SALON

United Nations

Monday, Oct 27, 2003 3:12 PM UTC

Dazed and confused about Iraq

ANSWER supports "the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance." Military Families Against the War wants to bring their loved ones home safely. Others who rallied Saturday just hate Bush. Can this antiwar movement be saved?

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Allan Johnson, a high school English teacher and debate coach from Fairfax, Va., held a sign saying “U.S. Troops Out of Iraq. Bring Them Home Now!” at Saturday’s “End the Occupation” rally in Washington. In fact, though, Johnson isn’t sure he wants to bring the troops home now, or to end the American occupation of Iraq. At least, not yet.

“We’ve made a giant mess,” said Johnson, a handsome man who wore his long snowy hair in a ponytail and had a sparkling stud in one ear. “I would hate for the Bush administration to halfway fix things and then leave, and then blame the Iraqis if things go wrong. Once you go to somebody’s house and break all the windows, don’t you owe them new windows?”

Why, then, was he marching at an End the Occupation rally? “I don’t agree with all the people here, believe you me,” he said. But his own sign? He glanced at it, startled, and explained that someone had handed it to him. “I didn’t even look at it,” he said. “I was just waving it.”

Many of the thousands of people who traveled from across the country to march on Washington Saturday were afflicted by a similar disconnect between the slogans they were rallying behind and their own sentiments about the situation in Iraq. Some said they recognized that a unilateral American departure from the country could be as destructive as a unilateral American invasion, but they wanted to demonstrate their opposition to the Bush administration’s policies in the Middle East. The End the Occupation rally, co-sponsored by ANSWER, a front group for the Stalinist Workers’ World Party, and the more moderate United for Peace and Justice, seemed the only game in town. Many apparently decided to pretend that “end the occupation” really means “bring in the U.N.,” despite ANSWER’s blunt and repeated avowals that it means nothing of the sort.

It was a day full of purposeful misunderstandings. Members of Military Families Speak Out, a group of soldiers’ relatives who oppose the war their loved ones are fighting, shared the stage with members of ANSWER, a group that’s aligned itself with the guerrillas who are killing American troops and those Iraqis who cooperate with them. Both want to end the occupation, but for quite different reasons.

The rally was just the latest example of liberal confusion and mixed messages over postwar Iraq, as progressives try to figure out how to oppose Bush’s policies in a way that doesn’t punish the Iraqi people for the administration’s mendacity. Angry at the way Iraq’s reconstruction has turned into a bonanza for Bush’s corporate cronies, powerful Democrats along with some Republicans have tried to block grants to rebuild Iraq, and progressive groups have adopted nativist arguments insisting that Americans’ money should be spent in America. What’s lost in such reasoning, of course, is any sympathy for beleaguered Iraqis, whose misfortune it was to live under Saddam Hussein, and be liberated by a president who lied to his own people and alienated the world.

Held on a dazzling autumn day, the rally didn’t draw the masses that demonstrated against the war before it began, but the crowd was impressive nonetheless, given that much of the prewar urgency has dissipated in the postwar slog. ANSWER claimed an unlikely 100,000 marchers, while police estimates ranged between 10,000 and 20,000. Either way, the event showed that the antiwar movement has been able to sustain some of its passion, even after the war itself became a fait accompli.

Meanwhile, the influence of the antiwar movement, which has done much to catapult Howard Dean to the front of the Democratic primary pack, continues to be felt in the party. On Oct. 17, 11 Democratic senators, including presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards, and a majority of House Democrats voted against an $87 billion spending package for Iraq and Afghanistan. Previously, Democrats tried to split the funding bill in order to provide for the troops while subjecting reconstruction money to further scrutiny and cuts.

Some who voted no objected to the lack of administration accountability. But much of the rhetoric coming from liberal Democrats suggested a strangely conservative resistance to the whole idea of aiding foreigners when Americans are in need.

“We cannot afford to give this president another blank check to spend on his Iraq adventure when so many people are suffering through a recession here at home and when our nation’s critical infrastructure needs are being neglected,” said Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., explaining why she voted no on Bush’s request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Watson’s viewpoint is one encouraged by antiwar groups. MoveOn.org, the online progressive fundraising powerhouse, has been running isolationist commercials against the $87 billion appropriation. Over shots of sad-looking Americans, a voice-over says, “We could have built 10,000 new schools, or hired almost 2 million new teachers. We could have rebuilt our electric grid. We could have insured more of our children. Instead, George Bush wants to spend that $87 billion in Iraq. If there’s money for Iraq, why isn’t there money for America?”

This position resonates with Americans. In a CBS News Poll taken on Oct. 20 and 21, 59 percent of respondents opposed spending $87 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it’s clearly popular with activists. At Saturday’s rally, presidential candidate Al Sharpton, dapper in a cream-colored jacket and black turtleneck, drew some of the event’s loudest cheers when he roared, “Don’t give Bush 87 billion! Don’t give him 87 cents! Give our troops a ride home!”

And yet liberals who reluctantly backed the war continue to argue that their antiwar colleagues are forgetting about the people of Iraq. “Pulling out of Iraq now would be calamitous for the Iraqis, and everyone knows it, except for the Baathists, the most extreme Islamists, and the nincompoops,” says Paul Berman, author of the recent book “Terror and Liberalism.”

Nor is turning all occupation duties over to the U.N. a realistic option. Even if authority for the occupation is turned over to the United Nations, as many believe it must be, America will still be expected to foot most of the bill and provide most of the troops.

George Packer, editor of “The Fight is for Democracy,” a collection of essays about America and its role in the world after Sept. 11, would like to see progressives put pressure on the administration to do more for the people of Iraq, rather than less. But Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says, “I see little evidence of any such liberal alternative that is serious and constructive for the people of Iraq, unfortunately.” Liberals who care about the welfare of Iraqis, he says, must “start to distinguish between their dislike of Bush and their recognition that the mission must succeed. That would be a big start, and the crucial one.”

“Hatred of Bush and the opportunism of Democratic politicians has created a tactical alliance between mainstream Democrats and the fringe,” says Packer, who writes about his own six-week trip to Iraq in a forthcoming New Yorker article. “It’s disappointing to see both presidential candidates and leading members of Congress really fail to see the importance of what’s going on in Iraq right now. You can object to no bid contracts, you can object to cronyism and waste as I do, without undermining the basic understanding that we are committed to this and we have an enormous obligation to the Iraqis. I don’t see why you have to choose between disliking Halliburton and supporting the Iraqis in their efforts to create a decent society.”

Right now, though, there’s no liberal message that separates the welfare of the Iraqi people from that of the Bush administration. In a New Republic article this week, Michael Crowley quotes Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., complaining that his colleagues’ Iraq stances are driven by blind rage. “In trying to pin them down, I say, ‘At the end of the day, we have to have a policy to cope with what to do now,’” he told Crowley. “And they say, ‘Well, we’re just pissed off.’ They don’t really even attempt to argue the policy of it.”

What Smith says about other congressmen is even more true of many of their constituents. At Saturday’s rally, people from across the country came together to protest a war that’s already happened and argue for a solution that many of them, if pressed, believe is both unrealistic and potentially catastrophic.

Because the rally was smaller that those preceding the war, there was a larger ratio of would-be communist revolutionaries, Zionist conspiracy mongers and skinny teenage anarchists with black bandannas covering their faces. Someone flew an Iraqi flag, the version Saddam instituted in 1991, which added the words “Allahu Akbar” to the three green stars at its center. At one point, a dapper, avuncular white-haired man in a nice camel coat sidled up to me and said in a thick European accent, “So, what are we going to do about the Zionists?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you think?”

“I think we should oppose them. I think that Malaysian guy hit the nail on the head,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who recently said that Jews rule the world by proxy.

Yet the majority of the demonstrators were not Judeophobes or Baathist stooges. They were people who’d opposed the war all along, who felt betrayed and marginalized by their government and the media’s failure to take their concerns seriously, and who wanted a new American foreign policy. For many of them, “end the occupation” was a kind of shorthand. They didn’t take it literally. But the people who called the protest did.

Unlike many Democrats, ANSWER isn’t confused about where it stands on Iraq. According to an ANSWER pamphlet, “Counter-revolution & Resistance in Iraq,” “The anti-war movement here and around the world must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance.” The group, whose prodigious organizing ability allowed it to lead much of the antiwar movement, is organizing “Bring the Troops Home Now” committees across the country to circulate petitions demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

ANSWER is clear that it doesn’t want U.N. troops to replace Americans. According to an ANSWER newspaper that volunteers were distributing at the rally, “The ANSWER Coalition promotes the demand, ‘Bring the troops home now, end the occupation of Iraq.’ Some other groups call instead for turning the Occupation Authority over to the United Nations … The Iraqis have shown they want no foreign, imperial forces to become the arbiters of their political and economic process … Given the U.N.’s record in Iraq the last 13 years, why would the Iraqi people agree that this same UN should be the institution to serve as the guarantor in a transition to renewed sovereign control?”

Despite their differing loyalties, Military Families has also come out against an international presence in Iraq. At Saturday’s rally Susan Shuman, whose son has been in Iraq since March, told the crowd, “We are very clear that the occupation of Iraq is the problem and not the solution. It is the problem for the people of Iraq who continue to be in harm’s way, it is the problem for our troops who continue to die on a daily basis … It cannot be solved by replacing American troops with Japanese troops, with troops from Turkey, Latvia or Spain. Don’t deploy them, don’t extend them, don’t replace them. Bring them home now!”

The crowd erupted in chants of, “Bring them home! Bring them home!”

Sharpton sounded a similar note, slamming Democrats who disagree. “Let’s be clear,” he said. “There are some that are trying to act as though you can be against the war but for gradual withdrawal. If you’re against the war, you want the war stopped now, and the only way to stop it is to end it right now.”

And then what? After all, there is a near consensus among experts that, if America suddenly abandoned Iraq, civil war would ensue. Most Iraqis want to see America repair their utilities and fund the building of a new government infrastructure. Yet in conceiving of Iraq exclusively as Bush’s venal adventure, Saturday’s antiwar speakers, like many Democrats and progressives, left no affirmative role for liberals in resurrecting that broken country.

“I wasn’t for it in the first place, so I don’t feel I have a responsibility,” Matt Hundley, a 21-year-old from West Virginia, says of the war and its aftermath.

Most demonstrators weren’t so overtly callous. Some saw America as the source of all instability in Iraq, and thus couldn’t imagine its troops bringing anything but travail to the Iraqi people. Protestor Laura Beauvais, a professor of business at the University of Rhode Island, was against appropriating $87 billion to Iraq. When asked what Americans owe the Iraqi people, she said, “We owe them help getting basic things like schools and healthcare.” But how to provide that, without spending American money? “How you do that is beyond someone like me. It doesn’t have to be through more troops, and giving money to corporations,” she said.

Toward the end of the march, Richard Whelan, a third-generation military veteran with a son in the Air Force, stood with a sign saying, “Bush’s War Time Sacrifices: My Child. Your Child. Our $. Our Future.” A real-estate salesman from Maine with steel gray hair and a wise, lined face, he was among the small minority of protestors who had thought out the implications of his proposed solution. He would be happy to see $87 billion of American money channeled through the U.N., he said, and wished for a “phased withdrawal — an announcement that we were going to phase out and the U.N. was going to phase in.”

At the same time, he wanted American Iraq policy to be overseen by the State Department, not the Pentagon, and he said the Peace Corps should have a role in the nation’s rebuilding. “I can see many Americans over there,” he said. “They may die over there, but they would die for a just cause.”

Whelan was joined by Eric Lazarus, owner of a New York City software company. The conversation turned to the wisdom of the protest’s call for an abrupt American pullout, and Lazarus said, “It may sound like an irresponsible thing to say, ‘Bring the troops home now,’ but it’s an attempt to get the dialogue started. Look, the U.S. isn’t going to pull out. It’s not a part of the national debate.”

He had hit on one of the key dynamics shaping both Democratic and leftist demands on Iraq — the sense that since progressives have so little power, it doesn’t much matter what they call for. That’s why Johnson, who was surprised by the sentiments on his own sign, could say, when asked what he wants to see done in Iraq, “We should announce to the world that we’re going to commit to using our power for good.” Pressed further, he said, “I voted for Nader, so I’m not a realist.”

It’s becoming an abominable cliché to mention George Orwell when discussing the debate over Iraq, but a quote of his from “The Lion and the Unicorn” seemed particularly apt on Saturday. “The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers,” he wrote. “The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power.”

Or, as Packer says, the cry “End the occupation” is “an expression of impotence, an inability to make distinctions. In this case, impotence and omnipotence are two sides of the same coin. You can think anything because it won’t matter. That frees people up to not think about Iraq.”

Michelle Goldberg is a frequent contributor to Salon and the author of "Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism" (WW Norton). More Michelle Goldberg.

Thursday, Mar 15, 2012 10:30 AM UTC

Is Agenda 21 a U.N. plot to kill the suburbs?

Or is "sustainable growth" a sensible policy demonized by a right-wing conspiracy theory?

By McMansions endangered from on high (Credit: iStockphoto/Dmitry Galanternik)

In a resolution approved in January, the Republican National Committee characterized the United Nations’ Agenda 21 as “destructive strategies for sustainable development.” Included in this resolution was the RNC’s condemnation of the “insidious nature” of Agenda 21, and the recommendation by the RNC to adopt this resolution at the 2012 RNC Convention. An increasing backlash against this 19-year-old nonbinding U.N. plan shows how a conspiracy theory can become part of a major party’s platform.

How did a 40-chapter U.N. work plan on sustainable development, published in 1992, foster such a fervent backlash among conservative groups? Agenda 21, first revealed at the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, aimed to address environmental and development concerns through global partnership initiatives. While the plan covered everything from the sharing of educational resources to strategies for economic and environmental development, conservative groups have focused primarily on its fourth section — titled “the means for implementation” — as revealing Agenda 21’s true and, for them, insidious nature.

While a recent New York Times article described anti-Agenda 21 activism as emerging roughly two years ago, the roots of the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory go back at least a decade. As early as 2002 Dr. Stanley Monteith, a Santa Cruz County, Calif., physician, who runs the conservative Christian website Radio Liberty, hosted a series of lectures on the dangers of Agenda 21. An insurance salesperson named  Joan Peros gave a nearly hour-long lecture on the perils of Agenda 21, warning, it “doesn’t matter which party is in power or control … some of our leaders totally understand and embrace the ushering in of a one-world order.”

The paranoia behind such fears was expressed by another guest lecturer on Monteith’s program, Jean Soderman, a self-professed former participant in Local Agenda 21 planning in Santa Cruz. When asked whether Agenda 21 would be worse than what Hitler did, she responded, “Yes. We are controlled by computers now and it has been said … that they have been trying this for two times already … first with Hitler, and it is going to be much, much worse.”

Michael Shaw, also from Santa Cruz and founder of the anti-Agenda 21 website Freedom Advocates, gave a lecture in 2006 at the Eagle Forum Conference in Santa Rosa, titled “Speaking of Agenda 21.” Shaw spoke about the loss of property rights through the ruse of “sustainable development,” and described Agenda 21 as “political globalists … moving toward a form of … state capitalism.  It is an assault on land and that is where we have to stand up and protect our land.”

The anti-Agenda 21 critique entered the conservative mainstream in an October 2009 article in the American Thinker. Scott Strzelcky and Richard Rothschild charged that, through the implementation of “smart growth” initiatives,  Agenda 21 would  force people to relocate into highly urbanized areas — what anti-Agenda 21 activists commonly describe as “stack ‘em and pack ‘em” housing, evoking the image of Soviet-era East Berlin apartments. According to Strzelcky and Rothschild, Agenda 21 will ultimately lead to the demise of the suburban way of life.

Such concerns over the loss of private property rights are not a new phenomenon in the United States. The Wise Use movement in the West of the late 1980s brought together farmers, loggers, industries, religious groups, libertarians and conservatives to oppose the Endangered Species Act and other federal environment laws. According to investigative journalist Jeffery St. Clair, the Wise Use members saw themselves as players in “a high-stakes-chess game” against the environmental movement, whose members were “overtly carrying out a sinister master plan, a vast socialist experiment to depopulate the rural West.” When asked about the evolution of property rights movements, Jeffery St. Clair told me, “in the West, many of the Tea Party activists are the same old Wise Users in new hairstyles.”

But while the Wise Use movement centered around protecting rural and federal lands from perceived government encroachment, anti-Agenda 21 activists are concerned that private property, for them an extension of one’s liberties and freedoms, will cease to exist entirely.

The movement really took off in July 2011 after Glenn Beck devoted a show to those “who had mastered the art of hiding it in plain sight and then dismissing it as a joke.” Beck held up  a copy of United Nations Earth Summit Agenda 21. “Sustainable development is just a really nice way of saying centralized control over all of human life on Planet Earth,” he stated. “Whenever you start unraveling this, it is like an onion … its real intentions are being masked with environmental issues.”

With his patented chalkboard, Beck drew the web of connections that has been fueling Agenda 21 panic ever since: the activities of a group called the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, known as  ICLEI — or Local Agenda 21. Started in San Francisco in 1990, ICLEI’s primary goal is to provide consultation, training and information to support sustainable development at the local level.  For Anti-Agenda 21 activists, ICLEI is the real enemy.

As Andrew Cohen wrote in a recent article for the Atlantic:

You would think that the Tea Party, with its disdain for large government, would be delighted with the ICLEI’s emphasis on “locally designed initiatives.” No. To the “Agender” crowd, as they are called, the ICLEI is the local instrument by which the UN forces its “sustainability” agenda upon the U.S.

It’s only within the last few months that the New York Times and the Atlantic have reported on this backlash by anti-Agenda 21 activists against local planning projects. Recently in Florida, a Tea Party group in Citrus County argued against the restriction of boating rights in Kings Bay (designed to protect the Kings Bay manatees). Edna Mattos, the leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, cited Agenda 21 as being behind this proposed restriction.

At the same time, Agenda 21 has become a talking point for presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich. Speaking in South Carolina on the perils of Agenda 21,  Gingrich decried what he called “taking control of your private property and turning it into a publicly controlled property.” Gingrich has also proposed an executive order “to cease all federal funding of any kind of activity that relates to United Nations Agenda 21.” In addition, bills publicly condemning Agenda 21 have been introduced by Republican state representatives in Tennessee, New Hampshire and Georgia.

Anti-Agenda 21 rhetoric not only plays into fears over the declining suburban lifestyle, but has changed the vocabulary of city planners. Many of the planners that I have spoken with are taking to heart Andrew Whittemon’s recommendations to take the concerns of Agenda 21 more seriously and to speak more clearly.

Whittemon, a professor of planning at the University of Texas, Arlington, said, “Planners can avoid conflict by being explicit about the most direct harms coming to residents and businesses, giving attention to local solutions, and certainly dropping the jargon.”

The impact of the movement is already felt. One city planner I spoke with, who wished to remain anonymous, told me: “The Agenda 21 accusations that we hear in public meetings are the most counterproductive to reaching consensus or middle ground in land use planning. So we are staying away from using words like ‘sustainable development.’”

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Liam Hysjulien is a freelance writer. Reach him by e-mail at LiamHAIOTB@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @Liam_Hysjulien. More Liam Hysjulien.

Friday, Sep 23, 2011 5:31 PM UTC

Palestinian leader asks UN to recognize state

Mahmoud Abbas defies U.S., Israeli opposition, requests recognition as member state

By and , Associated Press Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holds his hands to his face as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during the 66th session of the General Assembly at United Nations headquarters Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)(Credit: AP/Seth Wenig)

The Palestinian president on Friday formally asked the United Nations to recognize a state of Palestine, defying U.S. and Israeli opposition.

The application for full U.N. member sidesteps nearly two decades of troubled negotiations and risks a threatened American veto.

More Mohammed Daragameh.

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Wednesday, Sep 21, 2011 7:51 PM UTC

Palestinians won’t seek vote delay on UN bid

President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly won't cave to U.S., French pressure to push back vote on statehood

By and , Associated Press French President Nicolas Sarkozy, left, meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Millennium Hotel in New York during the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Andrew Burton)(Credit: AP)

A top Palestinian official said Wednesday that President Mahmoud Abbas had no plans to agree to a delayed vote on his bid for membership in the United Nations, rejecting mounting pressure from the United States and France.

The Palestinians plan to submit their letter of application on Friday when Abbas is to speak to the U.N. General Assembly, but he faced a withering lack of support as the world body opened its annual meeting. President Barack Obama said there could be no “shortcuts” in the quest for Middle East peace, a message that was echoed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“We will not allow any political manoeuvring on this issue,” said Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Abbas and former chief of negotiations.

Erekat said Abbas had made that plain in discussions with all parties involved over the last three days of meetings in the lead-up to the annual UN global gathering of presidents, heads of state and ruling royalty.

Sarkozy proposed a one-year timetable Wednesday for Israel and the Palestinians to reach a peace accord, part of a concerted push with the United States to steer the Palestinians away from an application for U.N. membership.

Sarkozy spoke shortly after Obama warned against action on the Palestinian bid before there was a peace agreement. He said negotiations, not U.N. declarations, were essential to a lasting peace.

While Obama stopped short of calling directly for the Palestinians to drop their bid for full membership — an effort the U.S. has vowed to veto in the Security Council — Sarkozy sounded a more compromising tone and urged each side, and the international community, to approach the deadlocked process with new ideas and tactics.

“Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters and let us begin negotiations and adopt a precise and ambitious timetable,” Sarkozy told the leaders and officials gathered at the U.N. “Sixty years without moving one centimeter forward, doesn’t that suggest that we should change the method and the scheduling here?”

“Let’s have one month to resume discussions, six months to find agreement on borders and security, one year to reach a definitive agreement,” he said.

A senior European Union official said the proposal laid out by Sarkozy matched one by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton during a meeting with EU foreign ministers on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions.

Abbas’ push for full membership, which he has said would be submitted on Friday, has dominated this year’s U.N. meeting, pushing the U.S. and Israel against a wall of international sympathy for Palestinians. While the full membership bid would meet with a certain U.S. veto in the Security Council, assuming the Palestinians muster enough votes to have it approved, they have succeeded in bringing the issue again to the forefront of the world’s political discussions after years of failed negotiations, bickering and sporadic outbreaks of violence.

Sarkozy said that by setting preconditions, “we doom ourselves to failure. … There must be no preconditions.”

It remained unclear whether the latest proposal would be enough to avert a showdown over statehood that has consumed the U.N. over the past few days and sparked a frenzy of last-minute diplomatic door-knocking by the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as a flurry of discussions between the Quartet of Mideast negotiators — the U.S., the E.U., the U.N. and Russia.

But the proposal outlined by Sarkozy received a warmer welcome from the Palestinians than Obama’s comments.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Abbas aide, told The Associated Press that the Palestinians “appreciate the speech and the positions included in that speech.”

“The Palestinian leadership will study seriously the positions and the ideas in that speech,” he said.

Obama’s remarks, however, drew a lukewarm response, with the Palestinian delegation wearing stern and disapproving looks as the U.S. president spoke.

“Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations — if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now,” the president told U.N. delegates. “Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians — not us — who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them.”

Obama showed solidarity with Israel, not mentioning a return to the borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in which Israel annexed territory. The remarks may rile some in the Arab world where mass uprisings against authoritarian regimes have also sparked a new measure of anti-U.S. sentiment. Obama’s words also stood in stark contrast to the image he left behind when he addressed the Muslim world from Cairo in 2009, pledging to improve relations and cooperation.

Senior Palestinian officials said Abbas will reiterate to Obama his decision to move forward with the application for membership that will be submitted to the Security Council. But they also said that the Palestinians seek to cooperate with the U.S. and will be ready to return to the negotiating table once a solid foundation for talks was in place.

Nabil Abu Redeineh said that “peace in the Middle East needs an immediate end of the Israeli occupation” and that the U.S. needs to pressure Israel to immediately withdraw from lands annexed in 1967. The Palestinians are ready to return to talks “the minute Israel accepts” those borders and stops settlement building, he said.

Obama was scheduled to meet later Wednesday with Abbas.

He met earlier in the day with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

With Obama at his side, the Israeli premier said the Palestinian bid to appeal directly to the U.N. was a short cut that “will not succeed.” Netanyahu also lauded Obama for speaking up on principle.

The issue of Palestinian statehood has gained new momentum in the Arab world amid the so-called Arab Spring uprisings that have ousted the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and laid the still rocky foundations for a new era of freedom and democratic nations in a region dominated by dictators, monarchs and other entrenched regimes.

Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh, Amy Teibel and Julie Pace in New York contributed reporting.

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Tuesday, Sep 20, 2011 5:01 PM UTC

Obama should support Palestinian statehood

If the president wants to foster peace and be on the right side of history, he must back the Palestinian U.N. bid

By , GlobalPost A Palestinian waves a flag during a demonstration in the West Bank, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011

BOSTON — President Obama should not veto Palestinian national aspirations in the United Nations Security Council.

The president is not wrong in thinking that this would be better handled in negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel. It would be wonderful if Israel itself were to sponsor a Palestinian state, but this is not going to happen as long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in power.

He has spent his entire career trying to avoid Palestinian statehood with delaying tactics and maneuvers — seemingly willing to negotiate everything anywhere, but in reality putting up every obstacle he can in the path of peace and permanent settlement with the Palestinians.

Not that the Palestinians are guiltless in this stand off. They have had offers and opportunities they have not taken. But the entire Middle East is now in a state of flux and transition, and, as a practical matter, to try to keep the Palestinians frozen in their status as an occupied people without political rights is to ask for serious trouble — both for Israel and the U.S. The next Intifada will be far more destructive than the last two.

As a moral matter it is simply time to let the Palestinians have their state just as Harry Truman recognized that the Jews, after all they had been through in Europe in World War II, should have their state in 1948.

Many Israelis understand this. Former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told The New York Times that “the world is tired of this conflict and angry at us because we are viewed as conquerors, ruling over another people. If I were Bibi Netanyahu I would recognize a Palestinian State. We would then negotiate borders and security.” But Netanyahu comes from the so-called “Revisionist” wing of Zionism that is reluctant to give up any part of what they consider the biblical land of Israel.

When David Ben Gurion on May 14th, 1948, declared that the state of Israel would come into being at midnight, America responded with de-facto recognition almost immediately. But the Soviet Union came through first with de-jure recognition, something the U.S. did not grant until an elected government had been formed in January of 1949.

Even with the two superpowers onboard, the U.N. Security Council did not grant Israel U.N. membership until May 11, 1949 — a full year after the state was declared — and after a long fight to physically secure its borders.

Palestine might come into being in reverse order — declare sovereignty now, gain admittance to the U.N., and then negotiate the borders with Israel, as Ben-Eliezer suggested.

There are many who say there are dangers involved in a Palestinian state, and they are right, just as those in Truman’s State Department, including George C. Marshall, were right in warning that the creation of a Jewish state would cause a sea of troubles.

And there are those who say that the Palestinian problem is exaggerated, that it doesn’t really matter if they remain an occupied people, because giving them their freedom would not solve all the issues of the Middle East or placate Islamic extremists. And they, too, are right. Giving the Palestinians their state would not solve all the issues of the Middle East, but it would surely help. Again and again, year in and year out, the centrality of the Palestinian problem never goes away. Even General David Petraeus, from his command post in Afghanistan, recognized that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians was hurting America’s war efforts as far away as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Richard Perle and David Frum, in their book, “An End to Evil, How to Win the War on Terror,” submit that “in the Arab and Muslim World, the Palestinian issue has never been about compassion, mercy, or even justice. First and always, this issue has been about vengeance…”, i.e., “the destruction of Israel and the re-conquest of the Holy Land.” This might be true of some, but this is akin to saying the Jews in Israel want to take over Jordan just because that was an original “revisionist” goal back in 1947, or because David Ben Gurion once put feelers out to the British and French in 1956 that Jordan should be divided up between Israel and Iraq. Yes, some Arabs still might want to destroy Israel, just as some Israelis want to expel all the Palestinians, but that does not represent the vast majority nor government policy in either Israel or the Arab world.

The Obama administration tried its best to talk the Palestinians out of going to the United Nations to legitimize their state but failed. Given the administration’s record, this failure was entirely predictable. Obama came into office seeming to promise a renewed energy toward trying to solve the Palestinian problem, following President Bush’s near-total support for whatever Israel wanted.

Obama went eyeball to eyeball with Netanyahu over settlements, and the Palestinians saw that Obama blinked first. It was obvious then that Obama might talk a good game, but that the Israeli tail was always going to wag the American dog. The sight of Netanyahu who, having defied and insulted the American president, addressing a joint session of Congress with congressmen and senators of both parties jumping to their feet like jack-in-the-boxes to show their support, was all anyone needed to understand Israel’s power in the American Congress.

The Democratic Party has to be mindful of pro-Zionist political support. But it is in America’s strategic interest, and ultimately in Israel’s interest too, to lance the boil of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

If it was the right thing to do to recognize the state of Israel when it was first born, it is time now to grant the same rights and privileges to the Palestinian people. The Obama administration is always talking about being on the right side of history in the Middle East. The United States could abstain, if it must, but vetoing Palestinian nationalist aspirations would put us on the wrong side of history.

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Wednesday, Jul 20, 2011 12:48 PM UTC

Serbia arrests last war crimes fugitive

The U.N. charged Goran Hadzic with crimes against humanity for activities during Balkan wars

By , Associated Press FILE - In this Feb. 6, 1993 file photo, Goran Hadzic, who heads representatives of the Krajina Serbs, talks with reporters at the United Nations in New York, United States. It has been reported on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 by Serbian TV station B92 that authorities have arrested Goran Hadzic, the last remaining fugitive sought by the U.N. war crimes court. Hadzic has been on the run for eight years. He is wanted for atrocities stemming from the 1991-1995 war in Croatia. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)(Credit: AP)

The last fugitive sought by the U.N. Balkan war crimes tribunal was arrested by Serbian authorities Wednesday, answering intense international demands for his capture and boosting the country’s hopes of becoming a candidate for European Union membership.

Former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic was taken into custody as he met a man delivering him money in a forest in a mountainous region of northern Serbia where many of his relatives live, authorities said. He had dramatically changed his appearance and was armed but did not resist, they said.

Hours later, Hadzic was brought in for questioning at the war crimes court in the capital Belgrade, a key step toward his extradition to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. His lawyer said Hadzic will not appeal the process, paving the way for a quick extradition, possibly within the next few days.

State TV footage showed Hadzic entering the courtroom escorted by guards. He walked slowly, slightly hunched, wearing a gray shirt, short hair and a mustache. His black beard had been shaved.

An unknown figure before the 1991-1995 ethnic war for control of Croatia, Hadzic suddenly rose to prominence through his links to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s secret police. Put in charge of the self-styled Serb ministate in eastern Croatia, he was seen as a pawn of criminal gangs that collaborated heavily with the secret police and made huge profits from smuggled cars, gasoline and cigarettes.

The Hague tribunal indicted him in 2004 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including the murder, torture, deportation and forcible transfer of Croats and other non-Serbs from the territories he controlled.

Less than two months after the capture of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, Serbia’s Western-leaning president announced live on national television that “Serbia has concluded its most difficult chapter in the cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.”

“It was our moral duty,” President Boris Tadic said. “We have done this for the sake of citizens of Serbia, we have done this for the sake of the victims amongst other nations, we have done this for the sake of reconciliation, we have done this for the sake of establishing credibility of all societies, not only Serbian society.”

In his indictment Hadzic is accused of responsibility for the 1991 leveling of Vukovar, said to be the first European city entirely destroyed since World War II.

In one of the worst massacres in the Croatian conflict, Serb forces seized at least 264 non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital after a three-month siege of the city, took them to a nearby pig farm, tortured, shot and buried them in an unmarked mass grave.

A month before about 20 kilometers (12.43 miles) southwest of Vukovar, about 50 Croats who had been detained for forced labor were made to walk through a minefield to render it safe for the Serbs, according to the indictment.

“Upon reaching the minefield, the detainees were forced to enter the minefield and sweep their feet in front of them to clear the field of mines,” it said.

Hadzic worked with paramilitary forces that became notorious for their brutality, including the “Tigers,” led by Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan. In that same month of October 1991, Arkan’s men captured 28 civilians from a police facility in Dalj, tortured them and threw their bodies in the Danube. Arkan was assassinated in a Belgrade hotel in 2000.

Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said the arrests of Mladic and Hadzic “mark a long-awaited step forward in Serbia’s cooperation.”

EU leaders immediately welcomed the arrest and saluted “the determination and commitment” of Tadic’s government.

“This is a further important step for Serbia in realizing its European perspective and equally crucial for international justice,” said a joint statement by EU president Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barrios and foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

A tribunal statement said Hadzic will be transferred to The Hague as soon as judicial procedures are completed in Serbia. That normally takes several days.

He will then be brought before a judge to hear a reading of the 14 charges against him. He may enter a plea or delay for a month.

Tribunal president O-Gon Kwon said the arrest was a milestone in the history of the court, which has indicted 161 leaders from the former Yugoslavia since it was created in 1993 at the height of the fighting.

The tribunal has been under U.N. pressure to wind up its cases and close its doors.

Serbian security police found out that Hadzic was meeting a money courier and arrested him Wednesday morning outside the village of Krusedol, Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told reports.

Until this week, Tadic said, Serbian officials did not know where Goran Hadzic was, despite suspicions that he had been sheltered by former allies.

In the past, Hadzic had narrowly escaped arrest, apparently due to tips from within the Serbian security authorities. Serbia’s post-war authorities have for years faced accusations that they are not doing enough to hunt down the war crimes suspects.

Serbia, widely viewed as the main culprit for the wars in the Balkans, has been working to reintegrate into the international community following years of sanctions and pariah status in the 1990s.

Milosevic was extradited to the Hague tribunal in 2001 and died there in 2006, while on trial for genocide.

Along with Mladic, Serbia has also arrested war crimes fugitives Radovan Karadzic. Both are currently facing war crimes charges in the Hague.

Dusan Stojanovic and Slobodan Lekic contributed.

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