Svet

[Shan Jan]

Slazem se sa M16, mislim da je ispravna ta ideja primeniti ratni pristup protiv ovih narkokartela. Oni definitivno imaju respektabilnu vojsku i po nacinu rada moze se redi da lice na gerilu (osim sto nemaju nikakvu ideologiju mada ko zna svasta je moguce). Objavljivanje rata bi dozvolilo jasno svrstavanje na ovu i onu stranu i ustedelo dosta vremena i dosta nevinih zrtava usled nemogucnosti pribavljanja dokaza, svedoka i zivih sudija. U ratu nema potrebe za dokaznim postupkom pa bi glavni problem bio insajderovanje u protivnicke redove. Verujem da im to ne bi bilo tesko. Ovo jeste "ne bas demokratsko" resenje ali cini mi se da je trenutno najbolje moguce kad se gleda cena koja treba da se plati.

[Аврам Гојић]

 

ovaj svedski tekst pomalo evocira divno vreme prica o jevrejima koji kradu hriscansku decu kako bi im cedili krv. meni je milije da razlicite jevrejske organizacije skacu na ovakve price nego da se takvo nesto ponovo zapati.

Meni je cudno sto se svedski tekst uopste dovodi u vezu sa priznanjem da su izraelski forenzicari uzimali organe bez pitanja, a vas dvojica ste malo u nesporazumu zato sto govorite o razlicitim stvarima.1. Svedjanin je optuzio IDF da su otimali mlade Palestince radi prikupljanja organa (po medicinski tesko odrzivom modelu "zute kuce")2. Izraelska vlada priznala je da je pre vise godina postojala praksa prikupljanja organa od mrtvih Jevreja (velika vecina), Palestinaca i stranih radnika, bez konsultacije sa porodicom. Dakle, priznanje izraelske vlade nije potvrda svedskog teksta koji je verovatno posledica naivnosti autora. Inace prica ima i zanimljiv spinoff: tvrdnju ukrajinskih antisemita da je Izrael uvezao i zaklao 25.000 primeraka ukrajinske dece. Iranski mediji opsirno pisu o ovome, i mrtvi-ozbiljni konstatuju da su dokazi o ovome izneti na "pseudo-naucnoj konferenciji u Kijevu" (wtf). A strukturoloski gledano, ideja o tome da bi se izraelska vojska bavila otimanjem Palestinaca radi prodaje organa je krizanac dva mita, jednog novog, jednog starog: cuvene urbane legende o ukradenom bubregu, i predstave o Jevrejima koji otimaju inovernu decu.

[pacey defender]

Ja ne. Ja bih ovo krstio otprilike onako kako su Ameri krstili 9/11-oružani napad na državu. I poveo rat protiv grupe koja je napala oružanim, odnosno vojnim sredstvima. I ovo nije isto kao kad neki huligan ubije policajca na raskrsnici recimo. Ovi ljudi iza sebe imaju bukvalno oružanu vojnu silu, samo što nemaju tenkove i avione. Oni na teritorijama koje kontrološu otvoreno stavljaju državne zakone van snage. Očigledno, ne samo vojno, nego i teroristički odgovaraju na napade protiv sebe. Dakle, protiv njih se ne bori policijskim, nego vojnim sredstvima(ok, malko sam preterao sa napalmom). A ima i druga stvar. Kad kreneš u jednu takvu sveobuhvatnu akciju, malko se povećavaju "stakes", pa je i onima koji su korumpirani i koji ih štite u državnoj administraciji malo teže da nastave da ih štite. Ja sam sto jedan posto za pravnu i pri tom minimalnu državu, ali sa ovim nema kompromisa. To se-fizički uništava. Bilo koja razvijena zapadna država bi to uništila ne do temelja, nego do dva nivoa ispod zemlje. Posebno Amerikanci. I ne samo to. Te zemlje su i postale pravne i za svoje građane(i imigrante) sigurne države zato što su se(samo mnogo ranije) najokrutnije obračunali sa onima koji su mislili da na njihovoj teritoriji mogu otvoreno da prkose državnoj vlasti, posebno ako su to radili iz kriminalnih razloga.

Tu se poprilično razlikuješ od Filipenka recimo. Dobro je što je tako. Zapravo, moj post se nije na tebe odnosio. Nemam ja nikakve utopističke iluzije da neki kabinetski "ta nemojte tako, sačekajmo da prenoći, ne valja lomiti preko kolena - hajde mi to da razmotrimo, sprovedemo istraživanje i predstavimo policy paper" pristup može da reši probleme. Jasno je da je odlučna (re)akcija države neophodna - na kraju krajeva, to je ono što građani s pravom očekuju. Odnos države i građanina zasnovan je na nekoj vrsti ugovornog odnosa gde se mi odričemo dela svoje slobode, suvereniteta i novaca kako bi država u naše ime zaštitila sve nas od onih koji nisu fer i pošteni kao većina. Sve je to ok, jasno je da država mora da reaguje odlučno i beskompromisno. Zato mislim da između "Ja sam sto jedan posto za pravnu i pri tom minimalnu državu" i "sa ovim nema kompromisa. To se-fizički uništava" nisi uopšte morao da stavljaš ono "ali". To nisu isključive kategorije. Pravna država, bila ona socijalna ili minimalna, dužna je da se stara o bezbednosti svojih građana i dužna je da se obračuna sa svima koji narušavaju bezbednost i živote drugih.Problem nastaje kada se predlože ovakve budalaštine :

Eksterminacija kompletne gamadi po kratkom postupku, sa sve njihovim porodicama.

e tu mi je već fitilj poprilično kratak. Edited December 23, 2009 by pacey defender

[zorglub]

A strukturoloski gledano, ideja o tome da bi se izraelska vojska bavila otimanjem Palestinaca radi prodaje organa je krizanac dva mita, jednog novog, jednog starog: cuvene urbane legende o ukradenom bubregu, i predstave o Jevrejima koji otimaju inovernu decu.

Ma, niko ni ne pominje to, ali eto, rekli ljudi- da, uzimali smo organe bez da smo i pitali ikoga. Prethodno se napao članak koji je sugerisao baš to (kao što kaže, preneo je čovek optužbe palestinskih porodica) besramno stavljajući antisemitizam u priču. Edited December 23, 2009 by zorglub

[Valk]

Na ovom forumu se ne toleriše navođenje Hitlera kao ''uzora'' za bilo šta. Molim da nađete primereniju paralelu za izražavanje mišljenja.

[kim_philby]

Ma, niko ni ne pominje to, ali eto, rekli ljudi- da, uzimali smo organe bez da smo i pitali ikoga. Prethodno se napao članak koji je sugerisao baš to (kao što kaže, preneo je čovek optužbe palestinskih porodica) besramno stavljajući antisemitizam u priču.

svedjanin je tvrdio da je na zapadnoj obali sljakala civutska 'zuta kuca' sto nije ono sto je IDF priznao. druga utakmica, druga igra.meni nije tesko da poverujem da su organi uzimani bez pitanja i bez obzira na etnicitet poginulih znajuci utilitarnost IDF ali tvrditi da su palestinci otimani kako bi im se cupali organi...inace

In an article published in August in the popular Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Bostrum reported that Israel seized young Palestinian men and returned them to their families with missing organs.The story, which ran under the headline “They plunder the organs of our sons,” also cited the recent arrest of a New York rabbi accused of trafficking in human organs.

antisemitizam i primitivni senzacionalizam.

Edited December 24, 2009 by kim_philby

[zorglub]

Senzacionalizam- da, antisemitizam- zašto? Zato što se, pobogu, piše o izabranom narodu?Opet, osim ukoliko debelo ne grešim, čovek je preneo optužbe porodica nastradalih. Ako je pak sam nažvrljao članak, onda se slažemo.

[kim_philby]

pa zato sto ga istorija primorava da u ovom slucaju bude malo pribraniji. reakcija ukrajinskih antisemita na tekst je potvrda toga. naravno ne sumnjam ja da nesretni svedzanin nije na nivou samorazumevanja antisemita ali njegov tekst jeste strukturalno antisemitski odnosno holofrazira staru antisemitsku propagandu o otimanju dece & jevrejima. ovde nije na crti politicka korektnost vec veoma opasna zamka u koju cesto upadaju oni koji kritikuju drzavu izrael i cionizam.vidi pod francois genoud & jacques verges...izabrani narod & evropa. zamrsena je to prica.

[zorglub]

Pa dobro, jel' se u tu zamku upada po defoltu? Takođe, ne vidim ko je ovde pominjao cionizam. Priča između ovo dvoje jeste zamršena, s tim što Izraelu takvo stanje očigledno i odgovora. Kako drugačije bi na svaku jbn kritiku mogao odgovoriti sa- AHA! Antisemitizam!

[Аврам Гојић]

Problem sa ovim clankom je u tome sto je idiotski, a ne antisemitski - a upravo u tom idiotizmu, koji za napisano ne trazi potvrdu nego spekulacije pretvara u istinu, krije se zamka antisemitske reakcije. Svedjanin je morao toga biti svestan. Sta je Boströmu krunski dokaz da je bilo prikupljanja organa? Prisustvo oziljaka od autopsije i cinjenica da IDF prikuplja mrtva tela. Prvo ne znam da objasnim ali svakako ne dokazuje kradju organa, a drugo se zova asanacija terena. Lesevi Palestinaca nisu dobar PR. Takodje, njemu nije problem da kao dokaz koristi izjavu majke ubijenog. Otkud ona moze da zna da je bilo prikupljanja organa? Jedino sto ona vidi je oziljak.Pri tome, on nema problem sa tvrdnjom da se neko koristi za prikupljanje organa posto je pogodjen u torzo visestrukim hicima iz automatske puske, kao sto je slucaj sa mladim Bilalom. Kao medicinski laik morao je posumnjati u mogucnost transplantacije unutrasnjih organa nakon tretmana kalibrom 5.56, i morao je pitati nekoga ko se razume u medicinu da li je to moguce. Ovo nije uradio iz dva neprihvatljiva razloga: - boleo ga je kurac, on vec ima pricu - znao je da bi mu bilo koji lekar rekao da organ harvesting o kakvom on pise - naprosto nije vijabilna praksa.Dobri Boström mozda nije antisemita (a mozda i jeste, jury is still out). Ne zelim da verujem da je Boström napisao ovaj tekst radeci za neki lobi, ali tekst je, po formi (spekulacije koje magicno postaju dokazi za dalje spekulacije) i po sustini (Jevreji ritualno zrtvuju nasu decu) srednjovekovni blood libel koji je vec jednom doveo do najgadnijeg pogroma u istoriji. Potom, tekst mesa babe i zabe: pocinje sa pricom o zlocinu u Bruklinu koji ukljucuje i neke rabine, i onda opusteno prelazi na Jevreje iz Izraela, kao da se podrazumeva da oni moraju biti u nekoj tajnoj judejskoj vezi. Sramotno pisanje.Zakljucicu post recima nekoga ko bolje poznaje kontekst od mene: ugledni kolumnista Mats Skogkär, koji prati skandal oko teksta od samog pocetka i kao izvestac i kao kolumnista, rekao je:"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything. Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel."

[zorglub]

Dobro, i sada, kada znamo da je "organ harvesting" ipak bila aktivnost koja prestala pre deset godina i više se ne događa, i dalje ćemo tvrditi kako je članak antisemitski? Sve što ja znam je sledeće:

Novinar Donald Bostrom u avgustu je izneo optužbe palestinskih porodica da su izraelski vojnici ubijali Palestince zbog organa.Palestinci, sa kojima je Bostrom razgovarao na svom putovanju po Zapadnoj obali, tvrdili su da su „organi ukradeni iz njihovih mrtvih sinova” i da su dobijali njihova tela „ispražnjena i sašivena od trbuha do grla”.

Dakle, osim ako serbiše prevod ne laže, čovek je samo prenosio optužbe rodbine poginulih.I što je još zanimljivije, i strašnije, sva se buka digla oko nekog članka koji provejava antisemitizmom, reakcijom ukrajinskih antisemita , zaboravljajući potpuno zašto se jbn članak uopšte i spomenuo. Jbt, ispašću stormovac , ali ako Vama svima ovo ne smeta, onda stvarno sa mnom nešto nije u redu...

[Аврам Гојић]

Dobro, i sada, kada znamo da je "organ harvesting" ipak bila aktivnost koja prestala pre deset godina i više se ne događa, i dalje ćemo tvrditi kako je članak antisemitski? Sve što ja znam je sledeće:Dakle, osim ako serbiše prevod ne laže, čovek je samo prenosio optužbe rodbine poginulih.I što je još zanimljivije, i strašnije, sva se buka digla oko nekog članka koji provejava antisemitizmom, reakcijom ukrajinskih antisemita , zaboravljajući potpuno zašto se jbn članak uopšte i spomenuo. Jbt, ispašću stormovac , ali ako Vama svima ovo ne smeta, onda stvarno sa mnom nešto nije u redu...

Ljudi koji nemaju mnogo zadnjih misli obicno ne umeju da to prepoznaju ni kod drugih, pa je tvoje nerazumevanje teksta zapravo kompliment forumasu Zorglubu.Ali:1. kada pises ovakve testove, za koje znas da ce izazvati dramaticnu reakciju, ne mozes reci "samo prenosim sta rodbina kaze", to je neodgovorno i opasno, da ne govorimo o tome da je neprofesionalno. rodbina nije mogla da zna da su organi vadjeni, sto i autor posredno priznaje, ali neke stvari i pored toga naziva ociglednim.2. jedan novinski clanak ne moze da se bavi dvema pojavama osim ako njih ne vezuje neki najmanji zajednicki sadrzalac dovoljno vazan da od dve teme napravi jednu. Koji je to sadrzalac u tekstu? Jevreji. Autor pise o a) trgovini organima u Bruklinu, krivci su neki Jevreji b) kradji organa u Izraelu. Ako je tekst kritika drzave Izrael, zasto je poceo tekst necim sto su uradili Jevreji na drugom kraju sveta? Bice da je ipak u pitanju pokusaj da se uspostavi spona izmedju ova dva povoda, tj. da autor predoci brizljivo selektirane "cinjenice" i da onda ostavi citaocima da izvuku zeljeni zakljucak - ne o drzavi Izrael, vec o Jevrejima.Uostalom, hajde da pogledamo i sam sporni clanak. Osnovno pravilo pisanja novinskog teksta je da oprema (naslov i podnaslov, itd.) i lid - tj. uvod u tekst moraju da govore o istoj stvari, postepeno je priblizavajuci. Naslov teksta glasi "Our sons are plundered of their organs", kao deo ispovesti roditelja Palestinaca, a uvod pocinje tajno snimljenim priznanjem americkog Jevrejina vrlo zvucnog imena, kako je on nekakav "provodadzija organa" - sto je deo price koja nema nikakve veze sa drzavom Izrael, i jedina veza izmedju evt. prestupnika je njihova etnicka pripadnost. Moram li dalje da objasnjavam?U spojleru, integralni tekst.

Our sons are plundered of their organs"Young Palestinian men throwing stones and bottles at Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank. In this area, Bilal Achmed Ghanan was shot to death and cut up in a hospital. "Our sons are being used as organ reserves," claim the Palestinians.Foto: DONALD BOSTRÖMBilal Achmed Ghanan, 19, was shot and taken away by Israeli soldiers. The body was returned stitched together from the belly to the neck.Foto: DONALD BOSTRÖMLevy Izhak Rosenbaum being led away by FBI agents. Rosenbaum is alleged to have functioned as a middleman in the illegal organ trafficking scheme.Foto: APPalestinians accuse the Israel Defense Forces of taking organs from their victims.Donald Boström writes about an international organ trafficking scandal – and about the time he saw the cut-up dead body of a nineteen-year old Palestinian.You could call me a ”matchmaker”, said Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with an FBI-agent whom he believed to be a client. Ten days later, at the end of July this year, Rosenbaum was arrested and a vast, Sopranos-like, imbroglio of money-laundering and illegal organ-trade was revealed in New Jersey: Rabbis, politicians and trusted civil servants had for years bin involved in money laundering and illegal organ-trade.Rosenbaum’s matchmaking had nothing to do with romance. It was all about buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. Rosenbaum says that he buys the kidneys for 10 000 dollars, from poor people. He then proceeds to sell the organs to desperate patients in the States for 160 000 dollars.The accusations have shaken the American transplantation business. If they are true it means that organ trafficking is documented for the first time in the US, experts tell the New Jersey Real-Time News.On the question of how many organs he has sold Rosenbaum replies: ”Quite a lot. And I have never failed,” he boasts. The business has been running for quite some time.Francis Delmonici, professor of transplant surgery at Harvard and member of the National Kidney Foundation’s Board of Directors, tells the same newspaper that organ-trafficking, similar to the one reported from Israel, is carried out in other places of the world as well. 5 – 6 000 operations a year, about ten per cent of the world’s kidney transplants are carried out illegally, according to Delmonici.Countries suspected of these activities are Pakistan, the Philippines and China, where the organs are allegedly taken from executed prisoners. But Palestinians also harbor strong suspicions that young men have been siezed, and made to serve as organ reserve, just as in China and Pakistan, before being killed – a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the nineties. Jerusalem Post wrote that ”the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France’s example shortly.”Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the 2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn’t condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business – on the contrary, chief medical officers of Israel’s big hospitals are involved in most of the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5, -03).In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then minister of health, tried to address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at having the Israeli public register for postmortal organ donation. Half a million pamphlets were spread in local newspapers. Ehud Olmert himself was the first person to sign up.A couple of weeks later the Jerusalem Post reported that the campaign was a success. No fewer than 35 000 people had signed up. Prior to the campaign it would have been 500 in a normal month. In the same article, however, Judy Siegel, the reporter, wrote that the gap between supply and demand was still large. 500 people were in line for kidney transplant, but only 124 transplants could be performed. Of 45 people in need of a new liver only three could be operated on in Israel.While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories. There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies.I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestininan families in the West Bank and Gaza – meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed. One example that I encountered on this eerie trip was the young stone-thrower Bilal Achmed Ghanan.It was close to midnight when the motor roar from an Israeli military column sounded from the outskirts of Imatin, a small village in the northern parts of the West Bank. The two thousand inhabitants were awake. They were still, waiting, like silent shadows in the dark, some lying upon roofs, others hiding behind curtains, walls, or trees that provided protection during the curfew but still offered a full view toward what would become the grave for the first martyr of the village. The military had interrupted the electricity and the area was now a closed-off military zone – not even a cat could move outdoors without risking its life. The overpowering silence of the dark night was only interrupted by quiet sobbing. I don’t remember if our shivering was due to the cold or to the tension. Five days earlier, on May 13, 1992, an Israeli special force had used the village’s carpentry workshop for an ambush. The person they were assigned to put out of action was Bilal Achmed Ghanan, one of the stone-throwing Palestinian youngsters who made life difficult for the Israeli soldiers.As one of the leading stone-throwers Bilal Ghanan had been wanted by the military for a couple of years. Together with other stone-throwing boys he hid in the Nablus mountains, with no roof over his head. Getting caught meant torture and death for these boys – they had to stay in the mountains at all costs.On May 13 Bilal made an exception, when for some reason, he walked unprotected by the carpentry workshop. Not even Talal, his older brother, knows why he took this risk. Maybe the boys were out of food and needed to restock.Everything went according to plan for the Israeli special force. The soldiers stubbed their cigarettes, put away their cans of Coca-Cola, and calmly aimed through the broken window. When Bilal was close enough they needed only to pull the triggers. The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the workshop stair. Villagers say that people from both the UN and the Red Crescent were close by, heard the discharge and came to look for wounded people in need of care. Some arguing took place as to who should take care of the victim. Discussions ended with Israeli soldiers loading the badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a destination unknown to his family. Five days later he came back, dead and wrapped in green hospital fabric.A villager recognized Captain Yahya, the leader of the military column who had transported Bilal from the postmortem center Abu Kabir, outside of Tel Aviv, to the place for his final rest. ”Captain Yahya is the worst of them all,” the villager whispered in my ear. After Yahya had unloaded the body and changed the green fabric for a light cotton one, some male relatives of the victim were chosen by the soldiers to do the job of digging and mixing cement.Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear laughter from the soldiers who, as they waited to go home, exchanged some jokes. As Bilal was put in the grave his chest was uncovered. Suddenly it became clear to the few people present just what kind of abuse the boy had been exposed to. Bilal was not by far the first young Palestinian to be buried with a slit from his abdomen up to his chin.The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: ”Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,” relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied.– Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the electricity interrupted? Nafe’s uncle was upset and he had a lot of questions.The relatives of the dead Palestinians no longer harbored any doubts as to the reasons for the killings, but the spokesperson for the Israeli army claimed that the allegations of organ theft were lies. All the Palestinian victims go through autopsy on a routine basis, he said. Bilal Achmed Ghanem was one of 133 Palestinians killed in various ways that year. According to the Palestinian statistics the causes of death were: shot in the street, explosion, tear gas, deliberately run over, hanged in prison, shot in school, killed at home etcetera. The 133 people killed were between four months to 88 years old. Only half of them, 69 victims, went through postmortem examination. The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians – of which the army spokesperson was talking – has no bearing on the reality in the occupied territories. The questions remain.We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the Intifada began.Donald Boström

Edited December 24, 2009 by vasudeva418

[Roger Sanchez]

Fenomenalan tekst Marka Lyncha u Foreign Policyju.. inteligentan, duhovit, ubitačan. Užitak & divljenje. :)

Mainstreaming the Mad Iran BombersPosted By Marc Lynch Thursday, December 24, 2009 - 11:36 AMToday's New York Times runs what I believe is its first op-ed explicitly advocating a military campaign against Iran. Such agitation for war isn't new -- John Bolton and friends have been obsessively demanding such an attack for a long time, adapting the argument for war as the only solution to whatever the current situation may be. It's one thing when the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fox News or other conservative outlets advocate such a war. You expect that, and discount accordingly; an op-ed in Fred Hiatt's Washington Post demanding war on Iran is like a DC-based blogger complaining about the Redskins... it happens constantly, nobody takes it very seriously and it doesn't accomplish anything. But the New York Times doing so is a serious step towards mainstreaming the idea, akin to how Ken Pollack and Tom Friedman's support for the invasion of Iraq persuaded a lot of centrists and liberals. It's as if we as a country have learned nothing from the Iraq war debate. Alan Kuperman, the NYT op-ed's author, is best known for defending the U.S. non-response to the genocide in Rwanda (leading the late, lamented Alison Des Forges to accuse him of playing "word games to rationalize the West's ignominious failure to halt genocide in Rwanda"). While he has no evident expertise in Iran, he has determined that Iranian domestic politics and a few months of negotiations conclusively prove that negotiations can never work and that there's only one way to stop Iran -- war. His argument is like a caricature of such war advocacy, hitting each predictable theme like a sledgehammer. Does he rule out the alternative policy by default? Yes he does! "peaceful carrots and sticks cannot work."Does he reduce the policy options to two extreme positions, one of which is guaranteed to be rejected? Yes he does! "the United States faces a stark choice: military air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities or acquiescence to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons." Does he warn that Saddam, um, Ahmedenejad will give WMD to terrorists? Yes, yes he does. "if Iran acquired a nuclear arsenal, the risks would simply be too great that it could become a neighborhood bully or provide terrorists with the ultimate weapon, an atomic bomb." (the "neighborhood bully" is a nice touch.) Will, pray tell, the smoking gun be in the shape of a mushroom cloud? Does he exaggerate the prospects for success? Yes, he does. Well, first he says "As for knocking out its nuclear plants, admittedly, aerial bombing might not work." But he quickly moves on from that, since that will not do. Oddly, his main example of success comes from Iraq, where he claims that the first Gulf war led to the uncovering of the Iraqi nuclear program --- not the Osirak raid -- which is accurate, but rather completely contradicts his argument. Does he minimize the risks of military action? Yes, he does. "Yes, Iran could retaliate by aiding America’s opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does that anyway." Try telling that to U.S. military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, or to leaders in the Gulf, who are slightly less cavalier with the lives of their people.Does he suggest that if all else fails regime change would be easy and cheap? Yes, dear lord, he does. ( ) "If nothing else, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that the United States military can oust regimes in weeks if it wants to." Truly, this was the lesson to be drawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm still marveling over how easily we overthrew Saddam and the Taliban and got out of Iraq and Afghanistan more or less costlessly. That was special. On the other hand, as Matt Duss helpfully points out, "if we don't have an Iran war, how are we supposed to have an awesome Iran surge?"Does he accuse those who oppose military action of appeasement? Yes, yes, of course he does. "in the face of failed diplomacy, eschewing force is tantamount to appeasement."Why spend so much time on a mediocre, unoriginal op-ed? The better question is why the NYT published it. Advocates of such a military strike have been agitating tirelessly for years to mainstream and normalize an idea once seen as mad, using precisely these arguments so often that their deep weaknesses may not even register anymore. Opponents of such a military strike -- on the grounds that it would not likely stop the nuclear program, would kill lots of innocent Iranians and inflame Iranian public opinion, would destroy Obama's hopes to transform America's relations with the Islamic world and inflame anti-Americanism back to Bush-era levels, and so on -- may not take this seriously enough. The Obama administration almost certainly doesn't want to make such a wrong-headed move --- but, then, there are a lot of things which the Obama administration doesn't want to do but has been forced into by political realities (Gitmo, the public option, escalation in Afghanistan) and intentions aren't enough. Many people may have assumed that the legacy of Iraq would have raised the bar on such arguments for war, that someone making such all too familiar claims would simply be laughed out of the public square. The NYT today shows that they aren't. I suspect that one of the great foreign policy challenges of 2010 is going to be to push back on this mad campaign for another pointless, counter-productive war for the sake of war.

[Jolly Roger]

А чија је реч постеља? Питам, не знам. Јел турска?

Nije. Rec "postelja" je poreklom iz starog slovenskog jezika.edit: uh... tek sada videh koliko kasnim s odgovorom... sorry... Edited December 25, 2009 by Jolly Roger

[Shan Jan]

Fenomenalan tekst Marka Lyncha u Foreign Policyju.. inteligentan, duhovit, ubitačan. Užitak & divljenje. :)

Dobar. Ako Ameri kojim ludim slucajem napadnu Iran samo ce pokrenuti opet muslimanske klince u alkaidu. Jedini nacin da to koliko toliko jeftino prodje je da Izraelci izvedu neku diverzijicu. Ipak siguran sam da Obama peacemaker to necce odobriti. Obrni okreni, Iranci ce to napraviti i tu nista ne moze da ih zaustavi. Pametni ljudi.