George Bush, John McCain Think Israelis are Appeasing Terrorists

According to Israeli news sources:

Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said Monday that the Jewish state is holding talks directly with the Palestinian movement Hamas, despite a government decision forbidding such moves.

This is the first time that Israel has officially admitted any direct contact with the militant group that the Jewish state regards as a terrorist organization, local daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported on its website.

The talks "are in direct defiance of the government's resolution, according to which Israel would agree to talk to the group only after it accepts the conditions set by the Quartet," Ramon admitted at a meeting of lawmakers from the Kadima party.

The Quartet of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nation has demanded Hamas recognize Israel, renounce violence and ratify past agreements and the road map.

Israel is negotiating a possible ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit with Hamas, apparently with Egypt being the middleman, in a manner, the report said not to breach the "political siege" Israel imposed on Hamas since its violent takeover of the coastal strip in June last year.

Commenting on the stance of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and some other ministers that Shalit's release must be included in the truce deal, Ramon, however, said the two issues should not be linked together, as "a humanitarian one" has nothing to do with "the war on terror."

California considers dropping anti-Communist laws

By Joel Wendland

Here is an interesting item from The Mercury News:

SACRAMENTO—Sen. Alan Lowenthal thinks it's about time that California removes some of the last vestiges of the Cold War from its laws.

The Long Beach Democrat has introduced a bill that would scrap statutes allowing teachers and other public employees to be fired for being members of the Communist Party.

The measure, scheduled to be considered Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee, also would drop a requirement that representatives of organizations seeking to use school facilities sign a form stating they do not have communist affiliations.

Lowenthal said the measure would drop old laws that were adopted at the height of the Red Scare following World War II and that have been found unconstitutional by the courts.

"Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the threat between us and communism just isn't there...," he said in an interview. "They are not a danger to our liberty, and the courts have uniformly said that."

Further into the article, the California lawmaker argues for keeping portions of the statute that ban advocacy of the violent overthrow of the government. A spokesperson for the senator pointed out that the Communist Party rejects AND denounces the use of violence and terrorism. Thus prejudicial laws that targeted Communists or anyone for perceived political beliefs are outdated.

The US working class has learned from its history in the civil rights movement, workers' struggles for unions, and in other advocacy struggles for rights, the environment, health care, and more, that violent tactics are not successful and are morally questionable. Instead, they give the authorities a basis on which to respond in a violent manner, to divide the people, and to set progress back.

Militant struggle does not mean violent struggle. Building broad coalitions of different communities and forces for social progress, direct non-violent action, peaceful but loud and colorful street protests, lobbying and election campaigns, boycotts and strikes, town hall forums and teach-ins, sit-ins and civil disobedience, and letter-writing are preferred tactics of struggle by most progressive groups of all political stripes.

Dr. Strangelove II: The Attack on Senator Obama's Refusal to Love the Bomb

I thought I would respond at length to Tom Riggins' fine piece on the really outrageous comments that a few Democratic presidential hopefuls have made about Senator Obama's statements rejecting the use of nuclear weapons in the Middle East against the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

Tom was really being too kind. These candidates seem to have more interest in throwing stones at Obama than remembering Albert Einstein's famous comment (concerning the inevitable use of nuclear weapons in WWIII) that WWIV would be fought with sticks and stones,or Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's statement that nuclear war was the only kind of war where the survivors would even the dead. One might remind Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd (a liberal Democratic Senator who is the son of Senator Thomas Dodd, the former FBI man who in the 1950s headed the Senate equivalent of HUAC) that even those politicians who have no compunctions against both building, stockpiling, and at least threatening to use nuclear weapons saw those weapons as either deterrents to or a vital part of major wars, which have always been their purpose, not a weapon against suicide bombers and saboteurs

These Democratic candidates might also remember if history has any interest to them that right-wingers from the inception of the nuclear era muttered about using nuclear weapons as part of a preventive war against the Soviet Union, and "selectively" in the Korean war against North Korean and Chinese forces. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used nuclear blackmail which he called "brinkmanship" to threaten Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese (but not the Soviet Union, which even he understood had nuclear weapons of their own by then) in the 1950s, and boasted about "going to the brink," which horrified most liberals and progressives, even those who had accepted the cold war and was implicitly challenged by the the two time Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson. Barry Goldwater picked up on a theme that many right-wing military fans used to talk about when he advocated giving field commanders the power to use "tactical nuclear weapons" (that
concept itself has a Dr Strange love quality to it) but the Democrats brilliant answer in 1964 was a commercial (pulled because of protests after it was shown but it had its effects) or a little girl in a field as the nuclear countdown began. When Democrats hide from or try to pretend that they are no different on foreign policy than the Republicans they usually lose, as they did in presidential elections through the majority of the cold war era. When they focus on domestic progressive issues and de-emphasize militarism and war, in short, when
they represent policies that their voters support, they usually win.

On this issue at least, I think it is time to ask these Democrats the question that Casey Stengel famously asked to a very bad New York Mets team in the early 1960s--does anyone here know how to play this game? Are these Democrats more interested in emulating Bush's fear tactics and advancing their chances for the nomination by attacking Obama than they are in beating Bush? Do they agree with Bush and right-wing Republicans that the Democratic party is "soft" on terrorism as right-wing Republicans proclaimed that they were "soft" on Communism and revolution to the point that they have to say that they will never "tie the hands
of the military" even if those hands are on nuclear buttons.

Or are they simply "crackpots"? Not crackpot realists, the term C. Wright Mills used in the 1950s to describe Dulles, Herman Kahn, and all those cold war enablers and implementers who saw military escalation
both conventional (as an alternative to nuclear) and nuclear (as cheaper than conventional) as "tough-minded" responses to the "real world." Al Qaeda isn't a country like the U.S. or the USSR or a military alliance system like NAT0 or the Warsaw Treaty. Don't they realize that "terrorism" is a tactic used by groups who cannot or will not fight conventional wars or guerrilla wars. That point has been made by most serious strategic thinkers for more than a century now, and is still central to the thinking of British and European planners against terrorist groups, but it is rarely made here, since the "war against terrorism" has become both an enormous political pork barrel and a fixed idea against serious thought on a wide variety of questions.

Frankly, I doubt that John Foster Dulles or even Herman Kahn would see any utility in threatening or using nuclear weapons against a relatively small internationally organized groups, particularly a group like Al Qaeda that trains people to be suicide bombers and revels in a sociopathic death wish, which it dresses up in ecclesiastical garb. That is "crackpot" even more than "crackpot realist."

Such a policy would be giving Al Qaeda what it wants, besides letting the genie of nuclear warfare out of the bottle where it has stayed since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks. Of course, one should remember that
the most likely place to use such weapons would be where Al Qaeda is really headquartered, that is, the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas where it began in 1988 as part of the Reagan war to "free Afghanistan" from its revolutionary Communist government and its Soviet supporters. Pakistan does have nuclear weapons, a point that should be taken into account

Although most of the Democratic candidates refrained from this participating in this nonsense, those did, or, like Hillary Clinton, saw these issues as "hypothetical" are hurting the people who regularly vote for their party and helping the Republicans. By turning on each other on such absurd grounds they can only give the discredited right-wing Republican administration and party time to regroup and make better use of their traditional large financial edge for the 2008 elections.

As a final point, I showed the Battle of Algiers, to a Summer Class that I am teaching (not the one in U.S. history, but one in the History of Imperialism) very recently. I mentioned to the class that the army had U.S. troops in Iraq watch the film to get a greater understanding about how to fight terrorism immediately after the beginning of the occupation (ironic, since the film is clearly against the French colonialists and for the Algerians).

Also, and this may be a comment on the military itself and its lack of understanding, the film does have the French elite paratroop commander directing the counter-insurgency make the point over and over again that
the military factor is very secondary in fighting the insurgents and their terrorist tactics. This is a police problem and police tactics are necessary to defeat the enemy. Although all of the Democratic candidates were far better students than GW Bush, (and they could afford the tuition for my Summer courses, although I would like to see them revive the idea of free tuition public higher education) those who attacked Obama might see the Battle of Algiers and see if they can learn something

The French knew what they were doing in Algeria and they lost because they could not deal with the underlying social-economic questions or the allied question of national liberation. The French were actually successful by using both brutal (widespread torture) and sophisticated police methods in suppressing the urban insurrection and they still lost because of their failure to deal with the exploitation and dehumanizing social oppression that colonialism had meant for many generations in Algeria.

The Bush administration hasn't known much of anything about what it has been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism, national or international, is still a police matter, not significantly, much less primarily a military matter.

The "war on terrorism" is for domestic political consumption and the politicians who go along with it to the tune of the 460 billion "military budget" and verbal arms races to prove that they are "stronger" on terrorism than their opponents get further and further away from both doing the cooperative international police work necessary to really eliminate such groups and developing a foreign policy and an international economic that will support democratic and progressive forces in countries like Pakistan who are their enemies and will undertake reforms that will undercut the support that groups like Al Qaeda have not supporting regimes and ruling groups.

These are the issues, along with addressing the needs of the working people of our country which the Democratic candidates should be addressing rather than attacking one of their number not talking like a
crackpot and/or a member of the Bush administration.

--Norman Markowitz

Questions For a President Left Behind

In the late 1930s, Robert E. Sherwood, a prominent playwright and also speech writer for Franklin Roosevelt wrote an anti-war play titled "Idiot's Delight." Although the play was set in Europe, I thought of it, particularly the title, when I read GW Bush's speech at an Air Force base today trumpeting the dangers of Al Qaeda in Iraq, its relationship to the central Al Qaeda leadership, and the disaster that would occur if the U..S. withdrew from Iraq. Let us ask the, to put it charitably, "left behind" president a few long unanswered questions.

1. Why did his administration fail to hold bin Laden relatives after the September 11 attacks to interrogate them about the Al Qaeda leader?

2. Why hasn't his administration concentrated on Saudi Arabia, where the Al Qaeda recruits and money have always been centered if it is serious about fighting Al Qaeda?

3. Why has the administration continued to support the Musharraf dictatorship in Pakistan to the tune of billions, providing no aid whatsoever to democratic and progressive forces in that country where pro Al Qaeda elements are part of the machinery of government and bin Laden and his top lieutenants operate, as the whole world and even U.S. intelligence knows, from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region (in a country by the way which does have nuclear weapons aka weapons of mass destruction)?

4. Why have the administration and the Congress for that matter not seriously examined the relationship between bin Laden and the Al Qaeda group he created in Afghanistan in 1988 and the Central Intelligence
Agency, which worked with and supported him directly and indirectly through its subordinate, the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) through at least the 1980s? What about possible ongoing relationships leading up to the September 11 attacks, between Al Qaeda and bribed or rogue agents of the CIA and its subordinates, and the relationship of the bin Laden family, perhaps the greatest capitalist family in the region (its wealth was estimated at four billion at the time of the attacks and has grown substantially since) and its Texas oil industry and other big business U.S. friends in both the development of Al Qaeda and its post September 11 protection?

Before knee jerk readers of establishment publications start calling me a conspiracy theorist, I am not saying that I know the answers to these questions. I am saying that it is a comment on the discussions concerning "terrorism" in the U.S. that they were and are not even asked and weren't asked seriously by the "blue ribbon" commission investigating the attacks, which shied away from the larger context of events.

We have simply been told over and over again that there are no relationships, that the CIA's involvement with bin Laden, evidence to the contrary, wasn't much and doesn't matter, that his relationship with the rest of his family and the feudal-clerical Saudi ruling class simply ceased to exist when he challenged the monarchy and sought to create in Saudi Arabia the kind of regime that the Taliban did create in Afghanistan in the 1990s. That one might seriously look at the nature of capitalist class power, the privileges enjoyed by very rich who stand above the law, their undermining in the U.S. with the help of conservative political forces of public investigations into the hiding places for their wealth , their institutional and personal connections with each other, even in the past with a rogue figure like bin Laden, in order to understand the development of the Al Qaeda group and the threat that it poses to the U.S. and other peoples in the world, is out of the question for this administration and, unfortunately, for many of its establishment critics.

The Al Qaeda networks may be interconnected and may indeed be planning new and potentially terrible attacks against against American institutions and the American people (we shouldn't dismiss that completely because many fear that the Bush administration and the Republican Right need that to happen if they are prevent their defeat in 2008) . But who believes based on its record that the Bush administration can do anything to prevent that. The administration's policies have, to be very charitable, helped Al Qaeda regroup, use Iraq as a base, continue to raise large amounts of funds, and recruit foot soldiers and cannon fodder from both the same sanctuaries that it used in the past and new ones that the Bush invasion and occupation of Iraq have provided it with.

Not only does the Bush administration have no social economic strategy to even pretend to address the underlying social economic problems of the Middle East (or anywhere else for that matter). It has no political-military strategy to accomplish anything in the region except strengthening Al Qaeda, the clerical regime in Iran, its avowed enemies and those whom it labels its enemies. Bush can fight stem cell
researchers, trade unionists defending their right to strike and American jobs, senior citizens seeking to protect social security, environmentalists, and many others, whom his administration has really fought an undeclared war against. But he can't fight the Al Qaeda group or his declared "war against terrorism" based on his record of the last six years.

Also, there is no evidence that his administration really has any interest in fighting them, as against his progressive opponents, since they provide an excuse for his worst policies. Bush's (or his handlers")
real assumption, in my opinion has been that the stronger and more dangerous Al Qaeda and its allies become, the more his administration's power and the power of the Republican Right remain secure.

--Norman Markowitz

Bush and the National Intelligence Estimate

There is a classic definition of a reactionary--someone who learns nothing and forgets nothing and thus keeps on doing the same thing over and over again, regardless of the circumstances. Good examples of this today by the Bush administration would be re-asserting laissez-faire capitalism in the 21st century when it was largely discredited at the end of the nineteenth century and using military force to solve what are social economic problems again and again, regardless of the outcome. This might compare with such past examples as proclaiming over and over again that the "economy is fundamentally sound" (Hoover in the Great Depression, when everyone knew it wasn't) and "There is light at the end of the tunnel" and victory will be at hand in the War in Vietnam(when events constantly showed that that was wishful thinking). Finally, that the "war on terrorism" is being fought and will be won if the U.S. doesn't "cut and run"(a term used widely during the Vietnam War period which had nothing to do with reality) by the Bush administration today.

The Intelligence Agencies have just issued a report on Al Qaeda and the "war on terrorism" which which should be news only to very extreme ractionaries. I and a great many people I know could have issued much of the report off s the top of our head in its larger interpretations - a bright Middle School Student with internet access to global sources of information could have put together its larger conclusions over the last three or four years.

Al Qaeda remains essentially the threat that it was in 2001 in spite of the hundreds of billions spent in the "war on terrorism," i.e, the earth revolves around the sun.

Al Qaeda is continuing to organize and coordinate its operations under the leadership of Osama bin Laden from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, i.e., the earth is round.

The war in Iraq has produced "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia", which is the "the most visible and capable affiliate" of the Al Qaeda network, i.e, the earth still revolves around the sun, even though Al Qaeda didn't exist in Iraq, which no one except these fanatics have called Mesopotamia for many many centuries, until the Bush administration launched its war, so maybe the administration is not yet ready to accept that the earth still revolves around the sun.

The failure to break up the center of the Al Qaeda network and capture its leaders derives from the Pakistani military dictator and Bush "ally, General Musharaff, to take serious action against the Al Qaeda forces
who are headquartered on Pakistani territory, albeit, "tribal" regions, i.e, the earth is still round and areas of Pakistan are still feudal and pre-feudal, even though the Bush administration continues to regard Pakistan as a "free nation" and major ally of the U.S. in the region so it may not completely accept that the earth is still round.

First, we should all agree with the Democrats and all other critics of the Bush administration that the report, from the administration's own intelligence analysts, highlights the disaster that its policies have created. These intelligence agencies have nothing to do with any critic of this administration or any U.S. administration. They were created after WWII largely to fight the cold war, a war on behalf of world capitalism against the forces of revolutionary socialism and anti-imperialism through the world. They have long held built in biases that lead them to ignore legitimate social movements, exaggerate foreign intervention when that intervention was Soviet or from some pro socialist source, and give their political masters in Washington the "data" to support policies that favor backing up dictators of the right like Musharaff, ignoring diplomatic and social economic solutions to international problems, and pursuing military interventionism.

The initial White House response today is that bin Laden himself as well as the Bush administration regards "Iraq as the central front in the war on terror."

That means, if one is to take it seriously, that the administration is using bin Laden's propaganda about Iraq to gain funding and mobilize support for his clerical fascist "holy war" against the U.S. and many other nations and societies in order to gain funding and support to continue its disastrous war policy. It is "evidence" only that Bush and bin Laden continue to need each other to validate their policies and sustain their power.

But we on the left particularly must take stock of what has happened and is happening and begin to come forward with a foreign policy that will make sense to the U.S. working class, not simply denounce Bush with the arsenal of ammunition his disastrous policies give us.

The most important thing that a future progressive U.S. government could do in the Middle East (and we should begin to work for this now) would be to come forward with a policy that breaks decisively with the
transnational oil companies and establishes something like the old postwar United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency to develop the oil resources of the whole region in order to benefit benefit the people
of the region and as part of a global energy policy. Such an agency could also work with allied United Nations agencies to advance policies that would increase employment, wages, the standard of living and quality of life generally of the people of the region. This is the only long-term solution to the distortion and manipulation of desperate peoples religious traditions by the bin Ladens of the region and for that matter the bin ladens of all religions and creeds through the world.

.This, in my opinion, is more important than the establishment of a peace process that will end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, That is of enormous general political importance but in reality does not, except
for the Palestinian and Israeli people, really directly affect the lives of the masses of people in the region; rather provides them with a distraction from dealing with their own exploitation and oppression, and also provides a distraction for large sections of the left who focus on the national rights of Palestinians to the exclusion of all else as many people of Jewish background uncritically defend Israeli state policies as a defense of Israel against their better judgment about those policies.

Such a development policy would of course have to bring about the reorganization of Arabia and the Gulf States, the removal of the feudal regions which are the longtime accomplices of the transnational oil companies. Before everyone starts calling me an imperialist and a militarist, let me say that I am not advocating an invasion of these regions, as Bush invaded Iraq with different ends and disastrous consequences. The left and a future progressive U.S. government should and can withdraw its support to these regimes, which the U.S. and transnational oil companies have propped up for more than half a century. There are socialist oriented and secular democratic elements in these societies who deserve support. There are the workers in the oil industry, many foreign "guest workers" from Muslim countries with limited rights and no great sympathies with the feudal clerical ruling groups in the region.

Also, the left and a future progressive U.S. government should and can decisively break with the clerically based military regime in Pakistan, itself a "legacy" that the British Empire left its U.S. successors in the region. At present, regimes in Islamabad in effect blackmail U.S. governments into supporting them, pointing to the elements in their society which welcome Al Qaeda and similar groups and warning that any reduction in U.S. support will enable these groups to come to power. A progressive U.S. government should end its military support for Islamabad, strengthen its relationship with a secular multi-cultural India, and support those forces in Pakistan itself that seek reconciliation with India (one should always remember that contemporary and Pakistan were for many centuries part of the same Indian Civilization and that their separation into first two and (with the formation of Bangla Desh) three states, had its roots not in peoples histories and real needs but in the political machinations and crisis created by the collapse of the British empire after World War II.

The U.S. supported Pakistan as an anti-Communist cold war ally and stooge and also as a bulwark against an Indian government which was both neutralist in the cold war, friendly with the Soviet Union and its allies, and contained significant pro socialist elements in a country which had large Communist parties. All of this was done from the 1950s on in the name of defending "freedom and democracy" even though India was a democracy and a multi-religious, multi-ethnic society and Pakistan was through most of its history what it is today, a military dictatorship that defines its state and society as Muslim.

Pursuing such policies which will change radically both the Gulf states and Pakistan will also pay a "peace dividend" against groups like Al Qaeda, since it will eliminate both the sources of funding for such groups and also the various centers and schools (most dramatically the ones in Pakistan funded by Saudi money) which indoctrinate impoverished Muslim youth and prepare them to become foot soldiers for terrorist groups.

Pursuing such policies will also make the United States respected by the peoples of Muslim background and encourage greater understanding and respect of those people in the United States itself, where one of the
ugliest and most sinister consequences of the September 11 attacks has been the escalation of fear and hostility against the ethnically diverse Muslim minority in the U.S. and Muslims generally in the world

--Norman Markowitz