Tag: Syria

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The American Circus

CREDIT: Danny Raustadt | Dreamstime.com

A porn actress, the president of the United States’ lawyer, and the most popular television host in America walk into a court room …

Nah, no one’s going to buy that plot, right? It’s too crazy, too over-the-top. But what did we expect, really? We elected a reality show host to the presidency, and he’s turned the entire country into a reality show.

It’s getting really hard to keep up. I used to bang out this column on Monday and clean it up and revise it a little on Tuesday morning, just before we went to press. Now, that’s become almost impossible, especially if I’m writing about national politics. I’ll get Trumped every time.

This past Monday, for instance, I took a break to walk up the five stories to the roof of the Parking Can Be Fun building next to our offices. I do this two or three times a day, because when my Fit-Bit buzzes and tells me to get moving, I must obey or risk not making my daily goal of 8,000 steps. Then I will die — or something.

Anyway, I like the view from up there. You can see the river, brown and swollen with snowmelt from Minnesota; you can see the trees over in Arkansas, freshly emerged from the seasonal floods and sporting the tender greens of spring; you can watch the geese fly against a perfect morning-blue sky. You can clear your head and think about what you might want to write about. And I came up with a couple of ideas. Silly me.

When I returned to my desk, the internet had blown up with the news that Trump’s fixer’s lawyer, the attorney representing Michael Cohen, had been forced to reveal in court that Cohen was also an attorney for Fox News mega-host Sean Hannity. What? Hannity immediately intimated that Cohen was a liar and didn’t really represent him but that he wanted attorney-client privilege. What?

Porn stars and presidents and right-wing nuts, oh my! Twitter went crazy; the cable channels went into overdrive; the news cycle had a shiny new toy — and the never-ending American political circus had a new act.

Let’s think a minute about what’s happened in the past few days. First, the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, announced he wouldn’t run for reelection. Then, on Friday, Cohen, who was supposed to be in court facing off against porn star and former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels, was seen smoking cigars on the street with Russian oligarchs and mafioso types. That night, Trump announced a bombing raid on Syria. The former FBI director, James Comey, released a book that exposed the president as a shallow, self-centered liar (shocker!) and went on television to talk about it. On Sunday, UN Ambassador Nicki Haley announced tough new sanctions on Russia — which were reversed on Monday by Trump.

And that was just the weekend.

Monday night, the cable shows chewed through the events of the day, trying to stuff in segments on Hannity’s ethical malfeasance in promoting Cohen on his show without revealing his personal connection, Comey’s provocative book, and Trump’s subsequent eviscerating tweets. The fact that the United States had bombed a country in the Middle East three days prior was lost in the shuffle, having been assessed by most as a meaningless wag-the-dog moment with no casualities and no real consequences. In normal times, any of these stories would have consumed a week’s worth of punditry and analysis. Now we’re all just trying to keep up, while the carousel goes round and round.

Perhaps figuring we all needed a break, the president and his wife flew to Trump’s resort in Florida (on separate planes) for five days of vacation, but not before leaving us with several tweets about crooked Hillary and lyin’ Jim Comey. Trump will presumably spend the rest of the week golfing and tanning. We can hope so, anyway.

Seriously, I’m exhausted just recounting all of this. I probably need another trip to the rooftop of Parking Can Be Fun, but I’m afraid I’ll miss something.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Offering a little help with Trump’s test.

CREDIT: Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

I want desperately to help Donald Trump. I think I can be of great service to him, his image, his campaign, and his fight against the immigrants he thinks are trying to get into the United States to blow us up. I was elated when he made his “foreign policy” speech the other day and announced that, if elected president, he would put in place a new ideology “test” that immigrants would have to take before they were allowed into the country — to make sure we don’t let in, for heaven’s sake, any bigots. I levitated. My head spun. My eyes bulged. My heart raced. Actually, my skin crawled, but I ignored that because I really want to help. First, however, I have a few questions for Mr. Trump.

Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

Donald and Melania Trump

1) Is this test going to consist of questions that have to be answered true or false, or will it be multiple choice? And will there be an essay component to it?

2) I assume it will be the same test for immigrants from all countries, but I don’t want to make an ass out of you and me, so can you jot me a quick email to let me know if you need a set of questions for, say, people traveling from Syria that’s different than a set for, say, people traveling from Luxembourg? You just never know these days whom not to trust.

3) Are the questions going to be opinion-based or fact-based? Like, “What do you think about baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie?” as opposed to “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”

4) Will you ask them what they think about Trump Tower? This could get really iffy with the stuck-up French and those smartass, superior Germans, who like that woman president of theirs.

5) Will your wife Melania’s family members from Slovenia have to take the test when they come to visit, or can we just skip over them and let ’em on in to save time? I say, make them take the test just to be sure.

6) The trend now in all communications is to keep things brief. Can we keep the test brief for everyone, or is it going to “be huge”?

7) Does the size of male immigrants’ hands need to be addressed? Is it okay if theirs are bigger than yours? I’m a little doubtful you’ll give them much leeway on this one, given the way things have been going.

8) And speaking of size and hands and such, how are the two of us going to address these giant, naked Donald Trump statues that some damn crazy artists placed in various cities the other day? They may have been immigrants. Probably from Finland or some other punk-ass Scandinavian country. The Washington Post described the likenesses of you by writing, “The eyes scowl, the mouth pouts, and the veiny, almost reptilian skin looks like it was torn off a human-size frog and dipped in bronzer.” You know that’s not what you look like. And whatever terrorist made the statues put a little, tiny, barely visible … well, I’m sure you saw the photos and the headlines and the stories and the YouTube videos showing the statues to billions of people around the world. We need to put some questions in the quiz about this. Something to the effect of, “If we allow you to enter the United States of America, do you have plans to create naked statues of me, President Donald J. Trump, with a tiny penis, and place them in public for the world to see? Please answer true, false, or I’m not really sure at this time.” If they fill in the last option, keep them out of the country. It’s as easy as that.

9) The other big thing to worry about is keeping out people who might decide they like the Clintons. You don’t want to run the risk of that, do you? As you have pointed out, Hillary and Barack Obama founded ISIS, so you can bet plenty of the terrorists they trained are going to try to get in one way or another. You better put a question on the test about that. Something to the effect of, “When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came to the Middle East and founded ISIS, did you get any special training from them about how to blow up Americans or any other good, Christian people? Did Hillary show you how to make a bomb and bring it to the United States? Answer just true or false on this one.”

10) And finally, there’s this question about what is in the immigrant terrorists’ hearts when they try to come into the United States. What is their real ideology? Why do they hate the West so much? I think the best way to address that is the way you described it the other day during your town hall with Sean Hannity, when you, I think, talked about getting them off the internet. You said, “Sean, when you look at what’s going on with the internet and how ISIS is using the internet and what they’re doing and what they’re doing to us and then you have people in our country that say oh, you can’t do that, that’s doing something so bad to us, here we are, people — they want to blow us up. We have to be very careful.” I think you are 100 percent right. I would just put that exact quote on the test, and if they can figure out the answer, don’t dare EVER let them in.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Sect Appeal

The two main sects within Islam are not at all like the various sects within Christianity, or, for that matter, within Judaism. Sunnis hate Shiites and Shiites hate Sunnis. Since the middle 7th century, each side has taught and preached that the other side is practicing a corrupt form of Islam. It is because the other side is practicing corrupted Islam that the true followers (whichever side that is) believe it is their obligation to teach about the denial and the destruction of the other. 

It began with the death of Muhammad in 632. Muhammad failed to declare a successor. That decision caused a divide among his followers. Sunnis believed that the best successor should emerge from among the students of Muhammad. Shiites believed that Muhammad’s mantle of leadership should be passed down through the family. 

Sunni is the larger sect, comprising about 85 percent of Muslims. Shiites comprise the remaining 15 percent. There are other, smaller sects but their numbers worldwide are dwarfed by these two groups. The largest country with a Shiite majority is Iran. Iraq also has a majority of Shiites, about 60 percent. 

Every once in a while, Sunni or Shiite leaders announce their intention to unite the factions in order to confront a common enemy. The pitch always sounds good, but almost always falls flat. The common enemy they most often speak of is the West — specifically Israel and the United States.

If these two Muslim sects were to stop their conflict, the Middle East would be a different place. Not a peaceful place, but a place with differently focused conflict. For instance, much of the tension in Syria is Shiite versus Sunni. The conflict in Yemen is Shiite versus Sunni. And the power struggle engaging Iran and Saudi Arabia is, of course, Shiite versus Sunni. 

And yet, despite the conflict, every Friday over the past few weeks, Shiites and Sunnis in some Iraqi cities have come together in major squares. By the tens of thousands, sometimes even by the hundreds of thousands, they have gathered united, as one voice, in protest over the current divisive situation. The slogans they are shouting and the placards they are raising say, “Sectarianism is dead” and “Stop stealing from us in the name of religion.”

Iraqis are coming together in main squares in Baghdad and Basra to call upon their politicians to stop quarreling and quibbling. The protesters want services — education, water and electricity. For years, their politicians have told the citizens of Iraq that the problem in government is religious sectarianism — Shiites versus Sunnis — and now many young people in Iraq are saying that they aren’t buying it any more. 

Young Sunnis and young Shiites want accountability. More crucially, they want to know why ISIS has succeeded in taking over huge swathes of Iraq. In today’s world, if anything is to unite Sunnis and Shiites, it will be ISIS. To put it succinctly, other than the West, right now, the only thing that Shiites hate more than Sunnis and Sunnis hate more than Shiites is ISIS. The Iraqi people want unity among conventional Muslims to fight and rid Iraq of extremist ISIS. 

Shiite militias are operating under an umbrella called Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), while Sunni tribes are much more loosely aligned in their fight and are against ISIS more independently — tribe by tribe. In the end, through unity of forces, they could possibly be successful and turn their country around. But it is a long shot. 

The fear of ISIS brutality is everywhere in Iraq. While gathering in town squares as a way of protest is empowering, the fear of beheading at the hands of ISIS is still, understandably, a major disincentive to organizing, fighting, and resisting. When 800 ISIS members marched into Mosul in June of last year, 55,000 Iraqi police and soldiers ran away. A city of two million people collapsed into the hands of 800 ISIS members. 

So, while Shiite-Sunni unity is the only real chance for success in fighting ISIS, given their ancient hatred for each other, coupled with ISIS intimidation, I don’t see Muslim unity in Iraq’s immediate future.

Micah D. Halpern’s latest book is Thugs: How History’s Most Notorious Despots Transformed the World through Terror, Tyranny, and Mass Murder.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Corker Says Constituents and “Common Sense” Come Before Political Loyalties

CREDIT: jb

In a visit to Shelby County Wednesday, Bob Corker, the
Republican who was elected to the U.S. Senate last year over Democrat Harold
Ford Jr. in a tight race that drew ample national attention, made it clear that
partisan issues are the least of his concerns.

Both in a luncheon address to Rotarians at the Germantown
Country Club and in remarks to reporters afterward, former Chattanooga mayor
Corker emphasized a “common sense” approach in which “I strive to make sure that
everybody in the state is proud of the way I conduct myself…to understand issues
as they really are, devoid of some of the rhetoric that surrounds these
issues…[and] the political whims of the day.”

Take his response when asked whether embattled GOP senator
Larry Craig, busted in the infamous “wide stance” airport-restroom case, should
resign for the good of the Republican Party:

Corker said Craig’s predicament was a matter for the
“people of Idaho” and the Senate Ethics Committee. “I don’t try to get into all
the political ramifications of this or that. The way to get a whole lot more
done is to focus on issues.” Somewhat disdainfully, he added, “There are all
these messaging amendments that we do, all about making one side look bad and
the other side look good. Democrats do it, and Republicans do it. It’s a total
waste of time.”

Helping The Med

As to how that even-handed outlook affected his stand on
issues, Corker was explicit. He talked of applying pressure on the
Administration, especially on recent health-care issues he considered urgent for
his constituents. “I know for a fact that I played a huge role in this [latest]
TennCare waiver thing. I have to say I had to put a hold on the Bush
nominations to make it happen. I thought it was important for our state.”

And there was his vote and enthusiastic support recently to expand SChip (the
federal State Children’s Health
Insurance Program) so as to increase funding for Tennessee by $30
million and to permit Medicaid payments for patients at The Med from Arkansas
and Mississippi. Both Corker and Tennessee GOP colleague Lamar Alexander
strongly supported the bill, which passed but was vetoed last week by President
Bush.

“I was glad to have worked out these issues
that have plagued the Med for so long. It’s ridiculous that people from Arkansas
and Mississippi have used the facility for so long and don’t pay for it. What’s
the logic in that?” Corker said, vowing to try to get the Med-friendly
provisions re-established in a veto-proof compromise measure yet to be
fashioned.

Corker made a pitch for the Every American Insured Health Act,
a bill he has sponsored that, he said, would modify the tax code so as to
guarantee universal access to private health insurance “but would not add a
penny to the national deficit.”

Contending that “what I’m trying to do is to add to
the equation a real debate, a real solution,” the senator said his proposal had been
“slammed” on the same day by both a conservative columnist and a liberal
columnist, leading him to conclude, “I’m pretty sure we got it just about
right.”

Corker said that executives of key national corporations,
saddled with large health-care costs for their employees, were “waling the halls
of Congress trying to get us to move to a government-run system so they can
alleviate. that expense which makes them non-competitive.” Without some
alternative form of universal access, he said, such a government-run system was
inevitable.

With 800,000 Tennesseans and 47 million Americans lacking
health-care coverage, there was also a “moral obligation” to make coverage universal,
Corker stressed.

Relations with Iran and Syria

As a member of both the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
and the body’s Armed Services committee, Corker says he is focusing hard on
issues relating to war-torn Iraq, a country he has visited twice, and
neighboring Iran, subject of much speculation these days concerning possible
future hostilities between that country and the U.S.

Here again, the senator stressed his determination to
maintain independence of judgment. “I’ve had some very tense moments with this
administration – in the first two months I was up there [in Washington]
especially. There were some underwhelming meetings.”

Corker is dubious about the current political leadership of
Iraq {“things cannot go on as they are”) but supportive for the time being of
the current military strategy of General David Petraeus, with whom he stays in
contact.

On Iran, Corker said there was “some concern in the
Senate that the president might take action” and emphasized that “he [Bush]would have
to have Senate authority to do that.” Corker reminded reporters that after his
election he had said on CBS’ Face the Nation that diplomatic negotiations
with both Syria and Iran were necessary.

“We don’t want to overplay our hand in Iran,” he said.
“There’s a group of people there who want to be our friends. If we move into
Iran unilaterally others [in the region] will step back from being our friends.”

Corker, who was a construction executive before entering
politics, related the current diplomatic situation to his experience in
labor-management negotiations in Tennessee. “If you don’t talk with your enemies
they remain your enemies. There’s a lot to be learned just to be in somebody’s
presence,” he said.

Categories
News News Feature

Get Real

For most Americans, who now wish we had never invaded Iraq, the notion of expanding that extraordinarily lethal mistake into neighboring Iran and Syria must seem insane. Yet those same brilliant neoconservative strategists who brought us the war in Iraq and constantly urge its escalation exist in their own special reality. They speak of military hostilities against Iran and Syria with anticipation rather than apprehension. As we have learned over the past four years, their dreams often turn out to be our nightmares.

For four brief hours on Memorial Day, however, the neoconservative drive toward a wider conflagration in the Middle East stalled when ambassadors from the United States and Iran met in Baghdad.

The historic significance of that meeting should not be underestimated, even though U.S. officials emphasized that no further meetings would necessarily occur. Convened under the auspices of the Iraqi government, which maintains close relations with Tehran as well as Washington, the meeting represented the first substantive bilateral discussion between American and Iranian officials in three decades.

Relations with Iran have been poor ever since the mullahs seized power from the U.S.-sponsored shah in 1979, but in recent months the increasing strains between us have brought armed conflict closer. Longstanding grievances against Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism in the region have been exacerbated by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear arsenal and allegations about Iranian agents supplying weapons to the insurgents in Iraq.

As these problems worsened, American policy toward Iraq has vacillated between “containment” and “regime change,” applying economic sanctions and threatening rhetoric in varying degrees. That policy cannot be described as a great success. Iran has become more aggressive and more influential in the region as a direct consequence of the violent regime change that we inflicted on Iraq.

What we have not tried, until now, was talking to the Iranian leaders. Breaking the taboo against speaking directly with them represents the change that the Iraq Study Group urged six months ago as the most promising path toward disengagement from that bloody quagmire, when its report highlighted the need for regional talks including Iran and Syria.

Naturally, such signs of sanity were immediately met with furious denunciations from the far right, echoing the shrill attacks on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several congressional colleagues who dared to visit the Syrian leadership in Damascus. When the Pelosi trip was followed weeks later by overtures from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to both the Syrians and the Iranians, it became plain that U.S. policymakers were considering a sensible shift.

The real danger is that whenever we start talking with our enemies, we may discover potential areas of compromise or even agreement. Progress would undermine the arguments of politicians and pundits who prefer a policy of permanent war.

But we already know that both Syria and Iran have cooperated with us in the past when they believed that their interests coincided with those of the United States. In the aftermath of 9/11, the Syrians were obliging enough to accept a Canadian citizen whom we deported and to torture and interrogate him on our behalf. (Unfortunately, he was innocent.) During that same period, the Iranians were helpful in western Afghanistan when the U.S. and its allies overthrew the Taliban.

There is no reason to pretend that the Syrian and Iranian regimes are anything but deplorable in their domestic conduct and foreign policy. But it is also true that those governments and the societies they control are more complex than our warmongers would tell us. Close observers of Iran, for instance, believe that our threatening attitude actually weakens the democratic forces in their struggle with the mullahs — and that improved relations, including normal diplomatic exchanges, could only strengthen reformers.

Is there reason to believe that negotiating with the Iranians or the Syrians would lead to any worthwhile result? Our allies in the Iraqi government — whose survival we have ensured with thousands of American casualties and hundreds of billions of American dollars — certainly think so. The Iraqi diplomats talk with their counterparts in Damascus and Tehran every day.

Those facts won’t dissuade the neoconservatives both within and outside the Bush administration from maligning any gestures toward realism. We are still living with the terrible consequences of the last great neoconservative triumph — the war in Iraq — and the enhanced power that their errors have bestowed so ironically on Iran. In coping with that reality, it is long since time that we learned to ignore their bad advice.

Joe Conason writes for The New York Observer and Salon.com.