Mideast Media Sampler 05/03/2011

From an email from DG:

1) Searching for Saddam
In December 2003, American forces captured Saddam Hussein. Slate has a 5 part series outlining how American forces were able to find him.

How similar were the searches for Saddam and Osama? According to an observation in the  final installment, probably not very.

For all Hickey, Russell, Maddox, and Reed's success in Iraq, network theory is not a silver bullet. Network diagrams helped pin down Saddam Hussein after only nine months on the run. Osama Bin Laden, meanwhile, has evaded capture for more than eight years since the United States invaded Afghanistan.

The American military's challenge in chasing Bin Laden isn't directly analogous to what it faced in Iraq. For one thing, fighting an urban insurgency requires an entirely different strategy than picking through the caves of Tora Bora and the mountainous membrane between Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

But there may be another reason the blueprint for tracking down Saddam doesn't easily graft onto the hunt for Bin Laden: Unlike the insurgency in the early days of the Iraq war, al-Qaida is no longer a real network.

2) Gruenewald statement by PM Ariel Sharon

In honor of Yom Hashoah, I had wanted to link to this speech from then PM Ariel Sharon. I don't know how it sounded, but the words are incredibly moving.

I come here today from the Land of Israel where I was born, in which I live and for which I have fought all my life. Maly, Hala and Abraham Bobkar were from my age group when they set out from here on their last journey. The same historical process which scattered my people across the entire globe and founded the Zionist movement is what led to the fact that they, and not I, were on transport #23.

3) Is Obama too rigid for peace?

In their endorsement of candidate Barack Obama for President the editors of the Washington Post wrote:

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests.

Now Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Washington Post reconsiders President Obama.

We all know that when Barack Obama moved into the White House, a supple and pragmatic thinker replaced a rigid ideologue. 

But what if what we all know is wrong? What if history is proving George W. Bush to have been the more adaptable, and Barack Obama the more rigid — or, to put it in positive terms, consistent?

There's that word "supple" again. Hiatt makes an excellent observation here:

Probably no president shifted more dramatically than President Bush after Sept. 11, 2001. The man who had run on a platform of humility abroad and modest government at home proceeded to invade two countries, evangelize for democracy and dramatically expand the size and power of government.

And while President Obama faced two major crises coming into office, Hiatt writes:

But he did not allow the crisis to reshape the priorities he had brought to the White House. Instead, he repackaged them. Reforms of health care, schools and energy were resold as essential to repair the economic imbalances the financial crisis had revealed. A giant spending package ostensibly aimed at stimulating the economy was crammed with measures, from computerizing doctors’ offices to promoting merit pay for teachers, that had more to do with Obama’s original policy goals than with economic stimulus.

President Obama used the financial crisis to sell his domestic program. Once he had the crisis, he used it as a way to sell policies he would have implemented anyway.

Hiatt gets to the point:

The guiding principle of foreign policy for Obama the candidate was engagement: the notion that by embracing the diplomacy that Bush supposedly had neglected, Obama would restore U.S. standing in the world. Where Bush had lectured and bullied, Obama would embrace alliances, international law and a more realistic acceptance of America’s declining relative power.
The thesis has had limited success. There have been diplomatic achievements with Russia, and a peaceful election in Sudan, but little or no progress in key targets of administration engagement: Iran, Burma, North Korea, Israel-Palestinian peace.

I don't agree with everything Hiatt wrote, but overall he's on target. I wish he had explicitly said: "I oversold the candidate."


4) Show me the money

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayaad is upset:

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Monday sent out an urgent appeal for help saying he may not be able to pay for salaries for about 130,000 public employees or anything else if Israel does not release about $100 million in funds collected over the last month on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

He claims that Israel has no right to do so:

This time, the Palestinian Authority has not yet paid April salaries and may not be able to do that any time soon because Israel has decided to withhold the monthly payment. 

“Israel has no right to withhold this money,” Fayyad said. “This is Palestinian money and it is not a grant or charity from Israel.” 

Fayyad appealed for help from the donor countries to get him out of his predicament, first, by financial support, and, second, by pressuring Israel to release the funds. It is unclear whether Israel will be swayed.

While there's an acknowledgment in the article that Hamas doesn't recognize Israel, nowhere in the article does it inform us that the (upcoming) agreement between Fatah and Hamas is a violation of the premises of the peace process. So the news is reported only in respect to Israeli obligations, not Palestinian ones.

Technorati Tag: Middle East and Osama Bin Laden.