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I thought about the horrible videos we had seen of the crowds in Orange County, California, screaming “go home” at Muslims — including children — attending a fundraising event.  Their radical crime?  They were raising money for a battered women’s shelter.  The young woman in the airport would probably be subjected to some of that invective today, I thought.  I was ashamed to think that she feared that kind of behavior from me.  As a Muslim woman, she would be even more visible and vulnerable to attack than her male relatives, whose garb is less distinctive.  I wanted to tell her — not all non-Muslims agree with Peter King and with that crowd in Orange County.  But when I looked back, she was gone.

On the plane, I drafted a letter to the members of the Homeland Security Committee, to urge them to reject the very premise for the hearing… to reject the idea that Congress has any authority at all to look into the teachings and practices of a particular religion.  This Congress is particularly interested in following the Constitution… sometimes.  I hope they look at it closely this time.

With the clock ticking before the CR’s expiration on March 4, the House and Senate struck a deal late last week and averted a government shutdown by passing another short term stop gap Continuing Resolution (CR) that expires on March 18.  This CR will cut $4 billion from the federal budget in two weeks.

Now it’s up to the Senate to follow the House and pass a Continuing Resolution to fund the government through September 30, 2011.

We asked you last week to urge your Senator to fully fund the Complex Crises Fund (CCF) and United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in the Senate CR.  The Prevention and Protection Working Group, a NGO coalition convened by FCNL, also responded to the House’s CR by emphasizing that drastic cuts to prevention accounts will result in costly emergencies in the coming years.

The CCF and USIP were completely eliminated in the House’s version of the CR, but the Senate responded by including these vital investments in its proposal.  We’re not in the clear yet,  but we’re encouraged that the Senate included these accounts which will help avert expensive humanitarian crises and military interventions. Thank you for writing your Senators!

Until Congress funds the government through September 30, the debate over the budget will continue to dominate the Hill’s agenda.  Stay tuned for updates and opportunities to make your voice heard.

I have spent the past ten days talking with people on both sides of the barrier that separates Israel from the West Bank. The barrier/wall/fence (the terminology varies depending on your geographic location, as well as your political perspective) often delves deeply into the occupied West Bank, particularly around east Jerusalem and when it is proximate to Israeli settlements. In other places, the barrier snakes its way along the armistice line drawn at the conclusion of the 1948 conflict referred to by Israelis as the War of Independence and by Palestinians as the Nakba (the catastrophe).

I am sojourning with a group of high school students. Our students hail from the Peoples Republic of China, the Republic of China, and the United States. Our journey thus far has taken us to east and west Jerusalem, as well as to the Jezreel Valley and the Galilee, and to Bethlehem and Ramallah. Over the course of the past ten days, we have had the opportunity to hear differing perspectives on the quality of life and the current impasse in negotiations for a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Here are some initial thoughts about what we have heard.

First and foremost, from a Palestinian perspective, the door to a two-state solution is seen as closing rapidly. The prevailing sense of uncertainty and pessimism about the viability of a two-state solution is not a new one. But the situation has taken on a new urgency as a result of the ongoing growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the US veto of the UN Security Council resolution on February 18.

I am referring to the UN Security resolution that condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank as an obstacle to peace and illegal under international law. The resolution sought to cast a new urgency for a negotiated peace agreement. Although FCNL and many other organizations urged the U.S. administration to cast a “yes” vote, in the end the U.S. cast the sole “no” vote (a veto), while the other 14 members of the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution.

We’ve heard widely-divergent interpretations regarding the meaning of the US veto. We met earlier this week with a West Bank settler who holds dual Israeli and U.S. citizenship. He told us that God gave the land of Israel to the Jews and that post-1948/1967 the West Bank is “disputed territory” and not occupied territory. He believes that the recent UN vote supports his narrative and sends a message to the world that settlements are both legitimate and legal. This view is not, of course, consistent with the U.S. explanation of its veto. But perceptions are important, especially in this part of the world.

The Israeli settler point of view on the UN resolution is in stark contrast to the viewpoint articulated by Palestinians with whom we’ve met. Most concerning is the perception among Palestinians of the serious erosion of U.S. credibility as a result of the UN vote. When one combines this erosion with the equally serious misinterpretation of U.S policy among the increasingly powerful Israeli settler movement, the prospects for a just and lasting peace seem remote. The sense of uncertainty – even of doom among some — is not new. We have been there before. So what is different this time?

The difference is the political change – led to a large extent by young people – that is sweeping across the Arab world in north Africa and the Middle East. This political change – the outcome of which is still unknown – is a source of unease and uncertainty for many Israelis while at the same time being a source of great hope for many Palestinians.

The “new Arab world” that is emerging provides tremendous opportuity for this U.S. administration. But that opportunity can be seized only if the United States takes bold new initiatives and breaks out of the geostrategic-driven foreign policy of the past.

A U.S. administration that initially offered bright hope in the Arab world for a new Middle East has sunk to new lows. President Obama’s 2009 address to the Muslim world from Cairo is now viewed by Palestinians with whom our group has spoken as insincere at best and hypocritical at worst.

At FCNL we will be joining others to urge the U.S. administration and Congress to take bold new steps for peace in the Middle East. More details will be forthcoming soon.

Yet the power of nonviolence seems lost to some policymakers here in Washington. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that as soon as the protests in Libya turned violent there were calls for military intervention. What amazed me is that even before some of the groups (and certainly not all) in Libya began calling for international military intervention, some individuals in Congress, in the administration, and in the policy making community began arguing for a no-fly zone over Libya.  Has the United States really learned that little?

Ah, say some pundits, a no-fly zone is not intervention, it’s an international humanitarian operation. Yet speaking at a Congressional hearing yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seemed to dispensed with that argument: “Let’s just call a spade a spade,” said Gates. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya.”

Yet the United States is at least threatening just that. The Navy has publicly announced that several ships are steaming to the area around Libya and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken supportively of the idea of a no-fly zone. Responding to the apparent contradiction between Gates and Clinton, White House spokesman Jay Carney told the Wall Street Journal “The fact that the no-fly zone idea is complex does not mean it’s not on the table.”

In the twisted logic of Washington, some policymakers and analysts have suggested to me that the “threat” of military force is a good way to avoid military force. Hmm. I would be very cautious.

The United States has some very well-informed State and Pentagon officials who are following events in North Africa very closely. Yet part of the failing of U.S. policy in North Africa is that as soon as a situation like Libya develops, the senior people making policy know very little about the region and they tend to fall back on the tools that they know — the military tools.  (My colleague Bridget has written extensively about the tools for preventing violent conflict).

To my mind, the first thing the United States needs to do is stop playing a negative role in the region. The United States backed authoritarian governments in Egypt and Tunisia for decades because stability trumped democracy and freedom at every turn. That backing created a perfect breeding ground for violent, extremist groups. I draw some hope from the reality that, despite decades of U.S. support for repressive regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, there are signs that many of the protesters that are now calling for new openings are not violently anti-U.S. I hope that I could be that open if I were in their position.

Ironically again, it seems the U.S. military is the one service that is seeing the limits of war in the region. Last week, speaking at West Point, Secretary of Defense Gates said

“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or onto the Middle East should have his head examined.”

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PS: For those of you looking for more, Bill Minter has put up some good contextual analysis of the undemocratic and repressive nature of the Libyan regime. One problem in our society is we continue to look for simple solutions to complex problems.

Sandy Robson/FCNL

Last Thursday, the Prevention and Protection Working Group (convened by FCNL) and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill called “Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities: What More Can Be Done?”.  The briefing featured a panel discussion comprised of U.S. government officials from the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Michael Gerson, a columnist for the Washington Post and contributor to the Genocide Prevention Task Force, also participated in the briefing.  The panelists described the work they are currently engaged in to prevent genocide and identified tools and capacities that would enable the U.S. to halt violence before it starts.

The briefing room was packed with House and Senate staffers (representing both sides of the aisle), officials from the Department of Defense and State Department, and many of our friends from the NGO community.

This off-the-record discussion commemorated a historic anniversary; twenty-five years ago this month, the U.S. Senate gave its consent to ratify the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.  Despite the Convention’s aspirations, the past quarter century has born witness to horrific violence in Rwanda, the Balkans, and Sudan.  Clearly, much work remains.  Fortunately, the Prevention and Protection Working Group stands ready to work with Congress to enact practical policy solutions to prevent future genocides.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war…

[Read the whole article in Rolling Stone]

It seems some military leaders have decided that, in addition to the swarms of lobbyists on the Hill that work for defense contractors, they need to employ PSY-OPs to convince congress to spend more money on the Pentagon.

Sounds to me like the Our Nation’s Checkbook campaign is having an impact.

House Slashes Funds to Prevent War: Last week the House passed a Continuing Resolution for FY2011 which cuts all of FCNL’s priority prevention accounts, and even zeros out funding for the United States Institute of Peace.  The House cut the Civilian Response Corps budget down t0 just $47 million in 2011 (the budget was $150 million for 2010), completely terminates the Complex Crises Fund (it had been $50 million in 2010), and slashes international peacekeeping funding by $283 million.  In addition, the House approved an amendment that zeros out funding for the bipartisan, congressionally-mandated United States Institute of Peace.  Any potential short-term savings from cutting these accounts will amount to less than a day’s worth of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but these same determined budget cutters refused to include real cuts to military spending in the bill.

What’s next for 2011 funding? The Senate will now have to pass its own version of a Continuing Resolution for FY11 funding, and the two chambers will have to reconcile the two bills by March 4 to avoid a government shutdown.  The Senate is not pursuing all the draconian cuts that the House is pushing, but pressure is on to cut anywhere possible.  FCNL is lobbying Senate appropriators to maintain funding for key prevention accounts, particularly the Complex Crises Fund, and funding for USIP.  Given how far the two chambers are from each others’ approaches, many are predicting the government will come to a standstill in March.

What about the 2012 budget? In the meantime, the President sent his FY2012 budget to Congress last week as well, and appropriators need to begin work on legislation for next year even while the FY11 budget is unsettled.  The White House has proposed continuing key accounts to help prevent wars in FY2012 at quite reasonable levels:  $92 million for the Civilian Response Corps; $75 million for the Complex Crises Fund; and meeting US contributions to the UN and for UN peacekeeping.  The Obama administration seems to understand that these relatively small investments can generate great savings by helping avert humanitarian crises and military operations.  We will be lobbying Congress to support the President’s budget for these accounts in 2012.

What can you do? Please write your senators and urge them to maintain funding for the Complex Crises Fund and US Institute of Peace in 2011.  If these programs are zeroed out or deeply cut it will be very hard to restore their funding in the future.  Sign up for our Prevent War emails to get future updates on investing in an ounce of prevention to avoid a pound of war.

via http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes