Broken Washington: The Cases of Zogby and the Brookings Institute

Picture: Martin Indyk at Brookings - Archives

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
The Huffington Post

President Barack Obama has excelled in domestic policies from healthcare and financial reform to education improvement and tax adjustments. But when it comes to foreign policy, Obama deserves a big bold F.

Why the failure? Stories of Washington's self-proclaimed experts and think tanks for hire might give us some clues.

Monica Hesse profiled James Zogby in The Washington Post. She quoted Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as saying: "In Washington, if you want to know about Arab issues, you call Jim Zogby."

Zogby's father -- a Lebanese immigrant -- died when James was a teenager. Hesse (or probably Zogby himself) does not give the nationality of mother Zogby, only her first name, Celia, which does not come across as an Arab name.

Zogby's meager Arab credentials do not pose a problem for him. After all, being an Arab is just another profession. "If I had played baseball [for a living] or become a corporate lawyer, I never would have experienced any problems because I would have been completely assimilated," he told Hesse.
So instead, Zogby, along with his Irish-American wife Eileen, "traveled to Lebanon to interview the displaced inhabitants of Palestinian camps." And, lo and behold, Zogby today is Washington's reference on "Arab issues."

This is the absurdity of Washington DC where it is often "who you know," not "what you know."
The only thing Arab about James Zogby is that -- like your average Arab autocrat -- he has been grooming his son Joe, a staffer for Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill), to succeed him as president of the Arab-American Institute, which James founded and has been presiding over for more than quarter of a century (unlimited presidency, too, is common practice in Arab countries).

James has employed his brother's group, Zogby International, to run surveys in Arab countries. He uses the findings to showcase Arab opinion before American audiences. This makes of James, who does not speak Arabic, America's "Arab voice."

Hesse further quotes LaHood: "[Zogby] knows all the Arab leaders, whether it's [Yasser] Arafat or the king of Jordan or the president of Egypt or the prime minister of Lebanon."

Since he has befriended most Arab leaders, one cannot but wonder whether Zogby shares with them his findings about Arab opinion polls. For instance, does Zogby ever tell them about how their citizens "liked freedom and democracy," as per his polls?

The short answer is no. Zogby is a TV host and columnist with several state-owned Arab media outlets. This puts Zogby on the payroll of Arab governments. When James Zogby addresses America, he does it on behalf of Arab autocrats, which makes him a foreign lobbyist.

Other foreign policy experts in Washington also have shadowy connections.

The Brookings Institution, one of the most prestigious think tanks in the nation's capital, maintains a "branch" in Doha, Qatar.

The Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, has put on a double face ever since he came to power 15 years ago. On the one hand, Qatar's autocrat hosts CENTCOM headquarters and maintains ties with Israel. On the other hand "Sheikh Hamad" funds Al-Jazeera satellite TV, with its relentless anti-American rhetoric, and befriends Iran and Syria as he tries to undermine Saudi Arabia, which was reluctant in accepting Hamad's toppling of his father and predecessor in 1995.

In intellectual circles, like on Al-Jazeera, Qatar endorses an anti-American line. This means that, as long as Qatar is paying for Brookings Institute's "Doha branch," and probably other Brookings bills, it expects the think tank's papers and events to fall in line with Doha's perspective.

So strong the Qatar influence inside Brookings that Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel and a leading figure at the institute, flies routinely to Doha where he meets advisors to Syrian President Bashar Assad and their pro-Hezbollah Lebanese protégés.

In Washington, Brookings held this week a panel on a "strategy for Lebanon." The selected speakers were known for their support of Syria and Hezbollah. But that was not all. The audience too, was handpicked. The invitation did not go out to Lebanese activists, experts and journalists who might have presented counter-arguments.

Instead, the invitation was restricted to pro-Syria and pro-Hezbollah pundits, along with US government officials. Perhaps Brookings was hoping to get a specific point -- unchallenged -- across to US policy makers.

When the invitation leaked, several Lebanese experts and journalists -- known for their anti-Hezbollah stances -- RSVPed. Their reservations were turned down. Excuses were confused and included "cut off time for RSVP" was over, or the event was "closed to the media" (even though media presence does not necessarily mean coverage; various think tanks invite journalists and either instruct them to remain off the record or go by Chatham House Rules where arguments can be quoted but not ascribed to speakers).

When it comes to foreign policy, Washington is broken. Zogby and the Brookings Institute are among the many culprits.

Movie Review: Carlos

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Amazon.com
The Huffington Post

Writing a critique about the Canal Plus drama, Carlos, is agonizing. The cast is perfect. The historicity of events is closest to the known record. Drama buildup is impeccable, despite the length of this three part series.

The only problem is that this great production leaves viewers in love with Carlos, a shallow demagogue, a Marxist-turned-Islamist and a gun for hire who worked for the world’s most notorious secret police of Iraq, Syria, and Libya, among other oppressive regimes.

From his prison in France, Carlos today praises 9/11, Osama Ben Laden and Saddam Hussein, a stance that is absent in this movie that shows the man more of a sexy Don Juan than a human beast who justifies wholesale killings of civilians as being part of an ongoing world revolution against capitalism and imperialism.

It should be noted, however, that Carlos's brutal behavior surfaces from time to time. In Part III, he cold-bloodedly ordered the killing of a Lebanese journalist who had previously interviewed him.

The handsome Edgar Ramirez skillfully plays Carlos, the num de guerre of Illitch Ramirez Sanchez. Born to a Marxist Venezuelan father, Carlos was studying in Moscow when he was deported and found himself training with Palestinian guerilla groups in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. Carlos was recruited by Palestinian Wadih Haddad (played by Lebanese composer and singer Ahmad Kaabour), member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the mastermind of its militant network responsible for dozens of bombings and plane hijackings throughout the 1970s.

Carlos became Haddad’s man in Paris, where the Venezuelan militant organized several attacks that culminated in his killing of two French police officers. Carlos was forced to flee and rejoin his master in Aden, then the capital of the Communist Southern Yemen. While there, Haddad tasked Carlos with kidnapping OPEC oil ministers at their meeting in Vienna in 1975. The operation did not go according to plan, and Haddad and Carlos departed ways thereafter, with each of them maintaining his own militant network.

Haddad died in 1978 and his network eventually disbanded. Secret services from the Soviet bloc and a few Arab countries found in Carlos a useful tool to settle scores with their opponents, and sometimes with each other like in the case of Iraqi and Syrian rivals.

With the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1990, however, the world changed, the Soviet bloc was disbanded and Carlos lost his friends. He went into hiding in Khartoum, Sudan. But his hosts eventually caved to French pressure and handed him over in 1994. He was tranquilized and flown to Paris where he was tried and sentenced to life in prison.

Carlos the movie is also a good history account of events in, or related to, the Middle East. The producers understandably air a disclaimer that, despite their research, they were forced to fictionalize part of their movie.

Still, the movie highlights several aspects of the currents that underlie the so-called liberation movements in Arab countries. More often than not, violence employed by the dictator regimes of Iraq, Syria and other tyrants aims at improving their bargaining positions with Western nations, or at settling scores with each other.

Perhaps one of the most telling similarities between then and now is the Syrian unwavering campaign to sabotage a French documentary that showed Damascus’s involvement in the killing of French Ambassador to Lebanon Louis De Lamar in 1981.

Like in 1981 when Syria employed whatever violence at its disposal to prevent any leveling of accusations against its involvement, Syria in 2010 still uses all kinds of possible terror to derail a UN-created tribunal to bring to justice the perpetrators of the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Syria is widely believed to be involved in the crime along with Lebanese partners such as Hezbollah.

Also telling is the way the Middle East changed at the time, which still apply today. Syria housed Carlos for several years. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 while the US stood on the verge of recreating a new Middle East, Syria changed course and kicked Carlos out. This should stand as a reminder to all those who believe today that Syrian troubling behavior can be changed that, absent any cataclysmic changes in the region, such as an eclipse of the rising power of Iran – Syria’s staunch sponsor and ally – Damascus will never change course.

In terms of production and for those who like to dig into details, they will certainly find glitches. War-time Beirut had a different infrastructure than the one depicted in the movie, thus different sidewalks and airport landscape. And while the movie makes sure to reprint the famous red Middle East Airline ticket, for instance, actors carry the new series Lebanese passports in scenes depicting the 1970s. Also, the Sudanese police do not drive Harley Davidson motorbikes or US-made Jeeps. Lebanese security personnel do.

Such details should not derail viewers. After all, even the best-funded of Hollywood movies depicting the Middle East (such as Robert Redford and Brad Pitt’s Spy Game, George Clooney’s Syriana, or Steven Spielberg’s Munich) commit errors. Compare Syriana with its $50 million budget and barely comprehensible spoken Arabic to Carlos, its $20 million budget and nearly impeccable use of several languages and attention to detail.

Your Guide to Lebanon's Messy Politics and Impending Civil War

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
The Huffington Post

In Lebanon, the main players are:

1. Hezbollah and the Muslim Shiites represent close to quarter of the population. Historically, the majority of the Shiites were peasants, but their fortunes changed with a boom in their population and the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Since then, Tehran has furnished the community with enormous funds and supervised -- in 1982 -- the creation of Hezbollah, a radical armed group whose original mission was to turn Lebanon into an Islamic state and liberate Jerusalem by wiping Israel off the map.

In 1990, Lebanon's 15-year civil war ended. The victors, Syria's cronies, redistributed power, leaving Lebanon's former dominant group, the Christians, out. Hezbollah did not subscribe to the post-war formula and built instead its own state. It restricted its activity to fighting the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah's now junior partner, Speaker Nabih Berri, safeguarded the Shiite share in the state.

But after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, Hezbollah became unemployed. It picked random fights with the Israelis until 2005, when the Independence Uprising and international pressure forced 29 years of Syrian occupation to an end. In post-Syria Lebanon, Hezbollah had to step up to maintain whatever system the Syrians had erected in Lebanon, which had favored Hezbollah and the ongoing existence of its armed militia.

2. The Hariri family and the Muslim Sunnis is the biggest group in Lebanon with quarter of the population. Historically, the Sunnis were city dwellers who found it unnecessary to organize politically. However, with Lebanon's independence from the French in 1943, the Sunni merchants entered into partnership with the Christian elite to maintain the Lebanese entity as was drawn by the French.

The Sunni political establishment proved inadequate in a region governed by violent revolutionary politics. The Sunni power was eclipsed throughout the civil war until 1992, when billionaire Rafik Hariri returned from Diaspora in Saudi Arabia and emerged as a national leader, which did not sit well with Lebanon's Syrian masters -- who spent the 1990s trying to curtail his power.

In 2003, America invaded Iraq and the regional balance of power changed. Hariri silently revolted against the Syrian mandate. It is widely believed that the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad killed Hariri in retribution. Hezbollah is also thought to have been involved in the crime.

Hariri's assassination in 2005 ignited the Independence Uprising. In 2007, the UN Security Council created a tribunal to try the assassins of Hariri and a dozen journalists, politicians and military officers. Hariri's son Saad was elected Prime Minister in 2009.

The Hariris' regional sponsor is Sunni Saudi Arabia, which in 2009 decided to offset Hezbollah (read Iran and Shiite) growing power in the region and Lebanon. Therefore, the Saudis calculated that Syria could come to the rescue. Through restoring Syria's influence over Lebanon, Saudi hoped Syria would curb Iran's strength in Lebanon and Iraq. The Saudi plan has proven disastrous as Syria failed to deliver in both countries. Now Syria wants Hariri to denounce the UN Tribunal, and threatens civil war in case Hariri does not do so.

3. The Christians of all dominions (Catholic, Orthodox, Copts, Syriac, Protestant, etc) form one third of the population. Through a series of errors since the 1950s, the Christians lost power as their numbers dwindled and their economic power declined. In 2005, the last two standing Christian leaders Michel Aoun and Samir Geagea joined the Independence Uprising. Upon its success, Aoun returned from exile in France and Geagea's 11 years of political arrest ended.

Aoun, however, flipped shortly after and became an ally of Hezbollah.
Geagea stayed the course and -- until the writing of these lines - has proven to be more of a statesman than a politician, an honor reserved for a few in Lebanon, such as Rafik Hariri and former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

4. Walid Jumblatt and the Druze form less than 10 percent of the population. Jumblatt defines opportunism. Since Syria killed his father in 1977, he has been a warlord, a Syrian crony, an Independence Uprising leader and now back to being a Syrian puppet.

Between 2005 and 2008, Jumblatt exemplified courage and led the charge against the Syrian autocracy and Hezbollah's unconstitutional militia. In May 2008, Hezbollah fighters stormed Southern Mount Lebanon, a predominantly Druze area. Despite all the Druze bravado, Jumblatt surrendered. He dropped his fiery nationalistic rhetoric of 2005, 2006 and 2007 and endorsed statements in support of Hezbollah's armament and against the UN Special Tribunal.
Jumblatt believes that his flip-flop politics can salvage the shrinking minority that follows him blindly. However, the past days of glory seem to have become a distant past for the Druze, the rulers of Lebanon centuries ago.

On March 14, 2005, the Sunnis of Hariri, the Christians of Aoun and Geagea and the Druze of Jumblatt -- with international support -- joined forces to end Syrian occupation. They also demanded that Hezbollah be disarmed, that state sovereignty be restored, that democracy and freedom be safeguarded and that justice be served on the cases of Hariri and later political crimes.
Since then the Independence Uprising has suffered a series of setbacks. Hezbollah bought off Aoun and later used its militia to punish Jumblatt and Hariri. French President Jacques Chirac was succeeded by Nicholas Sarkozy, an amateur who believed he could change Syrian behavior and make an ally out of Damascus. Democracy-supporting (even if in Lebanon only) US President George Bush was succeeded by Barack Obama, a novice in foreign policy. Also, fearing Iranian power in Iraq and Lebanon, Saudi erroneously believed it could boost Syria to counter Iran.

With all the losses, Jumblatt was the first to abandon the March 14 ship, even after that coalition had defeated Hezbollah, and Aoun, in the 2009 parliamentary elections. Saudi impressed on Hariri to make nice with Syria and concede on several issues. Meanwhile, Geagea -- once shunned as a civil war criminal -- became the heart of the Independence Uprising and defended its principles, often serving as the only consolation for the demoralized March 14 supporters.

Hezbollah and Damascus have tried their sticks, by invading Beirut and Mount Lebanon, and carrots, through the formation of a cabinet under Hariri. Yet they remain desperate to see Hariri, the leader of the biggest religion group and son of the assassinated figure, denounce the tribunal. If Hariri gives up on tribunal, he would leave Geagea alone and possibly politically irrelevant.
Hezbollah fails to see, however, that ending the tribunal will not prevent civil war. It will only delay it. In the absence of justice, the Sunnis will come back asking for revenge sooner or later. When they do so, they will be perpetuating an ongoing vicious cycle of civil wars in Lebanon.

WASHINGTON TODAY: Dozens Protest Foreign Funding at US Chamber of Commerce

Dozens protest foreign funds used by the US Chamber of Commerce for partisan ad attacks against Democratic candidates. The rally was held at noon today. CoC's abuse was uncovered by Lee Fang in an exclusive report from the Center for American Progress (CAP).

Twisted logic, crippled justice

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
NOW Lebanon

It is mindboggling how, in the logic of Hezbollah and its affiliated propagandist politicians, justice – not crime – can lead to instability in Lebanon. It is even more puzzling how Hezbollah has managed to convince its supporters that the problem in the Rafik Hariri assassination was not the death of Hariri himself, but the “politicization” of the UN-created Special Tribunal for Lebanon to try those charged with its perpetration.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by Hezbollah’s logic. After all, Hezbollah started a war when it killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers on July 12, 2006 and then called it self-defense.

By the same token, when Israel kills more than 1,200 Lebanese and wipes out complete neighborhoods in Beirut and the South, in return for 120 Israelis killed and a few potholes caused by Hezbollah missiles, Hezbollah claims a “Divine Victory.” And with divinity, there is no room to argue.

That same year, Hezbollah raised hell when it felt underrepresented in government. It demanded that the Shia community of Lebanon be given its due share of power. But when Sunni politicians complained of the latest Shia-Syrian campaign against Sunni Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Hezbollah MPs accused the Sunnis of provoking sectarianism.

Hezbollah adores consensus when it comes to the election of the Maronite president and the selection of the Sunni prime minister and his cabinet. But when it comes to the election of the Shia speaker, the affair becomes a strictly Shia one, with other sects expected to rubberstamp the Hezbollah-Amal choice.

And while consensus also covers minor issues of governance, such as public budgeting, it does not cover the issue of Hezbollah’s arms and the activities of the Resistance. Presumably this is because the Resistance too is divine, and none of Hezbollah’s rivals can interpret this divine will. Only the Party of God has links with the heavens, and the Resistance is an undisputable heavenly truth.

Moving on. Hezbollah claims Israel killed former PM Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005. The logic behind such a claim is that Israel planned a trap for Lebanon and Syria. The murder forced Syrian troops out of Lebanon and provoked Sunni-Shia tension that Israel hoped would lead to a new Lebanese civil war.

Even if we go along with Hezbollah, and its laughable cinematic evidence, and accept that Israel killed Hariri to force Syria out and ignite civil war, then who killed Samir Kassir, George Hawi and Gebran Tueni – all of whom were Greek Orthodox – after Syria had withdrawn its troops from Lebanon? What was Israel’s point behind killing Maronite lawmakers Pierre Gemayel and Antoine Ghanem? A Maronite war on the Shia?

When the UN Security Council created the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), Hezbollah initially supported the concept of the court during the first sessions of “national dialogue” held in parliament, and then withdrew its ministers to obstruct the tribunal’s creation.

Hezbollah argued that the STL was politicized. However, it later allowed international investigators to interrogate a batch of 18 Hezbollah officials. Afterward, Hezbollah turned down another tribunal request for the interrogation of a second batch of its militants.

Time and again, Hezbollah has reverted to its favorite pastime of twisting logic. Hezbollah argues that Israel killed Hariri, but the Party of God has no plans to avenge the crime like it usually does for smaller Israeli offenses on Lebanese sovereignty and interests. Instead, the party has become preoccupied with proving that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is a US-Israeli plan to sow discord in Lebanon.

So instead of calming its rank and file, Hezbollah is doing exactly what the US and Israel presumably want it to do through the Hariri murder and later through the politicization of the tribunal: taking the country to civil war. Instead of being outraged by the crime, Hezbollah and its supporters are outraged by justice, blaming it on an imminent war. In short, justice undermines stability.

Hezbollah therefore expects every Lebanese, who trembles at the thought of Hezbollah’s formidable militia, to choose stability over justice. Shooting down justice, as Hezbollah and many Lebanese intellectuals argue, would maintain Lebanon’s delicate sectarian balance and fragile civil peace.

They have forgotten one fact: stability in the absence of justice means the powerful has oppressed the weak. Stability without justice also means that whenever Lebanon seeks justice for this or that murder, the country will be threatened with more murders until everyone is silenced.

Hezbollah’s recipe for Lebanon is not stability in return for peace. It is more conflict. Stability should not be mistaken for surrender and blackmail. A stable Lebanon is only possible when justice is served and when everyone is equal.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a correspondent for Al-Rai newspaper.

Book Review: The End of the Free Market by Ian Bremmer

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Amazon.com

Protectionism is bad. Free trade and free markets are good. Ian Bremmer argues in favor of free market, boasting that the volume of trade between the US and China increased many folds since the 1970s, and today stands at $300 billion a year.

However, what Bremmer fails to notice, is that of these $300 billion, China sells the US worth $200 billion, America sells to China worth $100 billion. Year on year, the US balance of trade with China is negative. The most recent figure - when this review was written - showed that in August 2010, despite the US sluggish economy, America was $18 billion in the negative in its trade with China.

A negative US trade balance with China is abnormal. One day, one time, the Chinese will come knocking on America's door asking for their money.

This means that Americans should not feel excited about the surge in the sheer volume of trade between their country and China. They must rather fight for an even balance of trade between the two countries. If America remains in the red, Americans will be broke and the Chinese will become rich.

So instead of free trade, it would have been better for Bremmer to talk about fair trade, a concept that seems alien for an author who wonders, in this book, without blinking, whether China is still willing to fund America's coming round of economic growth (given America's national debt in 2010 standing at $13 trillion, $2 trillion of them held by the Chinese government).

The economic solutions Bremmer offers are more of the same. He belongs to America's mainstream school of neoliberal economics. Not in this book, but he probably endorses Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer and the school of Fredrick Von Hayek. And he probably encourages smaller government and lower taxes.

In all fairness, however, Bremmer notices some economic abnormality because of Wall Street, and writes in favor of some sort of regulation.

"[W]hen financial markets spiraled toward crisis in 2008, it became clear that the short-term thinking of the few had inflicted enormous damage on the many--including victims of the broader economic meltdown, the crisis's `collateral damage'," according to Bremmer.

The author writes pages and pages in criticism of more than two thirds of the worlds' governments: China's state capitalism, Russia's populist leadership and the Gulf's oil power.

By and large, Bremmer expresses discontent with the way the world economy is going. After three decades of neoliberalism, the world looks to have departed ways with the Western perceptions of the free market, an ideology that seems to have been disastrous in all of its aspects save for its ability to pile colossal national debt for world economies.

Bremmer realizes that no one in the world is calling for the restoration of command economies from the Soviet era. However, he expresses unease with the way free markets have emerged resulting in a combination of free market and state intervention. Bremmer loathes such a combination. However, he fails to offer valid alternatives.

Throughout his pages, he presents scattered ideas about his views on how the economy in America and the world might be revived. More US debt to China, more "free trade" and nothing about America's need to reindustrialize, at least to regain its title as one of the world's industrial countries, and to balance out what it sells China and the rest of the world.

Bremmer's book is smooth and entertaining. However, someone should have advised him - while he wrote it - to "wake up and smell the coffee." The world is changing. Complaining about China, Russia and other nations will not help America get back to its former economic glory.