History may not be on their side

With so much bad blood over so many years flowing between them, Israel and Palestine face daunting odds when it comes to the dream of establishing a meaningful and lasting peace.

Many (but not all) Israelis believe that permanent settlement of the land is their God-given right, some have simply lived there all their lives and don't wish to leave a place they consider home. Meanwhile, Palestinians likely feel as though they live under an illegal occupation begun by UN mandate and continued through Israeli governmental force. It is, obviously, an incredibly volatile situation.

Neither side is wholly guilty or wholly innocent in this mess, but it can be extremely difficult for the various involved parties to see that, given the deeply personal stakes.

For anyone to criticize Israel is seen by some to be anti-Semitic. Who wants to be accused of that, especially when the specter of the Holocaust is raised as part of the accusation? But it is absolutely essential that we all be allowed to have an open and honest dialogue concerning the actions of the modern Israeli state in regards to their Palestinian/Arab neighbors. To ignore any and all abuses of power by them would be to do a gross disservice not only to those immediately effected by the problems, but also to those ancestors who actually lived through Nazi persecution.

I heard an Israeli man quoted on NPR yesterday in regards to the current bombing campaign in Gaza. He said he wanted to "see them eradicated." The utter irony of a Jewish person calling for the devastation of an entire people apparently flew right over his head, and that, quite frankly, is incredibly sad.

Too, the extreme degree of violence being leveled against the Palestinians by Israel is appalling. In alleged response to a couple of rockets (honestly, it probably goes back further than that), the country has sent its airforce to bomb various buildings throughout the strip. Doesn't this seem a little, I don't know, disproportionate? Here's another example of the disparity:
I see the frustration on both sides. Far too many people, both civilian and military, have been needlessly killed in this seemingly never-ending conflict. Most folks, both Palestinian and Israeli, simply want to be able to go about their lives in peace, with access to basic needs like clean water, food, and medicine, and with relatively safe streets and schools for their children.

But Hamas and other militant groups (and even heads of state) insist that they want to wipe Israel off the map, and/or kill all of the Jews. That, too, is disgusting and reprehensible. So is sending random rockets into civilian areas.

None of the actors in this are innocent, none without blood on their hands. But no one else should have to die, either. Someone has to step up and put an end to the ridiculous cycle of retaliation--no matter what. Set aside history, set aside pride, set aside political or religious ideology and just stop. That's what it will take.

I know, I know--it's not so easy as all that. There are always rogue players involved who will try their damnedest to spoil any attempts at peace. But let them become the outcasts, reviled for their violent tactics, while the rest rise above and work toward something far more meaningful.

Then again, maybe things are just too far gone. Maybe there can never be a peaceful co-existence between Israeli and Palestinian, regardless of any new partition or independence. That would be, in my opinion, a great tragedy - and a hard lesson learned about what happens when outside forces move into a place and impose their will without any consideration for the native population, and when religious extremism on all sides becomes the rule of the day.

Extreme reactions breed extreme reactions.

Afghanistan, we (really) hardly knew ye

Have you ever read an article or story about a subject that really made you take a moment and think to yourself, "Damn, I don't know what I thought I knew about that"?

I recently came across just such an article. "How We Lost the War We Won: A journey into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan" by Nir Rosen turned out to be an incredible eye-opener for me.

An American reporter granted nearly unprecedented access to some of the most off-limits part of that country, Rosen relates a story of a far more nationalistic than fundamentalist resurgent Taliban--one even open to women in schools and jobs--and a situation that cannot be "won" through military means.

I urge you to read it. Go on, I'll wait.

A taste:

With the Bush administration focused on the war in Iraq, money poured into Afghanistan from Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists, who were eager to maintain a second front against the American invaders. The Taliban — once an isolated and impoverished group of religious students who knew little about the rest of the world and cared only about liberating their country from oppressive warlords — are now among the best-armed and most experienced insurgents in the world, linked to a global movement of jihadists that stretches from Pakistan and Iraq to Chechnya and the Philippines.

But this isn't a Bush bashing piece. Rosen gets down in the dirt and dust with the people of Afghanistan, literally risking his life to bring this story back to the rest of the world. And his main point seems to be that merely throwing more troops, more brawn at the problem is not going to fix much of anything.

"More troops are not the answer," a senior United Nations official in Kabul tells me. "You will not make more babies by having many guys screw the same woman." It is a point echoed in dozens of off-the-record interviews I conducted in Kabul with leading Western diplomats, security experts, former mujahedeen and Taliban commanders, and senior officials with the U.N. and prominent aid organizations. All agree that the situation is, in the words of one official, "incredibly bleak."

...

As one top official with a Western aid organization put it, "We're simply not up to the task of success in Afghanistan. I'm increasingly unsure about a way forward — except that we should start preparing our exit strategy."

The key line, and my inferred moral to Rosen's story, is this:

"This can't be solved other than by talking to the Taliban," says a top diplomat in Kabul. A leading aid official adds that it is important to understand the ideological goal of the Taliban: "They don't have an international-terrorist agenda — they have an Afghanistan agenda. We might not agree with their agenda for the country, but that's not our war."

It's a tough pill to swallow. I'm the polar opposite of a fan of any regime or ruling power that oppresses any of the people over whom it holds sway. I don't agree with conservative Islamic doctrine, or any doctrine, that subjugates women. But Afghanistan is not my country to rule. It is not anyone but Afghani's to rule.

The trick, of course, lies in making sure that Afghanis, all Afghanis, have an equal and unthreatened voice in those ruling decisions. Part of that does, I believe, require outside involvement, but much more in the form of international aid for infrastructure rebuilding, schools, security training, and know-how for a whole host of programs and problems. Not so much with the armies and weapons.

It was, after all, the US and Soviet Union that provided the region with much of its military training and armament. I would argue that it is then up to us to help them recover from all of that, but not by repeating past mistakes. Like the man said, you will not make more babies by having many guys screw the same woman.

Crass, but you get the point.

What's really interesting to see is how that country's government is now slowly flexing its independent muscle, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of the end of the Bush administration. Just today, the Karzai government made what's being called a "surprising reversal" and agreed to sign on, with 100 other countries, to a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs. The United States, it should be noted, has refused to sign the treaty and had been urging Afghanistan, one of the countries worst effected by the bombs, to follow suit.

Whether Karzai's move is purely political or not, it's impressive and important. Cluster bombs, much like modern nuclear weapons, are, in my opinion, completely unneccesarry tools of barbarous overkill. And the people they most hurt--regular Afghani citizens--are who we should all be listening to anyway.

What this all comes down to, I think, is the same moral of the story that we've learned (or were supposed to have learned) from Iraq. More often than not, the people who actually live in a place are the ones who best know what that place needs and how its people live. Even with the best of intentions, an outside power that swoops in and attempts to force change through violence is destined to wreak havoc and, usually, fail in its ultimate goals.

The US wanted to kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan as part of their larger effort to "contain the spread of communism". They succeeded at that, but in the long run provided training and weapons to people like Osama bin Laden, who would go on to return the favor by helping to kill thousands of people on 9/11.

The US wanted to prevent the Islamic Revolution happening in Iran from spreading into Iraq and other nearby countries, and so threw its support behind Iraq during the '80-'88 conflict. In so doing, they helped supply the regime of Saddam Hussein with many of the weapons and intelligence it would go on to use against our own forces.

We have to stop supporting dictators and regimes simply because it seems convenient to our country's own selfish goals at the time. It always comes back to haunt us in the long term, which is a tense we seem to have a difficult time thinking in. We also have a difficult time asking for help and advice from the people most likely to know what's really up: the locals. And we are far, far too quick to rush toward force and violence as means to our ends.

I thought I knew a thing or two about Afghanistan and the Taliban. But things, as they are wont to do, change or are not what they at first appeared to be--and we all need to work to keep our minds open and flexible to keep up with the times. We need to really listen to the Afghani people to find out what they want, and then stick to that plan. Sorry Mr. Obama, but "more troops" isn't going to win that war. Through arrogance and incompetence, we've already lost it. Now's the time for finding a way to lend a hand in securing a meaningful peace--and to give up the reins of power and control over anyone but ourselves.

$100 billion

Allow me to get a little political for a moment.

The LA Times asks:

“The president will ask the nation to pay for the next 11 months in Iraq with billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. We think this sacrifice will be in vain, because only Iraqis can heal their national wounds. And so we ask instead: What else could the United States do with a guesstimated $100 billion to reduce the strength and the appeal of Islamist terrorist groups worldwide?”

Here’s my list, in no particular order:

1) The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM): "RESULTS will press for $1.3 billion, the U.S. fair share of the funding needed for the GFATM for 2008. The GFATM is an enormously important and innovative multi-donor funding mechanism providing grants to some 136 poor countries to tackle these three major killer diseases. It is now providing two-thirds of all donor funding for tuberculosis and malaria, is tracking projects against bold and measurable targets for treatment and prevention, and leverages U.S. investments with other donor funds." (from results.org)

2) UNICEF: “Thirty one attacks against schools, mainly torching schools and explosions were reported in all parts of Afghanistan during 2007 up to June. Deliberate attacks on girl students and women teachers resulted in at least 4 deaths and 6 injuries. Only in the four southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul, out of a total of 740 schools, it is estimated that 262 (unconfirmed) of them are no longer providing education services to students. UNICEF urgently requires US$ 7 million to respond to the urgent needs of children and women.” (see also us-arc.org)

3) Heifer International is "dedicated to our goal:
$800 million by the year 2010 to lift 5 million families to self-reliance. With 800 million chronically hungry people in the world, 1 billion living on less than $1 a day and 30 million chronically hungry in the U.S. Heifer has a real challenge in ending hunger and poverty. Heifer's simple but sustainable model incorporates a community-building approach to ending hunger so families and entire communities work holistically to gain self-reliance."

4) Money for the rebuilding of Iraq: get rid of no-bid contracts, practice some actual oversight of the projects, impose regular safety (structural and environmental) standards. People need basic infrastructure before they can even think about getting a good education, jobs, and a regular life. They need clean water, a reliable source of electricity, decent food and roofs over their heads. When they have these things, they will then need a solid education, for both boys and girls, and the promise of a living-wage job. An even just basically educated and employed population will be much, much less inclined to join up with an insurgent or “terrorist” organization, both because they’ll have a better way to make ends meet and likely will be less dissatisfied with the environment in which they live. But we need to make sure that the money for these efforts goes to companies and organizations that will be held accountable for their actions and their spending habits.

5) I have a sneaking suspicion that, even after all of that, we’d still have a sizable chunk of the $100 billion left over. Why not use that to fund a system of universal health care here at home? People smarter than I have come up with good, realistic plans that could be self-sustaining and save/improve countless lives. Once we’ve got a handle on our (currently horribly broken) health care system, then we too can focus on things like bettering the education and job training systems in this country.

It seems like obvious, non-pie-in-the-sky thinking. Businesses of all sizes would benefit tremendously from universal health care, taking the burden of paying for their employee’s skyrocketing health care costs off their shoulders. Businesses would also benefit from a more educated and happy (see: leads to better productivity) workforce. Everyone would benefit from greater security (less impoverished, oppressed people all over the world usually means fewer recruits for violent extremist groups), better health care, better education, etc.

Instead, we’ll continue to miraculously find billions of dollars to fund aggressive and failing wars, but falter when it comes to finding a few million for proper reconstruction efforts in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and, in our own backyard, New Orleans. Imagine that.

(P.S. Added this blog to Technorati, because why not: Technorati Profile)