Only a few weeks after US-Iran diplomacy began in earnest, it seems to be heading towards a premature ending. Rather than tensions reduction, the world has witnessed the opposite. Iran is refusing to accept a fuel swap deal brokered by the IAEA, the IAEA has passed a resolution rebuking Iran, and Tehran has responded by approving a plan to build ten more nuclear facilities.
With the potential end of at least this phase of diplomacy, fears of a disastrous Israeli attack on Iran are on the rise once more. But contrary to Washington's official line, America is capable of preventing Israel from initiating a war that would further destabilize the Middle East.
Conventional wisdom in Washington reads that the United States has little influence over Israel, particularly on the issue of Iran's nuclear program, since Israel maintains that it is an existential threat.
Washington has utilized the perception of Israeli immunity to international pleas to pressure China to rebuke Tehran. According to the Washington Post, National Security Council officials recently traveled to Beijing and used the Israeli card to get the Chinese on board.
The Chinese were told that Israel regards Iran's nuclear program as an "existential issue and that countries that have an existential issue don't listen to other countries," according to a senior administration official. The implication was clear: Israel could bomb Iran, leading to a crisis in the Persian Gulf region and almost inevitably problems over the very oil China needs to fuel its economic juggernaut."
It is questionable that the Chinese were moved by the notion that Israel cannot be influenced by the international community on this issue. Mindful of the strength of US-Israeli relations, it is hardly convincing that Washington cannot influence Israel's actions towards Iran.
Indeed, there is an important precedent in which Washington successfully prevented Israel from taking military action even when Israel itself had been attacked.
On August 2, 1990, almost a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Iron Curtain divide, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Within months, the George H. W. Bush administration carefully assembled a coalition of states under the UN flag and defeated the Iraqi army and restored Kuwait's ruling family, the House of Sabah. The Bush senior administration saw particular value in ensuring that the international coalition contained numerous Arab states. But to get the Arab's to join a war alongside the US and against another Arab power, Israel needed to be kept out of the coalition.
This turned out to be a tricky issue, particularly when Saddam Hussein hurled thirty-four Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, in an obvious attempt to lure Israel into the war. Then-National Security Advisor, General Brent Scowcroft, told me in an interview that the United States told Israel "in the strongest possible words" that it needed to keep itself out of the Iraq operation because Israeli retaliation would cause the collapse of Washington's alliance against Iraq.
For the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, this was a very tough decision. Saddam's missile attacks damaged Israel's public morale; the country's otherwise lively and noisy capital quickly turned into a ghost town. Bush sent Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to Israel to assure Israeli leaders that the United States was doing all it could to destroy the Iraqi missile launchers.
But neither the Israel Defense Forces nor the Ministry of Defense was convinced. Instead, a feeling prevailed among Israel's leaders that Washington was untrustworthy and that it could not be relied upon when it came to Israel's existence. Bad blood was created between Israel and the United States, according to Efraim Halevi, the former head of the Mossad. Washington's protection of Israel was ineffective, and the image that Israel was relying on the United States for protection was hard to stomach for ordinary Israelis. Shamir's decision to accommodate the Americans was extremely unpopular, because it was believed that it "would cause irreparable damage to Israel's deterrent capabilities," Halevi told me. To make matters worse, people around Shamir felt that the United States did not reward Israel for, in their view, effectively enabling the coalition to remain intact by refusing to retaliate against Iraq.
Just as Israeli retaliation against Iraq in 1991 would have been devastating for the US, an Israeli preventive attack against Iran today would spell disaster for US national security.
In July 2008, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned against any Israeli military action against Iran, saying that the Middle East would become "more unstable" and that it would put US forces under much stress, indicating that an Israeli attack on Iran would inevitably suck the US into war with Iran. "From the United States' perspective, the United States' military perspective, in particular, opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us," Mullen told reporters.
A year later, Mullen's line was echoed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who warned that a military attack would only be a "temporary solution." "There's a lot of talk about a military effort to take out their nuclear capabilities, but, in my view, it would only be a temporary solution," Gates told reporters in September 2009.
Beyond the impact an Israeli attack on Iran would have on US national security, the first casualty of war with Iran would be the Iranian pro-democracy movement. Having shown great courage in challenging the Ahmadinejad government, the last thing Iran's pro-democracy activists need is for Iran to get embroiled in a military confrontation with Israel and the US. Their struggle for democracy will be infinitely more difficult in the midst of war.
Should diplomacy with Iran fail, and should Israel seek to attack Iran, America will have plenty of reasons to prevent such a disaster from taking place. And history shows that contrary to conventional wisdom, Washington has the ability to prevent Israel from taking actions that would endanger America.
November 29, 2009
Sacrificial Sheep: Eid Al Adha In A Moroccan Berber Village
This past Saturday, we decided to spend Eid Al Adha, the Muslim holiday where people sacrifice a sheep, in the country side. We visited a little Berber village a few miles south of Marrakesh.
This is a tradition that has existed for centuries and Muslims all over the world celebrate it once a year. According to the Muslim history, the tradition started when God asked the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) to prove his full dedication by sacrificing his only son: Ismael. It was extremely hard for Ibrahim to make a choice but he ultimately decided to show his loyalty to God and to kill his son. After he did so, God spoke to him and revealed to him that he instead had a sheep killed and that his son Ismael was alive because the willingness to sacrifice his son was enough of a proof of commitment .
Since then, Muslims commemorate this miracle by killing a sheep. Some of it is given to poor people but most families get together to celebrate and eat.
In Azimime, the village that we picked to spend the holiday, the mood was pretty festive. We arrived there at around 9:30 a.m. Women had woken early to make a delicious breakfast and to start preparing for the day. People were moving around the village, walking into their neighbors' houses to wish them a happy holiday. We received a very warm welcome from the villagers who rarely had outsiders visit them. Omar and his family invited us into their home, made us tea and after we were done, took us around the village so we could see people slaughtering their sheep, following the Muslim tradition.
Everyone was welcoming, offered us tea and wanted us to spend the night. In each home, a butcher came in to help with the slaughtering. Once it was done, the sheep was cut into pieces and every part was used to cook. First, we ate the liver, but did not get a chance to eat the head and other parts because they were going to cook on the fire the entire night.
We tried, in our pictures, to capture the tradition. The following slide-show takes us through a day with the villagers and their families on this holy day.
(Photographs by Leila Alaoui)
Eid Al Adha Slideshow 1 from aida alami on Vimeo.
This is a tradition that has existed for centuries and Muslims all over the world celebrate it once a year. According to the Muslim history, the tradition started when God asked the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) to prove his full dedication by sacrificing his only son: Ismael. It was extremely hard for Ibrahim to make a choice but he ultimately decided to show his loyalty to God and to kill his son. After he did so, God spoke to him and revealed to him that he instead had a sheep killed and that his son Ismael was alive because the willingness to sacrifice his son was enough of a proof of commitment .
Since then, Muslims commemorate this miracle by killing a sheep. Some of it is given to poor people but most families get together to celebrate and eat.
In Azimime, the village that we picked to spend the holiday, the mood was pretty festive. We arrived there at around 9:30 a.m. Women had woken early to make a delicious breakfast and to start preparing for the day. People were moving around the village, walking into their neighbors' houses to wish them a happy holiday. We received a very warm welcome from the villagers who rarely had outsiders visit them. Omar and his family invited us into their home, made us tea and after we were done, took us around the village so we could see people slaughtering their sheep, following the Muslim tradition.
Everyone was welcoming, offered us tea and wanted us to spend the night. In each home, a butcher came in to help with the slaughtering. Once it was done, the sheep was cut into pieces and every part was used to cook. First, we ate the liver, but did not get a chance to eat the head and other parts because they were going to cook on the fire the entire night.
We tried, in our pictures, to capture the tradition. The following slide-show takes us through a day with the villagers and their families on this holy day.
(Photographs by Leila Alaoui)
Eid Al Adha Slideshow 1 from aida alami on Vimeo.
The Brad & Angelina Tell-All Book – How Fake Is It?
Us Weekly has screamed it on covers and the New York Post did the same on Sunday (Brangelina's SEXY SECRETS), but are Brad and Angelina really fighting constantly and breaking up in the near future as an upcoming book claims? Reading the details, I'm not so sure.
Author and reporter Ian Halperin supposedly spent five years piecing together Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and spoke with 900 sources. He was most recently seen doing the media circuit to talk about Michael Jackson, the subject of his last book.
Halperin spoke with Sunday's NY Post to dish up some of "his most sensational findings" about Brad and Angelina. Reading the article, I find much of it hard to believe.
To be clear, I haven't read the book. I've never met Halperin. I've also never met Brad Pitt and I've spent just 20 minutes in a hotel room with Angelina and about five others during a junket, during which she avoided talk of her personal life.
The Post's Halperin-Brangelina feature opens with an anecdote about then-Mrs. Pitt Jennifer Aniston meeting Jolie on the set of Friends shortly before Mr. and Mrs. Smith began filming. Despite the 900 sources, this insider-y sounding anecdote comes uncredited from Aniston's 2005 interview with Vanity Fair's Leslie Bennetts.
From the NY Post/Halperin:
It was 2004, just weeks before shooting was to begin on the action flick "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," when Angelina Jolie happened to visit the set of the hit show "Friends."
"Brad is so excited to be working with you," Jennifer Aniston told her husband's new co-star. "I hope you guys have a really good time."
From Aniston's 2005 Vanity Fair cover interview:
Aniston has met Jolie only once, when she took a passing opportunity to say hello. "It was on the lot of Friends -- I pulled over and introduced myself," Aniston recalls. "I said, 'Brad is so excited about working with you. I hope you guys have a really good time.'"
Moving on to what is either some poorly fact-checked chronology or just an error, the next NY Post paragraph reads:
Less than a year later, Brad Pitt and Jolie would pose for W magazine in a spread called "Domestic Bliss." Real-life romance soon followed, as modern Hollywood's most famous love triangle played out in the tabloids. Eventually, Pitt would leave Aniston and take up with Jolie.
The W spread came out in June 2005. Pitt and Aniston officially split 5 months earlier.
Next paragraph:
"Brad had never had such incredible sex," Halperin says. "My sources say that they sometimes spent 18 to 20 hours a day in bed. But sex eventually wears off."
How likely is this? The incredible sex, who's to argue? But 18-20 hours in bed a day having it? I'm not sure. When Brad and Angelina met in 2004 she was a single mom to son Maddox, and she adopted Zahara in July 2005. Did she spend days on end in bed with her boyfriend while her toddler son and newly-adopted daughter were elsewhere? It seems unlikely.
Next is the part that is the most egregiously wrong, and alone casts everything else Halperin writes about Pitt and Jolie (as reported by the NY Post anyway) into doubt:
A woman who worked with Pitt while he was filming "Troy" told Halperin: "They were definitely in love, but that's where it gets tricky. If you want to know if they're still together, the answer depends on when you ask the question.
"I've heard that they've broken up so many times it would make your head spin.
"There are apparently screaming matches, usually with her doing the screaming. Nobody really witnesses that part of it -- they just see him leaving in a huff. But then he ends up coming back again, and nobody knows what happened to bring him back."
Troy came out in the summer of 2004 and was filmed in 2003, before Brad had ever met Angelina.
An unnamed woman who worked on that film is telling second hand stories about Brad and Angelina's breakups and screaming matches, when there is zero evidence she had ever met Angelina, much less seen Brad and Angelina as a couple.
And there are things like this, exaggerations in the least:
Halperin claims that Pitt's biggest problem with Jolie is her controlling nature. "She won't let [Pitt] out of the house alone," he said.
She supposedly won't let him out alone, yet there are plenty of paparazzi photos of Pitt alone on his motorcycle cruising LA., like here and at dinner with friends, like here.
Maybe Brangelina are fighting constantly, with Jolie a temperamental control freak and Pitt a pothead cheater, and maybe they'll soon split up. But from what I've read of this book, I think it's just as likely they won't.
Author and reporter Ian Halperin supposedly spent five years piecing together Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and spoke with 900 sources. He was most recently seen doing the media circuit to talk about Michael Jackson, the subject of his last book.
Halperin spoke with Sunday's NY Post to dish up some of "his most sensational findings" about Brad and Angelina. Reading the article, I find much of it hard to believe.
To be clear, I haven't read the book. I've never met Halperin. I've also never met Brad Pitt and I've spent just 20 minutes in a hotel room with Angelina and about five others during a junket, during which she avoided talk of her personal life.
The Post's Halperin-Brangelina feature opens with an anecdote about then-Mrs. Pitt Jennifer Aniston meeting Jolie on the set of Friends shortly before Mr. and Mrs. Smith began filming. Despite the 900 sources, this insider-y sounding anecdote comes uncredited from Aniston's 2005 interview with Vanity Fair's Leslie Bennetts.
From the NY Post/Halperin:
It was 2004, just weeks before shooting was to begin on the action flick "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," when Angelina Jolie happened to visit the set of the hit show "Friends."
"Brad is so excited to be working with you," Jennifer Aniston told her husband's new co-star. "I hope you guys have a really good time."
From Aniston's 2005 Vanity Fair cover interview:
Aniston has met Jolie only once, when she took a passing opportunity to say hello. "It was on the lot of Friends -- I pulled over and introduced myself," Aniston recalls. "I said, 'Brad is so excited about working with you. I hope you guys have a really good time.'"
Moving on to what is either some poorly fact-checked chronology or just an error, the next NY Post paragraph reads:
Less than a year later, Brad Pitt and Jolie would pose for W magazine in a spread called "Domestic Bliss." Real-life romance soon followed, as modern Hollywood's most famous love triangle played out in the tabloids. Eventually, Pitt would leave Aniston and take up with Jolie.
The W spread came out in June 2005. Pitt and Aniston officially split 5 months earlier.
Next paragraph:
"Brad had never had such incredible sex," Halperin says. "My sources say that they sometimes spent 18 to 20 hours a day in bed. But sex eventually wears off."
How likely is this? The incredible sex, who's to argue? But 18-20 hours in bed a day having it? I'm not sure. When Brad and Angelina met in 2004 she was a single mom to son Maddox, and she adopted Zahara in July 2005. Did she spend days on end in bed with her boyfriend while her toddler son and newly-adopted daughter were elsewhere? It seems unlikely.
Next is the part that is the most egregiously wrong, and alone casts everything else Halperin writes about Pitt and Jolie (as reported by the NY Post anyway) into doubt:
A woman who worked with Pitt while he was filming "Troy" told Halperin: "They were definitely in love, but that's where it gets tricky. If you want to know if they're still together, the answer depends on when you ask the question.
"I've heard that they've broken up so many times it would make your head spin.
"There are apparently screaming matches, usually with her doing the screaming. Nobody really witnesses that part of it -- they just see him leaving in a huff. But then he ends up coming back again, and nobody knows what happened to bring him back."
Troy came out in the summer of 2004 and was filmed in 2003, before Brad had ever met Angelina.
An unnamed woman who worked on that film is telling second hand stories about Brad and Angelina's breakups and screaming matches, when there is zero evidence she had ever met Angelina, much less seen Brad and Angelina as a couple.
And there are things like this, exaggerations in the least:
Halperin claims that Pitt's biggest problem with Jolie is her controlling nature. "She won't let [Pitt] out of the house alone," he said.
She supposedly won't let him out alone, yet there are plenty of paparazzi photos of Pitt alone on his motorcycle cruising LA., like here and at dinner with friends, like here.
Maybe Brangelina are fighting constantly, with Jolie a temperamental control freak and Pitt a pothead cheater, and maybe they'll soon split up. But from what I've read of this book, I think it's just as likely they won't.
How To Be A Countertop Composter (VIDEO)
We at HuffPost Green love to get down and dirty...with compost that is! Umbra Fisk of GristTV offers her top tips for composting. From huge outdoor containers, to small countertop boxes, this video will no doubt inspire you, as much as it did us, to get in touch with your greener side. Just in time for Thanksgiving and the holiday season, there will be no excuse to send any the leftovers that don't make it into the next day's lunch to anywhere but your new composter.
WATCH:
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Levin: There Would Be No Afghan Dilemma If Bush Had Caught Bin Laden
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-Mich.) insisted on Sunday that, had it not been for the Bush administration's failure to catch Osama bin Laden in 2001, there likely would be no debate about sending more troops to Afghanistan.
Addressing a new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report claiming bin Laden was nearly captured by U.S. forces at Tora Bora, Levin argued that had the capture taken place, "there would be a good chance we would not have forces or need to have forces [in Afghanistan]."
"This has been kind of well known for some time," Levin added. "We took our eye off the ball instead of moving in on him at Tora Bora, the previous administration decided to move its forces to Iraq. It was a mistake then. I think this report of the Foreign Relations committee just sort of reinforces that."
Released on Sunday, the SFRC report [pdf] provides a harsh indictment of the Bush administration's actions in the early stages of the search for bin Laden.
"Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," reads the executive summary. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics world-wide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today's protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan. Al Qaeda shifted its locus across the border into Pakistan, where it has trained extremists linked to numerous plots, including the July 2005 transit bombings in London and two recent aborted attacks involving people living in the United States. The terrorist group's resurgence in Pakistan has coincided with the rising violence orchestrated in Afghanistan by the Taliban, whose leaders also escaped only to re-emerge to direct today's increasingly lethal Afghan insurgency."
Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Levin also stressed that any increase in U.S. forces in Afghanistan had to be accompanied by an equal commitment within the country to bolster its own security.
"I think there's greater question on why the additional troops would help increase the size of the Afghan army," Levin said. "When I was in Afghanistan, I was told that the greatest need in Afghanistan is for more Afghan troops."
"I favor additional trainers, I favor a surge in equipment," the Michigan Democrat added, "but the key here is an Afghan surge, not an American surge."
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Addressing a new Senate Foreign Relations Committee report claiming bin Laden was nearly captured by U.S. forces at Tora Bora, Levin argued that had the capture taken place, "there would be a good chance we would not have forces or need to have forces [in Afghanistan]."
"This has been kind of well known for some time," Levin added. "We took our eye off the ball instead of moving in on him at Tora Bora, the previous administration decided to move its forces to Iraq. It was a mistake then. I think this report of the Foreign Relations committee just sort of reinforces that."
Released on Sunday, the SFRC report [pdf] provides a harsh indictment of the Bush administration's actions in the early stages of the search for bin Laden.
"Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," reads the executive summary. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics world-wide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism, leaving the American people more vulnerable to terrorism, laying the foundation for today's protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan. Al Qaeda shifted its locus across the border into Pakistan, where it has trained extremists linked to numerous plots, including the July 2005 transit bombings in London and two recent aborted attacks involving people living in the United States. The terrorist group's resurgence in Pakistan has coincided with the rising violence orchestrated in Afghanistan by the Taliban, whose leaders also escaped only to re-emerge to direct today's increasingly lethal Afghan insurgency."
Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Levin also stressed that any increase in U.S. forces in Afghanistan had to be accompanied by an equal commitment within the country to bolster its own security.
"I think there's greater question on why the additional troops would help increase the size of the Afghan army," Levin said. "When I was in Afghanistan, I was told that the greatest need in Afghanistan is for more Afghan troops."
"I favor additional trainers, I favor a surge in equipment," the Michigan Democrat added, "but the key here is an Afghan surge, not an American surge."
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