Posts For: February 6, 2015
Can Iran Be Trusted On Nukes? Can Obama?
Though a vote won’t be held on a new Iran sanctions bill is being put off until late March, the question of what is exactly going on in the talks between the West and Tehran deserves more attention. The chattering classes have focused largely on a pointless dispute about whether Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will speak to Congress in March about Iran. But the real issue is the substance of the current negotiations. As a Washington Post editorial noted yesterday, the clear intent of the Obama administration is to acquiesce to Iran’s demands to be allowed to keep its nuclear infrastructure as well as treat the regime, as a legitimate regional power in the Middle East is no longer in much doubt. That leaves observers asking two very important questions. One is whether Iran can be trusted to keep the terms of any nuclear deal it signs. The other is whether the Obama administration can be trusted to hold the Iranians accountable.
Though a vote won’t be held on a new Iran sanctions bill is being put off until late March, the question of what is exactly going on in the talks between the West and Tehran deserves more attention. The chattering classes have focused largely on a pointless dispute about whether Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will speak to Congress in March about Iran. But the real issue is the substance of the current negotiations. As a Washington Post editorial noted yesterday, the clear intent of the Obama administration is to acquiesce to Iran’s demands to be allowed to keep its nuclear infrastructure as well as treat the regime, as a legitimate regional power in the Middle East is no longer in much doubt. That leaves observers asking two very important questions. One is whether Iran can be trusted to keep the terms of any nuclear deal it signs. The other is whether the Obama administration can be trusted to hold the Iranians accountable.
As the Post points out, the danger inherent in the administration’s Iran policy is that by letting them keep thousands of centrifuges and a nuclear stockpile that could be quickly re-activated to allow it to build a weapon, the terms currently being discussed will, at the very least, allow the Islamist regime to become a threshold nuclear power. Though he continues to insist, as he has since he first started running for president in 2007, that he won’t let Iran get a nuclear weapon, the president doesn’t seem to have a problem with that. Why? The answer is that Obama believes that the U.S. and Iran have common interests that will allow them to cooperate together in the region and that the ayatollahs have too much to gain from a reconciliation with the West in terms of their nation’s economy to want to risk it all by building a bomb.
But the problem with that formulation is that it is fundamentally mistaken. Iran has no interest in America’s need for regional stability and preserving moderate Arab regimes allied with the West, let alone protecting the existence of the state of Israel. To the contrary, it hopes to threaten both the Arab states and Israel via the threat of a nuclear weapon as well as keeping the pressure on them through the use of its Hezbollah terrorist auxiliaries and allied terror groups like Hamas. Yet Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon as well as its progress on ballistic missiles means that this is a problem that concerns the entire West and not just Israel and the Arabs.
That is why the bipartisan sanctions bill proposed by Senators Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez is so important. It provides at least a measure of accountability to the process since it raises the price for Iran for dragging out negotiations or for continuing to refuse to accept even another weak deal with the West like the interim agreement signed in November 2013.
Even more to the point, is the question of whether even a weak deal, such as the one Obama and Kerry embraced in 2013 can be enforced by this or subsequent administrations. To date, the administration has refused to take seriously charges that the Iranians are already cheating on the interim deal. The dynamic of the process is such that the president views any such questions or even threats of more sanctions with hostility because he sees them as a threat to his goal of a rapprochement with Iran.
This is problematic because so long as Iran believes that Washington won’t take violations of a nuclear deal seriously, it will feel free to push the envelope on more cheating. Since the president has already conceded that, as the Post wrote, “a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and restrict that capability,” it is difficult to believe the Islamist regime will think it need worry about the president abandoning a process to which he has become so devoted no matter what they do.
That brings us back to the question of the sanctions bill. Realists must understand that even if the bill is passed and then a threatened presidential veto is overridden, Congress can’t stop Obama from negotiating with Iran and coming up with a bad deal. Nor is it likely that it will be able to force him to put such a treaty to a vote as the Constitution demands since the president will seek to evade that requirement.
Indeed, even if the bill were to become law, the president could also use waivers in the legislation to prevent its enforcement. This is something of a poison pill that was forced on its sponsors by both political expediency (getting more Democratic votes) and legal technicalities (existing sanctions laws also have waivers that could be used by Obama to thwart this bill). But to the credit of both Kirk and Menendez, they have attempted to write their waivers in such a way as to constrict the president from wantonly ignoring the intent of Congress. Though this and other administrations have used waivers to flout the meaning of laws, doing so in this case will involve not merely a desire on the part of the president to ignore Congress but a willingness to lie about Iran’s conduct.
This is a president who has already demonstrated on a host of issues but most notably on immigration that he is not constrained by the normal Constitutional order or even the rule of law. That means that it is difficult to have confidence that any waiver, no matter how carefully it is drafted, will be able to force the president to hold Iran accountable.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Iran talks. It’s not just that given its record as well as its regional and nuclear ambitions, Iran is not to be trusted. It’s that President Obama can also not be trusted to pursue a policy that is aimed at stopping Iran from becoming a threshold nuclear power. Without such accountability, there is no reason for Congress or the American people to trust the outcome of the negotiations.
Williams and the Myth of the Evening News
In our 24/7 news environment it is sometimes hard to remember the central role that the national evening news broadcasts played in American life prior to the cable revolution. But though those programs still exist and have a considerable audience, their importance is greatly diminished. That’s why the controversy over NBC News’ Brian Williams’s lies about his experience during the 2003 invasion of Iraq is significant, though not quite as earthshaking as it once might have been. But while the toppling of yet another mainstream media giant is still a big deal, it also points out the fallacy inherent in the way most Americans once regarded the institution of the evening news. Far from being the source of objectivity and integrity, these shows were, and are, the product of news organizations that are not only flawed but also saturated with liberal bias. It is that lack of intellectual integrity and bias that led to the success of the alternatives to these programs in places like Fox News and talk radio. The diminished audience for programs like the one Williams hosts (at least for now) is rooted in the lack of faith in the integrity of the mainstream media that his prevarications have once more illustrated.
In our 24/7 news environment it is sometimes hard to remember the central role that the national evening news broadcasts played in American life prior to the cable revolution. But though those programs still exist and have a considerable audience, their importance is greatly diminished. That’s why the controversy over NBC News’ Brian Williams’s lies about his experience during the 2003 invasion of Iraq is significant, though not quite as earthshaking as it once might have been. But while the toppling of yet another mainstream media giant is still a big deal, it also points out the fallacy inherent in the way most Americans once regarded the institution of the evening news. Far from being the source of objectivity and integrity, these shows were, and are, the product of news organizations that are not only flawed but also saturated with liberal bias. It is that lack of intellectual integrity and bias that led to the success of the alternatives to these programs in places like Fox News and talk radio. The diminished audience for programs like the one Williams hosts (at least for now) is rooted in the lack of faith in the integrity of the mainstream media that his prevarications have once more illustrated.
The clamor about Williams’s astonishing lies about what happened during his time in Iraq is amplified by the notion that he is not just another TV talking head but the face of NBC News. To be the leading personality of a broadcast network’s news division is not a small thing even in an era where there are hundreds of alternatives for viewers choose at 6:30 p.m. EST when the NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams airs on weekdays. But though he has built a reputation and a following with a sonorous voice, sense of humor, and a low-key everyman style of reading the news, Williams is not quite the big deal that a person in his position would once have been considered.
For decades, the nation was largely dependent on the 30-minute programs shown by the three major networks for national and international news. Those who read the headlines on these programs—Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, and Howard K. Smith, just to mention those with the longest tenure—were not just TV stars. They were the gods of the news business and national icons rather than mere celebrities as some of today’s more prominent news readers might be considered.
But the point here is that Williams’ program and the competition on CBS and ABC ceased being the central focus of the nation’s attention or of the chattering classes a long time ago. And the reason for that is not entirely unrelated to the controversy about the NBC personality.
Williams was forced this week to make an on-air apology for repeatedly falsifying the story of his Iraq experience. Though at the time of the incident, he broadcast a report that said he was in a helicopter following an aircraft that was hit by enemy fire, in the years since then he has embellished the story to the extent that now the rocket-propelled grenade hit his copter. Shakespeare’s Henry V pointed out in his “St. Crispin’s Day” speech that old soldiers have sometimes been known to speak of their exploits “with advantages” as the years pass and when wine is flowing. But Williams is a journalist who is supposed to stick to the facts and avoid fiction. That Williams once publicly berated bloggers as being unreliable when compared to media veterans like him only makes him more vulnerable.
What’s more, as the New York Times pointed out today, he may have dug himself an even deeper hole by putting his false statements down to “the fog of war,” a very real concept that has nothing to do with what happened to Williams. Indeed that “fog” may be even greater than we might think since some are accusing him of making up the part about his helicopter following the one that was hit.
This is all very embarrassing for NBC and a star that it pays more than $10 million a year to look at the camera and sound credible. But if NBC News and CBS and ABC too have audiences that are a fraction of what they once were, it is in no small measure due to the fact that many Americans long ago gave up believing in the network’s integrity.
The point about Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley’s hold on the American imagination is not just that they looked and sounded the part of the nation’s town crier and conscience. It was that they were thought to be objective and fair in their reporting. This was always something of a myth, but the belief in the mainstream media’s conceit about its own objectivity is one that many liberals still cling to. But the huge audience that tunes in to Fox News every day is testament to the fact that many of us long since recognized that the three networks were feeding us news reported and told from a liberal frame of reference. The news icons weren’t just outdated. They were revealed to have feet of clay.
Fox isn’t perfect but it provides a look at the news from a different perspective than that of the leftist elites. That’s also why its left-wing competition at MSNBC is such a disaster. The fat that MSNBC’s ratings are now at a 10-year low is not surprising. Liberals like to watch news with a liberal bias. But MSNBC’s open bias (which is far greater than that of Fox’s tilt to the right) isn’t what they want. They prefer their liberal bias presented with a false veneer of objectivity rather than the overt leftism of the failing network.
Whether Williams can survive the furor over his lies is an open question. But his network and the rest of the mainstream media were exposed before we learned about his fibs. Like Dan Rather’s infamous false reports about George W. Bush’s National Guard service, Williams’s tall tale is just one more example of why the pretense of Olympian objectivity of the evening news readers was always bunk. The myth of the evening news was exploded a long time ago. Set beside that truth, the fate of one TV personality is very small change indeed.
Give Jordan Drones
Jordan has formally requested that the United States provide it Predators for its fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). Alas, true to the Obama doctrine of screwing over allies at every opportunity, the United States has refused the Jordanian request.
Jordan has formally requested that the United States provide it Predators for its fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). Alas, true to the Obama doctrine of screwing over allies at every opportunity, the United States has refused the Jordanian request.
This is a mistake. King Abdullah II might have seized the momentum in the current crisis after the Islamic State released a video showing it burning alive Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh, but as Kasasbeh’s crash shows in the first place, flying over enemy territory is always a risky endeavor. If Jordan loses another pilot in as barbaric a manner, all bets could be off with regard to the king. After all, the shifts in momentum in the fight against the Islamic State could give any observer whiplash.
It would be ironic if the Obama administration fell back over concerns regarding Israel’s qualitative military edge, given its increasing hostility to Israel’s security needs. Regardless, the qualitative military edge balance was originally crafted at a time when the security situation in the Middle East was far different: Israel faces far greater threats than a surprise Jordanian attack.
The icing on the cake, of course, is that Iran announced earlier this week that it would begin providing its own unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to its allies, a move calculated to erode regional security whereas providing Jordan with the equipment it needs to push back the nihilistic forces of the Islamic State would do the opposite.
It’s one thing if Obama doesn’t want the United States to lead, but is far more tragic if he actively seeks to tie the hands of American allies who are willing to step up to the plate.
The Crisis of American Strategy
President Obama got a lot of mileage out of his administration’s strategy of speaking in bumper-sticker slogans and easily digestible sound bites. But as the president’s new National Security Strategy makes clear, it backfired badly the moment an administration official told the New Yorker that the president’s approach to foreign affairs was “leading from behind.” Far more than any other, this catchphrase has dogged the president, who is now fashioning entire strategic objectives around the quest to pushback effectively against a phrase that has come to define his time in office.
President Obama got a lot of mileage out of his administration’s strategy of speaking in bumper-sticker slogans and easily digestible sound bites. But as the president’s new National Security Strategy makes clear, it backfired badly the moment an administration official told the New Yorker that the president’s approach to foreign affairs was “leading from behind.” Far more than any other, this catchphrase has dogged the president, who is now fashioning entire strategic objectives around the quest to pushback effectively against a phrase that has come to define his time in office.
The reason “leading from behind” stuck is, plainly, because it is true. “Leading from behind” is another way of saying “following.” And that is precisely what the Obama administration has done. But Obama’s own stubbornness has impeded his attempts to shake this catchphrase. Rather than actually changing strategy to better assert American leadership, he has spent his time and energy finding creative ways to counter it with rhetoric, not action. And he has failed.
This is evident in the administration’s advance PR for Obama’s new National Security Strategy, his second (and almost certainly last) during his time in office, which is being released today. The administration sent deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes out to spin the New York Times, an exceedingly unwise choice, as his comments make clear:
“There is this line of criticism that we are not leading, and it makes no sense,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “Who built the effort against ISIL? Who organized the sanctions on Russia? Who put together the international approach on Ebola?”
He’s right about Ebola. But the administration’s confused and clumsy anti-ISIS effort is thus far a failure, as is the administration’s staggeringly weak approach to Russia. Rhodes wants Obama to take credit for colossal failures, because that’s all they’ve got. It is, however, a kind of clever defense of Obama if taken to its logical conclusion: Do you really want Obama to “lead” when this is what happens?
Meanwhile Foreign Policy magazine chose to focus on the phrase “strategic patience”–another piece of transparent, Orwellian spin. What “strategic patience” means in practice is that the administration thinks letting countries like Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria collapse does no harm to American strategic interests, or at least that the harm it does is outweighed by the benefit of watching the international state system disintegrate. (The administration really hasn’t thought this through.)
But in Obama’s defense, if you stick around on Foreign Policy’s website you can see one reason there is such a lack of strategic vision in America. The magazine conducts an annual survey of “America’s top International Relations scholars on foreign-policy research,” and this year’s shows that the ivory tower, at least with regard to international relations, is experiencing a rather horrid intellectual crisis.
For all you can say about Obama’s National Security Strategy, it stems from a better understanding of events than the field of international-relations scholars. In one question, they were asked to list the top foreign-policy issues for the next ten years. Here’s the result:
1. Global climate change 40.96%
2. Armed conflict in Middle East 26.81%
3. Failed or failing states 22.29%
4. China’s rising military power 21.54%
5. Transnational terrorism 21.23%
6. Renewed Russian assertiveness 17.47%
7. Global poverty 16.42%
8. Global wealth disparities 15.66%
9. China’s economic influence 15.51%
10. Proliferation of WMD 14.01%
10. Transnational political violence 14.01%
As you can see, Foreign Policy appears to have accidentally polled the international-relations scholars on Earth-2, a planet where the sun just invaded Ukraine, economic inequality is beheading prisoners in Iraq and Syria, and poverty just hacked America’s second-largest health insurer.
Is inequality a larger foreign-policy issue than transnational political violence and nuclear proliferation? Yes, according to America’s top international-relations scholars; no, according to anyone with a modicum of common sense and access to a newspaper. When you think of it this way, considering Obama’s academic pedigree, it’s a surprise his foreign policy hasn’t been even more of a disaster.
There are some other fun nuggets in the FP survey. For example, they asked the esteemed scholars of this alternate reality, “Who was the most effective U.S. secretary of state of the past 50 years?” I wish I were kidding when I say this was the list they came up with:
1. Henry Kissinger 32.21%
2. Don’t know 18.32%
3. James Baker 17.71%
4. Madeleine Albright 8.70%
4. Hillary Clinton 8.70%
6. George Shultz 5.65%
7. Dean Rusk 3.51%
8. Warren Christopher 1.53%
8. Cyrus Vance 1.53%
10. Colin Powell 1.07%
11. Condoleezza Rice 0.46%
12. Lawrence Eagleburger 0.31%
13. John Kerry 0.31%
There was much mocking of John Kerry on Twitter for coming in dead last here. But I think the rest of the poll vindicates him. Any survey that finds George Shultz on a lower rung than Hillary Clinton is deserving of exactly zero credibility. (Also, “don’t know” coming in at No. 2? International-relations scholars don’t have opinions on America’s high-level diplomacy? OK then.)
What we’re seeing, both within the Obama administration and in the broader academic world, is a shocking dearth of strategic thinking in favor of the various passing fads of conventional wisdom and political correctness. And as the postwar international system continues its collapse, the consequences are plain to see.
The Jobs Report
The monthly jobs report came in stronger than expected this morning, with 257,000 new jobs in January, above the estimate of 237,000. In addition, the jobs numbers for November and December were revised upwards by a combined 147,000 jobs. November’s new jobs total, 423,000 is the highest since 1997.
The monthly jobs report came in stronger than expected this morning, with 257,000 new jobs in January, above the estimate of 237,000. In addition, the jobs numbers for November and December were revised upwards by a combined 147,000 jobs. November’s new jobs total, 423,000 is the highest since 1997.
The unemployment rate, however, ticked up a notch to 5.7 percent. That, counter-intuitively, is good news, as more people are entering the jobs market because they are more confident that they can now find work. The participation rate went up from 62.7 percent to 62.9 percent. A year ago, the rate was 62.5 percent.
Long-term unemployed, those without a job for at least the last 27 weeks, number 2.8 million, up slightly from last month but way down from last January, when the number was 3.69 million. The under employed, those working part time who would like full-time work, also went up slightly from last month, to 6.8 million, but is also down substantially from last January, when the number stood at 7.8 million.
All in all, this is a good report and if the trend continues, the Fed is increasingly likely to begin tightening a bit by mid-year. That would be a powerful signal that the economy is finally back on track.
What Obama Should Have Said at the Prayer Breakfast
At first, I was prepared to defend President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast from conservatives who excoriated him for comparing (as the New York Times account put it) “the atrocities of the Islamic State to the bloodshed committed in the name of Christianity in centuries past.”
At first, I was prepared to defend President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast from conservatives who excoriated him for comparing (as the New York Times account put it) “the atrocities of the Islamic State to the bloodshed committed in the name of Christianity in centuries past.”
There are legitimate comparisons to be made. Indeed, just as Southern slaveowners once cited the Bible to defend slavery, so now ISIS cites Islamic law to defend its own form of slavery. Just as the Spanish Inquisition once burned heretics at the stake, so now ISIS burns alive a Jordanian pilot. More broadly the religious zealotry, bloodthirstiness, and intolerance of ISIS is indeed reminiscent in many ways, as Obama noted, of the Crusades.
But then I read the actual text of his speech and saw that his message wasn’t: Christianity was once intolerant but it has now reformed itself and Islam should do likewise. That’s an important message similar to the one that Egypt’s President Sisi recently delivered when he called for a “religious revolution” within Islam.
Alas, that’s not what President Obama said. What he actually said was: “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
He also said: “From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it.”
Neither statement is true or helpful.
When we see ISIS beheading and burning hostages, and “selling, crucifying, burying children alive,” I’d say we have every right to get on our “high horse” about that–even if Christians in centuries past committed their share of atrocities. In fact we have an obligation to get on our “high horse”–to make clear that ISIS’s conduct violates every norm of civilized behavior and will not be tolerated. To shrug our shoulders and say “everybody does it” is untrue and immoral.
And it is no more likely to succeed as a rhetorical gambit than Obama’s previous forays into moral relativism, such as his 2009 Cairo speech (which I defended at the time), in which he equated Iranian “hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians” with the role the U.S. played in 1953 “in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Such comparisons do not win the U.S. any friends–they don’t make the Iranian mullahs (or even the Iranian people) think what a great guy Obama is for disowning the conduct of the Eisenhower administration, just as ISIS (or even the ordinary people of Syria and Iraq) won’t think he is a great guy for disowning the conduct of the Crusaders. They just think he’s weak, that he’s unwilling to stand up and defend the United States, that he can be taken advantage of.
As for Obama’s claim that ISIS’s actions “are betraying” Islam–a claim he has made in the past–that too is a dubious statement and a presumptuous one for a non-Muslim to make. More accurate would be to say that ISIS’s actions are a betrayal of what we want Islam to be–but just as Christianity could be interpreted in centuries past to justify slavery and burning at the stake, so too Islam can be interpreted today to justify beheading of hostages and the enslaving of children. It does no good to deny the fact–indeed it is hard to imagine us fighting and defeating these Islamist extremists if we don’t recognize that their conduct has some grounding in Muslim tradition and has some support in the Muslim world.
No, that doesn’t mean that most Muslims are jihadists; the vast majority are not. But we need to be honest enough to recognize that ISIS’s actions, however reprehensible, have some real appeal to a minority of the Muslim world (see, for example, this article about Tunisia, which is one of the most moderate and stable corners of the Middle East), and we won’t change that fact by denying it away.
Obama’s speech reveals the fuzzy thinking behind his strategy in what used to be called “the war on terror.” Little wonder that across the greater Middle East–in countries such as Nigeria, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen–we are losing the struggle. If the president can’t even think clearly on these major issues, he certainly can’t act effectively.
Illegal Settlements Must Be Stopped
The European Union’s opposition to Israel’s West Bank settlements is well known. Preventing Jews from having homes on the biblical hills of Judea and Samaria is apparently a top foreign-policy priority for Brussels. Of course in attempting to justify their fixation with this matter the Eurocrats generally appeal to international law, making mention of its stipulations in the gravest tones. But now it turns out that the EU has been flouting international law and backing illegal West Bank settlements after all. In fact, it’s been funding and building them directly. Only these West Bank settlements aren’t for Jews, they’re for Palestinians. So apparently the rules don’t apply.
The European Union’s opposition to Israel’s West Bank settlements is well known. Preventing Jews from having homes on the biblical hills of Judea and Samaria is apparently a top foreign-policy priority for Brussels. Of course in attempting to justify their fixation with this matter the Eurocrats generally appeal to international law, making mention of its stipulations in the gravest tones. But now it turns out that the EU has been flouting international law and backing illegal West Bank settlements after all. In fact, it’s been funding and building them directly. Only these West Bank settlements aren’t for Jews, they’re for Palestinians. So apparently the rules don’t apply.
A report by the Israeli NGO Regavim has revealed that in recent years the EU has funneled millions of euros into constructing more than 400 housing units in 17 illegal settlements. Somewhat bizarrely these outposts fly the EU federal flag and are staffed by EU personnel boldly dressed in EU uniform. But unlike Israel’s West Bank settlements which have a disputed legal status, there can be no doubt that these EU settlements are in clear and open breach of international law.
The settlements in question have been built by the EU in Area C of the West Bank. Under the Oslo II agreement signed in 1995, clause 2 of article 27 gives Israel full and exclusive authority over all planning and construction within Area C of the West Bank. This is an agreement that not only the Palestinian Authority signed up to, but one that the European Union is a signatory of as well. As such, that treaty has the status of binding international law which the EU is obliged to uphold. Worse still, these illegal settlements are guarded by aggressive EU workers who have been caught threatening Israeli soldiers and onlookers with rocks.
So what does the EU have to say in its defense? Well according to Jake Wallis Simons who broke this story for the Daily Mail, Brussels spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic simply denied that any of the above is taking place. And when presented with the photographic evidence of the EU flag fluttering over the illegal hilltop outposts she refused to make any further comment. Welcome to the Orwellian world of Brussels federalism.
Unfortunately for Maja Koncijancic, her EU comrades on the ground are not so tight lipped. When Simons questioned a spokesperson for the EU in the West Bank and Gaza, this time the spokesperson not only accepted that the construction was taking place but openly justified it on political grounds as part of an effort to secure the territory for a Palestinian state. A similar response came from Oxfam—a very worthy UK charity which like several others now seems to have gone rogue on the Israeli-Palestinian issue—which has also been involved with the EU’s illegal settlement project. An Oxfam spokesperson justified the illegal construction on “humanitarian” grounds. But it turns out that by humanitarian he actually just meant that in Oxfam’s opinion not enough construction permits were being issued to Palestinians in Area C. But if that counts as reason enough to break the law in Oxfam’s eyes, then every time there’s a construction freeze on Israeli settlements, the good people of Oxfam should be helping Israeli settlers build more housing units, all on “humanitarian” grounds.
It is of course baffling that at a time when Europe is so totally cash strapped and when a war rages in its own backyard (Ukraine), Brussels is funneling millions into illegal West Bank settlements. And all the while EU officials and European governments use accusations of settlement building to lambaste Israel. But what this really exposes is that all of the EU’s highminded talk about international law is just an excuse and a means of dressing up contempt for the Jewish state in acceptable language. Its own illegal settlement project demonstrates that the EU cares nothing for international law in the West Bank.
For some time now there has been something very disconcerting about the European Union’s activities in the West Bank. Back in 2013 when a French diplomat was filmed attacking an Israeli soldier, one couldn’t help but think that with so few Jews left in their own countries, those Europeans with the urge are now having to make the arduous journey to the West Bank to get into scuffles with Jews. Indeed, Tuvia Tenenbom’s exposure of how Germany in particular is funding a vast apparatus of anti-Israel NGO activity in the West Bank makes one wonder why it seems to be so impossible for these people to just leave the Jews alone.
Europe has been accused of hypocrisy before regarding its obsession with the settlement issue. Allegations that the EU has failed to muster the same fierce opposition to Moroccan settlements in occupied Western Sahara have simply been shrugged off by Brussels. But now that it turns out the EU has its own illegal settlement project in the West Bank, the hypocrisy allegation should really be made to stick.
Babylon Deserves UNESCO Protection
Few countries have suffered like Iraq. In the last quarter-century, it has endured three wars, devastating sanctions, and insurgency. Torture and terrorism have been commonplace. Two generations have been scarred if not lost by war and isolation. But despite countless premature eulogies, Iraq and Iraqis of all stripes have been far more resilient than the outside world has predicted or given them credit for.
Few countries have suffered like Iraq. In the last quarter-century, it has endured three wars, devastating sanctions, and insurgency. Torture and terrorism have been commonplace. Two generations have been scarred if not lost by war and isolation. But despite countless premature eulogies, Iraq and Iraqis of all stripes have been far more resilient than the outside world has predicted or given them credit for.
Saddam Hussein was an egomaniac. Beyond all the palaces, statues, portraits, monuments shaped from molds of his forearms and a Koran written in his blood, Saddam saw himself as the inheritor of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s mantle. Hence, he sought to reconstruct Babylon in his image. From the New York Times in 1989:
For the last three years, over a thousand laborers imported from the Sudan (Iraqi men were away fighting Iran) have worked seven days a week through wet winters and scorching summers to rebuild what archeologists call King Nebuchadnezzar’s Southern Palace – a vast complex of some 500 rooms and the reputed site of the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Walls of yellow brick, 40 feet high and topped with pointed crenellations, have replaced the mounds that once marked the Palace foundations. And as Babylon’s walls rise again, the builders insert inscribed bricks recording how Nebuchadnezzar’s palace was ”rebuilt in the era of the leader Saddam Hussein.” ”We must finish by September,” said Rabia Mahmmood al-Qaysi, Director of Restoration, in his office here. ”It’s the President’s order.” Outside, an immense painting depicts President Hussein standing before the rebuilt towers of Babylon.
The finished product was more kitsch than archaeologically authentic. From the New York Times in 2003:
The Iraqi leader found the squat, khaki-colored nubs of earth and scattered stacks of bricks left over from one of history’s glorious empires somehow lacking, far too mundane to represent the 2,500-year sweep of Mesopotamian history that was to be reborn through his rule. So he ordered one of the three original palaces rebuilt. Never mind that nobody really knows what the imposing palaces looked like. Nor did Mr. Hussein pay much heed to the fact that the archaeological world cried foul — deriding his project as Disney for a Despot — because he was violating their sacred principle of preserving rather than recreating. But as with many moves by Mr. Hussein, the end result garnered great populist appeal and hence he will probably have the last word on the fate of the famous ruins.
What the New York Times got wrong, however, is that it was not Saddam who will have the last word on the fate of the famous ruins, but rather the bureaucrats of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, better known simply by the acronym UNESCO. When UNESCO isn’t straying from its mission to dabble in politics and polemics, it maintains a list of world heritage sites whose protection it aids.
Iraq has just four UNESCO-listed World Heritage Sites: Hatra, Ashur (Qal’at Sherqat), Samarra Archaeological City, and the Erbil Citadel in Kurdistan. That puts it alongside such countries as Belarus, the Côte d’Ivoire, Congo, and Kazakhstan, far from the prominence of its true cultural cousins. Such famous archaeological sites as Ur, Nineveh, and Babylon itself are missing from the UNESCO ranks. That could soon change if Prime Minister Haider al-Abbadi’s government and the governorate administration in nearby Hilla have their say. From the Iraq Daily Journal:
Iraqi Minister of Tourism and Antiquities on Monday said that his country is seeking to restore the ancient ruin city of Babylon onto the UNESCO world heritage list. “We have finished our part and prepared a dossier to be sent to the UNESCO tomorrow, and so we met our obligation to prepare this dossier on February 1,” Adel Shirshab told a press conference in Baghdad. Earlier, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iraqi government and the government of Babil province, in which the Iraqi side has to prepare a dossier by some Iraqi archeologists and tourism experts to assess the damages and situation of the site…
The site is the remains of a Mesopotamian capital that flourished for centuries, it was home to Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.) who introduced the world’s first known set of laws, and Nebuchadnezzar (604-562 B.C.) who built the famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Under the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the city was terribly damages when he decided to rebuild Babylon with modern bricks inscribed with his name, right atop the original walls. Then the 4,000-year-old city became military “Camp Alpha” soon after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. UNESCO earlier said that the U.S. troops and contractors inflicted considerable damage on the historic Iraqi site of Babylon, driving heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops and digging trenches through one of the world’ most important archaeological sites.
UNESCO’s complaints with regard to the American (well, actually, Polish) military presence were guided more by knee-jerk opposition to the Iraq war rather than real damage to the site. The U.S. military wasn’t without mistakes, but it had consulted archaeologists and was quite careful. (I had toured Babylon in 2003 while still within the boundaries of the Polish military’s contingent alongside an Iraqi archaeologist). Having the ruins within the confines of a military camp may actually have protected it, by preventing looters and scavengers from picking over its artifacts.
Regardless, When it comes to Iraq, if there’s one thing most of the world can agree upon (well, with the exception perhaps of sectarian states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran), it is that policies which bring Iraqis together rather than tear them apart are long overdue. Likewise, almost every senior Iraqi official and foreign diplomat will acknowledge the need for Iraq to diversify its economy, a need made more acute by the drop in the price of oil.
The Iraqi government’s application to list Babylon as a UNESCO World Heritage Site is wise. It helps bolster Iraq’s fledgling tourism sector, an industry that will be crucial in the future if and when Iraq stabilizes.
UNESCO, however, seems ambivalent. Perhaps the reason is political, or perhaps it is sincere concern over previous damage to the site. But, Saddam’s megalomania is hardly the fault of Iraqis; they were its chief victims. Regardless, while archaeologists might lament what Saddam did to portions of the site, large sections remain untouched. For UNESCO to refuse to extend its support and protection because of Saddam’s ill taste would effectively continue the destruction which Saddam began.
There is a further irony here as well. Prior to the “Shock-and-Awe” campaign which marked the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there was some discussion about targeting statues of Saddam and key Baathist monuments. U.S. forces had the precision to conduct such operations, and destroying such Saddam kitsch would signal that Coalition action was against Saddam rather than the Iraqi people. However, U.S. government lawyers said that such a strategy would be illegal since those statues and monuments were Iraq’s cultural heritage. How sad it would be if Saddam’s cultural heritage became the reason to allow Iraq’s real cultural heritage to erode further.
If the international community is serious about allowing Iraq to pick up the pieces, and if UNESCO is sincere in its mission to protect endangered archaeological sites and country’s cultural heritage, then it should both fast-track and work with the Iraqi government to get Babylon the UNESCO designation it needs and deserves.
February 2015
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Articles
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The Existential Necessity of Zionism After Paris
The Editors -
I Think That I Shall Never See a Jew As Lovely As a Tree
Tevi Troy -
The ‘Conversation About Race’ That Isn’t a Conversation
Noah RothmanTwenty years of talk about race obscures this country’s remarkable progress.
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Slandering Americans Who Fight for Israel
Daniel FleschLone soldiers face unfounded accusations of unsavory origin.
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The Return of North Korea
Michael Auslin -
Famous Actresses I Have Known
Frederic RaphaelA memoir, featuring Faye Dunaway’s cigarettes, Natalie Wood as Zelda Fitzgerald, and more.
Politics & Ideas
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The Sage of Araby
Sohrab Ahmari -
Father Abraham
Jeremy Rozansky -
Choosing the Chosen
Stephen Daisley -
Uncoupling
Naomi Schaefer Riley
Culture & Civilization
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WASP Without a Sting
Terry Teachout -
Madame Chaja
Jenna Weissman JoselitOn an exhibition about the little beauty giant Helena Rubinstein.
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A Disaster of Biblical Proportions
David Wolpe -
Don’t Kill Us, We’ve Taken Sensitivity Training
Matthew Continetti
John Podhoretz
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The Censors Win
John Podhoretz
Letters
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Why Pasternak Dared
Our Readers -
What FDR Could Have Done for Jewish Children
Our ReadersResponses to “‘Children in Europe are Europe’s problem!’” by Robert Slayton
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Ceding Europe to Extremists on Both Sides
Our ReadersResponses to “A Local Story of Global Jihad” by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein
Threat Assessment
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Will Palestinians Be Held Accountable?
Jonathan S. Tobin
Enter Laughing
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