The recent political trials in Iran and Burma have raised several questions on the motives of these trials. There could be several levels of analysis, and similarities and differences could be drawn between the trials of political prisoners in Iran and the political prisoners in Burma.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Building consensus within America's body politic and national security establishment for a new way forward with Muslims worldwide is a formidable challenge. Many Americans still don't appreciate the complex nuances of Muslim society and remain stubbornly Islamophobic almost seven and half years after 9/11. Equally formidable is earning the goodwill of Muslims worldwide following the Iraq War as well as American atrocities perpetrated upon Islamic detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Hopefully, President Obama's historic election has finally opened a path for constructive conversation about how America can most effectively engage the Muslim world.

The CIA's former point man on Islam, Emile Nakahleh, has vigorously entered this conversation with his new book, A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations With the Muslim World (Princeton University Press). From 1991 to 2006, Nakahleh served as the director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA. He holds a PhD in international relations and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men~~George Orwell

With the United States finally deciding to go into Pakistan when and as it likes, it is setting up its former strategic ally - which morphed into a client state after 9/11 - to go the way of Iran in the future.

This article was previously published on OpEdNews (May 21, 2008)).

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.   --Thomas Jefferson

NOTE: Welcome to this new column series. In "BTB Review" we will be discussing US national politics through the relatively unclouded lens of Beyond the Beltway, a weekly two-hour syndicated political radio talk show headquartered in Chicago. On this independent Sunday evening program which airs from 6 to 8 PM Central Time, veteran host Bruce DuMont teams up with conservative, liberal, Republican, Democratic, and independent guests to "take America's political pulse" and provide "a fresh and balanced perspective of national politics." I discovered this show in late 2003 and have been listening to it ever since on Fort Wayne, Indiana station AM 1190 WOWO. Given that after twenty-eight years of steady running Beyond the Beltway is still not well known, I hope that this column will encourage people to listen to the show, to learn and think more about the issues our country faces, and to become better informed and more responsible citizens of the United States of America.

Today on Current TV I heard a headline that some of the virtual currencies in online games are now worth more than the dollar. That CAN'T be true. But apparently a study showed that some virtual currencies carry more weight than the US dollar. Well, I haven't been able to follow up that story, and I am sure it really is more a faux entertainment kind of story than a real one. But it is indicative of how far the dollar has fallen under Bush's "leadership." I work with many foreigners from around the world. They all tell me how weak the dollar is...they are all AMAZED at how weak the dollar is. From Spain, Israel, France, Peru, Russia, Bulgaria, Cyprus and many other nations they all tell me they are amazed at how weak the dollar is. It used to be that nations around the world tied their currency to the dollar as a way of stabilizing their currency. Now some of those nations have abandoned the dollar standard in favor of the Euro. Right now the Euro and the British pound reign supreme. The dollar is becoming a sad, backwards currency.

Mr. Hannity: Although Shah Pahlavi "led an often oppressive regime...our alliance [with him was]...strategically crucial". (p. 89)

My response: Here we observe two related ideas: the law of the balance of power and the principle of the lesser of two evils. Thruout history, nations have tended to collect into various loose federations in order to increase their security against an aggressive nation or to balance out one another's power. Through such politics, nations strove to preserve international harmony and to correct disharmonies and divisions. The principle of the lesser of two evils holds that a state party can side with a second state party which is generating or promoting certain evils for the purpose of mutually counteracting a third state party which is generating or promoting even worse evils.

Mr. Hannity: "Liberals," including US Catholic bishops, reproachfully stirred up millions of people to join nuclear freeze demonstrations in the early 1980s. (p. 76)

My response: Some brief background on this issue might help clarify the discussion. Early in the Cold War, American administrations pursued a strategic, offensive-defense security doctrine known as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The idea was for the US to maintain "strategic parity" with the Soviet Union --that is, a balance among number, power, sophistication and readiness of atomic bombs such that neither country would dare to start a nuclear war against the other thanks to fear of equally destructive retaliation by the adversary. Except for a temporary challenge during President John F. Kennedy's administration, which began courageously downsizing America's nuclear arsenal, the MAD doctrine more or less continued to guide American nuclear policy through containment to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of the 1970s, which aimed to mutually reduce US and Soviet nuclear forces. The acronym of MAD was quite appropriate; this delicate policy was truly insane, as it could not be continued for long without leading eventually to a global nuclear disaster.

Mr. Hannity (Quoting Jeane J. Kirkpatrick): "'[The] Carter administration...actively collaborated in the replacement of moderate autocrats friendly to American interests with less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasion.'" (p. 66)

My response: This statement typifies a biased Republican slant on history, which holds that Carter openly surrendered our national interests to foreign extremists, particularly to Iranian radical Ayatollah Khomeini. In fact, this incorrect yet ingenious claim exhibits a quadruple negative, propounding a lie within a lie within a lie within a lie.

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as The Peace Tree, the Independent Bloggers Alliance and Worldwide Sawdust.

Barbara Slavin, senior diplomatic correspondent for USA Today since 1996 and author of the recently published book, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation (St. Martin's Press), writes that,

"Iran and the United States are like a once happily married couple that has gone through a bitter divorce. Harsh words have been exchanged - husband and wife have come to blows and employed others to inflict more punishment. Apologizing is hard and changing behavior even harder. This relationship is unequal, with one side or the other feeling more vulnerable at any given time and afraid the other will take advantage of concessions."

Author Note. The following essay was co-authored with Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis division counsel.

Among the most important public health advances of the past century has been the development of potent vaccines against dangerous and life-threatening illnesses. Polio, tuberculosis, and measles quickly come to mind. Through a process of inoculation, a small dose of the pathogen is intentionally administered to the patient which induces immunity against the full-blown disease.

In a similar way, social scientists have demonstrated that attitude inoculation can be used to prevent the transmission of hazardous beliefs and behaviors from one person to another. For example, research reveals that adolescents can more effectively resist pressure from cigarette-smoking peers if they are given role-playing opportunities in which they rehearse their responses to students pressuring them to smoke.

But today we are in urgent need of an inoculation campaign against an entirely different threat to our nation's health--namely, the Bush administration's exploitation of its "global war on terror" to eviscerate the rule of law and our constitutional checks and balances; to prolong the disastrous occupation of Iraq; and to lay the groundwork for military strikes against Iran. Ever since the tragic events of 9/11 six years ago, the White House has promoted this agenda by working non-stop to spread a simple yet infectious idea: All actions taken by this president and his representatives are necessary to protect the United States from future catastrophic terrorist attacks.

When a nation manifests a mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, in combination with unchecked power emanating from an insular and arrogant elite, a golden age of peace and plenty is as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami.

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies.
Moshe Dayan

See You In September, With A Report We Wrote In July

In a story in the LA Times this morning "Top general may propose pullbacks" Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel report that Petraeus may announce pullbacks from some areas in Iraq, including al Anbar province and a turnover of those ares to Iraqi forces.

I'm somewhat mystified by this process as it appears that, at the White House, they seem to know already, in other words, today, what they are going to report in September, in other words, a month from today. In fact it seems that they began writing their "field report" weeks ago... in the White House.

I'm not sure why exactly, but this somehow reminds me of reports I hear from teachers with experience in the "no child left behind" follies, who have described to me the specter of spending weeks and weeks of classroom time devoted to "teaching to the test" in order to maintain mandated academic ratings and the flow of federal funds. Taking the test is mostly a charade, passing the test, a foregone conclusion, an exercise in making things look good on paper.

In other words, as Junior might say every few seconds, in the case of Iraq they are writing a "report" which will contain recommendations that will allow us to draw conclusions, that were decided on in the White House more than a month ago.