NY Times on Jewish Lobby Article

The New York Times finally ran an article about the paper written by the professors from Harvard and Chic ago about the Jewish Lobby. However, the article consists mainly of derogatory comments by mostly Jewish commentators without explaining what the article said. The NYT article also says the Atlantic magazine refused to publish the article.

I was at first disappointed at the Atlantic for not publishing the article, and at the NYT for publishing an article about it that only publishes the criticism of it, while saying very little about the article itself. Then, I realized that this is exactly the result of the Jewish lobby. It could destroy the Atlantic, and could do major damage to the NYT. The lesson is, from those the Lobby has already destroyed, like former Senator Charles Percy, "Be afraid, be very afraid."

An article by Alfred Lilienthal tells what happened to the NYT when it refused a Zionist ad shortly before Israel's creation:

To his great regret, Sulzberger [the owner of the NYT], some years earlier, had rejected an advertisement submitted by the American League for a Free Palestine, the U.S. counterpart of Menachem Begin’s extremist Irgun Zvai Leumi. The ad had defended their leader’s terrorist activity against the British and called for immediate establishment of the Zionist state of Palestine. The Times rejection of the extremist Zionist advertisement had been met with what Sulzberger later was to describe to me as “a frightening experience,” a virtual boycott of the paper, the details of which remain one of the most guarded secrets tucked away in a Times Square safe.

Senate Immigration Bill Fails

Reuters reports that the compromise Senate immigration bill has failed. Hooray! No amnesty today.

As several people have said, the US just ought to enforce the laws on the books. Contrary to Sen. John McCain's argument that it would be impossible to send 12 million illegals back home on buses, if we enforced the laws, they would mostly go of their own accord. They got here on their own. It would require some toughness. Life for them would have to be as bad here as in Mexico. We would have to make sure that illegals can't work, can't get food stamps, and in general can't get medical care, except for life threatening conditions. The Catholic church could help them by giving them food and shelter if it wanted to, but if they became a huge burden on the church, rather than contributors, the church would probably eventually encourage them to go home.

More on AIPAC article

Here's some more comment on the AIPAC article: Globalist 1; Globalist 2. The best thing is that it is a reply written by a Jew, but it does not accuse the authors of anti-Semitism.

Proposed Senate Immigration Bill Is Amnesty

The proposed Senate immigration bill as reported by the New York Times is an amnesty for illegal aliens. Anything that rewards them for an illegal act is an amnesty, and this bill proposes to do that for aliens who have been in this country for more than five years, i.e., the worst offenders.

This bill is racism at its worst. It favors Mexicans over all other races and nationalities because they are the main people who sneak over the border illegally. Sure, there are illegal Africans, Asians, and South Americans, but they mainly have to come in by the planeload and clear immigration at an airport. A few, but very few, non-Mexicans come sealed in shipping containers or by other unorthodox methods. Of the millions of aliens under consideration, the vast majority are Mexican. Indians, Russians, and Chinese be damned, especially if they have Ph.D.s or are highly skilled. The Senate doesn't want them! It wants uneducated Mexicans who sneak across the border.

The main thing that bothers me is the disregard of the rule of law. We have immigration laws, but now the Senate says they are only hortatory. I was upset at Republican disdain for international law early in the Bush administration, but now -- with increasing domestic acceptance of torture, denial of habeas corpus, warrantless wiretapping and other horrible things that it took the common law and the Constitution hundreds of years to outlaw -- deciding that there is no immigration law is consistent with the general Republican disdain for law. No wonder Enron's Ken Lay and company were good friends of the President, and they probably will be again when the press spotlight dims.

Perhaps I am upset because of my past job as a consular officer in Brazil issuing American visas. It breaks your heart to refuse a visa to someone, for example, who wants to visit his mother who is working illegally in the States, and whom he has not seen for years. But under the law, he is almost certain to stay and work in the US as his mother did, and thus, he is not eligible for a visa. But if he were Mexican, he could just sneak across the border. Why should there be one law for Mexicans and another for Brazilians (and Poles, and Thais, and Nigerians)? What's the point of breaking his heart, and yours, if Congress doesn't really care?

Replies to AIPAC Article

The Christian Science Monitor picks up more comment about the article on AIPAC's extraordinary influence on US politics. Alan Dershowitz weighs in for a Harvard rebuttal of a Harvard colleague. One of his worst arguments (on page 15) is, "Several years ago, I challenged those who made similar accusations to identify a single Jewish leader who equated mere criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism. No one accepted my challenge, because no Jewish leader has made such an absurd claim." Dershowitz's paper is just the thing he claims does not exist. He attacks his Harvard colleague as an anti-Semite for daring to criticize Israel.

Everybody attacks the original article because David Dukes of KKK fame agreed with it. But does that necessarily make it wrong? If David Dukes said the sky was blue, would that necessarily mean that it was green? The fact that someone who is frequently wrong says that something is right does not logically mean that he is wrong in this case. The argument should be judged on its truthfulness, not on some kind of guilt by association.

Supreme Court Hears Vienna Convention Case

According to the New York Times, yesterday the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving the Vienna Convention, which grants access by home country consular officials to people arrested in a foreign country. When I was a US consular officer in Brazil, I considered this the best guarantee against mistreatment, even possible torture, of arrested American citizens.

The virtue of this convention for Americans is not so much what it does for foreigners in the US, but the protections it affords Americans overseas. Similarly, the virtue of the Geneva Conventions is not so much the restrictions against torture that it places on American soldiers (although why the American government should embrace torture is beyond me), but rather that adhering to the Convention is a protection against torture for American soldiers captured by foreigners.

The report in the Times indicates that the Supreme Court may not find that any enforceable rights are created in US courts by the Vienna Convention, but the very idea that the issue made it to the Supreme Court, and that the Court may encourage local police and defense lawyers to notify the appropriate consuls is progress.

From the Supreme Court calendar, these cases, one from Oregon and one from Virginia, appear to be Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon and Bustillo v. Johnson. A more legalistic report of the case is on the Northwestern University web site.

Problems with Non-American American Diplomats

American Ambassador to Iraq Khalilzad wins high praise for his work in trying to bring a stable government to Iraq and end the religious strife (or civil war, depending on your viewpoint) there. As an American from a family that has been in America for several generations, I always thought that the US should give some sort of favoritism to native-born Americans, because immigrants or first generation Americans often have an advantage in that they know the language and culture of their country of origin well, which is important. But it is also important to know the US well. I worry that intimate knowledge of the US is something that is does not show up as well in testing as language proficiency does. In addition, most immigrants left their home countries for some reason, which means that they do not share some important values with the citizens of their home country who did not leave. This was often on view during the Cold War, when many of the most virulently anti-Russian policymakers were of Russian extraction.

Born in Afghanistan, Khalilzad is, according to Juan Cole (who was just on PBS), "an Afghan Pushtun of Sunni extraction." I think that because of this, he may be viewed with suspicion by Shiite Muslims, who are the leaders in forming a new government in Iraq. In looking for confirmation that Khalilzad is of Sunni extraction, I found a somewhat questionable website says that Khalilzad's wife, Cheryl Benard, is an Austrian who works for the Rand Corporation, whom he met at the University of Chicago while they were studying under leading neo-con Albert Wohlstetter.

The fact that Khalilzad was born a Sunni Muslim, but that one of the main influences on his thinking was Wohlstetter, a Jew at Chicago who influenced many of the Jewish neo-cons, including Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, has got to be confusing. Maybe it shows religion doesn't matter. Or maybe it shows that there is nobody as radical as a convert to a new religion (or a new political philosophy).

Israeli Election Implications for AIPAC

It will be interesting to see what effect yesterday's Israel elections have on American politicians' good buddies in AIPAC. According to CNN and other sources, Likud under Netanyahu did poorly. However, Likud has been the party of ethnic hatred and warfare (mainly against the Palestinians, but also against Arabs and Muslims in general) that has endeared itself to AIPAC, to many American Jews, and through AIPAC (with help from some Christian Armageddon theorists) to American politicians (Republican and Democratic). Will they become more dovish if Israel becomes more dovish? Or will the US, which started a holy war in Iraq, continue to implement Likud's policies after they have been rejected by Israel?

US-India Deal Encounters Problems with NSG

The Financial Times reports that the US-India nuclear deal has encountered problems being approved by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The NSG was largely a creation of the US to enforce non-proliferation export controls by developed countries. We have over the years been the main country pressing for stricter controls. Now we want looser controls, and the rest of the developed world says, "Hey, wait a minute."

US policy on non-proliferation has turned 180 degrees. But the US is likely to get what it wants eventually, because most other countries have been more interested in selling than in controlling nuclear equipment and technology. For them the NSG was sort of a fig leaf that let them say, "We looked at the proliferation impact of this sale, and it's okay; so, the sale is going forward." For the US, the NSG was a way to keep potentially dangerous sales to a minimum, by actually blocking some sales. Now the US is leading the pack, saying, "Let's sell." The others, particularly nuclear vendors like the French and the Germans, for example, will probably quickly join us. Some smaller countries that truly worry about proliferation, perhaps Sweden and Switzerland, may drag their feet. It will probably mean the end of the NSG as an effective deterrent to proliferation. Every time another country wants to make a sale that we don't like, they'll say, "What about your deal with India?" And the sale will go forward.

One of the first tests may well be Russian sales of nuclear equipment to Iran.

When I was Science Counselor at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, I worked with Polish Ambassador Strulak, who was Poland's main NSG expert, on NSG issues.

More on Israeli Lobby Article

The Christian Science Monitor has an update on Israeli response to the previously mentioned article on the amazing influence of the Israeli Lobby on US foreign policy. It says that while most Israeli and American Jewish commentators have condemned it, some have said that it is a wake-up call that requires discussion.

The Wall Street Journal has had two editorials condemning the article. Interestingly, the article names the WSJ as a newspaper strongly favorable to Israel, which the second editorial, "The Israel Conspiracy" in today's edition, confirms. The earlier op-ed, "Israel Lobby" by Ruth Wisse, a professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard, appeared in the March 22 edition. She implies that the authors are anti-Semitic. She says that a comparison of their article with an 1879 German one "might highlight some American refinements on the European model, such as the anti-Semitic lie that 'Israeli citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship.' In fact, unlike neighboring Arab countries, Israeli citizenship is not conditional on religion or race." She concludes, "Their insistence that American support for Israel is bought and paid for by the Lobby heaps scorn on American judgment and values."

Today's editorial by Bret Stephens says:

The authors are at pains to note that the Israel Lobby is by no means exclusively Jewish, and that not every American Jew is a part of it. Fair enough. But has there ever been an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that does not share its basic features? Dual loyalty, disloyalty, manipulation of the media, financial manipulation of the political system, duping the goyim (gentiles) and getting them to fight their wars, sponsoring and covering up acts of gratuitous cruelty against an innocent people -- every canard ever alleged of the Jews is here made about the Israel Lobby and its cause.

Both editorials condemn the article by noting that ex-Ku Klux Klansman David Duke has praised it, thus implying guilt by association.

These editorials demonstrate that you cannot criticize Israel or the Israel Lobby without being branded as "anti-Semitic." What if this issue is not about race, but about genuine political and foreign policy matters? The "anti-Semitic" sobriquet is in today's world equivalent to Senator McCarthy's "communist" name-calling in his day.

Mid-East Policy in Shambles

I want to give kudos to Mid-East special envoy (or whatever he is) James Wolfensohn. He has been a voice in the wilderness calling for something to be done about the Palestinian situation, as reported by the Washington Post. Administration officials seem to be immobilized by the election of Hamas and Ariel Sharon's incapacitation. But the Iraq invasion was supposed (in retrospect, after WMD failed to show) to be about bringing peace to the Middle East through the creation of democratic institutions. As Wolfensohn has pointed out, things are in danger of spinning out of control, into chaos if not into greater armed conflict.

I have not been a fan of Wolfensohn. I thought his appointment was bad because he was Jewish and would be too favorable to Israel to do his job. But he has turned out to be a friend of the Palestinians in this crisis, and I congratulate him for it. He probably thinks that ultimately Israel will benefit if a peaceful solution can be found, but that's fine, and I compliment him for that, too.

Orange Revolution Fading in Ukraine

After the euphoria of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine last year, the country appears on the verge of returning to its old eastward-looking, Russian policies. As the BBC reports, upcoming elections seem likely to return the russophiles to power.

American news networks don't seem interested, and neither does the American government. It doesn't need any more bad news on top of the bad news from Iraq. Condi Rice is supposed to be a Russian specialist; where is she? Meanwhile, the elections in Belarus seem to have maintained in power the party that favors Russia. And, Putin and Hu sign a big energy deal. In the old cold war days, a Russian-Chinese alliance would have worried everybody in the West. Things have changed, but have they changed enough so that we don't have to worry about this? There are rumors that the US is preparing to somehow support Taiwanese claims of independence. What if Russia, with all its old, cold-war nuclear missiles, sides with China in such a dispute?

Does America Put Israel's Interests Above Its Own?

The Christian Science Monitor and others have called attention to a new study by two professors arguing that due to the influence of the Israeli lobby in the United States, America puts Israel's interests ahead of its own.

This encourages me to think that I'm not paranoid and not anti-Semitic. There really is something to worry about. This comes on the heels of the criminal investigation of spying activities by AIPAC. The AIPAC scandal involves Iran, and it's well known that Israel wants the US to be tough on Iran.

For the record, here is the full text of the article on the Harvard web site.

What will Sen. Saxby Chambliss Do to Tammy Duckworth?

I have still not recovered from what Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss did to former Democratic Senator Max Cleland. Chambliss called Cleland, a triple amputee Vietnam veteran, soft on defense because he opposed certain portions of the homeland defense bill (which has turned out to be a mess).

Tammy Duckworth, who is running for a House seat as a Democrat in Illinois, is a double amputee, wounded in Iraq, just the sort of person Chambliss hates. I don't know why Georgians would elect a Senator who hates people wounded while fighting for America, but Chambliss fits the bill. I don't know why Republicans would give him, a man who despises military veterans, a position having anything to do with defense, but they made him a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a sign of why things are going so badly in Iraq.

There is no mention in Chambliss' Senate biography that he ever served in the military, although he was the right age to have been drafted at the peak of the Vietnam war, graduating from college in 1966 and completing law school in 1968. I graduated from college in 1967 and was drafted after my first year of law school (at the University of Georgia) in 1968. How did Chambliss avoid the same fate?

I hope Tammy Duckworth gets elected and one day kicks Chambliss in the rear end with one of her prosthetic feet. She is probably too nice to do that, but Chambliss deserves it for what he did to Cleland.

What about the Ships?

Everybody in Congress is happy because Dubai has ceased trying to manage US ports, as reported by the Washington Post, for example.

But what about the ships that dock in the US ports, now to be managed by an American entity? Most of the ships plying the oceans fly flags of convenience. They are registered in foreign countries and thus are under the jurisdiction of some of the world's most unreliable countries, Liberia, for example. They do this to escape the regulation of more advanced, civilized countries.

So what's the point of making sure the managers of American ports are American, when almost all of the ships are foreign, and are regulated by some of the most lenient, undiscriminating countries in the world? They are flagged in these countries, because of more lenient regulation, just as most large American companies incorporate in Delaware, because it is more "friendly."

The bottom line is that the Dubai/P&O port management fiasco, is just that. The US will be no safer, because Congress is not really serious about making ports safer, by for example, inspecting more containers arriving on these unregulated, foreign flagged ships.

Brazil Ready to Start Uranium Enrichment

The Mercury News reports a Knight Ridder story that Brazil is about to start up its own uranium enrichment plant, probably putting it ahead of Iran in this technology. Having spent two years, twenty years ago, trying to discourage Brazil from doing this, I am somewhat disappointed. The good news is that Brazil, unlike Iran, is cooperating closely with the IAEA. Then, there are the lessons we could learn from Brazil's nuclear program.

For me, it's that you have to be a reliable supplier and work closely with countries that have nuclear reactors. I've described it earlier, but Brazil had no intention of developing the full nuclear fuel cycle when it purchased its first nuclear reactor from Westinghouse in the US in the 1970s, mainly as a hedge against the oil shortages gripping the world then. Just as the reactor was about to go on line, the US refused to sell fuel for it, as the Arabs were refusing to sell oil then. Senator John Glenn passed a law requiring "full scope safeguards" (equivalent to NPT membership) on all nuclear activities in a country before the US could sell nuclear fuel to it. Brazil said this was changing the terms of the agreement after the agreement had already been concluded and after Brazil had spent about a billion dollars on its reactor. Brazil got so mad that it has spent the last 30 years developing a fuel cycle, so that its nuclear reactor supplied power will not be subject to the whims of the US and its allies.

Beating people (like Iran and North Korea) about the head and shoulders is likely to be counterproductive, as it was in Brazil, unless we are willing to back up our demands with military force, as we did in Iraq. The poor planning and execution in Iraq, however, may have taught protential proliferators a lesson that to counter US pressure you need to develop a bomb. This may be the lesson of Bush's current trip to India, which seems to have gotten a "get out of jail free" card from Bush after developing nuclear weapons. See this briefing on how Clinton viewed the Glenn amendment for his trip to India.

Another project that Brazil started during the 1970s oil crisis, developing ethanol automobile fuel from sugar cane, has also been successful, putting Brazil far ahead of the US in this technology, which Bush just recently indentified as important (30 years after Brazil).

Bush Is Right on Ports

It's unusual, but I agree with President Bush and David Brooks on approving the sale to the U.A.E. of the P&O company that manages several American ports. Port security is the responsibility of the US government, not the company that runs the ports. Of course, the government has done almost nothing to increase port security, but that's not the U.A.E.'s fault.

In addition, about 20 years ago at the American Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil, I worked with the woman who chairs Treasury's CFIUS committee that approved the sale, Gay Sills. (At that time, while she was married to Bill Hoar, her name was Gay Hoar, a tough moniker, which she carried with aplomb.) I have confidence in her, and think that she would have vetted the sale thoroughly. Of course, she may have based the committee's approval on certain, existing criteria which were met, and the Congress may add extra criteria now. But those new criteria will probably be based on some xenophobic, anti-Arab, racist standard, rather than on an analysis of true security threats, which will be bad for our image in the Middle East, as David Brooks points out.

Bushies Love Torture

The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Navy's general counsel warned against allowing torture. There are responsible voices crying in the wilderness. Good for him!

The draft-dodging Bushies don't understand that refraining from torturing detainees is a protection for American troops. The deal used to be, "If you don't torture my troops, I won't torture your troops." But Bush says he doesn't care if American troops get tortured. He says, "Bring it on. Out troops can take all the torture you can dish out. Cheney and I, of course, won't expose ourselves to the risk of torture, but our mercenaries can take it for us."

More on Politicization of State Department

The Washington Post reports further on the politicization of the State Department's nonproliferation activities. Every administration pushes its own political people into the State Department, but not often into mid-level policy positions dealing with life and death issues. Usually the senior people rely on career staff to at least present them with a range of options, from which they can choose the options in keeping with that administration's policies. But the Bushies are replacing the mid-level staff, which means that they only get options already scrubbed to reflect only the administration's viewpoint. When the future of the world is at stake, this is not a good idea.

It shows that while Condi Rice has been getting favorable reviews from the liberal press as an enlightened leader of the State Department, she is continuing many of the close-minded, right-wing policies she oversaw at the White House.

Split on Bush Presidency to Last 1,000 Years?

Gibbon's discussion of the divisions among historians about the legacy of Constantine makes you wonder whether the current divisions over Bush's legacy will also endure a thousand years. In the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter 18), Gibbon says:

The character of the prince [Constantine] who removed the seat of empire, and introduced such important changes into the civil and religious constitution of his country, has fixed the attention, and divided the opinions of mankind. By the grateful zeal of the Christians the deliverer of the church has been decorated with every attribute of a hero, and even of a saint; while the discontent of the vanquished party has compared Constantine to the most abhorred of those tyrants who, by their vice and weakness, dishonoured the Imperial purple. The same passions have, in some degree, been perpetuated to succeeding generations, and the character of Constantine is considered, even in the present age, as an object of satire or of panegyric.

So both Constantine and Bush are viewed positively by Christians. In Bush's case, make that by evangelical or fundamentalist Christians. Gibbon ends this chapter on the successors to Constantine with the following passage:

The most innocent subjects of the West were exposed to exile and confiscation, to death and torture; and as the timid are always cruel, the mind of Constantius was inaccessible to mercy.

This passage sums up what I think is wrong with the Bush administration: "the timid are always cruel." We have torture, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib because the Bushies are cowards. Bush and Cheney both avoided service in Vietnam -- Bush by hiding out in the National Guard. Then, he had the effrontery to call up the National Guard -- his hidey-hole -- to bear much of the fighting in Iraq. As President and Vice President, when the US was attacked on 9/11, Bush disappeared into Louisiana and Nebraska on Air Force One, while Cheney disappeared into the bowels of the earth in his famous undisclosed location. A courageous man would have immediately appeared on national television to assure the national that he was in charge, would repel the invaders, and would care for the victims. Bush did this about three days later, when he was sure it was safe to come out. But he and Cheney are still afraid, hence their resort to torture, and their refusal to comply with international or domestic law where they fear physical threats, such as their illegal use of NSA to intercept domestic calls.

Gibbon on Use of Torture in the Roman Empire

Gibbon relates in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire how the use of torture increased as Roman liberty decreased. Some other parallels to today's United States are noted in my Colorado Confederate blog. About torture in the time of Constantine (Chapter 17), Gibbon says:

The annals of tyranny, from the reign of Tiberius to that of Domitian, circumstantially relate the executions of many innocent victims; but, as long as the faintest remembrance was kept alive of the national freedom and honour, the last hours of a Roman were secure from the danger of ignominious torture. The conduct of the provincial magistrates was not, however, regulated by the practice of the city, or the strict maxims of the civilians.... The acquiescence of the provincials [in Guantanamo?] encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to confound the distinctions of rank, and to disregard the privileges of Roman citizens.... But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new jurisprudence of the empire, that in the case of treason [terror], which included every offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from an hostile intention towards the prince or republic, all privileges were suspended, and all conditions were reduced to the same ignominious level.

Afghanistan Heads South

An Economist magazine editorial laments the fact that the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating. With all the concern about Iraq, and the general consensus that the war in Afghanistan was much more justified than the war in Iraq, the news that Afghanistan is following Iraq down the tubes is discouraging.

Bad Intelligence on Iraq

It has become so accepted that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence to get us into war in Iraq that one forgets how reprehensible it was. Thousands of people have died because of this decision: 2,000 plus American soldiers, but untold (because the administration won't tell) numbers of Iraqi military and civilians, as well -- probably in the high tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

A new article in Foreign Affairs documents the Administration's misuse of intelligence. One must ask, however, if the author was the NIO for the Middle East, why did he stay in his job? Since he did stay in his job during the period when intelligence was being misused, he undercuts his integrity to protest today. That doesn't mean that the facts he reports should be ignored.

The LA Times reports on a new British book that similarly claims that the US and Britain doubted the strength of the information with which they justified their invasion of Iraq.

While there may be some legal questions about whether Bush violated any law, particularly since any relevant law would probably have been international and not domestic, this purposeful misleading of the American people seems like it should be an impeachable offense.

The Foreign Affairs summary of its article is as follows:

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

State Dept Dumps Career Weapons Experts

Knight Ridder reports that the State Department is dumping or passing over career Foreign Service and Civil Service weapons experts to hire or promote outsiders who are loyal to the Bush Administration. It appears that at least some of the problems are left over from (now UN Ambassador) John Bolton's reign over arms control policy at State. One of Condi Rice's best moves was to get him out of the State building, but apparently he left some problems behind for a "realist" foreign policy.

Actually, such personnel shake-ups are not unusual. I left the Foreign Service partly because Clinton and Gore wanted to shrink the government payroll any way they could, and pressured people like me, working on non-proliferation issues, to leave. (Remember those good old days when the President actually worried about how much money the government was spending.) Another reason I left was that the Republicans in Congress were blocking US implementation of its nuclear agreement with North Korea through KEDO. My job as the senior diplomatic working on scientific issues at the American Embassy in Rome turned out to require a lot of time begging Italy and other European countries to donate money to makeup for American shortfalls in funding KEDO because Republicans in Congress didn't like it. I thought the US should live up to its treaty obligations.

Also, the personnel issues are not unusual. When I worked for then-Assistant Secretary Richard Clarke (of 9/11 fame) in State's old Politico-Military bureau during the Bush I administration, I got promoted while I was assigned there, based on my performance in my previous job in Brasilia, Brazil. Clarke did not want me to have a supervisory position in his bureau, although my new rank required it. To Clarke's credit, his opposition was not political. He wanted someone who was a more aggressive bureaucratic infighter than I was. Nevertheless, he finally agreed (grudgingly) to allow me to hold a supervisory position on missile proliferation matters.

Data Mining after NSA Phone Surveillance?

This Christian Science Monitor story on data mining outlines the latest threat to individual privacy from the government, following the furor over NSA's monitoring of telephone calls. Of course, this is only what the government is doing. Corporations are already deep into data mining, mainly to figure out what we like and how to sell us stuff, but it could get more nefarious.

No War on Terror

A war means millions of people in uniform from one country fighting millions of others in uniform from another country. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were carried out by about 20 people, and even if one counts all the people trained with them in Afghanistan under Osama bin Laden, there are only a few thousand more. There are, of course, wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the US invaded with thousands of uniformed troops, and where troops in uniform continue to fight.

Although the attack on the WTC and Pentagon was not the beginning of a war on terror, the Bush administration used it as a basis for starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cynically, they decided that going to war was the way to get re-elected, that the American people would not throw out a president who was leading a war. But it wasn’t a war. 9/11 was a terrorist attack by a handful of people from various countries that was wildly successful beyond their expectations. The lack of attacks on the US is not due to great defense by the Bush administration but rather to the lack of military force on the enemy’s side. Bush showed his true colors by failing to prevent the 9/11 attack not by “preventing” subsequent attacks, which would likely not have occurred in any case.

The American invasion of Iraq was not to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction or to bring democracy to Iraq, but rather to get George W. Bush re-elected. If he had not invaded Iraq, he would not have had much of a “war” on terrorism. Iraq made it a real war, not a fake war, albeit not a war on terrorism.

Where Is Yasser Arafat When You Need Him?

Everyone claims to be surprised by Hamas’ victory in Palestine. What happened? One thing is that Yasser Arafat is gone from the scene. If Yasser Arafat had still been around he may well have been able to orchestrate the politics to produce a Fatah victory. Arafat was a cagy political operator, both on the international and domestic stages. The Israelis couldn’t wait to get rid of Arafat, but it may be another case of be careful what you wish for. Is Israel going to be happier with the Palestinians under the rule of Hamas rather than Arafat?

All indications are that Mahmoud Abbas was selected by the US and Israel to succeed Arafat, because he was a moderate who allowed himself to be influenced by Washington and Tel Aviv (or Jerusalem). But that was certainly part of Fatah's problem; Abbas' appeal to the US and Israel was anathema to Palestinians. So now, what will his relationship be with Hamas? Nobody seems to know. It seems likely that things will get worse before they get better, in part at least because of Sharon’s departure from the scene, in part because of the way Washington and Israel have played their hands. The Europeans, who have been more balanced between Israel and the Palestinians, may be able to play a more constructive role now that American Middle Eastern policy has failed.

Israel, of course, is one of the main problems in dealing with the Iranian nuclear problem. Israel's nuclear arsenal of hundreds of nuclear weapons is a driving force behind Iran's (and earlier, Pakistan's) desire for its own nukes. If things continue to deteriorate, maybe Israel will finally get to use some of them. The good news is that Israel will not use its nukes without strong provocation, because it sees them as the ace in the hole to protect the entire Jewish race if it is ever again threatened by something like the Holocaust. The question is: how closely does Israel see its future linked to the future of the entire Jewish race?

Letter to Congressmen and Senators

I have not written to you for some time. As the year comes to an end, I am writing to tell you some of my concerns, lest you think everything is okay with this constituent.

My main concerns are:
1. Torture carried out by the US Government,
2. Poor progress of the Iraq War,
3. US failure to honor the rule of law,
4. Government corruption,
5. Immigration mess, and
6. Failure to follow up Hurricane Katrina.

Torture. There seems to be little doubt from reliable press reports that the US has used torture in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I express my concerns about torture as a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army artillery on the DMZ, an attorney who is a member of the Alabama bar, and a retired Foreign Service officer who spent over 20 years with the U.S. Department of State. In Vietnam, one of our worries was that we would be captured by the “barbaric” North Vietnamese or Viet Cong and tortured. If you are properly trained as a soldier to hate the enemy, there is always the temptation to torture or mistreat a prisoner you take, but on the other hand, if you are properly trained, you will resist this temptation and uphold what used to be the high standards of the West in general and the United States in particular. As a junior Foreign Service officer, one of my jobs was to look after Americans who were arrested in Brazil, where prisoners were often mistreated. It was my impression (based on an unscientific sampling of what I saw and heard) that those who carried out this mistreatment, which often fell short of real “torture,” were not normal people. They were often sexual deviates, among other things, who delighted in the pain of others. I cannot understand why the US has not reacted in horror at torture by Americans, whether military or CIA. Incidentally, as a Foreign Service officer, I worked regularly with CIA officers, including from the operations side in Washington and overseas, and I do not think they would use torture. I think the CIA people who used torture were probably some kind of paramilitary types, who are a small minority of all CIA employees. The press reports that the Bush Administration, particularly Vice President Cheney, supports the use of torture. I hope that the Congress will assert its authority and force the Government — the military, the CIA, and anybody else — to stop using torture against anyone in US custody. We should also stop “rendition” of prisoners to other countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe, where they may be tortured by the foreign police or military. Prisoners captured by the US should be treated humanely, no matter what the circumstances were under which they were captured. We cannot let Saddam Hussein be the model for our democracy.

Iraq War. I am very concerned that the Iraq War will end up creating more serious problems in the Middle East than it solves. Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but now it has become a breeding ground for terrorists. It may degenerate into civil war, with the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds fighting one another. Iraq could become a giant, black hole of violence that will roil the Middle East for decades to come. Outside of the usual suspects, the Kurds are seen as a threat by Turkey, because of their desire for a greater Kurdistan, which would include part of Turkey, as well as part of Iraq. Although Turkey is a relatively moderate Muslim state, the disintegration of Iraq may radicalize Turkey and draw it into the already volatile mix. Furthermore, the US occupation of Iraq has made the US a focal point of Arab and Muslim hatred. Finally, I am concerned that the main beneficiary of our war there will be Iran, because we have facilitated the ascendancy of the Shiites in Iraq, who have a natural alliance with Iran, which is the only other predominately Shiite country in the world. Iran, of course, is working on an atomic bomb, which we are powerless to stop, because we destroyed our credibility on non-proliferation by being dead wrong about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, and because we are so tied down in Iraq, we have no remaining forces even to make a credible military threat against Iran (not to mention North Korea). In addition, I am disappointed that the Iraq War prevented us from killing or capturing Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the 9/11 attacks. I am concerned that we entered the ill-advised Iraq War because of pressure from Jews, who may have been more concerned about the welfare of Israel than about the US. Many of the neo-conservatives who argued for the war were Jews — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and William Kristol, just to name a few. In light of the Abramoff and AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee) scandals, I am concerned that American politicians are sending Christian soldiers to die in Iraq in return for Jewish money. In the old days, Jews were mostly Democrats, but both of these scandals involve Jews who were trying to influence this Republican Administration and Republicans in Congress (and succeeding). I realize that this is a politically incorrect accusation, but one of the concerns underlying all of the issues I raise in this letter is the American abandonment of the New Testament of the Bible. The Old (Jewish) Testament said “an eye for an eye,” (torture?), but the New (Christian) Testament said, “Love your enemies.” Christians should certainly be tolerant of Jews, but Christians should also live up to their own moral standards. By waging what is a particularly Jewish war in Iraq, we are losing sight of those standards. I have not seen the new Spielberg movie, “Munich,” but I am concerned that it is propaganda supporting the Old Testament, Jewish response to terrorism. I am also disappointed that the US Government does not trust its American troops in Iraq. Most senior officials are protected by private contractors, such as Blackwater or Triple Canopy, not by soldiers or marines. More and more the war is being fought by these private contractors, who may earn ten times what their counterparts in the military make. Many are not Americans. Giving so much money and prestige to these non-military fighters dishonors the troops who are fighting for our country and flag, not just for money.

Rule of Law. US failure to adhere to the rule of law is related to the torture issue, but much broader. For me it began with the US abrogation of the Kyoto Treaty and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. I was particularly upset by the American failure to adhere to the Vienna Convention, which deals with consular access to prisoners arrested in a foreign country, because as a vice consul, I personally used the Vienna Convention to protect Americans arrested in Brazil. As a veteran, I was also dismayed by the US failure to adhere to the Geneva Convention. We will have no basis to protest if American soldiers are captured and tortured by their enemies. (According to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Hitler “considered denouncing the Geneva Convention in order… ‘to make the enemy realize that we are determined to fight for our existence with all the means at our disposal.’ …When some of the officers present raised legal objections Hitler retorted angrily: ‘To hell with that!’” (Page 1100). Hitler apparently did not follow through on his threat.) I thought early in the Bush Administration that these actions indicated only contempt for international law, but as time has passed, the Bush Administration has shown contempt for domestic law as well, up to and including the Constitution and the judicial branch of government in general. If the Bush Administration had been interested in law, it would have negotiated some kind of exit from Kyoto and the ABM Treaty, but it just said, like Hitler, “To hell with that.” Now we find that the Administration created a prison in Cuba to try to escape American law, that it engages in “extraordinary rendition” to evade American legal protection for prisoners, and that it even does weird things with prisoners arrested in the US. The US courts have slapped the Administration’s hand for its handling of Jose Padilla. It remains to be seen what action the Supreme Court will take, if any. Recently revelations about National Security Agency spying on private American citizens have been published. The Administration’s denial of habeas corpus (a right granted in the Constitution, Article I, section 9) for Padilla and possibly others, and its violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures by wiretapping without a court warrant are certainly serious concerns to law-abiding Americans. It may warrant impeachment proceedings. An editorial in the financial newspaper Barron’s for December 26 stated, “Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later.”

Corruption. Jack Abramoff, Congressman Tom DeLay, Congressman Duke Cunningham, White House aide David Safavian, Congressman Bob Ney, and the list of possibly corrupt politicians and lobbyists goes on. AIPAC, which is supposed to be a lobby for Israel, was found to be spying against the US for Israel. Outside government, we find a number of CEO’s in trouble with the law, from Joe Nacchio of Qwest here in Colorado, to Ken Lay of Enron, and even to business icon Jack Welch, who according to the December 26 issue of Barron’s, cooked the books at GE to the tune of about $6 billion to make his reign as CEO look better. I believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg, mainly those who got caught because they were too greedy. I am particularly outraged at Halliburton and Vice President Cheney, who personally benefits financially from Halliburton’s profits, for their war profiteering in Iraq. Halliburton has not performed well, but has raked in millions, perhaps billions, from unsupervised contracts with the US government. Others, who were perhaps a little less greedy, have stayed below the radar and gotten away with billions. I was particularly irked that the US Chamber of Commerce came out in favor of illegal immigration, no doubt because their constituents, the major businesses of America, benefit from this illegal traffic. I think it is odd that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has not gotten more criticism for employing an illegal alien, working for him at the Cherry Cricket restaurant in Denver, who killed an off-duty cop. Apparently businessmen think that violating laws regarding immigration is not really breaking the law. I think it is. If you don’t like the law, change it, don’t violate it.

Immigration. As I noted above in connection with corruption, immigration is a big mess. I think this country needs a policy and needs to adhere to it. I don’t favor amnesty. If we want to have a guest worker program, it should start prospectively. We should not reward people who have come to the US illegally for committing an illegal act. This is one point on which I disagree with Senator John McCain, whom I respect for standing up on many other issues that agree with him on, from torture to funding political campaigns. More generally, I don’t believe that the Department of Homeland Security is up to any of its jobs. It failed in New Orleans after Katrina; it’s failing to control immigration, and it would certainly fail to protect the homeland from another attack. Somebody needs to do something to whip the Department into shape, although I think it is probably impossible. It’s too big; its various activities — from the Coast Guard to the Secret Service, from border patrol to FEMA — are too diverse to produce any synergy.

Katrina. The failure to help New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina epitomizes many of the failures listed above. On the Jewish issue, many families in New York who suffered losses in 9/11 received millions of dollars from the federal government. Osama bin Laden probably attacked the World Trade Center because the New York financial district contains one of the highest concentrations of Jews of any place in the world outside of Israel. A number of Jews working in the financial district were killed, and their families and politically connected friends demanded huge sums in reparations. They got it through their enormous power on Capitol Hill. Payments to New Yorkers from the reparations fund run by Kenneth Feinberg came to about $7 billion, separate from money for reconstruction. If New Orleans had had as many Jewish residents as New York City, it would have been buried in federal money before the rain stopped falling. In addition on the corruption side, then-Senator Tom Daschle’s wife was a lobbyist for American Airlines, one of the companies that could have been sued by victims of the 9/11 attacks. Thus, he shepherded the bill through Congress which made the federal government responsible for paying victims, rather than American Airlines or its insurers. The residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are just plain old Americans, and the federal government could care less about them. They were treated like the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, who were also just ordinary citizens, like me.

It looks like the government only does what lobbyists and campaign donors pay it to do. I hope that you will consider changing that.

Why is Jordan's Government Better Than America's

Reuters reports that several Jordanian officials including Jordan's national security adviser (Condi Rice's counterpart) resigned over the three hotel bombings there. Fifty some odd people were killed in Jordan, versus about 3,000 in 9/11. Why did no American take responsibility for failure in 9/11. In retrospect, it has become clear that George Tenet pretty much destroyed the CIA while he was director. The CIA is now a broken shell of its old (pre-9/11, pre-Iraq War) self. What a failure of leadership! First, Tenet's failure. Then George Bush's failure for not firing him right after 9/11. Did Bush offer to let him stay on if Tenet promised to provide the intelligence support for a war in Iraq? They're all worthless liars; I wouldn't put it past them. Poor America!

Condi Rice, of course, was in charge of national security, but took no responsibility, nor did Don Rumsfeld, who could have sent some Air Force fighters to take out the airliners before they hit the WTC and the Pentagon, thus saving thousands of lives, if he had been doing his job.

Jordan's King Abdullah makes Bush, who hid in Louisiana or Nebraska after the 9/11 attacks, look like a helpless crybaby. And his young, beautiful Queen Rania makes Laura look like an inarticulate, fuddy-duddy old housewife. But of course Laura, who seems to be an honest, intelligent, decent woman, comes off much better in comparison to Queen Rania than stupid, old, dishonest George does in comparison to Abdullah.

Problem with Iraq War Was 9/11

Bush's attempt to save his reputation by saying that most Democrats agreed with his decision to go to war is misguided. It's true that many Democrats voted to allow Bush to go to war in Iraq, but they did so because the 9/11 attacks were still fresh in everyone's mind. The Republicans cynically linked Iraq to 9/11, partly by timing and partly by public arguments, implying a link, made by Bush, Cheney and company. Democrats knew that if they voted against taking out Saddam that they would be seen as insensitive to the attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Egged on by the neo-cons, the Bushies struck while 9/11 was still hot, still in everyone's consciousness.

To me, all the debate about the intelligence is largely irrelevant. I'm glad the Democrats are finally doing something. But the issue is not the intelligence. The issue is using 9/11 to go to war with a country that had little or nothing to do with 9/11. The neo-cons wanted to get Saddam. Cheney has probably wanted to get Saddam ever since he was Secretary of Defense during the first Iraq war, when Bush I stopped him from marching to Baghdad and taking out Saddam. We now see how smart Bush I was compared with Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company. Bush I was a patriot. Bush II and his cronies are just sucking money out of the US Government as fast as they can. In gratitude for his largess with the people's money, Bush II's rich friends will no doubt look after him financially for the rest of his life. It's ironic that the Republicans argue to reduce taxes "because it's your money," but when they get it, they don't treat it as yours; they give it to their rich friends, who pay proportionately little in taxes.

Torture Debases the US

The continuing reports that the US is mistreating prisoners undermines what the United States should be standing for. The most recent report in the Washington Post that the CIA has secret detention centers in Eastern Europe and other places adds a particularly distasteful piece to the puzzle. This administration's disregard for the US Constitution is disgraceful, and is a bad omen for the future of this country. We already know of its contempt for international law. Contempt for international law is bad, but contempt for the US Constitution is worse. Perhaps this contempt was illustrated by Bush's attempt to name Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. She wasn't a bad person, but she knew nothing about the Constitution, and Bush didn't care that she didn't.

However, you don't need the Constitution to know that torture is wrong. Torture is an affront to human decency. We have advanced as a civilization from the days when the church tortured "infidels" in the Inquisition, in the name of Christ, etc. Now we seem to be back there again. Is it an accident that Bush's two appointees to the Supreme Court have been Catholics, the church that ran the Inquisition?

My opinion is that Bush and Cheney, and all the politicians who fail to speak out against torture are failed human beings. They are trash -- black and white (Rice and Bush). They are vile, filthy, inhuman scum. They make me ashamed to be an American. How can so-called "Christians" support them? I expect Colorado Springs to be swallowed up by fire and brimstone any minute.

It's not that these impulses to torture are unusual. Today we have many child molesters, and various, other types of perverts in our society, but we try to keep them under control. In World War II, we had the German Holocaust, the Japanese Bataan death march, and the Japanese atrocities committed in China. We had My Lai in Vietnam. In any war troops who are encouraged to kill the enemy will develop a hatred for the enemy that will lead to atrocities, if not controlled by better men at higher levels. There are always atrocities committed in wars. But that's why we have the Geneva Convention, and the other international laws to prevent torture and other atrocities. Men agree on them in more peaceful times when heads are cooler, and then should adhere to them when passions are hot. But Bush and company rejected them after 9/11. Bush used Saddam Hussein has his role model.

This is awful. Cooler headed, more moral leaders of our society need to rise up against Bush and Cheney and make them change their policies on torture. John McCain and Jimmy Carter have recently done so. More power to them!

Where is the so-called "Christian right" when there is a truly Christian issue to be handled? They are missing in action, demonstrating how little they understand the Bible. A pox on their houses!

Did Libby/Cheney Hate the CIA or Joe Wilson More?

Did Scooter Libby get himself indicted because he hated Joe Wilson so much? I don't think so. It's more likely that Libby hated the CIA that much, and that he saw Joe Wilson as the CIA's representative or front man in a battle between the CIA and the White House. I first heard this idea from Mort Zuckerman on the McLaughlin Group, and then found it in an op-ed by David Ignatius in the Washington Post.

Although Joe Wilson was an ambassador to an African country, he was not one of the top tier of career Foreign Service officers. He was more or less equivalent to a midlevel general in the military, most of whom are never heard from again after they retire. He seems to have some political connections, but again, not of the highest level. He did not have the personal clout to threaten the White House. He wrote an op-ed attacking the White House's WMD justification for the Iraq War, but a lot of other people -- academics, think tank staffers, other retired government officials -- wrote articles attacking various aspects of the Iraq War, presumably without attracting the vicious attacks from Libby, Rove and Cheney that Wilson did.

Therefore, it makes sense to me that the White House saw the CIA as undercutting the White House rationale for the war and thus as a major bureaucratic enemy in Washington. When the White House staff found out that Wilson was married to a CIA agent, they assumed the worst: that he had been put up to his attack on the White House by the CIA. Thus, as a representative of the CIA he came under the kind of attack usually reserved for major Washington players, which he personally was not.

IAEA Nobel a Slap at Bush

The Nobel committee's decision of award the Nobel Peace Prize to the IAEA and ElBaradei, as reported by CNN and many others, is a slap at Bush for his decision to settle everything by war rather than diplomacy. Before the Iraq war, Bush ignored and ridiculed the IAEA along with the other UN inspection efforts in Iraq led by Hans Blix, the former head of the IAEA. The UN was right about weapons of mass destruction, and Bush was wrong. Then Secretary of State Powell ruined his reputation by arguing Bush's case in the UN. Most of Powell's arguments were wrong. I think he was just mistaken or misled by the CIA, but clearly he intended to support Bush's case, although the case had no basis in fact.

So, hooray for the Nobel Committee and for the IAEA! Truth will out. The UN is on the side of the angels. The Bush administration and all its evangelical supporters are on the other side. It's pretty clear when you see where this administration stands on torture at Guantanamo and in Iraq. This administration and its supporters stand for evil, illustrated currently by their opposition to Sen. McCain's bill. Clearly the 9/11 terrorists were more evil, but apparently Bush decided that you have to fight evil with evil. I don't think that was the way to go.

North Korea Nuclear Agreement Redux

The much touted nuclear agreement with North Korea is very similar to the one that the Clinton Administration reached about ten years ago. The issue that caused the US to break off the earlier agreement, uranium enrichment, is not mentioned explicitly in the new agreement, but according to the US is captured because the new agreement refers to all North Korean nuclear activities.

What appears to have happened is that sometime after the Clinton agreement and the tantrum by the Bush administration, Pakistan's A.Q. Khan dropped by North Korea and offered to sell them uranium enrichment technology, because he wanted a little (or a lot of) extra money. The North Koreans thought this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and jumped at it. It turned out to be somewhat of a once in a lifetime opportunity, because once the US learned what Khan was up to, they got Pakistan to rein him in, although they closed the barn door after the horse had escaped.

When the Bush administration learned that North Korea had gotten access to enrichment technology they threw a hissy fit, which is not very helpful in diplomacy. They managed to:
-- cancel the agreement, which provided some restraint on North Korea's activities,
--provoke North Korea to withdraw from the NPT, and
--get the IAEA inspectors thrown out.
All of which left us less secure and more in the dark about what the DPRK was doing.

Now we have a proposal, in principle, to get us more or less back where we were several years ago. At least this administration has more or less come to its senses. The DPRK probably never will, but it's better to have one of the parties at the table to be sane. Probably a lot of the progress on the US side been made possible by getting John Bolton out of the State Department, where he managed to sabotage any similar attempt by Colin Powell. Also, I tend to believe the reports that the Chinese threatened to embarrass Bush and blame the US publicly for the failure of the negotiations if we didn't sign on.

Another Encounter with Richard Perle

I began working on Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) issues while I was in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), about the same time I began working on Soviet high technology issues. There was no non-proliferation regime for controlling delivery systems of weapons of mass destruction, and Reagan decided to follow up on Carter's first steps towards developing one.

One of the first things we needed was a list of items to be controlled by a missile control regime, and one of the State Department experts on controlling high technology was Bill Root, who was the director of the office in the Economic Bureau that handled COCOM issues, the Coordinating Committee that allowed Western countries to coordinate their exports of high technology items to the Soviet Union. Root's assistant, the deputy director, was Vic Comras. Richard Perle took a strong interest in COCOM issues from his Pentagon roost. He and his staff frequently fought with Root and his staff on COCOM issues, just as he and his staff fought with me and my associates (I was too junior to have a staff) on MTCR issues.

One day I was going over a draft list of controlled items for the MTCR with Bill Root. I think that I had left INR and had been reassigned to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), where I continued to work on MTCR issues. (ACDA was then headed by the Ken Adelman, now an outspoken neo-con. It has since been abolished as a separate agency and folded into the State Department.)

Root was explaining how to make the most effective use of technical specifications, so that manufacturers could understand them, and so that the list actually did what we wanted it to do. While we were talking, he got a phone call from Richard Perle. He suggested that we break for lunch and continue after lunch. When I came back to his office after lunch, his staff told me that he had retired from the State Department. I guess he had had it with Perle. Unfortunately, I continued to cross swords with Perle, his minions and successors for years. I believe that one reason the MTCR is so weak is because Perle wanted it so strong. The Western countries would not accept a regime that was as restrictive as Perle wanted, but because of Perle's pressure within the government, it was impossible for the US Government to reach a reasonable compromise with the Europeans and the Japanese.

First Encounter with Richard Perle

My first encounter with Richard Perle occurred when he decided to stop cooperation with a little known Austrian institute that promoted US-Soviet cooperation -- the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

I had started working in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) on Latin American nuclear proliferation issues because I had served a tour in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and then returned to work on the Brazil desk in the Department. While I was there, the INR analyst who had handled Soviet scientific and technological matters for years retired, and nobody wanted the portfolio. So, I volunteered to take it. According to the article on IIASA, this must have been around 1983, during the Reagan administration.

Not long after that, Richard Perle, who was then Assistant Secretary of Defense, decided to end US cooperation with IIASA. I can't remember why, but presumably because he saw it as a one way flow of technology to the old Soviet Union. I found out about Perle's move through Bill Salmon, who had been Science Counselor at the American Embassy in Paris, and had returned to Washington to work as a scientific advisor to the 7th floor, where the Secretary of State and the Under Secretaries work. He and I both tried to preserve a US role in IIASA on the basis that it was harmless (which it was) and that the scientific cooperation was useful. However, Perle was too well connected politically within the Reagan Administration for a couple of non-political State Department types to defeat. So, soon the official US connection to IIASA was broken. As far as I remember, there were no interagency meetings about the decision. Nobody at a policy level wanted to take on Perle.

I was disappointed because there was no debate on the merits of the decision. Was there really any technology leaking? Probably a little, but probably technology that did not matter and was of no military assistance to the Soviet Union. But it was something that Perle could show his fellow conservative hard-liners that he had done to be tough on the Soviet Union.

Is Khalilzad the Best US Ambassador for Iraq?

As an American who was in the Foreign Service and whose ancestors lived in the US for several generations, I am usually skeptical of immigrants or first generation Americans who become American foreign affairs officials. Zalmay Khalilzad, the current US Ambassador to Iraq, fits that description. He was born in Afghanistan and has spent much of his career working on Afghan matters, including serving as US Ambassador to Afghanistan before he was Ambassador to Iraq.

There were a number of Soviet emigres who worked on US-Soviet relations in the bad old days of the Cold War. In most cases they were virulently anti-Soviet, which is understandable, since they had hated their native country strongly enough to leave it and come to America. Over the years, a number of wealthy businessmen have paid large political contributions to get an ambassadorial appointment back to the "old country" they came from. That's fine, but can people who leave their own country be objective about the best policies toward it for the US? They should get to know America first, and let their grandchildren work on foreign policy. It's probably okay for them to work in some second-tier role, in academia perhaps, writing articles about foreign policy, or working at the RAND Corporation (as Khalilzad did early on) or some other think tank in a consulting capacity much like at a university. But actually formulating US policy should be left with people who grew up in the US -- for whom there should be no doubt where their loyalties lie. In the old days such newcomers had trouble getting security clearances necessary to work on foreign policy, but it doesn't seem to be a problem today.

Secondly, there are some problems with sending people back to their home countries (or nearby) as representatives of the United States. People there either love them or hate them, but their opinions are often formed not because of the policies they pursue, but because of opinions about them personally in their native lands. Do the Iraqis see Khalilzad as an American or an Afghan? Certainly he speaks for the US, they probably do not see him exactly as they saw John Negroponte, who is of recent Greek ancestry, but at least not an immigrant.

What about Khalilzad's policy recommendations? He had a lot of input on the new Iraqi constitution, but seems to have caved on issues such as the role of Islamic law in the new Iraq and the way women are treated. Is that because it's the best course of action for the US, or is he just used to Islamic law and a subordinate role for women?

Conservatives Favor Fragmentation of Iraq

David Brooks' column in the NYT on Thursday saw as positive the fact that the Iraqi constitution reflects divisions in Iraqi society. Brooks reports that Amb. Peter Galbraith, who is working in Iraq, says:

There is, he [Galbraith] says, no meaningful Iraqi identity. In the north, you've got a pro-Western Kurdish population. In the south, you've got a Shiite majority that wants a "pale version of an Iranian state." And in the center you've got a Sunni population that is nervous about being trapped in a system in which it would be overrun. In the last election each group expressed its authentic identity, the Kurds by voting for autonomy-minded leaders, the Shiites for clerical parties and the Sunnis by not voting. This constitution gives each group what it wants.

"It's not a problem if a country breaks up, only if it breaks up violently," Galbraith says. "Iraq wasn't created by God. It was created by Winston Churchill."

What Iraqis don't want is a united Iraq. Apparently this is okay with Brooks and his buddies. The Iraqis want three separate countries, perhaps loosely united for a short time. But over the longer term the Shiites want to unite with Iran, the Kurds want to form their own country, Kurdistan, taking the parts of Turkey and Iran that are predominately Kurdish. The Sunnis lose out, because the Kurds and Shiites have all the oil, but the Sunnis have the heart and soul of Iraq, the city of Baghdad, which will have no oil income to support it relatively huge population. The Bushies don't care. Already, under Bush's US rule Baghdad has no infrastructure, no security, no electricity, no water, no sewer.

Churchill wasn't infallible, but he was a heck of a lot smarter than George W. Bush. W has Saddam's gun; that's all he really wanted. He can brandish it in his father's face and ridicule him for not killing Saddam, while Iraq becomes a hotbed of anti-Western terrorism under W's rule. W will let somebody else worry about that after he's gone. It will be interesting to see if David Brooks is gone from the NYT after the Bush adminstration leaves town. I really thought he was smarter than this.

Hegel & Kissinger on Iraq and Vietnam

I think Sen. Chuck Hegel is right when he says that Iraq is looking more and more like Vietnam, and that we need to figure out what to do. He says that we should not destabilize the Middle East: that the longer we stay, the more like is destabilization. I think that leaving any time soon is more likely to produce destabilization than staying. We need a strong hand to put down the insurgency and prevent Iraq from degenerating into civil war under a fundamentalist Islamic government.

In the Washington Post, Kissinger raises the question of what criteria we use to determine whether we are winning in Iraq. If we don't win, Iraq may degenerate into civil war, and the radicals will become ascendant in the Middle East. It would be ironic if the domino theory that politicians used as a justification for the Vietnam War turned out to be more applicable to the Iraq war.

Now is when we need the support of the international community, but because Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld gave the finger to the UN and the international community, we are unlikely to get much support. It may be that they will be so worried about the world instability that the US bull-in-the-china-shop approach has created that they will do something, if only for their own self preservation. But sending John Bolton to the UN is yet another example of Bush giving the finger to the international community, making the cooperation of other countries less likely.

Constitution Failure Could Be Chance for New Start in Iraq

The US plan for Iraq, if there ever was one, is going down the tubes fast. The Iraqis have demonstrated that they are not ready for self-government. Thus, if the constitution writing effort fails, the US should go back in with a strong man, like Gen. MacArthur in Japan, who will take control for a few years, whip the country into shape, and write a constitution for them in the process.

The US invasion of Iraq opened Pandora's box. It made Iraq a hotbed of Middle Eastern terrorism, which it was not before the invasion. We must put the lid back on. We need to double or triple the number of troops in Iraq for years to come, until order is restored and the infrastructure works -- electricity, water, sewers, etc. We need to kick out Halliburton and get some competent people in there who know what they are doing to restore services.

This is our chance. Declare the Iraqi efforts so far a failure and take control. Do it now! It's our country, and now we are just destroying it.

Pakistan Tests Nuclear Capable Missile

Bloomberg is reporting in a story datelined August 11 that Pakistan just tested a nuclear capable missile. What a surprise! No proliferation problem here!

Bloomberg reported:

"Pakistan today conducted a successful test of its first-ever ground-launched cruise missile HATF-VII, also known as Babur,'' the army said from Islamabad. The "Babur cruise has the capability to carry nuclear and conventional warheads to a range of 500 kilometers (300 miles) with a pinpoint accuracy.''

Proliferation Problems in Iran and North Korea

The US is having trouble enforcing its non-proliferation policies against both Iran and North Korea simultaneously, and it's no surprise. One of the problems is India. The US just gave India a get out of jail free card, despite the fact that it was one of the first proliferators. The lesson of India is that if you proliferate and wait patiently, you will be forgiven and you can keep your atomic bombs. Our policy toward Pakistan gives sort of the same message, although somewhat ambiguously. Pakistan has turned into one of our allies in the war against terrorism, despite the fact that it is a notorious proliferator, and has helped other countries (Iran, North Korea) with their nuclear programs.

India is not such a bad country in this regard, and we probably need to work out some transitional arrangement for it to enter the nuclear club, but just to admit it to the club won't work, because everybody else will want to follow India's lead. We need some new agreement to replace or supplement the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It would have to set standards that tend to discourage other countries from following India's example, and that place stringent controls on their nuclear weapons. Ironically, we probably are happy that India has nuclear weapons with which to deter Chinese aggression, while we presumably are unhappy that there is something of a nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has shown total disregard for legalistic solutions to international problems. But that's what we need here. It's hard to envision a network of military alliances that would send US troops in on India's side of it fights China, but would bring our troops in on Pakistan's side if India fights Pakistan. Meanwhile what do we do about Iran and North Korea, and maybe later Brazil, Argentina and some other countries? They see India as the model for developing nuclear weapons. Just hang tough and you'll get to keep them.

The fact that negotiations with Iran and North Korea are going nowhere illustrates the weakness of this policy. It was probably influenced by John Bolton, who thankfully will be otherwise occupied, until we bring the issue to the UN Security Council for sanctions. Speaking of sanctions, what will they be? It's easy for the US to support any sanctions, because we do almost no business with Iran or North Korea. But if you don't do any business, sanctions have no effect. Countries that do more business with Iran (Russia, China) will be much less enthusiastic about sanctions.

Presbyterians Censure Investment in Israel

According to the Washington Post, "A Presbyterian committee accused five companies Friday of contributing to 'ongoing violence that plagues Israel and Palestine' and pledged to use the church's multimillion-dollar stock holdings in the businesses to pressure them to stop."

I was reminded of this when I checked on the Simon Wiesenthal Center web site for my previous post. Complaining about this Presbyterian action is at the top of the Center's list of concerns. It also complains about an action by the Disciples of Christ calling on Israel to tear down the wall it is building to separate Israeli Jews from Palestinian Arabs.

I certainly support these actions by the churches. Israel must be more loving in its treatment of the Palestinians, who lived in Palestine for centuries before it became Israel as a result of a UN resolution shortly after the end of World War II. Hooray for main line Christian churches! I don't totally understand, however, the love affair between fundamentalist Christian evangelicals and Israel.

Big Jewish Contributor Named Ambassador to Netherlands

I have been worried about Jewish influence on the Bush Administration ever since the war in Iraq. The US was not significantly threatened by Iraq, but Israel was. Most of the neo-cons arguing for going to war with Iraq were Jewish: William Kristol, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Ken Adelman, etc. But lots of the big Jewish donors are Democrats: George Soros, for example. Was there big Jewish money behind the Republicans, too? Turns out there was and is: Roland E. Arnall, who was recently named by Bush to be the US Ambassador to the Netherlands, for example, according to the LA Times. Interestingly, one of the pictures accompanying the story on the LA Times web site is of Arnall posing with Jewish Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman.

From the LA Times story, it sounds like Arnall is probably a sleazebag. It says his mortgage company, Ameriquest, used boiler room tactics, bait-and-switch tactics, etc. But he made a lot of money, some of which he apparently gave to George Bush and his Republican colleagues. His main claim to political fame is that he financed the Simon Wiesenthal Center to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

I have been very worried that one origin of the Iraq war was that after 9/11 Jews paid Bush and company to send Christian soldiers to kill Muslims for Israel. That's probably too cynical, but this is some indirect evidence of that motivation.

US Plans to Cut and Run in Iraq

I am not a fan of the Iraq war, but I am also not a fan of the Pentagon's plans to pull out. The problem is that we don't have enough troops in Iraq now, not that we have too many. Bush and Cheney were draft dodgers and are now chicken hawks. The Iraq invasion has turned into a mess, and they have no idea how to clean it up. We need US troops on every street corner to establish order, not a few hundred troops driving into a city, shooting some people and then leaving again. The insurgents just come right back.

And we need to re-establish the Iraqi infrastructure. Maybe Saddam Hussein is responsible for the damage to the electrical grid, the water and sewer system, the oil wells, etc. Or, maybe we did more damage than expected when we bombed the hell out of Iraq during the invasion. In any case, the Pottery Barn rule enunciated by Colin Powell applies. You break it, you own it, and you've got to fix it. A significant percentage of ordinary Iraqis think life was better under Hussein than it is now, because there is no security, and public services don't work. Halliburton is incompetent to get the public services working despite the billions it is getting paid.

Iraq is likely to degenerate into civil war. The Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds will end up fighting each other, each with additional support or opposition from foreign neighbors. The Iranians will help the Shiites. The bulk of the Arab world (which is mainly Sunni) will help the Sunnis, and the Turks will work against the Kurds, because they fear the creation of a Kurdistan nation that will include part of Turkey. We opened Pandora's box when we invaded, and Bush and company don't have a clue how to close it.

I think Sam Donaldson was right on ABC news on Sunday morning. The administration wants the Iraq constitutional assembly to stay on schedule and wants all the other elections, etc., on schedule, so that we can declare victory and get the hell out. It worked in Vietnam. (Everybody knows how well that war ended.) Bush and company think it will work in Iraq, too. It will probably work about as well. Remember the genocide in the Cambodian killing fields. Basically the world looked the other way, and we will probably look the other way when the killing fields in Iraq run red with blood again. It probably won't be Saddam Hussein who does the blood letting, but it will probably be somebody about as bad.

How I Came To Be A Democrat

The first political event I ever attended was a Republican rally for Barry Goldwater for President in Montgomery, Alabama. After serving in the Army in Vietnam and joining the Foreign Service, I may have become pretty liberal. What happened when I was assigned to Warsaw, Poland, in the mid-1990's may have confirmed my then existing predilections.

I was assigned to be the Science Counselor at the American Embassy in Warsaw, where my main job was supposed to be to manage scientific cooperation between the US and Poland under an arrangement named the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund II. It was Fund II, because the first fund had been closed during the bad old days of Polish martial law. An agreement to work under the second Fund had been signed just before I left for Poland, and it was to last for five years.

After about one year, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over Congress and cancelled the funding for our Polish cooperation. The agreement had a clause that said if either of the parties was unable to fund the cooperation, it would end. This clause had been included with Poland in mind, because it faced so many financial problems as it came out of 50 years of Communist rule, but America took advantage of it. The Polish Foreign Ministry called me in almost weekly to complain that the US was not living up to its agreement. I told them that I would report their complaints to Washington, but if they were really serious, they would raise the matter with the Ambassador in Warsaw, or with the Secretary of State or one of his immediate subordinates in Washington. But Poland then wanted more than anything to be included in NATO, and it would not do anything that might endanger that goal, such as making a big stink about the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund. So, they kept raising the matter with me. Although I knew there was nothing personal about it, I ended up taking it personally. I began to feel that I was at least partly responsible for American breaking its word to Poland. I began to feel that I could not represent an America that did not keep its word.

It happened that about this time I became eligible to retire from the Foreign Service, and after discussing it with my wife, I had about decided to retire, so that I would not have to represent a dishonest government. You may say that it is naive to think that any government is going to be totally honest. But I think that if a government is going to be dishonest, there should be a reason for it. For example, virtually every Foreign Service officer will have to lie at one time or another because he or she knows something from intelligence that he or she cannot admit knowing without compromising that intelligence. (Unless of course he has the same lack of morals and patriotism as Robert Novak.) But in this case, the United States was not going to be bankrupted by paying for continued scientific cooperation with Poland, which was the circumstance foreseen by the clause in question.

In any case, I was about to retire, when out of the blue I got a call from Washington asking me if I would agree to go to Rome, where the Science Counselor had be unexpectedly removed. He was not a Foreign Service officer, and the State Department said that after several years, he could not continue to serve in Rome without becoming one, which for some reason he would not do. So, my wife agreed to move from Warsaw to Rome with me.

When I got to Rome, it turned out that one of my main duties was to handle issues involving the North Korean nuclear program, in particular the follow-up to the KEDO agreement, which promised North Korea two Western style reactors that do not produce weapons usable by-products in return for shutting down the plutonium production reactor(s) that North Korea had been using. In addition, the US, Japan and South Korea promised North Korea to supply it with a certain amount of fuel oil to provide energy to replace that produced by the indigenous reactors until the new non-proliferating reactors could come on line.

Once again, the Republican Congress refused to appropriate the money for all the fuel oil that the US had promised. So, one of my jobs was to go the Italians (both in their national capacity and at that time as the Presidency of the European Union) and ask them to contribute money to make up for what the Congress had refused to appropriate. Following up on my experience with the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund II in Poland, I was not happy. I felt that once again the US was failing to honor its promises. Thus, I told the Embassy that I would stay until Italy relinquished its presidency of the EU, but then I would retire.

Another more personal matter intervened, as well. After I agreed to move from Warsaw to Rome, my wife and I decided that it would save the government money, and would be interesting for us, to drive from Warsaw to Rome. We could have had our car shipped, and had the government purchase airline tickets, etc., but we could drive in a few days. Hotels, food and gas would certainly be less than airline tickets and the cost of shipping our car. Plus, we could carry stuff in our car that would reduce the amount we had to ship at government expense. In any case, we had packed everything. Big stuff had been shipped to Rome. The car was loaded to roof, and was parked outside ready to leave that night for Krakow, our first stop. I was saying good-bye to friends in the Embassy, and while I was in the defense attache's office, someone came in to tell me that I had just had a call from Rome saying, "Don't leave!" It was tough to get me the message, because the call had come to a Pole in our personnel section who could not come to the defense attache's office, because it was in a secure, American-only part of the Embassy. So, the Pole had to find an American to deliver the message.

It turned out that the problem was that Newt Gingrich had closed down the American government, and only essential personnel could work. However, I had no place to live, either in Warsaw (since we had moved out) or in Rome. I was furious and called Rome. Because I was just being a good soldier and going where the State Department asked me to go, I didn't know any of the personalities in Rome. It turned out that the DCM (the deputy ambassador) was an old friend from an assignment in Brasilia, Brazil. He arranged some deal with the personnel office in Rome that allowed us to travel. But for what I considered a personal insult, possibly stranding by wife and me with nowhere to live in Warsaw during a cold November, Newt Gingrich won my undying displeasure (a mild word). I also thought it was ironic that the Republicans claim to be the party of business, but if there is one thing that businesses have to do, it's meet a payroll. Newt couldn't do that. Now meeting payrolls is less important. Many businesses now leave their employees twisting in the wind, especially when it comes to health care and retirement. Newt was ahead of his time, unfortunately for us all.

Ironically, when we returned to northern Virginia after I retired, in the first election I voted in after my return to the States, I voted for Republican John Warner for senator, because I thought (and still think) he was (and is) a good man. But he was the exception. In general, no more Republicans.

However, I still think Goldwater, like John Warner and John McCain, was probably a good man, much better than most of the rest of the sleazeballs currently occupying the seats of power in the Republican party he helped create.

Difference between Iraq and Vietnam

The deaths in Iraq of about 20 Marines from Ohio points out an important difference between the way we are fighting the Iraq war and the way we fought the Vietnam war. Troops are sent to Iraq in cohesive units, like the one from Ohio. In Vietnam, they were sent pretty much individually, probably due to the draft, but perhaps due to some political considerations.

I enlisted when I came up 1-A to try to maintain some control over my destiny. However, I was sent to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where very few of my colleagues from Alabama were sent. Then, after going through basic training, I was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and given further training there with no one from my basic training unit. Then only three of us who had trained together at Fort Sill were sent to Vietnam together, and although we were sent to the same artillery battalion, we were sent to different batteries, and so never saw each other after the first few days. As individual soldiers reached the end of their tour, they were replaced individually, so that the unit in Vietnam was in constant flux, a few old hands and a few new ones.

Of course this created problems for unit cohesiveness in Vietnam, but I think that one of the worst problems was coming home, because there was no support. Most of your buddies were still back in Vietnam, and the ones who had left before you were back home wherever they lived, some in New York, some in California, etc. After several years, I did see one of my old battery mates in the Washington, DC, area, where we both had moved by coincidence. I think this lack of support had a lot to do with the feeling of alienation when troops came back singly. The country rejected them as war criminals, and they didn't have anywhere to turn for support. The guys who might have supported them were halfway across the country. And the veterans who were nearby did not have the same shared experiences as the guys who had served in Vietnam with you.

I think the current system of maintaining the integrity of entire units is better. But when you have a unit suffer significant casualties, as the Marines from Ohio did, then it is tougher. But even then there is a shared support system for the families of the dead, because other families live nearby.

Quillen Right on Intelligent Design

In today's Denver Post, Ed Quillen's op-ed on "What Intelligent Design?" makes exactly the right reply to those who would replace evolution with intelligent design in our schools and scientific laboratories. If whoever did the intelligent design was so smart, why aren't we (and most of our fellow creatures) better designed?

In additions to the points raised by Quillen, I wonder: Why can't dogs talk? Why do some turtles live longer than human beings? Why do so many human beings become sick and useless years before they die? Who designed the dodo bird?

Bush Believes He Is Still at War

Bush's advisors tried to change the "war on terror" into a "global struggle against violent extremism," but Bush himself isn't buying it. Bush wants to be a war president. The fact that we are not clearly winning the war is apparently less important than being at war. The military appears to be uncomfortable with being in charge of the war on terror. Rumsfeld and his four star lackeys led the charge to change the name from war to struggle.

Karl Rove made fun of "liberals" who thought that the police, rather than the military, had to be the front line against terrorism. Rove said that after the 9/11 attacks, liberals, "wanted to prepare indictments, therapy and understanding" for the attackers. Rove clearly thought indictments were useless, but after the London underground bombings, Tony Blair didn't declare war on any new countries, as Bush declared war on Iraq. Rather, Blair has increased the role of the British police in fighting terrorism. No doubt Rove ridicules Blair and the British people in private, despite the fact that the British bombers appear to be home grown in Britain, rather than people who have come from the Middle East specifically to carry out the bombings.

Bush has no clue what he's doing, or what needs to be done to protect the American people, but he knows that he likes being a war president. By the way, how's the war in Iraq going these days? How many American military have been killed? How many innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed? How much better is life for the average Iraqi? How democratic is the new Iraqi government under the new constitution going to be?