She voted against this resolution which gives G.W. Bush power to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those "he deterimines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks"
...
H.J. Res. 64
Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and
Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and
Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and
Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and
Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the
United States:
Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the ``Authorization for Use of Military Force''.
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL.--That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any further acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
(b) WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS.--
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION.--Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
In this CNN article talks about the failures in the intelligence agency as being bureaucratic. Note he didn't say anything about the need for anti-encryption laws.
...
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A leading Republican senator said Wednesday that last week's terrorist attacks represented "a massive failure" on the part of the U.S. intelligence community, and he faulted federal law enforcement agencies for a lack of coordination in relaying key information to one another.
"I think it was a debacle," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview with CNN. "It was a real massive failure. I don't know what happened. I don't know how it happened, but at the end of the day, we know that we were not warned."
Shelby noted that some information on two suspected hijackers had been passed from the CIA to the FBI, which in turn passed it to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But authorities failed to catch up with the men -- identified by sources as Khalid Al Midhair and Salem Alhamzi -- who were on board the hijacked jet that slammed into the Pentagon, according to the Justice Department.
"It's again, in my judgment, too many bureaucratic failures, not enough coordination between the agencies," Shelby said.
Shelby said the CIA director should be granted Cabinet-level status to elevate the agency's influence and prestige within a presidential administration. He said changes are needed at several agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency. "We not only need more money, we need to change some things, and they've got to be changed at the top," Shelby said.
Shelby's comments come in the wake of revelations that the FBI had at least suspicions about the behavior of some individuals now tied to what may be a broader hijacking conspiracy.
One man being held in U.S. custody, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested August 17 in Minnesota on an alleged passport violation. Moussaoui was in custody at the time of last week's attacks, being held as a material witness.
Moussaoui had apparently raised suspicions because he sought training in flying commercial jets at an Oklahoma flight school despite having a lack of experience. FBI agents visited the Airman Flight School two weeks before the attacks, asking questions about Moussaoui.
The survey found that 72 percent of Americans believe that anti-encryption laws would be "somewhat" or "very" helpful in preventing a repeat of last week's terrorist attacks
What a useless survey. Since when does your average American know anything about encryption? Or how terrorits use encryption? Or about U.S. constitution for that matter... *sigh*
Yesterday, I found petition which was advertised in an earlier slash-dot discussion. Is there another petition for the security point? This one seems overly broad for this specific topic.
...
We the undersigned, endorse the following petition: CALL FOR PEACE & JUSTICE!
Target: George W. Bush President of the United States
Sponsor: Eve Lyn
URGENT! In the aftermath of the ruthless attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we implore the leaders of the United States to ensure that justice be served by protecting the innocent citizens of all nations.
We demand that the President maintain the civil liberties of all U.S. residents, protect the human rights of all people at home and abroad, and guarantee that this attempted attack on the principles and freedoms of the United States will not succeed.
We plead for a thorough investigation of the terrorist events before any retaliation.
According to the Washington Post, last Friday Barbra Lee (Democrat from California) said on the house floor: "I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States." More details are below, copied from here.
...
The Solitary Vote Of Barbara Lee
Congresswoman Against Use of Force
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 19, 2001; Page C01
"We need to step back," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). "We're grieving. We need to step back and think about this so that it doesn't spiral out of control. We have to make sure we don't make any mistakes."
She was walking down a hallway in the Cannon House Office Building. A plainclothes police officer hovered a few steps away, looking very serious. The Capitol Police began guarding Lee on Saturday because of death threats she received after voting against a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force against anyone associated with last week's terrorist attacks. The resolution passed 98-0 in the Senate and 420-1 in the House. Lee's was the sole dissenting vote.
"In times like this," she said, "you have to have some members saying, 'Let's show some restraint.' "
Led by her police bodyguard, she moved along quickly, slipping into her office and closing the door behind her. Inside, the phone lines had shut down under an onslaught of calls from all over the country -- many of them irate, some of them downright nasty -- and her voice mailbox was too full to take any more messages.
"We've gotten thousands of calls and thousands of e-mails," she said. "People are very emotional. . . . They're frustrated and they're angry."
She's 55, a small woman with short black hair. Normally, she has a bright smile, but these days she looks sad, worried, harried. She is quick to point out that she voted to condemn last week's attacks and to allocate $40 billion to fight terrorism.
"I'm just as American and just as patriotic as anybody else," she insists.
She does not rule out military action, she says, but she voted against the authorization to use force because she opposes giving the president the sole decision on when and where to make war. "I believe we must make sure that Congress upholds its responsibilities and upholds checks and balances. This is a representative democracy and it's our responsibility."
War, she believes, is not the most effective way to fight terrorism. "Military action is a one-dimensional reaction to a multidimensional problem," she says. "We've got to be very deliberative and think through the implications of whatever we do."
This is not the first time Lee has stood alone against war. In 1999, during the crisis in Kosovo, she was the only House member to vote against authorizing President Clinton to bomb Serbia. "I'm not a pacifist," she says, "but I don't believe military action should be the only action we embark on."
Fortunately for Lee, she represents one of the most liberal congressional districts in the United States -- California's 9th, which includes Berkeley and Oakland. It's the district that was represented by another antiwar dissident -- Ronald Dellums -- for nearly 28 years. Lee served as Dellums's chief of staff for a decade before she was elected to the California State Assembly in 1990. When Dellums retired in 1998, she won the election to succeed him, and was reelected last year with 85 percent of the vote.
"I would have voted the same way," says Dellums, now president of Washington-based Healthcare International Management. "We need to think this through and ask, 'Are there better ways to do this?' "
"I agonized over this vote all week," she says. "I searched my conscience. I talked to many people. Ultimately, on some votes, you have to vote the way your conscience dictates."
Her agony was exacerbated by the knowledge that her chief of staff, Sandre Swanson, was mourning the death of his cousin Wanda Green, who was a flight attendant on the hijacked United jet that crashed in Pennsylvania.
"I support her decision," Swanson says. "The principle on which she based her decision was that somebody should stand up and say that only Congress has the power to declare war. . . . People say she was unpatriotic. I think it was very patriotic."
"I admire the courage of Barbara Lee," says Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who spent the 1960s in the front lines of the civil rights movement. "She demonstrated raw courage to stand up and vote the way she did. She stood alone -- one against 420. Several other members wanted to be there also but at the same time, like me, they didn't want to be seen as soft on terrorism."
Lewis voted to authorize military action but, he says, he came close to joining Lee in opposition. "I was probably 99 percent of the way there in my heart and my soul," he says, "but in the end I wanted to send the strongest possible message that we can't let terrorism stand."
Lee's vote is reminiscent of the first woman ever elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted against the nation's entry into World War I and World War II. It also brings to mind Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening, the two senators who voted against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson the power to wage war in Vietnam.
On the House floor last Friday night, Lee quoted Morse: "I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States." She added: "Senator Morse was correct, and I fear we make the same mistake today."
Out in Oakland, Lee's vote is the subject of much debate, some of it heated, says Don Perata, the Democratic state senator who represents Lee's district.
Perata calls Lee's vote "wrongheaded" and he isn't impressed with her explanation of it. "There wasn't a lot of clarity there," he says. "I would have cast a different vote. This is a time for a united front in America, particularly in Congress."
But, he predicts, Lee's vote probably will not affect her chances for reelection.
"The district is overwhelmingly Democratic," he says. "There are probably more people who are to the left of the Democrats than there are Republicans."
Also, he adds: "Barbara is very popular here. She's just a very, very nice woman -- and in this business that counts for a lot."
On Monday, Perata says, California talk radio was abuzz with callers denouncing Lee as a communist.
"I was wincing," he says, "because that's not Barbara. She did not cast that vote because she's unpatriotic. She loves this country and its opportunities as much as anybody."
Meanwhile, back in her office on Capitol Hill, Lee was furiously working the phones, talking to constituents and local media outlets.
"I hope that when I get my message out," she says, "people will understand why I did what I did. Whether they agree with me or not, they'll understand that I want to bring these [terrorists] to justice as much as anybody else does."
She declined to speculate on the effect her vote might have on her popularity. "This was not," she says, "a poll-driven vote."
The Washington Post has a very nice article about the only member of the house who voted against the grain last week.
...
Congresswoman Against Use of Force
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 19, 2001; Page C01
"We need to step back," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). "We're grieving. We need to step back and think about this so that it doesn't spiral out of control. We have to make sure we don't make any mistakes."
She was walking down a hallway in the Cannon House Office Building. A plainclothes police officer hovered a few steps away, looking very serious. The Capitol Police began guarding Lee on Saturday because of death threats she received after voting against a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force against anyone associated with last week's terrorist attacks. The resolution passed 98-0 in the Senate and 420-1 in the House. Lee's was the sole dissenting vote.
"In times like this," she said, "you have to have some members saying, 'Let's show some restraint.' "
Led by her police bodyguard, she moved along quickly, slipping into her office and closing the door behind her. Inside, the phone lines had shut down under an onslaught of calls from all over the country -- many of them irate, some of them downright nasty -- and her voice mailbox was too full to take any more messages.
"We've gotten thousands of calls and thousands of e-mails," she said. "People are very emotional. . . . They're frustrated and they're angry."
She's 55, a small woman with short black hair. Normally, she has a bright smile, but these days she looks sad, worried, harried. She is quick to point out that she voted to condemn last week's attacks and to allocate $40 billion to fight terrorism.
"I'm just as American and just as patriotic as anybody else," she insists.
She does not rule out military action, she says, but she voted against the authorization to use force because she opposes giving the president the sole decision on when and where to make war. "I believe we must make sure that Congress upholds its responsibilities and upholds checks and balances. This is a representative democracy and it's our responsibility."
War, she believes, is not the most effective way to fight terrorism. "Military action is a one-dimensional reaction to a multidimensional problem," she says. "We've got to be very deliberative and think through the implications of whatever we do."
This is not the first time Lee has stood alone against war. In 1999, during the crisis in Kosovo, she was the only House member to vote against authorizing President Clinton to bomb Serbia. "I'm not a pacifist," she says, "but I don't believe military action should be the only action we embark on."
Fortunately for Lee, she represents one of the most liberal congressional districts in the United States -- California's 9th, which includes Berkeley and Oakland. It's the district that was represented by another antiwar dissident -- Ronald Dellums -- for nearly 28 years. Lee served as Dellums's chief of staff for a decade before she was elected to the California State Assembly in 1990. When Dellums retired in 1998, she won the election to succeed him, and was reelected last year with 85 percent of the vote.
"I would have voted the same way," says Dellums, now president of Washington-based Healthcare International Management. "We need to think this through and ask, 'Are there better ways to do this?' "
"I agonized over this vote all week," she says. "I searched my conscience. I talked to many people. Ultimately, on some votes, you have to vote the way your conscience dictates."
Her agony was exacerbated by the knowledge that her chief of staff, Sandre Swanson, was mourning the death of his cousin Wanda Green, who was a flight attendant on the hijacked United jet that crashed in Pennsylvania.
"I support her decision," Swanson says. "The principle on which she based her decision was that somebody should stand up and say that only Congress has the power to declare war. . . . People say she was unpatriotic. I think it was very patriotic."
"I admire the courage of Barbara Lee," says Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who spent the 1960s in the front lines of the civil rights movement. "She demonstrated raw courage to stand up and vote the way she did. She stood alone -- one against 420. Several other members wanted to be there also but at the same time, like me, they didn't want to be seen as soft on terrorism."
Lewis voted to authorize military action but, he says, he came close to joining Lee in opposition. "I was probably 99 percent of the way there in my heart and my soul," he says, "but in the end I wanted to send the strongest possible message that we can't let terrorism stand."
Lee's vote is reminiscent of the first woman ever elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted against the nation's entry into World War I and World War II. It also brings to mind Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening, the two senators who voted against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson the power to wage war in Vietnam.
On the House floor last Friday night, Lee quoted Morse: "I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States." She added: "Senator Morse was correct, and I fear we make the same mistake today."
Out in Oakland, Lee's vote is the subject of much debate, some of it heated, says Don Perata, the Democratic state senator who represents Lee's district.
Perata calls Lee's vote "wrongheaded" and he isn't impressed with her explanation of it. "There wasn't a lot of clarity there," he says. "I would have cast a different vote. This is a time for a united front in America, particularly in Congress."
But, he predicts, Lee's vote probably will not affect her chances for reelection.
"The district is overwhelmingly Democratic," he says. "There are probably more people who are to the left of the Democrats than there are Republicans."
Also, he adds: "Barbara is very popular here. She's just a very, very nice woman -- and in this business that counts for a lot."
On Monday, Perata says, California talk radio was abuzz with callers denouncing Lee as a communist.
"I was wincing," he says, "because that's not Barbara. She did not cast that vote because she's unpatriotic. She loves this country and its opportunities as much as anybody."
Meanwhile, back in her office on Capitol Hill, Lee was furiously working the phones, talking to constituents and local media outlets.
"I hope that when I get my message out," she says, "people will understand why I did what I did. Whether they agree with me or not, they'll understand that I want to bring these [terrorists] to justice as much as anybody else does."
She declined to speculate on the effect her vote might have on her popularity. "This was not," she says, "a poll-driven vote."
September 18, 2001
Business and Finance - Europe
Affluent Egyptians in Cairo Gloat Over Attacks While Eating Big Macs
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
CAIRO, Egypt -- As the Bush administration works to draw moderate Arab states into its coalition against terrorism, it must consider the mood at a gleaming McDonald's outlet here on Arab League Street, a cosmopolitan avenue in a well-heeled neighborhood of Cairo.
Sandwiched between a Rolex watch store and a BMW car dealership, the restaurant is packed with affluent university students dressed in American garb and aware of the billions of dollars in foreign aid that the U.S. has pumped into Egypt. It's the sort of place where one would expect to find sympathy for the American cause.
But listen to what they're saying.
Sitting under a poster advertising "Crispy and Delicious McWings," Radwa Abdallah, an 18-year-old university student, is explaining that she rejoiced when she learned that thousands of Americans had probably died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "Everyone celebrated," Ms. Abdallah says, as her girlfriends giggle. "People honked in the streets, cheering that finally America got what it truly deserved."
Fellow student Raghda El Mahrouqi agrees: "I just hope there were a lot of Jews in that building," she says. Sherihan Ammar, an aspiring doctor in elaborate makeup and tight T-shirt, sums up her feelings this way: "America was just too full of itself," she says with a dismissive gesture.
Many Americans and Europeans have been shocked by television footage of Palestinians celebrating the terrorist attacks. But such feelings are hardly limited to Palestinians who live on the West Bank and Gaza and find themselves, all too often, looking down the barrels of American-made weapons. A trip around the capital of Egypt, one of America's main Mideast allies and the biggest Muslim recipient of U.S. foreign aid, shows that educated, relatively wealthy and seemingly Americanized Arabs just as openly express their joy at the carnage in the U.S.
Those sentiments, shared by about half of several dozen people interviewed in Cairo, also provide a clue to the motives of the hijackers themselves. They, too, appear to have come from relatively well-to-do families and had little in common with the desperate and usually uneducated Palestinians who make up most of the suicide bombers in Israel.
Although all Arab governments except Iraq's have condemned the U.S. attacks, the prevailing view even among those horrified by the killings is that what happened in New York and Washington isn't all that different from what America itself has inflicted on Iraqis, Palestinians, Sudanese and other Muslims. That sentiment isn't limited to Arab states, either: Opinion surveys conducted in Greece, a NATO ally, indicate that anywhere between 5% and 17% of those polled believe that the U.S. somehow "deserved" the attacks, according to the Greek media.
In the Arab world, public opinion doesn't have the same importance as in the West: No Arab ruler has to worry about winning Western-style elections. But there's only so much that the region's governments can do to help the U.S. without risking serious upheaval at home. "Any Arab country that will ally itself with the U.S. will incur public-opinion losses, and will see its stability undermined," warns Gehad Auda, professor of international relations at Egypt's Helwan University.
Irritation with American foreign policy runs right through Egyptian society. Sameh Ashour, head of the influential Egyptian Lawyers Association, greets visitors in a building whose facade is draped with a black banner that reads, "Jerusalem Calls! Where Are the Muslims?" He dismisses the attacks in New York and Washington as a "natural result" of American foreign policy. "The U.S. itself practices terrorism when this suits it around the world," he says, "and tries to prevent terrorism when it doesn't suit it."
Mohammed Tantawi, editor of the government-controlled Akhbar Al-Youm newspaper, wrote this weekend that the attacks should be seen as a rather ordinary event. After all, he wrote, "thousands of innocent people, including many children, women and elderly citizens are being killed every day" in Palestinian territories by U.S.-supplied Israeli jets.
This might be a gross exaggeration: About 630 Palestinians, including gunmen and suicide bombers, were killed in the 12 months since the latest round of the Palestinian uprising began, while Israel counts about 170 deaths among its own. But that's exactly how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perceived by many in the Arab world. That perception is fueled by independent Arabic-language satellite TV channels, which tend to give gruesome details of Palestinian suffering and pay scant attention to victims on the Israeli side.
Even in thoroughly Western-oriented countries like Morocco, a nation far removed from the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and a one-time applicant to join the old European Community, many voice sneaking admiration for the terrorists. In a convenience store in Er Rachidia, a sand-swept town at the threshold of the Sahara, the first television images of the World Trade Center towers engulfed in smoke were greeted with a roar of approval. "Of course we are happy," says the storekeeper as he invited a group of foreigners to stop and watch the news.
In Marrakech, the hub of Morocco's tourist industry, reactions were only a little more guarded. "What happened is a terrible thing for all the people involved," says Abdou Hamaoui, a 29-year-old civil engineer sipping a glass of lemon Schweppes at the Cafe Glacier on the main square of the city's old town. "But the U.S. government deserves this."
Herwig Bartels, a former German ambassador to Morocco who now runs the lavish Riad El Cadi inn, says that sentiment reflects "a very strong resentment toward American politics, which is fuelled daily by television reports showing Palestinians being killed." He thinks initial jubilation among Moroccans has waned "now [that] people have seen the civilian side of the attacks." Yet he's still bracing for a drastic decline in American tourists.
Back in Cairo, those cheering America's loss in Cairo see no contradiction with the fact that they also eat American foods, wear American clothes and watch American movies -- nor with the fact that their country receives $2 billion (2.17 billion euros) in U.S. aid each year. "It's OK to eat at McDonald's because it is managed by Egyptians," says Ms. Abdallah, the 18-year-old university student. "But in general, I do try to avoid American companies -- because, you know, every Saturday they give money to the Jews."
In an outdoor cafe a short drive away, Ahmed Ahmad Tarif, a 21-year-old business-administration student, is wearing a Nike T-shirt. He bought it, he says, because it's good quality, even though he believes that "America stands for racism and for being against freedom and democracy."
Fellow student Ahmed Hussein, bespectacled and with a thin mustache, reflects for a moment when asked about U.S. economic assistance for Egypt. "The money we receive from America and the hatred we feel for America are two separate things," he finally says, "and should not be mixed together."
--Alessandra Galloni in Marrakech, Morocco, contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com.
September 14, 2001
America in the Eyes of the Arab World: A Complex Mix of Emotions Fuels Hate U.S. Is Resented for Its Power, 'Godless Materialism', Revered for Its Democracy, Principles of Due Process
By Peter Waldman, Stephen J Glain, Robert S. GReenberger, Hugh Pope, and Steve Levine
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Among the many questions smoldering in the ruins left by this week's terrorist attack is this: What possibly could have driven 18 presumably young hijackers, all of them now believed to be of Mideast origin, to sacrifice their lives in a mission to kill so many faceless Americans?
Answers may well surface someday, in elaborately detailed last wills and testaments prepared, often on videotape, by most Islamic suicide bombers. Until then, Americans are left to ponder the image of themselves in Islamic cultures arrayed from Morocco to Pakistan, societies with abiding differences among themselves yet with an increasingly shared antipathy toward the U.S., experts say.
This resentment is deeper and more complex than mere hatred of the U.S. for its support of Israel, say Arabs and Mideast scholars, though the daily images of embattled Palestinians on satellite TV have certainly fueled Islamic rage. Anti-Americanism has also taken root among well-educated middle-class professionals and businesspeople in the Arab and Muslim worlds, born of frustrations much closer to home: the perception that unlimited American power is responsible for propping up hated, oppressive regimes.
The Arab-Israeli conflict, in this sense, is a surrogate in many places for the discontent that people feel with their own governments. Because it is dangerous in most Muslim countries to express or act upon such political frustrations, people lash out at the U.S. and Israel instead.
And in places like the Gaza Strip, Egypt and Pakistan, there is a ready supply of poor and desperate young men to provide the blood and brawn for terrorism, Mideast experts say. Yet it takes the encouragement and support of better-heeled elements of society -- bankers in Cairo and Bahrain, say, or doctors and lawyers in Algiers and Islamabad -- to make suicide bombing acceptable.
"I've been bombarded all week with e-mails and calls from friends throughout the Muslim world who've expressed their outrage at what's happened here," says John Esposito, a Georgetown University professor who runs the school's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. "But what's struck me is how many of them have also said they hope America will now take a closer look at its foreign policy. Many are businesspeople who deal with the U.S. all the time but who feel our presence in the region, especially in the Gulf, is forcing economic and military dependency. A great deal of disappointment involves their own rulers."
The main political grievance is well-known, frequently aired in the region's media: America's alleged double standard in defending Israel's occupation of Arab lands while continuing to hit Iraq with economic sanctions and military attacks for what some Muslims consider essentially the same behavior. For many Arabs and Muslims, this humiliating disparity is compounded by the fact that so many of their own authoritarian rulers have not only acquiesced in this state of affairs but also actively helped maintain it by cooperating with the U.S. military.
Then, when Muslim countries such as Algeria, Jordan and Egypt attempt to elect parliamentary representatives -- often Islamic fundamentalists -- who challenge the regimes' pro-U.S. stance, their rulers thwart democracy with hardly a protest by a U.S. government fearful of change.
Enter the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, Saddam Hussein of Iraq or Osama bin Laden, now in Afghanistan -- men, in the eyes of their followers, not afraid to resist U.S. hegemony and thus lionized by many Arabs and Muslims.
"Osama definitely touched a nerve, even among people who don't agree with his methods," says Philip Robins, a Mideast expert at Oxford University. "The U.S. would be well advised to try to think of the way it conducts itself internationally, at the U.N., at the way it presents itself to the world."
Mr. Robins says the U.S., in Mideastern minds, conjures up "an undifferentiated ball of different emotions" -- it is both resented for its power and "godless materialism" and revered for its democracy and principles of due process.
That's why the U.S. arouses such passion and anger in the Muslim world, among all segments of society: The realpolitik of its diplomacy, particularly in the oil-soaked Mideast, has seldom lived up to its cherished ideals. An oft-heard lament from Arabs and Muslims is: Why, if equality and freedom are so important in the West, doesn't the U.S. stand up for them in the Muslim world?
Implicit in that question is one of the cruelest ironies of this week's wanton bloodshed: that America has been victimized by the exalted expectations it instilled in others. "We are sorry about the civilian victims, and cannot but condemn this terrorist act," wrote the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi in an editorial this week. "But we call upon American citizens to ask, why among all the embassies, buildings and defense establishments of all the Western powers, it is theirs that are targeted by terrorist actions?"
The heart of the matter is pride, say Mideast scholars, the pride of Muslim peoples who know from their religion, history and traditions they were once a dominant civilization but who now feel subjugated by an American superpower they regard as culturally shallow and by what they see as its warship, Israel. Many Arabs and Muslims feel the normal ways societies pick themselves up -- developing their economies, renewing their governments -- aren't available to them, again because the U.S. has propped up oppressive regimes.
Take Jordan, for example, one of the U.S.'s closest Mideast allies and a country that has been thought since its peace with Israel nearly a decade ago to have bright economic prospects. Yet as its population has grown nearly 3% a year, its economy has barely kept up.
"Economic malaise is becoming a permanent condition," says Labib Kamhawi, an opposition member of Jordan's parliament.
This year, Jordan's King Abdullah circulated a memo to members of his royal family ordering them to "avoid overspending and accumulating debts." Some Jordanians believed that the notice smacked of a public-relations gimmick to make the monarchy sound frugal. The rest of the population, meanwhile, is so uncreditworthy that most merchants refuse to even accept checks. For decades, Jordan and its monarchs have been recipients of direct and covert U.S. aid.
"I have six lawyers and can arrest people who write rubber checks," says Abdulmajeed Shoman, the chairman of Arab Bank, Jordan's largest bank. "Not everyone else can do that."
Write to Peter Waldman at peter.waldman@wsj.com, Stephen J. Glain at stephen.glain@wsj.com, Robert S. Greenberger at bob.greenberger@wsj.com, Hugh Pope at hugh.pope@wsj.com and Steve LeVine at steve.levine@wsj.com
Major Business News
Middle Eastern Support for U.S.
Is Far From Certain, Bush Finds
By HUGH POPE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Contrary to first appearances, President Bush may find it far more difficult to build a coalition in the Arab world for a broad "crusade" against terrorism than his father did as he set about reversing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 11 years ago.
If the U.S. response to last week's lethal airline hijacks is limited to an attack against suspected bases of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, all may yet be well. But even so-called moderate Arab states in the region are likely to resist a broader U.S.-led effort.
The pro-Western United Arab Emirates, for instance, has made an unprecedented vow to take part in a focused military action against terrorist targets, and says it will even reconsider its ties to Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which is protecting Mr. bin Laden. But the UAE wants something in return: "We require, too, that your governments should work in a parallel and effective way to ensure a just and lasting peace in the Middle East," UAE Foreign Minister Sheik Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan told envoys of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia and China Sunday.
Such Arab formulations -- empty rhetoric in the past -- have now become an important fault line between the U.S. and the generally pro-Western Arab states of the region. The support of these states -- the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait on the Persian Gulf; Jordan, Egypt and Morocco further afield -- will be key to the legitimacy of any U.S. enterprise in the region. Saudi Arabia alone commands more than one quarter of the world's oil reserves.
"International efforts to combat terrorism must also deal with the state terrorism practiced by Israel," said a blunt editorial on Sunday in the Saudi newspaper al-Jazira, which reflects official thinking.
In fact, diplomats say, the opposite may happen. After its latest experience, the U.S. looks even less likely than before to restrain Israel, the Mideast country it feels closest to, especially when Israel justifies its actions against Palestinians as punishment for or deterrence against suicide bombings.
This divergence of views is one reason that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, leader of the most populous Arab state, says he won't join any antiterror coalition unless it is under the aegis of the United Nations, not the U.S. -- even though he receives $2 billion in U.S. aid every year.
"Watching CNN, you get the impression the Arabs are coming through [for the U.S.]. They aren't," said Joseph Teitelbaum, a Tel Aviv University professor and the author of a book on the Islamist opposition in Saudi Arabia. "I think the U.S. is going to find it more difficult... than in 1990."
A major change has taken place in the key state of Saudi Arabia since power shifted to Crown Prince Abdullah, Mr. Teitelbaum said. This happened after the heart attack that King Fahd suffered in 1995. "Fahd was seen as doing the blind bidding of the United States," he said. "But Abdullah has made peace with the Islamist opposition. He has made his peace with Iran."
All over the Arab world, an outpouring of sympathy for Americans has often been qualified with a reflexive twinge of satisfaction that the U.S. was at last paying a price for its strong support of Israel and its insistence on sanctions against Iraq, Libya, Syria and other states.
"I disapprove of those displays of happiness. But it was not because of what happened. It was a feeling that people in the top country of the world can now know the same feelings that people here have had for years and years," said Omar Bahlaiwa, a commerce official in Riyadh.
One word has made matters worse. President Bush's talk of a Christian-style "crusade" has sent hackles rising all over this conservative, deeply Muslim part of the Arab world. The label spread quickly over Arabic forums on the Internet, bringing up associations with the bloody European-Christian occupation of Jerusalem and what is now Israel for much of the 12th century.
"This is a dangerous word," Mr. Bahlaiwa said. "Most Saudis don't see these suicide hijackings as an 'Islamic' act. But this takes me back to the Middle Ages, to all-out religious war... you'll be fighting all Islam."
Brute Force or Smart Pressure?
Middle East News Online
Ian Urbina, editor at Middle East Report
Posted Tuesday September 18, 2001 - 05:03:23 PM EDT
Colin Powell has two rules in foreign policy: respond with overwhelming force and always maintain a clear exit strategy. The problem with terrorism is that overwhelming force removes all exit strategies. The more forceful the US military reaction, the greater the increase in enemies, the less the opportunity for withdrawal. Indeed, this is a different type of war. It will be lost with brute force or won with smart pressure.
The US must bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice and take their support networks out of operation permanently. The exact opposite will be achieved by a military response. Bombing or sending in troops may help restore the nation's self- confidence. But it will also increase Bin Laden's recruitment by arming him with images of American aircraft attacking Arab states and killing civilians. At the root of anti- Americanism is the perception of the US as a global bully. The US does what it wants because it can. Bombing or invading will only prove this perception correct, thereby creating more militants willing to sacrifice their lives to show that even the strongest nation in the world can not act without impunity.
The alternative is to employ smart pressure. That means acting through the law not above it. Bring forward the evidence, which surely exists, and indict bin Laden as a mass murderer. As Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, has pointed out, using global law enforcement collaboration plus moral and religious leverage is an approach with twice the effectiveness and half the blowback.
Pursuing the problem as an international criminal investigation, as with other terrorists, will lend the US the ethical and legal credibility it needs to remove Bin Laden rather than merely drive him underground where he will thrive.
If the US drops its war rhetoric, governments in the Middle East will be much more inclined to cooperate with requests for assistance in tracking down and arresting bin Laden and his associates. The deliberate murder of innocents is as much a crime and an abomination in Muslim societies as it is in Christian societies. It would be foolish to forget that it is only a fringe element of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims which has seized upon violence to address their grievances. Unfortunately, the unilateralist rhetoric of the US is quickly alienating many countries in Middle East.
Using military might to intimidate world leaders into unequivocally backing US decisions will only sow instability and popular resentment. Even the Taliban initially stated that they would hand over bin Laden if there was proof of his role. But as the US grew more forceful in its threats, the Taliban became more entrenched in its defensiveness. Now, many Afghani's in the region who have stated that they despise the Taliban are also saying that they will return to fight if the Americans continue their aggressive course.
To win the fight against terrorism, the US must stop approaching it as a war and begin attacking it as a crime.
Ian Urbina is an editor at Middle East Report and is based at the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a foreign policy think tank in Washington DC.
This is not a war for territory; it is a war for mindshare in the moderate populations of the Middle East. The ball is in our court; advantage western civilization; do we ace or do we fault?
If I am mistaken, feel free to correct me, but as far as I know Bush has neither claimed Osama Bin Laden was guilty or called for his death. He has, however, stated that those responsible for the acts would be brought to justice.
In a rather sick attempt to be humorous, Bush alluded that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive".
New War Of Information, Education and Image?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 2
Is this new war one of information, education, and image?
What can 60 billion dollars buy?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Recently we gave G.W. Bush 60 billion dollars to spend how ever he'd like... I'd like to question the wisdom of this. What can we do with 60 billion dollars.
Can we buy hope instead of terror?
With this 60 billion dollars could we start enough "rebuilding" efforts in Afgan, Iraq, and Palestine to turn would-be terriorists into brick-layers?
1. The petition needs to be much much
better thought-out with serious
research behind it. It must *educate*
the congress person.
2. The petition needs zip+4 in order to
correctly buildle the petition to the
appropriate congress person.
3. Comments should not be necessary...
or if allowed, should be subject to
moderation since the petition *must*
be professional.
4. It must be said that only registered
voters can participate. One can then
validate against registered voter list
and eliminate any signatories which are
not registered voters.
Mabye we can get Jamie Love to write it... I live down the street from the congressional offices, so I can take a day or so running about hand-delivering them. If/when I get time, I can write some of the back-end database code, as long as the applet sent a POST with the Name, ZipCode, Comments, and Signature.
If we were to setup this system, it'd be better to make it more of a long-term thing... a one-off is nice; but as time goes on I'm sure there will be a great many petitions we may want to send.
Petitions are, IMHO, is the second best way to go about influencing congress. What we really need is a concentrated mechanism to gather thousands of signatures on a single, short, and well articulated position paper. Perferably the signatures being "real" and not digitial. This way, when a congress person has a chance to read 10 letters... the petition will be at the top of their stack, beacuse it has so many hundred signatures.
Thus, I humbly suggest that someone with some time/skill/influence author such a letter... short and sweet. Then some electronic way to "sign up" and "sort" the signatures by voting district and then send this snail-mail to the congress person's staff for sorting (clearly marking on the front of the envelope the issuse and # of signaturess *in their district* )
A well-organized and thoughtul petition is far more effective than a few single letters... certainly a few thousand letters are better; however, most people are too lazy to write their own letter -- while they will take time to fill in information for a petition.
From the Washington Post article George Bush Sr says:
But I went to CIA at a time when CIA had been criticized properly for some things, but unfairly attacked for many things that it shouldn't have been attacked for. And what happened out of that period was that many of our human intelligence sources dried up. If they see there is some muckraker going out to CIA and considering everybody out there as doing something bad or naughty, and if they see the names of our intelligence sources released, those sources dry up.
And so, human intelligence is kind of a dirty business. And in it, you have to deal with unsavory people. People tried to make a lot out of the fact that at one point the intelligence community dealt with Manuel Noriega. Well, they did, but it isn't a nice, clean business. And if you're going to infiltrate some cell somewhere or a terrorist cell, you have to deal with people that are willing to betray their country, people that are willing to betray their friends, people that want money or other things. And it's not pleasant.
But if we're going to provide the president with the best possible intelligence, we have to free up the intelligence system from some of its constraints. You have got to always respect the privacy and right of an American citizen. But I think they ought to take a hard look now at whether we've gone too far in denying the people that run the intelligence community access to human intelligence.
You know, you can tell a lot from science. When I was president, during the Gulf War, they could tell me exactly how many troops were where on the front lines. They could say which direction they were moving. I remember getting a thing from Saddam Hussein via Gorbechev saying, ``Well they're pulling out.'' Yes, they were pulling out of where they were, but they were going south toward Saudi Arabia. We could tell that from intelligence.
But what we couldn't tell is the intent. And the only way you can measure intent in intelligence is if you have human intelligence, if you have people that are really willing to risk their lives for a cause--and sometimes they'll risk it for noble reasons, you believe in democracy and freedom--and sometimes they risk it for more selfish reasons like money or women, you name it.
And it's not pleasant, but I think we're going to find that we have to do more in the way of human intelligence and that means we're going to have to take a broad look at exactly what constraints the intelligence community, not just CIA, but the community itself, is operating under.
And I think it's important to recognize that all this new Internet technology that you guys know so much about has to be reviewed, in a sense, to see whether we're constraining our intelligence communities from getting after the culprits that may be American citizens. It's not pleasant.
11. Would you support or oppose new laws that would make it easier for the FBI and other authorities to investigate people they suspect of involvement in terrorism?
Support: 92%
Oppose: 6%
No Opin: 2%
12. What if that meant giving up some of Americans' personal liberties and privacy---in that case would you support it or not?
Support: 71% (less liberty for more security)
Oppose: 24%
No Opin: 5%
Ben Franklin said something like... those who trade liberty for security will loose both.
It appears from the press that we are headed to war. I was wondering, what are our goals? Retribution? Revegenge? "Justice?"
Ten years ago I remember large disapointment of the American Public when we attacked Iraq; we didn't go further and replace their dictatorship with a democracy. Is this our goal? This is very much different from the above. Is this goal more nobel or permanent?
I have bad recollection, but about 2 years ago I heared an NPR article on the Mexican/American war and the general in charge; who made it clear to the civilian population that they were *not* staying and *not* going to control their contry; and they we only wanted to remove their dictator and replace it with democracy. From the story, at first the Americans were greeted with suspicion. Then, one of the weoman accuesed a soldier of rape. The very next day the General held a court-martial and hung the soldier in the town square (even though there was ample evidence that the soldier was innocent). Word of this spead, and from the documentary, passage through each remaining town was easier and in some cases brought cheer.
Is this too idealistic of a picture to have? Perhaps I'm just too niave.
You can get a truer picture of what goes on by not relying on only US and Israeli media. People, look on the net for Arab and other international news sites. Not unbiased either - but a different bias.
This is what I meant by "Interesting". I should have been more clear in my first post as it seems to have me pegged as a Troll.
Slashdot Mirror
She voted against this resolution which gives G.W. Bush power to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those "he deterimines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks"
...
H.J. Res. 64
Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and
Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and
Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and
Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and
Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the
United States:
Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the ``Authorization for Use of Military Force''.
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL.--That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any further acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
(b) WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS.--
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION.--Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
I'm listening to congressman dryer right now (2:54 WAMU) on NPR's special covertage. His comments are...
1. We should continue to allow encryption.
2. Crypography is being used in pictures, etc., and it is hard to even know if something is encrypted.
3. It is possible that Ossama bin Ladin is using cryptography technology.
4. We will probably have registered, third-party back-door mechanism where you need a court order to get the required key.
In this CNN article talks about the failures in the intelligence agency as being bureaucratic. Note he didn't say anything about the need for anti-encryption laws.
...
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A leading Republican senator said Wednesday that last week's terrorist attacks represented "a massive failure" on the part of the U.S. intelligence community, and he faulted federal law enforcement agencies for a lack of coordination in relaying key information to one another.
"I think it was a debacle," said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview with CNN. "It was a real massive failure. I don't know what happened. I don't know how it happened, but at the end of the day, we know that we were not warned."
Shelby noted that some information on two suspected hijackers had been passed from the CIA to the FBI, which in turn passed it to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But authorities failed to catch up with the men -- identified by sources as Khalid Al Midhair and Salem Alhamzi -- who were on board the hijacked jet that slammed into the Pentagon, according to the Justice Department.
"It's again, in my judgment, too many bureaucratic failures, not enough coordination between the agencies," Shelby said.
Shelby said the CIA director should be granted Cabinet-level status to elevate the agency's influence and prestige within a presidential administration. He said changes are needed at several agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency. "We not only need more money, we need to change some things, and they've got to be changed at the top," Shelby said.
Shelby's comments come in the wake of revelations that the FBI had at least suspicions about the behavior of some individuals now tied to what may be a broader hijacking conspiracy.
One man being held in U.S. custody, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested August 17 in Minnesota on an alleged passport violation. Moussaoui was in custody at the time of last week's attacks, being held as a material witness.
Moussaoui had apparently raised suspicions because he sought training in flying commercial jets at an Oklahoma flight school despite having a lack of experience. FBI agents visited the Airman Flight School two weeks before the attacks, asking questions about Moussaoui.
The survey found that 72 percent of Americans believe that anti-encryption laws would be "somewhat" or "very" helpful in preventing a repeat of last week's terrorist attacks
What a useless survey. Since when does your average American know anything about encryption? Or how terrorits use encryption? Or about U.S. constitution for that matter... *sigh*
Yesterday, I found petition which was advertised in an earlier slash-dot discussion. Is there another petition for the security point? This one seems overly broad for this specific topic.
...
We the undersigned, endorse the following petition: CALL FOR PEACE & JUSTICE!
Target: George W. Bush President of the United States
Sponsor: Eve Lyn
URGENT! In the aftermath of the ruthless attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we implore the leaders of the United States to ensure that justice be served by protecting the innocent citizens of all nations.
We demand that the President maintain the civil liberties of all U.S. residents, protect the human rights of all people at home and abroad, and guarantee that this attempted attack on the principles and freedoms of the United States will not succeed.
We plead for a thorough investigation of the terrorist events before any retaliation.
We call for PEACE and JUSTICE, not revenge.
In Solidarity,
The Undersigned
According to the Washington Post, last Friday Barbra Lee (Democrat from California) said on the house floor: "I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States." More details are below, copied from here.
...
The Solitary Vote Of Barbara Lee
Congresswoman Against Use of Force
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 19, 2001; Page C01
"We need to step back," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). "We're grieving. We need to step back and think about this so that it doesn't spiral out of control. We have to make sure we don't make any mistakes."
She was walking down a hallway in the Cannon House Office Building. A plainclothes police officer hovered a few steps away, looking very serious. The Capitol Police began guarding Lee on Saturday because of death threats she received after voting against a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force against anyone associated with last week's terrorist attacks. The resolution passed 98-0 in the Senate and 420-1 in the House. Lee's was the sole dissenting vote.
"In times like this," she said, "you have to have some members saying, 'Let's show some restraint.' "
Led by her police bodyguard, she moved along quickly, slipping into her office and closing the door behind her. Inside, the phone lines had shut down under an onslaught of calls from all over the country -- many of them irate, some of them downright nasty -- and her voice mailbox was too full to take any more messages.
"We've gotten thousands of calls and thousands of e-mails," she said. "People are very emotional. . . . They're frustrated and they're angry."
She's 55, a small woman with short black hair. Normally, she has a bright smile, but these days she looks sad, worried, harried. She is quick to point out that she voted to condemn last week's attacks and to allocate $40 billion to fight terrorism.
"I'm just as American and just as patriotic as anybody else," she insists.
She does not rule out military action, she says, but she voted against the authorization to use force because she opposes giving the president the sole decision on when and where to make war. "I believe we must make sure that Congress upholds its responsibilities and upholds checks and balances. This is a representative democracy and it's our responsibility."
War, she believes, is not the most effective way to fight terrorism. "Military action is a one-dimensional reaction to a multidimensional problem," she says. "We've got to be very deliberative and think through the implications of whatever we do."
This is not the first time Lee has stood alone against war. In 1999, during the crisis in Kosovo, she was the only House member to vote against authorizing President Clinton to bomb Serbia. "I'm not a pacifist," she says, "but I don't believe military action should be the only action we embark on."
Fortunately for Lee, she represents one of the most liberal congressional districts in the United States -- California's 9th, which includes Berkeley and Oakland. It's the district that was represented by another antiwar dissident -- Ronald Dellums -- for nearly 28 years. Lee served as Dellums's chief of staff for a decade before she was elected to the California State Assembly in 1990. When Dellums retired in 1998, she won the election to succeed him, and was reelected last year with 85 percent of the vote.
"I would have voted the same way," says Dellums, now president of Washington-based Healthcare International Management. "We need to think this through and ask, 'Are there better ways to do this?' "
"I agonized over this vote all week," she says. "I searched my conscience. I talked to many people. Ultimately, on some votes, you have to vote the way your conscience dictates."
Her agony was exacerbated by the knowledge that her chief of staff, Sandre Swanson, was mourning the death of his cousin Wanda Green, who was a flight attendant on the hijacked United jet that crashed in Pennsylvania.
"I support her decision," Swanson says. "The principle on which she based her decision was that somebody should stand up and say that only Congress has the power to declare war. . . . People say she was unpatriotic. I think it was very patriotic."
"I admire the courage of Barbara Lee," says Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who spent the 1960s in the front lines of the civil rights movement. "She demonstrated raw courage to stand up and vote the way she did. She stood alone -- one against 420. Several other members wanted to be there also but at the same time, like me, they didn't want to be seen as soft on terrorism."
Lewis voted to authorize military action but, he says, he came close to joining Lee in opposition. "I was probably 99 percent of the way there in my heart and my soul," he says, "but in the end I wanted to send the strongest possible message that we can't let terrorism stand."
Lee's vote is reminiscent of the first woman ever elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted against the nation's entry into World War I and World War II. It also brings to mind Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening, the two senators who voted against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson the power to wage war in Vietnam.
On the House floor last Friday night, Lee quoted Morse: "I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States." She added: "Senator Morse was correct, and I fear we make the same mistake today."
Out in Oakland, Lee's vote is the subject of much debate, some of it heated, says Don Perata, the Democratic state senator who represents Lee's district.
Perata calls Lee's vote "wrongheaded" and he isn't impressed with her explanation of it. "There wasn't a lot of clarity there," he says. "I would have cast a different vote. This is a time for a united front in America, particularly in Congress."
But, he predicts, Lee's vote probably will not affect her chances for reelection.
"The district is overwhelmingly Democratic," he says. "There are probably more people who are to the left of the Democrats than there are Republicans."
Also, he adds: "Barbara is very popular here. She's just a very, very nice woman -- and in this business that counts for a lot."
On Monday, Perata says, California talk radio was abuzz with callers denouncing Lee as a communist.
"I was wincing," he says, "because that's not Barbara. She did not cast that vote because she's unpatriotic. She loves this country and its opportunities as much as anybody."
Meanwhile, back in her office on Capitol Hill, Lee was furiously working the phones, talking to constituents and local media outlets.
"I hope that when I get my message out," she says, "people will understand why I did what I did. Whether they agree with me or not, they'll understand that I want to bring these [terrorists] to justice as much as anybody else does."
She declined to speculate on the effect her vote might have on her popularity. "This was not," she says, "a poll-driven vote."
The Washington Post has a very nice article about the only member of the house who voted against the grain last week.
...
Congresswoman Against Use of Force
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 19, 2001; Page C01
"We need to step back," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). "We're grieving. We need to step back and think about this so that it doesn't spiral out of control. We have to make sure we don't make any mistakes."
She was walking down a hallway in the Cannon House Office Building. A plainclothes police officer hovered a few steps away, looking very serious. The Capitol Police began guarding Lee on Saturday because of death threats she received after voting against a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force against anyone associated with last week's terrorist attacks. The resolution passed 98-0 in the Senate and 420-1 in the House. Lee's was the sole dissenting vote.
"In times like this," she said, "you have to have some members saying, 'Let's show some restraint.' "
Led by her police bodyguard, she moved along quickly, slipping into her office and closing the door behind her. Inside, the phone lines had shut down under an onslaught of calls from all over the country -- many of them irate, some of them downright nasty -- and her voice mailbox was too full to take any more messages.
"We've gotten thousands of calls and thousands of e-mails," she said. "People are very emotional. . . . They're frustrated and they're angry."
She's 55, a small woman with short black hair. Normally, she has a bright smile, but these days she looks sad, worried, harried. She is quick to point out that she voted to condemn last week's attacks and to allocate $40 billion to fight terrorism.
"I'm just as American and just as patriotic as anybody else," she insists.
She does not rule out military action, she says, but she voted against the authorization to use force because she opposes giving the president the sole decision on when and where to make war. "I believe we must make sure that Congress upholds its responsibilities and upholds checks and balances. This is a representative democracy and it's our responsibility."
War, she believes, is not the most effective way to fight terrorism. "Military action is a one-dimensional reaction to a multidimensional problem," she says. "We've got to be very deliberative and think through the implications of whatever we do."
This is not the first time Lee has stood alone against war. In 1999, during the crisis in Kosovo, she was the only House member to vote against authorizing President Clinton to bomb Serbia. "I'm not a pacifist," she says, "but I don't believe military action should be the only action we embark on."
Fortunately for Lee, she represents one of the most liberal congressional districts in the United States -- California's 9th, which includes Berkeley and Oakland. It's the district that was represented by another antiwar dissident -- Ronald Dellums -- for nearly 28 years. Lee served as Dellums's chief of staff for a decade before she was elected to the California State Assembly in 1990. When Dellums retired in 1998, she won the election to succeed him, and was reelected last year with 85 percent of the vote.
"I would have voted the same way," says Dellums, now president of Washington-based Healthcare International Management. "We need to think this through and ask, 'Are there better ways to do this?' "
"I agonized over this vote all week," she says. "I searched my conscience. I talked to many people. Ultimately, on some votes, you have to vote the way your conscience dictates."
Her agony was exacerbated by the knowledge that her chief of staff, Sandre Swanson, was mourning the death of his cousin Wanda Green, who was a flight attendant on the hijacked United jet that crashed in Pennsylvania.
"I support her decision," Swanson says. "The principle on which she based her decision was that somebody should stand up and say that only Congress has the power to declare war. . . . People say she was unpatriotic. I think it was very patriotic."
"I admire the courage of Barbara Lee," says Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who spent the 1960s in the front lines of the civil rights movement. "She demonstrated raw courage to stand up and vote the way she did. She stood alone -- one against 420. Several other members wanted to be there also but at the same time, like me, they didn't want to be seen as soft on terrorism."
Lewis voted to authorize military action but, he says, he came close to joining Lee in opposition. "I was probably 99 percent of the way there in my heart and my soul," he says, "but in the end I wanted to send the strongest possible message that we can't let terrorism stand."
Lee's vote is reminiscent of the first woman ever elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted against the nation's entry into World War I and World War II. It also brings to mind Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening, the two senators who voted against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson the power to wage war in Vietnam.
On the House floor last Friday night, Lee quoted Morse: "I believe that history will record that we have made a grave mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States." She added: "Senator Morse was correct, and I fear we make the same mistake today."
Out in Oakland, Lee's vote is the subject of much debate, some of it heated, says Don Perata, the Democratic state senator who represents Lee's district.
Perata calls Lee's vote "wrongheaded" and he isn't impressed with her explanation of it. "There wasn't a lot of clarity there," he says. "I would have cast a different vote. This is a time for a united front in America, particularly in Congress."
But, he predicts, Lee's vote probably will not affect her chances for reelection.
"The district is overwhelmingly Democratic," he says. "There are probably more people who are to the left of the Democrats than there are Republicans."
Also, he adds: "Barbara is very popular here. She's just a very, very nice woman -- and in this business that counts for a lot."
On Monday, Perata says, California talk radio was abuzz with callers denouncing Lee as a communist.
"I was wincing," he says, "because that's not Barbara. She did not cast that vote because she's unpatriotic. She loves this country and its opportunities as much as anybody."
Meanwhile, back in her office on Capitol Hill, Lee was furiously working the phones, talking to constituents and local media outlets.
"I hope that when I get my message out," she says, "people will understand why I did what I did. Whether they agree with me or not, they'll understand that I want to bring these [terrorists] to justice as much as anybody else does."
She declined to speculate on the effect her vote might have on her popularity. "This was not," she says, "a poll-driven vote."
September 18, 2001
Business and Finance - Europe
Affluent Egyptians in Cairo Gloat Over Attacks While Eating Big Macs
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
CAIRO, Egypt -- As the Bush administration works to draw moderate Arab states into its coalition against terrorism, it must consider the mood at a gleaming McDonald's outlet here on Arab League Street, a cosmopolitan avenue in a well-heeled neighborhood of Cairo.
Sandwiched between a Rolex watch store and a BMW car dealership, the restaurant is packed with affluent university students dressed in American garb and aware of the billions of dollars in foreign aid that the U.S. has pumped into Egypt. It's the sort of place where one would expect to find sympathy for the American cause.
But listen to what they're saying.
Sitting under a poster advertising "Crispy and Delicious McWings," Radwa Abdallah, an 18-year-old university student, is explaining that she rejoiced when she learned that thousands of Americans had probably died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "Everyone celebrated," Ms. Abdallah says, as her girlfriends giggle. "People honked in the streets, cheering that finally America got what it truly deserved."
Fellow student Raghda El Mahrouqi agrees: "I just hope there were a lot of Jews in that building," she says. Sherihan Ammar, an aspiring doctor in elaborate makeup and tight T-shirt, sums up her feelings this way: "America was just too full of itself," she says with a dismissive gesture.
Many Americans and Europeans have been shocked by television footage of Palestinians celebrating the terrorist attacks. But such feelings are hardly limited to Palestinians who live on the West Bank and Gaza and find themselves, all too often, looking down the barrels of American-made weapons. A trip around the capital of Egypt, one of America's main Mideast allies and the biggest Muslim recipient of U.S. foreign aid, shows that educated, relatively wealthy and seemingly Americanized Arabs just as openly express their joy at the carnage in the U.S.
Those sentiments, shared by about half of several dozen people interviewed in Cairo, also provide a clue to the motives of the hijackers themselves. They, too, appear to have come from relatively well-to-do families and had little in common with the desperate and usually uneducated Palestinians who make up most of the suicide bombers in Israel.
Although all Arab governments except Iraq's have condemned the U.S. attacks, the prevailing view even among those horrified by the killings is that what happened in New York and Washington isn't all that different from what America itself has inflicted on Iraqis, Palestinians, Sudanese and other Muslims. That sentiment isn't limited to Arab states, either: Opinion surveys conducted in Greece, a NATO ally, indicate that anywhere between 5% and 17% of those polled believe that the U.S. somehow "deserved" the attacks, according to the Greek media.
In the Arab world, public opinion doesn't have the same importance as in the West: No Arab ruler has to worry about winning Western-style elections. But there's only so much that the region's governments can do to help the U.S. without risking serious upheaval at home. "Any Arab country that will ally itself with the U.S. will incur public-opinion losses, and will see its stability undermined," warns Gehad Auda, professor of international relations at Egypt's Helwan University.
Irritation with American foreign policy runs right through Egyptian society. Sameh Ashour, head of the influential Egyptian Lawyers Association, greets visitors in a building whose facade is draped with a black banner that reads, "Jerusalem Calls! Where Are the Muslims?" He dismisses the attacks in New York and Washington as a "natural result" of American foreign policy. "The U.S. itself practices terrorism when this suits it around the world," he says, "and tries to prevent terrorism when it doesn't suit it."
Mohammed Tantawi, editor of the government-controlled Akhbar Al-Youm newspaper, wrote this weekend that the attacks should be seen as a rather ordinary event. After all, he wrote, "thousands of innocent people, including many children, women and elderly citizens are being killed every day" in Palestinian territories by U.S.-supplied Israeli jets.
This might be a gross exaggeration: About 630 Palestinians, including gunmen and suicide bombers, were killed in the 12 months since the latest round of the Palestinian uprising began, while Israel counts about 170 deaths among its own. But that's exactly how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is perceived by many in the Arab world. That perception is fueled by independent Arabic-language satellite TV channels, which tend to give gruesome details of Palestinian suffering and pay scant attention to victims on the Israeli side.
Even in thoroughly Western-oriented countries like Morocco, a nation far removed from the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and a one-time applicant to join the old European Community, many voice sneaking admiration for the terrorists. In a convenience store in Er Rachidia, a sand-swept town at the threshold of the Sahara, the first television images of the World Trade Center towers engulfed in smoke were greeted with a roar of approval. "Of course we are happy," says the storekeeper as he invited a group of foreigners to stop and watch the news.
In Marrakech, the hub of Morocco's tourist industry, reactions were only a little more guarded. "What happened is a terrible thing for all the people involved," says Abdou Hamaoui, a 29-year-old civil engineer sipping a glass of lemon Schweppes at the Cafe Glacier on the main square of the city's old town. "But the U.S. government deserves this."
Herwig Bartels, a former German ambassador to Morocco who now runs the lavish Riad El Cadi inn, says that sentiment reflects "a very strong resentment toward American politics, which is fuelled daily by television reports showing Palestinians being killed." He thinks initial jubilation among Moroccans has waned "now [that] people have seen the civilian side of the attacks." Yet he's still bracing for a drastic decline in American tourists.
Back in Cairo, those cheering America's loss in Cairo see no contradiction with the fact that they also eat American foods, wear American clothes and watch American movies -- nor with the fact that their country receives $2 billion (2.17 billion euros) in U.S. aid each year. "It's OK to eat at McDonald's because it is managed by Egyptians," says Ms. Abdallah, the 18-year-old university student. "But in general, I do try to avoid American companies -- because, you know, every Saturday they give money to the Jews."
In an outdoor cafe a short drive away, Ahmed Ahmad Tarif, a 21-year-old business-administration student, is wearing a Nike T-shirt. He bought it, he says, because it's good quality, even though he believes that "America stands for racism and for being against freedom and democracy."
Fellow student Ahmed Hussein, bespectacled and with a thin mustache, reflects for a moment when asked about U.S. economic assistance for Egypt. "The money we receive from America and the hatred we feel for America are two separate things," he finally says, "and should not be mixed together."
--Alessandra Galloni in Marrakech, Morocco, contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com.
September 14, 2001
America in the Eyes of the Arab World: A Complex Mix of Emotions Fuels Hate U.S. Is Resented for Its Power, 'Godless Materialism', Revered for Its Democracy, Principles of Due Process
By Peter Waldman, Stephen J Glain, Robert S. GReenberger, Hugh Pope, and Steve Levine
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Among the many questions smoldering in the ruins left by this week's terrorist attack is this: What possibly could have driven 18 presumably young hijackers, all of them now believed to be of Mideast origin, to sacrifice their lives in a mission to kill so many faceless Americans?
Answers may well surface someday, in elaborately detailed last wills and testaments prepared, often on videotape, by most Islamic suicide bombers. Until then, Americans are left to ponder the image of themselves in Islamic cultures arrayed from Morocco to Pakistan, societies with abiding differences among themselves yet with an increasingly shared antipathy toward the U.S., experts say.
This resentment is deeper and more complex than mere hatred of the U.S. for its support of Israel, say Arabs and Mideast scholars, though the daily images of embattled Palestinians on satellite TV have certainly fueled Islamic rage. Anti-Americanism has also taken root among well-educated middle-class professionals and businesspeople in the Arab and Muslim worlds, born of frustrations much closer to home: the perception that unlimited American power is responsible for propping up hated, oppressive regimes.
The Arab-Israeli conflict, in this sense, is a surrogate in many places for the discontent that people feel with their own governments. Because it is dangerous in most Muslim countries to express or act upon such political frustrations, people lash out at the U.S. and Israel instead.
And in places like the Gaza Strip, Egypt and Pakistan, there is a ready supply of poor and desperate young men to provide the blood and brawn for terrorism, Mideast experts say. Yet it takes the encouragement and support of better-heeled elements of society -- bankers in Cairo and Bahrain, say, or doctors and lawyers in Algiers and Islamabad -- to make suicide bombing acceptable.
"I've been bombarded all week with e-mails and calls from friends throughout the Muslim world who've expressed their outrage at what's happened here," says John Esposito, a Georgetown University professor who runs the school's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. "But what's struck me is how many of them have also said they hope America will now take a closer look at its foreign policy. Many are businesspeople who deal with the U.S. all the time but who feel our presence in the region, especially in the Gulf, is forcing economic and military dependency. A great deal of disappointment involves their own rulers."
The main political grievance is well-known, frequently aired in the region's media: America's alleged double standard in defending Israel's occupation of Arab lands while continuing to hit Iraq with economic sanctions and military attacks for what some Muslims consider essentially the same behavior. For many Arabs and Muslims, this humiliating disparity is compounded by the fact that so many of their own authoritarian rulers have not only acquiesced in this state of affairs but also actively helped maintain it by cooperating with the U.S. military.
Then, when Muslim countries such as Algeria, Jordan and Egypt attempt to elect parliamentary representatives -- often Islamic fundamentalists -- who challenge the regimes' pro-U.S. stance, their rulers thwart democracy with hardly a protest by a U.S. government fearful of change.
Enter the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, Saddam Hussein of Iraq or Osama bin Laden, now in Afghanistan -- men, in the eyes of their followers, not afraid to resist U.S. hegemony and thus lionized by many Arabs and Muslims.
"Osama definitely touched a nerve, even among people who don't agree with his methods," says Philip Robins, a Mideast expert at Oxford University. "The U.S. would be well advised to try to think of the way it conducts itself internationally, at the U.N., at the way it presents itself to the world."
Mr. Robins says the U.S., in Mideastern minds, conjures up "an undifferentiated ball of different emotions" -- it is both resented for its power and "godless materialism" and revered for its democracy and principles of due process.
That's why the U.S. arouses such passion and anger in the Muslim world, among all segments of society: The realpolitik of its diplomacy, particularly in the oil-soaked Mideast, has seldom lived up to its cherished ideals. An oft-heard lament from Arabs and Muslims is: Why, if equality and freedom are so important in the West, doesn't the U.S. stand up for them in the Muslim world?
Implicit in that question is one of the cruelest ironies of this week's wanton bloodshed: that America has been victimized by the exalted expectations it instilled in others. "We are sorry about the civilian victims, and cannot but condemn this terrorist act," wrote the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi in an editorial this week. "But we call upon American citizens to ask, why among all the embassies, buildings and defense establishments of all the Western powers, it is theirs that are targeted by terrorist actions?"
The heart of the matter is pride, say Mideast scholars, the pride of Muslim peoples who know from their religion, history and traditions they were once a dominant civilization but who now feel subjugated by an American superpower they regard as culturally shallow and by what they see as its warship, Israel. Many Arabs and Muslims feel the normal ways societies pick themselves up -- developing their economies, renewing their governments -- aren't available to them, again because the U.S. has propped up oppressive regimes.
Take Jordan, for example, one of the U.S.'s closest Mideast allies and a country that has been thought since its peace with Israel nearly a decade ago to have bright economic prospects. Yet as its population has grown nearly 3% a year, its economy has barely kept up.
"Economic malaise is becoming a permanent condition," says Labib Kamhawi, an opposition member of Jordan's parliament.
This year, Jordan's King Abdullah circulated a memo to members of his royal family ordering them to "avoid overspending and accumulating debts." Some Jordanians believed that the notice smacked of a public-relations gimmick to make the monarchy sound frugal. The rest of the population, meanwhile, is so uncreditworthy that most merchants refuse to even accept checks. For decades, Jordan and its monarchs have been recipients of direct and covert U.S. aid.
"I have six lawyers and can arrest people who write rubber checks," says Abdulmajeed Shoman, the chairman of Arab Bank, Jordan's largest bank. "Not everyone else can do that."
Write to Peter Waldman at peter.waldman@wsj.com, Stephen J. Glain at stephen.glain@wsj.com, Robert S. Greenberger at bob.greenberger@wsj.com, Hugh Pope at hugh.pope@wsj.com and Steve LeVine at steve.levine@wsj.com
September 18, 2001
... than in 1990."
... you'll be fighting all Islam."
Major Business News
Middle Eastern Support for U.S.
Is Far From Certain, Bush Finds
By HUGH POPE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Contrary to first appearances, President Bush may find it far more difficult to build a coalition in the Arab world for a broad "crusade" against terrorism than his father did as he set about reversing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 11 years ago.
If the U.S. response to last week's lethal airline hijacks is limited to an attack against suspected bases of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, all may yet be well. But even so-called moderate Arab states in the region are likely to resist a broader U.S.-led effort.
The pro-Western United Arab Emirates, for instance, has made an unprecedented vow to take part in a focused military action against terrorist targets, and says it will even reconsider its ties to Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which is protecting Mr. bin Laden. But the UAE wants something in return: "We require, too, that your governments should work in a parallel and effective way to ensure a just and lasting peace in the Middle East," UAE Foreign Minister Sheik Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan told envoys of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia and China Sunday.
Such Arab formulations -- empty rhetoric in the past -- have now become an important fault line between the U.S. and the generally pro-Western Arab states of the region. The support of these states -- the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait on the Persian Gulf; Jordan, Egypt and Morocco further afield -- will be key to the legitimacy of any U.S. enterprise in the region. Saudi Arabia alone commands more than one quarter of the world's oil reserves.
"International efforts to combat terrorism must also deal with the state terrorism practiced by Israel," said a blunt editorial on Sunday in the Saudi newspaper al-Jazira, which reflects official thinking.
In fact, diplomats say, the opposite may happen. After its latest experience, the U.S. looks even less likely than before to restrain Israel, the Mideast country it feels closest to, especially when Israel justifies its actions against Palestinians as punishment for or deterrence against suicide bombings.
This divergence of views is one reason that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, leader of the most populous Arab state, says he won't join any antiterror coalition unless it is under the aegis of the United Nations, not the U.S. -- even though he receives $2 billion in U.S. aid every year.
"Watching CNN, you get the impression the Arabs are coming through [for the U.S.]. They aren't," said Joseph Teitelbaum, a Tel Aviv University professor and the author of a book on the Islamist opposition in Saudi Arabia. "I think the U.S. is going to find it more difficult
A major change has taken place in the key state of Saudi Arabia since power shifted to Crown Prince Abdullah, Mr. Teitelbaum said. This happened after the heart attack that King Fahd suffered in 1995. "Fahd was seen as doing the blind bidding of the United States," he said. "But Abdullah has made peace with the Islamist opposition. He has made his peace with Iran."
All over the Arab world, an outpouring of sympathy for Americans has often been qualified with a reflexive twinge of satisfaction that the U.S. was at last paying a price for its strong support of Israel and its insistence on sanctions against Iraq, Libya, Syria and other states.
"I disapprove of those displays of happiness. But it was not because of what happened. It was a feeling that people in the top country of the world can now know the same feelings that people here have had for years and years," said Omar Bahlaiwa, a commerce official in Riyadh.
One word has made matters worse. President Bush's talk of a Christian-style "crusade" has sent hackles rising all over this conservative, deeply Muslim part of the Arab world. The label spread quickly over Arabic forums on the Internet, bringing up associations with the bloody European-Christian occupation of Jerusalem and what is now Israel for much of the 12th century.
"This is a dangerous word," Mr. Bahlaiwa said. "Most Saudis don't see these suicide hijackings as an 'Islamic' act. But this takes me back to the Middle Ages, to all-out religious war
Write to Hugh Pope at hugh.pope@wsj.com
Scanning the Middle East Wire, I ran across this juicy nugget of wisdom.
...
Brute Force or Smart Pressure?
Middle East News Online
Ian Urbina, editor at Middle East Report
Posted Tuesday September 18, 2001 - 05:03:23 PM EDT
Colin Powell has two rules in foreign policy: respond with overwhelming force and always maintain a clear exit strategy. The problem with terrorism is that overwhelming force removes all exit strategies. The more forceful the US military reaction, the greater the increase in enemies, the less the opportunity for withdrawal. Indeed, this is a different type of war. It will be lost with brute force or won with smart pressure.
The US must bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice and take their support networks out of operation permanently. The exact opposite will be achieved by a military response. Bombing or sending in troops may help restore the nation's self- confidence. But it will also increase Bin Laden's recruitment by arming him with images of American aircraft attacking Arab states and killing civilians. At the root of anti- Americanism is the perception of the US as a global bully. The US does what it wants because it can. Bombing or invading will only prove this perception correct, thereby creating more militants willing to sacrifice their lives to show that even the strongest nation in the world can not act without impunity.
The alternative is to employ smart pressure. That means acting through the law not above it. Bring forward the evidence, which surely exists, and indict bin Laden as a mass murderer. As Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, has pointed out, using global law enforcement collaboration plus moral and religious leverage is an approach with twice the effectiveness and half the blowback.
Pursuing the problem as an international criminal investigation, as with other terrorists, will lend the US the ethical and legal credibility it needs to remove Bin Laden rather than merely drive him underground where he will thrive.
If the US drops its war rhetoric, governments in the Middle East will be much more inclined to cooperate with requests for assistance in tracking down and arresting bin Laden and his associates. The deliberate murder of innocents is as much a crime and an abomination in Muslim societies as it is in Christian societies. It would be foolish to forget that it is only a fringe element of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims which has seized upon violence to address their grievances. Unfortunately, the unilateralist rhetoric of the US is quickly alienating many countries in Middle East.
Using military might to intimidate world leaders into unequivocally backing US decisions will only sow instability and popular resentment. Even the Taliban initially stated that they would hand over bin Laden if there was proof of his role. But as the US grew more forceful in its threats, the Taliban became more entrenched in its defensiveness. Now, many Afghani's in the region who have stated that they despise the Taliban are also saying that they will return to fight if the Americans continue their aggressive course.
To win the fight against terrorism, the US must stop approaching it as a war and begin attacking it as a crime.
Ian Urbina is an editor at Middle East Report and is based at the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a foreign policy think tank in Washington DC.
The rule emerged in the 70's. Bush Sr.
had a nice talk about it 4-5 days ago
that was published by the Washington Post.
This is not a war for territory; it is a war for mindshare in the moderate populations of the Middle East. The ball is in our court; advantage western civilization; do we ace or do we fault?
Nicely said.
If I am mistaken, feel free to correct me, but as far as I know Bush has neither claimed Osama Bin Laden was guilty or called for his death. He has, however, stated that those responsible for the acts would be brought to justice.
In a rather sick attempt to be humorous, Bush alluded that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive".
Shut down the power grid in Kabul immediately before the first bombing
What power grid?
Not smart.
Is this new war one of information, education, and image?
Recently we gave G.W. Bush 60 billion dollars to spend how ever he'd like... I'd like to question the wisdom of this. What can we do with 60 billion dollars.
Can we buy hope instead of terror?
With this 60 billion dollars could we start enough "rebuilding" efforts in Afgan, Iraq, and Palestine to turn would-be terriorists into brick-layers?
This doesn't quite do it...
1. The petition needs to be much much
better thought-out with serious
research behind it. It must *educate*
the congress person.
2. The petition needs zip+4 in order to
correctly buildle the petition to the
appropriate congress person.
3. Comments should not be necessary...
or if allowed, should be subject to
moderation since the petition *must*
be professional.
4. It must be said that only registered
voters can participate. One can then
validate against registered voter list
and eliminate any signatories which are
not registered voters.
Best,
Clark
Mabye we can get Jamie Love to write it... I live down the street from the congressional offices, so I can take a day or so running about hand-delivering them. If/when I get time, I can write some of the back-end database code, as long as the applet sent a POST with the Name, ZipCode, Comments, and Signature.
... a one-off is nice; but as time goes on I'm sure there will be a great many petitions we may want to send.
If we were to setup this system, it'd be better to make it more of a long-term thing
Petitions are, IMHO, is the second best way to go about influencing congress. What we really need is a concentrated mechanism to gather thousands of signatures on a single, short, and well articulated position paper. Perferably the signatures being "real" and not digitial. This way, when a congress person has a chance to read 10 letters... the petition will be at the top of their stack, beacuse it has so many hundred signatures.
... short and sweet. Then some electronic way to "sign up" and "sort" the signatures by voting district and then send this snail-mail to the congress person's staff for sorting (clearly marking on the front of the envelope the issuse and # of signaturess *in their district* )
Thus, I humbly suggest that someone with some time/skill/influence author such a letter
A well-organized and thoughtul petition is far more effective than a few single letters... certainly a few thousand letters are better; however, most people are too lazy to write their own letter -- while they will take time to fill in information for a petition.
From the Washington Post article George Bush Sr says:
But I went to CIA at a time when CIA had been criticized properly for some things, but unfairly attacked for many things that it shouldn't have been attacked for. And what happened out of that period was that many of our human intelligence sources dried up. If they see there is some muckraker going out to CIA and considering everybody out there as doing something bad or naughty, and if they see the names of our intelligence sources released, those sources dry up.
And so, human intelligence is kind of a dirty business. And in it, you have to deal with unsavory people. People tried to make a lot out of the fact that at one point the intelligence community dealt with Manuel Noriega. Well, they did, but it isn't a nice, clean business. And if you're going to infiltrate some cell somewhere or a terrorist cell, you have to deal with people that are willing to betray their country, people that are willing to betray their friends, people that want money or other things. And it's not pleasant.
But if we're going to provide the president with the best possible intelligence, we have to free up the intelligence system from some of its constraints. You have got to always respect the privacy and right of an American citizen. But I think they ought to take a hard look now at whether we've gone too far in denying the people that run the intelligence community access to human intelligence.
You know, you can tell a lot from science. When I was president, during the Gulf War, they could tell me exactly how many troops were where on the front lines. They could say which direction they were moving. I remember getting a thing from Saddam Hussein via Gorbechev saying, ``Well they're pulling out.'' Yes, they were pulling out of where they were, but they were going south toward Saudi Arabia. We could tell that from intelligence.
But what we couldn't tell is the intent. And the only way you can measure intent in intelligence is if you have human intelligence, if you have people that are really willing to risk their lives for a cause--and sometimes they'll risk it for noble reasons, you believe in democracy and freedom--and sometimes they risk it for more selfish reasons like money or women, you name it.
And it's not pleasant, but I think we're going to find that we have to do more in the way of human intelligence and that means we're going to have to take a broad look at exactly what constraints the intelligence community, not just CIA, but the community itself, is operating under.
And I think it's important to recognize that all this new Internet technology that you guys know so much about has to be reviewed, in a sense, to see whether we're constraining our intelligence communities from getting after the culprits that may be American citizens. It's not pleasant.
From the recent poll on the Washington Post:
11. Would you support or oppose new laws that would make it easier for the FBI and other authorities to investigate people they suspect of involvement in terrorism?
Support: 92%
Oppose: 6%
No Opin: 2%
12. What if that meant giving up some of Americans' personal liberties and privacy---in that case would you support it or not?
Support: 71% (less liberty for more security)
Oppose: 24%
No Opin: 5%
Ben Franklin said something like... those who trade liberty for security will loose both.
It appears from the press that we are headed to war. I was wondering, what are our goals? Retribution? Revegenge? "Justice?"
Ten years ago I remember large disapointment of the American Public when we attacked Iraq; we didn't go further and replace their dictatorship with a democracy. Is this our goal? This is very much different from the above. Is this goal more nobel or permanent?
I have bad recollection, but about 2 years ago I heared an NPR article on the Mexican/American war and the general in charge; who made it clear to the civilian population that they were *not* staying and *not* going to control their contry; and they we only wanted to remove their dictator and replace it with democracy. From the story, at first the Americans were greeted with suspicion. Then, one of the weoman accuesed a soldier of rape. The very next day the General held a court-martial and hung the soldier in the town square (even though there was ample evidence that the soldier was innocent). Word of this spead, and from the documentary, passage through each remaining town was easier and in some cases brought cheer.
Is this too idealistic of a picture to have? Perhaps I'm just too niave.
You can get a truer picture of what goes on by not relying on only US and Israeli media. People, look on the net for Arab and other international news sites. Not unbiased either - but a different bias.
This is what I meant by "Interesting". I should have been more clear in my first post as it seems to have me pegged as a Troll.