Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Middle East Page 20 of 21

Communist Dictatorship China Reaffirms It Will Never Do a Nuclear First Strike, Unlike US

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On April 24, 2010

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Who are the bad guys, again?

Retired People’s Liberation Army Major General Xu Guangyu said in the newspaper commentary that China wanted a minimal nuclear deterrent and would avoid any arms race. “China resolutely adheres to a defensive nuclear strategy, and has always adhered to a policy that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances,” wrote Xu

Meanwhile, the US…

The Barack Obama administration’s declaration in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it is reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against Iran represents a new element in a strategy of persuading Tehran that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites is a serious possibility if Iran does not bow to the demand that it cease uranium enrichment.

Although administration officials have carefully refrained from drawing any direct connection between the new nuclear option and the Israeli threat, the NPR broadens the range of contingencies in which nuclear weapons might play a role so as to include an Iranian military response to an Israeli attack.

A war involving Iran that begins with an Israeli attack is the only plausible scenario that would fit the category of contingencies in the document.

The NPR describes the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in those contingencies as a “deterrent”. A strategy of exploiting the Israeli threat to attack Iran would seek to deter an Iranian response to such an attack and thus make it more plausible.

In other words, if Israel attacks Iran, the US says it might nuke Iran if Iran strikes back after an Israeli attacks.

Say what?  Oh, I see “You’re going to let my friend Israel beat the shit out of you, or I’m going to pull the trigger of this gun I have pointed at your head.  Because you’re a bad country, and Israel and the US are the good guys.”

Gee, the idea of those crazy Iranians getting nukes seems so much scarier than the US having them, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, in other news, the US locks up more of its own people than China, despite having a population which is one quarter of China’s.

A force for peace, and the home of the free, indeed.

Enough BS About “I can’t judge because I’ve never been a soldier”

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On April 7, 2010

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Seriously, Sean-Paul’s my friend, but this sort of thing (which is hardly unique to him) in reference to the video of the killing of reporters and other civilians is waffling of the highest order:

As for the actions of the soldiers? At first, I wasn’t sure how to feel, but I know enough about war to know I know nothing of war, so I reserve judgment. Alas, I can’t help but to think that the rules of engagement were violated here in some fashion. But again, I cannot say with any certainty and so withhold judgment.

Waffle irons have nothing on this.

No, the fact that you haven’t been to war doesn’t mean you can’t judge, and especially the fact that you aren’t a civilian doesn’t mean you can’t judge.   This constant mantra of “oh, the troops aren’t to blame” excuses acts of barbarity.

And as a civilian, it’s in your best interest to not brush aside acts of barbarity by militaries.

Somehow the argument “I don’t understand” never gets applied in reverse.  It gets applied to American soldiers, but not to say, Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters.  They commit atrocities and we have no hesitation in condemning them.

Imagine you did understand.  What possible reason could these soldiers have for their actions which would excuse them?  That they’re under pressure?  So what?  That may make it understandable, it doesn’t make it excusable.  Any more than if I think I understand why some terrorist kills a bunch of civilians, that understanding makes it acceptable.

The knee-jerk “support the troops! Never say anything bad about our boys” stuff is noxious.  A proper functioning military in a civilized society court-martials people who do things like this.

And this is not an isolated incident.  As Siun notes:

At the time the New York Times reported that “the military has paid more than $32 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians for noncombat-related killings, injuries and property damage, an Army spokeswoman said. That figure does not include condolence payments made at a unit commander’s discretion.” And given that the average payment for a dead adult civilian was $3,000, you begin to get some sense of the scale of devastation we have brought to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

You do the math…  And that’s just deaths where they felt they had to pay someone off, where payments are on the record.

This is military policy.  The reason it was covered up is that it’s not an aberation, it’s policy.  As Greenwald notes, this is what the US military does. The rot goes all the way to the top.

And no, “following orders” is not an excuse.

Enough waffling.  What happened in that video was wrong.  What’s even worse is that there’s no reason to believe it was an isolated incident.

The Iranian Government Destroys Its Own Legitimacy

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On December 27, 2009

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I don’t have a ton to say about the riots and protests in Iran.  But what I do think is important is how the regime has destroyed its own legitimacy by killing people on Ashura, when Hussein was killed.  Such killing is strictly forbidden, and even the Shah didn’t kill people on Ashura.

In an Islamic Republic doing such a thing is a violation of the legitimacy of the government itself.  And Iranians are still close enough to their revolution, and brave enough personally, that doing so matters (unlike wholesale violation of the US constitution or widespread vote theft in America, for example, which is meaningless because most Americans don’t actually care enough to get violent about it.)

It is also interesting to note that the same thing is happening here that happened to Shah — cycles of mourning at funerals keep things at a fever pitch.  The more people the government kills, the more mourning there is to be done, the more mourning, the more opportunities for protests and riots.  And since those mourning rituals and funerals are a big deal culturally and religiously, trying to suppress them increases the illegitimacy of the state.

And the Iranians are getting hardcore, they burned down a police station, for example.

I don’t know how this is going to play out.  But, one way or the other, I admire people who are willing to fight.

JPMorgan Illustrates What Banks Do When They Have Money

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On November 19, 2009

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And it isn’t lending it out cheap:

JPMorgan will on Thursday unveil a £1bn deal to buy Cazenove, the UK broker with which it has had a joint venture for the past five years.

The bank is to pay about 535p a share in a deal in which David Mayhew, widely recognised as one of the City’s best-connected corporate advisers, will retain the title of chairman of the Cazenove brand.

Last year myself and Stirling both noted that what would be done by banks if they were bailed out is to horde their money, not lend it out cheap, and save it to buy up competitors, make leveraged plays and so on.  That is EXACTLY what has happened.  Exactly.

During a downturn, if you have money, you don’t want to lend it out for low gains when you can buy up competitors, cheap.  You don’t want to lend it out cheap, when you can make leveraged plays off the bottom of a stock and commodity market which is bound to go up because trillions are being poured into it by central banks.  You want to take that money, and buy things while they are cheap, not lend it out for 4 or 5% returns, when you can make many many times that.

Why, exactly, governments expect banks who have better ways to make money to act like retail banks who don’t have any other way to make money but lend out at prime +3 or 4 percent is beyond me.  They think they’ll do it out of gratitude for being bailed out, or some sort of sense of civic duty?  Most politicians may be stupid, venal and corrupt—but it’s that very greed and venality which means they should understand that banks will do no such thing.

Banks will do it only if they are forced to do it.  Remove retail banking from investment banking, insurance and brokerage services, and disallow any risky games on the markets for retail banks.  Remove all special facilities from non retail banks because Goldman Sachs should not be doing highly leveraged plays with free money from the Federal Reserve.  And reinstitute serious leverage limits, not just for retail banks but for everyone.

As for retail banks, if they don’t lend to the public at rates approved of by the Federal Reserve and Congress, they too should lose their access to special facilities.  Banks are given the valuable right to borrow money for almost nothing, and to, in effect, print money by lending out money they don’t have.  Those are privileges which are given to them in the expectation that they will use them to benefit the economy.  If they refuse to do so, they should lose the privileges.

None of this is rocket science.  Those of us who predicted both the crisis and what the bungling of the crisis would cause, however, are precisely the people who are not listened to by those in power.  Obama is having his jobs summit, and forget nobodies like me, he isn’t even inviting somebodies like Stiglitz and Krugman.

If you’ve been right down the line, then you are precisely the sort of person who isn’t “serious” and shouldn’t be listened to when it comes to what it takes to fix the problem.

Why?  Because everyone knows that fixing the problem will end the gravy train for a lot of very rich people.  A lot of very rich people who give a great deal of money to Democrats in general, and gave a lot of money to Obama in particular.  If the cost of keeping that gravy train and the donations it enables going is tens of millions of unemployed people, well, so be it. Because serious people know that real change isn’t going to happen under Obama or under this Democratic Congress, so there’s no point in even talking to people who might suggest it.

Plus ca change. Plus c’est la même chose.

Iranian Nuclear Hysteria

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On September 30, 2009

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The story dominating the news cycle right now is that Iran declared a nuclear site after it realized that the US already knew about it, and this means Iran wants nukes and is working on getting them.

The story is questionable at best. Under the Non Proliferation Treaty, Iran believes it needs to only declare sites 180 days before it introduces nuclear materials to them. This has been Iran’s stand for years, and there is no evidence that the site has any nuclear materials in it.

Second: we don’t know why Iran declared the site now. Maybe it’s because they knew the US knew (what is this, n-dimensional chess), or maybe it’s because they were going to anyway. We don’t know. We do know that the last time the US accused a country of having a nuclear program, however, that the US lied.

At this point there is no firm evidence that Iran is trying to get nuclear weapons. Various intelligence services have claimed Iran is, but none of them have produced evidence to be evaluated in the light of day.

Nonetheless the call is out for “severe sanctions”. Now, I’m not entirely sure that I know what severe sanctions means, but I think a safe guess is that the US wants sanctions similar to those imposed on Iraq in the nineties.

Those sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of people, possibly as many as a million. They were as devastating to Iraq as an all-out war. In terms of lives lost, the substantive difference between the sanctions and the Iraq war is that in the Iraq war American soldiers were killed as well—a few thousand American soldiers, a number much smaller than the Iraqi deaths, but a number which matters much more to Americans.

However, if deaths of non-Americans matter to you, then you should oppose Iranian sanctions. Especially since there is so far no convincing evidence that Iran even has a military nuclear program.

But even if Iran did have a military nuclear program, severe sanctions, or a military strike might still be overkill. Like them or hate them, Iran’s leadership are not insane. Nuclear weapons come with return addresses. If Iran were foolish enough to use a nuke, the country would be reduced to a glowing glass lined parking lot. Iran’s leadership would have to be insane and suicidal to do so.

Screaming constantly about how dangerous a nuclear Iran would be is simply war-mongering intended to whip up hysteria. The sort of lies which are used to whip Westerners up before every action which kills large numbers of foreigners.

To recap:

There is no public convincing evidence that Iran has a military nuclear program.

Even if Iran has somehow successfully concealed such a program from the innumerable inspections it undergoes, and did somehow manage to get nukes, it would be no more likely to use them than any other nuclear armed nation.

Sanctions could kill as many people as a major war, and they are being sold without solid evidence and through a campaign which tries to claim that Iranian nukes would be a real threat to the US, which is simply untrue.

Although American soldiers won’t die due to sanctions on Iran, the effect of sanctions could well be equal to that of a major war on Iranians. As with war, the decision to kill that number of people requires the highest evidence and the most careful consideration: not accusations which aren’t backed up by proof or hysteria about America being endangered.

We’ve been down this road once. Let’s not go down it again, and let’s not be quiet just because the people trying to shove us down this road have a (D) by their name.

The West Drives Iran Into China’s Arms

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On September 29, 2009

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China started exporting petrol to Iran recently.  Petrol is one of the main things Iran needs from the outside world.

Meanwhile, the West, and the US in specific, seems determined to impose sanctions if Iran doesn’t give up its nuclear program, a program that Iran insists is for civilian purposes.

If the West does  impose “draconian sanction” they will shove Iran firmly into China’s orbit unless China is onside with the sanctions.  It is unlikely China will be.  China has very consistently supported the individual sovereignty of various countries the West tries to use sanctions against (both Burma and Sudan, among others), and they are willing to back it up with large amounts of aid, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but for cold hard pragmatic reasons.

One major arm of China’s foreign policy is to lock up as much access to natural resources as possible and helping Iran is part of that policy.

The Chinese think long term and strategically about these issues.  America and the West in general are being driven by irrational hysteria on this issue, and short term thinking in general.

The evidence that Iran is working towards a nuclear bomb is scanty though not nonexistent, and even if they had nuclear weapons the only thing it would change is the ability of other nations to threaten them with armed force.  Tehran’s leaders are not insane, they would be no more likely to use nuclear weapons than any other country which has them, and probably less likely than some.  Nuclear weapons, including weapons provided to terrorists, come with “return addresses” —they have distinctive signatures which can be used to figure out where they came from.  If Iran were to use a nuke in any way against outsiders, other nuclear powers would respond and wipe the country off the map.

Iran probably isn’t working on nukes.  Even if it is, its getting them doesn’t particularly matter.  And the West’s preoccupation with the Iranian nuclear program is only driving them into the arms of the Chinese.

The Gore Gutlessness Lesson for Mousavi

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On June 22, 2009

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A friend of mine, someone I respect a great deal, just observed that Mousavi calling for more demonstrations was sad, given that it isn’t his head that’s going to be cracked.  Leaving aside the fact that I’m not so sure he’s sacrosanct, if things go far enough, my response is “so what?”

Because, with all due respect it’s that sort of attitude that let Bush get appointed as President in 2000 and thus lead to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.  Nothing’s worth getting heads cracked to most Westerners.  Certainly not an election which was even more unquestionably stolen than the Iranian one (which may or may not have been.)

For all the good Gore has done since then, I’ll despise him to the day I die for his gutlessness in 2000.  Democratic crowds, including leg-breakers from the unions and other sources were ready to roll, and he told them to stand down.  If there had been large protests, there is a very good chance that Sandra Day O’Connor would have blinked, and voted against Bush.

The price of Gore’s gutlessness was a lot of deaths.  A hell of a lot of deaths, and the gutting of the US constitution, which the country may never recover from.

I don’t know if Mousavi is making the right decision in continuing to keep the fight going.  But I do know that whether it’s the right decision or not is not determined by whether or not his opponents will use violence.  If you are unwilling to stand up to violence, then anyone who is willing to use it controls you.  You become their slave, and a slave to fear.

Anti-Abortion Terrorism Chalks Up Another Success

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On June 9, 2009

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The measure of terrorism's success

The measure of terrorism's success

The Tiller family has announced that it is closing Dr. Tiller’s clinic. The terrorists have won, and that assassination has succeeded in doing what it was meant to do. I’m sure the murderer is very happy tonight.

The bottom line on right wing terrorism against abortion rights is that it’s succeeding and has been for some time. Take a good hard look at the chart at the top and try and tell me otherwise. And when it comes to late term abortions, well, Tiller was one of the very few who still provided the service. According to Tiller, speaking in March before his assassination, he was one of only three doctors left in the US doing such abortions. Now there are two. If those numbers are right, one third of all abortion doctors doing these abortions were just killed.

In the aftermath of Tiller’s death, I heard a lot of progressives talking about how the anti-abortion folks were losing. The bottom line is that they’re winning. It is harder to get abortions than it was 5 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 25 years ago. Abortion access peaked in 1982 and has been declining ever since. Consider that the US population has increased by approximately 30% since 1982.  At the same time the number of providers has dropped by over a third.

Now, most types of abortion violence had been in a slow, long term decline (the exception is burglary) so there’s certainly some reason for optimism. At the same time I strongly suspect that anti-abortion violence will rise, along with other types of right wing terrorism, during Obama’s administration.

The larger point is simpler. It’s harder to get an abortion than it has ever been since Roe vs. Wade, because there are just less doctors who perform abortions. Until more doctors step up and start providing abortions, especially late term abortions, this will continue. It’s hard to blame doctors for not being willing to provide abortions. Not only could you be killed for doing so, your family will be stalked and perhaps harmed, your clinic will be burglarized, you will be subject to constant legal harassment and your life will, in general, be made a living hell along with the lives of your family, friends and associates.

It’s a lot to ask of someone. But this comes back to the truth of rights. You have no rights that people aren’t willing to suffer and die for. Rights that someone won’t put their life on the line for will be taken away by people who are willing to resort to intimidation, violence and to push for laws which take those rights away.

So the questions, then are these:

1) Where are the doctors who are willing to risk their lives, the lives of their families, and to endure constant harassment to ensure that women keep this right, not just in theory, but in practice?

2) Where are the mass of people who will provide money, aid, and physical protection to the doctors who put their lives on the line? Yes, they exist even now, but obviously there aren’t enough of them, because the number of abortion providers keeps going down.

Is this a right you’re willing to risk your life to keep? If enough people don’t answer that question yes, then you will continue to lose it.

Chart Source

Cross posted at Crooks and Liars.

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