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	It Just Gets Worse by Bob Herbert, Zbigniew Brzezinski Financial Times / New York Times   July 2005   It Just Gets Worse, by Bob Herbert. (New York Times)   Back in March 2004 President Bush had a great time displaying what he felt was a hilarious set of photos showing him searching the Oval Office for the weapons of mass destruction that hadn"t been found in Iraq. It was a spoof he performed at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association.   The photos showed the president peering behind curtains and looking under furniture for the missing weapons. Mr. Bush offered mock captions for the photos, saying, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere" and "Nope, no weapons over there ... maybe under here?"   If there"s something funny about Mr. Bush"s misbegotten war, I"ve yet to see it. The president deliberately led Americans traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, into the false belief that there was a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and that a pre-emptive invasion would make the United States less vulnerable to terrorism.   Close to 600 Americans had already died in Iraq when Mr. Bush was cracking up the audience with his tasteless photos at the glittering Washington gathering. The toll of Americans has now passed 1,750. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. Scores of thousands of men, women and children have been horribly wounded. And there is no end in sight.   Last week"s terror bombings in London should be seen as a reminder not just that Mr. Bush"s war was a hideous diversion of focus and resources from the essential battle against terror, but that it has actually increased the danger of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies.   The C.I.A. warned the administration in a classified report in May that Iraq - since the American invasion in 2003 - had become a training ground in which novice terrorists were schooled in assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other terror techniques. The report said Iraq could prove to be more effective than Afghanistan in the early days of Al Qaeda as a place to train terrorists who could then disperse to other parts of the world, including the United States.   Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. analyst who served as deputy director of the State Department"s counterterrorism office, said on National Public Radio last week: "You now in Iraq have a recruiting ground in which jihadists, people who previously were not willing to go out and embrace the vision of bin Laden and Al Qaeda, are now aligning themselves with elements that have declared allegiance to him. And in the course of that, they"re learning how to build bombs. They"re learning how to conduct military operations."   Has the president given any thought to leveling with the American people about how bad the situation has become? And is he even considering what for him would be the radical notion of soliciting the counsel of wise men and women who might give him a different perspective on war and terror than the Kool-Aid-drinking true believers who have brought us to this dreadful state of affairs? The true believers continue to argue that the proper strategy is to stay the current catastrophic course.   Americans are paying a fearful price for Mr. Bush"s adventure in Iraq. In addition to the toll of dead and wounded, the war is costing about $5 billion a month. It has drained resources from critical needs here at home, including important antiterror initiatives that would improve the security of ports, transit systems and chemical plants.   The war has diminished the stature and weakened the credibility of the United Sates around the world. And it has delivered a body blow to the readiness of America"s armed forces. Much of the military is now overdeployed, undertrained and overworked. Many of the troops are serving multiple tours in Iraq. No wonder potential recruits are staying away in droves.   Whatever one"s views on the war, thoughtful Americans need to consider the damage it is doing to the United States, and the bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world. That anger is spreading like an unchecked fire in an incredibly vast field.   The immediate challenge to President Bush is to dispense with the destructive fantasies of the true believers in his administration and to begin to see America"s current predicament clearly. New voices with new approaches and new ideas need to be heard. The hole we"re in is deep enough. We need to stop digging.   Juy 2005 (Zbigniew Brzezinski)   Like a novelist who wishes to inject verisimilitude into his fiction, George W. Bush, US president, began his speech on Iraq with a reference to a historical fact all too tragically well known to his audience. The evocation of the monstrous crime of September 11 2001 served as his introduction to the spin that followed: that Iraq was complicit in 9/11 and thus, in effect, attacked the US; that the US had no choice but to defend itself against Iraq"s aggression; and, finally, that if America does not fight terrorists in Iraq, they will swarm across the ocean to attack America.   Since fiction is not ruled by the same standards as history, Mr Bush was under no obligation to refer to his own earlier certitude about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” (or, rather, to their embarrassing absence), or to the inept sequel of the initially successful US military campaign; or to the fact that the occupation of Iraq is turning it into a huge recruitment centre for terrorists. Similarly, there was no need to deal with the perplexing fact that the Iraqi insurgency does not appear to be in “its last throes”, or with the complex choices that the US now confronts.   But a more disturbing aspect of the speech was the absence of any serious discussion of the wider regional security problems and their relationship to the Iraqi conundrum. That connection poses the danger that America risks becoming irrelevant to the Middle East – largely through Mr Bush"s own doing. Much depends on how long the US pursues unrealistic goals in Iraq. And on whether the US becomes seriously engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, on how the US relationship with Iran is managed and on how the advocacy of democracy in the Middle East is pursued.   The reality in Iraq is that 135,000 American soldiers cannot create a stable “democracy” in a society rent by intensifying ethnic and religious conflicts. US military commanders, contradicting Mr Bush, have publicly stated that the insurgency is not weakening. It is useful to recall in this regard Henry Kissinger"s wise observation (made in regard to the war in Vietnam but pertinent here) that guerrillas are winning if they are not losing. The longer US troops are involved in Iraq, the more victory will remain “on the horizon” – that is, a goal that recedes as one moves towards it.   Only the Iraqis can establish a modicum of stability in Iraq, and that can be achieved only by Shia-Kurdish co-operation. These two communities have the power to entice or to crush the less numerous Sunnis. Hence the immediate goal of US policy should be to develop a dialogue with self-sufficient Shia and Kurdish leaders about the circumstances in which they could issue a public demand for American disengagement.   All this would be far less risky if accompanied by serious progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. That progress has to go beyond the Gaza disengagement or a renewal of reciprocal violence is to be expected. Progress requires US involvement and a willingness to press both parties with real resolve and towards clear goals. Equivocation, partiality toward one side and the temptation to evade this issue are prescriptions for continued conflict.   Similarly, US withdrawal from Iraq could be made more difficult and costly by any escalation in US-Iranian hostility. Iran has not taken full advantage of the opportunities for mischief but the temptation to do so would increase if American policy towards it again conflated the issue of nuclear power with the pursuit of “regime change”. There is little indication that the White House is sensitive to this reality.   Democracy in the Middle East is a worthy goal but one that the people of the region can pursue only on their own terms. Public hectoring by US officials is likely to promote the emergence of radical populist regimes motivated by strong anti-American (and anti-Israeli) passions.   The fictionalised account of America’s war against terror in Iraq failed to take into account the reality that the conflict there mobilises hostility towards the US, that the persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stimulates regional anger against America, that continued US threats of “regime change” in Iran harden Iranian enmity towards the country and that heavy handed advocacy of democracy poses the risk of legitimising populist hostility toward it. In explaining the causes of imperial failure, Arnold Toynbee ultimately ascribed it to “suicidal statecraft”. Of course, he was dealing with history and not fiction.
	Recognise us! The Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organisation by Andrew Mueller OpenDemocracy Netherlands   12 - 7 - 2005   The world’s stateless nations are fighting against local oppressors and global invisibility by sharing experiences, problems – and soccer skills. Andrew Mueller reports from the conference of the Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organisation.   Football matches pitting the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria against Southern Cameroons, and West Papua versus South Moluccas, soccer games occurred, in June 2005, in the The Hague, and they may – eventually – add up to the precursor of a small revolution in the geopolitical consciousness.   This four-team tournament (won, incidentally, by South Moluccas in a spirited 3-2 final against Ichkeria) was a curtain-raiser to the seventh general assembly of the Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organisation (Unpo), a sort of un-UN for countries which, if the United Nations were a nightclub, would be rebuffed by the bouncers with a firm “your name’s not down, you’re not coming in”.   Yet, the first Unpo Cup was judged a great success. Indeed, one of the resolutions agreed by the general assembly was the establishment of a full-scale World Cup for non-nations, an event which could result in some truly amazing contests: Tatarstan vs Buryatia, Cabinda vs Nagaland, Kurdistan vs Somaliland, East Turkestan vs Circassia, Zanzibar vs Scania, Assyria vs Mapuche.   The Unpo general assembly on 24-26 June looked like any international summit, the only immediately noticeable difference was that the flags were not the ones usually flying at such wingdings. These, instead, were the banners of those nationalities who, due to varying combinations of bad luck, betrayal, occupation, injustice, invasion, indifference and the whims of history, have missed out on the security and standing of statehood.   Some of the entities represented by these flags of the Unpo delegations were representatives from Chuvash, Abkhazia, Aceh, Khmer Krom, and the Buffalo River Dene Nation, an Indian community in Canada.   A couple are reasonably well-known: Kosova (Kosovo), which was bombed into a limbo of semi-independence from Serbia by Nato in 1999; Tibet, which has become a popular cause among actors, rock groups and others whose likelihood of being able to point to Tibet on a map would seem a poor bet. Another is a full-fledged first-world powerhouse: Taiwan, owner of the world’s 17th-largest economy and a formidable modern military.   There were also a couple of delegations clamouring for entry to this club for peoples with nowhere else to go: Baluchistan and Talish, both of whom reacted to their formal admissions to the Unpo with a delight which was genuinely moving.   The existence of the Unpo and, more to the point, the sixty organisations and parties which constitute its membership, seems an anomaly. We are, allegedly, and especially in Europe, living in an increasingly post-state world, where national identity counts for less and less, and borders for even less than that. This is, of course, a wholly logical approach: given that we do absolutely nothing to earn or deserve a national identity beyond being born or raised on one or other side of a line on a map, it is absurd that people regard their nationality as important.   We all do, though: go anywhere in the world, stop anyone in the street, and ask them to describe themselves. In no particular order, they’ll tell you their name, their job, and where they’re from. That being the case, it is possible to imagine the anguish of people for whom where they’re from isn’t an instantly recognisable brand but the beginning of a sequence of bewildered questions.   I can go anywhere in the world and tell people I’m Australian. While many people will have only a cartoonish image of what that means, the not displeasing idea often arises that, despite appearances, I’m a rugged son of the bush, capable of killing a crocodile with my bare hands. At least no one asks: “where the hell’s Australia?” or “is that even a place?”   Statehood, and the right to think of oneself as the citizen of a state, are precious prizes which history and geography distribute with terrifying caprice, something illustrated perfectly by the situation of the Unpo’s office in The Hague.   The Netherlands is a small country with no obvious natural borders which has been invaded, occupied, liberated, united and separated many times, and which could have ceased to exist on several occasions; it was once, indeed, rent apart by a secessionist movement similar to those attending the general assembly, when the southern Netherlands seceded in 1830 and established itself as Belgium.   There is no especially good reason why the Netherlands should have a seat in the United Nations, ambassadors in every capital, a monarchy, its own military and a place in the World Cup draw and why Kurdistan (to pick but one example) should not.   The Unpo is regarded by the members I met at the general assembly as an important and necessary halfway house, especially in facilitating contact with international bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, whose attentions are often all too necessary in places where questions of nationality and sovereignty are in dispute. In its fourteen-year history, six of its former members have been promoted up a division to full-fledged statehood: Estonia, Latvia, Armenia, Georgia, Palau and East Timor.   Further Links:   UNPO home page: http://www.unpo.org/   International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs: http://www.iwgia.org/sw325.asp   Minority Rights Group: http://www.minorityrights.org/ Visit the related web page
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