This is the second unexpected entry that I see myself doing. Obama’s speech of Cairo brought me some meditations I wanted to share with you. The first part is about Obama’s speech at the light of the teachings of counterinsurgency history. In the second part, I bring you a bizarre evolution of the accusations of racism made against Sotomayor. Please consider the pictures before taking the poll.
PART 1
Obama’s speech in Cairo (http://english.aljazeera.net/...) was direct, inspired and empathetic. Let me make a meaningful quote:
"The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and co-operation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam."
"I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."
The speech addressed:
i) Violent extremism. Here Obama convoked to oppose extremism but also admitted that "unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. (...) Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future - and to leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq's sovereignty is its own." He also said that "We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year."
ii) The conflict Israel-Palestine. "The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world. (...) America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own." He, Obama advocated for a two-state solution and for stopping Israeli settlements.
iii) Nuclear weapons and Iran. Here, Obama admitted that "For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against US troops and civilians."
iv) Democracy, religious freedom, and women’s rights (emphasizing on women’s education) were the other three issues of the speech.
Along the speech, Obama also addressed the hot issues of globalization and oil, education and cooperation, giving credibility to a speech that, had it omitted them, had lost credibility. Obama also quoted of Quran, mentioned his Muslim ancestors and his second name. He also mentioned the intellectual and cultural debt of Western civilization to Islam and the participation of Muslims in American life.
Nevertheless, the detainee-abuse photographs were absent of the speech. Whoever has watched images from Middle East’s conflicts will be able to see how Islamists show the photographs of everybody they can include as martyrs to their pantheon. From the Palestine casualties of the Intifadas, to the Children of Qana by Hezbollah after Olmert’s attack to Southern Lebanon to the abuse detainees of Abu Ghraib in Iraq. I bet Muslim extremists read the London Daily Telegraph and I bet they will try to show Obama as a hypocrite whose policy is not different from Bush’s.
Guess what?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
Osama bin Laden (http://english.aljazeera.net/...), the leader of al-Qaeda, has accused Barack Obama of following the policy of his predecessor George Bush in "antagonizing Muslims". For now, the motivation has been the attacks against Taliban advances in the Swat Valley by Pakistani forces.
If you read a bit on counterinsurgency, this was not difficult to foresee. Was it?
Consider Colonel Ralph Peters’s solution to Guantanamo: (http://news.videosift.com/...): to kill every prisoners at that facility, even if miscarriages of justice are made to those who are innocent because Peters considers that the margins of error would be small. Did somebody inform Peters that from the first days of Guantanamo to recent months the off-the-record estimate of innocents to guilty was 9/1 and that never afterwards could we know how much that estimation had been reduced?
As justification, Peters said that those who engage in terrorism are "not human anymore" and "monsters". "Fight for human rights, kill terrorists."
We’d like to ask Colonel Peters how well did the body-counting as a measure of success worked in Vietnam?
During the American Revolution, the American insurgents engaged in harassment against Loyalists and their best results were obtained initially, when they were in no conditions to fight the British in parity of terms, when they used unconventional war tactics against the British. General Nathanael Greene (Russell F. Weigley. The American way of war. A history of United States military strategy and policy, pp. 35-36) was the best example of this. All known insurgencies begin using terrorism because they are not stupid and know very well that they are in no conditions to engage in direct confrontation with the vast resources of the status quo. Even more important, insurgencies’ goals are much more political than military (That is why in Vietnam General Giap accepted the heavy casualties suffered by the insurgents in Dien Bien Phu against the French and during the Tet offensive against us. William R. Polk. Violent Politics. Chapters 9 and 10). Afghans also used terrorism against the Russians too and where praised by Reagan. Actually more problematic than the means (terrorism), in the case of Islamic Fundamentalists, is the cause (Fundamentalist Islamic Caliphate). Means and cause is a small distinction that Colonel Peters do not seem to understand unless Peters had meant that the insurgents of the American Revolution were also "not human" and "monsters"? Actually, a response like that proposed by Peters is always celebrated by insurgencies. It was at the shadow of bully poses like that, that the dirty war in Peru let the Shining Path flourish, especially during the first half of the 1980s. Insurgencies expect, wish that the status quo strikes blindly against the population in its desperation to hit the insurgents, what in turn engrosses the ranks of the insurgents with the victims of the excesses of the status quo’s forces. Did Colonel Peters know, in example, that the IRA tipped the British against innocent people so they, after the British had bitten the bait, could embrace those unjustly captured as martyrs?
How this clown could have ever been trusted any decision on matters affecting our national security?
i) Insurgencies are political much more than military wars so a key goal for al-Qaeda is to push us to acts of desperation which can make us lose legitimacy. Sometimes that is unavoidable in the short term. The offensive in the Swat Valley (Pakistan) implies a human cost that is something difficult to avoid [but, following the example of the British during the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), we should not excuse us of compensating the affected population. In his speech, Obama correctly said "That is why we plan to invest $1.5 billion each year over the next five years to partner with Pakistanis to build schools and hospitals, roads and businesses, and hundreds of millions to help those who have been displaced. And that is why we are providing more than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people depend upon"] but Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, renditions to outsource torture, and the naïve efforts to hide photographs of whose existence everybody knows are stupid ways of helping al-Qaeda to hurt our credibility.
ii) To cause a financial hemorrhage of the status quo is nothing new among insurgencies. The Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya against the British in the 50s, the Afghan insurgency against the British in the XIX Century and against the Russians in the 1980s are the best examples of this. Kevin Phillips’s excellent book "American Theocracy" deals with this issue across the history of the Spanish and British empires. Michael Scheuer’s "Imperial Hubris" has plenty of information to support this thesis in the case of al-Qaeda.
iii) The American over exposure due to the use of conventional warfare has also played stupendously for insurgencies across history. The Provisional IRA used any conceivable way to bring the British to its war against the Stormont government of Northern Ireland as the Algerian FLN brought the French paratroopers to Alger in the 1950s. (Battle of Alger, 1957)
Of course, the terrible mistakes of the Bush administration played perfectly in favor of al-Qaeda’s interests. It advocated for torture, crusades and cover ups; broke the economic health of the nation after years of fiscal disarray and, worse, for an irresponsible lack of supervision that submerged us into a law of the jungle where well connected crooks ended up stealing or destroying astonishing amounts of wealth, and over exposed the American army in a pathetic extension of the strongman paradigm, as if Mossadeq and the Shah Pahlavi had never existed.
Obama cannot let conservatives stick to him the absurd legacy of the Bush administration on issues like Guantanamo and the cover up of detainee abuse photos. That is precisely what al-Qaeda wants and all the relevant experiences on counterinsurgency history show that.
PART 2:
For those who read my previous entry, do you remember how Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was labeled as racist by many in the Republican party. Here I just want to mention to bizarre evolutions of that case:
i) Manuel Miranda ex-Bill Frist aide, known hacker and one of the promoters of a filibuster against Sotomayor, said at the pseudo think-tank Heritage Foundation that "Hispanic polls, Hispanic surveys, indicate that Hispanics think just like everyone else. We’re not like African-Americans. We think just like everyone else." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...)
ii) You must remember that Tom Tancredo was one of the most vehement users of the "racist" label. Marcus Epstein, who also works for Pat and Bay Buchanan, is a former Tancredo’s aide and executive director of Team America, Tancredo’s anti-immigrant PAC. Epstein has pleaded guilty after calling nigger and striking a karate hit to a black woman in 2007. Nevertheless, as Cenk Uygur refers (Cenk Uygur, http://www.theyoungturks.com/), the woman managed to wrap him and detain him until he was arrested (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...).
Please consider the following photographs before answering the poll:
Marcus Epstein, Tattoo impersonator and chairman of Team America
Herve Villechaize, ‘Tattoo’
Verne Troyer, ‘Mini-Me’
Ralph Wiggum, fictional character of The Simpsons.