NATO reaches missile shield deal
ANGELA MERKEL’s SPEACH
OF THE WORLD
THE POLICY THE POLICY OF THE WORLD - NOVEMBER 2010 / DIGINOW.NET
N AT O reaches mis-
sile shield deal Barack Obama, the US president, has said that Nato leaders have agreed plans to expand a European missile defence system that would
the United States,” Obama said. He said that the shield, “offers a role for all of our allies, it responds to the threats of our times. It shows our determination to protect our citizens from the threat of ballistic missiles.” “An attack on one Nato member is an attack on all,’’ he said. Turkey’s concerns However, officials were careful not suggest where the ballistic missile threat could come from after Nato-member Turkey raised objections to a system specifically designed to stop attacks from Iran. “We are categorically opposed to have a country named [as a threat] and our request appears to have been accepted,” Abdullah Gul, the Turkish president, told reporters before leaving Ankara, the Turkish capital, to attend the summit.
protect all of the military alliance’s member nations including the US. Obama made the comments on Friday at the end of the first day of a summit of leaders from the 28-member grouping in Lisbon, the Portuguese capital.
“Turkey cannot join a project that is aimed at a specific country,” he said, stressing that Nato was a defensive alliance aimed at defending its members against any ballistic threat and is not an organisation designed “to intimidate and threaten”.
The system would add security to the US’s own system based in North America.
“The project must cover all [Nato] members without exception ... It will not be aimed at Iran, we said it,” he said.
“For the first time, we’ve agreed to develop a missile defence capability that is strong enough to cover all Nato European territory and populations as well as
Diplomats at the summit said there had been intense debate in the run-up to the summit about whether Iran should be targeted as a specific threat in the public document they adopt.
The US had asked Turkey, a Nato-member, to host some of the radar defences and to approve the proposal. Nato compromise Turkey is mindful of its delicate position with neighbouring Iran and said it would refuse to sign a Nato document that names Iran as the threat in the final declaration. “Turkey does not want to be the military front for Nato, it wants to be the diplomatic face of Nato in the Arab and Muslim world,” Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said. “But any state that would dare launch a missile against Europe would be obliterated the day after - so who would be so suicidal as to launch a missile against Europe?” Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Istanbul, said: “The compromise that Nato seems to have arrived at, even ahead of this meeting, is that no countries will be cited and the stress will be on this being a defensive system and not an offensive one. “[Turkey has] worked extremely hard in this region to deal with the perception of threat among its neighbours, to de-escalate the sense of jeopardy and danger and defensiveness and offensiveness ... that has caused so many problems.”
McNaught said that Turkey also wanted to make sure that the system would in no way be used to protect Israel from at-
tack. “It [Turkey] wants to be clear that this system is for the defence of territories from Turkey’s eastern border, westward. It wants to be sure this is not a ‘proxy’ defence system for Israel.” she said. “It does not want any of the intelligence gathered through this system to be shared with Israel.” ‘Urgent need’ Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Nato’s secretary general, said that there was an urgent need for the new missile defence system. “The fact is that more than 30 countries in the world have or are acquiring missile technologies, some of them can even hit targets in the Euro-Atlantic area. And we intend to build a missile defence system to defend against any of these threats.” The expanded system is expected to cost $273 million over the next 10 years, Rasmussen said. Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, who will attend the summit on Saturday has previously fought against the missile shield, saying it was a threat to his country’s own nuclear deterrence.
But Nato on Friday decided to invite Russia to join the defence shield, extending its protection across Russian territory.
it is healthier
Sit On A Wooden Chair !
Where is the anger at the horrors revealed in the latest Wikileaks Iraq war logs?
fused to release and denied even having collected. Then there is the continued torture by US troops of prisoners well after Abu Ghraib, and the even larger problem of ignoring, as a matter of official military policy per “frago 242” (Fragmentary Order 242) the even more systematic torture and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by their own jail-
Dishearteningly unsurprising. This somewhat awkward phrase is, to my mind, the best description of the emotional and moral impact of Wikileak’s release of 400,000 classified US military documents. In the wake of the GOP “landslide” in the US midterm elections, most commentators have moved on from this all-too-troubling and familiar story. But their doing so only reinforces the basic problems that the release of the documents has revealed - an almost brazen disregard for reality and willingness to ignore the lessons of history for political expediency and economic and strategic gain. And Barack Obama’s post-election “move to the centre” and unwillingness to face the core systemic issues that helped lead to this electoral debacle will only strengthen the Republicans and diminish further the US’ global standing.
Violating the laws of war The individual details are bad enough. First, there are the details of hundreds of civilians killed at checkpoints and over 60,000 killed more broadly during the war; a figure the US military had re-
ers. And even more stunning, the cavalier manner in which military lawyers okayed the killing of Iraqis trying to surrender merely because “they could not surrender to an aircraft”. One can only wonder how the Nobel Peace Prize Committee now feels about having bestowed their
most cherished prize on a president who handed over thousands of Iraqi detainees to that country’s government and security forces, even though the US military had irrefutable evidence of massive, systematic torture by Iraqi security personnel. Is it time yet to ask for the medal back? And lest we imagine things have gotten much bet-
Indeed, a huge share of the actions detailed by the Iraq war logs are clear violations of the laws of war, which the US is obligated by international treaty, its own constitution and customary international law to uphold (and when breached, to prosecute). That a Democratic administration, which in good measure owes its existence to Obama’s early opposition to the Iraq invasion, is not merely avoiding these issues, but actively working to suppress any attempts to address them, illustrates how entrenched amorality and criminality have become within the US politico-military system. But however disturbing, all these revelations largely confirm what anyone who has bothered to pay attention to the last eight years of invasion and occupation in Iraq already new, albeit in less detail. Indeed, throughout the worst years of the occupation, from 2004 to 2008, the US military was in routine violation of at least a dozen articles of the Geneva Conventions. And it was precisely this disrespect for these foundational international treaties that created the situation revealed in all their gory detail in the latest Wikileaks release.
ter under Obama, the continued imprisonment of child soldier Omar Ahmed Khadr and the routine use of attack drones outside war zones with the attendant civilian casualties are both clear violations of the laws of war - and these are only the examples we know about.
Here I would like to take issue with Robert Grenier’s otherwise thoughtful critique, Wikileaks: An Inside Perspective, when he downplays the significance of revelations the US turned its eyes away from Iraqi torture of prisoners by declaring that for the US to have intervened more forcefully would have been to “behave like colonialists”. In fact, as the legal occupier of Iraq, the US and coalition forces were obligated under international law to do everything possible to stop abuses, and
not to turn over control of prisoners if there was evidence that they would be mistreated. It was in ignoring this obligation that the US reduced itself to the level of a typical occupying army. Furthermore, it was very much “the fault of the Americans” that the entire situation described in the war logs was created in the first place, through its commission of the ultimate “crime against peace” - as the Nuremberg Principles adopted by the UN Charter describe it - in its unlawful invasion
of Iraq.
When violence becomes all the rage Grenier is correct, however, in arguing that those who imagine that the documents paint the US as uniquely responsible are wrong. Indeed, what is most troubling about the logs is their demonstra-
tion of just how easily people from all sides of this conflict have given in to the most base of human instincts at almost every turn; and how in so doing they were merely behaving in the same way politicians, soldiers, guerrillas and civilians have always done as soon as the veneer of civilized society is rubbed even slightly away. For their part, US and other “coalition” soldiers, commanders and mercenaries have clearly shown a callous disregard for the Iraqis whom they were supposed to be liberating and protecting. But from the start, those fighting against the occupation have distinguished themselves by an equal and in many cases greater level of brutality and indiscriminate violence than the already high level reached by the occupation forces. It needs to be remembered that even after the US invaded Iraq, the chain of events that led to the present situation were not necessary, even if in hindsight it seems they were inevitable. As important as it is to hold the US and its allies to account for the massive war crime that became Iraq, those opposing the occupation must be held to a similar standard. The Iraqi “resistance” could have built upon the wave of grassroots activism that flowered in the first year after the invasion to develop a concerted non-violent resistance to the occupation. In fact, scores of international activists went to Iraq to help develop such a resis-
tance, but they were overwhelmed by, and in some cases even became victims of, the violence of the armed resistance. What is clear is that the various insurgent groups have claimed the lion’s share of Iraqi victims since the start of the occupation, and succeeded in largely closing the public sphere to the myriad Iraqis who were trying to find peaceful ways to both force the Americans out and to build a democratic system after decades of harsh dictatorial rule. Watching that happen with my own eyes in 2004 was one of the most depressing things I have ever witnessed.
Raging for the machine Sadly, it seems that when US soldiers and “insurgents” had each other in their sights, they were in many ways looking into a mirror. And both sides were perfectly willing to sew a high level of chaos in Iraq to achieve their strategic directives, with little concern for the costs to everyone else. Of course, if there were a Wikileaks release of the Congo, Chechnya, Kashmir or innumerable other war logs, there is little doubt they would reveal similar levels of lawlessness, violence and inhumanity. And sadly, there is little chance Obama is pushing his Indian counterpart to conduct a more humane occupation; what moral ground would he have to stand on if he did so? But what is behind such actions, which reflect the worst tendencies of humanity? Generalising is rarely a good idea, but at least in the case of Iraq and the US a common denominator
seems to be misdirected or uncontrolled rage. In the wake of 9/11 Americans were filled with anger, which was easily redirected by the politico-military elite towards an invasion of Iraq. This type of misdirection has a long history in the US, as Thomas Frank documented in his 2004 bestseller What’s the Matter with Kansas, and is continuing to this day. As the Tea Party’s corporate funders have so well demonstrated, it is much easier to get people to rage for the machine than against it. In Iraq, decades of rage - at a brutal government, at Western imperialism, at members of “other” sects or ethnicities - was turned towards extreme violence rather than productive activism with remarkable ease. And if it is not misdirected rage, it is apathy that keeps people from actively working to stop the machinery of violence and to hold those who have profited from it to some sort of account. This was brought home to me over the weekend when my son discovered Rage Against the Machine’s recently re-famous anthem Killing in the Name Of. One of the most important functions of art is to help people understand complex realities in visceral ways, and in so doing to provoke some kind of response. In that sense Rage Against the Machine was the most politically and sonically powerful band of the 1990s. It was also the most prophetic its rage against militarism and the injustices of the emerging neoliberal globalisation anticipated not merely the rise in global activism after the groundbreaking protests in Seattle in 1999, but the larger globalised militarism and war after 9/11.
Yet the relatively peaceful and prosperous - at least in the West - 1990s were a relatively easy time to be filled with rage. When the band lent its song Wake Up to the film The Matrix (whose critique of neoliberal globalisation and the police state that was emerging to protect it was surely lost on most moviegoers) few understood that singer Zack de La Rocha’s screams to wake up were being directed at them. Sadly, the band broke up in 2000, just when its angry and thoughtfully provocative music would have been most useful. By the time it reunited in 2007, Americans’ rage had been numbed, at least when it came to focusing on the political, economic and military elite that the band famously railed against. Things are seemingly no better in the UK, the other main power responsible for the Iraq disaster, even though a Christmas 2009 facebook campaign famously helped make Killing in the Name Of the top selling single of the year - beating the previously undefeated crop of X-Factor winners to the top spot.
Taking it to the streets When Rage played a free concert in London to thank fans for their support, 40,000 concert-goers happily screamed “F*** you I won’t do what you tell me!” - the songs famous closing refrain - along with de La Rocha. But only a few months later, when the British government largely gutted the country’s education and social welfare budgets, few if any of those fans took to the streets to protest and actually do something.
And where are the fans who crowd US festivals where Rage continues to perform when it comes to channeling that anger to political ends the way people did during the Vietnam and Civil Rights eras? The fact is that without action, rage becomes just another commodity or marketing tool - useful to sell albums and concert tickets, and even to pump up soldiers before battle (not surprisingly, its seems that most prefer less political bands like Metallica and Slayer to Rage Against the Machine for that purpose). But now, with 400,000 new pieces of evidence screaming for justice, the question still needs to be asked: where is the rage at the revelations brought on by the release of the Iraq war logs? In the US, the Republicans are now arguing that the answer is clear - the rage is against Obama and his evil band of liberal elitists. However laughable this argument seems to the rest of the world, Americans are clearly buying that narrative in larger numbers. The question remains: will Americans, Brits, Iraqis and others who have been so harmed by the legacy of the Western invasion of Iraq ever turn the anger on the forces who have so well manipulated them? Will they begin to rage, and act, against the machine rather than for it? That is the question my son had for me, as he began to understand the meaning of Killing in the Name Of. And sadly, it seems that no amount of revela
tions of the horrors the US has brought to Iraq will succeed in waking Americans up to the reality of what has been wrought on Iraq, Afghanistan, and increasingly at home, in their name.
Mark LeVine
is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. He has authored several books including Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (University of California Press, 2005) and An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).
What Are All These U Are they protecting little child against monsters !
US-led Soldiers Doing ?
“Remember, remember the 2nd of November, gun-toters, tea-baggers and plot.”
Cirque de Folly: Election Time USA! Tea Party candidates are accused of having links to criminal biker gangs, as pundits scream about patriotism. Populist anger from the right has been a dominant theme in US mid term elections, but some Americans are pushing to ‘restore sanity’
W
hy yes, to answer your query, this is my very own version of the infamous Guy Fawkes poem, based on the actions of either the traitorous criminal of British lore, or a liberty-loving patriot if one accepts the raison d’etre of the film V For Vendetta.
M
eanwhile, the plotters I refer to in my little ditty are the ones whose dreams of “liberty” mean bringing America’s political progress to a stunning halt on election day— the curb-stomping base of a brave new and neurotic Tea-Party GOP, who lack the constitution to actually support what’s in the Constitution. Lets also not forget the ghosts of Strom Thurmond, played on C-SPAN and at your local White…I mean Conservative Citizens Council meeting by the bilious Blue Dog Democrats.
A
nd the starring role in this circus of the demented, of course, is reserved for their benefactors, those wonderful and wily plutocrats, who buy and sell politicians like a bevy of free-basing Vito Corleones.
T
hat is what we have to look forward to on November the 2nd,
when the circus actually reaches town. When some of the cross-eyed lunatics who look like they’re about to gain higher office in the United States inevitably do, one can see us looking back on this date—while staring into a candle and chanting “The Horror”.
T
his is because we may be privileged enough to be granted new members of Congress such as Republican Easy Rider Allen West, who likes to hang with a criminal biker gang in Florida that, as The Washington Monthly reported, “the Justice Department believes is involved in drug running, arson, prostitution, robbery, and murder”. I guess they couldn’t fit extortion, rape, and aggravated assault into their busy schedules.
O
r then there’s GOP Congressional candidate Rich Iott of Northern Ohio, who likes to “bond with his son” by dressing up as SS storm troopers over the weekend, to mount
an assault on whoever gets to play the Hungarian Jews that this unit hunted down and killed during World War II. Because, really, who doesn’t pine for the vicarious thrill of genocide reenactment?
A
nd to think that I considered sitting down with my 4-year old, watching SpongeBob and reading him my friend Adam Roth’s thought-
ful children’s tome, Checking Up On Daddy, a good way to continue the bonding process. Now I know that not teaching the kid to goosestep and covet the Sudetenland may cost me big time in our future father-son relationship.
weak, non-passed federal-climatechange legislation. Drama alert! But really, who knew we had such a modern, well coiffed Sir Robin of Locksley among us, you know, except the caring about the poor people part.
S
o I think I’m just gonna go ahead and agree with another brilliant
M
eanwhile, Democratic West Virginia Governor-cum NRA Lapdog Joe Manchin, didn’t go all in on the Beer Hall Putsch, but thought it responsible to film an advertisement for his US Senate run during which he shoots a copy of the very
author and friend, Ari Berman, whose book Herding Donkeys and subsequent pieces in The New York Times and Huffington Post have pointed out that trusting Democrats such as this to act in the public interest is akin to
The FLOWERS of Istanbul
renting a room for Charlie Sheen in a 5-star hotel, hooking him up to a Jack Daniels drip, and assuming everyone will be alive in the morning.
those whose priorities are sexting the pages or allowing BP to drill at Ground Zero.
T
o where does this all leave us? Is there any hope for the country post-November 2nd, or should we all start storing jugs of water, saltines, and Cipro in our basements, while wearing that space suit Marty McFly uses to convince his old man to date his mom in Back to the Future?
he bigger danger is how these newly elected “public servants” will effect what is politically acceptable, with their bigger mics and a whiff of, dare I say, the Establishment bestowed upon them post-victory. Will they be able to make their platform provided by Pinhead seem mainstream, from a good leeching to lower your fever to the ongoing search for half-humans, halfmonkeys to prove that evolution did not in fact not occur? In the latter case, by the way, I really do believe a close genetic study of Steve Tyler is warranted.
T
B
S
peaking of ole Charlie, how did he make it to the crowd outside that Rand Paul/Jack Conway debate so quickly this past week?
S
ruthfully, I don’t think that much will change, for the simple reason that unless the Democrats forcefully push through filibuster reform, it doesn’t matter if the Senate is filled with the likes of Rand Paul, or Roger Clemens, or Rasputin.
W
ell, except the PED parties thrown by that second guy would most definitely rock the casbah . But I digress. The legislative gridlock is such that it doesn’t just block the ideas of good public servants, but also
ut, to return to the point: Italian Marxist Antionio Gramschi famously said “he who changes the culture changes the politics”. So we’d all do well to pay attention, and if possible participate, in the ever-shifting conventional wisdom and underlying assumptions that animate our political culture. Because if we don’t, even if Sarah Palin’s newly elected short-bus stepchildren can’t pass legislation, they can change the conversation with their constant blather. Which if repeated enough will
grow in size and power, much like a hungry Puma or Rush Limbaugh’s head.
C
liff Schecter is the President of Libertas, LLC, a progressive public relations firm, the author of the 2008 bestseller The Real McCain, and a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.
F@
ollow Cliff Schecter on Twitter: Cliffschecter
German m ‘ failing’
multiculturalism Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, has said that
highly popular and polls showed a majority of Ger-
the country’s attempt to create a multicultural society
mans agreed with the thrust of his arguments.
has “utterly failed”, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam which is polarising her conserva-
Merkel has tried to accommodate both sides of the
tive coalition.
debate, talking tough on integration but also telling Germans that they must accept that mosques have
Speaking to a meeting of young members of her
become part of their landscape.
Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by
She said on Saturday that the education of unem-
side without integrating had not worked in a country
ployed Germans should take priority over recruiting
that is home to some four million Muslims.
workers from abroad, while noting Germany could not get by without skilled foreign workers.
“This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam.
In a weekend newspaper interview, Ursula von der Leyen, Merkel’s labour minister, raised the possibility
The chancellor has faced pressure from within her
of lowering barriers to entry for some foreign workers
party to take a tougher line on immigrants who do
in order to tackle the lack of skilled workers in Eu-
not show a willingness to adapt to German society
rope’s largest economy.
and her comments appeared intended to pacify her critics.
“For a few years, more people have been leaving our country than entering it,” she told the Frankfurter
She said too little had been required of immigrants in
Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
the past and repeated her usual line that they should learn German in order to get by in school and have
“Wherever it is possible, we must lower the entry hur-
opportunities in the labour market.
dles for those who bring the country forward.”
‘Alien cultures’
The German Chamber of Industry and Commerce says the country lacks about 400,000 skilled workers.
The debate over foreigners in Germany has shifted since Thilo Sarrazin, a former central banker, pub-
However, Horst Seehofer, the chairman of the Chris-
lished a book saying Muslim immigrants lowered the
tian Social Union, the CDU’s sister party, has rejected
intelligence of German society.
any relaxation of immigration laws and said last week there was no room in Germany for more people from
Sarrazin was criticised for his views and stepped down from the Bundesbank last month, but his book proved
“alien cultures”.
WHICH is the
Camera
BEST ?
ask to “info@diginow.net”
Championing Democracy - But Not Yet
Supporting democratic reform in the Muslim world must be a central element of US counter-terrorism policy. By Robert Grenier With presidential elections in Egypt due next year, Obama’s apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in the country could have far-reaching consequences.
“Lord, make me a champion of democracy - but not yet.” Those words, a paraphrase of the famous quote from Saint Augustine, sum up nicely the attitude of US governments, both Democratic and Republican, where the issue of political reform in the Arab and Muslim world is concerned. That is not to suggest, however, that most Americans are ready to acknowledge such ambivalence, even to themselves. No, Americans take comfort in the rhetoric of democracy, and pride themselves on their own democratic history, seeing that legacy not merely as a reflection of their peculiar national experience, but as a model to others and a manifestation of a universal yearning among men. To Americans, democracy is synonymous with virtue. As with most virtues, however, adherence to democratic principles is likely to be consistent only when combined with a clear sense of enlightened self-interest. For Americans, the link between democracy and self-interest is clear enough at home. But when gazing beyond the water’s edge, Americans easily lose sight of the link between their principles and national security - save in the most vague, long-range terms, captured in such phrases as “democracies are inherently moderate,” or “democracies do not lightly make war” - both of which are perhaps dubious propositions, at best. Instead, concern for international democracy is relegated to the realm of altruism, and its proponents often dismissed, whenever countervailing national interests present themselves, as fuzzy-headed idealists incapable of firm leadership in foreign affairs, which is best left in any case to the cleareyed proponents of realpolitik. Not all Americans subscribe to this view, of course, but the irony is that in the US, even the proponents of international democracy fail to make a compelling case for it.
The Egyptian example Barack Obama, the US president, and The Washington Post have provided us with but the most recent example. When meeting last September with
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Obama went out of his way, according to
For this, there are two main elements: justice and democracy. To be clear,
the White House account of their discussions, to advocate for civil society,
justice cannot be imposed by the US. Nor can the demands of justice for
open political competition and transparent elections.
oppressed Muslims, whether in Chechnya, Palestine, Xinjiang or Kashmir, be easily addressed. Most involve complicated disputes requiring patient
With the Egyptian parliamentary vote due later this month, the picture looks
diplomacy. But if, as a great power, the US genuinely pressed for resolution of
rather different: the Egyptian government has again rejected election moni-
these disputes, and did so in a way which made justice for those victimised
tors, both domestic and international; it has launched a crackdown on the
a clear, consistent, well-articulated and forcefully-supported element of US
political opposition, arresting some 260 members of the Muslim Brother-
policy, perceptions of the US would change over time.
hood, among others; it has suspended the licenses of 17 private independent television channels; and it has restricted text messaging, the organising tool
Secondly, and just as importantly, we must remember that terrorism is the
of choice for street oppositionists.
tool of the weak. It is engaged in by people who feel themselves or those with whom they identify to be oppressed, and who see no other means of redress-
With pivotal presidential elections in Egypt due next year, the US president’s
ing their grievances. If we are to oppose resort to terrorism as illegitimate,
apparent indifference to the fate of political reform in Egypt has potentially
as we must, we should also include as part of that policy provision for legiti-
far-reaching consequences - but it is not merely the result of inattention.
mate, political means of redress. And that means championing democracy.
It is worth noting that the occasion of Obama’s September meeting with Mubarak was the launch of the latest ill-fated Israeli-Palestinian peace talks,
The most important recent call to support of international democracy, little
Egyptian support for which is a major preoccupation of the White House.
remembered now, was the second inaugural address of President George W. Bush, delivered in January, 2005. I remember being greatly heartened
The Washington Post’s reaction to the administration’s failure to maintain
by that speech, not just because it was a ringing endorsement of American
pressure on Mubarak is also instructive. The best they could do to justify
values, which it was, but because I saw it as a key element of US counter-
their denunciation of Obama’s policy was to complain that Mubarak had
terrorism policy, for which I was a senior responsible official at the time.
“defied” him, and to invidiously compare the relative passivity shown
Commitment and follow-through on those words were sorely lacking, but
toward Mubarak with the recent unpleasantness displayed toward Binyamin
I am convinced that the policy espoused in 2005 remains firmly linked to
Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, over his settlement policies. So much
long-term global security.
for ringing endorsements of democracy.
Misunderstanding?
None of this is to suggest that a commitment to democracy can be pursued in a vacuum, or that its implementation will be easy. There will always be conflicting, countervailing interests which must be addressed and accommo-
In fact, the championing of democratic reform in the Muslim world should
dated, and in any case US influence in the world has clear, and perhaps grow-
not simply be a matter of altruism, easily set aside when seemingly more
ing, limits. Moreover, the spread of democracy will not eliminate extremism.
compelling national interests present themselves. Instead, it should be seen
It will make it much more difficult, however, for those who espouse the use
as a central element in US counter-terrorism policy.
of violence to attract new adherents to their cause, by changing the environment in which such appeals are made.
Counter-terrorism experts in the US and the West decry the lack of a coherent “counter-narrative” to that presented by violent extremists, who win
A consistent commitment to democracy, even if sometimes inconsistently
new converts to their cause in part by vilifying the allegedly perfidious role
applied, is genuinely in the security interests of the US and, perhaps para-
played by the US in subjugating Muslims, both directly and through support
doxically, in the long-term interests of some of the US’ most important and
to unrepresentative and repressive regimes.
currently undemocratic allies in the region.
“We are losing the information war,” they lament. Most, however, fun-
Long-term US and regional security have not been well-served when the US
damentally misunderstand the problem. To them, the negative perceptions
and others have failed to support democratic outcomes which they thought
of the US are the result of some colossal misunderstanding. Yes, it is often
might work against their perceived short-term interests: in 1992 in Algeria,
misunderstood, but the negative perception of the US is not fundamentally
in 2006 in Palestine, and, perhaps, now in Egypt.
the result of others’ failure to see the basic goodness of its intentions: it is a result of US policies which, while they may not aim at the repression of
As St. Augustine himself came to realise, change which must be implemented
Muslims as a matter of intent, often contribute to that effect.
eventually is usually best implemented now.
The “extremist narrative” cannot be countered by showing images of smil-
Robert Grenier is a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine
ing Muslims happy to be living in the US; it can only be effectively combated
Service. He was the director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Centre from
when the US genuinely addresses the core concerns of Muslims.
2004 to 2006.
Justice and democracy
The FLO of Ista
OWERS anbul
The
POLICY Of The World