The initial attacks against Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense included a virtual mantra that the former Nebraska senator was “out of the mainstream” of thinking on the Middle East. Even in his endorsement of Hagel yesterday, Tom Friedman noted that “some of his views are not ‘mainstream.’” But that’s [...]]]> via Lobe Log

The initial attacks against Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense included a virtual mantra that the former Nebraska senator was “out of the mainstream” of thinking on the Middle East. Even in his endorsement of Hagel yesterday, Tom Friedman noted that “some of his views are not ‘mainstream.’” But that’s nonsense, particularly when it comes to the Middle East. The fact is this: Hagel’s views on the Middle East — favoring a “lighter footprint” in the region; taking a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; strong skepticism about any U.S. military intervention in Syria, and military intervention in general; opposition to an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program — very much reflect those of a significant majority of the U.S. public. We know that because poll after poll of U.S. public opinion during the last year and more shows it.

Now, as Elliott Abrams predictably points out on his blog about the results of a new Pew poll, it’s absolutely true that a significant plurality of Americans sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians. That is not in question and has been true for a very long time. But note in his post how he complains about public attitudes toward intervention in Syria, elements of which he and other neo-cons have been pushing for a long time. (Of course, Elliott blames Obama for the lack of public enthusiasm for intervention, just as he blames close to everything which, in his view, goes bad in the region, on Obama’s passivity or some other flaw, never recalling that his work as George W. Bush’s chief Mideast aide helped lay the groundwork for what Obama has had to deal with.) According to the poll, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they feel the U.S. has no responsibility for involving itself in Syria and 65% oppose even the arming of anti-Assad rebels. So it’s the neo-con view that Washington should get more involved in support of the rebels which, in this case, is definitely “outside the mainstream.” Similarly, take a PIPA poll from early October this year. Asked whether the U.S. should become more or less involved in the Middle East, 23% opted for the former. But a whopping 63% said the U.S. should become “less involved.” Again, the neo-con view doesn’t represent the “mainstream.” Hagel — and Obama, for that matter, seem much closer.

But back to the U.S. public’s views about Israel (and I apologize for not doing a more thorough analysis, but the circumstances in which I find myself over this vacation are such that I can’t do the kind of research and linking I’d like to). What worries the neo-cons and the Israel lobby about Hagel is that while he supports Israel, he doesn’t see it as having the same or, in some cases, similar interests and values as the United States. At times, he even sees big differences in interests between the two countries, especially in the Middle East. Neo-cons and the Israel lobby, on the other hand, are devoted to the proposition that their interests and values are one and the same. To some extent, the success of those efforts are reflected in the greater sympathy that a large plurality of Americans feel for Israel, as opposed to the Palestinians. (There are other reasons why this is so, too.)

But let’s consider just a few polling results over the past year that might shed some light on how the general public perceives the convergence of U.S. and Israeli interests. Back in February, Gallup did their annual survey of the favorability ratings of individual countries around the world. If the Israel lobby had its way, Israel would rank at the top, but that’s not the case at all. In fact, while Israel ranks relatively high, it’s quite amazing to consider which countries are higher yet. Of course, the leading Anglosphere countries top the list, with Canada at 96%, Australia at 93%, and Great Britain at 90%. One would expect Israel to come in at right around Britain’s level, but that’s not the case. Germany ranked #4 at 86%, followed by Japan at 83%; and — get this! — perfidious France, which only ten years ago almost lost its claim to fried potatoes sold in the Congressional cafeterias because of its opposition to the neocon-inspired invasion of Iraq, scored 75%. And, tied with France, was…India(!!!!), which has no serious military relationship, let alone an alliance, with the U.S. and won’t even buy our nuclear plants or fighter jets. Only then, after France and India, comes Israel, at 71%! While the view of Israel is still clearly positive, it hardly suggests that the general public, unlike the Congress and its many standing ovations for Bibi Netanyahu, accepts the Jewish state as its most loyal and steadfast ally.

Also take a look at the latest in a series of quadrennial polls conducted earlier this year and released in September by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. While the general public hopes to reduce direct U.S. involvement in the Middle East, a 50% plurality said one of the very few situations in which they would support the deployment of U.S. troops there would be as part of a peacekeeping force to help ensure an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Asked how they would feel if Israel was attacked by its neighbors, a 50% plurality would oppose the U.S. taking any military action; 47% percent said they would favor it.

Asked about U.S. economic aid to Israel, a mere 11% said it should be increased and another 45% said it should remain the same. But 23% said it should be reduced, while 18% said it should be halted altogether. Similar figures applied to military aid (which Congress and the administration continue to increase, what with Iron Dome, etc.)

Most important — and this goes to the latest Pew stats cited by Abrams — the Council asked about what side, if any, the U.S. should take in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. While 30% said Washington should take Israel’s side — despite their lip-service to a two-state solution, the vast majority of members of Congress clearly fall into that category with its various AIPAC-drafted resolutions, statements, and letters — and only three percent said it should side with the Palestinians, while a strong 65% majority said it should take neither side. This is consistent with virtually all polling done on this question, which, it bears repeating, is far more relevant than the question of which side you sympathize with most. The fact is, around two-thirds of the U.S. public believes Washington should act as an honest broker between the two sides, which, as I understand it, is what Hagel has long argued. Again, on this, it’s the neo-cons and the Israel lobby that lies outside the mainstream.

Finally, the Chicago Council asked respondents to say what they would prefer the U.S. do if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, and Iran retaliated against Israel. The question was, should the U.S. “bring its military on the side of Israel against Iran?” Thirty-eight percent of respondents said yes, but a 56% majority said no. (Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Dempsey, of course, also suggested his answer would be no.) Of course, this is not the reigning view in Congress, at least at the moment.

As I noted, this is a pretty cursory glance at some polls about how the general public sees the identity or difference in interests between the U.S. and Israel. But I’m confident that if you troll among many polls, these results would be pretty representative. Like Hagel, the general public has expressed support in various surveys for a two-state solution along the Clinton parameters, but I don’t think most neocons support that, and the Israel lobby takes its cues from Bibi whose sincerity on the issue is subject to considerable doubt, particularly in light of the most recent settlement announcements and activity. Again, it’s the neocons who appear outside the mainstream, certainly not Hagel. The disconnect here is found in Congress where the lobby exercises the most influence. Indeed, the measure of the influence — and/or intimidation — exerted by the lobby can be seen precisely in that disconnect between Congress (and the Beltway Bubble) and the general public.

Photo: Junko Kimura/Getty Images

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Iran is unlikely to agree to curb its nuclear programme unless the U.S. and its Western allies are prepared to ease tough economic sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic over the past decade, according to a major new report signed by more than three dozen former top U.S. foreign-policy [...]]]> via IPS News

Iran is unlikely to agree to curb its nuclear programme unless the U.S. and its Western allies are prepared to ease tough economic sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic over the past decade, according to a major new report signed by more than three dozen former top U.S. foreign-policy makers, military officers, and independent experts.

While recent sanctions “may well help bring Iran to the negotiating table, it is not clear that these sanctions alone will result in agreements or changes in Iranian policies, much less changes in Iran’s leadership,” the report, “Weighing Benefits and Costs of International Sanctions Against Iran”, concludes.

“If Iran were to signal its willingness to modify its nuclear program and to cooperate in verifying those modifications, Iranian negotiations would expect the United States and its allies, in turn, to offer a plan for easing some of the sanctions,” according to the 86-page report.

But, “(a)bsent a calibrated, positive response from the West, Iran’s leaders would have little incentive to move forward with negotiations,” it stressed, noting that the administration of President Barack Obama should have a plan at the ready that would make clear how and in what sequence Washington might ease sanctions in exchange for Iranian cooperation.

The new report, which is signed by 38 foreign policy luminaries, including three Republican former cabinet secretaries, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and half a dozen retired Army and Marine Corps generals with substantial Middle East experience, comes at a particularly sensitive moment.

On the one hand, Congress, prodded by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is moving to enact as part of the 2013 defence bill tough new sanctions against foreign companies and individuals still doing business in several key Iranian economic sectors.

The final bill, which may seek to reduce Obama’s ability to “waive” such sanctions, could also include policy language adopted by the House urging the administration to build up its military presence in the region to make the threat of an attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities more credible.

On the other hand, the administration, which opposes the pending sanctions package and any limitation on the president’s waiver authority, has been meeting with its partners in the P5+1 group -the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany – to forge a common negotiating position in preparation for a new round of talks with Iran that will probably take place next month.

In the clearest statement to date, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week said Washington was also willing to engage Tehran on a bilateral basis in order to gain an accord.

She and other officials have said in the past that Washington is willing to ease sanctions in return for Iran’s cooperation, but the administration has been vague about the timing, suggesting it would consider taking such steps only after Tehran took specific concrete steps.

These include shipping its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium out of the country, closing its Fordow enrichment plant, and clearing up long-pending questions by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about Tehran’s possible past research into the military applications of nuclear energy.

“So far, neither the United States nor the UN Security Council has stipulated the precise criteria that Iran must meet to trigger the lifting of sanctions, or the sanctions that would be lifted in exchange for Iran’s actions,” noted the new report, which was also signed by more than a dozen retired top-ranked diplomats, including former U.N. ambassador Thomas Pickering. “There is no action-for-action plan that all parties understand.”

Given the prominence and bipartisanship of the signatories, who also included Michael Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general who served in top intelligence positions under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and advised Mitt Romney in his unsuccessful election bid against Obama, the new report could well influence both the debate in Congress and within the administration.

The Iran Project’s first report – on the costs and benefits of a possible U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran – received considerable attention here after its release in mid-September.

That report, which concluded that even a massive U.S. assault would set back Tehran’s nuclear programme by only four years at best, highlighted the growing concern in establishment foreign-policy circles about the beating of the war drums by the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its supporters here.

Like its predecessor, the latest report, does not advocate a particular policy.

But it notes that the benefits of U.S. sanctions against Iran “have often been taken as a given,” in part because they offer an alternative to military action. The costs of sanctions, on the other hand, have not been “routinely addressed in the public or policymaking debate”.

Moreover, it said, “sanctions alone are not a policy,” and their effectiveness “will depend not only on the sanctions themselves, but also on the negotiating strategy associated with them.”

Assessing the costs, as well as the benefits, of sanctions, it said, should “enhance the quality of debate about the sanctions regime and the role of sanctions in overall U.S. policy toward Iran.”

Among the benefits sanctions have provided, according to the report, have been a slowdown in the expansion of Iran’s nuclear programme; a relative weakening of its conventional military capabilities; growing concerns in the regime about public unhappiness with the economy which “appears to have been significantly weakened” as a result of these measures.

It also cited “some indications of a greater willingness on the part of the Iranian leadership to negotiate seriously” over its nuclear programme, although the report also expressed doubt “that the current severe sanctions regime will significantly affect the decision making of Iran’s leaders – any more than past sanctions did – barring some willingness on the part of sanctioning countries to combine continued pressure with positive signals and decisions on matters of great interest to Iran.”

On the costs side of the ledger, on the other hand, the report cited tensions between the U.S. and Russia, China, India, Turkey, and South Korea, among other countries, which have been pressed to comply with Washington’s increasingly comprehensive sanctions.

It also noted increased influence by hard-line factions, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), over the cash-strapped economy; the political empowerment of those same factions which can depict the sanctions as U.S.-led aggression; and the sanctions’ potential negative humanitarian impact as U.S. and foreign companies and groups that sell or provide food and medicine to Iran find the licensing procedures too burdensome and the banks needed to provide credit for such transactions increasingly unwilling to do so.

Insofar as the sanctions lower the quality of life for the average Iranian, they may also contribute to long-term alienation between the two countries.

In addition, the sanctions are creating “new international patterns of trade” that are resulting in increased market share for Chinese and Indian goods in Iran at the expense of Western products, while the “rapid expansion of unofficial, black-market trade between Iran and Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey is distorting and undermining the economies of those states and the region,” according to the report.

Israel tops the list of the world’s most militarised nations, according to the latest Global Militarisation Index released Tuesday by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC).

At number 34, Israel’s main regional rival, Iran, is far behind. Indeed, every other Near Eastern country, with the exceptions of Yemen (37) [...]]]> via IPS News

Israel tops the list of the world’s most militarised nations, according to the latest Global Militarisation Index released Tuesday by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC).

At number 34, Israel’s main regional rival, Iran, is far behind. Indeed, every other Near Eastern country, with the exceptions of Yemen (37) and Qatar (43), is more heavily militarised than the Islamic Republic, according to the Index, whose research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Singapore ranks second, followed by Syria, Russia, Jordan, and Cyprus, according to the Index, which is based on a number of weighted variables, such as the comparison of a country’s military budget with its gross domestic product (GDP), and the percentage of the GDP it spends on health care.

The former Soviet Caucasian state has used its vast oil wealth, which has placed it among the fastest growing economies in the world, to buy expensive weapons systems in recent years, apparently as leverage to press Armenia (23) into returning the disputed Nagorno-Kharabovsk enclave which Baku lost in a brief but bloody war after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Bahrain’s placement in the top 10 was also a first for the Sunni-dominated kingdom which has been backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in an increasingly violent effort to suppress demands by the Shi’ite majority for democratic reform.

While the Middle East is far more militarised than any other region – all of its countries rank within the top 40 – Southeast Asia, led by Singapore, appears ascendant, according to Jan Grebe, the Index’s head researcher who directs BICC’s work in the field of arms export control.

In addition to Singapore, China (82) and India (71) are increasing their defence budgets at a relatively rapid rate, while the recent flaring of territorial conflicts between Beijing and its neighbours across the South and East China Seas will likely amplify voices within those countries for defence build-ups.

“It remains to be seen how this development will affect the degree of militarisation of individual states and the entire region,” Grebe said.

In contrast, both sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are relatively low on the Index, which covers statistics for 2011 and ranked 135 countries altogether.

At number 30, Angola was a notable African exception, while Chile (31), Ecuador (36), and Colombia (38) topped the Latin American list. By contrast, Brazil, which has by far the largest defence budget in the region, ranked 76.

Among those excluded from the Index was North Korea, whose defence budget has proved impervious to independent analysts and which is widely thought to be one of the world’s most militarised states, if not the most. Eritrea, another state that has made it into the top 10 in the past, also was not included this year.

Created in 1996, the GMI, which has been updated each year, tries to assess the balance between militarisation and human development, particularly related to health.

In addition to BICC’s own research, data published by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the Institute for Strategic Studies are used to compile the Index, whose rankings go back to 1990 at the end of the Cold War.

In addition to the comparison of military budgets, GDP, and health expenditures, the Index uses several other variables, including the total personnel in the paramilitary and military forces – albeit not the police – and total number of physicians vis-à-vis the overall population, and the ratio of the number of heavy weapons to the total population.

Each variable is given a certain score which is then “weighted” according to a set formula to determine a total quantitative score. The more militarised a country, the higher the score. South Korea which, for many years, ranked in the top 10, fell to 18 this year.

Eritrea, which fought a bitter war with Ethiopia and repeatedly cracked down hard against internal dissent, gained a “perfect” 1,000 score in 2004, the first of a three-year reign atop the list.

But Israel, which has carried out a 45-year occupation of Palestinian lands and Syrian territory, has topped the list for almost all of the last 20 years. On the latest Index, its score came to 877, 70 points ahead of Singapore, which has been number two for every year this century, except for the three in which Eritrea was number one.

Significantly, Greece ranked 14 on the list, the highest of any NATO country, far ahead of its regional rival, Turkey, which took the 24th slot, and Bulgaria (25).

The two countries with the world’s largest defence budgets, the United States and China, ranked 29 (591) and 82 (414), respectively.

In addition to the six Middle Eastern states in the top, Oman (11), the UAE (13), Lebanon (17), Iraq (26), and Egypt (28) were all found to be more militarised than Iran, which is currently subject to unprecedented economic sanctions imposed primarily by the West which accuses it of pursuing a nuclear programme that may have military applications.

The concentration of so many Middle Eastern states at the top underscores the degree to which the region has become a powder keg.

If the Middle East dominates the top ranks, sub-Saharan African states, with just a few exceptions, lie at the low end of scale. The region’s biggest economy, South Africa, ranks 98, while its most populous nation, Nigeria, stands at 117.

Too little militarisation carries its own risks, according to
Grebe, because states may not be able to guarantee order or even territorial integrity.

“This situation points to the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon that some state security apparatuses are incapable of preventing violence and conflict simply because the country concerned shows a degree of militarisation which is too low,” he said.

With President Barack Obama winning re-election, foreign policy analysts here are pondering whether his victory will translate into major changes from the rather cautious approach he followed overseas in his first term.

For now, speculation is focused primarily on the Middle East, the region that has dominated the international agenda [...]]]> via IPS News

With President Barack Obama winning re-election, foreign policy analysts here are pondering whether his victory will translate into major changes from the rather cautious approach he followed overseas in his first term.

For now, speculation is focused primarily on the Middle East, the region that has dominated the international agenda since 9/11, much to the frustration of those in the Obama administration who are hoping to accelerate Washington’s “pivot” to the Asia/Pacific, especially in light of growing tensions between China and Japan and the ongoing political transition in Beijing.

Others are hoping that Obama will be willing to invest a fair amount of whatever additional political capital he gained from his victory on reviving international efforts to curb global warming, a challenge that thrust itself back into public consciousness here with hurricane-force winds as “Super-Storm Sandy” tore up much of the northeastern coast, including lower Manhattan.

Indeed, long-frustrated environmental groups seized on Obama’s allusion to the “destructive power of a warming planet” in his Chicago victory speech early Wednesday’s morning as a hopeful sign that the president, who hardly mentioned the problem during the campaign for fear of key coal-producing swing states, notably Ohio, may make climate change one of his “legacy” issues.

“President Obama’s legacy will be shaped by his ability to take on big challenges, including climate change, clean energy, environmental protection, and sustainability,” said Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute (WRI).

As with climate change and other issues with major domestic implications, however, Obama will be constrained by certain political realities, most notably the fact Republicans will still hold a solid majority in the House of Representatives and 45 seats in the Senate, enabling them to effectively block any legislation to which they are strongly opposed.

“You’ve had an election that more or less preserves the status quo in the House,” noted Charles Kupchan, a foreign policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “At a time when Obama’s top priority is getting the economy going, I’m not sure we’ll see a major initiative on climate change.”

And, while Obama won a sturdy majority of the electoral vote, his margin in the national vote is unlikely to exceed three percent when all the votes are counted. As a result, the institutional and partisan balance of power remains much the same as before the election.

Moreover, the fact that foreign policy did not play much of a role in a campaign dominated by the economy – only five percent of voters told pollsters as they left the voting booth that foreign affairs was the most important issue facing the country – suggests that Obama cannot claim a clear mandate for major policy changes.

Still, the fact that his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, dropped his earlier hawkish, neo-conservative rhetoric as the election approached and essentially embraced Obama’s general policy approach, including even in the Middle East, in the closing weeks of the campaign was taken by some as a green light, if not a mandate, to pursue the president’s instincts.

“The election campaign, and not only the outcome, should be seen as the rout of the neo-conservatism of the disastrous 2001-2006 period of the Bush administration and the consolidation of a broad, bipartisan foreign policy consensus,” wrote Middle East analyst and occasional White House adviser Marc Lynch on his foreignpolicy.com blog Wednesday.

He predicted that what he called Obama’s “caution and pragmatism” in the region, particularly with respect to generally supporting democratic transitions, seeking ways to convene Israelis and Palestinians, engaging moderate Islamists, and pursuing Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, is unlikely to change, although he suggested that bolder approaches in some areas were called for.

In particular, the administration should begin “serious efforts at real talks with Iran” on its nuclear programme and “be prepared to take yes for an answer,” he wrote, echoing a consensus among realists in the foreign policy establishment that Obama will have greater flexibility to strike a deal with Tehran now than at any time in the last two years.

Reports of back-channel talks between the U.S. and Iran in preparation for a new round of negotiations between Tehran and the so-called P5+1 powers after the election have been circulating for two weeks.

Lynch also called for Washington to get behind a major push to unify the two main Palestinian factions and “encourage the renewal of a peace camp in the upcoming Israeli election” in hopes reviving serious efforts to achieve a two-state solution – a recommendation that also been urged by many analysts disappointed by Obama’s failure over the last two years to apply real pressure on Israel to halt the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Since 2010, Obama and his fellow Democrats have avoided confronting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who made little secret of his support for Romney – on either issue in major part because they felt their re-election chances depended heavily on the neutrality, if not the goodwill of the powerful Israel lobby.

Remarkably, however, those fears appear to have proved largely unfounded. Despite the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars in swing states on ads by the hard-line neo-conservative Republican Jewish Coalition and the Emergency Committee for Israel, as well as repeated charges by Romney that Obama had “thrown Israel under the bus,” 70 percent of Jewish voters opted for the president – a result that suggested that at least those hard-line neo-conservative elements of the lobby most closely tied to Netanyahu and the settler movement were not nearly as powerful as generally believed.

If so, Obama may have more room for manoeuvre on both Israel-Palestine and Iran, if he chooses to exercise it, than he himself previously thought.

Indeed, the election results were greeted with some considerable anxiety by Netanyahu’s supporters both here and in Israel.

“(R)emember that Obama is deeply committed to three things: global nuclear disarmament, rapprochement with the Islamic world, and Palestinian statehood,” wrote David Weinberg Wednesday in Israel Hayom, an Israeli newspaper funded by U.S. casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major Netanyahu backer who also funded the election ads against Obama.

“I believe that he will forcefully act to progress on all three fronts, and this could bring him into conflict with Israel,” he added. “So start filling your sandbags. We’re in for a rough ride.”

Moreover, surveys of Jewish voters nationwide and in the swing states of Ohio and Florida commissioned by J Street, a “pro-peace” Zionist group, found that Obama’s tally among Jewish voters was only four percent less than in 2008 – roughly the same proportionate loss he suffered among virtually all demographic groups, except Latinos, who increased their support for the president significantly compared to four years ago.

The surveys also found overwhelming (79 percent) support for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, 76 percent support for an active U.S. role in negotiating a settlement, as well as a significant plurality for continuing diplomacy with Iran.

Still Kupchan believes Obama is unlikely to aggressively challenge Netanyahu, especially on the Israel-Palestinian issue.

“I think the chances of a major push on the peace process are slim,” said Charles Kupchan, a foreign policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That would happen only if there is an opening of sorts in the region or if it comes primarily from within Israel and a shift in the electoral landscape there that gives it Netanyahu an incentive to do something bold.”

But he, too, predicted that Obama will try harder to reach some agreement with Iran in the coming months while continuing to resist intervention – especially military intervention – amid the continuing turmoil in the Arab world.

“The one place you’ll see a growing footprint and presence and growing activism,” he said, will be in Asia, especially if “things heat up more over territorial disputes between China and its neighbours. And the new Chinese leadership may pursue a more confrontational stance which could in turn invite an American response in kind.”

With Barack Obama and Mitt Romney virtually tied with Election Day less than two weeks away, Muslim voters could play an unexpected critical role in deciding the outcome Nov. 6.

A poll of 500 registered Muslim voters released here Wednesday found that more than two-thirds (68 percent) currently plan to vote [...]]]> via IPS News

With Barack Obama and Mitt Romney virtually tied with Election Day less than two weeks away, Muslim voters could play an unexpected critical role in deciding the outcome Nov. 6.

A poll of 500 registered Muslim voters released here Wednesday found that more than two-thirds (68 percent) currently plan to vote for Obama and only seven percent for Romney. But a surprisingly large 25 percent said they were still undecided between the two main party candidates.

And tens of thousands of those undecided voters are disproportionately concentrated in three “swing” states – Ohio, Virginia and Florida – where the candidates are focusing their campaigns in the last two weeks.

“The Muslim vote could be decisive in several battleground states,” said Naeem Baig, chairman of the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT), which co-sponsored the survey and whose political arm is expected to formally endorse candidates before the election.

The poll, which was conducted during the first two weeks of October, also found large majorities of respondents who said that the U.S. should support rebels in Syria (68 percent) and that Washington was right to intervene with NATO in last year’s revolt against the Qadhafi regime in Libya (76 percent).

Respondents were roughly evenly divided on whether the U.S. has provided sufficient support to the uprisings in the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring.

Precisely how many Muslim citizens there are in the United States – and hence how many Muslim voters – has been a matter of considerable debate. The U.S. Census is forbidden to ask residents their religious affiliation.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), another co-sponsor of the survey and an 18-year-old grassroots organisation that has become one of the country’s most active national Muslim groups, estimates a total U.S. Muslim population at between six and seven million, or about the same as the total number of U.S. Jews.

The Pew Research Center, on the other hand, last year estimated the total number of Muslim Americans at 2.75 million, of whom about one million were children and hence ineligible to vote. It found that more than 60 percent of U.S. Muslims are immigrants, and, of those, more than 70 percent are citizens.

Most native-born Muslims are African Americans, who, together with Arabs, Iranians, and South Asian comprise roughly 80 percent of the total U.S. Muslim population.

CAIR estimates the total number of registered Muslim voters at at least one million. Ohio, according to CAIR’s estimates has around 50,000 registered Muslim voters; Virginia, around 60,000; and Florida, between 70,000 and 80,000.

Historically, Muslim Americans have been split in their voting behaviour, but in the 2000 election 72 percent voted for George W. Bush primarily because his campaign met at length with Muslim organisations and, during a key debate with then-Vice President Al Gore, the former president spoke out against the use of secret evidence in deportation hearings and racial profiling. Four national Muslim organisations eventually endorsed his candidacy.

But, disillusioned with his administration’s harsh response to 9/11, including the detention of hundreds of Muslim men, the passage of the so-called Patriot Act, as well as the war in Iraq, U.S. Muslims abandoned Bush.

In the 2004 election, 93 percent of Muslims voted for the Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry; another five percent for third-party candidate Ralph Nader, and only one percent for Bush, according to surveys conducted at the time.

The Democratic shift continued in 2008 when nearly 90 percent of Muslim voters cast their ballots for Obama and only two percent for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain.

Whether that level of support will be retained for Obama, however, is unclear, according to CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, who said Muslims were in some respects disappointed by Obama’s inability or failure to fully follow through on some of his campaign pledges to amend or rescind the more onerous provisions of the Patriot Act and close the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba.

Like the general public, he noted, Muslims have also been disappointed by the president’s performance on the economy and reducing unemployment.

In addition, noted Oussama Jammal, who chairs a public affairs committee of the the Muslim American Society (MAS), noted that Obama’s greater use of drones to strike suspected Al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants in Pakistan “is not selling well in the (Muslim) South Asian community”.

Revelations regarding “unprecedented surveillance” of mosques and the use of agents provocateurs by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have also hurt Muslim confidence in Obama, according to Baig.

The 500-person sample on which the poll was based was drawn from a data base of nearly 500,000 Muslim American voters that was, in turn, developed by matching state voter-registration records with a list of some 45,000 traditionally Muslim first and last names prevalent in a variety of the world’s Muslim-majority ethnic groups.

Respondents included 314 men and 186 women across the country. Twenty-six percent of respondents were born in the U.S.; while 71 percent were not. (Three percent declined to answer the question.) Ninety-three percent said they had lived in the U.S. 10 years or more.

Of the total sample, 43 percent said they were of South or Southeast Asian ancestry; 21 percent, Arab; eight percent, European; and six percent from Iran and Africa each, an indication that African American Muslims, who are estimated to comprise about 30 of all Muslim Americans, may have been under-represented.

Half of respondents said they attend a mosque at least once a month.

The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus five percent.

In addition to its findings about presidential preferences, the poll found that a whopping 91 percent of respondents intend to vote in this year’s election. In the last presidential election in 2008, only about 57 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

It also found that the percentage of those who considered themselves closer to the Democratic Party grew from 42 percent in 2006 to 66 percent today, while affiliation with the Republican Party remained roughly the same at between eight and nine percent since 2008. Fifty-one percent of respondents said they considered the Republican Party, several of whose presidential candidates during the primary campaign made blatant Islamophobic remarks, hostile to Muslims.

Asked how important they considered 16 current foreign and domestic issues education, jobs and the economy, health policy, and civil rights were called “very important” by four out of five respondents. Seventy-one percent said they considered “terrorism and national security” in the same category, while two-thirds of respondents named the “possibility of war with Iran”.

It was exactly 50 years ago when then-President John F. Kennedy took to the airwaves to inform the world that the Soviet Union was introducing nuclear-armed missiles into Cuba and that he had ordered a blockade of the island – and would consider stronger action – to force their removal.

Haaretz reporter Barak Ravid references Jim Lobe’s widely read article about Bibi Netanyahu’s testimony to Congress on Iraq one year prior to the US-led war in 2003. In sum, the Israeli Prime Minister seems to be reading from the same old script:

A video clip [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Haaretz reporter Barak Ravid references Jim Lobe’s widely read article about Bibi Netanyahu’s testimony to Congress on Iraq one year prior to the US-led war in 2003. In sum, the Israeli Prime Minister seems to be reading from the same old script:

A video clip from the 2002 hearing has been making the rounds of the Internet over the past few days, after it was posted by American blogger Jim Lobe at almost the same time as Netanyahu was addressing the United Nations General Assembly last week.

During last week’s speech, Netanyahu stressed that if Iran is not stopped, it will be on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon by next spring, or by summer at the latest. Therefore, Netanyahu argued, a red line must be drawn to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Netanyahu’s remarks during the 2002 congressional hearing sounded very similar to his UN speech. The arguments are the same, the intonation is the same, even the advisers are the same – Netanyahu’s current diplomatic adviser, Ron Dermer, who wrote the prime minister’s UN address, can be seen in the 10-year-old video sitting behind Netanyahu in the congressional hall.

Politically the administration has to care a lot [about what happens in Afghanistan] because since he came into office Obama [...]]]> IPS News’s Washington Bureau Chief Jim Lobe discusses the Obama administration’s Afghanistan strategy and its effects ahead of the U.S. 2012 presidential campaign and the expected withdrawal of U.S.-led combat forces by 2014. Notes Jim:

Politically the administration has to care a lot [about what happens in Afghanistan] because since he came into office Obama has tried to depict the Afghanistan war as the “good war” as opposed to the not so good war in Iraq and he’s invested quite a lot in what might be called success but it doesn’t appear to be turning out that way. He’s sent over 60,000 additional troops during his term to Afghanistan and if things go south too quickly, it will be highly embarrassing to him and it will be a major point of weakness during his election campaign that Republicans are sure to exploit.

But I want to look at Lee Smith, just because he gave me a good laugh yesterday.

For years, the Weekly Standard correspondent [...]]]> Jim asks a good question: Who was more instrumental in the Arab uprisings, George W. Bush or his nemesis Al Jazeera? Andrew Sullivan had a funny take on “Bush’s vindication”: 80% right, 100% wrong.

But I want to look at Lee Smith, just because he gave me a good laugh yesterday.

For years, the Weekly Standard correspondent and Hudson Institute fellow has been saying that Arabs respect only strength. Well, someone forgot to tell this to the Arabs. If Hosni Mubarak had been reading Smith, he must be wondering why he feels so much like Rodney Dangerfield right now.

Let’s look at some of Smith’s writing. Here’s a piece from just last month:

Western cyber-optimists argue that information technology like satellite television and the Internet will so inundate the Arabic-speaking Middle East with images and information that it will entirely reconfigure Arab societies. But this has it exactly wrong: Culture is more powerful than technology, and how a society uses any given technology is determined by its culture.

Now, who has it exactly wrong? Within a month of Smith’s screed, peaceful protesters used Facebook to organize what became the massive Egyptian protests that overthrew the “strong horse.” Once the Internet went down, they watched Al Jazeera and other satellite channels to figure out what was going on, who was saying what, and where to go next. The events of the past month represent an almost exact negative image of Smith’s sociological caricature.

I use the words “strong horse” above because this is how Smith refers to leaders that can move the Arab heart — not Facebook groups anonymously led by shrimpy Google execs. It’s even in the name of Smith’s book, “The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations,” which came out last year.

I haven’t read the book, but I have read an approbative review by Daniel Pipes in the National Review that appeared early last year:

[Smith] presents Pan-Arab nationalism as an effort to transform the mini-horses of the national states into a single super-horse and Islamism as an effort to make Muslims powerful again. Israel serves as “a proxy strong horse” for both the United States and the Saudi-Egyptian bloc in the latter’s Cold War rivalry with Iran’s bloc. In a strong-horse environment, militias appeal more than do elections.

Could this possibly be more wrong? Is the Islamist “single super-horse” theory the reason that the Muslim Brotherhood promptly rejected a call of solidarity from Tehran? The absurdity of Pipes’s last statement alone makes my head spin. Wait, wait. It gets better:

What Smith calls the strong-horse principle contains two banal elements: Seize power and then maintain it. This principle predominates because Arab public life has “no mechanism for peaceful transitions of authority or power sharing, and therefore [it] sees political conflict as a fight to the death between strong horses.” Violence, Smith observes is “central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.”

That’s not all:

Smith’s simple and near-universal principle provides a tool to comprehend the Arabs’ cult of death, honor killings, terrorist attacks, despotism, warfare, and much else. He acknowledges that the strong-horse principle may strike Westerners as ineffably crude, but he correctly insists on its being a cold reality that outsiders must recognize, take into account, and respond to.

Now that Pipes and Smith have been proven wrong by events, will they go back and “recognize, take into account, and respond to” the undeniable new reality that doesn’t fit into their worldview? Probably not, because they’re ideologues, and that’s what ideologues, by definition, do. Reality is subservient to what they want to think about the world.

Now, go back and read Daniel Pipes’s review of Lee Smith’s book– and you tell me who is obsessed with Israel and the “strong horse.” Is it the Arabs who continue to flood the streets and demand freedom from their rulers? Or is it these neoconservatives?