Peace and Justice Post

Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada, Aug 13, 2007

Buttons with Jordanian King Abdullah’s picture are for sale along with Jordanian, Palestinian and other flags in a shop in Amman, Jordan, July 2007. (Matthew Cassel)

Last month the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the US and Israel were considering a revival of the “Jordan option.” In spite of the fervent denials emanating from Amman, the report caused a rash of speculation and concern among Palestinians. Many fear that if implemented it would mark the end of hopes for an independent Palestinian state. Resurrecting the Jordan option, in which the West Bank and possibly Gaza would be united in a political and economic confederation with Jordan, demonstrates not just the poverty of ideas in Washington and Israel, but their desperation as well. Perhaps the allies believe that by trapping the Palestinians between the “rock” of Israel’s apartheid wall and the “hard place” of Jordan’s vaunted Arab Legion and dreaded Mukhabarat intelligence service, they will extinguish Palestinian nationalism. However, they and whichever Arab leaders agree to such a policy are sadly mistaken. If history is any guide, the Hashemite regime has more to fear from such a confederation than the Palestinians.

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AFP, August 13, 2007

Karl Rove
©AFP – Saul Loeb

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Karl Rove, the master political tactician behind President George W. Bush’s two election triumphs, quit Monday in a bombshell announcement after more than six tempestuous White House years.

“I’m grateful to have been witness to history,” said an emotional Rove, dubbed “Bush’s brain” by critics, as he stood side-by-side with the president to make his resignation as deputy White House chief of staff official.

“I’ve seen a man of farsighted courage put America on a war footing and protect us against a brutal enemy in a dangerous conflict that will shape this new century,” Rove said.

Rove, a scourge of Democrats, rocked Washington’s political establishment when he first divulged his plans in an interview in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Karl Rove (R), George W. Bush (L) and Laura Bush
©AFP – Karen Bleier

Bush praised Rove, who will leave at the end of the month, for making “enormous sacrifices” to serve, and in a nod to his own waning days in power said: “I will be on the road behind you here in a little bit.”

But Democrats, who have repeatedly been the victims of Rove’s hard knuckle brand of politics, said he had left a stain on Washington.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, who has subpoenaed Rove in a row over federal prosecutors Democrats say were fired for political gain, accused him of manipulating elections and putting himself above the law.

“There is a cloud over this White House, and a gathering storm. A similar cloud envelopes Mr. Rove, even as he leaves the White House.”

Rove, who enjoys near mythical status in Republican circles, had been expected by most observers to stay until Bush leaves office in January 2009.

There will now be speculation as to whether he will take a role in any of the 2008 campaigns of Republicans vying to succeed Bush in the White House.

Karl Rove (R) and George W. Bush
©AFP – Saul Loeb

“I’ve asked a lot of my family, and they’ve given all I’ve asked and more,” Rove said.

“Now it seems the right time to start thinking about the next chapter in our family’s life.”

The timing of Rove’s departure means he will absent from the White House’s political battle with Congress expected in September when the top US general and diplomat in Iraq deliver a progress report on Bush’s war strategy.

Rove’s county-by-county knowledge of the US political map helped Bush win two close-fought elections, by appealing to conservatives and disdaining the conventional wisdom that US elections are won from the center.

But he leaves office having failed in his ultimate political ambition, of piecing together an enduring conservative ruling majority, after Democrats seized control of Congress last November.

George W. Bush (L) and Karl Rove
©AFP – Saul Loeb

Bush, who once dominated the US political scene, is mired in a prolonged slump: the president’s job disapproval ratings stood at a dismal 63 percent at the end of last month, the worst showing since president Jimmy Carter, sending alarm bells through the Republican establishment.

An astute operator from Texas who has been with Bush since his gubernatorial campaigns of the 1990s, Rove has been under fire since 2003, when retired US diplomat Joseph Wilson claimed he had illegally leaked to the media the identity of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA employee.

Wilson asserted the leak had been orchestrated in retaliation for his questioning the Bush administration’s rationale for war in Iraq. Rove was never charged but the probe led to the conviction of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former chief of staff for Vice President Richard Cheney.

George W. Bush (L) and Karl Rove
©AFP – Saul Loeb

Rove has been widely reported to have played a key behind-the-scenes role in persuading Congress to endorse the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“Iraq will be in a better place,” Rove said in the Journal interview, despite criticism that the troop “surge” strategy announced by the president at the beginning of the year was not bearing any fruit.

He also made headlines in 2005, arguing that following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, liberals wanted to “offer therapy and understanding for our attackers” instead of tough military action.

Granma, August 10, 2007

BY ELSA CLARO

GEORGE Bush is leaving an unpleasant and difficult legacy for whoever will replace him in 2008. With serious domestic economic and financial problems that in themselves are a daunting task, along with deteriorating social services, the newcomers also have the burden of two costly, useless wars that are making problems worse and more deeply entrenched, instead of resolving them.

Bush, who has the state’s funds at his disposition — funds created by taxpayer money — as if they were part of a personal account, has provided for an enormous increase in U.S. military contributions to Israel consisting of $30 billion over 10 years, arming the Zionist government to the tune of $3 billion annually.

We don’t need to suggest what could be done with such a sum of money – which will almost double Washington’s current military aid to Tel Aviv – if they were dedicated to needs in the United States, such as the rebuilding of New Orleans and aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Or if they were used in Iraq, where after so many years of boycott and direct destruction, there is a very critical situation.

The humanitarian organization Oxfam revealed that 70% of Iraq’s 27 million people do not have adequate access to water, and only 20% of the population has heath care.

The dramatic situation of Iraq’s children continues to worsen. While before the invasion, they comprised a sector hard hit by economic woes (remember the years of the insufficient oil-for-food plan), now some 30% of children are malnourished, while 15% of adults do not eat regularly.

That hardship requires urgent help, because the transitional government has been unable to meet even the most basic needs. The war itself, with its daily violence, is covering up this tragedy being suffered by at least 8 million people in Iraq.

And this is not even mentioning the 2 million who were able to escape to neighboring nations.

Despite this situation, theoretically created to “bring liberty and democracy,” its creators are planning expenditures as gigantic as those made by Washington to raise increase military aid to Israel for maintaining military superiority in the area. The top reason is to exceed Iran’s capabilities, while they continue to harass the latter with financial pressure and hostile military preparations.

And given that Bush has relatively little time left in the White House, the Pentagon organized arms sales to several Middle Eastern nations, including some that are not exactly Israel’s closest friends. The latter has no problem with that, confident in whatever commitments its big partner is orchestrating.

Large-scale military reinforcements are on their way to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, all of which are to receive advanced armaments and warships worth some $20 billion.

While the central reason is to maintain Israel’s superiority in the Middle East, above all in face of Iran’s defensive capacity, the subject has other motives that we could call secondary.

It is not at all strange for the ruling group in the United States to give this transaction commercial significance. They believe that if those nations are planning to buy modern weapons in any case, it is preferable for it to be a U.S. sale, involving billions of dollars, of course.

The issue implies many additional complexities. There are religious differences among those Arab nations, but they do share common opposition to Israel because of the antagonistic policies the latter has held since its creation as a country, and given the expansionist intentions it has not renounced.

Hence this is not the end of the story, at this point in time.

Dissident Voice

By Glen Ford / August 10th, 2007

Senator Barack Obama believes himself to be the reincarnation of President John F. Kennedy. For those of us who are schooled in history — real history — that’s not a good thing. Kennedy tried on many occasions to assassinate Fidel Castro, and set in motion events that led to military dictatorships assuming power throughout Latin America. Kennedy, early in the month of November, 1963, gave the order to murder South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy met his own fate a few weeks later, in Dallas, but he had already set in motion a war that would claim 58 thousand American and three million Vietnamese lives.

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Reuters (IDS), August 13, 2007

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Nearly 90 percent of people living in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital want their troubled and divided state to become an independent country, according to a poll in an Indian newspaper on Monday.

India and Pakistan have fought and argued over the Himalayan region ever since partition in 1947, but 87 percent of people questioned in Srinagar have no allegiance to either side.

Only 3 percent of the mainly Muslim inhabitants of the city think Kashmir should become part of Pakistan, and 7 percent prefer Indian rule, the poll said.

But down in Jammu, the state’s mainly Hindu winter capital in the plains to the south, 95 percent think Kashmir should be part of India.

Both countries claim the region in full, and both have ruled out independence as an option. India controls around 45 percent of the former princely state, Pakistan around a third and China the rest, a largely uninhabited slice of high-altitude desert.

Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies interviewed 226 people in Srinagar and 255 in Jammu for the poll, published in Monday’s Indian Express.

People in 10 Indian and 10 Pakistani cities were also interviewed.

Indians were keener to keep control of the region than Pakistanis — 67 percent of urban Indians think it should be ruled from New Delhi, against 48 percent of Pakistanis who wanted Islamabad to take full control, according to the poll.

Another 47 percent of Pakistanis said they supported independence for Kashmir.

The fate of Kashmir — known for both its natural beauty and for its bloody recent past — has been uncertain ever since its Hindu ruler hesitated in choosing whether to join the region to India or the newly formed Pakistan in 1947.

Officials say more than 42,000 people have been killed since militants started a violent separatist revolt in 1989. Human rights groups put the toll at about 60,000 dead or missing.

However, roughly seven out of 10 Kashmiris think the situation has improved since 2002.

The overwhelming majority of Srinagar’s residents think the security forces have too much power. The army is often accused of killing innocent people and other rights abuses, operating under a special law that largely protects soldiers from prosecution.

Around 84 percent of people in Srinagar want to see the return of Kashmiri Pandits, a Hindu community, large numbers of whom fled the region after being targeted by Islamist militants. Many live in refugee camps elsewhere in India.

Published on Saturday, August 11, 2007 by The Progressive

By Matthew Rothschild

Once again, the United Nations Security Council is letting itself be turned into a tool of the United States.

On August 3, it voted unanimously to adopt a resolution to expand the U.N.’s role in Iraq. The U.N. is now authorized to play a bigger role in national reconciliation, regional dialogue, and humanitarian assistance.

But there is much less there than meets the eye.

The U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expects to send all of thirty more U.N. personnel to Iraq. But the staff union at the U.N. opposes this, and even wants those currently in Iraq to be withdrawn until the safety situation there improves.

Sounding like a mouthpiece of the Bush Administration, the Secretary-General said he would urge “Iraqi government leaders to do their own part in promoting and engaging in inclusive political dialogue.”

This is the blame-Maliki first strategy, which Hillary Clinton has also signed on to.

The Secretary-General is supposed to involve himself in regional dialogue, as well, though it’s difficult to imagine how he’ll be able to succeed there, as Bush and Cheney are threatening to attack Iran virtually every day now.

It’s also difficult to imagine how the U.N. will be able to help the security situation any. The response by Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, was laughable. He said he hopes “the U.N. will soon be able to redeploy a contingent to Basra, where its expertise would be helpful in delivering capacity building in Iraq’s southeast.”

The ambassador’s comment came the same day that Britain lost two more soldiers in southern Iraq, bringing its toll to 168 since the war began. Iraq is Britain’s “least successful military campaign since Suez in ‘56,” wrote Patrick Cockburn of the London Independent.

How are two dozen U.N. staffers going to make any difference in Basra, which the British are bailing from as fast as possible?

Everyone in the Security Council is leaning on thin reeds.

And rather than face the fact that Security Council has for the past three years placed its imprimatur on the U.S. and British illegal invasion and lawless occupation, the Security Council simply attaches another fig leaf.

So much so that Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, hailed the latest resolution as a bygones-be-bygones triumph.

“Without a doubt, we in the international community have had our differences with regard to Iraq,” he said. “Despite these differences, we all share the same vision for Iraq’s future. This forward-looking resolution . . . is an important signal that the page has turned.”

Amnesty International, to its credit, noted that the resolution leaves the United States completely off the hook for its role in the human rights disaster that is Iraq today.

“The least the Security Council can do is to call on all parties concerned to halt and prevent further human rights abuses, to protect civilians, including internally displaced persons and other vulnerable groups, and to put an end to impunity,” it said. It denounced not only the sectarian killings but also the “continuing detention of thousands of Iraqis without charge or trial by the U.S.-led Multinational Force and Iraqi security forces, the widespread
reports of torture, the sharp rise in the use of the death penalty, and other gross abuses.”

But the Bush Administration doesn’t want to put an end to impunity.

It thrives on impunity.

And the latest U.N. resolution just gives it a little more.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

New York Times

By JEFF ZELENY and MARC SANTORA

Published: August 12, 2007

DES MOINES, Aug. 11 — Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.

John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, would keep troops in the region to intervene in an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for military action if violence spills into other countries. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would leave residual forces to fight terrorism and to stabilize the Kurdish region in the north. And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois would leave a military presence of as-yet unspecified size in Iraq to provide security for American personnel, fight terrorism and train Iraqis.

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Source: Dissident Voice

By Francis A. Boyle / August 10th, 2007

Despite the massive, overwhelming repudiation of the Iraq war and the Bush Jr. administration by the American people in the November 2006 national elections conjoined with their consequent installation of a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party with a mandate to terminate the Iraq war, since its ascent to power in January 2007 the Democrats in Congress have taken no effective steps to stop, impede, or thwart the Bush Jr. administration’s wars of aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or anywhere else, including their long-standing threatened war against Iran. To the contrary, the new Democrat-controlled Congress decisively facilitated these serial Nuremberg crimes against peace on May 24, 2007 by enacting a $95 billion supplemental appropriation to fund war operations through September 30, 2007.

In the spring of 2007 all the Congressional Democrats had to do was nothing. They could have sat upon the supplemental appropriation request for war operations by the Bush Jr. administration and thus failed to enact it into law. At that point, the money for war operations would have gradually run out, and the Bush Jr. administration would have been forced to have gradually withdrawn U.S. armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of so doing, the Congressional Democrats knowingly prolonged these wars of aggression and thus in the process became aiders and abettors to these Nuremberg crimes against peace.

Under the terms of the United States Constitution, the President cannot spend a dime unless the money has somehow been appropriated by the United States Congress. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution expressly provides: “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law…” Furthermore, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12 of the Constitution also provides that “Congress shall have power . . . To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years . . . ”

America’s Founders and Framers deliberately strove to keep America’s prospective military establishment on a financial short-leash tightly held by the hands of Congress precisely because of their well-founded fear that a standing army would constitute a dire threat to the continued existence of the Republic based upon their recent experience confronting and defeating King George III’s standing army. As the American July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence stated their objections in part: “[H]e has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power . . . For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us…”

Congress must use its constitutional power of the purse to terminate the Bush Jr. administration’s wars of aggression immediately. Those Congressional incumbents of either political party who refuse to do so must be replaced by men and women of good faith and good will of any or no political party who will do their constitutional duty to terminate ongoing Nuremberg crimes against peace. To the contrary, the current leadership of the Democratic Party (though, to be sure, not all Democrats), let alone most of the Republicans, have been complicit with all the atrocities that the Bush Jr. administration has inflicted upon international law, international organizations, human rights, the United States Constitution, civil rights, civil liberties, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere since September 11, 2001.

Further confirmation of this proposition can be found in the fact that when the self-described Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan went on July 23, 2007 with 200 protesters to speak with Democratic Congressman John Conyers — Chair of the House Judiciary Committee that has supervisory jurisdiction over bills of impeachment — about starting impeachment proceedings against President Bush Jr., at the end of an hour Congressman Conyers ordered her and 45 others arrested for disorderly conduct when they refused to leave his office. In other words, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party arrested one of the leaders of the American Peace Movement for insisting that he and his congressional colleagues perform their constitutionally-mandated duties. Nothing could be more symptomatic of the constitutional, moral, and political bankruptcy of the so-called two-party system of politics in the United States of America: Republicans versus Democrats, Tweedle Dum versus Tweedle Dee.

Since the Democrats’ Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi had already ruled arbitrarily that President Bush’s impeachment was “off the table,” Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan announced her intention to run against Pelosi in the 2008 national elections. Once again Mrs. Sheehan’s instincts, principles, judgment, and strategy are directly on target. The American people must oppose, defeat, and replace all members of the United States Congress of any political party who will not impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney in order to terminate their needlessly — inflicted death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia as soon as possible. The so-called leaderships of both political parties have left the American people with no alternative. Even more urgently, the Neo-Conservative cabal known as the Bush Jr. administration are still threatening, planning, preparing, and conspiring to attack Iran, which could very well set-off World War III. Just recently they added nuclear-armed Pakistan to their publicly proclaimed list of targets.

Meanwhile, the Bush Jr. administration’s “surge” of 30,000 troops into Iraq announced in January of 2007 has marched on to its inexorable bloodbath for the Iraqi people and U.S. armed forces. There is more than enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that the underlying strategy of the Bush Jr. administration is nothing more than to postpone their inevitable defeat in Iraq until after their departure from office in January 2009 no matter what the cost in lives to Iraqis and Americans. But the world cannot wait until January of 2009 for America to start to end these wars and their related war crimes, as well as to prevent more threatened wars, especially against Iran or Pakistan, which could prove catastrophic for humankind.

The United States Congress must immediately and simultaneously proceed to exercise both its constitutional power of the purse and its constitutional power of impeachment toward that end. That is the bilateral strategy which the U.S. Congress pursued a generation ago in order to terminate the Nixon administration’s criminal wars of aggression against Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. That must be the bilateral strategy by which the U.S. Congress today terminates the Bush Jr. administration’s criminal wars of aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and otherwise perhaps soon Iran or Pakistan. Despite Pelosi’s disingenuous protestations to the contrary, the Nixon/Vietnam precedent proves that Congressional impeachment and cutting-off funds for wars are mutually reinforcing strategies. They might even win the 2008 U.S. Presidential and Congressional elections for those who embrace them.

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU Read other articles by Francis A..

by Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, August 10, 2007

Another feverish Neo-Con has come out of the closet and admitted to enjoying the fetish that he shares with scores of other Administration apologists – a deathwish for more terror and more dead Americans in order to unite the country behind Bush.

“ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I’m thinking another 9/11 would help America,” laments Stu Bykofsky in his Philadelphia Daily News column.

“Remember the community of outrage and national resolve? America had not been so united since the first Day of Infamy – 12/7/41.

We knew who the enemy was then.

America’s fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America’s righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.”

That’s right – we need more terror or the terrorists will win!

Bykofsky is disappointed that 600,000 plus dead civilians along with thousands of slain troops in Iraq isn’t enough to convince Americans that the war should be prosecuted with more vigor, so he’s yearning for a kick up the backside in the form of thousands of dead Americans at home.

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