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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KonKilo who wrote (91686)	4/10/2003 12:28:32 AM
From: LLLefty	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<<Don't expect postwar miracles from the Iraqi National Congress.<<< Chilabi,BTW, drew a huge cheering crowd in his debut appearance today in southern Iraq. Despite the relentlessly nasty attempts by the CIA, State and the ME profs to ridicule and diminish Chalabi and the INC, keep your eye on him. Here's a fresh view of Chalabi from the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland who is no babe in the woods when it comes to unraveling the Washington game. By Jim Hoagland Wednesday, April 9, 2003; Page A21 You are hearing a lot about Ahmed Chalabi right now. Much of it is not true. Worse, you are not hearing what you need to know about a man who is neither an Iraqi puppet for U.S. forces nor a conniving political fortune hunter taking the Bush administration for a ride. Who is Chalabi? The antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-change-in-Iraq crowd spreads the puppet version to smear this Iraqi exile leader, while State Department and CIA senior officials peddle the fortune-hunter image. Both groups use Chalabi as a dartboard to serve their own interests or those of their Arab clients. Their objections reveal more about their politics than his. Like Iraq itself, Chalabi has learned in a lifetime of fighting Saddam Hussein from abroad to keep things hidden. We have known each other for 30 of his 58 years. But it was only two years ago that I fully understood why he had given up a banker's fortune, a life of academic achievement and material comfort and precious time with children he manifestly adores to oppose the Iraqi dictator in his every waking moment. His sister had just died. A distraught Chalabi was preparing to leave London to arrange for her burial in the Syrian capital of Damascus. "This is the worst part," he said over the telephone. "I have to bury one more member of my family outside our country. I have buried my parents and my brother outside Iraq already. When will I bring them home?" Chalabi was much closer to achieving that goal yesterday when I reached him by satellite telephone in Nasiriya. He and at least 700 members of the Free Iraqi Forces being trained by the U.S. military were flown over the weekend from northern Iraq into that southern city, which is inhabited largely by Iraqis who follow the Shiite branch of Islam -- as does Chalabi. His religion is important both to the U.S. troops trying to work with Shiite clerics to calm the population in the south and to his critics in the State Department, who identify American interests with the authoritarian Sunni elites who run the Arab world. When you hear Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage maligning Chalabi, you hear the institutional voices of Saudi Arabia and Egypt speaking through him. Chalabi was too busy yesterday to worry about the ugly polemics and race for influence that the impending collapse of Iraq's dictatorship has sparked in Washington. He had just returned from the town of Suq ash-Shuyukh, where seven civilians had been killed or wounded by U.S. forces in a "fog of war" incident. "We were able to work out problems both sides felt they had in this tragedy," said Chalabi, who went on in exasperation: "This could have been avoided. It was a result of lack of knowledge by the U.S. soldiers about the region. We are here to participate in joint operations that will free and protect Iraqis, not to be anybody's puppets." Like exiles and oppressed people everywhere, Chalabi has been forced to take support for his cause wherever he could find it. He worked closely with the shah of Iran in the 1970s to spark a rebellion against Baghdad, and with the CIA and the Clinton administration in the 1990s, until they too abandoned him. Today it is Vice President Cheney, some Pentagon planners and neoconservative intellectuals (among others) who have absorbed his analysis of Iraq. That fact is offered as prima facie evidence that Chalabi is their creation and must be stopped. But that is the kind of guilt-by-association politics that Cheney once practiced in denouncing Nelson Mandela's African National Congress because it took support from Moscow and Moammar Gaddafi when American help was not available. Such character assassination by remote control was wrong when practiced by the political right. It is no less wrong now for having been taken up by the left, by ex-Clintonites who fought Chalabi when he sought their help, and by those with personal or ideological scores to settle against Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle. The attempt to get at them -- and ultimately at Bush's presidency -- by libeling Chalabi sets a new low in the stinking mess known as Washington politics. This former math professor takes more pride in the doctorate his daughter Tamara has just received from Harvard than in any of his own accomplishments. He will be nobody's puppet. I doubt he will agree to serve in the Iraqi Interim Authority that will be created by a U.S. military government he has sought to prevent. Chalabi has a more pressing, more personal agenda in liberated Iraq. He first has to find burial plots for his family. © 2003 The Washington Post Company ------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: KonKilo who wrote (91686)	4/10/2003 12:30:14 AM
From: LLLefty	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<<Don't expect postwar miracles from the Iraqi National Congress.<<< Chilabi drew a huge cheering crowd in his debut appearance today in southern Iraq. Despite the relentlessly nasty attempts by the CIA, State and the ME profs to ridicule and diminish Chalabi and the INC, keep your eye on him. Here's a fresh view of Chalabi from the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland who is no babe in the woods when it comes to unraveling the Washington game. By Jim Hoagland Wednesday, April 9, 2003; Page A21 You are hearing a lot about Ahmed Chalabi right now. Much of it is not true. Worse, you are not hearing what you need to know about a man who is neither an Iraqi puppet for U.S. forces nor a conniving political fortune hunter taking the Bush administration for a ride. Who is Chalabi? The antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-change-in-Iraq crowd spreads the puppet version to smear this Iraqi exile leader, while State Department and CIA senior officials peddle the fortune-hunter image. Both groups use Chalabi as a dartboard to serve their own interests or those of their Arab clients. Their objections reveal more about their politics than his. Like Iraq itself, Chalabi has learned in a lifetime of fighting Saddam Hussein from abroad to keep things hidden. We have known each other for 30 of his 58 years. But it was only two years ago that I fully understood why he had given up a banker's fortune, a life of academic achievement and material comfort and precious time with children he manifestly adores to oppose the Iraqi dictator in his every waking moment. His sister had just died. A distraught Chalabi was preparing to leave London to arrange for her burial in the Syrian capital of Damascus. "This is the worst part," he said over the telephone. "I have to bury one more member of my family outside our country. I have buried my parents and my brother outside Iraq already. When will I bring them home?" Chalabi was much closer to achieving that goal yesterday when I reached him by satellite telephone in Nasiriya. He and at least 700 members of the Free Iraqi Forces being trained by the U.S. military were flown over the weekend from northern Iraq into that southern city, which is inhabited largely by Iraqis who follow the Shiite branch of Islam -- as does Chalabi. His religion is important both to the U.S. troops trying to work with Shiite clerics to calm the population in the south and to his critics in the State Department, who identify American interests with the authoritarian Sunni elites who run the Arab world. When you hear Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage maligning Chalabi, you hear the institutional voices of Saudi Arabia and Egypt speaking through him. Chalabi was too busy yesterday to worry about the ugly polemics and race for influence that the impending collapse of Iraq's dictatorship has sparked in Washington. He had just returned from the town of Suq ash-Shuyukh, where seven civilians had been killed or wounded by U.S. forces in a "fog of war" incident. "We were able to work out problems both sides felt they had in this tragedy," said Chalabi, who went on in exasperation: "This could have been avoided. It was a result of lack of knowledge by the U.S. soldiers about the region. We are here to participate in joint operations that will free and protect Iraqis, not to be anybody's puppets." Like exiles and oppressed people everywhere, Chalabi has been forced to take support for his cause wherever he could find it. He worked closely with the shah of Iran in the 1970s to spark a rebellion against Baghdad, and with the CIA and the Clinton administration in the 1990s, until they too abandoned him. Today it is Vice President Cheney, some Pentagon planners and neoconservative intellectuals (among others) who have absorbed his analysis of Iraq. That fact is offered as prima facie evidence that Chalabi is their creation and must be stopped. But that is the kind of guilt-by-association politics that Cheney once practiced in denouncing Nelson Mandela's African National Congress because it took support from Moscow and Moammar Gaddafi when American help was not available. Such character assassination by remote control was wrong when practiced by the political right. It is no less wrong now for having been taken up by the left, by ex-Clintonites who fought Chalabi when he sought their help, and by those with personal or ideological scores to settle against Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle. The attempt to get at them -- and ultimately at Bush's presidency -- by libeling Chalabi sets a new low in the stinking mess known as Washington politics. This former math professor takes more pride in the doctorate his daughter Tamara has just received from Harvard than in any of his own accomplishments. He will be nobody's puppet. I doubt he will agree to serve in the Iraqi Interim Authority that will be created by a U.S. military government he has sought to prevent. Chalabi has a more pressing, more personal agenda in liberated Iraq. He first has to find burial plots for his family. © 2003 The Washington Post Company ------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: KonKilo who wrote (91686)	4/10/2003 2:48:58 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Analysis, By Barry Rubin: he old Middle East comes crashing down Much of the old Middle East not all, but a considerable part lies today as ruined as Saddam Hussein's statues. Once again, the main claims and ideas by which the region is explained and governed have crashed down with surprising ease. The American army is in Baghdad, cheered by Iraq's people at the same moment as it is booed by so many of the Arabs who never suffered under Saddam's lash. Do not forget this day too soon. Of course, this is the Middle East and things will go wrong, victories will tarnish, new lies and rationalizations will soon appear. And yet, let it be clear: Everything the supporters of this war predicted has come true; everything their critics said has been shown to be false. Everything the advocates of an alternative way of understanding the region has proven true, while everything the champions of the Old Middle East have asserted is dead wrong. As dead as hundreds of thousands of victims of Iraq's dictatorship who have been ignored in the theories, complaints, and even the reports of those daring to call themselves "friends" of the Arab people. In the short run, the Arab world did not rise to Saddam's aid. There have been no significant terrorist attacks. The mythical Arab street has remained reasonably quiet. The Iraqi armed forces did collapse quickly. The people did not love their dictator nor did they fight to keep on their chains. The terrorist training camps and torture chambers stand revealed to the world, just as the unconventional weapons will be in the days to come. The masses did greet the British and American forces. The stories of US plans gone wrong, heavy resistance, American defeats, deliberate Western brutality, nationalist devotion to the tyrant, and far more were wrong, wrong, wrong. The European governments and demonstrators who demanded that Saddam be allowed to misrule and oppress for many more years have been shown to be mistaken. Will those who misunderstood and misrepresented acknowledge their mistakes? A French friend told me some weeks ago that when the children's prisons of the regime were opened up to show its total degradation, the people of France 33 percent of whom advocated Saddam's victory in a recent poll would demand their government explain how it protected such an evil dictatorship. Will that happen now? Yet no less important are the long-term myths that have been exposed for the falsehoods that they are: That the Arab world stands always and everywhere united against the West in some practical way. Wrong. That the words of Arab newspapers and television networks reflect some powerful force that will be unleashed in the real political world. Wrong. That anti-Western sentiment, pan-Arab nationalism, and hatred of Israel will determine Arab behavior on every significant issue. Wrong. That the Arab-Israeli conflict is the only issue of any importance and it shapes all other considerations in the region. Wrong. What could be more ironic than the fact that the Iraqi Baath party gave out membership certificates whose main message was to fight to "liberate" Palestine, a tireless effort to distract its people from liberating themselves? That the only way for the West to deal with Middle Eastern dictators is to appease them. Wrong. That nothing can be done to fight the sponsors of terrorism, aggression, and dictatorship because of the nature of the Arab world. Wrong. This does not mean, of course, that everything will go smoothly now. The Iraqis want a better life and they want to govern themselves. Eventually, they will object to long-term governance by the West. A transfer of power must take place in a reasonable time. Yet this problem can be handled if US policy is handled with as much sense as it has been up until now. As important as the specific issue of Iraq is going to be, there is a genuine question as to whether and to what extent this marks a new era. Will the thudding crash of Saddam's statues have anywhere near the wider effect the fall of Communist statues in the USSR and Eastern Europe had a decade ago? In a sense, this could be just one more partial disappointment, as so many great days in modern Middle East history have been. From the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to the 1991 victory in Kuwait, the forces of reaction have been defeated again and again. Yet no single demonstration or even the cumulative proof of decades on the need for deep and thorough-going change in the region's thinking and institutions has succeeded in bringing down the psychological and political iron curtain of the Middle East. Still, the hefty weight of reality has again and again sought to pound the lesson home. Will this time be the decisive blow? One must doubt, but one can hope. jpost.com

To: KonKilo who wrote (91686)	4/10/2003 1:33:51 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Wonderful and apt last paragraph in Gideon Rose's Slate piece. What the administration hawks seem not to realize yet is that toppling Saddam will not end the debate over the war's legitimacy. For many abroad, in fact, it will only confirm the belief that American power is dangerously unchecked. This is a problem. Scaring the bad guys is one thing; scaring the entire world is another, and something only a fool would laugh off. The Bush administration is full of Churchillians. It would do well to remember what the great man himself thought should come after resolution and defiance: "In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will." Up to middle of the night, last night.