Tag: Judith Klinghoffer

No. I do not believe that war with China is around the corner or even the block. It is true that China and the US have traded sharp words recently. Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu told reporters that “China would aim nuclear weapons at American cities if U.S. forces intervened in a Chinese assault to prevent Taiwan from turning its de-facto separation from China into formal independence.”

The old general was spouting the Mao doctrine of the 60’s. Mao argued that given the size of her population, China can afford to absorb an American nuclear strike. When I read that General Zhu added that in such a case all of the Chinese East coast would be obliterated, I immediately remembered how Mao spent a fortune moving essential Chinese facilities Westward.

The US responded sharply, and not only with words, as it extended its strategic alliance with India to the nuclear field. Congress remembered the trade deficit.

The Chinese government announced it would stick to its no first nuclear strike policy, adjusted its currency and got its evil younger sister, North Korea to the negotiating table.

I suspect that sharp words were also exchanged between the Chinese government and the army. Why? Because some years ago when I raised in private the issue of Taiwanese independence with a senior advisor to the Chinese government on relations with Taiwan, he responded by taking a paper and drawing a map of the Chinese coast and Taiwan. He sought to demonstrate that an independent Taiwan would mean the encirclement of China. “The army will never stand for it,” he said excitedly, “everything will be lost.”

He, apparently, knew what he was talking about and so should all the militant advocates of a formally independent Taiwan.
posted by Judith.

Well, it is not difficult to understand how 64% of 1500 adult Russians surveyed last week by the Moscow-based Bashkirova & Partners pollster agree with the opinion that British authorities have created favorable conditions for terrorist attacks by hosting individuals accused of having links to terrorists, such as Chechen
activist Ahmed Zakayev.”

The truth is that serious action against Jihadist Imams such as Omar Bakri and Abu Qatada have yet to be taken. Blair promises action in October! The Germans courts find EU anti-terror laws unconstitutional and keep releasing Al Qaeda members while the Italians seek to arrest CIA agents for kidnapping terrorists.

I know, I know, the rule of law is non-negotiable. But laws must be adapted to reality. Maybe, just maybe, with better legal tools, police may not have to resort to a “shoot to kill” policy.
posted by Judith.

Former Kuwaiti Education Minister: All of Al-Qaida’s Terrorism Started from the Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood:

“The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has its own justifications for violence. In a statement by the movement, in which it ‘condemned’ the Sharm Al-Sheikh crime, it laid out its justification for the crime. The statement said: ‘the colonialist policies that the world’s strong countries pursue, as well as the aggression against the peoples – they are what engender the culture of violence.’

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s problem is that it has no shame. The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology of takfir [accusing other Muslims of apostasy]. Sayyid Qutb’s [2] book Milestones was the inspiration and the guide for all of the takfir movements that came afterwards.

“The founders of the violent groups were raised on the Muslim Brotherhood, and those who worked with Bin Laden and Al-Qa’ida went out under the mantle of the Muslim Brotherhood.the rest is here.

posted by Judith.

Andrew is kind enough to let me read your emails. Keep them coming. But if you wish to have your comment automatically posted and even debated, you can do so on my History News Network blog .
posted by Judith.

After landing in Normandy, the allies concluded the capture of France and announced that they will establish in it a democracy which will serve as a model for the rest of Europe. The rest of the European nations including Germans who suffer under Fascism will rise and overthrow their evil regimes. No historical parallel is ever exact but this exercise should help focus the minds of our policy makers. Does anybody believe the Nazis would not have organized an insurgency to undermine the French “occupation?”

So, please, no more WWII parallels.

It is clear that we have decided instead to fight the last war, the Cold War, which took 50 years to win but cost fewer American lives. During that time we fought a number of counter insurgency battles. We won some and lost some. In his recent testimony before the Senate ,Ken Pollack suggests the US Army alter its strategy in a manner which will better protect our Iraqi allies and end efforts to win the hearts of the Sunnis. There is no better way we could start than by protecting recruitment centers.

I read General Petraeus is finally leaving. Finally.

posted by Judith.

Hello, Andrew’s audience. It is an honor to be given the opportunity to write on his blog. Hope you’ll find some of this stuff of interest.

In a week in which bombs were exploding in Britain, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel and Turkey, the topics dominating the week-end talk shows were the Plame affair and the appointment of the “brilliant” John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Why deal with facts when empty speculation is so much more fun?

Following 7/7 Nick Cohen told his fellow liberal that he knows that “Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do.” So, he understood the reluctance of his peers to refocus on the totalitarian attack disrupting their lives. He, too, had little patience with the shortcomings of Bush and Blair. Indeed, pointing out the failings of the party in power is what the loyal opposition must do. How else could it convince the voters to replace it? Affirming the villainy of a foreign power merely strengthens the party in power. With very few exceptions (such as the past week), it is far more useful politically to blame your own government for the villainy of your enemies. In other words, the logic of the democratic system is to look inwards and blame political rivals for everything that goes awry. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that democracies do not fight each other?

I may be clutching at straws but in a terrible week, I found comfort in the following little item: “A snap on-line poll conducted by the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi asked respondents who was responsible for inter- Palestinian fighting. Those who said the PA were 43.3 per cent, Hamas 42.9 per cent, and Israel 13.8 per cent.” Usually, it is all the fault of Israel or the US.

The increasingly adversarial media follows the same logic even more ferociously. It does not need votes and it is not interested in the events which lead Mona Eltahawy to conclude that “there is no more “us” and “them.” It is all “we.” Why talk about the dead and the maimed when we can discuss the expected level of rancor which will accompany the confirmation hearings of John Roberts in September!
posted by Judith.

What happens when events refuse to follow the media’s preferred script? The extremist Israeli settlers are going to prove to the world that they are just as bad as Hamas. The BBC had arranged to broadcast an entire week from Gaza. But the settlers, who knew violence would alienate the Israeli populace, refused to cooperate. That did not stop the NYT editorial board. It merrily published an editorial entitled “Midsummer Mideast Madness” in which it equated the deadly Palestinian infighting which worries even the Arab press with the non-violent settlers’ efforts to show their true colors.

The truth is that Hamas must learn that elections have consequences. The primary responsibility for teaching that lesson belongs to Abbas’ government. But the Western media could help to delegitimize Hamas’ actions in the manner some of the Arab press is beginning to do: Can you believe this headline Two Palestinians killed after slaying of Israeli couple”?
posted by Judith.

There is no way and there should be no way to distinguish between the war on terror, democracy and women’s right. No one knows that better than the terrorists. While Islamic law is open to a wide variety of interpretations, leaving issues such as marriage, divorce and inheritance in the hands of the law as practiced by a family’s own sect or religion is more than foolhardy, it is criminal. Do remember that such laws may permit honor killing in Jordan, gang rape in Pakistan and forced divorce even in democratic India.
posted by Judith.

Egypt has been trying to take careful, perhaps, inadequate steps to to democratize the electoral process by following the examples of Israel and Turkey. For the first time, the ruling party’s central and regional leadership will choose the presidential nominee in a manner similar to the way Israeli parties choose their candidates for prime minister. A promising step provided someone dares challenge Mubarak whose posters already cover Cairo.

The second change is the decision to legitimatize what some like to call a “post-islamist party” like Turkey’s ruling party or as Cairo Magazine reports “Not your grandma’s Islamists. It includes a Copts. An Egyptian friend writes that the new party may be worth watching “because Ayman Nour’s party is so Western secular liberal in tone and style that it will be unlikely to resonate outside of elite circles (although the rough treatment Ayman has received over the past year certainly has boosted his image and image of his party.)”

The big question is how will the recent bombing affect the upcoming elections? If Debka is right, Mubarak’s winter residence was one of the targets. Either way, Mubarak’s Egypt is faced with a two front challenge:

It is challenged peacefully by its own civil society and political opposition that have launched a growing campaign to retire Mubarak after his 24 years of rule, and prevent him from passing on the presidency to his son. The state is also challenged violently by a brazen, self-assertive new generation of Egyptian terrorists allied to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, who attack the symbols of the Egyptian state head-on.

It is time for him to go and it is time for the US coalition to go on the offensive. At the very least, incitement must be banned, terrorist groups like Hamas or Hizballa should no longer be permitted to march in the streets wearing uniforms and national borders should no longer shield escaping terrorists.

posted by Judith.

A couple of days ago I was watching Clinton tell a BBC reporter that his administration stopped Al Qaeda from establishing a base in Bosnia. In the same vein, his UN representative and Secretary of State wannabe Richard Holbrooke
wrote that “we would probably have had to pursue Operation Enduring Freedom not only in Afghanistan but also in the deep ravines and dangerous hills of central Bosnia, where a shadowy organization we now know as al Qaeda was putting down roots that were removed by NATO after Dayton.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Dayton accords did indeed require the eviction of the “foreign fighters” but Izetbegovic (whose indictment as a war criminal was made public only after his death) ignored that condition with the same impunity Arafat ignored the Oslo agreements demanding the dismantling of Hamas. Consequently, when Bernard-Henri Levy visited Bosnia he found Taliban-run villages and it was from Bosnia that the so called charities financed the Al Qaeda operations.

Srebeniza was an atrocity worth stopping. But so is remembering that Clinton’s way of fighting terror was appeasement and the protection, strengthening and promotion of the “moderate Arab governments” or, more accurately, repressive Sunni autocracies.

It was that policy that the Bush administration discarded after 9/11 to the chagrin of many so-called realists from both parties. Both the insurgency and the inter-Western arguments about the Iraq war (as opposed to the war in Afghanistan) have their roots in that change of strategy. Afghanistan, after all, remains a Sunni country. For the Islamist, of course, both are lost territories.

posted by Judith.