War in Context

The Obama cult meme
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, February 22, 2008

“I just have a very bad feeling about the way things are going,” says Paul Krugman in the New York Times as he anticipates the “backlash against Obamamania.”

“Barack Obama, the wunderkind of US politics, has long basked in adulatory press coverage for his historic White House bid — but a media backlash appears to be building,” reports Jitendra Joshi for AFP. “Some Obama supporters fret already that his campaign has the trappings of a messianic cult, as thousands upon thousands pack auditoriums to bask in his uplifting oratory.”

“Obama’s high-flown, inspirational rhetoric often feeds into the impression of a political campaign veering into the realms of religion - never more so than when he declared in a victory speech that ‘we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,’” writes Helen Kennedy in the New York Daily News. “The line is the title of a 2006 Alice Walker book, but some saw it as another sign of the emerging Cult of Obama.”

And in Slate, John Dickerson asks, “Isn’t the generation that Obama has so successfully courted usually the first to toss overhyped products, even the overhyped products with which they were at first so enthralled? More generally, shouldn’t Democrats who have complained that George Bush was elected on the strength of a popularity contest be nervous that this blossoming Obamadulation is getting out of hand?”

So what’s going on here? Charles Krauthammer notes that in his post-Super Tuesday string of wins, “Obama has been able to win these electoral victories and dazzle crowds in one new jurisdiction after another, even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.”

There’s a message in that for Mr Krauthammer et al: the opinion writers and the talking heads — the media sages whose knowledge of politics has so much greater depth than the average Joe — are actually wielding very little influence. Who’d've thunk it? Of course many of them would in false modesty dismiss any suggestion that they are attempting to exercise influence, but at the very least, these are the people who make a living on the claim they know how to take a political pulse.

The backlash — and it is clearly a media backlash — probably has much more to do with journalism than it has with what’s going on across America. Journalists like to play a game of political impartiality. It’s never particularly convincing, but anyone who’s getting paid to be a messenger doesn’t want to be accused of distorting the message. At the same time, journalists are people and if the story you’re covering involves large numbers of people being swept up by a wave of enthusiasm, it’s hard not to get infected by at least a smidgen of that enthusiasm. The media backlash is an effort through which the media is now trying to disinfect itself.

So now let’s turn to the cult question — though first I should spell out where I stand.

I didn’t pay too much attention to the presidential race until the beginning of the primaries. I haven’t signed up on the mailing lists of any of the campaigns. I haven’t attended any political rallies. I don’t find “Yes We Can” a particularly compelling or moving slogan. The will.i.am “Yes We Can” video didn’t make me want to chant along — I can only name three of the people in it and one them is Barak Obama. I see change as the one certainty in life and thus not a choice. But when it comes time to vote, unless something totally unexpected happens, I’ll be voting for Obama. I will not be acting under the influence of a higher power.

Since the word “cult” has now been used so widely, the first thing we need to do is get clear about the defining characteristics of a cult. Some social scientists like to run through a checklist to determine whether a social grouping should be called a cult, but anyone who has encountered one or been in one knows that they are actually quite easy to distinguish.

The single most important feature of a cult is that it involves the sublimation of individual will and judgment through surrender to an external authority. That authority may come in the form of a charismatic teacher or it may be suffused across a group. In either case a social order exists that undermines the validity, authenticity, and moral authority of the cult member’s personal autonomy and judgment. Let thy will — not my will — be done.

This is where cults and social movements intersect. Both attach a higher value to the social fabric than to its individual strands. Where they differ — and this is all-important — is that one attempts to be inclusive in a widening circle of solidarity, whereas the other sees itself located in a spiritually embattled world. On the inside are the chosen, the saved, the enlightened; on the outside are lost souls. Social movements are in the business of empowering individuals collectively, not saving them.

By this measure, there is no cult of Obama. At the same time, Obama obviously has a fan base and some Obama fans can be as goofy as any others. Where the cult-analysis gets the Obama phenomenon completely wrong is the implication that the mass rallies are a vanguard that somehow sucks in much wider support.

Charles Krauthammer wants his readers to believe that we are witnessing the greatest political scam of all time as a “silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope,” that he doesn’t attempt to explain how Obama closes the sale. Everyone acknowledges that Obama is appealing, inspiring and a great speaker, but these observations don’t explain the Obama phenomenon.

If the product was all in the packaging, the Obama product has plenty of strong selling points: good looks, an easy smile, a golden baritone, a rousing orator. But that isn’t enough. He’s also a bit skinny, looks even more youthful than his mere 46 years, and his debating skills don’t match his speaking skills.

No, the Obama hook isn’t a silver tongue or a mysterious ability to provoke intemperate enthusiasm; it is that he is believable. He has pulled off a miracle that no one thought possible: in spite of his being a politician, people actually believe what he’s saying. What makes him believable is something anyone can recognize even if they don’t know its name: authenticity. This is more than sincerity. It isn’t simply that Obama means what he says but what he says resonates in who he is.

Whereas an election campaign can generally do more than prove or disprove the proposition of electability, Obama’s campaign is itself a demonstration of his ability to deliver what he promises in his presidency: that he can bring people together, bridge divisions, and inspire support. He isn’t just providing a foretaste of what an Obama presidency might look like and passing the litmus test of “looking presidential”; he’s exercising the closest thing to presidential leadership that anyone could have prior to entering office.

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Clinton camp splits on message
By Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times, February, 2008

Before the Iowa caucuses, senior aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton fell into a heated argument during a 7:30 a.m. conference call about the basic message their candidate was delivering to voters.

Mark Penn, chief strategist and pollster, liked Clinton’s emphasis on her “strength and experience,” and he defended the idea of her running as a quasi-incumbent best suited for the presidency. Harold Ickes and other advisors said that message was not working. A more promising strategy, they argued, would be to focus on the historic prospect of electing the first woman president.

Today, as Clinton tries to revive her campaign after losing 10 straight primary contests to Sen. Barack Obama, some insiders look back and wish that argument had produced a different outcome. Penn won the debate, say two people aware of the conversation, and Clinton went on to present herself to voters as a steely figure so familiar with the workings of government that she could lead from Day One.

The Clinton campaign now seems in peril, its precarious situation acknowledged on Wednesday even by former President Bill Clinton, who suggested that his wife could not survive a loss in either of the next two major contests, in Texas and Ohio on March 4. [complete article]

See also, As crucial tests loom, Clinton hits harder (WP).

Editor’s Comment — According to in the New York Times:

When Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton meets Senator Barack Obama at a one-on-one debate in Austin on Thursday night, one of her final opportunities to change the course of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, she will again face the challenge that has repeatedly stymied her: how to discredit her popular opponent without hurting herself.

But that isn’t just a challenge; it’s a false proposition. The only reason the strategy of cutting down your opponent ever has a chance of working is when support for both candidates is weak. The attacks need to highlight flaws that were already visible and occur in a context where a significant number of voters are struggling to decide between the lesser of two evils.

Clinton’s problem is that her attacks reflect much more on her than they do on her opponent. To the extent that the Clinton campaign becomes focused on what’s wrong with Obama, she looks more and more like a sour loser — someone incapable of showing the grace to acknowledge defeat. On top of that, an attack campaign has a subtext that’s likely to offend the people it’s trying to win over. It’s saying: Vote for me. Don’t be a naive sucker who gets taken in by Obama’s charm and oratory. That’s an insult wrapped up inside an invitation.

Clinton’s other huge problem is that instead of running a presidential campaign, she’s been running a nomination campaign. If she were ever up against McCain, her whole strength-and-experience argument falls flat — unless of course the New York Times is able to intercede on her behalf and torpedo the strong and experienced Republican.

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A new face for American diplomacy
By Hooman Majd, Salon, February 21, 2008

When I was in Tehran, Iran, a year ago, I was asked by several senior government officials, including former President Mohammad Khatami, what to make of Barack Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States. The young senator from Illinois was still barely on the international radar then. My response was that I couldn’t see Americans nominating, let alone electing, a black man whose middle name was Hussein. My answer, clearly wrong in hindsight, stirred smiles and raised eyebrows among the Iranian leaders because they’d had no idea that Obama had a Muslim father. Even more surprising to them was that he carried, apparently without shame, a Muslim name. From Khatami this elicited an “Ajab!” — Farsi for, essentially, “You’ve got to be kidding!” There were also many nods of agreement with my conclusion about Obama’s chances.

At this point in the presidential race, although it is deeply heartening that I was so wrong in my judgment of American voters, Obama’s great potential to connect with the Muslim world, and to change how Muslims perceive the United States, is conspicuously absent from our national debate. A crucial question about who should be the next president is whether Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain is most likely to be able to heal the rift between the U.S. and much of the rest of the world, a rift not created but dangerously widened by the administration of George W. Bush. What is abundantly clear now — at least to many foreigners and particularly to Muslims in the Third World — is that Barack Obama is the candidate by far the best suited to begin healing that rift and restoring America’s global reputation, and perhaps even to begin reversing decades of anti-Americanism. Obama would begin a presidency with a huge advantage in terms of world perception. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The promise of an Obama presidency can easily be overstated, but what makes the view of the future much more interesting is to tie it to the present. Already there are very positive indications coming out of the Middle East suggesting that a President Obama would be warmly and enthusiastically received.

Consider this account from Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution. She’s been attending the 5th Annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, which brings together Americans with Muslims from Nigeria to Malaysia and everywhere in between. She notes that this year there has been a tidal shift in attitudes towards America veering away from the hostility of recent times, but then she goes on to provide this unexpected explanation for the change in mood:

Quite honestly, though, I don’t think the relative love-fest at this year’s meeting is all ascribable either to regional shifts or to the conference organizers’ choice of speakers. The most powerful explanation for the change is evident in the overwhelming fact that all anyone at this conference really wants to talk about is Barack Obama. [My emphasis]

A friend from the Gulf tells me her young relative was so excited about the Democratic candidate that he tried to donate money over the Internet, as he’d heard so many young Americans were doing. Then he found out he had to be a U.S. citizen to do so. Another young woman, visiting from next-door Saudi Arabia, said that all her friends in Riyadh are “for Obama.” The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia, certainly speaks to Muslims abroad.

But more important is just the prospect of a refreshing shift in the the breeze off the Potomac. More than the changes in the region, it seems to be anticipated changes in Washington that are drawing the eyes of my Arab counterparts and giving the conference its unusually forward-looking tone. We’ll see how long the honeymoon lasts! [Thanks to Marc Lynch for bringing this to my attention.]

Change might be coming, but I seriously doubt it can come fast enough that Obama could turn his global popularity into an electoral advantage. Even so, there’s no question that herein lies a major part of his promise.

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U.S. urges Pakistanis to keep Musharraf, despite election defeat
By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy, February 20, 2008

The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party’s rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.

The U.S. is urging the Pakistani political leaders who won the elections to form a new government quickly and not press to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf ousted last year, Western diplomats and U.S. officials said Wednesday. If reinstated, the jurists likely would try to remove Musharraf from office.

Bush’s policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department, with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.

The President is finished, he should copy Castro and quit
By Bronwen Maddox, The Times, February 20, 2008
To call President Musharraf a lame duck is an evasion; he is surely finished. As the results from the Pakistani elections on Monday come in, it is clear that he has almost no support in Parliament — and the few in his party who kept their seats are rushing to distance themselves from him. So is the Army, which he commanded until November and which underpinned his eight-year military rule.

Pakistan’s victors may lack strength to oust Musharraf
By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, February 21, 2008
This week’s election will leave President Pervez Musharraf weakened in his post, but continuing returns and haggling over the new government on Wednesday showed his opponents likely to fall short of the numbers needed to impeach him. The Pakistan Peoples Party, which won the most seats in the new Parliament, said it would not move against Mr. Musharraf if it could not muster the two-thirds majority needed to remove him or change the Constitution. “Musharraf is our problem,” said Ahmad Mukhtar, who successfully contested a seat against a powerful ally of Mr. Musharraf, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussein. “Today we don’t have the two-thirds majority. It is very difficult to talk about impeachment.”

U.S. payments to Pakistan face new scrutiny
By Robin Wright, Washington Post, February 21, 2008
Once a month, Pakistan’s Defense Ministry delivers 15 to 20 pages of spreadsheets to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. They list costs for feeding, clothing, billeting and maintaining 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistani troops in the volatile tribal area along the Afghan border, in support of U.S. counterterrorism efforts. No receipts are attached. In response, the Defense Department has disbursed about $80 million monthly, or roughly $1 billion a year for the past six years, in one of the most generous U.S. military support programs worldwide. The U.S. aim has been to ensure that Pakistan remains the leading ally in combating extremism in South Asia. But vague accounting, disputed expenses and suspicions about overbilling have recently made these payments to Pakistan highly controversial — even within the U.S. government.

Islamic stronghold in Pakistan goes secular
By Mark Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor, February 22, 2008
Hajji Ali Akbar wants his country to be governed by Islamic law. Yet in Monday’s elections in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), he and many others voted for a party that rejects religion in politics. It has led many to herald these elections as a victory for secular democracy and as a sign of the failure of Islamic parties’ governance. The religious parties that held 46 of the 96 provincial parliamentary seats won only nine this time. Moreover, they have been replaced by the secular Awami National Party (ANP).

Making Iraq disappear
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, February 20, 2008
Think of the top officials of the Bush administration as magicians when it comes to Iraq. Their top hats and tails may be worn and their act fraying, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Their latest “abracadabra,” the President’s “surge strategy” of 2007, has still worked like a charm. They waved their magic wands, paid off and armed a bunch of former Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists (about 80,000 “concerned citizens,” as the President likes to call them), and magically lowered “violence” in Iraq. Even more miraculously, they made a country that they had already turned into a cesspool and a slagheap — its capital now has a “lake” of sewage so large that it can be viewed “as a big black spot on Google Earth” — almost entirely disappear from view in the U.S.

Report: Barak warns Syria IDF planning Hezbollah op
Haaretz, February 21, 2008
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has warned Syria through Turkish mediation that the Israel Defense Forces is planning to escalate its military operations against Hezbollah and Hamas, the London-based daily Al-Hayyat reported on Thursday. On his visit to Turkey last week, Barak asked Turkish President Abdullah Ghoul to urge Syrian President Bashar Assad to adopt a different stance toward Hezbollah, according to Al-Hayyat.

Israel’s Mossad, out of the shadows
By Laura Rozen, Mother Jones, February 19, 2008
It’s fair to call Efraim Halevy—who served three Israeli prime ministers as chief of the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence service—a hawk. He negotiated a covert peace deal with Jordan that preceded the countries’ public treaty in 1994. Nine years later, he resigned as head of Israel’s National Security Council over policy differences with then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. And when he left the Mossad, Halevy received the prestigious CIA Director’s Award from then-director George Tenet for his assistance to the U.S. intelligence service—the exact details of which Halevy cannot disclose.

Iran affirms its defiance on nuclear program
By Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, February 21, 2008
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran’s determination to continue its nuclear program had brought major powers “to their knees.”

Minority Rules
By Meline Toumani, New York Times, February 17, 2008
For the past two years, politicians all over southeastern Turkey, along with human rights advocates, journalists and other public figures, have been sued for instances of Kurdish-language usage so minor that they are often a matter of a few words: sending a greeting card with the words “happy new year” in Kurdish, for example, or saying “my dear sisters” in a speech at a political rally. Such lawsuits have become so common that in some cases the accused is simply fined for using the letters W, X or Q — present in the Kurdish but not the Turkish alphabet — in an official capacity.

Rigged trials at Gitmo
By Ross Tuttle, The Nation, February 20, 2008
Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon’s announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantanamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes–and seeking the death penalty for all of them. Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration’s military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo’s military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

Miliband admits US rendition flights stopped on UK soil
By Mark Tran, The Guardian, February 21, 2008
Britain acknowledged today for the first time that US planes on “extraordinary rendition” flights stopped on British soil twice. The admission came from the foreign secretary, David Miliband, who apologised to MPs for incorrect information given by his predecessor, Jack Straw, and the former prime minister Tony Blair.

CIA confirms rendition flights to Brits
By Pamela Hess, AP, February 21, 2008
CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged Thursday that two rendition flights carrying terror suspects refueled on British territory, despite repeated U.S. assurances that none of the secret flights since the Sept. 11 attacks had used British airspace or soil.

Stifling online speech
Editorial, New York Times, February 21, 2008
The rise of Internet journalism has opened a new front in the battle to protect free speech. A federal judge last week ordered the disabling of Wikileaks.org, a muckraking Web site. That stifles important speech and violates the First Amendment. It should be reversed, and Wikileaks should be allowed to resume operations.

Misguided judge pulls plug on Wikileaks
By Peter Scheer, Mercury News, February 21, 2008
Wikileaks.org, a whistle-blower Web site that enables the anonymous (and, in theory, untraceable) leaking of confidential government and corporate documents, has gone dark.

Although Wikileaks’ silencing was sought by anti-democratic governments worldwide - including China, whose censors work mightily to block all access to the site - Wikileak’s plug was pulled, ironically, by a federal judge in San Francisco.
[Except this is the Internet - you can still find Wikileaks uncensored here.]

Spy satellite blast, caught on tape
By Noah Shachtman, Wired, February 21, 2008
A Navy missile blasted a dying spy satellite just above the atmosphere late Wednesday night. Here’s the footage of the hit:

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New York Times Exclusive Rumor: McCain in bed with lobbyist… maybe… at least we talked to a couple of people who thought that some other people might think that it looked like that was happening… maybe… at least we thought this was fit to print… at least fit to print if The New Republic was going to run it anyway
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, February 21, 2008

Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn W. Thompson, David D. Kirkpatrick, and Stephen Labaton, along with research by Barclay Walsh and Kitty Bennett — a veritable posse of journalists! Are they all hoping they have a shot at getting a Pulizer prize? I don’t think so. This is about strength in numbers. No one wants to carry the can for a story destined for a special place in the New York Times‘ hall of fame for lousy journalism.

Now if John McCain really was in bed with a lobbyist that would be real news. Not necessarily something that the Times could bring itself to condense into a pithy little, no-nonsense, blaring headline.

Instead we have this story: “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk.” Which is to say, there are indications that John McCain may have exercised an error in judgment by thinking that his own confidence in his own integrity meant that others would share that same confidence even when presented with the appearance that he might in fact be acting with a lack of integrity. (R.D. Laing would appreciate that — read Knots and you’ll know what I mean.) Oh, and by the way, McCain might actually have been having an affair. But we don’t know that — we just know that a few people thought that might be happening, but we don’t know who those people are, just that they included two associates “who said they had become disillusioned with the senator.” And that’s news? Gordon Bennett!

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The triumph of narrative
By Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, February 19, 2008

Though we may or may not have reached the end of the unexpected upsets and dramatic reversals of the primaries, much less the general election to come, there is no doubt that of all the people who ran for president this year, Obama has run the smartest and most skilled campaign. But of all the things he has done right, none may be more important than the fact that he has told far and away the best story.

This is a topic I addressed in two previous columns, and now that one nominee is chosen and the other will be soon (at least within a few months), it seemed appropriate to revisit the question of the narratives the candidates have built (the first installment is here, and the second is here). Those columns were written in July, but even before that—indeed, as long ago as his explosion into national consciousness at the Democratic convention in 2004—Obama has been telling a story perfectly keyed to the current moment in history.

As Obama tells it, the country is held hostage by a political class that sows partisan and cultural division, making solving problems ever more difficult, while the country yearns for a new day of unity. As the youngest candidate, the only post-boomer candidate, the only bi-racial candidate, and the one candidate with a preternatural ability to obtain the good will of those who disagree with him, he can bring all Americans together and lead us to a future built on hope.

Your own reaction to that story may be a quickening of the heartbeat, or a disgusted ‘”Give me a break.’” But there is no denying that many, many people are willing to sign on to it. And though he is careful not to say it himself, Obama’’s story benefits greatly from how often other people say that he is a Man of Destiny. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — This has been the week where the cult meme really took off among the chattering classes — it’s a topic I hope to write about at greater length soon.

Either we’re now witnessing one of the biggest, fastest growing cults ever seen, as a wave of intemperate enthusiasm is compelling people to suspend their critical judgement. Or, the support Obama is getting — support that comes from vastly more people than attend his rallies — is actually an exercise in critical judgement that commentators prefer to diminish. What’s irrational about imagining that America would be well served by a president who can inspire enthusiasm and who in a divided country and a divided world has the power to bring people together? We’re at a fork in the road. One way leads to tribalism, fractured societies, and ultimately our demise. The other way hinges on the understanding that we share a collective fate.

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A ‘challenge’ worth challenging
By E. J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, February 19, 2008

The boilerplate in a candidate’s speeches gets little attention because words used over and over never constitute “news.”

But one of John McCain’s favorite lines — his declaration that “the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremists,” or, as he sometimes says, “extremism” — could define the 2008 election.

Whether McCain is right or wrong matters to everything the United States will do in the coming years. It is incumbent upon McCain to explain what he really means by “transcendent challenge.”

Presumably, he’s saying that Islamic extremism is more important than everything else — the rise of China and India as global powers, growing resistance to American influence in Europe, the weakening of America’s global economic position, the disorder and poverty in large parts of Africa, the alienation of significant parts of Latin America from the United States. Is it in our national interest for all these issues to take a back seat to terrorism?

McCain makes his claim even stronger when he uses the phrase “21st century.” Does he mean that in the year 2100, Americans will look back and say that everything else that happened in the century paled in comparison with the war against terrorism?

But such a debate won’t happen unless Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton challenge McCain’s assertion directly and offer an alternative vision. There is reason to suspect they might fear doing so. They shouldn’t. [complete article]

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Unilateral strike called a model for U.S. operations in Pakistan
By Joby Warrick and Robin Wright, Washington Post, February 19, 2008

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone’s operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA’s dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda’s core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government’s official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. [complete article]

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The end of Musharraf?
By Ron Moreau and Zahid Hussain, Newsweek, February 19, 2008

Pakistani voters dealt President Pervez Musharraf and his Pakistan Muslim League-Q a humiliating defeat in Monday’s general elections. The opposition Pakistan People’s Party of the late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League-N of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif trounced Musharraf’s forces. A sizable victory will allow these two moderate, mainstream parties to combine with several other smaller allies and form a government with a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly. To make matters worse for Musharraf and his allies, the PPP has won control of the provincial assembly in the key southern province of Sindh, and Sharif’s PML-N of the provincial assembly in Punjab, the country’s richest, largest and most influential region. “It’s amazing what has happened to Pakistan,” says retired Pakistani Army Lt. Gen. Talat Masood. “The people have strongly spoken in favor of democracy, moderate forces, the rule of law—and against Musharraf.” [complete article]

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German intellectuals: Israel’s creation made Palestinians victims of Holocaust
By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz, February 19, 2008

A group of visiting German intellectuals called on Berlin on Monday to change what they termed its Holocaust-rooted blind support of Israel, saying the creation of the State of Israel turned Palestinians into victims of the Nazi Holocaust as well.

The four, Dr. Reiner Steinweg, Prof. Gert Krell, Prof. Georg Meggle, and Jorg Becker, took part in a debate Monday evening at the Netanya Academic College on the future of German-Israeli relations. They were among 25 signatories to a petition on the issue that was circulated in the German media following the Second Lebanon War.

According to the manifesto, German responsibility toward the Palestinians is “one side of the consequences of the Holocaust which receives far too little attention.” The paper goes on to argue that it was the Holocaust which Germany perpetrated that brought about “the suffering that has persisted [in the Middle East] for the last six decades and has at present become unbearable.” This, according to the manifesto titled “Friendship and Criticism,” is because “without the Holocaust of the Jews, Israeli policy would not see itself as entitled - or forced to ride over the human rights of the Palestinians and the inhabitants of Lebanon.” [complete article]

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Forget the Kool-Aid: Obama’s support is real
By Steve Kornacki, New York Observer, February 18, 2008

While it’s certainly true that his speeches represent sweeping statements of vision—and not, until recently, laundry lists of policy proposals—he has also presented original and specific ideas about what he would do as President.

It could be argued, for instance, that Obama’s pledge to sit down face-to-face with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most substantively meaningful plank in any candidate’s platform in 2008, a wholesale departure from the past 28 years of U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic—and from the cautiously conventional approach articulated by Hillary Clinton, who memorably branded Obama’s posture “naïve.”

And when he talks about “ending the mind-set that got us into war,” Obama raises the possibility of an administration whose global vision would not be shaped by the stale, nonpartisan national security establishment that has infected the thinking of both political parties for decades—and that helped convince an overwhelming bipartisan Congressional majority (Clinton included) to choose war in 2002.

But the real problem with sneering at the fervor that Obama has stirred is that it ignores how elections are won and how governing coalitions are built. The truth is that even voters who aren’t moved by Obama’s substantive appeal are still, by and large, favorably impressed by him and willing to at least consider voting for him. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Cynicism that parades itself as worldly wisdom is generally no such thing. Most often it is the psychological armor through which we protect ourselves from disappointment. It insulates us from the vulnerability of being wrong. It provides us with justifications for shying away from risks without revealing our fears.

Obama must tame America for the continent of his ancestors
By Okello Oculi, The Nation (Nigeria), February 15, 2008

Barack Obama, now leading Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party presidential primaries ahead of key battles in Texas, has come like rain on American politics.

His campaign theme - ‘the source of new hope on a parched land’ is a cleansing agent in a land weighed down by crusted blood of Iraqis murdered in their own territory by Americans who came to save them from “weapons of mass destruction”.

Obama has come as rain from a Kenyan cloud that seeded in the plains of Iowa and fell in Hawaii, but refuses to be tied down as just another “black candidate” pushing primarily for the restoration of justice for African-Americans by reminding white America of its guilt.

Instead, he insists on the freedom of a collective American Messiah who has come to mobilise all disillusioned children of American democracy to open up a new frontier in politics. This is Obama’s venture of building hope using the power of hope. [complete article]

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Debating torture and counterinsurgency — a century ago
By Paul Kramer, The New Yorker, February 25, 2008

Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom. This was the language that, when coupled with expanding military and commercial ambitions, had helped launch two very different wars. The first had been in 1898, against Spain, whose remaining empire was crumbling in the face of popular revolts in two of its colonies, Cuba and the Philippines. The brief campaign was pitched to the American public in terms of freedom and national honor (the U.S.S. Maine had blown up mysteriously in Havana Harbor), rather than of sugar and naval bases, and resulted in a formally independent Cuba.

The Americans were not done liberating. Rising trade in East Asia suggested to imperialists that the Philippines, Spain’s largest colony, might serve as an effective “stepping stone” to China’s markets. U.S. naval plans included provisions for an attack on the Spanish Navy in the event of war, and led to a decisive victory against the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in May, 1898. Shortly afterward, Commodore George Dewey returned the exiled Filipino revolutionary Emilio Aguinaldo to the islands. Aguinaldo defeated Spanish forces on land, declared the Philippines independent in June, and organized a government led by the Philippine élite.

During the next half year, it became clear that American and Filipino visions for the islands’ future were at odds. U.S. forces seized Manila from Spain—keeping the army of their ostensible ally Aguinaldo from entering the city—and President William McKinley refused to recognize Filipino claims to independence, pushing his negotiators to demand that Spain cede sovereignty over the islands to the United States, while talking about Filipinos’ need for “benevolent assimilation.” Aguinaldo and some of his advisers, who had been inspired by the United States as a model republic and had greeted its soldiers as liberators, became increasingly suspicious of American motivations. When, after a period of mounting tensions, a U.S. sentry fired on Filipino soldiers outside Manila in February, 1899, the second war erupted, just days before the Senate ratified a treaty with Spain securing American sovereignty over the islands in exchange for twenty million dollars. In the next three years, U.S. troops waged a war to “free” the islands’ population from the regime that Aguinaldo had established. The conflict cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and about four thousand U.S. soldiers.

Within the first year of the war, news of atrocities by U.S. forces—the torching of villages, the killing of prisoners—began to appear in American newspapers. Although the U.S. military censored outgoing cables, stories crossed the Pacific through the mail, which wasn’t censored. Soldiers, in their letters home, wrote about extreme violence against Filipinos, alongside complaints about the weather, the food, and their officers; and some of these letters were published in home-town newspapers. A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.” [complete article]

The timing of the Guantanamo trials is not an accident
By Charles Swift, Slate, February 15, 2008

During the course of my career as a defense lawyer in the military, I’ve shrugged off many government conspiracy theories. Each time I heard one, I’d smile and say that one should never attribute to a vast government conspiracy acts that can be as readily attributed to mere government incompetence or accident. So, I did not initially assume any concerted plan or purpose behind recent activities at Guantanamo Bay.

But the government’s latest moves in the ongoing battle over the legality of its detention policies are anything but incompetent, and they’ve forced me to reassess my initial conclusion: The decision to try six Guantanamo detainees using military commissions is very clearly part of a concerted effort to use the Guantanamo commissions to subvert the goals of justice and to maintain a veil of secrecy around its questionable interrogation policies. [complete article]

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Hamas doesn’t want a separate Gaza
By Ahmed Yousef, Daily Star, February 18, 2008

Many Western observers, politicians and journalists considered the recent breach of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt a victory for the Hamas movement. Some viewed it as the beginning of the end of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people. The statement by Luisa Morgantini, the vice president of the European Parliament, was an example of this. The breach in the wall and the thousands of Palestinians crossing the border, she said, “are all true acts of resistance and an affirmation of the freedom of that people.”

The purpose of crossing the frontier was not to embarrass Egypt, challenge its sovereignty or threaten its security. It was a message to the forces of the Israeli occupation and the international community that the pressure to bring down the government of Premier Ismail Haniyya by starving the people of Gaza to death will not succeed and will not break the steadfastness and determination of the Palestinian people or end their legitimate resistance. [complete article]

Officials: Gaza op will bring int’l troops
By Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post, February 18, 2008

Israel is considering a large-scale incursion into the Gaza Strip during which it would present an ultimatum to the international community for the deployment of a multinational force as the only condition under which it would withdraw, defense officials have told The Jerusalem Post.
[…]
“We are talking about the Second Lebanon War model,” a defense official said. “To go to war and tell the world that if they want a cease-fire and for us to leave then they will need to send a force to replace us.” [complete article]

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Israel’s self-defeating ‘liquidation’
By Uri Avnery, Rootless Cosmopolitan, February 16, 2008

If a person in the street were asked to name the area of enterprise in which we Israelis excel, his answer would probably be: Hi-Tech. And indeed, in this area we have recorded some impressive achievements. It seems as if hardly a day passes without an Israeli start-up company that was born in a garage being sold for hundreds of millions. Little Israel is one of the major hi-tech powers in the world. But the profession in which Israel is not only one of the biggest, but the unchallenged Numero Uno is: liquidations.

This week this was proven once again. The Hebrew verb “lekhassel” - liquidate - in all its grammatical forms, currently dominates our public discourse. Respected professors debate with academic solemnity when to “liquidate” and whom. Used generals discuss with professional zeal the technicalities of “liquidation”, its rules and methods. Shrewd politicians compete with each other about the number and status of the candidates for “liquidation”.

Indeed, for a long time now there has not been such an orgy of jubilation and self-congratulation in the Israeli media as there was this week. Every reporter, every commentator, every political hack, every transient celeb interviewed on TV, on the radio and in the newspapers, was radiant with pride. We have done it! We have succeeded! We have “liquidated” Imad Mughniyeh! [complete article]

Israel kills terror chief with headrest bomb
By Uzi Mahnaimi, Hala Jaber and Jon Swain, Sunday Times, February 17, 2008

At 10.35pm he decided to go home. Having exchanged customary kisses with his host, Hojatoleslam Ahmad Musavi, the newly appointed Iranian ambassador, Mughniyeh stepped into the night.

Minutes later he was seated in his silver Mitsubishi Pajero in a nearby street when a deafening blast ripped the car apart and killed him instantly.

According to Israeli intelligence sources, someone had replaced the headrest of the driver’s seat with another containing a small high-explosive charge. Israel welcomed his death but the prime minister’s office denied responsibility. Hezbollah accused the “Zionist Israelis” of killing its “brother commander” but believed the explosive had been detonated in another car by satellite.
[…]
Informed Israeli sources said that at the time of his death Mughniyeh was working for the Syrians on a terrorist attack against Israeli targets. This was to avenge Israel’s airstrike on what was believed to be a secret nuclear site in Syria last year. [complete article]

Israel’s ‘non-denial denial’ in Hezbollah death
By Cam Simpson, Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2008

Did they or didn’t they?

The question is still rippling across the world today. Did Israel have a hand in Tuesday’s assassination of one of its most despised enemies, the Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh?

The answer remains unclear, but one thing is absolutely, positively certain: Israel has not denied it.

Several international news outlets continue today to mistakenly report that Israel has denied killing Mughniyeh. But Israel has done nothing of the sort. [complete article]

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The dumbing of America
By Susan Jocaby, Washington Post, February 17, 2008

“The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.” Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today’s very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an “elitist,” one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just “folks,” a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.”) Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country’s democratic impulses in religion and education. But today’s brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture. [complete article]

Dumb and dumber: Are Americans hostile to knowledge?
By Patricia Cohen, New York Times, February 17, 2008

The author of seven other books, [Susan Jacoby] was a fellow at the [New York Public] library when she first got the idea for this book [“The Age of American Unreason”] back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.” [complete article]

A class of 300 million
By Susan Jacoby, Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2008

Who will be ready for the presidency on Day One? Who is best qualified to be commander in chief? Who is tough enough, charismatic enough and competent enough to do the job?

These are all important questions, of course, but they ignore a crucial element of presidential leadership — the ability to educate the public about the preeminent issues of the day.

Our greatest presidents, in the judgment of historians and in popular memory — including Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt — would never have succeeded as commanders in chief had they not first succeeded as teachers in chief. And two of the most conspicuous presidential failures in recent history — Bill Clinton’s healthcare reform plan and George W. Bush’s open-ended war in Iraq — can be traced, in part, to the inability or unwillingness of both men to educate the public about complex, long-term issues.

The duty of the president as public educator is not only more important than ever but, paradoxically, more difficult to carry out today than it was at a time when the attention of Americans was not fragmented by continuous access to infotainment. No 21st century president can count on what Roosevelt could — an audience of at least three-quarters of the American public every time he took to the radio for one of his “fireside chats.” And none of the 2008 presidential candidates is equipped with the experience of educating the public that Lincoln acquired during the famous debates he conducted about slavery with Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign. [complete article]

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