January 16, 2007
News Analysis
Rice Speaks Softly in Egypt, Avoiding Democracy Push

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
CAIRO, Jan. 15 — In the days before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with officials in Egypt, the news media here were filled with stories detailing charges of corruption, cronyism, torture and political repression.

Cellphone videos posted on the Internet showed the police sodomizing a bus driver with a broomstick. Another showed the police hanging a woman by her knees and wrists from a pole for questioning. A company partly owned by a member of the governing party distributed tens of thousands of bags of contaminated blood to hospitals around the country. And just 24 hours before Ms. Rice arrived, the authorities arrested a television reporter on charges of harming national interests by making a film about police torture. The reporter was released, but the authorities kept the tapes.

Ms. Rice, who once lectured Egyptians on the need to respect the rule of law, did not address those domestic concerns. Instead, with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit by her side, she talked about her appreciation for Egypt’s support in the region.

It was clear that the United States — facing chaos in Iraq, rising Iranian influence and the destabilizing Israeli-Palestinian conflict — had decided that stability, not democracy, was its priority, Egyptian political commentators, political aides and human rights advocates said.

But the calculus of stabilization is complicated and fraught in a region as fragile as the Middle East, where interests are defined by religion, geography, geopolitics and political opportunism. And it is not at all clear that the new (old) approach will work. The United States is so unpopular in the region now, many here say, that its support is enough to undermine a government’s legitimacy with its public.

“The former pressure was an illusion and the lack of any pressure now will push the crisis between the people and their rulers to the edge,” said Ibrahim Eissa, the editor of Al Dustoor, a weekly independent newspaper in Egypt that is critical of the government. That eliminates “all false appearances that the Arab regimes are against the United States in defense of their independent sovereignty and that the United States is supporting democracy when it is in strict alliance with the oppressive regimes,” he added.

The dynamics of the region have also changed over the years, and it is no longer clear what the payoff is for Washington in return for overlooking rights violations. It is not certain, for example, that the Egypt of 2007 can deliver the kind of influence it once wielded when it was seen as the political and cultural center of the Arab world. Egypt has failed to calm fighting between Palestinian factions, or to help negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier held by Palestinian militants.

At the same time, where Washington was criticized in the past for supporting repressive governments, it risks even sharper criticism now because it made such a public commitment to promoting democracy.

Ms. Rice raised the bar herself when she visited American University here in 2005 and said in a speech: “We are all concerned for the future of Egypt’s reforms when peaceful supporters of democracy — men and women — are not free from violence. The day must come when the rule of law replaces emergency decrees — and when the independent judiciary replaces arbitrary justice.”

Since then, Egypt’s government has piled up a long list of repressive actions, including ordering the police to block people from voting in parliamentary elections; delaying local elections by two years; imprisoning an opposition leader, Ayman Nour, on charges widely seen as politically motivated; battling with judges who have demanded oversight of elections; and imprisoning Talaat el-Sadat, a member of Parliament and the nephew of President Anwar el-Sadat, for a year in a military jail after he criticized the armed forces on television.

Recently, President Hosni Mubarak proposed amending the Constitution in ways that would make it easier for Egypt’s toothless opposition parties to field candidates for president. But the proposals would ban truly independent candidates from running, limit the role judges play in monitoring elections and permanently outlaw any party with a religious bent.

Perhaps more to the point, the government has done little if anything to improve a climate across the country that discourages participation in opposition politics, many political analysts said.

“The government has said to us, ‘Stop, we are closing all the windows and doors we had opened,’ said Hafez Abu Seada, secretary general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.

Three hours north of Cairo, in Kafr Ghamam, a village of about 40,000 people, a small group of men said they had tried to build a following for the Wafd Party, which would seem to be uncontroversial. It is, after all, a legal opposition party and, like other government-sanctioned parties, has virtually no influence.

To win support from the village, the men tried to persuade the government to cover a pit where raw sewage was dumped and to repair a bridge that ran over the pit. But the men said no one would sign a letter to the government requesting the aid because they were afraid to be identified with an opposition party.

“My father threatened to kick me out of the house if I got involved with this party,” said Mustafa Ibrahim Abdel Hamid, a 21-year-old in the village.

What are people afraid of? A knock at the door, many people there said. Last month, after a group of party organizers gathered to discuss who would hold which position in the nascent organization, two men who took over leading posts were visited by state security, they said.

“I got scared and I wanted to resign,” said one of the men, Al Sayed Muhammad Ibrahim. “I wanted to resign. I have daughters. I don’t want any problems. My daughters, my son, my wife, all asked me to resign.”

In Luxor on Monday afternoon, the Egyptian authorities organized a news conference with Ms. Rice and Mr. Aboul Gheit.

“I especially want to thank President Mubarak for receiving me and for spending so much time with me to talk about the issues of common interest here in the Middle East,” Ms. Rice said. “Obviously the relationship with Egypt is an important strategic relationship — one that we value greatly.”

Mark Steyn's book is excerpted by MacLeans under the title (The future belongs to Islam). It is worth reading because I think it gives you a very accurate sense of what Steyn's book is all about (America Alone: the end of the world as we know it).
I bump into the online article because in this excerpt he obliquely cites BFA, noting that I read Robert Kaplan--unlike he, apparently, because otherwise I assume he'd cite Kaplan directly. The cite on Kaplan is just the reference to the phrase "Injun country," which he dissects very narrowly in its historical context, noting that the Sioux never ravaged New York City (although, I might add, the Irish did when sufficiently provoked, a la "Gangs of New York"--but again, Steyn likes to use his imagery very narrowly, so pointing out stuff that like is meaningless here).
Since Steyn focuses on "them" coming here (actually, arguing only Europe instead of the West at large) instead of noting the far more profound global flow of "us" going there--in the form of globalization--he only describes Islam's potential for cultural invasion here while ignoring the powerful effect of the West's cultural penetration of the Middle East (where does he think all this nationalism/Islamism is coming from?).
So, Steyn's basic technique is much like a Lou Dobbs or a Pat Buchanon: anecdotes that scare, compounded with some today data extrapolated to tomorrow's frightening inevitabilities. This is a technique often used by fear-meisters, especially in the realm of the environment, and it betrays an "all things being equal" assumption that just never holds true in the real world. A good example of this was all the "population bomb" logic from my youth, which has simply fallen apart on a global level. Now we're getting a "clash of civilizations" version of that from Steyn with reference to Europe, which is apparently the center of his universe.
But here's some limits to this logic:
1) The simple extrapolation approach on population in Europe is unlikely to unfold, as time and time again we find that those baby-crazy immigrants simply don't maintain that fertility rate the longer they live in an advanced economy. Strangely enough, they become subject to all the same pressures on family that everybody else does. We hear this argument on Hispanics here in the States, except we already find that birth rates are dropping as Hispanics get more wealth and opportunity--go figure! Just like everybody else who's come to America in the past.
2) If the amazing did come true in Europe, making it unique in human history, then what would be the difference to global history? Answer is, not much. Either Europe gins up its demographic vitality through the effective integration of Muslims or "Eurabia" simply becomes an extension of the loser Middle East. Meanwhile, the rest of the world simply wouldn't hang around. It would move on. To some, the "end of the world," but to others who "know" more of the world than just Europe, no big deal. Not big for America, whose allies will lie in the East and South, not in Europe. Not big for the East or the South either.
3) But if it did come true in Europe, it would constitute no more than a strange migration of the problem set from the Middle East to Europe, because the Middle East isn't slated for rapid expansion as a population indefinitely. Indeed, the baby boom of the 1970s, associated with oil wealth in many instances, has ended already throughout the region.

Weirdly enough, as globalization increasingly penetrates the region, fertility rates have dropped throughout the region, as Olivier Roy noted in Globalised Islam, a book I used plenty in BFA. If Steyn worries so much about aging Europe, I am plenty optimistic about a middle-aging Middle East, where today's youth bulge becomes tomorrow's middle age spread. So if Steyn expects a neverending flow of population from the Islamic Middle East and North Africa to fuel his invasive species fears in Europe, that's simply not in the cards. As for the processing of that youth bulge in the Middle East, two outcomes are possible: 1) lotsa violence as politics and economics remain unchanged and 2) politics and economics in the region change a lot. If the former occurs, the Middle East will be as disconnected from globalization's Core as central Africa is today. With some pain, the world will simply learn to get along without Middle Eastern oil, as the tumult there will push the Core down the hydrocarbon chain even faster than it will proceed on its own natural course, which has been quite steady throughout human history. If the latter occurs, then just watch the flow of humanity from the Middle East to Europe dry up. Impossible? We've seen that occur on a state-by-state basis plenty with Latinos here in the States over the past 40 years. If it hadn't, then America would have been overrun by Puerto Ricans a long time ago, based on logical extrapolations you could have made in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. But no matter.
4) Steyn assumes that the invasive Muslims will simply pervert democracy in Europe, rather than avail themselves of democracy's avenues to press their economic and political demands. In effect, Steyn's making the same glum assumptions about market-democracies that Karl Marx once did about a different proletariat, yielding the same sort of decisive assumptions that will be just as powerfully disproven as his ultimately were.
5) Of course, Steyn's (and others') counters to that immigrant Irish in America who were last argument is to say that the intense religious-cultural coherence of Islam will transcend all those changes that tamed such past threats--like say, the described in all the same ways then (in the mid-1800s) as Muslims are described by Steyn today in Europe. But do we see that coherence throughout the Middle East? Hardly. When given the chance, Muslims throughout the region seem to move into an acceptance of modernity that looks suspiciously like that of every other culture on the planet. Can it be done en masse? Check out East Asian Muslims. Can it be done in Western democracies? Check out America. But these are unfair arguments to someone as fixated on Europe as Steyn, as he displays the same fatalism on culture and civilization as Osama and others do regarding the Middle East. Neither's gloom is justified. Globalization won't warp the Middle East beyond all recognition, although it will kill Osama's nostalgic dream of turning back the clock there to a time he finds more comforting. And the Islamization of Europe won't warp Europe beyond all recognition, although it will kill Steyn's nostaglic dreams for turning back the clock there to a time he finds more comforting.
There is much intellectual danger in Steyn's form of reasoning, which I believe betrays the course of his life education and experiences. Coming from the rather narrow and self-absorbed world of theater, he really doesn't have the chops to do good horizontal linkaging of trends and driving forces associated with globalization, and that's too bad, because if he understood his biases better, his arguments could be a lot more powerful, although they'd also be far less frightening, and since he works his gallows humor in this vein, I guess that's just a choice he prefers making. But this is not seriously systematic thinking about the future. Steyn's futurism betrays the usual myopic problem of the pessimists going all the way back to Malthus and Marx: they simply refuse to acknowledge the enduring ingenuity of mankind to change and adapt, plus they ignore the obvious power of markets to take advantage of both good and bad, treating all churn as simply an opportunity for new sales of new goods and services to new customers. In short, the "bad" that Steyn describes for Europe will not occur in some vacuum. Wherever Europe fails in this respect, others will exploit, and I'm not just talking about his invasive Muslims. I'm talking about the rest of this flat world

GMT 1-16-2007 0:45:11
Assyrian International News Agency
To unsubscribe or set email news digest options, visit http://www.aina.org/mailinglist.html

(AINA) -- Hundreds of thousands of Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) have fled from Iraq to the neighboring countries of Syria, Turkey and Jordan. They are leaving Iraq because of systematic ethnic and religious persecution and are trying to make their way to "Christian countries" such as Sweden, Australia and the United States.


For the Assyrians to have a piece of land with self government in Iraq is of interest to the entire world. To create an administrative region or area (mantaqa edariya) is supported under article 125 of the current Iraqi constitution. If this doesn't happen, Iraq's original ethnic people, a group over 6000 years old, will vanish. Hundreds of thousand are currently fleeing the country.


Iraq, or what formally was Iraq, is not even a hundred years old. New countries come into existence every day. Only 10 years ago there was a country called Yugoslavia, today there are several new countries in the Balkans.


Assyrians have not had their own country since the fall of its capital city, Nineveh, in 612 B.C. After that this ethnicity had smaller kingdoms (Adiabene and Hatra) in which the people spoke Aramaic that survived during short periods.


For thousand of years this ethnic group has been massacred, persecuted and decimated. Now, finally, there can be an end to this. A protectorate in the same area where their former imperial capital, Nineveh, lay can be a reality. The province of Nineveh is largely populated by Assyrians.


The Kurdish regional government wishes to expand the Kurdish zone in northern Iraq. They are using their Assyrian finance minister Sarkis Aghajan to encourage Assyrians to apply for a protectorate from the Kurdish government. They, in turn, can demand autonomy with a certain degree of self-government from the U.N., the United States and its allies for Assyrians in the Nineveh province. Today the province belongs to the Arab dominated Iraq.


Assyrian organizations are split, some feel that they should seek autonomy from the regime in Baghdad. Others feel they should turn to Kurds. The majority feel that the demand for autonomy should be requested both from the Kurdish and Iraqi governments. It is important to secure an area with self-government irrespective of where in the future this province should find itself.


I feel that we should seek our protectorate from the Kurdish Regional Government as well as from the Iraqi Arab Government as well as from the U.S.A., its allies and the U.N.


There is no doubt that it is we who have been hit hardest by the war in Iraq. Only three years ago Assyrians constituted six percent of the Iraqi population. Many organizations now calculate that forty percent of the Iraqi refugees in Iraq's neighboring countries are Assyrians. Nearly half of the Iraqi Christian population is, in other words, in headlong flight.


Three demands must be made:


Refugee status must be given to the Christian Iraqis which means that they become quota refugees and that the U,N. is responsible for ensuring that they do not live in frightful refugee conditions in the neighboring countries. Today, fathers sell their kidneys to provide for their families in the short term. Quota refugees should also be able to be returned to Nineveh Province instead of having to seek asylum in countries such as Sweden, Australia and the U.S.A.
A protectorate in Nineveh with self-government must be given to the country's original inhabitants. This should also be the beginning of an autonomy of their own in a federal Iraq.
The United Nations must recognize Assyrians as an ethnic people and not as they are currently labeled as "Christian Iraqis" a religious minority.


There is a lot in this ethnic group's advantage right now. For the first time in modern history the majority of the people are united and are jointly placing demands on, among others, the United Nations.


When the Kurds needed security they received their protectorate and this was subsequently developed into a country of their own.


Now it's the Assyrians who are in need of security.


By Nuri Kino

January 15, 2007
Guangzhou Journal
In City Ban, a Sign of Wealth and Its Discontents

By JIM YARDLEY
GUANGZHOU, China, Jan. 11 — Guangzhou, the chaotic export capital in southern China, appeared to hit a major Chinese milestone this month, becoming the country’s first city to reach a per capita income of $10,000 — more than five times the nationwide figure and a rough threshold for becoming a “developed” country.

But in a measure of just how problematic prosperity can be here, the city will institute a ban on motorcycles and motorized bicycles on Monday, hoping to quell a crime wave that has been building to more than 100,000 offenses a year.

The vehicles, the primary mode of transport for migrant workers clawing their way up Guangzhou’s economic ladder, are also favored by criminals who have terrorized the city in recent years, including a shocking case in late 2005, when a woman had her hand cut off by a thief on a motorcycle. News accounts concluded that motorcycle thieves were divided into gangs, including one called the Hand Choppers.

“Crime will be a long-term problem in Guangzhou,” said Peng Peng, director of research management for the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences. “As long as there is a vast gap between the rich and poor in the city, Guangzhou will suffer from crime.”

The Communist Party is forever trying to focus the expectations of the Chinese people on a better, if distant, future where everyone is more affluent and where China is a true modern nation. Yet cities like Guangzhou and nearby Shenzhen, which have already begun to taste real prosperity, are learning how new wealth can bring new problems and not always solve the old ones. As incomes have risen in Guangzhou, so have crime, traffic and inequality.

Inequality here is unquestionably stark between the 7.5 million registered residents and the estimated 3.7 million migrants. This week, Guangzhou had to lower its per capita income figure to $7,800; the $10,000 level had been calculated without including migrants, whose wages are notoriously low.

But public sympathy has limits, particularly since studies show that migrants are responsible for much of the city’s street crime. Most major Chinese cities feel very safe by American standards. Still, in Guangzhou, thefts, purse snatching, robberies and muggings have become common. One 2006 poll found that only 20 percent of residents felt safe. Hawkers at one pedestrian overpass in Tianhe District were selling switchblades and collapsible metal rods as self-defense weapons.

Last March, Zhang Guifang, a high-ranking Communist Party official in the city, signaled a tougher stance when he encouraged police officers to open fire on crime suspects when necessary. The police subsequently shot five mugging suspects, and crime seemed to slow down.

Recently, there has been talk, including by a high-ranking official in Guangzhou’s Communist Party, of capping the number of migrants allowed into the city as a means of curbing social problems. As yet, the city has not instituted any restrictions, but the motorcycle ban has already forced thousands of motorcycle taxi riders to leave. Others have turned over their motorcycles and motorized bicycles to government impound lots in exchange for modest cash payments.

“It might be because Guangzhou is richer now,” said Lin Mu, 50, a motorcycle taxi driver, offering an explanation for the ban and then laughing at his own words. “There are no more poor people, so there is no room for motorcycles! Everyone has millions and millions!”

Another migrant, who gave only his last name, Gong, idled his motorcycle with other riders along a major thoroughfare in the city’s Tianhe District. “A lot of people have left,” said Mr. Gong, 40, his eyes darting in search of customers as well as police officers. “We’re just biding our time until the final deadline on the 15th.”

Mr. Gong said he migrated to Guangzhou five years ago from Hunan Province. He had earned about $250 a month on his motorcycle — a healthy wage for a migrant — but now he said he was not certain what he would do.

“Oh, here they come, here they come!” he said, suddenly racing off as two police officers approached on a motorbike. “Sorry, I’ve got to go.”

Along Beijing Road, one of Guangzhou’s most fashionable shopping boulevards, random interviews found that nearly everyone had been robbed or knew someone who had been. Maggie Qu, 20, who recently graduated from a local technical college, said a thief stole her wallet and cellphone out of her purse two months ago. Her friend, Chen Jianguo, 21, expressed sympathy for migrants — “They are Chinese, after all” — but he blamed them for the crime problem. “They do bring crime,” Mr. Chen said. “Unemployed people and uneducated people have to make a living, so they may resort to crime.”

He added: “There are too many of them coming, and there are not enough job opportunities.”

Of course, migrants are also responsible for performing the hard labor that generates much of the city’s economic output — just like elsewhere in China. Ye Cunhuan migrated to Guangzhou from Hubei Province in 2003 and opened four stores that sell motorized bicycles. These bikes, equipped with small motors, are popular for deliveries and also for people who cannot afford a motorcycle. Now, Ms. Ye has had to close two stores and is facing ruin.

“This has been fatal to my business,” she said.

She has responded by filing a lawsuit that claims the ban violates a national law that establishes the legality of motorcycles and motorized bicycles. The case was heard last Monday, and she expects a verdict by March. Ms. Ye scoffed at the idea that criminals used motorized bicycles, given their low rate of speed, and characterized the ban as an act of discrimination against migrants and others with less money.

“They don’t want to see any of the poor or any ugliness on the streets,” Ms. Ye said. “They want Guangzhou to be a city that attracts wealth and beauty and is full of luxury cars.”

Lin Yang contributed to this article.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA09Ak05.html
Page 1 of 2
If you so dumb, how come you ain't poor?
By Spengler

I wish there were a way to express in English the words Mephistopheles uses - herzlich schlecht, or "heartily miserable" - to describe the state of men. Herzlich, literally "hearty", conveys something comfortable and amiable - making "heartily miserable". The phrase should pass into the political lexicon along with such German expressions as Schadenfreude. It qualifies wonderfully America's current position in Iraq.

For the past three years I have argued that the inner logic of ethnic decline would shape the United States' Iraq policy, rather



than the messianic social engineering that temporarily turned the Bush administration's brains into pulled pork. Civil war and partition, de facto or de jure, would turn Iraq's potential for violence inward. [1] Unpleasant as this might be for Iraq, it would be good for US interests, as I wrote on January 21, 2004:
A devilish thought is forming in the back of the American mind: which is better, to have Iraqis shooting at American soldiers, or at each other? During the Cold War, Moscow stood to gain from instability, and Washington sought to stabilize allied regimes (Iran being the exception that proved the rule). Now, with no strategic competitor, America can pick up the pieces at its leisure. As in finance, volatility favors the player with the most options.
Last week was not a good one for America's detractors. The price of oil fell to US$56 a barrel. The same financial markets that swooned in July while Israel fought Hezbollah have forgotten the meaning of risk. The question the world should ask George W Bush is, "If you so dumb, how come you ain't poor"? The US economy and US markets are looking more buoyant than ever. As I wrote last week (Jeb Bush in 2008?, January 3), the whole Iraq debacle might disappear from the public's radar screen in time for America's next presidential election.

Not being privy to the Bush administration's Iraq policy debate, I do not know how Washington will present its intentions. But the facts on the ground speak for themselves. A full-dress civil war in Iraq and an incipient civil war between Fatah and Hamas in Palestine promise a period of bloodshed of indefinite duration - and America's strategic position will be stronger as a result, provided that it can neutralize Iran. On the assumption that Iran had a reasonable shot at obtaining deliverable nuclear weapons by late 2007 or 2008, I forecast last year - wrongly - that Western powers would attack Iran. There is a consensus among the major powers' intelligence services that Iran will not have nuclear weapons until 2010, and more likely 2012. Neutralizing Iran may be easier than I anticipated.

Last week I conjectured that Washington would obtain Russian and Chinese cooperation in preventing Iran from exploiting Iraq's chaos to create a new Shi'ite empire. A report in the January 7 Los Angeles Times indicates that the US already has succeeded in choking off a great deal of financing and technology for Iran's critical oil sector. [2] It appears that the US has obtained at least some degree of Russian and Chinese cooperation in delaying energy development agreements in Iran. European banks, including the major Swiss banks, are refusing new business from Iran at the request of the US Treasury, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Iran now spends 15% of gross domestic product on energy subsidies, paid out of net oil exports that are likely to fall to zero over the next 10 years. If the US continues to tighten the tourniquet around Iran's energy sector, the result may be political chaos in Iran, including disaffection among the Turkic (Azeri) minority that comprises a quarter of Iran's population.

There has been an inordinate amount of nonsense written about US decline, complete with Russian and Chinese designs to benefit from America's embarrassment in Iraq. The reality could not be more different. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has the remotest desire to see the US withdraw from the region or lose power, for two reasons. The first is that America's presence in the region ensures that little wars will remain little. The second is economic. America's economy and particularly the appetite of American consumers for imports remains the locomotive of the world economy, most emphatically of China's. China's trading relationship with the United States is an irreplaceable pillar of national prosperity, and the means to generate the national savings China requires to establish what President Hu Jintao calls "the harmonious society".

If, hypothetically, the Persian Gulf were to go up in flames and the price of oil were to double, the US economy would tumble into recession. China's even more oil-sensitive economy would experience a double blow, in the form of higher energy costs and reduced exports to its major markets in the industrial world. By the same token, if Central Asia were to slide into chaos, the biggest loser would be Russia.

Russia and China will bargain hard in return for providing cooperation to the United States, as I wrote on January 2, but their interests ultimately overlap with America's sufficiently to create a concert of nations to contain Iran. If economic pressures do not succeed, the option of a military strike remains ready.


Page 2 of 2
If you so dumb, how come you ain't poor?
By Spengler

That, I suppose, is the point of the January 6 report in the London Sunday Times that Israel is prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's capacity to build nuclear bombs. Israel has no intention of doing any such thing in the near future. With the prospect of an Iranian nuclear device at least three years away, why would it? But the Sunday Times report at least reminded Tehran of what might be in store should it continue to misbehave.

It is a good wind that blows no one ill. Last month King Abdullah



of Jordan warned poignantly against the outbreak of multiple civil wars in the Middle East, in Iraq as well as between the main Palestinian factions. The Hashemite Kingdom has reason to worry, given that 1.8 million of its 5.9 million population are displaced Palestinians, and that the country also harbors several hundred thousand Iraqi refugees. Jordan has reason to fret about the prospective spillover. But more broadly, civil carnage is part of the solution.

In a January 7 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Edward Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote, "Civil wars can be especially atrocious as neighbors kill each other at close range, but they also have a purpose. They can bring lasting peace by destroying the will to fight and by removing the motives and opportunities for further violence." [3]

Luttwak was writing about Iraq, but the same applies to Palestine. I can only reiterate what I wrote on August 29, 2003 (in Civil war: A do-it-yourself guide):
It is unpopular these days to draw attention to the merits of violence, particularly the sort that inevitably entails "collateral damage", that is, the slaughter of innocents. Progress supposedly brings us non-violent conflict resolution. Au contraire. The faster the world changes, the more people find themselves left behind, and the more people are left behind, the more diehards are willing to fight to the death. Real nations, as opposed to romantic visions of nations, have no room for irredentists and other rejectionists. They need the sort of people who show up on time, pay dues to a respectable political party and get along (if grudgingly) with the neighbors.
Contrary to what almost everyone has maintained for years - that the solution to the problems of the Middle East lies in the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian problem - the present civil war in Palestine proves that no one cares about the Israel-Palestinian problem. The so-called Palestinian issue has been subsumed into the broader problem of containing Persian imperialism, and the Palestinians have been left to fend for themselves, rather like the Kurds - but without the Kurds' language, 3,000-year history, and success in creating institutions of self-rule.

Notes
1. See Will Iraq survive the Iraqi resistance?, December 23, 2003; The devil and L Paul Bremer, January 21, 2004; Mistah Kurtz, he clueless, May 11, 2004.
2. US puts squeeze on Iran's oil fields.
3. Will civil war bring lasting peace to Iraq?

(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)