United States’ agents have localized and killed a foreign national on foreign soil, then recovered his body. This man is accused of committing serious crimes against humanity, but no attempt was made to capture him alive and put him on trial. The president of the United States has acted as both prosecutor, judge and jury with the US Navy Seals as executioners. Despite this, President Obama freely owns up to his achievement, without even an attempt at explanation as to why the killing was necessary. Official word from the US Government is also that the mission was to kill It also seems that the aim has been to kill him, not a serious attempt to capture. And the rest of the western nations applaude. Including Norway’s prime and foreign ministers. And the people of the United States (and to a lesser degree in Europe as well) celebrate. Celebrate the killing of another human being.

I am, as most Norwegians, an opponent of the death penalty. I believe it is wrong to kill a human being, even if they have committed serious crimes, unless keeping them alive constitutes a direct and immediate threat to more lives. But even if you do believe in premeditated killing under certain circumstances, should it not be a last resort? Should it not happen only when there has been a trial, or when no other options were possible?

Osama bin Laden was an evil man. Killing him may also have been necessary, but I have problems accepting the fact that not even an attempt is made to justify the killing as necessary, and that a live capture was not even part of the mission agenda. Is this how a supposedly liberal democratic state is supposed to behave?

At the very least, I had expected a little bit of criticism from the press or even a modicum of moderation from governments that are against the death penalty.

Gore and Wolfowitz, pretty far apart in domestic politics have come together in their condemnation and call for action by the American government. They also display some insight into matters in Malaysia and Anwar Ibrahim. Matters in Malaysia are by no means entirely black and white, but the heart of the matter is that abuse of judicial power to undermine democracy is wrong no matter what. As they formulate it:

Our views of Anwar Ibrahim have been formed completely independently of each other. We do not always agree with his views on foreign policy, but we do agree that as a political leader, statesman and intellectual, Mr. Anwar possesses qualities that encourage hope for the future. These qualities include lucidity and openness to debate and engagement; commitment to principles of accountability and good governance; and a serious concern for the future of his country and the world—not to mention his extraordinary courage in standing up for what he believes. We are convinced that he is committed to the values of pluralism, tolerance and freedom that are needed for Malaysia to flourish.In the end, what matters is not our opinion of Mr. Anwar’s character, but the opinion of his fellow countrymen. Malaysians should decide for themselves, through an open electoral process, who they wish to lead them. They should not be deprived of that opportunity by an abuse of judicial power.

Malaysia has a parliament and elections, but it is nowehere near being a working democracy. This week they have once again proven this with the censorship of MP and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar now faces possible suspension from parliament over a comment made during one of its sessions. He claimed that the nationalist campaign 1Malaysia, intended to boost national unity, is somehow related to Ehud Barak’s 1999 political campaign One Israel. The relation is the PR firm APCO that allegedly has been working for the government coalition Barisan Nasional.

Making connections to Israel is not trivial in Malaysia, a country with a Muslim majority and where religion is frequently politicized. Using a European analogy, this claim is roughly as controversial in Malaysia as if a British MP had claimed that Gordon Brown’s policies reeked of nazist ideology. It is probably a breach of parliamentary decorum worthy of a reprimand from the Speaker, but definitely not grounds for exclusion from parliament. In a democracy, we have to accept even remarks that we disapprove of. The threat of such extreme sanctions for minor infractions does not make for a climate of open and free discussion necessary for true democracy.

The government coalition has worked hard and played dirty to keep Anwar Ibrahim down. The censure against Anwar fits the trend nicely. As preposterous as the censure is, the remarks themselves clearly show that both sides know how to play that game. I don’t believe for a second that Anwar actually believes that the 1Malaysia policy is the result of conspiring with Israel. But the mere suggestion is enough to sow doubts in the religious, less educated rural Malaysia. He scores a double point when the government responds with trampling on free speech, aggravating the more secular urban citizens hoping for a more democratic Malaysia.

That both sides play dirty should surprise very few. It is also understandable that the opposition is willing to stoop to that level given that their opponents have the draconian arsenal of the government at their disposal. Perhaps they even have to in order to survive. But is this a good starting point for building a more vital Malaysian democracy? We can only hope that the level of debate will rise if the level of democracy increases.

Similar charges in 1998 led to Anwar being sacked as s deputy PM, imprisoned and quarantined from politics – also being the decisive blow against his economic reform program¹. It may have been a pyrrhic victory for the sitting regime as it also served as a rallying call for the opposition eventually leading to the creation of the current opposition coalition where such diverse parties as the Islamist PAS and the socialist DAP stand reasonably united with Anwar as their leader.

In the previous round, the allegations against Anwar were by many seen as a decisive low blow by a hegemonic leader (Mahathir Mohamad) against his reform-oriented deputy who was rising too fast in public popularity . In 1998 Mahathir sat on the pinnacle of a strong pyramid of patronage and media control. He needed to prevent Anwar from getting in the position for a possible hijack of this effective machine. In destroying an internal enemy he created an external one.

Under Mahathir’s successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, that pyramid became increasingly wobbly. He was unpopular, even with the Malay majority that had strongly supported Mahathir. He was also generally seen as incompetent, and failed to exercise the autocratic control over Malaysian politics his predecessor had. Not only did an organized parliament opposition appear, gradually increasing its political power, but oppositon also grew within his party UMNO and the government coalition Barisan Nasional was creaking at the seams.

Anwar’s political quarantine ended in 2008, and in the same year an electoral landslide made Barisan Nasional lose its traditional 3/4 majority in parliament. The internal opposition became strong enough to force the retirement of Prime Minister Abdullah, to be replaced with Najib Tun Razak the son of nation builder Tun Abdul Razak and member of one of the true power dynasties of Malaysia. Where there were only feeble attempts at criminal charges against Anwar at the end of Abdullah’s reign, they have now once again managed to drag him into court where he faces the possibility of a long prison sentence and a new political quarantine. His alleged offence is engaging in homosexual activity.

Reuters comments on the strong media bias that especially influences the poorer and less educated rural Malaysia. Still, The Washington Post suggests that this whole trial may be a bad move from the government. Indeed I agree that should he be convicted, it will be yet another pyrrhic victory for the leadership of Malaysia. It was a desperate move and a bad idea in 1998 and gave Anwar the martyrdom status necessary to become the opposition icon he is. And that was in a time when Mahathir’s autocratic control of the country was much stronger than Najib’s today. It is an even worse idea now. The opposition struggles with being an alliance of very diverse groups. Further martyrdom for Anwar will certainly give them renewed strength, provided they manage to find a new leadership figure without breaking apart.

Should Anwar lose the trial, it will also cast further shadows of doubt over the Malaysian court system. In the previous round, Anwar’s sodomy conviction was actually overturned after four years. The police and prison authorities were also strongly reprimanded for mistreatment of Anwar while imprisoned. The way the trial is conducted may tell us much about whether the independence of the court system has improved or worsened since 1998.

One way or the other, the trial will have great impact on Malaysian politics. The process and its outcome will be very interesting to follow.

1. I have previously published a student paper about this in the post Sex, lies and capital controls

I quote:

[...]the candidates are God awful.  Seriously, they stink.  Just to review our choices:  Democrat Martha Coakley has a prosecutor’s complex that would make Javert seeem like a bleeding-heart liberal.  She is a God-awful politician so out of touch with  reality that she accused Red Sox hero extraordinaire Curt Schilling of being a Yankee fan (Schilling’s blog response is here).  Based on the ads I’ve seen, her campaign has also been, by far, the nastier of the two.

This leaves Republican Scott Brown, who based on this vacuous Boston Globe op-ed, is an empty shirt with no actual policy content whatsoever.  He was in favor of health care reform before he was against it.  He can’t stand the run-up in government debt, and wants to cut taxes across the board to take care of the problem — cause that makes perfect economic sense.   The one thing he is unequivocally for is waterboarding suspected terrorists.

It would be true political irony if all Obama’s blood sweat and tears over health reform should go to waste because of a mess like this. But that’s politics for you. Part of the reason why it’s so interesting…

But what is the moral of the story of Obama’s theory mixing? Logical inconsistency? No, that the real world is significantly more complex than what either of those theories portrays it as, and that any government drawing on just one way of analyzing the world has a much smaller toolbox to choose from when trying to understand what’s going on and what to do about it.

Just having an American president that has relaxed the hardcore neo-Conservative thinking of the White House seems to me to be important enough for world peace to justify a Nobel Peace Prize all on its own, regardless of the greatness of his future achievements.

None of what goes on in the evening has anything to do with government. The president and the Congress are discussed as omnipresent villains in a fairytale that begins with a happy kingdom of worthies, introduces an ogre, a witch, and a curse, and then interviews champions to come forward to rescue the frightened children and save the USA. All the while, Ming the Merciless, aka Rupert Murdoch, rakes up the ratings and the bucks.

The worst mistake Axelrod and Emanuel are making by confusing Fox News with the Republican Party is that they are confusing campaigning with entertaining and then letting this mistake blind them to the fact that the White House is for governing, not just staging.

Fox News is not in the news business; it’s in show business. The Republican Party, like its blood kin the Democratic Party, is in the campaign business. The White House is in the government business, though, from the evidence so far, it doesn’t know how to break out of the campaign business.

It all sounds rather logical to me. I’ve never been thought “taking on the media” was a particularly good idea. The winner in this struggle is surely Rupert Murdoch, who gets richer by the hour.

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama is certainly an unexpected and interesting choice by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. On the one hand, awarding it to a person with a nine month history of involvement on the scene of international diplomacy may seem odd. On the other hand, awarding the prize based on work towards international diplomacy and multilateralism must be considered a return to the original intent expressed by Alfred Nobel in his will.

Some critics claim that awarding it to the man that advocated stepping up the military effort in Afghanistan is outrageous. Awarding the prize to someone who has shown himself willing to use military force is however nothing new. Theodore Roosevelt (1917), Henry Kissinger (1973) and Mikhail Gorbachev (1990) are examples of statesmen who aren’t remembered as always being soft when it came to the application of power.

More substantial is the criticism that Obama hasn’t actually achieved anything yet. He has been in office for 9 months. During this time he has taken many initiatives to promote multilateralism and change America’s position in the world, but he has yet to get any results. I can’t off the top of my head remember any laureate with so little to show for himself in terms of actual achievement. Still, the will of Alfred Nobel, the mandate of the prize, states that the Nobel Prizes should be given to: “…those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” Who did more during the last 12 months than Barack Obama?

For the peace prize specifically, it shall according to the will go to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Once again, it serves as a good description of Obama’s agenda, promoting the UN, promoting mulitlateralism in general and working for nuclear disarmament.

The comittee has been under a lot of fire in recent years for overstepping these bounds by laureates such as Wangari Maathai (2004), Mohammad Yunnus and Grameen Bank (2006) and Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007). With last year’s prize to Matti Ahtisari and this year’s to Barack Obama they have certainly returned to “the roots” with prices for traditional peace work by Nobel’s own definitions.

Lastly, awarding the prize to an active world leader with future achievements to make rather than in retrospect for past achievements may help the prize further in contributing to making actual peace in the world. Giving the prize to the person in the world best positioned to make actual progress on the matter may put additional pressure on the American president to deliver on his promises.

All in all I’m surprised at the award, but pleasantly so.

(Hat tip to Pravda for finding this).

These figures are rather amazing. There seems to be only one country where the people don’t think Obama is more likely to do the right thing in international affairs – Israel. And the relationship between Israel and the US can hardly be said to be much like the relationship with any other country…