the avant-garde artist John Latham depicting the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. The museum explained that it did not want to stir things up after the London bombings. (A few months earlier, to avoid offending Muslims, a museum in Goteborg, Sweden, had removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.)

Finally, at the end of September, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with a group of imams, one of whom called on the prime minister to interfere with the press in order to get more positive coverage of Islam.

So, over two weeks we witnessed a half-dozen cases of self-censorship, pitting freedom of speech against the fear of confronting issues about Islam. This was a legitimate news story to cover, and Jyllands-Posten decided to do it by adopting the well-known journalistic principle: Show, don't tell. I wrote to members of the association of Danish cartoonists asking them “to draw Muhammad as you see him.” We certainly did not ask them to make fun of the prophet. Twelve out of 25 active members responded.

We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.

The cartoons do not in any way demonize or stereotype Muslims. In fact, they differ from one another both in the way they depict the prophet and in whom they target. One cartoon makes fun of Jyllands-Posten, portraying its cultural editors as a bunch of reactionary provocateurs. Another suggests that the children's writer who could not find an illustrator for his book went public just to get cheap publicity. A third puts the head of the anti-immigration Danish People's Party in a lineup, as if she is a suspected criminal.

One cartoon – depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban – has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name. The cartoon also plays into the fairy tale about Aladdin and the orange that fell into his turban and made his fortune. This suggests that the bomb comes from the outside world and is not an inherent characteristic of the prophet.

On occasion, Jyllands-Posten has refused to print satirical cartoons of Jesus, but not because it applies a double standard. In fact, the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. There were, however, no embassy burnings or death threats when we published those.

Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

This is exactly why Karl Popper, in his seminal work “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” insisted that one should not be tolerant with the intolerant. Nowhere do so many religions coexist peacefully as in a democracy where freedom of expression is a fundamental right. In Saudi Arabia, you can get arrested for wearing a cross or having a Bible in your suitcase, while Muslims in secular Denmark can have their own mosques, cemeteries, schools, TV and radio stations.

I acknowledge that some people have been offended by the publication of the cartoons, and Jyllands-Posten has apologized for that. But we cannot apologize for our right to publish material, even offensive material. You cannot edit a newspaper if you are paralyzed by worries about every possible insult.

I am offended by things in the newspaper every day: transcripts of speeches by Osama bin Laden, photos from Abu Ghraib, people insisting that Israel should be erased from the face of the Earth, people saying the Holocaust never happened. But that does not mean that I would refrain from printing them as long as they fell within the limits of the law and of the newspaper's ethical code. That other editors would make different choices is the essence of pluralism.

As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.

The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants.

Since the Sept. 30 publication of the cartoons, we have had a constructive debate in Denmark and Europe about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect for immigrants and people's beliefs. Never before have so many Danish Muslims participated in a public dialogue – in town hall meetings, letters to editors, opinion columns and debates on radio and TV. We have had no anti-Muslim riots, no Muslims fleeing the country and no Muslims committing violence. The radical imams who misinformed their counterparts in the Middle East about the situation for Muslims in Denmark have been marginalized. They no longer speak for the Muslim community in Denmark because moderate Muslims have had the courage to speak out against them.

In January, Jyllands-Posten ran three full pages of interviews and photos of moderate Muslims saying no to being represented by the imams. They insist that their faith is compatible with a modern secular democracy. A network of moderate Muslims committed to the constitution has been established, and the anti-immigration People's Party called on its members to differentiate between radical and moderate Muslims, i.e. between Muslims propagating sharia law and Muslims accepting the rule of secular law. The Muslim face of Denmark has changed, and it is becoming clear that this is not a debate between “them” and “us,” but between those committed to democracy in Denmark and those who are not.

This is the sort of debate that Jyllands-Posten had hoped to generate when it chose to test the limits of self-censorship by calling on cartoonists to challenge a Muslim taboo. Did we achieve our purpose? Yes and no. Some of the spirited defenses of our freedom of expression have been inspiring. But tragic demonstrations throughout the Middle East and Asia were not what we anticipated, much less desired. Moreover, the newspaper has received 104 registered threats, 10 people have been arrested, cartoonists have been forced into hiding because of threats against their lives and Jyllands-Posten's headquarters have been evacuated several times due to bomb threats. This is hardly a climate for easing self-censorship.

Still, I think the cartoons now have a place in two separate narratives, one in Europe and one in the Middle East. In the words of the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the integration of Muslims into European societies has been sped up by 300 years due to the cartoons; perhaps we do not need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe. The narrative in the Middle East is more complex, but that has very little to do with the cartoons.

Insult is being exploited by extremists

By Omar Hassaine; president of the San Diego chapter, Council of American Islamic Relations

February 26, 2006

The publication of cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that were insulting to Muslims worldwide triggered some of the largest demonstrations, as well as debates, around the world. Unfortunately, some individuals, groups, and commentators from both sides have exploited this opportunity to further their own agendas and preconceived beliefs, prolonging the controversy.

Without such individuals and groups, this incident could have ended as a newspaper printing something controversial, triggering peaceful protests by those who were offended. The newspaper could then have decided to either apologize, putting an end to the protests or not apologize in which case more protests could have continued. Unfortunately this is not how things unfolded.

The newspaper did not apologize and defiantly stood by its right to publish, while other newspapers added fuel to fire by reprinting the caricatures. The protesters grew more agitated by this response and unfortunately some groups and individuals, either through raw uncontrollable emotion or subversion, turned peaceful protests into riots. Regrettably, many in the free world were ready to turn this into a defense of free speech, using the common fear theme of Muslims trying to control us, overcome our democracies, take away our freedoms, force our women to dress modestly, kill us and the list goes on.

The only winners from this saga are the extremists on both sides. The terrorist recruiters can now gleefully cite this incident as proof of the West's contempt for Islam and everything dear to Muslims, while their counter extremists and Islamophobics in the West have been crying wolf, using this controversy to perpetuate the belief that Islam and Muslims are a threat to our societies.

To digress a little, being familiar with the Muslim belief would help one better understand the true emotional reaction of Muslims in relation to the cartoons. Muslims respect and revere all prophets including Jesus, Moses, Abraham and believe that prophets are not to be mocked, represented in a drawing or even pictured in movies. Due to this reason, even when Arab or Muslim media engage in unacceptable attacks on followers of other religions, they never dare attack or mock their prophets. Muslims are taught to love the prophet more than they love anyone else including their families and themselves. Muslims all over the world consider Prophet Muhammad as the ultimate role model and strive to imitate him in all actions and practices.

When the Danish newspaper depicted him as a terrorist, it demonized and insulted not only the prophet of Islam but also all Muslims and their beliefs. Such a portrayal perpetuates the idea that all Muslims are terrorists and that the war on terror is in fact a war on Islam. This explains why Muslims all over the world felt deep anguish over the cartoons. In the past decade and particularly since 9/11, the U.S. and European media has published numerous anti-Muslim articles and cartoons but we rarely hear about protests at the magnitude we witnessed recently.

There are 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide, many of whom demonstrated, and only a small minority of them engaged in rioting and other deplorable behavior that is absolutely contrary to Islamic teachings. But does anyone in the media, for the sake of defending free speech, care to make this clear distinction? Do the pictures and articles clearly say we cannot blame a religion for the actions of some fringe groups? Did anyone bother to fully cover the “Fatwa” (religious edict) by the highest religious authorities in the Muslim world, who represent Islam and the overwhelming majority of Muslims, denouncing all forms of violence during a demonstration?

The answer is, mostly no. When the commentators try to address this, they play with terms and go into convoluted arguments about the moderate Muslims, the non-radicals, or democratic Muslims who should go out and protest the protests of their fellow Muslims and defend free speech. They concentrate on the illogical actions and threats by radical extremists without separating it from the true Islamic principles and beliefs that do not support such actions. These media pundits perpetuate unreasonable stereotypes and indirectly fuel more extremism on both sides.

Why didn't the newspapers that published the cartoons publish any anti-Semitic cartoons that were common in Europe prior to the holocaust? It is probably a red line for the editor of Jyllands-Posten and editors of the other newspapers who published the cartoons, as well as for those who suddenly jumped in defense of free speech. They are threatened not by some remote violence but by the fear of losing their jobs and being labeled as anti-Semitic. Therefore, those who accuse the Danish and other newspapers and individuals of double standards do have a legitimate argument.

That being said, it is important here to emphasize that every Muslim I know or talked to, and every mainstream and legitimate Muslim media and leadership strongly denounced the violence that cannot be justified by Muslim belief and by the prophet's actions during his lifetime. When the prophet was shunned, ridiculed and injured he always forgave the perpetrators. Islam's sacred tradition, while describing his character states “You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness.”

Another factor that has played into this, and has been covered in some but not all media, is that most Muslims countries, such as Syria and Pakistan, that witnessed the violence have been under dictatorial rule for long periods of time. The people in those countries do not have the privilege to express their protests as we express them in Western democracies. Local tensions have boiled up in other places such as Nigeria, Gaza and Lebanon. The bungled foreign policies in the Muslim world, wars, economic sanctions, high unemployment rates, and occupations in Iraq, Palestine and other Muslim countries cannot be excluded from the equation and have added to the magnitude of the response.

The media has a role to be balanced and not to only magnify the violent actions of a few while ignoring the big picture. They have the responsibility not to mix everything up or portray things out of context. As a matter of fact, the media here only picked up on the controversy when violence happened. The reprinting of the cartoons in certain newspapers in the name of defending freedom of expression has been criticized by the likes of Presidents Bush and Clinton and even British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The role of these newspapers in amplifying the controversy is not much different from those on the other extreme calling for violence and revenge.

In this new global world, the lives of people have become dependent on responsible, accurate and fair media coverage because bias and incitement cannot always be separated from violence even in our advanced democracies. The rising rate of violent attacks on Muslims and their places of worship in the United States as well as in Europe is directly related to the rise of anti-Islamic rhetoric and incitement in the media. In its most extreme forms, incitement and hatred that have been justified as free speech have preceded the horrible genocides and ethnic cleansings of the previous century.

Defamed - Hypocrisy in the Arab and Muslim world

By Kenneth Jacobson; associate national director and director of international affairs of the Anti-Defamation League.

February 26, 2006

Rarely has an incident highlighted the gaping chasm between two worlds more than the Danish cartoon controversy.

In the West, the controversy points to the need for continuing discussion and consideration as to how to maintain freedom of the press while being sensitive to ethnic and religious minorities. This is becoming more important as societies become increasingly multicultural and multireligious. Discussions can help many Muslim immigrants living in the West come to appreciate that a free and responsible press serves everyone's interest, including theirs. In America we seem to do a better job at this than Europe because our mindset is based on integrating minorities into society as equal partners.

On the other hand, in much of the Arab and Muslim world there is no such conversation taking place. Broadly speaking, there is neither a free press nor a sensitive press. In many Arab/Muslim countries we see a state-sponsored press that disseminates anti-Semitic and other hateful material.

Hypocrisy is the only word to describe the Arab/Muslim world's outrage over the cartoon controversy – not that they do not have reason to be upset (as opposed to engaging in violence or threats), but that they have no credibility on this subject because of their own press and culture.

Unfortunately, it is not well-known how widespread and long-standing are the press and other attacks on Jews in too many Arab countries. A sampling of such hatred is instructive:

The anti-Semitic blood libel has appeared throughout the Muslim and Arab world with gruesome accounts and depictions of Jews murdering non-Jews and using their blood for ritual purposes.

An episode of the anti-Semitic television series, Ash Shatat (“The Diaspora”), shows a heinous dramatization of the killing of a Christian child by a rabbi and the use of his blood to make matzah. The program is a Syrian production and was first aired in October and November 2003 by the Lebanon-based satellite television network Al-Manar, which is owned by the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Al-Manar is widely available to viewers across the Muslim and Arab world and around the world. The closing credits of the programs give special thanks to various government ministries in Syria, including the security ministry, the culture ministry, the Damascus Police Command and the Department of Antiquities and Museums.

The Saudi government daily, Ar-Riyadh, ran a two-part article entitled “The Jewish Holiday of Purim” by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University in Al-Dammam, on March 10 and March 12, 2002 which claimed that Jews murder Muslim or Christian children and drain their blood to make pastries for the holiday of Purim.

Abu Dhabi Television aired a television comedy skit in November 2001 portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon drinking the blood of Arabs.

Conspiracy theories of Jews plotting to control U.S. foreign policy, dominate the world, control the media, spread deadly diseases, and perpetrate terrorist attacks abound in the Arab and Muslim media. Often, Israel is the target of these theories, thereby crossing the line of legitimate criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism. For example:

The Qatari Ash-Sharq printed a cartoon accusing Jews of controlling the media and spreading lies about the Holocaust (Feb. 19).

The state-run Syrian daily al-Thawra accused Israel of developing the bird flu virus to harm the genes of its Arab neighbors. According to the newspaper, Israeli scientists are trying to identify genes unique to Arabs and then develop viruses that attack these genes. This conspiracy theory is reminiscent of medieval charges accusing Jews of poisoning drinking wells (Feb. 9).

United Arab Emirates newspaper, Al-Bayan, ran a cartoon depicting a Jew deviously holding a yo-yo of the world in his hand to illustrate Jewish domination of world affairs (Dec. 22, 2005).

Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories placing the blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Jews and Israel have been popular with many claiming that Israel, not Osama bin Laden, was behind the horrible events of 9/11. Rumors that originated in the Arab world and circulated on the Internet falsely claimed that 4,000 Jews did not report to work, or “called in sick” that morning. It suggested that no Jews died because they somehow had foreknowledge of the attack.

Denial of the Holocaust is common throughout the Arab and Muslim world in statements by their leaders, in newspaper articles, at book fairs, and at conferences on Holocaust revisionism. For example:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust with statements that Iran does not accept the claim that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews while speaking to reporters at an Islamic summit in Mecca on Dec. 8, 2005, and statements that the Europeans have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust while speaking to thousands of people in the Iranian city of Zahedan on Dec. 14, 2005.

The semi-official Iranian Mehr News Agency, whose articles are made available on the Internet in Farsi, Arabic and English and widely circulated throughout the Muslim and Arab world, has featured interviews with some of the world's most active and notorious Holocaust deniers. Arthur Butz, a professor of electrical engineering and author of the 1977 book, “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,” told Mehr News, “The alleged slaughter of millions of Jews by the Germans during World War II did not happen” (Jan. 25). Michael A. Hoffman II, an Idaho-based Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist termed the Holocaust, “a religious cult masquerading as history” and “a means for Judaizing the West” (Jan. 24). Mark Weber, director of the California-based Institute for Historical Review, an organization that promotes Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, called Holocaust remembrance “a one-sided campaign designed to further Zionist interests” (Dec. 11, 2005).

The United Arab Emirates newspaper, Al-Bayan, ran an article accusing the Jews of using the myth of the Holocaust to control the world by having the General Assembly of the United Nations accept “the exaggerations and inflating of the Jewish Holocaust in Germany which is known as the Holocaust and dedicating an international budget to commemorate it annually” (Nov. 25, 2005).

An annual book fair in Cairo, Egypt, the largest literary event in the Arab and Muslim world, which attracts many people and includes books from all over the Arab world, displays a selection of books that contain anti-Semitic text, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories about Jews, including Muhammad Jarbu'a, “Exempting Hitler from the Holocaust Accusation,” Lebanon: An-Nida, 2002; “ Muhammad 'Isa Da'ud, “The Bomb: Jews whom God transformed into Monkeys and Pigs,” Madbuli as-Saghir, 2003; Dib 'Ali Hasan, “Encyclopedia of the Jews' Crimes,” Damascus: At-Takwin, 2004; Mazen an-Naqib, “The Murder – from the Jewish Scriptures and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion unto Knightless Horse,” Damascus: Al-Aawael, 2004.

Throughout the Arab and Muslim media, Jews are depicted with stereotypical and demonic features. For example:

The state-owned Qatari newspaper Al-Watan depicts an evil-looking, stereotypical bearded Jew with a big nose, black coat and hat plotting to bring down the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (Jan. 6).

The Omani newspaper, Al-Watan, ran a cartoon depicting a bearded angry Jew with a long beard and black hat slicing the throat of an Arab in front of two weeping Arabs (Feb. 3, 2004).

What is particularly disturbing about this widespread assault on Jews in the Arab/Muslim media is the fact that so many of the organs are media-controlled or sponsored and that government officials have failed to stop such media bigotries or even to criticize or condemn them.

So I return to my original point. We in the West must struggle with the dilemma we face. Sensitivity to religions and minorities is crucial without undermining the freedom of the press. But if the Arab/Muslim world is to have something significant to contribute to the discussion, it needs to get its own house in order and to start taking seriously both the freedom of the press and the responsibility of the press.

 
Whose judgment on the Iraq War is entitled to respect?
.
.
It is becoming increasingly apparent even to loyal Bush followers that our occupation in Iraq has turned into a full-blown, irreversible disaster. Conservative hero William Buckley, writing in the pages of National Review yesterday, emphatically proclaimed American defeat in that war.

http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/buckley/buckley.asp
.
.

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It is becoming increasingly apparent even to loyal Bush followers that our occupation in Iraq has turned into a full-blown, irreversible disaster.

Quite possibly the reason for the President's highly unexpected 'change of heart' with regards to 'alternative fuels'... I'm guessing the last card to be played will be that of a nuclear nature, hence, no more Middle Eastern oil... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Defamed - Hypocrisy in the Arab and Muslim world

By Kenneth Jacobson; associate national director and director of international affairs of the Anti-Defamation League.

February 26, 2006

Rarely has an incident highlighted the gaping chasm between two worlds more than the Danish cartoon controversy.

In the West, the controversy points to the need for continuing discussion and consideration as to how to maintain freedom of the press while being sensitive to ethnic and religious minorities. This is becoming more important as societies become increasingly multicultural and multireligious. Discussions can help many Muslim immigrants living in the West come to appreciate that a free and responsible press serves everyone's interest, including theirs. In America we seem to do a better job at this than Europe because our mindset is based on integrating minorities into society as equal partners.

On the other hand, in much of the Arab and Muslim world there is no such conversation taking place. Broadly speaking, there is neither a free press nor a sensitive press. In many Arab/Muslim countries we see a state-sponsored press that disseminates anti-Semitic and other hateful material.

Hypocrisy is the only word to describe the Arab/Muslim world's outrage over the cartoon controversy – not that they do not have reason to be upset (as opposed to engaging in violence or threats), but that they have no credibility on this subject because of their own press and culture.

Unfortunately, it is not well-known how widespread and long-standing are the press and other attacks on Jews in too many Arab countries. A sampling of such hatred is instructive:

The anti-Semitic blood libel has appeared throughout the Muslim and Arab world with gruesome accounts and depictions of Jews murdering non-Jews and using their blood for ritual purposes.

An episode of the anti-Semitic television series, Ash Shatat (“The Diaspora”), shows a heinous dramatization of the killing of a Christian child by a rabbi and the use of his blood to make matzah. The program is a Syrian production and was first aired in October and November 2003 by the Lebanon-based satellite television network Al-Manar, which is owned by the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Al-Manar is widely available to viewers across the Muslim and Arab world and around the world. The closing credits of the programs give special thanks to various government ministries in Syria, including the security ministry, the culture ministry, the Damascus Police Command and the Department of Antiquities and Museums.

The Saudi government daily, Ar-Riyadh, ran a two-part article entitled “The Jewish Holiday of Purim” by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University in Al-Dammam, on March 10 and March 12, 2002 which claimed that Jews murder Muslim or Christian children and drain their blood to make pastries for the holiday of Purim.

Abu Dhabi Television aired a television comedy skit in November 2001 portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon drinking the blood of Arabs.

Conspiracy theories of Jews plotting to control U.S. foreign policy, dominate the world, control the media, spread deadly diseases, and perpetrate terrorist attacks abound in the Arab and Muslim media. Often, Israel is the target of these theories, thereby crossing the line of legitimate criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism. For example:

The Qatari Ash-Sharq printed a cartoon accusing Jews of controlling the media and spreading lies about the Holocaust (Feb. 19).

The state-run Syrian daily al-Thawra accused Israel of developing the bird flu virus to harm the genes of its Arab neighbors. According to the newspaper, Israeli scientists are trying to identify genes unique to Arabs and then develop viruses that attack these genes. This conspiracy theory is reminiscent of medieval charges accusing Jews of poisoning drinking wells (Feb. 9).

United Arab Emirates newspaper, Al-Bayan, ran a cartoon depicting a Jew deviously holding a yo-yo of the world in his hand to illustrate Jewish domination of world affairs (Dec. 22, 2005).

Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories placing the blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Jews and Israel have been popular with many claiming that Israel, not Osama bin Laden, was behind the horrible events of 9/11. Rumors that originated in the Arab world and circulated on the Internet falsely claimed that 4,000 Jews did not report to work, or “called in sick” that morning. It suggested that no Jews died because they somehow had foreknowledge of the attack.

Denial of the Holocaust is common throughout the Arab and Muslim world in statements by their leaders, in newspaper articles, at book fairs, and at conferences on Holocaust revisionism. For example:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust with statements that Iran does not accept the claim that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews while speaking to reporters at an Islamic summit in Mecca on Dec. 8, 2005, and statements that the Europeans have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust while speaking to thousands of people in the Iranian city of Zahedan on Dec. 14, 2005.

The semi-official Iranian Mehr News Agency, whose articles are made available on the Internet in Farsi, Arabic and English and widely circulated throughout the Muslim and Arab world, has featured interviews with some of the world's most active and notorious Holocaust deniers. Arthur Butz, a professor of electrical engineering and author of the 1977 book, “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,” told Mehr News, “The alleged slaughter of millions of Jews by the Germans during World War II did not happen” (Jan. 25). Michael A. Hoffman II, an Idaho-based Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist termed the Holocaust, “a religious cult masquerading as history” and “a means for Judaizing the West” (Jan. 24). Mark Weber, director of the California-based Institute for Historical Review, an organization that promotes Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, called Holocaust remembrance “a one-sided campaign designed to further Zionist interests” (Dec. 11, 2005).

The United Arab Emirates newspaper, Al-Bayan, ran an article accusing the Jews of using the myth of the Holocaust to control the world by having the General Assembly of the United Nations accept “the exaggerations and inflating of the Jewish Holocaust in Germany which is known as the Holocaust and dedicating an international budget to commemorate it annually” (Nov. 25, 2005).

An annual book fair in Cairo, Egypt, the largest literary event in the Arab and Muslim world, which attracts many people and includes books from all over the Arab world, displays a selection of books that contain anti-Semitic text, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories about Jews, including Muhammad Jarbu'a, “Exempting Hitler from the Holocaust Accusation,” Lebanon: An-Nida, 2002; “ Muhammad 'Isa Da'ud, “The Bomb: Jews whom God transformed into Monkeys and Pigs,” Madbuli as-Saghir, 2003; Dib 'Ali Hasan, “Encyclopedia of the Jews' Crimes,” Damascus: At-Takwin, 2004; Mazen an-Naqib, “The Murder – from the Jewish Scriptures and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion unto Knightless Horse,” Damascus: Al-Aawael, 2004.

Throughout the Arab and Muslim media, Jews are depicted with stereotypical and demonic features. For example:

The state-owned Qatari newspaper Al-Watan depicts an evil-looking, stereotypical bearded Jew with a big nose, black coat and hat plotting to bring down the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (Jan. 6).

The Omani newspaper, Al-Watan, ran a cartoon depicting a bearded angry Jew with a long beard and black hat slicing the throat of an Arab in front of two weeping Arabs (Feb. 3, 2004).

What is particularly disturbing about this widespread assault on Jews in the Arab/Muslim media is the fact that so many of the organs are media-controlled or sponsored and that government officials have failed to stop such media bigotries or even to criticize or condemn them.

So I return to my original point. We in the West must struggle with the dilemma we face. Sensitivity to religions and minorities is crucial without undermining the freedom of the press. But if the Arab/Muslim world is to have something significant to contribute to the discussion, it needs to get its own house in order and to start taking seriously both the freedom of the press and the responsibility of the press.

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Account frozen...

Hypocrisy..........

U.S. Plants Paid Propaganda in Iraq's Press

"Absolute truth was not an essential element of these stories," said the senior military official.

Seeding Iraq with planted "storyboarded" myths is inimical to every claim we make about the virtues of our democratic ideology.

American taxpayers are financing these fictions.

Welcome to 'lip-service' democracy...... Do as we say, ...not as we do.

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Disgraced Republican US Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham admitted his guilt in corruption and bribery crimes during a recent 51⁄2 -hour interview.....

...........in which he cited “a culture of corruption in Washington.”

Imagine that.....

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/grandolddocket.php

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Iran takes Russia offer on joint uranium deal
Tehran unclear about domestic-enriching in U.S.-backed plan

By Ali Akbar Dareini
ASSOCIATED PRESS

February 27, 2006

BUSHEHR, Iran – Iran and Russia agreed in principle yesterday to establish a joint uranium enrichment venture, a breakthrough in talks on a U.S.-backed Kremlin proposal aimed at easing concerns that Tehran wants to build nuclear weapons.

But further negotiations on the details lay ahead, and it was not known whether Iran will entirely give up enrichment at home, a top demand of the West.

The deal – announced by the two countries' top nuclear chiefs after a visit to a Russian-built nuclear plant in southern Iran – could deflect any move by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency at its March 6 meeting to recommend the Security Council consider action on Iran.

Iran's deputy nuclear chief, Mohammad Saeedi, warned that the deal would be off if the International Atomic Energy Agency refers Iran to the Security Council, a step that could lead to economic or political sanctions. “If talk of referral is raised, then all ways will be blocked,” Saeedi said.

He said European countries and China could become involved in the joint venture, with Russia playing a leading role. Russian participation in the project is aimed at ensuring that no enriched material is secretly diverted to a weapons program.

The United States accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons but has backed the proposal if it means enrichment would take place entirely in Russia. Iran denies any intention to build weapons, saying it aims only to produce nuclear energy.

U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was cautious about the deal. “It's too soon to say,” he said on CNN's “Late Edition.” “In any of these arrangements, the devil is in the details. We'll just have to see what emerges.

It appeared that the issue of Iran's domestic enrichment was still unresolved between Tehran and Moscow.

The head of Iran's nuclear agency, Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, and his Russian counterpart Sergei Kiriyenko avoided addressing the issue while announcing the agreement yesterday. The two spoke in Bushehr, the site of Iran's first reactor, built with Russian aid and due to be inaugurated this year.

Russia, a top ally of Iran, has been pressing Tehran to have all its uranium enrichment take place on Russian soil – and had made the deal contingent on Iran's formally calling off its domestic enrichment program, based in the central city of Natanz. But Iran rejected that linkage, insisting on its right to carry out enrichment.

Enrichment is a key process that can determine the direction of a nuclear program. Uranium enriched to a low level produces fuel for a nuclear reactor, while higher enrichment produces the material needed for a warhead.

This month, the IAEA board of governors – including Russia – voted to report Iran to the Security Council. But it did not ask the council to take any immediate action, putting off any possible move for sanctions.

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(CBS) The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

GW BUSH VS. OTHER PRESIDENTS: ....APPROVAL RATINGS IN SECOND TERMS

Bush, Now
Approve
35%
Disapprove
57%

Clinton, 11/1997
Approve
57%
Disapprove
31%

Reagan, 11/1985
Approve
65%
Disapprove
26%

Nixon, Gallup Poll, 11/1973
Approve
27%
Disapprove
63%

Eisenhower, Gallup Poll, 11/1957
Approve
58%
Disapprove
27%
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On a brighter note, .........just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president.
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Monday, February 27, 2006


BOB HERBERT: IKE SAW IT COMING

Early in the documentary film "Why We Fight," Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York City police officer whose son was killed in the World Trade Center attack, describes his personal feelings in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11.
"Somebody had to pay for this," he says. "Somebody had to pay for 9/11. ... I wanna see their bodies stacked up for what they did. For taking my son."
Lost in the agony of his grief, Mr. Sekzer wanted revenge. He wanted the government to go after the bad guys, and when the government said the bad guys were in Iraq, he didn't argue.
For most of his life Mr. Sekzer was a patriot straight out of central casting. His view was always "If the bugle calls, you go."
When he was 21 he was a gunner on a helicopter in Vietnam. He didn't question his country's motives. He was more than willing to place his trust in the leadership of the nation he loved.
"Why We Fight," a thoughtful, first-rate movie directed by Eugene Jarecki, is largely about how misplaced that trust has become.
The central figure in the film is not Mr. Jarecki, but Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican president who had been the supreme Allied commander in Europe in World War II, and who famously warned us at the end of his second term about the profound danger inherent in the rise of the military-industrial complex.
Ike warned us, but we didn't listen. That's the theme the movie explores.
Eisenhower delivered his farewell address to a national television and radio audience in January 1961. "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience," he said.
He recognized that this development was essential to the defense of the nation. But he warned that "we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications."
"The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist," he said. "We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
It was as if this president, who understood war as well or better than any American who ever lived, were somehow able to peer into the future and see the tail of the military-industrial complex wagging the dog of American life, with inevitably disastrous consequences.
The endless billions to be reaped from the horrors of war are a perennial incentive to invest in the war machine and to keep those wars a-coming.
"His words have unfortunately come true," says Senator John McCain in the film. "He was worried that priorities are set by what benefits corporations as opposed to what benefits the country."
The way you keep the wars coming is to keep the populace in a state of perpetual fear. That allows you to continue the insane feeding of the military-industrial complex at the expense of the rest of the nation's needs.
"Before long," said Mr. Jarecki in an interview, "the military ends up so overempowered that the rest of your national life has been allowed to atrophy."
In one of the great deceptive maneuvers in U.S. history, the military-industrial complex (with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as chairman and C.E.O., respectively) took its eye off the real enemy in Afghanistan and launched the pointless but far more remunerative war in Iraq.
If you want to get a chill, just consider the tragic chaos in present-day Iraq (seven G.I.'s were killed on the day I went to see "Why We Fight") and then listen to Susan Eisenhower in the film recalling a quotation attributed to her grandfather: "God help this country when somebody sits at this desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do."
The military-industrial complex has become so pervasive that it is now, as one of the figures in the movie notes, all but invisible. Its missions and priorities are poorly understood by most Americans, and frequently counter to their interests.
Near the end of the movie, Mr. Sekzer, the New York cop who lost his son on Sept. 11, describes his reaction to President Bush's belated acknowledgment that "we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved" in the Sept. 11 attacks.
"What the hell did we go in there for?" Mr. Sekzer asks.
Unable to hide his bitterness, he says: "The government exploited my feelings of patriotism, of a deep desire for revenge for what happened to my son. But I was so insane with wanting to get even, I was willing to believe anything."

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Report: Iran keen to hike enrichment of uranium
U.N. watchdog cites plan for centrifuges

By George Jahn
ASSOCIATED PRESS

February 28, 2006

VIENNA, Austria – Iran appears determined to expand its uranium enrichment program – a key international concern because of fears it could eventually make nuclear weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a new report yesterday.

The U.N. watchdog, in a confidential report made available to the Associated Press, said Iran plans to start setting up thousands of uranium-enriching centrifuges this year even as it negotiates with Russia on scrapping such domestic activity.

The IAEA also suggested that unless Iran drastically increases its cooperation, the agency would not be able to establish whether past clandestine activities were focused on making nuclear arms.

The report, prepared by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei for a March 6 meeting of the agency's 35-nation board of governors, could help determine what action the U.N. Security Council will take against Iran, which says its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes.

A Feb. 4 board meeting already reported Tehran to the council over concerns it might be seeking nuclear arms. But further action was deferred until the end of next week's meeting on the insistence of veto-wielding council members Russia and China, which have close economic and political ties with the Islamic republic.

The 11-page report emphasized that a probe of more than three years has not revealed “any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

Still, it declared that – because of lack of sufficient cooperation from the Iranian side – the IAEA remained unable “to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran.”

The finding was essentially an admission that the agency cannot establish whether Iran is hiding aspects of its nuclear program that it is obligated to report to the IAEA under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The evidence of Iran's intention to embark on full-scale uranium enrichment appeared to jibe with news of lack of progress in talks between Moscow and Tehran meant to move Iran's nuclear enrichment program to Russia, thereby defusing concerns it might be misused to make nuclear warheads instead of fuel.

Earlier yesterday, Russian officials played down reports of a deal in principle on the Russian proposal, reminding Tehran it must freeze its domestic uranium enrichment.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: “Given their history, you can understand why we remain skeptical.”

The United States and the European Union have backed the Russian offer to host Iran's uranium enrichment program.

But the report made available yesterday showed Iran pressing ahead with enrichment at home by going from testing a lone centrifuge – a machine that spins uranium gas into enriched uranium – to introducing the gas into 10 centrifuges and beginning enrichment between Feb. 11 and Feb 15. Furthermore, said the report, Iran began final maintenance of an additional 20 centrifuges a week ago, reflecting determination to further expand enrichment.

That would leave Iran still far short of the thousands of centrifuges it needs to enrich substantial amounts of uranium.

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Account frozen...

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A BBC poll of 41,856 people in 35 countrys reveals this:

It's official......

Citizens worldwide think Western leaders have made a fundamental mistake in their war on terror by invading Iraq.....

They think Bush's Iraq war makes terror 'more likely' all over the world.
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......and what's on Fox News ?



Could all-out civil war in Iraq be a 'good' thing.?

Oh, yeah..... it's time to make people think total failure could be a good thing.....
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Note for non-US readers: The story mentions a "Hail Mary," which is a high-risk play in American Football that results in a score if successful. It is so rarely successful that it is only tried when a team is incredibly desperate (and occasionally when time is about to run out).

Of Mosques, Oil Fields and Ports
By George Friedman of StratFor.com

Last week was dominated by three apparently discrete events. The al-Askariyah mosque -- a significant Shiite shrine in As Samarra, Iraq -- was bombed, triggering intensifying violence between Shiite and Sunni groups. A group linked to al Qaeda claimed responsibility for attacking a major oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. And a furor broke out in the United States over the proposed purchase, by a government-owned United Arab Emirates (UAE) firm, of a British company that operates a number of important American ports. Apart from the fact that all of these incidents involve Muslims, the stories don't appear to be linked. They are.

All three stories are commentaries on three things. First, they are measures of the current state of the U.S.-jihadist war. Second, they are measures of the Bush administration's strategy of splitting the Islamic world against itself, along its natural fault lines, and using that split to contain and control the radical Islamist threat against the United States. And finally, they are the measure of U.S. President George W. Bush's ability to manage public perceptions of his plans and operations.

The Fault Lines in Iraq

Begin with the bombing of al-Askariyah, or "the Golden Mosque," in As Samarra.

After the failures of U.S. intelligence and operations in Iraq in spring 2003, the United States adopted a long-term strategy of using the natural split between the country's Shiite and Sunni populations to first stabilize its own position, and then improve it. During the first phase, Washington tilted heavily toward the Shia, doing everything possible to assure that there would be no Shiite rising to accompany that of the Sunnis. Since the Shia had no love for the Sunni minority, given their experiences under Saddam Hussein's anti-Shiite regime, this was not overly difficult. In addition, the Shia were able to take advantage of the U.S.-Sunni war to shape and dominate post-Hussein politics. The Shia and Americans suited each other.

In the second phase of this policy, the United States reached out to the Sunnis, trying to draw them into a Shiite-Kurdish government. Washington had two goals: One was a Sunni counterweight to the Shia. Whatever it had promised the Shia, Washington did not simply want to hand Iraq over to them, out of fear that the country would become an Iranian satellite state. The second goal was to exploit fault lines within the Sunni community itself, in order to manipulate the balance of power in favor of the United States.

By the time this phase of the policy was being implemented -- at the end of the first battle of Al Fallujah, in 2004 -- the U.S.-Sunni war had developed a new dimension, consisting of jihadists. These were Sunnis, but differed from the Iraqi Sunnis in a number of critical ways. First, many were foreigners who lacked roots in Iraq. Second, the Sunni community in Iraq was multidimensional; Sunnis had been the backbone of support for Hussein's regime, which had been far more secular than Islamist. The jihadists, of course, were radical Islamists. Thus, there was the potential for yet another rift; the stronger the jihadists grew, the greater the risk to the traditional leadership of Iraq's Sunnis. The jihadists might increase their influence within the community, marginalizing the old leadership.

The U.S. success in manipulating this split reached a high point in December 2005, with Iraq's national elections. The jihadists opposed Sunni participation in the election, but the Sunni leadership participated anyway. The jihadists threatened the leadership but could not strike; as foreigners, they depended on local Sunni communities to sustain and protect them. If they alienated the Sunni leadership without destroying them, the jihadists would in turn be destroyed.

Thus, after the disaster in December, the jihadists embarked on a different course. Rather than focusing on American forces or Shiite collaborators, the goal was to trigger a civil war between the Shia and Sunnis. The brilliantly timed attack on the Golden Mosque, much like the 9/11 attacks, was intended to ignite a war. There would be an event that the Shia could not ignore and to which they would respond with maximum violence, preferably against the Sunnis as a whole. In an all-out civil war, the Sunni leadership would not be able to dispense with the jihadists, or so the jihadists hoped. Their own position would be cemented and the Americans would be trapped in a country torn by civil war.

The Sunni leadership, of course, understands the situation. If the Sunnis protect the jihadists who carried out the attack -- and we are convinced they were jihadists -- they will be in a civil war they cannot win. Given their numbers compared to the Shiite majority, the Sunnis -- if they were to break with the Shia -- eventually would have to come back to the table and make some sort of a deal. The jihadists are betting that the terms the Shia would impose would be so harsh that the Sunnis would prefer civil war. The United States has an interest in limiting what terms the Shia can impose, and the Iraqi Shia themselves understand that if there is civil war, they will need Iran's help. Getting caught between the United States and Iran is not in their interest.

There is, interestingly, the possibility of what passes for peace in Iraq embedded in all of this. The jihadists, marginalized and desperate due to American maneuvers, have tossed up a "Hail Mary" in the hope of disrupting the works. It is certainly possible that the maneuver will work. But a more reasonable assumption is that the bombing of the Golden Mosque achieves merely a shift in the time frame the Sunnis thought they had for negotiations. What might have taken months now could take much less. Certainly, the Sunnis have been forced to a decision point.

Attempt at Strategic Attack

The al Qaeda attack against the Abqaiq facility has similar roots.

Prior to 2003, the Saudi position on al Qaeda was one of benign neglect. The Saudi regime tried to limit both its exposure to the American war against the jihadists, and to intelligence cooperation with the United States, out of fear of the consequences from al Qaeda. After the invasion of Iraq, however, and the realization that the United States was rampaging just to the north, the Saudis shifted their position, and significant intelligence cooperation began. There were two consequences of this shift: One, the United States was receiving Saudi intelligence and became much more effective than before in blocking al Qaeda attacks and disrupting their operations; and two, the jihadists went to war against the Saudi regime, launching a series of strikes and counterstrikes over the next two years. The United States had split the Saudi government off from the jihadists, and the Saudis absorbed the price of collaboration.

Al Qaeda has been relatively quiet in Saudi Arabia since June 2004. It had appeared to many observers that al Qaeda was finished in Saudi Arabia. Thus, just as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's faction in Iraq had to assert itself or be marginalized, the al Qaeda faction in Saudi Arabia had to demonstrate its continued capability to mount operations -- however dangerous and difficult that task might be. It was Hail Mary time in the kingdom as well. The result was the Feb. 24 attack against Abqaiq, a critical oil processing facility.

This was intended to be a strategic attack. A strategic attack differs from a tactical attack in several ways:

1. It shifts the political equation dramatically by demonstrating capabilities.

2. It involves a strike against a target or resource that, if destroyed, changes the economic or political scene definitively.

3. It requires a substantial commitment of resources.

The Sept. 11 strikes amounted to a strategic attack; a suicide bombing by jihadists in Iraq normally does not. The Abqaiq operation was an attempt at a strategic attack. It was designed to be a shocking demonstration of al Qaeda's continued capabilities -- and to massively affect world oil supplies. Such an operation would involve a great deal of planning and, we suspect, a substantial proportion of trained and available al Qaeda personnel in Saudi Arabia (as opposed to sympathizers).

But the strike was a fiasco. Rather than demonstrating al Qaeda's capabilities in Saudi Arabia, the attackers barely penetrated the first security cordon before they were gunned down by security forces. Certainly, they demonstrated that al Qaeda still has operatives who are willing to attempt a strategic attack, but they failed to demonstrate that they still have the ability to actually execute one. Special operations are always difficult, but it now appears that either the group had been penetrated by Saudi security from the beginning, or the cell was not trained in the arts that al Qaeda previously dominated. All three cars used in the strike appear to have been identified and destroyed before there was any possibility they could reach their targets inside the Abqaiq compound.

In Iraq, two divisions in the Muslim world revealed themselves and were manipulated. The first was the Sunni-Shiite split, the second was the rift between the jihadists and mainstream Sunnis. In Saudi Arabia, the split was between, on one side, the state apparatus and the leaders of the royal family -- who had lost their ability to remain neutral in the face of the Iraq invasion, U.S. bellicosity and the fear of a U.S.-Iranian entente over Iraq -- and an increasingly radicalized faction of the religious establishment that was supporting al Qaeda. Within the kingdom, the latter could not withstand the weight of the former, and the result showed itself last week, with a feeble al Qaeda effort that was followed by bombastic rhetoric.

The Debate on the Ports Deal

The third dimension in all of this became apparent with the ports issue. Washington has tried to draw a line between Muslim states that have cooperated with the United States in due course -- regardless of what their earlier behavior might have been like -- and those states that it still doesn't trust. It distinguishes in this way between, for example, Syria and Kuwait. The former has always been seen as hostile to the United States, the latter has been a mainstay of American strategy since its liberation by the United States in 1991. The rest of the Muslim world is distributed along a continuum between these poles.

Washington's only hope for something approaching a satisfactory outcome in Iraq was to work with factions it never would have spoken to prior to 2003. Its hope for a satisfactory outcome in the global war with the jihadists was in getting Saudi intelligence to work with the United States. That also required actions and compromises that would not have been made before 2003. Finally, in order to reshape the Muslim world, the United States needed to have relations with countries that did not have immaculate records but which, on the whole and for a variety of reasons, now found it in their interest to work with Washington.

For Saudi Arabia, the motivating factor was fear. For the UAE, it was greed. To be more fair, the UAE is something like a Switzerland: Its business is business, and it tilts its politics in such a way that business is likely to be good. The Islamic world is a complex place, and there are many players. If the United States is to be successful, it must divide, manipulate and conquer that world along the lines of its complexity. The Sunni-Shiite fault line is one axis, but the division between countries that are motivated by mercenary considerations, as opposed to those that have more complex motives, is another.

The UAE wants to do business, and it is good at it. One of its businesses is managing ports. Purchasing a British company in the same industry is a natural thing to do in business; the fact that the purchase in question would give the UAE company oversight of ports in the United States is another attraction of the deal. The attraction is not that the UAE could facilitate the movement of al Qaeda operatives into the United States; that is not what the UAE is after, since it would be bad for business. What it is after is the profits that come from doing the business.

Now, some argue that this business deal will make it easier for al Qaeda operatives to get into the United States. We find that doubtful. Al Qaeda operatives -- the real ones, not the wannabes -- if they are out there, will get into the United States just fine by a number of means. And if they try to slip a bomb into a container ship, it won't be one sent from a Muslim country -- the level of scrutiny there is too high. It would be from a place and under a flag that no one would suspect for a moment, like Denmark. At any rate, given what it means to "operate a port," the risk to the United States from having a British company manage its ports is about the same as that from the UAE: Has anyone noticed that holding a British passport these days is no guarantee of loyalty to Western ideals?

The Administration's Strategy

The point here is not to argue the merits of the Dubai ports deal, but rather to place the business deal in the context of the U.S. grand strategy. That strategy is, again, to split the Islamic world into its component parts, induce divisions by manipulating differences, and to create coalitions based on particular needs. This is, currently, about the only strategy the United States has going for it -- and if it can't use commercial relations as an inducement in the Muslim world, that is quite a weapon to lose.

The problem has become political, and stunningly so. One of the most recent opinion polls, by CBS, has placed Bush's approval rating at 34 percent -- a fairly shocking decline, and clearly attributable to the port issue. As we have noted in the past, each party has a core constituency of about 35-37 percent. When support falls significantly below this level, a president loses his ability to govern.

The Republican coalition consists of three parts: social conservatives, economic conservatives and business interests, and national security conservatives. The port deal has apparently hit the national security conservatives in Bush's coalition hard. They were already shaky over the administration's personnel policies in the military and the question of whether he had a clear strategy in Iraq, even as they supported the invasion.

Another part of the national security faction consists of those who believe that the Muslim world as a whole is, in the end, united against the United States, and that it poses a clear and present danger. Bush used to own this faction, but the debate over the ports has generated serious doubts among this faction about Bush's general policy. In their eyes, he appears inconsistent and potentially hypocritical. Economic conservatives might love the ports deal, and so might conservatives of the "realpolitik" variety, but those who buy into the view that there is a general danger of terrorism emanating from all Muslim countries are appalled -- and it is showing in the polls.

If Bush sinks much lower, he will breaks into territory from which it would be impossible for a presidency to recover. He is approaching this territory with three years left in his presidency. It is the second time that he has probed this region: The first was immediately after Hurricane Katrina. He is now down deeper in the polls, and it is cutting into his core constituency.

In effect, Bush's strategy and his domestic politics have intersected with potential fratricidal force. The fact is that the U.S. strategy of dividing the Muslim world and playing one part off against the other is a defensible and sophisticated strategy -- even if does not, in the end, turn out to be successful (and who can tell about that?) This is not the strategy the United States started with; the strategy emerged out of the failures in Iraq in 2003. But whatever its origins, it is the strategy that is being used, and it is not a foolish strategy.

The problem is that the political coalition has eroded to the point that Bush needs all of his factions, and this policy -- particularly because of the visceral nature of the ports issue -- is cutting into the heart of his coalition. The general problem is this: The administration has provided no framework for understanding the connection between a destroyed mosque dome in As Samarra, an attack against a crucial oil facility in Saudi Arabia, and the UAE buyout of a British ports-management firm. Rather than being discussed in the light of a single, integrated strategy, these appear to be random, disparate and uncoordinated events. The reality of the administration's strategy and the reality of its politics are colliding. Bush will backtrack on the ports issue, and the UAE will probably drop the matter. But what is not clear is whether the damage done to the strategy and the politics can be undone. The numbers are just getting very low.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Of Mosques, Oil Fields and Ports
By George Friedman of StratFor.com

Octagon, this is a brilliant article, pointing out both the reasons for U.S. moves and strategy, and the errors that have been made along the way in implementing that strategy. Thank you for posting it.

Note for non-US readers: The story mentions a "Hail Mary," which is a high-risk play in American Football that results in a score if successful. It is so rarely successful that it is only tried when a team is incredibly desperate (and occasionally when time is about to run out).

The Oakland Raiders are known to do this on their first offensive play of the game. The team it seems to work on the most is the San Diego Chargers. Go figure.