Author: Jim Lobe

Clark Hoyt, the public editor, or ombudsman, of the New York Times, went after Edward Luttwak in his weekly column today for the military historian’s controversial May 12 op-ed on why Sen. Obama would be considered an “apostate” by many Muslims and thus particularly susceptible to assassination attempts if, as president, he were to go on a state visit to a Muslim nation. After consulting with five Islamic scholars at U.S. universities on whether Luttwak’s argument was consistent with Islamic law, Hoyt concluded that Luttwak’s assertions were essentially baseless and “extreme” and strongly implied that the op-ed should not have been published at all. (The headline of Hoyt’s essay was “Entitled to Their Opinions, Yes. But Their Facts?”) Hoyt also took to task the op-ed editor, David Shipley, for publishing only letters to the editor in response to the original op-ed and not providing space for a full rebuttal.

This is not the first time that Luttwak, who has long gloried in his role as an unconventional policy provocateur (usually, but not always, on behalf of hawkish, if not neo-conservative, forces in Washington), has written attention-grabbing op-eds that are based on no factual evidence of any kind. I haven’t compiled them in any systematic way, but one example some 20 years ago really stands out as a warning to all op-ed editors at elite newspapers that Luttwak was not the most careful of researchers.

On November 22, 1987, Luttwak published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “A Member of Moscow’s Exclusive Club” which argued that the fact that then-Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was seated next to East German leader Erich Honecker and Polish President Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski “in the section reserved for the leaders of Leninist governments in good standing” at the opening of the Communist Party Congress in Moscow conveyed a “very definite message: the Sandinista regime has been admitted to the very exclusive club of governments that the Soviet Union regards as permanent, organic allies.” [emphasis in original] The conclusion:

“If there were any suspicion that the Sandinistas might actually allow the democratization required by the Arias peace plan, creating the possibility of a peaceful change of government by free elections, Ortega would not have been seated where he was.”

Within the op-ed space, the Post reprinted the AP photo cropped in a way that only Ortega’s face was visible.

There was only one problem with both the photo and Luttwak’s analysis (aside from the fact that the Sandinistas did indeed accede to a peaceful change of government by free elections under the Arias plan): Ortega was not seated next to Honecker and Jaruzelski. What Luttwak had thought was one photo of the three leaders seated together that had appeared in the Times and other newspapers on November 3 was actually two distinct photos separated by a thin white line: one of Honecker and Jaruzelski seated next to each other, the other of Ortega and a man whom the Times later identified as Gus Hall. In fact, the latter two were seated in an entirely different section of the hall, as was indicated by the entirely different angles of Ortega’s face (presumably fixed on Gorbachev at the podium) and those of Honecker and Jaruzelski.

Luttwak, in other words, had based his entire analysis (and he was very close to senior Reagan administration officials, such as then-Undersecretary for Policy Fred Ikle and Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams) at the time –that the Soviet Union now considered Nicaragua as as integral a part of its empire as Poland and East Germany — on a total visual misapprehension.

“Am I the only person who has seen the photographs published in all our newspapers,” he asked. “Americans are still furiously debating the nature of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and its intent in regard to the Arias peace plan, but surely that question has been settled conclusively by the photos that appeared on Nov. 3, the day after the opening of the Party Congress in Moscow.”

Despite several letters to the editor (including one from me sent the day of the op-ed’s publication) pointing out the obvious error, the Post never issued a correction or an explanation. (After all, in order to crop Ortega’s photo to incorporate it into Luttwak’s op-ed, the newspaper’s editors should have known that the factual premise on which his analysis was based was completely faulty.) So It fell to a Post columnist, the late and great Phil Geyelin, to write his own op-ed in rebuttal one week after Luttwak’s article came out. In reply to Luttwak’s question whether he was the only person who had seen the “telltale photographs,” Geyelin wrote:

“No, Edward, you are not the only one; but you may be the only one who failed to notice that the photographic display in The New York Times actually consisted of two photographs, one of Honecker and Jaruzelski seated side by side, and another of Ortega alone. There was white space between the two shots and nothing in the caption to suggest that the three men were even in the same room.

“Nor was there, according to authorities I’ve talked to, a special section ‘reserved’ for ‘Leninist governments.’ True, the communist countries of Eastern Europe were lumped together. But Ortega was no closer to them than he was to a mixed gaggle of Socialist leaders, including representatives of India’s ruling National Congress, the Italian Communist Party, and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat. So much for the ‘political precision’ of Soviet seating arrangements or the claim that ”the nature” of the Sandinistas, or their intentions, has been ’settled conclusively.’

So, the next time you see an analysis by Edward Luttwak, be sure to scrutinize the factual premises very carefully. That goes especially for editors and talk-show producers.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

Speaking of Rupert Murdoch, the May edition of his Far Eastern Economic Review was banned in China, according to Friday’s Washington Times, which attributed the banning to the magazine’s publication of an essay by the American Enterprise Institute’s “Freedom Scholar,” Michael Ledeen, entitled “Beijing Embraces Classical Fascism.”

I find the ban absurd myself, but I have to say that I’ve very rarely read such nonsense as Ledeen’s essay, even by Ledeen whose writings I have monitored pretty closely since 9/11 for indications of what Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Victor Davis Hansen, Dick Cheney, and even Karl Rove may be talking about when they get together in various permutations and combinations.

He argues, among other things, that the China of today is what Italy would look like “50 years after the fascist revolution” if Mussolini’s corporatist state had somehow survived into the 1970’s, requiring of the reader an act based solely on his or her imagination and absolutely no empirical evidence of any kind. In Ledeen’s imagination, such a state would “no longer be a system based on charisma, but would instead rest almost entirely on political repression, the leaders would be businesslike and cynical, not idealistic, and they would constantly invoke formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the ‘great Italian people…’.” While Ledeen might think that description constitutes “classical fascism,” I don’t see the difference between that and a typical autocratic regime that bases its legitimacy on some form of nationalism. After about another 1,200 words of rampant speculation based on virtually nothing but (mostly questionable) cliches and stereotypes — “the Chinese, like the European fascists, are intensely xenophobic…;” “Just like Germany and Italy in the interwar period, China feels betrayed and humiliated, and seeks to avenge her many historic wounds;” “…the short history of classical fascism suggests that it is only a matter of time before China will pursue confrontation with the West” — Ledeen concludes: “It follows that the West must prepare for war with China, hoping thereby to deter it.”

Based on my own modest experience in China, I have no doubt that the country (not unlike the U.S.) is nationalistic, that its ambitions as an emerging global power are significant, and that (again, like the U.S.) it considers military power an essential component of great-power status. But “fascist?” That’s quite a leap.

From his own post-graduate study of Italian fascism, as well as his work under the great George Mosse at the University of Wisconsin, surely Ledeen knows that a cult of violence (to which Ledeen and other hard-line neo-cons like Charles Krauthammer have themselves shown a perverse attraction) and the so-called Fuehrerprinzip — the notion that a charismatic leader who thoroughly embodies the virtues of a nation should be revered and his orders followed without question — are central to the “classical” fascist ideologies that grew up in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. And while one can argue that both characteristics were on display during the Cultural Revolution, it would be very difficult to find any trace of them in the Chinese leadership today. That a once-respected and influential journal should publish this kind of agitprop is truly disgraceful.

Amid renewed speculation after President Bush’s Knesset speech last week that he may yet order an attack on Iran before he leaves office, particularly if Sen. Obama should win the November elections, it appears that the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is preparing the case for why an attack — either by the U.S. or Israel — on Tehran’s nuclear facilities might not be as calamitous as most analysts, including top Pentagon brass, believe. WINEP, of course, was founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has acted as an integral part of the so-called Israel Lobby since its launch.

The case is previewed in an article by Yossi Melman that appeared in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz Thursday. It consists mainly of an interview of WINEP’s Patrick Clawson, co-author with another WINEP analyst, Michael Eisenstadt, of an upcoming paper entitled “The Last Resort.” Clawson concludes that fears about possible Iranian retaliation are exaggerated and that, in fact, “Iran’s options for responding are limited and weak.”

To Helena Cobban, the estimable Middle East analyst whose blog, www.justworldnews.org, is widely read here in Washington and in the region, the paper smacks of “cakewalk” all over again. Cobban, who also works with the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) and who just published a new book entitled Re-Engage! America and the World After Bush, critiques the argument here. I would note that I received alarmed e-mail messages from three experts in the region — one Israeli and two Arabs — that referred me to the Haaretz article and suggested, like Cobban, that it could mark the launch of a new propaganda effort.

Meanwhile, Gen. David Petraeus, in his confirmation hearings Thursday, offered the latest official Pentagon view of Iran, repeating Sec. Gates’ recent remarks about needing to gain “leverage” with Tehran to engage it in a serious way diplomatically. (Last year, Gates and Rice were talking about not want to engage Iran as a “supplicant;” this year, it’s all about “leverage.”)

Here’s the view of Adm. Fallon’s replacement of Centcom commander:

“Iran continues to be a destabilizing influence in the region. It persists in its non-transparent pursuit of nuclear technology and continues to fund, train and arm dangerous militia organizations.

“Iran’s activities have been particularly harmful in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan. In each location, Tehran has to varying degrees fueled proxy wars, in an effort to increase its influence and pursue its regional ambitions.

“Even as we work with leaders in the region, to help protect our partners from Iranian intimidation or coercion, however, we must also explore policies that, over the long term, offer the possibility of more constructive relations, if that is possible.

“Together with regional and global partners, we need to seek ways to encourage Iran to respect the integrity of other states, to embrace non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and to contribute to regional stability rather than regional instability.”

That’s from Petraeus’ prepared testimony which must have been cleared by Adm. Mullen and Sec. Gates. In answers to questions, he expressed doubt about the usefulness of new rounds of negotiations with Tehran under current circumstances.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

Another hard-line neo-conservative group — and one that received a nearly $80,000 grant from the Pentagon just last September — may also have died. In fact, its effective demise may actually have preceded the the grant’s approval by the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Eric Edelman.

I’m referring to the Policy Forum on International Security Affairs (aka the Policy Forum on International Security Issues) headed by Devon Gaffney Cross, the sister of Frank Gaffney, the ultra-hawkish president of the Center for Security Policy, and a member of the Defense Policy Board since 2001. She launched the organization in London shortly after 9/11 to help improve British and European public opinion about the Bush administration’s “global war on terror” by hosting off-the-record meetings at exclusive London clubs and posh Parisian restaurants between selected reporters from influential publications and senior U.S. defense officials and prominent neo-cons outside the administration. I have posted on the Policy Forum’s activities and relationships with other groups at last year’s Prague Democracy and Security Conference here and here, and its funding by Edelman’s office here.

Unlike PNAC’s, the Policy Forum’s website (www.policyforumuk.com) is still visible on the Internet, although it hasn’t been updated for about nine months now, despite its self-described mission not only to “create an open channel of dialogue between those who create the international news and those who report it,” but also “to expand our original mission beyond the narrow confines of the journalistic community, and to engage with the wider European community [by] reaching out to the active, curious and engaged public…”

It turns out that, according to the ICC Directory of UK Companies, the Policy Forum, which was officially incorporated in the UK on December 18, 2003, initiated its dissolution on March 11, 2007, ten days after its “managing director,” German real estate magnate Zacharias Gertler, resigned his position. It filed its first dissolution on November 12, 2007 — just two months after it was awarded the non-competitive contract by Edelman’s office ”for technical support and consulting services for public liaison and media outreach services in support of the diplomacy mission including addressing and informing European and Middle Eastern audiences on the challenges facing U.S. National Security policies” — and its final dissolution on March 25 this year. This raises an obvious question: why did the Pentagon award a non-competitive contract to an entity that was in the process of dissolving itself?

Now, there is evidence that the Policy Forum is also incorporated in the State of New York, where Cross, whose husband is president of the New York Jets organization, has her primary residence. According to taxexemptworld.com, an organization known as “Policy Forum on International Security (c/o Devon Cross)” — described as a “charitable organization” involved in “housing development, construction, and management” — gained tax-exempt status in New York in September, 2006. So it may be that the Pentagon contracted with the New York-based Policy Forum and not the London-based Policy Forum, but, given the small size of the contract, we would have to file an FOIA request to find out.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

For those who continue to believe that John McCain’s realist advisers exercise real influence on his foreign-policy positions, the latest piece of contrary evidence was provided by the candidate today in Miami where he served red meat, hot and steaming, to the hard-liners who have made so much progress in promoting democratic change on the island over the last 48 years. His speech came less than a week after the Council on Foreign Relations, the Mecca of foreign-policy realism, released a major report on U.S.-Latin American relations that called for unilaterally relaxing sanctions imposed by Bush on travel and remittances “with the aim of lifting the embargo against Cuba.”

In any event, the speech offered no hint of difference between McCain’s policy proposals and those pursued by Bush. He belittled the transition from Fidel to Raul Castro as meaningless and declared that the embargo should remain intact until Havana releases “all political prisoners unconditionally”, [legalizes] political parties, labor unions, and free media, and [schedules] internationally monitored elections.”

He attacked Obama for, like the CFR, proposing to ease the embargo and for “want[ing] to sit down unconditionally for a presidential meeting with Raul Castro,” a step which McCain said “would send the worst possible signal to Cuba’s dictators — there is no need to undertake fundamental reforms, they can simply wait for a unilateral change in U.S. policy.”

He also insisted that maintaining the embargo would be “just one element of a broader approach” on Cuba that would include providing “more material assistance and moral support…, and increase Radio and TV Marti and other means to communicate directly with the Cuban people.”

“My Justice Department would vigorously prosecute Cuban officials implicated in the murder of Americans, drug trafficking and other crimes. While our Cuba policy will not always be in accord with that of our hemispheric and European partners, my administration will begin an active dialogue with them to develop a plan for post Castro Cuba, a plan that will spark rapid change and a new awakening in that country.”

Of course, you expect this kind of thing from a Republican in south Florida, but it’s interesting to note that, when McCain was still a maverick eight years ago, he was the only Republican candidate who said he would be willing to engage Fidel Castro in a ‘’step-by-step reciprocal” process of easing sanctions in exchange for political and economic reforms. He repeatedly cited the process that led to the normalization of relations with Vietnam as a model.

Now, however, consistent with the Bush approach of posing sweeping preconditions to any negotiation process, McCain appears more than eager to pander to the most hard-line sectors of the Cuban-American community.

Hillary and Obama are addressing Cuban-American audiences in Florida later this week.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

The website of the Bill Kristol’s Project for the New American Century (www.newamericancentury.org) has vanished. If you go to the site, you are diverted to another one that says, “This Account Has Been Suspended. Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.” A metaphor, perhaps, for the bankruptcy of the ideas that inspired the project and the strategic disaster that they produced for U.S. interests in Iraq, the greater Middle East, and the wider world?

You can still find most of PNAC’s documents — including its letters and their signatories — through www.archive.org, but it seems that the original site is gone for lack of payment. While the site became effectively dormant in 2005, its sudden disappearance is somewhat alarming. What does it say about the new American Century itself, particularly in light of the slew of recent books on the decline of American power and the end of unipolarity? A coincidence or an augury?

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.