Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2004, pages 28-31

Four Views

What to Do on Nov. 2?

Portrait of a Miserably Undecided Voter

By Richard H. Curtiss

(AFP photo/files).

I DON'T KNOW how I got into this fix. There I was, with only six months to go before the November election. But then things happened, unexpected things, and each one seemed to upset me more than the previous event. A year ago I had decided that President George W. Bush had betrayed me, in particular, and therefore probably a very large bloc of similar voters.

After the eternal procrastinating of President Bill Clinton, at almost the last moment of his term, in the fall of 1998, he really tried to end the Israeli-Palestinian problem. But it was too late and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made mincemeat of him. All he had to do was make up a story that the United States had almost reached a deal and then that Yasser Arafat had then welshed on it. All lies, of course.

Thus it was easy for me and thousands of other American voters to decide to give Bush a chance to solve the Israeli-Palestine dilemma. Our votes made the difference, and it was right down to the wire in Florida, where Bush won and candidate Al Gore lost. Then, less than a year later 9/11 came along and everything seemed to change, particularly when it came time to do something about Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

To be fair to Bush, he did make some key remarks that helped Americans realize that the vast majority of Muslims are well-meaning people who are just trying to make a living, stay off welfare and help their fellow human beings like everyone else. Most Americans accepted that and realized that Muslim Americans are, in all aspects, good citizens and should not be intimidated in matters of conscience.

But that’s about all that President Bush did after 9/11. He then signed the PATRIOT Act, which is just as un-American as anything that has ever been enacted under pressure and haste without thinking through the consequences. We have only to recall what happened to Japanese Americans in World War II, and earlier un-American activities in earlier generations, such as discouraging the teaching of German in public schools. It was foolish then and it remains a highpoint of stupidity. The U.S. Constitution should be our guiding force and should not be breached without very good reasons.

So I felt quite sure that Bush had failed my tests and I almost certainly would vote for a Democratic candidate, whoever he might be. I hoped it would be Howard Dean, and in fact had convinced myself that one of the first things Dean would do would be to try to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem once and for all. That didn’t happen, however—in fact, Dean did not carry a single state in any of the early Democratic primaries.

American voters then began to look ever so carefully at what the winner of the primaries, Sen. John Kerry, stands for. It appears that Kerry stands on both sides of every given question. And he can give sound bites, long dissertations and even whole election speeches on any given subject.

The more I looked into the matter, the more I realized that there is only one constant around which everything else was flexible. That is the subject of Israel. He was for Israel from the time he was first elected by Massachusetts voters.

As the years progressed, Kerry was always for Israel. There were no exceptions. He never missed an opportunity to vote for money for Israel regardless of the consequences to his own country. There are plenty of similar pro-Israel voters. In my state of Maryland, for example, Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Sen. Paul Sarbanes always vote for Israel regardless of the consequences to the American public. Kerry, Sarbanes, Mikulski and dozens of other incumbent senators (and representatives) will vote the way Israel tells them to because they fear to do otherwise. This is a fact and it is disgusting, totally un-American and every one of them ought to be impeached.

Neither Mikulski nor Sarbanes is Jewish. Since money is nondenominational, however—except for the amount of the bill—it tends to trump religion and many other natural affiliations. Kerry, too, is a Catholic. But on his father’s side, it turns out, a Kerry had converted from Judaism to Catholicism when the family came to the United States.

No one had paid much attention to this until recently, when Kerry himself began to raise the subject. It seems that the family tree boasts many rabbis, and Kerry has exploited this on the campaign trail—at least when it served his purposes. Most Americans probably paid little attention to this, but it certainly did not escape Kerry’s handlers, who wanted to make sure their candidate would be suitably pro-Israel.

Perhaps Kerry was trying to make the point that if you wanted a pro-Israel candidate you’d do much better with Kerry than with Bush, who has no such lineage at all. In addition, Kerry’s brother Cameron converted to Judaism when he married a Jewish woman. Cameron has been an adviser and political strategist to his brother’s campaign, and traveled to Israel on the senator’s behalf.

So here we all sit, along with thousands of other undecided voters. Bush, for whatever reason, does not have a single Jewish adviser in his cabinet, unlike Clinton, who appointed an extraordinary number to his cabinet, the Supreme Court, and as Mideast negotiators. On the other hand, National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the vice president’s office are teeming with Israel-first neoconservatives. And it does seem that George W. Bush can’t go anywhere unless big brother, Vice President Richard Cheney, is within hailing distance to tell him what to do next.

Ralph Nader only further complicates the 2004 election. He is, to my mind, a better candidate than either Kerry or Bush. But the U.S. system makes a third candidate like a third wheel, with nothing to do with anything. So a vote for Nader means Bush wins. Is that what most voters want? I don’t think so.

So I’m stuck trying to decide for whom to vote. My prayer, of course, is that either Bush or Kerry will say something definitive about Israel’s occupation of Palestine and make my decision less difficult.

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Bush Embraced My Muslimness; Why Not Kerry?

By Muhammad Ali Hasan

COULD YOU ever believe that a little boy from Pueblo, Colorado gave every American politician a chance to embrace him as a Muslim? As a matter of fact, did you know that every single Muslim, around the world, boy and girl, gave this chance to all American politicians?

On the twilight of Sept. 11, 2001, that chance was given to every American politician. The question that the tragic 9/11 attacks posed to every American politician was, certainly, a powerful one—were hell-bent terrorists responsible for this act? Or were Muslims responsible for this attack?

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, happened to be one of the first politicians to fail this test. While our Twin Towers fell, Senator Feinstein seemed to be consumed by her legislation that sought to temporarily ban all student visas to “Muslim” countries, thus temporarily ending student immigration to America from the Muslim world, only because of guilt by association.

I recall a Republican congressman from Louisiana stating something to the effect that, should he see a Muslim-looking person, he would “shoot first and ask questions later.” Other Muslims were worried over possible hate crimes taking place. I was not worried about that. Growing up in southern Colorado as a proud American my entire life, I knew that this great country was too loving and accepting to allow for such rampant attacks to happen.

I was worried, though, about the possibility of internment camps. It was not long after the attacks upon Pearl Harbor that President Franklin D. Roosevelt extended his version of “compassion” to our Japanese Americans, by taking away their belongings and placing them into internment camps.

I recall that, during the internment of our Japanese-American citizens, it was Gov. Ralph L. Carr of Colorado who fervently spoke out against that internment; he refused to allow internment to befall any of Colorado’s Japanese-American citizens. Some say that it would later cost him a shot at a Senate seat. Too bad the ambitions of some senators overpower their own integrity, unlike the honorable Governor Carr.

Similarly, shortly after 9/11 I found myself not only severely depressed over the attacks, but praying that then-Gov. Gray Davis (yes, I’m now a Californian American Muslim) would extend upon me the same compassion that Governor Carr extended to his Japanese-American citizens. Surely, there was going to be one politician who would request internment camps. And surely, since Republicans controlled the White House, Congress, and Senate, such a bill of legislation would catch fire. After all, it was the liberal Sen. Dianne Feinstein who was the first to introduce what I would describe as, at the least, “hate” legislation.

As a major supporter of President George W. Bush in 2000, I only prayed that my decision to support him would pay off now, more than ever! It did.

It was Sept. 17, 2001 when President Bush arrived at a Washington, DC mosque, where, in front of hundreds of journalists and global media outlets, he took off his shoes, kissed the imam of the mosque, and proceeded to give a speech about why Muslims were not to blame for these attacks. As a matter of fact, he even complimented the religion of Islam!

It was after that event that President Bush began meeting frequently with Muslim leaders. It seemed that every speech he gave, and still gives, had something positive to say about Islam. And he was quick to criticize anyone who spoke badly about Islam, including Rev. Franklin Graham, who has not visited the White House since saying such things.

However, what bothers me most is that the nation’s most “liberal” senator, a senator who hails from Massachusetts, a senator who builds his reputation upon embracing the oppressed, sat silent. Many senators and congressman, Republican and Democrat alike, visited mosques and spoke well of Islam. Yet why couldn’t John Kerry bring himself to do the same? Would it have been so hard to visit one mosque? Take a picture with one Muslim? Tell the media how much you like the religion of Islam? Was it really that difficult?

At this point, many Kerry supporters will chide me. “Actions speak louder than words,” they’ll say. To this charge, I challenge my Kerry-supporting friends to re-examine whether President Bush’s outreach was merely “words” or if it truly was “action.” Having a right-wing, Christian president telling all American citizens to respect and celebrate Islam is not simply lip service; it is a direct prevention of hate crimes and biased thought. Not to mention the fact that President Bush recently mentioned how he would never consider internment camps as a means of security—a far cry from the actions of President Roosevelt, whose political decision was made little more than 50 years ago.

But feel free to boil this down to “actions.” There is only one presidential candidate out there who has officially recognized Palestine. There is only one candidate who has given $18 billion in aid to the Iraqi people, over $2 billion to the people of Afghanistan, and around $700 million to the people of Pakistan, as well as promises of major aid to Palestine. There is only one candidate who has convinced Ariel Sharon to start pulling out of the Gaza Strip. There is only one candidate who has cultivated a strong relationship with Pakistan, including providing aid and lifting the sanctions imposed by President Bill Clinton. There is only one candidate who has done all of this, and that candidate is President Bush.

And certainly, I am concerned about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effects it is having upon the Muslim world. The deaths of innocent Muslims deeply upset me. However, for how long could I sit here, as a Muslim myself, and accept the fact that the Taliban and Saddam Hussain would continue raping the destinies of so many. President Bush told me that he went to Iraq and Afghanistan to liberate people, not bring war to them; with $18 billion in aid going to Iraq and over $2 billion to Afghanistan, not to mention all of the schools we are building and infrastructure we are rebuilding, I am convinced that we are there to bring liberty to the Muslims and people of those countries!

And it should be noted that Senator Kerry opposed the $18 billion in aid that went to Iraq. He opposed the $2 billion that went to Afghanistan. He has even said that he wants to be hard on Pakistan, with the idea of de-nuclearizing the contry, then giving oversight of their nuclear arsenals to other countries. Nothing would be worse for the world than the alienation of Pakistan, at the hands of the American presidency. No country has arrested more Al-Qaeda members than Pakistan, not to mention the amazing contributions its army has given us in Afghanistan. With Pakistan and India also entering peace talks for the first time ever, is this not the worst time to exaggerate tensions between those two nuclear neighbors, within a war of “pick me over you” foreign policy? In that way, President Bush should be given more credit for cultivating such a strong ally in Pakistan and India, and Senator Kerry should be criticized for speaking so terribly of our best allies!

Do I like wars? Certainly not! I am deeply depressed that innocent Muslims are being killed in these wars. However, how long were we to sit and watch a holocaust take place in Kurdistan? How long were we to sit and watch the Taliban extend an aggressive, and oppressive, rule of law over the Afghan people? While I know that Muslims will pass away from our decisions of war, I do know that the number of Muslims we lose within these wars is certainly lower than the number of lives we would continue to lose if Saddam Hussain and the Taliban remained in power. Personally, I consider it a gift to our Ummah, that we actually have a presidential candidate who not only has agreed to rid our religion of its worst dictators, but on top of that, keep a promise of rebuilding the Muslim world by sending much money to these countries.

After hearing all of this, most Kerry supporters then bring out what they think is their trump card—the PATRIOT Act. Let us recap that the PATRIOT Act was a bill that was overwhelmingly passed by both Democrats and Republicans. And let us not forget that Senator Kerry, himself, wrote parts of it! At this moment in time, our records indicate that one American Muslim citizen is being held under the PATRIOT Act, with most other detainees being held, with evidence, under military tribunal. Combine that with the fact that I am not writing this piece from an internment camp, and you have a strong endorsement for President Bush.

Consider once again that it was President Bush who spoke so glowingly of Muslims, right after the horrible 9/11 attacks, yet it was Senator Kerry who stood silent. If that is Kerry’s response to Muslims as a senator, then I would hate to see his response as a president. Why take a chance, then, in replacing President Bush, whose management over this Act has been extremely responsible? I myself hate the PATRIOT Act. Yet, I think that President Bush’s management of it has been very good, considering the times.

In quiet moments, I sometimes catch myself reciting this prayer: may Allah forbid that another 9/11 ever happens again. May Allah forbid that we should lose so many lives, or even more, to such a horrible attack. And may Allah forbid the kind of response that our Senator Kerry would deliver to Muslims, should an attack like that happen. I gave President Bush and Senator Kerry a chance to embrace me when I needed it most. President Bush embraced me. Senator Kerry did not.

Muhammad Ali Hasan is a filmmaker, teacher, and graduate student based in Sourthern California.

Kerry Is America’s Only Hope in the Next Four Years

By Paul Findley

	(AFP photo/files).

Senator John Kerry’s campaign for president is running like a dry creek. George W. Bush has set America on a dangerous, costly course and shows no sign of changing if he wins a second term as president. The case against Bush is powerful and compelling. Why doesn’t Kerry say so?

Bush has made the world more dangerous, not safer. America is more reviled worldwide and debt-ridden than ever before. His presidency is one colossal blunder after another. In overreaction to 9/11, he abandoned sound, cherished American principles and doctrines, and, at his request, a craven Congress gave him near-dictatorial powers.

With an imperial flourish, Bush announced a year after 9/11 that the United States would be the self-appointed policeman of the world and would establish worldwide bases for that purpose. He trashed national sovereignty and other vital rules of international law by asserting his right to invade any nation when he alone perceived a security threat. He announced that the United Nations and other international institutions must follow his lead or become irrelevant.

Unfortunately, Bush meant what he said. Without exhausting diplomatic measures, he rushed America into the yawning abyss of preventive wars, attacking Muslim Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of which posed any serious threat to the United States or their neighbors. These invasions created costly new problems and left old ones unsolved. They have already snuffed out the lives of more than a thousand U.S. military personnel, killed at least 13,000 Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and inflicted serious injury on many thousands more. Uncounted families on all fronts have been blighted forever, with homes and means of livelihood laid waste.

These wars have made the U.S. government hated worldwide, especially among the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. At home, instead of raising taxes to finance the wars, Bush, incredibly, pushed through tax cuts that shift this burden of war to future generations.

The president put his own integrity in question by frequent changes in his justification of the Iraqi war. Much like a salesman of bogus goods determined not to take no for an answer, he first said the war was needed to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. When that claim proved specious, he said the war was to rid the world of Saddam Hussain. When the dictator was arrested and locked up, Bush shifted again, this time saying the war is needed to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people.

How can Iraqis believe Bush’s promise? They need look no further than neighboring Palestine to know that the U.S. government is financially, politically, and militarily complicit in Israel’s brutal long-term denial of freedom and democracy to Iraq’s fellow Arabs in Palestine. No wonder militancy against the U.S. occupation continues.

Bush’s plans for a second term include more military campaigns. He seeks regime change in Muslim Syria and Iran and has set the stage with threatening, high-decibel rhetoric and espionage. He has already received congressional sanction to begin preparations. To gauge the peril of assaulting Iran, one must remember that more than one million Iranian troops were killed in the Tehran regime’s successful defense against Iraq’s heavy attack in 1980.

Bush seems oblivious of the true nature of terrorism. He keeps saying that terrorists hate America’s freedom. That is both wrong and absurd. The truth is they hate our policies in the Middle East, not our freedom. Terrorism arises mainly from deeply felt grievances, most often affronts to basic human dignity, nationalism, or religion. Bush’s massive, expensive, and dangerous war on terrorism does not contain even one small step toward redressing these grievances. Perhaps he is afraid of offending Israel, although, by now, even the most ardent Zionist must realize that Israelis can never fully escape the terror of suicide bombings until Palestinians are free from terror inflicted by Israel’s military forces.

War-making-conduct should be one of the most important issues in the presidential election. If re-elected, Bush, who avoided combat service in Vietnam, promises most wars. Kerry would be unlikely to start wars. Why? He volunteered to serve in Vietnam and was wounded in combat. Later, convinced not only that the war could not be won but, as important, that it was being waged on ideas and interests that were increasingly questioned, he had the courage and good sense to lead the home-front battle to end it.

Unfortunately, Kerry’s campaign is lackluster and even his position on the war in Iraq remains unclear. Although he shows no signs of the messianic, hunch-directed mindset that seems to guide Bush, he is silent on important human rights issues, as well as on Bush’s radical new doctrines.

Kerry’s silence on these paramount issues leaves several million voters—Muslims, Arab-Americans, disenchanted Republicans, and others—unsettled. For example, at a Labor Day Muslim convention in Chicago, more than 8,000 delegates voted to wait until mid-October before deciding which candidate, if any, to endorse. Four years ago, over 65 percent of Muslim votes went to Bush, a massive tide that I, misjudging Bush’s competence, helped create. A recent survey shows Muslim support for Bush is now near zero.

Kerry could jumpstart his campaign by pledging a complete, quick exit from Iraq of all U.S. forces that the directly-elected Iraqi government does not want to remain, by stating clearly a deep concern for civil rights in America and human rights on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and by rejecting Bush’s plans for an imperial America.

He must tell the American people the truth—that the present dangers to U.S. security and economic well-being are greatly magnified by international hostility to Bush’s occupation of Iraq and support of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Kerry is America’s only hope to avert deep trouble in the next four years. If he fails to speak out clearly and resolutely, many unsettled votes—perhaps two million—will likely go to principled independent Ralph Nader, who has no chance to win, or not be cast at all. In that event, Bush’s re-election is virtually assured.

Former Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) is the author of They Dare to Speak Out, Deliberate Deceptions, and Silent No More, all available from the AET Book Club. He never before has publicly endorsed a Democratic candidate for president.

We Need Four More Years of Bush and Cheney

By Youssef M. Ibrahim

(AFP photo/Luke Frazza).

A few million Americans, this writer among them, have decided in the past few weeks to vote for Ralph Nader, the Independent American presidential candidate, a man who does not stand a chance in a million to become president. It sounds crazy to pick a sure loser, doesn’t it? Not quite. There is a method to this madness.

Nader represents the left wing of the Democratic Party, its very soul, long abandoned. He calls for an end to the exports of American jobs. Help for the growing ranks of new Americans sinking into poverty. Better health care.

He says the U.S. should get out of Iraq and Israel must leave the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians.

Even if he gets six or seven million votes, he has placed the message on the billboard. And will ensure Sen. John Kerry is defeated, a Machiavellian twist that falls under “the end justifies the means.” Here is why.

Firstly, do we, Americans, Arabs and rest of the world want Kerry to be the next president of the United States? No way.

The man’s policies are not definable. His positions in the Senate are wobbly and unprincipled. On Iraq, for example, he has not offered an exit strategy for the U.S. and instead wants to send “more” American troops.

He has yet to explain how the international community or the United Nations will help as one member after another of the so-called coalition—Spain first and now the Philippines—are pulling out of Iraq.

More importantly, he just outdid George Bush in the candidates’ race to endear themselves to the pro-Israel lobby by asserting his backing of Israel’s 700-kilometer-long separation wall being built inside the West Bank of the River Jordan. The “wall” is gobbling up 53 percent of what is left of Palestinian lands there, ending any hope of an independent Palestinian state.

Kerry, the liberal, is supporting a racist policy which will reduce Palestinians to the level of rats locked up in Israeli cages in Gaza or the West Bank. This is like apartheid South Africa’s former racist, anti-black Bantustans or colonies, or like what the Americans did to the Red Indians.

If anything, Kerry has shown himself to be an opportunist with none of the stuff former U.S. Secretary of State Madelline Albright used to call “cohunes,” which is now part of the American electoral lexicon. Therefore, voting for him makes no difference.

Secondly, giving Bush another four-year term could make the difference.

It would initiate new international alignments by the rest of the world to defend itself against the raging neoconservative bulls of his administration. Many nations and organizations such as NATO are already placing some distance between them and America. Sleepy Europeans are rising up to their responsibilities as a counter-power.

Arab and Muslim leaders under popular pressure are being forced to reassess their embrace of America, looking at new strategic alliances with its rivals—China, Europe and Russia. Another four years of Bush and his crowd of extremists such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz will solidify this trend of finishing off the neoconservative vampire for decades to come.

If you accept Machiavellian logic you will see that Bush is the most self-destructive president we have had in 50 years. Let him finish the job.

Thirdly, Bush is also doing us all another big favor, although that was never his intention. One must confess the sight of Saddam Hussain standing trial for his crimes and those of his family against the Iraqi people has put the fear of God in the hearts of quite a few leaders around the world. For Bush, this was mean revenge for his father.

But it has suddenly triggered all this talk about “democratic reform,” free elections and changing ministers who have held their jobs in some Arab countries forever.

It is good to light a fire under the big bears’ feet. The trial of Saddam has made a lot of people in this part of the world think about the way they are governed.

Finally, thanks to Bush, the world is forming a more realistic view of the sole superpower.

Once upon a time, many of us flocked to America, the land of freedom, equal rights, protection under the law for all, and the right of free expression.

Today, Bush has turned this same America into an ogre that stands for pre-emptive attacks, wars-of-choice, regime changes, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo gulags.

At home the PATRIOT Act laws are daily confiscating freedom of non-Americans and Americans alike, making it a land of arbitrary arrests, indefinite confinement, denial of lawyers, torture, murder and maybe rapes in secret detention centers no one knows about. This is a wake-up call for Americans and the world. That is why we need Bush to finish committing his act of political suicide.

Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for The New York Times and energy editor of the Wall Street Journal, is managing director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group. He can be contacted at <ymibrahim@gulfnews.com>. This column first appeared in the July 13, 2004 edition of the Gulf News. Reprinted with permission.