Category: Travel

Should the US Still Police the World?

This was a debate between Bret Stephens and Jamie Kirchick for the affirmative and Matt Taibbi (without his baseball cap) and Lee Fang for the negative. You can and should watch it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/a-free-press-live-debate-on-foreign?r=1n8osb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The affirmative side (Jamie and Bret) only seemed to understand policing in military terms. The idea that there might be good and bad policing never seemed to cross their minds. Bearing in mind that I was a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq for its final two months and made 22 visits to Afghanistan from 2002-2013 (not to mention my years of work with the IMF in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, and South Sudan), my experience has been that when led by our military, which is quite good at fighting, our policing is generally inept (to understate it considerably). Warren Coats life and travels

Jamie and Bret’s blindness sadly reflects the single-minded understanding of neocons of what our leadership role in the world should look like (military involvement and wars).  This blindness is shockingly visible in the debate. America must and should be involve in the world we are part of. We should promote the values of peace and freedom that have America the envy of the world. That means actively working to be a good neighbor and to help fashion the rules and norms of cross border cooperation (for the cross-border movement of goods, people, digital messages and value, etc.). We potentially have a lot to offer in such a role in our own self-interest and for the betterment of the world.

But when we have led with our Army, our “leadership” has been rotten for the world and for us. We are bad colonial rulers as I have seen first hand. These points were made by Matt and Lee who mopped the floor with Bret and Jamie. By the vote of those listening, Matt and Lee won the debate but were still supported by a minority of those voting. God help us.

More recently, our unconscionable support of Israel’s vicious slaughter of its neighbors in Gaza and the West Bank and now its invasion of Lebanon, has destroyed any remaining respect we had as a world leader.  https://wcoats.blog/2024/10/05/score-card/

Score Card

Three weeks ago, Israel detonated pagers and walkie-talkies in Syria and Lebanon that killed 37 people (including two children) and injured thousands. A week ago, Israel bombed Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, much of its senior leadership and thousands of Lebanese civilians. Israeli soldiers entered Lebanon on September 30 in a limited ground offensive against Hezbollah forces.

In retaliation Iran sent 200 or so missiles to Israel “targeting military installations and critical infrastructure.” While most were intercepted a few struck military airbases and killed one person.

Israel promises to retaliate for this vicious attack. “Donald Trump has said that Israel should ‘hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later’ in response to an Iranian missile attack on Tuesday.” https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-israel-should-hit-irans-nuclear-first-1964268

Need I say more???

Collateral damage (deaths of innocent bystanders) is unavoidable in war. But Iran seems to recognize that taking some care to minimizing it is not only humane but also wise for not creating more enemies to fend off in the future.  On Oct 7, 2023, Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis in their attack from Gaza. In retaliation Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians according to the official reports of Hamas authorities many of whom were women and children. However, some aid works claim that the true number is much higher. Around 670 Palestinians, including 150 children, have been killed by Israelis in the occupied West Bank over this period.

According to Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, this is not carelessness on Israel’s part, but rather the deliberate policy of removing Palestinians (one way or another) from the River to the Sea. One way or the other, Israel is committing suicide. Anyone who cares about the future of Israel should demand an immediate end to this fighting. Anyone who cares about the standing of the U.S. in the world, and how our tax dollars are being spent, should demand the same.

From the River to the Sea

The subtitle of my memoire is “From the River to the Sea, All should be Free.” I deliberately chose this potentially provocative statement to warn readers to expect to encounter my political views and to refuse to allow the English language to be twisted by the political views of others. In the same spirit, I always stated that “All Lives Matter” rather than the more restrictive “Black Lives Matter.”  I have always defended the rights of All people to peace, justice and equal rights.

I asked my AI search engine the following:

What different groups chant “From the River to the Sea “ and what does each group mean by that?

The reply was:

The phrase “From the River to the Sea” is used by various groups with differing interpretations:

  1. Pro-Palestinian Activists: For many, it symbolizes the aspiration for Palestinian liberation and equality across the region from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, often seen as a call for peace and justice.
  2. Jewish and Pro-Israel Groups: Many perceive it as a threat to Israel’s existence, viewing it as a call for the elimination of the Jewish state, especially when used by groups like Hamas.

“When someone says from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, I question, ‘Where do you see the Jews going?'” said Yair Szlak, president and CEO of Montreal-based Federation CJA. ‘That is hate speech, right, because it is into the sea that they seek to send the Jews.’”

Take a close look at this amazing statement. Mr. Sziak implies that the only way Palestinians can be free is by getting rid of the Jews!!  Aside from being a absurd statement, it is sadly revealing of the thinking of some Israelis.

“Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine-Israel program at the Arab Center Washington D.C., has written extensively about the meaning of the slogan before and since Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7, which led to Israel’s current bombardment of the Gaza Strip. 

“Munayyer says today, the phrase is used to reference the lack of freedoms Palestinians have in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which includes the state of Israel as well as the Gaza Strip and the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

“’That’s what has to change. That doesn’t mean that there should be any violence against Israelis,’ Munayyer said.” https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/from-the-river-to-the-sea-palestine-1.7033881

The alternative to war

As Israel continues to slaughter women and children in Gaze, Hezbollah continues to flatten norther Israel, Russia continues roll back Ukrainian troops in Ukraine, I have tried to follow the pronouncements from all sides. The solution proposed by each is to win the war.

But can winning the war bring peace and security to Israel, to West Bank and Gaza, or to Ukraine? Israel wants to eliminate the Palestinians, but Germany’s genocide of six million Jews did not eliminate Jews. Israel’s genocide of Palestinians will not illuminate them either and even its systematic assassinations of Hamas rulers (most recently Ismail Haniyeh in Iran) will not eliminate Hamas. Peace will not come to Israel, the WBGS, Lebanon, or Syria by winning THE WAR.

 “While Israel has not yet issued an official statement, with the attack [on Haniyeh], it has reinforced the message that it speaks with the language of force above all else…. Assassinating Haniyeh, perhaps the most important member of Hamas’s negotiating team, fits within Israel’s narrative that the only way to achieve an end to the Gaza war is to force Hamas to surrender militarily. To most of the rest of the world, the assassination of a lead negotiator for a potential peace deal is certainly viewed as a bloody sabotage of multinational efforts to end the genocidal war.” “Assassination of Hamas leader Haniyeh”  “From Paris to Beirut-Israels long record of assassinating Palestinians”

As long as the focus remains on winning wars, none of the Middle Eastern countries will be safe and at peace. The countries of the Middle East (or anywhere else) must determine and accept the terms for mutual treatment appropriate for good neighbor relationships. “Israel Hamas Iran Gaza Middle East”   Arriving at such agreements will not be easy, and will not be possible without large majorities of the populations of these countries truly wanting peace and security and being willing to treat each other fairly. “Best way to end Israels war with Gaza” “Why Palestinian unity matters”  But the search for such genuine peace must start with giving up the idea of winning the war and ending the current fighting.

Russia

Russia has become a pain in the ass. Why and what should we do about it? First we must realize and accept that Russia will always be here. Just as Nazi Germany’s Holocaust did not eliminate Jews and Israel’s effort to eliminate Palestinians (sufficiently to have a democratic Jewish Israel from the River to the Sea as stated in Zionist documents) will not succeed, it is not possible, nor would the world accept the morality of eliminating Russia.

So the goal must be to carrot and stick Russia into a neighbor we can live with—even productively and happily live with.  Our approach to Ukraine provides many lessons for what not to do. With the collapse of the USSR, Russia and the other former Soviet Republics passionately wanted to become part of Western “normal” world. It was great fun working with them toward that goal in the early 1990s.

Russia’s great cultural offerings were more open to us. Russia was added to the G7, which became the G8. Russians are a proud people, who had just been humiliated, and wanted respect. But our embraces were more stumbling than they should have been. After reassuring Russia that NATO would not expand one inch East in exchange for the reunification of Germany as a NATO. We lied. NATOs membership doubled from 16 to 32.

Russia swallowed hard and offered conditions for Ukrainian neutrality that were larging acceptable to Ukraine and in any event negotiable. But we didn’t support/encourage Ukraine to negotiate so Russia invaded it. Even two months later when Russia and Ukraine had virtually agreed on the terms for ending the war, we discouraged it. Two and a half years later 100,000 have been confirmed dead. About 60% of the total were Russian. Twice that many are estimated to have died. And damage to Ukrainian cities and country side will take trillions of dollars to repair. https://wcoats.blog/2022/05/15/ukraines-and-russias-war%ef%bf%bc/

A May 24 report from Reuters, stated that Putin himself “is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognizes the current battlefield lines.” We seem to prefer that “they” continue fighting to the last Ukrainian. After all we have been able to test our military equipment in the field without the loss of American lives. But we must remember the lessons of the Holocaust and Gaza. We can’t wipe Russia off the map. They will be here five, ten, twenty years from now. What do we want our relationship with Russia to be then? What carrots and sticks will get us there?

From the River to the Sea–One State

Under Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition government, Israel is committing suicide. These are my thoughts on how it might be saved.

Israel’s response to Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on Oct 7 has been the most inhuman effort to wipe out a people since the Holocaust. Netanyahu called for revenge “implementing a ‘full siege’ of the densely populated Gaza Strip — ‘no electricity, no food, no fuel,’ said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant — as part of a campaign that is aimed at destroying Hamas’s military capabilities” Wash Post “Israel-Gaza war Hamas”  As of May 14th “Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people from their homes.” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-death-toll-how-many-palestinians-has-israels-campaign-killed-2024-05-14/

Virtually every country in the world except the US has condemned Israels genocide as have many Jews. The Washington Post has an excellent account of a mother and son coping with opposite views on these events: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/19/israel-gaza-university-protests-arrests/

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has applied for warrants for the arrest of Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar, Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in their conduct in these attacks. US congressional and administration officials have attacked the ICC’s initiative (though it is supported by every legal authority I respect) and threatened retaliation in a display of the hypocrisy increasingly undermining US status in the world.

Patrick Leahy, author of the Leahy Law, which “prohibits U.S. aid to any unit of a foreign security force if the secretary of state has “credible information” the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights: murder, rape, torture, forced disappearance or other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty and personal security.” states that Israel is guilty of such violations and the law should prevent Biden from sending weapons to Israel. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/20/israel-leahy-human-rights-aid/

The recent attack and counterattack were continuations of 70 years of unresolved relations between the areas Palestinian and Jewish residents. Netanyahu remains adamantly against revising the Two State Solution (Oslo Accord) future and Saudi Arabia is equally insistent on it. Ireland, Norway, and Spain will officially recognize Palestine as a state from next week and other countries are expected to follow. 

The so far unsurmounted challenge was not a result of the gathering of Jews in what is now Israel, but the determination to make it a democratic Jewish State. Religious states, such as Iran, are always problematic. Israel can only be a democratic Jewish state by eliminating one way or another most Palestinians. American’s founding fathers had the wisdom to prohibit that by putting the separation of church and state in our constitution.

If Israel gave up being a Jewish state it could remain democratic and absorb the entire area from the River to the Sea. And every resident would receive the same protection of the law and equal rights. It should consider a federal structure in which smaller districts with local administrations might well be predominately Muslim or Jewish. https://wcoats.blog/2024/01/19/one-state-solution-for-palestine-israel/

Playing by the rules

This morning’s NYTimes proclaimed that:“The Biden administration, responding to the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, unveiled its largest sanctions package to date as the war in Ukraine enters its third year.”

On November 30, 2023, Phillip Dean Hancock was executed in Oklahoma. As the death penalty has been eliminated in most countries and such killing is considered immoral by millions of people around the world, what sanctions would be appropriate for them to impose on the U.S.?

A quite different case arises from killing an enemy in someone else’s country (aside from in war, where anything seems to be “allowed.”)  On February 13 of this year, Maxim Kuzminov, a former Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine, was found dead with multiple bullet wounds in Villajoyosa, a city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. The murder is suspected to have been organized by Moscow. What measures should Spain take against Russia in response (hopefully the U.S. will keep its nose out of other people’s business—fat chance)?

On January 3, 2020, the U.S. assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, in Baghdad. More recently, on February 7, 2024, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, a senior commander in Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. What measures should Iraq (and Iran) take against the U.S.?

The rule of law is a fundamental aspect of our freedoms and the prosperity it has made possible. The international rules based order is an extension of those principals internationally and has served, though imperfectly, the same purposes globally. The U.S. has become an Imperial power who doesn’t obey the rules it tries to impose on others. Thus, American influence in the world is declining rapidly. We will all suffer as a result.

The Houthi’s and Us

After almost a decade of trying to end Saudi Arabian bombing of the Houthi government in Northern Yemen, President Biden has ordered multiple American bombing attacks on Northern Yemen because of Houthi attacks on ships sending arms to Israel in support of its genocide in Gaza. You might need to read that sentence again to get all its parts.

The first point is that once again the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the Congress must authorize war before the President can launch one, has been violated. And why did Biden think it necessary to bomb Yemen? Because the Houthi attacks were interfering with our shipment of weapons to Israel in support of Israel’s vicious murder of Palestinians by bombing and starvation. “The group’s official spokesman reiterated that attacks on vessels transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait toward the Suez Canal will continue until “Gaza [receives] the food and medicine it needs.” That shouldn’t be hard to accomplish.

Even if the US Congress authorized the American bombing of Yemen, it would be bad policy for the U.S., for the Palestinians, and for Israel. “Weighing additional US responses to Houthi Red Sea attacks” America’s interest should be peace and prosperity for all in the Middle East (and all the world). Supporting Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza does not serve that goal and makes the U.S. complicit in Israel’s genocide. Moreover, Europe’s relative silence and the silence of any of us to Israel’s inhuman war in Gaza (including Biden, Trump and Nikki Haley) makes them all complicit. “War in Gaza exposes European philosophy ethically bankrupt”

The march toward the aridification of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank is too unbelievably savage to spell out. Such a fate should not be wished on any people. “Unfolding genocide as ever single person in Gaza goes hungry” “Israel’s Netanyahu its Cromwell”

But this war, following a century of Zionist mistreatment of Palestinians in their homeland, is destroying Israel. “Israel is facing existential threats from inside and out-there’s one solution” Israel is committing suicide. To survive, Israel must become a secular democratic state that give equal rights and fair treatment to all who inhabit it. “One state solution for Palestine/Israel”

U.S. leadership is failing once again and is waning. The lust for war by the hawks has overpowered American self-interest once again. War with Iran can’t be far behind. Taiwan can wait (a bit).  “Gaza and Yemen sound death knell for US led rules based global order”

One State Solution for Palestine/Israel

I have long supported the “two state solution” for the Levant envisioned by the Oslo Accords. I led IMF technical assistance teams that launched the Palestine Monetary Authority as called for in the Oslo Accords. “Oslo-the Play”   After listening to the following presentation by two very knowledgeable Jews, I have changed my mind: Max Blumenthal & Miko Peled 

In supporting a Two State Solution I had assumed that the alternative One State Solution had to be a democratic Jewish state as sought by Zionists, which would have required that Israel eliminate, one way or another, enough Palestinians to establish and retain a large Jewish majority. This is, of course, exactly the policy Israel had followed since its founding and most conspicuously in its current devastating attack on Palestinians in Gaza.  “A one state solution”

Miko Peled, the son of a distinguished Israeli general, proposes a One State Solution in which Israel’s Jews give up its being a Jewish State. Rather Israel, from the River to the Sea, would be a democratic state in which all residence would enjoy equal treatment under the law. But can Zionists be convinced to support a secular Israel of Jews and Palestinian, both the descendance of Abraham. In a recent meeting of the Committee for the Republic, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiroargued that Zionism is antisemitic and should be repudiated:  “Antizionism is not Antisemitic”

In a realistic assessment of the current situation, Natan Sachs argues that neither a one state nor two state solution is possible any time soon because of the lack of trust on both sides after 70 years of oppressive Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and the vicious attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct 7. However, he argues that continuing to kick the can down the road has been a disaster and must end. The U.S., now providing the bombs with which Israel is slaughtering innocent Palestinian men, women, and children, must order an immediate ceasefire before millions in Gaza starve to death and the war escalates to Lebanon and beyond.  “UN Human Rights Experts warm of unfolding Genocide in Gaza”

The U.S. must also use it considerable leverage to end new Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Settler (and Israeli Army) abuse of Palestinians living there and strengthen the Palestinian Authority. Since WWII the U.S. has given Israel more than $260 billion in foreign assistance (over $3.3 billion annually in recent years), more than to any other country.

“It is time, rather, to couple a political horizon with serious, transformative, solution-oriented yet hard-nosed conflict management: imperfect, messy, halting, unsatisfactory for all, and yet preferable by far to the current reality…. The United States must set the ground rules for the long interim period before true conflict resolution might be possible and enforce these rules vigorously…. Even if a solution to the conflict is currently unavailable, aimlessly kicking the can down the road is not a reasonable strategy. That approach was not conflict management; it was a strategy that allowed the conflict to manage both sides.”  “Peace between Israelis and Palestinian remains possible”

In my view a single state with full citizenship with equal rights for all inhabitance would be the best long run outcome but it will not be easy and will take time for interim Israeli occupation to build mutual confidence for drafting and adopting such a constitution (like England, Israel does not have a written constitution). Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other parts of greater Israel housing important Jewish, Islamic and Christian sites must be fully protected by religious liberty provisions of the constitution.  While such an outcome will take many years to achieve, interim measures must build to that outcome.