The Speech

Barack Obama often gives these speeches in aggressively non-sound bite forms. The speech on race doesn't have one line that people recite over and over, nor does his DNC nomination speech, or his speeches in Europe, or his Inauguration speech. He would rather create an event, something that needs to be read or watched in full. This morning's speech to the Muslim world from Cairo was promoted intensely on Facebook and Twitter, and translated into multiple different languages. The intended audiences are overseas, and the ideas complex and not easily boiled down.

Today's speech starts as almost a historical lecture about the challenges between Muslim countries and the United States, and like many Obama speeches, he seeks common ground between the divides, and calls for a new beginning of mutual understanding and shared principles, focusing on what unites and not what divides. And he asks that the two sides listen to each other and be honest with one another.

I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." That is what I will try to do - to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.

He addresses the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel/Palestine issue, the Iranian nuclear weapons crisis, democracy promotion, religious freedom and women's rights, doing the "on the one hand, on the other hand" shtick with almost all of them. Here's a good example, and a really keen take on the Israel/Palestine debate:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers - for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

There was a lot of honesty in the speech. Obama asserted that "our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons" to a part of the world where women are less equal. He said that "no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other" and acknowledged American roles in past overthrows of Muslim governments, particularly in Iran. He said that "No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons," an oblique reference to Israel, and made a hedge on Iranian negotiations by admitting that they "should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

The President, in other words, challenged the assumptions of both Americans and Egyptians, Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis, and sought common understanding through honesty and a new foundation for dialogue. Some will see the speech as essentially empty, as if a speech could end all oppression in the Muslim world. And I agree that actions matter, and words fall hollow if not backed up by them; in fact, the rhetoric makes things WORSE if the actions do not match. But I also agree with MJ Rosenberg, that speaking to Muslims and Arabs as equals does have an impact. Marc Lynch has a good take as well. Ultimately, Obama seeks to bring the greater Muslim world forward into a new conversation and marginalize those extremists who pervert religion with violence, and refuses to use ideology as a wedge between the divides. In that respect the speech is not as important as its buildup and the environment created around it. You can see by the Al Qaeda freakout in reaction - as well as conservatives - that they both hate the crackup of the Manichean relationship between the Western and Muslim worlds.

More coverage in NYT and WaPo, and even from Thomas Friedman, though I advise you to read what's inside the quotes from Obama and not the Moustache's turgid prose.

But Did He BOW When He Said It?

The pace of mini-controversies coming from the right can now be measured in minutes. The day started with conservative bloggers freaking out about a Jeff Zeleny article claiming that Obama said America could be thought of as a Muslim country. Dhimmitude!!1! Get your burqas out! Except what he actually said was that America has a lot of believers in Islam inside its borders, and we could do with a better dialogue on these issues, using the example that there are more Muslim-Americans than the population of most Muslim countries. So that was a bust.

Then, apparently Obama uttered the Muslim world for "thank you" while accepting a compliment from King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, leaving Michael Goldfarb wondering whether Obama secretly speaks Arabic.

Seriously.

Obama gives his speech in Cairo tomorrow, so for the rest of the week we can expect hard-hitting analysis like "Is Obama Wearing a Djellabah in Private," "Did The President Have Shawerma Or Foul For Lunch" and "Is Obama's Smile 8% Brighter Now That He's On The Arab Street."

Fun, fun, fun.

World Report

I've got a lot of international stories that probably aren't worth a full post, so here goes:

• Opium: it's not just for Afghanistan anymore.

The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops.

Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers switch to producing opium in fertile parts of Diyala province, once famous for its oranges and pomegranates, north- east of Baghdad.

Failed states eventually become narco-states. It's a fact of life. And the real question is whether or not this money is flowing, like to the Taliban in Afghanistan, to insurgent and anti-government forces.

• By the way, Pakistan is a complete mess. A fort in Waziristan has been overrun by Islamists, and the intelligence service has lost control of the key elements of the militant networks there. At the same time, the United States is slowly creeping forward with a greater military role inside the country, leading us into yet another untenable conflict.

• In Kenya, amidst credible evidence that the election was rigged, the resulting unrest has once again turned violent, with riot police using live ammo and killing protestors. The anti-government forces are now looking to economic boycotts and other peaceful protests to make themselves heard. What is very worrisome is the continued tribal violence, which is not limited to Kenya inside the region. Just next door in Rwanda, the ideology of genocide is still being taught in schools.

• Nicolas Sarkozy is no longer the darling of the right, I'd gather, after the fairly trashy saga of marrying an ex-model months after a messy divorce, after his ex-wife called him "a man who likes no-one, not even his children." Of course, the Republicans are the party of Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston... so maybe it's not a big deal.

• The fallout from President Bush's "Ignorant Abroad" act through the Middle East is just starting to be felt. After a right-wing faction pulled out of Ehud Olmert's government because of the slightest hint of peace talks with the Palestinians, Olmert put his hawkish hat on.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Thursday to wage a "war" to stop Gaza militants firing rockets into Israel, despite warnings by Palestinian leaders that Israeli military strikes would harm peacemaking.

"A war is going on in the south, every day, every night," Olmert said in a speech.

"We cannot and will not tolerate this unceasing fire at Israeli citizens ... so we will continue to operate, with wisdom and daring, with the maximum precision that will enable us to hit those who want to attack us," Olmert said, minutes after the air strike.

Israel has a right to defend themselves, but it seems to me that the immediate fallout from Bush's visit was a break away from peace and talk of war.

• Elsewhere, the Ignorant Abroad talked about freedom and democracy in Saudi Arabia while not meeting any democracy activists or dissidents, claimed that Egypt is moving toward political reform when he has done nothing of the sort, and basically spent his trip lavishing gifts on the Gulf states in the hopes that they would raise production of oil. And by the way, got no concession for his efforts. So, lies, incompetence, and failure. Just like at home!

They've Already Won The Iran Debate

We're having a debate about Iran in this country, a debate between reason and utter insanity. It's clear that the Cheney Administration has found the next Hitler in the guy who controls the traffic signals in Tehran; and they will be relentless in fostering a climate of fear in the American pschye, designed to turn them into a quivering mass who will submit to their father-protectors. Whether or not this is the work of the mentally ill is besides the point. The point is this:

Every day we talk about Iran is one less day we're talking about Iraq.

This has been a classic distraction strategy from the very beginning. I mean, yes, we all know that the Administration is crazy enough to unilaterally strike Iran and bomb what they perceive to be an imminent nuclear threat. So sure, you have to counsel patience, you have to ask for direct talks, as Chuck Hagel did today, or you cede the debate to the neocons in the White House and their enablers in the Senate, and end up with a situation where the public is on board with an attack on Iran, beyond all reason. But all of that energy expended on rebutting the Iran claims doesn't go to ending this tragic occupation in Iraq, which, contrary to wingnut belief, has not magically turned the corner. Indeed, there has been no movement whatsoever on the political front, with the country due to lapse into a warlord state where local gangs fight for power at the local level. But none of these cases are being made, crowded out by the drumbeat to Iran.

Did you even know that the Democrats are considering dropping another $50 billion on Iraq before they go home for the recess? There's no way to organize around that when it barely registers a peep. I don't know if Bush wants to attack Iran or not. What I do know is that it is a great way for him to tie everyone up in knots around the question, so that he can say that Congress wasted its time trying to stop the occupation without repercussions. I think the strategy to fearmonger around Iran is less about scaring the Iranians and more about scaring the Democrats and the American people. Scaring them into silence.

Because the truth is that what we're witnessing is the collapse of Bush's foreign policy, although you wouldn't know it. Throughout the world, from an increasingly violent Pakistan, where every public official is a target, to a Turkey on the verge of an invasion of Kurdistan, to Somalia, which has become so restive that the prime minister has quit, to Afghanistan, where our airstrikes are angering the population and our poppy eradication tests are driving citizens into the arms of the Taliban, to Egypt, which has decided on the exact same program as Iran on nuclear energy, which could escalate proliferation in the Middle East by exacerbating Sunni-Shiite tensions (why is it OK for Egypt to get civilian nuclear energy and not Iran, you can hear people say).

None of this is being discussed in any serious fashion because everyone has gone code red on Iran. This is by design, because it's precisely the moment where the Bush foreign policy is at its lowest ebb.

The Bush administration once imagined that its presence in Afghanistan and Iraq would be anchored by friendly neighbors, Turkey to the west and Pakistan to the east. Last week, as the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to deteriorate, the anchors themselves also came loose [...]

After Sept. 11, when the Bush administration launched its global “war on terror,” the United States enjoyed some clear assets in fighting the al-Qaida terrorist network. In the Middle East, the United States had the support of secular Turkey, a NATO member. The long relationship of the powerful Pakistani military with that of the United States enabled Bush to turn the military dictator Musharraf against the Taliban, which Pakistan had earlier sponsored. Shiite Iran announced that it would provide help to the United States in its war on the hyper-Sunni Taliban regime. Baathist Syria and Iraq, secular Arab nationalist regimes, were potential bulwarks against Sunni radicalism in the Levant.

Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf. The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the Pakistani public increasingly viewed as an oppressive American puppet. Iraqi Kurdistan’s willingness to give safe haven to the PKK alienated Turkey from both the new Iraqi government and its American patrons. Search-and-destroy missions in Afghanistan have predictably turned increasing numbers of Pushtun villagers against the United States, NATO and Karzai. The thunder of the bomb in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his “war on terror.”

And we're all talking about this potential war in Iran. It's a brilliant, brilliant maneuver.

I don't know what really can be done about this; it would be folly not to take Bush seriously about anything megalomaniacal. But let's be clear that saber-rattling on Iran serves multiple goals, not the least of which is wriggling out of the failed foreign policy choices that will define this Presidency far into the future.

SORT OF RELATED: I love how the US giving Turkey intelligence on the PKK guerrillas in Kurdistan is supposed to solve everything. News flash: we don't have good intel in Iraq. We rely on tips. If we had good intel we wouldn't see 100 bombing attacks a day. This isn't going to help anything.

The FBI, Torture, and The Court Opinion That Wasn't

This story is just starting to get some blogospheric attention. Long story short: the FBI forced an Egyptian named Abdallah Higazy to confess to aiding in the 9/11 attacks. The evidence they had was a radio found in his NYC hotel room on 9/11 that is used to talk with airline pilots. They coerced the confession out by threatening the deportation of his family to Egypt, where they were likely to be tortured. It turns out Higazy was completely innocent of the charges. This resulted in a series of lawsuits where Higazy sought punitive damages. What came out at trial was that the entire thing was a Three's Company-like misunderstanding.

So Higazy "confesses" and he's processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. This is like something out of the movies. The radio belonged to the pilot, not Higazy, and Higazy was free to go, the victim of horrible timing. Higazi was innocent! He next sued the hotel and the FBI agent for coercing his confession. The bottom line in the Court of Appeals: Higazy has a case and may recover damages for this injustice.

That Appeals Court opinion, from the Second Circuit, was released late last week.

As I read the opinion I realized it was a 44 page epic, too long for me to print out. I blogged about the opinion while I read it online and then posted the blog as I ate lunch. Then something strange happened: a few minutes after I posted the blog, the opinion vanished from the Court of Appeals website! I had never seen this before, and what made all the more strange was that it involved a coerced confession over 9/11. What the hell was going on?

The problem was that the Second Circuit Court opinion wasn't redacted, so they pulled it back. When it reappeared, all the information about how the FBI extracted the false confession from Higazy was removed. In its place was this: "This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."

The unredacted opinion, released the day before and mirrored by the legal blog How Appealing, is here (PDF). They actually CALLED the blogger asking him to remove the opinion, and he refused; good for him, because through his efforts we know a little more about how our government operates. The FBI is using Mafia tactics here, folks, threatening the family of suspects to get false confessions. And saying that they'll deport a family to a country that tortures is little different from doing the torturing here; it's merely a question of outsourcing. That familiar Bush phrase "we do not torture" should be appended with the phrase "on U.S. soil"; anywhere else is fine.

Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.”

Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

Jim Henley, Matt Yglesias, and believe it or not, Patterico have more. This should get a lot more attention.

Today I Am Ashamed To Be A Jew (UPDATED AND BUMPED)

Like everyone of the Jewish faith, I have citizenship in Israel. One of the core tenets is rememberance, the idea that we honor our forbears by keeping them and their struggles in our thoughts. Central to this is the rememberance of the Holocaust; there is even a holiday, Yom Ha-Shoah, a tribute to those millions we lost during the Nazi Wehrmacht, and a vow to never forget the stinging power of genocide.

We have forgotten.

CAIRO, Aug. 19 -- Israel closed the door Sunday on a surge of asylum-seekers from Sudan's Darfur region and from other African countries, the largest influx of non-Jewish refugees in the modern history of the Jewish state.

Authorities announced that they had expelled 48 of more than 2,000 African refugees who have entered illegally from Egypt in recent weeks. Officials said they would allow 500 Darfurians among them to remain, but would deport everyone else back to Egypt and accept no more illegal migrants from Darfur or other places.

If this was a problem of space, or a rigid stance against lawbreaking, they wouldn't allow 500 to stay. They have put a limit on compassion for those fleeing their own genocide, the same circumstance out of which Israel was born.

Israeli officials claim that they have assurances from the Egyptians that the refugees won't be sent back to Darfur, but when asked directly, the Egyptians did allow that these Sudanese would be sent back to the Sudan. Which would be a death sentence.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel had sought no assurances about the future of the refugees. "Israel just said, 'Please take them,' " the Egyptian official said [...]

Sudan and Israel officially are enemies, and Sudan's government has said any refugees sent back from Israel would be considered as having dealt with an enemy state and treated accordingly.

"If deported to Sudan, they will be tried for treason," said Madhal Aguer, a private aid worker in Cairo for refugees from a separate conflict in southern Sudan; a long-running civil war between the north and south killed up to 1 million people before a peace deal in 2005.

Also, the Israelis claimed that they would separate those Sudanese coming from Darfur and those coming from the rest of the country, accepting those facing genocide in the region. This they did not do.

Israel sent back the first group of 48 African refugees through the Karm Abu Salim, or Kerem Shalom, crossing with Egypt late Saturday night, Egyptian and Israeli officials confirmed. Egypt said the deportees included refugees from Darfur.

Israel apparently expelled them without hearings, in contravention of a refugee accord it has signed that requires countries to determine whether deportation will subject asylum-seekers to mistreatment, said Ben-Dor, the Israeli refugee lawyer.

They have forgotten their history.

In the 1930s, when Jews were fleeing Eastern Europe in droves to escape the coming crackdown from the Nazis, Jews were denied access to Palestine by the British. In fact, many countries closed their doors to the Jews who were trying to escape Germany, Austria, Poland, and practically every country in Europe. Fueled by anti-Semitism, countries dithered and made excuses not to accept Jewish refugees. Even the United States never raised their immigration levels beyond a certain quota, which was left unfilled to begin with (one of the few countries that allowed Jews to settle was China, and many of them were transported to Shanghai, as depicted in the film Shanghai Ghetto). Hundreds of thousands of Jews were denied safe haven, which meant almost certain death in the concentration camps.

Why the Israeli government is doing this is baffling to me. I give credit to the majority of the Israeli Parliament, who actually petitioned against this. But it was to no avail. Ehud Olmert played the part of a little bureaucrat who added up numbers in a book instead of looking at the human costs involved. It's shameful, and it does violence to my ancestors.

UPDATE: Some idiot at the Corner called the influx of 2,300 "Muslims" an existential threat to Israel, and praises the deportation. First, Darfurians escaping the genocide are Christians. Second of all, as Neil says, "2300 refugees have come into Israel, which has a population over seven million, over the last six months. Israel already has over a million Arab residents. Existential threats don't come in the form of a couple thousand people fleeing genocide who would quickly fall in love with a country that rescued them."

UPDATE II: Good for Rahm Emanuel. From Jesse Lee in an email:

Ambassador Sallai Meridor
Embassy of Israel
3514 International Dr. N.W.
Washington DC 20008

Dear His Excellency Ambassador Meridor:

The British Broadcasting Corporation reports today that Israel has returned 48 Sudanese people to Egypt and intends to refuse entrance to refugees from the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan.

I am writing today to express my disappointment that Israel would turn away any person fleeing from persecution. I understand the concern the State of Israel has for maintaining the integrity of her borders, but if any country should understand the special needs of those affected by the genocide in Darfur, it should be Israel. Since its founding, Israel has been committed to finding homes for those who suffer at the hands of war and despair. The international community looks to Israel as a land of hope and sanctuary.

In 1948, the Jewish Diaspora finally had a place to call home. I hope that the state of Israel will reconsider its decision to turn away those refugees who must flee Darfur to avoid death and persecution so that the Sudanese people can find asylum in a state that was founded to be a home and a place of hope for those who had suffered similarly.

Sincerely,

Rahm Emanuel
Member of Congress