The United States is the world's only military superpower and has the globe's largest economy. Yet, by some measures, the US is a second-rate industrial nation - at best. (CS Monitor)

The High price of Friendship

ACCORDING to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the United States has engaged in more multinational operations since the end of the cold war than it did in the preceding 90 years. Relying on one’s partners to fight wars makes sense. After all, it is better to fight with your friends at your side than alone, right?

Wrong.
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This partnership has come at a price. At President Bush’s request, in May 2005 Congress created a $200 million Coalition Solidarity Fund that supports coalition partners in Afghanistan and Iraq. For example, Estonia received $2.5 million in Coalition Solidarity Fund money to support its troops — about 40 in Iraq and 80 in Afghanistan. Albania, with its 120 or so troops in Iraq and 35 or so in Afghanistan, received $6 million, as did the Czech Republic, which has roughly 100 troops in Iraq and 60 in Afghanistan. (The Czechs are expected to withdraw their troops from Iraq by the end of the year while sending approximately 100 new troops to Afghanistan.)
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Yes, wartime situations are fluid and troop deployments are not the sum total of partners’ contributions. But a new standard shouldn’t be hard to discern: the United States should use coalition warfare when it reduces the costs of prosecuting war, not when it greatly increases them. If a coalition is to serve any function other than augmenting one’s war-fighting capacity, we should think twice before forming it. (NYT Op-Ed byPatricia Weitsman)

Najib Mahfuz and the Muslim Brotherhood

Fuad Ajami expressed his surprise at the Muslim Brotherhood kind words for Najib Mahfuz. His comments was part of a segment on BBC America World News dedicated to Mahfuz this evening.

Ajami could not recall the first critic ever to hail the rising star Mahfuz was none other than Syyed Qutub. In the 1940's Qutub wrote several reviews of Mahfuz's novels Kifah Tibah, Khan al-Khalili and al-Qahirah al-Jadidiah. All his reviews were published in al-Risalah in 1944, 1945 and 1946 respectively.

SpiralFrog, a new music download destination, has signed an agreement with Universal Music Group (UMG), the world's leading music company, to make UMG's extensive catalog available for legal downloading in the US and Canada via SpiralFrog's advertising-supported service.

SpiralFrog will offer users of its no-cost web-based service the ability to legally download music by many of the world's most popular and award-winning artists. (Link)

at the Gibsons, with the Yanceys, Glass, Tyson & Gruben - Sunday Aug. 27, 2006

Will the real Hassan Nasrallah, please stand up

There are 32 Hassan Nasrallahs in the telephone book. But that is the tip of the iceberg because the book lists only land lines, which hardly anyone in this cellphone-crazed country uses anymore.

The other day a journalist doing street interviews asked for a man’s name and was told “Hassan Nasrallah.” The man somewhat sheepishly explained that it was in fact his name and that there were lots of people named Hassan Nasrallah.

So perhaps it is not surprising that even Israel's elite commando unit became confused. It staged a daring raid on the Hezbollah stronghold in Baalbek in the early morning darkness of Aug. 2, killing at least 10 people and carrying off five suspected guerrillas captured in a house.

But the house belonged to Hassan Nasrallah the plasterer rather than Hassan Nasrallah the Hezbollah leader.

At any rate, Israel released all five captives overnight and on Tuesday evening they were being debriefed at the Lebanese Army headquarters in Yarze, in the hills overlooking Beirut.
“We captured five people we thought were involved with Hezbollah,” explained an Israeli official who asked not to be identified. “Under questioning it turned out we were wrong. So we turned them over to the UN.” (NYT)

Arm yourself against malicious websites (CS Monitor)

يقول صاحبى: والله غالب على أمره

هذه رسالة حق وصدق وعدل من كتاب الله إلى الأمة اللبنانية الكريمة العظيمة الشامخة الأبية تعزيها وتعززها وتعِزها في محنتها الطاحنة الكبرى، يثبت الله بها الذين صدقوه ما وعدوه "بالقول الثابت في الحياة الدنيا وفي الآخرة" ويضل بها الظالمين؛ "ويفعل الله ما يشاء". وهكذا يعرف بها المرابطون موقفهم، في هذا العالم الجديد الذي يظل يحكمه قانون الغاب الأزلي القديم؛ من ذلك المجتمع الدولي الذي يتسلى به ويلهو دائما ويلعب هذا الكيان الكوميدي العالمي المسمى "مجلس الأمن"، والذي هو حقا أقرب ما يكون إلى مجلس الأنس

يقول المولى سبحانه

"الذين قال لهم الناس إن الناس قد جمعوا لكم فاخشوهم فزادهم إيمانا وقالوا حسبنا الله ونعم الوكيل. فانقلبوا بنعمة من الله وفضل لم يمسسهم سوء واتبعوا رضوان الله والله ذو فضل عظيم. إنما ذلكم الشيطان يخوِّف أولياءه فلا تخافوهم وخافون ِ إن كنتم مؤمنين". آل عمران الآيات 173 – 175

هذه تذكرة، بوعد الله، لعلها تصل كاملة إلى كثيرين ممن يهمهم الأمر ويعنيهم؛ ولا يُخلف الله وعده : "والله غالب على أمره ولكن أكثر الناس لا يعلمون"، "ولا تحسبن الله غافلا عما يعمل الظالمون". وصدق الله مولانا العظيم، إذ يقول سبحانه

سنستدرجهم من حيث لا يعلمون. وأملي لهم إن كيدي متين

بقلم: د. ف ع أ

Falfal Club Birthday

To Susan Yancey and Charles Gibson (2/3 of the Falafel Club), Happy Birthday

The Link is to a segment from Keith Olbermann's program "Countdown". The subject of the segment is the politics of fear practiced by the Bush Administration. (Video Link) (Transcript Link)

More on the missing Egyptian students from the Associated Press.

Six of 11 Egyptian students who failed to turn up as scheduled for a Montana university exchange program last week have been apprehended and authorities said on Thursday none of them posed a terror threat. (AP)

The White House, and in particular White House advisors who belong to the neoconservative movement, allegedly encouraged Israel to attack Syria as an expansion of its action against Hizbullah, in Lebanon. (CS Monitor)

Baghdad Morgue Tallies 1,815 Bodies in July (WP)

One of 11 missing Egyptian students (Eslam Ibrahim Mohamed El-Dessouki) was arrested in Minneapolis (Seattle Times)

Two more Egyptian exchange students who failed to show up for a program atMontana State University in Bozeman have been nabbed. The F.B.I. says the students surrendered to police in New Jersey. One of the other eleven students surrendered Wednesday in Minneapolis. (KBZK TV)

Aba Dhar Muhammad Salih is a Baghdad sign maker who used to make signs for small businesses and professionals. Now he designs obituary banners for victims of Iraq's chaotic post-Saddam period. (NPR Morning Edition)

من أرض الحرمين أرسل لى صديقى أبو أحمد برساله معنونه "رسالة هادئة الى أهل الشيعة". وقولى لصاحبى, وهل يعلم مابالقلوب الا المولى سبحانه وتعالى؟ ألم يقل أهل الشيعة أنه لااله الا الله وأن المصطفى الحبيب رسول الله؟

لقد حان الوقت يأخى الفاضل أن نترك ما بالقلوب للمولى عز وجل. وما على أهل السنة وأهل الشيعة ألا حوار فيما يجمعنا لدفع أمة الأسلام، شيعة وسنه، الى الأمام كى نأخذ مكاننا بين الأمم. ما يجمع أهل الشيعة وأهل السنة أكثر مما يفرق بيننا. وطريقنا لتوفير حياة كريمة لأمة الأسلام طويل وصعب ويتطلب من الجميع عمل دؤوب وعرق كثير. ولك منى أبا أحمد رجاء بأن تعمل على جمع الكلمة ولك منى اطيب تحية وسلام

Living with AIDS in Saudi Arabia (NYT)

Apache, Humvee, the Afandi and the Allawi are the must have cellphones on the Iraqi cool list (NYT)

Eleven Egyptian students went missing on their way from JFK to Bozeman, Montana. The FBI is on the lookout for them. (LA Times)

Have a feeling that the end of this story will be very comical.

At the Movies

The Ant Bully: Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep & Paul Giamatti (jOHN a. dAVIS)

The Groomsmen: Edward Burns, Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, Donal Logue & Jay Mohr (Edward Burns)

The Night Listener: Robin Williams, Toni Collette, Sandra Oh & Rory Culkin (Patrick Stettner)

Shadowboxer: Cuba Gooding Jr., Helen Mirren, Vanessa Ferlito, Stephen Dorff & Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Lee Daniels)

When US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is not saying "Golly Gosh" or "Henny Penny" or "the Sky is falling, he has other loco things to say.

Here is what he said in front of a Senate Committee hearing on Thursday, August 3, 2006. That is the same hearing, where he was pounced on by Senator Clinton.

“If we left Iraq prematurely, the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines.” And finally, he intoned, America will be forced “to make a stand nearer home.” (NYT)

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recently "Freedom is coming to Cuba". If this is the same freedom seen in Afghanistan, Iraq and the land of the Cedar Revolution, all brought to the world courtesy of the current US Administration, I have only three words for the Cuban population "duck for cover".

From the column of Op-Ed Contributor Robert Pape in the NYT today titled "Ground to a Halt".

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Hezbollah is principally neither a political party nor an Islamist militia. It is a broad movement that evolved in reaction to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. At first it consisted of a small number of Shiites supported by Iran. But as more and more Lebanese came to resent Israel’s occupation, Hezbollah — never tight-knit — expanded into an umbrella organization that tacitly coordinated the resistance operations of a loose collection of groups with a variety of religious and secular aims.

In terms of structure and hierarchy, it is less comparable to, say, a religious cult like the Taliban than to the multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the 1960’s. What made its rise so rapid, and will make it impossible to defeat militarily, was not its international support but the fact that it evolved from a reorientation of pre-existing Lebanese social groups.

Evidence of the broad nature of Hezbollah’s resistance to Israeli occupation can be seen in the identity of its suicide attackers. Hezbollah conducted a broad campaign of suicide bombings against American, French and Israeli targets from 1982 to 1986. Altogether, these attacks — which included the infamous bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 — involved 41 suicide terrorists.

In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchers scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and the biographies of the Hezbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.

What these suicide attackers — and their heirs today — shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hezbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.
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Given Syria’s total control of its border with Lebanon, stemming the flow of weapons is a job for diplomacy, not force. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, Sunni-led nations that want stability in the region, are motivated to stop the rise of Hezbollah. Under the right conditions, the United States might be able to help assemble an ad hoc coalition of Syria’s neighbors to entice and bully it to prevent Iranian, Chinese or other foreign missiles from entering Lebanon. It could also offer to begin talks over the future of the Golan Heights.

But Israel must take the initiative. Unless it calls off the offensive and accepts a genuine cease-fire, there are likely to be many, many dead Israelis in the coming weeks — and a much stronger Hezbollah.