Immigration 5 – Can politicians handle that?

Political leaders are notorious for their short-term outlook and their self interest as well as those of their financial backers. Can they muster the commitment, the long-term view and the courage that would come with drafting a sustainable emigration policy? At this point I think not. Who should take the lead on it though? Could the UN or an affiliated agency tackle the problem without widespread members’ support? Alternatively, some nation states could show leadership by undertaking the project, thinking it through and leaving no stone unturned. Could it be the United States; I doubt it, but there might be no other way…

Immigration 4 – Comprehensive treatment needed

It seems counterproductive to have nations handle immigration on a piecemeal basis when the basic problems and challenges are the same whether we talk about Europe, North America or certain parts of Asia. It would appear that the United Nations should be the ideal body to spearhead a comprehensive program capable of defining a general and sustainable set of directions that would help all member nations, and create a continuum in terms of policies, targets and appropriate strategies and tactics. At the moment, each nation that is faced with a particular situation related to immigration devises its own plan and frequently has to resort to re-inventing the wheel and seeking isolated solutions that are meant to address specific symptoms rather than the root causes of the situation.

Immigration 3 – The nationality question

None of us chose our birthplace and in most cases, our nationality. In fact what does nationality means? Family ties, culture, education, religious traditions, language, race to name a few. Contrast that with what makes us human, that is the pool of traits and physical features all humans share in common. Then compare to other species (dogs, cats, birds, fishes) and it’s pretty obvious that all humans are very much homogeneous and very similar. This observation shows the artificial nature of what define and differentiate our different nationalities. What can be seen as differences is in fact very trivial and is dwarfed by the large, solid elements that unite us.

Immigration 2 – The lure of boom

Work then become one critical element in allowing harmonious waves of immigration.
When no work is available, there should be no reason for human migration as it would exacerbate human suffering. At present, it appears that when there’s a booming economy in a northern nation, this simple reality creates a vacuum that steers people in search of a better life towards it. It happens haphazardly, by hearsay or by way of modern communications. Nothing is orchestrated. Maybe there’s there an opportunity to organize a labor market that is more efficient and in particular, that can anticipate labor needs both geographically and in terms of skills needed. The proposition gets a bit more complicated as the need for labor may fluctuate (seasonally or during periods of boom and bust) and mechanisms should be envisioned to regulate this.

Immigration 1 – Seamless planet

I want to start this discussion by looking at the planet, from space. It looks so seamless that one may wonder why can't humans move freely to the place of their choice? It probably is bad enough that almost everywhere human beings can own, thus control land, but that’s a fact that will be very hard to change. So what’s wrong about having some “have-not” moving around?
The next general idea is that we need to have these itinerants abide by local rules and laws, and financially participate to pay for their own impact in these areas that are not theirs; in so doing, they will contribute to the services they might use (administrative help, health care, education, other use of public infrastructure.) If that were to be the case, it seems that they should have the right to work, if work is in fact available.

The Bush Presidency in four pages

Here is a scary account to the Bush Presidency and some of the challenges that the next President is going to face. We’ll be hearing about these issues for decades so we should get used to them. Regardless of what you may think of that particular magazine and the author’s political orientation is, this piece draws a fair account of the state of disarray our nation is in. I personally have stopped blaming Bush and his team for that, but instead, I can’t forgive the majority of American who has voted him back in office in 2004, knowing full well what the current administration was all about.

What have you been smoking Scott?

In his interview of Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last night on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley showed up as the quintessential “Ugly American.” Shame on CBS for airing such a biased show! Pelley should be promoted to Fox News at once. At the very least, that horrible and tasteless interview made me root for Iran’s leader who showed a lot of composure and dignity while insulted by an imbecile.

A green Bush?

President Bush seems to have concocted some green cult of his own by deciding to take an environmental initiative on his own and hoping to look a bit better at the next G8 summit. He, who’s never believed in global warming is trying to reconstruct a Kyoto deal that’s more convenient to Cheney and his oil company friends and that will further muddle and delay what could be done sooner if not now. Even to people with limited smarts this initiative looks fishy and it is. Bush always was and remains in the camp of those who believe in intelligent design, oil forever and the Easter bunny. His new green color looks more like mold to me…

Dying in vain?

Today is Memorial Day, the United States’ celebration of the brave men and women who over the years have fallen in combat. Without a question, many of these soldiers have died for some great and worthwhile causes, like Europe’s liberation during World War I and World War II and during the Battle of the Pacific. All of us must be grateful that their gift of life has been behind our continued freedom and prosperity. Not all wars can claim the same virtues and usefulness.

Vietnam first comes to mind as those questionable endeavors. Did those who fell in Indochina filled a pressing need for freedom and happiness, or where they used by paranoid politicians who wanted to allay their fears of world-wide communist expansion or even by the much decried military-industrial complex? These questions are still debated today. The first Gulf War was decidedly what should be termed as an “oil war.” It made a point, but was not truly necessary outside of securing “Big Oil’s” interests. Thank God, it didn't cause too many troop casualties.

The U.S. engagement into Afghanistan was justifiable as the logical response to the 9/11 attacks, and if one point should be made about that conflict is that the invasion was not prosecuted as well as it should have been; America’s eye was obviously taken of the Taliban ball by the Iraq war. By now, most intelligent folks agree that this current war, whether it was a second “oil war” or not, was ill-conceived, poorly planned and totally unjustified.

As President Bush keeps digging in his heels, this war of occupation goes against what logic would dictate, both in the Iraqis and American best interests. Sure, the administration and the military establishment are using semantic to re-brand as “al-Qaeda” the various ethnic and religious groups fueling the Iraqi civil war, when in fact the incarnation of that terrorist group was mostly crushed when the allied forces invaded Afghanistan.

Both al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are therefore “recycled” and revived by the Administration’s fear mongers who absolutely need that pretense to justify and carry on their presence in Iraq. With that in mind, and if we have to be brutally sincere and honest, those American soldiers that die each day in Iraq are most definitely dying in vain.

How to save $200 billion

If we accept that one year in Iraq costs us around $100 billion, and if we also agree that President Bush has no intention to draw troops down while he’s in office, we can easily figure out that our next president will have to wait until 2009 to initiate any pull-out effort.

If instead pressure could be applied now on Republicans - who stand more likely to lose their seats in 2008 - to band together and summon Messrs. Bush and Cheney to quit their rhetoric and finally acknowledge that this war is a lost cause, we would be two years ahead of the game and save ourselves these $200 billion, including hundreds if, not thousands, of U.S. troops lives, not to mentions thousand of wounded.

We, the taxpayers would love the idea, troop families would salute that tangible support and most Iraqis would get what they've wanted for four years; Everyone would applaud the move, except perhaps our President and Vice-President as they might need more time for the concept to sink in…

On getting out of Iraq…

The current situation can be summarized as “damned if U.S. pull out of Iraq now, damned if the U.S. stay forever” with very little nuances in between. Without question, we’ve created a hell of a mess; the right thing for America to do would be to clean it up, however that view begs several comments.

First as our total incompetence took four years to create the present chaos, the odds of us being able to turn things around are really not in our favor. Maybe someone other than the United States would be better at fixing things.

Second, the vicious cycle of civil unrest and violence is likely to take place whether we’re present or not. From the lootings to the car bombs and suicide bombes the U.S. troops have played the role of passive witnesses, rarely engaging the insurgents. The Iraqis forces are no better and are for the most part involved with the insurgency and the various militias.

As some say, the tooth paste is now out of the tube and we can’t put it back in. If we leave the scene, things might deteriorate even faster; if we stay around longer, the civil violence might be somewhat protracted, but Iraq will end up at the same level, minus the additional number of American and British troops that will be killed and wounded and the ill-will that a military presence in the middle-east creates.

The net result is that we, the United States will be better off, the Iraqis would be as bad, and of course we would look bad, but for that latter part I have a solution to propose in my next message…

Is Iraq like Yugoslavia?

The recent history of these two countries bears some striking similarities. Both countries came into being at about the same time as a result of the Versailles treaty following World War I. The collapse of the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian empires saw their former colonies pieced together as states with little regards to religious, ethnic or tribal populations, most of which had been fighting one another for centuries.

To hold together, these mismatched nations had to be run by dictators like Marshall Tito and Saddam Hussein. Ironically, for most of the time they were in power, both head of states maintained a cozy relationship with the United States. Out of all other communist block countries, Yugoslavia was the U.S. darling and Iraq was America’s good friend during its war against Iran.

Both countries disintegrated when their leadership changed. Upon Tito’s death and the end of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia imploded and erupted into a bloody civil war involving almost each ethnic and religious faction. That civil war only came to an end when the UN and NATO stepped in and took sides against Serbia. One notable difference with Iraq however, was that Yugoslavia had no oil and held little strategic value.

For almost a quarter of a century, Iraq was kept together under Saddam’s iron fist. The Sunnis (his people) were in charge. When something got out of line, Saddam had no qualms massacring thousands of rebels and everything would return to normal.

When the U.S. stepped in, it thought that ushering democratic institutions into Iraq would take care of everything and bring brotherly love throughout the land, including Kurdistan, the seemingly weakest link of the chain. Instead, the U.S. invasion of Iraq revealed the pent up hatred along sectarian and ethnic lines that had festered, but were suppressed, under Hussein’s long, brutal rule

To make matters worse, the country’s basic infrastructure that had been destroyed as the invasion progressed could never be fully restored, and with sporadic electricity, failing water and sewer systems, not to mention a total lack of security, the Iraqis quickly found out that their daily lives were worse off under Bush’s army than under Saddam’s Ba’ath Party.

Could this explosive reaction have been anticipated? Probably, but the Administration claimed it knew better and believed that after its troops had been welcome as liberators by the Iraqis, the whole populace would line up and ask for their own copy of the American Constitution. It did not happen. Instead looting took place and after being fired, the entire Ba’ath administration and the Iraqis army turned into thousands of disgruntled insurgents. Clueless in foreign policy, the Administration, not only broke everything inside the “pottery barn” when it invaded Iraq, but ignited a vicious civil war.

Led by clerics and warlords who only can tell their people to slaughter each other, this civil unrest is likely to cost hundred thousands if not millions more lives, and will create debilitating damages that may take many decades to repair. The U.S. invading forces that were so instrumental in bringing Iraq to a state of chaos have little credibility in turning things around, even with a hollow surge made of extended tour of duties instead of additional troops.

The upshot of this situation is that in order to carry on, Iraq cannot stay whole. Instead it will have to be partitioned along ethnic and religious lines, and someone (most likely the UN, not the incompetent invader), will have to figure out a convoluted way to make that break-up somewhat equitable.

Is campus massacre a form of terrorism?

The Virginia Tech shooting reminded all of us that we need more effective firearm controls. Granted, the NRA is the most powerful lobbying organization in the country. Its record campaign contributions delivers tons of votes and its effective lobbying for gun ownership and hunting rights makes up for easy access to guns and ammos.Like some take at face-value what's in the Koran or the Bible, the NRA's success also hinges on a literal interpretation of an obsolete Second Amendment. While this is not the first school massacre, politicians seem unwilling to touch the issue as it's tainted with election money and therefore taboo. Of course, if the slaughter had been the work of some Islamist dude, we’d be on red alert and President Bush would be scaring the wits out of us all. But again, isn't campus massacre a form of terrorism? It's certainly not a mild derivative. Now,where do we go from here?

Why don’t Iraqis like us?

During World War II, my father was the mayor of a small French mountain village, next to the Swiss border. This area of the Alps was under German occupation and my dad had to interact with the Wehrmacht on a daily basis and on a vast number of issues, ranging from signage to local information, whereabouts of resistance forces, over-border trafficking and tracking down community members that should be sent to German labor camps.

On the surface, my father was “nice” to the occupying forces and would always tell them what they wanted to hear. Of course, language barriers didn't help communication. As soon the Germans turned their backs, my dad was risking his life undoing what he had been ordered to, forging false ID cards, guiding Jews over the mountains into Switzerland, and doing whatever the daily situation dictated. He was clearly polarized against the Germans and so was the entire population.

When I see what goes on in Iraq today, I can’t help but draw a parallel with that experience. For every Iraqi including their new police and army, American forces will always be seen as the ugly occupiers (causing widespread destruction, initiating forced entries, being culturally clueless). Iraqis quickly saw through our ousting Saddam as a pretense, and the Abu Ghraib disaster sealed our credibility once and for all. Those we call insurgents and terrorists are seen as resistance forces by the populace and receive their full support.

Most Iraqis would rather take the risk to die from a sectarian explosion than see us win. Arabic is so different from English that it makes communication sketchy at best; the same is true of undifferentiated attire between “good” and “bad” guys, they are no uniforms to tell them apart! We have to be incredibly naïve to believe that some Iraqis “like us” or are willing to work with us. It seems that the more our forces get involved, the more they antagonize the local population. Our training of the police and the army has just benefited the multiplication of effective militia and our troops appear as powerless witnesses of a situation spiraling out of control.

The recent mass demonstration in Najaf and most polls show that the number one wish of Iraqis that are not elected officials is to see us pack up and leave as soon as humanely possible…

What happened to Osama bin Laden?

Watching “America at the Crossroads” on PBS last night, made me think that Osama bin Laden is intentionally kept “alive” by the Bush Administration to justify the so-called "war on terror". I'm convinced that bin Laden is dead. The man was too media savvy for totally vanishing from sight.

The last credible filmed document of Osama showed him laboriously hiking down a hill somewhere in the Hindu Kush mountains. Since that time, we haven’t seen any video of him which authenticity was not questioned by some research institutes or some media celebrities of the Walter Cronkite caliber. If he's indeed dead, was he killed in the Tora-Bora tunnels or did he die from his kidney condition or typhoid fever?

With Osama and his petro-dollars gone, al-Qaeda, has become an empty shell and a vacated brand; the energy and the money have now shifted to support the Sunnis and the Shiites civil war in Iraq. That’s were the action is at moment and is likely to stay for a while. What we’re now witnessing is a proxy war mainly supported by the Saudi and the Iranians.

The Administration’s poster child

For those who have never paid much attention to Paul Wolfowitz, his day in the sun has finally arrived. Not only did he play a major role in pushing our country into a disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq along with Messrs. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush, but he just confirmed a dysfunctional intellect (or a strong belief that he was above normal common-sense) as chief of the World Bank. By confirming his support to Mr. Wolfowitz, President Bush makes himself and his presidency even more irrelevant. Whether Paul Wolfowitz stays as a lame-duck president of the World Bank or resigns, he has now confirmed his full potential for malfeasance, and if the law of Karma works, he may soon have to face the consequences…

Why stay in Iraq?

Following yesterday’s streets demonstrations in Najaf, a “damn if you pull-out and damn if you don’t” quandary, tenuous connection to al-Qaeda, continued US casualties and an obscene price tag of over $100 billion a year, I don’t understand why it’s taking us so long to bail out of Iraq? We should start drawing down troops now, not sometime in 2008! Am I missing something or what? Why is the new Democratic majority so coy about that? If -- as I suspect – oil is the reason, we should be able to negotiate a continuous flow to quench our gargantuan thirst and position our Navy to make sure tankers gets through the Strait of Hormuz. In the face of that, why is having our troops return safely home as soon as possible such a radical idea?

Efficient insurgency

In a recent video, New York Times’ Baghdad Bureau Chief John F. Burns asserts that the Iraq insurgency is self-financed and indefinitely sustained through a massive $2 billion heist in cash from the country’s central bank, continued oil theft, currency counterfeiting and kidnapping.

According to Burns, a US intelligence agency estimates that the insurgency costs less than $200 million a year to operate. Contrast that with our military burning $8 billion a month in Iraq. The insurgents spend less in one year of fighting than the US forces spend in one day!

General Petraeus vs. al-Qaeda

In watching Jim Lehrer's interview of General Petraeus on PBS last night, I was struck by Patraeus characterization of the enemy as al-Qaeda. Seems like "sectarian violence" is no longer the problem and that al-Qaeda is now the new buzzword.

This new wording sounds as if it's coming straight out of Karl Rove's mouth and might work better in justifying the Administration's military posturing. From now on, expect to hear more about al-Qaeda's terrorism and less about Shiites and Sunnis slaughtering each other in Iraq.

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