Future historians will argue over the precise moment when the Arab-Israeli peace process died.
Robert Grenier
Is the realisation finally dawning in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and Washington that the peace process is dead? [GALLO/GETTY]
Future historians will no doubt argue over the precise moment when the Arab-Israeli peace process died, when the last glimmer of hope for a two-state solution was irrevocably extinguished. When all is said and done, and the forensics have been completed, I am sure they will conclude that the last realistic prospect for an agreement expired quite some time before now, even if all the players do not quite realise it yet: anger and denial are always the first stages in the grieving process; acceptance of reality only comes later.
There are growing signs, however, that the realisation is beginning to dawn in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and, most strikingly, Washington, that the peace process, as currently conceived, may finally be dead.
Washington: hoping for a miracle?
We should begin in Washington, in the aftermath of the seven-hour marathon meeting between Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in New York last week.
To view the apparent results of that meeting in context, one would have to recount the gargantuan structure of US military, intelligence, economic and diplomatic support to Israel, painstakingly constructed over many decades, for which there would not be space to describe it all here - if indeed one had the knowledge to do so.
The edifice is so extensive, including direct military aid, weapons transfers, access to US emergency weapons stocks, pre-positioning of US military materiel in Israel, US investments in Israeli technology development, US support for Israel's foreign weapons sales, weapons co-production agreements, all sorts of loan guarantees, assistance for settlement of immigrants in Israel - the list goes on - that literally no single entity in Washington is aware of it all.
In September, the US Congressional Research Service made a noteworthy attempt to capture it, but was probably only partly successful, having no access, for example, to classified US assistance. The annual value of all this is literally incalculable, and well in excess of the $3bn per year usually cited, to say nothing of critical US diplomatic support in the UN and elsewhere.
Given all this, confronted with Israel's refusal to extend its partial moratorium on new settlement construction in the Occupied Territories, and with anything more than verbal pressure on Israel literally unthinkable, the US was hard-pressed to come up with additional inducements which might extend the peace process even a little further.
Into the breach, as he has done so many times before, stepped the redoubtable Dennis Ross. Ross, in discussions with an Israeli counterpart, compiled an extensive list of motivators whose length we do not yet know, but which was verbally agreed between Clinton and Netanyahu in New York, and which will be presented in writing for possible approval by the Israeli cabinet.
We are told it includes a US commitment to block any Palestinian-led effort to win unilateral UN recognition of a Palestinian state; US obstruction of efforts either to revive the Goldstone Report at the UN, or to seek formal UN condemnation of Israel for the deadly Mavi Marmara incident; an ongoing US commitment to defeat any UN resolutions aimed at raising Israel's unacknowledged nuclear weapons programme before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); vigorous US diplomatic efforts to counter all attempts to "delegitimise" Israel in various world fora; and, most importantly, increasing efforts to further ratchet international sanctions on both Iran and Syria concerning their respective nuclear and proliferation efforts.
To this the US is adding a commitment to supply Israel with some 20 ultra-modern F-35 aircraft worth $3bn - so new they have not yet entered the US inventory - as well as a mysterious "comprehensive security agreement," whose details have not been revealed, but which may include unilateral US endorsement of Israeli troop deployments in the Jordan Valley, in the event of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
And what is Israel being asked in return? Consider this carefully: in return for the above written guarantees, Israel will consider agreement to a brief, one-time-only 90-day extension of the partial settlement moratorium, which excludes not only East Jerusalem, but also the cordon sanitaire of settlements which Israel has carefully constructed to ring the city and deny Palestinian access to it, after which the US agrees, in writing, never again to request an Israeli settlement moratorium.
After witnessing US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians for over 30 years, I had thought I was beyond shock. This development, however, is breathtaking. In effect, along with a whole string of additional commitments, including some potentially far-reaching security guarantees which it is apparently afraid to reveal publicly, the Obama administration is willing to permanently cast aside a policy of some 40 years' duration, under which the US has at least nominally labelled Israeli settlements on occupied territory as "obstacles to peace,". All this in return for a highly conditional settlement pause which will permit Netanyahu to pocket what the US has given him, simply wait three months without making any good-faith effort at compromise, and know in the end that Israel will never again have to suffer the US' annoying complaints about illegal settlements.
Leave aside the fact that as of this writing, the Israeli cabinet may yet reject this agreement - which seems even more breathtaking, until one stops to consider that virtually everything the Americans have offered the Israelis they could easily obtain in due course without the moratorium. No, what is telling here is that the American attempt to win this agreement, lopsided as it is, is an act of sheer desperation.
What gives rise to the desperation, whether it is fear of political embarrassment at a high-profile diplomatic failure or genuine concern for US security interests in the region, I cannot say. It seems crystal clear, however, that the administration sees the next three months as a last chance. Their stated hope is that if they can get the parties to the table for this brief additional period, during which they focus solely on reaching agreement on borders, success in this endeavour will obviate concerns about settlements and give both sides sufficient stake in an outcome that they will not abandon the effort.
No one familiar with the substance of the process believes agreement on borders can be reached in 90 days on the merits; consider additionally that negotiators will be attempting to reach such a pact without reference to Jerusalem, and seeking compromise on territory without recourse to off-setting concessions on other issues, and success becomes virtually impossible to contemplate.
The Obama administration is coming under heavy criticism for having no plan which extends beyond the 90 days, if they can get them. There is no plan for a 91st day because there is unlikely to be one. The Obama policy, absurd as it seems, is to somehow extend the peace process marginally, and hope for a miracle. The demise of that hope carries with it the clear and present danger that residual aspirations for a two-state solution will shortly be extinguished with it.
Tel Aviv: buyer's remorse?
Meanwhile, in Israel, we are seeing something akin to buyer's remorse. On the cusp of finally achieving the goal for which Likud has aimed since its founding in 1973 - that is, an end to the threat of territorial compromise which would truncate the Zionist project in Palestine - the Israeli military and intelligence communities, which will have to deal with the consequences of a permanently failed peace process and the dissolution of responsible Palestinian governance in the West Bank which could well follow, are actively voicing their concerns.
Even as ardent a Likudnik as Dan Meridor has recently said to Haaretz: "I've reached the painful conclusion that keeping all the territory means a binational state that will endanger the Zionist enterprise. If we have to give up the Jewish and democratic character (of the state) - I prefer to give up some of the territory."
The time for such second thoughts has passed, however. Having succeeded in creating irrevocable facts on the ground, settlements which no conceivable Israeli government could remove even if it wanted to, the territory which Meridor and company would conceivably part with now will not be enough to avoid the fate which they fear in future: the progressive delegitimation of the current state, and the eventual rise of a binational state in its place.
Ramallah: terminally gloomy?
The terminal gloom among the tired leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is palpable. They will not allow themselves to be openly complicit in a negotiated capitulation to Israel, and yet they cannot bring themselves to irrevocably abandon the process either.
The recent, relative success of Salam Fayyad, the prime minister, in bringing some measure of security and good governance to the West Bank notwithstanding, they know their legitimacy is tied to the hope of their people for a just peace - a peace they also know, in their hearts, they cannot deliver. They look to the Americans in hope of salvation, while the Americans can only hope, impotently, for the same.
Both Israelis and Palestinians know that the relative calm prevailing in the West Bank and Gaza cannot last indefinitely absent some prospect for an end to Israeli occupation of the former. No one can see the way to a near-term solution, and yet neither does anyone yet have the courage to suggest an alternative future.
That will be the task of a new and probably distant generation of Israelis and Palestinians.
Robert Grenier was the CIA's chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. He was also the director of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
US and Israel: Blinded by the Right
Similarities exist in the political landscapes' of both the US and Israel, which left unaltered, could be of grave harm.
Mark LeVine Last Modified: 24 Oct 2010 09:32 GMT
Holding hands on the way down; both the US and Israel are being led to the precipice by the increasingly right-wing policies [EPA]
"I'm not a witch... I'm you."
With these words, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell attempted to convince voters that despite admitting to have dabbled in witchcraft and holding many extreme views, her values and views are closer to those of her state's voters than those of the "Washington elite," represented by her opponent, Chris Coons.
We can pass this comment off as just political sloganeering, but in fact it well summarises the sad state of affairs in the "Thelma and Louise" of global politics, the United States and Israel.
Like the angry, self-loathing drunk unable to recognise himself in the The Who's seminal anthem "Who Are You," Americans and Israelis are reaching such depths of distrust and despair that the coarsest appeals to right wing identity politics - represented by the rise of the Tea Party and the current Netanyahu government - will ensure the perpetuation of policies that will doom both countries to an even darker future.
In so doing they are moving so far from their founding ideals that it's becoming impossible to recognise them anymore.
Weaving a Powerful Spell
O'Donnell, or at least the Tea Party from which she sprang, is involved in a base kind of witchcraft, using superstition and the lure of identity with some mythical past to manipulate people into acting against their core interests and forgetting their own history.
There is surprising resonance between O'Donnell's message and what is being put out to Israeli society by its leadership in the current "loyalty oath" controversy, in which the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drafted a law that would force new non-Jewish citizens of the state to swear an oath to be loyal to Israel as a Jewish state.
In both countries, the confusion about and opposition to extremist policies reveal a startling lack of comprehension of just how similar the "mainstream" has long been to the Right of centre (for example, Democratic Administrations brought us both Vietnam and the disastrous first dalliances with the Afghan resistance).
In Israel, Labour Party Minister Avishay Braverman declared that "Ben-Gurion would be turning in his grave" over the new law. Indeed, a large demonstration was held in front of his Tel Aviv home, where the countries Declaration of Independence was read over sixty years before.
But Ben-Gurion was a primary architect of the very policies of Conquest of Land that made the zero-sum conflict with Palestinian Arabs inevitable. Even as he read the Declaration of Independence, which described Israel as a "peace-seeking country based on the principles of equality and civil liberties" he knew full well that the only way the new state could survive and prosper would be if the country's indigenous Palestinian Arab population - those that were left inside Israel - were denied basic rights and equality well into the future.
A report from the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom described how "beneath the statue of Meir Dizengoff, first mayor of Tel Aviv, actress Hanna Meron read out from that Declaration of Independence," but she should have known that Tel Aviv - long the symbol of the rational, modern Israel - was itself built upon on the conquest of Palestinian land, the forced incorporation of surrounding Palestinian villages, and ultimately of Jaffa (minus most of its residents). When lamenting that the "reality of Israel is very different than what the country's Declaration of Independence envisaged," she missed the fact that while its different from the rhetoric of six decades past, the reality actually bears striking continuities to that bygone era.
Indeed, when activists decry the supposed arrival of "fascism" in Israel, they forget that while the "forcible invasion of the hallowed realm" of individual conscience might now be hitting close to home for Jewish citizens, its long been at the heart of the Palestinian experience of living in the country - either as citizens, or obviously worse, as occupied inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza.
Even as the Israeli peaceniks made their stand, untold numbers of Palestinians languish in Israeli jails, and scores have been injured and killed, precisely for refusing to accept the expansion of Israeli ideology on the ground, for peacefully imagining another solution and then trying to actualise it on the ground. And so Palestinian activists such as Ameer Makhoul or Abdallah Abu Rahmah, remain imprisoned merely for asserting the core ideals of the Declaration of Independence: that they deserve and are owed the same full rights as their Jewish co-citizens.
The sad reality is that the line towards what protesters describe as fascism was not crossed last week; not 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but at the beginnings of the Zionist project, which was built on a conquest of land and exclusively Jewish identity; this is historical reality. And when Palestinians met that discourse with an equally exclusivist nationalism on their part, the mold was set for the zero-sum, irreconcilable conflict that continues to this day.
Of Tea and Potions
Say what you will, at least Israelis don't bother sugar-coating their occupation anymore except to the most gullible foreign visitors.
With the horrors of Vietnam still fresh in America's historical memory, military leaders feel compelled to present their presence in Iraq or Afghanistan in the softest manner possible, at least for the natives' benefit. And so the Iraqi invasion was labelled, in all seriousness, "Operation Iraqi Freedom." In Afghanistan, thanks in part to the huge success of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, the US military created a program in which female soldiers, who are increasingly part of the kill chain, are being sent into Afghan homes to drink tea with women in order to help smooth relations between the occupier and occupied.
Perhaps the soldiers are slipping some sort of potion in the tea when the women aren't looking to convince them of America's benign intentions (this is a military, after all, that has actually spent money training soldiers to knock over goats with their minds). Or maybe the military is just drinking its own Kool-Aid. But the Afpak brass claims that this program is a "success" that will help pacify the often recalcitrant population.
Of course, the fact that the tea parties have been dubbed by commanders "tea as a weapon" suggests that, whatever the PR spin, the military has not lost sight of the program's function and purpose.
Back in the United States, however, the witchcraft seems to be working perfectly. If Israelis lounging in Tel Aviv's famed cafés rarely need bother about the troubles caused by their settler compatriots and stubborn Palestinians, a just released poll reveals that only 4% of Americans rank the almost decade long war to be a major issue as in advance of the mid-term elections. It's not that most support what General Petreaus and other commanders openly describe as an "endless" conflict (although a shocking number still do).
Like Israelis who complain that Palestinians don't want peace while the bulldozers clear away ever more Palestinian soil, most Americans are so focused on the lousy economy that they apparently feel they don't have the luxury to worry about the war. That the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on the war could be spent productively to stimulate the economy, retrain workers, rebuild infrastructure and educational institutions, and otherwise improve the employment prospects and economic situation of most Americans doesn't even cross their minds, so successful has the voodoo first practised by President Bush and now by his successor been.
Even the dean of American newscasters, Tom Brokaw, has been bewitched, complaining in a New York Times Oped recently that "we all would benefit from a campaign that engaged the vexing question of what happens next in the long and so far unresolved effort to deal with Islamic rage," as if America - its politics, its economic interests, and its toxic consumerist culture - hasn't played a significant role in fomenting and sustaining "Islamic" anger.
And so now we have the prospect of politicians like Christine O'Donnell and Avigdor Lieberman holding some part of the fate of their countries, and everyone else's with it, in their hands. Smiling giddily, they drive their countries ever closer to a precipice over which neither will be able to avoid careening, never mind returning in a form that resembles the ideals upon which they were founded - however flawed they may have been in practise.
At least in the movie, the audience could take comfort in the idea that Thelma and Louise would achieve a measure of peace as they sped off that desert cliff. There will be no witchraft powerful enough to make put a positive spin on where the United States and Israel are heading if they don't turn around before it's too late.
Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. He has authored several books including Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (University of California Press, 2005) and An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).
Mark LeVine Last Modified: 24 Oct 2010 09:32 GMT
Holding hands on the way down; both the US and Israel are being led to the precipice by the increasingly right-wing policies [EPA]
"I'm not a witch... I'm you."
With these words, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell attempted to convince voters that despite admitting to have dabbled in witchcraft and holding many extreme views, her values and views are closer to those of her state's voters than those of the "Washington elite," represented by her opponent, Chris Coons.
We can pass this comment off as just political sloganeering, but in fact it well summarises the sad state of affairs in the "Thelma and Louise" of global politics, the United States and Israel.
Like the angry, self-loathing drunk unable to recognise himself in the The Who's seminal anthem "Who Are You," Americans and Israelis are reaching such depths of distrust and despair that the coarsest appeals to right wing identity politics - represented by the rise of the Tea Party and the current Netanyahu government - will ensure the perpetuation of policies that will doom both countries to an even darker future.
In so doing they are moving so far from their founding ideals that it's becoming impossible to recognise them anymore.
Weaving a Powerful Spell
O'Donnell, or at least the Tea Party from which she sprang, is involved in a base kind of witchcraft, using superstition and the lure of identity with some mythical past to manipulate people into acting against their core interests and forgetting their own history.
There is surprising resonance between O'Donnell's message and what is being put out to Israeli society by its leadership in the current "loyalty oath" controversy, in which the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drafted a law that would force new non-Jewish citizens of the state to swear an oath to be loyal to Israel as a Jewish state.
In both countries, the confusion about and opposition to extremist policies reveal a startling lack of comprehension of just how similar the "mainstream" has long been to the Right of centre (for example, Democratic Administrations brought us both Vietnam and the disastrous first dalliances with the Afghan resistance).
In Israel, Labour Party Minister Avishay Braverman declared that "Ben-Gurion would be turning in his grave" over the new law. Indeed, a large demonstration was held in front of his Tel Aviv home, where the countries Declaration of Independence was read over sixty years before.
But Ben-Gurion was a primary architect of the very policies of Conquest of Land that made the zero-sum conflict with Palestinian Arabs inevitable. Even as he read the Declaration of Independence, which described Israel as a "peace-seeking country based on the principles of equality and civil liberties" he knew full well that the only way the new state could survive and prosper would be if the country's indigenous Palestinian Arab population - those that were left inside Israel - were denied basic rights and equality well into the future.
A report from the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom described how "beneath the statue of Meir Dizengoff, first mayor of Tel Aviv, actress Hanna Meron read out from that Declaration of Independence," but she should have known that Tel Aviv - long the symbol of the rational, modern Israel - was itself built upon on the conquest of Palestinian land, the forced incorporation of surrounding Palestinian villages, and ultimately of Jaffa (minus most of its residents). When lamenting that the "reality of Israel is very different than what the country's Declaration of Independence envisaged," she missed the fact that while its different from the rhetoric of six decades past, the reality actually bears striking continuities to that bygone era.
Indeed, when activists decry the supposed arrival of "fascism" in Israel, they forget that while the "forcible invasion of the hallowed realm" of individual conscience might now be hitting close to home for Jewish citizens, its long been at the heart of the Palestinian experience of living in the country - either as citizens, or obviously worse, as occupied inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza.
Even as the Israeli peaceniks made their stand, untold numbers of Palestinians languish in Israeli jails, and scores have been injured and killed, precisely for refusing to accept the expansion of Israeli ideology on the ground, for peacefully imagining another solution and then trying to actualise it on the ground. And so Palestinian activists such as Ameer Makhoul or Abdallah Abu Rahmah, remain imprisoned merely for asserting the core ideals of the Declaration of Independence: that they deserve and are owed the same full rights as their Jewish co-citizens.
The sad reality is that the line towards what protesters describe as fascism was not crossed last week; not 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but at the beginnings of the Zionist project, which was built on a conquest of land and exclusively Jewish identity; this is historical reality. And when Palestinians met that discourse with an equally exclusivist nationalism on their part, the mold was set for the zero-sum, irreconcilable conflict that continues to this day.
Of Tea and Potions
Say what you will, at least Israelis don't bother sugar-coating their occupation anymore except to the most gullible foreign visitors.
With the horrors of Vietnam still fresh in America's historical memory, military leaders feel compelled to present their presence in Iraq or Afghanistan in the softest manner possible, at least for the natives' benefit. And so the Iraqi invasion was labelled, in all seriousness, "Operation Iraqi Freedom." In Afghanistan, thanks in part to the huge success of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, the US military created a program in which female soldiers, who are increasingly part of the kill chain, are being sent into Afghan homes to drink tea with women in order to help smooth relations between the occupier and occupied.
Perhaps the soldiers are slipping some sort of potion in the tea when the women aren't looking to convince them of America's benign intentions (this is a military, after all, that has actually spent money training soldiers to knock over goats with their minds). Or maybe the military is just drinking its own Kool-Aid. But the Afpak brass claims that this program is a "success" that will help pacify the often recalcitrant population.
Of course, the fact that the tea parties have been dubbed by commanders "tea as a weapon" suggests that, whatever the PR spin, the military has not lost sight of the program's function and purpose.
Back in the United States, however, the witchcraft seems to be working perfectly. If Israelis lounging in Tel Aviv's famed cafés rarely need bother about the troubles caused by their settler compatriots and stubborn Palestinians, a just released poll reveals that only 4% of Americans rank the almost decade long war to be a major issue as in advance of the mid-term elections. It's not that most support what General Petreaus and other commanders openly describe as an "endless" conflict (although a shocking number still do).
Like Israelis who complain that Palestinians don't want peace while the bulldozers clear away ever more Palestinian soil, most Americans are so focused on the lousy economy that they apparently feel they don't have the luxury to worry about the war. That the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on the war could be spent productively to stimulate the economy, retrain workers, rebuild infrastructure and educational institutions, and otherwise improve the employment prospects and economic situation of most Americans doesn't even cross their minds, so successful has the voodoo first practised by President Bush and now by his successor been.
Even the dean of American newscasters, Tom Brokaw, has been bewitched, complaining in a New York Times Oped recently that "we all would benefit from a campaign that engaged the vexing question of what happens next in the long and so far unresolved effort to deal with Islamic rage," as if America - its politics, its economic interests, and its toxic consumerist culture - hasn't played a significant role in fomenting and sustaining "Islamic" anger.
And so now we have the prospect of politicians like Christine O'Donnell and Avigdor Lieberman holding some part of the fate of their countries, and everyone else's with it, in their hands. Smiling giddily, they drive their countries ever closer to a precipice over which neither will be able to avoid careening, never mind returning in a form that resembles the ideals upon which they were founded - however flawed they may have been in practise.
At least in the movie, the audience could take comfort in the idea that Thelma and Louise would achieve a measure of peace as they sped off that desert cliff. There will be no witchraft powerful enough to make put a positive spin on where the United States and Israel are heading if they don't turn around before it's too late.
Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. He has authored several books including Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (University of California Press, 2005) and An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).
Bush 'considered' bombing Syria
In memoir to be released soon, former US president says Israel wanted him to bomb suspected Syrian nuclear facility.
CIA image showing alleged covert nuclear reactor under construction, near Al Kibar, in the eastern desert of Syria
George Bush contemplated ordering a US military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007, the former US president has reminisced in his memor to be published soon.
Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was for developing a nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, "Decision Points", to hit bookstores on Tuesday, Bush says that he received an intelligence report about a "suspicious, well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria" that looked similar to a nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister.
"George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound," Olmert told Bush, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.
Bush said he discussed options with his national security team. A bombing mission was considered "but bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback," he writes.
A covert raid was discussed, but it was considered too risky to slip a team in and out of Syria undetected.
Bush received an intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director Mike Hayden, who reported that analysts had high confidence the plant housed a nuclear reactor but low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons programme.
Bush said he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons programme."
Faulty intelligence
Bush had ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on intelligence that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Olmert was disappointed by Bush's decision to recommend a strategy of using diplomacy backed up by the threat of force to deal with Syria over the facility.
"Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Olmert told Bush, according to the book.
Bush denies charges that arose at the time that he had given a "green light" for Israel to attack the installation.
"Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," Bush says in the book.
In Jerusalem, Olmert's office declined comment on the disclosures in the Bush memoir.
Israel has never formally confirmed carrying out the sortie or targeting a nuclear facility.
The Olmert government was pursuing indirect peace talks with Syria at the time.
But Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal in 2008, has recently lifted the veil, speaking of a "daring operation" that he ordered despite opposition.
Bush writes that Olmert's "execution of the strike" against the Syrian compound made up for the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Bush feels had a mixed outcome.
Lebanon's young democracy emerged from the conflict stronger for having endured the test, Bush says, but "the result for Israel was mixed."
"Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis' shaky military performance cost them international credibility," Bush says.
CIA image showing alleged covert nuclear reactor under construction, near Al Kibar, in the eastern desert of Syria
George Bush contemplated ordering a US military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007, the former US president has reminisced in his memor to be published soon.
Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was for developing a nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, "Decision Points", to hit bookstores on Tuesday, Bush says that he received an intelligence report about a "suspicious, well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria" that looked similar to a nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister.
"George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound," Olmert told Bush, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.
Bush said he discussed options with his national security team. A bombing mission was considered "but bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback," he writes.
A covert raid was discussed, but it was considered too risky to slip a team in and out of Syria undetected.
Bush received an intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director Mike Hayden, who reported that analysts had high confidence the plant housed a nuclear reactor but low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons programme.
Bush said he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons programme."
Faulty intelligence
Bush had ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on intelligence that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Olmert was disappointed by Bush's decision to recommend a strategy of using diplomacy backed up by the threat of force to deal with Syria over the facility.
"Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Olmert told Bush, according to the book.
Bush denies charges that arose at the time that he had given a "green light" for Israel to attack the installation.
"Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," Bush says in the book.
In Jerusalem, Olmert's office declined comment on the disclosures in the Bush memoir.
Israel has never formally confirmed carrying out the sortie or targeting a nuclear facility.
The Olmert government was pursuing indirect peace talks with Syria at the time.
But Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal in 2008, has recently lifted the veil, speaking of a "daring operation" that he ordered despite opposition.
Bush writes that Olmert's "execution of the strike" against the Syrian compound made up for the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Bush feels had a mixed outcome.
Lebanon's young democracy emerged from the conflict stronger for having endured the test, Bush says, but "the result for Israel was mixed."
"Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis' shaky military performance cost them international credibility," Bush says.
Bush 'considered' bombing Syria
In memoir to be released soon, former US president says Israel wanted him to bomb suspected Syrian nuclear facility.
CIA image showing alleged covert nuclear reactor under construction, near Al Kibar, in the eastern desert of Syria
George Bush contemplated ordering a US military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007, the former US president has reminisced in his memor to be published soon.
Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was for developing a nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, "Decision Points", to hit bookstores on Tuesday, Bush says that he received an intelligence report about a "suspicious, well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria" that looked similar to a nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister.
"George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound," Olmert told Bush, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.
Bush said he discussed options with his national security team. A bombing mission was considered "but bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback," he writes.
A covert raid was discussed, but it was considered too risky to slip a team in and out of Syria undetected.
Bush received an intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director Mike Hayden, who reported that analysts had high confidence the plant housed a nuclear reactor but low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons programme.
Bush said he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons programme."
Faulty intelligence
Bush had ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on intelligence that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Olmert was disappointed by Bush's decision to recommend a strategy of using diplomacy backed up by the threat of force to deal with Syria over the facility.
"Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Olmert told Bush, according to the book.
Bush denies charges that arose at the time that he had given a "green light" for Israel to attack the installation.
"Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," Bush says in the book.
In Jerusalem, Olmert's office declined comment on the disclosures in the Bush memoir.
Israel has never formally confirmed carrying out the sortie or targeting a nuclear facility.
The Olmert government was pursuing indirect peace talks with Syria at the time.
But Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal in 2008, has recently lifted the veil, speaking of a "daring operation" that he ordered despite opposition.
Bush writes that Olmert's "execution of the strike" against the Syrian compound made up for the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Bush feels had a mixed outcome.
Lebanon's young democracy emerged from the conflict stronger for having endured the test, Bush says, but "the result for Israel was mixed."
"Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis' shaky military performance cost them international credibility," Bush says.
CIA image showing alleged covert nuclear reactor under construction, near Al Kibar, in the eastern desert of Syria
George Bush contemplated ordering a US military strike against a suspected Syrian nuclear facility at Israel's request in 2007, the former US president has reminisced in his memor to be published soon.
Israel eventually destroyed the facility, which Syria denied was for developing a nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, "Decision Points", to hit bookstores on Tuesday, Bush says that he received an intelligence report about a "suspicious, well-hidden facility in the eastern desert of Syria" that looked similar to a nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
Shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister.
"George, I'm asking you to bomb the compound," Olmert told Bush, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.
Bush said he discussed options with his national security team. A bombing mission was considered "but bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback," he writes.
A covert raid was discussed, but it was considered too risky to slip a team in and out of Syria undetected.
Bush received an intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director Mike Hayden, who reported that analysts had high confidence the plant housed a nuclear reactor but low confidence of a Syrian nuclear weapons programme.
Bush said he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons programme."
Faulty intelligence
Bush had ordered the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on intelligence that said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.
Olmert was disappointed by Bush's decision to recommend a strategy of using diplomacy backed up by the threat of force to deal with Syria over the facility.
"Your strategy is very disturbing to me," Olmert told Bush, according to the book.
Bush denies charges that arose at the time that he had given a "green light" for Israel to attack the installation.
"Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light and I hadn't given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel," Bush says in the book.
In Jerusalem, Olmert's office declined comment on the disclosures in the Bush memoir.
Israel has never formally confirmed carrying out the sortie or targeting a nuclear facility.
The Olmert government was pursuing indirect peace talks with Syria at the time.
But Olmert, who resigned in a corruption scandal in 2008, has recently lifted the veil, speaking of a "daring operation" that he ordered despite opposition.
Bush writes that Olmert's "execution of the strike" against the Syrian compound made up for the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Bush feels had a mixed outcome.
Lebanon's young democracy emerged from the conflict stronger for having endured the test, Bush says, but "the result for Israel was mixed."
"Its military campaign weakened Hezbollah and helped secure its border. At the same time, the Israelis' shaky military performance cost them international credibility," Bush says.
US snubs Israel over threat to Iran
US rejects Israeli request for military threat against Iran over its nuclear programme, favouring continued sanctions.
Vice President Biden told the Jewish leaders in the US that a military threat against Iran was not necessary [REUTERS]
The US has rejected comments by Israel's prime minister calling for a military threat against Iran to ensure it does not obtain nuclear weapons.
"We know that they are concerned about the impact of the sanctions. The sanctions are biting more deeply than they anticipated and we are working very hard at this," Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said on Monday.
"So I would disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions it needs to end its nuclear weapons programme," he said during a visit to Australia for security talks.
"We are prepared to do what is necessary but at this point we continue to believe that the political-economic approach that we taking is in fact having an impact in Iran."
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told US Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday that only a "credible" military threat can deter Iran from building a nuclear weapon, Israeli political sources said.
Netanyahu, beginning a five-day US visit, argued that economic sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to stop its nuclear programme.
Peaceful resolution
However, Biden said after the talks that the sanctions "have a bite" and were having a "measurable impact", though he expressed frustration that Tehran had brushed aside overtures by President Barack Obama's administration.
"The only way to ensure that Iran will not go nuclear is to create a credible threat of military action against it if it doesn't cease its race for a nuclear weapon," one of the sources quoted Netanyahu as telling Biden.
In remarks to the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in New Orleans, Biden said: "We continue to seek a peaceful resolution and hope Iranian leaders will reconsider their current destructive and debilitating course".
"But let me be very clear about this: We are also absolutely committed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
The West believes that Iran aims to use its uranium enrichment programme to build atomic weapons, and both Israel and the United States have said all options are on the table in dealing with its nuclear ambitions.
But Netanyahu, who has in the past called for "crippling sanctions" against Iran, had made clear that Israel wanted to see if tough economic sanctions could eliminate what it described as a threat against its existence.
Tehran has repeatedly denied it is seeking to build atomic weapons and maintains that it has a right to produce its own fuel for several nuclear power plants it's building for civilian use.
Biden's discussions with Netanyahu comes on the heels of US mid-term elections that left Obama in a weakened position with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and the Democrats clinging to a slender majority in the Senate.
US politicking
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham set a tough tone on Saturday at a security conference in Ottawa when he said conservatives want "bold" action on Iran.
If Obama "decides to be tough with Iran beyond sanctions, I think he is going to feel a lot of Republican support for the idea that we cannot let Iran develop a nuclear weapon," Graham told the Halifax International Security Forum.
"Sanctions are important. They are increasing pressure on Iran. But so far there has not been any change in the behaviour of Iran and upgrading of international pressure is necessary," Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, quoted him as telling Biden.
The impasse over Iran's nuclear activities has already led to fresh UN and EU sanctions against Tehran, which were followed by several other unilateral punitive measures by the United States and the European Union.
Sanctions notably ban investments in oil, gas and petrochemicals while also targeting banks, insurance, financial transactions and shipping - which Tehran has brushed off as having no impact.
But Iran has said it is prepared to resume talks from November 10 and proposed that they be held in Turkey rather than Vienna, the site proposed by Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief.
The talks, which include Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the US, have been deadlocked since October 2009 when the two sides met in Geneva.
The New York Times reported last month that the Obama administration and its European allies were preparing a new, more onerous offer for Iran than the one rejected by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last year.
The offer would require Iran to send more than 1,995 kgs of low-enriched uranium out of the country, an increase of more than two-thirds from the amount required under a deal struck in Vienna.
Vice President Biden told the Jewish leaders in the US that a military threat against Iran was not necessary [REUTERS]
The US has rejected comments by Israel's prime minister calling for a military threat against Iran to ensure it does not obtain nuclear weapons.
"We know that they are concerned about the impact of the sanctions. The sanctions are biting more deeply than they anticipated and we are working very hard at this," Robert Gates, US defence secretary, said on Monday.
"So I would disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions it needs to end its nuclear weapons programme," he said during a visit to Australia for security talks.
"We are prepared to do what is necessary but at this point we continue to believe that the political-economic approach that we taking is in fact having an impact in Iran."
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told US Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday that only a "credible" military threat can deter Iran from building a nuclear weapon, Israeli political sources said.
Netanyahu, beginning a five-day US visit, argued that economic sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to stop its nuclear programme.
Peaceful resolution
However, Biden said after the talks that the sanctions "have a bite" and were having a "measurable impact", though he expressed frustration that Tehran had brushed aside overtures by President Barack Obama's administration.
"The only way to ensure that Iran will not go nuclear is to create a credible threat of military action against it if it doesn't cease its race for a nuclear weapon," one of the sources quoted Netanyahu as telling Biden.
In remarks to the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in New Orleans, Biden said: "We continue to seek a peaceful resolution and hope Iranian leaders will reconsider their current destructive and debilitating course".
"But let me be very clear about this: We are also absolutely committed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
The West believes that Iran aims to use its uranium enrichment programme to build atomic weapons, and both Israel and the United States have said all options are on the table in dealing with its nuclear ambitions.
But Netanyahu, who has in the past called for "crippling sanctions" against Iran, had made clear that Israel wanted to see if tough economic sanctions could eliminate what it described as a threat against its existence.
Tehran has repeatedly denied it is seeking to build atomic weapons and maintains that it has a right to produce its own fuel for several nuclear power plants it's building for civilian use.
Biden's discussions with Netanyahu comes on the heels of US mid-term elections that left Obama in a weakened position with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and the Democrats clinging to a slender majority in the Senate.
US politicking
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham set a tough tone on Saturday at a security conference in Ottawa when he said conservatives want "bold" action on Iran.
If Obama "decides to be tough with Iran beyond sanctions, I think he is going to feel a lot of Republican support for the idea that we cannot let Iran develop a nuclear weapon," Graham told the Halifax International Security Forum.
"Sanctions are important. They are increasing pressure on Iran. But so far there has not been any change in the behaviour of Iran and upgrading of international pressure is necessary," Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, quoted him as telling Biden.
The impasse over Iran's nuclear activities has already led to fresh UN and EU sanctions against Tehran, which were followed by several other unilateral punitive measures by the United States and the European Union.
Sanctions notably ban investments in oil, gas and petrochemicals while also targeting banks, insurance, financial transactions and shipping - which Tehran has brushed off as having no impact.
But Iran has said it is prepared to resume talks from November 10 and proposed that they be held in Turkey rather than Vienna, the site proposed by Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief.
The talks, which include Britain, China, France, Russia, Germany and the US, have been deadlocked since October 2009 when the two sides met in Geneva.
The New York Times reported last month that the Obama administration and its European allies were preparing a new, more onerous offer for Iran than the one rejected by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last year.
The offer would require Iran to send more than 1,995 kgs of low-enriched uranium out of the country, an increase of more than two-thirds from the amount required under a deal struck in Vienna.
Championing democracy - but not yet
Supporting democratic reform in the Muslim world must be a central element of US counter-terrorism policy.
Robert Grenier Last Modified: 06 Nov 2010 13:56 GMT
With presidential elections in Egypt due next year, Obama's apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in the country could have far-reaching consequences [GALLO/GETTY]
"Lord, make me a champion of democracy - but not yet."
Those words, a paraphrase of the famous quote from Saint Augustine, sum up nicely the attitude of US governments, both Democratic and Republican, where the issue of political reform in the Arab and Muslim world is concerned. That is not to suggest, however, that most Americans are ready to acknowledge such ambivalence, even to themselves. No, Americans take comfort in the rhetoric of democracy, and pride themselves on their own democratic history, seeing that legacy not merely as a reflection of their peculiar national experience, but as a model to others and a manifestation of a universal yearning among men. To Americans, democracy is synonymous with virtue.
As with most virtues, however, adherence to democratic principles is likely to be consistent only when combined with a clear sense of enlightened self-interest. For Americans, the link between democracy and self-interest is clear enough at home. But when gazing beyond the water's edge, Americans easily lose sight of the link between their principles and national security - save in the most vague, long-range terms, captured in such phrases as "democracies are inherently moderate," or "democracies do not lightly make war" - both of which are perhaps dubious propositions, at best.
Instead, concern for international democracy is relegated to the realm of altruism, and its proponents often dismissed, whenever countervailing national interests present themselves, as fuzzy-headed idealists incapable of firm leadership in foreign affairs, which is best left in any case to the clear-eyed proponents of realpolitik. Not all Americans subscribe to this view, of course, but the irony is that in the US, even the proponents of international democracy fail to make a compelling case for it.
The Egyptian example
Barack Obama, the US president, and The Washington Post have provided us with but the most recent example. When meeting last September with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Obama went out of his way, according to the White House account of their discussions, to advocate for civil society, open political competition and transparent elections.
With the Egyptian parliamentary vote due later this month, the picture looks rather different: the Egyptian government has again rejected election monitors, both domestic and international; it has launched a crackdown on the political opposition, arresting some 260 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, among others; it has suspended the licenses of 17 private independent television channels; and it has restricted text messaging, the organising tool of choice for street oppositionists.
With pivotal presidential elections in Egypt due next year, the US president's apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in Egypt has potentially far-reaching consequences - but it is not merely the result of inattention. It is worth noting that the occasion of Obama's September meeting with Mubarak was the launch of the latest ill-fated Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Egyptian support for which is a major preoccupation of the White House.
The Washington Post's reaction to the administration's failure to maintain pressure on Mubarak is also instructive. The best they could do to justify their denunciation of Obama's policy was to complain that Mubarak had "defied" him, and to invidiously compare the relative passivity shown toward Mubarak with the recent unpleasantness displayed toward Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, over his settlement policies. So much for ringing endorsements of democracy.
Misunderstanding?
In fact, the championing of democratic reform in the Muslim world should not simply be a matter of altruism, easily set aside when seemingly more compelling national interests present themselves. Instead, it should be seen as a central element in US counter-terrorism policy.
Counter-terrorism experts in the US and the West decry the lack of a coherent "counter-narrative" to that presented by violent extremists, who win new converts to their cause in part by vilifying the allegedly perfidious role played by the US in subjugating Muslims, both directly and through support to unrepresentative and repressive regimes.
"We are losing the information war," they lament. Most, however, fundamentally misunderstand the problem. To them, the negative perceptions of the US are the result of some colossal misunderstanding. Yes, it is often misunderstood, but the negative perception of the US is not fundamentally the result of others' failure to see the basic goodness of its intentions: it is a result of US policies which, while they may not aim at the repression of Muslims as a matter of intent, often contribute to that effect.
The "extremist narrative" cannot be countered by showing images of smiling Muslims happy to be living in the US; it can only be effectively combated when the US genuinely addresses the core concerns of Muslims.
Justice and democracy
For this, there are two main elements: justice and democracy. To be clear, justice cannot be imposed by the US. Nor can the demands of justice for oppressed Muslims, whether in Chechnya, Palestine, Xinjiang or Kashmir, be easily addressed. Most involve complicated disputes requiring patient diplomacy. But if, as a great power, the US genuinely pressed for resolution of these disputes, and did so in a way which made justice for those victimised a clear, consistent, well-articulated and forcefully-supported element of US policy, perceptions of the US would change over time.
Secondly, and just as importantly, we must remember that terrorism is the tool of the weak. It is engaged in by people who feel themselves or those with whom they identify to be oppressed, and who see no other means of redressing their grievances. If we are to oppose resort to terrorism as illegitimate, as we must, we should also include as part of that policy provision for legitimate, political means of redress. And that means championing democracy.
The most important recent call to support of international democracy, little remembered now, was the second inaugural address of President George W. Bush, delivered in January, 2005. I remember being greatly heartened by that speech, not just because it was a ringing endorsement of American values, which it was, but because I saw it as a key element of US counter-terrorism policy, for which I was a senior responsible official at the time. Commitment and follow-through on those words were sorely lacking, but I am convinced that the policy espoused in 2005 remains firmly linked to long-term global security.
None of this is to suggest that a commitment to democracy can be pursued in a vacuum, or that its implementation will be easy. There will always be conflicting, countervailing interests which must be addressed and accommodated, and in any case US influence in the world has clear, and perhaps growing, limits. Moreover, the spread of democracy will not eliminate extremism. It will make it much more difficult, however, for those who espouse the use of violence to attract new adherents to their cause, by changing the environment in which such appeals are made.
A consistent commitment to democracy, even if sometimes inconsistently applied, is genuinely in the security interests of the US and, perhaps paradoxically, in the long-term interests of some of the US' most important and currently undemocratic allies in the region.
Long-term US and regional security have not been well-served when the US and others have failed to support democratic outcomes which they thought might work against their perceived short-term interests: in 1992 in Algeria, in 2006 in Palestine, and, perhaps, now in Egypt.
As St. Augustine himself came to realise, change which must be implemented eventually is usually best implemented now.
Robert Grenier is a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service. He was the director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Centre from 2004 to 2006.
Robert Grenier Last Modified: 06 Nov 2010 13:56 GMT
With presidential elections in Egypt due next year, Obama's apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in the country could have far-reaching consequences [GALLO/GETTY]
"Lord, make me a champion of democracy - but not yet."
Those words, a paraphrase of the famous quote from Saint Augustine, sum up nicely the attitude of US governments, both Democratic and Republican, where the issue of political reform in the Arab and Muslim world is concerned. That is not to suggest, however, that most Americans are ready to acknowledge such ambivalence, even to themselves. No, Americans take comfort in the rhetoric of democracy, and pride themselves on their own democratic history, seeing that legacy not merely as a reflection of their peculiar national experience, but as a model to others and a manifestation of a universal yearning among men. To Americans, democracy is synonymous with virtue.
As with most virtues, however, adherence to democratic principles is likely to be consistent only when combined with a clear sense of enlightened self-interest. For Americans, the link between democracy and self-interest is clear enough at home. But when gazing beyond the water's edge, Americans easily lose sight of the link between their principles and national security - save in the most vague, long-range terms, captured in such phrases as "democracies are inherently moderate," or "democracies do not lightly make war" - both of which are perhaps dubious propositions, at best.
Instead, concern for international democracy is relegated to the realm of altruism, and its proponents often dismissed, whenever countervailing national interests present themselves, as fuzzy-headed idealists incapable of firm leadership in foreign affairs, which is best left in any case to the clear-eyed proponents of realpolitik. Not all Americans subscribe to this view, of course, but the irony is that in the US, even the proponents of international democracy fail to make a compelling case for it.
The Egyptian example
Barack Obama, the US president, and The Washington Post have provided us with but the most recent example. When meeting last September with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Obama went out of his way, according to the White House account of their discussions, to advocate for civil society, open political competition and transparent elections.
With the Egyptian parliamentary vote due later this month, the picture looks rather different: the Egyptian government has again rejected election monitors, both domestic and international; it has launched a crackdown on the political opposition, arresting some 260 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, among others; it has suspended the licenses of 17 private independent television channels; and it has restricted text messaging, the organising tool of choice for street oppositionists.
With pivotal presidential elections in Egypt due next year, the US president's apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in Egypt has potentially far-reaching consequences - but it is not merely the result of inattention. It is worth noting that the occasion of Obama's September meeting with Mubarak was the launch of the latest ill-fated Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Egyptian support for which is a major preoccupation of the White House.
The Washington Post's reaction to the administration's failure to maintain pressure on Mubarak is also instructive. The best they could do to justify their denunciation of Obama's policy was to complain that Mubarak had "defied" him, and to invidiously compare the relative passivity shown toward Mubarak with the recent unpleasantness displayed toward Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, over his settlement policies. So much for ringing endorsements of democracy.
Misunderstanding?
In fact, the championing of democratic reform in the Muslim world should not simply be a matter of altruism, easily set aside when seemingly more compelling national interests present themselves. Instead, it should be seen as a central element in US counter-terrorism policy.
Counter-terrorism experts in the US and the West decry the lack of a coherent "counter-narrative" to that presented by violent extremists, who win new converts to their cause in part by vilifying the allegedly perfidious role played by the US in subjugating Muslims, both directly and through support to unrepresentative and repressive regimes.
"We are losing the information war," they lament. Most, however, fundamentally misunderstand the problem. To them, the negative perceptions of the US are the result of some colossal misunderstanding. Yes, it is often misunderstood, but the negative perception of the US is not fundamentally the result of others' failure to see the basic goodness of its intentions: it is a result of US policies which, while they may not aim at the repression of Muslims as a matter of intent, often contribute to that effect.
The "extremist narrative" cannot be countered by showing images of smiling Muslims happy to be living in the US; it can only be effectively combated when the US genuinely addresses the core concerns of Muslims.
Justice and democracy
For this, there are two main elements: justice and democracy. To be clear, justice cannot be imposed by the US. Nor can the demands of justice for oppressed Muslims, whether in Chechnya, Palestine, Xinjiang or Kashmir, be easily addressed. Most involve complicated disputes requiring patient diplomacy. But if, as a great power, the US genuinely pressed for resolution of these disputes, and did so in a way which made justice for those victimised a clear, consistent, well-articulated and forcefully-supported element of US policy, perceptions of the US would change over time.
Secondly, and just as importantly, we must remember that terrorism is the tool of the weak. It is engaged in by people who feel themselves or those with whom they identify to be oppressed, and who see no other means of redressing their grievances. If we are to oppose resort to terrorism as illegitimate, as we must, we should also include as part of that policy provision for legitimate, political means of redress. And that means championing democracy.
The most important recent call to support of international democracy, little remembered now, was the second inaugural address of President George W. Bush, delivered in January, 2005. I remember being greatly heartened by that speech, not just because it was a ringing endorsement of American values, which it was, but because I saw it as a key element of US counter-terrorism policy, for which I was a senior responsible official at the time. Commitment and follow-through on those words were sorely lacking, but I am convinced that the policy espoused in 2005 remains firmly linked to long-term global security.
None of this is to suggest that a commitment to democracy can be pursued in a vacuum, or that its implementation will be easy. There will always be conflicting, countervailing interests which must be addressed and accommodated, and in any case US influence in the world has clear, and perhaps growing, limits. Moreover, the spread of democracy will not eliminate extremism. It will make it much more difficult, however, for those who espouse the use of violence to attract new adherents to their cause, by changing the environment in which such appeals are made.
A consistent commitment to democracy, even if sometimes inconsistently applied, is genuinely in the security interests of the US and, perhaps paradoxically, in the long-term interests of some of the US' most important and currently undemocratic allies in the region.
Long-term US and regional security have not been well-served when the US and others have failed to support democratic outcomes which they thought might work against their perceived short-term interests: in 1992 in Algeria, in 2006 in Palestine, and, perhaps, now in Egypt.
As St. Augustine himself came to realise, change which must be implemented eventually is usually best implemented now.
Robert Grenier is a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service. He was the director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Centre from 2004 to 2006.
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