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.