Archives: Articles

On a rare visit to the Pentagon, Mr Obama said the US needed to rethink its military strategy, placing a greater emphasis on naval and air power while reducing the size of the army, because of both the fiscal crisis and the drawdown of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are now turning the page on a decade of war,” he said. “We have to renew our economic strength here at home, which is the foundation of our strength in the world.” However, he noted that the US would still spend more on its armed forces than the next 10 biggest military powers combined.

The new strategy underlines the Obama administration’s focus on the Asia-Pacific region in the coming decades, alongside the Middle East. While Mr Obama and other officials did not mention China by name, a strategy paper was more blunt in describing potential military threats from Beijing, at one stage listing it alongside Iran as one of the principal challenges.

“States such as China and Iran will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projections capabilities,” the document says. It also notes: “Over the long-term China’s emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the US economy and our security in a variety of ways.”

Defence chiefs rejected suggestions that the US was abandoning a strategy of being able to fight two large ground wars at the same time, saying that the new strategy would allow response to any threats that might emerge. But they reaffirmed that ground forces will not be structured to conduct the sort of long-term counterinsurgency campaigns unleashed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The subsequent scaling back of the army and parts of the marine corps could have big implications for the continuing US military presence in Europe, which Leon Panetta, defence secretary, said would “adapt and evolve”.

The new military strategy is based around $487bn in cuts from planned spending that the Pentagon will have to make over the next decade. A further $500bn in cuts could be forced on the Pentagon if Congress cannot agree on other deficit reduction plans. Mr Panetta said that these extra cuts would threaten “core US national security interests”.

Aware of the likely criticisms from Republicans, Mr Obama cited advice from Dwight Eisenhower, the late Republican president, that defence spending should be balanced against other important national programmes.

But Buck McKeon, Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, described the changes as “a lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America”.

By Geoff Dyer in Washington

5 January 2012

@ Financial Times

Peace for Life

An Islamic Response to Kairos Palestine

Preface

An Islamic Response to Kairos Palestine is an initiative of the Muslims in Peace for Life (PFL), a global solidarity network of peace advocates rooted in faith communities engaged in various forms of resistance to state terrorism and Empire and committed to interfaith, South-South and South-North solidarity and progressive faith-based responses to the urgencies of justice and peace.

The Kairos Palestine – a Moment of Truth1 is a declaration issued in 2009 and signed by most Palestinian Christian leaders. Its signatories described the document, drawn up after “prayer, reflection and an exchange of opinion,” as a cry from within the suffering in our country, under the Israeli occupation, with a cry of hope in the absence of all hope, a cry full of prayer and faith in a God ever vigilant, in God’s divine providence for all the inhabitants of this land. Inspired by the mystery of God’s love for all, the mystery of God’s divine presence in the history of all peoples and, in a particular way, in the history of our country, we proclaim our word based on our Christian faith and our sense of Palestinian belonging – a word of faith, hope and love.

Kairos Palestine has resonated across the world and numerous communities and religious leaders have responded to it. It is a heartfelt call from our oppressed Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters to the world to act in the face of their daily humiliation and dispossession. PFL is deeply committed to intensifying the solidarity of the global religious community against Israeli Apartheid, and the PFL Muslim members feel a particular moral duty to respond to Kairos Palestine from an Islamic perspective. We say to our Christian sisters and brothers in Palestine: “We hear your cries; you are not alone. We need each other now more than ever before and we commit ourselves to walking the journey towards freedom and justice in Palestine side by side with you.”

In responding to Kairos Palestine we respond to the Islamic imperative to identify with the oppressed and the marginalized. We do so in a manner that a) reflects our inadequacies as Muslims; b) rejects attempts to co-opt our faith for the agenda of Empire; and c) offers a vision of Islam that is just, compassionate and recognizes the sacredness of all of humankind while maintaining a particular bias for those whom the Qur’an refers to as the marginalized in the earth (mustad`afin fil-ard).

Muslims across the globe are invited to sign this document.

1 Kairos Palestine – a Moment of Truth is available online http://www.kairospalestine.ps/?q=content/document

An Islamic Response to Kairos Palestine

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Dispenser of Grace

Oh you who have attained to faith, rise as witness-bearers for Allah, with regard to Justice, though this may be against yourselves […] Do not follow your own desires lest you swerve from justice; for if you distort the truth, God is indeed aware of all that you do. (Al-Nisa, ayah 135)

We are Muslims – religious leaders, scholars, activists and ordinary believers struggling to live out our faith in fidelity to the Noble Qur’an and the demands of justice. We hail from different parts of the world and represent diverse tendencies within the House of Islam.

For decades we have witnessed the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people – Muslims, Christians and others – of their land and watched as they were stripped of their human rights and treated as sub-human outsiders in their ancestral land. We have regularly lamented this and protested against their ongoing persecution and marginalization. We acknowledge that our responses could have been stronger and that we have not adequately articulated the Islamic imperative to stand in solidarity with the oppressed.

Kairos Palestine – A Moment of Truth has awakened in us a keenness to speak truth to power – even if that power may reside within us. In the words of the Qur’an, ‘wa law ‘ala anfuskim” (“even if this may be against yourselves”, Al-Nisa, ayah 34).

Our statement in response to Kairos Palestine document is addressed to a) the Muslim ummah (global community), b) the Christians of Palestine, c) the Jewish community and d) the international community.

Our Message to the Muslim Ummah

We affirm the often heroic actions of many in our community who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian and other oppressed people, making huge sacrifices in order to remain true to the Islamic demand for justice and dignity. At the same time, we stand in humility in front of Allah for our collective and individual failures to support vigorously the struggle of the Palestinian people. In the face of the daily humiliation and injustices visited upon Palestinians, we have been guilty of living a pretence of normalcy and of often inadequate responses. The rulers and governments in many of our countries have offered half-hearted public condemnation of Zionism and the occupation of Palestinian land and lives, on the one hand, while having actively or passively collaborated with the Israeli regime to contain their populations’ solidarity with the Palestinian people.

We are proud of the many parts of the ummah who have, recently, compelled their rulers to yield to their cries for freedom and justice. We call on our people to be vigilant to ensure that that their victories not be usurped by those Western powers who have been deeply complicit in the oppression of the Palestinian people.

We acknowledge our responsibility to work for peace. We do so not in response to the demands of imperialists and Islamophobes who insist that Muslims must eschew any form of resistance to occupation and imperial adventures in pursuit of oil and other natural resources. Our struggle for peace responds to the invitation of the Almighty “to the abode of peace” (Yunus, ayah 25). This bears no resemblance to the “peace” of the Empire, which is one of silence and acquiescence in the face of dispossession and occupation. Theirs is a peace which trades in death; ours is one that seeks justice.

The peace that the Qur’an calls us to is one of life, justice and dignity. We are mindful of the Qur’anic obligation to disrupt the established order (even if presented in the garb of “peace”) if it is based on injustice and dispossession, as is clearly the case in Palestine.

“Allah has created the heavens and the earth in truth; so that every person may be justly compensated for what she [he] had earned and none may be wronged” (Al- Jathiyah, ayah 22). This verse, as well as Al-Zumar, ayah 69, equates justice with truth. “God (himself) bears witness that He is the Upholder of justice” (Al-Nisa, ayah 18). The Qur’an exhorts the faithful to uphold justice as an act of witness unto Him (Al-Nisa, ayah 135 and Al-Ma’idah ayah 6) and those who sacrifice their lives in the path of establishing justice are equated with those who achieve martyrdom in “the path of God” (Ali Imran, ayah 20).

The Most Gracious has imparted this Qur’an. He has created humankind; He has imparted unto him [her] speech. The sun and the moon follow courses computed; the stars and the trees submit; and the skies He has raised high; and He has set up the balance of justice in order that you may not transgress the measure. So, establish weight with justice and fall not short in the balance. It is He who has spread out the earth for [all] His creatures. (Al- Rahman, ayahs 1-10)

The Qur’an places humankind and the task of doing justice within the context of their responsibility to the Creator, on the one hand, and the order which runs through the cosmos on the other. It is within this overall context that human beings are being warned against “transgressing the measure” and exhorted to “weigh [your dealings] with justice” (Al-Rahman, ayahs 7-9). “God has sent His Messengers and revealed His Books so that people may establish justice” (Al-Hadid, ayah 25).

The Qur’an posits a universe based on a foundation of justice. The natural order is one rooted in justice; deviation from it is disorder (fitnah). The status quo, irrespective of how long it has survived or how stable it has become, does not enjoy intrinsic legitimacy in Islam. Injustice is a deviation from the natural order and even though it might stabilize over decades by establishing new facts on the ground, it is, nonetheless, regarded as a disruption of “the balance”. In the Qur’anic paradigm, justice and the natural order based on it are values to be upheld, while sociopolitical stability per se is not. When confronted with this disturbance in the natural order through the systematic erosion of human rights, the Qur’an imposes an obligation on the faithful to challenge such a system until it is eliminated and society is again restored to its natural state – that of justice.

The Qur’an offers itself as an inspiration and guide for comprehensive insurrection against an unjust status quo. It, furthermore, asks to be read through a commitment to destroy oppression and aggression and to establish justice. We call on all Muslims to deepen and intensify our resistance to all forms of oppression and to strengthen our solidarity with the Palestinian people. Our Message to the Christians of Palestine Our dear brothers and sisters, we salute the courage and steadfastness displayed by you in resisting the occupation and the theft of your homes, olive groves and lands. We are deeply humbled by your persistent refusal to succumb to the divide and rule games of the occupiers. Your religious leaders’ commitment to freedom and their prophetic voices reflected in Kairos Palestine is nothing short of inspirational. We are touched to read in it your bearing witness to the oppression and indignity suffered by Palestinians of all persuasions. Your role in articulating the truth that this is not a battle between Jews and Muslims but one between occupier and occupied cannot be expressed by any of us with the same integrity as you have done.

We acknowledge that we, the Muslim ummah, have often been indifferent to your presence in Palestine – a presence that pre-dates the coming of Islam. We have not been adequately mindful of the absolute centrality of Palestine as sacred space in the Christian tradition, and as the place where Christ (may the blessings and peace of Allah be upon him and upon his pure mother) was born and ended his sojourn on earth, and many of us have been ignorant of your sacrifices for freedom and justice.

We acknowledge that we have sometimes articulated a vision for a post-apartheid Palestine that appears to be one where one form of ideological domination – Zionism – might be supplanted by another – Islamic domination. Often in our resistance to the ideological domination of Zionism we have come across as wanting more of the same, to become the evil that we abhor. In doing so, we have been unfaithful to the pluralism of our faith and the Qur’anic vision of a single people. Addressing all the prophets, the Qur’an declares: “Oh Prophets, consume of the good, and [remember] that these, your people, are a single people” (Al- Mu’minun, ayat 51-52).

We appreciate the message that you convey to the world in Kairos Palestine where you say that “Muslims are neither to be stereotyped as the enemy nor caricatured as terrorists, but rather to be lived with in peace and engaged with in dialogue.” We support your call for the post-apartheid Palestinian state to be one for “all citizens, with a vision constructed on respect for religion but also equality, justice, liberty, and respect for pluralism and not on domination by a religion or a numerical majority.’’

We will work with our co-religionist Palestinians to create a society wherein all people, regardless of religious or sectarian affiliation will be treated equally. A second class citizenship for any Palestinian will diminish the worth of all Palestinians and will be a betrayal of your sacrifices. Our call to Muslims to ensure justice is not only about justice for Muslims but for all.

A Message to our Jewish Brothers and Sisters

Our dear brothers and sisters, we are ashamed of those of our co-religionists who routinely engage in the blanket demonizing of you and your religion. Much of their rhetoric is racist and anti-Semitic and too often fails to distinguish between the diverse tendencies among you. This is in conflict with the Qur’anic principle “No one shall bear the burden of [the crimes committed by] another.” It is true that Jews have historically fared much better when they lived in Muslim majority societies than what they did in others. It is also true that anti-Semitism accelerated in the Muslim world after the Nakba (Catastrophe) visited upon the Palestinians by the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. These facts, however, cannot serve as rationalizations for anti-Semitism or for the dismissal of all Jews because of the crimes of some. Our own religious tradition require critical scrutiny and we struggle to find ways of reading our texts that will deepen our sense of the interconnectedness of all human beings – and all forms of life – and the requirements of justice.

We pledge ourselves to work against all forms of racism and discrimination – including anti-Semitism. Some among you have, at great personal cost, stood up against injustices meted out to the Palestinian people, while others have called for and engaged in ethnic cleansing. You have insisted that such crimes against humanity cannot be committed in your name. Your solidarity inspires us and your presence in the trenches of struggle helps ensure that the Palestinian struggle for justice is not reduced to an anti-Jewish one.

Some of you lived in Palestine for centuries, pre-dating even Christians; others recently arrived from Cape Town, New York, Dar as Salaam or Moscow. In many cases those arriving in a land that they had only an ideological attachment to led to the displacement of numerous other people who inhabited the land for centuries. It is impossible for us to regard them as anything but usurpers.

They premised the idea of their entitlement to the land on a supposed unbroken conversation between God and Jews and a “perpetual enlistment in the divine army” in the words of Donald H. Akenson. The Zionist belief in the chosenness of a particular people (the Jewish people) who are granted a land by God is not unique. In South Africa, for example, Afrikaner children were taught to sing about “die land uitgegee op gesag van die Hoogste se hand ” (the land given to us on the authority of the Almighty).

We reject the notion that the Eternally Transcendent and Almighty God is like a tribal chief or a dishonest realtor who parcels out land to His favourites, and we reject the idea our sacred texts can be abused as if they were title deeds of land ownership.

Many of you regard the State of Israel as a product of a Jewish struggle for selfdetermination and emancipation from the discrimination that Jews experienced primarily in Christian Europe, and also in Muslim North Africa and the Middle East. Neither the tragedy of unspeakable horror and genocide visited upon Jews by Nazi Germany, nor the ongoing attempts to manipulate this tragedy for narrow racist and ideological ends – thus creating new victims – must be allowed to be forgotten. Palestinians should not have to pay the price for Jewish “liberation”. An injury inflicted on others invariably also dehumanizes the perpetrators. It is not possible to tear at another’s skin and not have one’s humanity also diminished in the process. To defend the Palestinians against the daily humiliation imposed by Israeli settlers, colonists, soldiers, the Israeli state and Zionism itself is to defend the best in what Jews have to offer the world. An injury to one is an injury to all. The distinguished Jewish Liberation theologian, Marc Ellis, wrote: “It is no longer possible to raise the banner of revolution for one people only.” You cannot build your security on the insecurity of others. In the freedom of and justice for the Palestinian people are the seeds of your own liberation, security and humanity.

A Message to the Global Community

We are astonished at how ordinary decent people equivocate when it comes to the State of Israel and the dispossession and suffering it has imposed on the Palestinian people. Is ‘moderation’ in matters of manifest injustice a virtue? Do both parties deserve an ‘equal hearing’ because the oppressor had been oppressed some time previously? Those who opt for illusionary neutrality are, by this “neutrality” being acquiescent to the dominant and oppressive party. We Muslims call on you seriously to consider the Qur’anic idea of a God of all people (rabb al-nas) Who makes clear that “We wished to be gracious to those who had been oppressed in the earth” (Al- Qasas, ayah 5), Who emphasizes that Divine Favour is for the oppressed and against the oppressor.

The notion of some people that “both sides have a story to tell” is a way of their evading responsibility for their complicity in the perpetration of injustices. Not only does such a position hallow the abuser with a mantle of respectability, the silence draws us all into a web of complicity. In the case of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, only those who refused to turn a blind eye and refused to be silent can be regarded as having been civilized. All others were guilty of having Jewish blood on their hands. Talking about the “Jewish-German conflict” when referring to the holocaust against Jews, or the “Black-White situation” when referring to apartheid in South Africa, or “marital problems” when referring to domestic violence is not virtuous; it is the path of acquiescence and complicity.

We call on you to identify with the calls made in the Kairos Palestine, and to join the growing international Palestine solidarity movement. Ordinary people throughout the world contributed in numerous ways to the struggle to end South African apartheid. We can also contribute to ending Israeli Apartheid. We call on you to hold your lawmakers to account for the way way they spend your taxes and ensure that none of it supports the oppression of the Palestinian people and the occupation of their land; to demand that your local grocer does not sell products that originate from Israel; to monitor the foreign policies of your countries and demand that ethics and morality be inserted into their decisions on economic partnerships; to visit Palestine and to see it from the eyes of the least, the broken and the dispossessed, from the eyes of those courageous human beings who resist oppression in order to struggle for their own humanity and that of their oppressors..

Let us all join together, keeping the Palestinian people in our prayers and seeking concrete ways to be and act in solidarity with them.

Wa ma tawfiq illa billah

To sign this document, please click this link to visit the signing webpage.

The declaration, Kairos Palestine – a Moment of Truth, is available online.

“Not even a drop of oil will flow through the Persian Gulf,” Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned, according to the state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). Washington quickly dismissed the threat as mere bluster. But energy markets react not just to the credibility of threats and warnings, but on the general level of tensions.

While Iran is unlikely to act on its warning in the short term – closing the Straits would after all also choke of Iran’s own ability export oil and potentially pit it against Russia and China – these threatening statements do fill one important function: They cause oil prices to rise due to the increased risk premium. Higher oil prices are good for Iran but bad for the U.S. and the European Union. The euro is already risking collapse and the Obama administration cannot afford higher gas prices (and the negative impact that will have on job creation) in an election year.

It is likely to get worse. As the Obama administration – pushed by domestic political forces – continues to ratchet up pressure on Iran in the elusive hope that the government in Tehran will cry uncle and give up its nuclear program, the Iranians will respond to escalation with escalation.

If the name of the game is to harm the other side, then both countries can clearly play this game.

Initially, threats of closing the Straits of Hormuz were made by mid-ranking members of the Iranian parliament. Now Vice Presidents in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s cabinet make them. If the current trajectory remains, we will likely see more senior Iranian government figures make even more specific warnings with even greater frequency.

Along side the heightened rhetoric, we will likely see more Iranian military exercises in the Persian Gulf, potential provocations between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps navy and EU and U.S. navies by heightening the level of “testing the other side,” perhaps even “intentional accidents” at strategic targets throughout the region. These measures will at a minimum help push the risk premium of oil to even higher levels.

Even more aggressive measures will likely be pursued by Iran in the next phase of this standoff with the West.

Such is the logic of pressure politics – pressure begets pressure and along the way, both sides increasingly lose sight of their original endgames. As this conflict-dynamic takes over, the psychological cost of restraint rises, while further escalatory steps appear increasingly logical and justified. At some point – and we may already be there – the governments will no longer control the dynamics. Rather, the conflict dynamic will control the governments.

Though neither side may have intended to drive this towards open war, but rather to merely deter the other side or compel it to change its policies, pressure politics in the absence of real diplomacy has a logic of its own. This formula simply drives us towards confrontation, whether we intend it or not.

But all hope is not lost. Contrary to common perceptions, diplomacy has not been exhausted. In fact, it didn’t even fail – it was prematurely abandoned. As I describe in A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, Barack Obama’s political maneuverability for diplomacy with Iran was limited – and whatever political space he had, it was quickly eaten up by pressure from Congress, Israel, Saudi Arabia and most importantly, by the actions of the Iranian government itself in the fraudulent 2009 elections.

By the time diplomacy could be tried in October 2009, Obama’s political maneuverability had become so limited that its entire Iran policy – in the words of a senior Obama administration official – had become “a gamble on a single roll of the dice.” It either had to work right away, or not at all. And diplomacy rarely works instantaneously.

The Iranians did not come to a “yes,” as Obama had hoped, during the October talks. Only weeks later, the Obama administration activated the pressure track and abandoned diplomacy in all but name. Ironically, Brazil and Turkey managed through their diplomacy to get Iran to a “yes” only six months later. But by that time, Obama had committed himself to sanctions and the pressure track. Between a sanctions resolution at the United Nations and a diplomatic breakthrough based on the benchmarks of the original October deal, Obama rejected the diplomatic opening and opted for sanctions and pressure politics.

Diplomacy cannot work under such constrained circumstances. It needs time, patience, perseverance and a clear understanding that the cost of abandoning diplomacy is greater than the cost of sustaining it – because of the catastrophic repercussions of the military confrontation that will follow collapsed talks. While this might have escaped decision makers in Washington and Tehran earlier, there should be little doubt about its veracity today.

By Trita Parsi

28 December 2011

@ CNN World

The views expressed in this article are solely those of Trita Parsi.

Trita Parsi is the author of the newly released book A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (Yale University Press, 2012).

The military strategy unveiled by President Barack Obama Thursday keeps massive spending on the US war machine largely intact, while shifting its focus decisively toward China.

Obama made an unprecedented appearance at the Pentagon Thursday, marking the first time that a US president has personally participated in the presentation of such a defense strategic guidance document, which presents in broad strokes the priorities and direction for the US armed forces.

In presenting the document, entitled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” Obama insisted that the US military budget would remain higher than those of the next 10 military powers combined. Preemptively responding to right-wing claims he was “cutting” military spending, he pointed out, “The growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.”

The guidance calls for a fundamental re-orientation of American military power toward the Asia-Pacific region, while affirming its commitment to maintaining US military control over the oil-rich Persian Gulf. “All trends are shifting to the Pacific,” stressed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. “Our strategic challenges will largely emanate out of the Pacific region.”

In its blunt and provocative portrayal of China as an enemy, the document reflects the steady buildup toward a confrontation over dominance of the Asia Pacific region, the scene of the world’s greatest economic growth.

The guidance document asserts that “US economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments” in this region and, while Washington will continue its interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere across the globe, “we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” [emphasis in original].

The document stresses US efforts to forge a series of military alliances ranging from Japan and South Korea to the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, while singling out India for the role of an “anchor” for US security interests in the Indian Ocean region.

“The growth of China’s military power,” the document warns, “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.”

In a section entitled “Project power despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges,” the guidance document lumps together China and Iran as countries that “will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projection capabilities,” citing “electronic and cyber warfare, ballistic and cruise missiles, advanced air defenses, mining and other methods.” The Pentagon has grown increasingly concerned over China’s development of torpedoes capable of attacking US aircraft carriers, which were previously seen as impregnable means of deploying massive US military power off China’s shores.

The document also includes multiple assertions of US determination to uphold the “free flow of goods” and “access to the global commons,” which are primarily thinly veiled references to Washington’s increasingly bellicose intervention in regional disputes over the South China Sea.

In surrounding himself with the uniformed members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as civilian Pentagon officials, Obama was undoubtedly attempting to cast himself as a hands-on commander-in-chief and to insulate himself from criticism from the Republican right. Republican presidential candidates, leading Republican members of Congress and sections of the right-wing media all seized upon the document’s budgetary implications, portraying them as a gutting of the American military.

The strategic guidance represents nothing of the sort. As Obama himself boasted, the administration’s proposal to trim around $450 billion in projected expenditures over the next ten years will still leave the Pentagon’s base budget higher than the last one implemented by the George W. Bush administration.

The cuts being proposed by the Obama administration are not to the current budget, but rather to the projected spending over the next decade, which factored in an assumed steady increase in funding for Washington’s bloated armed forces. The past decade, dominated by the “global war on terror” and the simultaneous wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, saw military spending in the US soar by more than 80 percent. The plan being implemented by Obama will maintain military spending at this unprecedentedly high level, even as the White House and the US Congress prepare to take a meat ax to core social programs and benefits, including Medicare and Social Security.

Media reports on the presentation of the strategic review have included claims that the document unveiled Thursday represented Obama putting his “personal stamp” on US military policy. This is even more absurd than the claims about crippling budget cuts. The outline presented in the strategic guidance has been worked out within the US armed forces command and the military-industrial complex, with Obama serving as little more than a political spokesman for these powerful interests.

In its broad outlines, the guidance presents proposals that are remarkably similar to those pushed by Bush’s first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who entered the Pentagon pushing for a “revolution” in military policy. Like Rumsfeld’s proposals, the guidance presented Thursday advocates streamlining the ground forces, particularly the Army, while relying more heavily on Special Operations troops and hi-tech weaponry, including unmanned attack drones.

While the document provides no specific numbers relating to budgets and manpower, it has been reported that with the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and the drawdown from Afghanistan, the Army’s ranks will be thinned from the current 570,000 to 490,000. Similar reductions in force are reportedly in store for the Marine Corps, meaning that tens of thousands of troops returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be thrown onto America’s long unemployment lines.

While undoubtedly the senior brass in the Army and Marines are chafing at these cuts, their concerns are outweighed by powerful corporate interests that are pleased with the guidance’s promise of continued spending on a new stealth bomber, submarines, star wars technology and other air and sea weapons systems that are seen as the most efficient means of aggressively projecting US military might. During Thursday’s press conference, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta directly addressed these interests, declaring the Pentagon’s commitment to “preserving the health and viability of the nation’s defense industrial base.”

In his appearance at the Pentagon, Obama repeated his assertion that, based on the withdrawal from Iraq and the minimal troop reductions in Afghanistan, “the tides of war are receding.”

On the contrary, the defense strategic guidance demonstrates that US imperialism remains committed to the use of armed force to assert its hegemony over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia, even as it gears up its war machine for an armed confrontation with China.

Giving a cynical tip of the hat to the “Arab Spring”, the guidance affirms US reliance on the despotic monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council in preparing for a military confrontation with Iran.

Defense Secretary Panetta provided a glimpse of what is on the horizon, assuring the assembled media that the US military is prepared to wage “a land war in Korea” while simultaneously defeating Iran in a confrontation over the Straits of Hormuz.

China issued a strong reaction to the defense guidance document. “China must make the US realize that its rise cannot be stopped,” Global Times, a state-run Chinese newspaper declared. Insisting that Beijing must not “give up its peripheral security,” the paper added that “China needs to enhance its long-distance military attack ability and develop more ways to threaten US territory in order to gradually push outward the front line of its ‘game’ with America.”

Confronting the relative decline of American capitalism and the rise of China, Washington is turning toward the reckless use of military might to defend its position of global dominance, threatening a conflagration that would eclipse the wars of the past decade.

By Bill Van Auken

7 January 2012

WSWS.org

The Pentagon document, “Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defence,” represents a major reorientation of the US military forces globally, particularly toward the Asia-Pacific region. It insisted that China’s military expansion “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.”

In fact, China is under threat by the US. Through Obama’s efforts to strengthen alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines, as well as build new partnerships with India, Indonesia and Vietnam—not to mention the US-led occupation of Afghanistan on China’s western flank—Beijing is being encircled on every front.

China has increased military spending by an estimated 200 percent over the past decade. But the US military still dwarfs that of China on any indicator, from spending (six times bigger) to the size of its nuclear arsenal (35 times larger), and maintains a vast technological superiority in virtually every field.

The initial official Chinese response to the Pentagon document was cautious. The state-owned Xinhua news agency called on the US to “abstain from flexing its muscle.” At the same time, it stated that “if fulfilled with a positive attitude and free from a Cold War-style zero-sum mentality,” the new US strategy “would not only be conducive to regional stability and prosperity, but be good for China, which needs a peaceful environment to continue its economic development.”

Chinese Defence ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng was more critical, declaring on Monday that “the accusations levelled at China by the US in this document are totally baseless.” He hoped the US would “deal with China and the Chinese military in an objective and rational way, be careful in its words and actions, and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries.”

Writing in the People’s Liberation Daily on Tuesday, Major General Luo Yuan bluntly warned that the US was targetting China. “Casting our eyes around, we can see that the United States has been bolstering its five major military alliances in the Asia-Pacific region, and is adjusting the positioning of its five major military base clusters, while also seeking more entry rights for military bases around China. Who can believe that you are not directing this at China?” he asked.

The differing responses reflect a debate in Beijing that intensified after last year’s NATO intervention in Libya, which caused losses of billions of dollars of Chinese investment in that country. One camp advocates a continuation of the present cautious policy of avoiding a confrontation with the US. The second calls for a shift to a more aggressive policy to defend China’s growing economic and strategic interests around the world.

Those advocating a low-key approach argue that China is in no position to challenge the US. Their concerns reflect the vulnerability of the Chinese economy, which is heavily dependent upon the advanced Western countries for investment, technology and markets, and would be severely disrupted by any open confrontation with Washington.

In a commentary in China Newsweek on January 3, academic Zheng Yongnian warned against “a new Cold War” with the US and its allies, in particular over North Korea. He argued that such a confrontation would be “very unfavourable to China” because China was no match for the US, whose international dominance “is all-dimensional, including in politics, economy and military, whereas China’s is still predominantly economical.”

Zheng indicated that China could weather a new Cold War, explaining: “If East Asia is divided into two blocs, with China losing the space in the east, it must strive to expand into the west. This scenario is not only possible, but has already begun, which is to develop ties with Arab countries.” However, he argued that the best option for China was to cooperate with the US, in line with Beijing’s chosen “road to integrate into the West-dominated international community” since its rapprochement with America in the 1970s.

The critics of Beijing’s present policy of a “peaceful rise” point to the impact that US aggression has already had on China’s investments and carefully cultivated diplomatic influence. The US not only supported the ousting of the Libyan regime but is now threatening Iran, upon which China relies as a major source of oil. In South East Asia, the Obama administration has encouraged the Philippines and Vietnam to assert their claims in the South China Sea against China’s and undermined China’s influence in regional bodies.

Dai Xu, a researcher at Peking University’s Chinese Centre of Strategic Studies, argued in the Global Times last week that China “must draw a line.” He argued against the stance of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping who advocated that the country “keep a low profile,” focus on economic development and avoid joining or forming alliances or any international grouping.

Dai is known for his 2009 book, C-shaped Encirclement, which warned that the US was seeking to contain China in the Asia-Pacific. Now he is calling for an end to appeasement with the US, pointing to the supposed historical lessons of the Song Dynasty 1,000 years ago. It faced a military threat from the nomadic kingdoms to the north and responded by offering concessions and abandoning military preparedness, only to be annihilated.

In his Global Times article, Dai said the US had “a clear roadmap and timetable to ‘conquer’ the world,” stretching from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, with the ultimate aim of taking on China and Russia. In the face of the escalating US threat against Iran, which could lead to a war involving America, Israel and Russia, Dai called for China to prepare accordingly.

The debate highlights the fact that the Chinese ruling elite has little room to manoeuvre. “Cooperation” with the US would mean making concessions to Washington’s economic demands, such as revaluing the yuan, which in turn would bankrupt sections of Chinese industry and foment wider social unrest.

Washington’s aggressive stance against China has strengthened the position of those who advocate an end to appeasement, which in turn heightens the danger of war.

By John Chan

13 January 2012

@ WSWS.org

As the blade of blame is being directed against the CIA and Mossad for orchestrating the brutal assassination of the 32-year-old Iranian scientist in broad daylight in Tehran on Wednesday morning, the duo have preferred to feign ignorance as to the identity of the main perpetrator of the crime.

“I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters on Thursday.

Also, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the US had nothing to do with the assassination.

“We were not involved in any way — in any way — with regards to the assassination that took place [in Iran],” he said. “I’m not sure of who was involved…But I can tell you one thing: the United States was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the United States does.”

The US is not the only party which has chosen to be in denial.

Israeli President Shimon Peres also denied on Thursday that Israel was involved in the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist. In an interview with CNN, Peres was asked if Israel was involved in the nuclear assassination, to which he answered: “Not to the best of my knowledge.”

“I know that it is fashionable that whatever wrong happens in Iran, it is the United States and Israel. There is nothing new in this approach,” said Peres.

What kind of answer would the viewers expect from Peres to such a naive question? The question is indeed as unwise in substance as the answer given by Peres.

In order to find out who really killed the Iranian scientist, one needs to put together the factual pieces.

Just two days after Iran sentenced to death CIA operative of Iranian descent Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, two unidentified men on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb onto the car of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a senior official at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, and detonated it on Wednesday, killing the young scientist and his driver.

It does not seem unreasonable to say that there was a link between the two incidents.

And in comes a third party e.g. Britain which bears as equal responsibility for the crime as the other two. British Middle East minister Alistair Burt has recently visited Israel and demanded all nations intensify pressure on Tehran to stall its nuclear program. Proudly he announced that “a few weeks ago the British government imposed tough new financial restrictions against Iran. These new sanctions make it illegal for any financial institution in the United Kingdom to have any dealings with any institution in Iran. They are the toughest of their kind. And we will build on them, getting others to follow suit.”

A close friend of Israel, Mr. Burt described the Iranian nuclear program as “the major issue at the top of our shared agenda,” saying that Israel can serve as a partner in a common cause against a regime dangerously loose.”

Lavishing pearls of British wisdom on the audience while speaking at Bar-Ilan University’s Feldman International Conference Center, Mr. Burt said Iran “does not just threaten Israel,” and sycophantically described Israel as the “bastion for stability in the region.”

Also contributing to the shared agenda of Israel and Britain in nuclear assassinations and sabotage activities in Iran is the remark of the Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz who said on Tuesday in an address to a closed Knesset committee that Iran should expect more “unnatural” events in 2012.

While the hawks in Washington have already declared a nuclear war on Iran in a metaphoric sense i.e. the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientists, some of them avail themselves of a kind of literature in their reference to the nuclear assassinations which indicates the abyss of human degeneration. An impetuous example of this was reflected in a video circulated on the internet in which Rick Santorum, who is a sad excuse for a human being and a politically bankrupt White House aspirant, has unfeelingly described the assassination of Iranian scientists as “wonderful.”

“On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that’s a wonderful thing, candidly,” said Rick Santorum addressing an election campaign in Greenville, South Carolina.

He added that, “I think we should send a very clear message that if you are a scientist from Russia, North Korea, or from Iran and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a bomb for Iran, you are not safe.”

There are times when one wonders how on earth all these politically, ethically and intellectually Lilliputian-minded people have turned up together in this world.

All these facts aside, examples for the animosity of the UK, US and Israel towards the Islamic Republic are legion. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the myriad crimes orchestrated, funded and carried out by the trio.

There is no doubt that the recent assassination has caused a lot of intellectual anguish, emotional pain and political wrath in Iran.

In a stern warning, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, lashed out at the United States and Israel for orchestrating the assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. In a message of condolence to his family, Ayatollah Khamenei said the assassination was carried out under the unholy auspices of the CIA and Mossad.

“This act of cowardice, whose perpetrators and architects will never dare to confess to their foul and appalling crime or assume responsibility for it, has been engineered and funded by the CIA and Mossad [spy] services,” he said, adding, “The assassination shows that the global arrogance spearheaded by the US and Zionism has arrived at an impasse in their encounter with the determined, devout, and progressive nation of Islamic Iran.”

Central to the circle of the prime suspects in the nuclear assassinations is the IAEA itself. About two weeks ago, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan had reportedly met the agency inspectors.

Isn’t it strange that the nuclear scientist was killed only two weeks after his meeting with the IAEA inspectors?

Another point which actually strengthens the speculation is that the names and identities of Iranian nuclear scientists who have so far been assassinated have been published in the list of sanctions issued by the IAEA.

Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz has said, Iran should be expecting more “unnatural” events in 2012.

Iran is certainly prepared for the worst but the enemies of the Islamic Republic should for their part await devastating consequences of colossal proportions if they wish to persevere in their path of mischief.

By Dr. Ismail Salami

13 January 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

Attacks on both local and international journalists across Iraq have not stopped to this day

Baghdad, Iraq – Iraq has been one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists since 2003.

While scores of newspapers and media outlets blossomed across Baghdad following the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the spring of 2003, the media renaissance was also met with attacks on both local and international journalists across the country – that have not stopped to this day.

Iraq was the deadliest country in the world for journalists every year from 2003 to 2008, the third deadliest in 2009, and the second deadliest in 2010 and 2011, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

CPJ documents 150 journalists killed in Iraq since 2003, a number, as high as it is, which pales in comparison to that logged by the group Brussels Tribunal (BT).

Logging the name, date, incident description, and source when available, BT reports that 341 Iraqi journalists and media workers have been killed since the invasion.

Adding to the overt physical risks from a dangerous security situation and threats of kidnapping, Iraqi journalists have told Al Jazeera that they now face threats from the Iraqi government itself, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Adnan Hussein, the editor-in-chief and deputy director of Iraq’s Al-Mada newspaper, one of the largest in the country, wrote an article about then-Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in 2006.

“I mentioned that he talked too much, so I received an email from one of his supporters,” Hussein explained at his office in Baghdad. “The email said: ‘If you are in Baghdad we will kill you and throw you in the garbage like the dogs’.”

“So how is our situation?” Hussein asked. “Certainly we are afraid. I give you this example, and it still exists today.”

Atmosphere of fear

On September 8, 2011, Iraqi journalist Hadi al-Mahdi was shot in his Baghdad home by assailants using pistols with silencers. Mahdi had hosted a thrice-weekly radio show covering social and political issues, including government corruption, bribery and sectarianism.

On his Facebook page, Mahdi had regularly organised pro-democracy demonstrations and publicised threats he had received. Having become afraid for his safety, two months before his murder, Mahdi had stepped down from his radio show.

“The killing of Hadi Mahdi created an atmosphere of fear,” Hussein said of the death of his colleague.

He explained that the Maliki government claimed to have recently passed a law that provided greater protections to Iraqi journalists, but that instead “the law limits our work and does not guarantee our rights”.

“Journalists here are now working in the streets naked,” he said. “They have no rights and no protections. Journalists cannot work and cover what needs to be covered because they are too exposed.”

One of Hussein’s colleagues recently accused an Iraqi military spokesman of being a hypocrite in one of his columns, and the spokesman filed a lawsuit against their paper for $6m compensation.

“I returned to Iraq one year ago [after working as the Managing Editor of Asharq Alawsat newspaper in London] to find a bad situation, because of the political situation,” Hussein concluded. “But now I feel it will worsen. The Iraqi government is not operating within any rules.”

Oday Hattem, Chairman of Iraq’s Society for Defending Press Freedom, agrees.

Hattem, who was arrested twice by Saddam Hussein’s regime for publishing articles that offended the government, knows first-hand about media repression.

“There is no freedom to work in journalism here – if we compare the journalism in Iraq with the West,” Hattem told Al Jazeera.

The large number of media outlets available in the country today, “does not necessarily mean there is freedom of the press, because every paper or TV channel belongs to a political party”, he said.

Hattem believes the laws of journalism from Saddam’s era continue to prevent Iraqi journalists from criticising the government, and the fact that religious parties each have their own militia means they, too, are not to be criticised.

According to Hattem, if a journalists reports critically “that means this journalist will lose his life”.

Like Hussein, Hattem sees the situation worsening on all fronts.

“The political and freedom of speech situations are both descending,” he said. “Maliki launched an attack on freedom of speech in February 2010, when he arrested tens of journalists and human rights activists after the beginning of demonstrations in Baghdad.”

US President Barack Obama, during a December 12, 2011, press conference with Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, had nothing but high praise for the state of press freedom in Maliki’s Iraq:

So we’re partnering to strengthen the institutions upon which Iraq’s democracy depends – free elections, a vibrant press, a strong civil society, professional police and law enforcement that uphold the rule of law, an independent judiciary that delivers justice fairly, and transparent institutions that serve all Iraqis.

Three days later, Iraq’s Society for Defending Press Freedom filed an appeal with Iraq’s High Federal Court against Maliki’s government and its “Journalists Rights Law”, which the group said contradicted four articles from Iraq’s constitution.

Like most Iraqi journalists Al Jazeera spoke with, Hattem also received threats through what he said were “departments of the government”.

“I have had to change my address several times, and in 2008, my six-year-old daughter was kidnapped,” he explained.

Hattem received a death threat in February 2011 which caused him to leave the country for 30 days, “and a lot of my colleagues have left journalism because they have received threats from Shia parties and their militias”.

“In November 2011, there was another attempt to kidnap my daughter from in front of school,” Hattem said, adding that Maliki and his government are “controlling the media more now than even under Saddam”.

“After 2003, we hoped for full freedom of the press as it is in the west,” he added. “But the US does not want Iraq to be a democratic country. The spine of democracy is freedom of the press, but since 2003, the US forces never lifted a finger to stop violations against the press and freedom of journalists.”

‘You will be arrested or assassinated’

Yasser Faisal from Fallujah has worked as a freelance cameraman for Reuters since 2002, both in and out of Iraq.

He feels that working as a journalist in Iraq today is more difficult than it was under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“If you want to search for the truth about something and this thing is against the interests of the government, you will be either arrested or assassinated,” he told Al Jazeera.

Faisal said, after the withdrawal of US forces, “the situation has become even more dangerous” because “there are no international organisations or laws that can protect you, so you can only work if you have contacts or relations with the Iraqi army or police”.

He points to the fact that, like every other journalist Al Jazeera spoke with, any time Iraqi security forces are around, journalists are not allowed to take pictures or film, and censorship even within hospitals is alive and well.

Of the new law that supposedly protects Iraqi journalists, Faisal said simply, “it is not effective”.

Ibrahim al-Jassim, a reporter for the Al Masar satellite channel in Iraq, also pointed to the militia of the political parties as part of the problem Iraqi journalists face.

“We have many difficulties here,” he said, while standing nearby Baghdad’s busy Saadoun Street. “These are all dependent on the security situation.”

Jassim believes that the targeting of Iraqi journalists is happening “because of the Iraqi political parties not wanting the truth out. Our job is to seek the truth, and nobody here wants the truth to come out”.

A 2011 report by Human Rights Watch on Freedom of Expression in Iraq confirms this: “In 2010, Iraq remained one of the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a journalist. Extremists and unknown assailants continue to kill media workers and bomb their bureaus…”

Many difficulties

Ahmed Rehayma, office director at the Society for Defending Press Freedom in Iraq again points to the government for the root of the current problems facing Iraqi journalists.

“This pressure from the government has happened to all of us,” he explained. “It’s a fact we cannot deny.”

Of his reporting for the Azzam newspaper up until four months ago, he said that he always pursued the truth, but that the government is “most certainly putting up obstacles”.

He pointed to a story he wrote on how bomb detection devices used by the Iraqi military at checkpoints don’t really work.

“The Ministry of Interior tried to make me look like a troublemaker for doing this story,” he explained. “They stopped us on that story.”

Rehayma told of another instance where he was reporting on a fire and an Iraqi policeman made him delete his photos, and then became physically abusive.

“We know plenty of journalists who have horrible stories,” he said. “We see Maliki consolidating power and this concerns us, as it will make things hard for the media. Our media is in trouble now.”

By Dahr Jamail

10 January 2012

@ Al Jazeera

Dahr Jamail is an American journalist who is best known as one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 Iraq invasion. He spent eight months in Iraq, between 2003 to 2005, and presented his stories on his website, entitled Dahr Jamail’s MidEast Dispatches. Jamail writes for the Inter Press Service news agency, among other outlets. He has been a frequent guest on Democracy Now!. Jamail is the recipient of the 2008 The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

Rogozin, Russia’s former Permanent Representative to NATO, told officers of the Aerospace Forces in the restricted area of Krasnoznamensk that no matter what type of political system Russia has the western military bloc will not change their views.

“No matter what Russia may be – imperial, communist or democratic – they see us with the same eyes as they did in the previous centuries,” he said.

The same attitude applies to Germany, Rogozin says, the largest and most successful economy in the European Union.

“The relationship with Germany also remains complicated, because they still fear it,” he said. “The Germans have no more than battalions in the NATO army, which does not exist in fact but unites national forces for certain operations.”

The Germans are not allowed to form even a brigade for a particular operation. They still fear the Germans, he added.

This week, President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to NATO since 2008, deputy prime minister in charge of the defense complex.

­NATO’s outdated principles

Rogozin went on to explain how NATO still conducts its business under the outdated principles first laid down by NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay, who held the post from 1952 til 1957.

“NATO continues to live by the principles set down by NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay: ‘America in, Germany under and Russia outside,’” Rogozin said. “This means control over German militarism; they understand…that the Germans may always develop into a force, which  will consolidate Europe around itself,” he said.

Indeed, many in Germany have been calling for the creation of a European army that will eventually replace NATO, which many observers believe has overstayed its welcome.

“The long term goal is the establishment of a European army under full parliamentary control,” German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle told an audience last year at the Munich Security Conference, noting that the German government “wants to advance along this path.”

Meanwhile, according to Rogozin, America asserts its military presence on the continent by any means possible, while Russia is held at a distance.

“America must be represented in Europe by hook or by crook,” he said.  “Russia must be held at a distance – and the farther the better.”

This warped formula forces Russia into the position where it must keep a watchful eye on what is happening behind the scenes of US-led military bloc.

“Hence the mission of Russian diplomats, military diplomats and intelligence officers is the opposite: they must be inside all the time and prevent the Americans from being alone with the Europeans,” he said.

Commenting on the highly controversial US missile defense system, which is being constructed just miles from the Russian border, Rogozin gave a grim account of the system, and what it means for much of Europe: “NATO has no such technologies or experience, they do not understand what is going on and they do not understand that NATO, the European allies of America, are nothing but a shield and a lamb to slaughter,” he said.

Rogozin, who is known for his straightforward speaking, ridiculed the Romanians for allowing components of the missile defense system on their territory, saying that they will have no control over it.

“We have scrutinized the agreement the Americans have signed with the Romanians [on the deployment of US interceptor missiles in Romania in the construction of the European missile defense],” the former NATO envoy said. “The Romanians may think they are important interception missile operators but even the base commander, a Romanian serviceman, has the right to enter only the lobby.”

He (the Romanian base commander) will never visit the control station for a very simple reason that the base is American, not  NATO, Rogozin added.

The Deputy Prime Minister believes that the United States has convinced the Europeans that they need constant US involvement in their affairs.

“The Americans invented a story that Europe cannot do without them,” Rogozin said. The result of such a relationship is less than beneficial for Europe.

What this means for Europe is that they have become “hostages and targets of a retaliation attack,” without even having access to the American technologies.”.

Rogozin found tremendous irony in the situation, since it was the contributions of the all the western countries that allowed for the development of such systems, which remain, nevertheless, under American control.

“The American strategy, including that within NATO, is based on the absolute technological superiority in the Western world and on European monetary contributions to the US defense sector, which are spent on the development of these systems,” he concluded.

26 December 2011

@ rt.com

But my agnostic friends also deserve a shout-out. Because even though they weren’t sure whether their prayers could do any good, they were in there with me throughout all the same, doing everything they could think of to help out too, as far as I’m concerned doing just as good of a job honoring God’s commands that we look after each-other as everyone else did, even though they’re not even sure whether God exists or not!

However, it’s the prayers I want to talk about.

Because although my Muslim and Jewish friends didn’t feel it necessary to clarify exactly which God they were praying to because everyone of us knows we pray to the same one. Many of my Christian friends — respectfully, kindly and to my mind tragically — felt they needed to assure me they were praying to the God of Abraham rather than to Jesus, because they thought I’d be offended otherwise.

And as far as I am concerned, that’s mostly because Muslims for the last thousand years have consistently failed to live up to either the commands of the Quran or the example of Muhammad regarding interfaith relations, and thereby have warped the development of both major world religions, leading up to the growing and unnecessary conflict we see developing between Islam and Christianity today.

Frankly, it’s gotten so bad between us all that I even have to clarify my admission that I have great Jewish and Christian friends. Because extremist Muslims and extremist non-Muslims alike will tell me I can’t because the Quran says Muslims shouldn’t be friends with Jews or Christians.

The verse they’re talking about is 5:51, which many translate as if it says, “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends (awliyaa). They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.”

But they do so in woeful ignorance of the real meaning of the word awliyaa, because it doesn’t mean “friend” at all. It’s actually something much closer to “protector,” “helper” or “guardian.” It is from a family of words that mean “leader” or even “crown.”

In ancient times, a person’s awliyaa was an important role more akin to a modern day power of attorney. In that context, the command isn’t against having friends among Jews or Christians, it’s against putting our destiny into their hands: something that remains good advice to Muslims today.

But the way that command is willfully mis-translated by conflict seeking Muslims and non-Muslims alike speaks not just to how far we’ve all stepped off the path to peace God’s prophets promote, but also how easy it would be for us to step back on if we’re willing to listen.

In simplest terms, the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Does God care so much which team we play for, or does he care more about how we play the game?

Muslim/Christian religious chauvinism’s not new, and it’s not one-sided. In his “Narnia Chronicles,” C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite Christian writers, wrote about a “false-God-follower” who, when he met the character Lewis thought represented the true God, was told: “I take to me the services which thou hast done to Tash [the false God] … if any man swear by him and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.”

The thing is, in that series, the Calormen –who worshipped Tash– obviously played to the worst anti-Arab stereotypes, demonstrating that Lewis wasn’t immune to prejudice, but he made an important point about faith, which he clarified:

“I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god, or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know him. For He is (dimly) present in the good side of the inferior teachers they follow. In the parable of the Sheep and Goats those who are saved do not seem to know that they have served Christ.”

And regardless of his prejudices, Lewis is certainly far kinder than many current Christian theologians, who seem quite prepared to consign even the best Muslims to eternal damnation. More importantly though, he’s also completely in line with the teachings and behavior of Muhammad, Abraham, Moses, David and the Christ, among others, alike.

Because Muhammad liked Christians! And he liked and respected Jews and Judaism, too. (If you’re interested, Google “Mukhayriq” and the Constitution of Medina.) His uncle Waraqah, the first person who declared his prophethood, likely remained a Christian til the day he died! What he didn’t like was Christians and Jews who said one thing and did another, but he disliked Muslims who did that even more.

But more important from an Islamic perspective than his personal feelings were the way he treated Christians, and the promises he made them. The biggest theological difference between Islam and Christianity has to be belief in the Trinity, and that’s the main doctrinal point the Quran takes issue with: few Christians today recall that belief in the Trinity wasn’t even part of Christianity until the fourth century A.D., or realize that today’s Muslims are likely much closer to the beliefs the earliest Christians held dear than today’s Christians are.

But belief in the Trinity was taking hold among Christians at the time of Muhammad, and he had to deal with many Christians who not only believed that God could be Three as well as One, but also the belief that Jesus was God as well. Did he condemn them or abuse them for it? Absolutely not!

In fact, when the Christians of Najran came to Medina to debate theology, they quite respectfully asked permission to leave the city to worship the Christ. And even more respectfully, Muhammad told them they didn’t have to leave the city at all, and invited them to use his own mosque for their worship! Because Muhammad knew that even though their belief was wrong, it was sincere, and like C.S. Lewis, among many others, he too knew that all good prayers and good deeds go to the same good place and the same good purpose, regardless of how much we know about it. And when they left Medina — still Christians — he promised them Muslim protection for their freedom of religion forever.

I often pose “dogmatic” believers a simple question: If I raised my children on a desert island, with no other influence but mine, to believe God wanted nothing more than for them to paint their bellies blue, and if they died with blue-tinged abdomens, would God punish my children or me? You’d be surprised how many figure out some way to justify God punishing us all.

Muhammad, on the other hand, didn’t care so much about doctrinal purity. In fact, there’s a Christian monastery that’s been at the foot of Mount Sinai for the last 1,500 years, which cherishes a document that was dictated by Muhammad and transcribed by Ali (whom Shiite Muslims also revere) that promises Muslim protection for Christians and for Christianity, a promise they made binding on all Muslims everywhere till the end of time.

“This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them. Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.

No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.

No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses. Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.

No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.

Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (the end of the world).”

Muslims in Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia in particular should take note.

Now, I think the reason why believers find themselves in conflict with other believers so often is a simple one: The one belief everyone shares, but that divides us from one another regardless, is that we’re right about what we believe and we think it matters.

But how much do we know about exactly what Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael believed about God, beyond believing God was One and, as such, above believer’s polytheistic playing-one-God-against-another manipulations? Did Moses think God’s covenant was only with the children of Israel, or did David think Jerusalem’s Temple was for Jews and Jews alone? Did Jesus need to indoctrinate either Samaritans or Roman Centurions before he served them? The answer to all those questions is a resounding “NO!” if you take the time to find out the answers for yourself.

And I think it’s incredibly important that we all do so and soon. Not only does the belief that God cares WHAT we believe more than what we do about it divide us unnecessarily, it is also the belief that sits at the heart of the religious radicalism that’s currently plaguing us all.

Thinking God cares more about your team jersey, about whether you play for the Saints or the Cardinals, the Servants or the Crusaders, than whether you play by the rules He’s set out is

They all sound equally crazy to me.

But I’m Muslim, and so I ask all my Muslim brothers and sisters around the world, and especially those who think they can or should abuse, mistreat or even kill non-Muslims: Does Allah really care so much what we believe, so much that He doesn’t care what we do? Al-Baqarah 177 says otherwise:

It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces to the East and the West; but righteous is he who believeth in the Lord and the Last Day and the angels and the Scripture and the Prophets; and giveth his wealth, for love of Him, to kinsfolk and to orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and to those who ask, and who sets slaves free; and who observeth proper worship and payeth the poor what they are due. And those who keep their treaty when they make one, and the patient in tribulation and adversity and time of stress. Such are they who are sincere. Such are the God fearing.

Because honestly? I think thinking YOU can make God do something; like let YOU into Heaven no matter what YOU do because of what YOU believe, makes YOU bigger than God — at least in your own mind — and that’s the biggest sin in Islam!

So what’s my bottom-line? Heaven can be as big as God wants it to be, even big enough for everyone if He chooses to make it so, and I think it’s my agnostic friends who so far have the best of it.

Because by not trying to put God into a box of their own making by way of their own believing they show God the most respect of all of us, regardless of their uncertainties, which quite frankly are mostly the fault of us “true-believers” because of the awful things we’ve done purportedly on God’s behalf anyways.

We Muslims and Christians and other believers, on the other hand, are well on our way to making earth a living Hell for all of us by pretending otherwise. We should put that sort of self-serving, short-sighted believing behind us, before it’s too late for all of us.

Ameen.

Dr. David Liepert

Muslim Author, Leader, Spokesperson, Host of “The Optimistic Muslim” on webtalkradio.net

Posted: 1/21/12 01:08 PM ET

Assad’s popularity, Arab League observers, US military involvement: all distorted in the west’s propaganda war

Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that most Syrians are in favour of Bashar al-Assad remaining as president, would that not be major news? Especially as the finding would go against the dominant narrative about the Syrian crisis, and the media considers the unexpected more newsworthy than the obvious.

Alas, not in every case. When coverage of an unfolding drama ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get suppressed. So it is with the results of a recent YouGov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates, funded by the Qatar Foundation. Qatar’s royal family has taken one of the most hawkish lines against Assad – the emir has just called for Arab troops to intervene – so it was good that The Doha Debates published the poll on its website. The pity is that it was ignored by almost all media outlets in every western country whose government has called for Assad to go.

The key finding was that while most Arabs outside Syria feel the president should resign, attitudes in the country are different. Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war – a spectre that is not theoretical as it is for those who live outside Syria’s borders. What is less good news for the Assad regime is that the poll also found that half the Syrians who accept him staying in power believe he must usher in free elections in the near future. Assad claims he is about to do that, a point he has repeated in his latest speeches. But it is vital that he publishes the election law as soon as possible, permits political parties and makes a commitment to allow independent monitors to watch the poll.

Biased media coverage also continues to distort the Arab League’s observer mission in Syria. When the league endorsed a no-fly zone in Libya last spring, there was high praise in the west for its action. Its decision to mediate in Syria was less welcome to western governments, and to high-profile Syrian opposition groups, who increasingly support a military rather than a political solution. So the league’s move was promptly called into doubt by western leaders, and most western media echoed the line. Attacks were launched on the credentials of the mission’s Sudanese chairman. Criticisms of the mission’s performance by one of its 165 members were headlined. Demands were made that the mission pull out in favour of UN intervention.

The critics presumably feared that the Arab observers would report that armed violence is no longer confined to the regime’s forces, and the image of peaceful protests brutally suppressed by army and police is false. Homs and a few other Syrian cities are becoming like Beirut in the 1980s or Sarajevo in the 1990s, with battles between militias raging across sectarian and ethnic fault lines.

As for foreign military intervention, it has already started. It is not following the Libyan pattern since Russia and China are furious at the west’s deception in the security council last year. They will not accept a new United Nations resolution that allows any use of force. The model is an older one, going back to the era of the cold war, before “humanitarian intervention” and the “responsibility to protect” were developed and often misused. Remember Ronald Reagan’s support for the Contras, whom he armed and trained to try to topple Nicaragua’s Sandinistas from bases in Honduras? For Honduras read Turkey, the safe haven where the so-called Free Syrian Army has set up.

Here too western media silence is dramatic. No reporters have followed up on a significant recent article by Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer who now writes for the American Conservative – a magazine that criticises the American military-industrial complex from a non-neocon position on the lines of Ron Paul, who came second in last week’s New Hampshire Republican primary. Giraldi states that Turkey, a Nato member, has become Washington’s proxy and that unmarked Nato warplanes have been arriving at Iskenderum, near the Syrian border, delivering Libyan volunteers and weapons seized from the late Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenal. “French and British special forces trainers are on the ground,” he writes, “assisting the Syrian rebels, while the CIA and US Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause, enabling the fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers …”

As the danger of full-scale war increases, Arab League foreign ministers are preparing to meet in Cairo this weekend to discuss the future of their Syrian mission. No doubt there will be western media reports highlighting remarks by those ministers who feel the mission has “lost credibility”, “been duped by the regime” or “failed to stop the violence”. Counter-arguments will be played down or suppressed.

In spite of the provocations from all sides the league should stand its ground. Its mission in Syria has seen peaceful demonstrations both for and against the regime. It has witnessed, and in some cases suffered from, violence by opposing forces. But it has not yet had enough time or a large enough team to talk to a comprehensive range of Syrian actors and then come up with a clear set of recommendations. Above all, it has not even started to fulfil that part of its mandate requiring it to help produce a dialogue between the regime and its critics. The mission needs to stay in Syria and not be bullied out.

By Jonathan Steele

17 January 2012

@ guardian.co.uk