July 2007
Monthly Archive
July 20, 2007
Denmark is preparing to withdraw its troops from Iraq where they’ve been serving under British command in Basra.
In preparation for their departure, the Danes have secretly extracted 200-Iraqis who had been working for them, mainly as translators. All will be offered asylum in Denmark.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Captain Joergen Christian Nyholm, who served in Iraq. “My personal opinion is that they are at a pretty high risk.”
July 20, 2007
Pakistan’s Supreme Court has reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, ruling that the judge’s dismissal by president Pervez Musharraf was “illegal.”
Mushie purportedly sacked Judge Chaudhry for alleged corruption but it is widely believed the dictator was seeking to eliminate a judicial threat to the legitimacy of his rule that could upset Musharraf’s plans to seek parliamentary appointment to a second, five-year term. That ploy is expected to be challenged before the courts.
This is not a happy time for Mushie. His takedown of the Red Mosque extremists has bought him new enemies but few new friends. The breakdown of his truce with Islamist forces in Waziristan has left him scrambling for a new deal even as the accomodation is being condemned by Musharraf’s Western benefactors. Then yesterday the White House announced it was prepared to carry its war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda onto Pakistani territory.
Mushie has long been just one step ahead of his assassins and now he has even more people apt to be gunning for him as he becomes weaker and weaker.
July 20, 2007
One unfortunate side effect of the Bush Global War Without End on Terror has been the politicization of our generals.
It used to be considered a core tenet of democracy that the armed forces were effectively subordinate to their civilian masters and never, ever were to take part in the political arena. That’s a principle our own General Hillier hasn’t always honoured but, then, neither have his American counterparts either.
The bright shining star of today’s Iraq war is General David Petraeus, America’s counter-insurgency guru and now commander of US forces in Iraq. Petraeus is squarely behind the eight-ball right now with a disenchanted American people and an angry Congress demanding that he produce clear and convincing results of progress by September, the military’s own deadline for reporting on the “surge”.
Now that same military, quite predictably, is trying to wiggle out from under that committment, saying they’ll need “more time” to assess whether the strategy is actually working. Watch for the Pentagon to turn intensely political on this as its demands are rejected.
As for Petraeus, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warns that Petraeus has shown himself ready, willing and able to play politics:
I don’t know why the op-ed article that General Petraeus published in The Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, hasn’t gotten more attention. After all, it puts to rest any notion that the general stands above politics: I don’t think it’s standard practice for serving military officers to publish opinion pieces that are strikingly helpful to an incumbent, six weeks before a national election.
In the article, General Petraeus told us that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously.” And those security forces were doing just fine: their leaders “are displaying courage and resilience” and “momentum has gathered in recent months.”
In other words, General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner. And the best guess has to be that he’ll do the same thing three years later.
Hillary Clinton is also getting a load of politics from the Pentagon. She had requested, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, that the Defense Department develop a detailed proposal for withdrawing troops from Iraq. That request sparked a letter from a Pentagon undersecretary saying that, even discussing withdrawal, aids the insurgents:
“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”
A Clinton aide fired back with this missive:
“Redeploying out of Iraq with the same combination of arrogance and incompetence with which the Bush Administration deployed our young men and women into Iraq is completely unacceptable, and our troops deserve far better. The redeployment of our forces out of Iraq is long overdue. The Administration must immediately provide a redeployment plan that keeps our brave men and women safe as they leave Iraq – not a political plan to attack those who question them after years of miscalculations and misjudgments. This response is at once outrageous and dangerous.”
It’s becoming obvious that the military – whether in the US, Britain or Canada – have to be put back in their place. Once they can speak back to political power, they become political power and that is unacceptable.
July 19, 2007
That would be Iraq or, to be more precise, the Iraq that George w. Bush has created.
Timothy Garton-Ash, writing in today’s LA Times, says Iraq is over and yet hasn’t even begun.
The Oxford prof and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University says it’s impossible to tell just how bad this is going to get but Iraq and its ramifications will get worse:
Now a pained and painstaking study from the Brookings Institution argues that what its authors call “soft partition” — the peaceful, voluntary transfer of an estimated 2 million to 5 million Iraqis into distinct Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions, under close U.S. military supervision — would be the lesser evil. The lesser evil, that is, assuming that all goes according to plan and that Americans are prepared to allow their troops to stay in sufficient numbers to accomplish that thankless job — two implausible assumptions. A greater evil is more likely.
In an article for the Web magazine Open Democracy, Middle East specialist Fred Halliday spells out some regional consequences. Besides the effective destruction of the Iraqi state, these include the revitalizing of militant Islamism and enhancement of the international appeal of the Al Qaeda brand; the eruption, for the first time in modern history, of internecine war between Sunni and Shiite, “a trend that reverberates in other states of mixed confessional composition”; the alienation of most sectors of Turkish politics from the West and the stimulation of authoritarian nationalism there; the strengthening of a nuclear-hungry Iran; and a new regional rivalry pitting the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies, including Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, against Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
For the United States, the world is now, as a result of the Iraq war, a more dangerous place. At the end of 2002, what is sometimes tagged “Al Qaeda Central” in Afghanistan had been virtually destroyed, and there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq. In 2007, there is an Al Qaeda in Iraq, parts of the old Al Qaeda are creeping back into Afghanistan and there are Al Qaeda emulators spawning elsewhere, notably in Europe.
Osama bin Laden’s plan was to get the U.S. to overreact and overreach itself. With the invasion of Iraq, Bush fell slap-bang into that trap. The U.S. government’s own latest National Intelligence Estimate, released this week, suggests that Al Qaeda in Iraq is now among the most significant threats to the security of the American homeland.
The U.S. has probably not yet fully woken up to the appalling fact that, after a long period in which the first motto of its military was “no more Vietnams,” it faces another Vietnam. There are many important differences, but the basic result is similar: The mightiest military in the world fails to achieve its strategic goals and is, in the end, politically defeated by an economically and technologically inferior adversary.
Even if there are no scenes of helicopters evacuating Americans from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, there will surely be some totemic photographic image of national humiliation as the U.S. struggles to extract its troops.
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have done terrible damage to the U.S. reputation for being humane; this defeat will convince more people around the world that it is not even that powerful. And Bin Laden, still alive, will claim another victory over the death-fearing weaklings of the West.
In history, the most important consequences are often the unintended ones. We do not yet know the longer-term unintended consequences of Iraq. Maybe there is a silver lining hidden somewhere in this cloud. But as far as the human eye can see, the likely consequences of Iraq range from the bad to the catastrophic.
Looking back over a quarter of a century of chronicling current affairs, I cannot recall a more comprehensive and avoidable man-made disaster.
July 19, 2007
Our prime ministerial brain trust claims Canadians’ rejection of the mission to Afghanistan isn’t based on moral objections but on the casualties our forces have sustained.
If it ain’t “A” then it’s gotta be “B”, eh? Maybe it’s not really “B” either but “B” along with “C”, “D”, “E” and “F”.
I don’t believe that it is the casualties issue that is driving this as much as the combination of so many other factors. It’s the haplessness of the Karzai government; the indifference of other NATO members; the ineptitude of George Bush and his stupid war in Iraq that keeps his military off the job in Afghanistan; the inability of our side to sort out Afghanistan’s narco-economy; the corruption in the Afghan government, police and security services; the resurgence of al-Qaeda throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa; the resurgence of the Taliban and the wishes of Karzai and his parliament to negotiate with our supposed mortal enemy; our complete vulnerability to insurgents and terrorists operating with relative freedom across the border in Pakistan; the amount of time, effort and lives expended with no demonstrable result save for the resurgence of our opponents; the deaths of civilians caused by our addiction to artillery and airstrikes and – most of all – the total inability of our leaders – political and military – to present an understandable and convincing plan to win this thing.
No, Stevie, Canadians aren’t deciding this on an “A” or “B” call. You and your buddy, Rick Hillier, have given us any number of reasons to say “no” to the mission.
July 19, 2007
Larry Zolf, writing in the National Post, pleads with Stephen Harper to restore Conrad Black’s Canadian citizenship:
Prime Minister, you and you alone can give Conrad Black his Canadian citizenship back. David Radler, who ratted on Black, will serve time in a comfortable Canadian jail. Black faces 20 years for taking his own file boxes from the Toronto offices of Hollinger Inc., and faces the possibility of spending that time in a tough Chicago prison. That is a ludicrous situation.
Mr. Prime Minister, why not imitate Mr. Bush’s treatment of Scooter Libby and show Black some mercy, too?
The Conservative party owes Conrad Black a great deal. He created the National Post, a newspaper that championed the Canadian Alliance and you too, Mr. Prime Minister.
I defended Black on the CBC Web site. I found the whole Black trial American vigilantism at its worst.
But that’s beside the point, Mr. Prime Minister. Giving Black his Canadian citizenship back would be the right and decent thing for you as a prime minister to do. It would also piss off the Canadian Liberal establishment and the Canadian Liberal media, and wouldn’t that be fun for you?
In a way, Zolf’s right. The Harpies do owe Convict Black a debt of gratitude and a man of such stalwart principles as Stephen Harper claimed to be back when might even do what Zolf suggests. But Harpo has already shown that he’s not going to let his vaunted principles get in the way of his quest for the chalice of power.
Sorry, Larry, but with Harper languishing in the polls and beset by all manner of looming troubles at home the last thing he needs is to invite public outrage by cutting a cushy deal for Lord Black. Even you, Larry, know that much.
July 19, 2007
It looks like it’s going to take one really big issue to cause Canadians to make a decisive choice on just who they want to lead this country.
A Globe & Mail/CTV poll finds the Libs and Tories tied at 31% in popular support. The NDP have 17% and the Greens 10%.
This is bad news all around but especially for Stephen Harper who is shedding his skins faster than a snake with leprosy. Did anyone notice how Harpo was praising Canada’s “progressive” traditions, even our universal health care, while prancing through South America? I don’t think even Stephen Harper likes Stephen Harper any more. All those things this guy once stood for he’s now wiping his feet on. I’m sure that, deep down inside his guts are churning, but Harpo knows that he’s not going to let his principles stand in the way of a shot at real power.
More bad news for the Harpies is their boss’s utter failure to achieve a breakthrough in Quebec where the Tories are a distant third to the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals.
The good news has to fall to the Liberals. Even with a leader as lackluster as Stephane Dion, our “Invisible Man”, the party can still hold its own against the Tories – for what that’s worth.
July 19, 2007
Any litigation lawyer knows that some cases will turn not so much on the facts or even the law as on the personality of the judge hearing the case.
Some judges are just bloody awful, others are great, most are somewhere in between. Some are bold, some are timid; some right, some left. Even articled students hanging around the court house quickly learn which is which.
Now a study of the Ontario Court of Appeal has further shattered the notion of judicial impartiality. From the Toronto Star:
The study found that judges differed in opinion on Charter challenges, depending on whether Liberals or Conservatives appointed them. The study also traced divergent opinions to a judge’s gender in family law cases.
Both of these factors had a greater impact when the appeals panel – which is almost always composed of three judges – was homogenous: when judges were either all Conservative or all Liberal, for example, or when all were men.
For example, when a convicted defendant makes an appeal after an unsuccessful Charter challenge to render evidence inadmissible, most panels upheld the conviction. But an all-Conservative panel affirmed the conviction 65 per cent of the time and all-Liberal groups upheld it at a rate of 87 per cent.
In that case, and despite impressions that Liberals would “be softer on crime,” [Osgoode Hall Law Prof and co-author James] Stribopoulos said, “You would want three Conservative judges. Which is kind of crazy.”
A judge’s gender became most pertinent in family law disputes. When men appeal a ruling, all-male panels were statistically slightly kinder to female litigants. Litigants who were successfully acquitted on a Charter challenge were more likely to get that acquittal affirmed by a panel with at least one female judge – at 82 per cent – than they were with an all-male panel, at 70 per cent.
The solution is simple: promote more diversity among judges, Stribopoulos said. “That’s why it’s important that the whole of the judiciary looks like the society it judges. And right now, it doesn’t.”
July 19, 2007
It’s a controversial study and it may not be adequately scientific but a report soon to be released claims that 85% of those who watch kiddie porn also molest children.
The study, carried out by psychologists at the US Federal Bureau of Prisons, found 85% of inmates convicted of possession of child pornography admitted “they had committed acts of sexual abuse against minors, from inappropriate touching to rape.”
There are conflicting opinion over just what to make of the study and its findings but, if nothing else, it is sure to lead to further research that will meet even stringent scientific criteria.
The issue is how the criminal justice system should deal with kiddie porn downloaders and the spread of this form of pornography on the internet. Some are suggesting that those caught be treated more akin to actual molestors than harmless perverts.
July 19, 2007
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