FROM THE PANEL
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist. He was born in Jerusalem in 1955. Presently he is a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States. Mr. Kuttab is the former director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, Palestine and the founder of AmmanNet, the Arab world's first internet radio station. His personal web page is www.daoudkuttab.com
The situation in Iraq will eventually be resolved by Iraqis, but the presence of Americans will delay any serious attempts at a solution. American occupation remains the strongest argument for armed opposition, as well as the first excuse why other countries in the region don't help Iraq out.
Yossi Melman is a senior commentator for the Israeli daily Haaretz. He specializes in intelligence, security, terrorism and strategic issues. An author of seven books on these topics, his most recent book, The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran was published recently by Carroll & Graf.
In Iraq, the U.S. faces a choice between bad and worse. It would be a mistake to stay for long, but leaving could devastate the region's delicate political composition. To stabilize the situation, the U.S. needs the help of Syria and Iran. There's no alternative to talking.
Lamis Andoni is a Middle East consultant for Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news station. She has been covering the Middle East for 20 years. She has reported for the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times and the main newspapers in Jordan. She was a professor at the Graduate School in UC Berkeley.
The U.S. strategy has been focused on "security" -- stopping armed attacks against its forces and the Iraqi government. But setting up barriers around Sunni neighborhoods will only promote sectarianism and legitimize armed opposition groups. The U.S. does not have a clear vision of how to end the occupation and provide a future for all Iraqis.
Michael Young is the Opinion Editor and a columnist for Lebanon’s The Daily Star newspaper. He is also a contributing editor and contributor at Reason magazine, where he writes bi-weely articles.
The consequences of the U.S. leaving Iraq too soon would be devastating. But the question is not just a practical one, it is a moral one. A majority of Americans supported the Iraq war; now they are responsible for what happens in Iraq. Or they can never again claim the moral high ground anywhere in the world.
Saul Singer is Editorial Page Editor and author of the weekly column “Interesting Times” for the
Jerusalem Post. He is the author of
Confronting Jihad: Israel's Struggle and the World After 9/11. Before moving to Israel from the Washington area in 1994, Mr. Singer served for ten years as an advisor on the personal and committee staffs of the United States Congress, including the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Senate Banking Committee, and Senator Connie Mack.
Try this analogy: the American tortoise racing a terrorist hare. Terrorists have an advantage in that it is easier to destroy than to build and preserve, but destruction loses support over time. The terrorists' only hope of winning in Iraq is for the U.S. to lose the will to keep going -- slow but steady.
Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. An internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, he is also the first director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and the Dubai School of Government. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006.
He teaches annually at American University of Beirut, University of Chicago and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Syracuse University and Stanford University, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (USA), and the Jordan National Museum.
He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years and for 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA.
A better analogy would be the hole-digging one: when you're sinking into a deepening hole and you need to stabilize the situation, stop digging. More troops cannot produce a peaceful Iraq, only a government that Iraqis see as legitimate can.
Four years ago, George W. Bush opened Pandora’s Box. And now there is no realistic way to put the lid back on. The Iraq war was a mistake, but leaving now would be far more costly than staying. There would certainly be regional war.
Mubashar Jawed Akbar is a leading Indian journalist and author. He's the founder and editor-in-chief of
The Asian Age, a daily multi-edition Indian newspaper with a global perspective and editor-in-chief of
The Deccan Chronicle, a news daily based in Hyderabad. He has written books including
Blood Brothers,
Nehru: The Making of India,
Kashmir: Behind the Vale,
Riot After Riot,
The Shade of Swords, and
India: The Siege Within.
Brilliant proposition, but there is a third “mine” – undermine. George Bush has undermined the American people with the number of fuses he has lit in the Middle East. If the Iraq mine explodes when the foot comes off, that's better than staying to light more fuses.
Dr. Ali Ettefagh serves as a director of Highmore Global Corporation, an investment company in emerging markets of Eastern Europe, CIS, and the Middle East. He is the co-author of several books on trade conflict, resolution of international trade disputes, conflicts in letters of credit, trade-related banking transactions, sovereign debt, arbitration and dispute resolutions and publications specific to the oil and gas, communication, aviation and finance sectors. Dr. Ettefagh is a member of the executive committee and the board of directors of The Development Foundation, an advisor to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and an advisor to a number of European companies. Dr. Ettefagh speaks Persian (Farsi), English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Turkish.
The situation in Iraq is not simply a matter of invasion without conquest, a failing puppet state. Iraq was already a minefield, and the invasion’s waltz of quickstep missions turned that minefield into a very complex disaster zone.
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