Sgt. Maj. Carlton W. Kent, 16th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, places a wreath at the gravesite of the first Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, Sgt. Maj. Wilbur Bestwick, at Skylawn Memorial Park Feb. 22. The burial site for Bestwick is incorrectly listed on his biography, and the Inspector-Instructor staff at nearby San Jose, Calif., were able to track down the correct site. Kent paid his respects during a recent visit to I&I San Jose.
Early Bird summary
Wednesday’s Early Bird leads with a story from Agence France Presse reporting that The United States must "at a minimum" prevent Taliban insurgents from returning to power in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview on Tuesday.While President Barack Obama's administration was still reviewing US strategy in Afghanistan, Gates said that the US effort would have to ensure the Taliban would not rule the country again after being ousted in 2001."I would say that at a minimum, the mission is to prevent the Taliban from retaking power against a democratically elected government in Afghanistan, thus turning Afghanistan, potentially again, into a haven for Al-Qaeda and other extremists," Gates told National Public Radio (NPR). A complete transcript of the NPR interview is also available at this link.
Despite ongoing violence, the Iraqi government is unlikely to ask American troops to remain in the country beyond a 2011 departure deadline, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq said Tuesday, according to the Seattle Times.But Iraqi leaders must decide whether to waive an approaching end-date - June 30 - and allow combat soldiers stay in urban flashpoints like Mosul where al-Qaida and insurgents continue to threaten security, Gen. Ray Odierno said."I think that the Iraq leadership is focused on that this ends in 2011," Odierno said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The Washington Post reports that Vice President Biden told NATO allies in Brussels, Belgium Tuesday that the Obama administration wants their help building a new strategy in Afghanistan because growing security threats there affect all 26 countries in the alliance and because only by working together can they stop terrorist attacks.Biden, on a one-day visit to the headquarters of NATO and the European Union, sought primarily to dissipate the irritation left behind by the Bush administration in Europe, which felt its voice was not being heard in Washington, a U.S. official said. But at the same time, the official said, the vice president's consultations were aimed at getting European countries involved in a broad strategic review now underway, as a way of persuading them to contribute more to the military and nation-building campaigns that European and U.S. leaders acknowledge are lagging badly.
Al Qaeda has expanded its presence in Afghanistan, taking advantage of the sinking security situation to resurface in the country it was forced to flee seven years ago, the top U.S. military intelligence official testified Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Times.Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described Al Qaeda's efforts as one of the reasons for the Obama administration's decision last month to order additional troops to Afghanistan.Afghanistan is no longer the haven for Al Qaeda that it was before the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. But in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Maples said, "I believe Al Qaeda's presence in Afghanistan is more significant, although still at a relatively minor scale, than we have seen in the past."
Meanwhile, Fox News Channel reports that the Taliban have ridiculed any idea of talks with the United States such as those President Obama has proposed. A transcript of the report can be read at this link.
The Financial Times of London reports that Libya is establishing military ties with the US that could lead to the sale of lethal weapons to the north African country.In a remarkable sign of the degree of rapprochement after four decades of open hostility during which the US carried out military strikes against the regime of Muammer Gaddafi, Gene Cretz, the US ambassador to Tripoli, told the Financial Times that the new military relationship would begin with training programmes, followed by the sale of non-lethal weaponry.Then “at some point, if both sides want it . . . we would hope that [the sale of lethal weapons] would be a culmination of our military relationship”, he said.
The Washington Post and New York Times both report on the incident between China and the U.S. that occurred Sunday, with the Post reporting that China on Tuesday rejected accusations that it harassed a U.S. naval ship off one of its southern islands and said the vessel was conducting illegal surveying activities.On Monday, the White House had protested the aggressive shadowing of the USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea near Hainan Island on Sunday. According to the Pentagon, five Chinese vessels surrounded the ship and closed to within 50 feet while crew members were "waving Chinese flags and telling Impeccable to leave the area."
Media summary
Leading newspaper headlines: The Wall Street Journal banners and the New York Times leads with news that Bernard Madoff is expected to plead guilty tomorrow to 11 felony charges and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. (Slate Magazine)
Tariq Aziz guilty of Iraq murders: Tariq Aziz, for many years the public face of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, has been jailed for 15 years for his role in the execution of 42 merchants. (BBC)
NATO struggling in Afghan south: Coalition forces in Afghanistan are not winning in large parts of the south, the commander of Nato and US forces there has said. (BBC)
Could China and India go to war over Tibet?: Today (Tuesday, March 10) is the 50th anniversary of the Lhasa uprising. Much of the associated commentary suggests that Tibet is, at most, an internal human rights issue in China, albeit one that impacts China's foreign relations with Western democracies who care about the plight of the Tibetan people. (Foreign Policy)
Leading newspaper headlines
The Wall Street Journal banners and the New York Times leads with news that Bernard Madoff is expected to plead guilty tomorrow to 11 felony charges and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. Prosecutors say Madoff began operating what may be the largest fraud in Wall Street's history as early as the 1980s. Ten days before he was arrested, Madoff sent statements to clients claiming to have a total of $64.8 billion, far more than the $50 billion the disgraced financier originally confessed to losing. The Washington Post leads with the first major stock market rally of 2009 that came after Citigroup reported some surprising good news and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called for reforms in the financial system. Citigroup announced it was profitable in the first two months of the year, and its shares surged 38 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average increased 5.8 percent, the biggest gain since Nov. 21.
The Los Angeles Times leads with President Obama's strong criticism of the state of public schools. In a speech yesterday, Obama called for more charter schools as well as higher salaries for good teachers and a system to quickly fire bad ones, outlining a set of priorities that put the president on a collision course with teachers' unions. He had mentioned many of these plans during the campaign but he always "treaded carefully on the politics of education reform, siding with critics of public education at some points but carefully preserving his relationship with powerful education unions," notes the paper. "His speech appeared to position him closer to the critics." USA Today leads with a look at how the first two months of 2009 have marked the driest start of any year since the government began to keep track in 1895. The dry conditions have led to a severe drought in Texas and farmers are increasingly worried it will be a bad year for crops while firefighters say it could lead to a longer fire season.
Assuming Madoff pleads guilty to all 11 charges against him, he could face a maximum prison sentence of 150 years. Everyone expects the actual sentence to be significantly lower, though still effectively a life sentence for the 70-year-old. In documents that were unsealed yesterday, federal prosecutors revealed new details about Madoff's scheme but still left many unanswered questions. Prosecutors say Madoff hired inexperienced employees and directed them to "generate false and fraudulent documents." He also carried out huge bank transfers to make it seem as though he was trading in European securities. But it's still unclear whether anyone knowingly helped Madoff with the scheme, and whether his brother, wife, and sons who worked for the firm knew what was going on. It's also still unclear how much money investors lost and how much money Madoff managed to take for himself. Assuming he did manage to pocket a significant amount of the money, where is it? So far, only about $1 billion in assets have been recovered. The government said it plans to seek at least $170 billion in assets from Madoff. No one actually believes Madoff has that kind of money, but "prosecutors want to be able to grab everything he does have," as the WSJ puts it.
In addition to the good news from Citigroup, investors were also upbeat about suggestions from federal regulators that they may reinstitute rules that put certain limits on short selling when markets are on a downward spiral. In a speech yesterday, Bernanke said the rules of the financial system need to be reformed in order to prevent another financial crisis and suggested that it might be necessary to review accounting rules that determine how companies value their assets. Everyone warns that yesterday's rally might not mean much because during the crisis there have been several upswings that later led to more losses. And while Citigroup's news was encouraging to investors, many were skeptical that the banking giant will be able to hold on to any profits if the global economy continues to deteriorate.
The WSJ points out that yesterday also marked the end of the first 50 calendar days since President Obama was inaugurated, a period in which the Dow industrials fell 16.36 percent. That is "the second-worst mark for the period in more than a century," reports the paper. The only one who was faced with worse numbers was President Gerald Ford, who saw industrials fall 20.76 percent during his first 50 days.
USAT reports that the government's terrorist watch list now has 1 million entries, a 32 percent increase since 2007. The million records currently on the list represent around 400,000 individuals since there are often multiple entries for one person to reflect aliases or different spellings of a name. In the past two years, 51,000 people have asked to be taken off the list but the vast majority of cases that have been reviewed found these people weren't on the list at all. There have been 830 requests since 2005 from people who were, in fact, on the list and approximately 150 of them were removed.
Nobody fronts yesterday's suicide bombing in western Baghdad that killed more than 30 people and raised fears that insurgent violence could increase as Obama begins to implement his 18-month withdrawal plan. More than 60 people have been killed in Iraq since Sunday. U.S. officials insist the attacks are acts of desperation from a fading insurgency. But the NYT points out that both attacks this week targeted Iraqi soldiers that have high levels of security, "suggesting much planning and coordination." Indeed, the WP points out that the attacks took place in areas that "are fortified even by the standards of the capital," and perhaps more significantly, the "Iraqi security forces seemed undisciplined in the immediate aftermath."
The NYT reports on its front page that a group of leading lawmakers led by Sen. Russ Feingold want to change the Constitution in order to require any Senate vacancies to be filled through an election. There are currently four appointed lawmakers serving in the Senate, and while that is hardly a record, it is higher than average. "I really became troubled when I realized that such a significant percentage of the U.S. Senate was about to be appointed rather than elected by the people," Feingold said. It's unclear whether the initiative will get very far, particularly considering that it's far from easy to enact a constitutional amendment, but the idea has gained some high-profile backers, including Sen. John McCain.
The papers note the Smithsonian confirmed a long-standing rumor that a pocket watch that belonged to Abraham Lincoln contains a secret message that was engraved by a watchmaker who repaired it in 1861. The watchmaker, Jonathan Dillon, told his family he was repairing the watch when he heard news that Fort Sumter in South Carolina had been attacked. Turns out, the engraving was there, and reads, in part: "Jonathan Dillon April 13-1861. Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date thank God we have a government." Dillon misspelled Sumter and apparently didn't know the opening shot of the Civil War had been fired a day earlier. And it wasn't quite how Dillon remembered it when he told the NYT in 1906 that the engraving read: "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try." The NYT publishes a correction today and points out the 1906 article noted the 84-year-old had a "remarkable memory."
In the WP's op-ed page, Andrew Grove writes that in order to institute change "an organization must travel through two phases." First, there has to be "a period of chaotic experimentation" where options are discussed. Then there comes a time "for the leadership to end the chaos and commit to a path." We have now lived through the chaos to try to figure out the best way to stabilize the financial system, but the administration still hasn't made a decision. Until that happens, it needs to hold off on trying to fix other parts of the economy. "First things first. Strive to achieve stability in our financial system," he writes. "When the momentum is clear enough to allow trust in the system to return, then tackle the next mega-problem."
The NYT's Thomas Friedman writes that he's worried Washington still doesn't quite grasp the severity of the ongoing crisis. "Economically, this is the big one," he writes. "Yet, in too many ways, we seem to be playing politics as usual." Republicans seem to be lost in the woods. "Rather than help the president make the hard calls, the G.O.P. has opted for cat calls." Meanwhile, Obama sometimes gives the impression that he'd rather stay a bit removed from the crisis and push forward with other initiatives. "I understand that he doesn't want his presidency to be held hostage to the ups and downs of bank stocks, but a hostage he is," writes Friedman. "We all are."
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Tariq Aziz guilty of Iraq murders
Aziz surrendered to US troops in 2003
Tariq Aziz, for many years the public face of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, has been jailed for 15 years for his role in the execution of 42 merchants.
Aziz had denied any role in the summary trials of the men accused in 1992 of profiteering during economic sanctions.
Two of Saddam Hussein's half-brothers were also found guilty and sentenced to death by a court in Baghdad.
Another top official, Ali Hassan al-Majid - commonly known as Chemical Ali - was jailed for 15 years.
Two other Iraqi officials were jailed for six and 15 years, while a former governor of the Iraqi central bank was acquitted.
The trial is not viewed by Iraqis as a big political event, the BBC's Mike Sergeant in Baghdad says.
'Poor health'
This is Aziz's first conviction in the controversial Iraqi High Tribunal process, which has been criticised by human rights groups on a number of counts.
He could also have received a death penalty. Last week he was acquitted in a separate trial over the killings of Shia Muslim protesters in 1999.
Aziz, a Christian, was Iraq's foreign minister during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, later becoming the deputy prime minister.
He had argued that his work was political and he bore no responsibility for the deaths of the flour merchants.
Aziz surrendered to US troops on 24 April 2003. In recent years, he has reportedly suffered from poor health in prison awaiting trial.
'Flawed' process
On Wednesday, two of Saddam Hussein's half-brothers - former presidential adviser Watban Ibrahim and former intelligence chief Sabawi Ibrahim - were sentenced to death by ha
nging.Majid was Saddam Hussein's defence minister
Co-defendant Majid was jailed for 15 years. Majid had faced his fourth capital conviction in the merchants' case, having already been sentenced in the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s, the crushing of a Shia uprising in 1991 and the 1999 killings.
Saddam Hussein himself was hanged in December 2006 in a separate case.
Human Rights Watch issued a report into the trial of Saddam Hussein, concluding that the process was flawed and its verdict unsound because of "serious administrative, procedural and substantive legal defects".
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Nato 'struggling in Afghan south'
Coalition forces in Afghanistan are not winning in large parts of the south, the commander of Nato and US forces there has said.
Gen David McKiernan told the BBC that coalition strategy had so far been clear, but under-resourced.
A decision to send more US troops to Helmand province later this year did not amount to a criticism of British troops based there, he said.
The US has said it will deploy up to 17,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.
President Obama acknowledged in a newspaper interview published on Sunday that the US was not winning the war in Afghanistan
'Force uplift'
In an interview with the BBC, Gen McKiernan said there were areas in the north, east and west where "coalition efforts in support of the government of Afghanistan [are] winning".
"But there are other areas - large areas in the southern part of Afghanistan especially, but in parts of the east - where we are not winning," he said.
In these areas "more has to happen along multiple lines of operation in order for anybody by any metric to say that the Afghans are winning or the efforts of the coalition are winning," Gen McKiernan added.
US President Barack Obama authorised the deployment of up to 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan last month amid a major review of US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US already has about 14,000 troops serving with the Nato-led mission.
There are also 19,000 US troops under sole US command charged with fighting Taleban and al-Qaeda insurgents.
Gen McKiernan said he was "very satisfied" with the contribution of British troops in Helmand.
"Our challenge in the southern part of Afghanistan is that we don't have enough of a persistent security presence in all the areas that allow the other lines of operation - better governance - to develop in that area," he said.
"So these US forces, this force uplift, of which the majority will be positioned in the southern part of Afghanistan, I think will change security conditions there this year."
Bomb
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan has killed one Canadian soldier and wounded four others.
The Canadian military said the soldiers were on patrol in Kandahar province when their vehicle was hit by the blast on Sunday.
More than 110 Canadian troops have been killed since the start of their mission in Afghanistan in 2002 - the third highest casualty figures among international forces there, after the US and UK.
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Could China and India go to war over Tibet?
Tue, 03/10/2009 - 10:47am
By Dan Twining
Today (Tuesday, March 10) is the 50th anniversary of the Lhasa uprising. Much of the associated commentary suggests that Tibet is, at most, an internal human rights issue in China, albeit one that impacts China's foreign relations with Western democracies who care about the plight of the Tibetan people. Indeed, the Dalai Lama's admission that Tibet is part of China, and that he seeks true autonomy rather than actual independence for his people, reaffirm this view. There is also, however, an external dimension to the Tibetan crisis, one that implicates core national security interests of nuclear-armed great powers.
This is the role Tibet's dispensation plays in the conflict between China and India. Indian strategist C. Raja Mohan puts it bluntly: "When there is relative tranquility in Tibet, India and China have reasonably good relations. When Sino-Tibetan tensions rise, India's relationship with China heads south." Although not widely recognized in the West, the nexus of Tibet and the unresolved border conflict between China and India ranks with the Taiwan Strait and Korean peninsula among Asia's leading flashpoints.
Contrary to Chinese propaganda, Tibet was not traditionally a part of China. Over the centuries, relations between China and Tibet were characterized by varying degrees of association spanning the spectrum from sovereignty to suzerainty to independence. The People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet in the middle of the last century precisely because Tibetans did not consent to Beijing's rule.
For its part, prior to Indian independence, then-British India vigorously supported Tibetan autonomy and sponsored the Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Ladakh to create an expansive geographic buffer between China and the subcontinent. John Garver's excellent history of Sino-Indian rivalry contains useful maps depicting a rump China and an expansive Indian subcontinent separated by a vast, autonomous Tibet, demonstrating how far apart were India and China geographically until Chinese unification by the Communist Party several years after Indian independence gave them a common border.
That common border has since been a source of conflict. As is well known, India and China went to war over their territorial dispute in 1962, ending the era of what Indian Prime Minister Nehru called "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai" ("Indians and Chinese are brothers"). What is less well known in the West is that China, while subsequently resolving 17 of its 18 outstanding land border disputes with neighboring countries, has kept the territorial conflict with India alive, at times appearing to inflame the issue as a source of leverage over New Delhi.
Over the past two years, Chinese officials have publicly asserted Chinese claims to the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which some Chinese military advisors and strategists refer to as "Southern Tibet." Chinese forces have periodically engaged in small-scale cross-border encroachments, destroying Indian military bunkers and patrol bases in Ladakh and Sikkim.
At the same time, China has been systematically constructing road and rail networks across the Tibetan plateau in ways that tilt the balance of forces along the contested frontier in China's favor; India has responded with infrastructure projects of its own, including roads and air fields, to enable military reinforcement of its border regions, but has failed to keep pace with its northern neighbor. China has also positioned large numbers of military and security forces on the Tibetan plateau, mainly with an eye on suppressing popular unrest. But the possibility of using them to "teach India a lesson" (as in 1962) remains.
Indian pundits note that public reminders from Beijing of China's decisive victory over India in the 1962 war have spiked over the past year, sending what Indians believe is a clear signal to New Delhi at a time of rising tensions. Combined with China's reported deployment in Tibet of nuclear missiles targeting India, officials in New Delhi feel increasingly alarmed in the face of Chinese provocation. In striking statements little noted in the West, both Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and respected former National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra recently warned China against any attempt to seize Indian-held territory along their contested border.
Surging border tensions may be related to worries in Beijing over the Dalai Lama's succession. Some of the holiest sites in Tibetan Buddhism, including the sacred monastery at Tawang, are in Indian-held territory. The Dalai Lama, who has been in poor health, has said that he would not feel obligated to nominate a successor from, or be reborn in, Tibet proper, raising the possibility that the next Dalai Lama could be named outside China -- in the Tibetan cultural belt that stretches across northern India into Bhutan and Nepal.
Some Indian strategists fear that China may act to preempt, or respond to, an announcement of the Dalai Lama's chosen successor in India - particularly in Tawang -- by deploying the People's Liberation Army to occupy contested territory along the Sino-Indian border, as occurred in 1962, creating a risk of military conflict between the now nuclear-armed Asian giants.
Although China enjoys the dominant military position in the Tibetan plateau, India still has cards to play. It hosts the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in Dharamsala, enabling Tibet's representatives to keep their cause alive in the court of world opinion. And unlike Britain -- which last October withdrew its recognition of China's "suzerainty" (in favor of "sovereignty") over Tibet in a failed effort to placate Beijing, leading one scornful Singaporean commentator to note that China was "bringing Europe to its knees" -- India continues to recognize only Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, rather than full and consensual sovereignty. This creates the possibility that New Delhi could play a "Tibet card" in its relations with Beijing in the same way that China accuses the United States of playing a "Taiwan card" to keep it off balance.
What do Sino-Indian border tensions linked to the Tibetan cause mean for the United States?
First, the U.S. has a compelling interest in preventing conflict between one of its largest trading partners and its newfound strategic partner.
Second, historic U.S. support for the cause of human rights in Tibet, in addition to Washington's growing military ties with New Delhi, mean that the United States would find it difficult to be a neutral arbiter in such a conflict.
Third, India's continuing political and moral support for the Tibetan government-in-exile demonstrates that it shares with America a set of ideals in foreign policy, creating the basis for greater values-based cooperation between Washington and New Delhi - a prospect that has not gone unnoticed in Beijing.
Fourth, given China's development of military capabilities designed to threaten U.S. access to the Western Pacific and Southeast Asian waterways, Chinese pressure on U.S. friends including the Philippines and Vietnam to back down on claims to contested islets in the South China Sea, and Chinese harassment of the U.S. Navy in Asian waters, Washington has an important interest in making perfectly clear to Beijing that the use of force to resolve contested territorial claims or limit freedom of the seas is unacceptable -- and could upend rather than facilitate China's peaceful rise.
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