The forgotten Canadian

I would never have thought that writing an op-ed in the Taipei Times would result in my being interviewed, 12 hours after publication, by Voice of America in Washington. On April 27, 2007, I published a piece in the Taipei Times about Huseyin Celil, a Uighur Canadian who was sentenced to life in jail in China for allegedly being part of a terrorist organization. I argue that despite precedents set by the Canadian government, as in the Maher Arar case, Celil will soon be abandoned by the Canadian government because of trade considerations.

During my half-hour telephone interview with VOA, I argued that even if Canada were to adopt a proactive approach to dealing with abuses of human rights by Beijing — which in the worst case scenario might result in short-term losses of business contracts — the long-term consequences of taking action would be fairly limited, as trade has a tendency to adjust itself. In other words, and as MacLean's argues in its March 5, 2007, issue ("Go on, take a stand," pp. 30-1), whether Canada adopts a tough stance on human rights with Beijing or not has a negligible impact on bilateral trade. A such, I argued Canada need not undermine its ideals and credibility abroad in order to conduct business with China.

Readers can read the full article, titled "Why Celil doesn't stand a chance," by clicking here.

For those who can read Chinese, the Voice of America Web site published excerpts of my telephone interview during its April 27, 2007, (10:00am – 10:30am) broadcast, which you can access at http://www.voanews.com/chinese/w2007-04-27-voa42.cfm.

Asking the wrong question

The Canadian Parliament yesterday turned down a motion, by 150 votes to 134, by the Liberal opposition requesting that Ottawa commit to a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2009. While at first glance the request would appear sound to a majority of Canadians, further investigation shows that its genesis lies in the wrong principle. The question being asked by the Liberals — or the New Democrats, who demand an immediate withdrawal — as well as the majority of Canadians who are in favor of pulling troops from Kandahar Province is whether Canada can afford the rising cost in soldiers' lives (54 to date, along with one diplomat) and in monetary terms of what is ostensibly turning into an “open-ended” military commitment to Afghanistan.

This type of opposition to the war is reminiscent of that of the great majority of Americans who, in the 1960s and with increasing momentum in the 1970s, opposed the Vietnam War. Then, much as now in Canada, the opposition resulted from calculations that the war was being too costly.

Despite this seemingly “anti-war” opposition, it is flawed because of its fundamental lack of morality, which in turn results in the wrong question being asked. What peace activists in the US through the 1970s were asking, as are the Liberals today, is whether we can afford the cost of the war. They were not against war per se; rather, they were against how much it was costing Americans then, and Canadians today.

What is not being asked, what the opponents of the Canadian presence in Afghanistan have failed to put on the parliamentary agenda, therefore, is whether we should be there in the first place. In other words, is it moral for Canadian soldiers, initially deployed to assist in provincial reconstruction, to presently be engaged in a violent war against the Taliban and other insurgents, to be fighting alongside US and other NATO troops in the most volatile area of Afghanistan? Are we welcome there, or are we deceiving ourselves, just as the US did in Vietnam (and today in Iraq), into believing we are there as “liberators”? The paradigm — that we are there to do good, or that by being there we can do good — has very much been imposed from the top-down; in other words, the government, with the complicity of the mainstream media, has told Canadians what they should believe, and very little has happened since in terms of testing and, if need be, revisiting that assumption.

Sadly, now that the motion has been defeated, we are unlikely to hear much of this type of debate, and Canadian soldiers will continue to die, and kill (and hand over suspected Taliban prisoners to Afghan authorities without assurances that they will not be tortured, if we are to believe recent reports in the Globe and Mail), in a foreign land, for a purpose whose morality — the most important factor — has not been put into question, let alone debated on.

As expected

The history of public intellectuals facing personal attacks, and sometimes threats to their safety, is, sadly, a long one. Individuals, groups and sometimes entire states will turn to slander, lawsuits and at times persecution to silent those who, through their work, attempt to expose injustices that otherwise would remain hidden. Few subjects in recent years have so often given rise to this type of behavior than Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

It was with this in mind that I wrote my article “The insidious language of victimhood,” which appeared in the Taipei Times on April 18. I knew very well that by publishing an article critical of the Israeli military’s recourse to illegal methods — in this case using Palestinians as human shields — and putting my name on it would surely invite a type of attack that has become par with the course. Already, academics like Edward W. Said and Noam Chomsky, to name just a few, as well as reporters like Robert Fisk, are well known to have been slammed by Israel for their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More so, on some occasions the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was attacked by the Israeli lobby for being “skewed” after inviting Fisk to participate in a program or of being “one sided” or “anti-Semitic” when it provided reporting on Israeli atrocities in the Occupied Territories. This type of censorship, a negative response to an article or report meant to silence their authors, is what Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent call “flak.”

So I received my first piece of “flak” yesterday, a letter sent to the Taipei Times’ Letters to the editor by a Taiwan-based Israeli. The editor, for reasons that should soon become apparent, chose not to publish it, and I will not reply to that person directly. I have nevertheless chosen to dissect it here, an exercise that should allow me to put my theories to the test. Aside from demonstrating that the writer’s arguments soon crumble upon scrutiny, responding to them gives me an opportunity to expand on some of the points I tried to make in my article.

As if often the case when flak is at play, the letter constitutes more of a personal attack than an argument resulting from solid research, and the writer oftentimes commits the very intellectual crimes he accuses his “opponent” of having committed (the so-called “one-sidedness). “There is no other way to describe the piece except as total rubbish,” the writer begins, in reference to my article, which he says was by a “writer.” Already, the writer's position of opposition is clear and furthermore the writer questions my abilities or professional skills by putting my title between quotation marks. I am not a writer, he writes. I am a “dupe.” (These types of remarks bear all the hallmarks of thought processes as part of a totalitarian state, of the type that I constantly encountered when I worked for an intelligence service.)

He then presses the matter by writing that readers “are not told of any expertise or relevant experience” on the issue that I write about, which he then argues explains why I was so easily deceived by the writings of Edward Said, a Palestinian. Aside from the fact that he also fails to mention any expertise of his own on the subject, readers here would know that I have a master’s degree in War Studies, which included a course on asymmetric warfare; a diploma in humanitarian assistance, where I met many aid workers who worked in the Occupied Territories; a diploma in peacekeeping; and that I worked for three years as an intelligence officer on the very issue of “Islamic terrorism,” including 14 months where I was in regular contact with Israeli intelligence officers. And yet the writer portrays me as a “gullible person” who “swallowed the rhetoric hook, line and sinker.” He then accuses me of being “oblivious” to the basic tenets of journalism, which hold that one should analyze both sides of a topic. In other words, the writer accuses me of bad journalism because he assumes I am only basing my assessment on Said’s work, which he erroneously says I quote in my article. The fact is, Said (and other “pro” Palestinians) constitutes only a small proportion of the enormous amount of reading I have done on the issue. During my graduate studies at the Royal Military College, most of the assigned readings on the Middle East came from think-tanks like the RAND Corporation, CSIS, the US Naval Institute, the CIA and other US centers attached to the defense and intelligence establishments — all hardly presenting material in favor of Palestinians. Moreover, in the more public sphere, I have also read, among others, Thomas Friedman, Shlomo Ben Ami and Fouad Ajami and many academic "specialists" on terrorism, such as Bruce Hoffmann and Walter Laqueur. Again, these tend to provide a view that is favorable to Israel. Lastly, as an intelligence officer, I read hundreds upon hundreds of classified reports, domestic and foreign, on the issue of Israel and its regional enemies and also spent more than a year writing threat assessments, as well as a Federal Court warrant against a Levant-based organization. Needless to say, not a single page written in the documents that I read while working there painted anything remotely close to a position favorable to Palestinians. In fact, such documents are paranoid in the extreme and see Palestinians as anythign but victims in the conflict. So the writer’s contention that my article — and the conclusions reached — were singly the result of my having been influenced by Said’s “propaganda” is invidious at best.

The writer, who cannot spend enough time blasting Said (a national past time, in some quarters), then writes that Said comes from a culture where “criticism of the Palestinians or any exoneration of Israel were tantamount to a death sentence.” Here, the writer seems to conveniently overlook the fact that throughout his life Said was attacked by both sides, as he spared neither. Not only did he never condone the use of Palestinian violence and the tactic of suicide bombings (as I do not), but he also relentlessly criticized the Palestinian authorities for their incompetence and corruption. The writer also fails to note that despite his origins, Said lived a long life in exile and was based in New York City, where he taught at Columbia University, thus making his “death sentence” argument a moot point.

The writer then argues that I should stick to “facts” and “logic” rather than appeal to the emotional. He takes issue when I write that throughout his life Said had “exposed the grave injustice done to Palestinians,” adding that I accept the “unproven premises” of Palestinians as victims and a media conspiracy to “conceal the truth” (his quotes, not mine). Sticking to facts for a moment, it is difficult to imagine anyone who has been alive in the past sixty years who could deny, based on facts, that the Palestinians have not been victims. Not only were they expelled from their homes, with millions to this day still living in atrocious conditions in refugee camps throughout the Middle East, but on a daily basis they are exposed to Israeli bombings, incursions, arrests without due process, disappearances, discrimination, long waits and searches are Israeli-created borders, and so on. To write that Palestinian is an unprovenpremise is nothing but morally repugnant.

After attacking me for my apparent lack of historical knowledge, the writer then questions my use of the term “illegal” to describe Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Leaving aside the amorality of the occupation and strictly sticking to legal matters, in terms of international law any territory gained by the use of force and held as such is illegal, which means that territory seized by Israel in the 1967 war it is holding illegally. Furthermore, by repressing an entire population because of a minority elements (Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Lebanese Hezbollah) who have turned to violent resistance, it is breaking the Geneva Convention. When it razes villages, destroys houses of suspected “militants” or terrorists, steals large quantities of potable water and uses carpet-bombing methods to arrest individuals suspected of involvement in “terrorism,” Israel is illegally occupying a people and illegally using force against them. These are the facts.

The one-sidedness of my argument, if we follow the author’s logic, is that I do not talk about Palestinian violence in my article. What he fails to understand, however, is that this is not the topic of my opinion piece, as I was focusing on the use of language to describe Israeli military action against Palestinians. Furthermore, every day people the world over are bombarded with images and news of Palestinians “terrorists” and “radicals” and “militants” and “extremists” attacking Israelis or, more recently, killing each other. Everybody is aware of that and there is no question that it does happen. What I did seek to expose, though, was that every time Israel uses force, it is depicted as self-defense or, for the more sardonically inclined among us, to liberate Palestinians, to save them from themselves, as it did in Lebanon in the 1980s (or the US did in Vietnam and Iraq, or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan). Moreover, my piece did not state that there is a “conspiracy” to hide the truth (otherwise I would not have used the term “insidious”), but rather an intellectual reflex, sometimes unconscious, to depict Israel as the victim no matter what it does. A Palestinian who calls for violence against Israel is depicted in the media as a radical or a terrorist. Why, then, won't an Israeli commander ordering the destruction of an entire neighborhood in Beirut, knowing fully well that doing so will kill countless civilians and achieve little of military significance, also be described in the media as a radical or an extremist (let alone a terrorist)? The only difference between the two is that he is part of a modern army equipped with modern weapons non-state groups like Hamas and Hezbollah could only dream of ever putting their hands on, and that for years his side has been depicted as the victim. As long as it is self-defense, it seems that it cannot be called a crime or an atrocity.

If, again, the writer of the letter wants facts, he should look at the cold numbers of victims in the numerous wars Israel has fought since its creation in 1948. In every one of them, the ratio has been somewhere around 1:10, the latter number being that of its enemies, thanks to overwhelming US military support, to the order of (what we know of) US$5 billion every year. In fact, so dedicated is the US to Israel that last week it was already announcing the resumption of sales of MK-84 "general purpose" cluster bomb munitions, worth US$65 million, to Jerusalem (3,500 of them, as per Israel's request), after a brief interruption in the wake of Israel’s illegal (yes, it is illegal as per international law) use of them in civilian areas in Lebanon, which resulted in a number of deaths and casualties after the hostilities had ended.

What the writer ultimately fails to recognize (because he is committing the very error of becoming emotional, as opposed to rational, on the issue), is that at no point do I state that Israel has no right to defend itself, nor do I ever refer to all Palestinians (or Hezbollah, with which I am quite familiar) as “peace-loving” (a cynical use by the author, in reference to the ungrateful Palestinians who turned down a peace offer that included a non-viable series of disconnected statelets that only a people facing a powerful military could ever be asked to contemplate, something else this so-called history savvy author conveniently omits). What I question is language that claims the Israeli military was “forced” (Associated Press) to turn to illegal tactics (the use of human shields, a crime of war) to conduct door-to-door operations in Palestinian territories. Having studied asymmetric warfare, I could be tempted to condone the recourse to suicide bombings as the result of an unequal armed conflict, in which one side has one of the world’s most powerful and modern military and the other has not air force, no navy, no helicopters, no cluster bombs but only small arms and home-made explosives. But I do not. I do not condone, nor do I support, the targeting of civilians by suicide bombers, or Hezbollah’s firing rockets at Israeli civilian positions. These are, without any question, illegal acts of war, as my previous writings have shown. From a tactical perspective, however, we can try to understand why Palestinian "militants" turn to such military uses, and it soon becomes evident that it would be suicidal for them to engage the Israeli military directly.

Hezbollah’s rocket attacks against Israel during Israel’s war in Lebanon last summer were illegal, and the reason I do not discuss these when, in my article, I refer to Israel’s use of cluster bombs is, again, because it is not the issue. My article was about the use of language to describe Israeli action. Just because it was using a modern military to “defend” itself (initially to free two Israeli soldiers who had been kidnapped by Hezbollah) doesn’t mean it could use its overwhelming military force to destroy a great deal of the Lebanese civilian infrastructure and kill more than a thousand civilians in the process, ten times more Lebanese — mostly civilians — than Israeli died in the conflict (mostly soldiers).

Finally, the writer attacks my conclusion, which he sardonically calls “brilliant,” that language that truly reflects reality is needed. Whether one agrees with my position is for the reader to decide. But a spade needs to be called a spade. If such language had been honestly used from the onset, perhaps there would have been more pressure on Washington — from within the US and at the international level — to stop it from launching a war against Iraq, ironically another war of “self-defense” and, post facto, when weapons of mass destruction were not discovered, to “liberate” the Iraqis, to save them from themselves. The same holds for Israel and Palestine. If Israeli actions were truly exposed for what they are, states that sell them modern military equipment would perhaps think twice. And the real victims — the Palestinians (this is not naïve use of propaganda but something that is based on facts and numbers and history) — would perhaps not feel as abandoned and wronged against as to believe that the only recourse left is to strap explosives against their waist and blow themselves up at a bus stop.

Manicheans in Ottawa

Parallel to the ongoing debate in the US over troop withdrawal from Iraq, Ottawa has been going through a similar process, with the Liberal Party proposing a bill that calls for a definite withdrawal from southern Afghanistan in 2009. The Conservative government, however, has refused to say whether it will respect that deadline, with some party members saying that Canada has a duty to remain in Afghanistan until the job is done and that it should stand by the “war on terror” (the British government has endeavoured to ban the term “war on terror,” deeming it unconstructive; it seems, however, that Canada has yet to make that intellectual journey).

Using language that is disturbingly reminiscent of that of a famous (or infamous) president south of the border, chief government whip Jay Hill (Conservative) said that “in a fight against evil, there are no conditions for a withdrawal: you either win or you lose,” buttressing his argument by comparing Canada’s mission in Afghanistan to World War I and World War II.

Setting aside for the moment the altogether false analogies in Hill’s comparisons to the two world wars, his Manichean perspective on the mission in Afghanistan (and, it follows, in the “war on terrorism”) tells us that we are fighting “evil,” as restrictive a description of the enemy as is possible. This presupposes, as some elements within the Canadian government have argued for a while, that terrorists are apolitical and have no grievances, and in the Afghan case specifically, it bans the possibility that some, if not many, elements may not perceive NATO’s presence in their country as that of a benefactor or liberator, as was the case in Vietnam and certainly is the case in Iraq today. These elements are evil, pure and simple.

This point of view implies that these monsters cannot be reasoned with and that a diplomatic approach is impossible. The only solution, therefore, cannot but be a military one. And once a government has decided it cannot lose and has embarked on a purely military way to address the problem, “winning,” if we follow Hill’s logic (note that he fails to provide a definition of the sought end state), means exterminating every single individual who opposes Canada’s and NATO’s presence in Afghanistan, their country.

The problems facing Afghanistan are immense, perhaps intractable. From the little that Canadians are able to gather, progress in the country has been, at best, slow, and the so-called improvements in the quality of life of Afghans trumpeted by Ottawa (see, for example, the Provincial Reconstruction Team section on the Department of National Defense Web site at www.forces.gc.ca) are not easily quantifiable, are certainly fragile, and could at times verge on propaganda (for example, DND says that 4.6 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan, but fails to mention if their quality of life and security upon returning has improved, if they have jobs and so on. Another example is the mention that the economy has tripled, without reference to distribution of wealth. Sixty thousand soldiers have been demobilized, we are told, but we do not know of these individuals have been given jobs in return. All that say that it is easy to throw numbers in such a way as to give the illusion of progress).

Ottawa must engage in a serious debate on whether it should remain committed to Afghanistan. But no matter what decision it ultimately makes, there should be no room for the Bush-like view of reality in terms of “good” and “evil.” The world just doesn’t work that way. Some — perhaps a lot — of people don’t want us there. Others have grievances resulting from a long history or brutal colonialism; others have lost loves ones — including innocent bystanders — on the receiving end of our guns. That anger, that hatred, doesn’t mean they are “evil.”

The insidious language of victimhood

News broke out last week that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had been using Palestinians as human shields when conducting operations in the Occupied Territories. While the practice had seemingly been used for quite a while, it took a brave human rights worker to capture it on film for the story to break out and to expose yet another IDF form of abuse. While the IDF breaking international humanitarian law is not exactly, beyond the story continues to be what I like to call the “insidious language of victimhood” in how the media covers Israeli, a longstanding practice that for 60 years now has portrayed every type of Israeli action — however inhumane — as that of the victim.

The Taipei Times published my article on the matter, titled “Victimhood and Media Rhetoric on Israeli Affairs,” in its April 18, 2007, issue. You can read it by clicking here.

The Wan-an air drill

Nothing serves to remind one that Taiwan faces the constant threat of a military attack than the Wan-an ("everything is safe") exercise, which once a year between 2:00PM and 2:30PM, brings the country to a standstill.

Such an exercise was held on Tuesday, whereupon, to the faint wail of air raid sirens, Taipei came to a quasi full stop. As a rule, people are told to stay put and vehicles must stop circulating, with police officers on almost every street corner ensuring the cooperation of the public. As per regulations, says the Taipei City Government Web site, people are instructed to seek shelter and all business activity must cease. People inside buildings — office, houses, schools — are to stay indoors, turn the lights off and shut the windows. The MRT stops operating above ground, but underground service continues uninterrupted. Individuals caught conducting business during the exercise can be fined NT$30,000 to NT$150,000 (C$1,000 to C$5,000).

Nevertheless — and perhaps as a sign that, despite signs to the contrary emanating out of China, the threat perception of Taiwanese seems to have diminished with time — some people did not respect the regulations and continued driving, and windowwashers were even seen going about their job on a building in downtown Taipei.

Still, as the drill proceeds, the usually bustling city turns eerily silent.

Events like these, regardless of the fact that they are but a simulation, confirm the reality to a country's citizens that the specter of armed conflict looms large. People who come from North America or who, like me, were born in Canada, probably will never have experienced a drill like the Wan-an, unless they grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. Despite the constant bombardment in the media of news — some hysterical, some more level-headed — about the Chinese military buildup (with a 17.8 percent increase in its budget this year) and the nearly 1,000 missiles Beijing is pointing at Taiwan, one tends to fall in the routine of daily life and forgets about the ever-present danger.

If it only serves one purpose, the drill is a stark reminder that things could go wrong, that the normal course of life could undergo a radical transformation in a matter of minutes, the time it would take for the People's Liberation Army's missiles to cross the Taiwan Strait. It makes one appreciate the value of peace even more and perhaps one a little more willing to seek ways to prevent such a scenario from becoming an horrific reality.

The Threatened Democracy

A few weeks ago, the senior editor of the Features section at the Taipei Times asked me to write a review of a new book on the Taiwan Strait titled Taiwan: The Threatened Democracy, written by Bruce Herschensohn, a former adviser to US president Richard Nixon. Given that US arch conservatives from centers such as the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institutes often appear in the Opinions section of the Times, and that Herschensohn falls on that side of the political spectrum, I jumped on the occasion to provide a counter to the usual arguments on Taiwan and China propounded by the American Right.

I find it unfortunate that the Right, rather than the liberal Left, has seized on the Taiwan “cause,” as it puts into question that group’s true motive for defending Taiwan’s right to exist as a free nation and makes one wonder if the “freedom” and “democracy” they purportedly defend are not in fact euphemism for regional hegemony in a bid to counter the Chinese “threat” the Right is so hysterically up in arms against.

The Left, so far largely silent on the issue, needs to start arguing in favor of Taiwan, which is what I hope to have begun by publishing the review.

Readers can access the full text of my review article by clicking here.

Taiwan's new "anti-terrorism" bill

The Taiwanese Cabinet last week submitted a revised "anti-terrorism" bill that should alarm every Taiwanese. Lacking a definition of what constitutes terrorism and with little oversight to ensure that intelligence and law-enforcement agencies do not overstep their responsibilities in a way that would infringe upon the rights and freedoms of individuals, the new act, if passed, would represent a grave step backwards for the nascent democracy.

Having experienced and participated in activities that could only have been launched in a system where oversight is lacking and consequently where undue infringements are deemed permissible, I felt compelled to write about the dangers the proposed bill represents to Taiwan. Visitors can view the full op-ed, published in the Monday, March 26 issue of the Taipei Times, by clicking here.

Thursday Afternoon in Taipei

On of the perks of working as an editor for a newspaper is that my work schedule is from 15:30 until 22:00, which, provided I get up early enough, gives me plenty of time in the morning and early afternoon to accomplish what people abiding by more traditional schedules could never hope of doing. Another advantage is that as newspapers are also published on weekends, one’s “weekend” need not fall on Saturday and Sunday. In my case, “weekend” is Thursday and Friday.

One little indulgence I have developed in recent months is to go, mid-afternoon, to this place called in House, a lounge bar situated in the Xin-yi district, about a five minute walk from Taipei 101. Not only is in House one of my favorite lounges in Taipei, with excellent house music and a dreamy décor, but the fact that I am going there in the middle of the week before dinnertime certainly adds to the experience.

After you have been seated by one of the invariably good-looking, fashionable waitresses or waiters, you are handed a drinks menu to choose from which offers a nice variety, from wines to whiskeys to multiple cocktails. Comfortably seated in a leather sofa, with the not-too-loud mix playing round you and the faded pink and blue hues bathing you in a dreamy mood — to which we add hundreds of candles on tables, hanging from the ceiling and on windowsills — you place your order. From noon until 18:00, all drinks come with a cake or sorbet. What will it be, a 15-year-old single malt, or a kamikaze? Red wine, or a Mai Tai?

For me, part of the experience lies in the surrealism of it all. It’s as if reality were a dial and you shifted it, say, thirty degrees. There is something unreal about being in a lounge bar in mid-afternoon on a workday. It’s like stepping into a different world — not altogether unlike the real world, but like I said, a few degrees off. I also like to observe people there, for I never find myself alone in there. For me, I bring a book and read while I munch on peanuts, take a sip from my drink and eat my sorbet or cake. Others come in small groups. Some are hunched around a portable computer, talking shop, the bright monitor an out-of-place yet natural intrusion into the otherwise somber atmosphere. Others come alone, engrossed in a cigar, or deep in conversation on the ubiquitous cell phone. It’s amazing how many people one will find in a lounge at this time of the day. While some do conduct business there, for the majority it is, like me, leisure, a hedonistic escapade from reality. Looking at them, I always wonder what it is they do so that they can be there on a weekday. True, Taipei has more than its share of utterly rich people who need not have a day job for their entire lives. Maybe the people around me think I am one of them, who knows? I could very well see myself spending entire days there, writing a novel, perhaps.

At any time, it’s a place to see and be seen, where one drops all his worries and allows himself to be embraced by the alcohol and the enthralling lounge music. Make that a weekday experience, and the escapism is all the more complete.

Empty Rhetoric in Politics

Diplomacy, it seems, is as much damage control as it is the substantial fashioning of relationships between states. The principal tool of diplomats — especially when it comes to damage control — is, obviously, rhetoric. By paying close attention to what is being said, it is easy to determine whether a state has a well-rounded, coherent strategy or is just struggling to maintain the appearance of having a handle on things. As we saw last week with US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s threats to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the issue of fighting the Taliban, contradiction are usually indicative of policymaking confusion.

This week, Washington once more proved that its policies on the Taiwan Strait issue is no more coherent. The first instance is actually a long continuation of a trend, which consists of (a) a paranoid view of Chinese military growth (the People’s Republic of China’s military budget increased 17.8 percent this year) and the incessant references to the “threat” that this poses to neighboring states and US interests in the region; and (b) of Washington’s recriminatory attitude whenever Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) makes any kind of reference to independence, which Washington never fails to slap down as a “threat to peace and security in the Taiwan Strait” and as threatening to US support for the democratic nation. Here again, the contradiction is a lurid one: non-democratic, expansionist China is a growing threat, democratic Taiwan is an ally worthy of protection, but any attempt at normalization of status or reference to independence in face of Beijing’s avowed threats of military aggression is portrayed as treason.

The reason why Washington’s rhetoric is so contradictory is that its policy on Taiwan is actually a non-policy — the maintenance, in lieu of progress, of the status quo whereby China will not invade Taiwan and the latter will not declare unilateral independence. It would be all nice well if the international system were static and the balance of power unchanging, but that is not the case. Beijing is building up and modernizing its military, and there are growing indications that Beijing may not always have full control of its military apparatus, which one day could result in enterprising individuals making military decisions that do not entirely correspond to or reflect the wishes of the civilian leadership. While the panicking, to the point of irrationality, segments of the US intelligentsia and policymaking circles overestimate the Chinese “threat” and misrepresent its aims and intentions, it remains that Beijing’s policy on Taiwan does include the use of force — and the odd 1,000 missiles it points at Taiwan as well as the language adopted in its “Anti-Secession” Act attest to that. With these two contradictory forces shaping Washington’s views, its language becomes one of obfuscation, one that simply cannot lead to political development.

Taiwan is therefore a friend, in extremis one worthy of protection, but it cannot be allowed to act in its own interest or to seek for its 23 million people the representation on the world stage that they deserve. Beijing, for its part, is at times friend, at times enemy, a partner in trade but a brewing storm over the horizon. The signals are mixed, and diplomats’ rhetoric reflects that.

Aside from contradictory language, empty, meaningless rhetoric is also part of the diplomat’s toolbox. Something needs to be said to fill a void, but once it is analyzed it is obvious that whatever was said makes no contribution whatsoever. The Taiwan Strait conflict offers many examples of this, such as when US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, visiting China over the weekend, said that the 450 air-ground missiles the US intends to sell Taiwan to equip its F16s “would be for strictly defensive purposes and consistent with our ‘one China’ policy.” Close scrutiny of the language cannot but beg the question: what other use but a defensive one would Taiwan make of these missiles — invade China, perhaps? Everybody and their dog knows that the only reason why Taipei would seek such weapons, along with other packages, is to defend itself from an eventual military attack by China (whether a successful defense, under the present conditions, can be achieved is beyond the scope of this entry).

One would think that clear, rational policies lie behind and inform the relations between states — more so when it comes to unstable issues like Taiwan and China. The reality, however, is otherwise. Look to the language, see what is being said. More often than one would think, the rhetoric is empty and the diplomat is no more than the messenger attempting to buy time.

Remembering the 228 Incident

Sixty years ago, on Feb. 28, 1947, began what would lead to the slaughter of between 20,000 and 30,000 Taiwanese during a security crackdown by Republic of China officers. The event, which ostensibly was sparked the previous day by a dispute between a cigarette vendor and an anti-smuggling officer, quickly turned into a days-long civil disorder and open rebellion against the corruption and illegitimacy of the regime that, since the handover by former colonial occupier Japan in 1945, had imposed its rule on the island. The distant Kuomintang (KMT) regime on the mainland soon sent reinforcements and in the ensuing days its officers launched in sometimes random, sometimes systematic killings. An American visiting at the time reported beheadings and rapes. The incident, for which recently released accounts now put the blame on Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), opened the door to the White Terror era, which lasted until 1987 and during which tens of thousands of Taiwanese were disappeared, imprisoned or killed.

As I write this, commemorative ceremonies throughout Taiwan are being held. Just outside the window, a procession is snaking its way through the streets of the neighborhood, loud gongs and cymbals and various wind instruments, accentuated by powerful firecrackers, paraphrasing the screams of those who fell sixty years ago.

Taiwan probably wouldn’t be what it is today without its own terrible formative incidents, of which 228 was, sadly, but one among many. Nor would it be the democracy it is today had it not been for KMT rule, however repressive it might have been. The fact is, nations must build upon the geography and history they are dealt and make the most of it. And 228, painful as the memories are, is part of that dowry. It is important that these events be remembered, dug up, and studied, that attempts to comprehend them be sustained and that future generations be taught them, as they constitute the very DNA of a people. By dealing with those memories in a peaceful — perhaps even forgiving manner — Taiwanese, as have other nations that have come to accept their violent past, can serve as an example to peoples who are currently experiencing political violence or will do so in future.

Signs of failure

Despite US President George W. Bush’s constant declarations to the effect that al-Qaeda has been weakened by the “war on terrorism” launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, analysts the world over are now revisiting this assumption (see “How not to win,” Feb. 26).

A clear indication of this failure to eliminate the threat can be found in recent comments by no less a player in antiterrorism than Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of the British domestic intelligence service, MI5. In November, Manningham-Buller — well-known for her usually less alarmist assessments of the terrorist threat than those of the government she serves — said that since 2005 MI5 had identified 30 major terrorist plots in Britain and was monitoring the activities of — take a deep breath — no less than 1,600 Britain-based individuals from approximately 200 terrorist networks. This is on the home front alone! The exact same figures were repeated by London Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson at a security conference in Sydney, Australia, on Monday.

With the population of Great Britain established at 60.7 million as of late last year, this means that there is one terrorist suspect for every 38,000 British — an astounding figure. Such a ratio would mean that Canada, with a population of 33 million, has 868 terrorists in its midst. If this were the case, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service would have to grow something like eight-fold so that it could monitor the activities of all those suspects. And this is excludes all the other usual groups targeted by intelligence services — the usual suspects, if you will — such as China, Russia, Iran and others. Given, based on my experiences, the usual ratio (and I am being very conservative here) of 2 intelligence officers for every target of an investigation, this would mean that in Canada, more than 1,700 intelligence officers would be working on the al-Qaeda file, a figure that excludes the communication intercepts specialists, translators, and other operational staff, not to mention pay and administrative staff, lawyers, and so on. (As of last year, the total workforce at CSIS, including administration, pay services and others, was approximately 2,400.)

But what those numbers truly show is that if they are true, the West is clearly doing something wrong, so wrong, in fact, that defeat in its “war on terrorism” is almost a fait accompli. Ever since they launched the campaign against al-Qaeda and other like-minded groups in 2001, the architects of the “war on terror” have repeatedly said that this new war is as much a military campaign as it is a war for the hearts and minds of people in the Muslim world. Given the MI5 numbers, it would appear that the hearts and minds part has either gone terribly wrong — or worse, that the leadership didn’t mean what it said. This, of course, is not entirely impossible, as to this day British Prime Minister Tony Blair still refuses to acknowledge that Britain’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan have absolutely no impact upon domestic security.

The most alarming part is that even if the figures are most likely overblown, the intelligence community and the British government believe they are true, and they don’t seem to grasp that they are indicative of a monumental failure on the diplomatic and hearts and minds front. Absent such an understanding, such figures — real or inflated — can only but go up.

How not to win

Amid rising fears — as it does every year around this time — of a new Taliban “spring offensive” against NATO troops in Afghanistan and rising concerns that al-Qaeda, to quote Condoleezza Rice’s odd wording, “has tried to regenerate some of its leadership” and may, as some so-called security experts would have us think, be planning future attacks, here comes US Vice President Dick Cheney, originally bound for meetings with the Afghan proconsul Hamid Karzai but barred from reaching Afghanistan — not by the Taliban, or terrorists, but rather by snow. Cheney therefore makes a secret stop in Pakistan and holds a lunch meeting with President Pervez Musharraf.

The symptoms of incoming defeat often lie in the things that are said by politicians and their spokespersons. For a few years now, the lies and contradictions coming out of the US military leadership in Iraq and in Washington when it talks about Iraq, have served as signal posts indicating the way ahead, and we all know what the road looks like. Because of the sheer amplitude of the Iraq fiasco, which now threatens to inflame an entire region, Afghanistan and even al-Qaeda have been taken off the front page. In fact, as Bruce Hoffman, professor at Georgetown University, puts it: “it appears that Iraq blinded us to the possibility of an al-Qaeda renaissance. The United States’ entanglement there has consumed the attention and resources of our country’s military and intelligence communities — at precisely the time that Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda commanders were in their most desperate straits and stood to benefit most from this distraction.”

So five years on, not only has the world’s most powerful military, with the support of some NATO countries, failed to destroy al-Qaeda, but it has in fact allowed it to regroup. Rather than take the blame for its incapacity to focus on the task at hand — i.e., “defeating” al-Qaeda following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — and to admit that its adventure in Iraq was misguided at best, Washington is resorting to the age-old dirty trick of shifting the blame. Every now and then, it lambastes its servants at NATO and tells them to do more in Afghanistan, to deploy more troops, to be more aggressive in their pursuit of the Taliban.

More recently, however, the Bush administration has turned the screw on the Pakistani government, which it wants to be more aggressive in its hunt for al-Qaeda. Reports of varying credibility claim that many insurgents attacking Coalition forces in Afghanistan use Pakistan — more specifically the Waziristan area — as a base. Musharraf’s statement that Pakistan “has done the maximum in the fight against terrorism,” was insufficient to prevent finger-pointing in Washington. “The Pakistanis remain committed to doing everything possible to fight al-Qaeda, but having said that, we also know that there's a lot more that needs to be done,” said the ever-Orwellian presidential spokesman Tony Snow. US administration officials now say that if Pakistan, despite the fact that it has done the “maximum” it can, fails to combat al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the so-called “tribal areas” (note the use of language to describe the area where the insurgents allegedly find haven, giving its people an aura of savageness not unlike that which has been used throughout history to characterize groups that needed to be civilized, or altogether eradicated) more aggressively, Washington’s military aid to Pakistan could be cut. In other words, Pakistan would need to receive certification, from no less a figure than George W. Bush, that it is doing all it can to fight al-Qaeda. Since what this imposes on Pakistan is hardly achievable (after all, it’s not like the US has itself been successful at combating insurgencies), we can easily predict that Islamabad would get a failing grade.

One wonders, however, what could be accomplished by this. This is a perfect example of the signals mentioned above, the signs that matters are spiraling out of Washington’s control. The language piles into contradictions. If it were to follow upon its threat to Pakistan, Washington would weaken it military at a time when it asks it to do more. Run faster or else I’ll stop giving you water. Stop giving the marathoner water and he is sure not to complete the race.

What the planners in Washington fail to understand is that its Manichean view of the war on terrorism — the “us against them” or “good versus evil” attitude it has adopted since 9/11 — is the wrong template for a country like Pakistan that is being compelled to wage war against its own people. Things on the ground are not black and white, and not all inhabitants in the “tribal” area are pro-Taliban or al-Qaeda supporters. But Bush, Cheney and their advisers fail to see that, or simply don’t care. The only sure way Musharraf could accomplish what Washington demands of him would be by razing northern Waziristan to the ground, something even Musharraf cannot bring himself to do. Effectively, what Washington is asking the Pakistani president to do is the very same type of action it exploited to demonize a recently hanged dictator — localized ethnocide. But even if Musharraf didn't go to that extent, he must always gauge the reaction of Pakistanis to what he does. In other words, he muct make domestic political calculations.

So Pakistan is stuck in a corner, and the fault is Washington’s. The Taliban spring offensive will come, as it does every year, and al-Qaeda will continue to regroup. Unable to focus on one thing, Washington will continue to do what it does best: call upon its proxies in the region and within NATO to do more, criticize them for not doing enough, and turn its attention elsewhere.

In Iran, perhaps?

A sound signal, with a caveat

The ruling last week by the Supreme Court of Canada that the antiterrorism provision allowing the authorities to detain indefinitely suspected terrorists was counter to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — coming less than a month after Maher Arar received an official apology and a $11.5 million compensation from the Canadian government for its role in his deportation to Syria in 2002, where he was tortured — sends an encouraging signal to the world that Canada is in remission and that it recognizes, however belatedly, that some of the things it has done in the name of security have breached its age-old contract with its citizens.

At the heart of the issue are the Security Certificates which, under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), are emitted against foreign nationals or permanent residents suspected of terrorism. The certificates allow for the detention, without a fair judicial process, of those individuals for extended periods of time, pending deportation. Ostensibly to protect intelligence sources (usually foreign) and methods of collection, the accused and their defense lawyers are given no access to the charges against them or the intelligence used to back those charges, making a proper defense in the court of law virtually impossible. It is a system that, not altogether unfairly, has prompted comparisons to the manner in which the US has treated its prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Eight cases are pending, and twenty have been resolved since 1991. Of the latter, 15 were deported. Of the 28 individuals, nineteen were of Arabic, Northern African or Persian origin. Unfortunately for the individuals whose cases are pending, the court suspended the ruling for a year to allow for a rewriting of the relevant parts of IRPA. The three most prominent cases — Hassan Almrei, Mohammed Zeki Mahjoub and Mahmoud Jaballah — this means a continuation of detentions that started in 2001, 2000 and 2001, respectively. Pictures: Mohamed Harkat (Algeria) released on bail in June 2006; clockwise from centre left: Hassan Almrei (Syria), Mohammed Mahjoub (Egypt), Mahmoud Jaballah (Egypt) and Adil Charkaoui (Morocco), freed on conditional release in February 2005.

Were those individuals Canadians by birth and — let us put it bluntly — Caucasian and non-Muslim, it is highly unlikely that the public, along with government, would allow their detention to continue for a single additional day without fair trial, let alone a year. But given the current state of affairs in the post-911 world and the racist slant against individuals of Middle Eastern or Persian origin, Almrei, Mahjoub and Jaballah will remain incarcerated without provisions for a fair trial with access to the charges against them. Moreover, the ruling was accompanied by a caveat stating that prolonged detention would be allowed if the new version of the law conforms with the Charter. In other words, despite the seemingly path-breaking ruling, there is no assurance that those three individuals — and others to come — will receive a fair trial, let alone be freed and compensated.

This cannot be allowed in a democracy based on a system of law. Whether they are citizens or not, individuals suspected of participation in terrorism-related activities — this alone casting a wide net encompassing all kinds of activities, both passive and active — deserve the full set of defense tools granted individuals suspected of other crimes. If found guilty in a fair trial, they should face the full consequences of their acts. But we cannot allow for the continuation of a system whereby suspects are detained for years without the means to defend themselves and cannot know the substance of the charges against them — especially when much of the intelligence used to send them to jail in the first place is, as most things intelligence-related, of questionable value, oftentimes based on innuendo, institutional sloppiness, false assumptions or outright racism.

Without provisions for a fair trial and unmitigated respect for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Security Certificates are only a tool used by authorities to conceal less-than-airtight cases bent on ridding themselves of individuals who happen to be of the wrong ethnic or religious group.

The Middle Eastern Arms Race

As if the bloody Iraq civil war, continuing flare-ups in Palestine and the occasional bombing in Lebanon were not proof enough of the growing instability in the entire Middle East, the arms trade show that opened last weekend in the United Arab Emirates — and the billions of dollars that mainly Sunni states in the region intend to spend there — surely is a sign that, post toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, all is not well in the area.

Of course, for the US arms industry, the news that states like Saudi Arabia, to give but one example, intend to spend as much as US$50 billion at the fare purchasing fighter aircraft, cruise missile and attack helicopters, is delightful. But in the wake of an invasion that was hailed as a new birth for the Middle East (remember the Bush promise of bringing democracy to the region), the arms race by states whose record on democracy is far from envious (again, Saudi Arabia) and whose purchasing of those weapons cannot but prop the undemocratic regimes (if all the projected deals fall through, weapons providers will be making as much as US$60 billion in sales), is as clear a sign if ever there was one that the whole quixotic endeavor was utter failure. Nothing proves this failure more than an arms race pitting Shiite Iran (and its allies in states like Lebanon and Syria) and Sunnis.

Not satisfied with already having failed in Iraq and perpetuated hatred for Israel through its moral and political support for Jerusalem’s actions in the Occupied Territories and, last summer, in Lebanon, the US is now banking on the fears it has created by demonizing Tehran and its nuclear program — added to its accusations that failure in Iraq is the result of Iranian meddling there — to arm the region.

So, from the prospect of democratization a mere four years ago, what the world now faces is a divided Middle East whose constituents are racing against time to equip themselves with the means to wage war against one another. If, as many fear, the US decides to launch strikes against Iran, either because of its actions in Iraq or, more likely, its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia will have little choice but to side with Washington and could be sucked into the conflict (though, despite the billions it already has spent purchasing arms from the US, the kingdom is far from capable of engaging in a modern military confrontation, as it was in 1991, which led to the deployment of US troops there to prevent an Iraqi invasion; and of course whatever it is that Riyadh bought over the weekend will take years before it is integrated into its armed forces). Furthermore, an attack on Iran cannot but engender some reprisal from Tehran itself as well as its regional ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, which itself is on the brink of an internal armed conflict — a conflict that, in turn, would lead to Syrian and Israeli participation, as happened in the 1980s.

It is surprising how little has changed, except for the amplification, through inept military adventurism and a total abandonment of diplomacy by Washington and, to a lesser extent, London, of old divides. The solution, it appears, is not, despite Condoleezza Rice’s tour of the region, a new diplomatic course, but rather selling an unprecedented quantity of weapons to states on the brink of war.

If, in the wake of London’s decision to pull out of Iraq, Washington still wonders whether it should pack up and leave, a region-wide conflagration involving a mix of terrorism, insurgency and conventional battles surely would be the tipping point. The last time the US took a hands-off approach to a military conflict in the Middle East was in the 1980s, when Iraq launched an invasion of Iran. That conflict lasted eight years, with devastating consequences.

If Taiwan serves as an example (and there is no reason to believe that Washington’s relationship with Middle Eastern states is any different), there is no imagining what the pressure on so-called “allies” in the region for them to buy military equipment must be like. These states are being told that they must buy weapons to a level largely dictated by Washington so that they can defend themselves, or at least hold off until the US can intervene. If they fail to do so, as Taipei now has for a few years, they will be reprimanded by Washington. Through shadowy, backroom diplomacy engineered by influential arms vendors, Middle Eastern kingdoms are spending billions buying weapons that can only lead to their defeat, for no one will ever win such a complex conflict as a Middle East-wide war.

Who in his right mind — except those whose sense of morality has been rotten by greed — could look at the arms expo in the UAE and see this as a positive development? Given the situation, such arms fares should be banned altogether.

The human comedy

As an editor at a newspaper, many stories come across my desk that seem like they’ve been pulled from a comedy script. Those that I like most are the paradoxes and coincidences that show us that no matter how seriously we humans tend to take ourselves, life tends to have the upper hand and does so with thunderous laughter. Here are three gems that I came across recently.

In late January this year, Taiwan and Israel held their ninth economic and technological cooperation conference. Two-way trade between the two countries for the first 11 months of last year amounted to a little more than US$1 billion. The conference was therefore held to strengthen the links between the two states and encourage further investment and cooperation. There is no small irony in the fact that among the Taiwanese delegation to the conference was the Vice Minister of Economic Affairs, Hsieh Fa-tah (謝發達), whose first name, once Romanized, is oddly reminiscent of a certain Palestinian liberation movement.

The second one occurred yesterday in Grenada, a Caribbean state that in the mid-1990s switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing. For the past years, Beijing has been financing various projects on the cash-strapped island, including a sports stadium whose construction was recently completed. To celebrate the even, a ceremony was held, with the president and various high-ranking Chinese representatives in attendance, including the Chinese ambassador. A band was brought in to play national anthems. The look on Chinese officials’ faces must have been priceless as they struggled to keep their composure upon being served not the Chinese national anthem — but that of Taiwan.

The last one also took place yesterday. During the past week, the Taipei International Book Exhibit was held at the Taipei World Trade Center, close to where I live. This year’s theme was Russian literature, much of which has only begun to be translated into Chinese. In the afternoon, a British man who has made it his mission in the past years to save Japanese forests from the axe by purchasing them held an questions-and-answer session — in Japanese — with the media. Of course, the Taipei Times was there and coverage appeared on page two. Now, another feature of page 2 is the Lunar Prophecy box, which is offered every day and is based on sage advice found in ancient Chinese tomes. The Lunar Prophecy is twofold: it tells people which activities the day is good for and which ones it is bad for. So, as the reader moves his eyes from the story about the man who tried to save forest from being cut toward the Lunar Prophecy box, what does he see under “today is a good day for…”?

Cutting down trees.

A reminder from China

Two days before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was to officially release its much-expected report in Paris on the human impact on the environment and global warming, Taiwan was sent a strong reminder from China that pollution knows no borders, makes no distinction between rich and poor, young and the elderly, and is a threat to all. That reminder came on the back of a cold front coming from China, which with it carried diverse forms of aerosolized industrial chemicals from China’s industrial coastline. Particulate and sulfur dioxide levels were at such levels that the Environment Protection Administration advised people with cardiovascular or respiratory diseases to stay indoors.

Conditions in Taipei City were not as severe as other areas in Taiwan, and yet, when I looked out the window yesterday morning, the effects of that pollution were visible to the naked eye: the apartment where I live is located less than a kilometer from the Taipei 101 building. On any given day, it is perfectly visible. But for a while yesterday the sky had a gray, steel tinge to it and the world’s tallest occupied freestanding structure was hiding behind the veil of atmospheric pollution. Ten in the morning had the light quality of a strange dawn.

Then, as I stepped outside, I fully understood why the EPA had made an advisory targeting people with respiratory or cardiovascular problems: a mere 20-minute walk left fighting for air, and my nose was clogged. All around me, people were sneezing, most of them behind the protective masks so prevalent in East Asia. As there is no alternative to breathing, one has little choice but to take in the foul-smelling oxygen, knowing full well that this implies breathing in some chemicals as well. The most astonishing thing was that a large part of those pollutants, this vaporized industrial waste, had not even originated in Taiwan proper, but in China, more than 100km away across the Taiwan Strait.

The problem of pollution is far worse in China, where environmental regulations are at best nominal only and in most cases inexistent. According to the Guardian, air pollution is responsible for 400,000 premature deaths in China every year. Every year, thousands upon thousands of people die prematurely as a result, and many children are born with respiratory and allergy problems at a prevalence historically unseen. A Chinese government study conducted in 2003 revealed that more than 100 million Chinese lived in cities where the air quality was considered “very dangerous.”

A small reminder after a walk that left me breathless, eyes itchy and nose runny, that whatever the IPCC reveals in its report on Friday, we should take seriously. If the world continues to pollute at the current rate and if its governments continue to see the Kyoto Protocol as a sound bite — if not an object of contempt, as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to — rather than an obligation to generations present and future, then it can only get worse and other landmarks will begin to disappear, in some areas perhaps for good.

Which brings me to my last point: whether it is true or not that the Harper government played a hand in the sacking of Canadian Environment Commissioner Johanne Gelinas, there is no such thing as being too tireless, or showing too much dedication, in promoting environmental protection.

A democracy health check

Let me first open with an apology to my readers for the irregularity of my postings. A few months ago, my literary agent requested that I make some changes to the first part of the volume I have been working on for more than a year. As a consequence, I have been dividing my time between my regular job at the Taipei Times and, on most mornings, sitting in a coffee shop with coffee and portable computer, making said changes to my document. One casualty of this heavy intellectual schedule has been this site. Work on my book has progressed well, and if everything goes as planned, I should be done making the edits by the end of this month, after which point one can expect to see an upsurge in postings herein.

It is no small irony that the country that, without the approval of the UN Security Council and with world opposition, invaded Iraq to ex post facto rid it of a murderous dictator who didn’t care for the wellbeing of his people, is now being led by a president who has become so unaccountable to not only the people he represents but the very democratic institutions that give his power legitimacy as to claim that he will continue the course, add soldiers in Iraq and all the while backhand the advice given him by, among others, the members of the Iraq Study Group.

The Executive Branch of the US has become so powerful that even a vote in the Senate against the President Bush’s decision to augment the US military presence in Iraq by some 21,500 soldiers is incapable of preventing him from doing so. Even worse, a few weeks ago, Bush made the headlines when he said that he would stay the course even if he only had the support of his wife and his dog. Heck, even Saddam, at the height of his power, needed the approval of more people than that, as do the powers in Beijing, however undemocratic they are.

In many ways, the US has become a dictatorship where the militarized few can hide budgets, spend at will, and decide upon war and peace as they see fit.

The so-called exporter of democracy is slowly but surely turning into an anti-democratic force that promises to sow much discord the world over, with tremendous peril for all. Bush has become an emperor, confident in the infallibility of his vision, accountable to no one but to himself and, perhaps, to the god who purportedly gives him guidance and to the handful of advisers who surround him. His deluded mission is one to civilize and to liberate. It is, in many respects, akin to Japanese emperor Hirohito’s in the lead-up to World War II.

The state of US democracy, supposedly the very model for the world to adopt, has become so decayed as to perhaps necessitate, ironically, the very antithesis of democracy — a coup — to stop the decision-makers before they further enflame the Middle East or exacerbate its alienation of Beijing.

Blindly forward in Iraq

By any yardstick imaginable, 2006 did not end well for Iraq and its people. Even the execution, in extremis, of Saddam Hussein mere days after his sentencing didn’t bring the sense of catharsis that his executioners might have wished for. In fact, the hanging of the former president — in the spirit of the age caught on film and distributed via the Internet around the globe — may not have achieved more than bring satisfaction to his long-time enemies in the Shiite camp and to exacerbate the already gaping divide between the country’s — and the region’s — Sunnis and Shiites. After all, vengeance rarely, if ever, manages to bring the sweet taste that the perpetrator had sought while planning his actions.

As for the US, whether its ambassador in Baghdad requested, as the US claims, that the execution be postponed or not, it, too, comes out the loser, as the perception will always be that American hands were behind the hanging in yet another attempt to humiliate Islam and its people. Saddam’s ultimate downfall may have brought a modicum of celebration in Washington, London and Jerusalem, but it certainly hasn’t cleared the path to victory in Iraq. For all intents and purposes, the images of Saddam’s execution will have made matters worse.

More than ever, the so-called Coalition forces in Iraq will be looking for an exit strategy, as the body count in Iraqi lives — established at somewhere between 14,000 and 16,000 for 2006 — and now 3,000 for US soldiers, keeps increasing. Many had placed their hopes in the findings of the Iraq Study Group Report, a multi-month, much-lauded effort to look at the facts on the ground and establish a new strategy which in the end would allow for most US forces to depart the embattled country.

The report — published for public consumption last month by Vintage — will engender a necessary debate within society, and for the most part its findings are valuable. It is honest in assessing that the situation is deplorable and that victory (whatever the term signifies) is by no means a certainty. Gone is the hubris, the “can-do” attitude of the innocent Western agent sent abroad. Instead, the language of unwavering optimism which characterized the Bush administration’s view on Iraq in 2003 and 2004 has been replaced by the cautious “improve” and “no guarantee for success.” The report underscores the cold reality of the possibility of failure in Iraq, with dire consequences not only for the US but the region as well. The clear-eyed assessment of the situation in Iraq is the most valuable contribution this report is likely to make. Whether it is heeded by decision-makers remains to be seen.

Where the report comes short is in the recommendations that it makes, not so much because the strategy proposed makes no sense but rather because it perpetuates the lack of definition that historically has caused so much headaches to occupying powers facing an insurgency. Part of the new strategy involves giving the responsibility for security to Iraqi forces, with US forces providing training, weapons and, when needed, support. All in all, however, US soldiers are no longer to play a primary role in providing security to Iraqis. Moreover, the US would use a system of sticks and carrots whereby a failure on Iraq’s part to reach certain milestones and demonstrate that it is acting could result in a US pullout regardless of whether the country has been stabilized or not.

The report then says that US troops should move away from a policing role in Iraq and “fight al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq using special operations teams.” (p. 72). Therein lies the major flaw in the strategy: the report does not provide definitions for what constitutes mere criminality, sectarian conflict, insurgency, guerrilla and terrorism, or what, for that matter, distinguishes al-Qaeda in Iraq from the Sunni-backed insurgency. What constitutes a terrorist act? Which definition will be adopted — the Israeli one, in which every single act of resistance is “terrorism,” or one that solely focuses on attacks on civilians? Granted, there is no way to clearly define violent activities in a place like Iraq. But by failing to even attempt to provide distinctions and thereby give focus to US military activities, US forces will be caught doing the very same thing they have been doing for years, a situation with thus annuls any benefit that might have arisen from a change in strategy.

A lack of definitions for fundamental terms — terrorism, insurgency — will hound US and other forces in Iraq for years to come, regardless of whether the recommendations made in the Iraq Study Group Report are followed or not. In the meantime, countless Iraqis will continue to suffer and see their world continue on the path to collapse. If the situation perdures — and if the conflict, as it very well might, turns into a regional conflagration — some might even begin to wish a return to life under Saddam, the deposed tyrant who we are told was the very reason the US invaded Iraq and whose execution last week failed to bring the sense of achievement, of finality, that the architects of the war surely had hoped for.

Turning up the notch on fear, again

Now that the holidays are over and that people have returned to their normal lives, the time has come to strike some fear into them lest the spirit of the holidays unduly spill into everyday life. After all, since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, people in the West have come to expect that there are dangers lurking somewhere in the background. Governments tell them so. But perhaps the alleged plot to bomb aircraft at Heathrow Airport in Britain was already receding too far into the past. Something needed to be said — in the absence of something being done — to resuscitate the fear in people’s heart.

Cue, therefore, on Jan. 2, a report by the Canadian Press based on a document released by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in October through an Access to Information (or is it Disinformation?) request.

According to the CSIS study, it is “quite surprising” that terrorists have not yet detonated a “dirty bomb” — known in the trade as a radiological dispersal device (RDD) — given that making such a crude weapon is, according to CSIS, relatively easy and the materials required to make one readily available to ordinary citizens.

“The technical capability required to construct and use a simple RDD is practically trivial, compared to that of a nuclear explosive device or even most chemical or biological weapons,” the study says, adding that the Sept. 11 attacks had raised fears that terrorists would try to crash airliners into nuclear power stations or find ways to disperse radioactive material with the intent of causing economic damage by rendering an entire area off limits.

CSIS claims that the detonation of an RDD is “undoubtedly the most likely” terrorist scenario involving radioactive sources, adding that “it is quite surprising that the world has not yet witnessed such an attack.”

This, again, is mere fear-mongering on the part of the authorities, as it uses that which cannot be demonstrated to create a monster on the wall. A closer look at the phraseology and choice of words in the report shows how shallow the assessment is. By saying that a dirty bomb is undoubtedly the most likely terrorist attack involving radioactive material, it is simply stating that other methods — breaking into a nuclear power station and somehow finding a way to cause a detonation, or building a nuclear device and managing to smuggle it to a targeted area — are more onerous. And they are. Putting a rifle in one’s mouth and pressing the trigger is also undoubtedly the most likely way someone would end his life — more likely than achieving death by waiting for UV rays from the sun to cause a fatal skin cancer.

What the report conveniently fails to mention — and this is the reason why it expresses surprise at the world having yet to suffer such an attack — is that physical aggression is contingent on two factors: capabilities and intent. Clearly, if building and detonating a RDD is so easy — after all, the materials required to build one are at hand in medical laboratories and universities — the variable that has been missing is intent. What the report also fails to mention is that would-be terrorists could also fairly easily build conventional explosives using ammonium nitrate — fertilizer — and other available chemicals to commit a deadly attack. That this hasn’t occurred in Canada is also a result of lack of intent.

The CP article then mentions that certain parts of the report were too sensitive to have been released through the Access to Information request. This likely is nothing more than the means by which CSIS leaves doubt in the public’s mind. What is that material that is so secret it cannot be made public? Could it be information about individuals known to CSIS who have been building such a device? By leaving black holes inviting wild fantasy, CSIS ensures that the information it gives is just enough to feed nightmares. In reality, however, this so-called sensitive information is probably little more than foreign agency information on which the CSIS report is based. The truth is, it is not the information itself that is of a sensitive nature — after all, everything in the report can be sourced in open — that is unclassified — material. The sensitive information is likely the name of the foreign agency which provided the information. In the name of good relations with its allies, CSIS is bound not to reveal the identity of the foreign agencies it deals with, and any reference thereto for public disclosure will consequently be sanitized.

Despite this renewed attempt on the part of Canadian authorities to increase the level of fear that there are terrorists out there picking apart a discarded X-ray machine to build a radiophobic’s worst nightmare, Canadians need not worry. There is a multitude of means and ways by which people with bad intentions can wreak physical, human and economic havoc. Modern society is filled with technologies that can be turned against us. In fact, certain martial artists make it their pride to transform everyday objects into deadly weapons. Murders can be committed using a pair of scissors, a pencil — heck, even a door stopper would do the job. Are the daily front pages plastered with such stories? No. Why? Lack of intent.

The fact that a RDD attack has not materialized is not for lack of opportunities. It simply is lack of intent.