Bloodthirsty Liberal

Ralph Peters with some words of encouragement for sub-Saharan Africa:

Whatever planet Earth may find in short supply in 2010, violence and misrule will remain abundant, from the most-recent round of Muslim-vs.-Christian massacres in Nigeria to Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez’s delight in unleashing his thugs on students marching for freedom.

But no region — not even sub-Saharan Africa — competes with the greater Middle East when it comes to wanton savagery, thwarted opportunities and the danger posed to innocent populations around the world. With fanatical terrorists of unprecedented brutality, Islamist extremists pursuing nuclear weapons, rogue regimes, disintegrating states and threats of genocide against Israel, the lands of heat and dust between the Nile and the Indus form a realm of deadly failure that will haunt the civilized world throughout our lifetimes.

A survey of the region’s key countries — and problems — doesn’t offer much good news for the Obama Administration’s naive foreign policy efforts:

Said survey follows.

Oh, okay, you want a few highlights?

LEBANON: This isn’t a country — it’s a temporary stand-off.

…

Hezbollah has been rearming mightily in the wake of its 2006 war with Israel. A new war would devastate much of Lebanon — if internal strife doesn’t do it first.

…

EGYPT: … Egypt faces a potential succession crisis as octogenarian president Hosni Mubarak, who’s ruled the country for almost three decades, grooms his singularly unimpressive son, Gamal, to take over upon his death.

…

SYRIA: The neighborhood’s in such awful shape that this police state’s beginning to look like a success story…. When Damascus looks like a beacon, it’s getting awfully dark in the Middle East.

…

IRAQ: Can’t say we didn’t try. After years of serious progress toward a national compromise… [r]econciliation has come to a screeching halt. The Shia are smug, the Sunnis feel betrayed, and the Kurds are still denied title to the traditionally Kurdish city of Kirkuk. Every faction’s fighting for a greater share of oil revenues. And the Obama administration’s AWOL (this was Bush’s war — we wouldn’t want a positive outcome).

…

SAUDI ARABIA: Its two main exports are oil and fanaticism…. They care only for their repressive version of Islam. The birthplace of Bin Laden, Saudi Arabia’s differences with his terror organization are over strategy and tactics, not over their mutual goal of forcing extremist Islam on all of humanity.

IRAN: Racing to acquire nuclear weapons, delighting in the prospect of a cataclysmic war that would lead to the “return of the hidden imam,” beating the hell out of its own people in the streets, murdering members of the intelligentsia, and explicit in its vows to destroy Israel, the government of Iran continues to be protected by China and Russia.

If you want to know more about that benighted, poxy patch of scrub and swampland… I pity you. You need a date.

Given the circumstances, he is actually being gentle

Years ago I had a long conversation with someone at HRW about their statements regarding Israel and their lack of coverage of Palestinian terrorism. We went around in circles, unfortunately. This was when I was still a member of the general Left-of-Center world and still identified with the Democrat Party and the liberal world view. I’ve since learned that no one listens to anyone else and I’ve stopped trying to convince anyone of the problems with the UN, Amnesty, HRW, etc., except on this blog. The founder of HRW is finally at the end of his rope with the situation, and he is speaking out in today’s NY Times:

AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.

Note for interested readers: Natan Sharansky was a prisoner in the Soviet gulag for something like 12 years. During those days he was called Anatoly Sharansky. He was freed by the pressures put on the Soviets by the Regan administration and went to live in Israel. In my view, he is the founder of the entire Human Rights Movement. Today he is a pariah to those folks. And why? Because he is an outspoken Israeli and a Zionist.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.

Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

The organization is expressly concerned mainly with how wars are fought, not with motivations. To be sure, even victims of aggression are bound by the laws of war and must do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties. Nevertheless, there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally.

But how does Human Rights Watch know that these laws have been violated? In Gaza and elsewhere where there is no access to the battlefield or to the military and political leaders who make strategic decisions, it is extremely difficult to make definitive judgments about war crimes. Reporting often relies on witnesses whose stories cannot be verified and who may testify for political advantage or because they fear retaliation from their own rulers. Significantly, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an expert on warfare, has said that the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza “did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

Only by returning to its founding mission and the spirit of humility that animated it can Human Rights Watch resurrect itself as a moral force in the Middle East and throughout the world. If it fails to do that, its credibility will be seriously undermined and its important role in the world significantly diminished.

Robert L. Bernstein, the former president and chief executive of Random House, was the chairman of Human Rights Watch from 1978 to 1998.

I thought that what he had to say was so important that I put it all out there. None of this will convince the Israel-haters out there and I’m sure we’ll hear from them. There isn’t much to be done about that. Organizations like the UN, and HRW, and Amnesty, have taken a position which is blatantly hostile to Israel. They embolden the haters. This stance harms Jewish people everywhere, and also harms all vulnerable minorities. The bullies of the world observe this treatment and fully understand that no one will care about any other group.

- Aggie

Or is it Barck O’Bush?

Because I’m starting to have trouble telling them apart.

Obama accuses Syria of supporting terrorism, undermining U.S.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday he had renewed sanctions against Syria because it posed a continuing threat to U.S. interests.

Obama, in a letter to Congress notifying it of his decision, accused Damascus of “supporting terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, and undermining U.S. and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.” [That howling sound is the moveon, daily kos crowd screaming that the President isn’t living up to his branding. - Aggie]

“For these reasons I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect the national emergency declared with respect to this threat and to maintain in force the sanctions,” Obama said in the letter to Congress.

Renewal of the sanctions is required each year by Congress. The announcement came following the visit of two U.S. envoys to Damascus this week to try to improve ties.

The sanctions, imposed by former President George W. Bush, prohibit arms exports to Syria, block Syrian airlines from operating in the United States and deny Syrians suspected of being associated with terrorist groups access to the U.S. financial system.

While the United States has made clear it wants better relations with Syria, a nation it has long accused of supporting terrorism, the renewal of sanctions shows Washington is not yet ready for a dramatic improvement in relations.

Isn’t it interesting that the Obama administration seems to be continuing the Bush policies while denying it all day and all night? I’m obviously not talking about domestic policies here, but in terms of the War on Terror, now called The Annoyance of Obnoxious Neighbors or Let’s Work Together To Learn To Land Airplanes, depending on which department head is speaking. He is changing the language but pursuing very similar policy in some cases. In other cases, he is off his rocker (see Torture Memos).

- Aggie

I may be repeating myself here, but why do we diss our old friends—pawing Queen Elizabeth like she’s Mick Jagger, and presenting Gordon Brown with an incomplete set of season two of Two and a Half Men—while courting the world’s sleaziest dictators and cruelest despots?

Of course consider the source:

Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that the United States and Syria are close to restoring full diplomatic ties, but he doubted Cuba’s new openness means its leaders are ready to grant free speech or change their political system.

“I don’t have much doubt that the present tentative plan of our government and the Syrian government is to re-establish diplomatic relations when it’s propitious to do so,” he told The Associated Press.

“I don’t see any impediment to it. It will be an orderly process,” Carter said in a telephone interview from Quito, Ecuador, at the start of a four-nation South American trip. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens this year.”

Ruthless anti-Semite, sworn enemy of Israel,
and ignorer of basic human rights
meets President of Syria

Maybe Carter doesn’t know what he’s talking about (maybe?), and I don’t get why he’s opining on Syria from Ecuador—but when he says “I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens this year,” I have to agree. I wouldn’t be surprised either.

Jonah Goldberg at NRO found this nugget in the latest New Yorker:

In his e-mail, Assad praised the diplomatic efforts of former President Jimmy Carter. “Carter is most knowledgeable about the Middle East and he does not try to dictate or give sermons,” Assad said. “He sincerely is trying to think creatively and find solutions that are outside the box.” Carter’s calls for engagement with Hamas have angered many in Israel and America. In “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land,” published in January, Carter described Syria as “a key factor in any overall regional peace.” Last December, Carter visited Syria, and met not only with President Assad but with Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader.

A senior White House official confirmed that the Obama transition team had been informed in advance of Carter’s trip to Syria, and that Carter met with Obama shortly before the Inauguration. The two men—Obama was accompanied only by David Axelrod, the President’s senior adviser, who helped arrange the meeting; and Carter by his wife, Rosalynn—discussed the Middle East for an hour. Carter declined to discuss his meeting with Obama, but he did write in an e-mail that he hoped the new President “would pursue a wide-ranging dialogue as soon as possible with the Assad government.” An understanding between Washington and Damascus, he said, “could set the stage for successful Israeli-Syrian talks.”

Jonah notes that if Sy Hersh wrote it, there’s only about a 50% chance it’s true.

Obama has yet to make his intentions clear toward Israel and the Middle East—but Carter sure has. And if he has Obama’s ear (God knows there’s a lot of it), Israel had better say Kaddish.

They went to the site and collected soil samples

Maybe they could teach Europe how to grow a set.

An Israeli commando unit carried out a reconnaissance mission at an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor that was later destroyed by the Israel Air Force, the Swiss daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported Thursday.

The 12-man unit was dropped by two helicopters onto the site, according to the report, where they proceeded to take soil samples and photographs.

The clandestine operation reportedly took place in August 2007, about a month before the IAF strike on the al-Kabir reactor in the country’s eastern desert, said the article. The piece was written by Hans Ruehle, former chief of the planning staff of the German Defense Ministry.
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Ruehle also reported that a top-ranked Iranian defector told the United States that Iran was financing North Korean moves to make Syria into a nuclear weapons power, leading to the Israeli air strike.

The article goes into detail about an Iranian connection and fills in gaps about Israel’s September 6, 2007, raid that is said to have knocked out Syria’s reportedly nearly-completed reactor.

Ali Reza Asghari, a retired general in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and a former deputy defense minister, changed sides in February 2007 and provided considerable information to the West on Iran’s own nuclear program, the paper reported.

The biggest surprise, however, was his assertion that Iran was financing a secret nuclear project of Syria and North Korea, he said. No one in the American intelligence scene had heard anything of it. And the Israelis who were immediately informed also were completely unaware.

Ruehle, who did not identify the sources of his information, publishes and comments on security and nuclear proliferation in different European newspapers and broadcasts and has held prominent roles in German and NATO institutions.

U.S. intelligence had detected North Korean ship deliveries of construction supplies to Syria that started in 2002, and American satellites spotted the construction as early as 2003, but regarded the work as nothing unusual, in part because the Syrians had banned radio and telephones from the site and handled communications solely by messengers - medieval but effective, Ruehle said.

“The analysis was conclusive that it was a North Korean-type reactor, a gas graphite model,” Ruehle said.

Other sources have suggested that the reactor might have been large enough to make about one nuclear weapon’s worth of plutonium a year.

Just before the Israeli commando raid, a North Korean ship was intercepted en route to Syria with nuclear fuel rods, underscoring the need for fast action, he said.

On the morning of September 6, 2007, seven Israeli F-15 fighter bombers reportedly took off to the north. They flew along the Mediterranean coast, brushed past Turkey and pressed on into Syria. Fifty kilometers (30 miles) from their target they fired 22 rockets at the three identified objects inside the Kibar complex, according to Ruehle.

“The Syrians were completely surprised. By the time their air defense systems were ready, the Israeli planes were well out of range. The mission was successful, the reactor destroyed,” Ruehle said.

“Israel estimates that Iran had paid North Korea between $1 billion and $2 billion for the project,” Ruehle said.

Let’s see… George W. Bush defined the Axis of Evil. I know, there really is no such thing as evil, only man-caused disasters, but let’s try to remember anyway. Who was in the Axis of Evil? Was it Iran, Syria and North Korea? The article indicates that nobody knew that North Korea, Syria and Iran were participating in building this weapon, but I don’t buy it.

- Aggie

Back in 1981, Israel blew up a nuclear facility in Iraq. In those days, our good friends, the French, were helping Saddam Hussein to have his very own nuclear bombs, and somewhere in my files, I have a happy picture of Jacques Chiraq and a young Saddam standing around what looks like a giant beer making thingy. Everyone was so ticked off at Israel.

This isn’t the best one, but it will do. From 1975:

Don’t they look young!

In 2007, Israel did the same thing in Syria, and again, the world wasn’t too happy. They even suggested that Israel lied about what the Syrians were doing.

Once again, we have Israel to thank:

U.S.: Evidence mounts of Syrian nuclear cover-up
By Reuters

The United States said on Wednesday that United Nations inspectors had found growing evidence of covert nuclear activity in Syria, and European allies said a lack of Syrian transparency demanded utmost scrutiny.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is looking into U.S. intelligence reports that Syria had almost built a North Korean-designed, nuclear reactor meant to yield bomb-grade plutonium before Israel bombed it in 2007.

Last month, the IAEA said inspectors had found enough traces of uranium in soil samples taken in a trip to the bombed site granted by Syria last June to constitute a “significant” find, and satellite pictures taken before the Israeli bombing revealed a building resembling a reactor.

But the IAEA report said Syria, citing national security reasons, had ignored many agency requests for further on-the-ground access and documentation to back up its assertion that Israel’s target was a purely conventional military building.

Yadda, yadda, yadda… will we ever learn?

- Aggie

Speaking truth to Baathist power:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Syrian women’s rights activist Bassam Al-Qadhi, which aired on Al-Dunya TV on February 11, 2009:

“The killing of women because they are women is a worldwide phenomenon. The problem with us is not that we kill [women], while others do not. The problem is that we reward the killer. This is where the difference lies.

“In Europe or America, someone might kill his wife because he suspected she was having an affair with a neighbor, for example. He might kill her, but he will stand trial as a murderer, and he will go to jail. He will not receive a legal certificate of good character, saying that he was ‘defending his honor.’

“The problem with us is that we give a certificate of good character for this, that we say to him: ‘Off you go. You can enjoy your life, because you killed your wife, your daughter, or your sister.’ This is the fundamental difference, and this is what we are trying to change.”

It gets even worse, believe it or not.

Mean old Israel burnt the first batch

Investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which works under the auspices of the United Nations, have found traces of enriched uranium in Syria, a potential sign that the country had been attempting to develop a nuclear program, Reuters quoted diplomats familiar with the IAEA investigation as saying.

According to Monday’s report, the uranium was discovered at the same site which was allegedly bombed by IAF jets in September 2007. Behind the scenes, Israel has reportedly been working to convince US and other Western officials of the legitimacy of the air strike, but the findings of the IAEA investigators provide the first independent confirmation that a nuclear program had indeed been in development.

Back in 1981, the world was very upset with Israel because she blew up Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons facility. The French were especially upset, because they helped Saddam to build it. Can you even imagine how awful it would have been if that lunatic had nuclear weapons?

Here’s a picture of Saddam and Chirac looking over a French reactor, taken in 1975:

My guess is that Obama World will welcome many new countries into the NWC, the Nuclear Weapon Club.

- Aggie

That’s one fewer terrorist to talk to, President Obama:

The U.S. military conducted a successful strike into Syria on Sunday to kill a suspected al Qaeda facilitator, a U.S. official said Monday.

The American official, who would not be identified but who has access to U.S. intelligence, identified the intended target of the attack as “Abu Ghadiya,” an Iraqi whose family the official said has been active in smuggling money, weapons and foreign fighters across the Syrian border into Iraq.

Syrian foreign minister Waleed Mouallem disputed the explanation.

“This is lies from the United States,” Mouallem said.

Okay, now I believe it. And if smuggling weapons, money, and foreign fighters is enough to earn you a Hellfire missile up your left nostril, may I know why there aren’t a whole lot more dead Iranians? Or do we have that long overdue development to look forward to?

PS: Senator Obama could not be reached for comment:

Noah Pollak notes the apparent contradiction between Obama’s support for fighting al Qaeda in Pakistan and his silence on the U.S. cross-border attack into Syria on al Qaeda.

…

I emailed the Obama campaign yesterday asking if they would issue a statement on the attack, and I received no response. Perhaps the mainstream press would prefer that Obama not have to take a position on a controversial foreign policy matter just days before voters have the opportunity to make him our commander in chief.

He’s gone from voting present to being absent.