Greetings and Happy New Year!
Eight weeks have gone by since Session 458 - The US in the World: New Strategies for Engagement - was together in Salzburg, and in less than two weeks President Obama will be making his inaugural address.
I hope most of you have seen, and I know many of you have joined, the conversation about US foreign policy which Stephen Salyer launched from Salzburg on November 14. (http://salzburgglobal.blogspot.com/2008/11/salzburg-on-capitol-hill-join.html)
If so, you will know about the briefing we gave to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington on November 19, and the memo and video based on your work which we presented to that and other audiences. The above links will refresh your memory, as will this cartoon sent in by Volha Charnysh which I think beautifully captures its spirit.
Of course a lot has happened in those eight weeks – including a lot more depressing economic news, and the even more depressing conflict in Gaza with its terrible human cost. The challenges facing the new US president on January 20th and after seem if anything even more formidable and more urgent than they did in November.
Therefore I am writing now to invite you all to send in your updated suggestions for President Obama's first acts in office, from the economic stimulus package, to a possible statement on Guantanamo, to the war in Gaza or whatever you believe is most urgent. Please enter those thoughts in the comments section we have created for this purpose. We will then compile them into a news item which we will post on our main website and send to all the influential policy-makers whom we have access to.
I look forward eagerly to reading what you have to say.
Edward Mortimer
Senior Vice-President & Chief Programme Officer
Salzburg Global Seminar
1 comments:
(this was written the some hours before Inauguration Day, during a thunderstorm here in Australia. I couldn't post it then)
Countdown to Hope against Hopelessness
Tomorrow’s inauguration marks both the depths to which people can sink in their actions toward each other, and the heights. This should be a time for celebration, a time for hope — especially for children and their parents on the wrong side of the tracks, and walls.
I thought that the Bush presidency had dirtied one phrase irredeemably, but was heartened a week ago by this letter from a Palestinian friend. We are brother and sister in our hearts, though he is a Muslim and I am a Jew. He lives in hope against hopelessness.
“Here in Jerusalem we feel like hopeless since we can not do anything for our brothers in Gaza. My wife keeps crying and my little kids keep asking me why is that? why they are killing these kids in Gaza, and I do not know what to answer them.
I wish you my sister all the best and one day we will get our freedom and I hope those killers would be sued one day and bring them to justice.”
In the words of Barack Obama, “that matters to me, even if it’s not my child.”
America the weak needs to build up its strength again
Regardless of the strength of Mr Obama’s international popularity, America’s economy is weak, and has weakened the economies of the world. The wings have dropped off its moral authority, endangering the security of the world and the very rights that America and the UN supposedly stand for.
For America to get its strength back, it needs to remember what democracy is — not a nation run by standover tactics exercised by K Street and email-deluges by the organized who can overwhelm all those quiet Americans who just don’t get organized enough to be counted. Democracy isn’t rule by the organized, or pay to play. President Obama felt forced to say soothing words in his campaign so that the NRA didn’t gang up against him, though he said lobbyists “won't find a job in my White House.” He spoke of change, post-lobbyist, yet post-election, there was immediate softening of his stance. Perhaps the most important change an Obama administration could bring to American government is a firming of Obama’s stance against lobbyists and special interests that can and have hurt America’s security and the world’s, just as they can and have hurt America’s economy and the world’s.
It is crazy to think that special interests, lobbyists and the organized, could come before the health and welfare of a nation, let alone that place where rhetoric rules without responsibility—the world. It is nuts to think that America comes to this inaugural time actually weakened by the first few days of this historic new Congress. But that is true.
A nation is only as strong as the ability to influence its friends
If America cannot halt the criminal activities of the nation that owes it the greatest debt, that uses American munitions—then America can hardly balance the power of the nation that is America’s greatest creditor. Yet one of the first acts of this 44th Congress was to support another regime's acts, right or wrong, in a pledge that was McCarthyesque —and followed that by being silent when the foreign regime that gained a status beyond that of America itself, a status that puts its actions above critique — committed war crimes unfettered by any worry that its greatest friend and benefactor would utter a word against it.
Yet, as Americans hope the world knows, a regime is not a country. One can be against a regime and not an enemy of a nation. Thus, the jubilation of the world at the hope this new president brings to the world. But that hope is tempered by reality.
Obama has stayed away from the war, but they brought the war to him - shoving it down his throat as his first pre-incumbency lesson in how American presidents must behave with respect to Israel's desires, if they wish to remain in power. . . .
Israel is using the two arsenals it is most comfortable with - military force to kill, injure, terrorize and displace thousands of Palestinian civilians; and the equivalent political overkill to bludgeon the American political establishment into total submission. After six decades of trying, Israel has been unable to turn Palestinians into vassals and subservient slaves - but it has succeeded in transforming an otherwise impressive American political governance system into a herd of castrated cattle who cower before the threats that Israel's Washington-based henchmen and hit men direct at them. Gaza will get its ceasefire soon, but will Washington ever find relief from the stranglehold of Israel's political thugs?
These Congressional votes in the past few days were not an unusual event, sadly, but rather a routine reaffirmation of the chokehold that Israel enjoys over the elected representatives of an otherwise healthy democracy.
—Ramy G. Khouri, Obama’s pro-Israel congressional welcome, The Daily Star (Lebanon), 14 Jan 2009
“Smart diplomacy”
The incoming Secretary of State talks of a new "smart diplomacy" yet her stance of not talking to Hamas and the lockstep stance of Congress toward Israel add up to what I'd call a three-monkey policy towards one state in the world, and that’s not the USA.
Much of the world is urging an end to the war and acting to forge a cease-fire -- except the United States. Here, blind and unequivocal support for the Israeli attack is actually increasing almost as fast as the Palestinian body count piles up.
—Both parties cheerlead still more loudly for Israel's war, by Glenn Greenwald, Salon, 8 Jan 2009
Why? It cannot be that Americans are unjust. Maybe it's the same reason that it is still legal to hunt deer in the USA with assault rifles. The lobby that acts like Joe McCarthy to make American policy follow successive unjust Israeli regimes, spans both parties and religions in the land-grab that is Greater Israel. It is facile to sum it up as so many do, as a religious war that has “gone on for thousands of years.” As Amos Oz (who should be one of the key people advising Mr Obama on the peace process) has said, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “not a religious war, not a war of cultures, not a disagreement between two traditions, but simply a real-estate dispute over whose house this is.”
That land-grab began with the birth of Israel, with the terra nullius approach and the actions taken to make the land look as if there was no one to uproot where a new state was planted. Terra nullius was also an excuse used to colonize Australia—and was just as untrue. Terrorism has played an important role in the creation of Israel. In 1943 Menachem Begin, who later became Prime Minister of Israel, became the leader of the terrorist organization, Irgun (Rahm Emanuel’s father, Benjamin, was also a member of the Irgun). It is widely thought that Irgun’s actions, including the bombing of the King David Hotel, “hastened” the establishment of the State of Israel. Years later, Mr Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize. Smart diplomacy must recognize these facts, as it must, the sentiments that America bombards the world with in the name of "freedom".
Smart diplomacy must recognize that when people have a chance to boot out a leadership that is corrupt and ineffectual and elect new leadership, they might choose the lesser of two evils. As Americans know, that’s the most common choice in a democracy. Smart diplomats know that the Middle East is full of people who know the history of Israel and the role terrorism played, and still plays in the terrorism of the state that is the USA’s greatest friend. In the case of its terrorism over the past weeks (when it bombed three UN schools where people sheltered, and used white phosphorus against international law), the message from America, so far, is that it doesn’t recognize the state terrorism of a friend. And the hope of that friend is that state terrorism crushes victoriously. But the victory backfired , for state terrorism always loses in any war for hearts and minds. Smart diplomats know this, but when will smart diplomacy be implemented? Not until key people open their eyes and minds to the obvious.
"It is obvious that the Palestinians will be left with no territory in which to establish a viable state, but completely enclosed within the barrier and the occupied Jordan River valley. The Palestinians will have a future impossible for them or any responsible portion of the international community to accept, and Israel’s permanent status will be increasingly troubled and uncertain as deprived people fight oppression and the relative number of Jewish citizens decreases demographically (compared to Arabs) both within Israel and in Palestine. This prospect is clear to most Israelis, who also view it as a distortion of their values. Recent events involving Gaza and Lebanon demonstrate the inevitable escalation in tension and violence within Palestine and stronger resentment and animosity from the world community against both Israel and America."
—President Jimmy Carter, —Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, 2006
Nancy Pelosi was one of Carter’s greatest critics, and one of the shrillest voices against Howard Dean’s statement that America should for once, "not take sides". Of President Carter, she said, “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.” Yet she has been quiet these past days, even when the UN accused Israel of war crimes and of blocking food and aid. The reality is that successive Israeli governments are acting just as President Carter and others such as Israel’s Peace Now organization say—and though many Jewish people do not support the actions of these governments, their voices are not heard in Congress. My voice is one. Nancy Pelosi knows that people can elect a government that acts abhorrently. She spent enough time criticizing the last regime to know that democracy is not perfect, and the history of America shows her that people can live in unjust societies, and support them.
Among the more unusual measures on this year's ballots was one in Florida that would repeal an old clause in the state constitution that allows legislators to bar Asian immigrants from owning land.
— “California voters ban gay marriage”, International Herald Tribune, 6 Nov 2008
America’s strength
America’s strength should have a chance to grow again, beginning now. It is the tarnished silver lining in the cloud that hovers over the nation and the world. America’s strength lies not in its economy, nor its military might. The strength lies in the hope that America’s promises can ring true. The promise to all people everywhere, that America knows what tyranny is, and fairness, and democracy, and free trade and the right of everyone to dignity and respect. America’s strength lies in the promise that the UN Declaration of Human Rights, written by a woman who made her president husband into a great president — means as much to America’s government as it does to everyone who lives in hope, anywhere in the world. For America to gain enough strength, say, to be effective against a Mugabe and for the people of Zimbabwe, America needs to be consistent in its message of what it values, and what it is willing to do to support those values. The cutting off of Hamas and the Palestinian people post-election, and the imposition of the same old compliant and corrupt regime agaiupon Palestinians, was a disaster for America’s image (and made President Bush’s Wilsonian cant tragically laughable). The refusal to recognize why Palestinians voted for Hamas, a dangerous wilful ignorance.
Hope, to be fulfilled, needs those elected and those who serve to act not out of fear, but out of duty to those principles that make tears come to our eyes, they are so beautiful. The rule of fear which makes Congress into what Ramy G. Khouri called “castrated cattle” might seem as if it solves the present, but it’s only another mortgage-default-swap, and as dangerous. Crushed hopes don’t necessarily crush actions. They often spur them, and those actions can be anti-social in the extreme.
America needs each individual to act not for the next election, but for America and the world. If some integrity comes back into Congress and public life, the next election might be easier than one thinks for those who act decently. Is that an audacity of hope? I think not. People are sick of the politics-of-extremism. And as for Israel, the USA would help Israel’s future and its present politics if America didn’t support Israel when it disobeys international laws, continues to steal land and even water, oppresses to the point that any self-respecting person would find it hard to turn the cheek if not to fervently hate; and even goes against its own courts, as it has done yet again over these past weeks when it forbade the press to see its just war.
The fact that the Israelis seem to be trying to blockade the media only hurts their argument that they are somehow more democratic, more open and not terrorists.
- Charlie Beckett, a media specialist at the London School of Economics.
Criticism of Israel’s conduct mounts, Financial Times, 10 Jan '09
Israel has a vibrant society of disagreement, yet the US acts as if there is only one voice — the hardline one that wins out in the faulty style of Israeli democracy where political parties that are virulently anti-Palestinian keep a stranglehold on policy, and where the Jews who are the most aggressively anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab are the ones that are too holy to serve in the military—yet Israelis who conscientiously object the draft, are jailed.
"I want to shout as loud as I can and ask everyone to join us in this struggle, Palestinians and Israelis who want to stop the bloodshed. The massacre will not stop unless people from all over the world will wake up, join us and call for boycott, divestment and sanctions on the Israeli government. I am saying these things as a Jew and as an Israeli who wants to continue to live in this beautiful and sad piece of land."
— Yonatan Shapira, a former Captain in the Israeli Air Force Reserves. He is co-founder of Combatants for Peace. The article that quotes him is Israeli Military Refuseniks, by Jesse Bacon, Kansas City infozine, 31 December, 2008
As Aaron David Miller has said, successive US administrations have engaged only with people the Israeli governments (and AIPAC-popular hardliners like Benyamin Netanyahu) have approved, and walked the narrow road of Israeli-governments' agenda, which is not a path to peace.
In 25 years of working on this issue for six secretaries of state, I can't recall one meeting where we had a serious discussion with an Israeli prime minister about the damage that settlement activity—including land confiscation, bypass roads and housing demolitions—does to the peacemaking process.
- Aaron David Miller, If Obama is Serious, he should get tough with Israel, Newsweek, 12 Jan '09
Mr Miller should be part of the solution. The new administration must take counsel and engage with people who AIPAC and the Israeli government might disagree with to the point that they call them, as they have Hanan Ashrawi, terrorists. Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Knesset, should be a key advisor to the US President, who should read Burg’s new book, The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes. Jeff Halper, an American-born Israeli Professor of Anthropology as well as a peace and human rights activist for over three decades, is a “critical insider” of great authority. In 1997, he co-founded the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD). Peace Now is the world authority on settlement expansion, which increased at the fastest rate ever in 2008. Arik Diamant, the founder of Courage to Refuse, should also be another member of the new knowledge pool tapped into. Diamant and CTR can give the new administration a real picture of what US military assistance is aiding. In the USA, Rabbi Michael Lerner should be part of the pool of advisors. He is the founder of Tikkun, based in San Francisco, and I would urge Nancy Pelosi to meet with him. Perhaps he could give her courage, and in a spirit of bipartisanship, she can pass this across the aisle to Mitch McConnell and they can truly become leaders in a Congress filled with newfound strength of purpose.
“Smart diplomacy” means also taking counsel and engaging with a range of Palestinians (including Hamas and Hanan Ashrawi) and others in the region and at home, including journalists such as Mr Khouri in Lebanon and Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya. In the US, experts such as Shibley Telhami and Juan Cole should be included in briefing the administration, and in helping to formulate a smart diplomacy. In a fresh approach, perhaps the Geneva Accord should be revisited? And for a perspective not tainted by any hopes for promotion to anything whatsoever, Zbigniew Brzezinski could provide much good advice. He was so right on the Iraq war that he was vilified by the outgoing administration, and is so unbiased concerning Israel that he is vilified by AIPAC, who particularly wanted Mr. Obama to distance himself from Brzezinski’s approval of him as a candidate, and Mr Obama did just that. Whatever the tack, the role of the US must change from the Israeli government’s best friend to a friend of everyone who respects the right of people to live free and with respect. The US must finally distinguish between a regime and a nation. The US should no longer stand by and watch as Israel expands. It should reconsider Israel’s role as the recipient of the greatest amount of the USA’s foreign aid, and use aid as a lever. At the moment military aid should cease, and the special relationship between the USDoD and the IDF should be reviewed. It does America no good that made-in-the-USA armaments killed hundreds of women and children in Gaza.
And perhaps its time to listen to the best ex-president America has ever had. Instead, he was censured when he spoke of the power of one lobby and the “suicide”politicians commit who speak up against it. Jimmy Carter’s service post-presidency should perhaps be held up as a model. It’s so unlike the profile of most ex’s now.
Cutting up the hog
The rule of fear doesn’t just exist in the Israel/Palestine issue. Mr Obama spoke of the massive stimulus package not having any earmarks. It doesn’t need to. It’s the biggest hog Congress has ever had the opportunity to cut up. Its distribution will be a test. Fear of not being elected again, fear of not retiring from office to a cushy existence as a fixer, could decide who gets what—but it shouldn’t, not when there’s such a great opportunity for change. Americans have seen what happens when lobbyists control what the government does and fails to do.
“A special interest’s lobbying activity may go up or down over time, depending on how much attention the federal government is giving their issues.”
— Open Secrets, Center for Responsible Politics
Making the change
Much was said about organization during the campaign—as if the candidate with the best organization would win the election. The victory that excites the world was the collective result of people, thinking people, exercising their rights—people, not sheepdogs. The election of this president was also a victory against fear and prejudice—just as it was a victory, on other issues,for fear and prejudice. But as we know, we can change all that.
I hope that the 44th president of the United States can, with help from all of us, lift the pall of fear from Congress. This is more than ever, the time. In the only face-to-face conversation I’ve ever had with a Washington columnist, the c. described the lobbyists physically hanging around Congress "like a Great Depression bread line". That was before Blackberries tugged congressional waists.
This should be a new time, when fear is given the boot, and those who use stand-over tactics or work against the public good, are put in their rightful place. I believe this is possible. In the words of Barack Obama:
“I’m not asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
It’s a precious responsibility and rare privilege in this exciting time—to make that change. Besides, it is reprehensible and foolish to load the hopes and morality of a nation and the world, upon the shoulders of a person.
_____________
Toshi Knell (counting down the hours, and they’re now less than 24)
Fellow
Session 388, Sustaining Democracy in the Modern World. June 2001
Session 458, The United States in the World: New Strategies of Engagement. November 2008
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