reflectivepundit

Words from the Outside World Will Not Stop Gaddafi’s Reign of Terror

By Brigitte L. Nacos

“Once again, an Arab dictator is employing criminal violence in a desperate effort to remain in power - and once again, the Obama administration has been slow to find its voice,” the Washington Post editorialized yesterday and concluded with the punch line, “Shouldn't the president of the United States be first to oppose the depravities of a tyrant such as Mr. Gaddafi? Apparently this one doesn't think so.”

Today, an editorial in the New York Times criticizes that “It took President Obama four days to condemn the violence. Even then, he spoke only vaguely about holding Libyan officials accountable for their crimes. Colonel Qaddafi was never mentioned by name.”

The truth is that Gaddafi doesn’t give a damn about what Obama or any other leader in the West or elsewhere says or fails to say as long as condemnations are not accompanied by deeds that assure his quick fall.

Repeating President Obama’s remark that ‘the entire world is watching’ the horror in Libya,” Eugene Robinson argues in his column today that “watching isn't nearly enough. There is much more that world leaders - beginning with Obama - urgently must say and do.”

When everything is said in these and similar opinion pieces, there are no suggestions for measures that would actually stop Gaddafi’s reign of terror in the only venue that counts at this point: on the ground in Libya and most of all in the dictator’s stronghold Tripoli.

Actions by international and multinational organizations and by individual countries, whether the freezing of assets abroad, stopping arms shipments, and the like, are fine. But such measures will not strengthen the opposition nor weaken the Gaddafi regime in what may well be the decisive showdown today, tomorrow, or the day thereafter. Nor will threats that Gaddafi and his crew will be brought to justice--eventually.

The establishment of a no-fly zone in Libyan air space would prevent Gaddafi’s remaining forces from attacking the opposition from the air via fighter planes and helicopters; but considering the long decision-making process within international organizations, this in unlikely to happen in time to influence the outcome. And if it would happen, it would not be enough either.

“After Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda, the United States and its allies vowed that they would work harder to stop mass atrocities,” the Times editorial reminds Western governments without spelling out what working harder would mean.

Nothing short of putting boots on the ground in support of the opposition--now--will stop further and perhaps more catastrophic bloodshed if Gaddafi gets a chance to stage an endgame.

Given that Arabs and Muslims in the region do not trust the U.S. and the West, it is time for Arab governments in the region to step to the plate.

Winding Down the Afghanistan War: President Obama Must Stick to His July 2011 Deadline

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In the 2011 fiscal year, the war in Afghanistan will cost American taxpayers $119 billion—and then some that is not readily found in a multitude of budget areas. As the bi-partisan Afghanistan Study Group noted in its recent report, “$100 billion per year is more than the entire annual cost of the Obama administration’s new health care plan and is money that could be used to better counter global terrorist threats, reduce the $1.4 trillion annual deficit, repair and modernize a large portion of U.S. infrastructure, radically enhance American educational investment, launch a massive Manhattan Project-like effort on energy alternatives research, or be used for other critical purposes.”

Most importantly, spending huge sums of money and increasing the troop strength significantly has not resulted in improving the situation on the ground in significant ways. General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy that worked in the Iraqi setting has not succeeded in the completely different Afghan civil war with its multiple factions.

After nearly 10 years of this war the time has come to wind down the U.S. military commitment –as ever more NATO allies wind down their own involvement.

It is time to remember and concentrate on the reasons for going to war in the first place:  

One, destroy the original Al Qaeda organization (Al Qaeda Central) and its capacity to carry out terrorist attacks, and

Two, prevent the Taliban from offering remnants of Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists safe havens inside Afghanistan.

As for Al Qaeda Central, its leaders are believed to hide out in the mountains of Pakistan as do Afghan Taliban leaders that once welcomed bin Laden to establish Al Qaeda’s headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan.  Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and their clique are no longer a major factor. One cannot help but wonder about the reasons for Al Qaeda leaders’ silence during the current Egyptian uprising. After all, al-Zawahiri, who was tortured in Egyptian prisons, must itch to share his sentiments. Did he and his comrades lose the ability to communicate whenever they decide to?

Today, there are very few Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan (Yemen and Somalia are among the countries with far more Jihadis poised to launch terrorist attacks against Americans and American interests).

To be sure, those terrorists on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border should not be ignored. But to hunt and fight them does not require 100,000 U.S. troops and an equal or larger number of contractors.

The Al Qaeda types as well as Afghan leaders and groups that provide safe havens for Al Qaeda or like-minded individuals and groups can be fought most effectively by teams of Special Forces that should remain in the country and region.

Ultimately, military force and nation building efforts that depend on outsiders will not end the civil war in Afghanistan.

A Case of Censorship: Shutting Out Al Jazeera on Cable and Satellite TV

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Since the upheaval in the Arab world began, the Arab satellite network Al Jazeera and the British Broadcasting Corporation’s BBC World News offered the most extensive and compelling reporting from Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, other countries in the region, and, of course, extensive coverage of reactions throughout the world.

While most American cable and satellite subscribers have access to the BBC, very few can watch Al Jazeera.  Only people in Washington, D.C., Toledo, Ohio, and Burlington, Vermont,  decide for themselves whether they want to watch Al Jazeera—or not.

For the rest of us, companies like Time Warner Cable, Comcast Cable, Cablevision, and others decide for us; they censor what you and I can watch and what we cannot watch.

Since all of these companies offer hundreds of channels to their subscribers, the scarcity-of-channels justification is not convincing--particularly not, when you examine the channel line-up that is offered.  

My Cablevision line-up, for example, includes 4 South-Asian, 4 Russian, 3 Korean, 3 global Chinese,  2 Filipino, 1 German, 1 Italian, 1 Polish, and many other ethnic channels.

Not Al Jazeera or any other Arab language channel; and, most importantly, not Al Jazeera English.    

Since the exclusion of Al Jazeera is so wide-spread, one wonders whether the relentless attacks on the network by the George W. Bush administration explains the united corporate front against Al Jazeera.

When selecting TV-channels and programs people in liberal democracies should have access to an expansive marketplace of ideas—that is the rationale for the First Amendment’s freedom of press and freedom of expression guarantee. People who have the right to vote governments in or out are deemed intelligent enough to separate fact and fiction, truth and lies, balanced and biased reporting.

Upheaval in the Arab World

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Nobody should have been terribly surprised, when a popular uprising rocked Tunisia driving President Ben Ali after nearly half-a-century of authoritarian rule out of office and out of the country. And nobody should have been terribly surprised that the revolutionary virus spread rapidly beyond Tunisia’s borders. Underneath the surface of stability, repressive regimes in the region were like powder kegs ready to explode.

The fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak that will come sooner rather than later, the firing of Jordan’s government by King Abdullah II; the promises by Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh, not to stand for reelection and by the Palestinian Authority, to hold local elections as soon as possible; a Facebook initiative calling for protests in Syria’s capital Damascus for later this week may well be followed by more dramatic happenings. Even the Emir of Qatar, the benefactor of Qatar-based Al Jazeera, cancelled his trip to South America because of the rapidly unfolding developments in his neighborhood.

As today’s images of violent clashes between pro- and anti-Mubarak factions in the streets of Cairo showed, Mubarak made an ill-advised effort to show Egyptians that the choice was between "stability and chaos," as he put it—he standing for stability, the popular uprising for chaos. But it was only after pro-Mubarak demonstrators were unleashed that the by and large peaceful demonstrations turned into bloody violence.

The turmoil in Egypt is the result of Mubarak’s refusal to heed the calls for democratization for many years. Instead of opening the system to participatory democracy, he is responsible for the popular uprising.  

This much is clear: Today’s Egypt and today’s Middle East are very different from what this country and this region were a few weeks ago.

But nobody knows what is in the cards for Egypt and other Arab states.

Some neo-conservatives have criticized the Obama administration and presumably other Western governments that walked a fine line between the demonstrators and the dependable ally in the presidential palace for not supporting Mubarak; others were critical of Obama and other Western leaders for not siding categorically with those who called for democratic rights.

I think that the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handled the situation as well as they could.