Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 9:22 PM
Subject: [R-G] Ad to appear in the NY Times next week--so far signed by
60000 Australians
*Dear President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder:
We, as Australians, condemn calls for violence, including assassination,
against Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, or for him
to be labeled a terrorist, enemy combatant or be treated outside the
ordinary course of justice in any way.
As Thomas Jefferson said, "information is the currency of democracy."
Publishing leaked information in collaboration with major news outlets, as
Wikileaks and Mr. Assange have done, is not a terrorist act.
Australia and the United States are the strongest of allies. Our soldiers
serve side by side and we've experienced, and condemned, the consequences of
terrorism together. To label Wikileaks a terrorist organisation is an insult
to those Australians and Americans who have lost their lives to acts of
terrorism and to terrorist forces.
If Wikileaks or their staff have broken international or national laws, let
that case be heard in a just and fair court of law. At the moment, no such
charges have been brought.
We are writing as Australians to say what our Government should have: all
Australian citizens deserve to be free from persecution, threats of violence
and detention without charge, especially from our friend and ally, the
United States.
We call upon you to stand up for our shared democratic principles of the
presumption of innocence and freedom of information. *
_______________________________________________
Rad-Green mailing list
Rad-Green@lists.econ.utah.edu
***
U.S. Illusions in Lebanon
By Roger Cohen
NY Times Op-Ed: December 14, 2010
BEIRUT - Once upon a time a U.S. secretary of state spoke of the "birth
pangs of a new Middle East." That's now the most laughed-at phrase in
gravity-defying Lebanon, a country with two armies, a "unity" government too
divided to meet, a wild real estate boom and a time bomb called the
"international tribunal."
Confused already? Lebanon is not for amateurs. Condoleezza Rice wanted to
believe that in the bloodshed of Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah, the
militant Shiite movement, lay the seeds of a new Middle East - democratic,
Hezbollah-free and amenable to U.S. interests. Turns out she was dreaming.
Four years on, Hezbollah is stronger than ever. It has the more powerful of
those two armies (the other being the Lebanese armed forces), a presence in
government, veto power over Lebanon's direction, and a leader - Hassan
Nasrallah - whose popularity as the proud face of Arab defiance has never
been higher.
Dahiye, the Hezbollah-controlled southern Beirut suburb flattened by Israel
in 2006, now bustles with construction and commerce, including
state-of-the-art juice bars and risqué lingerie stores. It feels about as
threatening as New York's Canal Street.
And America continues to dream, albeit in sobered fashion. Sure, the "new
Middle East" has joined "axis of evil" in the diplomatic junkyard. But U.S.
policy still involves an attempt to ignore reality.
Hezbollah, Iran-financed and Syrian-backed, has assumed a pivotal role in
Lebanese politics. It's a political party, a social movement and a militia
for which the term "terrorist group" is entirely inadequate. It has also
become the single most powerful symbol of what is known throughout the
Middle East as "the resistance."
This is an unpalatable truth. It's also, I suspect, an enduring one. For the
United States to shun any contact with Hezbollah amounts to trying to play
the Middle Eastern chess game without several pieces. As recent history
suggests, that's a recipe for failure.
A little of that history is in order. The 2005 assassination of Lebanon's
pro-Western Prime Minister Rafik Hariri set off massive protests that saw
Syria withdraw its military and rekindled old illusions of a Lebanon firmly
in the Western camp.
A United Nations tribunal was set up to investigate the killing amid
widespread suspicion of Syrian involvement. A billboard - "The Truth - for
the sake of Lebanon" - caught the giddy sense of new beginnings in the land
par excellence of foreign meddling. Nobody spoke more about "truth" than
Saad Hariri, the slain leader's son and now himself prime minister.
Everyone, it seemed, was drinking the Kool-Aid. Even Walid Jumblatt, the
leader of Lebanon's Druse community and the ultimate Middle Eastern
survivor, spoke of the "start of a new Arab world," went anti-Syrian and was
a strong advocate of the tribunal. As he's a Lebanese bellwether, that
seemed significant.
Now, over an exquisite lunch in his Beirut villa, I found the twinkly-eyed
Jumblatt speaking of the "madness" of that moment, his brief sojourn on "the
imperialist side," his sense that he had "gone too far with the Americans
and the Arab moderates," and his realization that the survival of his small
community depended on taking the familiar road to Damascus.
The Obama administration has been infuriated by Jumblatt's switch. But it
reflects the changing tide. As Nadim Houry, the Beirut director of Human
Rights Watch, said: "After what Israel did in July 2006, the United States
lost the strategic war." This was consummated in 2008, when Hezbollah
defeated its pro-Western rivals on the streets of Beirut.
A recent meeting between Jumblatt and Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. assistant
secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, did not go smoothly. "He told me I'm a
national leader and should back the tribunal," Jumblatt said. "I said, no, I
prefer to be a tribal leader, I'm downgrading! And I asked what the use of
tribunal justice is if it leads to slaughter? It's better to drop justice
for stability."
Jumblatt is flip but shrewd. An indictment from the tribunal is imminent;
rumors are rife that it will name Hezbollah members. That could ignite
tensions across an explosive Shia-Sunni (Iran-Arab) fault line. It would
also cast Hariri as Hamlet: heading a government including those accused of
murdering his father.
Nasrallah has been multiplying warnings and advancing preposterous - but
widely believed - theories of Israeli involvement in the assassination.
Hariri has been talking less and less about "truth" and meeting more and
more with the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
My sense is the passage of time - as well as bungling and inconsistencies -
has rendered justice impossible in the Hariri murder. Lebanese stability is
precious and tenuous: It trumps justice delayed, flawed and foreign.
In its way, the delicate balance of Shia and Sunni interests as the Lebanese
economy booms and Hezbollah makes deals with Hariri does represent a new
Middle East of money-making pragmatism. It's just not the one the United
States wanted or is ready to deal with.
As Houry said, "It's not either or here. This is not a satellite of Iran.
Real liberal instincts endure." Is anyone listening in D.C.? It's time to
drop either-or diplomacy to address a many-shaded reality.
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