Thursday, November 13, 2008
Rubin: Bedu tribe in Galilee reveals links to Obama
Tabrik, Shaikh Obama. It seems they may be Druze, not Muslims, so there should not be any negative reaction.
Read more on this article...
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
A.Q. Khan Speaks
Pakistan's nuclear godfather has suddenly emerged from seclusion (involuntary) and penned a risible column for the Daily Jang. It is notable, this column, for his self-aggrandizing, self-importance, and self-service. Keeping to the tradition, he sprinkles the column with bits of Urdu poetry (though not the tired old morsels), and frames himself as a "just a worker". And then he launches into a tirade against Musharraf, as well as a glorification of the Bhutto family. I thought that the greater English-speaking world would want a peek into the mind of A. Q. Khan, so I translated it. Enjoy:
x-posted at CM Read more on this article...
'Til The Dawn
- Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan
Why ask me the cause of my silence?
There must be some reason why I remain quiet
In 1961, I was about to embark, for higher education, to the most acclaimed technical university in Berlin. I thought that I should inform the Pakistani public, especially the students, about the conditions in Germany. In those days, the office of the Daily Jang was on Karachi Business Road. During college (D. J. Sindh Goverment Science College), I would routinely walk by the office. So I went in to meet Mir Khalil al-Rahman Sahib and seek his advice. At that time, Taki Sahib was the Editor and he immediately arranged for me to meet Mir Sahib. I had heard of him, and now I knew him in person. Mir Sahib was a handsome, tall man with a commanding personality and his intelligence was reflected in his broad forehead. He met me with great affection. He was very keen on my idea and told me to certainly keep the readers of Jang informed from Berlin. And thus, I left for Germany. Berlin, in those days, was the playing field for the political conflict between East and West. Only ten days earlier, East Berlin (i.e. the Eastern Communist Germany) had erected the Wall. Innumerable Germans were running from the Communists towards West Berlin and many were dying from the bullets of VOPOS, ie the East Berlin militia. In the skies, the Russian Mig fighters were daily breaking the sound barriers over the city. My hostel was roughly fifteen minutes away from the Brandenburg Gate, and near the Victory Column.
From there, I began to send reports to Daily Jang under the heading "Letters from Berlin" - which were regularly published. This continued for two years. In the pages of Jang I predicted that the mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, would one day become the Chcancellor of Germany. And indeed, in a few years, he did. In late 1963, I shifted from Berlin to the famous technical university in Holland and stopped writing "Letters from Berlin".
Due to current affairs, I though, why not indulge my disposition, and write once again on the important matters of the country. I have always held a fondness for writing, and if there is anything important, I do write. The habit is ...
I cannot break this pagan habit...
Which is not to say that the public remains unaware of my thoughts and my emotions:
I sit quietly, but it appears
as if the whole world is telling my story
No doubt, whenever someone begins to write for the newspapers, the public tries to decipher the intent or the cause:
You may or may not be suspicious, but we
Just gain comfort from telling our painful story
We all know that Good and Evil will always battle in this world. Almighty Allah has warned us of this repeatedly in the Qur'an and declared, "Allah, protect me from the evil of the evil doers and the oppressors". Some selfish and oppressive people, purely for the sake of their self-interest, trample the rights of the people under their feet. Drunk with power, they even, God forbid, deny the existence of God and his Might. The example of Musharraf is in front of you:
In every age, humans have done evil
In every age, humans have tried to become gods
But, God forbid, the haughtiness of being a god does not make one a god. Even if such people forget entirely about God:
The oppressors now think
As if there is no god left in the world
Our bureaucracy and sycophants play a large role in making these false gods into God. Musharraf is F.A. pass (high-school equivalent), a qualification which we use to employ attendants. By a mistaken promotion, he became our commander-in-chief. It nauseated us to see such a dim-wit lecture the highly educated and the experts on economics, education, foreign policy, commerce and industry. And they would bow in front of him and wag their heads and exclaim at his intelligence. The way of an intelligent ruler (or Dictator) is that he doesn't choose his companions on the basis of their flattery but on the basis of their expertise and their knowledge; he listens to their advice; and gives them all the help for the completion of important projects. There was this rumor going around about Musharraf that he complains to his Army friends, "I am saddened to see that if uneducated people cannot understand my arguments, it is ok, but even educated people cannot follow me." The reason is obvious. The ability to pull the trigger of a gun and the ability to make an intelligent statement are clearly different.
Selfish and opportunist people mix heaven and earth in false praise of such rulers, and make them into Plato. These are the people, who because of such actions, weaken the foundations of the country. These people operate like Hitler and his minister of propoganda, and say so many falsehoods that the ruler begins to believe them to be true and begins to consider himself intelligent. The results appear in the destruction of the country. Such was a lie spoken by Mujib ur-Rahman that the money derived from Jute sales, West Pakistan is paving streets with gold in Karachi. It was such a big lie, it was immediately accepted.
I returned to Pakistan in the fourth week of December. This is in 1975, i.e. nearly 33 years ago. I had returned at the request of Bhutto Sahib. Along with my wife and two daughters (aged 7 and 51/2 years), I had intended to return on January 15th. At the sincere request of Bhutto, and for the benefit of the country, I did not hesitate for even a moment: I left the best career, big income, and excellent facilities and stayed behind. I did not receive first salary, 3,000 ruppees monthly, until six months later. And no other compensation from the state:
Strange is God's grant to the exalted ones
Strange are these people, who bear sorrows but keep their hearts alive
Some of the most prominent expert scientists of the country spread falsehoods in the ears of Bhutto Sahib and Ghulam Ishaq Sahib that this young ruffian is here to make a fool out of you. He will enjoy himself for a few days and them take his leave. They explained the intricacies of the technology and the difficulties and that only three developed countries of the world, ie Holland, Germany and England, have the necessary expertise - an expertise they gained after 20 years of hard work and after the expenditure of nearly 2 billion dollars. Bhutto Sahib and Ghlam Ishaq Khan Sahib possessed the power to see the hidden truths. They had no doubts over my capacity for the truth and knew that I had not said a false word to them. Even though some people told me to declare that we will have an atomic bomb in two or three years.
I refused to tell a lie. They may have used this lie as a basis of their foreign policy and been defeated, as a result. And then some famous scientists decided that they could put some two or three thousand tons of explosive materials in some cave and then explode it and Bhutto Sahib will be satisfied and his obsession will be over. Listen. If politicians tell lies, than it is their profession and they can, without any shame, practice their profession in front of the general simple-minded public. But it is incumbent on us scientists and engineers to always keep our profession and our conscious in mind, and speak only the truth. I have always operated on this principle and never told a lie:
Truthful I am, in my word, O Ghalib God is my witness
I tell the truth when I say, I don't lie
The jist is that with the help of my colleagues, I made the impossible, possible. In only eight short years, and for a minuscule cost, made this depressed nation into a nuclear power. Bhutto Sahib, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and General Zia ul-Haq helped without fear and without regret. Any task undertaken with good intentions and with true hard work, is rewarded by Allah. With the help of Honorable Benazir Bhutto, this country became a missile power. At my request, she granted me permission to seek missile technology from China and North Korea and install it here. In this General Mirza Aslam Beg and General Abdul Wahid Kakar played key roles. It is worth thinking that even as countless selfish, bribery-prone, traitors were busy tearing the country apart like hungry wolves, there remained some honest, pious, and skilled people who sacrificed their lives to keep this country on the slow path of progress. With the help of such people, by God's Will, we will make our country into a developed, welfare-based Islamic state.
I have spend the majority of my life, nearly all of my life. When I look back at my life, it is with peace and contentment, that I did my utmost to serve my dear country. I did not do any favors for my country. Instead, it is this nation that granted me all these favors, which I tried to pay back - piece by piece. I gained higher education and technical excellence in Europe for 15 years and I wanted to use that to serve the country in important matters. In 1999, I proposed that we launch a satellite but this high-school pass dictator did not approve my request. Still, I am proud of my service to my country. In addition to providing it with nuclear, and missile, power, I founded countless educational and welfare organizations. From Khyber to Gawadar, the love that exists in people's hearts is my greatest prize. One despicable, traitorous foreign agent donned the costume of Presidency and tried to harm me, but he failed in his dirty deed. Instead he, himself, was evicted from the Presidential house in disgrace. And now this self-styled Commando cannot even set a foot in the street of this country. The public will tear him into little pieces and feed him to the eagles. My relationship is with the 170 million people, and it will always remain. No one can stop me from serving this country. We have, in our front, the golden examples of the sacrifices of Honorable Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto. They gave their lives but did not sell their country and became living legends. This is the reason that in "'Til the Dawn", I will reveal my thoughts, now and then:
The flame burns in every light, 'til the dawn
x-posted at CM Read more on this article...
Friday, November 7, 2008
YES WE CAN WHAT?
BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
America appears to be swept up in a feel-good moment, but as much as Barack Obama wows people as a public speaker and wordsmith, as much as his candid, inclusive style represents an antidote to everything rotten redolent of George W. Bush, as thrilling as it is for black Americans, who have proudly claimed the mulatto son of a Kansas mother and Kenyan father as one of their own, and by his precedent feel empowered by his victory, the feel-good moment has not yet arrived, or if it has, it is cruelly illusory.
That Obama gives good speeches is a given, his acceptance speech stands as one of the best ever, good enough to rouse even jaded political commentators to goose bumps. Good enough to drive people to tears, not just Americans but even foreigners. I watched the acceptance speech in Kyoto with a classroom full of Japanese students and by the time the 16-minute speech had ended, a good number of students were crying.
“Wow. What did you think of that speech?” I asked.
“I wish we had a leader like that,” said one.
“It’s so powerful when he says ‘Yes We Can’!” chimed another.
“I am so moved, he is kind to everyone,” answered a third.
And despite misgivings rooted in a media analyst’s appreciation for Obama’s truly awesome and awesomely manipulative gift for language, I too was almost speechless after hearing his speech. It was such a sterling performance, so brilliantly crafted and so naturally read from two strategically placed teleprompters that it seemed like he was talking from his heart to his closest friends.
Barring a few tired, over-worn clichés about Wall Street and Main Street, barring the braggadocio of American exceptionalism and the incantatory, quasi-religious refrain “Yes We Can,” Obama’s speech was a speech for the ages, down to the touching review of a century of history as imagined through the eyes of a 106 year old voter, taking us back to “before there were cars on the road and planes in the sky” to the moon landing all the way on to the promise he made to his kids, that a puppy would be accompanying them to the White House.
Finding time to embrace erstwhile bitter rivals John McCain and Sarah Palin, finding time to include every one who didn’t vote for him in his mandate to be the president of one and all, he seemed a man incapable of having enemies.
And therein lies the problem. Obama wants to play nice, and to do that in a contentious, demanding job, he needs to surround himself with people who are not so nice. This became immediately obvious with his first and most important political pick, Rahm Emanuel for White House Chief of Staff.
Emanuel, with his impressive resume as Washington insider, Clinton White House retread, wealthy investment banker, and a harsh reputation as a political enforcer, is not only more Wall Street than Main Street, but rather akin to one of those hard-core Republican political operatives like Karl Rove or Newt Gingrich who Democrats so love to hate.
Politely described in the mainstream press as “aggressive” or “Rahmbo” or “obnoxious” or “combative,” the kind of guy who the New York Times reported as having shoved a steak knife into a restaurant table while expressing anger about political enemies, Emanuel can be as infuriating and blood-curdling as Barack Obama is inclusive and charming.
While still serving in the Clinton White House, Rahm Emanuel gave a talk to a seminar I attended at Harvard. When challenged on matters of policy or ethics, even in a friendly small group discussion over sherry and canapés, he would leap forward at those who dared to question him, clenching his fists with a menacing physicality that was either comical or intimidating depending on how much you liked to fight.
But that’s just personality; it’s the old hawkish ideas he espouses that are troubling. American voters, fed up with the old Washington politics, suffering and anxious for absolution and release after eight years of heartache and disappointment, elected the ultimate anti-Bush only to get an anti-Obama appointed into the most strategic White House office slot, second to the President.
Proximity to an ax-man is not likely to alter President-elect Obama’s almost magical poise and good-humored equilibrium, but it will influence policy and raise judgment questions almost as serious as John McCain’s lapse of judgment in choosing the ditzy Sarah Palin as his running mate.
What further deepens the disappointment with the man who promises to bring peace to a wounded world is his right-hand-man’s hawkish identification with right-wing Israeli politics –Emanuel did a stint with the Israeli military during the first Gulf War—a gung-ho gesture if not a sign of confused allegiance. More generally, Emanuel’s hawkish foreign policy views and his take-no-prisoners approach to domestic foes promises not only to confound hopes for a more equitable and balanced worldview in the White House, but also serves to keep political strife and war on the table. For those who followed the flowering of Obama’s foreign policy thinking over the last few months rather than getting distracted with his flowery, seductively-scented rhetoric, it’s no secret that he is not only not anti-war but actively considering military escalations that even old battle-ax Bush was hesitant to make in tinderbox locations like Pakistan.
The brilliance of Obama’s speaking style lies in his ability to fire up sentimental notions of unity while evading matters of substance. In this sense he is both a better and worse speaker than his speech-giving teacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
From what I’ve seen on TV and You-tube, including “controversial” material that was used against Wright by Republican political operatives, I was impressed by the preacher’s style and forthright substance; you know where he stands even if you can’t agree with all of it. I like his dramatics, his vivid hand gestures, his ability to fire up an audience, his passion for his people. Barack Obama, who was exposed to virtually no such talk in Indonesia and little such talk in Hawaii, chose an effective inner-city mentor and eventually exceeded his mentor in talking the talk of the street and the pulpit, while toning it down and fine-tuning it for political viability and political correctness.
In short, if this was truly a victory for African-Americans, we’d see more Wrights than Rahms at Obama’s side in the White House, but that’s not going to happen any time soon.
In the meantime, I hope Obama starts to show some real insight and originality in picking the rest of his administration, --please no more Clinton retreads like Richard Holbrooke or Robert Rubin-- because America, saddled with twin disasters of a failed military policy and a failed economic policy, cannot afford to have the same old hawks and same old investment bankers peddling the same old wine in a new bottle labeled “Yes We Can.”
pc Read more on this article...
America appears to be swept up in a feel-good moment, but as much as Barack Obama wows people as a public speaker and wordsmith, as much as his candid, inclusive style represents an antidote to everything rotten redolent of George W. Bush, as thrilling as it is for black Americans, who have proudly claimed the mulatto son of a Kansas mother and Kenyan father as one of their own, and by his precedent feel empowered by his victory, the feel-good moment has not yet arrived, or if it has, it is cruelly illusory.
That Obama gives good speeches is a given, his acceptance speech stands as one of the best ever, good enough to rouse even jaded political commentators to goose bumps. Good enough to drive people to tears, not just Americans but even foreigners. I watched the acceptance speech in Kyoto with a classroom full of Japanese students and by the time the 16-minute speech had ended, a good number of students were crying.
“Wow. What did you think of that speech?” I asked.
“I wish we had a leader like that,” said one.
“It’s so powerful when he says ‘Yes We Can’!” chimed another.
“I am so moved, he is kind to everyone,” answered a third.
And despite misgivings rooted in a media analyst’s appreciation for Obama’s truly awesome and awesomely manipulative gift for language, I too was almost speechless after hearing his speech. It was such a sterling performance, so brilliantly crafted and so naturally read from two strategically placed teleprompters that it seemed like he was talking from his heart to his closest friends.
Barring a few tired, over-worn clichés about Wall Street and Main Street, barring the braggadocio of American exceptionalism and the incantatory, quasi-religious refrain “Yes We Can,” Obama’s speech was a speech for the ages, down to the touching review of a century of history as imagined through the eyes of a 106 year old voter, taking us back to “before there were cars on the road and planes in the sky” to the moon landing all the way on to the promise he made to his kids, that a puppy would be accompanying them to the White House.
Finding time to embrace erstwhile bitter rivals John McCain and Sarah Palin, finding time to include every one who didn’t vote for him in his mandate to be the president of one and all, he seemed a man incapable of having enemies.
And therein lies the problem. Obama wants to play nice, and to do that in a contentious, demanding job, he needs to surround himself with people who are not so nice. This became immediately obvious with his first and most important political pick, Rahm Emanuel for White House Chief of Staff.
Emanuel, with his impressive resume as Washington insider, Clinton White House retread, wealthy investment banker, and a harsh reputation as a political enforcer, is not only more Wall Street than Main Street, but rather akin to one of those hard-core Republican political operatives like Karl Rove or Newt Gingrich who Democrats so love to hate.
Politely described in the mainstream press as “aggressive” or “Rahmbo” or “obnoxious” or “combative,” the kind of guy who the New York Times reported as having shoved a steak knife into a restaurant table while expressing anger about political enemies, Emanuel can be as infuriating and blood-curdling as Barack Obama is inclusive and charming.
While still serving in the Clinton White House, Rahm Emanuel gave a talk to a seminar I attended at Harvard. When challenged on matters of policy or ethics, even in a friendly small group discussion over sherry and canapés, he would leap forward at those who dared to question him, clenching his fists with a menacing physicality that was either comical or intimidating depending on how much you liked to fight.
But that’s just personality; it’s the old hawkish ideas he espouses that are troubling. American voters, fed up with the old Washington politics, suffering and anxious for absolution and release after eight years of heartache and disappointment, elected the ultimate anti-Bush only to get an anti-Obama appointed into the most strategic White House office slot, second to the President.
Proximity to an ax-man is not likely to alter President-elect Obama’s almost magical poise and good-humored equilibrium, but it will influence policy and raise judgment questions almost as serious as John McCain’s lapse of judgment in choosing the ditzy Sarah Palin as his running mate.
What further deepens the disappointment with the man who promises to bring peace to a wounded world is his right-hand-man’s hawkish identification with right-wing Israeli politics –Emanuel did a stint with the Israeli military during the first Gulf War—a gung-ho gesture if not a sign of confused allegiance. More generally, Emanuel’s hawkish foreign policy views and his take-no-prisoners approach to domestic foes promises not only to confound hopes for a more equitable and balanced worldview in the White House, but also serves to keep political strife and war on the table. For those who followed the flowering of Obama’s foreign policy thinking over the last few months rather than getting distracted with his flowery, seductively-scented rhetoric, it’s no secret that he is not only not anti-war but actively considering military escalations that even old battle-ax Bush was hesitant to make in tinderbox locations like Pakistan.
The brilliance of Obama’s speaking style lies in his ability to fire up sentimental notions of unity while evading matters of substance. In this sense he is both a better and worse speaker than his speech-giving teacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
From what I’ve seen on TV and You-tube, including “controversial” material that was used against Wright by Republican political operatives, I was impressed by the preacher’s style and forthright substance; you know where he stands even if you can’t agree with all of it. I like his dramatics, his vivid hand gestures, his ability to fire up an audience, his passion for his people. Barack Obama, who was exposed to virtually no such talk in Indonesia and little such talk in Hawaii, chose an effective inner-city mentor and eventually exceeded his mentor in talking the talk of the street and the pulpit, while toning it down and fine-tuning it for political viability and political correctness.
In short, if this was truly a victory for African-Americans, we’d see more Wrights than Rahms at Obama’s side in the White House, but that’s not going to happen any time soon.
In the meantime, I hope Obama starts to show some real insight and originality in picking the rest of his administration, --please no more Clinton retreads like Richard Holbrooke or Robert Rubin-- because America, saddled with twin disasters of a failed military policy and a failed economic policy, cannot afford to have the same old hawks and same old investment bankers peddling the same old wine in a new bottle labeled “Yes We Can.”
pc Read more on this article...
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Rubin: Messages on Obama from my Inbox
Since the election, I've gotten quite a few notes from people around the world in the form of emails, text messages, and Facebook messages. I thought I would share a few:
A Western reporter in Southern Afghanistan:
A Western reporter in Southern Afghanistan:
It [Tuesday] looked like an extraordinary night from here. I was on an embed last week. The failure here is complete. As you know, the challenge in Afghanistan and Pakistan is staggering. Several Afghans made impromptu declarations to me today that Obama's victory filled them with hope. We may have a window here, albeit a very small one.A senior official of the Afghan government:
I read the speech of Mr. Obama, "Yes we can". It is great. It seems his charisma, speaking and oral skills have played a great part in his victory. Although the speech is largely for American audience, it is appealing to everybody in any corner of the world. I also read Senator McCain's speech. It shows how much maturity is in the US elections. I always thought should Obama lose the contest, US will remain a superpower but not necessarily from a moral point of view. Now however the US can be an example of morality in politics for many many countries.A senior official in Tehran (two messages):
(1) Hope all is well with you and your family. I want to say congratulations. Hope CHANGE could bring better for all.
(2) I know you are busy in these days but my wife that is following your presidential election really impressed and insisted me to convey her warmest congratulation to you and your family. When she saw the emotion of your people after the result of the election in the TV she told me, she remember our people emotion when Dr. Khatami won the first period of his presidency.A photographer in Paris:
yes you could and you did it bravo and thanks for all of us.A Kenyan UN official from the same ethnic group, Luo, as Obama’s father, from Kigali:
Well done!!! America has made history! There is partying across the continent and tomorrow is a public holiday in Kenya! I will miss it as I am in Rwanda!Another UN official, in Sudan, with the same surname as the Kenyan above, to whom I mistakenly wrote at first:
You may be surprised to know that I am a Sudanese Luo. But the Luo we speak is just the same as the Acholi of Uganda. You mention eating dinner in Nairobi with [O., the Kenyan UN official] in 1998. Oooh! that's when I was just 18 years old. Anyway am a different O. in Sudan. I pray, Obama has to win, and in Jesus name he will win!An Afghan journalist at BBC Persian Service:
Many many congratulations. I’m so happy for Americans and the world. You have made the history. The world is behind you.From a colleague in Saudi Arabia:
All brothers saying Tabrik. See you soon.From a Pakistani friend wandering around Europe flogging his book:
It’s a bloody landslide! Thank God, he won. Barney, don’t accept anything without consulting me first please. I don’t trust your judgments on these things.From an Italian colleague:
Subject: I love America!From a young Afghan from Kabul, currently studying in India:
Last January I pledged that, should Barak Obama be elected President of the United States of America, I would finally become a citizen of this great country. Tonight, after eight years of doubts and disappointments, I found again the country I fell in love with when I decided to make it my home twelve years ago. The country where I decided to raise my family. A country where everyone has an opportunity, really. Tonight, I am extremely proud of the United States, and of everything it stands for. I want to be part of it, today and forever. Tomorrow morning, I will mail out the application for naturalization that my students brought to me at the beginning of the semester.
Congrats Barney. Sir, The world is all yours, coz this is now Obama who is leading the horse!!! Let's see how much his so-called "CHANGE" would affect the lives of innocent Afghans.Read more on this article...
Monday, November 3, 2008
Rubin: Hitchens on McCain and Khalidi
I don't always agree with Christopher Hitchens, but it is uniquely satisfying to read him when I do. His rambunctious counter-attack on McCain-Palin for their shameful (shameless?) slur on Rashid Khalidi is worth savoring.
Read more on this article...
Friday, October 31, 2008
Rubin: McCain's Racism Trifecta
I can't stop stewing over this attack on Rashid Khalidi. Even the Washington Post editorial board called out the Republicans on this one, quoting Rashid as saying he would just wait till the "idiot wind" blows over. That's the editorial's title: Idiot Wind."
I have been wondering why among all the awful things going on this one is occupying so much of my mental space, and I think I figured it out. Partly it's because I know the person involved (I'm writing this sitting at the dining-room table where Rashid was a guest two weeks ago), but it's beyond that.
What did John McCain do?
He exploited the Holocaust AND the Nakba to stimulate anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry in order to frighten Jews from voting for an African-American secretly stigmatized as a Muslim terrorist. Wow! My whole life flashed before my eyes. That one sentence attacked virtually everything I ever considered important.
No victory can be big enough. Let's get out there and take back our country. Read more on this article...
I have been wondering why among all the awful things going on this one is occupying so much of my mental space, and I think I figured it out. Partly it's because I know the person involved (I'm writing this sitting at the dining-room table where Rashid was a guest two weeks ago), but it's beyond that.
What did John McCain do?
He exploited the Holocaust AND the Nakba to stimulate anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry in order to frighten Jews from voting for an African-American secretly stigmatized as a Muslim terrorist. Wow! My whole life flashed before my eyes. That one sentence attacked virtually everything I ever considered important.
No victory can be big enough. Let's get out there and take back our country. Read more on this article...
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Rubin: My Friend, the "Neo-Nazi"
It is really strange to turn on the television and see actual presidential and vice-presidential candidates charging that someone who had dinner at my apartment two weeks ago -- Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University -- is a "neo-Nazi." Yet John McCain actually said this yesterday. Sarah Palin also attacked him, as a "radical professor" and "former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization." (Rashid never held such a position, though he did at one time try to present the Palestinian point of view to journalists in Beirut. I think this is the same PLO whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, the U.S.'s preferred "moderate" Palestinian leader, and Israel's partner in negotiations, but maybe it is some other PLO, known only to Sarah Palin.)
But all this is beside the point. I actually find it demeaning, insulting, and depressing to have to defend Rashid. I could say, I know him, he has been a guest in my home in New York and in my rented house in Provence, he bears absolutely no resemblance to the image these despicable people are trying to project of him, and lot's more. I could point out that I am Jewish and have VISIBLE JEWISH ARTIFACTS IN MY HOME, which did not appear to alarm Rashid, if he even noticed them, but it is all just so ridiculous I don't know what to say.
I don't want to treat these charges with the respect of a refutation. I just want to express my disgust with those who uttered them and my solidarity with my friend, Rashid Khalidi.
UPDATE: After I put this up, I saw that Juan Cole has commented on this far more cogently than I, as has Scott Horton, a fellow guest at the above-mentioned dinner party and house in Provence. Read more on this article...
But all this is beside the point. I actually find it demeaning, insulting, and depressing to have to defend Rashid. I could say, I know him, he has been a guest in my home in New York and in my rented house in Provence, he bears absolutely no resemblance to the image these despicable people are trying to project of him, and lot's more. I could point out that I am Jewish and have VISIBLE JEWISH ARTIFACTS IN MY HOME, which did not appear to alarm Rashid, if he even noticed them, but it is all just so ridiculous I don't know what to say.
I don't want to treat these charges with the respect of a refutation. I just want to express my disgust with those who uttered them and my solidarity with my friend, Rashid Khalidi.
UPDATE: After I put this up, I saw that Juan Cole has commented on this far more cogently than I, as has Scott Horton, a fellow guest at the above-mentioned dinner party and house in Provence. Read more on this article...
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Rubin: U.S. and Iran in Afghanistan
An article I wrote with Sara Batmanglich about U.S.-Iran relations in Afghanistan has been posted on the website of MIT's Center for International Studies. It opens:
AFGHANISTAN IS ONE of several contexts in which the long-term common interests of the U.S. and Iran have been overshadowed by the animus originating in the 1953 CIA-led coup in Iran and the Iranian revolution of 1979, to the detriment of the interests of the U.S., Iran, and Afghanistan. This confrontation has served the interests of the Pakistan military, Taliban, and al-Qaida. Re-establishing the basis for U.S.-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan would provide significant additional leverage over Pakistan, on whose territory the leadership of both the Taliban and al-Qaida are now found.And it ends:
Read more on this article...There is, however, a major strategic judgment to be revisited. The military and intelligence agencies of both Pakistan and Iran have systematically used asymmetrical warfare, including terrorism, as a tool of their security policy. Which of them poses a greater threat to U.S. national interest and international peace and security? How should responses to these two threats be balanced? Since the Iranian revolution, the U.S. has overreacted to the Iranian threat and engaged in systematic appeasement of Pakistan, which is now home to the leadership of both al-Qaida and the Taliban (both Afghan and Pakistani). These countries are rivals for influence in Afghanistan and are sponsoring competing infrastructure projects for road transport and energy trade. Iran and India are building a combined rail and road link from the Iranian port of Chah Bahar to Afghanistan’s major highway. Pakistan, with Chinese aid, is building the port of Gwadar in Baluchistan, aiming at a north-south route to Central Asia. “Taliban” regularly attack Indian road building crews in southwest Afghanistan, and Pakistan charges that India is supporting Baluch insurgents from its consulates in Afghanistan.
A reevaluation of the threats originating in Iran and Pakistan should lead to a recalibration of U.S. policy in Afghanistan to tilt away from Pakistan and more toward Iran. Yet it would be wrong and destructive to treat Pakistan with the type of enmity now reserved for Iran. Like Iran, Pakistan’s policy is motivated by a combination of genuine security threats, ideological aspirations, and institutional interest. In Pakistan’s more open political system, it is far easier for the U.S. to engage with allies inside the country against the security services whose covert policies the U.S. finds threatening.
Ultimately, U.S. interests would be best served by supporting efforts to extend and improve governance and security in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, thereby depriving al-Qaida and its epigones of refuge on either side of the border. Using Afghanistan as a base for anti-Iran policies handicaps the U.S. in pressing for Pakistani cooperation, thus undermining one of the country’s most important strategic objectives. Of course, such recalibration will also require shifts in Iranian policy away from the path it has taken. Clearly abandoning any U.S. agenda of forcible regime change in Iran will make such a shift much more likely.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Iran’s Presidential Election Takes Off
Farideh Farhi
After enduring almost two years of incessant presidential politics in the United States, I must say that I am not really looking forward to yet another prolonged race, this time in Iran. But the reality is that the campaign for the presidency of Iran, to be decided on 12 June 2009 or a few weeks later if the contest again goes to the second round, has already become heated, even if the picture regarding who and how many will actually end up being candidates is still far from clear.
The fact that Iran is into full presidential mode this early is rather unusual for an election that almost certainly will involve a candidate who is an incumbent running for his second term. Iranian presidents are limited to two four year terms but asides from the two early and very short-term presidents, who were either impeached and subsequently forced into exile (Abolhassan Banisadr) or assassinated (Mohammad Ali Rajai), two term presidencies have been the norm since the presidential election of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s current supreme leader, in 1981.
In fact, Iran’s last three presidents (Khamenei, Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Khatami) were not significantly challenged in their second runs and no one entertained the possibility that they might not be re-elected. Even Khatami, whose candidacy was in doubt for a very short period of time because of his own frustration in pushing his reform agenda, no one really doubted that he would be re-elected in 2001 once he decided to run.
This election will be, and one might even say is already, different. To be sure, few doubt that Ahmadinejad will run and he will be the man to beat. As I mentioned above, even in the short history of the Islamic republic, there are things that have become part of the norm or tradition and as elsewhere traditions are hard to break. At the same time, the extent to which Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement of the economy and his office has become part of the Iranian political discourse, I think, is unprecedented. This is why, for the first time the possibility that a president running for the second term may face serious challenge is openly discussed and contemplated. With the drop in oil prices and the specter of larger than expected budget deficits for the current fiscal year, talks of Ahmadinejad’s wrong-headed policies as well as incompetence are bound to intensify.
So far only one person – Mehdi Karrubi of the National Trust Party - has openly declared his candidacy with the proviso that he might step aside if something like a council of mediating elders among the reformist and centrist forces settles for another candidate deemed more likely to be elected. Few believe that he will do so and his insistence on running may ultimately be the most important card he has in forcing the hand of the reformists to support him at the end.
Given the history of verbal acrimony between the reformists and Karrubi - who as the Speaker of the Sixth Parliament refused to support the sit-in of reformist deputies when they were disqualified by the Guardian Council to stand for re-election - members of the reformist Islamic Iran’s Participation Party and Islamic Revolution’s Mojahedin will undoubtedly be holding their noses if they ultimately decide to side with Karrubi. But this is a decision they will have to contemplate knowing very well that only agreement among centrist and reformist forces over one candidate will enhance their chances.
In a recent and very interesting interview on October 8 with Etemaad Daily, Alireza Alavi Tabar, one of Iran’s most interesting political analysts and a reformist, suggested that in order to win the reformists need to garner at least 5 million more votes than their opponents (about 45 million are eligible to vote and in the first round of the last presidential election close to 30 million voted). According to his analysis, 5 million is the maximum number of votes that can be manipulated in Iran.
It is improbable that this 13 to 14 percent vote manipulation hurdle can be overcome in the likely scenario of only about 50 to 60 percent of eligible voters participating in the election. Improbability however is bound to turn into certainty if reformist and centrist groups enter the election with multiple candidates. Without compromise meager reformist and centrist chances will turn into nil.
But the election is still seven months away and the reformists are not yet in the mood for compromise. Their clamor for the past couple of months has been to convince former president Khatami to run. But he has remained rather coy about his intentions and I personally will be very surprised if he decides to run for a couple of reasons.
Most importantly is the fact that he is not crazy and ambitious enough to put himself through the abuse and obstacles that he will have to face both in running and governing. Someone with a good sense of humor said a while back that the difference between Khatami supporters and Khatami is that they think about the Election Day while he thinks about the day after the election! I think this is about right although the amount of mud which will be thrown at him during the campaign will not be insignificant either.
Khatami has developed something quite rare in Iran: respect as a former statesman who remains politically engaged without holding office and speaks truth to power. Just yesterday he blasted the government by saying “Looking at official slogans, one gets the impression that this is a country of flowers and nightingales in which there are no rising prices, unemployment, poverty, corruption and prostitution.” He went on to say that he considers the most important duty of the president to be the execution of the Constitution; an obvious dig at the current occupant of the office who was just accused on national television, no less, by his own former interior minister and the current head of the government’s audit office to have improperly withdrawn money from Iran’s foreign exchange reserves without the required parliamentary approval.
To make the story short, I think giving up the position of an elder and trusted statesman will be hard for Khatami and his family. He will only do so, as he said publicly, if he receives assurances from a wide spectrum of people, including some well-known conservatives or so-called principlists, that his next attempt at presidency will be different.
Considering that in the chaotic and highly competitive political environment of Iran such assurances are almost impossible to come by, a Khatami candidacy can essentially be considered a non-starter. Of course, in making this assertion I am not totally rejecting the possibility that he may run but essentially echoing the words of the well known Iranian analyst Abbas Abdi who suggested a while back that if Khatami does run he will do so only with the confidence that he will win; a highly unlikely scenario.
Lacking this confidence, Khatami’s second reason for not running is tactical. He knows that the principlists are divided over Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The question of support for Ahmadinejad is not settled for them yet and there are other conservative or center-right candidates – such as Tehran mayor Mohammad Qalibaf, former chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, and even former interior minister Mustafa Purmohammadi - who are contemplating runs along with perennial presidential aspirants like parliamentary deputy Ahmad Tavakoli and former commander of Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps Mohsen Rezaie. Some principlist politicians, including one hard-line parliamentary deputy, have talked about conditional support for Ahmadinejad provided he retracts from some of his recent policies and appointments. Others have simply said that so far there is no agreed upon principlist candidate. In short, it is not yet clear whether there will be one or several candidates representing the principlist camp.
But if Khatami runs, given his relative popularity, principlist equivocation will probably give way and there will be tremendous pressure on all factions to the right of the political spectrum to close rank behind Ahmadinejad who after all is the current president and, given his name recognition, will have the best chance of winning in a manipulated competition against Khatami.
Even if it is not true, this will be the case Ahmadinejad’s supporters will be making to all principlists from now until the election. The hard-line Kayhan Daily has already gone there in its 16 October editorial, warning all principlists that “the replacement for the current administration, if it has to go, is not going to be a principlist individual but someone outside the [principlist] current.”
The mere fact that Kayhan has to warn the principlist camp about the possibility of reformist revival in order to marshal support for Ahmadinejad is by itself a reflection of the trouble the president is facing in his standing among the Iranian elite. Just to give a few examples, in the past week or so Hassan Rowhani publicly blasted him twice for losing opportunities generated by unprecedented high oil prices and U.S. troubles in Iraq and not buttressing Iran’s foreign exchange reserves in order to cushion against the shock that the Iranian economy will face as oil prices fall.
Furthermore, Ahmadinejad’s Economic Transformation Plan that includes reform of the tax and subsidy systems among other things has been questioned for being at best undeveloped and at worst highly inflationary and disruptive. Even in situations where his administration has really not been at fault, such as the parliamentary mandated implementation of a value added tax on Iranian merchants which was resisted through bazaar strikes, his administration has been criticized for giving insufficient information to merchants who, it was said, would not have opposed the tax had they understood it better.
The Iranian parliament, under the leadership of Ali Larijani, has also already signaled that it will not easily give in to Ahmadinejad’s announced desire to give cash subsidies (somewhere between $40 to $80 monthly depending on income brackets) to the majority of Iranians beginning early next year or right before the June election. Some members of the parliament have deemed the giveaway inflationary while others have been less charitable, identifying it as election bribe.
Larijani, himself, explicitly stated yesterday that he will not run for president. When asked whether he will be willing to do so if called upon to serve, he said “so far there has not been a call to duty and rest assured that there are many others in the arena that will make such things unnecessary.” Despite his avowed lack of interest, however, he did not miss the chance to point out that given the financial troubles of the world which will impact Iran also, Islamic Iran should begin its fourth decade with a new “political logic” that avoids the extremisms of both the left and the right and rely on all the ‘managerial capabilities” that exist in the country among the reformists and principlists.
No doubt this should be considered a statement of dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad who is constantly accused of only relying on a small circle of advisors. But even more generally it should be considered an expression of the yearning for going beyond the extreme divisiveness that has characterized Iranian politics in the past decade but has been particularly fanned during Ahmadinejad’s presidency. In this context, the new “political logic” simply means a logic that creates a space for a less dysfunctional political system.
Ultimately the issue for principlists critical of Ahmadinejad is not dissatisfaction with the current occupier of the office or the current state of affairs - they are clearly dissatisfied, but whether it is possible to dislodge him from office without risking the possibility of a reformist win. For them the best scenario entails the prospect of a crowded field that will open the way for a second round confrontation between Ahmadinejad and a more centrist, and presumably more competent, principlist candidate who will at the end emerge victorious.
Given Iran’s hyper-politicized environment, this scenario is not easy to implement. But the machinations in Iran’s various political camps to devise a game plan that will lead to electoral victory, while being mindful of Ahmadinejad’s concrete failures, will keep the Iranian political dynamics fluid for the next seven months.
This fluidity in turn will keep the business of speculation about who will actually run for the president quite robust until May when the registration deadline for candidacy arrives. Among the candidates discussed none is likely to be vetted but who knows by the time May comes who else might appear on the scene.
These dynamics should be considered part and parcel of a competitive political system that doesn’t have a well or even minimally developed party system and relies on constant negotiations and shifting positions among contending and at the same time intersecting elite factions. It is going to be a long, chaotic, and in all likelihood ugly campaign. Read more on this article...
After enduring almost two years of incessant presidential politics in the United States, I must say that I am not really looking forward to yet another prolonged race, this time in Iran. But the reality is that the campaign for the presidency of Iran, to be decided on 12 June 2009 or a few weeks later if the contest again goes to the second round, has already become heated, even if the picture regarding who and how many will actually end up being candidates is still far from clear.
The fact that Iran is into full presidential mode this early is rather unusual for an election that almost certainly will involve a candidate who is an incumbent running for his second term. Iranian presidents are limited to two four year terms but asides from the two early and very short-term presidents, who were either impeached and subsequently forced into exile (Abolhassan Banisadr) or assassinated (Mohammad Ali Rajai), two term presidencies have been the norm since the presidential election of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s current supreme leader, in 1981.
In fact, Iran’s last three presidents (Khamenei, Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Khatami) were not significantly challenged in their second runs and no one entertained the possibility that they might not be re-elected. Even Khatami, whose candidacy was in doubt for a very short period of time because of his own frustration in pushing his reform agenda, no one really doubted that he would be re-elected in 2001 once he decided to run.
This election will be, and one might even say is already, different. To be sure, few doubt that Ahmadinejad will run and he will be the man to beat. As I mentioned above, even in the short history of the Islamic republic, there are things that have become part of the norm or tradition and as elsewhere traditions are hard to break. At the same time, the extent to which Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement of the economy and his office has become part of the Iranian political discourse, I think, is unprecedented. This is why, for the first time the possibility that a president running for the second term may face serious challenge is openly discussed and contemplated. With the drop in oil prices and the specter of larger than expected budget deficits for the current fiscal year, talks of Ahmadinejad’s wrong-headed policies as well as incompetence are bound to intensify.
So far only one person – Mehdi Karrubi of the National Trust Party - has openly declared his candidacy with the proviso that he might step aside if something like a council of mediating elders among the reformist and centrist forces settles for another candidate deemed more likely to be elected. Few believe that he will do so and his insistence on running may ultimately be the most important card he has in forcing the hand of the reformists to support him at the end.
Given the history of verbal acrimony between the reformists and Karrubi - who as the Speaker of the Sixth Parliament refused to support the sit-in of reformist deputies when they were disqualified by the Guardian Council to stand for re-election - members of the reformist Islamic Iran’s Participation Party and Islamic Revolution’s Mojahedin will undoubtedly be holding their noses if they ultimately decide to side with Karrubi. But this is a decision they will have to contemplate knowing very well that only agreement among centrist and reformist forces over one candidate will enhance their chances.
In a recent and very interesting interview on October 8 with Etemaad Daily, Alireza Alavi Tabar, one of Iran’s most interesting political analysts and a reformist, suggested that in order to win the reformists need to garner at least 5 million more votes than their opponents (about 45 million are eligible to vote and in the first round of the last presidential election close to 30 million voted). According to his analysis, 5 million is the maximum number of votes that can be manipulated in Iran.
It is improbable that this 13 to 14 percent vote manipulation hurdle can be overcome in the likely scenario of only about 50 to 60 percent of eligible voters participating in the election. Improbability however is bound to turn into certainty if reformist and centrist groups enter the election with multiple candidates. Without compromise meager reformist and centrist chances will turn into nil.
But the election is still seven months away and the reformists are not yet in the mood for compromise. Their clamor for the past couple of months has been to convince former president Khatami to run. But he has remained rather coy about his intentions and I personally will be very surprised if he decides to run for a couple of reasons.
Most importantly is the fact that he is not crazy and ambitious enough to put himself through the abuse and obstacles that he will have to face both in running and governing. Someone with a good sense of humor said a while back that the difference between Khatami supporters and Khatami is that they think about the Election Day while he thinks about the day after the election! I think this is about right although the amount of mud which will be thrown at him during the campaign will not be insignificant either.
Khatami has developed something quite rare in Iran: respect as a former statesman who remains politically engaged without holding office and speaks truth to power. Just yesterday he blasted the government by saying “Looking at official slogans, one gets the impression that this is a country of flowers and nightingales in which there are no rising prices, unemployment, poverty, corruption and prostitution.” He went on to say that he considers the most important duty of the president to be the execution of the Constitution; an obvious dig at the current occupant of the office who was just accused on national television, no less, by his own former interior minister and the current head of the government’s audit office to have improperly withdrawn money from Iran’s foreign exchange reserves without the required parliamentary approval.
To make the story short, I think giving up the position of an elder and trusted statesman will be hard for Khatami and his family. He will only do so, as he said publicly, if he receives assurances from a wide spectrum of people, including some well-known conservatives or so-called principlists, that his next attempt at presidency will be different.
Considering that in the chaotic and highly competitive political environment of Iran such assurances are almost impossible to come by, a Khatami candidacy can essentially be considered a non-starter. Of course, in making this assertion I am not totally rejecting the possibility that he may run but essentially echoing the words of the well known Iranian analyst Abbas Abdi who suggested a while back that if Khatami does run he will do so only with the confidence that he will win; a highly unlikely scenario.
Lacking this confidence, Khatami’s second reason for not running is tactical. He knows that the principlists are divided over Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The question of support for Ahmadinejad is not settled for them yet and there are other conservative or center-right candidates – such as Tehran mayor Mohammad Qalibaf, former chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, and even former interior minister Mustafa Purmohammadi - who are contemplating runs along with perennial presidential aspirants like parliamentary deputy Ahmad Tavakoli and former commander of Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps Mohsen Rezaie. Some principlist politicians, including one hard-line parliamentary deputy, have talked about conditional support for Ahmadinejad provided he retracts from some of his recent policies and appointments. Others have simply said that so far there is no agreed upon principlist candidate. In short, it is not yet clear whether there will be one or several candidates representing the principlist camp.
But if Khatami runs, given his relative popularity, principlist equivocation will probably give way and there will be tremendous pressure on all factions to the right of the political spectrum to close rank behind Ahmadinejad who after all is the current president and, given his name recognition, will have the best chance of winning in a manipulated competition against Khatami.
Even if it is not true, this will be the case Ahmadinejad’s supporters will be making to all principlists from now until the election. The hard-line Kayhan Daily has already gone there in its 16 October editorial, warning all principlists that “the replacement for the current administration, if it has to go, is not going to be a principlist individual but someone outside the [principlist] current.”
The mere fact that Kayhan has to warn the principlist camp about the possibility of reformist revival in order to marshal support for Ahmadinejad is by itself a reflection of the trouble the president is facing in his standing among the Iranian elite. Just to give a few examples, in the past week or so Hassan Rowhani publicly blasted him twice for losing opportunities generated by unprecedented high oil prices and U.S. troubles in Iraq and not buttressing Iran’s foreign exchange reserves in order to cushion against the shock that the Iranian economy will face as oil prices fall.
Furthermore, Ahmadinejad’s Economic Transformation Plan that includes reform of the tax and subsidy systems among other things has been questioned for being at best undeveloped and at worst highly inflationary and disruptive. Even in situations where his administration has really not been at fault, such as the parliamentary mandated implementation of a value added tax on Iranian merchants which was resisted through bazaar strikes, his administration has been criticized for giving insufficient information to merchants who, it was said, would not have opposed the tax had they understood it better.
The Iranian parliament, under the leadership of Ali Larijani, has also already signaled that it will not easily give in to Ahmadinejad’s announced desire to give cash subsidies (somewhere between $40 to $80 monthly depending on income brackets) to the majority of Iranians beginning early next year or right before the June election. Some members of the parliament have deemed the giveaway inflationary while others have been less charitable, identifying it as election bribe.
Larijani, himself, explicitly stated yesterday that he will not run for president. When asked whether he will be willing to do so if called upon to serve, he said “so far there has not been a call to duty and rest assured that there are many others in the arena that will make such things unnecessary.” Despite his avowed lack of interest, however, he did not miss the chance to point out that given the financial troubles of the world which will impact Iran also, Islamic Iran should begin its fourth decade with a new “political logic” that avoids the extremisms of both the left and the right and rely on all the ‘managerial capabilities” that exist in the country among the reformists and principlists.
No doubt this should be considered a statement of dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad who is constantly accused of only relying on a small circle of advisors. But even more generally it should be considered an expression of the yearning for going beyond the extreme divisiveness that has characterized Iranian politics in the past decade but has been particularly fanned during Ahmadinejad’s presidency. In this context, the new “political logic” simply means a logic that creates a space for a less dysfunctional political system.
Ultimately the issue for principlists critical of Ahmadinejad is not dissatisfaction with the current occupier of the office or the current state of affairs - they are clearly dissatisfied, but whether it is possible to dislodge him from office without risking the possibility of a reformist win. For them the best scenario entails the prospect of a crowded field that will open the way for a second round confrontation between Ahmadinejad and a more centrist, and presumably more competent, principlist candidate who will at the end emerge victorious.
Given Iran’s hyper-politicized environment, this scenario is not easy to implement. But the machinations in Iran’s various political camps to devise a game plan that will lead to electoral victory, while being mindful of Ahmadinejad’s concrete failures, will keep the Iranian political dynamics fluid for the next seven months.
This fluidity in turn will keep the business of speculation about who will actually run for the president quite robust until May when the registration deadline for candidacy arrives. Among the candidates discussed none is likely to be vetted but who knows by the time May comes who else might appear on the scene.
These dynamics should be considered part and parcel of a competitive political system that doesn’t have a well or even minimally developed party system and relies on constant negotiations and shifting positions among contending and at the same time intersecting elite factions. It is going to be a long, chaotic, and in all likelihood ugly campaign. Read more on this article...
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Online Ayatollah
Maziar Bahari is a filmmaker and journalist stationed in Iran and in this report shown on Aljazeera English he sheds light on the daily life and work of the reformist cleric and Shi'ite source of emulation, Ayatollah Sanei. It is an interesting watch.
Read more on this article...
Rubin and Rashid in Foreign Affairs: From Great Game to Grand Bargain
Ahmed Rashid and I have just published an article in Foreign Affairs: From Great Game to Grand Bargain: Ending Chaos on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It opens:
It opens:
The Great Game is no fun anymore. The term "Great Game" was used by nineteenth-century British imperialists to describe the British-Russian struggle for position on the chessboard of Afghanistan and Central Asia -- a contest with a few players, mostly limited to intelligence forays and short wars fought on horseback with rifles, and with those living on the chessboard largely bystanders or victims. More than a century later, the game continues. But now, the number of players has exploded, those living on the chessboard have become involved, and the intensity of the violence and the threats it produces affect the entire globe. The Great Game can no longer be treated as a sporting event for distant spectators. It is time to agree on some new rules.I think it is fair to say that Ahmed and I are not as sure of anything as we sound in the article, but we thought it was time to introduce some broader perspectives. We are looking for debate and discussion, not agreement. Read more on this article...
Sunday, September 21, 2008
MADE IN THE SHADE OF NO TOWERS
(as published in the Bangkok Post)
US FINANCIAL CRISIS
A meltdown 'in the shadow of no towers'
PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
The Bush years will be remembered for many definitive events, but perhaps none so grave as the two black Septembers that now bookend his presidency.
First there was the September 2001 attack from without that the Bush administration was warned about but failed to thwart, busy as he was gathering sagebrush and playing cowboy on his ranch. Even forgiving that lapse, malicious plans were hastily laid that very month for an unprovoked attack on Iraq. Sense of vigilante justice aroused and seemingly out of control, Mr Bush went on to attack the wrong country. A million lives later, including some 5,000 American dead, 50,000 wounded for life, the war rages on. Civil liberties diminished, US prestige was at an all time low. A trillion dollars down the drain.
Then there was the collapse from within, again in September, again Wall Street a ground zero. And what is the response of those most responsible for the mess? What is the response from the extremely rich who made the economy unravel due to unmitigated greed empowered with lax oversight, deregulation and cronyism?
Do what we say or else.
We are told with frightening effect that the world's biggest economy was within a few days of collapse. If true, it is reminiscent of the bureaucratic sclerosis and insider mismanagement that led to the demise of the Soviet Union. We are told that the $85 billion rescue package bailing out AIG, plus $200 billion more for Fanny Mac and Fanny Mae, are mere band-aids, not enough to do the job. What's that horrendous sucking sound? On top of all that, another $700 billion of tax money going down the drain?
Twin mega-disasters on the watch of one man. One in his first September as president, the other in his last. The first took down the Twin Towers, the second disaster took place, to borrow a phrase from ace illustrator Art Spiegelman, "in the shadow of no towers".
The Bush administration is nothing if not nervy. They have the nerve to ask taxpayers to foot a questionable trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street on top of a questionable trillion-dollar war.
That's asking a lot, especially when the asking is being done by "deciders" with no sense of shame or accountability.
Would it be too much to ask for the Bush administration to show some accountability for its mistakes and resign en masse?
What ever happened to honour? Whither responsibility?
It's about time ordinary Americans got wise to being conned. In this time of crisis, Republicans are taking care of business as usual, taking care of the big guys at the expense of the small, and spouting noisy populist rhetoric while quietly maintaining their affluent base. The Democrats are only marginally better, expressing the hope that a modicum of relief might be directed at ordinary people losing their homes, wondering if there might be some upper limit to the multi-million bonuses the wizards of the financial world pilfer to reward themselves.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a Bush appointee of Nixon-era Pentagon and White House vintage, says no. No time to think about ordinary Joes, even while acknowledging the country desperately needs their help. "It pains me tremendously to have the American taxpayer put in this position," says Mr Paulson, former aide to John Erlichman, asking for a trillion dollars in exchange for a three-page proposal.
In demanding, without due diligence and democratic process such an astronomical sum, in demanding further that it come not from the reckless, profligate gamblers who caused the problem but from the hard-earned money of ordinary working Americans, in demanding market discipline below without throwing struggling families as much as a few breadcrumbs as top Democrats are demanding, Mr Paulson shows himself to be icily on par with Messrs Rumsfeld, Cheney and other Nixon-era appointees of George Walker Bush.
After bluffing and boasting his way into a taxpayer-supported war against Iraq to the tune of a trillion dollars, Mr Bush sometimes claims to feel the pain, at least when addressing teary-eyed widows and fatherless children, though his mind is unwavering, his faulty positions non-negotiable. His jogging speeds are down but his golf game is good.
"We need this to be clean and quick," says Mr Paulson, echoing Mr Rumsfeld, the man with a simplistic plan for a little war on the Euphrates.
Why should we believe any of these slicks in suits? Why should we believe these tricky dicks in high office? Why should we trust any appointee in an administration of truth evaders and unapologetic greed? Their track record is abysmal, their stubborn selfishness legendary. They plunder national wealth; send other people's kids to war, green light torture, arbitrary arrest and surveillance, yet demand get-out-of-jail-free cards. Quick to put themselves above the law and beyond the reach of subpoenas - they want what they want on their terms. Is there only one solution to the financial crisis? The Bush administration says give us the money or else, once again using fear to win trust.Oh no, you don't. Not you. Not again. There's got to be a better way.
Philip J Cunningham is a freelance political commentator. Read more on this article...
US FINANCIAL CRISIS
A meltdown 'in the shadow of no towers'
PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
The Bush years will be remembered for many definitive events, but perhaps none so grave as the two black Septembers that now bookend his presidency.
First there was the September 2001 attack from without that the Bush administration was warned about but failed to thwart, busy as he was gathering sagebrush and playing cowboy on his ranch. Even forgiving that lapse, malicious plans were hastily laid that very month for an unprovoked attack on Iraq. Sense of vigilante justice aroused and seemingly out of control, Mr Bush went on to attack the wrong country. A million lives later, including some 5,000 American dead, 50,000 wounded for life, the war rages on. Civil liberties diminished, US prestige was at an all time low. A trillion dollars down the drain.
Then there was the collapse from within, again in September, again Wall Street a ground zero. And what is the response of those most responsible for the mess? What is the response from the extremely rich who made the economy unravel due to unmitigated greed empowered with lax oversight, deregulation and cronyism?
Do what we say or else.
We are told with frightening effect that the world's biggest economy was within a few days of collapse. If true, it is reminiscent of the bureaucratic sclerosis and insider mismanagement that led to the demise of the Soviet Union. We are told that the $85 billion rescue package bailing out AIG, plus $200 billion more for Fanny Mac and Fanny Mae, are mere band-aids, not enough to do the job. What's that horrendous sucking sound? On top of all that, another $700 billion of tax money going down the drain?
Twin mega-disasters on the watch of one man. One in his first September as president, the other in his last. The first took down the Twin Towers, the second disaster took place, to borrow a phrase from ace illustrator Art Spiegelman, "in the shadow of no towers".
The Bush administration is nothing if not nervy. They have the nerve to ask taxpayers to foot a questionable trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street on top of a questionable trillion-dollar war.
That's asking a lot, especially when the asking is being done by "deciders" with no sense of shame or accountability.
Would it be too much to ask for the Bush administration to show some accountability for its mistakes and resign en masse?
What ever happened to honour? Whither responsibility?
It's about time ordinary Americans got wise to being conned. In this time of crisis, Republicans are taking care of business as usual, taking care of the big guys at the expense of the small, and spouting noisy populist rhetoric while quietly maintaining their affluent base. The Democrats are only marginally better, expressing the hope that a modicum of relief might be directed at ordinary people losing their homes, wondering if there might be some upper limit to the multi-million bonuses the wizards of the financial world pilfer to reward themselves.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a Bush appointee of Nixon-era Pentagon and White House vintage, says no. No time to think about ordinary Joes, even while acknowledging the country desperately needs their help. "It pains me tremendously to have the American taxpayer put in this position," says Mr Paulson, former aide to John Erlichman, asking for a trillion dollars in exchange for a three-page proposal.
In demanding, without due diligence and democratic process such an astronomical sum, in demanding further that it come not from the reckless, profligate gamblers who caused the problem but from the hard-earned money of ordinary working Americans, in demanding market discipline below without throwing struggling families as much as a few breadcrumbs as top Democrats are demanding, Mr Paulson shows himself to be icily on par with Messrs Rumsfeld, Cheney and other Nixon-era appointees of George Walker Bush.
After bluffing and boasting his way into a taxpayer-supported war against Iraq to the tune of a trillion dollars, Mr Bush sometimes claims to feel the pain, at least when addressing teary-eyed widows and fatherless children, though his mind is unwavering, his faulty positions non-negotiable. His jogging speeds are down but his golf game is good.
"We need this to be clean and quick," says Mr Paulson, echoing Mr Rumsfeld, the man with a simplistic plan for a little war on the Euphrates.
Why should we believe any of these slicks in suits? Why should we believe these tricky dicks in high office? Why should we trust any appointee in an administration of truth evaders and unapologetic greed? Their track record is abysmal, their stubborn selfishness legendary. They plunder national wealth; send other people's kids to war, green light torture, arbitrary arrest and surveillance, yet demand get-out-of-jail-free cards. Quick to put themselves above the law and beyond the reach of subpoenas - they want what they want on their terms. Is there only one solution to the financial crisis? The Bush administration says give us the money or else, once again using fear to win trust.Oh no, you don't. Not you. Not again. There's got to be a better way.
Philip J Cunningham is a freelance political commentator. Read more on this article...
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
IAEA Declares a Gridlock with Iran
Farideh Farhi
With the exception of one potentially important nugget about the possibility of Iran drawing on “foreign expertise” in conducting experiments on a detonator suitable for an implosion-type nuclear weapon, the IAEA's September 15, 2008 report offers little that is different from its previous report.
In many ways, it effectively confirms that there is little else the IAEA can do in probing into Iran’s nuclear program or, given the steady progress on the enrichment front reported, of checking it unless there is a breakthrough in the broader negotiations that have been going on between Iran and the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members plus Germany.
The reference to foreign expertise constitutes a mere two-line reference in a 6 page document. The details of the information obtained by the agency have apparently been relayed to Iran whose clarifications, or lack thereof, would presumably constitute a part of the Agency’s next report. Beyond this new information, the report is a testimony to things remaining the same.
First and foremost, this report, like the previous ones, states the Agency’s ability “to verify non-diversion of declared nuclear material and activities.” This is a clear acknowledgment that Iran has remained committed to its Safeguards Agreement in “providing access to declared nuclear material and providing the required nuclear material accounting reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities.” In this regard, the report is a flat denial of recent unsubstantiated claims about the disappearance of nuclear material from Iran’s facilities.
Second, the IAEA continues to be unhappy with Iran’s refusal to implement the Additional Protocol beyond an ad-hoc manner. It wants more intrusive inspections. At times the issue is couched in the language of “transparency measures” that Iran needs to take but the bottom line is IAEA’s desire for Iran to implement the Additional Protocol.
This issue remains part and parcel of IAEA’s catch-22 predicament with Iran. Iran voluntary implemented the Additional Protocol in the past before Iran’s case was referred to the Security Council and has offered in previous negotiations to make it permanent but not until Iran’s case is removed from the Security Council. In short, Iran has remained steadfast in its position that the IAEA will not get what it wants from Iran in order to do its job of inspecting Iran until the Agency becomes the sole judge of Iran’s nuclear program.
A similar dynamic is at play regarding the IAEA’s unhappiness with Iran’s refusal to provide preliminary design information Iran had previously agreed to provide - during the course of negotiations with the EU-3 as a voluntary, non-binding measure - about nuclear facilities it plans to build. On this voluntary commitment, like the temporary suspension of enrichment and voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol, Iran continues to engage in a calculated pull back in protest to the Security Council referral.
As is the case with many other countries, without the Additional Protocol, the IAEA cannot draw a conclusion about the absence of nuclear activities but this is not the same thing as suspecting undeclared activities and material. In fact, as mentioned above, the report is clear that so far the IAEA has not encountered evidence of undeclared activities.
Even regarding the issues related to the alleged studies and “possible military dimensions of Iran’s program,” which from IAEA’s perspective now effectively constitute the only unanswered aspects of Iran’s past activities, the Agency is careful to say has little information “on the actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear components of a nuclear weapon or of key components, such as initiators…Nor has the Agency detected the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies.”
Tehran considers the alleged studies found on a laptop a fabrication and has said so to the skeptical IAEA. Being concerned about the ease with which electronic copies can be doctored, Tehran has also insisted that it will not provide further information regarding the alleged studies until Western powers allow the IAEA to provide Iran hard copies of the intelligence for examination.
But the IAEA clearly wants more from Iran, including access to documents and individual scientists and in this report has specified alternative ways Iran and the IAEA can go about clarifying the issue. It is doubtful that Iran will be more responsive in the next round, particularly now that the fate of a new Security Council resolution is up in the air, partly due to US-Russia conflict over Georgia but more perhaps because of the exhaustion of a so far ineffective route.
The only thing the report no longer leaves in doubt is that Iran is making significant progress on developing and improving the efficiency of its centrifuges. It is now running about 3,800 centrifuges, an increase of several hundred in the past four months. It has also boosted the efficiency of its centrifuges, allowing them to be fed more material and face fewer crashes. Iran’s program still cannot be considered fast-paced or based on urgency but does seem to have overcome some of the technical challenges it was facing. As such, the slow pace may suggest more of a choice, perhaps not to alarm Iran’s interlocutors more than necessary.
With an exhausted Security Council process that has so far failed to prevent Iran from its slow and yet steady progress towards mastering enrichment and an inspection process that has effectively reached its end in terms of the further prodding of Iran to do more, it is becoming evident that something else needs to be done to push Iran towards accepting a more rigorous inspection regime. With its September report the IAEA is once again making abundantly clear that this “something else” is beyond its capabilities and will require a transformation in the global political environment within which Iran’s nuclear program can be satisfactorily addressed.
This commentary was originally posted here. Read more on this article...
With the exception of one potentially important nugget about the possibility of Iran drawing on “foreign expertise” in conducting experiments on a detonator suitable for an implosion-type nuclear weapon, the IAEA's September 15, 2008 report offers little that is different from its previous report.
In many ways, it effectively confirms that there is little else the IAEA can do in probing into Iran’s nuclear program or, given the steady progress on the enrichment front reported, of checking it unless there is a breakthrough in the broader negotiations that have been going on between Iran and the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members plus Germany.
The reference to foreign expertise constitutes a mere two-line reference in a 6 page document. The details of the information obtained by the agency have apparently been relayed to Iran whose clarifications, or lack thereof, would presumably constitute a part of the Agency’s next report. Beyond this new information, the report is a testimony to things remaining the same.
First and foremost, this report, like the previous ones, states the Agency’s ability “to verify non-diversion of declared nuclear material and activities.” This is a clear acknowledgment that Iran has remained committed to its Safeguards Agreement in “providing access to declared nuclear material and providing the required nuclear material accounting reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities.” In this regard, the report is a flat denial of recent unsubstantiated claims about the disappearance of nuclear material from Iran’s facilities.
Second, the IAEA continues to be unhappy with Iran’s refusal to implement the Additional Protocol beyond an ad-hoc manner. It wants more intrusive inspections. At times the issue is couched in the language of “transparency measures” that Iran needs to take but the bottom line is IAEA’s desire for Iran to implement the Additional Protocol.
This issue remains part and parcel of IAEA’s catch-22 predicament with Iran. Iran voluntary implemented the Additional Protocol in the past before Iran’s case was referred to the Security Council and has offered in previous negotiations to make it permanent but not until Iran’s case is removed from the Security Council. In short, Iran has remained steadfast in its position that the IAEA will not get what it wants from Iran in order to do its job of inspecting Iran until the Agency becomes the sole judge of Iran’s nuclear program.
A similar dynamic is at play regarding the IAEA’s unhappiness with Iran’s refusal to provide preliminary design information Iran had previously agreed to provide - during the course of negotiations with the EU-3 as a voluntary, non-binding measure - about nuclear facilities it plans to build. On this voluntary commitment, like the temporary suspension of enrichment and voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol, Iran continues to engage in a calculated pull back in protest to the Security Council referral.
As is the case with many other countries, without the Additional Protocol, the IAEA cannot draw a conclusion about the absence of nuclear activities but this is not the same thing as suspecting undeclared activities and material. In fact, as mentioned above, the report is clear that so far the IAEA has not encountered evidence of undeclared activities.
Even regarding the issues related to the alleged studies and “possible military dimensions of Iran’s program,” which from IAEA’s perspective now effectively constitute the only unanswered aspects of Iran’s past activities, the Agency is careful to say has little information “on the actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear components of a nuclear weapon or of key components, such as initiators…Nor has the Agency detected the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies.”
Tehran considers the alleged studies found on a laptop a fabrication and has said so to the skeptical IAEA. Being concerned about the ease with which electronic copies can be doctored, Tehran has also insisted that it will not provide further information regarding the alleged studies until Western powers allow the IAEA to provide Iran hard copies of the intelligence for examination.
But the IAEA clearly wants more from Iran, including access to documents and individual scientists and in this report has specified alternative ways Iran and the IAEA can go about clarifying the issue. It is doubtful that Iran will be more responsive in the next round, particularly now that the fate of a new Security Council resolution is up in the air, partly due to US-Russia conflict over Georgia but more perhaps because of the exhaustion of a so far ineffective route.
The only thing the report no longer leaves in doubt is that Iran is making significant progress on developing and improving the efficiency of its centrifuges. It is now running about 3,800 centrifuges, an increase of several hundred in the past four months. It has also boosted the efficiency of its centrifuges, allowing them to be fed more material and face fewer crashes. Iran’s program still cannot be considered fast-paced or based on urgency but does seem to have overcome some of the technical challenges it was facing. As such, the slow pace may suggest more of a choice, perhaps not to alarm Iran’s interlocutors more than necessary.
With an exhausted Security Council process that has so far failed to prevent Iran from its slow and yet steady progress towards mastering enrichment and an inspection process that has effectively reached its end in terms of the further prodding of Iran to do more, it is becoming evident that something else needs to be done to push Iran towards accepting a more rigorous inspection regime. With its September report the IAEA is once again making abundantly clear that this “something else” is beyond its capabilities and will require a transformation in the global political environment within which Iran’s nuclear program can be satisfactorily addressed.
This commentary was originally posted here. Read more on this article...
Saturday, September 13, 2008
SAMAK FALLS FROM GRACE
BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
Thailand Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who showed no sign of bowing to the popular protest and intense media criticism mounted against him in the past few weeks, was eventually tripped up by a technicality and forced to resign.
To see a divisive and controversial leader step down on a technical charge related to pocketing modest cooking show fees is less than satisfactory and raises questions about the sense of proportion and even-handedness of the judicial process. On the other hand, even Samak and his supporters saw in the technicality a face-saving ploy that would allow him to be immediately re-nominated by his party and resume his position as prime minister afresh after an interim of a few days, perhaps after demonstrators had finally dispersed.
But while intense protests culminating in the PAD takeover of the ceremonial Government House, combined sporadic student protests, and continued pressure from the opposition might have been something the overly-confident Samak was uniquely gifted to ignore, his party could not ignore accumulating social pressures, civic strife and the deleterious effect the political standoff was having on the economy.
Thaksin Shinawatra, the unusually wealthy and unusually influential former prime minister now in the UK, was said to support Samak's re-instatement as prime minister according to Thai newspaper reports. But in a sure sign that Thaksin's stock has dropped significantly ever since he skipped bail and absconded to Britain, his nominee did not get the nod.
So Samak was, in the end, felled not by his opponents but by members of his own party who could no longer muster up the enthusiasm to support a divisive figure in the face of widespread opposition.
In this indirect sense, the protests and chorus of voices calling for Samak to step down had a positive effect, not so much to remove the unpopular prime minister, which was said to be the main goal of the protests, but to make it harder for him to be re-appointed.
So far the PAD has not yet shown the wisdom to let well enough alone, clean up the grounds of Government House and go home. Instead, the protests continue, rain or shine, creating solidarity and resentment, with a momentum of their own. But to what end? Where do things go from here?
Only time will tell, and time is running short. Read more on this article...
Thailand Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who showed no sign of bowing to the popular protest and intense media criticism mounted against him in the past few weeks, was eventually tripped up by a technicality and forced to resign.
To see a divisive and controversial leader step down on a technical charge related to pocketing modest cooking show fees is less than satisfactory and raises questions about the sense of proportion and even-handedness of the judicial process. On the other hand, even Samak and his supporters saw in the technicality a face-saving ploy that would allow him to be immediately re-nominated by his party and resume his position as prime minister afresh after an interim of a few days, perhaps after demonstrators had finally dispersed.
But while intense protests culminating in the PAD takeover of the ceremonial Government House, combined sporadic student protests, and continued pressure from the opposition might have been something the overly-confident Samak was uniquely gifted to ignore, his party could not ignore accumulating social pressures, civic strife and the deleterious effect the political standoff was having on the economy.
Thaksin Shinawatra, the unusually wealthy and unusually influential former prime minister now in the UK, was said to support Samak's re-instatement as prime minister according to Thai newspaper reports. But in a sure sign that Thaksin's stock has dropped significantly ever since he skipped bail and absconded to Britain, his nominee did not get the nod.
So Samak was, in the end, felled not by his opponents but by members of his own party who could no longer muster up the enthusiasm to support a divisive figure in the face of widespread opposition.
In this indirect sense, the protests and chorus of voices calling for Samak to step down had a positive effect, not so much to remove the unpopular prime minister, which was said to be the main goal of the protests, but to make it harder for him to be re-appointed.
So far the PAD has not yet shown the wisdom to let well enough alone, clean up the grounds of Government House and go home. Instead, the protests continue, rain or shine, creating solidarity and resentment, with a momentum of their own. But to what end? Where do things go from here?
Only time will tell, and time is running short. Read more on this article...
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
TIME FOR THAI PM TO STEP ASIDE
BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
The time has come, Mister Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, to step down for the good of your country. I say this not as a supporter of the righteous protestors who demand you resign, they have much to answer for themselves, nor out of malice towards you. I am an admirer of your plucky style, as much as I am a critic of your sometimes prejudiced words.
You are proud and sometimes virulent in your nationalism, so I will not advise you to look at my country, America, with its very own very flawed version of democracy, as a model. But you might look to Asia for inspiration.
Not to Burma, the least democratic of your Asian neighbors, certainly not to paramount dictator Than Shwe. Although you reportedly admire the cruel and vain Burmese dictator because of his apparent devotion to Buddhist ritual, we have come to understand that sort of incendiary comment as Samak-speak, a trademark random comment that manages to shock and enrage, rock the boat and assault the intellect, only to fall harmlessly by the wayside because you are not taken seriously as an intellectual. Yet your silver tongue has the power to inspire and incite and you have built a solid career on this talent.
We only met once, when you were running for mayor. I was impressed that a man of your fame and stature would visit the predictably unsympathetic venue of the Bangkok Foreign Correspondent’s Club at all, but the fact that you did so completely on your own, no aides, no assistants, no personal secretary, not even a driver, truly impressed. You just walked in and started talking.
On the other hand you disappointed when you summarily dismissed the topic of your involvement in the bloody crackdown of October 6, 1976 by turning the question on the questioner, who happened to be me.
“You, when you come to Thailand?” you challenged, as if a foreigner who had the temerity to ask such a question could be ridiculed for relatively recent arrival in the country.
“In the year 2514, khrap,” I answered in Thai. Stating the year 1971, when I first arrived as an exchange student, bought a rare interlude of silence from the silver tongue.
“You been here long time, you speak Thai well.” ("Phut thai taekchan", was the exact phrase I believe)
“Aren’t you ashamed of October 6?”
“No.”
And that was that. I still admire your pluck and tenacity and accept that, for whatever reason, talking with you about October 6 is not going to be constructive. Similar journalistic exchanges took place in the past year upon your ascension to Prime Minister. I could only note with wistful nostalgia your deft ability for turning questions back on the questioner.
But enough of that: there’s too much going on in the present to dwell in the past.
You are between a rock and a hard place, Mister Prime Minister. For inspiration, I suggest you look to the most democratic of your Asian neighbors, Japan.
You, a prime minister hanging in by a thread, were scheduled to fly to Tokyo and meet Japan’s prime minister, also hanging in by a thread. That meeting was of course cancelled because of unrest in Bangkok, but in the interim, your Japanese interlocutor resigned.
You have political karma that enables and inhibits you.
Since Thailand’s Government House has been occupied by your political opponents, an understandably annoying development that might have caused a less confident leader to resort to more extreme measures, you have been uncharacteristically calm, almost unruffled in your public response. Despite your unwillingness to talk about it, the shadow of October 6 does hang over you, in the positive sense that you want nothing of the sort to happen again.
There’s less bravado and more nuance in your recent presentation of self as prime minister, suggesting a swift, self-corrective learning curve. Under ordinary circumstances you might grow into the role, though it could also be argued you reached the natural peak of your abilities as a mayor and should be content with that.
The necessary humility and willingness to compromise, inherent to being an effective prime minister at a delicate time such as this, does not mix well with your brash, populist style, nor that of your ambitious patron-in-exile, Thaksin Shinawatra.
Japan’s Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, a political blueblood and veteran party stalwart of considerable skill, knew better than to fight the inevitable. When it became clear to him that he could not serve his country as he might like to because of unfavorable deadlocks, logjams and impasses in his own party and Japan’s parliament as a whole, he quietly resigned.
“Sorry for causing so much trouble with this abrupt announcement,” said Mr. Fukuda, stepping down with grace and good manners that have characterized his career.
Each person has his or her own style and no one would expect you, Mr. Samak, to follow the mild-mannered Mr. Fukuda to the word. But there are lessons that can be drawn from the Japanese cultural penchant for humility and dignified resignation in the face of intractable difficulty.
Sometimes the best way forward is to step aside.
pc (Bangkok Post, September 4, 2008) Read more on this article...
The time has come, Mister Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, to step down for the good of your country. I say this not as a supporter of the righteous protestors who demand you resign, they have much to answer for themselves, nor out of malice towards you. I am an admirer of your plucky style, as much as I am a critic of your sometimes prejudiced words.
You are proud and sometimes virulent in your nationalism, so I will not advise you to look at my country, America, with its very own very flawed version of democracy, as a model. But you might look to Asia for inspiration.
Not to Burma, the least democratic of your Asian neighbors, certainly not to paramount dictator Than Shwe. Although you reportedly admire the cruel and vain Burmese dictator because of his apparent devotion to Buddhist ritual, we have come to understand that sort of incendiary comment as Samak-speak, a trademark random comment that manages to shock and enrage, rock the boat and assault the intellect, only to fall harmlessly by the wayside because you are not taken seriously as an intellectual. Yet your silver tongue has the power to inspire and incite and you have built a solid career on this talent.
We only met once, when you were running for mayor. I was impressed that a man of your fame and stature would visit the predictably unsympathetic venue of the Bangkok Foreign Correspondent’s Club at all, but the fact that you did so completely on your own, no aides, no assistants, no personal secretary, not even a driver, truly impressed. You just walked in and started talking.
On the other hand you disappointed when you summarily dismissed the topic of your involvement in the bloody crackdown of October 6, 1976 by turning the question on the questioner, who happened to be me.
“You, when you come to Thailand?” you challenged, as if a foreigner who had the temerity to ask such a question could be ridiculed for relatively recent arrival in the country.
“In the year 2514, khrap,” I answered in Thai. Stating the year 1971, when I first arrived as an exchange student, bought a rare interlude of silence from the silver tongue.
“You been here long time, you speak Thai well.” ("Phut thai taekchan", was the exact phrase I believe)
“Aren’t you ashamed of October 6?”
“No.”
And that was that. I still admire your pluck and tenacity and accept that, for whatever reason, talking with you about October 6 is not going to be constructive. Similar journalistic exchanges took place in the past year upon your ascension to Prime Minister. I could only note with wistful nostalgia your deft ability for turning questions back on the questioner.
But enough of that: there’s too much going on in the present to dwell in the past.
You are between a rock and a hard place, Mister Prime Minister. For inspiration, I suggest you look to the most democratic of your Asian neighbors, Japan.
You, a prime minister hanging in by a thread, were scheduled to fly to Tokyo and meet Japan’s prime minister, also hanging in by a thread. That meeting was of course cancelled because of unrest in Bangkok, but in the interim, your Japanese interlocutor resigned.
You have political karma that enables and inhibits you.
Since Thailand’s Government House has been occupied by your political opponents, an understandably annoying development that might have caused a less confident leader to resort to more extreme measures, you have been uncharacteristically calm, almost unruffled in your public response. Despite your unwillingness to talk about it, the shadow of October 6 does hang over you, in the positive sense that you want nothing of the sort to happen again.
There’s less bravado and more nuance in your recent presentation of self as prime minister, suggesting a swift, self-corrective learning curve. Under ordinary circumstances you might grow into the role, though it could also be argued you reached the natural peak of your abilities as a mayor and should be content with that.
The necessary humility and willingness to compromise, inherent to being an effective prime minister at a delicate time such as this, does not mix well with your brash, populist style, nor that of your ambitious patron-in-exile, Thaksin Shinawatra.
Japan’s Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, a political blueblood and veteran party stalwart of considerable skill, knew better than to fight the inevitable. When it became clear to him that he could not serve his country as he might like to because of unfavorable deadlocks, logjams and impasses in his own party and Japan’s parliament as a whole, he quietly resigned.
“Sorry for causing so much trouble with this abrupt announcement,” said Mr. Fukuda, stepping down with grace and good manners that have characterized his career.
Each person has his or her own style and no one would expect you, Mr. Samak, to follow the mild-mannered Mr. Fukuda to the word. But there are lessons that can be drawn from the Japanese cultural penchant for humility and dignified resignation in the face of intractable difficulty.
Sometimes the best way forward is to step aside.
pc (Bangkok Post, September 4, 2008) Read more on this article...
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