Month: October 2010

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 12th, 2010:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: An American Jewish Committee poll found that “Jewish approval of President Obama is dropping,” according to JTA. On Iran, the poll found “American Jewish confidence in Obama’s approach to Iran also has fallen” to 43 percent approval. Nearly 60 percent of those American Jews polled approved of military action to prevent an Iranian bomb, and a third disapproved. Seventy percent approved of Israeli military action, which just over a quarter of respondents opposed.

Commentary: Since Obama seems unlikely to strike Iran, Jennifer Rubin, writing at the Contentions blog, cited the responses to questions about Iran in the AJC poll reported by JTA as the central reason for the overall dip in approval. “In answer to the question of whether anything can wean Jews of their ‘sick addiction‘ to the Democratic Party” — referencing Rachel Abrams — “the answer seems to be ‘Obama,’” she writes.

Reuters: Lesley Wroughton reports that on Friday Iran’s Economy Minister Shamseddin Hosseini accused the World Bank of “discriminatory behavior” in its decision not to authorize new development assistance in Iran. Hosseini said that development and humanitarian assistance were not part of UN sanctions and that the Bank’s refusal to consider a new lending strategy to Iran went against the Bank’s articles of agreement. “The shocking point is that, based on inquiry made from the legal department of the World Bank, the developmental and humanitarian projects are excluded from the imposed sanctions on Iran,” Hosseini said, “in no section of the legal opinion reasons can be found to reduce relations and not financing such new projects.” U.S. lawmakers have pressured the Bank to cut its lending to Iran.

Foreign Policy: Iranian analysts tend to use Red China, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to contextualize and predict Iran’s behavior. Carnegie Endowment Associate Karim Sadjadpour looks at those examples, rejects two and chooses one. Using former U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan’s 1947 essay on the Soviet Union, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” as a template, Sadjadpour substitutes references to the former USSR with words related to the Islamic Republic and offers a guide to how the U.S. should manage its Iran policy. Sadjadpour rejects the China comparison, and the ensuing strategy of rapprochement. He concludes anti-Americanism is too deeply ingrained in the identity of the Islamic Republic. Instead, the U.S. should put aside fears that Iran is expansionist or genocidal—there is little evidence to support these fears—and accept that U.S. policies might not bring immediate change in Iran. Instead, the parallels to the Soviet Union’s “siege mentality” should help form a new U.S. policy based on Iran’s longterm strategic weaknesses and, ultimately, unsustainable security policies and revolutionary ideology.

Last Wednesday, October 6, a panel of speakers from a variety of political positions met antiwar activists at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco to discuss how to build a consensus to end the war in Afghanistan.

The speakers included Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, Antiwar.com’s Angela Keaton, Republican congressional candidate John Dennis, labor leader Michael Eisenscher, and radio talk show host Karel. The moderator was Jeff Johnson of PeacePundit.com, and included remarks by Unitarian Church leaders Dolores Perez Priem, Sandra Schwartz, Jeremiah Kalendae, and Louis Vitale, and Anthony Gregory of the Independent Institute.

Here is the video of the event, in several parts:

Angela Keaton:

Daniel Ellsberg (Part I):

Continue reading “Daniel Ellsberg, Angela Keaton, et al. on Afghanistan (video)”

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 11th, 2010:

The Washington Post: In an editorial, WaPo’s Jackson Diehl writes the Obama administration’s foreign policy strategy is marked by public and highly choreographed “process” and timelines. On Iran, Diehl points to the administration’s statement last spring that Iran was two to five years away from producing a bomb. Whether the sanctions approach will be successful is still unclear, says Diehl, but it has set a clock ticking. The scheduled drawdown of troops in Afghanistan by July 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ goal of creating a “framework agreement” by next September, and the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, all are on timelines and will be put to a test before the 2012 presidential election. He concludes, “Process is always important to good policy — and yes, the Bush administration sometimes demonstrated what can go wrong when there are no deadlines. Yet in the Obama administration, the timetable is becoming an end in itself. It reflects a president who is fixed on disposing of foreign policy problems — and not so much on solving them.”

The New York Times: In his oped, Roger Cohen reflects on his breakfast with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and concludes that he is ultimately, “odious” but not dangerous. Cohen points out that hyping the threat of Ahmadinejad has become a U.S. and Israeli pastime, with estimates for when Iran will acquire an atomic bomb ranging from 1999 to 2014. “There is a dangerous pattern here of Israeli and U.S. alarmism,” he writes. Iran is a “paper tiger,” says Cohen. “One of the things there’s time for, if you’re not playing games with the Iran specter, is a serious push for an Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough that would further undermine the Iranian president.”

The Daily Beast: Reza Aslan writes that Farsi1, a Farsi-language satellite station broadcasting in Iran, is among the most popular in the banned-but-tolerated Iranian satellite TV market. But Farsi1 is partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewCorp, which operates a slew of right wing American outlets like the New York Post and Fox News Network. Several officials in the Islamic Republic have denounced it as a tool of the West’s war with Iran, as they have done with BBC Persian and Voice Of America (which are operated by the British and U.S. governments, respectively). “Part of why the government is so wary about these satellite programs is that they are usually filled with overt political propaganda against the Iranian regime (this includes BBC and Voice of America),” writes Aslan. “But what controversy exists about Farsi1 is focused on the main man behind the project, Rupert Murdoch,”whose Fox News has fed “anti-Islam hysteria.”

Nine years ago the U.S invasion of Afghanistan began. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the U.S would still be in Afghanistan nine years later — struggling politically and operationally, to “win.” Unbeknownst to most Americans at the time, we would fight a parallel war in Iraq two years into that nine-year stretch, cycling more than 2.1 million servicemen and women through three million tours of duty in both countries.

Today, more than a dozen members of Iraq Veterans Against the War stood on the steps of the Russell Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington to call for an end to the deployment of mentally traumatized troops into these seemingly endless conflicts. Studies suggest that upwards of 35 percent of troops come home from war with some degree of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, yet recent reports indicate that men and women are being redeployed zonked out on painkillers and psychotropic drugs, and in a growing number of documented cases, suicidal.

I spoke with Ethan McCord, a former Army infantry soldier who was present the day of the civilian killings made infamous by the Wikileaks’ Collateral Murder video. He actually pulled the wounded children out of the car that had been attacked by a U.S Apache helicopter. He said that event traumatized him so much he had asked for counseling that night. He said his commander told him to shove it.

Today, McCord is a single dad with three children — the youngest, 3, had been born while he was deployed. He pointed out that the children here in the U.S who were eight years old when we first invaded Afghanistan would be nearly eligible to join the military today. Sadly, both of us wondered aloud about our own eight-year-olds at home today, nine years from now. Where would they be?

More on McCord, the IVAW campaign, and the antiwar veterans’ ongoing struggle to be heard,  in my Tuesday column.

Justin Raimondo will be speaking at California Lutheran University’s Lundring Events Center with Reason magazine’s Senior Editor Brian Doherty on October 26 from 5:30p.m.-7:30p.m. The talk, “Anti-Interventionism: The Left and Right Wing Traditions,” is being hosted by the Steven and Susan Woskow Trust and co-sponsored by Students for Liberty, the World Can’t Wait, Ventura County Libertarian Party, Center for Equality & Justice, and Antiwar.com. The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited so please RSVP to secure your seat: Steven Woskow at 805-306-1860. Interested in hosting Justin? Email wendy@antiwar.com to coordinate an event.