Never Apologize, Never Explain

Maher Arar, 36, is a Canadian software engineer. He immigrated with his family from Syria to Canada in 1988, when he was 17. He earned his Bachelor's degree (computer engineering) from McGill University, perhaps the most prestigious university in Canada, and his Master's degree (telecommunications) from a branch of the University of Québec. While at McGill, he met his future wife, who went on to obtain her Ph.D. in finance from McGill. They have two young children. Mr. Arar ran his own consulting firm for some time, and then was employed as a telecommunications engineer by a firm in Ottawa.

In 2002, he and his family vacationed in Tunisia. On the way home to Ottawa, he flew through JFK in New York. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police mistakenly identified Mr. Arar as no longer a Canadian, although he was traveling on a Canadian passport. Also, the RCMP had been conducting a terrorist investigation in Ottawa, and had earlier observed a conversation between Arar and another engineer who happened to be a "person of interest" in the investigation. This engineer -- the one with whom he was seen speaking -- was not himself a suspect, nor, of course, was Mr. Arar.

Nevertheless, based on this information from the RCMP, the United States seized Mr. Arar as he was changing flights at JFK, interrogated him for two weeks in this country, refused him access to an attorney, and then flew him in a small jet to Syria. He was beaten upon arrival in Damascus.

He was imprisoned in a 6' x 3' cell without light, with rats as company, for ten months. He was tortured the entire time, beaten regularly by cables. Syrian authorities shared the results of his "interrogation" with the United States, and were given access to the results of his interrogation by American intelligence. He was released in October 2003, because the Syrians were unable to find any terrorist links. He was returned to Canada, where he has lived since with his family.

His capture and torture apparently was part of the Bush Administration's "rendition" program.

Arar's lawsuit against the United States is on appeal from its dismissal by a lower court, after the Administration invoked the "state secrets" privilege.

The Canadian government apologized for its part in the fiasco in January 2007, after a lengthy and thorough investigation, and paid Amar $10.5 million in compensation, plus his legal fees. Formal apologies were offered by both the RCMP and the Canadian government.

Former Attorney General Gonzales, on behalf of the Bush Administration, denied any evidence of torture, and asserted that Arar's rendition to Syria had been legal and fully within the Administration's rightful powers.

On October 18, 2007, Congressmen from both parties apologized to Mr. Arar and called on the Bush Administration to apologize on behalf of the nation. An Administration spokesman said there were no plans for an apology. Amar remains banned from entry into the United States.

Today, Secretary of State Rice did acknowledge that the matter had been "mishandled." Mistakes were made, apparently, although she did not use those words.

The Bush Administration still has not apologized.

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Information for this report was obtained from Wikipedia, and from two articles in MSNBC.

Enigma Variations

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia," Winston Churchill famously declared in a 1939 radio broadcast. "It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." In today's world, the same might be said of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In both instances, too little is known of the sources of power within the country, too little is known of the motivations of the persons exerting that power, and too little is known of the conflicting pressures to which they are responding. In both cases, our ignorance is partly -- but only partly -- our own fault.

These thoughts are prompted by two conflicting articles appearing in today's press. In the New York Times, Michael Slackman writes from Tehran that the economic hardships and international isolation imposed by America's foreign policy is actually helping the hardliners secure their hold over the nation. The hardliners, led by President Ahmadinejad and the religious leadership, are less afraid of a military strike from the West than they are of a "velvet revolution," similar to those that undermined various Communist regimes. They fear that increased prosperity and contact with the international community would gradually weaken Islamic fundamentalism's hold over the people. Therefore, they have consistently worked to undermine the moderating influence of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and to marginalize him as a political influence in the country.

President Ahmadinejad holds power at the sufferance of the religious leadership, and especially that of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's so-called Supreme Leader. As long as Ahmadinejad's aggressive foreign policy and repressive domestic rule further the religious objectives of the ayatollahs, he will remain useful and will stay in power. So far, Slackman writes, the president retains their confidence. As Ayatollah Khamenei commented last week, in reference to the West's attempts to hold back Iran's development of nuclear capabilities: "Iran will defeat these drunken and arrogant powers using its artful and wise ways."

On the other hand, Barbara Slavin writes from Washington, in USA Today, that opponents of President Ahmadinejad took over two powerful governmental positions this week, constituting a major setback for the president. Rafsanjani, rather than being marginalized, has now been elected president of the Assembly of Experts, a religious convocation of Shiite clerics that appoints the Supreme Leader himself. He is expected to make this assembly a more active governing body. And Ayatollah Khamenei replaced the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful military force in the country and a military force that Bush reportedly wants to designate as a "terrorist organization." The new commander, Mohammed Ali Jafari, is no liberal domestically, but has favored increased negotiations with the United States on various issues, including the nuclear capability issue.

According to an Iran analyst for the U.S. Navy -- for whatever that opinion is worth -- Khamenei is fed up with President Ahmadinejad's confrontational approach toward the West, and is acting to moderate his approach to foreign policy.

Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice.

My instincts tell me that isolation of countries, economically and politically, only tightens a dictator's power by giving him an external threat against which to rally his country. At the same time, all the economic hardships are borne by the very citizens we say we are hoping to help. Cuba is the obvious example of such a foreign policy that has achieved nothing, nothing except securing votes from south Florida for American politicians.

Foreign policy is an art, however, not a science. What works in one instance may be counter-productive in another. Our uncertainty is heightened in situations like Iran -- as in Stalinist Russia -- where we have so little reliable information regarding the conflicting political ideologies, opposing personalities, and economic forces at work.

"May you live in interesting times," goes the ancient Chinese curse. We certainly do. Stability in Iran -- a fascinating and often underrated civilization -- would be a major favorable development for our world. It is unclear, at this time, whether President Bush's policy toward Iran will be his one significant foreign policy success, or whether it will have recklessly unified the Iranian people for years to come behind repressive political and religious rulers.

Empathy: Its Uses in Foreign Policy

em·pa·thy

[em-puh-thee] –noun

the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

The Sunday New York Times seems full of stories today that discuss the on-going meltdown of the Bush administration, stories provoked by this week's hasty resignation of Karl Rove, and by the continuing bad news from Iraq.

What went wrong over there? I don't discount the importance of conflicting intellectual approaches to geopolitics. But I wonder if many of this administration's difficulties don't stem from Republicans' traditionally poor sense of empathy for persons from backgrounds unlike their own.

We usually think of "empathy" as benefitting the person with whom we empathize. But the ability to get "inside the skin" of others also benefits the empathizer. Every salesman, businessman, attorney, advertiser, public relations consultant needs to understand how others think and feel. No one ever disputes this need when dealing with other Americans. And yet, even a highly successful American business frequently falls flat on its face when it attempts to sell goods and services abroad. Its sales force fails to understand the minds, customs, emotions, and motivations of the people to whom they're trying to make the sale.

"You gotta know the territory," as the itinerant salesmen sang in "The Music Man."

The Bush administration didn't know the territory before it went into Iraq. I doubt if its officials do now. Back in 2003, the organizers of the Iraq debacle seemed almost gleeful in discounting and ignoring the opinions of career officers in the State Department, persons who may have had some sense of the history, culture, ideals, taboos, aspirations, and daily lives of Iraqis and other Arab peoples. I pick on the Bush administration, because I disagree with it in so many respects, but this same failure is endemic historically in American foreign policy. Not understanding what makes others tick is a very human weakness, but if we are to have a successful foreign policy, it's a weakness we can't afford.

The British Foreign Office, stuffy as it may have been at the height of the Empire, nevertheless put up with eccentrics like Lawrence of Arabia, Arab head dress and all, just so long as his expertise remained of use. We desperately need such expertise, wherever we can find it.

Republicans need to recognize in themselves -- and I speak only in generalities, of course -- an even greater than average tendency to narrow their horizons to the set of people and peoples who look, act, dress, talk, and feel like themselves. Republicans have to force themselves -- in their role as government officials, regardless of their preferences in their private lives -- to expand their universe, to learn to understand -- to empathize with, if you will -- peoples very unlike themselves. Over the years, Republicans can expect to control foreign policy roughly fifty percent of the time. As a nation, we can't afford another two presidential terms of foreign policy like those now approaching an end.

Most of us -- at least, those of us apt to be reading this blog -- spent some time, during or shortly after college, bumming around foreign countries. Those were times we rubbed shoulders with all kinds of foreigners, both locals and other travelers, because we didn't have the money to shut ourselves off in expensive hotels. I think that experience provided us with a sense, at least, that human life is rich in the multitude of ways it can be led, that humans can live lives in ways very different from our own with very different objectives, and still live lives that they find deeply meaningful. They may envy our wealth and the comfort of our lives, but many are unwilling to buy our external affluence by abandoning the riches of their own internal traditions.

Maybe all future foreign policy appointees, when facing Senate confirmation hearings, should be forced to respond to certain questions: How many youth hostels have you ever stayed in, and in what parts of the world? With how many local families have you lived abroad? Ever been so broke overseas that you hitchhiked? With how many fellow students in foreign countries did you ever discuss politics, economics, jobs, education, religion, love, sex, family life -- not as a debate but kicking ideas around informally, over a beer or lying on your backs staring at the stars? How have all these experiences affected you?

Republicans like "litmus tests." This might be a good one to implement.

Photo: Future voters. Kargil, India. 2005.

After the Neocons, What?

Illustration (c) The Economist 2007

American idealism remains as essential as ever, perhaps even more so. But in the new world order, its role will be to provide the faith to sustain America through all the ambiguities of choice in an imperfect world. Traditional American idealism must combine with a thoughtful assessment of contempory realities to bring about a usable definition of American interests. Henceforth, ... the fulfillment of America's ideals will have to be sought in the patient accumulation of partial successes.

--Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (1994)

In this week's Economist magazine, the columnist "Lexington" points out the amazingly swift decline in influence of the Republican "neoconservative" movement over the past three years. Rumsfeld "resigned"; Wolfowitz disgraced by nepotism; Libby convicted; Conrad Black on trial for fraud; Dick Cheney himself so unpopular that even BYU students have protested against his appearance on campus. Neoconservatism began, Lexington observes, as a "critique of the arrogance of power." It ironically ends in confusion and disgrace, resulting from its adherents' own arrogance.

The British magazine suggests that American foreign policy is now returning to the "realism" that British diplomacy has always embraced. "Britain does not have friends, only interests," remarked the nineteenth century prime minister, Lord Palmerston. Lexington feels that Condolezza Rice herself "is returning to her 'realist' roots at the State Department, now that Mr. Rumsfeld is out of her hair."

Well, I'm not so confident that Condi's embrace of neoconservatism was merely a tactical tool that permitted her to survive in a neoconservative administration. However, I'm willing, for a short period, to give her the benefit of the doubt. (I may just have a weakness for attractive Stanford grads who play Brahms when they aren't plotting invasions.) We shall see.

In any event, a full Palmerstonian "realism" is not the only alternative to our current foreign policy of imposing "democracy" on other cultures by devastating them. Henry Kissinger, who never ranked high in my pantheon of heroes -- but certainly was no idiot, either -- pointed the way to a more "nuanced" (the word that drives George Bush crazy) foreign policy in his history of American diplomacy. If "realism" is conceived as a foreign policy whose only objective is maintaining American security in a hostile world -- or more broadly, as also protecting American business interests abroad -- we have not pursued a purely realistic foreign policy for many decades, if ever.

American diplomacy has always been concerned with pursuing both friends and interests.

Most Americans care about the welfare of people throughout the world. They've proved their concern within the past two or three years by their outpouring of contributions to aid victims of the tsunami in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia, and of the earthquake in Kashmir. They care about people living in areas that have no oil, no wealth, no conceivable strategic value to American geopolitics -- places like Darfur in Africa. When Americans seem not to care, it is more apt to be because they do not know of human suffering, not because they don't care about it.

The first duty of foreign policy, of course, is always to protect against direct threats to the security of the United States. But this country is the undisputed superpower of the world. Threats to national security are not the major concern that they were during the Cold War. (Terrorist threats pose what is largely a police problem, I would argue, not a foreign policy problem.) Our country is therefore free to pursue idealistic goals as well -- promoting freedom from poverty and starvation, minimizing threats of warfare, encouraging development of democratic forms of government that are consistent with each country's culture and values.

As Kissinger suggested, such a foreign policy can't be based on military threats, let alone military invasions. It can't be based on hostile embargoes and isolation, such as we have futilely imposed on Cuba for nearly a half century. Instead, it should be based on careful delivery of foreign aid, on help with education, on encouragement of other countries in developing their own skills and resources. It should be based on enthusiastically inviting foreign study in the United States, and the study overseas of American students -- not on crippling such international student exchanges by impossible visa requirements and quotas. It should be based on a sincere effort -- by government and citizens -- to appreciate the values of other cultures, a willingness to work with other cultures within those values, while maintaining faith in our own values, and the humility to recognize that other nations have histories far longer than our own. The temporary fact that their people do not all own iPods does not mean that their national (or tribal) experiences have been worthless, or have taught them nothing.

And as Kissinger concludes, patience is a virtue. A series of gradual successes should be our goal, not the overnight kind of "success" that we sometimes seem to think we must achieve by invading a nation, or assassinating its leaders. Societies evolve, they rarely change radically within a decade. Like every other country, we have the right to encourage such evolution. We have no right to impose it, and we have little hope of long-term success when we try.

The neocons waited for decades for their moment. They seized the opportunity that the Bush adminstration provided, botched it, demonstrated the fallacies of their ideas, and are now getting the boot. Let's pray for a more carefully reasoned foreign policy, more consistent with American ideals and less impatient in its demands for instant success, in the years to come.

Birth of a Wallflower

[T]he Bush administration prefers talking to nobody unless it finds somebody who thinks more or less the way it does. And folks like that are fewer and fewer.

--Christopher Dickey (Newsweek)

Mr. Dickey sums up succinctly a major theme of present U.S. (i.e., Bush's) foreign policy. He compares present-day America to a stalled semi, blocking traffic in the middle of the freeway: You can't ignore it, "but if you can squeeze by, you do, and a lot of the time you’re honking your horn."

Read today's news. Speaker Pelosi visits Syria. Syria is a major power in the Middle East, centrally located, and critical to the peace process. But Syria is naughty, according to this administration. VP Cheney appears all red-faced, hopping up and down, screaming, and generally throwing a tantrum because Pelosi is talking to Syria.

Or take Iran. Sure, it's a country led by an erratic president, with real power held by conservative mullahs. But it's a huge country, non-Arab, with a society that's far more Western, middle-class, and historically sympathetic to our values than that of Iraq.

Everyone in this country (not just Bush) is totally confused at what's going on politically behind the scenes in Iran. We desperately need to understand Iranians better, and to make personal contacts across their entire political and religious spectrum. But no way! Iran is part of Bush's "Axis of Evil." Official -- even informal -- contacts are out of the question. So we beg the Saudis -- a nation that, one day, you just know, will cause us problems -- to find out for us what's going on and to let us know all the gossip.

"Betty, I'm not talking to Heather. She's a brat! So pleaaaase ... do me a big favor and find out if Heather's still friends with Trisha, and if she's REALLY gonna go out with Justin, ok?"

Mr. Dickey is overly generous in comparing the U.S. to a stalled trucker. We are more like the spoiled little girl who turns up her nose at other kids who aren't "good enough" for her. Soon, she's talking only to a couple of hangers-on, non-threatening kids who don't have other friends.

The poor little rich girl inevitably ends up in tears; no one ever bothers inviting her to their parties anymore.

We may be reaching the point where other nations throw their own party in the Middle East, serving barrels of petroleum for refreshments, and absent-mindedly "forget" to invite the U.S. and its pathetic little shadow, the U.K.