Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Bill Moyers Journal . Transcripts | PBS, February 22, 2008

BILL MOYERS: So what happens if the American ambassador there, who’s a big advocate of aerial spraying to destroy the poppy fields. What happens if he succeeds? What happens if the United States government sprays all the poppy plants and kills them, as happened in Colombia. What do the farmers do?

SARAH CHAYES: They join the Taliban. I mean, it’s the biggest gift we could possibly do for the insurgency. What else would they do? They’re furious. Their livelihood is taken away. Their children might be poisoned. Or they might think their children are poisoned. They join the Taliban. They take revenge.

BILL MOYERS: So if people were not growing poppies, what would they be growing?

SARAH CHAYES: What exists down there is very valuable crops. Almonds, apricots. It’s fruit crops mostly. To me, the way to attack opium is to compete with it. Like let’s make it possible to make a living and not– you don’t have to import some exotic new plant. They’ve got almonds, they’ve got apricots, they’ve got pomegranates. They’ve got cumin, they’ve got anise seed. Wild pistachios. We’re putting all this stuff in our soap.

Why isn’t there a fruit juice factory in Kandahar? It’s the pomegranate capital of the world. You know, everyone’s talking about the antioxidant qualities of pomegranates. That it’s the Garden of Eden of pomegranates down there. And what’s amazing is, with all this money that you mentioned being spent over there, you can’t get any money to do stuff like that.

BILL MOYERS: We’ve also given a lot of money to Pakistan, across the border.

SARAH CHAYES: Right. Correct.

BILL MOYERS: To help fight the insurgents, right? What’s happening to that money?

SARAH CHAYES: Well, we’re paying a billion dollars a year to Pakistan, which is orchestrating the Taliban insurgency. So, it’s actually US-taxpayer money that is paying for the insurgents, who are then killing, at the moment, Canadian troops.

The Other Front, WP, Sunday, December 14, 2008

By Sarah Chayes

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan

Nurallah strode into our workshop shaking with rage. His mood shattered ours. “This is no government,” he stormed. “The police are like animals.”

The story gushed out of him: There’d been a fender-bender in the Kandahar bazaar, a taxi and a bicycle among wooden-wheeled vegetable carts. Wrenching around to avoid the knot, another cart touched one of the green open-backed trucks the police drive. In seconds, the officers were dragging the man to the chalky dust, beating him — blow after blow to the head, neck, hips, kidneys. Shopkeepers in the nearby stalls began shouting, “What do you want to do, kill him?” The police slung the man into the back of their truck and roared away.

“So he made a mistake,” concluded Nurallah, one of the 13 Afghan men and women who make up my cooperative. “We don’t have a traffic court? They had to beat him?”

In the seven years I’ve lived in this stronghold of the Afghan south — the erstwhile capital of the Taliban and the focus of their renewed assault on the country — most of my conversations with locals about what’s going wrong have centered on corruption and abuse of power. “More than roads, more than schools or wells or electricity, we need good governance,” said Nurallah during yet another discussion a couple of weeks ago.

He had put his finger on the heart of the problem. We and our friends in Kandahar are thunderstruck at recent suggestions that the solution to the hair-raising situation in this country must include a political settlement with “relevant parties” — read, the Taliban. Negotiating with them wouldn’t solve Afghanistan’s problems; it would only exacerbate them. Ask any Afghan what’s really needed, what would render the Taliban irrelevant, and they’ll tell you: improving the behavior of the officials whom the United States and its allies ushered into power after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

I write this by flickering light, a fat candle at my right elbow and a kerosene lamp on my left. We get only three or four hours of electricity every couple of days, often from 1 to 5 a.m. Still, the bill has to be paid. To do that, you must wait in a total of eight lines in two different buildings. You almost never get through the whole process without hearing an uncouth bark as your turn comes up: “This desk is closing; come back tomorrow.” Due to the electricity shortage, the power department won’t open new accounts. Officially. But for $600 — 15 times the normal fee and a fortune to Afghans — you can get a meter installed anyway.

A friend recently visited the jail in Urozgan Province, north of Kandahar, where he found 54 prisoners. All but six were untried and uncharged and had been languishing there for months or years. A Kandahar public prosecutor told him how a defendant had once offered him the key to a Lexus if he would just refrain from interfering in a case the man had fixed.

BBC survey, September 28, 2008, AlQaeda_Sep08_rpt.pdf (application/pdf Object)

US ‘War on Terror’ Has Not Weakened al Qaeda, Says Global Poll, September 28, 2008

The US‘s `war on terror’ has failed to weaken its prime target al Qaeda, according to people in 22 out of 23 countries surveyed in a new poll for the BBC World Service.

On average only 22 per cent believe that al Qaeda has been weakened, while three in five believe that it has either had no effect (29%) or made al Qaeda stronger (30%). And while negative views of al Qaeda are most common in nearly all of the countries surveyed, this is not the case in Egypt and Pakistan – both pivotal nations in the conflict with al Qaeda. In both of these countries far more have either mixed or positive feelings towards al Qaeda (Egypt 40% mixed and 20% positive, Pakistan 22% mixed and 19% positive) than have negative feelings (Egypt 35%, Pakistan 19%).

Asked who is winning the conflict between al Qaeda and the United States, the predominant view of those polled is that neither the US nor al Qaeda is winning, with 15 countries holding this view. In three countries – Kenya, Nigeria and Turkey – the dominant view is that the US is winning. In no country does more than one in five – 21 per cent in Pakistan – believe that al Qaeda is winning. Views are divided in other countries. On average across all 23 countries just 10 per cent think al Qaeda is winning, 22 per cent think the US is winning, and 47 per cent think neither side is winning.

Even in the United States only 34 per cent believe al Qaeda has been weakened. Fifty-nine per cent believe the `war on terror’ has either had no effect (26%) or has made al Qaeda stronger (33%). Meanwhile, 56 per cent believe neither side is winning the conflict; 31 per cent believe that the United States is winning; 8 per cent believe al Qaeda is winning.

Shooting from the hip doesn’t help – Haaretz editorial, September 24, 2008

The circumstances of Monday night’s incident in Jerusalem have yet to be fully ascertained. Statements from witnesses and police – which indicate that it was a deliberate attack by a terrorist who found himself a convenient target and simple means of execution – contrast with the family’s version of events, according to which this was a car accident involving an inexperienced youth who failed his driving test. If it turns out to have been a terrorist attack, it joins the string of recent attacks in which the perpetrators used their vehicles as weapons.

These attacks, which are attributed to individuals rather than organizations and thus become more difficult to pinpoint in advance, are a reminder of the explosive situation in which Jerusalem in particular and Israel in general find themselves. A series of meetings between the prime minister and the Palestinian leadership created a sense of progress on the diplomatic front. The gradual success of the Palestinian leadership in taking upon itself the responsibility for security in Jenin and other parts of the West Bank and the calm along the southern border create the impression that the era of violence is fading: If there still are Palestinian civilians willing to carry out terrorist attacks, they have become isolated, and thus tolerable, cases. Even if the Shin Bet security service struggles to see them coming, harsh and immediate punitive measures, including the destruction of the terrorists homes, would surely put an end to them.

This is an illusion. The diplomatic discussions between Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, and Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qureia, have not advanced a diplomatic solution. The Israeli promise to improve living conditions in the territories translated into the removal of a few roadblocks and the release of some 200 Palestinian prisoners, but most parts of the West Bank are still subject to stringent restrictions on movement, unemployment is skyrocketing, and economic growth is virtually nonexistent. The calm in Gaza is hanging by a thread, be it because Israel is not fulfilling its obligations, as charged by Hamas, or due to the inner-Palestinian strife in the territories. This is a temporary and fragile lull that is not backed by a strategic and political plan, all the more so since Israel is busy with its own political backyard and a presidential campaign is underway in Washington.

In the meantime, the harm done to the Palestinian populace is felt in every home where the main wage earner cannot get to work, a pregnant mother in labor cannot get to a hospital, or a student is not granted a permit to travel abroad for studies. The motivation to carry out terrorist attacks is increasing. In such conditions, thwarting individual hostile acts is an uphill battle. The defense ministers hasty reaction, blaming the legal system for harming the states ability to respond immediately, seems particularly bizarre. Has razing the homes of terrorists families prevented terror attacks in the past? Has collective punishment quelled the outbreak of the intifada? Even the security services eventually understood that harsh punishments are no cure. At most, they can provide a sense of revenge.

This dangerous and fragile situation does not call for shoot-from-the-hip statements or a political shrug of the shoulders. Even a caretaker government is authorized to make practical decisions that affect the daily life of civilians in the territories and create an atmosphere that will lead to a more positive direction. This way, the government can aid the Palestinian security services in their ongoing efforts against terrorism and perhaps weaken, if not dissolve, the population’s support for those lone terrorists ready to carry out attacks.

Worshiping the Indispensable Nation – by Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch, September 10, 2008
9/11 Plus Seven

by Andrew J. Bacevich

The events of the past seven years have yielded a definitive judgment on the strategy that the Bush administration conceived in the wake of 9/11 to wage its so-called Global War on Terror. That strategy has failed, massively and irrevocably. To acknowledge that failure is to confront an urgent national priority: to scrap the Bush approach in favor of a new national security strategy that is realistic and sustainable – a task that, alas, neither of the presidential candidates seems able to recognize or willing to take up.

On Sept. 30, 2001, President Bush received from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a memorandum outlining U.S. objectives in the War on Terror. Drafted by Rumsfeld’s chief strategist Douglas Feith, the memo declared expansively: “If the war does not significantly change the world’s political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim.” That aim, as Feith explained in a subsequent missive to his boss, was to “transform the Middle East and the broader world of Islam generally.”

Rumsfeld and Feith were co-religionists: Along with other senior Bush administration officials, they worshipped in the Church of the Indispensable Nation, a small but intensely devout Washington-based sect formed in the immediate wake of the Cold War. Members of this church shared an exalted appreciation for the efficacy of American power, especially hard power. The strategy of transformation emerged as a direct expression of their faith.

The members of this church were also united by an equally exalted estimation of their own abilities. Lucky the nation to be blessed with such savvy and sophisticated public servants in its hour of need!

The goal of transforming the Islamic world was nothing if not bold. It implied far-reaching political, economic, social, and even cultural adjustments. At a press conference on Sept. 18, 2001, Rumsfeld spoke bluntly of the need to “change the way that they live.” Rumsfeld didn’t specify who “they” were. He didn’t have to. His listeners understood without being told: “They” were Muslims inhabiting a vast arc of territory that stretched from Morocco in the west all the way to the Moro territories of the Southern Philippines in the east.

Yet boldly conceived action, if successfully executed, offered the prospect of solving a host of problems. Once pacified (or “liberated”), the Middle East would cease to breed or harbor anti-American terrorists. Post-9/11 fears about weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of evildoers could abate. Local regimes, notorious for being venal, oppressive, and inept, might finally get serious about cleaning up their acts. Liberal values, including rights for women, would flourish. A part of the world perpetually dogged by violence would enjoy a measure of stability, with stability promising not so incidentally to facilitate exploitation of the region’s oil reserves. There was even the possibility of enhancing the security of Israel. Like a powerful antibiotic, the Bush administration’s strategy of transformation promised to clean out not simply a single infection but several; or to switch metaphors, a strategy of transformation meant running the table.

Nicholas D. Kristof, Make Diplomacy, Not War, NYTimes.com, August 10, 2008

Iraq and Afghanistan are the messes getting attention today, but they are only symptoms of a much broader cancer in American foreign policy.

A few glimpses of this larger affliction:

¶The United States has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats.

¶This year alone, the United States Army will add about 7,000 soldiers to its total; that’s more people than in the entire American Foreign Service.

¶More than 1,000 American diplomatic positions are vacant because the Foreign Service is so short-staffed, but a myopic Congress is refusing to finance even modest new hiring. Some 1,100 could be hired for the cost of a single C-17 military cargo plane.

In short, the United States is hugely overinvesting in military tools and underinvesting in diplomatic tools. The result is a lopsided foreign policy that antagonizes the rest of the world and is ineffective in tackling many modern problems.

The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 1945, The Manhattan Project’s Interactive History

As with the estimates of deaths at Hiroshima, it will never be known for certain how many people died as a result of the atomic attack on Nagasaki. The best estimate is 40,000 people died initially, with 60,000 more injured. By January 1946, the number of deaths probably approached 70,000, with perhaps ultimately twice that number dead total within five years. For those areas of Nagasaki affected by the explosion, the death rate was comparable to that at Hiroshima.

The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, Manhattan Project

In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan. The bomber’s primary target was the city of Hiroshima, located on the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea. Hiroshima had a civilian population of almost 300,000 and was an important military center, containing about 43,000 soldiers.

The bomber, piloted by the commander of the 509th Composite Group, Colonel Paul Tibbets, flew at low altitude on automatic pilot before climbing to 31,000 feet as it neared the target area. At approximately 8:15 a.m. Hiroshima time the Enola Gay released “Little Boy,” its 9,700-pound uranium bomb, over the city. Tibbets immediately dove away to avoid the anticipated shock wave. Forty-three seconds later, a huge explosion lit the morning sky as Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet above the city, directly over a parade field where soldiers of the Japanese Second Army were doing calisthenics. Though already eleven and a half miles away, the Enola Gay was rocked by the blast. At first, Tibbets thought he was taking flak. After a second shock wave (reflected from the ground) hit the plane, the crew looked back at Hiroshima. “The city was hidden by that awful cloud . . . boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall,” Tibbets recalled. The yield of the explosion was later estimated at 15 kilotons (the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT).

On the ground moments before the blast it was a calm and sunny Monday morning. An air raid alert from earlier that morning had been called off after only a solitary aircraft was seen (the weather plane), and by 8:15 the city was alive with activity — soldiers doing their morning calisthenics, commuters on foot or on bicycles, groups of women and children working outside to clear firebreaks. Those closest to the explosion died instantly,Victim of atomic attack with the pattern of her clothing burned into her back. their bodies turned to black char. Nearby birds burst into flames in mid-air, and dry, combustible materials such as paper instantly ignited as far away as 6,400 feet from ground zero. The white light acted as a giant flashbulb, burning the dark patterns of clothing onto skin (right) and the shadows of bodies onto walls. Survivors outdoors close to the blast generally describe a literally blinding light combined with a sudden and overwhelming wave of heat. (The effects of radiation are usually not immediately apparent.) The blast wave followed almost instantly for those close-in, often knocking them from their feet. Those that were indoors were usually spared the flash burns, but flying glass from broken windows filled most rooms, and all but the very strongest structures collapsed. One boy was blown through the windows of his house and across the street as the house collapsed behind him. Within minutes 9 out of 10 people half a mile or less from ground zero were dead….

No one will ever know for certain how many died as a result of the attack on Hiroshima. Some 70,000 people probably died as a result of initial blast, heat, and radiation effects. This included about twenty American airmen being held as prisoners in the city. By the end of 1945, because of the lingering effects of radioactive fallout and other after effects, the Hiroshima death toll was probably over 100,000. The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.

AP/ABC News: Study Questions US Strategy Against Al-Qaida, July 29, 2008

The United States can defeat al-Qaida if it relies less on force and more on policing and intelligence to root out the terror group’s leaders, a new study contends.

“Keep in mind that terrorist groups are not eradicated overnight,” said the study by the federally funded Rand research center, an organization that counsels the Pentagon.

Its report said that the use of military force by the United States or other countries should be reserved for quelling large, well-armed and well-organized insurgencies, and that American officials should stop using the term “war on terror” and replace it with “counterterrorism.”

“Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests there is no battlefield solution to terrorism,” said Seth Jones, the lead author of the study and a Rand political scientist.

“The United States has the necessary instruments to defeat al-Qaida, it just needs to shift its strategy,” Jones said.

Nearly every ally, including Britain and Australia, has stopped using “war on terror” to describe strategy against the group headed by Osama bin Laden and considered responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 suicide attacks at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

Dick Norton posted a good piece on Samir Kuntar (al-Quntar) on his blog on July 15, 2008. Israel is releasing Kuntar as part of its deal with Hezbollah. In return for Israel’s release of Kuntar and four other Lebanese prisoners–as well as the bodies of eight members of Hezbollah and those of four Palestinians–, Hezbollah is giving Israel what remains of the bodies of Israeli army reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev–as well as the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah provoked by the latter’s abduction of Rosenwasser and Regev. Smadar Haran Kaiser describes Kuntar’s role in slaughtering her family on April 22, 1979 in the following article published in the Washington Post on May 18, 2003:

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. “This is just like what happened to my mother,” I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

At his trial in 1980, Kuntar claimed that Israeli gunfire killed Danny Haran as soldiers burst in the Haran home and that he did not smash Einat Haran’s head with his rifle butt as her mother claims. Kuntar obviously wanted to minimize his own guilt in this case and his testimony does not seem credible.

According to Haaretz, the government of Lebanon has declared Wednesday a national holiday to celebrate the “liberation of prisoners from the jails of the Israeli enemy and the return of the remains of martyrs.” Also according to Haaretz, Kuntar and the other prisoners are to be welcomed at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, President Michel Suleiman, and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

Such a welcome for a man involved in the murder of a four-year-old girl is obscene. It is sickening. Such a welcome for a man involved in an attack that forced a mother to cover her little daughter’s mouth so she would not scream and reveal her presence is obscene. It is sickening.

Haaretz also describes people in Gaza celebrating Kuntar’s release. This too is obscene. This too is sickening.

Jaber Weshah, deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, used to be Samir Kuntar’s cellmate. Haaretz quotes him as saying: “Today is a true day of joy for all Palestinians and all freedom lovers across the world.” This too is obscene. This too is sickening. By celebrating Kuntar’s release, Palestinians simply reinforce right-wing Israeli attempts to deflect the world’s attention from what Israel does to the Palestinians every day.

According to Haaretz, “Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called Kantar an ‘Arab nationalist hero’ and said his release was a great day for the Arab nation.” This too is obscene. This too is sickening. The fact that Kuntar’s release is being celebrated by Palestinians is a great victory for all those determined to deflect attention away from the everyday agony of the Palestinians. It is a great victory for those who seek to make the world forget what Palestinians endure at checkpoints. It is a great victory for all those who seek to portray Palestinian resistance to occupation as mere barbarism.

All of us who condemn what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem must also condemn the murder of little Israeli girls by men like Samir Kuntar. And we must condemn all portrayals of such men as great heroes.

Ann Scott Tyson, Gates Warns of Militarized Policy – washingtonpost.com, July 16, 2008

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned yesterday against the risk of a “creeping militarization” of U.S. foreign policy, saying the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries, with the military playing a supporting role.

“We cannot kill or capture our way to victory” in the long-term campaign against terrorism, Gates said, arguing that military action should be subordinate to political and economic efforts to undermine extremism.

Margaret Nagle, Rethinking Islamic Fundamentalism, UMaine Today Magazine – March/April 2007

Why has American foreign policy in the Middle East failed? Part of the answer, says Munson, is the failure to understand people who do not see the world as it is seen by most Americans. This, in turn, is related to the failure to situate current events in their broader historical context. American policymakers often have failed to understand that the angry rhetoric reverberating in the Muslim world is rooted not just in religion, but also in nationalistic and social grievances.

“We must understand how the other side thinks,” says Munson. “And that’s not just an esoteric, anthropological, ivory tower view, but a fundamental point in understanding international affairs. Foreign policy is not just about natural resources or missiles, it’s about having a sense of others and why they do what they do. If we don’t understand others, we can’t respond appropriately,” a point that Sun Tzu’s The Art of War eloquently made more than 2,500 years ago.

Munson argues that fighting people whose motives one does not understand is like fighting blindfolded. That’s what we are doing in Iraq, he says.

Munson emphasizes that it is a mistake to assume that political movements have only one cause or distinctive feature. He has argued in a series of recent articles that militant Islamic movements definitely do have a fundamentalist dimension. They insist on strict conformity to a sacred text and require that all aspects of life, including the social and political, should conform to sacred scriptures believed to be inerrant and immutable. But Islamic fundamentalism usually also has a nationalist and anti-imperialist dimension. For many Muslim fundamentalists, militant Islam is to some extent a means to an end — overcoming foreign domination.

In the Quran, as well as in the minds of many traditional Muslims today, there is but one explanation for the subjugation of the believer by the unbeliever: God is using the latter to punish the former for his sins, including deviating from his laws, Munson says. Only a return to a strictly Islamic way of life will induce God to free the faithful from the faithless. A return to Islam is thus linked to overcoming foreign domination and a return to cultural identity. In 1972, the Ayatollah Khomeini told followers:

If the Muslim states and peoples had relied on Islam and its inherent capabilities and powers instead of depending on the East (the Soviet Union) and the West, and if they had placed the enlightened and liberating precepts of the Quran before their eyes and put them into practice, then they would not today be captive slaves of the Zionist aggressors, terrified victims of the American Phantoms, and toys in the hands of the accommodating policies of the satanic Soviet Union. It is the disregard of the noble Quran by the Islamic countries that has brought the Islamic community to this difficult situation full of misfortunes and reversals and placed its fate in the hands of the imperialism of the left and the right.

Munson stresses that understanding such rhetoric does not entail endorsing it. He notes that there are many aspects of Islamic militancy that are outrageous and deserve condemnation, notably the horrendous violence against civilians and the anti-Semitism. He describes the Holocaust conference held in Tehran in December 2006 as “sickening.” But he stresses that “it is in the interest of the United States to try to limit the appeal of militant Islamic movements. Invading Muslim countries has precisely the opposite effect, as we can see in Iraq.”

Mandela off U.S. terrorism watch list – CNN.com, July 1, 2008

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former South African President Nelson Mandela is to be removed from a U.S. terrorism watch list under a bill President Bush signed Tuesday.

Mandela and other members of the African National Congress have been on the list because of their fight against South Africa’s apartheid regime, which gave way to majority rule in 1994.

Apartheid was the nation’s system of legalized racial segregation that was enforced by the National Party government between 1948 and 1994.

The bill gives the State Department and the Homeland Security Department the authority to waive restrictions against ANC members.

“He had no place on our government’s terror watch list, and I’m pleased to see this bill finally become law,” said Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

South Africa’s apartheid government had designated the ANC a terrorist organization during the group’s decades-long struggle against whites-only rule. Its members have been barred from receiving U.S. visas without special permission, and the bill Bush signed will lift that requirement, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

“What it will do is make sure that there aren’t any extra hoops for either a distinguished individual, like former President Mandela, or other members of the African National Congress to get a U.S. visa,” Casey said.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Strengthening Extremists, NYTimes.com, June 19, 2008

The yearlong siege of Gaza may soon end with the new cease-fire there, marking the eclipse of one more American-backed Israeli policy that backfired by strengthening extremists.

Here in Gaza, sulfurous with fumes from cars burning cooking grease because the siege has made gasoline scarce, the entire last year of the blockade feels not only morally bankrupt — a case of collective punishment — but also counterproductive. The fragile new truce between Hamas and Israel just might create a new opportunity to stabilize the Palestinian territories, but only if we absorb the lessons of what has gone wrong.

Consider Adham Sharif, a 26-year-old man whose only child, a baby girl named Mariam, had a tiny hole in her heart and needed surgery to repair it. Gaza hospitals were unable to perform such an operation, but doctors said that surgeons in Israel or in neighboring countries could save her.

Iraq, perceived hypocrisy fuel record anti-Americanism: report, June 11, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Anti-Americanism is at record levels thanks to US policies such as the war in Iraq, and Washington’s perceived hypocrisy in abiding by its own democratic values, US lawmakers said Wednesday.

A House of Representatives committee report based on expert testimony and polling data reveals US approval ratings have fallen to record lows across the world since 2002, particularly in Muslim countries and Latin America.

It says the problem arises not from a rejection of US culture, values and power but primarily from its policies, such as backing authoritarian regimes while promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

“Our physical strength has come to be seen not as a solace but as a threat, not as a guarantee of stability and order but as a source of intimidation, violence and torture,” said Bill Delahunt, chairman of the subcommittee on international organizations, human rights and oversight.

“We have dangerously depleted what (former president Ulysses S.) Grant… identified as our greatest source of international power — our reputation for what he called conscience. I would substitute the phrase ‘moral authority’,” Delahunt added.

The report blames specific policies for falling approval ratings, notably the war in Iraq, support for some repressive governments, a perception of bias in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the “torture and abuse of prisoners” in violation of treaty obligations.