Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2009, pages 65-66

Other People's Mail

Compiled by Kate Hilmy and Delinda Hanley

What Is Military’s Mission?

To The Washington Post, June 15, 2009

In Michael O’Hanlon’s analysis that the Obama administration is underfunding the Pentagon, he failed to address the most important question: What is the mission that would justify perpetuating the colossal U.S. military budget?

Should the United States occupy Iraq and Afghanistan indefinitely (Mr. O’Hanlon has supported both wars)? Are our huge military budget, which at more than $600 billion per year is almost as large as those of the rest of the world’s countries combined, and more than 700 foreign bases justified by a global “war on terror”?

Evidently Mr. O’Hanlon is not interested in these questions, just in ensuring that the Pentagon continues to get more than half of the federal discretionary budget while programs for education, affordable housing, health care and the environment go begging, thereby degrading our economy and our overall quality of life.

The military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about has become a nearly omniscient political power with an interest in its own self-perpetuation that has little to do with defending the country.

Mr. O’Hanlon ought to question what the military’s mission is before shilling for it.

Kevin Martin, Peace Action, Silver Spring, MD

Obama and Iran

To the Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2009

I don’t know what Jonah Goldberg wants President Obama to do to bolster the supporters of Iranian reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. We are more popular in the Middle East than we have been in many years, but more popular doesn’t mean popular.

If Goldberg wants to kill this movement in Iran, then by all means, let’s tell the Iranians what to do. After all, that was the George W. Bush foreign policy (plus some added military force), and how has that been doing?

Mitch Engel, Los Angeles,CA

Democracy May Grow in Iran

To The New York Times, June 17, 2009

President Obama is wise to observe discretion with respect to commenting on the unrest in Iran. The CIA overthrow of a democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, in the 1950s is still an open wound in Iranian society, and the appearance that the United States was backing reformists today would play into the hands of those who oppose them. Let the Iranians determine their own future.

Tom Miller, Oakland, CA

Iran’s Election Unrest

To the Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2009

One of former President George W. Bush’s major goals was to bring American-style democracy to the Muslim world. I am sure he must be ecstatic to see that Iran has taken the lessons of his Florida election to heart.

Omer Murray, Newhall, CA

Stand Up To Tyranny

To The Seattle Times, June 26, 2009

One has to wonder where the U.S. would be today if, at the time of our revolution, France had taken the same posture the Obama administration is taking with respect to the protests and election in Iran.

Had France said it didn’t wish to be the foil for the tyrannical English monarchy and that the revolution was an internal matter between the British monarchy and the colonies, we likely would still be under British rule.

Instead, France stood with us, supported us and tipped the balance. With its help, which was certainly not limited to verbal or written encouragement, the revolution was won, and we are the free country we are today.

We need to stand with those who would be free of tyranny, clerically inspired or otherwise.

Dick Roberts, Lynnwood, WA

Iranians Show Their Resolve

To The New York Times, June 17, 2009

I did graduate-level research at Stanford University from 2001 to 2003 on the role of the Internet in Iran. My field work in Iran at the time indicated that it was freedom of expression and access to unfiltered information that served to undermine the self-legitimacy strategy of the Iranian government. After all, information is accompanied by increased accountability.

Today, there is a social media revolution in Iran, whereby Twitter, Facebook and similar sites are serving as the vehicles by which those who reject the apparent election coup are assembling and disseminating valuable information in real time.

Nobody dismisses the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a large, strong base of supporters. But it is Iran’s own laws that were clumsily and blatantly abrogated for the sake of displaying a political mandate, highlighting new vulnerabilities that all who champion a more democratic Iran can seize upon in the short and long run.

Lily Sarafan, Los Gatos, CA

Iranians Show Their Resolve

To The New York Times, June 17, 2009

The uprising of the Iranian people against the suspicious re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should serve as a serious rebuke to those who considered, or joked about, bombing that country.

Carol V. Hamilton, Pittsburgh, PA

Few Hopes for Iraq Inquiry

To The Independent, June 18, 2009

It is a bleak day for democracy when the prime minister announces an inquiry to be conducted behind closed doors about a war conceived and planned in secret.

Further, this was a war based on misinformation as to the threat represented by non-existent weapons of mass destruction; a war conducted in spite of sustained opposition from the British public, costing the lives of 179 UK military personnel and many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, involving an occupation which left Iraq in a desolate state with loss of hospitals, schools and essential services; and the final report “will not set out to apportion blame.”

No one who has watched on TV those first horrendous days of the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad or who has read the reports of the siege of Fallujah by Robert Fisk and Dahr Jamail will take much comfort in this news.

Jane Johnson, Exmouth, UK

Photos of Abuse

To The New York Times, June 21, 2009

In ‘’Abuse Photos Part of Agreement on Military Spending,’’ Sen. Lindsey Graham is quoted as saying, ‘’Every photo is a bullet for our enemy.’’

While I agree that the release of more photos of abuse of prisoners may not serve any purpose, I disagree that it is the photos that are the problem. It is the actions that are recorded in the pictures that are the real bullets for our enemies.

Gail Minthorn, Wilton, CT

Guilty Pleas for 9/11

To The New York Times, June 11, 2009

Re: “U.S. May Permit 9/11 Guilty Pleas in Capital Cases”: Obviously, guilty pleas will allow the United States to obscure the means used to interrogate these men. The absence of a full trial will represent just another cover-up by an administration that promised transparency.

Apparently, we are never to know what crimes were committed in our name in the “war on terror.” And obviously, there is to be no accountability for anyone responsible for those crimes. That itself constitutes a failure to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

H. R. Coursen, Brunswick, ME

Brutality on Several Shores

To The Washington Post, June 8, 2009

My compliments to Ed Cody on his fascinating May 26 story on the release of Guantanamo detainee Lakhdar Boumediene.

It is bad enough to be incarcerated in a hellhole if guilty, but to spend seven years of your life humiliated and force-fed through a nostril is unimaginable. Nothing will make up for the nightmare of being away from his wife and children for precious years.

There is a brutal similarity with the British policy of internment without trial in Northern Ireland and with the jailing of many innocent Irish in England.

Guantanamo Bay is a scab on the face of American democracy introduced by a scalp-seeking, saber-rattling Bush administration. We will never forget the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Punish the guilty, but the innocent should be immediately released. President Obama should ensure that justice is done.

Jim McKeon, Bishopstown, Ireland

Try Truth-Telling

To The Washington Post, June 20, 2009

After reading Charles Krauthammer’s unseemly smear of President Obama, saying he has a “disturbing ambivalence” toward the United States [“Obama Hovers From on High,” op-ed, June 12], I couldn’t help but recall Samuel Johnson’s admonition that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” When you parse all of Mr. Krauthammer’s rhetoric about Mr. Obama’s recent visit to predominantly Muslim countries, what you are left with is the accusation that Mr. Obama wasn’t sufficiently reflexively pro-American.

Mr. Obama’s penchant for “evenhandedness” and “moral equivalencies” might scare Mr. Krauthammer, but they are not examples of ambivalence. They are clearly rhetorical devices used by Mr. Obama to boldly say to adversaries: The past is not prologue; let’s move forward.

More important, it is Mr. Obama’s declaration that the United States is strong and mature enough to base its claim to leadership on the unvarnished truth.

Vincent E. Cobb, Clinton, MD

Expanding Israeli Settlements

To The Independent, June 5, 2009

Donald MacIntyre’s report of June 3 reveals once again the hypocrisy of Israeli spokespersons when talking about settlements. MacIntyre quotes Dov Weisglass as saying “that no further Palestinian land would be expropriated, and that expansion would be within the existing construction line.” What utter nonsense.

The article was illustrated by a picture of Beitar Illit, an illegal settlement about two kilometers inside the Green Line. I have visited the Palestinian village of Wadi Fuqin, which is dominated by Beitar Illit, three times in the past four years. On each occasion I saw how the settlement continues to expand its borders, slicing off the top of the hill and pushing the spoil down into the Wadi Fuqin valley.

This is not natural expansion. Both in 2007 and this year many of the apartment blocks were empty. This is theft, pure and simple. I have seen the same thing in Ma’ale Adumim, near Jerusalem, and Har Homa just outside Bethlehem.

It is far overdue for Western governments to call a halt and to demand that Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders.

Robert Shearer, Winsham, UK

Action Not Rhetoric

To The Independent, June 17, 2009

While Binyamin Netanyahu’s statement about a Palestine state is welcome as a grudging response to pressure from the Obama presidency, it is so hedged with preconditions and qualifications that it provides very little room for serious peace negotiations. Is he serious about trying to progress peace or is the speech just another delaying tactic in the Zionists’ long march to total control?

If he is serious, then there is an easy way to demonstrate that good faith. First, ease the siege of Gaza to allow the import of adequate food, fuel and construction materials. Second, significantly reduce the roadblocks, currently at record levels of over 700, in the West Bank that do so much to destroy economic activity. What we need now from the Israelis is not more rhetoric but some positive “facts on the ground.”

Mike Gwilliam, Norton-on-Derwent, UK

Argument About Settlements

To The New York Times, June 23, 2009

Tony Judt does a wonderful job of clarifying why all the “settlements” are illegal and stand in the way of peace in the Middle East, and of explaining how the small but significant political constituency in Israel prevents meaningful change from taking place.

He rightly calls on the United States to change its stance but neglects to point out how a small but significant constituency in this country plays a similar role. Some of us, presumed to be part of that very constituency, certainly hope that President Obama will disregard the wrongful wishes of that constituency and put the United States on the right side of this issue once and for all.

For the sake of Israel and the wider world, expansion of settlements must stop, and all of them must be dismantled.

Howard Rubinstein, Brooklyn, NY

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