Category: North Africa

Turkey Takes a Harder Line Abroad

By MARC CHAMPION

ISTANBUL—Turkey is showing signs of trading its vaunted “zero problems with neighbors” foreign policy for a more muscular approach to its bid to become the leading power in the Middle East and North Africa.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and members of his new cabinet visiting the mausoleum of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, in July.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and members of his new cabinet visiting the mausoleum of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, in July.

The shift, analysts and diplomats say, could trigger clashes with Israel and force Washington to choose between its closest allies in the region.

In recent weeks the policy change has been on display as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to deploy his country’s navy in a dispute with Israel, approved a major aerial bombing campaign against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and pressed Egypt to let him make a politically provocative visit to Hamas-run Gaza.

A Turkish cabinet minister also threatened that Turkey would use its navy to prevent Cyprus and Israel from developing offshore natural gas fields without the involvement of Turkish-backed Northern Cyprus.

On Monday, Mr. Erdogan departs for high-profile visits to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya—three core battlegrounds in the wave of popular revolutions that have swept the Arab world in the past year.

Turkey isn’t shifting from soft power to hard, says Ibrahim Kalin, senior adviser to Mr. Erdogan, but is using “smart power” by turning to force where necessary. “The soft power is still there,” he says.

The Arab Spring forced Turkey to retool its foreign policy, analysts and diplomats say, after the revolutions rocked the regimes of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Libya’s Col. Moammar Gadhafi—partners in Turkey’s “zero problems” approach—and for a time put Ankara in conflict with popular Arab sentiment.

Mr. Assad’s crackdown also drove Ankara into more direct competition with Syrian ally Iran, whose regime Turkey had courted assiduously. Last week, Ankara agreed to host the forward radar for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization missile-defense system directed at Iran.

While the Obama administration has expressed alarm over the confrontational approach to Israel, U.S. officials said they have been coordinating closely with Turkey in responding to political upheavals in Arab countries—and Washington views Ankara as central to any efforts to stabilize the Mideast.

Turkish officials see the Arab upheavals of 2011 as playing to Turkey’s strengths as a model Muslim democracy. They say their “zero problems” policy remains in tune with the Arab Spring, because it shares the same values as the protesters.

The officials now feel ready to press those advantages with Mr. Erdogan’s trip next week. “We have made it clear we never had any kind of imperial intentions, but there is demand from the Arab street,” Mr. Kalin said in a phone interview on Thursday.

How much Turkish leadership Arab leaders will accept remains an open question. Mr. Erdogan pushed hard, for example, to secure Egyptian permission to cross its border into Gaza, where he would likely receive a hero’s welcome for his vocal opposition to Israeli policy. Egypt so far appears to have refused permission for the trip.

So far there is little sign that Israel will bow to threats and meet Turkey’s demand that it should apologize for the deaths of nine people in the seizure of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara ship in May 2010.

Nor does Cyprus appear to be rushing to compromise in reunification talks, while Syria’s President Assad has so far rebuffed pressure to reform from Ankara, as well as from other capitals. Israel sees Turkey’s campaign for an end to the blockade of Gaza as part of a strategic decision to gain prominence in the Muslim world at the expense of their old strategic alliance.In Iran, ex-justice minister Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi complained that Turkey is promoting “liberal Islam.”

The policy shift doesn’t have universal appeal at home, either. Turkey’s main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu caused a storm of protest from government officials on Wednesday when he said Turkey’s foreign policy had turned from one of zero problems to “zero gains.”

For now though, surveys suggest Mr. Erdogan is the most popular leader in the Middle East.

In Egypt, a new zeal for revolutionary change has cast Mr. Erdogan’s more confrontational attitude toward Israel and his moderate approach toward political Islam as a model for the democratic experiment. Activists are reportedly planning a welcome party to greet Mr. Erdogan’s arrival.

Egyptian foreign-policy institutions are less likely to look to Turkish regional leadership with the same enthusiasm, said an official in Egypt’s ministry of foreign affairs. “Egypt is not in the business of following,” he said.

Mr. Erdogan, in a speech at Cairo University on Monday, will set out Turkey’s vision for the region’s future, one defined by “not occupation, not authoritarianism, not dictatorship,” said Mr. Kalin.

Mr. Erdogan will also sign bilateral energy and other economic agreements, attend a high-level joint political-security council, meet representatives of the prodemocracy movement and address a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers, according to Mr. Kalin.

Yet Mr. Erdogan’s outreach to the Arab world comes with a visibly tougher approach to foreign policy. That includes a series of warnings to Cyprus and Israel in recent days against drilling offshore for natural gas without the involvement of Turkish-backed Northern Cyprus.

“That’s what naval forces are for,” Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s Europe minister told the Sunday’s Zaman newspaper.

“In this game of brinksmanship accidents can happen, not least because parts of the Israeli government are prone to high risk-taking,” says Professor Ilter Turan, professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Bilgi University.

Mr. Turan sees the Turkish government’s more aggressive stance as part of a wider confidence that is the result of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s sweeping re-election in June.

In a sign of that confidence, Ankara—once careful to court the European Union—this summer threatened to freeze relations with the bloc over Cyprus reunification talks.

Then, in August, Turkey’s once all-powerful generals effectively admitted defeat in a power struggle with the government; a new slate of top commanders appears to have accepted civilian control, boosting government confidence.

It isn’t clear how far Turkey will go. For example, while Ankara has threatened to send out naval patrols, it has yet to do so. The assault on bases of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, is only the first in several years and hasn’t expanded into a land campaign.

According to Henri Barkey, Turkey specialist and professor of international relations at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, Turkey is using the latest conflict with Israel in “a bid to recover lost prestige in the Arab world” after the Arab Spring. At the same time, he said, Ankara is bidding for regional leadership and challenging the U.S. to choose between its two closest regional allies.

“It’s a very high stakes approach, but they are also very confident,” he said.
—Joshua Mitnick in Tel Aviv, Matt Bradley in Cairo and Jay Solomon in Washington contributed to this article.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904103404576558511184832354

September 16, 2011
On Somalia Street, Istanbul, African migrants seek a new life

On Somalia Street, Istanbul, African migrants seek a new life

Thomas Seibert

Sep 5, 2011

African immigrants on the streets of the Kumkapi district in Istanbul. Kerem Uzel / Narphotos

ISTANBUL // When the muezzin’s call for the dhuhr prayer rang out from the Katip Kasim Mosque in a rundown neighbourhood of Istanbul this week, dozens of men arrived. But it was no ordinary crowd that gathered midday in the mosque: about half of the men were Africans.

“Istanbul’s Mogadishu” is the name Turkish newspapers call the area around the mosque in the Yenikapi district close to the Sea of Marmara on the European side of the Turkish metropolis. The street in front of the 17th-century mosque, Katip Kasim Camii Sokak, has been dubbed “Somalia Street”, because the neighbourhood has become home for migrants from across Africa, many of whom do not have Turkish residence permits and face expulsion if arrested by the police.

Some have been here for years.

“I want to go to the United States,” said Ali, 39, from Senegal, who only gave his first name. Like other Africans in the neighbourhood, he declined to be photographed because of fear of the police. Ali said he had come to Istanbul two years before and was earning money by selling perfume on the street in upscale and tourist parts of Istanbul.

“It is hard,” he said. “But I live together with friends, so it becomes a little easier.”

The area around the mosque is also home to Kurds, Armenians and members of other minority ethnic groups. Streets are dotted with telephone shops offering cheap calls to African countries and to Asian nations. Laleli, a quarter frequented by Eastern European tourists for cheap clothes and other supplies, is just up the road. Turks share tea with Africans and Eastern Europeans at cafes that dot the sidewalks.

On Somalia Street, Johnny Kitoko-Mboma, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, left a telephone shop and set out for home, a small flat he has been sharing with his wife and two young children since they arrived in Istanbul several months ago.

“I am stuck here,” Mr Kitoko-Mboma said. “There is no work permit, there are no jobs, they do not give jobs to Africans.”

Mr Kitoko-Mboma, 34, said he and his family left Kinshasa because of violence.

“My mother and my father are dead,” he said, adding they were killed as a result of political strife. The family ended up in Turkey after a weeks-long journey that took them through Tunisia and Lebanon.

Now his money was running out.

“If I can find work, I want to stay here, but I have been told the Turks do not accept asylum seekers at all,” Mr Kitoko-Mboma said.

Turkey’s asylum laws grant refuge only to migrants from Europe. Refugees from all other countries face expulsion if they do not register with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

The commission tries to find countries willing to take them in, a process with an uncertain outcome that can take years. Refugees are allowed to stay in Turkey, but rarely are given work permits.

Turkey is a major transit country for hundreds of thousands of migrants from Asia, the Middle East and Africa who want to get to the West but lack the necessary documents.

There are no official figures for the number of Africans currently in the country, but Turks and Africans in Yenikapi agreed there are several hundred, if not thousands, in that part of Istanbul alone.

While they wait, many Africans in Yenikapi try to get by on odd jobs and avoid the police.

“Every now and then you find work for a few hours,” said Abdul, 28, from Eritrea. “It’s hard.”

Not all Africans on Somalia Street are illegal migrants. Issa Konyate, a businessman from Senegal, said he had been in Turkey for a year and had travelled frequently between Istanbul and Dakar. He said he trades in textiles, managing several Senegalese football players in Turkey and had also helped Turkish entrepreneurs to set up a factory in Senegal.

“It’s good business,” he said. “There are no problems.”

Africa has been on people’s minds in Turkey recently. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, flew to Somalia and Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, travelled to a refugee camp in Kenya on separate visits. Turks donated US$200 million (Dh735m) in famine relief during Ramadan. Mr Erdogan has said Turkey would bring field hospitals to Mogadishu and rebuild schools and roads.

Turkish residents on Somalia Street said they felt pity with the African migrants.

“They are poor people,” said Salih Kartop, a Kurdish grocer in the neighbourhood. “Their countries are even poorer than Turkey. Some of them come in here and ask for a tiny piece of butter, not even a whole stick, because they cannot afford it.”

Asked about news reports of fighting and heavy drinking among the Africans, Mr Kartop shook his head.

“I haven’t heard anything like that, and I have been here for 10 years. Only people with money can make noise, if you don’t have money, what can you do?”

Atam Donukok, a Turk of Armenian descent, said most Africans were “very, very good people, super people”, although some were engaged in petty crime and drug dealing.

“But there are bad people everywhere, aren’t there?”

tseibert@thenational.ae

via On Somalia Street, Istanbul, African migrants seek a new life – The National.

September 5, 2011
Secret Libyan files claim MI6 and the CIA aided human rights violations

Intelligence helped Gaddafi regime track and apprehend dissidents, according to files seized from Tripoli offices

Cherry Wilson

Files found in Tripoli offices claim MI6 and the CIA were complicit in human rights violations by the Gaddafi regime. Photograph: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

British and US intelligence agencies built up close links with Muammar Gaddafi and handed over detailed information to assist his regime, according to secret files found in Libyan government offices.

The documents claim that MI6 supplied its counterparts in Libya with details on exiled opponents living in the UK, and chart how the CIA abducted several suspected militants before handing them over to Tripoli.

They also contain communications between British and Libyan security officials ahead of Tony Blair’s visit in 2004, and show that British officials helped write a draft speech for Gaddafi when he was being encouraged to give up his weapons programme.

The discovery was made by reporters and members of Human Rights Watch in the private offices of Moussa Koussa, the former foreign minister and head of Libyan intelligence, who defected to Britain in February. He is now believed to be in Qatar.

According to the documents, Libya’s relationship with MI6 and the CIA was especially close between 2002 and 2004, at the height of the war on terror. The papers give details of how No 10 insisted that the 2004 meeting between Blair and Gaddafi took place in his bedouin tent, with a letter from an MI6 official saying: “I don’t know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is that the journalists would love it.”

They also show how a statement made by Gaddafi during the time in which he pledged to give up his nuclear programme and destroy his stock of chemical and biological weapons was put together with the help of British officials. A covering letter states: “For the sake of clarity, please find attached a tidied-up version of the language we agreed on Tuesday. I wanted to ensure that you had the same script.”

Other letters seem to reveal that British intelligence gave Tripoli details of a Libyan dissident who had been freed from jail in Britain. One US document stated the CIA was in a position to deliver a prisoner into the custody of Libyan authorities.

The papers, which have not been independently verified, also suggest the CIA abducted several suspected militants from 2002 to 2004 who were subsequently handed over to Tripoli. Human Rights Watch has accused the CIA of condoning torture.

“It wasn’t just abducting suspected Islamic militants and handing them over to the Libyan intelligence,” said Peter Bouckaert, director of Human Rights Watch’s emergencies division. “The CIA also sent the questions they wanted Libyan intelligence to ask and, from the files, it’s very clear they were present in some of the interrogations themselves.”

Foreign secretary, William Hague, said he could not comment on security matters. Further documents found at the British ambassador’s residence in Tripoli, and obtained by a Sunday newspaper, concerned the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. A memo written in January 2009 by Robert Dixon, head of the North Africa team at the Foreign Office, and sent to then foreign secretary David Miliband, warned that Gaddafi’s ministers said there would be “dire consequences” for the UK-Libya relationship in the event of Megrahi’s death in custody.

www.guardian.co.uk, 3 September 2011

September 5, 2011
Full text of a CIA document indicating UK role in rendition of a terror suspect

We are aware that your service has been cooperating with the British to effect Abu Munthir’s removal to Tripoli’

“Our service has become aware that last weekend LIFG deputy Emir Abu Munthir and his spouse and children were being held in Hong Kong detention for immigration/passport violations. We are also aware that your service has been cooperating with the British to effect Abu Munthir’s removal to Tripoli, and that you had an aircraft available for this purpose in the Maldives.

Our understanding is that the Hong Kong special wing (SW) originally denied permission for your aircraft to land in Hong Kong to enable you to assume control of Abu Munthir and his family. However, we believe that the reason for the refusal was based on international concerns over having a Libyan-registered aircraft land in Hong Kong. Accordingly, if your government were to charter a foreign aircraft from a third country, the Hong Kong government may be able to coordinate with you to render Abu Munthir and his family into your custody.

If payment of a charter aircraft is an issue, our service would be willing to assist financially to help underwrite those costs. Please be advised that if we pursue that option, we must have assurances from your government that Abu Munthir and his family will be treated humanely and that his human rights will be respected; we must receive such assurances prior to any assistance being provided.

For your information, the Hong Kong special administrative region is governed by a variety of legal constraints regarding deportation and custody of aliens. Accordingly, we believe that you will need to provide significant detail on Abu Munthir (eg, his terrorist/criminal acts, why he is wanted, perhaps proof of citizenship). It is also our understanding that Hong Kong officials have insisted that prior to turning Abu Munthir over to your custody, they must receive clear assurances from your government that Abu Munthir and his family will be treated humanely and in accordance with human rights.”

guardian.co.uk, 4 September 2011

September 5, 2011
Libya and Syria: The Neocon Plan to Attack Seven Countries in Five Years

Kurt Nimmo

In the video below, former four star general and NATO commander Wesley Clark talks about the neocon plan to invade seven countries in five years. Included in the plan was an attack on Libya. Clark mentions the plan at two minutes, 26 seconds into the video.

The video was recorded on October 3, 2007, at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco.

Clark’s revelation is nothing new, although it reminds us that the attack on Libya fits into a larger context and there are horrific conflicts to come if the globalists have their way.

Following the election of Obama and a reshuffling of the same old deck in Congress in 2008, it was believed the bad old days of neocon wars were finally behind us. Obama said he would close down the wars and bring home the troops. Instead, he intensified the effort to spread chaos, mayhem and mass murder in the Middle East and South Asia, thus underscoring the fact there is absolutely no difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to creative destruction (it is telling that the neocon Michael Leeden has used the term – creative destruction is a Marxist concept).

Clark has talked about the neocon plan on several occasions. He said the following during a speech at the University of Alabama in October of 2006, recounting a conversation with a general at the Pentagon:

I said, “Are we still going to invade Iraq?” “Yes, Sir,” he said, “but it’s worse than that.” I said, “How do you mean?” He held up this piece of paper. He said, “I just got this memo today or yesterday from the office of the Secretary of Defense upstairs. It’s a… five-year plan. We’re going to take down seven countries in five years. We’re going to start with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, then Libya, Somalia, Sudan, we’re going to come back and get Iran in five years. I said, “Is that classified, that paper?” He said, “Yes Sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me, because I want to be able to talk about it.”

The neocons, of course, are merely one of a number of establishment factions, all of them reading from the same script. Obama’s attack on Libya and the impending attack on Syria under the ruse popularly known as the “Arab Spring” (pushed by elite NGOs and the CIA) is interchangeable with the Bush regime’s call to action against the Axis of Evil. The only difference between Democrat Obama and the (supposedly) Republican neocons (who have roots in Trotskyism) is that the neocons are decidedly Israeli-centric in their geopolitical stance.

The global elite do not care about Israel or any other nation-state, but are not above using the neocons – who are highly organized and motivated (despite propaganda depicting them as inept) – in their quest to destroy Arab and Muslim nationalism that directly threatens their drive for hegemonic rule (in particular, Sharia law with its restrictions on banking poses a threat to the banksters).

Syria is the next target followed by the big Kahuna, Iran. For the globalists, who are determined to wreck all nation-states and eradicate national sovereignty and borders, the fact this effort will precipitate the destruction of the “world’s policeman,” the United States, is an extra added bonus.

Multiple wars in multiple and far-stretched “theaters” will ultimately bankrupt the United States, as Ron Paul and a handful of others have warned. Obama has made if perfectly clear that the U.S. will not leave Iraq and Afghanistan and plans to continue attacking Pakistan and failed states in Africa where the CIA cut-out al-Qaeda has appeared on cue.

Wesley Clark’s warning is prescient, but nearly a decade too late. Clark is, at best,disingenuous because he himself a war criminal for the role he played in the slaughter of civilians in Yugoslavia.

www.infowars.com, September 2, 2011

September 4, 2011
Meet Professor Juan Cole, Consultant to the CIA

“Democracy Now?”

by JOHN WALSH

Juan Cole is a brand name that is no longer trusted. And that has been the case for some time for the Professor from Michigan. After warning of the “difficulties” with the Iraq War, Cole swung over to ply it with burning kisses on the day of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His fervor was not based on Saddam Hussein’s fictional possession of weapons of mass destruction but on the virtues of “humanitarian imperialism.”

Thus on March 19, 2003, as the imperial invasion commenced, Cole enthused on his blog: “I remain (Emphasis mine.) convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides.” Now, with over 1 million Iraqis dead, 4 million displaced and the country’s infrastructure destroyed, might Cole still echo Madeline Albright that the price was “worth it”? Cole has called the Afghan War “the right war at the right time” and has emerged as a cheerleader for Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya and for Obama himself.

Cole claims to be a man of the left and he appears with painful frequency on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now as the reigning “expert” on the war on Libya. This is deeply troubling – on at least two counts. First, can one be a member of the “left” and also an advocate for the brutal intervention by the Great Western Powers in the affairs of a small, relatively poor country? Apparently so, at least in Democracy Now’sversion of the “left.” Second, it appears that Cole’s essential function these days is to convince wavering progressives that the war on Libya has been fine and dandy. But how can such damaged goods as Cole credibly perform this marketing mission so vital to Obama’s war?

Miraculously, Cole got just the rehabilitation he needed to continue with this vital propaganda function when it was disclosed by the New York Times on June 15 that he was the object of a White House inquiry way back in 2005 in Bush time.   The source and reason for this leak and the publication of it by the NYT at this time, so many years later, should be of great interest, but they are unknown.   Within a week of the Timespiece Cole was accorded a hero’s welcome on Democracy Now, as he appeared with retired CIA agent Glenn Carle who had served 23 years in the clandestine services of the CIA in part as an “interrogator.” Carl had just retired from the CIA at the time of the White House request and was at the time employed at the National Intelligence Council, which authors the National Intelligence Estimate.

It hit this listener like a ton of bricks when it was disclosed in Goodman’s interview that Cole was a long time “consultant” for the CIA, the National Intelligence Council and other agencies. Here is what nearly caused me to keel over when I heard it (From the Democracy Nowtranscript.):

AMY GOODMAN: So, did you know Professor Cole or know of him at the time you were asked? And can you go on from there? What happened when you said you wouldn’t do this? And who was it who demanded this information from you, said that you should get information?

GLENN CARLE: Well, I did know Professor Cole. He was one of a large number of experts of diverse views that the National Intelligence Council and my office and the CIA respectively consult with to challenge our assumptions and understand the trends and issues on our various portfolios. So I knew him that way. And it was sensible, in that sense, that the White House turned to my office to inquire about him, because we were the ones, at least one of the ones—I don’t know all of Mr. Cole’s work—who had consulted with him. (Emphases mine.)

That seems like strange toil for a man of the “left.” But were the consultations long drawn out and the association with the CIA a deep one?   It would appear so. Again from the transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Well, the way James Risen (the NYT reporter) writes it, he says, “Mr. Carle said [that] sometime that year, he was approached by his supervisor, David Low, about Professor Cole. [Mr.] Low and [Mr.] Carle have starkly different recollections of what happened. According to Mr. Carle, [Mr.] Low returned from a White House meeting one day and inquired who Juan Cole was, making clear [that] he wanted [Mr.] Carle to gather information on him. Mr. Carle recalled [his] boss saying, ‘The White House wants to get him.’”

GLENN CARLE: Well, that’s substantially correct. The one nuance, perhaps, I would point out is there’s a difference between collecting information actively, going out and running an operation, say, to find out things about Mr. Cole, or providing information known through interactions. (Emphasis mine.) I would characterize it more as the latter.

And later in the interview Carle continues:

On the whole, Professor Cole and I are in agreement. The distinction I make is it wasn’t publicly known information that was requested; it was information that officers knew of a personal nature about Professor Cole, which is much more disturbing.There was no direct request that I’m aware, in the two instances of which I have knowledge, for the officers actively to seek and obtain, to conduct—for me to go out and follow Professor Cole. But if I knew lifestyle questions or so on, to pass those along. (Emphasis mine.)That’s how I—which is totally unacceptable.

It would seem then that the interaction between the CIA operatives and Cole was long standing and sufficiently intimate that the CIA spooks could be expected to know things about Cole’s lifestyle and personal life. It is not that anyone should give two figs about Cole’s personal life which is more than likely is every bit as boring as he claims. But his relationship with the CIA is of interest since he is an unreconstructed hawk. What was remarkable to me at the time is that Goodman did not pick up on any of this. Did she know before of Cole’s connections? Was not this the wrong man to have as a “frequent guest,” in Goodman’s words, on the situation in the Middle East?

This is not to claim that Cole is on a mission for the CIA to convince the left to support the imperial wars, most notably at the moment the war on Libya. Nor is this a claim that the revelation about the White House seeking information on Cole was a contrived psyops effort to rehabilitate Cole so that he could continue such a mission. That cannot be claimed, because there is as yet no evidence for it. But information flows two ways in any consultation, and it is even possible that Cole was being loaded with war-friendly information in hopes he would transmit it.

Cole is anxious to promote himself as a man of the left as he spins out his rationale for the war on Libya. At one point he says to Goodman (3/29), “We are people of the left. We care about the ordinary people. We care about workers.” It is strange that a man who claims such views dismisses as irrelevant the progress that has come to the people of Libya under Gaddafi, dictator or not. (Indeed what brought Gaddafi down was not that he was a dictator but that he was not our dictator.) In fact Libya has the highest score of all African countries on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) and with Tunisia and Morocco the second highest level of literacy. The HDI is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living for countries worldwide.

Whither the Left on the Question of Intervention?

None of this is all too surprising given Cole’s status as a “humanitarian” hawk. But it is outrageous that he is so often called on by Democracy Now for his opinion. One of his appearances there was in a debate on the unconstitutional war in Libya, with CounterPunch’s estimable Vijay Prashad taking the antiwar side and Cole prowar. It would seem strange for the left to have to debate the worth of an imperial intervention. Certainly if one goes back to the days of the Vietnam War there were teach-ins to inform the public of the lies of the U.S. government and the truth about what was going on in Vietnam. But let us give Democracy Now the benefit of the doubt and say that the debate was some sort of consciousness raising effort. Why later on invite as a frequent guest a man who was the pro-war voice in the debate? That is a strange choice indeed.

This writer does not get to listen to Democracy Now every day. But I have not heard a full-throated denunciation of the war on Libya from host or guests. Certainly according to a search on the DN web site, Cynthia McKinney did not appear as a guest nor Ramsey Clark after their courageous fact finding tour to Libya. There was only one all out denunciation of the war – on the day when the guests were Rev. Jesse Jackson and Vincent Harding who was King’s speechwriter on the famous speech “Beyond Vietnam” in 1967 in which King condemned the U.S. war on Vietnam. Jackson and the wise and keenly intelligent Harding were there not to discuss Libya but to discuss the MLK Jr. monument. Nonetheless Jackson and Harding made clear that they did not like the U.S. war in Libya one bit, nor the militarism it entails.

If one reads CounterPunch.org, Antiwar.com or The American Conservative, one knows that one is reading those who are anti-interventionist on the basis of principle. With Democracy Now and kindred progressive outlets, it’s all too clear where a big chunk of the so-called “left” stands, especially since the advent of Obama.   In his superb little book Humanitarian Imperialism Jean Bricmont criticizes much of the left for falling prey to advocacy of wars, supposedly based on good intentions. And Alexander Cockburn has often pointed out that many progressives are actually quite fond of “humanitarian” interventionism.   Both here and in Europe this fondness seems to be especially true of Obama’s latest war, the war on Libya . It is little wonder that the “progressives” are losing their antiwar following to Ron Paul and the Libertarians who are consistent and principled on the issue of anti-interventionism.

Democracy Now, quo vadis? Wherever you are heading, you would do well to travel without Juan Cole and his friends.

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com After wading through Cole’s loose prose and dubious logic to write this essay, the author suspects that the rejection of Cole by the Yale faculty was the result of considerations that had little to do with neocon Bush/Cheney operatives.

www.counterpunch.org,

September 3, 2011