Politics

James Zogby
The Huffington Post

This presidential election is exposing deep fault-lines in our society and the failure of some of the basic institutions of our democracy. If we don’t change direction, we’re on our way to “hell in a handbasket”.

I begin with the difficult situation in which Republicans now find themselves as they watch their out-of-control nominee wreaking havoc. Once the “party of Lincoln”, the GOP was, as late as a generation ago, led by George H.W. Bush and James Baker, in whose steady hands we emerged from the Cold War, and Congressional leaders like Howard Baker and Bob Michel who worked to forge consensus on critical issues of national concern. That, sadly, is no longer the case.

If it were not for the fact that the GOP brought this Trumpian disaster on themselves, I would almost feel bad for them. They spent the past seven years fueling hatred of all things Obama. Some in the party’s leadership thought they were being clever by nurturing the Tea Party, courting the “birthers”, and feeding anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment. Only now, when they see what the fruits of their labors have created, do they recoil in horror.

In many ways Donald Trump is the reductio ad absurdum of the past few decades of GOP politics. The efforts of some Republicans to distance themselves from their standard bearer is simply insufficient, at best, disingenuous, at worst. I, for one, can’t forget: their embrace of the Newt Gingrich-led “Park 51” campaign; their smiles at Sarah Palin’s hate-filled speeches; the coyness they demonstrated when confronted with the “birther” crowd; their “wink and a nod” at the bigotry that was on display when Arizona was passing its anti-immigrant legislation; or their outright refusal to consider any meaningful gun control measures in the face of the repeated slaughter of innocents.

At this point, the only honorable thing for decent GOP leaders to do is to accept paternity for the many threads that have combined to nominate Donald Trump. Distancing themselves or even denouncing him will not do. They need to offer the country a heartfelt mea culpa.

The behavior of cable network news is another part of this distressing story. They have also played a role in fueling the Trump phenomenon. He was entertainment and was good for ratings. When he boycotted Fox, CNN stepped up. With “countdown clocks” in the lower corner of the screen, they breathlessly announced and then covered, in full, his rallies. They, and other networks, allowed him to “call into” their interview programs and hired his spokespeople as “analysts” and commentators—giving Trump unprecedented free media coverage.

To be fair, the network’s regular pundits would express perfunctory upset over Trump’s many outrages—suggesting, after each, “that this would finally do him in”. Because he was playing them like an instrument, all their criticism amounted to was more free media for the maestro.

We are now in the period between the conventions and Labor Day, when we enter the final stretch of this deeply troubling contest, and the same disturbing dynamics are still at work. Trump commits more daily outrages. GOP leaders act surprised, distance themselves, play coy (suggesting that he’ll soon turn the corner and become a “serious candidate”), or become defensive, trying to explain the inexplicable. The network pundits are once again proclaiming Trump “dead in the water” citing recent polls showing him down anywhere from 4 to 11 points. At the same time, they bizarrely host endless debates (or in the case of CNN “shout fests”) between Trump defenders and detractors arguing pointlessly whether he really was encouraging gun owners to assassinate his opponent or exactly what did he mean by saying that “Barack Hussein Obama is the founder of ISIS”? In the end, it becomes just a lot of noise and more free media for Trump.

While all this is going on, I’m watching the continuing coverage of Trump rallies—featuring casts of thousands, who cheer his every word, become gleeful at his insults, and share his anger at his (and their) many “enemies”. They don’t seem to care that he insulted a Gold Star Muslim family’s sacrifice, or playfully threatened his opponent with assassination, or repeatedly and brazenly lies. He is their champion and they appear to see attacks on him as attacks on them.

As I watch this play out, I look at the faces in the crowd and ask “who are these folks?” and “how is this happening?” The problem is not Trump, it is what we have come to call “Trumpism” and these folks are our fellow citizens and neighbors whose angst and anger we have ignored.

Here Democrats must also acknowledge a failing. For too long the party dismissed this demographic as not essential for their victories. They approached election after election focusing on what was defined as their “base vote”—educated women, “minority communities”, gays, young voters, various “issue-oriented” groups. etc. What was sometimes called the “white working class” or “white middle class” was ignored. They would be talked about or to, but they were never understood or meaningfully engaged. They were left hanging on the vine, unattended, ripe for exploitation.

They were economically, socially, and politically dislocated, and the root causes of their discontent were ignored. As some in the GOP courted them with coded (and sometimes not so coded) appeals to intolerance, fueling their anger, the results were dismissed as if it were a temporary disorder. While it is a disorder, we now see that it is not temporary. Decades of neglect and appeals to racism, immigrant baiting, and Muslim bashing have brought us to where we are.

The way forward, as Jesse Jackson used to say, is to retrace the steps we took to get into this deep hole in which we find ourselves. Bernie Sanders demonstrated that by sharing the rage of those who’ve been left out and by redirecting their anger to the rigged economy and political system that has impoverished and disempowered them it was possible to invest them in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic movement for change. There is a lesson here for all to learn. Instead of dismissing the rage of those who’ve been left out, or pitting them against other equally vulnerable groups—it is imperative to understand the root causes of their hurt and help them understand it as well.

The networks too have a responsibility. As educators of the public, they have a critical role to play in getting under the skin of stories and presenting thoughtful analysis. Instead of merely amplifying the partisan divide, pretending that their goal is balance, the networks can reclaim the lost mantle of journalism.

None of this will happen in this election cycle. But if we don’t make a determined effort to understand what we’ve done and take steps to change course, we may defeat Trump but see the root causes of Trumpism fester.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

BY KIM GHATTAS

Foreign Policy 

There is one big gaping hole in the Democratic Party’s attempt to establish itself as the party of national security. At last month’s convention, one problem was never mentioned, one crisis that was studiously avoided.

Syria represents one of the thorniest problems that the next president will face — and not just the so-called Islamic State, but the larger conflict that has destroyed a country and produced an epic humanitarian tragedy, which is causing ripple effects deep into Europe. Yet aside from a few fleeting references to refugees, the war there was not mentioned once at the Democratic convention.

Admittedly, Syria is not an issue on the mind of many voters. There was little to gain from bringing up such a complex subject, where even the mention of the war against the Islamic State brought chants of “No more war” from Sen. Bernie Sanders’s delegates. But as with the Democratic Party’s crack-up on the Israeli-Palestinian debate, which I wrote about previously, the clash between the foreign-policy instincts of Clinton and Sanders’s supporters is precisely why it is important to pay close attention to the debate about the Syria conflict on the left.

During the drafting sessions of the Democratic platform, Bernie Sanders instructed his representatives on the committee to include an amendment that rejected any military intervention against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including the imposition of safe zones or no-fly zones. In the end, Sanders’s representatives, including Arab American Institute President James Zogby and Professor Cornel West, did not ask for the amendment to be included. They came to the conclusion during the drafting session that since the platform language did not specifically call for any U.S. military action, it did not require an explicit rejection of intervention.

The platform language that eventually passed deplored the humanitarian tragedy and urged more U.S. leadership of the international community to provide assistance to civilians, and said Democrats would “root out ISIS and bring together the Syrian opposition, international community, and our regional allies to reach a negotiated political transition that ends Assad’s rule.”

Platforms are not binding policy positions, and this one won’t bind Hillary Clinton if she makes it to the White House. But the episode reveals the gap within the Democratic Party on what role, military or moral, the United States has in ending the Syrian war, and whether the focus should be solely on the Islamic State or also on removing Assad from power.

That debate rages within the Clinton camp itself. By choosing Sen. Tim Kaine as her vice president, Clinton gave a boost to the wing that views inaction as too costly. Kaine has supported a “humanitarian zone” in Syria to protect civilians, saying that the failure to establish one “is going to go down as one of the big mistakes that we’ve made, equivalent to the decision not to engage in humanitarian activity in Rwanda in the 1990s.”

Even if Clinton’s instincts may push her toward greater intervention in Syria, she could face substantial opposition from her own party. Sanders may not be the Democratic Party’s nominee, but his supporters made clear during the convention that they’re not going anywhere.

And those supporters are even more skeptical of military force than their preferred nominee. Sanders could be described as the politician’s version of Noam Chomsky, deeply uncomfortable with the use of American military might, but with a pragmatic streak — though he voted against the Iraq War, he did vote in favor of the interventions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. (His humanism on Palestinian issues, including his breaking of a taboo in presidential politics by forcefully expressing his support for Palestinian rights, was driven partly by his calculation that it was an issue his base was passionate about, and one that he could use to draw a further contrast with Clinton and the Democratic Party.) But his lack of interest and passion in addressing the unspeakable suffering in Syria has been noteworthy, and it has worried activists on the Syrian issue, who see this as part of a larger trend on the left.

Syria cannot be made to fit a clear pattern of injustice, with an occupier and an occupied, like with Israel and the Palestinians, or an oppressed and an oppressor, like with South Africa’s apartheid. Any meaningful U.S. action in Syria would require more military force, a no-no for the left. And rather inconveniently, Assad belongs to the so-called axis of resistance against Israel that includes Hezbollah — and for which the American left has a tendency to voice support with little questioning, because it has the luxury of geographical distance from the consequences of life under its rule.

American political scientist and Israel critic Norman Finkelstein exemplified that attitude when he visited Lebanon in 2008 to show his support for Hezbollah, which he lauded for its courage and discipline in its 2006 war with Israel. A local interviewer pointed out that the widespread support Hezbollah enjoyed among Lebanese after it forced Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000 had dissipated in the wake of the costly 2006 war that had wrecked much of the country’s infrastructure — a war which many Lebanese blamed on Hezbollah. “I am not telling you what to do with your lives, and if you’d rather live crawling on your feet, I could respect that,” Finkelstein replied, evoking Spanish Civil War heroine Dolores Ibárruri, who said “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

When the interviewer pressed that support for Hezbollah should be a choice left to the Lebanese who have to live with the consequences of the group’s actions, Finkelstein’s answer was again that it was always better to resist and die with honor, adding dismissively that he doesn’t live in Lebanon, so the internal political divisions were irrelevant to him.

Such thinking is prevalent on the left when it comes to Syria, and its adherents are unwilling to vocalize any criticism of Assad’s use of force, lest it indicate support for removing him from power. Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which supports the opposition, told me Assad’s positions on the Palestinian cause means that “a large segment of the left has completely ignored Syria, and turned a blind eye to what is going on, or even subscribed to conspiracy theories” that the war was manufactured by the West to weaken Assad.

“They believe that U.S. power and military can never be used for good, and somehow they believe Russia provides a balance in the world, but they don’t realize that the Russians are much more brutal,” he said, a pertinent point as President Vladimir Putin’s influence or interference in this election cycle has become a point of debate.

Mustafa said he believed that Sanders’s silence reflected a lack of understanding of both Syria’s geopolitical complexities and the horror of a war where the overwhelming majority of civilian victims have been killed by government forces. “He should go to the Syrian border in Turkey. He should see for himself what is happening and then see if that shifts his position in the right direction,” Mustafa said. “This is our ‘never again’ moment. He needs to clarify his stance, not just keep repeating: We can’t depose dictators, we can’t use force, we can’t have no-fly zones.”

But if the left opposes military action, what about humanitarian action? Even if the United States does not impose a no-fly zone, it could still ramp up funding for overwhelmed and underfunded U.N. agencies and refugee organizations.

This is where Kaine’s views are closer to Clinton’s than even some of her own advisors, and those of President Barack Obama himself. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Middle East, he traveled to the region often, speaking passionately about the refugee crisis — including in March 2014, when he said that he refused to accept that “there’s nothing more we can do to end the suffering.” He spearheaded an effort to pass a Senate resolution to press the administration to beef up its humanitarian assistance.

There are two key components to Kaine’s thinking on Syria: First, he believes that the United States should push for a humanitarian zone to deliver aid. In November, he said the zone would be “principally a tool for delivering humanitarian aid pursuant to the U.N. Security Council resolution that even Russia voted for. I think, done correctly, it could also accelerate a path to a negotiated end to the Syrian Civil War.” In other words, this creates space to push back against Assad.

Secondly, Kaine believes the challenge of the Islamic State and the issue of Assad are connected, and Washington’s single-minded focus on the jihadi group means its Syria strategy is nonexistent or a mess. “These are two problems that are connected, and you can’t have a strategy that’s just about one,” he told NPR in October.

This dovetails neatly with Clinton’s own views. The former secretary of state has called for safe zones to protect civilians, and the Syria policy section of her website goes even further by stating that combined with no fly zones, “this creates leverage and momentum for a diplomatic solution that removes Assad and brings Syria’s communities together to fight ISIS.”

This belief is also what drives the thinking behind the dissent memo drafted by 51 State Department diplomats criticizing the Obama administration’s Syria policy. The memo called for limited strikes on Assad’s forces, to compel the Syrian regime to “negotiate a political solution in good faith.”

The dissent memo spurred a very public debate between Clinton’s advisors. Former Defense Undersecretary Michèle Flournoy, who is widely assumed to be a favorite to become secretary of defense in a Clinton administration, described Obama’s Syria policy, which relegates Assad to a secondary issue, as an “outright mistake.” Meanwhile, Philip Gordon, another Clinton advisor, has advised that the United States drop its demand for a departure of Assad.

Derek Chollet, who served in the State Department and the National Security Council in the current administration and is closer to Obama in his views on the U.S. role in the Middle East, has dismissed the idea that anything could have been done to produce a better outcome in the region. I know from conversations with Clinton aides that many disagree — and as I wrote in a previous article, they point to Libya, despite the ongoing violence there, as an example of a “less worse” outcome than Syria. From my own conversations with Clinton while she was secretary of state, I also know she feels strongly about preventing the growth of political vacuums that can be filled by America’s adversaries.

Clinton served the president loyally as secretary of state, but as early as February 2012, she told me she worried about Russia, Hezbollah and Iran’s extensive support to Assad. That raised the implicit the question: Where is the United States in all this?

In her book Hard Choices, Clinton describes Syria as a “wicked problem.” It’s also a problem that is only getting harder — and by January 2017 if she’s elected president, her choices may have been reduced further by developments on the ground. Putin’s military involvement in Syria, for instance, could lead to a further strengthening of Assad, thereby making her policy proposal for a safe zone moot.

Clinton will likely want to raise the cost of Russia and Iran’s actions in the region. But whatever she decides to do, she will also need to assess America’s willingness and readiness to stay the course and assist Syria in the postwar period. For that, she will need the public on board — a public that includes anti-war Sanders supporters.

The combination of advisors and aides around Clinton, some of whom espouse her worldview and some whom are closer to Obama’s thinking, are a reflection of Clinton’s preference for surrounding herself with a diversity of opinions. This presages a vigorous debate on Syria, which could bubble to the surface in a rapid review of U.S. policy starting as early as the transition period if Clinton is elected on Nov. 8. It’s still unclear who will come out on top. Knowing Clinton, she’ll prefer it not be Putin.

Source: foreignpolicy.com

An Israeli occupation police officer stealing the bike of an 8-year-old Palestinian girl in the occupied West Bank (Credit: YouTube/BTselem)   In a surreal moment in the daily press briefing on Thursday, a reporter asked the U.S. State Department spokesperson about the theft of the bicycle of a crying 8-year-old Palestinian girl by Israeli occupation … Continued

James Zogby
The Huffington Post

The quadrennial process of party platform writing is more of a political exercise than a policy deliberation. When party leaders sit down to debate what will or will not go into their platform, their eyes are less focused on what will constitute sound policy. Instead they consider the politics involved in the positions they want in the document: will they cause concern with important constituencies; will they result in negative press; and will they provoke donors? Given this, I feel good about what we accomplished with this year’s Democratic Party’s platform. I say this not only as a proud member of the five person team Bernie Sanders picked to serve on the Platform Drafting Committee, but also as the first Arab American to have served in that capacity.

Much has been written about the planks we lost or how the platform didn’t go far enough, but what shouldn’t be dismissed is that the Democratic Party is now on record embracing some of our positions and adopting some of our goals. All this is a clear recognition of the power of the progressive movement that was galvanized by the Sanders campaign and the role that Arab Americans played in that effort. The document includes: a call to abolish the death penalty; the goal of establishing a $15 an hour minimum wage; an expansion of the Social Security program; a recognition of the need to provide for public option health insurance; a call to eliminate Super PACs and overturn Citizens United; and the need to put a price on carbon emissions to deal with climate change. Bernie Sanders has referred to the final product as “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party” and has called for a sustained effort to insure that, after November, the goals recognized in the document become law.

What didn’t receive coverage, but should also be noted, are the many “little victories” we won during the platform deliberations. Sometimes they were simple, but important, word changes or additions we suggested that were ultimately endorsed by all sides.

For example, we were able to add language condemning the rise of “Islamophobia”. And we were able to insure the absence of any terms disparaging of Islam. We also included the protection of civil liberties as a priority concern and expanded on the definition of “racial profiling” to include “religion, ethnicity, or national origin” thereby making the called for ban on “un-American and unproductive” profiling, the most comprehensive ever.

In the section on “Fixing our Broken Immigration System” we co-authored with the Clinton campaign language recognizing that “immigration is not a problem to be solved, it is the defining aspect of the American character and our shared history”. We also called for reforming “the current quota system [that] discriminates against certain immigrants” and we rejected “attempts to impose a religious test to bar immigrants or refugees from entering the United States.”      

The platform also proposes a way forward to defeat ISIS and al Qaeda and end the wars in Syria and Iraq without seeing American forces mired down in prolonged conflict in the Middle East. The document recognizes that there must be “more inclusive governance in Iraq and Syria that respects the rights of all citizens”. And calls for “providing more support and security assistance for Lebanon and Jordan, two countries that are hosting a disproportionate number of refugees; and recognizes the importance of “maintaining our robust security cooperation with Gulf countries.”

On the matter of refugees, the platform explicitly supports “President Obama’s call for an international summit to address this crisis so that every country assumes its responsibility to meet this humanitarian challenge” and pledges to “look for ways to help innocent people who are fleeing persecution.”    

There was, to be sure, great disappointment in our failure to change the language on Israel/Palestine. We wanted to have the platform clearly state that the occupation and settlements must end, that the suffering of Palestinians must be acknowledged, and that excessive language on BDS and Jerusalem should be removed. We argued that it was commendable to call for two states, but the refusal to note that the major impediments to the realization of that goal are the occupation and settlements calls into question the commitment to achieving a two state solution. We also argued that our reading of their proposed language on BDS denied Palestinians the right to peacefully protest occupation and the language on Jerusalem was contradictory since, on the one hand, the platform states that “Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations” and then says that “it should remain the capital of Israel, an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”  

Since our Sanders’ team was outnumbered, we did not win, but from our lengthy debate on these issues (a small victory, in itself), several observations can be made.  The draft prepared by the Clinton team sought to preempt our concerns. This is the first platform in history to speak of the recognition of Palestinians as having rights not merely, as Peter Beinart has noted, “as a matter of Israeli self-interest”. The platform calls for providing “Palestinians with independence, sovereignty, and dignity”. And, in another place, says that “Palestinians should be free to govern themselves in their own viable state, in peace and dignity”. On this subject, earlier platforms were confused, at best, insulting, at worst.  

Finally, on the issues of BDS and Jerusalem, the Clinton campaign sought to explain their language by noting that they “were very careful not to say outright that we oppose BDS”, but rather to oppose it only it if it delegitimized Israel. And one Clinton supporter offered a caveat regarding Jerusalem noting that nothing in their formulation would preclude Jerusalem from also being the capital of a future Palestinian state.

As a reflection of the state of play of American politics, we should see this platform not a defeat but an acknowledgment that there has been a change. Change we made possible. We were able to impact the debate. In some instances, we were able to win changes in the platform and, even when we were not, we were able to force debate on critical issues of concern. That is why I was proud to be a part to be a part of the Sanders campaign and why I endorse his call to continue our forward march. We must remain a part of the progressive coalition working with our allies to elect Hillary Clinton, defeat Donald Trump, continue to transform the Democratic Party, and keep progressive ideas in the mainstream, and not on the fringes of American politics. Within this coalition we can continue to fight for progress. Outside of it, we run the risk of marginalizing ourselves and our issues.  

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Mark Brown
Chicago Sun Times

When he retired from the Cook County bench two years ago, former Circuit Judge William Haddad made it his first priority to establish a group that would give Arab-Americans and Muslims a stronger voice in Illinois politics.

His AMVOTE PAC, short for American Middle East Voters Alliance Political Action Committee, has proven to be both ahead of its time and a step behind.

In a year in which Republican presidential candidates tried to one-up each other on how to get tough with Muslims in the wake of terrorist attacks, AMVOTE has been able to sound the alarm about discrimination.

“We’re taking on folks that disparage our people,” Haddad said.

But with the organization still in its infancy, its voice doesn’t carry very far just yet.

I think that’s why Haddad reached out to me to call attention to AMVOTE’s latest effort.

It’s a petition asking politicians to renounce “profiling, surveillance and the banning of immigrants solely based upon their race, religion, ethnicity or any other condition or circumstance without due process of law.” So far, there haven’t been any takers.

As I told Haddad, I’m not a fan of symbolic petitions or renunciation demands. Not my style.

But I do appreciate minority groups engaging in the political process to stick up for themselves.

And judging by the fear mongering that continues to occupy my email inbox, I’d say this is definitely a good time for Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans to get better organized politically.

With an estimated 70,000 voters in Cook County of Middle Eastern heritage, there is certainly a potential to have some impact in state and local races if they speak in a unified voice.

Haddad, 70, is a Democrat. But AMVOTE pursues a bipartisan approach. The organization’s board of directors, which determines its endorsements, includes Democrats and Republicans.

In its first election cycle, the group demonstrated its evenhandedness by supporting Pat Quinn for governor and Judy Baar Topinka for state treasurer. Last year, it endorsed Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia over Mayor Rahm Emanuel, while backing several aldermen allied with the mayor.

Haddad said AMVOTE leaders primarily look for candidates who will treat their community fairly.

Something that’s gotten lost is that, before this election cycle, the Muslim community in the United States was pretty well split between Republicans and Democrats, perhaps even leaning Republican because of its high concentration of successful professionals.

“I couldn’t tell you what they are today,” Haddad said, but he added, “99 percent will not back a candidate who disparages, defames and demeans us.”

Haddad, a Christian of Lebanese descent, recognizes that those who would discriminate on the basis of someone’s name, appearance or country of origin don’t always make such distinctions.

He said Muslim-Americans in particular were inspired and empowered by the Democratic National Convention speech given by Khizr Khan, father of a U.S. Army captain killed in a car bombing in Iraq. Khan said Trump “consistently smears the character of Muslims” and questioned what sacrifices the Republican nominee had made for his country.

“Mr. Khan is right about what he said,” Haddad told me.

As a state political action committee, AMVOTE can’t be directly involved in the presidential race but expects to gets its point across just the same.

With little fund-aising behind it so far, AMVOTE has relied mostly on targeted mailers, robocalls, email blasts and social media to spread the word.

Haddad said he hopes to improve fund-aising in the future as the group gets better established/

“Our needs are meager,” he said. “It’s not expensive to have a big impact on an election.”

The problem for Republicans is that Trump might end up losing them not only this election but future elections as well.

Source: chicago.suntimes.com