March 2009

LONDON – “We must have an exit strategy”, said President Barack Obama on television yesterday. But what about an entry strategy, or should we say, after seven years of steadily losing the war in Afghanistan a re-entry strategy? In a month’s time Obama will descend on NATO at its Brussels HQ and demand that the Europeans help out. Well before then, Obama will have on his desk the interagency review of policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan that he has requested. We should be able to guess its bias, if not every details of its contents. It is being chaired by Bruce Riedel. He is a former CIA officer and a senior advisor to three U.S. presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues. We know his views (and they are easily accessible on the Brookings website). My first reaction on reading them is why on earth didn’t Obama give the job to his...

By Jan Oberg and Annette SchiffmannMarch 20, 2009 March 20 marks the 6th anniversary of the US-led invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq – coming upon 12 years of the most cruel sanctions history has witnessed. About 2 million innocent Iraqi citizens have died as a consequence of those Western policies. About 4 million out of 24 million are either displaced inside the country or refugees abroad. In a country where more than half the entire population is well under 20, hundreds of thousands are clinically traumatized. At the same time Western media – part of the MIMAC, the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – give wide publicity to a BBC opinion poll that shows that “security” has improved in Iraq. It is going so well, isn’t it? The West has now – at what is likely to be only the beginning of worldwide economic breakdown and environmental decay – secured the majority...

LONDON – When two years ago I talked about the Taliban to the now fallen military president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, and suggested he talk to them more and fight them less he reacted as if the thought had never passed through his head before. “Well, I have never thought of doing that, but you have given me a good idea!”, he said, suddenly sitting up in his chair. David Goodhart, the editor at Prospect magazine for whom I often write, dryly observed that Musharraf was trying to flatter a rather naive journalist. Thank you David, but in my naivete, after over 40 years of being a foreign correspondent, I didn’t read it that way! And now, the last six months, as the Taliban seem to be winning the war, everyone – Americans, NATO commanders and ambassadors on the spot and, not least, the Pakistanis – are falling over themselves to...

Bush decided unilaterally to de-alert all bombers, 450 of the deadly accurate city-destroying Minuteman missiles and the missiles in 10 Poseidon submarines (enough with one launch to destroy Moscow, Leningrad and every city in between). Gorbachev, taking the cue, deactivated 500 land-based nuclear-tipped missiles and six submarines (enough in total to reduce the most populated parts of the U.S. to ashes and dust). Moreover, this wasn’t the cosmetic de-alerting talked about today. Silo and submarine crews actually had their launch keys taken away from them. This is why President Barack Obama (if the New York Times has got the story right) has made a big mistake in his opening move following the pressing of the famous “reset button”. His letter to President Dimitri Medvedev, suggesting that the U.S. was open to discussion on the dismantling of the anti-missile site now being constructed on Polish soil if Russia would lean harder...

March 4, 2009 Jonathan Power LONDON – Each year, over the ages, at Passover time, religious Jews have intoned the prayer, “Next year in Jerusalem”. Until the twentieth century few really believed it any more than most Christians truly believe in the Second Coming. After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 the Jews were thrust into the outer world – many into Arab countries, later to become Muslim, where they were extended protection and tolerance, and later into the Roman and then Christian world where they were accepted for many centuries, with outbursts of truly virulent anti-Semitism centuries apart. Over two millennia many big tribal groups have been dispersed – the Slavs, the Moguls, the Bantu, the Tamils, the Celts – the list is a long one – but only the Jews have had an idée fixe about where they want to go back to. During the...