the human province

I've just read two interesting pieces on Iran. The first is in Foreign Affairs, penned by Ray Takeyh and argues for US détente with Iran. He argues for normalized relations as a starting point and not an end to negotiations, which should be direct and conducted on four tracks:

1. setting a timetable for resuming a diplomatic relationship, gradually phasing out U.S. sanctions, and returning Iran's frozen assets
2. nuclear negotiations
3. stabilizing Iraq
4. Israel-Palestine

The article is much more detailed than I can relay in a short post, so it's worth reading his outlook on the situation in Tehran and why past strategies on Iran are no longer appropriate and are likely to fail.

The second article is a piece by Sy Hersh on the Bush administration's redirection in the Middle East:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

This seems like an obviously bad idea and reflects how the many in Washington are incapable of looking at the region in a nuanced way: either the Sunnis are evil or the Shi'a are. As anyone who lives here (or even has a fleeting interest in Middle Eastern politics) knows, the region is much more complicated than that. And the childish idea of throwing one's weight fully behind radical Saudi-backed Sunni elements against a mutual foe (the Soviets at the time) has already been tried, to disastrous results, in Afghanistan.

Hersh mentions working with Saudi-sponsored Sunni islamists in covert actions in Lebanon to undermine Hezbollah and Tehran:

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don't have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't like. It’s a very high-risk venture."

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting "to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. "Salafis are sick and hateful, and I'm very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said. "They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly."

So there is a decision to realign US policy in the region to fit even more tightly with Sunni interests, including in Iraq. It looks like the US is so blinded by the idea of getting at Iran that it's willing to target Iraqi Shi'a groups even when they (including al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi) are aligned with the US-backed government of al-Maliki. (Cleverly enough, it looks like al-Sadr is going to let the US forces do his dirty work by cleansing his militia of elements that are not firmly under his control.)

Likewise, they're stepping up their support here in Lebanon to include arming salafi Sunni groups that are allied only temporarily with the government in Beirut but whose long-standing alliances are with groups like al-Qaida. So this means that the US is effectively funding some of the "foreign jihadis" who are leaving places like Tripoli in northern Lebanon kill Americans in Iraq.

Moreover, it looks like Washington might be flirting with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in hopes of overturning the Assad regime in Damascus -- the goal of at least part of the government in Beirut (Jumblatt and Geagea, and maybe Hariri too).

Now the Brotherhood is, in my mind, probably closer to Hamas and Hezbollah than it is to al-Qaida in terms of the possibility of it being reformed into a governing party as opposed to being just a terrorist group. But the fact remains that we've already followed the Saudis (who are now telling us that they can control these Sunni groups) when they took the lead with Pakistan in financing the Taliban, and look where that got us. At the end of the day, these radical Sunni groups hate the Shi'a and they hate Iran, but they hate us even more, and when they're done with what they consider the near enemy, they'll inevitably come looking for the far enemy: us.

Otherwise, the rest of the Hersh article addresses a lot of different issues in the region right now and is definitely worth reading, particularly as concerns Lebanese politics. Also, Hersh has managed to get an interview with Nasrallah, although he doesn't seem to have gotten many interesting quotes.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

Apparently the US is stepping up its rhetoric in discouraging Israel from even exploring Syria's overtures to peace talks. Ha'aretz reports that the Israeli government is split:

Israeli officials, including those in the intelligence community, are divided over the degree to which Syrian President Bashar Assad is serious and sincere in his call for peace talks with Israel.

One view describes Assad's call as a propaganda campaign, and insists that the Syrian leader is not serious. Among those holding this view is Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In Military Intelligence the view differs. There are those who say that Assad is serious in his call for peace talks, but also say that this does not mean that those talks would be easy for Israel. They even suggest that there is a very good chance that the talks would fail.

I've mentioned this before and still think that peace talks between Israel and Syria would be a good thing. Furhtermore, although I have my doubts about the exact offer and whether Assad will accept it, I have the feeling that Assad is ready to make a deal if he can get the Golan Heights back, maybe even if it means turning the land into a demilitarized park under Syrian sovereignty but open to Israeli picnickers.

In a strange move, the US has decided to put Jihad al-Binaa, Hezbollah's (re)construction company, on its list of terrorist organizations. This is a move followed by their decision to classify Al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station as a terrorist organization. This last act has already resulted in the jailing of two cable providers in Brooklyn.

Al-Binaa has been responsible for rebuilding thousands of homes in Lebanon that were destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. This is supposed to be a gesture that will hinder Hezbollah's reconstruction efforts, presumably to give the government an edge. But Beirut has so far proved fairly unwilling to spend all the money it's been given on rebuilding people's homes in the south or in Dahiye. Hezbollah, on the other hand, sent out 1,000 engineers and thousands of volunteers to do reconstruction surveys in damaged or destroyed neighborhoods.

Due to the current paralyzing political situation, reconstruction seems to be on hold from all sides, but Hezbollah did start some rebuilding and was responsible for dispensing bags of money ($12,000) for rebuilding to families whose houses had been destroyed this summer.

Acts like this are neither ignored nor forgotten by the Lebanese. They know where the bombs lobbed onto their houses came from, and as the Daily Star asks if America is "ready to take care of all those made homeless by the munitions it has lavished on its troublesome ally?" After all, the Lebanese remember who was speed delivering bombs to Israel during the war this summer. And the people also remember that the destruction reigned on their homes was, quite literally, American made:



So if the US is interested in making friends in Lebanon, it's going about it in a very strange way.

There were some stocks of TNT found in Achrafieh this morning, a bad sign for the country's stability. None of the explosives went off, but there is a distinct feeling that this was a warning. By whom, to whom and against what are not at all clear.

Meanwhile, Lebanon is tense, and prosperity hard to come by for your average Lebanese. I met a young Lebanese by the name of Hani today. He's twenty-six and is waiting for a response for a visa to go to Dubai. I asked him why he wants to go there. "To work," he said. "There is no work here in Lebanon." He'd like to settle down, get married, but he feels like he can't do that. "How can I get married? If I go to a girl's family, they'll ask me what I do for a living, how much money I have. What can I tell them? I don't have a job? I don't have any money? They'll laugh and tell me to leave."

He lives alone in a small apartment in an East-Beirut neighborhood. I met him because I heard he had a washing machine to sell. In fact, he's trying to sell everything, hoping that his visa will come through for Dubai, where he has a job lined up. He's a month and a half behind on rent ($130 a month), so he's getting rid of his refrigerator, his washing machine, his telephone, his television and his gas range, which really only leaves a single bed and a small table. He says that he can't stay with his brother, because he's married with two kids, so Hani doesn't want to impose.

I visit his apartment to look at the washing machine, and we come to a deal. All of his appliances have been cleaned up and packed so that he can sell them immediately if anyone is interested in buying. I can tell that he really needs the money, and I could probably get the price down some more. But I feel guilty about bargaining too much, and we come to a price fairly quickly. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to transport the washer to my place and get it up the three flights of stairs, when Hani volunteers to bring it over today and install it for me. "That way you can see that it works well," he tells me. "And besides," he tells me, "it's not like I have a job to go to or anything to do."

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

I'm back in Beirut after some time in Spain and France over the winter holidays. Things are a but tense but not too bad. I came in late at night on the 14th, the day of the Hariri memorial and the day after the bus bombings.

I was happy to see that the Hariri memorial, which was right next to the opposition sit-in, went off without any clashes. (Not least because I didn't want to get stuck at the airport in case the roads were closed.)

Besides that, people are pretty skittish. I've heard on numerous accounts (some from UNRWA employees) that during the clashes last month, there were checkpoints by various groups (not always official) where identity cards were checked to see what sect everyone belonged to. Although I can't confirm it, I've had one account that the Lebanese Forces (Christian leader Geagea's militia) were armed and manning checkpoints not far from Saida. There have been reports coming from Hezbollah that the Lebanese Forces have been rearming, which is not a good sign.

The Times reports on a call from some of its prominent Arab citizens to become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews":

A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews," prompting consternation and debate across the country.

Their contention is part of "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," a report published in December under the auspices of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel, which represents the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens, about a fifth of the population. Some 40 well-known academics and activists took part.

They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights, saying Israel inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocations.

The authors propose a form of government, "consensual democracy," akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.

I am a strong believer that the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a binational democratic state where one person equals one vote and where ethnic and religious minorities are guaranteed equal rights. This declaration seems to be a step in the right direction, although many Israelis see it as a thinly veiled plan to destroy Israel.

But whether that's accurate or not depends on whether one sees Israel as a Jewish state or as a state of its citizens. After all, Israel is less homogeneous, in terms of religion, than the US.

Further reading: An English version of the report can be found here. Otherwise, Ilan Pappe has a very good article on the Israeli demographic question here, and Tony Judt's article on a binational state can be read here.

I've just read two interesting pieces on Iran. The first is in Foreign Affairs, penned by Ray Takeyh and argues for US détente with Iran. He argues for normalized relations as a starting point and not an end to negotiations, which should be direct and conducted on four tracks:

1. setting a timetable for resuming a diplomatic relationship, gradually phasing out U.S. sanctions, and returning Iran's frozen assets
2. nuclear negotiations
3. stabilizing Iraq
4. Israel-Palestine

The article is much more detailed than I can relay in a short post, so it's worth reading his outlook on the situation in Tehran and why past strategies on Iran are no longer appropriate and are likely to fail.

The second article is a piece by Sy Hersh on the Bush administration's redirection in the Middle East:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

This seems like an obviously bad idea and reflects how the many in Washington are incapable of looking at the region in a nuanced way: either the Sunnis are evil or the Shi'a are. As anyone who lives here (or even has a fleeting interest in Middle Eastern politics) knows, the region is much more complicated than that. And the childish idea of throwing one's weight fully behind radical Saudi-backed Sunni elements against a mutual foe (the Soviets at the time) has already been tried, to disastrous results, in Afghanistan.

Hersh mentions working with Saudi-sponsored Sunni islamists in covert actions in Lebanon to undermine Hezbollah and Tehran:

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don't have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't like. It’s a very high-risk venture."

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting "to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. "Salafis are sick and hateful, and I'm very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said. "They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly."

So there is a decision to realign US policy in the region to fit even more tightly with Sunni interests, including in Iraq. It looks like the US is so blinded by the idea of getting at Iran that it's willing to target Iraqi Shi'a groups even when they (including al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi) are aligned with the US-backed government of al-Maliki. (Cleverly enough, it looks like al-Sadr is going to let the US forces do his dirty work by cleansing his militia of elements that are not firmly under his control.)

Likewise, they're stepping up their support here in Lebanon to include arming salafi Sunni groups that are allied only temporarily with the government in Beirut but whose long-standing alliances are with groups like al-Qaida. So this means that the US is effectively funding some of the "foreign jihadis" who are leaving places like Tripoli in northern Lebanon kill Americans in Iraq.

Moreover, it looks like Washington might be flirting with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in hopes of overturning the Assad regime in Damascus -- the goal of at least part of the government in Beirut (Jumblatt and Geagea, and maybe Hariri too).

Now the Brotherhood is, in my mind, probably closer to Hamas and Hezbollah than it is to al-Qaida in terms of the possibility of it being reformed into a governing party as opposed to being just a terrorist group. But the fact remains that we've already followed the Saudis (who are now telling us that they can control these Sunni groups) when they took the lead with Pakistan in financing the Taliban, and look where that got us. At the end of the day, these radical Sunni groups hate the Shi'a and they hate Iran, but they hate us even more, and when they're done with what they consider the near enemy, they'll inevitably come looking for the far enemy: us.

Otherwise, the rest of the Hersh article addresses a lot of different issues in the region right now and is definitely worth reading, particularly as concerns Lebanese politics. Also, Hersh has managed to get an interview with Nasrallah, although he doesn't seem to have gotten many interesting quotes.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

Apparently the US is stepping up its rhetoric in discouraging Israel from even exploring Syria's overtures to peace talks. Ha'aretz reports that the Israeli government is split:

Israeli officials, including those in the intelligence community, are divided over the degree to which Syrian President Bashar Assad is serious and sincere in his call for peace talks with Israel.

One view describes Assad's call as a propaganda campaign, and insists that the Syrian leader is not serious. Among those holding this view is Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In Military Intelligence the view differs. There are those who say that Assad is serious in his call for peace talks, but also say that this does not mean that those talks would be easy for Israel. They even suggest that there is a very good chance that the talks would fail.

I've mentioned this before and still think that peace talks between Israel and Syria would be a good thing. Furhtermore, although I have my doubts about the exact offer and whether Assad will accept it, I have the feeling that Assad is ready to make a deal if he can get the Golan Heights back, maybe even if it means turning the land into a demilitarized park under Syrian sovereignty but open to Israeli picnickers.

In a strange move, the US has decided to put Jihad al-Binaa, Hezbollah's (re)construction company, on its list of terrorist organizations. This is a move followed by their decision to classify Al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station as a terrorist organization. This last act has already resulted in the jailing of two cable providers in Brooklyn.

Al-Binaa has been responsible for rebuilding thousands of homes in Lebanon that were destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. This is supposed to be a gesture that will hinder Hezbollah's reconstruction efforts, presumably to give the government an edge. But Beirut has so far proved fairly unwilling to spend all the money it's been given on rebuilding people's homes in the south or in Dahiye. Hezbollah, on the other hand, sent out 1,000 engineers and thousands of volunteers to do reconstruction surveys in damaged or destroyed neighborhoods.

Due to the current paralyzing political situation, reconstruction seems to be on hold from all sides, but Hezbollah did start some rebuilding and was responsible for dispensing bags of money ($12,000) for rebuilding to families whose houses had been destroyed this summer.

Acts like this are neither ignored nor forgotten by the Lebanese. They know where the bombs lobbed onto their houses came from, and as the Daily Star asks if America is "ready to take care of all those made homeless by the munitions it has lavished on its troublesome ally?" After all, the Lebanese remember who was speed delivering bombs to Israel during the war this summer. And the people also remember that the destruction reigned on their homes was, quite literally, American made:



So if the US is interested in making friends in Lebanon, it's going about it in a very strange way.

There were some stocks of TNT found in Achrafieh this morning, a bad sign for the country's stability. None of the explosives went off, but there is a distinct feeling that this was a warning. By whom, to whom and against what are not at all clear.

Meanwhile, Lebanon is tense, and prosperity hard to come by for your average Lebanese. I met a young Lebanese by the name of Hani today. He's twenty-six and is waiting for a response for a visa to go to Dubai. I asked him why he wants to go there. "To work," he said. "There is no work here in Lebanon." He'd like to settle down, get married, but he feels like he can't do that. "How can I get married? If I go to a girl's family, they'll ask me what I do for a living, how much money I have. What can I tell them? I don't have a job? I don't have any money? They'll laugh and tell me to leave."

He lives alone in a small apartment in an East-Beirut neighborhood. I met him because I heard he had a washing machine to sell. In fact, he's trying to sell everything, hoping that his visa will come through for Dubai, where he has a job lined up. He's a month and a half behind on rent ($130 a month), so he's getting rid of his refrigerator, his washing machine, his telephone, his television and his gas range, which really only leaves a single bed and a small table. He says that he can't stay with his brother, because he's married with two kids, so Hani doesn't want to impose.

I visit his apartment to look at the washing machine, and we come to a deal. All of his appliances have been cleaned up and packed so that he can sell them immediately if anyone is interested in buying. I can tell that he really needs the money, and I could probably get the price down some more. But I feel guilty about bargaining too much, and we come to a price fairly quickly. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to transport the washer to my place and get it up the three flights of stairs, when Hani volunteers to bring it over today and install it for me. "That way you can see that it works well," he tells me. "And besides," he tells me, "it's not like I have a job to go to or anything to do."

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

I'm back in Beirut after some time in Spain and France over the winter holidays. Things are a but tense but not too bad. I came in late at night on the 14th, the day of the Hariri memorial and the day after the bus bombings.

I was happy to see that the Hariri memorial, which was right next to the opposition sit-in, went off without any clashes. (Not least because I didn't want to get stuck at the airport in case the roads were closed.)

Besides that, people are pretty skittish. I've heard on numerous accounts (some from UNRWA employees) that during the clashes last month, there were checkpoints by various groups (not always official) where identity cards were checked to see what sect everyone belonged to. Although I can't confirm it, I've had one account that the Lebanese Forces (Christian leader Geagea's militia) were armed and manning checkpoints not far from Saida. There have been reports coming from Hezbollah that the Lebanese Forces have been rearming, which is not a good sign.

The Times reports on a call from some of its prominent Arab citizens to become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews":

A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews," prompting consternation and debate across the country.

Their contention is part of "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," a report published in December under the auspices of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel, which represents the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens, about a fifth of the population. Some 40 well-known academics and activists took part.

They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights, saying Israel inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocations.

The authors propose a form of government, "consensual democracy," akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.

I am a strong believer that the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a binational democratic state where one person equals one vote and where ethnic and religious minorities are guaranteed equal rights. This declaration seems to be a step in the right direction, although many Israelis see it as a thinly veiled plan to destroy Israel.

But whether that's accurate or not depends on whether one sees Israel as a Jewish state or as a state of its citizens. After all, Israel is less homogeneous, in terms of religion, than the US.

Further reading: An English version of the report can be found here. Otherwise, Ilan Pappe has a very good article on the Israeli demographic question here, and Tony Judt's article on a binational state can be read here.

I've just read two interesting pieces on Iran. The first is in Foreign Affairs, penned by Ray Takeyh and argues for US détente with Iran. He argues for normalized relations as a starting point and not an end to negotiations, which should be direct and conducted on four tracks:

1. setting a timetable for resuming a diplomatic relationship, gradually phasing out U.S. sanctions, and returning Iran's frozen assets
2. nuclear negotiations
3. stabilizing Iraq
4. Israel-Palestine

The article is much more detailed than I can relay in a short post, so it's worth reading his outlook on the situation in Tehran and why past strategies on Iran are no longer appropriate and are likely to fail.

The second article is a piece by Sy Hersh on the Bush administration's redirection in the Middle East:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

This seems like an obviously bad idea and reflects how the many in Washington are incapable of looking at the region in a nuanced way: either the Sunnis are evil or the Shi'a are. As anyone who lives here (or even has a fleeting interest in Middle Eastern politics) knows, the region is much more complicated than that. And the childish idea of throwing one's weight fully behind radical Saudi-backed Sunni elements against a mutual foe (the Soviets at the time) has already been tried, to disastrous results, in Afghanistan.

Hersh mentions working with Saudi-sponsored Sunni islamists in covert actions in Lebanon to undermine Hezbollah and Tehran:

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don't have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't like. It’s a very high-risk venture."

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting "to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. "Salafis are sick and hateful, and I'm very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said. "They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly."

So there is a decision to realign US policy in the region to fit even more tightly with Sunni interests, including in Iraq. It looks like the US is so blinded by the idea of getting at Iran that it's willing to target Iraqi Shi'a groups even when they (including al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi) are aligned with the US-backed government of al-Maliki. (Cleverly enough, it looks like al-Sadr is going to let the US forces do his dirty work by cleansing his militia of elements that are not firmly under his control.)

Likewise, they're stepping up their support here in Lebanon to include arming salafi Sunni groups that are allied only temporarily with the government in Beirut but whose long-standing alliances are with groups like al-Qaida. So this means that the US is effectively funding some of the "foreign jihadis" who are leaving places like Tripoli in northern Lebanon kill Americans in Iraq.

Moreover, it looks like Washington might be flirting with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in hopes of overturning the Assad regime in Damascus -- the goal of at least part of the government in Beirut (Jumblatt and Geagea, and maybe Hariri too).

Now the Brotherhood is, in my mind, probably closer to Hamas and Hezbollah than it is to al-Qaida in terms of the possibility of it being reformed into a governing party as opposed to being just a terrorist group. But the fact remains that we've already followed the Saudis (who are now telling us that they can control these Sunni groups) when they took the lead with Pakistan in financing the Taliban, and look where that got us. At the end of the day, these radical Sunni groups hate the Shi'a and they hate Iran, but they hate us even more, and when they're done with what they consider the near enemy, they'll inevitably come looking for the far enemy: us.

Otherwise, the rest of the Hersh article addresses a lot of different issues in the region right now and is definitely worth reading, particularly as concerns Lebanese politics. Also, Hersh has managed to get an interview with Nasrallah, although he doesn't seem to have gotten many interesting quotes.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

Apparently the US is stepping up its rhetoric in discouraging Israel from even exploring Syria's overtures to peace talks. Ha'aretz reports that the Israeli government is split:

Israeli officials, including those in the intelligence community, are divided over the degree to which Syrian President Bashar Assad is serious and sincere in his call for peace talks with Israel.

One view describes Assad's call as a propaganda campaign, and insists that the Syrian leader is not serious. Among those holding this view is Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In Military Intelligence the view differs. There are those who say that Assad is serious in his call for peace talks, but also say that this does not mean that those talks would be easy for Israel. They even suggest that there is a very good chance that the talks would fail.

I've mentioned this before and still think that peace talks between Israel and Syria would be a good thing. Furhtermore, although I have my doubts about the exact offer and whether Assad will accept it, I have the feeling that Assad is ready to make a deal if he can get the Golan Heights back, maybe even if it means turning the land into a demilitarized park under Syrian sovereignty but open to Israeli picnickers.

In a strange move, the US has decided to put Jihad al-Binaa, Hezbollah's (re)construction company, on its list of terrorist organizations. This is a move followed by their decision to classify Al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station as a terrorist organization. This last act has already resulted in the jailing of two cable providers in Brooklyn.

Al-Binaa has been responsible for rebuilding thousands of homes in Lebanon that were destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. This is supposed to be a gesture that will hinder Hezbollah's reconstruction efforts, presumably to give the government an edge. But Beirut has so far proved fairly unwilling to spend all the money it's been given on rebuilding people's homes in the south or in Dahiye. Hezbollah, on the other hand, sent out 1,000 engineers and thousands of volunteers to do reconstruction surveys in damaged or destroyed neighborhoods.

Due to the current paralyzing political situation, reconstruction seems to be on hold from all sides, but Hezbollah did start some rebuilding and was responsible for dispensing bags of money ($12,000) for rebuilding to families whose houses had been destroyed this summer.

Acts like this are neither ignored nor forgotten by the Lebanese. They know where the bombs lobbed onto their houses came from, and as the Daily Star asks if America is "ready to take care of all those made homeless by the munitions it has lavished on its troublesome ally?" After all, the Lebanese remember who was speed delivering bombs to Israel during the war this summer. And the people also remember that the destruction reigned on their homes was, quite literally, American made:



So if the US is interested in making friends in Lebanon, it's going about it in a very strange way.

There were some stocks of TNT found in Achrafieh this morning, a bad sign for the country's stability. None of the explosives went off, but there is a distinct feeling that this was a warning. By whom, to whom and against what are not at all clear.

Meanwhile, Lebanon is tense, and prosperity hard to come by for your average Lebanese. I met a young Lebanese by the name of Hani today. He's twenty-six and is waiting for a response for a visa to go to Dubai. I asked him why he wants to go there. "To work," he said. "There is no work here in Lebanon." He'd like to settle down, get married, but he feels like he can't do that. "How can I get married? If I go to a girl's family, they'll ask me what I do for a living, how much money I have. What can I tell them? I don't have a job? I don't have any money? They'll laugh and tell me to leave."

He lives alone in a small apartment in an East-Beirut neighborhood. I met him because I heard he had a washing machine to sell. In fact, he's trying to sell everything, hoping that his visa will come through for Dubai, where he has a job lined up. He's a month and a half behind on rent ($130 a month), so he's getting rid of his refrigerator, his washing machine, his telephone, his television and his gas range, which really only leaves a single bed and a small table. He says that he can't stay with his brother, because he's married with two kids, so Hani doesn't want to impose.

I visit his apartment to look at the washing machine, and we come to a deal. All of his appliances have been cleaned up and packed so that he can sell them immediately if anyone is interested in buying. I can tell that he really needs the money, and I could probably get the price down some more. But I feel guilty about bargaining too much, and we come to a price fairly quickly. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to transport the washer to my place and get it up the three flights of stairs, when Hani volunteers to bring it over today and install it for me. "That way you can see that it works well," he tells me. "And besides," he tells me, "it's not like I have a job to go to or anything to do."

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

I'm back in Beirut after some time in Spain and France over the winter holidays. Things are a but tense but not too bad. I came in late at night on the 14th, the day of the Hariri memorial and the day after the bus bombings.

I was happy to see that the Hariri memorial, which was right next to the opposition sit-in, went off without any clashes. (Not least because I didn't want to get stuck at the airport in case the roads were closed.)

Besides that, people are pretty skittish. I've heard on numerous accounts (some from UNRWA employees) that during the clashes last month, there were checkpoints by various groups (not always official) where identity cards were checked to see what sect everyone belonged to. Although I can't confirm it, I've had one account that the Lebanese Forces (Christian leader Geagea's militia) were armed and manning checkpoints not far from Saida. There have been reports coming from Hezbollah that the Lebanese Forces have been rearming, which is not a good sign.

The Times reports on a call from some of its prominent Arab citizens to become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews":

A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews," prompting consternation and debate across the country.

Their contention is part of "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," a report published in December under the auspices of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel, which represents the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens, about a fifth of the population. Some 40 well-known academics and activists took part.

They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights, saying Israel inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocations.

The authors propose a form of government, "consensual democracy," akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.

I am a strong believer that the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a binational democratic state where one person equals one vote and where ethnic and religious minorities are guaranteed equal rights. This declaration seems to be a step in the right direction, although many Israelis see it as a thinly veiled plan to destroy Israel.

But whether that's accurate or not depends on whether one sees Israel as a Jewish state or as a state of its citizens. After all, Israel is less homogeneous, in terms of religion, than the US.

Further reading: An English version of the report can be found here. Otherwise, Ilan Pappe has a very good article on the Israeli demographic question here, and Tony Judt's article on a binational state can be read here.

I've just read two interesting pieces on Iran. The first is in Foreign Affairs, penned by Ray Takeyh and argues for US détente with Iran. He argues for normalized relations as a starting point and not an end to negotiations, which should be direct and conducted on four tracks:

1. setting a timetable for resuming a diplomatic relationship, gradually phasing out U.S. sanctions, and returning Iran's frozen assets
2. nuclear negotiations
3. stabilizing Iraq
4. Israel-Palestine

The article is much more detailed than I can relay in a short post, so it's worth reading his outlook on the situation in Tehran and why past strategies on Iran are no longer appropriate and are likely to fail.

The second article is a piece by Sy Hersh on the Bush administration's redirection in the Middle East:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

This seems like an obviously bad idea and reflects how the many in Washington are incapable of looking at the region in a nuanced way: either the Sunnis are evil or the Shi'a are. As anyone who lives here (or even has a fleeting interest in Middle Eastern politics) knows, the region is much more complicated than that. And the childish idea of throwing one's weight fully behind radical Saudi-backed Sunni elements against a mutual foe (the Soviets at the time) has already been tried, to disastrous results, in Afghanistan.

Hersh mentions working with Saudi-sponsored Sunni islamists in covert actions in Lebanon to undermine Hezbollah and Tehran:

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don't have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't like. It’s a very high-risk venture."

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting "to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. "Salafis are sick and hateful, and I'm very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said. "They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly."

So there is a decision to realign US policy in the region to fit even more tightly with Sunni interests, including in Iraq. It looks like the US is so blinded by the idea of getting at Iran that it's willing to target Iraqi Shi'a groups even when they (including al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi) are aligned with the US-backed government of al-Maliki. (Cleverly enough, it looks like al-Sadr is going to let the US forces do his dirty work by cleansing his militia of elements that are not firmly under his control.)

Likewise, they're stepping up their support here in Lebanon to include arming salafi Sunni groups that are allied only temporarily with the government in Beirut but whose long-standing alliances are with groups like al-Qaida. So this means that the US is effectively funding some of the "foreign jihadis" who are leaving places like Tripoli in northern Lebanon kill Americans in Iraq.

Moreover, it looks like Washington might be flirting with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in hopes of overturning the Assad regime in Damascus -- the goal of at least part of the government in Beirut (Jumblatt and Geagea, and maybe Hariri too).

Now the Brotherhood is, in my mind, probably closer to Hamas and Hezbollah than it is to al-Qaida in terms of the possibility of it being reformed into a governing party as opposed to being just a terrorist group. But the fact remains that we've already followed the Saudis (who are now telling us that they can control these Sunni groups) when they took the lead with Pakistan in financing the Taliban, and look where that got us. At the end of the day, these radical Sunni groups hate the Shi'a and they hate Iran, but they hate us even more, and when they're done with what they consider the near enemy, they'll inevitably come looking for the far enemy: us.

Otherwise, the rest of the Hersh article addresses a lot of different issues in the region right now and is definitely worth reading, particularly as concerns Lebanese politics. Also, Hersh has managed to get an interview with Nasrallah, although he doesn't seem to have gotten many interesting quotes.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

Apparently the US is stepping up its rhetoric in discouraging Israel from even exploring Syria's overtures to peace talks. Ha'aretz reports that the Israeli government is split:

Israeli officials, including those in the intelligence community, are divided over the degree to which Syrian President Bashar Assad is serious and sincere in his call for peace talks with Israel.

One view describes Assad's call as a propaganda campaign, and insists that the Syrian leader is not serious. Among those holding this view is Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In Military Intelligence the view differs. There are those who say that Assad is serious in his call for peace talks, but also say that this does not mean that those talks would be easy for Israel. They even suggest that there is a very good chance that the talks would fail.

I've mentioned this before and still think that peace talks between Israel and Syria would be a good thing. Furhtermore, although I have my doubts about the exact offer and whether Assad will accept it, I have the feeling that Assad is ready to make a deal if he can get the Golan Heights back, maybe even if it means turning the land into a demilitarized park under Syrian sovereignty but open to Israeli picnickers.

In a strange move, the US has decided to put Jihad al-Binaa, Hezbollah's (re)construction company, on its list of terrorist organizations. This is a move followed by their decision to classify Al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station as a terrorist organization. This last act has already resulted in the jailing of two cable providers in Brooklyn.

Al-Binaa has been responsible for rebuilding thousands of homes in Lebanon that were destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. This is supposed to be a gesture that will hinder Hezbollah's reconstruction efforts, presumably to give the government an edge. But Beirut has so far proved fairly unwilling to spend all the money it's been given on rebuilding people's homes in the south or in Dahiye. Hezbollah, on the other hand, sent out 1,000 engineers and thousands of volunteers to do reconstruction surveys in damaged or destroyed neighborhoods.

Due to the current paralyzing political situation, reconstruction seems to be on hold from all sides, but Hezbollah did start some rebuilding and was responsible for dispensing bags of money ($12,000) for rebuilding to families whose houses had been destroyed this summer.

Acts like this are neither ignored nor forgotten by the Lebanese. They know where the bombs lobbed onto their houses came from, and as the Daily Star asks if America is "ready to take care of all those made homeless by the munitions it has lavished on its troublesome ally?" After all, the Lebanese remember who was speed delivering bombs to Israel during the war this summer. And the people also remember that the destruction reigned on their homes was, quite literally, American made:



So if the US is interested in making friends in Lebanon, it's going about it in a very strange way.

There were some stocks of TNT found in Achrafieh this morning, a bad sign for the country's stability. None of the explosives went off, but there is a distinct feeling that this was a warning. By whom, to whom and against what are not at all clear.

Meanwhile, Lebanon is tense, and prosperity hard to come by for your average Lebanese. I met a young Lebanese by the name of Hani today. He's twenty-six and is waiting for a response for a visa to go to Dubai. I asked him why he wants to go there. "To work," he said. "There is no work here in Lebanon." He'd like to settle down, get married, but he feels like he can't do that. "How can I get married? If I go to a girl's family, they'll ask me what I do for a living, how much money I have. What can I tell them? I don't have a job? I don't have any money? They'll laugh and tell me to leave."

He lives alone in a small apartment in an East-Beirut neighborhood. I met him because I heard he had a washing machine to sell. In fact, he's trying to sell everything, hoping that his visa will come through for Dubai, where he has a job lined up. He's a month and a half behind on rent ($130 a month), so he's getting rid of his refrigerator, his washing machine, his telephone, his television and his gas range, which really only leaves a single bed and a small table. He says that he can't stay with his brother, because he's married with two kids, so Hani doesn't want to impose.

I visit his apartment to look at the washing machine, and we come to a deal. All of his appliances have been cleaned up and packed so that he can sell them immediately if anyone is interested in buying. I can tell that he really needs the money, and I could probably get the price down some more. But I feel guilty about bargaining too much, and we come to a price fairly quickly. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to transport the washer to my place and get it up the three flights of stairs, when Hani volunteers to bring it over today and install it for me. "That way you can see that it works well," he tells me. "And besides," he tells me, "it's not like I have a job to go to or anything to do."

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

I'm back in Beirut after some time in Spain and France over the winter holidays. Things are a but tense but not too bad. I came in late at night on the 14th, the day of the Hariri memorial and the day after the bus bombings.

I was happy to see that the Hariri memorial, which was right next to the opposition sit-in, went off without any clashes. (Not least because I didn't want to get stuck at the airport in case the roads were closed.)

Besides that, people are pretty skittish. I've heard on numerous accounts (some from UNRWA employees) that during the clashes last month, there were checkpoints by various groups (not always official) where identity cards were checked to see what sect everyone belonged to. Although I can't confirm it, I've had one account that the Lebanese Forces (Christian leader Geagea's militia) were armed and manning checkpoints not far from Saida. There have been reports coming from Hezbollah that the Lebanese Forces have been rearming, which is not a good sign.

The Times reports on a call from some of its prominent Arab citizens to become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews":

A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews," prompting consternation and debate across the country.

Their contention is part of "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," a report published in December under the auspices of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel, which represents the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens, about a fifth of the population. Some 40 well-known academics and activists took part.

They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights, saying Israel inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocations.

The authors propose a form of government, "consensual democracy," akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.

I am a strong believer that the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a binational democratic state where one person equals one vote and where ethnic and religious minorities are guaranteed equal rights. This declaration seems to be a step in the right direction, although many Israelis see it as a thinly veiled plan to destroy Israel.

But whether that's accurate or not depends on whether one sees Israel as a Jewish state or as a state of its citizens. After all, Israel is less homogeneous, in terms of religion, than the US.

Further reading: An English version of the report can be found here. Otherwise, Ilan Pappe has a very good article on the Israeli demographic question here, and Tony Judt's article on a binational state can be read here.

I've just read two interesting pieces on Iran. The first is in Foreign Affairs, penned by Ray Takeyh and argues for US détente with Iran. He argues for normalized relations as a starting point and not an end to negotiations, which should be direct and conducted on four tracks:

1. setting a timetable for resuming a diplomatic relationship, gradually phasing out U.S. sanctions, and returning Iran's frozen assets
2. nuclear negotiations
3. stabilizing Iraq
4. Israel-Palestine

The article is much more detailed than I can relay in a short post, so it's worth reading his outlook on the situation in Tehran and why past strategies on Iran are no longer appropriate and are likely to fail.

The second article is a piece by Sy Hersh on the Bush administration's redirection in the Middle East:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

This seems like an obviously bad idea and reflects how the many in Washington are incapable of looking at the region in a nuanced way: either the Sunnis are evil or the Shi'a are. As anyone who lives here (or even has a fleeting interest in Middle Eastern politics) knows, the region is much more complicated than that. And the childish idea of throwing one's weight fully behind radical Saudi-backed Sunni elements against a mutual foe (the Soviets at the time) has already been tried, to disastrous results, in Afghanistan.

Hersh mentions working with Saudi-sponsored Sunni islamists in covert actions in Lebanon to undermine Hezbollah and Tehran:

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don't have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't like. It’s a very high-risk venture."

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting "to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. "Salafis are sick and hateful, and I'm very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said. "They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly."

So there is a decision to realign US policy in the region to fit even more tightly with Sunni interests, including in Iraq. It looks like the US is so blinded by the idea of getting at Iran that it's willing to target Iraqi Shi'a groups even when they (including al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi) are aligned with the US-backed government of al-Maliki. (Cleverly enough, it looks like al-Sadr is going to let the US forces do his dirty work by cleansing his militia of elements that are not firmly under his control.)

Likewise, they're stepping up their support here in Lebanon to include arming salafi Sunni groups that are allied only temporarily with the government in Beirut but whose long-standing alliances are with groups like al-Qaida. So this means that the US is effectively funding some of the "foreign jihadis" who are leaving places like Tripoli in northern Lebanon kill Americans in Iraq.

Moreover, it looks like Washington might be flirting with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in hopes of overturning the Assad regime in Damascus -- the goal of at least part of the government in Beirut (Jumblatt and Geagea, and maybe Hariri too).

Now the Brotherhood is, in my mind, probably closer to Hamas and Hezbollah than it is to al-Qaida in terms of the possibility of it being reformed into a governing party as opposed to being just a terrorist group. But the fact remains that we've already followed the Saudis (who are now telling us that they can control these Sunni groups) when they took the lead with Pakistan in financing the Taliban, and look where that got us. At the end of the day, these radical Sunni groups hate the Shi'a and they hate Iran, but they hate us even more, and when they're done with what they consider the near enemy, they'll inevitably come looking for the far enemy: us.

Otherwise, the rest of the Hersh article addresses a lot of different issues in the region right now and is definitely worth reading, particularly as concerns Lebanese politics. Also, Hersh has managed to get an interview with Nasrallah, although he doesn't seem to have gotten many interesting quotes.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

Apparently the US is stepping up its rhetoric in discouraging Israel from even exploring Syria's overtures to peace talks. Ha'aretz reports that the Israeli government is split:

Israeli officials, including those in the intelligence community, are divided over the degree to which Syrian President Bashar Assad is serious and sincere in his call for peace talks with Israel.

One view describes Assad's call as a propaganda campaign, and insists that the Syrian leader is not serious. Among those holding this view is Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In Military Intelligence the view differs. There are those who say that Assad is serious in his call for peace talks, but also say that this does not mean that those talks would be easy for Israel. They even suggest that there is a very good chance that the talks would fail.

I've mentioned this before and still think that peace talks between Israel and Syria would be a good thing. Furhtermore, although I have my doubts about the exact offer and whether Assad will accept it, I have the feeling that Assad is ready to make a deal if he can get the Golan Heights back, maybe even if it means turning the land into a demilitarized park under Syrian sovereignty but open to Israeli picnickers.

In a strange move, the US has decided to put Jihad al-Binaa, Hezbollah's (re)construction company, on its list of terrorist organizations. This is a move followed by their decision to classify Al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station as a terrorist organization. This last act has already resulted in the jailing of two cable providers in Brooklyn.

Al-Binaa has been responsible for rebuilding thousands of homes in Lebanon that were destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. This is supposed to be a gesture that will hinder Hezbollah's reconstruction efforts, presumably to give the government an edge. But Beirut has so far proved fairly unwilling to spend all the money it's been given on rebuilding people's homes in the south or in Dahiye. Hezbollah, on the other hand, sent out 1,000 engineers and thousands of volunteers to do reconstruction surveys in damaged or destroyed neighborhoods.

Due to the current paralyzing political situation, reconstruction seems to be on hold from all sides, but Hezbollah did start some rebuilding and was responsible for dispensing bags of money ($12,000) for rebuilding to families whose houses had been destroyed this summer.

Acts like this are neither ignored nor forgotten by the Lebanese. They know where the bombs lobbed onto their houses came from, and as the Daily Star asks if America is "ready to take care of all those made homeless by the munitions it has lavished on its troublesome ally?" After all, the Lebanese remember who was speed delivering bombs to Israel during the war this summer. And the people also remember that the destruction reigned on their homes was, quite literally, American made:



So if the US is interested in making friends in Lebanon, it's going about it in a very strange way.

There were some stocks of TNT found in Achrafieh this morning, a bad sign for the country's stability. None of the explosives went off, but there is a distinct feeling that this was a warning. By whom, to whom and against what are not at all clear.

Meanwhile, Lebanon is tense, and prosperity hard to come by for your average Lebanese. I met a young Lebanese by the name of Hani today. He's twenty-six and is waiting for a response for a visa to go to Dubai. I asked him why he wants to go there. "To work," he said. "There is no work here in Lebanon." He'd like to settle down, get married, but he feels like he can't do that. "How can I get married? If I go to a girl's family, they'll ask me what I do for a living, how much money I have. What can I tell them? I don't have a job? I don't have any money? They'll laugh and tell me to leave."

He lives alone in a small apartment in an East-Beirut neighborhood. I met him because I heard he had a washing machine to sell. In fact, he's trying to sell everything, hoping that his visa will come through for Dubai, where he has a job lined up. He's a month and a half behind on rent ($130 a month), so he's getting rid of his refrigerator, his washing machine, his telephone, his television and his gas range, which really only leaves a single bed and a small table. He says that he can't stay with his brother, because he's married with two kids, so Hani doesn't want to impose.

I visit his apartment to look at the washing machine, and we come to a deal. All of his appliances have been cleaned up and packed so that he can sell them immediately if anyone is interested in buying. I can tell that he really needs the money, and I could probably get the price down some more. But I feel guilty about bargaining too much, and we come to a price fairly quickly. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to transport the washer to my place and get it up the three flights of stairs, when Hani volunteers to bring it over today and install it for me. "That way you can see that it works well," he tells me. "And besides," he tells me, "it's not like I have a job to go to or anything to do."

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

I'm back in Beirut after some time in Spain and France over the winter holidays. Things are a but tense but not too bad. I came in late at night on the 14th, the day of the Hariri memorial and the day after the bus bombings.

I was happy to see that the Hariri memorial, which was right next to the opposition sit-in, went off without any clashes. (Not least because I didn't want to get stuck at the airport in case the roads were closed.)

Besides that, people are pretty skittish. I've heard on numerous accounts (some from UNRWA employees) that during the clashes last month, there were checkpoints by various groups (not always official) where identity cards were checked to see what sect everyone belonged to. Although I can't confirm it, I've had one account that the Lebanese Forces (Christian leader Geagea's militia) were armed and manning checkpoints not far from Saida. There have been reports coming from Hezbollah that the Lebanese Forces have been rearming, which is not a good sign.

The Times reports on a call from some of its prominent Arab citizens to become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews":

A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews," prompting consternation and debate across the country.

Their contention is part of "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," a report published in December under the auspices of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel, which represents the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens, about a fifth of the population. Some 40 well-known academics and activists took part.

They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights, saying Israel inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocations.

The authors propose a form of government, "consensual democracy," akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.

I am a strong believer that the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a binational democratic state where one person equals one vote and where ethnic and religious minorities are guaranteed equal rights. This declaration seems to be a step in the right direction, although many Israelis see it as a thinly veiled plan to destroy Israel.

But whether that's accurate or not depends on whether one sees Israel as a Jewish state or as a state of its citizens. After all, Israel is less homogeneous, in terms of religion, than the US.

Further reading: An English version of the report can be found here. Otherwise, Ilan Pappe has a very good article on the Israeli demographic question here, and Tony Judt's article on a binational state can be read here.

I've just read two interesting pieces on Iran. The first is in Foreign Affairs, penned by Ray Takeyh and argues for US détente with Iran. He argues for normalized relations as a starting point and not an end to negotiations, which should be direct and conducted on four tracks:

1. setting a timetable for resuming a diplomatic relationship, gradually phasing out U.S. sanctions, and returning Iran's frozen assets
2. nuclear negotiations
3. stabilizing Iraq
4. Israel-Palestine

The article is much more detailed than I can relay in a short post, so it's worth reading his outlook on the situation in Tehran and why past strategies on Iran are no longer appropriate and are likely to fail.

The second article is a piece by Sy Hersh on the Bush administration's redirection in the Middle East:

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

This seems like an obviously bad idea and reflects how the many in Washington are incapable of looking at the region in a nuanced way: either the Sunnis are evil or the Shi'a are. As anyone who lives here (or even has a fleeting interest in Middle Eastern politics) knows, the region is much more complicated than that. And the childish idea of throwing one's weight fully behind radical Saudi-backed Sunni elements against a mutual foe (the Soviets at the time) has already been tried, to disastrous results, in Afghanistan.

Hersh mentions working with Saudi-sponsored Sunni islamists in covert actions in Lebanon to undermine Hezbollah and Tehran:

The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don't have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't like. It’s a very high-risk venture."

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.

During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting "to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. "Salafis are sick and hateful, and I'm very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said. "They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly."

So there is a decision to realign US policy in the region to fit even more tightly with Sunni interests, including in Iraq. It looks like the US is so blinded by the idea of getting at Iran that it's willing to target Iraqi Shi'a groups even when they (including al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi) are aligned with the US-backed government of al-Maliki. (Cleverly enough, it looks like al-Sadr is going to let the US forces do his dirty work by cleansing his militia of elements that are not firmly under his control.)

Likewise, they're stepping up their support here in Lebanon to include arming salafi Sunni groups that are allied only temporarily with the government in Beirut but whose long-standing alliances are with groups like al-Qaida. So this means that the US is effectively funding some of the "foreign jihadis" who are leaving places like Tripoli in northern Lebanon kill Americans in Iraq.

Moreover, it looks like Washington might be flirting with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in hopes of overturning the Assad regime in Damascus -- the goal of at least part of the government in Beirut (Jumblatt and Geagea, and maybe Hariri too).

Now the Brotherhood is, in my mind, probably closer to Hamas and Hezbollah than it is to al-Qaida in terms of the possibility of it being reformed into a governing party as opposed to being just a terrorist group. But the fact remains that we've already followed the Saudis (who are now telling us that they can control these Sunni groups) when they took the lead with Pakistan in financing the Taliban, and look where that got us. At the end of the day, these radical Sunni groups hate the Shi'a and they hate Iran, but they hate us even more, and when they're done with what they consider the near enemy, they'll inevitably come looking for the far enemy: us.

Otherwise, the rest of the Hersh article addresses a lot of different issues in the region right now and is definitely worth reading, particularly as concerns Lebanese politics. Also, Hersh has managed to get an interview with Nasrallah, although he doesn't seem to have gotten many interesting quotes.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the contrast between center and periphery in Sudan as seen by the increasingly chic Khartoum and its slums and other regions. Khartoum's success has been funded by Sudan's newfound oil wealth, much of which comes from the south.

The article makes an important point about Sudanese politics and the country's regional wars -- the main underpinning of conflict in the south, the Nuba Mountains and in Darfur is the distinction between center and periphery in which Khartoum enjoys prosperity while the rest of the country suffers:

In Soba Aradi [a slum outside of Khartoum], people see little difference between the conflict in southern Sudan, the current conflict in Darfur and their own treatment in Khartoum.

Though the war in southern Sudan had a religious dimension in that it involved an attempt by the government to impose Islamic law on a population that is about 30 percent Christian, the primary grievances of the rebel movement there had more to do with access to resources and power. The conflict in Darfur also largely comes down to a struggle for resources.

"It's all the same because it's the same government," said Emmanuel Agrey Lado, a physician's assistant from southern Sudan whose home has been bulldozed twice in two years.

U.S. diplomats, however, have mostly treated southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur separately.

After intense engagement by the Bush administration, the Sudanese government in 2005 signed a U.S.-backed peace agreement creating a semiautonomous region in southern Sudan, just as government troops were intensifying their onslaught in Darfur.

...Increasingly, leaders in the south say the fate of their region is very much intertwined with that of Darfur, a notion that hearkens back to the vision of John Garang, the widely popular and iconic leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) who died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

Under his leadership, the SPLM had strong ties to rebel groups not only in Darfur, but also in the north and the east, as Garang came to realize that the suffering extended beyond his own region and that the only way to achieve a more just order in Sudan was through a unified movement. After his death, those relationships languished.

In recent weeks, however, the current president of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has been reaching out to Darfur rebel leaders.

"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."

As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?'"

This point is one that I cannot stress enough.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

Apparently the US is stepping up its rhetoric in discouraging Israel from even exploring Syria's overtures to peace talks. Ha'aretz reports that the Israeli government is split:

Israeli officials, including those in the intelligence community, are divided over the degree to which Syrian President Bashar Assad is serious and sincere in his call for peace talks with Israel.

One view describes Assad's call as a propaganda campaign, and insists that the Syrian leader is not serious. Among those holding this view is Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In Military Intelligence the view differs. There are those who say that Assad is serious in his call for peace talks, but also say that this does not mean that those talks would be easy for Israel. They even suggest that there is a very good chance that the talks would fail.

I've mentioned this before and still think that peace talks between Israel and Syria would be a good thing. Furhtermore, although I have my doubts about the exact offer and whether Assad will accept it, I have the feeling that Assad is ready to make a deal if he can get the Golan Heights back, maybe even if it means turning the land into a demilitarized park under Syrian sovereignty but open to Israeli picnickers.

In a strange move, the US has decided to put Jihad al-Binaa, Hezbollah's (re)construction company, on its list of terrorist organizations. This is a move followed by their decision to classify Al-Manar, the Hezbollah television station as a terrorist organization. This last act has already resulted in the jailing of two cable providers in Brooklyn.

Al-Binaa has been responsible for rebuilding thousands of homes in Lebanon that were destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. This is supposed to be a gesture that will hinder Hezbollah's reconstruction efforts, presumably to give the government an edge. But Beirut has so far proved fairly unwilling to spend all the money it's been given on rebuilding people's homes in the south or in Dahiye. Hezbollah, on the other hand, sent out 1,000 engineers and thousands of volunteers to do reconstruction surveys in damaged or destroyed neighborhoods.

Due to the current paralyzing political situation, reconstruction seems to be on hold from all sides, but Hezbollah did start some rebuilding and was responsible for dispensing bags of money ($12,000) for rebuilding to families whose houses had been destroyed this summer.

Acts like this are neither ignored nor forgotten by the Lebanese. They know where the bombs lobbed onto their houses came from, and as the Daily Star asks if America is "ready to take care of all those made homeless by the munitions it has lavished on its troublesome ally?" After all, the Lebanese remember who was speed delivering bombs to Israel during the war this summer. And the people also remember that the destruction reigned on their homes was, quite literally, American made:



So if the US is interested in making friends in Lebanon, it's going about it in a very strange way.

There were some stocks of TNT found in Achrafieh this morning, a bad sign for the country's stability. None of the explosives went off, but there is a distinct feeling that this was a warning. By whom, to whom and against what are not at all clear.

Meanwhile, Lebanon is tense, and prosperity hard to come by for your average Lebanese. I met a young Lebanese by the name of Hani today. He's twenty-six and is waiting for a response for a visa to go to Dubai. I asked him why he wants to go there. "To work," he said. "There is no work here in Lebanon." He'd like to settle down, get married, but he feels like he can't do that. "How can I get married? If I go to a girl's family, they'll ask me what I do for a living, how much money I have. What can I tell them? I don't have a job? I don't have any money? They'll laugh and tell me to leave."

He lives alone in a small apartment in an East-Beirut neighborhood. I met him because I heard he had a washing machine to sell. In fact, he's trying to sell everything, hoping that his visa will come through for Dubai, where he has a job lined up. He's a month and a half behind on rent ($130 a month), so he's getting rid of his refrigerator, his washing machine, his telephone, his television and his gas range, which really only leaves a single bed and a small table. He says that he can't stay with his brother, because he's married with two kids, so Hani doesn't want to impose.

I visit his apartment to look at the washing machine, and we come to a deal. All of his appliances have been cleaned up and packed so that he can sell them immediately if anyone is interested in buying. I can tell that he really needs the money, and I could probably get the price down some more. But I feel guilty about bargaining too much, and we come to a price fairly quickly. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to transport the washer to my place and get it up the three flights of stairs, when Hani volunteers to bring it over today and install it for me. "That way you can see that it works well," he tells me. "And besides," he tells me, "it's not like I have a job to go to or anything to do."

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

I'm back in Beirut after some time in Spain and France over the winter holidays. Things are a but tense but not too bad. I came in late at night on the 14th, the day of the Hariri memorial and the day after the bus bombings.

I was happy to see that the Hariri memorial, which was right next to the opposition sit-in, went off without any clashes. (Not least because I didn't want to get stuck at the airport in case the roads were closed.)

Besides that, people are pretty skittish. I've heard on numerous accounts (some from UNRWA employees) that during the clashes last month, there were checkpoints by various groups (not always official) where identity cards were checked to see what sect everyone belonged to. Although I can't confirm it, I've had one account that the Lebanese Forces (Christian leader Geagea's militia) were armed and manning checkpoints not far from Saida. There have been reports coming from Hezbollah that the Lebanese Forces have been rearming, which is not a good sign.

The Times reports on a call from some of its prominent Arab citizens to become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews":

A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews," prompting consternation and debate across the country.

Their contention is part of "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," a report published in December under the auspices of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel, which represents the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens, about a fifth of the population. Some 40 well-known academics and activists took part.

They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights, saying Israel inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocations.

The authors propose a form of government, "consensual democracy," akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.

I am a strong believer that the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a binational democratic state where one person equals one vote and where ethnic and religious minorities are guaranteed equal rights. This declaration seems to be a step in the right direction, although many Israelis see it as a thinly veiled plan to destroy Israel.

But whether that's accurate or not depends on whether one sees Israel as a Jewish state or as a state of its citizens. After all, Israel is less homogeneous, in terms of religion, than the US.

Further reading: An English version of the report can be found here. Otherwise, Ilan Pappe has a very good article on the Israeli demographic question here, and Tony Judt's article on a binational state can be read here.