Timeline

To readers who have been puzzled for lack of posts from me over the past weekend, especially on days that proved to be most noteworthy I offer the explanation: I have been moving.

A process that the majority of adults loath, I have moved out of the apartment that I called home for two years into a slightly smaller one-bedroom loft. In the process, my access to internet and therefore ability to write was encumbered. This is the case until Thursday when I receive my internet/TV activation. Until then, Bear Rock Cafe and Starbucks have become my home away from new home. To friends reading this who have heard this story I beg your patience.

Call it a miracle, I would like to think of the whole process as excellent crisis management skills. In twenty-four hours I found a new apartment and over the next forty-eight hours I moved into my new space. Yes, it has been stressful, and with professional and personal obligations, I am exhausted. However, this quick process does point to the ability to make something happen if one follows a timeline and is committed to that timeline.

Using this background information I have mentioned my thoughts turn to the Middle East. Only now with gross negligence in bombing, has Israel joined a cease-fire. This action is good, needed, and long overdue after the failed response by the US (and that is what it has been) to mediate this crisis, in particular the mockery of personal diplomacy that has been Secretary Rice’s performance.

Peace in the Middle East is possible, a cease-fire, prisoner exchange, and other components of diplomacy to end this particular cycle of violence can occur. The individual groups intimately involved in this crisis and the US must be committed to a realistic timeline.

Diplomacy, like filling moving boxes is often a slow and laborious process. However, it can be done efficiently. This is what has been lacking from the US and Israel in dealing with this crisis and it is exactly what needs to change.

Denial

It is impossible not to be biased in the evolving story of the Middle East. Whether you are a Jew or an Arab or a friend of one or both, emotions and tempers are high. So I inform visitors and consistent readers of this blog once more of bias.

For people looking for good news from the Middle East, specifically any news that might end the fighting, today’s glimmer of hope came from an unexpected source. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says a deal could be “imminent” to free an Israeli soldier held for more than a month by militants in the Gaza Strip. This statement was made in Rome at a news conference with the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

As quoted by the BBC, Mr. Abbas said, “I told the prime minister that as far as the question of the abducted Israeli soldier is concerned efforts are undergoing continuously that lead us to believe that the solution will be imminent.”

This is good news, though not reality. A spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, the faction that dominates the Palestinian legislature, said: “Nothing has changed in the case of the Israeli soldier,” Reuters news agency reported and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat also played down Mr. Abbas’ comments, suggesting that they had been taken out of context.

To believe that Hamas is willing to make a deal, to think there is hope that a cease-fire with Hezbollah is possible soon, if somebody or some nation would step forward to lead, and sadly, to believe that the United States is willing to pressure Israel to stop its military campaigns in the north and south is nothing short than denial.
Public support for such military operations is high in Israel, currently around 80 to 90 percent. Add to this an anemic United Nations (the death of four personal and the UN response is proof positive) and complacent United States and the current recipe of disaster continues to unfold unabated.

SHAME

A warning to readers; this blog will be biased.

I will not dispense the motivational language usually reserved for the word leadership. It is as tiring to repeat as the recent lack of leadership from the US in the Middle East crisis has been.

When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Rome she faced an impossible task in trying to sell the Arab world on the U.S. policy of delaying a cease-fire on the grounds that “whatever we do, we have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East.”

Having the talks fail in producing an outcome this should not then be a real surprise. However, I ask this simple question: what were such talks supposed to do?

The most tangible and immediate result could have been a cease-fire. An end to the civilian deaths that mount each day, an end to violence that is emboldening moderate Lebanese to side with Hezbollah and for the Palestinians, a respite from daily chaos.

We, the United States have failed to be a leader. This failure began when we did not immediately respond a week and a half ago to Israel’s reciprocity and though such inaction might have been explained, failure in Rome cannot. We have failed to be the leader of the free world, which if the definition fits, includes Israel.

It is shameful. There is no other word for this failure. It is difficult to think of the next course of action, a real plan for peace. Since President Bush seems content to leave such thinking to his man or in this case woman on the ground, Secretary Rice, the mission I spoke in a prior post seems to be over, not that the mission was really defined for real success in the first place.

Where is Jimmy Carter or, dare I say the name, Bill Clinton?

A Violation Of The Constitution

According to an American Bar Association task force, which includes a one-time FBI director and former federal appeals court judge, has said that President Bush’s penchant for writing exceptions to laws he has just signed violates the Constitution

In short, the president overstepped his authority in attaching challenges to hundreds of new laws. These attachments, known as bill-signing statements, reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

The separation of powers between the branches of government has been integral to the success of this experiment we call the American democracy. The practice, if unchecked, harms the separation of powers doctrine.

Noel J. Francisco, a former Bush administration attorney who practices law in Washington, said the president is doing nothing unusual or inappropriate. In a statement on CNN.com, Mr. Francisco says, “Presidents have always issued signing statements, this administration believes that it should make clear … when the Congress is getting close to the lines that our Constitution draws.” This is a nice answer, decisive, and snappy. However, when one looks at the record and discovers that President Bush has had more than 800 signing statement challenges, compared with about 600 signing statements combined for all other presidents, eyebrows should be raised.

President Reagan was the first to use the statements as a strategic weapon, and that is what President Bush is attempting to use it as, though it should be said that other means can and should be used, instead. In effect, using such attachments is paramount to a line-item veto, and on the important issues of national security and the constitution, using such attachments to “get your way” when the Courts or Congress has a difference of opinion invalidates the purpose and the INTENT of the separation of powers doctrine.

The framers of the Constitution did not see the Executive branch becoming as important as it has become. In their experience, a combination of historical memory and prior professional duties indicated a strong legislative body, such as Parliament, when Congress was created. Political parties and presidential personality has molded the Executive into what we know it as today. At the heart is a healthy, if spirited, dialogue between the branches of our federal government, where the separation of powers are observed and each branch checks and balances the power of the other. The current practice utilized by President Bush undercuts this very sacred tradition, removing a key check, with no valid replacement.

What is Rice’s Mission?

Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, under President Clinton calls the current series of events occurring around the world the “perfect storm” of foreign policy: dark clouds closing in on Washington from every direction. Current world events is a testament to this statement.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on a mission to the Middle East to seek a “lasting solution” to the crisis between Israel and Lebanon. She is meeting regional leaders in Beirut and Jerusalem before heading to Rome later in the week. She stopped first in Lebanon’s capital, where she met with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s parliament speaker, who has close ties with Hezbollah and Syria. In her press statement she said how, “President Bush wanted this to be my first stop — here in Lebanon — to express our desire to urgently find conditions in which we can end the violence and make life better for the Lebanese people.” Nice sound bite, but her actual meeting was nothing short of a disaster. Lebanese Minister of Social Affairs Nayla Muawwad said the discussion wound up serving more to inform Rice than for her to inform the other participants according to a report by the BBC.

Amid the arrival of Rice, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said today that, “there is no conflict between Israel and the people of Lebanon. But Israel has no higher responsibility than to defend its citizens.” This should be remembered as Israeli military strategy has displaced an estimated 800,000 Lebanese according to U.N.’s relief coordinator, Jan Egeland with civilians suffering in northern Israel and in Lebanon. Livni also called for the release of the abducted Israeli soldiers and for Lebanon to exercise sovereignty over its territory by carrying out U.N. Resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of militias. This might be the rationale, but the logic of military operations in the very area Israel demands Lebanon to control is impractical as it is impossible.

Rice is now in Israel, where she is to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. She was also expected to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. It is hoped that Rice, now “on the ground” will be more engaged and bring the sides together, particularly later this week when she is to meet with Arab leaders and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. On that agenda is the possibility of a multinational force for southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, the Hezbollah guerrillas traded more attacks with Israeli forces Monday and the general consensus is that a cease-fire not expected immediately. So, what is Rice’s mission? It should be two fold: one to reassert US presence in the dialogue for peace and second to call for a cease-fire. Hopefully it will not be only a lengthy briefing.

Real World Trade Lost

Trade ministers from six key countries have reached an impasse in Geneva after marathon negotiations failed to make headway. This is not only unfortunate, but considering whom this impasse effects it is CRIMINAL. Such a failure jeopardizes the four-year effort to liberalize world trade.

The world has been trying to reach a new deal to expand free trade, with a special emphasis on helping poor countries. Talks have been going on since 2001, but predictably, progress has been very slow. A key meeting in Hong Kong in December 2005 failed to make a breakthrough.

In brief, advocates of a trade deal say it would help end poverty in developing countries, while rich countries could also benefit if they can sell more goods and services abroad.
Moreover, a deal would boost global growth and increase jobs, though critics say it would cost jobs in developing countries and hurt poor people.

Why have the talks broken down? The key issue is how far the US and the European Union will reduce their barriers to agricultural exports from developing countries, including both subsidies and tariffs. In return for this the rich countries want larger developing countries like Brazil and India to lower their barriers to imports of manufactured goods. This sounds reasonable, but after four years of talking, it appears that none of the key parties is prepared to compromise enough to push the talks to a conclusion. In particular, the US and the European Union are both facing strong pressure from their domestic farm lobbies not to go too far in reducing protection for the agricultural sector.

As the prospects for a deal have receded, each side has sought to blame the other.
The EU saying that the US has been too ambitious and has not shown enough flexibility to reach agreement, while the US blames protectionist pressures around the EU Common Agricultural Policy. There is validity to both claims but the best complaint comes from the developing countries who say that the rich nations were never serious about opening up their markets, and until they do, they are in no hurry to open their own. This is the truth, this is the hurdle and must be overcome.

The key problem has been that free trade in agriculture, the centerpiece of this trade round. Although small, the agricultural lobbies are powerful, and the industrial lobbies in rich countries have not exercised much leverage to push through a trade deal. Until then, the talks are facing a major obstacle in the US, since “fast track” negotiating authority by Congress expires in July 2007. This means that Congress must vote the deal up or down as a whole, otherwise opponents could add wrecking amendments and force the US to renegotiate the whole deal.

In the current political climate mid-term elections and with trade deals already unpopular because of the huge trade deficit, an extension is unlikely to be agreed and any trade deal without the participation of the world’s largest economy would be meaningless.

The main losers would be the larger developing countries like Brazil, India, and South Africa, who have many agricultural products they would like to export to rich countries.
The poorest countries who have been offered free market access as part of any trade deal, have less capacity to benefit from any market opening. It is this reason that some
NGOs say that no deal is better than a bad deal for the poor, and that it would be better to start from scratch to redesign the world trading system in a fairer way.

The fact that negotiations of this magnitude has gone on for so long and now have effectively been stalled indefinitely is truly sad. The opportunity to help has been lost.

Hopelessness

Israeli troops moved across the border into southern Lebanon on Saturday, blazing past a UN observation post and engaging Hezbollah militants as part of a limited ground campaign.
Backed by artillery and tank fire, Israeli troops knocked down a border fence and moved past the observation post before assuming control of the large village of Maroun al-Ras, Israeli military officials said.

Much of this news as it develops, is slowly adding to a universal consensus: this has to stop. More importantly, the question of further Israeli action (full-invasion of Lebanon?) and lack of response by the United States (Secretary of State Rice will leave for the Middle East sometime next week) makes all concerned observers of this crisis very uncertain of the future. This might sound redundant, but for many, shaking heads has grown old, replaced by a deep sense of hopelessness.

When does retaliation turn into belligerence? This is not a simple question with a simple answer. Nothing is ever simple in the Middle East. It is very complex, but in this very simple question is the answer to our hopelessness.

A Very Bad Decision

Thousands of Israeli troops massed on the Lebanese border today as Lebanon’s president said his army would defend the country if Israel launches a full-scale ground invasion.

The Israel Defense Forces has called up roughly 6,000 reservists as reinforcements along the border. Leaflets urging residents in southern Lebanon to leave their homes and move north of the Litani River, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Israeli border, have been dropped in the region, the IDF said, according to CNN.

It is the opinion of many international observers that this would be the wrong decision. Such an action would create a situation that Israel had not intended. The Lebanese Army would join with Hezbollah to fight the invasion, uniting the two, when the intention of current Israeli military operations is to divide the two groups. This blooger agrees.

Public opinion, in particular, would turn against Israel and in the short term this is something that Israel and its ally, America, cannot afford, or ignore. In the long term, good public opinion is what both America and Israel will need in order to create a peace plan.

No Clear Direction

Commentators have noted that Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, with America’s acquiescence, wants to prolong the military assault for perhaps another two weeks—perhaps until he can point to some specific success, such as Hezbollah giving up its captive soldiers. However, doubts have arise over the effectiveness of Israel’s campaign, since it seems that Hezbollah’s guerrilla fighters are as eager to continue the conflict, in the hope of bolstering their own reputation.

To date, over 300 Lebanese have been killed by Israel’s airstrikes, the vast majority of them victims. Some 29 Israelis have been killed. The Israeli government claims to have destroyed half of Hezbollah’s military capacity, but where is the evidence? The Shia group denies that any of its leaders were hurt in the bunker bombing on Wednesday and suggested that Israeli planes had actually flattened a half-built mosque. As if to add insult to injury, Hezbollah continues to fire rockets into Israel and is riding a wave of popularity in the Arab world. And, to the chagrin of Western politicians, it is abundantly clear that the Lebanonese government is unable (even if it were willing) to rein in the Hezbollah.
A reason to doubt that Israel’s assault over its northern border will prove effective soon is that a similar campaign, in Palestinian territory, seems to be getting nowhere. Back, in Gaza, where Palestinian militants are holding a soldier they captured late last month, Israel has adopted a similar military strategy, simultaneously trying to secure his release and stamp out the firing of homemade rockets into Israel. It has attacked militant leaders, shelled areas where rockets were launched, and bombed what little public infrastructure and government buildings the Palestinian’s have, in an attempt to put pressure on the Hamas-run government. It has not worked. 110 Palestinians have been killed, more rockets fall, the Israeli soldier remains in captivity, public support for Hamas is growing, and the government (or what is left of it after a wave of arrests in the West Bank) remains defiant.

The pictures from both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have been unremittingly familiar: buildings bombed to rubble, corpses and grief, refugees fleeing to safer areas. The scenes of chaos and suffering prompted Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, and Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, to propose sending a multinational force to the area. America, always sceptical with ideas coming from the UN, said that there is already a 1,990-strong UN peacekeeping force on the border that has failed to curb the fighting. Today, Kofi Annan called for an immediate end to the fighting between Israeli and Hezbollah forces.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton maintained that a cease-fire was a “simplistic” solution to the current problem between Israel and the Lebanese militia.
“As we’ve said repeatedly, what we seek is a long-term cessation of hostilities that is part of a comprehensive change in the region and a part of a real foundation for peace,” Bolton said and reported by CNN. “But, still, no one has explained how you conduct the cease-fire with a group of terrorists.”

Mr. Bolton and the United States foreign policy regarding this current crisis are off the mark. The fact that you are fighting terrorists is not the issue. Stopping the escalating violence and curbing the severe humanitarian crisis IS. It is this type of rationale that prevented decades of peace in Northern Ireland. It is this exact muddled and confusing disagreement between the UN, EU members, and the United States over language and semantics that allowed the genocide in the Balkans to continue unabated for three years as well as millions killed, displaced, and starving currently in Darfur, Sudan.

Pick up the phone, contact the ambassadors, or use the known intermediaries for the parties involved, and call a cease-fire. What is so difficult to comprehend?

Overwhelmed

Today’s news held many topics that I found interesting and wanted to write on.

However, errands and chores and work, all of which occupy a large part of my day interfered. Moreover, I was struggling with what topic to write on. The elections in Georgia where Ralph Reed lost the lieutenant governorship or President Bush dusting off his veto pen to write his name on stem-cell legislation that his Party, in control of the Senate, had passed. There was the latest news from the Middle East, where the term developing story, really means that as Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah are fighting each other, while the ordinary civilians are killed, tourists flee on cruise ships, temporarily converted to transport vessels, and the collective leadership in the UN, EU, and in Moscow at the G8 summit all seem rather pleased to scratch their heads and talk amongst themselves all the while providing NO leadership on a solution least of all action. Violence, not the least of which, reported today, was the rising civilian death toll in Iraq. More bombings, suicide and remote detonated from cars point to what? More death, sectarian strife, and an America unable to control situations of their choosing. And I have not yet mentioned Afghanistan.

So, my readers, I was prevented from writing today on a topic of substance because I was, frankly, overwhelmed. My humble apology and an oath to do better tomorrow.