The Only Place He is Loved

Following upon the allegations that an American Jewish entrepreneur bribed Israel PM Ehud Olmert when Olmert was Minister of Commerce and Industry, Israel journalist gadfly Gideon Levy wrote a column asking American Jews to stop intervening in Israel politics. While Levy acknowledged the present case was somewhat different, it was pointed to the perversion and corruption of Israel politics and policies by American Jewish money. In particular, Levy took issue with American funding of the numerous settlements in the territories and the various settlers' movements. Without the more than $100 million which American Jews have contributed, these efforts would have failed. And the settlements and settlers, Levy argues, are the major obstacle and opponents to finding peace with the Palestinians.

Levy, I believe, is right. Over Israel's 60 years, especially since 1967, the money and political support raised by American Jews has relieved Israel of the need to seek seriously accommodation and peace with the Palestinians. The settlement policies and activities, in particular, have further Israel's relations with them, pushing farther off a peaceful two-state solution. Moreover, this support, like that given by most Christian evangelicals, was given to fulfill the donors' fantasies, such as revenge on the goyim, rather than out of consideration for Israel's best interests.

However, I would Levy to ask that Israeli Jews return the favor. He should tell them to stop intervening in American politics and, in particular, to stop their ridiculous support of George W. Bush. One might argue whether the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq, its threats to Iran and its acceptance of Israel settlements were in Israel's best interests. According to the prevalent short-sighted Israel analysis, they were. But clearly the Israelis who cheer Bush for these steps have no concern for what they have cost the American people. They express no concern for the American lives and money wasted in Iraq, the U.S.'s moral stature shrunk by the administration's torture policies nor the administration's violations of its own citizens' civil liberties. Perhaps they are use to similar conduct by their own governments, army, security agencies and police similarly rationalized in name of security.

Even many of the best are filled with such dispassionate intensity. The supposedly liberal newspaper Haaretz in an editorial urges the United States to attack Iran. The editors know the American army is stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it kindly advises the use of planes, missiles and naval ships. Its Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner, who apparently has not heard of Katarina or seen the last five years of incompetence in Iraq, extols Bush as hard at work every day for the good of the world. Supposedly wise Israel president Shimon Peres, interviewed in the Washington Post, praises Bush for having toppled Saddam Hussein, for otherwise Israel would have to contend with both Iraq and Iran. He ignores that the revulsion through the Middle East, with the exception of Israel, to the occupation of Iraq has strengthen Iranian influence throughout the region. And it has strengthened the grip and audacity of the hardliners in Iran.

If Israelis lack the curiosity to ask why 72% of the American public disappove of Bush, if they are indifferent to costs other bear for their free ride, they might at least spare us the fawning over Bush.

Sounders of Swine

With the fall of the US housing market only halfway to bottom, the Republican opposition to the House housing bill would be ironic were it not tragic. Led by House Minority leader John Beohner, most Republicans complain that the Federal government's helping homeowners facing foreclosure would create moral hazards at taxpayers' expense. That means, that people gulled into predatory mortgages or who jumped at some deal they knew was too good would not suffer the full consequences of their decisions. What is ironic is these same Republicans do not acknowledge they created greater moral hazards by voting for and continuing to support the war in Iraq. This war has already cost American tax payers over $800 billion dollars and will likely end up costing three or four times that amount.

The Republican leadership instead has been well compensated by the defense contractors and oil companies who have benefited from the misadventure in Iraq. They are looking forward to a similar payday from banks and other financial institutions when the sustain Bush's veto of any housing bill that emerges from Congress. This is because such a bill to be effective will include requiring the banks and other mortgage holders to write down the amounts of principal and/ or reset rates to amounts the homeowners can bear. Consequently, the institutions would be forced to write off the differences, which would increase their losses, further depress the share price of their stocks and reduce the bonuses of their senior managers.

Undoubtedly the bankers, insurance companies, investment houses and their Republican gofers will discover some national security argument that makes the dispossession of millions of Americans virtuous. For example: any alleviation of current economic hardship will make the current sign up bonuses for army recruits less attractive and hence prolong our path to victory.
Or: any lessening of individual responsibility will sap our will to resist the Islamic fascist collective.

The conduct and allegiances of the Republicans might recall Samuel Johnson's and Ambrose Bierce's definitions of patriotism. For Johnson, patriotism was the last recourse of the scoundrel, for Bierce, it was the first.

Judgements of Histories

On the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, I remembered Thucydides's account of Athens's catastrophic expedition to Syracuse. Daniel Mendelsohn's brilliant New Yorker review of an annotated edition of Herodotus's Histories suggests to me that other Greek historian (and Thucydides's predecessor) had a better template for the Iraq expedition. In Mendelsohn's reading, Herodotus's point was not to gossip or celebrate Greek courage, but to recount the rise and fall of the great Persian empire. The empire fell because of a rash ruler's effort to expand it beyond its natural limits. That puts a nice socio-biological twist on hubris, the motor of Greek tragedy, and echoes Dirty Harry's line that "a man should know his limitations." In concluding his review, Mendelsohn lays the template thickly over the present case:

Then, there is the story itself. A great power sets its sights on a smaller, strange, and faraway land—an easy target, or so it would seem. Led first by a father and then, a decade later, by his son, this great power invades the lesser country twice. The father, so people say, is a bland and bureaucratic man [Darius], far more temperate than the son; and, indeed, it is the second invasion that will seize the imagination of history for many years to come. For although it is far larger and more aggressive than the first, it leads to unexpected disaster. Many commentators ascribe this disaster to the flawed decisions of the son[Xerxes]: a man whose bluster competes with, or perhaps covers for, a certain hollowness at the center; a leader who is at once hobbled by personal demons (among which, it seems, is an Oedipal conflict) and given to grandiose gestures, who at best seems incapable of comprehending, and at worst is simply incurious about, how different or foreign his enemy really is. Although he himself is unscathed by the disaster he has wreaked, the fortunes and the reputation of the country he rules are seriously damaged. A great power has stumbled badly, against all expectations.

Max Rodenbeck, the Economist's Middle East correspondent, also uses a book review to deliver a similar judgement of the Iraq expedition's effect on the American empire. He finds much wrong with Robin Wright's Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East, especially her assuming that Middle East societies can easily adopt civic culture and democratic values. However, he agrees with her that the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath helped put an end to such efforts earlier in this decade.

As numerous interlocutors in the region tell her, not only did the debacle promote extremism and further isolate pro-Western liberals, it alerted people to the terrible risks of toppling tyrants. The Iraq adventure, in Wright's view, may have been the biggest American policy failure of all time. It could yet prove to mark the end of an imperial America's influence in the region, much as France and Britain's catastrophic invasion of Egypt in 1956 demolished the colonial powers' standing and dangerously boosted the fortunes of Egypt's reckless leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. That is surely a sound judgment.

Nation Building

Iraq is a great place to practice nation-building, especially for an administration whose head wanted no part of it and whose skill set is consistent with that desire. That was clear from the testimonies today by David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker to the Senate Armed Forces and Foreign Relations Committee. Despite their efforts to simplify and talk up a complex, dismal situation, the complexities and fluidities in the Iraqi political landscape were evident from their words. So was their inability to see beyond a very narrow scope and the utter lack of visibility of what happens next. This is not surprising: there are numerous layers of regional, ethnic, linguistic, religious, tribal, economic and political faults in Iraq and very little shared tradition of living in a unified state. Ambassador Ryan's citing as a major accomplishment the creation of a new Iraqi flag and its being flown in all parts of Iraq --next to the Kurdish flag in the north -- was pathetic, but maybe that is all that can be expected. Crocker nearly referenced arguably the best model for understanding the politics and violence of current Iraq, when he projected the Lebanonization of Iraq in the event of US withdrawal. But not the Lebanon of today, to which Crocker indeed referred, casting the Mehdi Army in role of Hezbollah and Iran in the role of Iran and Syria. Rather the Lebanon of nearly 35 years ago, at the beginning of the civil war. Some features are different, to be sure, but there are similar fragmentations of power, corruption as standard government practice and militias doubling as political agents and extortionist gangs.

Lebanon's civil war lasted fifteen years, 1975 - 1990, and involved occupations of Lebanese territory by two neighboring powers, Syria and Israel, thirty and eighteen years, respectively, which outlasted the war itself. The US occupation was much shorter but costly. Recall the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut. The civil war and the interventions killed at least 100,000 Lebanese residents, permanently injured another 100,000 and caused over 250,000 to emigrate, out of population of about 5 million, including the Palestinians. The civil war was not continuous fighting but broken into phases, separated by attempts at political reconciliation and the suppression of some violence by the occupying troops in league with one or more of the political factions. If Lebanon is the model, even if Iraq has already had five years of civil unrest or war, the end is still far off. To measure progress over months rather than years is foolhardy, to predict victory -- whatever that means and for whom -- is insane.

A Change of Mind

At the height of the recent fighting in Basra, Tahseen Sheikhly, a high profile Iraqi government official and a Sunni, was abducted from his home in Baghdad by Shiite militiamen. He was held in Sadr City and released unharmed several days later. In an interview on NPR, Sheikhly said he was surprised by the depths of poverty he had seen in Sadr city. He now recognizes that the government must relieve some of this poverty, if it hopes to achieve greater security in Iraq. His words suggest 1) members of the al-Malaki government are awfully detached from the plight of common folks in their country; 2) new manuals on counter-insurgency notwithstanding, the strategy the US and the Iraqi government to achieve security is still largely that of killing or capturing insurgents and criminals, rather than winning over the people that support them. Sheikly's change of mind -- his questioning that strategy -- reverses the cliché that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. Perhaps a voluntary hostage program by members of the Malaki government and the US command might help change their strategic thinking, like Sheikhly's was changed. Such human shields in Sadr City and other Mehdi army strongholds might also encourage the Malaki government to honor the cease fire it struck with Sadr that presumably included Baghdad as well as Basra. It would have the side benefit of reducing the bloodshed -- the killing of three bodyguards in Sheikhly's case -- that often initiate the guided tours of Shiite militia strongholds; it would also raise the probability of the tourists getting home alive and whole.