Jon Stewart, You've Done It Again: Thanks for Interviewing Mustafa Barghouti and Anna Baltzer

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The edited version is here.


Jon Stewart, you've done it again. I've been watching you since day 1 of your version of the Daily Show; you've helped me laugh at our falsehoods and fates, and even survive the Bush Administration. That you interviewed these two nonviolent activists--no doubt, to the outcry of many--shows you have brass cojones, my man.

There is some talk that the TV version edited out some crucial information; in Baltzer's words, "Many of you who watched the show on TV noticed that everything of real substance that I said was edited out. The major issues cut out were (1) the US role in aiding Israel, (2) the lack of adequate coverage in mainstream US media, and (3) the Palestinian-led movement for Boycott / Divestment / Sanctions (BDS) to nonviolently pressure Israel to comply with international law."

You can check it out for yourself. The unedited versions are here, and edited version is at the link above.

Ali Abunimah, on "Why I Disrupted Olmert"

I've known Ali Abunimah since the mid-1990s, when his activism was principally media-criticism of U.S. representations of the Palestinians, Arabs, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has an acid and bitter wit that befits someone whose side of the argument is not always heard. Given his largely internet-based interventions, Ali's recent act of civil disobedience took me a little by surprise. Here is why he did what he did.

Why I disrupted Olmert
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 23 October 2009


Protesters demonstrated in the rain outside of the University of Chicago lecture hall where activists inside disrupted Olmert's speech, 15 October 2009. (Maureen Clare Murphy)

If former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had merely been a diplomat or an academic offering a controversial viewpoint, then interrupting his 15 October speech at University of Chicago's Mandel Hall would certainly have been an attempt to stifle debate (Noah Moskowitz, Meredyth Richards and Lee Solomon, "The importance of open dialogue," Chicago Maroon, 19 October 2009). Indeed, I experienced exactly such attempts when my own appearance at Mandel Hall last January, with Professor John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein, was constantly interrupted by hecklers.

But confronting a political leader suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot be viewed the same way.

The report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict last winter, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, found that Israel engaged in willful, widespread and wanton destruction of civilian property and infrastructure, causing deliberate suffering to the civilian population. It found "that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions" and that many may amount to "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." If that proves true, then the individual with primary responsibility is Ehud Olmert, who, as prime minister and the top civilian commander of Israel's armed forces, was involved in virtually every aspect of planning and execution.

The killings of more than 3,000 Palestinians and Lebanese during Olmert's three years in office are not mere differences of opinion to be challenged with a polite question written on a pre-screened note card. They are crimes for which Olmert is accountable before international law and public opinion.

Israel, unlike Hamas (also accused of war crimes by Goldstone), completely refused to cooperate with the Goldstone Mission. Instead of accountability, Olmert is, obscenely, traveling around the United States offering justifications for these appalling crimes, collecting large speaking fees, and being feted as a "courageous" statesman.

In their 20 October email to the University of Chicago community, President Robert Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum condemned the "disruptions" during Olmert's speech. "Any stifling of debate," they wrote, "runs counter to the primary values of the University of Chicago and to our long-standing position as an exemplar of academic freedom."

Was it in order to promote debate that the University insisted on pre-screening questions and imposed a recording ban for students and media? In the name of promoting debate, will the University now invite Hamas leader Khaled Meshal -- perhaps by video link -- to lecture on leadership to its students, and offer him a large honorarium? Can we soon expect Sudan's President Omar Bashir to make an appearance at Mandel Hall?

When I and others verbally confronted Olmert, we stood for academic freedom, human rights, and justice, especially for hundreds of thousands of students deprived of those same rights by Olmert's actions.

During Israel's attack on Gaza last winter, schools and universities were among the primary targets. According to the Goldstone report, Israeli military attacks destroyed or damaged at least 280 schools and kindergartens. In total, 164 pupils and 12 teachers were killed, and 454 pupils and five teachers injured.

After the bombing, Olmert and Israel continued their attack on academic freedom, blocking educational supplies from reaching Gaza. Textbooks, notebooks, stationery and computers are among the forbidden items. In September, Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, publicly appealed to Israel to lift its ban on books and other supplies from reaching Gaza's traumatized students.

Israel destroyed buildings at the Islamic University and other universities. According to the Goldstone report, these "were civilian, educational buildings and the Mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility or their contribution to a military effort that might have made them a legitimate target in the eyes of the Israeli armed forces."

Gaza's university students -- 60 percent of them women -- study all the things that students do at the University of Chicago. Their motivations, aspirations, and abilities are just as high, but their lives are suffocated by unimaginable violence, trauma, and Israel's blockade, itself a war crime. Olmert is the person who ordered these acts and must be held accountable.

Crimes against humanity are defined as "crimes that shock the conscience." When the institutions with the moral and legal responsibility to punish and prevent the crimes choose complicit silence -- or, worse, harbor a suspected war criminal, already on trial for corruption in Israel, and present him to students as a paragon of "leadership" -- then disobedience, if that is what it takes to break the silence, is an ethical duty. Instead of condemning them, the University should be proud that its students were among those who had the courage to stand up.

For the first time in recorded history, an Israeli prime minister was publicly confronted with the names of his victims. It was a symbolic crack in the wall of impunity and a foretaste of the public justice victims have a right to receive when Olmert is tried in a court of law.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. This article was originally published in the University of Chicago's Chicago Maroon newspaper and is republished with permission.

Philip Metres & Master Poets' class at Avon Lake Library

Poet and teacher Phil Metres will present a Master Poets’ Class at the Library on Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. Adults and high school students interested in listening to, writing and reading poetry are welcome to participate.

Phil is a much-published poet and associate professor of English at John Carroll University. His teaching interests include creative writing, poetry, American poetry and the poetry of war and peace.

Phil writes poetry about poetry:

If you are sitting in an exit row & you cannot understand
this poem, or cannot see well enough to follow
these instructions, please tell a literary critic. Poems are
heavy, awkward to lift, push, pull, and maneuver.
Because of this, and for the safety of all
Harold Bloom requires that we seat qualified readers
next to poems. If a poem loses pressure, an idea
will be released from the overhead compartment.
Make sure to write down the idea before
you attempt to assist others with their ideas. Once again,
thank you for reading this poem. I know you have
many choices and appreciate your choosing this one.

(used by permission of the poet)

More of Phil’s poetry can be enjoyed at http://www.philipmetres.com/content/view/16/44/ or by coming to the Nov. 4 Master Class.

Chicago Youth Poets Rage Against the Dying of the Light

I read Dawn Turner Trice's article about the spoken word performances of two Chicago student-poets, confronting the murders of classmates in a particularly violent year. Merging elegy and protest, these poets are raging against the violence of the our inner city streets, where war is not an abstraction somewhere "over there."

Video captures poetry slam performance of tribute
Dawn Turner Trice

October 26, 2009
They are performing "Lost Count: A Love Story," a spoken word poem (which they wrote with another student, Deja Taylor) that's an homage to the Chicago Public Schools children who were murdered that year.

Will they ever call your death beautiful/Your life a sacrifice/Will the meeting of blood and bullet ever be called romantic/A love story to be jealous of

The young men and women in the audience are from all over the country, but, for too many, their lives have been touched in some way by violence. Soon the audience members are overcome with grief and begin shaking their heads and sobbing. A few snap their fingers.

I recently saw the video and contacted Marshall, who's now 20 and a sophomore at Vanderbilt University, and Amparan, 19, a sophomore at Valparaiso University. Although their performance is solid, it's their message that's absolutely breathtaking.

The creative place from which Marshall draws has roots in the West Pullman neighborhood, where he grew up not far from the troubled Fenger High School.

He would have gone there if he hadn't been accepted at Whitney Young.

Though Marshall's mother worried about his long commute to Whitney Young, it was the walk through his own neighborhood that frightened her the most. One day, during his junior year, four thugs jumped him at 115th and Halsted streets as he was getting off the bus on his way home from school.

"I was fine physically, but my mother panicked and wanted to restrict where I went," Marshall told me. "She wanted my father to pick me up from the bus stop. I couldn't live like that, afraid."

But the fear was something he couldn't escape completely. Weeks after Marshall was attacked, the bludgeoned body of his friend and Whitney Young classmate Christopher Pineda, 17, was found in the Cal-Sag Channel. From "Lost Count," Marshall recites:

I remember you wearing Guatemalan green matching your flag on your Independence Day/Your hair was a black puff of curl and confidence/ ... I couldn't sleep for a week/When you washed up water logged in the Calumet River/Puffed and purple like violets before bloom

The students began writing "Lost Count" when Young Chicago Authors, a group that provides workshops on artistic expression for teens, asked students to prepare for local and national contests.

Initially, Marshall and Amparan were only going to write about friends who had died. But they began to pore over local newspapers culling information about all the students who were dying that year. Eventually their names were added to the performance and you can hear someone in the background reciting the names.

"We started with 12 and over a two-year span ended with over 60 kids who were killed," said Amparan.

He said writing the poem became an obsession. Marshall and Amparan met with a group of students four days a week after school at the Young Chicago Authors facility. But sometimes the two collaborated at a distance. Although they lived nearby -- Amparan's family lives in the Morgan Park neighborhood -- they could never walk to each other's house.

"Morgan Park is a tricky place to live in," said Amparan. "One block in the wrong direction and you're in the wrong place. We both lived on good blocks but the distance between us was just too dangerous."

Marshall and Amparan worry about their family members who remain in those communities. Their parents worry about them when they come home for visits.

Marshall is majoring in English and African-American studies; Amparan is studying sociology. They told me they want their rhymes and life work to mean something in a city where too many teens continue to struggle.

In Chicago, anyone under age 20 is a target/And I don't know how to do more than be afraid/That an age allowing me to be on this stage/Might have me murdered by Monday/I'm 18 and I play pick-up basketball games with ghosts/Is there a reason, I'm making it out of a community that has martyred young men I might be mistaken for

You can view the performance -- which won third place and aired on HBO in May -- on YouTube by searching for "Lost Count: A Love Story."

I challenge you to view it and not feel something.

dtrice@tribune.com

A J Street Poetry Reading Cancelled: More on Poetry and the Politics of Israel/Palestine in the U.S

According to recent stories, a poetry reading as part of a J-Street conference, has been dropped because it was deemed to be too controversial. Reading the list of speakers at this conference, I see some familiar names and some not so familiar, of the peace and justice movements in Israel and Palestine, but none of the Arab/Palestinian or Jewish/Israeli poets in the U.S. who are writing and contributing to trying to bring about a just peace (Naomi Shihab Nye, most famously, among many others--see the anthology Inclined to Speak).

A bit of information about J Street, from their website, which is an attempt to move away from the AIPAC-centered model of Jewish activism in support of Israel, to represent more moderate voices of Jewish and pro-Israeli Americans:

J Street is the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.

J Street was founded to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. We support a new direction for American policy in the Middle East and a broad public and policy debate about the U.S. role in the region.

J Street represents Americans, primarily but not exclusively Jewish, who support Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland, as well as the right of the Palestinians to a sovereign state of their own - two states living side-by-side in peace and security. We believe ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the best interests of Israel, the United States, the Palestinians, and the region as a whole.

J Street supports diplomatic solutions over military ones, including in Iran; multilateral over unilateral approaches to conflict resolution; and dialogue over confrontation with a wide range of countries and actors when conflicts do arise. For more on our policy positions, click here.

J Street will advocate forcefully in the policy process, in Congress, in the media, and in the Jewish community to make sure public officials and community leaders clearly see the depth and breadth of support for our views on Middle East policy among voters and supporters in their states and districts. We seek to complement the work of existing organizations and individuals that share our agenda. In our lobbying and advocacy efforts, we will enlist individual supporters of other efforts as partners.

While J Street has a laudable and moderate goal, I am not feeling sanguine about Obama's approach to the Middle East, which may look different to Bush's in terms of its level of engagement (which is good), but is rehashing the familiar "peace process" mantra which has gone nowhere in years, and which essentially means that Israel will make further steps in erasing any future Palestinian state. In particular, there is little discussion within the charter for other than the "two-state solution," which seems almost moribund, given the nature of Israeli settlement of the West Bank.

This latest controversy is suggestive of the power of political poetry--and, perhaps, its dangers. What is so difficult, in peacework, is to balance the need to tell a truth, to bring the news, AND to articulate some way forward, to create bridges to some common future.

Here is the poet that brought about the furor, who was dropped from the conference; Kevin Coval's work is confrontational but articulated from a standpoint of a Jewish dissent from the policies of Israel toward Palestinians, and resembles much of performance poetry's agit-prop directness and righteous rage. This is the first I've heard of him, but reading a bit about his poetry, I'm a little surprised that I hadn't, since he appears on HBO's Def Comedy Jam and also has had poems in literary journals.


This is from politico.com's Ben Smith:

The Weekly Standard, still dogging J Street, notes that the author of "Queer Intifada" has been dropped from the schedule of the group's conference.

Also missing, the speaker above, Kevin Coval, who appears on a cached schedule, but has apparently, quietly, been deemed a bit off-key for the conference, now headlined by Jim Jones.

The video above is worth watching, casting Israel as, in a litany of metaphors, a "whore." And who knew people still performed spoken-word art about "imperialist warheads"?

UPDATE: A J Street spokeswoman emails over a statement from executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami:

"Over the weekend, J Street canceled the poetry session scheduled as part of the “Culture as a Tool for Change” track at its upcoming National Conference.

As a matter of principle, J Street respects the dissenting voice that poetry can represent in society and politics. We acknowledge that expression and language are used differently in the arts and artistic expression when compared to their use in political argumentation.

Nevertheless, as J Street is critical of the use and abuse of Holocaust imagery and metaphors by politicians and pundits on the right, it would be inappropriate for us to feature poets at our Conference whose poetry has used such imagery in the past and might also be offensive to some conference participants.

We are sorry for any distraction that this issue may cause for those interested in working with us to advance the cause of peace and security for Israel and the Middle East."

In short, poetry still has power, particularly poetry which deals with the painful realities of Israel/Palestine, and particularly when it employs imagery of the holocaust. But not only poetry. Another story in The Weekly Standard about another contributor to the J Street Conference, Helena Cobban, suggests that she, too, is beyond the pale in her use of Holocaust allusion.

Creating a Culture of Peace (workshop)

Creating a Culture of Peace
20-hour Workshop November 14-16
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Creating a Culture of Peace, a 20 hour training workshop will be held on November 14, noon to 6 pm, November 15, noon to 6 pm and November 16, 8 am to 4:00. Location: Calvary Presbyterian Church, 2020 E. 79th Street (at Euclid Ave.) Cleveland, OH 44103.

A holistic approach is used to empower participants in the spirituality and practice of active peacemaking in their daily lives. Activities include small group sharing, exercises, video, brainstorming, presentations, discussions, role-plays, movement, music, meditation and journaling. This training is an incubator for participants to raise the issues which most concern them and to plan projects that respond. Read more - download flyer.

Cost: $200.00. Advance registration required by no later than October 23. A limited number of scholarships are available for those who cannot afford the entire fee. Sponsored by The Network of Spiritual Peace Activists. For more information contact: Rev. Doug Horner, 216-651-6250, JHorner422@aol.com

Check our website for the latest news you won't find in the mainstream media, local events, current legislation, media contact information.

Afghanistan: The Haunted House Telling Us to Get Out

I wish I had some easy answers about Afghanistan; the idea of stopping terrorism by helping Afghanistan build a strong central government and civil society (through schools, roads, fair elections, etc.) sounds good. There are some morally compelling arguments that would suggest that "abandoning Afghanistan" could be catastrophic for certain sectors of the population (young girls, for instance, who under a Taliban rule likely would not have access to public education).

Yet the very presence of U.S. forces, who appear to be propping up an unpopular and corrupt central government, cannot but resemble the old narrative so familiar during the Cold War; we are attempting to get security without democracy, win a war without adequate troop levels and using remote technologies (thus losing "hearts and minds"), and polarizing by our very presence. They don't call Afghanistan "the graveyard of empires" just because it sounds poetic.

Here's an article about CODEPINK's intervention in Obama's thought-process:

Code Pink Delivers Afghan Petition To President
SAN FRANCISCO -- Using a meet-and-greet at a Democratic fundraiser Thursday night, Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans hand delivered a petition to President Barack Obama allegedly signed by Afghani women who want an end to the war in their country.

Jodie Evans of Code Pink delivers petition from Afghani women to President Obama in San Francisco Thursday night, October 15, 2009.Evans was among those attending a sold-out Democratic Party fundraiser at San Francisco's Westin St. Francis Hotel, with a Code Pink supporter paying $30,400 for a pair of tickets to the dinner. The tickets included a photo opportunity with the President.

She said she had collected signatures of Afghani women during a trip there last week on a petition that asked for a role in the peace process and demanding that the U.S. abandon plans to send in additional troops.

"The women there are really upset that they are not at the negotiating table," said Evans, who was wearing a pink shirt with "End The Afghan Quagmire" stenciled on it. "He said: ‘What do you mean, I have (Secretary of State) Hilliary (Clinton)?'... I said no the Afghan women want to be at the negotiating table. He looked at me and said: ‘Oh.'"

Evans also said she showed Obama the message her t-shirt.

"I showed the President my shirt," she said. "I had a pink ribbon around my finger and I am here to remind you to keep your promises for peace...He said: ‘You know we are not going to end the problem in Afghanistan any time soon.' I said actually you're not going to solve the problem, they are."

There was no word from the White House on Obama's reaction to the impromptu meeting.

And here's David Cortright's take, for a civilian surge:

Alternatives to war in Afghanistan
The discussion so far has been mostly about troop levels
National Catholic Reporter
Oct. 13, 2009
By David Cortright

The problems in Afghanistan cannot be solved by military means alone. Even General David Petraeus agrees with that. But what are the alternatives? The Obama administration has been re-evaluating U.S. policy in the region, but the discussion so far has been mostly about troop levels and military options. If the president is serious about developing more effective strategies, he needs to de-militarize the mission and prioritize political reconciliation efforts.

Rather than attempting to fight a prolonged counterinsurgency war against the Taliban, the United States should focus on countering global terrorism and attempt to separate the Taliban from al-Qaeda. It was al-Qaeda, not the Taliban, that attacked the United States on 9/11. True, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are closely intertwined, but important distinctions exist between the two movements. The Taliban is a network of disparate Pashtun militia groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al-Qaeda, by contrast, is an Arab-based network with a global agenda of attacking Western interests.

As former Washington Post reporter Selig Harrison observes in “Pakistan: The State of the Union,” an April report from the Center for International Policy, the Taliban movement transcends the Afghan-Pakistan border. Local tribal leaders have never accepted the 1893 Durand Line demarcated by the British that divides the Pashtun region. Many reject the authority of both Kabul and Islamabad. The Taliban is not a unified organization but a complex, diverse movement encompassing more than a dozen separate insurgent organizations in Afghanistan and dozens of Islamist groups in Pakistan. “In contrast to al-Qaeda,” writes Harrison, “most of the Taliban factions focus primarily on local objectives in Afghanistan and [northern Pakistan] and do not pose a direct threat to the United States.” The various Taliban elements are divided by ideology and purpose, but they are united now by one overriding objective: to rid their region of foreign forces.

The presence of foreign troops is the principal factor motivating armed resistance and insurgency in the region. A recent report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace observed, “The more military pressure is put on a fragmented society like Afghanistan, the more a coalition against the invader becomes the likely outcome.” The presence of foreign troops is “the most important factor in mobilizing support for the Taliban,” said the January report, “Focus and Exit: An Alternative Strategy for the Afghan War,” by Gilles Dorronso.

Counterinsurgency specialist and Pentagon adviser David Kilcullen makes a similar point in his new book, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Oxford University Press). The foot soldiers of the Afghan insurgency are fighting to drive out foreign military invaders, not to reinstate the caliphate or advance al-Qaeda’s globalist agenda. The more foreign forces arrayed against them, the more intense the armed resistance.

In Pakistan as well, writes Harrison, U.S. military policies and air strikes are radicalizing the population “and driving more and more Pashtuns into the arms of al-Qaeda and its jihadi allies.”

Women count ballots after the close of polling stations in Herat, Afghanistan, Aug. 20. (CNS/Reuters/Raheb Homavandi)Policies of waging war in Muslim countries have the inadvertent effect of validating Osama bin Laden’s warped ideology of “saving Islam from foreign infidels.” When the United States invades and launches military operations in Muslim countries, this tends to validate the false image of America waging war on Islam. Polls in Muslim countries have shown 80 percent agreement with bin Laden’s contention that American policy is intended to weaken and divide the Islamic world. The presence of such attitudes creates fertile ground for jihadi recruiters.

Rather than waging war against the Pashtuns and stoking the fires of extremism, the United States and its allies should pursue policies of co-option and reconciliation. Harrison urges American leaders to seek “peace arrangements with Taliban and Taliban-related Islamist factions.”

South Asia experts Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid proposed in Foreign Affairs last year a “grand bargain” strategy of luring reconcilable Taliban elements into political accommodation and power-sharing arrangements as a means of peeling away support from al-Qaeda -related groups. They called for “a political solution with as much of the Afghan and Pakistani insurgencies as possible, offering political inclusion … and an end to hostile action by international troops in return for cooperation against al-Qaeda.”

Elements of the Afghan and Pakistani governments have supported reconciliation efforts. A February 2009 opinion poll in Afghanistan found 64 percent of respondents support a policy of negotiating with the Taliban and allowing its members to hold public office if they agree to stop fighting.

An important new book on the subject offers a blueprint for how to pursue dialogue and negotiation with elements of the Taliban. Written by Michael Semple, former deputy to the European Union’s special representative in Afghanistan, Reconciliation in Afghanistan (United States Institute of Peace Press) explores both the perils and promise of attempting to reach a political settlement with insurgent forces.

Reconciliation programs have been part of the new Afghan government since it was first installed. The results of these efforts have been meager, however, because of a lack of sustained commitment from political leaders in Kabul and their Western backers. From years of direct experience and interviews with 200 Afghans who took the initiative to join the process, Semple concludes that U.S., Afghan and international officials have been “singularly ill-equipped and often disinclined to take the needed steps to enable Afghans to reconcile and reintegrate peacefully back into society.”

Taliban groups attempting to reintegrate with the new government have been subjected to arbitrary arrest, seizure of assets and general harassment. The chronology of nearly every regrouped Taliban network, writes Semple, includes the tale of how “their commanders were driven out of southern Afghanistan before they launched the insurgency -- not after.” As the insurgency has grown, Taliban leaders have gained personal and political advantages in continuing the hostilities, and the prospects for reconciliation have dwindled further.

In recent months unofficial talks have occurred, with the support of Saudi Arabia, to facilitate dialogue with Taliban representatives. During these discussions Taliban interlocutors have offered to halt their attacks against foreign and government troops in return for the removal of outside forces. Some have asked for a security agreement, similar to the one negotiated with Iraq, which would establish conditions and a timeline for military withdrawals. They have proposed replacing U.S./NATO troops with an international peacekeeping force drawn from predominantly Muslim nations, pledging not to attack such a force. They have also demanded an end to U.S. drone attacks, in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines walk around a base in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, Sept. 3. (CNS/Reuters/Goran Tomasevic)U.S. officials have rejected these terms and have asserted that official negotiations should occur only after the American military has inflicted greater pain on the Taliban in order to extract better terms, and when the militia groups have agreed to lay down their arms.

Semple argues for direct talks with the Taliban leadership council in Quetta, Pakistan, to seek an agreement on renouncing international terrorism and integrating reconciled insurgents into the Afghan political system. The goal would be to obtain commitments from militia leaders and tribal chiefs to cooperate in isolating al-Qaeda and prevent their territory from being used for global terrorist strikes.

This is a bargain Taliban leaders may be willing to accept. Former Taliban ambassador Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef said in an interview last March, “The United States has a right to guarantee its own security.” Former Taliban foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil acknowledged in the same interview that Americans have the right to “ensure there is no danger to them from Afghanistan.” An agreement for local cooperation in preventing global terrorist strikes would “constitute a strategic defeat for al-Qaeda,” according to Rubin and Rashid. It would help to achieve the priority U.S. security objective of countering terrorist threats.

The alternative to prolonged counterinsurgency war is the pursuit of dialogue to achieve negotiated political solutions. This is the approach recommended in the Carnegie Endowment report. It would reverse the logic of current U.S. strategy, using the presence of U.S. and NATO troops not in the pursuit of military victory but as a bargaining chip to induce political agreement and conciliation. In exchange for cooperation in isolating al-Qaeda, U.S. forces would end combat operations against the Taliban and begin a gradual military disengagement. This would undercut extremist propaganda and neutralize appeals for jihad against foreign invaders. Under this scenario the mission of remaining foreign troops would focus more on civilian protection and the training of local security forces. Some military and special forces operations could continue, but these would be narrowly targeted against al-Qaeda.

Demilitarizing U.S. strategy would not mean abandoning the people of Afghanistan. The reduction of military operations should be linked to a greatly increased commitment to development assistance and democracy-building programs for local groups willing to uphold human rights principles.

In March the Obama administration announced a civilian surge for the region, but the resources devoted to these efforts have been inadequate, dwarfed by the enormous expenditures for war. The U.S. and its allies should greatly expand their level of assistance for locally-managed civilian assistance programs that advance social development, education and human rights. These efforts, combined with political reconciliation strategies, are likely to be more effective over the long run in stabilizing the region and reducing insurgency and terrorism.

David Cortright is director of policy studies for the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

White, including Middle Eastern

2. In addition, please select one or more of the following racial categories to describe yourself:

American Indian or Alaska Native (including all Original Peoples of the Americas)
Asian (including Indian Subcontinent and Philippines)
Black or African American (including Africa and Caribbean)
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (Original Peoples)
White (including Middle Eastern)

"White, including Middle Eastern." Only on census forms can this sort of formulation exist. The visibly invisible, my people, or as Aunt Salma would say, the "beeble."

John Roche's "Baghdad Boogaloo"

Congratulations Barack, Now Get Out of Afghanistan

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Afghanistan: The Graveyard of Empires Strikes Back
www.thedailyshow.com
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