http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11malley.html

This well founded despair feeds the notion that the final solution will come in regionwide upheaval, and will be as violent and mass murderous as what the world went thru in the ’40s.

There is no exaggerating the worth and reach of the Cairo speech. Hats off.

It remains for Obama to somehow apply it to American foreign policy, which remains as fully in the hands of the National Security Apparat as it has been since World War II.

Most pressingly: The adventure in Pakghanistan (born of baby Bush whismy to do something for Unocal in its dispute with Bridas over the proposed Afghan pipeline) is clearly swirling down the toilet. Get the heck out of there.

More photos re/from same.

And more.

Meanwhile Moshe Katsav, who resigned as President of Israel in 2007, has been indicted for rape.

A very similar thing happened, of course, shortly after Rumsfeld was dismissed at the Pentagon.

Freeman, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was also (more broadly) a vocal critic of the Iraq War and, in general, Bush-Cheney’s War on Terror.

The more things Change in the Obamarama the more they stay the same.

Another move in the ongoing struggle between Europe and Israel (see penultimate comment above).  Not that Britain IS Europe, but, here, seems to be leading a policy turn with tacit support on the Continent.
The piece by Roger Cohen (linked here) is worth reading.  In fact, here’s the back half:

QUOTE

One view of Israel’s continued expansion of settlements, Gaza blockade, West Bank walling-in and wanton recourse to high-tech force would be that it’s designed precisely to bludgeon, undermine and humiliate the Palestinian people until their dreams of statehood and dignity evaporate.

The argument over recognition is in the end a form of evasion designed to perpetuate the conflict.

Israel, from the time of Ben Gurion, built its state by creating facts on the ground, not through semantics. Many of its leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, have been on wondrous political odysseys from absolutist rejection of division of the land to acceptance of a two-state solution. Yet they try to paint Hamas as irrevocably absolutist. Why should Arabs be any less pragmatic than Jews?

Of course it’s desirable that Hamas recognize Israel before negotiations. But is it essential? No. What is essential is that it renounces violence, in tandem with Israel, and the inculcation of hatred that feeds the violence.

Speaking of violence, it’s worth recalling what Israel did in Gaza in response to sporadic Hamas rockets. It killed upward of 1,300 people, many of them women and children; caused damage estimated at $1.9 billion; and destroyed thousands of Gaza homes. It continues a radicalizing blockade on 1.5 million people squeezed into a narrow strip of land.

At this vast human, material and moral price, Israel achieved almost nothing beyond damage to its image throughout the world. Israel has the right to hit back when attacked, but any response should be proportional and governed by sober political calculation. The Gaza war was a travesty; I have never previously felt so shamed by Israel’s actions.

No wonder Hamas and Hezbollah are seen throughout the Arab world as legitimate resistance movements.

END QUOTE

I’ve been thinking for some time (some months) now that wide-ranging major war is in the books as a reaction to the financial catastrophe.

The world has been falling in love with the idea of war the entire decade, led by Bush-Cheney, as Japan and Germany led 100 (sic) years ago.

Simultaneously, as 100 years ago, the world has been falling in love with machines, machines based on semiconductors this time, rather than internal combustion engines.  A neo-Futurism defines the Zeitgeist again; people spend more time with their computers than their lovers, and all chips are on Technology to lead us out of the disasters that Technology has birthed.

Re the march to war, Obama has yet to show any signs of Change.  From high finance to the National Security Apparat, he seems so far the Establisment’s boy, or “Tom,” as Ralph Nader put it so blatantly last year.  Perhaps Ralph knew of whom he spoke; we shall see, eventually.

Might world-scale war come?  We’re actually not far from it at the moment, when one considers the Americans at work on both sides of Iran.

When we downsize in Iraq the future there — the Iran-Iraq future — will begin to assert itself.  It’s very hard to see Washington and Tehran each agreeing to Leave Iraq Alone.

That is: Our invasion of Iraq and the Pentagon’s construction of 13 (is that number still on target?) permanent bases, has made Iraq a permanent battlefield.  At best, a No Man’s Land like that which divided the German forces from the allies in the first war.  At worst … the first war in full bloom.

On the eastern border … Will Russia and China sit by as we venture into Pakistan?  Perhaps they will — and then watch us spin wheels and burn soldiers and treasure, smiling like Cheshire cats.

But even assuming (I don’t) all goes well with what Gates and Mullen have planned for Pakghanistan, what then?   The vise Iran finds itself in will be intolerable. And neither Russia nor China could tolerate an American move on Iran.

Anyway …  Larger war in Pakghanistan is in the cards — the Yankees are Coming as we breathe — and it seems it cannot get much larger without involving the other major powers (by proxy).

In that world — on fire from Iraq to … Indonesia (?), who would cry if Tel Aviv one morning went up in the mushroom cloud of some misplaced SU or US ordinance?  (Mother Jones reports that the US has lost at least ten nuclear devices, and stories of leaks out of the Soviet system in the early 90s were of substance.)  Britain’s move to open talks with Hezbollah speaks volumes.  Israel has lost all its friends in this world, aside from Uncle Sam.  And Sam ain’t what he used to be.