A harrowing tale of “Abduction,” from Iran. This author is eventually released and allowed to leave. Thousands taken in the terrifying crackdown will not be so fortunate.
Meanwhile: “The government has banned foreign news media members from leaving their offices, suspended all press credentials for the foreign press, arrested a freelance writer for The Washington Times, continued to hold a reporter for Newsweek and forced other foreign journalists to leave the country. That made it difficult to ascertain exactly what happened when several hundred protesters tried to gather outside the Parliament building Wednesday afternoon. Witnesses said they were met by a huge force of riot police officers and Basij vigilantes, some on motorcycles and some in pickup trucks, armed with sticks and chains. Witnesses said people were trapped and beaten as they tried to flee down side streets. ”
Mark Sanford gets dumped as chairman of the Republican Governors Association; Haley Barbour takes his place.
Buzz is starting for Sanford to resign.
Rudy Giuliani pens a campaign-sounding column for the New York Times on cleaning up New York state government. “New York state government is not working. This has been true for some time. But the paralysis and confusion that has overtaken the capital demonstrates the need to confront this dysfunction directly and take decisive steps to solve it once and for all. That’s why I’m calling on Albany to convene a state constitutional convention. This is not a partisan criticism. There is enough blame for all to share. Recently, though, the situation in our state has gone from bad to worse.” Echoes of Mayor Dinkins in 1993?
The Washington Post hassles Virginia Governor Tim Kaine about his travels on behalf of the DNC.
ABC is getting lots of flak for its wall-to-wall ObamaCare coverage. At the very least it is hard to understand why they did not have slots with appropriate spokesman and/or Republican officials to explain their alternative plans. If memory serves me correctly, Newt Gingrich got nearly equal time when the networks covered the First Lady’s HillaryCare discussions.
Still it wasn’t completely smooth sailing: “President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people — like the president himself — wouldn’t face. Obama on how to drive down health care costs while providing adequate coverage. The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News’ special on health care reform. . .”
Robert Reich explains why health care is stalled: “Mainly because Congress can’t decide how to pay for it. The hardest blow came last week when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the trial-balloon bill emerging from the Senate Health Committee would cost a whopping $1 trillion over 10 years and would cover only a fraction of Americans currently without health care.”
This likely won’t help: Obama has flip-flopped on mandating insurance and taxing benefits (something he creamed John McCain for suggesting in the campaign).
Michael Rubin thinks Obama’s holding out hope for engagement with the current Iranian regime is not the “realism” it is cracked up to be: “Realism is about maximizing U.S. interests. Preserving an enemy regime is not realism. It is simply stupid. We should not be throwing a lifeline to the Islamic Republic, the fall of which would enable Iran to emerge as a force for moderation in the region, and allow the Iranian people to take their rightful place among nations.”
The Democrats have played fast and loose with the cost impact of cap-and-trade in order to jam it through. The reality, as explained in a Heritage study, is that “Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill’s restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.” What does this mean for the economy as a whole? “The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.” No wonder Warren Buffett hates the idea.
But Republicans think it’s political gold: “The climate-change bill headed for a House vote Friday is likely to be a defining issue of the 2010 midterm election. Republican leaders see the measure, one of President Barack Obama’s top priorities, as a perfect illustration of their broader case that Democrats are the party of high taxes and intrusive big government. In a memo circulated to House Republicans, Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) said the pending climate vote would have significant electoral consequences. ‘Democrats who vote for it do so at their own peril,’ Mr. Boehner wrote. ‘The American people will remember this debate and will remember who stands up for them.’”
This great post missed one point. The U.S. has had one tenth of one percent of it’s total male population in Iraq for a few years. I’m too lazy to do the math but I suspect that Israel had at least an order of magnitude more of its available manpower in Gaza. To do what is proposed would demand that level of commitment of Israeli manpower for a very long time.
I’m in awe that Israel has sustained the level of its necessary military commitment for so long without succumbing to some sort of military dictatorship. That it has done so while fighting with one hand tied behind its back and one leg hobbled with a leaden boot by ethical concerns about enemy casualties is probably without parallel in human history.
Personally I’m astonished that any American military officer would be so naive as to imagine that Israel could ever win Palestinian Arab hearts and minds, except possibly via the old LBJ adage. But after all, I have heard Bibi Netanyahu himself suggest that many Pals have told him they prefer Israeli rule but are merely inhibited from openly saying so, so I guess I can’t begrudge Exum his share of the fantasy. In any case I can’t imagine how continued Israeli gestures toward either Hamas or Fatah would relax those inhibitions – or how Israel’s dysfunctional political system could present a reliable alternative for the Pals’ consideration. Talk about fantasies.
At present, the rest of the Arab world, with assistance from the rest of the Muslim world, would never permit Arabs in Palestine to overtly side with Israel.
Russia is suffering from a decreasing population. Wouldn’t it be useful to everyone in the world (except those who want to increase Palestinian suffering so that the world will see how bad Israel is) if Russia admitted Gazans and allowed them to be employed and to apply for citizenship?
George, Russia’s not all that nice, particularly to people they see as non-Russian and non-white.
They’re racists and many of thee people coming from Russia are corrupt and racist, as Israel’s should well know.
fuster,
I agree that Russia is not all that nice. But nobody in the world is more cruel to Palestinians than Hamas.
George, I fully agree with you. Russia is continuously expressing love for Palestinian Arabs. “Jews to Palestine” – Palestinian Arabs to Russia. What is fair is fair.
It’s easy to dismiss Exum’s thesis offhandedly, or somewhat more strenuously than off-handedly as in the top post, but there are some underlying truths in his brief contribution. He doesn’t say: “Surge in Gaza.” He merely proposes re-consideration of the relationship between means and ends.
Like of a lot of people, I suspect, I’ve been reading Thomas Ricks’ new book on the Petraeus and the surge. Aside from being a lively and surprisingly even-handed, thought-provoking narrative, it provides a constant reminder of how widely and in many cases fervently opposed the Petraeus approach or anything like it was in the US military and across political factions. In many respects it represented a 180 degree reversal of US strategy.
There is obviously no 1-to-1 relationship between COIN in Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict, but why not think, a little, about what a thoroughly alternative approach by Israel, an embrace of strategic surprise and political-military akido, might look like? Even the stauchest Israeli hawks acknowledge that the Palestinian populace is the real problem, not the arms of Hamas or Fatah. The response is a species of political defeatism joined to a siege strategy. Maybe, in the end, Fortress Israel really is the only practical approach, but in most cases a besieged fortress can eventually be sacked, if the besiegers possess time and supply. I think the enemies of Israel have plenty of both.
> The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the mother of all quagmires.
> It has been raging for more than sixty years now,
Actually the Arabs/Muslims occupied Jewish Gaza in the year 638.
Which was after the prophet Mohammed had declared a global jihad in his letters to the Kings.
> Actually the Arabs/Muslims occupied Jewish Gaza in the year 638.
Palestine, including Gaza, belonged to the Christians in 638. After the Muslim conquest, Jews were permitted to return to Palestine for the first time since the 500-year ban enacted by the Romans and maintained by Byzantine rulers.
“During the siege [of Gaza], the city’s Jewish community fought alongside the Byzantine garrison”
Now is this possible of all Jews had been banned for 500 years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gaza&oldid=270980756#Arab_rule
One aspect of this question that is being overlooked is the scale of an attempt and a narrow focus on what COIN in Iraq encompassed.
Recall that one of the crucial –indeed, if not THE crucial– aspect of COIN in Iraq was separating the people from the thugs/killers/terrorists. This was accomplished in various ways but one effective method involved building concrete barriers around neighborhoods to severely restrict the flow of people while also taking a detailed census of the neighborhood residents. This denied the bad guys the anonymity and freedom of movement that allowed them to terrorize and intimidate residents. Another example was the bi-section of Sadr City by U.S. forces in March 2008. U.S. forces built a wall that effectively put the Green Zone in Baghdad out of range of Mahdi mortar teams. At the same time, Sadr City residents who were on the U.S. side of the wall — the same shiites who had previously been considered rabidly anti-American and pro Sadr– responded enthusiastically to new security, law & order and economic investments in their neighborhood.
All of this is to make the following points: 1) Israel need not re-occupy all of Gaza, but if — and I stress if– Israel is forced to go into Gaza again to stop rocket attacks, Israel need only hold a portion of Gaza that would put Hamas rocket teams out of range of vital Israeli targets (Ben Gurion airport for example); 2) Gaza is actually smaller in area than Sadr City and Israel could effectively wall off a portion of Gaza and secure the population against Hamas thugs and allow Gazans to govern themselves sans Hamas; 3) Palestinians in Gaza will certainly never love Israeli forces but, like the Sadr City residents, they may appreciate nonetheless the absence of Hamas intimidation and the economic benefits that flow from being behind the Israeli walls; 4) If Palestinians within such a “free zone” can demonstrate a functional society, the example this may set for the rest of Gaza and perhaps the West Bank could be transformational.
TS -an interesting idea, but allow me to point out that mortars are short-range weapons in comparison to rockets.
Additionally, while many Gazans might welcome the end of Hamas’ governance, they are not likely to do so if it means Israeli occupation.
6-George, fabulous thinking. The Gazans, once they realize that they can be treated slightly less cruelly thousands of miles from their homes, and only freeze nine months of the year, will be thronging to sign up.
Great post as always Michael, but you and the others here forget one thing…the Israelis may eventually tire of the entire mess and do to the ‘Palestinians’ what the Arabs did to the Jews in the areas they occupied in 1948 – push them over the border.
As a matter of fact, had Israel done that in 1967, they wouldn’t be having the problems they are today.
,This is particularly a possibility in Gaza…Hamas will never make peace with israel, and no country can exist with its citizens under fire. Also, the Obama Administration has made it quite clear that they consider Israel a problem rather than the loyal ally its been since the Nixon Administration. There’s not much good will to lose there.
As much as the Israelis might dislike the idea, Israel will eventually have to go back to Gaza, clean out Hamas, annex Gaza and resettle it with Jews..even if that means transferring a number of the current inhabitants elsewhere, whether to Egypt, Jordan, or the Palestinian occupied areas of Judea and Samaria.
The loss of Gaza would also provide a good lesson to the Palestinian Authority that violence and revanchist intransigence have a cost, while peace and quiet might just end up providing them with the independent Palestinian state – ‘two states for two people, living together in peace’ – that they claim to want.
16 Rob, I don’t think that my country is going to allow that.
There is a different kind of Petraeus solution possible in Palestine.
In Iraq David Petraeus deprived the fish of their ocean, as Chairman Mao would say. The general found a way to harness the Iraqi civilians’ war weariness and turn that resentment against the insurgents and into support of the Americans.
A similar popular disgust with Hamas has to be created for a Petraeus solution to work in Gaza. That can be done in the following way.
The US has promised $900 million to Gaza. If for the rest of the year $3 million dollars is subtracted from that aid every day that Hamas refuses to return the kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit, and another $3 million is deducted every time Hamas fires a rocket into Israel, that will create public resentment. Especially if the Palestinians can see on their evening news how the money that should be theres and could be rebuilding their towns is being diverted by Hamas, to jubilant Jews in Sderot and Ashkelon. (It would need to be made clear that Shalit’s murder would cost a massive deduction, perhaps $100 million.)
Not only will the Palestinian public resent being so deprived, but the Hamas gunmen holding Shali, and those launching those rockets will realize that their hard work is materially assisting their enemy. That will make them collaborators. Moreover, taking money out of the pockets of poor Muslims and putting it into the hands of Jews cannot make such Believers popular with Allah.
Would that the Israelis were to adopt the best bit of American policy in Iraq by promising to leave altogether.
18- The US is onlikely to supply any of the promised money for Gaza unless Hamas agrees to modify their policies AND rejoin in a power-sharing government with Fatah.
It’s up to Israel, however to get Shalit back. There’s little interest in the US in Shalit.
> Now is this possible of all Jews had been banned for 500 years?
No one said all Jews had been banned, but there was, obviously, a huge diaspora after the sack of the Second Temple. The Christians imposed a ban on Jews returning to Palestine, which was lifted by Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab after the Muslim conquest.
Wikipedia:
In 135, following the fall of a Jewish revolt led by Bar Kokhba in 132–135, the Roman emperor Hadrian attempted the expulsion of Jews from Judea. His attempt was as unsuccessful as were most of Rome’s many attempts to alter the demography of the Empire; this is demonstrated by the continued existence of the rabbinical academy of Lydda in Judea, and in any case large Jewish populations remained in Samaria and the Galilee.
Fuster #20 in response to # 18 says :
I don’t know whether any of that is true.
It can be assumed that the US is genuinely interested in resolving the Pal/Israel conflict. If a way can be found that turns the Palestinian public against its militant leadership, that should interest the US. That it would simultaneously help free a hijacked youngster, would not, I think, disqualify the approach. In short, I think you are an idiot.
I certainly am an idiot! That’s not even for discussion.
The US is interested in undermining the militants and if you read anything about the terms under which the $900 million is reconstruction money was offered, then you would know that.
You however are nuts to think that the average citizen in the US is going to understand the emotional significance that Shalit holds to Israelis. It’s even nuttier to think that the US is going to concern itself with a single soldier and allow itself to be blackmailed to the extent that Israel does.
How does this guy continue to write–anywhere? This is just awful.