Tag Archives: middle east

March 2024 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Ralph Nader says the civilian carnage in Gaza is an order of magnitude worse than even the Gaza authorities say it is. Which is almost unthinkably horrible if true, and makes the Israeli public statements about collateral damage seem even less credible. However even handed you try to be in considering this war could be a proportionate response to the original gruesome attack, it is getting harder.

Most hopeful story: Yes, there are some fun native (North American) wildflowers you can grow from bulbs. Let’s give the environmental and geopolitical doom and gloom a rest for a moment and cultivate our gardens.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I looked into Belarus, and now I am just a little bit less ignorant, which is nice.

Netanyahu

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This is an article from 1996 in something called the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs. Here are some facts about Benjamin Netanyahu as reported by this article.

  1. He went to high school in suburban Philadelphia. (I looked up elsewhere, and it was Cheltenham high school. This is a public school district in a not particularly posh area.) Then MIT.
  2. He was a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, at least at that point of graduating MIT.
  3. He has gone by at least four names. One of the three alternates is just a shortened version, but the other two are John Jay Sullivan and John Jay Sullivan Jr.
  4. His social security file is marked “classified”. According to this article, that suggests he may have been on the payroll of the CIA or FBI.
  5. To run for office, he had to give up his U.S. citizenship, which he did legally in Israel. But in the U.S., at least according to this article and in 1996, he was still legally considered a U.S. citizen. (This situation is not unusual though, as I know plenty of people in ambiguous dual citizen categories in their home countries for one reason of convenience or another. An innocent one is because someone lives in the U.S. but wants to visit family in their home country for an extended period without applying for a tourist visa.)

The article veers into some interesting territory from there, but I found these apparently fact-based nuggets interesting.

Ralph Nader on Gaza

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I haven’t made up my mind on the Gaza situation, and therefore I haven’t talked a lot about it. And I probably shouldn’t, but I want to get my own thoughts in order. You can stop reading here if you want.

The October 7 attacks were horrific and it is entirely understandable why Israel would choose an overwhelming and violent response. In case we forget the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. invaded not one but two sovereign countries after those attacks, and occupied them for 20 years. There were not so many video cameras in those countries as we have in Gaza now, so the civilian suffering was not in the western public eye to the extent it is now, but the suffering was undoubtedly horrible. This is more like the Vietnam war, which was very public and which people had a very visceral reaction to.

Second, there are people in positions of power on both sides who espouse hateful, racist ideologies. These people have intentionally monkey-wrenched the peace process at least since the hopeful moment of the Oslo accords in the 1990s. The participants in that peace accord were murdered by racist ideologues (one assassination 100% documented; the other somewhat obviously poisoned in my opinion, but maybe not established 100%.) Antisemitism has been a problem since Roman times, and is a problem throughout the Muslim world today. Hateful, fundamentalist ideology also drives the settler movement. I do have a position on the settlements – I agree with the international consensus that they are wrong and illegal, and they need to stop.

Now to war crimes. I am not an expert on the subject, but I know there is an international consensus against collective punishment and against ethnic cleansing. The Israeli government is quite clearly engaging in these two things under any logical textbook definition, and I don’t think this is justified as a response to the original attacks. As for genocide, I don’t believe they are intentionally exterminating civilians, which is what many people associate with genocide. Under the UN definition of genocide, the ethnic cleansing (forcible and permanent moving of populations) counts as genocide, and they are guilty of it. There is a question of whether the Israeli government intends the movement to be permanent, but I am convinced that there is at least an element within the Israeli government that would like to reduce the Palestinian population of Gaza permanently by forcing people across the Egyptian border. I have always found the UN definition problematic though because some of its sub-parts are so obviously more violent and evil than others. There are degrees of unimaginable depravity. For example, murdering 6 million people is a higher plane of depravity than taking children away from their parents for reeducation to destroy their traditional culture and language (the Chinese approach in Xinxiang, the U.S. treatment of Native Americans well into the 20th century – of course, the U.S. military shot and displaced plenty of Native Americans in support of settler colonialism in the 19th century, lest we forget).

So back to civilian suffering, which is horrible. Is it justified as unavoidable collateral damage in an otherwise proportionate response to the original attack? I can’t answer this, but it seems there is much more that can and should be done to alleviate the suffering. The extreme ideological elements on both sides seem mostly indifferent to this suffering.

I promised to get to Ralph Nader. He says the real death toll is closer to 300,000 than 30,000. The 30,000 counts only official deaths reported by hospitals, while he believes there are hundreds of thousands of bodies buried under rubble that have not been counted.

With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm, and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With 5,000 babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine, and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death and injury toll. But for different reasons. Hamas keeps the figures low to reduce being accused by its own people of not protecting them, and not building shelters. Hamas grossly underestimated the savage war crimes by the vengeful, occupying Israeli military superpower fully and unconditionally backed by the U.S. military superpower.

The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the “official” rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism.

Ralph Nader

Strong words. If true, it is an impressive piece of propaganda for the Israeli government to question the Hamas estimate as being too high by a factor of 10, when it is actually too low by a factor of 10.

As for the aftermath of the operation, I picture something like the Chinese government’s approach in Tibet and Xinjiang, where the location and behavior of individual people is individually tracked and people are taken away for incarceration or reeducation. This also meets the UN definition of genocide, but at least it would be relatively bloodless compared to the intense suffering we are seeing now (and Chinese government’s genocide is relatively bloodless compared to the U.S. invasion and occupation of neighboring Afghanistan). For Palestine, I don’t see much hope for a return to the optimism of the 1990s any time soon.

how many U.S. troops in Yemen?

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Well, the answer to this one has to be zero, right??? According to the War Powers Report submitted to Congress by the White House in December, the answer is “a small number”. The summary letter I have linked to also lists other deployments the U.S. considers part of its “counterterrorism” efforts in the greater Middle East. So the “war on terror” is very much continuing. Most of this is about combating “ISIS” and “ISIL”, more or less at the invitation of the host government. These groups are not “Iran-backed” as far as I know, and in fact are even threatening to Iran.

The U.S. is also sometimes attacking Iran-backed groups and Iranian military advisers under the umbrella of counterterrorism. This particularly catches my eye:

As reported on November 22, 2023, I directed United States forces to conduct discrete strikes on the night of November 21, 2023, against facilities in Iraq used by the IRGC and IRGC-affiliated groups for command and control, logistics, and other purposes.  These strikes followed attacks against United States personnel and facilities in Iraq and Syria that threatened the lives of United States personnel and Coalition forces operating alongside United States forces, and that were perpetrated by the IRGC and militia groups affiliated with the IRGC.  A United States contractor suffered a fatal cardiac incident while moving to shelter during one of these attacks.  I directed these discrete military actions consistent with my responsibility to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive and to conduct United States foreign relations.

whitehouse.gov

I’ll try: “Iran-backed” groups are fighting “US-backed” groups in various countries. Iran and the US both have military advisers in various countries. U.S. troops and contractors are occasionally getting hurt in attacks maybe aimed directly at them, and maybe aimed at more local parties. We’re there because they are fighting us, and they are fighting us because we’re there.

January 2024 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: 2023 was “a year of war“, and so far 2024 is not looking better. Those diplomatic grand bargains you always hear about seem to be getting less grand. And the drumbeat for a U.S. attack on Iran got louder.

Most hopeful story: According to Bill Gates, some bright spots in the world today include gains in administering vaccines to children around the world, a shift toward greater public acceptance of nuclear power, and maybe getting a bit closer to the dream of fusion power. He pontificates about AI, and my personal sense is it is still too soon, but AI does hold some promise for speeding up scientific progress.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: The return of super-sonic commercial flight is inching closer.

the drum beat for a U.S. attack on Iran continues

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The media always refers to “Iran-backed” and “Iran proxy” groups responsible for various events in the Middle East, but we never really see proof that Iran is participating in specific attacks. We often hear that Iran is providing aid, arms, or has military advisers on the ground. I’m not saying any of this is outright lies, as I wouldn’t know, but it raises my propaganda hackles. Just substitute “US-backed” or “US advisors” and see how many situations around the world you could write and article about suggesting the US is a nefarious force behind all sorts of events. And of course, this is exactly what happened.

This is not hypothetical. The US has military advisers in Jordan, for example, who were just attacked by an “Iran-backed” group (why do we have troops in Jordan, or Syria for that matter, and is this article is suggesting we have troops in Iraq?). And here are some quotes from the warmongers, courtesy of Axios:

  • “Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said in a statement the attacks the U.S. has carried out on Iranian proxies outside Iran “will not deter Iranian aggression,” calling to “strike targets of significance inside Iran.”
  • “The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). “Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward unworthy of being commander-in-chief.”
  • Sen. John Cornyn, in a post on the social media site X, said: “Target Tehran[.]”
  • “The head of the snake is Iran,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and former Air Force brigadier general, told Axios.”

The other talking point we are hearing from Republicans is that we are “acting like it is September 10”. This is a rhetorical attempt to link migration at the Mexico-Border to the Hamas attacks on Israel. The U.S. should of course be alert for an attack by radical Islamist groups who would see it as justified self-defense for America’s support for what they see as human rights abuses and war crimes committed by Israel. I am not taking a position here, just pointing out that it is a vicious cycle of escalating violence and all sides are stoking the flames rather than trying to interrupt the cycle. No evidence has been provided of any plot that would involve crossing the US-Mexico border.

a new “grand bargain” for the Middle East

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When I first heard about a conceptual “grand bargain” under the Obama administration, the general idea was normalization of relations between the U.S., Iran, and Israel in exchange for Iran giving up its nuclear weapons program (maybe in exchange for a well monitored nuclear power program) and Israel allowing the creation of a Palestinian state. This obviously didn’t happen.

Before these ideas, there were smaller actual bargains including peace between Israel and most of its neighbors under Carter, and movement toward a Palestinian state under Clinton.

Before the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the latest idea was a formal normalization of (already de facto?) diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, possibly in exchange for nuclear power for Saudi Arabia. Iran was left out of this, and in fact it seemed to be the solidification of an anti-Iran block. The Palestinians were also left out of this, as far as I know. So now it seems to me that Biden is proposing a return to this deal that was already essentially made, and trying to add some progress toward a Palestinian state in the mix. It doesn’t seem that likely to me, at least until a new generation of leadership takes over in Israel, and unless/until Biden gets re-elected or a new generation of leadership takes over in the U.S.

It seems to me that the “grand” bargain is getting smaller and more cynical all the time. Still, one thing we can count on is the passage of time, and new leadership eventually taking over in all countries involved. One can hope for a brighter picture 5-10 years down the line. Hoping for a brighter picture by November 2024 seems a bit wishful to me.

India’s Foreign Relations

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Here is a long Foreign Policy article on India’s foreign relations. Among interesting things, they manage to maintain formal diplomatic relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel, and Iran at the same time. Their spats with China and Pakistan seem to go on forever but at least in recent decades, have not turned violent.

One thing that occurs to me in thinking about the recent “U.S. offer of civilian nuclear power” to Saudi Arabia is that both India and the U.S. might have an interest in prying Saudi Arabia from close ties to Pakistan’s nuclear program. They may cynically have decided that the nuclear proliferation tumor is going to metastasize to Saudi Arabia no matter what, and they would prefer for it to happen on their terms. An alternative, in a sane world, could be to offer Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other responsible countries civilian nuclear power under strict UN/IAEA oversight, backed up by a Security Council with some credibility.

so what’s going on in Syria?

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Syria is complicated. This article is by a Cato Institute author with some strong opinions I am not necessarily endorsing, but it does break down some of the key players.

  • Fact: The U.S. government has ground troops inside the borders of Syria, a sovereign country with a seat at the United Nations, and it does not have the permission of that government to be within its borders. The two countries do not have friendly diplomatic relations but nevertheless, neither side claims to be directly at war with the other.
  • The stated reason for U.S. troops entering Syria was to fight the Islamic State group. By many accounts, that objective has been achieved. It is also worth noting that by some accounts, the reason that group formed was blowback from the 2003 U.S. (mostly unprovoked) Iraq invasion.
  • There are, however, regular “drone and rocket attacks” on U.S. troops by militant groups “aligned with Iran and Syria”.
  • The Syrian government is publicly anti-israel, and the U.S. government is obviously an ally of the Israel government. This article doesn’t mention it, but Israel is also known to be carrying out regular strikes against groups on Syrian territory that it considers threatening and/or Iran proxies.
  • The government of Russia is allied with the government of Syria. The United States presence in Syria is therefore “discomfiting” to the Russian government according to some. Russia has troops on the ground in Syria with the permission of the Syrian government. The U.S. and Russia are not directly at war in Syria or anywhere else, but there have been confrontations, provocations, and “harassments”.
  • The U.S. government supports military forces of the Kurdish ethnic group, which some say serves as a de facto government controlling territory in this area. These Kurdish forces are openly engaged in military hostilities with Turkey inside the borders of Syria, which is a NATO member and declared U.S. ally.
  • The government of Syria and the government of Iran are allies, and the U.S. government is openly very hostile to Iran and accuses them of interfering with politics and funding wars and terror groups throughout the Middle East. The governments of Iran and Israel are also openly hostile, of course, with nuclear risks for the region and world.
  • Some say the U.S. is trying to “bring Assad down” or “steal Syria’s oil”. I don’t know how real these claims are or whether either represents any sort of official policy (well, certainly not the latter, and deploying the U.S. military to “steal oil” tens of thousands of miles away simply can’t be a viable business proposition. This one does not pass the logic test.)

There – I don’t know that I “explained” it, but I don’t know that there is anything to explain. We are there because they are fighting us, and they are fighting us because we are there. There are at least four distinct conflicts happening in the same geography – U.S. vs. Russia/Syria/Iran/islamist groups, Israel vs. Syria/Iran, Syria vs. Kurds, Turkey vs. Kurds. What a mess. Even Donald Trump wanted to get out of Syria, probably for what I would consider the wrong reasons. Let’s get the U.S. military out and the diplomats in. Where is Jimmy Carter when you need him? Who is the next Jimmy Carter – Obama maybe?