Looming post-war questions

WASHINGTON is abuzz with controversy about the post-war situation in Iraq. The Baghdad imbroglio is linked with various other controversies relating to the phenomenon of political Islam, terrorism, the Middle East peace process and the supposed nuclear ambitions of Iran.

The Bush administration has moved from the upbeat mood of the immediate post-war situation to a sombre realization of the pitfalls of unilateralism. However, its engagement with Iraq remains in full swing, by way of the post-Saddam clean-up operation, setting up a ruling clique and a reconstruction programme. The more the resistance movement acquires a momentum of its own, the more the Bush administration feels the need for new initiatives to establish its control over Iraq. A major theme is the reshaping of the Middle East along democratic lines. The idea is that if there is democracy there is less alienation among vast sections of the population and therefore less appetite for terrorism.

President Bush continues to enjoy the support of slightly less than half the American public for his Iraq policy. A vehement coalition of forces, with its centre of gravity lying in the Christian right, remains committed to what is widely believed to be the agenda for national security. Criticism of the policy of war against Iraq was initially muffled and indirect. Democrats feared that they would be condemned for being soft on national security, or for being friends of the enemy, and therefore traitors to the national cause. Too many Congressional seats were at stake in the future elections to allow them to openly confront the Bush administration on its policy of eliminating Saddam.

During the recent weeks and months, Democrats have become vocal in their criticism of the way things are being handled in Iraq. The usual theme is: we agreed with the war aims but we do not agree with the post-war policy. As the season of presidential primaries is starting, a cacophony of objections has emerged against handling of the war by President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld.

Three major themes are making the rounds in Washington DC. One, the financial cost of the war at one billion dollar a week has started to register in the public mind. Presidential candidates among Democrats as well as various media analysts have gone public with criticism of the Iraq policy on that account. They have raised the issue of taxing the nation for war with no well-defined goals nor clear-cut ways of achieving these goals.

Secondly, the rising number of American casualties on the war front after the major combat was declared to be over has started pinching the nation. President Bush’s standing came down in opinion polls as body bags started arriving. The combat fatigue hit the troops in Iraq and the administration was accused of putting them under heavy psychological and physical pressure.

Thirdly, the go-it-alone public mood has changed. There is a clear transition from the nationalist assertion of Pax Americana to the grim realization of the potential loss of NATO allies such as Germany and France. Liberals and mavericks have bemoaned the policy of unilateralism all around.

The administration faces a grim challenge to the prospects of re-election of President Bush next year. It all depends on how soon he manages to address issues emanating from opposition of various shades. And yet the corporate America and the Christian right continue to support a forward policy and would be loath to see the administration retrace its steps from Baghdad too soon.

In Washington, changes of tactics, approaches, manoeuvres, strategies and initiatives are discernible. Similarly, the Bremer administration in Baghdad has taken several steps. One is the formation of a supra-government council, followed by a cabinet in place representing major interests and communities in the country. Other steps include recruitment of a security force from amongst the Iraqis, especially from Saddam’s secret service; increased vigilance over strategic assets after incidents of blowing up oil pipeline and water pipeline; and sending home troops who had fought for months and replacing them with fresh troops.

Democrats have picked up the momentum. They warn against Vietnamization of Iraq. Criticism of President Bush’s remarks in the State of the Union address to the Congress about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction led to a serious controversy. Some hold the faulty British intelligence responsible. Others accuse the White House of lying to the nation.

President Bush feels under pressure on several counts. His advisers increasingly feel that casualties in Iraq must stop. Financial cost of the war, which is skyrocketing, must be slashed. NATO allies must be won over. The popularity of President Bush, which slipped by several points, must be restored. Gradual descent of Washington to a position of diplomatic isolation must be halted.

A major policy shift is already underway. Russia, India, Turkey and Pakistan had linked the issue of sending their troops to Iraq on a peacekeeping mission with the UN mandate. So, Washington felt obliged to go back to the world organization, which it had bypassed in its resolve to invade Iraq. Key words for the Republican administration’s policy on Iraq are: war on terrorism; unilateralism; reconstruction of Iraq; and reshaping of the Middle east. Key words for the Democratic opposition are: yes to war but no to post-war Iraq policy; bringing the traditional allies back in to share the human and financial burden of war; and; defining the war aims in the Middle East.

Beyond Republicans and Democrats, there is ‘the third estate’ represented by liberal intelligentsia. It claims to represent the conscience of America and offers a critique of the security establishment. This community includes ex-diplomats, university students and faculty and dissidents from the State Department, Pentagon, CIA, think tanks and the media.

This community was against Washington’s policy of going to war against Iraq in the first place. Early this year, it launched a strong campaign against what it considered an immoral war. It criticized the Iraq policy on various counts: violating the principle of national sovereignty of other states; arrogance of the doctrine of pre-emptive strike; undermining the role of the UN; and doctoring intelligence to prove Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Many among them believe that the US was led into the war against Iraq by Israel. As a consequence, the balance of power in the Middle East has further shifted in favour of Tel Aviv, while Muslim societies have been further alienated by Washington. It is Israel’s gain at the American expense.

The third estate seeks to counter the overwhelming influence of the print and electronic media. It feels that the US has landed itself in an unsavoury situation of being obliged to call occupation liberation. In addition to the on-going resistance movement against occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel, now the world has been burdened with another resistance movement against occupation of Iraq by America.

The third estate fears that the foundations of liberal democracy are being eroded in terms of individual freedoms such as privacy of the household, sanctity of personal information, physical mobility, transfer of finance and the right to enterprise. The increased sensitivity to security issues is held responsible for America’s transition to an illiberal democracy.

At the other end, it is feared that the US presence in Iraq is sharply radicalizing Muslims everywhere. American occupation of a Muslim country has created media outbursts and public anger in Muslim countries ranging from Egypt in the west to Indonesia in the east. Their respective governments are obliged to contain dissent and become even more authoritarian in the process. This defeats the professed war aim of establishing democracy in the Muslim world.

American Muslims are caught between the two worlds of rising anti-Islamic sentiment hitting them at home and alienation from the US policy abroad. They have been struggling to develop a viable presence in the political system and influence policy. They have a long way to go. The public at large is still not critically alienated from President Bush. His prospects of re-election are still not in jeopardy. However, given the nature of elections and the mounting controversy about the human, financial and diplomatic cost of occupation of Iraq, nothing can be taken for granted.

The wilting of the rose

EVERY August the Karachiites who can afford it, and who feel that life isn’t really complete unless they’ve paraded up and down Oxford Street, and seen a show or two in London’s West End, were in for a major surprise this year. Temperatures soared up to mid-thirties and even crossed the 37 degree mark.

British Rail was running behind schedule because there was a real danger that the tracks would buckle in the heat. Graeme Smith and Makhaya Ntini were setting records in a country which takes its cricket seriously. London was, nevertheless, booming. Tourists kept pouring in, as they have for decades. Prices were marginally higher than they were two years ago. And in Docklands one could still see scaffolding sprouting branches of leafed steel.

The big stories, however, in those steamy days, centred on the uncertain political future of Tony Blair. and the shock resignation of Nasser Hussain as captain of the English cricket team. Both provoked a slew of reactions.

Poor Tony Blair. How he has aged in the last few months .He still tries to convey a life of unruffled serenity whenever camera crews catch him in an unguarded moment. And in cabinet meetings and press conferences, he still maintains a marvellous presence. The few friends that he still has admire the way he dominates the proceedings. He is serious about contesting for another term. But deep down he knows that his popularity is being eroded with every passing day.

Every morning at breakfast he reads obituaries on Blairism. Every day he hears comments like the party needs a new direction. Was the attack on Iraq really worth it? What has Tony Blair got out of acquiescing in a war that George Bush was determined to pursue?

The fact is, irrespective of whether or not Hans Blix and his investigators had found weapons of mass destruction, Tony Blair genuinely believes that the attack on Saddam’s citadel was morally justified. It is a theological belief and one that is not easy to shake off. But what is now troubling this once hugely popular leader is what is happening in Iraq today. The assault on a land which was once the cradle of civilization could hardly have been described as a swift, clean and popular liberation.

People in Britain have been used to saboteurs operating in their land, and MI 6 files are full of accounts of how the IRA tried to settle scores with Her Majesty’s government. But the attacks were largely remote-controlled and infrequent. The suicide bomber, on the other hand, is a completely different phenomenon.

But thanks to President Bush’s constant harping on the danger from religious extremists and fanatics, terrorism has entered the mainstream western life. David Kelly’s death was a dreadful blow. Lord Hutton will, of course, have to wade through a mountain of evidence. But no intelligent Brit seriously believes that the ultimate findings will be any different from what Hans Blix pointed out months ago.

Things were very different with the Indian-born Brit whose contribution to English cricket has been widely recognized. There wasn’t a newspaper in the land on July 29 that didn’t carry a huge coloured portrait of a moist-eyed, Nasser Hussain, with a two-day growth on his chin and a jaw line contoured like a rusty anchor.

Press comments ranged from surprise to nostalgia, from the purely prosaic to eulogies drenched in spectacular quantities of praise. One of the nicest write-ups, which really said it all, was the one by Mathew Engel which appeared in The Guardian. Engel called the resignation the most surprising thing to happen in England since Harold Wilson walked out of Downing Street, for no obvious reason, 27 years ago. The finest tributes, however, came from some of the chaps with whom he had played and shared champagne after a victory.

“I was there when both Graham Gooch and Mick Atherton resigned and they were both sad days,” said wicket-keeper Alec Stewart.” As captains, they had many great qualities, but when it came to on-the-field tactics, Nasser was the best”.

“Nasser is a straight bloke and has done a brave thing,” was Mike Gatting’s comment. “He has done extremely well as captain. When he took over, his own game wasn’t perhaps at the top of the list. But he has a strong mind and a resolute attitude. That is what England needed then and along with Duncan Fletcher he turned England into a side with steel in it.”

David Gower was a little less charitable. “If you haven’t got that 100 per cent drive in yourself to lead a team, the best thing to do is to stand down. He has been very brave and honest to do that.”

Angus Frazer was more conciliatory. “Hussain’s attitude to captaincy and his methods may not have pleased everyone but he has been an excellent leader. During his four years in charge Hussain led his side with a passion that was absent from any of the four England captains I played under.”

The present captain, Michael Vaughan, was unstinting in his praise. “Like everyone else in the dressing room I was surprised by his decision. He has been a hugely inspirational captain and no one cares more about the England team than he does.” “He has instilled a passion and fire into the belly of English cricket and groomed a team which I believe are the second-best in the world. Nasser can now give himself a pat on the back and reflect on a job well done, “ said the great Ian Botham

Mike Selvey added his own wry comment. “Three games into his reign, Hussain stood on the balcony of The Oval and was booed, his side branded the worst in the world. But he has since striven endlessly to elevate the status of the side. He leaves it significantly better.”

Former cricketer and commentator Geoffrey Boycott had this to say. “When everything goes wrong, it is easy to think a change would relieve the pressure, but it won’t. If he [Hussain] is tired now, he must have been tired before the start of the Test. In the end, it was an inner turmoil which led to him making a hasty decision and one that he might come to regret.”

“Nasser has been an outstanding leader of England,” said David Graveney. “It has been a privilege of mine to work with him — as it has been for all the selectors. He’s always made his decisions, despite what’s written in the media, in the wider interests of the England team, and he’s done that again today.”

“It has come as a surprise. I didn’t expect it to happen, but Nasser obviously feels it is the best way forward for their side,” was Graeme Smith’s comment. “I had been reading up on Hussain but now I suppose I’ll have to read up on Vaughan again instead.”

“The news came as a shock to most of us It’s not ideal timing between back-to-back Tests, but Nasser had obviously decided that it had got a bit too much for him and it must have been a big call for him to make,” Ashley Giles confided to a colleague.

Dennis Amiss had a different point of view. “Nasser will be remembered as a captain who was liked in the dressing room. He’s done plenty of positive things during his time in charge and, hopefully, Michael Vaughan will be able to build on that.”

The greatest tribute, however, was paid by David Pringle. “When England’s team either side of the millennium is judged by historians, they may well use terms like ‘Before Nasser’ and ‘After Nasser’ to explain the newfound rigour the side developed under him. There can be no greater compliment.”

email: a-mooraj@cyber.net.pk

Muzzling American media

I’VE long considered CNN’s Christiane Amanpour an outstanding journalist. Last week my opinion of her rose further when she ignited a storm of controversy when asked by a TV interviewer about US media’s coverage of the Iraq War.

Breaking a taboo of silence in mainstream media, Amanpour courageously replied, ‘I think the press was muzzled and I think the press self-muzzled. Television...was intimidated by the Administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News.’

Right on cue, faithful to Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering’s advice to slander all dissenting views as treason, the rabidly right-wing, anti-Muslim, pro-Israel Fox accused Amanpour of being a ‘spokeswoman for al-Qaida.’

I felt for Ms Amanpour, having myself been slandered by the US neo-conservative media as ‘a friend of Saddam’ for disputing White House claims about Iraq — whose secret police had threatened to hang me on my last visit to Baghdad.

The pro-war, neo-conservative ‘National Review,’ whose writers never have served in their own nation’s armed forces, actually had the nerve to call me, who volunteered for the US Army during the Vietnam War, ‘un-patriotic.’ These are ‘patriots’ who are ready to fight to the last American soldier - for Israel.

Christiane Amanpour is absolutely right, the US media was muzzled and censored itself. I experienced this firsthand on US TV, radio, and in print. Never in my twenty years in media have I seen such unconscionable pressure exerted on journalists to conform to the government’s party line.

Criticism of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, photos of dead American soldiers or civilians killed by bombing, were forbidden. The tone of reporting had to be strongly positive, filled with uplifting stories about liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and women freed from Taliban repression. Criticism, sharp questions, and doubt about US policy were hushed up.

The bloated corporations dominating US media feared antagonizing the White House, which was pushing for the bill - just rejected by the Senate - to allow them to grow even larger. Reporters who failed to toe the line were barred from access to the military and government officials, ending their careers. ‘Embedded’ reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan became little more than public relations auxiliaries.

Critics of Administration policies in Iraq and Afghanistan were systematically excluded from media commentary, particularly on national TV. Night after night, networks featured ‘experts’ who droned on about Iraq’s fearsome weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the US, about Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda, the urgency to invade Iraq before it could strike at America, and a raft of other fabrications.

Such ‘experts’ echoed the White House party line and all were dead wrong. Yet amazingly, many are still on air, continuing to misinform the public, using convoluted arguments to explain why they were not really wrong even when they were wrong.

I do not exaggerate when I say that much of the US media from 9/11 to the present closely resembled the old Soviet media that I knew and disrespected during my stays in the USSR during the 1980’s.

The American media, notably the sycophantic White House press corps and flag-wavers at Fox TV, treated President Bush and his entourage with the same sickeningly sugared adulation and fawning servility that Soviet state media lavished on Comrade Chairman Leonid Brezhnev.

When dimwitted Brezhnev made the calamitous blunder of invading Afghanistan, the Moscow media rapturously described the brazen aggression as ‘liberation’ that recalled the glories of World War II. The US media indulged in the same frenzied foot-kissing, and the same silly WWII comparisons over Bush’s foolhardy invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Nations, like Pakistan, that cooperated with Bush’s phony ‘war on terrorism’ were ‘democratic allies.’ Those that did not were damned by the media as ‘rogue states.’

President Bush and his neo-conservative handlers led America into these twin disasters precisely because two of the key organs of democracy - an independent, inquiring media, and assertive legislature(Congress) - failed miserably to perform their duty. They allowed themselves to be cowed into subservience. They failed to expose and vigorously oppose the sinister, proto-totalitarian Patriot Act that now so endangers America’s basic liberties.

Or, like Fox, they eagerly served as White House mouthpieces, stoking war fever and national hysteria, retailing to the public all the Administration’s wholesale disinformation about Iraq.

In a shocking attempt to silence dissenting voices, US forces bombed the news offices of the outspoken al-Jazeera TV in Baghdad, Basra, and Kabul, killing and wounding some if it staff. Independent reporters in Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel were attacked and killed by US forces.

A leading Al-Jazeera’s correspondent, Tayseer Alouni, has been arrested in Spain and charged with aiding terrorism by interviewing Osama bin Laden. The US previously accused Alouni of being pro-Iraqi; Iraq expelled him for being ‘anti-Iraqi.’ In my book, that makes him an honest, courageous journalist, just like Ms Amanpour.

So long as Bush was riding high in the polls, the media fawned on him. The media always follows power. But now that many Americans are beginning to sense they were lied to or misled by the White House, Bush’s popularity is dropping, and the media’s mood is becoming edgy and more aggressive. Perhaps even vengeful. The muzzles may soon be coming off.—Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2003

Marine parks

IN early September, delegates from across the globe descended on the South African city of Durban to chart the way forward for the world’s national parks and protected areas.

This once in a decade event is both cause for celebration and cause for concern. It is well over 100 years since the creation of the first, modern, protected area — Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

Over 10 per cent of the earth’s land surface has now been afforded protection and there are countless examples of success stories for both people and wildlife as a result.

The same, however, cannot be said for the marine world. Indeed figures to be released at the IUCN’s Vth World Parks Congress by UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre, will show that less than one per cent of the oceans and seas have been given the same kind of protection.

It is not all doom and gloom. Australia, for example, has just unveiled proposals to create large swathes of so-called “no take areas” across Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef.

These “no take areas”, in which fishing and extractive industries such as mining and dredging will be banned, will cover roughly one-third of the 350,000 square kilometre marine park up from just under 5 per cent now.

The tourism industry, which generates nearly $3 billion annually for the local and national economy and which employs more than 47,000 people, is delighted. It believes the scheme will increase the number and size of fish for the visitors to see, and improve and expand good snorkelling and diving sites.

The coming into force of the UN Law of the Sea Convention, the development of regional fisheries agreements and initiatives such as UNEP’s Regional Seas Programme are among some of the recent developments that are focusing attention on the marine world.

Many fishermen’s organizations, appalled by the collapse of stocks and the devastation of livelihoods, are demanding action too. They also realize that the unfettered use of the drift net, the bottom trawl and the purse seine means there will nothing of value left to catch in a few short years.

Last year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development and its Plan of Implementation gives governments, in partnership with industry and civil society, a blueprint for action, including for oceans.

Among its recommendations and targets and timetables are ones to, where possible, restore fish stocks to healthy levels by 2015 and to advance the implementation of the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA) to reduce the threat of pollution. Significantly, it also urges the establishment of a global network of marine protected areas.

Big questions remain, not least in areas of funding and enforcement especially in developing countries. But, there is growing evidence that well-managed marine protected areas not only cover their costs, but can generals substantial income for the benefit of local people and national economies.

The theme of this year’s Congress is “Benefits beyond boundaries”. It is time to wholeheartedly support the early stirrings of this world-wide marine protected area movement, so that there are no longer artificial boundaries between the land and the oceans.

The writer is executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme.

Bulldozing towards peace

IN Nazi Germany, they used bulldozers to clear the corpses of the dead inmates in the concentration camps of Belsen and Buchenwald. In Israel, they use bulldozers in Palestinian camps to kill the living.

No one with a heart beating at the same rhythm as that of the rest of humanity cannot but be horrified at the cold-blooded genocide committed by the Israeli army when on March 16, 2003, a workday Sunday morning, a young 23 year old American student — Rachel Corrie — was deliberately run over by an Israeli army bulldozer while she stood on a mound of earth in an attempt to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian physician’s house in the Gaza strip.

The Israeli authorities later justified the act, maintaining that ‘the home was being destroyed in an effort to block arms smuggling, and then exonerated the driver. In an age when the Arabs are accused of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, a single Israeli bulldozer has been used as a weapon of individual destruction.

What was surprising was not that such an incident should have occurred in an area of the world where genocide is a cottage industry, but that such a death should have been condoned without a murmur of protest by Ms Corrie’s own government. The death of a US national in Iraq obviously merits a greater response than that of an American defending the rights of a Palestinian.

Despite the efforts of Ms Corrie’s parents to solicit a remonstrance at the level of Capitol Hill in Washington DC, her murder shall become simply another statistic, no different perhaps from the death three years ago of Muhammad Al-Durra, 12-year-old Palestinian boy caught in the crossfire between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza strip. Who can forget the image caught by press photographers of the young boy cowering with fear behind his father, Jamal, moments before they were both shot? Muhammad died before he could live, rather like another teenager Anne Frank whose life was equally cruelly expunged before her time.

Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl who spent some years incarcerated with her family in an attic during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam during the Second World War. She was betrayed, arrested and later died in the Belsen concentration camp. Her diary of the days she spent in that cramped attic was found later by her father after the war and published. It has since become part of the literature of the Holocaust, a neo-sacred testament of the persecution of all Jews. The Gentile Ms Corrie’s e-mails to her parents before her death are unlikely to be allowed to achieve an equivalent status in the annals of human suffering.

The text of these e-mails appeared ephemerally in a British daily newspaper within a week of her murder, and her account of the pogroms to which the Palestinians were being subjected carry a poignant resonance, an echo of Anne Frank’s own eye-witness account of the humiliations inflicted on the Jews by the occupying Nazis. “150 men were rounded up”, Corrie wrote to her mother, “and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses — the livelihoods for 300 people ... I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank.”

And in another she admitted: “I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop.” But it didn’t. “Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible”.

There will be no monument to Ms Currie in Arlington cemetery because while she may have been of the right colour, race and nationality to qualify as a modern American heroine, she had espoused the wrong cause.

Perversely, the post-war history of the world has turned half-circle. The vanquished — the Germans and the Japanese — have become victors, and those who fled persecution have become themselves the instruments of racial intolerance. Hitler’s expansionist policy of Lebensraum or more living space had to be thwarted in the late 1930s; it is now kosher and an integral element of Israel’s policy as a nation-state.

Gone is the surreptitious, self-conscious support that the United States once offered Israel. Gone is the pretence of maintaining equilibrium between Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Palestine. The United States and the Arab states have one thing in common: they are governed by short men with even shorter vision.

The Americans know this because they have engineered it by ensuring the placement of leaders like President Hosni Mubarak or King Abdullah of Jordan. The Israelis realize this only too well because they are the beneficiaries of it. The Chosen People, after many millennia of displacement and migration, have now been chosen by the only superpower on earth. There must be many in Israel who must believe that the Land promised to them has finally been allowed to come into their possession. They would expect to be forgiven for their unseemly, often brutal and inconsiderate haste in converting President George W. Bush’s road map into a different sort of map, a wider, expanded demarcation of Israel’s borders.

A decade from now, historians of this period will attempt to analyse how Israel was able to extend itself at the expense of the Palestinians and to consolidate its position with such impunity, how the Israeli cabinet could dare to announce its decision to remove and if need be assassinate Chairman Yasser Arafat, and how this Judaic equivalent of a fatwa failed to elicit even a murmur of protest from tongue-tied Arab leaders. They may even have to wonder what happened to the House of Saud after the Americans had withdrawn their support and left it to the mercy of its own Wahhabi-centric policies.

For Pakistan, the axis of its loyalty to the Palestinian cause has shifted as a result of the much deeper convulsion that has occurred in world politics following the collapse of the Twin Towers of Communism — the USSR and China. Now that the whole world has been converted to the 20th century creed of capitalism, Pakistan has no option but to acknowledge that Washington and its suburb of Jerusalem are the new epicentres of global attention.

To those who have worked with Jews, who have admired their industriousness, their tenacity, their creative talents, their determination and their unquenchable instinct to survive the worst that other humans could inflict on them, the present policies of the Israeli government offer a sad repudiation of everything that all Jews have lived for and when called upon millions have died for.

In a published history of the Second World War, a survivor recalled “that quite a nice young German hospital nurse came to see him in his Company H.Q. He showed her the pictures of the Buchenwald concentration camp. She looked horrified, then suddenly her face cleared. ‘But it’s only the Jews,’ she said.’ Will future youngsters look at photographs of the innocent dead in Gaza and say: “But they were only Palestinians.”

The British comedian Peter Cook once said in the satirical revue Beyond The Fringe: “I am not a Jew. I am Jewish. I only go half the hog.” I am not a Palestinian but I am Muslim, but even as the equivalent of Cook’s half-a-hog, I have been at the receiving end of racial intolerance. It was in London during the 1960s, at a dinner party given by some friends. One of the white guests kept referring to me throughout the long evening as ‘Sambo’. I did not see the point of refuting what was a physical reality. Just as I was leaving, he called out in reparation: “I hope you did not mind my calling you Sambo!”

“Why should I?” I replied. “I am coloured. But I had thought that your being a Jew would have made you a little more compassionate.”

Enter Wesley Clark

And now there are 10. Wesley Clark, a retired four-star general who’s never held political office, appears ready — after months of teasing — to announce his entry into the Democratic presidential race.

Clark brings to the race an impressive resume heavy on the national security credentials lacking in some of his fellow Democrats (now that he’s decided he’s a Democrat): first in his class at West Point, Vietnam veteran, head of the U.S. Southern Command and NATO commander during the 1999 campaign in Kosovo.

This expertise — deployed either as the party’s nominee or, if his bid for the top spot falls short, as a vice presidential choice — could help the Democrats allay concern among some voters about whether they can be entrusted with the presidency in a post-9/11 world. Clark is an eloquent critic of the Bush administration’s alienation of allies and a proven internationalist.

As he enters the race, some questions about Clark are mechanical but significant _ for example, whether he can begin this late (as strange as that may sound) and still build an organization and raise enough money.—The Washington Post