Thursday, May 14, 2009

Not so calm Waters: Health Care, Obama, and the Middle East

From: Lois Hamilton
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 8:47 AM

Hello Friends,

I am really depressed these days about what is happening with Health Care
"reform" in Washington. How nasty were those physicians, who were there as
single payer advocates, treated? It was abominable! Single Payer advocates
must get out in mass and oppose this! This should be our next big event,
since Lois Capps continues to say single payer is not possible at this time.
She is one of many in Congress who are responsible for this negative
"socialized medicine" attitude we watched at the "Health Care Roundtable".
We were promised by President Obama that EVERYONE would have a seat at the
table!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where were the doctors and single payer advocates?
Is this the CHANGE we voted for? Why aren't the millions of people in this
country without access to Health Care being represented?

And, don't get me started on the "Af-Pak War" and the bombings we are seeing
on the web of drone aircraft killing so many people in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Didn't Obama promise us Diplomacy first? Most experts agree that
there is not a military solution to the "War on Terrorism", yet Obama is
asking for a $94 Billion war supplemental bill and is sending more troops to
Afghanistan. Am I the only one of my Peace activist friends who feels this
is WRONG?

If you have a moment to spare, please let me know how you feel about all
this.

Taking Prozac,
Lo

***

From: "Anthony Fenton" <fentona@shaw.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:07 AM

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-xgr-illinois-afgh,0,6439964.story

Ill. Senate takes stand against Afghanistan war

By CHRISTOPHER WILLS | Associated Press Writer
5:50 PM CDT, May 12, 2009

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The Illinois Senate has jumped into the deep water
of foreign policy by passing a resolution that criticizes President
Barack Obama's plan to step up military efforts in Afghanistan.

The resolution calls for the United States to withdraw all troops from
Afghanistan rather than send more, as Obama plans to do.

"The people of the United States have indicated that this war has gone
on long enough," says the resolution, which passed last week. "The
Senate believes that it is not in the national interest of the United
States to deepen its military involvement in Afghanistan."

This puts state senators at odds with Obama, who once served in the
Illinois Senate, and with public opinion.

Polls show strong support for Obama's plan to send an additional
21,000 troops to Afghanistan despite some frustration with the length
of the war, which was launched in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. The resolution says America's focus in Afghanistan should be
on capturing Osama bin Laden.

The resolution is purely advisory. It passed by voice vote, meaning
the positions of individual state senators were not recorded.

Sen. Rickey Hendon, D-Chicago, said he sponsored the resolution
because he feels the war is eating up money that could be spent on
domestic services while driving down the price of heroin.

"What are we getting? We're getting cheap heroin. We're getting
massive numbers of addictions," Hendon said Tuesday.

The Senate approved a resolution in 2007 calling for an end to the war
in Iraq. Hendon said he told his fellow Democrats that if they were
willing to speak out on foreign policy then, they should speak out
now, even though the new president is a friend and Democrat.

"I love Barack just like all of us love Barack down here, but he's
wrong. He's wrong," Hendon said.

Patti Schuh, a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans, said that because
the resolution praises the service of troops who have served in
Afghanistan, most GOP senators didn't feel it necessary to formally
object to it.

But many felt the resolution was unnecessary, she said, and one
Republican criticized the idea of Illinois weighing in on foreign
policy when the measure came to the Senate floor.

"To some, it's just plain silly. What does the Illinois Senate have to
do with escalation of troops in Afghanistan?" Schuh said.

The resolution is SR129.

On the Net: www.ilga.gov
_______________________________________________
Rad-Green mailing list
Rad-Green@lists.econ.utah.edu

***

From: Sid Shniad
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:15 AM

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46787

U.S.: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Greatest Threat of All?

By Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe*
Inter Press Service: May 10, 2009

Washington - A potentially major clash appears to be developing between
powerful factions inside and outside the U.S. government, pitting those who
see the Afghanistan/Pakistan ("AfPak") theatre as the greatest potential
threat to U.S. national security against those who believe that the danger
posed by a nuclear Iran must be given priority.

The Iran hawks, concentrated within the Israeli government and its U.S.
supporters in the so-called "Israel lobby" here, want to take aggressive
action against Iran's nuclear programme by moving quickly to a stepped-up
sanctions regime.

Many suggest that Israel or the U.S. may ultimately have to use military
force against Tehran if President Barack Obama's diplomatic efforts at
engagement do not result at least in a verifiable freeze - if not a
rollback - of the programme by the end of the year.

Their opponents appear to be concentrated at the Pentagon, where top leaders
are more concerned with providing a level of regional stability that will
allow the U.S. to wind down its operations in Iraq, step up its
counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan, and, above all, ensure the
security of the Pakistani state and its nuclear weapons.

In their view, any attack on Iran would almost certainly throw the entire
region into even greater upheaval. Both Defence Secretary Robert Gates and
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have repeatedly and
publicly warned over the past year against any moves that would further
destabilise the region.

Other key administration players are believed to share this view, including
senior military officers such as Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
Adm. Dennis Blair and Gen. Douglas Lute, the "war czar" whose White House
portfolio includes both Iraq and South Asia.

The divide between these factions was on vivid display this past week, when
Washington played host to two high-profile - and dissonant - events.

First, top U.S. and Israeli leaders were out in force at the annual
conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the
powerful and hawkish lobby group, where attendees heard a steady drumbeat of
dire warnings about the "existential threat" to Israel of an Iranian bomb
and calls for increased sanctions - and occasionally even military force -
against Tehran.

Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan were rarely mentioned at the conference,
which instead stressed hopes for building a U.S.-led coalition against
Tehran that would include both Israel and "moderate" Sunni-led Arab states.

But just as more than 6,000 AIPAC delegates fanned out Wednesday across
Capitol Hill to press their lawmakers to sign on to tough anti-Iran
sanctions legislation, the arrival of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari for summit talks with Obama and other
top officials focused attention on the deteriorating situation in both
countries.

The surface cordiality of Karzai's and Zardari's visits masked the fact that
the U.S. has grown increasingly worried about the ability of either leader
to combat their respective Taliban insurgencies.

Most indications are that the Obama administration, including Obama himself
and Vice President Joe Biden, sides with the Pentagon, at least for now.

But the AIPAC conference, which was attended by more than half of the
members of the U.S. Congress and featured speeches by the top Congressional
leadership of both parties, served as a reminder that Iran hawks within the
Israel lobby have a strong foothold in the legislative branch, and may be
able to push Iran to the top of the foreign-policy agenda whether the
administration likes it or not.

Obama pledged during the presidential campaign that he would give AfPak -
which he then called the "central front in the war on terror" - top
priority, and, since taking office, he has made good on that promise.

He appointed a powerful special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, with a broad
mandate to take charge of U.S. diplomacy in the region. Holbrooke, who met
briefly with a senior Iranian official during a conference at The Hague in
late March, has said several times that Tehran has an important role to play
in stabilising Afghanistan.

At the same time, Mullen, the U.S. military chief, has been virtually
"commuting" to and from the region to meet with his Pakistani counterpart,
Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, Holbrooke noted in Congressional testimony this week.

Given its preoccupation with AfPak and with stabilising the region as a
whole, the Pentagon has naturally been disinclined to increase tensions with
Iran, which shares lengthy borders with Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and
could easily make life significantly more difficult for the U.S. in each of
the three countries.

But the new Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is
pushing the U.S. to confront Iran over its nuclear programme, and his allies
in the U.S. have similarly argued that Iran should be a top priority.

For the moment, the Iran hawks have mostly expressed muted - if highly
sceptical - support for Obama's diplomatic outreach to Tehran. But they have
warned that this outreach must have a "short and hard end date", as
Republican Sen. Jon Kyl put it at the AIPAC conference, at which point the
U.S. must turn to harsher measures.

AIPAC's current top legislative priority is a bill, co-sponsored by Kyl and
key Democrats, that would require Obama to impose sanctions on foreign firms
that export refined petroleum products to Iran.

In recent Congressional testimony, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said
that the administration would support such "crippling" sanctions against
Tehran if diplomacy did not work, but she declined to say how long the
administration would permit diplomatic efforts to play out before taking
stronger action.

While sanctions seem to be the topic du jour, the possibility of military
action against Tehran remains on everybody's mind, as does the question of
whether Israel would be willing to strike Iranian nuclear facilities without
Washington's approval.

In March, Netanyahu told The Atlantic that "if we have to act, we will act,
even if America won't."

Asked at the AIPAC conference whether Israel would attack Iran without a
"green light" from the U.S., former Israeli deputy defence minister Ephraim
Sneh joked that in Israel, stoplight signals are "just a recommendation."

By contrast, Pentagon officials have made little secret of their opposition.
In late April, Gates told the Senate Appropriations committee that a
military strike would only delay Iran's acquisition of a nuclear capability
while "send[ing] the programme deeper and more covert".

Last month, Mullen told the Wall Street Journal that an Israeli attack would
pose "exceptionally high risks" to U.S. interests in the region. (Although
the newspaper chose not to publish this part of the interview, Mullen's
office provided a record to IPS.)

Similarly, Biden told CNN in April that an Israeli military strike against
Tehran would be "ill-advised". And former National Security Advisor (NSA)
Brent Scowcroft, who is close to both Gates and the current NSA, ret. Gen.
James Jones, told a conference here late last month that such an attack
would be a "disaster for everybody."

For the moment, the top Pentagon leadership's resistance to an attack on
Iran appears to be playing a major role in shaping the debate in Washington.

Gates "is a bulwark against those who want to go to war in Iran or give the
green light for Israel to go to war", said former national security advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski last month.

Others dispute the idea, proposed by Netanyahu in his speech to AIPAC, that
the Iranian threat can unite Israel and the Arab states.

"The Israeli notion making the rounds these days that Arab fears of Iran
might be the foundation for an alignment of interest is almost certainly
wrong," wrote Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University, on
the Foreign Policy website.

"Nothing would unite Arab opinion faster than an Israeli attack on Iran. The
only thing which might change that would be serious movement towards a two
state solution [in Israel-Palestine]."

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at
www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

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