Beijing To Washington Via Pyongyang?

Those with a bent for deciphering North Korea’s erratic behavior have swung into action following Pyongyang’s reported preparations for testing a long-range missile that one day may be capable of reaching the United States.
Is Kim Jong-il just jealous, as The New York Times pondered, of all the attention Iran has been getting as a result of Tehran's recent nuclear bad behavior, and craves a spotlight of its own? Or is Pyongyang merely operating on a normal defense-modernization schedule? Did the Bush administration somehow instigate this whole crisis in a new effort to justify its own missile-defense program?
Another group of Pyongyang-watchers might be tempted to dismiss such speculation, citing Kim’s personal eccentricities – some would prefer the more precise term instability. If there is any country today where one man symbolizes the state, it has to be North Korea. Where else could you find a regime bent on acquiring the most modern means of destruction while its people are starving?
The Bush administration, which believes the missile is now fully fueled and ready to go, has been warning of devastating consequences this “provocation” would inflict on North Korea.
For all its rhetoric on how 9/11 changed the world as we knew it, President Bush and his advisers are adhering to a Cold War-era arms-control doctrine. Kim knows that an American retaliation against his country – devastating as that would be -- would also destabilize South Korea and Japan and beyond. Moreover, mutual assured destruction is not a smart deterrent in an age of suicide bombers, most of who tend to be clinically sane until the very end.
Perhaps the answer lies in China, Kim’s principal -- and many believe only – ally. The Chinese have been at the forefront of the six-party talks on North Korea, winning praise from the Bush administration. In the U.N. Security Council, American diplomats know that even if they cannot get Beijing to vote with Washington, the Chinese could make things easier by abstaining.
Admittedly, U.S.-Chinese relations have undergone a remarkable upswing since the spring of 2001 when a U.S. Navy patrol aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in China after what officials described as a "minor" mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet.
The fallout was anything but minor: political and military tensions between the two countries had plunged to such depths in a generation. Of course, 9/11 and the war on terrorism brought the two countries closer. After all, China was battling its own version of Islamic separatism in the restive region of Xinjiang.
But China seems to be having second thoughts about whether the Bush administration really abandoned the neocons’ “containment” strategy. If Washington’s honeymoon with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf could end in such short notice, China’s communist leaders could not be so confident, could they?
The pointers were clear. In February, the Pentagon released its Quadrennial Defense Review, which listed, among other things, traditional threats by “near-peer” powers like China. In its annual report to Congress on China's military, the Defense Department refocused on China's growing maritime capabilities. Both virtually resurrected the “China threat.”
The resignation of Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, in Beijing’s view, brought the clearest indication of a hardening of the Bush administration’s posture. Zoellick, who did not give a reason for quitting, was the architect of a more engagement-based U.S. policy on China. As a “responsible stakeholder,” according to the Zoellick approach, China could cooperate globally with the United States. In fact, the two governments had created a permanent panel – which Zoellick led from the American side – to discuss global issues and events.
If Washington could revert to a pre-9/11 posture, so could Beijing. Did the Chinese leadership decide to send that message through North Korea – for added emphasis?

Iraq: Amnesty No Slur On Sacrifice

When Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki, a Shia, unveiled a national reconciliation policy that includes the possibility of an amnesty for sections of the predominantly Sunni insurgency, he knew he would meet stiff opposition in Washington.
With the American military’s death toll having crossed the 2,500 mark since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the “sacrifice-in-vain” argument against an amnesty is bound to gain momentum among families of the victims, their elected representatives and wider American society.
Realities on the ground offer an opportunity for more sobering thought. In the aftermath of the killing of Abu Musaub Al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the American have been reminded how the foreign jihadists represent only a portion of the insurgency that shows no sign of abating. For planners in American and Iraq alike, however, the urgency of taming the indigenous militants has always been pressing. The government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi tried to push an amnesty but succumbed to American pressure.
It might never be known how significantly the US decision to disband Saddam Hussein’s military went on to shape the insurgency. In the run-up to the invasion, the media widely quoted experts and analysts who suggested a serious risk of urban warfare by Saddam’s military once US-British forces advanced on Baghdad.
Are the insurgents members of the same divisions that melted away without a fight on the fringes of the Iraqi capital in the final days of the invasion? The time needed to find out for sure would doubtless claim more American lives. More importantly, the raging insurgency will continue to kill and maim infinitely more Iraqis.
Admittedly, Zarqawi’s departure marks a serious blow to the jihadist component of the insurgency, more so in psychological than in operational terms. It is imperative to use an amnesty to separate Iraqi nationalist insurgents from jihadists when it has the greatest chance of working. Indeed, a targeted amnesty may be Iraq’s last hope of surviving as one nation.
Zarqawi’s real legacy – the sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunnis – casts a more dangerous shadow on Iraq, a reality Maliki recognizes. By appointing Sunni and Shia former army officers as defense and interior ministers respectively, the new prime minister has provided a small but real opening.
If the Shias, Kurds and mainstream Sunnis are sufficiently assured that an amnesty would foster reconciliation by bringing Sunni insurgents into the political process, outsiders should not have a veto.
An Iraq steadily gaining the peace and stability required to emerge as a vibrant democracy will have been worth the enormous sacrifices Iraqis, Americans, Britons and countless others have made.

China’s Year Of The Doghouse

The Year of the Dog seems to be gnawing at China’s international image with unusual ferocity. In a scathing report this week, Amnesty International accused China of stoking conflicts in Sudan, Burma and Nepal by selling arms to those regimes shunned by the rest of the world.
Striking at the basis of China’s emergence as a principal global player, the London-based human rights watchdog said: “China's arms exports, estimated to be in excess of one billion dollars a year often involve the exchange of weapons for raw materials to fuel the country's rapid economic growth.”
Such interests, according to a separate story by the Inter Press Service, has led China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, to block to US efforts to impose economic and military sanctions on recalcitrant countries.
Rejecting the AI report, Beijing insists it has been exporting conventional weapons properly in the light of international rules. Teng Jianqun, a researcher with the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told Xinhua news agency that China has always put its limited arms export under strict control and surveillance.
He noted that China adheres to three principles in arms trade: it should help enhance the self-defense capability of import countries, should not impair regional and global peace, security and stability, and should not be used to interfere with other countries' internal affairs.
Before the ethical dimensions of Chinese arms sales could fully settle in, Apple announced it is investigating a newspaper report that staff in some of its Chinese iPod factories work long hours for low pay and in “slave” conditions.
Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper alleged that workers received as little as £27 a month, doing 15-hour shifts making the iconic mp3 player. Employees at the factory lived in dormitories housing 100 people and outsiders were banned, the newspaper said. Apple said it did not tolerate its supplier code of conduct being broken. “Apple is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible,” the company said in a statement.
Apple added it is investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China.
Could there be a broader agenda at work here? The collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the world of its principal bogeyman (although some would still say an “inspiration”.)
The new baddies – Baathist Iraq, Iran, North Korea, for instance – couldn’t rise to the level of the Soviet threat that kept the world on its toes. Among many, nostalgia for the Cold War set in deep. In light of subsequent events, many must have wondered, might an Afghanistan Soviet Socialist Republic have done more for regional and even global security?
The idea of a grand alliance of disparate groups behind the demonization of China is not as far-fetched as it sounds. The steep rise in gas prices? Blame the booming Chinese middle class. Criticism of increased military spending on conventional threats in the midst of our new kind of war (on terror)? Point to Taiwan. Economic instability? Ah, those clever currency manipulators in Beijing.
The enduring moral of the Cold War: Make sure you always have someone else you can blame for when things go wrong.

President Garcia Confronts A Polarized Society

For many in Washington, the temptation to portray Peru’s recent presidential election as less a victory for Alan Garcia and more a defeat for Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez will persist. The prospect of another domino falling into the Venezuela-Cuba-Bolivia league had kept the Bush administration on its toes.
By returning to power after a gap of 16 years in a second round run-off against Ollanta Humala, a former army officer, the 57-year-old Garcia evidently feels vindicated. His first term in office, between 1985 and 1990 was a fiasco.
With corruption charges persistently hovering over him, Garcia’s rule saw Peru going bankrupt. Inflation skyrocketed as the currency nosedived exacerbating the economic pain of large segments of the population. This helped the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas to expand its influence across the country.
If Peruvians have given the social democratic leader another chance, they have done so with the primary intention of denying Humala power.
During the campaign, Garcia tried hard to show Peruvians that he had matured in the intervening years. Surely, he will be careful not to repeat the mistakes of his first term.
But his task is compounded by the fact that he has to govern a splintered society.
Garcia has acknowledged this reality by promising a broad government staffed by officials drawn from a wide spectrum of parties and political tendencies. There is a flip side to a unity government: the polarization of Peruvian society will have moved into his administration to paralyze decision making.
Although he lost, Humala carried 14 of Peru's 24 administrative regions and swept his stronghold in the southern highlands, where the country's poor and indigenous population is concentrated, receiving 80 percent of the votes. Simply put, he retains the ability to politicize Peru's disadvantaged and mobilize them into a cohesive group.
One thing going for Garcia is his pro-US policies and good neighborly attitude. Befriending Washington as well as moderate leftwing governments in Chile and Brazil would remain the principal tenet of his foreign policy.
For most Peruvians, Garcia will have to produce results closer to home. The new president needs massive investment, particularly from the United States, to harness his country’s vast natural resources and to ensure a profitable market for exports.
Garcia’s victory saved the recently negotiated Peru-US trade accord. How far Washington chooses to go toward rewarding that achievement would determine the momentum the second Garcia administration ends up acquiring in the weeks and months ahead.

Follow The Hawala Trail

How could Abu Musaub Al Zarqawi’s head – bloated alright -- be found in one piece amid the rubble left by two 500-lb bombs? His remains, we were told, were identified by sight and by finger-prints. So the tip of at least one of his fingers was intact.
Who’s going to pocket the $25 million bounty on the self-proclaimed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq? More importantly, who turned him in?
Whoever had the most to lose from al-Zarqawi alive. Iraqis, Americans, Muslims from other countries were victims of the Jordanian terrorist who shot to prominence with the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003. That attack, which claimed the top UN official responsible for Iraq and dozens others, marked the onset of the insurgency.
Zarqawi’s death was undoubtedly a huge psychological victory over the insurgents. But, as President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and top Iraqi officials insisted, Zarqawi’s death does not diminish the threat he posed alive.
A lanky bearded fellow huddled somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was troubled by Zarqawi’s transformation from a small-time radical into one of the world’s most feared men.
Here was a fighter who was always at the front – actually multiple fronts -- not sermonizing from some cave or crevasse once in a while. Equally at ease with IEDs and the Internet, Zarqawi was constantly seeking to innovate. He had acquired such mythical standing among his adversaries that his clumsiness with that rifle didn’t detract from his legend.
Clearly, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri were more than troubled by Zarqawi rise. They feared him as a potential rival with multitudes of radicals behind him ready to kill or die for the cause. The Al Qaeda top brass just couldn’t find a good reason to discredit Zarqawi. True, the way he fanned Shia-Sunni violence spilled too much Muslim blood in a war that was officially against the infidels. Before Bin Laden could condemn Zarqawi’s methods, he recognized how powerfully they worked. After all, killing yourself and your co-religionists for the larger good was sanctioned under jihad.
Iraqi and American military officials have said the plan to kill Zarqawi was the culmination of weeks of sifting through tips and tracking down credible leaders. It generally takes bin Laden several weeks to deliver his tapes to Al Jazeera. Maybe the Al Qaeda leader used a similar channel of couriers to order his lieutenants to liquidate Zarqawi.
While we’re at it, maybe that last tape from bin Laden contained a coded message to loyalists to lead the American and Iraqi forces to Zarqawi and then commiserate in his “martyrdom”. It won’t hurt to start following the hawala trail for signs of some of that $25 million.

Making Somalia Too Dangerous For Al Qaeda

The faint possibility of a diplomatic solution to the crisis over Iran’s nuclear weapons program has allowed the Bush administration to overlook – at least publicly – the significance of the fall of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, to Islamists. This does not mean the White House is ignoring the grave implications – both operational and psychological – for America.
During the waning weeks of the first Bush administration, the United States intervened militarily in Somalia, originally to alleviate a major food shortage. It didn’t take long for the mission to expand into full-blown combat against the warlords who had precipitated the food shortage.
After American forces sustained heavy casualties in a fierce operation in Mogadishu, and televised images of Somali rebels dragging a captured American soldier across a street were beam across the world, the new Clinton administration withdrew US troops from the country. Osama bin Laden, in calling for a holy war against the United States, cited that retreat as a reflection of America’s weak resolve.
After 9/11, Washington developed a new interest in Somalia, fearing that it would serve as a base for militant Islamists. The United States maintains a small contingent of Marines and Special Forces at a former French base in neighboring Djibouti. Quietly, these forces are engaged in an important battle of the wider global war on terror.
After longtime ruler Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled in a coup in 1991, Somalia descended into civil war. The country has fractured into chaotic enclaves. In the north, the breakaway region of Somaliland governs itself. In the south, drought threatens hundreds of thousands of lives, with 1.4 million people in need of food assistance. In the town of Baidoa, 250 km inland from the capital, an interim government exists only in name. With no effective government in place at the national, federal level, much of Somalia is ruled by warlords who make their own local laws.
Militias belonging to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) started battling an alliance of warlords in the south, leading to hundreds of deaths. Washington responded by backing the UIC’s rivals, known as the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism.
The UIC proposes Islam as a way to bring unity to Somalia, raising fears among the population of Sharia-sanctioned harsh punishments. However, after taking control of Mogadishu, the group has rejected efforts to project the organization as a Taliban-like monster ready to offer sanctuary to the likes of Al Qaeda.
The scars immortalized in Black Hawk Down, coupled with the quagmire in Iraq, inhibits a full-fledged American military involvement. On the other hand, the fall of a strategic capital to Islamists hits at the heart of the war on terror.
Because of its geographical location, Somalia can affect the stability of the entire region, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Situated close to vital trading points between Europe, Asia and Africa, moreover, Somalia is critical to economic stability as well.
Stepped-up American support for the rival warlords might seem ill-advised, considering what Somalia has gone through over the last 15 years. However, it does make sense as a first step toward another policy: making Somalia too dangerous even for Al Qaeda to move in.

Let’s Not Glorify The Gulag

In the post-World War II military history of the United States, the reflexive presumption of guilt some Americans have vis-à-vis the brave men and women in uniform will surely stand out as a principal unvanquished adversary.
Exotic proper nouns like My Lai, Abu Ghraib and, now, Haditha have become metaphors for the brutality American strength is capable of unleashing. War has always been ugly. And it gotten uglier as the enemy has become obscurers. Roadside bombs, snipers aiming from residential areas, rockets fired from donkey carts have replaced missile silos, elite battalions and bomb shelters as searchable targets. The world’s most advanced fighting force is contending with warriors whose defenses are as unsuspecting as the channels of detestation.
Even before the official enquiry has gained pace, the details of what happened in Haditha on November 19 last year are graphic. A four-Humvee convoy of US marines from Kilo company was patrolling the town. A white taxi drew near. Marines signaled for it to stop. A bomb exploded beneath the fourth Humvee, killing its driver.
What happened next? The American soldiers said 15 civilians were killed in the explosion along with the driver. Someone then started shooting at the US soldiers, who returned fire, killing eight insurgents.
A Time magazine investigation published in March, however, found evidence of a massacre. Witnesses claim that the Americans were not fired on. Worse, the civilians who died that day – as many as 24 -- were murdered by the marines.
The Americans ordered five occupants of the white taxi, whom they may have suspected of involvement in the bombing, to lie down. They ran away instead, and the marines shot them. Then, some of the marines allegedly burst into nearby houses and killed 19 more people, only one of whom had a gun. The dead reportedly included eight women, a child and an elderly man in a wheelchair.
When President Bush ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq, citing, among other things, the murderous nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the White House set for itself a higher standard. Americans are justified in expecting their military to follow a more civilized set of rules. Without Time’s expose, the world might not have learned of the tragedy. Americans still do not know how high up the Marine Corps chain of command the original cover-up went. How did the president, the defense secretary and other
top officials respond when they first learned of the false reporting.
Americans need to be told what steps are now being taken, besides remedial ethics training, to make sure that such crimes against civilians and such deliberate falsifications of the record do not recur.
The media must maintain sufficient vigilance on this story, in the face of competing ones, so that the investigation is transparent and the legal course – if any is required – reaches its logical conclusion.
Jumping to conclusions before all the facts are out does not serve any useful purposes. Comparing Guantanamo Bay with the Soviet Gulag, moreover, is tantamount to absolving Stalin and his henchmen of their worst excesses. Americans expect their politicians to be better than that, even in an election year.

Why Would Iran Want To Talk?

Just as the skeptics were saying all along, Iran has taken the United States for another ride. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Thursday his government was open to talks with the United States on his country’s nuclear program, but he rejected the U.S. precondition that it must quit enriching uranium first.
Mottaki was responding to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said the previous day that the United States would be willing to talk with Iran if it suspended its uranium enrichment and reprocessing.
The U.S. offer to negotiate was seen as a major policy shift. Washington has had no high-level talks with Teheran for more than 25 years. The two countries formally broke off relations in 1980, after the seizure of the American embassy in the Iranian capital in 1979.
Many in the United States have faulted America’s systematic isolation of Iran – once a famously staunch American ally with a proud civilization -- for the escalation of tensions. If the mullahs went on the warpath, it was only because of the strong support successive U.S. administrations of both parties provided the Shah’s brutal dictatorship which the Islamic Revolution overthrew.
So the Bush administration got a rare round of applause from leading newspaper editorials for demonstrating “maturity.” Lost in the exultation was the fact that it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who first broached the issue of direct talks, not the other way around.
Bush, for his part, appeared to exude a sense of vindication. Teheran’s repudiation, after all, proved that critics of his administration’s hard stance against Iran were wrong. At the end of a cabinet meeting, the U.S. president conceded that it remained to be seen if Iran's seemingly-negative response to the proposal was its last word on the subject.
Bush had enough cover to revert to his characteristic toughness. Foreign ministers of the five permanent U.N. Security Council member countries and Germany, meeting in Vienna, reached agreement on a package of incentives for Iran to halt sensitive nuclear activities, or penalties if it refuses. The offer will now be formally conveyed to Iran.
The so-called "carrots and sticks" package would offer Iran a set of financial and technology incentives if it ended uranium enrichment and returned to nuclear negotiations with Britain, France and Germany. If it refuses, there would be U.N. Security Council action against Iran and escalating sanctions.
But isn’t there a simpler question here? Why should Iran feel the urgency to hold direct talks with the United States when it has the stick of the resurgent Shias next door in Iraq to wield against Washington? And who knows? Mullah Omar of the Taleban may be the latest beneficiary of Teheran’s oil-generated largesse, considering the seriousness the anti-American insurgency has acquired in Afghanistan, another neighbor.
Moreover, each time Ahmadinejad threatens to nuke Israel off the map, he send oil prices shooting up a couple of dollars. That kind of cash inflow would goad Teheran to widen its gaze for potential allies against America, not grovel before the Great Satan it believes it can bog down across its eastern and western borders.

NAM: Authoritarian Amalgamation

The Cold War still evokes memories of two power blocs struggling to spread their ideology and influence under the shadow of nuclear Armageddon.
The United States-led western democracies used all their power to spread the frontiers of the free world. The Soviet Union, representing half a dozen communist satellites in Eastern Europe, was intent on vanquishing the forces of imperialism and expansionism.
The Third World, with its micro-nationalism, ethnic fissures and tribal fault-lines, provided the superpowers their battleground.
For an entire group of newly independent nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the pressures were too daunting. In some, Marxist governments emerged through violent revolutions aided and abetted by Moscow. In others, right-wing autocracies – mostly military regimes – seized power through active support from Washington.
Caught in the crossfire, some countries decided to form their own alliance: the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Leaders like Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser, India’s Jawahar Lal Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito and Indonesia’s Sukarno, believed the Third World could assert its role through collective action. NAM went on to include over 100 members, representing 55 percent of the planet’s people. It is the largest international organization after the United Nations, containing nearly two-thirds of the U.N.’s membership.
Officially, NAM saw itself not formally aligned with or against either power bloc. Members focused on national struggles for independence, the eradication of poverty, economic development and opposing colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism.
NAM was intended to be as close an alliance as NATO or the Warsaw Pact. From the outset, it had little cohesion. Many of its members were aligned with one or another of the great powers. Cuba, allied with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, organized a summit in 1979. India, another Soviet ally, was an active NAM member. The large number of U.S.-backed military regimes that professed non-alignment was a source of amusement to the Soviet Union.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, NAM cracked open right in the middle. Soviet client states fully supported the invasion, while others cried foul.
Nevertheless, NAM has had a great source of internal cohesion from its very inception: It contains the largest collection of the world's authoritarian governments.

Corporate Integrity Need Not Be An Oxymoron

Whether Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling still believe they were gutsy entrepreneurs, not greedy fraudsters, is immaterial. For now, the guilty verdicts the two Enron bosses received from a jury that deliberated for six days overshadow everything else. National Public Radio analyst Daniel Schorr spoke for many when he said he didn’t expect to see this kind of humbling of corporate America in his lifetime.
Lay was found guilty by the jury of six counts of conspiracy and fraud and Skilling on 18 counts but was acquitted on all but one charge of insider trading. In a separate trial in front of the judge Lay was also found guilty of bank fraud. He faces a maximum of 45 years in jail (plus up to 120 years for the bank fraud) and Skilling could receive 185 years inside. The judge is set to sentence them September 11. Both men said that they would mount an appeal.
From the outset, investors and employees had no doubt who was to blame for Enron’s collapse. Until Lay and Skilling stood in court, no top Enron executive had faced trial for -- much less been convicted of -- any wrongdoing. Some 30 people were charged in connection with the case. Nearly half made a deal and some testified for the government.
This led both defendants to put too much faith in weakness of such evidence.
Skilling and Lay sought to portray Enron as a fundamentally sound company that had been brought down by panic in the markets brought on by short-sellers and stoked by the media. The jurors saw little evidence that subordinates could have conducted massive fraud without the chief executive’s knowledge.
The defendants’ contention that they had merely engaged in activities common during the tech boom was puerile. An Enron-scale juggling of accounts was not so widespread as to rise to the level of standard operating procedure. In sum, the defense’s attempt to portray Enron’s collapse as an intrinsic hazard of capitalism was doomed from the start.
Are we on the threshold of the Age of Corporate Integrity? Businessmen may have self-interest in bemoaning the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation on corporate governance as excessive. The suspected malfeasance of a few cannot justify unreasonable encumbrances across the boardrooms. Moreover, how long would it take for such restrictions to impose a chilling effect on America’s entrepreneurial zeal?
Yet the onus is on corporate America. It could do itself – and the rest of us -- a huge favor by resisting the temptation to describe out-and-out crime as risk-taking.

Who Is Bin Laden Really Trying To Exonerate?

The irrationality of the Zacarias Moussaoui saga finally seems to have gotten to his boss. Well, make that his purported boss. An audio recording on an Islamist website supposedly of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden denies Moussaoui, the only person convicted over the 9/11 attacks, was involved in the operation.
Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, pleaded guilty in April 2005 to
six charges of conspiracy over the hijacking attacks on New York and Washington.
When a U.S. court jailed him for life without parole for his role in the attacks earlier this month, it only left room for endless speculation.
From the outset, the prosecution had called for the death penalty, arguing that “there is no place on this good Earth” for him. The defense recommended “the long slow death of a common criminal” in prison, rather than martyrdom through execution.
And Moussaoui himself? At first, he protested vigorously that he had nothing to do with, and knew nothing about, the 9/11 attacks. Then suddenly he claimed to be a central figure in the plot. He had planned, he claimed, to fly a fifth suicide mission into the White House that day, and would certainly have done so had he not already been behind bars, arrested four weeks earlier on a minor immigration charge. His alleged co-hijacker, Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” U.S. officials arrested after the 9/11 attacks, laughed off that story.
During the final six weeks of hearings, Moussaoui virtually lusted for the death penalty. He let it be known that he had “no regret, no remorse.” In fact, he wished that it could be September 11th every day.
Then he seemed to recognize that life imprisonment would be “a greater punishment than being sentenced to death.” When the jury at last handed down its verdict on May 3, he still could not help crying out defiantly: “America, you lost!”
In closed session with trial lawyers, Leonie Brinkema, the presiding judge, said she herself did not believe Moussaoui’s claim that he knew details of the plot in advance.
Was Moussaoui a star player or just a paranoid schizophrenic with grand delusions with perhaps no knowledge of the main plot? The word of Jihad Inc. CEO should have been the last. “I am the one in charge of the 19 brothers and I never assigned brother Zacarias to be with them in that mission," the purported voice of Bin Laden says. The man in the recording also said that none of the Guantanamo Bay detainees were connected to the attacks.
Delve deeper and the argument on the tape gets a bit tenuous. “Since Zacarias Moussaoui was still learning how to fly, he wasn't No 20 in the group, as your government claimed,” the man said to be Bin Laden says. Moussaoui confessed because of pressure caused by over four years in prison, the tape went on.
But wasn’t Moussaoui arrested a month before the attacks. Had he continued, he might as well have completed that training and become the 20th hijacker. So what was the purpose of the latest tape? Did the man purporting to be Bin Laden want to exonerate Moussaoui or exonerate himself for having chosen someone who bungled it all the way to the end?

From Afar, Cultural Revolution Still Haunts China

As China tries to exorcise the ghosts of its traumatic past, some of the shadows just refuse to disappear. The 40th anniversary of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution hasn’t spurred the Asian giant into paroxysms of patriotic fervor. Today’s Chinese communist leaders consider the Great Helmsman 70 percent correct. As one of the darkest decades of its past, the Cultural Revolution falls in the 30 percent of Mao’s transgressions.
Stripped of its ideological sheen, the Cultural Revolution was essentially Mao’s effort to strengthen his grip on the party and the country. Amid the omnipresence of Mao’s multi-sized portraits, and the teeming millions swearing fealty each day, state atheism only masked another fervid religiosity.
Some supporters – dwindling in numbers but less so in conviction – still insist that the Cultural Revolution played a crucial role in unifying the vast and largely ungovernable country that Long Marchers took over. They are right. But at what price?
Mao unleashed an orgy of madness to eliminate political rivals and perpetuate cult following. The more insidious effects continue to be experienced in the murders of hundreds of thousands of innocent and ordinary people and the maiming, torture and displacement of countless millions others.
It must be truly difficult for post-Mao Chinese from Shenzen to Shanghai to believe that the state actually equated education with counterrevolution. The wave of ideological purification didn’t spare Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s spectacular economic miracle, whom Mao branded a capitalist-roader and purged twice. Writers, artists, teachers, journalists and freethinkers were germs society needed to immunize itself against at all costs.
Even the fiercest critics of the Chinese communist leadership concede that the country’s economic transformation would inevitably bring political change. Deng’s Four Modernizations stand as a tacit repudiation of the Cultural Revolution, although the Tiananmen Square massacre under his watch raised the specter of regression. An official Chinese repudiation is perhaps too much to expect from a leadership that still cherishes 70 percent of what Mao represented.
But the Great Helmsman continues to cast a long and troubling shadow on China from next door. The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, sandwiched between Tibet and India, has all but fallen to Maoist insurgents. By tactically allying themselves with the mainstream political parties – most of them communist – the Maoists led street protests that forced King Gyanendra last month to relinquish political powers he had seized 15 months ago.
The Maoists and the mainstream parties, now in power, are preparing for a constitutional assembly that they hope would, among other things, abolish the 238-year monarchy. With the king out of the way, the Maoists are almost certain to turn their guns on the democratic parties.
What inspires the Nepalese rebels is not China, but Nepal’s southern neighbor India, where Maoist groups are active in at least 13 of 28 states. A Maoist victory in Nepal would be a seminal event in the creation of what extreme left-wing groups in South Asia call a compact revolutionary zone. From the Philippines to Peru, Maoist groups impatient to unleash the next wave of revolution.
The growing vulnerability of India -- China’s principal Asian rival -- to Maoism should have been the least of Beijing’s worries. But the Chinese leadership is alarmed. Beijing refuses to call the Nepalese rebels Maoists, saying their violent methods gives a bad name to their departed leader. The Chinese prefer the term anti-government guerrillas – and all the disapproval it connotes. The Nepalese Maoists, for their part, denounce the Chinese communists as deviants.
The Chinese leadership recognizes the growing rural-urban economic and social divide in their own country could breed some nostalgia for the days when everyone was poor but equally so. If Maoism could still be relevant in the neighborhood, why shouldn’t it be so at home?

From Justice To Homeland Security And Back?

Hearing President George W. Bush frame the debate on national TV, immigration has a chance of returning to its pre-9/11 abode within the trinity of equality, justice and opportunity.
The incorporation of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service into the Department of Homeland Security had signaled the transformation of one of America’s founding tenets into the imperative of national security.
The legal-illegal dimensions of the immigration debate obscured the core issue: how to ensure the overall enrichment of American values, society, power and accomplishments without imperiling the nation’s security, supremacy of rule of law and overburdened public services.
With passions running high on both sides of the debate, participants found themselves caught in a chicken-or-egg debate. Tighter border security before the regularization of undocumented aliens or vice versa? President Bush began his speech with the imperative of boosting border patrol personnel and technology before transitioning to the issue of undocumented aliens already in the United States. In retrospect, Bush’s speech was more of a thematic tapestry than an aggregation of political, economic, cultural and national security brushstrokes.
Doubtless, the House’s restrictive immigration bill and the Senate’s attempts to offer a more humane approach are rooted in their divergent institutional structures and electoral imperatives.
As the person responsible for signing into law a reconciled version of the two approaches as well as for the ultimate judgment of the American people, President Bush certainly felt he had to go on prime-time TV to press the case for action.
In acknowledging the complexities of the issue, the president alerted the country to the real and lasting consequences of playing on fears. In showing the compassionate side of America, Bush was equally vigorous in his defense of the supremacy of the rule of law. In essence, people who have paid their debts to society for breaking the law can have a second chance.
The real value of Bush’s intervention was less in the articulation of the philosophical dimensions of the immigration debate than in the forceful advocacy of the urgency of a comprehensive solution to a complex problem.
Immigration may never return to the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Americans are certainly capable of doing justice to one of their core founding principles through their collective conscience.

Thatcher’s Long Shadow On Labour

Confronted with growing calls from within his Labour party for a timetable for his departure, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has a standard response: Although he does not intend to go on and on forever, he cannot and will not offer a deadline because that would paralyze the government and the party.
Over the last 10 days, the latter half of the embattled premier’s argument has sounded increasingly redundant. In the aftermath of Labour's defeat in the May 4 local elections and the cabinet reshuffle that followed, the punditocracy agrees that Blair has lost control of his party.
Plummeting popularity ratings and embittered colleagues are a disastrous recipe in the best of times. With his political authority in tatters, the prospect of Blair serving a full third term as prime minister is fast receding. It is only a matter of time before Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer and Blair’s heir apparent, is elevated to the top job.
What is less certain – and more germane to Labour’s longevity in power – is the manner in which the transition is completed. In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, when Blair’s downhill slide accelerated, factional infighting was a luxury Labour could afford. With the Tories in almost perpetual disarray and the Liberal Democrats struggling to expand their base, Labour leaders knew voters had no alternative to putting up with an accumulation of scandals and double dealing in the ruling party.
The Tories have heightened the urgency for Labour to close ranks not just because of their remarkable gains in the local elections. The bad blood left by the dethronement of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 emaciated the Conservatives for a decade. Tory leader David Cameron is yet to prove he can lead his party back to power. But that prospect can only grow with a deepening of the succession struggle in Labour.
A transition plan should not be that difficult to work out. In exchange for an explicit commitment to step down -- most pundits believe some time next year would be propitious -- Blair could demand Brown’s full support for the remainder of his agenda.
Pensions, nuclear energy, health and education are but a few areas that need Blair’s undivided attention if the premier is to leave behind a lasting legacy.
Blair’s success there would strengthen Brown’s ability to implement the party agenda and to lead a united Labour to another electoral victory.

Has Privacy Lost Some Of Its Sanctity?

By now most Americans have probably figured out the real story in the latest revelations of the Bush administration’s domestic spying. Most Americans don’t seem to mind, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
USA Today’s disclosure that the National Security Agency, after Sept. 11, 2001, began assembling a database of records of domestic calls has worked up Congress the most.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) held up a copy of the newspaper to shame everyone in the chamber and beyond. As the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Leahy couldn’t have squandered such an opening at a time when his party is getting luckier by the week in the run-up to the November elections.
The conservative universe, on the other hand, is pulsating with anxiety over the possibility of both housing falling to the Dems. In that case, Sen. Leahy would become chairman of the Senate committee most closely involved with the impeachment of Bush so many Democrats are counting on.
For many Republicans, the prospect of a loss in November might have been bearable if the Harry Reids, Nancy Pelosis and Howard Deans had earned victory on other own. It’s President George W. Bush’s brazen flaunting of his lameduck-ness that’s troubling. If, anything, the latest revelations have stiffened the Bush administration’s resolve in pushing the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden, the former chief of the NSA, as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Now don’t get me wrong. The issues here are serious. The NSA, according to USA Today, attempted to keep track of all phone calls made in the United States and use them in an elaborate data-mining operation. The agency did not go to any court for approval. Rather, it simply asked several major telecommunications companies to turn over huge volumes of call data. Only one refused.
President Bush and the telephone companies insist their actions were strictly in accordance with the law. Doubtless, the ambiguity of the law permits such straight-in-the-eye assertions. How else could these companies have provided the feds with records on over a trillion calls without breaching privacy laws?
The implication that the United States has such a surfeit of al-Qaeda suspects is certainly amusing. But it is no laughing matter to our elected representatives. The absence of public debate and judicial review in the whole process is less troubling than the enormous scope for abuse of the process. Where’s the public outrage?
It doesn’t exist, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll. Some 66 percent of Americans said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found. Maybe public expectations of privacy have undergone a major shift in this age of terrorism.
Or is it technology? With so many people blabbering into their cell-phones on sidewalks, hospitals, restaurants – and yes – public libraries with such abandon, can we conclude that privacy has lost its traditional sanctity?
Culture, too, has played a part. People have learned to live with data-mining. After all, telemarketers, credit-card companies and email spammers seem to know our preferences almost as well as we do. With everything revolving around your social security number, there’s little telling who’s watching which planet for what purpose.
So what’s the big deal if the government is invading a space Corporate America has long trespassed on? Especially when there hasn’t been another 9/11?

Thailand’s Real Democracy Test

Now that Thailand’s constitutional court has annulled last month's controversial parliamentary elections and ordered a new vote, it is tempting to believe the kingdom’s constitutional crisis has blown over. In fact, the country, which has been under absolute monarchy or military rule for much of its life, may face a more crucial test of its democratic resilience.
The April 2 election was doomed when it failed to return a full 500-member lower house. Some 10 million of the 28 million voters heeded the opposition and marked the “no vote” box on their ballot papers. As a result, scores of candidates from the ruling Thai Rak Thai party failed to win at least a fifth of votes cast required to validate the outcome. This flaw left Thailand without a parliament and with a caretaker government for over a month. Hundreds of lawsuits were filed by opposition parties, protest groups and academics. Many accused the Election Commission of bias and inefficiency.
Admittedly, this was an election Thais could have avoided. Thaksin decided to return to the people only a year after being re-elected prime minister in a sweeping victory. But he could hardly be blamed. The kingdom’s constitutional crisis really began when Thaksin’s opponents refused to defer to that mandate.
During months of street protests in the capital, demonstrators accused the premier of corruption and demanded his resignation. Thaksin, for his part, rebuffed what he considered an elitist display of people power in the capital. He chose to fortify his flank with Thais in the countryside, who have benefited from his cheap health care and rural development policies. However, the indecisive outcome, the prospect of more protests and an audience with King Bhumibol prompted him to step down.
The situation could still have been salvaged. The Election Commission conducted another round of voting to fill the remaining seats, but failed. A third round was being planned when King Bhumibol went on national TV to urge Thailand’s judges to find a solution. Otherwise, the monarch warned, the country might “sink more than 4,000 meters under the sea.” Those words from the widely revered monarch had the effect of a political tsunami.
The court cited the Election Commission’s extraordinary haste in organizing the election without giving sufficient time to smaller parties and candidates to prepare themselves. Specifically, the judges interpreted the constitution as requiring a poll to be held at least 45 days after the dissolution of parliament; the April 2 elections were held only 37 days later. Furthermore, in the court’s opinion, the secrecy of balloting was compromised by changes to the positioning of polling-booths, which made it possible to peer over voters’ shoulders.
Although Thaksin’s gamble failed, he is not about to walk into the twilight as his adversaries would like. He was wise to recognize that his resignation would help to defuse the crisis. However, if Thaksin wants to vindicate himself by seeking his old job, he has every right. Contrary to the assertions of Thaksin’s critics, the constitutional crisis did not stem solely from a self-centered politician’s infinite arrogance and greed for power. The opposition’s refusal to play by the rules did no less harm.

France’s Watergate And America’s Right

During the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Dominique de Villepin became the face of French self-righteousness for many American conservatives. Of course, we now know France was nowhere close to any principle of multilateralism when it sought to delay and eventually block United Nations authorization of the invasion.
The oil concessions Saddam Hussein promised Paris in exchange for saving his regime were worth a dozen more Security Council vetoes.
In hindsight, many American conservatives probably wish France had succeeded in stopping the American-British steamroller. Even to them, De Villepin’s holier-than-thou countenance is still too much to take.
As America and Britain confronted the real consequences of unseating an entrenched autocrat, De Villepin stepped up the ladder to become prime minister. His climb-down earlier this year from an ambitious youth employment reforms seemed enough to doom his presidential prospects. The scandal uncovered this week threatens to end De Villepin’s political career.
The French prime minister is accused of ordering a secret investigation of his own Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to examine if he received any kickbacks from the $2.8 billion sale of French frigates to Taiwan in 1991.
Sarkozy, of course, is a potential De Villepin rival in the race to succeed Jacques Chirac as president. Supporters of the prime minister will continue to emphasize that he is not personally accused of any wrong doing or corruption. So there is no reason for his resignation.
Sarkozy allies, on the other hand, will have a field day mocking a premier who lacks the guts to look straight in the face of his minister and ask whether he took any money.
As the French grapple with these and other questions, American conservatives can savor their own moment of irony in what is being called France’s Watergate.

Chavez, Morales And Bolivar Revolution

Has Hugo Chavez’s imperial presidency finally started building that grand empire for the world’s left? When Bolivian President Evo Morales, following through on a campaign promise, nationalized his country’s oil and natural gas industries this week, the Venezuelan leader’s fingerprints were all over the place.
Morales stunned critics and supporters not by what he did but by the way he did it. Instead of going the legislative route -- which even the most unreconstructed ex-commie cannot avoid paying lip service to – Morales issued a decree befitting Stalin. And that, too, on May Day – the day of the year that fires up the international left to resurrect what much of the world has discarded as a losing cause.
To make himself understood, Morales dispatched the armed forces to secure the oil facilities. That’s the kind of radical overhaul Chavez’s revolution envisaged from its inception seven years ago. Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA, after all, is advising the Morales government. Chavez visited Morales to support his actions.
Bolivia is not outright expelling foreign companies in the Salvador Allende tradition. Instead, foreign firms will have to sign new contracts within the next 180 days and agree to channel all their sales through the Bolivian state. If they decline, then they would have to leave the country. In most cases, they will have to hand over 82 percent of production to the state.
The Chavez route has won other adherents, which must be worrying to his critics. Ecuador recently approved a law that allows the government to renegotiate contracts with oil companies. Peru’s presidential candidate Ollanta Humala has promised to nationalize gas reserves and production if he wins the runoff election. At the wider trade level, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba recently signed the Peoples' Trade Agreement, ostensibly their answer to the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Latin America’s left, however, is not solidly behind Chavez. Brazil, Chile and Uruguay have leftist governments, but they have not pursued nationalization policies.
Can Morales sustain his policy? Bolivia may have South America's second-largest reserves of natural gas, but its oil industry remains underdeveloped. Unlike Venezuela, Bolivia does not have steady oil revenues to fuel further economic growth.
The poorest country in South America, Bolivia is dependent on foreign investment and expertise to extract and export its huge gas reserves.
Morales is the first person who recognizes that energy revenues are nowhere near boosting social and infrastructure spending and securing the country’s long-term debt sustainability.
The best Bolivia can hope for is tighter conditions for foreign firms. So why has Morales exhibited such boldness? Could it have to do with the fact that Chavez calls his cause the Bolivar Revolution?

Immigration Debate: Civility Without Change

Behind all the belligerence, the immigration discourse has undergone a semantic change – at least from the pro-immigration side. America now needs illegal aliens from across the southern border to pluck tomatoes not because Americans won’t do the jobs but because employers can’t find Americans to get the job done.
How far this linguistic transformation would inject greater civility into the debate remains to be seen. But it won’t take away the essence.
Go to any gas station, convenience store or motel run by immigrant communities in the Midwest. You see a snapshot of the world – ethnic, demographic and linguistic.
Try striking up a conversation with the youngest-looking guy, especially when the boss (or manager) isn’t around. You discover that those manning the cash registers and front desks are relatives of the owner. How wonderful, these family values so far away from home. Until you realize there are too many Mohammeds and Manohars claiming to be brothers.
Yes, yes, Muslim, Hindu communities tend to use terms of endearment very generously. And don’t they say distance strengthens fondness? Then there are facts of life our affluent society simply can’t understand.
A Hindu grandaunt might have married into a Muslim family. A Muslim uncle might have renounced everything to do with religion except his name for his Hindu beloved. Their descendants might probably still be at each other’s throats if they were still somewhere along the Kashmir line of control. If life in America can breed peace and amity even in one soul, what’s there to complain about?
Moreover, how dare the West lecture on these things when all those white men of yore did so much to tear families asunder on the basis of religion?
Then get out of the premise for a smoke or some fresh air. If you stay long enough you might find a few Americans inquiring around for work? Some will have one job and be on the lookout for some extra buck.
No, the business is not hiring, they’re told inside. The economy still sucks. Just in case, they’re asked to fill out an application for future vacancies. Or at least leave a name, phone number and a good time to call.
The manager won’t call. He’ll probably be too busy yelling at his (illegal) workers, perhaps even threatening to cut their already sub-minimum wage, flaunting that file full of applications.