SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010
Obama’s disconnect In the Mideast, the personal touch is missing
by Jim Hoagland
and a vastly charitable reading of hu- man nature. Unfortunately, they are not anchored in an equally steady under- standing of — or feeling for — the frac- tious, grasping, always fascinating peo- ple of the region. No single prescription or set of princi- ples can cope simultaneously with the needs, desires or fantasies of the Arabs, Jews, Persians, Kurds, Turks, Berbers and others who are slotted, for policy and journalistic purposes, into one re- gional designation. The president’s ef- fort to put his outreach to “the Islamic world” at the center of U.S. foreign policy fails to take account of the intriguing and frequently murderous diversity within that world. That is a personal and political loss for Obama, a talented young leader whose other accomplishments are impressive. Failure to connect at the human level de- prives him of effective policies and the fun that can come in dealing with the na- tions we lump together as the Middle East. The volatility and extremes of per- sonal relations — people who lavish hos- pitality and warmth one moment can form a lifelong grudge the next — stir an adrenalin rush not present in relations with other parts of the world. Take the unproductive zigs and zags of
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Obama’s efforts on Israeli-Palestinian peace. They might have been avoided, or at least unbent, had he formed his prin- ciples by getting to know the protago- nists better, rather than insisting on them adopting his principles first. Oba- ma is due to pass the second anniversary of his election without having set foot in Israel or the West Bank. Or take Iran, where Obama’s words and deeds still fail to reflect the desper- ate heroism of the resistance movement or the rulers’ fanaticism and tyrannical character. It does a disservice to the hu- manity of Iran’s simmering revolt to cite sanctions as the cause of unrest there, as the administration did last week. Sanc- tions play a role, but not the dominant role in the popular uprising. Or read his emotionally inert speech last week on the end of the U.S. combat role in Iraq this month. It lacks any feel for the human successes or horrors that Iraqis, Americans and others have scored or suffered since the 2003 in- vasion. It misses even the suspense hanging over an Iraqi future without sig- nificant U.S. involvement.
resident Obama’s Middle East ini- tiatives are moored in clear and just principles, soul-lifting oratory
Nowhere is the lack of personal di- mension in U.S. diplomacy more evident than in the strategic neglect of northern Iraq’s Kurds, a people Americans can proudly claim to have liberated from Saddam Hussein’s genocidal fury. The gloomy government and journalistic retrospectives being churned out largely neglect the economic progress and rela- tive political stability that the 5 million to 6 million people of Kurdistan have fashioned out of Hussein’s overthrow. It is not simply good news being no
news. The Kurds are a non-Arab minor- ity, making up about 17 percent of Iraq’s population. Rather than anger chauvin- istic Arab governments (including the fractured one in Baghdad), Washington has ignored quiet Kurdish overtures to establish strong and direct security rela- tions with the Kurdistan Regional Gov- ernment headed by Massoud Barzani in the wake of this summer’s drawdown. The Obama team, reflecting an inherent American preference for centralized fed- eral governance, has also shown little sympathy for Barzani’s desire to estab- lish greater local authority over oil and other natural resources. “Now is the time for the U.S. to tell us
what it means by a long-term relation- ship with the Kurds,” Fuad Hussein, Bar- zani’s chief of staff, said during a recent visit to Washington. “We have made clear our ideas. Now it is for the U.S. to decide.” There are also strategic reasons for
the United States to show greater inter- est in and understanding of the Kurds’ commendable efforts to control their fu- ture. As Hussein told an audience at the Atlantic Council here, Turkey’s business and political elites have established strong ties to Barzani’s regional govern- ment after years of conflict. Iraq’s Kurds have also worked out a peaceful modus vivendi with their Iranian neighbors to the east and could be of help if Obama’s pursuit of dialogue with Tehran is to get on track. The emergence of a stable, largely de- tached Iraqi Kurdistan wedged between Turkey and Iran establishes a geograph- ic belt of non-Arab Islamic leaderships who increasingly share interests. U.S. ability to influence Iran’s government seems to be nonexistent, and its influ- ence is waning in Turkey. It is a good time, Mr. President, to get to know the Kurds — and their ambitions. Israel and the West Bank are not the only spots in the Middle East worth a visit next year.
The writer is a contributing editor to The Post. His e-mail address is jimhoagland@
washpost.com.
POST PARTISAN
Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at
washingtonpost.com/postpartisan
RUTH MARCUS
Back off Michelle Obama’s vacation
Let’s stipulate: A five-star resort on the Spanish Costa del Sol was probably not the first choice of White House spinmeisters for a mother-daughter getaway. Especially when the getaway included an entourage staying at the Hotel Villa Padierna, where rooms start at $330 a night, and photos of Michelle Obama strolling in Marbella wearing an off-the-shoulder number by Jean Paul Gaultier. “The first lady is on a private trip,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week. “She is a private citizen and is the mother of a daughter on a private trip. And I think I’d leave it at that.” He wishes. Technically, the first lady may be a
private citizen. In actuality, she isn’t. She can’t be; see, for example, the Se- cret Service contingent that accompa- nies her, private trip or not private trip. This is a simple fact of modern presi- dential family life. So as a political matter, the trip to
DAVID S. BRODER
McConnell’s Senate defense I
t was an odd but intriguing experi- ence to sit at a press breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor last week and listen as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell strongly rebut- ted one of my recent columns, implicitly endorsed the message of another and sent a disquieting signal about the pros- pects that might follow a Republican vic- tory in the midterm elections. The opening question to the Kentucky
senator from one of my colleagues was about the criticisms of the Senate’s per- formance detailed in the latest issue of the New Yorker and summarized in my Thursday column. McConnell, admirably candid, made it clear that he did not agree with any of it. The Senate, far from failing the country, is “operating very much as the Founders intended,” he said. The procedural delays that kept the
Senate preoccupied for 18 months on two big bills, health care and financial reform, and delayed until next year — or later — a dozen others passed by the
House are nothing to lament, he said. The delays simply reflect the philosophi- cal divisions in the country provoked by President Obama’s ambitious agenda. And the complaints about the decline of
The Senate minority leader says, “I don’t think we have a collegiality problem.”
civility, voiced by many of the senators interviewed by George Packer, the au- thor of the New Yorker article, and ech- oed in my own experience, are not a cause for alarm. “I don’t think we have a collegiality problem,” McConnell said, citing his own warm feelings toward Majority Leader Harry Reid and retiring Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, another Democrat. McConnell ascribed much of the dis- tress both Packer and I had recorded to the natural impatience of new members. The Senate, he said, “takes a bit of get- ting used to.” But if they stick it out,
Spain was not a good idea. You don’t need Dick Morris — who famously polled the Clintons’ vacation plans and pushed Jackson Hole over Martha’s Vineyard — to tell you it’s not going to play well at a time of 9.5 percent un- employment. But I also don’t begrudge Michelle Obama the trip, and I’d just as soon not have first family vacations determined by focus groups. I’m a big fan of moth- er-daughter — or father-daughter, for that matter — trips. I’m a big fan of for- eign travel. School’s out. It can’t be that the only acceptable activity in stressful economic times is a first family stayca- tion. Stick around the White House and straighten the closets, maybe repaint a bedroom? If Michelle and Sasha had hung out
at home, not one more American would have a job, not one-hundredth of a per- centage point would be added to the gross domestic product. Yes, her travel required a government plane and Se- cret Service resources, but that would be true wherever she went. It was true when George W. Bush made 77 visits to his ranch in Crawford and spent all or part of 490 days there during his presi- dency, according to CBS News’ Mark Knoller, official tallier of presidential downtime.
KLMNO
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A15 The glacial
pace of Justice Agency is on the sidelines of civil rights era probes
by Hank Klibanoff A KAZBEK BASAYEV/REUTERS
A girl in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s capital, walks past the turret of a wrecked tank from the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.
relations with Georgia by John McCain T
hough disagreements remain over how the conflict began, there is no denying that two
years ago this weekend, Russian troops crossed an internationally rec- ognized border and invaded Georgia. They attacked all of the country with strategic bombers, pushed deep into its sovereign territory, displaced nearly 127,000 ethnic Georgians from their homes, recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, and established a military oc- cupation that remains in effect. Much has changed in the past two years — but not for the better. Russia not only occupies Georgian territory but is building military bases there, denying access to humanitarian mis- sions and monitors, permitting the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in South Ossetia, and working to fortify the administrative boundary lines of the breakaway regions into hardened borders. More than 100,000 ethnic Georgians who fled Russia’s invasion remain in a situation of effective dis- placement, according to U.N. esti- mates. Even now, Russia is in vio- lation of the cease-fire commitments it made with French President Nico- las Sarkozy.
Despite living under constant Rus- sian threat, Georgia continues to move forward. Nearly 1,000 Georgian troops are fighting alongside us, without caveats, in the toughest parts of Afghanistan. Georgia is strength- ening the rule of law, fighting corrup- tion and expanding an economy that the World Bank considers the 11th- best place in the world to do busi- ness. Mayoral elections this year in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, were internationally praised as free and fair. While Georgia’s political reforms are a work in progress, European Par- liament representatives called the Tbilisi election “a real step toward the democratic development of the country.” In Russia, however, human rights
advocates continue to be threatened, abused and even assassinated. Just last weekend peaceful demonstra- tors, including former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, were beaten and arrested for exercising basic hu- man rights guaranteed in the Rus- sian Constitution. If President Dmi- try Medvedev wants a model for po- litical and economic modernization, he could look to Georgia. And if the Obama administration is looking for a relationship that really needs a “re- set,” it should look to Georgia, too. The administration has appeared more eager to placate an autocratic Russia than to support a friendly Georgian democracy living under the long shadow of its aggressive neigh- bor. It has lavished Medvedev with long phone calls and frequent meet- ings, with only modest foreign policy
gains to show for it. Meanwhile, the administration has demonstrated lit- tle willingness to engage with Geor- gia’s leadership, to further its NATO aspirations, to help rebuild its de- fenses or, until recently, even to call Russia’s troop presence in Georgia what it is — an occupation — let alone pressure Russia to withdraw. The White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently made some encouraging statements in sup- port of Georgia; now, they should turn these good words into better policies. If Medvedev is serious about his vi- sion of a Russia guided by the rule of law, he could bring his government into compliance with the interna- tional agreement he made to return Russian forces to their prewar posi- tions outside Georgia. For its part, the Obama administration could ral- ly the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to develop a road map with Russia to end the oc- cupation of Georgia — an incre- mental approach that could lead to the withdrawal of Russian troops, the return of displaced persons and the restoration of Georgia’s territorial in- tegrity. If Russia does not make prog- ress, there should be consequences: Medvedev must know that coopera- tion on Georgia is a U.S. priority and that if Russia does not deliver on our priorities, he should not expect the United States to deliver on his priori- ties, such as accession to the World Trade Organization. Another area where Georgia needs
U.S. support is in rebuilding its de- fenses. Georgia is doing more fight- ing in Afghanistan than much of the NATO alliance it wishes to join. Yet it has been a struggle to get the admin- istration to provide Georgian troops heading into combat even basic equipment, armored vehicles and re- placement parts. Beyond this short- term assistance, Georgia needs long- term support to provide for its own defense. This is likely to entail anti- tank capabilities, air defenses, early- warning radar and other defensive systems that should not be miscon- strued as U.S. endorsement for any Georgian use of force against its sepa- ratist regions. Georgia will always be less powerful than Russia, but that is no reason to leave it vulnerable two years after a Russian invasion. For all the damage it has done to
Georgia, and its threats to do more, Russia has failed to achieve its stra- tegic objectives: The democratic gov- ernment of Georgia has survived and is thriving. The U.S.-Russia relation- ship should enhance this success, not jeopardize it. We have an opportunity to support Georgia’s emergence as a strong, whole and free nation — but only if we remember who our real friends are.
The writer is a Republican senator from Arizona.
Time to ‘reset’
ttorney General Eric Holder is circulating in Congress his second report on the Jus- tice Department’s efforts to solve 109 mur- der cases in the South during the 1950s and ’60s that appear to have been racially motivated. What began as a Justice Department initiative in 2006 to investigate cold cases became a mandate when the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act became law in 2008. “We believe that we have made great progress this year,” the report concludes. The department prosecuted two cases, both holdovers from before the initiative, and closed 54 without prosecution. The report doesn’t address the 53 other cases
but devotes many of its 12 pages to throat- clearing, describing the processes Justice has un- dertaken to get ready to organize, to prepare, to gear up and to gather the information it would need to investigate cases it should have resolved over the past 50 years. Fifteen times in 12 pages the report touts Jus- tice and FBI “outreach” and “reaching out” to black establishment organizations and at univer- sity and government conferences — as though that is where cases against Ku Klux Klansmen are going to be cracked. In short, the report is a view from where Justice and the FBI seem to be sit- ting: the sidelines. The Justice Department has a good track rec- ord of putting Klan terrorists behind bars when they get into court. But it has had trouble turning long-standing pleas and evidence from victims’ families, as well as the hundreds of thousands of civil rights cold-case records in its files, into active investigations, witness and evidence develop- ment, and courtroom showdowns. Justice and the FBI have not, on their own,
generated a single case from the list of 109, or from many other murders in their voluminous files. If Congress’s mandate meant hard-charging investigations, lawmakers may be surprised at Justice’s self-description of a more passive role: “The Department stands ready to lend our assis- tance, expertise, and resources to assist in the in- vestigation and possible prosecution of these matters.” Every case that Justice has successfully pros-
ecuted has been the result of work by in- vestigative reporters. The killers of Medgar Evers; the four little girls in the Birmingham church; Vernon Dahmer; Ben Chester White; and Mi- chael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman would not have been prosecuted and convicted without the discoveries made by re- porter Jerry Mitchell of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss. Aformer Alabama state trooper, James Bonard
Fowler, is under indictment for killing Jimmie Lee Jackson in February 1965 — the shooting that triggered Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to- Montgomery march — only because Anniston Star reporter John Fleming revealed that Fowler admitted pulling the trigger. Unrepentant Klansman James Ford Seale is in jail for torturing and killing black teenagers Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee in southwest Mississippi in 1964 because of extraor- dinary digging by Canadian Broadcasting Corp. journalist David Ridgen and Moore’s brother, Thomas. Armed with video cameras, old FBI documents and moxie, the men discovered that Seale, who for years had been reported dead, was in fact alive and that another Klansman who had witnessed the black men being whipped was will- ing to testify against Seale. For more than three years, law professors Janis
McDonald and Paula Johnson of Syracuse Uni- versity and Margaret Burnham of Northeastern University, aided by their students, have broken important ground, working at a pace and with a passion far exceeding anything Justice or the FBI has shown. Rarely do they or the investigative re- porters and documentary filmmakers I work with through the Civil Rights Cold Case Project (
www.coldcases.org) come across FBI tracks. Our experience also suggests the FBI isn’t standing as ready as the Justice report says. Stan- ley Nelson, editor of the Concordia Sentinel weekly in Ferriday, La., has identified a number of witnesses, by name, in the 1964 arson-murder of Frank Morris, the black owner of a shoe repair shop there. The FBI has let months or years go by before seeking out those witnesses. Nelson has written extensively about a little- known Klan offshoot, the Silver Dollar Group, that operated with impunity in eastern Louisiana and southwest Mississippi in the mid-1960s and that may have been responsible for three mur- ders still on the FBI list. Two sons of a late Klans- man, Sonny and Leland Boyd, were 19 and 16 when their father helped form the group; their memories of being at the Shamrock Inn when the group was formed, of hauling explosives to their attic and of watching Klansmen test explosives by blowing up tree stumps at Sunday fish fries dom- inated Nelson’s front page in the winter of 2008- 09.
these newcomers will learn to love the old rules, he said, and abandon their foolish impulse to change them. To say that McConnell left me skepti- cal is no surprise, because I know that while he’s right about what is bothering many newcomers, frustration is also the force that is sending Evan Bayh of Indi- ana, a two-term, 12-year veteran and the son of a former senator, into early retire- ment. Much as I differed with McConnell’s
defense of the status-quo Senate, I have to agree with several of the other points he made at the breakfast. He is right when he says that the Senate tends to be at its best when the party ratios are rela- tively close — say 55 to 45 — rather than as lopsided as they have been during Obama’s first two years. A more-even split encourages dealing
between the parties in the center of the political spectrum, and it may very well return if Republicans make the gains now widely forecast for November. McConnell confirmed at the breakfast
that one day earlier, he had had his first ever one-on-one private meeting with Obama at the White House. And he fleshed out what I had gathered from my own earlier visit to the White House and reported in another column, namely, an active interest developing on the part of the president in reaching out to congres- sional Republicans for help on the 2011- 12 agenda. McConnell said he could foresee alli- ances with Obama on trade issues, on development of nuclear power and elec- tric vehicles, and, most important, on disciplining the federal budget. But then he threw a curve by endors- ing the idea that the 14th Amendment guarantee of U.S. citizenship to every child born in this country, whatever the child’s parentage, should be examined in congressional hearings. That is a radical change, freighted with emotional bag- gage, and if this is an example of what it would mean to have more Republicans on Capitol Hill, watch out.
davidbroder@washpost.com
The FBI has never called them. Worse, Sonny Boyd has said that when he called an FBI resident agent in Louisiana offering to tell what he knows, the agent said that unless Boyd knew specifically who killed Frank Morris, he wasn’t interested. That agent has been replaced. But his successor has been given little time to probe civil rights murders over the past year. Too many families whose relatives were killed by the Klan have waited too long. Perpetrators, witnesses and powerful narratives of history are dying every day. “I’ve waited 44 years for this phone call,” the daughter of Clifton Walker, gunned down in Woodville, Miss., in early 1964, blurted out when someone called in March 2008 for information about her dad’s murder. The caller was Civil Rights Cold Case reporter Ben Greenberg. Two years later, the Walker fami- ly still hopes to hear from the FBI.
Hank Klibanoff, a journalism professor at Emory University, is managing editor of the Civil Rights Cold Case Project and co-author of “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation,” which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in history.
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