Mideast Media Sampler 09/11/2011

From DG:

1) Mark Landler nominates himself to become chief Palestinian negotiator


It is very satisfying when someone succeeds at a position that allows him to go onto higher pursuits that exploit his talents. Anti-Israel blogger, Robert Mackey is leaving the New York Times The Lede blog to further his activism at the Guardian. Given his demonstrated bias and mendacity regarding Israel, he is well qualified to succeed in his new position. Maybe in time he'll get promoted to Al Jazeera.


If someone else at the New York Times is angling for a new job, I'd guess it was Mark Landler,who just wrote a masterful whitewash of Mahmoud Abbas's refusal to make peace with Israel, Obama and Abbas: From Speed Dial to Not Talking.

Among the very first foreign leaders President Obama called after entering the Oval Office on Jan. 21, 2009, was the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The last time the two men spoke was in February, when Mr. Obama failed, in an awkward, 55-minute phone conversation, to persuade Mr. Abbas not to go to the United Nations to condemn Israel for building Jewish settlements. 
The 25 months between those calls demonstrate how Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Abbas has withered — and along with it, Mr. Obama’s hopes to make Middle East peacemaking one of his signature achievements. 

How did things fall apart?

“The beginning of their relationship was good — auspicious, actually,” said Ziad J. Asali, the president of the American Task Force on Palestine. “But then decisions, mistakes and reality changed the relationship.” 
American and Palestinian officials insist that there is no animosity between Mr. Obama and Mr. Abbas, unlike the often tense relationship between the president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. But Mr. Abbas has lost faith in Mr. Obama, Palestinian officials said, and after four face-to-face meetings and many regular telephone calls, there is now little contact between them. 

Bob Dylan once sang, "You have no faith to lose and you know it." What was Abbas expecting of Obama?

Among Palestinians, the disappointment is all the more acute because their hopes for Mr. Obama were so high. Judging by Mr. Obama’s background, temperament and worldview, Palestinians expected him to bring a new focus to the peace process and a greater sympathy for the Palestinian cause. It did not go unnoticed that he is friends with a prominent Palestinian-American scholar, Rashid Khalidi.
Mr. Obama named a high-profile special envoy to the region, George J. Mitchell Jr. He also spoke empathetically about the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza after an Israeli military campaign against Hamas there. And the president’s demand of Israel that it freeze settlement construction cheered the Palestinians, who believed that would remove a stubborn hurdle to a peace deal. 

Put a different way, Abbas expected Obama to press Israel to make concessions before he would agree to negotiations.

“We hoped a lot that in his administration, there would be real progress,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. “But later on, disappointment set in,” Mr. Shaath said in a telephone interview from Ramallah on the West Bank. “He really could not deliver what he promised in terms of a cessation of settlement activity.”
When Mr. Netanyahu refused to extend a moratorium on construction, Mr. Abbas felt let down. And he blamed Mr. Obama for leading him on. In an interview with Newsweek in April, Mr. Abbas said: “It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said O.K., I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump.” 

Note that Netanyahu's faulted here refusing "to extend a moratorium on construction." In other words President Obama pressured Israel to ban construction in settlements for 10 months. Israel complied. And Abbas still refused to negotiate in good faith. Maybe Obama was the one who suggested the freeze; maybe he wasn't. There's no reason to trust anything Abbas says. Regardless, Obama got the freeze and it didn't succeed in getting Abbas to negotiate seriously.


After noting that given his serial threats to resign, Abbas may not be the best figure to base one's foreign policy on, Landler concludes.

“You pick your moments based on where you think the diplomacy is,” a senior official said. “The president’s currency is so valuable in diplomacy that if you don’t husband it, then you don’t have it when you need it.”
One thing both the Americans and the Palestinians agree on is that this is not one of those moments. Mr. Abbas has written off the prospect of a new American initiative for the rest of Mr. Obama’s term, Mr. Shaath said.
Still, noting that Mr. Abbas “keeps high esteem for the man,” Mr. Shaath said he “retains the hope that President Obama will be re-elected.”
“Maybe in his second term, he will deliver what he couldn’t in his first term.” 

I hope this is just an idle hope of Abbas and not based on some assurance that Obama would be tougher on Israel when he no longer has to worry about re-election.


One more item of note from the article is Landler's observation:

This is a sharp contrast to former President Bill Clinton, who met frequently with the last Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, even if that relationship ultimately soured, too — or even to former President George W. Bush, who built a decent working relationship with Mr. Abbas during his effort to achieve a peace agreement. 

Note the passive voice "soured." Here Landler elides both the reason for the relationship souring and, just as significantly, when the relationship soured. After seven years of overlooking Arafat's serial violations of the Oslo Accords, Clinton openly blamed Arafat for refusing to agree to peace at Camp David in July, 2000. But Arafat didn't refuse because Netanyahu was prime minister - the prime minister he refused was Ehud Barak. There were no excuses. Eight years later his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, refused a similar (slightly more generous) offer from Ehud Olmert.


That makes it twice that the Palestinians have refused an offer that "everyone knows" will bring peace to the Middle East. In this article, Mark Landler does his best to obfuscate and pretend that Abbas isn't the obstacle to peace. But that isn't reporting; it is public relations. It suggests that if Landler has another job in mind, it might be to succeed Saeb Erekat who resigns nearly as frequently as his boss.


2) Why do they hate us?


Eleven years before 9/11, Bernard Lewis wrote "The Roots of Muslim Rage" in the Atlantic.

At first the Muslim response to Western civilization was one of admiration and emulation—an immense respect for the achievements of the West, and a desire to imitate and adopt them. This desire arose from a keen and growing awareness of the weakness, poverty, and backwardness of the Islamic world as compared with the advancing West. The disparity first became apparent on the battlefield but soon spread to other areas of human activity. Muslim writers observed and described the wealth and power of the West, its science and technology, its manufactures, and its forms of government. For a time the secret of Western success was seen to lie in two achievements: economic advancement and especially industry; political institutions and especially freedom. Several generations of reformers and modernizers tried to adapt these and introduce them to their own countries, in the hope that they would thereby be able to achieve equality with the West and perhaps restore their lost superiority.
In our own time this mood of admiration and emulation has, among many Muslims, given way to one of hostility and rejection. In part this mood is surely due to a feeling of humiliation—a growing awareness, among the heirs of an old, proud, and long dominant civilization, of having been overtaken, overborne, and overwhelmed by those whom they regarded as their inferiors. In part this mood is due to events in the Western world itself. One factor of major importance was certainly the impact of two great suicidal wars, in which Western civilization tore itself apart, bringing untold destruction to its own and other peoples, and in which the belligerents conducted an immense propaganda effort, in the Islamic world and elsewhere, to discredit and undermine each other. The message they brought found many listeners, who were all the more ready to respond in that their own experience of Western ways was not happy. The introduction of Western commercial, financial, and industrial methods did indeed bring great wealth, but it accrued to transplanted Westerners and members of Westernized minorities, and to only a few among the mainstream Muslim population. In time these few became more numerous, but they remained isolated from the masses, differing from them even in their dress and style of life. Inevitably they were seen as agents of and collaborators with what was once again regarded as a hostile world. Even the political institutions that had come from the West were discredited, being judged not by their Western originals but by their local imitations, installed by enthusiastic Muslim reformers. These, operating in a situation beyond their control, using imported and inappropriate methods that they did not fully understand, were unable to cope with the rapidly developing crises and were one by one overthrown. For vast numbers of Middle Easterners, Western-style economic methods brought poverty, Western-style political institutions brought tyranny, even Western-style warfare brought defeat. It is hardly surprising that so many were willing to listen to voices telling them that the old Islamic ways were best and that their only salvation was to throw aside the pagan innovations of the reformers and return to the True Path that God had prescribed for his people.
Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism. The war against secularism is conscious and explicit, and there is by now a whole literature denouncing secularism as an evil neo-pagan force in the modern world and attributing it variously to the Jews, the West, and the United States. The war against modernity is for the most part neither conscious nor explicit, and is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more and has transformed the political, economic, social, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries. Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood.

If you prefer an analysis of Sayydi Qutb, called the Philosopher of Islamic Terror by Paul Berman, there's this:

That was Qutb's analysis. In writing about modern life, he put his finger on something that every thinking person can recognize, if only vaguely -- the feeling that human nature and modern life are somehow at odds. But Qutb evoked this feeling in a specifically Muslim fashion. It is easy to imagine that, in expounding on these themes back in the 1950's and 60's, Qutb had already identified the kind of personal agony that Mohamed Atta and the suicide warriors of Sept. 11 must have experienced in our own time. It was the agony of inhabiting a modern world of liberal ideas and achievements while feeling that true life exists somewhere else. It was the agony of walking down a modern sidewalk while dreaming of a different universe altogether, located in the Koranic past -- the agony of being pulled this way and that. The present, the past. The secular, the sacred. The freely chosen, the religiously mandated -- a life of confusion unto madness brought on, Qutb ventured, by Christian error.
Sitting in a wretched Egyptian prison, surrounded by criminals and composing his Koranic commentaries with Nasser's speeches blaring in the background on the infuriating tape recorder, Qutb knew whom to blame. He blamed the early Christians. He blamed Christianity's modern legacy, which was the liberal idea that religion should stay in one corner and secular life in another corner. He blamed the Jews. In his interpretation, the Jews had shown themselves to be eternally ungrateful to God. Early in their history, during their Egyptian captivity (Qutb thought he knew a thing or two about Egyptian captivity), the Jews acquired a slavish character, he believed. As a result they became craven and unprincipled when powerless, and vicious and arrogant when powerful. And these traits were eternal. The Jews occupy huge portions of Qutb's Koranic commentary -- their perfidy, greed, hatefulness, diabolical impulses, never-ending conspiracies and plots against Muhammad and Islam. Qutb was relentless on these themes. He looked on Zionism as part of the eternal campaign by the Jews to destroy Islam.
And Qutb blamed one other party. He blamed the Muslims who had gone along with Christianity's errors -- the treacherous Muslims who had inflicted Christianity's ''schizophrenia'' on the world of Islam. And, because he was willing to blame, Qutb was able to recommend a course of action too -- a revolutionary program that was going to relieve the psychological pressure of modern life and was going to put man at ease with the natural world and with God.

3) How did they do it? 


In May 2001, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson wrote "Terrorism on Trial." Three months later that article would, unfortunately seem remarkably prescient.

Perhaps the most disconcerting revelations from the trial concern Al-Qaeda's entrenchment in the West. For example, its procurement network for such materiel as night vision goggles, construction equipment, cell phones, and satellite telephones was based mostly in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Bosnia and Croatia. The chemicals purchased for use in the manufacture of chemical weapons came from the Czech Republic.

In the often long waits between terrorist attacks, Al-Qaeda's member organizations maintained operational readiness by acting under the cover of front-company businesses and nonprofit, tax-deductible religious charities. These nongovernmental groups, many of them still operating, are based mainly in the U.S. and Britain, as well as in the Middle East. The Qatar Charitable Society, for example, has served as one of bin Laden's de facto banks for raising and transferring funds.

Osama bin Laden also set up a tightly organized system of cells in an array of American cities, including Brooklyn, N.Y.; Orlando, Fla.; Dallas; Santa Clara, Calif.; Columbia, Mo., and Herndon, Va. 

One point I wish had been covered more is what role, if any, did these existing cells have in aiding the logistics of the 9/11 bombers. Of was the attack planned and executed independent of the existing infrastructure in America.


Here's a profile of former Judge and AG, Michael Mukasey, including why he objected to public trials for terror suspects.


4) Did we win?


Barry Rubin writes that we did beat Al Qaeda, (if we define victory as preventing another major attack on American soil) but ...

Where is terrorism weaker? Other than Algeria, where it was defeated in a bloody civil war, it is hard to find any such examples, though in other places  like Morocco and Saudi Arabia — terrorism has not made gains.
In many places in Europe, the Brotherhood and even more radical groups have made important strides in gaining hegemony in neighborhoods and over Muslim communities. Governments have not combatted this and even have encouraged it, arguing that the organizations are not presently using terrorism. But with growing radical Islamist ideas, the level of terrorism and intimidation also increases.
A key factor is the failure of the U.S. government, which basically defines anything that isn’t al-Qaeda as not being a threat. Within the United States, a major terrorist attack has been averted, though luck seems to play a role here (underpants bomber; Times Square bomber). At the same time there have been many more small-scale attacks. One way the U.S. government achieves positive statistics is to redefine specific events — a shooting at the El Al counter in Los Angeles, an attack on a Jewish community center in the Pacific Northwest, the murder of a military recruiter in Arkansas, and even the Ft. Hood killer — as non-terrorist, non-Islamist criminal acts.
So are things much better a decade after the September 11 attacks? Aside from the very important aspect of avoiding a huge successful terror attack on the United States, the answer is “no.”

The failure has not been tactical as much as it has been political and strategic. There's a sense among politicians, journalists and academics that that there is unworthy extremism - Al Qaeda - and worthy extremism - Muslim Brotherhood long repressed by Mubarak, Hamas and Hezbollah's social welfare organizations, Fatah's fight for Palestinian independence - that muddies the focus of our efforts to combat terror generally, and Islamic terror specifically.


As Michael Kelly wrote in his excellent "When innocents are the enemy:"

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand. 

If we, as a society, accept that there is such a thing as good or worthy terror (or extremism) it makes it harder to fight even the unworthy versions of terror. So it's a little early to say that we're winning the war of ideas.


5) Followup


Last week I highlighted Thomas Friedman's 9/11 column World War III. In it he makes a case that in order to fight the forces that brought terror to America that September day, America needed to fight back, to insist that Middle Eastern despots open their societies more and have more dialogue with the Islamic world. I praised his first two arguments. In the first case though he wrote:

First we have to prove that we are serious, and that we understand that many of these terrorists hate our existence, not just our policies. In June I wrote a column about the fact that a few cell-phone threats from Osama bin Laden had prompted President Bush to withdraw the F.B.I. from Yemen, a U.S. Marine contingent from Jordan and the U.S. Fifth Fleet from its home base in the Persian Gulf. This U.S. retreat was noticed all over the region, but it did not merit a headline in any major U.S. paper. That must have encouraged the terrorists. Forget about our civilians, we didn't even want to risk our soldiers to face their threats.

The problem is that Friedman was showing his partisanship; pretending that the failure to fight back started in the Bush administration. In addition he mis-characterized  what really happened. J. E. Dyer, a former naval intelligence officer set the record straight in an e-mail.

There was no "withdrawal" of the Fifth Fleet from the Persian Gulf.  That is categorically false.  I'm sure it's because Friedman didn't know any better, but it shouldn't be counted in a "good point."  It is accurate to say that the Marine contingent was pulled out of Jordan.  The FBI profile in Yemen was lowered, but the FBI wasn't withdrawn.  There is an FBI presence in the US delegation in virtually every nation, and there continued to be one in Yemen.  Its size was reduced.


Regarding the Fifth Fleet, its HQ in Bahrain was put on high terrorist threat alert twice in 2001 prior to 9/11, as was the US embassy in Manama.  The "few cell-phone threats from Osama" were suspected to be the prelude to another bombing attack like the ones in Kenya, Tanzania, and Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.  The concern was for the safety of personnel ashore and their families.  During one of the alerts, family members of both embassy and Navy personnel were sent back to the US because of the immediacy of the perceived threat.  The embassy reduced hours and services, but the Fifth Fleet activities continued on a normal basis (other than the extremely tight perimeter security).  No facilities were closed and no capital equipment was removed from Bahrain.  The number of Fifth Fleet ships, submarines, and reconnaissance aircraft in the Persian Gulf actually increased.

Although the threat was considered less likely against our Air Force facility in Kuwait (this was prior to having huge bases in Qatar and Iraq), security was tightened there as well.  (We were still directing and flying in the No-fly zone enforcement operation in Iraq.)  Security was also tightened at the embassies and residence compounds in the rest of the area.  Embassy families in the Gulf nations weren't having much fun.  Funds were made available for voluntary evacuations for family members, but the evacuations weren't mandatory as they were in Bahrain.


I was assigned to US CENTCOM HQ throughout this period and, in the intelligence directorate, monitored the threat along with the status of our Defense and embassy personnel ashore.  The "few cell-phone threats from Osama" turned out to be the prelude not to a bombing overseas, but to the 9/11 attacks.


Last point:  the useless American responses to the USS Cole bombing in 2000, the embassy attacks in Africa in 1998, the US barracks attack in Saudi Arabia in 1996, and WTC I in 1993 made a far bigger impression on Islamist terrorists than the terrorist threat alerts in 2001.  So did the Marine Barracks in Lebanon in the '80s, for that matter.  Friedman could have mentioned our inertia after the actual, high profile attacks, but he chose to focus on what happened after 20 Jan 2001.  Check his piece at David's link.  He doesn't make the obvious point about the attacks in the 1990s at all.  He confines himself to (1) decrying the measures taken during the terrorist threat alerts under Bush, and (2) the inevitable reductio ad Palestinium.

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