A military helicopter flies over the presidential palace as opponents of Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi protest in Cairo, Wednesday, July 3. (Nariman El-Mofty/AP)

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi have their backs to the wall

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 07.03.13

It's been about an hour since the Egyptian military's deadline for President Mohamed Morsi to calm the situation came and went and no word yet from the generals. Meanwhile, there are reports of troops moving in the streets, wild (and unsubstantiated) rumors of arrests of senior Muslim Brotherhood members, and jubilant, full-throated crowds in Tahrir Square and around the country demanding Morsi resign.

Morsi delivered a defiant national address last night in which he repeatedly insisted that only he had the democratic legitimacy to rule Egypt and offered not even a crumb of concession to his opponents – whose numbers on the streets now match, if not surpass, the crowds that led the military to abandon Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

But while Mr. Mubarak's power base largely lay in the support of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the bureaucracy he controlled, the Brotherhood remains the oldest and largest grassroots organization in Egypt. The movement's cadres delivered the presidency to Morsi, and he still has millions of stalwarts behind him.

Today, officials around Morsi and the Brotherhood appear to be gambling that they can face down the military with their own street power and by appealing to the democratic victory of an election held about a year ago. They keep referring to a military coup and hinting at the possibility of horrible bloodshed if events continue to unfold as they are. But any hopes that foreign powers like the US will line up to support them in response to this framing are fading fast.

This afternoon Essam al-Haddad, Morsi's national security adviser, issued a statement in English on his Facebook page that was both alarmist and alarming, framing the Brotherhood's political opponents as hell-bent on supporting a military coup and warning that the results will be global turmoil.

"As I write these lines I am fully aware that these may be the last lines I get to post on this page," he begins. "For the sake of Egypt and for historical accuracy, let’s call what is happening by its real name: Military coup."

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His alarm, from the Brotherhood's perspective, is not misplaced. For decades the organization's leaders endured jail and torture at the hands of military-backed regimes, and fear for their own fate if the military once again seizes power is natural. His statement also contains a warning, or perhaps a veiled threat, to both Egyptian opponents and the foreign community; that the very idea of democratic change will be discredited among devout Muslims the world over:

Today only one thing matters. In this day and age no military coup can succeed in the face of sizeable popular force without considerable bloodshed. Who among you is ready to shoulder that blame?
 
I am fully aware of the Egyptian media that has already attempted to frame (the Brotherhood) for every act of violence that has taken place in Egypt since January 2011. I am sure that you are tempted to believe this. But it will not be easy.
 
There are still people in Egypt who believe in their right to make a democratic choice. Hundreds of thousands of them have gathered in support of democracy and the Presidency. And they will not leave in the face of this attack. To move them, there will have to be violence. It will either come from the army, the police, or the hired mercenaries. Either way there will be considerable bloodshed. And the message will resonate throughout the Muslim World loud and clear: democracy is not for Muslims.

I do not need to explain in detail the worldwide catastrophic ramifications of this message. In the last week there has been every attempt to issue a counter narrative that this is just scaremongering and that the crushing of Egypt’s nascent democracy can be managed.

Mr. Haddad also took a veiled swipe at the US and others as hypocrites, and insisted the course should be stayed until the next regularly scheduled presidential election (four years from now).

"In the last year we have been castigated by foreign governments, foreign media, and rights groups whenever our reforms in the areas of rights and freedoms did not keep pace with the ambitions of some or adhere exactly to the forms used in other cultures," he writes. "The silence of all of those voices with an impending military coup is hypocritical and that hypocrisy will not be lost on a large swathe of Egyptians, Arabs and Muslims. Many have seen fit in these last months to lecture us on how democracy is more than just the ballot box. That may indeed be true. But what is definitely true is that there is no democracy without the ballot box."

The organized Egyptian opposition, the National Salvation Front among them, are in fact calling for fresh elections, and complain that the way Egypt's flawed constitution was rushed through by Morsi and his allies, with hardly any input from broader Egyptian society, was hardly democratic. They certainly seem to want the military to step in – but that's for what they hope is a stewardship role to fresh elections, a fresh constitutional process, and some way to guide Egypt from its current impasse.

He isn't the only one with those kinds of warnings. This afternoon, Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party spokesman Gehad al-Haddad expressed his own alarm in a series of tweets. After sharing the NSA's Facebook post he wrote

There is a FULL MILITARY COUP under way now in #Egypt. Tanks hv started moving thru the streets. #Egypt #SaveEgypt

— Gehad El-Haddad (@gelhaddad) July 3, 2013

Followed by:

#National_Coalition for #Legitimacy will stand its grounds in all its rallies & sit-ins across #Egypt w/ readiness 2 adapt 2 emerging events

— Gehad El-Haddad (@gelhaddad) July 3, 2013

So if the road 2 change thru democracy & the ballot box get shuts by military muscle. What options r we inviting the ppl 2 take 4 change ?

— Gehad El-Haddad (@gelhaddad) July 3, 2013

There has been no specific threat of violence, and the Brotherhood insists their counter-protests are and will remain peaceful. But every indication is they're not leaving without a fight, of one kind or another.

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Protesters against Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi wave national flags in Tahrir Square in Cairo July 3. The Egyptian president's national security adviser said on Wednesday that a 'military coup' was under way and army and police violence was expected to remove pro-Morsi demonstrators. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)

Timeline: the awkward dance of Obama and Morsi

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 07.03.13

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi is the only politician in the country who has any sort of a democratic mandate, having won a tight presidential race last year. But today, it's hard to imagine him surviving much longer – or to see that so-called mandate as worth much anymore.

The politically powerful army has issued an ultimatum, vast crowds calling for his downfall continue to seethe around the presidential palace in Cairo, and in a year he has gone from a virtual unknown in Egypt's politics to its most divisive figure.

While his election was hailed as a democratic victory in many quarters, the fact is that Egypt has failed so far in its experiment to build a more inclusive brand of governance since the long-standing military dictatorship ended in Feb. 2011. An elected parliament was dissolved by court order, and while Morsi converted the Shura Council – a ceremonial upper house that only 7 percent of Egyptians turned out to vote for – into a legislature, that has fooled no one. The body has no popular support and in practice has been used to do whatever Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood he hails from want.

Since Morsi's election, the US has been oddly supportive of Morsi, muted in its criticism even when his government has prosecuted American NGO workers dispatched to Egypt to work on democracy promotion. Though the message of the Obama administration this week has been that "democracy" is about far more than elections, for much of the past year it has given the opposite impression.

While the fall of Mubarak and events across the region since late 2010 have made it clear that the old ways of doing business in the Middle East are no longer workable, the US has continued to fall back on old positions and postures as it gropes for something resembling a coherent policy. On Jan. 25, 2011 as Egyptians poured into the streets, signalling the final days for the dictatorship, then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton insisted there was nothing to see. "Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable," she said then.

Below is a timeline of statements and actions from the administration on President Morsi and Egypt's transition, which until very recently have carried the same whistling past the graveyard flavor of Ms. Clinton's 2011 remark. 

July 2:

In "anonymous" remarks senior Obama administration officials began backing away from Morsi, saying that Obama has urged the president to hold new elections "soon."

July 1:

“Our commitment to Egypt has never been around any particular individual or party,” Obama said on a trip to Tanzania. “Our commitment has been to a process.... The U.S. government’s attitude has been, we would deal with a democratically elected government,” said Obama. “Democracy is not just about elections — it’s also about, how are you working with an opposition.”

June 18: US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson delivered a speech in Cairo to, she said, "set the record straight" on America's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly the popular conspiracy theory that the US had somehow engineered Morsi's rise to power. But her insistence that the elected president must be respected, dismissal of street protests as useful or appropriate, and failure to offer any criticism of either Morsi or the Brotherhood enraged Morsi's opponents. "This is the government that you and your fellow citizens elected. Even if you voted for others, I don’t think the elected nature of this government is seriously in doubt," she said. The speech also convinced critics that the US was indeed favoring the Brothers. "Some say that street action will produce better results than elections. To be honest, my government and I are deeply skeptical," she said.

Ms. Patterson also put the US firmly in the camp of "stability" over change in her speech, mirroring US policies in Egypt and across the region for decades. "Egypt needs stability to get its economic house in order, and more violence on the streets will do little more than add new names to the lists of martyrs. Instead, I recommend Egyptians get organized. Join or start a political party that reflects your values and aspirations. Egyptians need to know a better path forward. This will take time. You will have to roll up your sleeves and work hard. Progress will be slow and you often will feel frustrated. But there is no other way." She failed to mention the guilty verdicts for democracy NGO workers just a few weeks before.

June 4: Egypt sentenced 43 Egyptians and foreigners, some of them Americans, to jail for the crime of working with democracy promotion NGOs (among them the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which receive most of their funding from the US government). Secretary of State John Kerry said the US "is deeply concerned by the guilty verdicts and sentences" and that the verdict was "contrary to the universal principle of freedom of association and is incompatible with the transition to democracy." He went on to "urge the Government of Egypt to work with civic groups as they respond to the Egyptian people’s aspirations for democracy as guaranteed in Egypt’s new constitution."

May 10: The Obama administration issues a waiver on military funding to Egypt, sidestepping restrictions imposed by Congress, which had sought to condition delivery of $1.3 billion in military aid on progress on human rights and democracy. Angry legislators said there was no way Egypt could have passed the certification process.

April 3: US comedian Jon Stewart, a friend of Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian comic who has patterned a wildly popular satirical TV show after Stewart's The Daily Show, did a bit on Morsi after the government arrested and questioned Youssef for the crime of "insulting religion" and President Morsi. Stewart's clip included video of Morsi from 2010 describing Jews as descended from apes and pigs and he made the point that the president hadn't been hauled up on "defamation of religion" charges. The US Embassy Cairo Twitter feed shared a link to the Stewart clip, writing "Video @TheDailyShow with Jon Stewart on @DrBassemYoussef." Morsi was furious and Ambassador Patterson responded by having the embassy Twitter account briefly suspended and deleted the offending tweet. 

December 6, 2012: Alarmed by mass protests, which led to at least five deaths, over the constitution then being rushed to completion by Morsi and his aides, Obama called Morsi. A White House summary of the call reads: 

President Obama called President Morsi today to express his deep concern about the deaths and injuries of protesters in Egypt. The President emphasized that all political leaders in Egypt should make clear to their supporters that violence is unacceptable. He welcomed President Morsi’s call for a dialogue with the opposition but stressed that such a dialogue should occur without preconditions. The President noted that the United States has also urged opposition leaders to join in this dialogue without preconditions. He reiterated the United States’ continued support for the Egyptian people and their transition to a democracy that respects the rights of all Egyptians. The President underscored that it is essential for Egyptian leaders across the political spectrum to put aside their differences and come together to agree on a path that will move Egypt forward.

Sept 13, 2012: In a Telemundo interview a day after a mob stormed the US Embassy in Cairo (at the same time as the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya) Obama said of Egypt: "I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy ... they were democratically elected. I think we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident, to see how they respond to maintaining the peace treaty with Israel.... What we’ve seen is that in some cases, they’ve said the right things and taken the right steps. In others, how they’ve responded to other events may not be aligned with some of our interests, so I think it’s still a work in progress." A White House spokesman soon clarified: "'Ally’ is a legal term of art. We don’t have a mutual defense treaty with Egypt like we do with our NATO allies. But as the President has said, Egypt is [a] long-standing and close partner of the United States, and we have built on that foundation by supporting Egypt’s transition to democracy and working with the new government."

June 24, 2012: Obama calls to congratulate Morsi on his victory. A White House summary of the conversation said Obama "underscored that the United States will continue to support Egypt’s transition to democracy and stand by the Egyptian people as they fulfill the promise of their revolution.... [Obama] emphasized his interest in working together with President-elect Morsi, on the basis of mutual respect, to advance the many shared interests between Egypt and the United States."

Opponents of Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi protest outside the presidential palace, in Cairo, Tuesday, July 2. Egypt was on edge Tuesday following a 'last-chance' ultimatum the military issued to Morsi, giving the president and the opposition 48 hours to resolve the crisis in the country or have the army step in with its own plan. (Khalil Hamra/AP)

White House backing away from Morsi in record time (+video)

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 07.02.13

The withdrawal of support for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi by President Obama is the latest bit of bad news for Egypt's leader and the Muslim Brotherhood movement that catapulted him to power as the country's first freely elected head of state. 

The US hasn't publicly abandoned Mr. Morsi, whom the State Department has repeatedly hailed as a democratically elected leader. But via anonymous spokesmen it's done everything but, and the distancing has come in record time – just three days since mass protests broke out.

When protests against President Hosni Mubarak broke out in January 2011, the US struggled mightily to hold back the tide. On day two, Vice President Joe Biden famously insisted that Mubarak was no dictator (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) and that he should remain in office. It was only on day five that Obama's people began muttering about the need for "reform" and an unspecified "orderly transition" of some sort. Only on day 17, when Mubarak's fate was written, did the administration publicly say that Mubarak must go.

But Obama and his aides have been learning on the job since 2011 and it is, after all, a new Middle East. They now recognize that protests the size of those that broke out on June 30 against Morsi have a momentum of their own. (The video just below of anti-Morsi protesters was shot and released by a member of the Egyptian military, speaking volumes.) The experience of once trying – and failing – to hold back the tide is a wonderful teacher.

And besides, the US is far less invested in Morsi. Mubarak was America's man in Cairo for over 30 years. Morsi, in power for less than a year and member of a movement that is ultimately hostile to US regional objectives, doesn't have anywhere near that bank of goodwill. 

While the Obama administration has spent much of the past year rah-rahing about Egypt's emerging "democracy" and received reasonable cooperation from Morsi on Israel, it now must look at Morsi in much the same way as Egypt's generals: This is a guy who can't hold up his end of the bargain.

CNN reports, citing a "senior official" saying that Obama's people have told Morsi there should be new elections soon. (Note: When DC-based reporters provide this kind of anonymity, the statement usually is not coming from a leaking official, but from an official approved to speak who maintains deniability for the administration, and avoids accountability for their own words, by being "off the record.")

That comes a day after Egypt's senior generals dictated new terms to their nominal boss: Restore stability to Egypt by end of business Wednesday, or we'll step in and do it for you. Morsi and the Brothers must feel the walls are closing in a bit, as a coalition of democracy protesters, old Mubarak stalwarts, and the military hierarchy are trying to reset the rules in Egypt.

To be sure, anonymous US officials are also warning against an overt coup by Egypt's generals – but, in some ways, the coup has already taken place. The Egyptian generals have gone on record ordering the civilian president around, and laid out consequences for failure that they have the power to enforce. Imagine if the joint chiefs of staff issued an ultimatum to Obama.

And consider this quote from one of CNN's anonymous officials:

"As much as we appreciate [the Egyptian military's] statement that they intend to protect the Egyptian people, they need to be careful about how they inject themselves into the situation. We are telling them that playing a role with their ultimatum to get the two sides together is completely appropriate, but anything that looks like a military takeover is walking a very thin line."

Notice the concern for appearances and the blanket approval of direct military-meddling in Egypt's politics as "completely appropriate." The Obama administration at this point is not worried about legal niceties or an obsession with civilian control of the military in Egypt. The country's economy continues to deteriorate and its civilian politics, for a variety of reasons over the past two years, have failed.

The Constitution that Morsi and the Brotherhood rammed through has divided Egypt and infuriated the opposition. 

While Morsi may try to continue to cling to his "democratic mandate" from a narrow election victory last year, he seems no more able to credibly govern at this point than Mubarak was after Jan. 25, 2011. How long it will take to ease him from his current perch is far from certain.

But the game is starting to move very quickly.

An Egyptian girl chants slogans at a demonstration against Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi during a rally in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Monday, July 1, 2013. (Manu Brabo/AP)

Is Egypt's military about to overthrow an elected president?

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 07.01.13

The 48-hour ultimatum issued today by Egypt's unelected military brass comes amid a wave of protests that appear to dwarf the popular uprising that drove Egypt's military-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak from power 27 months ago.

While what happens next is anyone's guess, Egypt is undoubtedly in its most dangerous moment since former President Hosni Mubarak's ouster in 2011. The military is front and center in Egypt's politics once more; the Muslim Brotherhood feels cornered and threatened by what it deems to be counter-revolutionaries; and the crowds in Tahrir Square and elsewhere are demanding something different – but what they want, exactly, is far from clear.

Today Egypt's so-called democratic transition is a failure, with the strongest evidence of that the rapturous crowds chanting their love for the Army and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). In January and February 2011, a massive show of street power led SCAF to dump Mubarak overboard. Then came a period of ham-handed military rule, with show trials of activists, organized sexual assault on female protesters (what else to call the so-called "virginity tests" forced on them within weeks of the military takeover?) and the torture of democracy activists like Ramy Essam.

Eventually, the military appeared to back out of politics and reasonably free elections were held, first for a parliament that was packed with members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies, and then a squeaker of a presidential election that saw the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi narrowly defeat Ahmed Shafiq , a retired Air Force general who served in Mubarak's cabinet for eight years and as his last prime minister.

Since then, the parliament was dissolved by court order, a new Constitution written mostly by the Muslim Brotherhood was rushed through, and many of Egypt's democracy protesters who backed Morsi as the candidate of change over a longtime Mubarak servant have come to rue the choice. Inflation has jumped, government receipts have fallen, and anger over Morsi's failings has swept away Egyptians' anger about decades of authoritarian rule.

Now the canny military is once again the darling of many at Tahrir, who seem to welcome a soft military coup as the best option for the country. Steven Cook, a keen observer of Egyptian politics, marvels at how the generals – with the help of incompetent civilian politicians – have rehabilitated their image.

Of all the arresting images that emerged from yesterday’s mass protests in Egypt, the ones that struck me most were those of military helicopters dropping Egyptian flags down to the crowds below.  The Egyptian commanders have been pilloried for many things in the last two and a half years, but for a group of people who eschew politics and maintain thinly veiled contempt for politicians, they are shrewd political operators.  After the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, under Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, sullied the image of the senior officer corps—if not the military itself—the Ministry of Defense is in the strongest position it has been in since February 11, 2011.

...The possibility that June 30 would end in significant bloodshed in Egypt’s streets—beyond the sixteen deaths and almost eight-hundred injuries—also played into an unarticulated strategy on the part of both counter-revolutionary forces embedded within the state and anti-Brotherhood activists to encourage the officers to reset the political system. Both groups believe that a military intervention would fulfill their specific, but diametrically opposed interests.  For those within the state who have been working diligently to undermine the Brotherhood in virtually every way, the goal is the restoration of the old order. For Egypt’s myriad activists who have coalesced in a profound and at times pathological hatred of Morsi, a “do-over” transition would surely improve their electoral prospects. General Abdelfattah al Sisi and his deputies are not so dim-witted as to fall into the trap the political forces have set for them, however.

Cook concludes his piece by writing "this morning General al Sisi is the most powerful man in Egypt. To rule, but not govern…" The accuracy of his comment is borne out by the statement Sisi issued today that brings up the prospect of a coup. It is simultaneously with "the people" and vague enough that it could justify almost any action – or inaction. 

"The armed forces reiterates its call to meet the demands of the people, and it gives everyone 48 hours as a last chance to carry the burden of the ongoing historic circumstances that the country is going through," Sisi said in his nationally broadcast address. "If the demands of the people are not met within the given period of time (the military) will be compelled by its national and historic responsibilities, and in respect for the demands of Egypt’s great people, to announce a roadmap for the future, and procedures that it will supervise involving the participation of all the factions and groups.”

The "demands" of "the people?" Most Egyptians demand more jobs, better living standards, an end to police brutality, and a more dignified life in their homeland. But they are from a consensus on how to meet those demands. Tens of millions of Egyptians continue to support Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, just as tens of millions of other Egyptians view them as dangerous failures. Some of these are most worried about the Brotherhood's desire to further Islamicize Egyptian society and public life; others are uncomfortable with the neo-liberal economic policies the Brothers favor; and still others merely want a do-over.

It's become a tired cliche to describe Egyptian society as "polarized," but some cliches are useful because they're the best way to describe the reality. The effect of democratic elections, and the legal chicanery that has followed them, has been a breakdown of social trust and further division of society. Opposition forces, from groups that yearn for the stability and heavy-handed governance of the Mubarak era to those who want a real democracy – not just elections, but the trimmings of civil society, separation of powers, and political compromise – have failed to build workable opposition coalitions.

That has left Egypt with two stark choices: The military, or Morsi. At the moment, the military is clearly the more palatable choice for large swaths of the protesters, who have been described as dangerous rabble by Morsi. He says they're the ones standing between the will of the people and its realization, not him. It's not hard to understand why he sees it that way.

The Muslim Brotherhood's offices in Cairo were overrun last night and set on fire by protesters. Similar attacks were carried out in other cities. Did the military, or the police, intervene to protect them? No.

Egypt's politics are sick, and getting sicker. And while the Morsi presidency's singular achievement has been to divide Egypt's people in a shockingly short period of time, the movement he hails from spent 80 years struggling for power in Egypt. That power was delivered at the ballot box, but now it is facing the threat of being removed from power within two days, unless Morsi pulls the unlikeliest rabbit out of his hat in the interim. What will the Muslim Brothehood rank and file do then?

The example of Algeria can't be ignored. In 1992, the Algerian military cancelled elections that the country's Islamic Salvation Front was set to win. That set the stage for a decade of civil war that claimed at least 150,000 Algerian lives and convinced a generation of Islamists in that country that peacefully participating in electoral politics was a foolish choice.

Sisi surely knows this history. But as hundreds of thousands of protesters continue to fill Egypt's streets demanding Morsi irhal ("go!") – just as they did with Mubarak in early 2011 – he appears to have left himself few options.

America's deadliest soldier? Dillard Johnson says he never made that claim.

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 06.27.13

Yesterday I wrote about Dillard Johnson's new book "Carnivore," published by the News Corporation's HarperCollins and heavily promoted by News Corporation outlets like the New York Post and Fox News.

The promotional effort around the book has carried a hard-to-believe, almost impossible claim: that Johnson had 2,746 "confirmed" enemy kills over the course of two tours in Iraq. His first tour came during the 2003 invasion and the second for roughly 12 months starting in February 2005. The claimed kills, which first surfaced in NewsCorp's New York Post on Monday ("With 2,746 confirmed kills, Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson is the deadliest American soldier on record — and maybe the most humble"), was then repeated on a number of Fox News programs this week and mirrored around the Internet.

Similar claims are made in HarperCollins' publicity for the book ("He is recognized by the Pentagon to have accounted for more than 2,000 enemy killed in action," says the book jacket; "Credited with more than 2,600 enemy KIA, he is perhaps the most lethal ground soldier in U.S. history," says both the book jacket and a blurb the publisher supplied to Amazon; the book cover calls him "One of the deadliest American soldiers of all time.")

Mr. Johnson says there's one problem: It isn't true.

He says the book doesn't contain that claim, that he never claimed to have killed 2,746 enemy fighters in Iraq, and that he didn't kill that many people in Iraq. He says a combination of innocent mistakes by others and a desire by HarperCollins and his co-author to promote the book have led to the impression he's making claims that he hasn't made. He says a personal and informal total of likely enemy fighters killed during engagements in the Iraq invasion has been attributed to him, when in fact the total includes shooting from the Bradley he commanded as well as shots fired from Bradleys around him and commanded by others – his wingmen.

"Am I one of the deadliest American soldiers of all time? Probably not," says Johnson. "Do I think I did a lot of damage with my vehicle and stuff, with me being decisive? Yeah, absolutely."

These and other claims have drawn angry denunciations from a large number of soldiers who served with him in Iraq, who say he played an important role in their effort but did not come close to what's been written about him in the press.

Johnson says he agrees, and says the attribution of so many dead to him personally traces back to a 2004 Pentagon history of the invasion, On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was interviewed for the book and says it's been wildly misinterpreted, especially since the chapter he features in was excerpted by Soldier of Fortune magazine, with editorial changes made by someone there that exaggerated his personal role in the fighting.

His assertion of 121 "confirmed" sniper kills made in his book has also drawn howls of derision. Johnson is not trained as a sniper and was not equipped with a sniper rifle. He says his personal tally of 121 enemy killed during his second tour is correct, but that "I didn’t use a sniper rifle, I am not a sniper. Nowhere in the book does it say that I’m a sniper. It’s in the jacket, again, but I didn’t write that." He told me that all these kills were with M4 and M14 rifles.

He told Fox New's Laura Ingraham on the O'Reilly Factor – the evening after an appearance on Fox & Friends that morning that infuriated many veterans, and prompted angry emails from some former comrades – that the 121 kills involved "the M14 and my M4 personal rifle and some 203 ones." A 203 is a single shot grenade launcher and attributing specific deaths to a grenade launched over distance is both difficult and definitely not a form of "sniping."

Johnson explains that the choice of "sniper" in the book was for ease of understanding for the general civilian public. "When you look inside the cover and see the talk about the 121 confirmed sniper kills [that's because] most civilians don’t know what a designated marksman is," he says. He said his platoon didn't have many trained marskmen and that since he was a naturally good shot, he took on those kinds of duties to protect himself and his men.

Some of Johnson's stories have shifted over time.

He told Ms. Ingraham this week that the long shot, which he says in that interview was 821 yards, "was sort of a sniper battle from a rooftop and I got this guy. It took me 15 shots. He was a better shot than me. I just had better equipment and he was missing all around me and I basically just got lucky." But here's what Stars and Stripes reported him as saying about the incident on Dec. 20, 2005:

“I used my laser rangefinder to give me the distance to the enemy location, it was 852 meters exactly, a long shot,” Johnson said then, according to a 2nd Brigade Combat Team press release carried by the newspaper. He reported there were two insurgents there and that they were firing towards his rooftop position. “I engaged one enemy shooter with my own rifle. My first round fell short but it must have scared him because he stood up to run away. The next round I fired, hit him and he went down,” Johnson said.

On his O'Reilly appearance, Johnson corrected his host when she attributed 2,746 kills in Iraq to him personally. He says he wished he'd done that in the earlier Fox & Friends interview but that he was only on for about three minutes, and as it was his first television appearance, he was a little flustered.

"I was trying to get that in on Fox & Friends, but didn’t have time. Did on O’Reilly with Laura Ingraham," he tells me. He told Ingraham: 

"As far as the kills go ... I’m not really proud of those numbers being out there, it was part of the battle damage assessment that we did. My gunner actually did, you know, most of those or over half of those in the vehicle there and I was just present on the vehicle ... which I was the commander of."

Soldiers in general don't like to keep body counts, and while they may be proud of killing enemies in engagements, keeping their buddies safe, and accomplishing their missions, bragging about kill numbers is generally seen as uncouth, if not a downright creepy. Johnson agrees with that, and says there's no intent to brag about killing. Rather, he says, he kept track of enemy dead by counting rifles on the battlefield after engagements (on the reasoning that "one rifle equals one man") as a way to keep senior officers as informed as possible about the course of the war.

Johnson was kind enough to speak to me for about two hours last night. I'm currently sifting through my long notes of my conversation with him, and will revisit the story after I read his book myself this evening.

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One thing that's certain is that it was a tough fight. (John Moore/AP)

America's deadliest soldier or stolen valor?

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 06.26.13

Update: I spoke to Mr. Johnson after this story was first published. He says his new book doesn't claim that he killed 2,746 enemy combatants or that he has 121 sniper kills. He says while those numbers are on the book jacket, and in HarperCollins' publicity for the book, that the claim is never made in the text of the book and that it is inaccurate. He says he is not responsible for the publisher's writing. The 2,746 number he says is his battlefield estimate of those killed by both him and the men he was fighting with. Johnson says the he did kill 121 enemy combatants on his second deployment to Iraq, with M4 and M14 rifles, and that the choice of the term "sniper" was because average readers don't understand the difference between a marksman and a sniper. He says that Mr. Spaid could not have read the book, that Spaid's claim that dismounts were extremely rare during the invasion are inaccurate, and that Spaid wasn't in a position to speak to what Johnson witnessed and experienced. Johnson says that while he once gave an estimate that he'd perhaps fired 7,000 depleted uranium rounds from his Bradley during the invasion of Iraq that he gave that estimate to an interviewer while wounded and at Walter Reed hospital in 2003 and that it was only an estimate. He is uncertain about how many rounds were fired. He says the story about cutting the wire is true, that it was the sort of wire you might buy at the hardware store for a dryer, and that it's played for laughs in the book. He says that he regrets that he did not correct the Fox and Friends interviewer's statement that he had 2,746 confirmed kills in Iraq, but that it was his first television appearance and he was a bit flustered; he says he did correct this assertion on a later airing of the O'Reilly Factor on Fox (available here) and in other media interviews. Johnson said his motivation in writing the book was so that his comrades would get more credit for what happened and so there would be less focus on him, correcting a failure in emphasis in an official US Army history of the Iraq invasion published in 2004 that he was interviewed for. Tomorrow, I'll write more fully about my interview with Johnson with more details on his war experience.

A new war memoir, "Carnivore" by Dillard Johnson, makes some rather extraordinary claims, according to media appearances and promotional material from publisher HarperCollins. But it's looking likely that these claims are exaggerated, and in some eyes are veering towards stolen valor territory.

The book is subtitled "A memoir by one of the Deadliest American Soldiers of All Time" and in it Sgt. 1st Class Johnson and his co-author write that he had 2,746 "confirmed" enemy kills during his time serving in Iraq, with 121 of those "confirmed sniper kills, the most ever publicly reported by a US Army soldier."

But his claims have sent the online veteran community into an uproar, with many vets calling them implausible and some men who served with him saying his statements are downright falsehoods. He served as a commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with the 3rd Squadron, 7th US Cavalry, which took the lead in the charge to Baghdad after US forces went over the berm to invade Iraq in March 2003.

"I don’t want to take away from what [Johnson] did do, he did do great things: led a platoon, completed the missions," Brad Spaid tells the Monitor. He is a former staff sergeant who served with Johnson in Iraq and now has a civilian job with the Veteran's Administration and has read the book. "We lost some really good NCOs, guys that we really looked up to, and we feel that … on Facebook and blogs other vets are coming out and calling us out and calling us liars and idiots, and it takes away from what we really did…. We don’t want to become a laughing stock, we want to be remembered for what we did and move on." 

That Sergeant Johnson (who received a Silver Star) and his fellows in the 7th Cavalry faced heavy fighting and performed admirably in Iraq is beyond question. The brief unit history on their website recounts that "combat operations for Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20th when the squadron crossed into Iraq as the lead element of the [3rd Infantry Division]. The Squadron attacked to Baghdad fighting both the Republican Guard and the Saddam Fedayeen. It was the longest cavalry charge in the history of the world and it ended in the capture of Baghdad."

But while I haven't yet read the book, the headline claim is an extraordinary one, based on my five years covering the Iraq war between 2003 and 2008. An ounce of common sense also comes into play. 

In late 2007, after Johnson had left Iraq, statistics provided to USA Today by the US-led coalition, estimated that 19,429 militants had been killed by all coalition forces, including Iraqi ones, since the start of the war in 2003. Johnson's claimed "confirmed kills" of 2,746 would amount to 14 percent of all those deaths, an astonishing number for a single soldier who did not serve in the hottest battles of the post-invasion war.

His statement is even more remarkable when compared to the brief history given at the unit's home page, which recounts that "by the time the Squadron had redeployed it had killed 2,200 Iraqi personnel, 64 tanks, 41 armored vehicles, numerous active air defense systems, as well as trucks and civilian vehicles used as suicide bombers."

The squadron experienced heavy fighting between the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003 and when it left in August. It returned to Iraq for 12 months in 2005. Former Staff Sgt. Brad Spaid, who was with the 3/7th's Apache Troop in Iraq in '03 and with the Crazy Horse Troop that Johnson belonged to in '05, estimates that they only had about six engagements during that second deployment with at most five to six insurgents killed in each one. Yet Johnson's confirmed kills claim is 124 percent of the total on the unit's history page for 2003 and, by Mr. Spaid's reckoning, would still be well above 100 percent of the total if he claimed every single kill made in 2005. 

To be sure, the real number of militants killed by US forces in Iraq is essentially unknown, any statistics a combination of guesswork made amid the haze of battle when units were running on to the next engagement, not spending time counting up dead bodies and figuring out who delivered the shot that struck them down. A press contact for HarperCollins' William Morrow imprint, which published "Carnivore," had not returned a call for comment at the time of publication.

Whatever the uncertainty around body counts, the claims invite incredulity, and will raise doubts about any other claims made in the book, which is currently being heavily promoted by the NewsCorp media empire. NewsCorp owns HarperCollins and the tone of NewsCorp's news properties about the book has been gushing and uncritical. For instance the company's New York Post carried an "exclusive" on June 23 that begins:

With 2,746 confirmed kills, Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson is the deadliest American soldier on record — and maybe the most humble.

As a commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle nicknamed “Carnivore,” Johnson, 48, helped lead the ground assault during Operation Iraqi Freedom, overwhelming the enemy with a relentless show of military might that left a trail of dead in his wake.

Johnson was obliged to report confirmed kills to his superiors, cataloging the dead in a green journal that revealed the astonishing tally — which only began to come light as he and co-writer James Tarr were researching his exploits for his memoir.

And here's a partial transcript of his appearance on Fox and Friends yesterday morning (titled: "True stories from one of America's deadliest soldiers") with the interviewer in full "hooah!" mode (the transcript is mine; I've summarized the interviewer's comments):

Interviewer: "Hear this incredible story, and meet this incredible man. With 2,746 confirmed kills Army Sgt. 1st Class Dillard CJ Johnson is one of the deadliest American soldiers on record..."

Johnson: "I've just always been lucky I guess, you know, it's better to be lucky than good. I grew up and I always wanted to be Sgt. Rock, Sgt. Fury from the comic books and I believe in America and what it stands for."

Interviewer: You've got 100 plus sniper kills, why did you write this book?

Johnson: I wrote this book "because I kept winding up in other books and magazines and stuff over an insert from 'On Point.' It was out there in public domain, and all these other writers kept using it. And Charlie Horse really deserves, Crazy Horse, the unit I was in, really deserves the credit for what went on over there as far as the battle and the confirmed kills. And the confirmed kills aren't as if I went out there and actually counted bodies to go through this – a lot of them are attributed from the book 'On Point' and the other ones are when I actually did battlefield assessment to give my commander an evaluation of what was going on out there. But there were other troopers that did as much as I did or even more out there with it."

Interviewer: What should people understand about our fighting men and women?

Johnson: "They should really know that there's nobody out there doing this for a paycheck. They're doing it for love of country and love of their fellow soldier and they're putting their entire life on hold and their life at risk every day so that people can enjoy the freedoms that they have.... I don't think people really understand, you know, when we go to war with someone else, they don't understand what that country was like and everything else. America has been very fortunate as far as how our civilians act and everything else and we don't have the same culture that these other countries do, and all we can really do when we go to these other countries [is] give them a fighting chance, you know, for democracy..."

Dennis Goulet, who was the leader of the troop's 4th platoon (Johnson was the 3rd platoon's sergeant), writes that he doesn't believe Johnson's sniper claims, particularly an account of killing two insurgents at a range of 852 meters. "I can tell you ... the man was no sniper," he writes in an e-mail. "The only weapon system he had that could reach that far would be the Barrett or the Bradley gun. I was either with him on every mission and if I wasn't with him, every enemy engagement would have to be reported to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) and it's not like he was out there by himself."

A Dec. 14, 2005 release put out by a public affairs officer for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team appears to say that Johnson killed two Iraqi insurgents at 852 meters in an engagement at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad. (I write "appears" only because I can only find the release on unofficial sites like this one, not on official military sites, but it looks legitimate). But neither Mr. Goulet nor Spaid has any recollection of this achievement.

Goulet says the .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifle the unit carried was "seldom used" and doesn't recall Johnson killing anyone with it. I'm "not trying to discredit the man's service to the country, but there are hundreds of others that deserve recognition for their service, to include five men who lost their lives in 2005. It's about all who served in 3-7, NOT Johnson," writes Goulet.

Spaid says there are other elements in the book that ring false to him. In the book, Johnson recounts firing 7,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition from his Bradley Fighting Vehicle (nicknamed "Carnivore" and so yielding the title of the book) and dismounting to fight hand-to-hand. Spaid says at the time the heavy armor unit was not trained for that kind of infantry fighting and doubts that happened, recalling that he was only issued a 9mm pistol "with about 27 rounds" at the time. "We never dismounted, we were heavy armor."

Spaid says he checked with the Master Sergeant responsible for tracking ammunition used during that deployment – an important job since guns require maintenance after firing a certain number of those rounds and could explode, injuring or killing their crew, if they didn't get it. He says the sergeant told him "for Johnson to go through 7,000 depleted uranium rounds, that would have been 1/3 of what we’d been given for the entire invasion to be split between 50 or 60 Bradleys." He also points out that a Bradley carrying that many rounds would be physically impossible.

Other stories he casts doubt on include Johnson's claim that he cut through a 220 volt cable with a small knife to darken an Iraqi hut he was hiding in when insurgents entered. "That area where he was – there wasn't electricity," says Spaid. "And I've been to college, I think that many volts would melt a knife that size, even if it was insulated, not just leave a few nicks."

The tales of the 7th Cavalry in Iraq are filled with heroism, tragedy, and obstacles overcome, and I hope to revisit some of those stories later this week so that it isn't all about Johnson.

But as the saying goes, the first casualty when war comes is truth. Sometimes the casualties continue to accrue long after the guns have fallen silent.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen here at Forum Marinum harbor on June 25, confirmed on Tuesday that former Edward Snowden, sought by the United States, was in the transit area of a Moscow airport. Putin ruled out handing him over to Washington, dismissing U.S. criticisms as 'ravings and rubbish.' (leksey Nikolskyi/RIA Novosti/Kremlin/Reuters)

The US demands Russia give up Snowden: Thanks, says Putin.

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 06.25.13

The US is often accused of arrogance in international affairs and it's not hard to see why. US officials frequently speak of behavior that is "not acceptable" from other nations. Or they tell other countries and leaders what they "must" do. Or, if they're feeling a little more accommodating, they merely "urge" other countries "to do the right thing" in their best disappointed parent voice. 

But the matter of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who stole a trove of NSA secrets, leaked some of them to The Guardian, and now appears to have fled to the international terminal at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, helps bring to the surface how weak such rhetoric makes the US look, particularly when it's either unwilling or incapable of imposing its will. 

There are a great many things that the US would like to see happen in the world, but standing on the sidelines while "demanding" this or that only serves to make you look like an adolescent, incapable of seeing the wants and needs of others. While sometimes such rhetoric is designed to fool a domestic audience that the government is "doing something," even worse is how often US officials seem to believe that tough talk alone can achieve results.

Fairly typical was Secretary of State John Kerry's comment yesterday, when it still wasn't 100 percent clear that Snowden had fled from Hong Kong to Russia. "It would be very disappointing if he was willfully allowed to board an airplane" to Russia, Kerry said. He also said the US would be "deeply troubled” if that had happened "and there would be, without any question, some effect and impact on the relationship and consequences... I’d urge them to live within the law. It’s in the interest of everyone.”

He directed those comments at both China, Hong Kong (a special administrative region of China) and Russia. The net effect of them? A red rag to Putin, some minor laughter in Beijing.

 And, "law"? Whose law? "Everyone's interests?" Neither China or Russia view their interests as tied at the hip to America's, and the reluctance of two countries who are constantly beaten up by the State Department over poor free speech and human rights records have frankly been enjoying the spectacle of America chasing after a so-called whistleblower. Russia said the rock band Pussy Riot violated its blasphemy laws, appealed for understanding, and sentenced its members to prison. The State Department tsk-tsked:

The United States is concerned about both the verdict and the disproportionate sentences handed down by a Moscow court in the case against the members of the band Pussy Riot and the negative impact on freedom of expression in Russia. We urge Russian authorities to review this case and ensure that the right to freedom of expression is upheld.

A false equivalency? Perhaps. But that's not how Moscow sees it. Sovereignty is sovereignty, local laws are local laws, and we don't appreciate the yankees telling us how to run our own affairs.

What's it all about?

Far more than Snowden.

For over a year now, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her successor Secretary of State Kerry, and President Obama have insisted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "must go," notwithstanding that Russia, a key backer of the Syrian government, disagrees strongly.

In May Secretary Kerry said "we've made it crystal clear that we would prefer that Russia was not supplying assistance" to Syria while at the same time the White House spokesman said: "Our position is that Syria's future cannot include Bashar al-Assad."

That's all very interesting. But it has made Russia, if anything, less-inclined to agree with the US than before. Russia doesn't want to lose its naval base in Syria. It is more frightened of jihadis taking over the country than even the US, because of concerns of destabilization in the Caucasus. Russia doesn't like the precedent of the US determining which global governments survive. Flush with oil and gas wealth and an aggressive nationalism under Putin, Russia wants to be an equal, not a subordinate.

Putin and Russia were particularly stung by their decision to abstain from the UN Security Council vote on a no-fly zone for Libya in 2011 (just as Russia was stung years ago by the US decision to back eastward expansion of NATO). The US had promised that air-power would be used for defensive purposes only, the UN resolution spelled this out and yet the air campaign that was carried out was an offensive one designed to help the rebellion prevail over Muammar Qaddafi.

Better to stay mum

Russia, not surprisingly, is unlikely to take the US on its word in the near future and has also felt insulted by the lecturing it frequently hears from Washington. While it might feel good to talk tough sometimes, it's generally better to stay mum unless you're willing to go the whole way.

Yet in the US, most of the political criticism of the Obama folks is not the failure to find creative diplomatic solutions or build bridges but they don't talk tough enough.

Sen. John McCain is rather typical of this "lead by leading" school of criticism.

"For nearly five years now we have sent a signal to the world that we're leading from behind, that we are impotent, that we don't act when we say that we're going to... we need to show more leadership," Senator McCain told CNBC. He told CNN that Putin is an "old KGB colonel apparatchik that dreams of the days of the Russian empire" and "when you withdraw to fortress America, when you believe in light footprints, when you show the world you're leading from behind, these are the consequences of American leadership."

Perhaps that makes for a good soundbite, but as policy advice, it's incoherent. Putin and other country leaders don't do things they don't want to do because the US refuses to show "leadership" or because of their fundamentally nefarious nature. They generally don't like to do things precisely because they don't see them as in their interests, and either need convincing that America's estimation of their interests is better than their own, or at least be offered a reasonable compromise in return for holding their noses and doing us a favor.

Bluster

In the case of Snowden, they've gotten mostly bluster from the Obama administration as they have in the case of Syria (a subtext to McCain's comments today; the senator is a leading hawk on the country and supporter of its rebellion). 

Today Snowden is in Moscow (more or less. He's reported to be holed up in the airport). And it's a moment that Putin is likely savoring, while playing up a rule of law argument of his own: "We can hand over foreign citizens to countries with which we have an appropriate international agreement on the extradition of criminals," Putin told reporters today. "We don't have such an agreement with the United States ... Thank God, Mr. Snowden committed no crimes on the territory of the Russian Federation."

There have been some signs of dawning awareness that public comments haven't been helping. Mr. Kerry said today about Russia: "We are not looking for a confrontation. We are not ordering anybody," though he followed it up with a sentence that surely made Putin smile: "We are simply requesting under a very normal procedure for the transfer of somebody."

If Snowden is to be believed, he is carrying a trove of information on the NSA's abilities, programs, and targets. Moscow's intelligence agents currently have a whale of a potential source just on the outskirts of town. And that makes it likely the US is desperate to get him back. He may fly on soon. But it's not hard to imagine what Putin thinks when he hears of a "routine" extradition request from a country with which Russia does not have an extradition treaty. Something along the lines of: "If I give up this man that could undermine your spying operations against me, what of greater value will you give me in return?" What indeed?

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A TV screen shows a news report of Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping US surveillance programs, at a shopping mall in Hong Kong Sunday. (Vincent Yu/AP)

Snowden says he doesn't want NSA leaks to be about him. Really?

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 06.24.13

Two weeks ago, Edward Snowden gave The Guardian permission to disclose that he was the leaker of documents from the US National Security Agency.

"I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me," the former NSA contractor said then. "I want it to be about what the US government is doing."

If that was really his desire, he's certainly gone about it in a funny way. From that day, every step he's taken couldn't have been better calculated to draw attention to himself. Over the weekend he even turned the media dial up when he fled from Hong Kong to the loving bosom of Mother Russia.

And with the assistance of Julian Assange, Mr. Snowden's "where's Waldo" saga is turning into a WikiLeaks production.

Mr. Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has staked out a consistently anti-American and techno-libertarian position in the past few years. The US government is motivated by malice and power lust in his worldview, its rivals like Russia (where state-owned broadcaster RT ran a show of Assange's) get a free pass, and secrecy is an evil in and of itself. Though he presents himself as a champion of free-speech, Assange has sought refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, never mind that the country has a poor and deteriorating record on freedom of speech. The Committee to Protect Journalists listed Ecuador and Russia as two of the 10 worst places to be a journalist in the world past year.

Like Assange, Snowden has requested asylum in Ecuador. And while Snowden is avoiding US arrest and prosecution for leaking classified documents, Assange is hiding out in the embassy to avoid extradition to face rape and sexual assault charges laid against him by two women in Sweden. So jumping into the boat with Assange will do Snowden's cause, whatever it turns out to be, little good in the US, nor will his sojourn in Russia, no matter how long it lasts.

Leaving aside a discussion of whether Snowden has done the right thing, his actions have undermined the likelihood he'll reach a much broader audience in the US, where voters are already inclined to approve of government surveillance as a safety measure. There is inevitable speculation today, fair or unfair, that Snowden will be interviewed by the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB.

And the simple fact of the matter is that this is being played for political advantage by all sides. Assange and WikiLeaks are seeking regained relevance and publicity, Ecuador would likely love to use its embrace of a "whistleblower" to fight its developing image of an increasingly repressive state, and Russia (which deals with its leakers rather more harshly than the US does) is surely enjoying tweaking the nose of the US, which frequently lectures it about its own country's track record on basic freedoms. 

What is Snowden's agenda?

Originally, it seemed to be about violations of the US Constitution's protections against unreasonable searches. But during his stay in Hong Kong, he expanded his roster of leaks from claims that the NSA was carrying out wide-spread surveillance of US citizens to disclosing information about US surveillance programs against China, which is emerging as one of America's great rivals for strategic influence.

That choice weakened any future claims he might make that his decision to violate the terms of his top-secret clearance was motivated solely by a sense of patriotism or commitment to his own interpretation of the Constitution. While his opinion may prove right (the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a constitutional challenge to one of the programs though others claim that Snowden has dramatically overstated the extent of US domestic surveillance), today comes news that his agenda was far bigger.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports today that Snowden told the paper on June 12 (why it sat on the news til now they didn't say; it probably had to do with a promise that they'd wait until he left) that he'd taken his job with NSA contractor Booz Allen with the express intention of gaining access to US secrets so he could steal them and release them to the world.

"Asked if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: 'Correct on Booz,'" the paper writes. "His intention was to collect information about the NSA hacking into 'the whole world' and 'not specifically Hong Kong and China' ... 'If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published.'"

I am not certain what to think about Snowden's actions. There's no question the federal government's powers have expanded since 9/11, particularly when it comes to civil liberties. But Snowden has not stood up in an act of civil disobedience, pointed the finger and accepted the consequences.

He's consistently associated himself with people and nations that don't have America's best interests at heart since his first leaks hit The Guardian, and as he looks for aid around the globe, he carries with him what he claims are four laptops filled with documents and information stolen from NSA systems.

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Newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah speaks during a joint news conference with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton (not seen) in the West Bank city of Ramallah, June 19. Hamdallah has offered his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas, after just two weeks on the job. (Mohamad Torokman/Reuters)

So long Fayyadism, So long Palestinian Authority?

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / 06.20.13

The notion that a little-known Palestinian linguistics professor with no political support base of his own could be appointed Palestinian prime minister and somehow strengthen the West Bank's Palestinian Authority (PA), setting the stage for an eventual peace with Israel, was at best a little whimsical.

But Rami Hamdallah's attempted resignation after just two weeks on the job should demonstrate that such hopes, expressed by the US and Israel, were more folly than whimsy.

Agence France-Presse reports, citing a "PA official," that Mr. Hamdallah submitted a written resignation today "following disagreements with his two deputies."

While it's not clear yet whether Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will accept his resignation, it hardly matters. Mr. Hamdallah's technocratic predecessor Salam Fayyad tried to quit multiple times before it finally stuck. The fact will remain that whoever is given responsibility for day-to-day management of the PA will be hamstrung by a lack of political legitimacy, real control over the government's finances, and the absence of anything resembling a workable peace process.

Mr. Fayyad, who held his post for six years, in some ways jumped before he was pushed. He introduced changes into how the PA is governed that threatened the entrenched Fatah party that Mr. Abbas leads and for years had been at odds with Abbas, who also worried that Fayyad was building a power base of his own. Hamdallah is seen as both a less politically dynamic and less experienced politician than Fayyad, but had vowed to tread the same path while in power. 

Clearly, he's been finding that rough going. The PA hasn't had a parliament since 2007, when Hamas swept PA elections and Abbas's Fatah party refused to concede power or defeat. A brief civil war split the Palestinian territories in two, with Hamas ruling Gaza and Fatah's central committee, with Abbas at its head, running the West Bank in the name of the PA.

The splintering of at least nominal Palestinian unity since 2007 has weakened the PA's standing with its own people and in potential negotiations with Israel, which has dramatically expanded settlements in the West Bank in the interim. There have been no elections since and while there have been occasional gestures toward political reunification, neither Hamas nor Fatah have been willing to compromise, and the US and Israel have been staunchly opposed, since those two nations consider Hamas to be a terrorist group.

Whether Hamdallah stays or goes is irrelevant to the more important reailty: The dream of foreigners that a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian Authority largely disinterested in confrontation with Israel – which The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman amusingly called Fayyadism – is pretty much dead.

There is an aging group of Palestinian Liberation Organization and Fatah leaders around Abbas, who have failed to deliver the Palestinian state that the creation of the PA was all about. In the West Bank, there is no current political alternative to them. And Israel has grown very comfortable with the status quo, since the building of the separation wall has dramatically heightened their own security and the pro-settlement bloc in Israeli politics has gone from strength to strength.

While US Secretary of State John Kerry has been making vague promises of West Bank economic development and a restarted peace process, the position of the PA, reliant on external funding and taxes that Israel collects – and sometimes withholds – on its behalf, continues to deteriorate.

His weakness appears to be the very reason Hamdallah was attractive to Abbas in the first place.

"He’s a gray figure," Gershon Baskin, an Israeli activist and expert on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, told Monitor reporter Joshua Mitnick earlier this month. "I think that Abbas was looking for someone who is an administrator and not a politician, while retaining the confidence of the international community that the PA would not become corrupt."

Gray figures aren't really going to cut it anymore. And while the average Palestinian doesn't like official corruption anymore than the "international community" does, mollifying the international community isn't what they - or any public - want out of their leaders, elected or appointed.

Meanwhile, as the situation grows tenser, Israelis fear a third intifada could be in the offing, and the prospects that the Palestinian Authority can accomplish what it was created to do continue to dim.

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