Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha talks like a real, professional, diplomat.
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SUMMARY: In an exclusive interview, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha tells Judy Woodruff that they are cautiously optimistic that possible talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump would be a breakthrough for a peaceful resolution. They also discuss President Trump's recent threats to pull American troops if the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement [KORUS FTA] is not improved, and more.
SUMMARY: President Trump will address the nation Monday evening and reveal his changes to American policy on the war in Afghanistan. Special correspondent Nick Schifrin offers a look at the current state of the conflict and deteriorating security, then Judy Woodruff talks to Andrew Wilder of the United States Institute of Peace and journalist and author Ahmed Rashid about the challenges facing the U.S.
President Donald Trump announced what he called a “dramatic” shift in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia on Monday night, one focused less on nation building and writing a “blank check” to the Afghan government and more on increased pressure on Pakistan and its neighbors to fight terror in the region, he said.
The 16-year war has spanned three Presidents. Here are seven takeaways from foreign policy experts about Trump's remarks and how he could change the country's efforts in the region.
[1] This is the “most hawkish view of Pakistan that we've seen in some time,” said Seth Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation specializing in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Trump's language “really reflects how tired and angry a number of senior American intelligence, military and diplomatic officials are this far into the 16-year war in Afghanistan — and that the Taliban continues to have a safe haven in Pakistan soil,” Jones added.
[2] Trump's language indicated a subtle difference between his approach to the Taliban and his approach to al-Qaeda and ISIS.Trump used the words “obliterating” and “defeating” when he spoke about al-Qaeda and ISIS, but not when referring to the Taliban, Jones said. This suggests Trump recognizes that “the Taliban will probably have to continue in some form possibly in rural areas as a militant group [or] maybe in a political forum.”
[3] Trump said we're not in the business of nation building, but he shouldn't discount it, either, said Andrew Wilder of the United States Institute of Peace. “Having a democracy there is an important, fundamental to exit strategy from Afghanistan,” Wilder told PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff. “Just killing bad guys — we've done a lot of that over 16 years,” Wilder said, but more important is ensuring the country's 2019 presidential election is legitimate. Otherwise, we'll see “a descent into anarchy with no legitimate government,” he said.
[4] Setting deadlines for troop withdrawal — as President Barack Obama had done — are counterproductive, Trump said, and “I think he's right,” said James Dobbin, a former ambassador to the European Union and special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. “It's counterproductive to set deadlines that aren't condition-based, which gives the adversary a timetable that allowed them to wait it out.”
[5] A serious settlement in the region will require other political groundwork, says Steve Biddle, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and an adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Specifically: having Congress work out a deal involving concessions to the Taliban. “If we're not willing to lay the political groundwork for a real deal, then this is just keeping the war on life support to no identifiable purpose,” Biddle added. “Modest U.S. reinforcement can help prevent outright defeat of the Afghan government but it cannot win the war.”
[6] Trump highlighted partners in the region, and a diplomatic push will be key to his success. The U.S. hasn't had a regional strategy for the last two years, journalist Ahmed Rashid told NewsHour's Judy Woodruff. “Now, given everything else that's happening in the world, the Middle East, North Korea and others, I fear that President Trump is not going to put together a really high-powered team which is going to effectively deal with some of these neighboring countries and bring them together in some kind of alliance.”
[7] This was a speech more about strategy than tactical details. Jones noted Trump avoided touching on troop numbers and other debates about the long war, such as the role of military advisers. “It's hard to gauge how successful a strategy can be without knowing more of the details,” Jones said — and for that reason, we'll have to take a “wait-and-see” approach about how this plays out on the ground, he added.
SUMMARY: Laying out several new approaches to the conflict in Afghanistan, President Trump singled out Pakistan's support for the Taliban as particularly problematic. What was new in the president's speech and what are the real-world effects of his strategy? Former State Department official Laurel Miller, and Husain Haqqani a former ambassador to Pakistan, join Judy Woodruff.
SUMMARY: U.S. military and diplomatic leaders are moving ahead on the Afghanistan strategy President Trump outlined Monday during an address to the nation. Mr. Trump's new policy hinges on a regional approach and includes a deployment of more U.S. troops without a specific end date. Critics say the President's plan is a rehashing of already failed strategies. Nick Schifrin reports.
SUMMARY: As a war of words escalated between the North Korea and the U.S., Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged calm, saying Americans should have no concerns about the rhetoric of the last few days. The volley of tough talk follows reports that Pyongyang can now make nuclear weapons small enough to fit inside a long-range missile. John Yang reports.
SUMMARY: Judy Woodruff talks to former Pentagon official Abraham Denmark and Mike Chinoy of the University of Southern California about the latest threats and counter-threats between Pyongyang and Washington and what options the U.S. has to defuse the situation.
SUMMARY: President Trump doubled down on his threats against North Korea on Thursday, and disparaged a quarter century of U.S. policy for the country. Meanwhile, North Korea announced its plans to launch four intermediate-range missiles at the U.S. territory of Guam and state TV declared the U.S. President reckless. Special correspondent Nick Schifrin reports.
SUMMARY: The August recess hasn't stopped members of Congress from weighing in on President Trump's latest warnings to North Korea. Judy Woodruff speaks with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md) about the president's fiery comments and whether the administration has a well-thought-out strategy, plus how the U.S. should approach diplomacy while turning up the pressure on the nation.
SUMMARY: President Trump said the U.S. and its military is ready to deal with any provocation by the Pyongyang regime. How do the president's words impact the Trump administration's options? Judy Woodruff speaks with retired Adm. Dennis Blair, a former U.S. Pacific Forces commander, and former CIA analyst Sue Mi Terry to get some insight into the reclusive regime and how the U.S. should proceed.
SUMMARY: President Trump denounced North Korea yet again Friday, affirming the U.S. and its military are ready to deal with any further provocation from Pyongyang. Despite the tensions, it was revealed that U.S. and North Korean diplomats have had back channel discussions recently. Nick Schifrin looks at the internal response and gets the North Korean perspective from Rafael Wober of Associated Press.
An old question left unanswered, define 'winning.'
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SUMMARY: Under President Trump, a new strategy for the almost 16-year war in Afghanistan has been the subject of divisive debate among him and his national security team for months, with the President apparently growing frustrated with the slow progress. P.J. Tobia reports and Judy Woodruff talks to retired Army Gen. John Keane about how to handle America's longest war.
As I have said many, many times before. The Palestine/Israel conflict will, and cannot, be solved by outsiders. It can hopefully be solved when the citizens of Palestine AND the citizens of Israel tell their respective governments to STOP. Issues like Palestine support of Gaza Strip and Israel settlements in Palestine, are just two problems that must be solved.
Also, to paraphrase, "Friends don't let friends drive drunk" even when they are 'drunk' on ideology. Israel is drunk on their religious ideology.
SUMMARY: The United States has broken with decades of diplomacy by abstaining on a U.N. rebuke of Israel, rather than vetoing it in support of its longtime ally. The Security Council voted 14 to 0 that Israel is committing a “flagrant violation” of international law by building settlements on land Palestinians want. Judy Woodruff speaks with Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, about the decision.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): So, why did the Obama administration today abstain from voting on the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem?
We ask Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications to the President.
Ben Rhodes, welcome.
It is the case that the U.S. has long opposed these Israeli settlements but, at the same time, it has protected Israel in the U.N. against these condemning resolutions. Why the shift?
BEN RHODES, Deputy National Security Adviser: Well, look, first of all, it's bipartisan tradition to opposed settlements, as you mentioned. There have been many resolutions in the past under bipartisan administrations that address the Arab-Israeli conflict. The fact of the matter is, we vetoed a resolution that addressed settlements in 2011, and look what's happened since. We've had failed peace processes after failed peace process, and the pace of settlement construction has accelerated significantly. And just recently, you had the Israeli prime minister saying that this is the most pro-settlement in administration in Israeli history, the Israeli government that is currently in place.
We believe that at this pace, a two-state solution could be put at risk. We believe that would be profoundly bad for Israel and its security. And so, that's why the president took the position that he did.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It comes across, though, Ben Rhodes, though, as a parting shot at Israel on the part of President Obama.
BEN RHODES: Well, look, we have a record that we'll put up next to anybody in terms of support for Israel. In fact, we just concluded a $38 billion ten year MOU with respect to their security assistance from the United States.
The fact of the matter is, though, I think if you look at the map of the West Bank, if you look at the future of the two-state solution, these settlements are encroaching further and further beyond the separation barrier that the Israelis themselves built, thousands of new settlements are being constructed and, frankly, if these trends continue, it will be impossible to realize a two-state solution.
And the fact of the matter is, we can't just have a peace process or a two-state solution as an empty talking point. If we really want to be able to have a prospect for peace, we have to be clear about what we're against and that includes the type of settlements and I'd say as the resolution points out, the type of incitement to violence on the Palestinian side that have been obstacles to peace.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me just read you what — among other things the comments from Prime Minister Netanyahu after this happened. He said, “The National Security Council has disgracefully ganged up on the one democracy in the Middle East.” The Israeli government is saying this was a shameful resolution, they're not going to abide by it.
I mean, is the President — are you comfortable with what is now a really raw opening, a sore spot in the relationship with Israel as this President leaves office?
BEN RHODES: Look, we've taken a lot of criticism from the Israeli government over the years. If you look at our record, unprecedented military intelligence cooperation, a significant security assistance upgrades.
But again, let's talk about what the resolution addressed — the settlement construction. That's the conversation that the Israeli government is not having. And, in fact, you had this prime minister say this is the most pro-settlement Israeli government in history. Frankly, that statement is entirely inconsistent with the two-state solution that the Israeli government in the past has said they supported, that many members of Congress support.
At a certain point, we all just have to stop and look at the map and look at the facts and say, if these settlements continue, is the two-state solution impossible? And that clearly is the trend line. It's evident for everybody to see, and that's what we should be talking about.
SUMMARY: Corey Gil-Shuster covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a new way. He asks the world what it wants to know from and about Israelis and Palestinians, goes to the streets of Israel and the West Bank to get the answers and posts the unedited responses on YouTube. NewsHour contributor Justin Kenny recently followed along with Gil-Shuster to produce this report.
JOHN YANG (NewsHour): We look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of Canadian-Israeli Corey Gil-Shuster. He runs The Ask Project.
Gil-Shuster solicits questions from the Web and then hits the streets of Israel and the West Bank to ask serious and at times provocative questions. He posts the answers, unedited, on YouTube.
“PBS NewsHour” contributor Justin Kenny recently followed Gil-Shuster and produced this report.
COREY GIL-SHUSTER, The Ask Project: If you were driving on the highway and there was a Palestinian on the side of the highway that seemed to need help, would you stop and help?
CHEN SHIRAK, Israeli from Tel Aviv: If I'm by myself in the car, I won't stop to anyone. It doesn't matter if it's a man, a woman, in the middle of the road. If I am with someone, like my husband, and we see something, maybe we will stop.
COREY GIL-SHUSTER: My name is Corey Gil-Shuster. I run The Ask an Israeli, Ask a Palestinian Project.
If you were driving on the highway and you saw an Israeli on the side of the road that needed help, would you stop?
SAMI HABASH, Palestinian from Ramallah: Why not? Some day, he will help me. But if I saw — if I see that he is shooting, I will shoot back.
COREY GIL-SHUSTER:The project is about finding out what Israelis and Palestinians really believe and think about the conflict.
People from all around the world send me questions through e-mail. I choose the questions, and then I go out to the streets of Israel and Palestine to ask random Israelis and Palestinians to answer the questions themselves. I don't edit any content out of it.
DURA, Palestinian: Most, the majority, they want two states, an Israeli state and a Palestinian state.
RISHON LEZION, Israeli: They are very primitive. And they cannot build a country like we did.
WOMAN (through translator): For sure, the Israelis will be destroyed because Palestine is not their right.
COREY GIL-SHUSTER: Destroyed as in killed?
WOMAN (through translator): They should be killed, yes.
COREY GIL-SHUSTER: What are you willing to compromise for peace?
DROR, Israeli: Everything. My pants.
COREY GIL-SHUSTER: The question is, don't you think Israel is committing suicide by holding onto the West Bank?
NOGA TARNOPOLSKY, Israeli from Jerusalem: I think that's a really bad question.
COREY GIL-SHUSTER: OK, why?
NOGA TARNOPOLSKY: Because it's a leading question.
COREY GIL-SHUSTER:A lot of the questions I get are what I call gotcha questions. They're a little bit over the top, or exaggerated, or have a very overly simplistic way of looking at the conflict.
And I ask them exactly that way, or try to as much as possible, because I think it's interesting for Israelis or Palestinians to hear what people from outside think. And I want them to answer in an honest way.
SUMMARY: South Sudan, the world’s newest country, is again on the brink of a civil war. Photographer Sebastian Rich has covered the conflict in the country for more than four decades, and he is there now on a mission with UNICEF, documenting the turmoil and the toll it has taken on civilians. The area is plagued by malnutrition and the lowest education levels in the world. John Yang speaks with Rich.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):The world’s newest country, South Sudan, established in 2011, again stands on the brink of civil war. A peace deal signed last year between rival governing factions is in tatters. More than one-sixth of the country’s 12 million citizens have been displaced, and the humanitarian crisis there is worsening by the day.
John Yang has the story.
JOHN YANG (NewsHour): For that view, we turn to photographer Sebastian Rich, who has covered conflict zones for more than four decades. He has been to South Sudan many times. He is there now on assignment for UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.
First of all, tell us how it feels now, what the situation is like on the ground now.
SEBASTIAN RICH, Photojournalist: Well, the situation is a little more tense than it was, obviously, before the recent fighting.
The recent fighting has put the people, the ordinary people in the street. They’re much more tense than they were. There’s not so many friendly faces. If you walk in the streets of Juba now, you’re not greeted the same way you were a couple of months ago or even a year ago, when I came last year.
JOHN YANG: And how is this affecting the children that you’re covering, that you’re there watching, looking at behalf on UNICEF, particularly the issues of malnutrition?
SEBASTIAN RICH: Well, it’s affecting the children very badly.
And there’s 250,000, a quarter-of-a-million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. And that’s not including the children who just got malnutrition, the first stages of.
So, what’s happened is that the children who were actually starting to recover from severe acute malnutrition before this recent fighting, when the fighting happened, those children couldn’t come back to the hospitals to get their follow-up treatment and children that had started to get malnutrition couldn’t get to the hospitals either.
So now we have this huge increase in malnutrition and severe cases of malnutrition. And UNICEF is trying its very, very best to keep on top of this disaster.
SUMMARY: The leaders of France and Germany went to Kiev to discuss diplomatic solutions to the escalating war, while NATO defense ministers met in Brussels to plan how to counter Russia's aggressive actions. The White House has debated sending weapons to aid the Ukrainian military effort, a move that other nations have discouraged but has gained support in Washington. Gwen Ifill reports.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): In Ukraine, a debate over guns or diplomacy, a battle over that choice shaped up today as Western leaders sought to stop the killing and rein in Russia. The French president, the German chancellor, and America’s top diplomat all hurried to Ukraine in search of an answer.
Night had fallen by the time the leaders of France and Germany landed in Kiev. They were driven directly to the presidential palace to meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in a bid to stop the escalating war.
Before leaving Paris, French President Francois Hollande spoke of the growing urgency.
PRESIDENT FRANCOIS HOLLANDE, France (through interpreter): We will make a new proposal to solve the conflict. It won’t be said that France and Germany, together, haven’t tried everything, undertaken everything to preserve peace.
GWEN IFILL: France, Germany and other nations oppose supplying Ukraine with arms.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, NATO defense ministers agreed on new moves to counter Russia’s aggressive actions by more than doubling the size of a ready response force, and setting up new command centers in Eastern Europe. As fighting in the east has escalated, both NATO and Ukraine charge the Russians are supplying tanks, heavy weapons and even troops to the Ukrainian rebels, something the Russians deny.
That’s led to White House discussions of whether the U.S. should start shipping weapons to Ukraine’s military.
SUMMARY: With the reigniting of the war in Ukraine, Western leaders are battling over how to help end the conflict. Should the U.S. send arms to fight Russian-backed rebels? Gwen Ifill hears opposing views from former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): After 13 years, a major mission for U.S. forces and others in Afghanistan came to its official end with little fanfare this weekend.
And, as Jeffrey Brown reports, there are major doubts as to whether the country is now capable of fighting a resurgent Taliban.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): A subdued ceremony in Kabul brought a formal close Sunday to the longest war in American history.
GEN. JOHN CAMPBELL, Commander, International Security Assistance Force: Today, NATO completes its combat mission, a 13-year endeavor filled with significant achievements and branded by tremendous sacrifice.
JEFFREY BROWN: The conflict began with a U.S.-led invasion in October 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks. The assault quickly ousted the Taliban from power, but fighting continued as the American focus shifted to Iraq.
Then, in 2009, President Obama ordered a surge, and U.S. force levels peaked in 2010 with 140,000 troops. Since then, the U.S. combat role has wound down after a tremendous cost in both blood and money. More than 2,200 Americans been killed over the course of the Afghan war. Another 22,000 were wounded. And to date, the war effort has cost the U.S. Treasury $1 trillion.
Now, though, the Taliban is mounting its own resurgence, making 2014 the war’s deadliest year, with 5,000 Afghan security forces killed, including four just today. It’s a daunting challenge for the country’s new president, Ashraf Ghani.
PRESIDENT ASHRAF GHANI, Afghanistan (through interpreter): If the insurgents, with their terrorist acts, want us to ignore the peace movement, they are wrong. Or if they think that by their terrorist acts they can weaken our intentions, they need to know that people of Afghanistan have a unified intention and they will never surrender to terror acts.
JEFFREY BROWN: Still, thousands of Afghans have fled the violence and now face a harsh winter in makeshift camps like these in Kabul. In a bid to bolster the regime, some 13,000 foreign troops, mostly Americans, will remain in Afghanistan next year.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Would we (the U.S.) have spent 13yrs in Afghanistan if we had NOT wasted time fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq?
SUMMARY: As the U.S. combat mission ends in Afghanistan, those Americans who are staying in the country will move to a role of training and supervision. Sean Carberry of NPR speaks with Jeffrey Brown about the capabilities of Afghanistan’s military forces, goals of the country’s new President Ashraf Ghani and how much life has changed for the citizens since the start of the war.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Joining me now to explore that is former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher. He’s now a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace and author of “The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism.” Robin Wright is a journalist and author who has reported extensively on the Arab world and neighboring Iran. She’s also a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center. And Nader Hashemi is director for the Center for Mideast Studies at the University of Denver.
Marwan, I want to start with you.
This week, the Obama administration has been laying out the case to try and drum up support for the U.S. plan against the Islamic State. How much support is there in Jordan, where you are?
MARWAN MUASHER, Former Foreign Minister, Jordan: There’s a lot of support in Jordan against, you know, ISIS. That doesn’t mean, of course, again boots on the ground in the case of the Jordanians, but it will mean a lot of intelligence support, a lot of logistical support, a lot of support that we have seen before, when Jordan cooperated with the Americans against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the predecessor of I.S. in Iraq in 2007.
So, you can expect much of that support again.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Nader Hashemi, what’s your take on the people and the leaders in the Middle East and how much they support the U.S. plan?
NADER HASHEMI, University of Denver: Well, I think one always has the make that distinction between the people and the leaders of the Middle East, because what the people want is not always reflected in sort of official elite position.
I think there’s, you know, always the back drop of the legacy of external intervention, the legacy of colonialism, and more recently the legacy of the disaster of the Iraq war. People, I think, are very feared of a repeat in — of that scenario playing itself out if this intervention goes badly wrong.
And there is also, I think, just the general sort of uncertainty and lack of clarity in terms of what Obama’s long-term strategy for the region is, because he seems to have been sending signals in recent years that he really wasn’t interested in investing any time and attention in the Middle East. He wanted to pivot to Asia. He wanted to reduce the American footprint, all for very good reasons.
And then his whole strategy with respect to the bloodletting and the disaster in Syria has raised a lot of questions just about where Obama stands, what his grand strategy is. So, I think there’s a lot of sort of deep concern, both at the popular level and also at the governmental level, with respect to what comes next.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For more on what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine, I’m joined by Andrew Kramer of The New York Times. He joins us from Donetsk.
So, Andrew, you were visiting a town where the Russian troops were streaming in. Describe that scene to us.
ANDREW KRAMER, The New York Times: Yes, this was in the town of Novoazovsk on the Azov Sea. And we were standing on the outside of the town speaking with Ukrainian soldiers who were retreating.
These soldiers were convinced they were fighting the Russians. At least many of them were. We didn’t see the troops coming in, but they were said to have come across the border from Russia into Ukraine. It was a very chaotic scene. And, in fact, a day later, that town was seized by the pro-Russian forces.
HARI SREENIVASAN: You also spoke of locals in that area. What did they think about what’s happening?
ANDREW KRAMER: Well, people here who support the Russian cause are obviously cheered by this development. The rebel organization had been on its last legs militarily in recent weeks.
The Ukrainian army was closing in on towns of Donetsk and Luhansk. And now there’s been a reversal of fortunes, a turning of the tide here. The separatists and, according to Ukrainian government, with the support of Russia, has moved across the Russian border and has now opened a new front in the south along the seashore with the cities of Novoazovsk and Mariupol as the objectives.
Now, a rebel commander I spoke with said the intention is to form a defensive triangle out of these two cities and Donetsk and hopefully force the Ukrainian government into settlement talks on more favorable terms.
SUMMARY: For more perspective about what options the United States and its Western allies have to deal with the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Nicholas Burns joins Hari Sreenivasan via Skype from Massachusetts. Burns is a former Under Secretary of State and now a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. ---- HARI SREENIVASAN: And what about this idea of Novorossiya, something that the Russians have said, ‘Sure, we’ll stop all of this if we can just go ahead and annex this portion of Ukraine back?’ It seems that whether we like it or not, they’ve already sent the troops in and are, in fact, taking over that part of Ukraine.
R. NICHOLAS BURNS:Well, it’s a very unsettling and destabilizing concept that you’d say that, ‘We have a right as Russians to unite all Russians outside the borders of Russia.’ There are significant populations of Russians, of course, in Ukraine, but also in Moldova, in Belarus, in Kazakhstan, in Uzbekistan.
Should we support the Russian government’s right to march into those countries, take over portions of those countries simply because ethnic Russians are living there? This is an inexact comparison, of course, but that was essentially the philosophy of the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930s, that they would unite the Germans living outside the German Reich.
It’s a very dangerous, destabilizing concept we vowed after the second World War we would not allow that kind of action in Europe. And here it is with President Putin, with this Novorossiya, New Russia concept, which is dangerous. And it needs to be opposed by the United States and the Western Europeans.
Note, all that's happening today could possibly have been avoided if the U.S. and the West had taken firmer action (military strikes at the least) in Syria at the beginning of the civil war. Then, hindsight is always 20-20.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Joining us now from Washington D.C. is Dion Nissenbaum of The Wall Street Journal.
It seems the pace of change here and the U.S. attitude in involvement in Syria or in airstrikes has changed dramatically just in the last 24-36 hours.
DION NISSENBAUM: Yes there’s no question that the beheading of James Foley changed the calculus for the administration here and the rhetoric ramped up almost immediately.
You heard Secretary of State John Kerry saying that their wickedness, it has to be destroyed. The pentagon is really escalating its efforts to identify targets inside Syria.
They’re looking at expanding the air campaign in Iraq. I think militarily they could expand this fairly quickly.
I think what we need to see in the coming week is whether there’s the political will to move in this direction, and you’ll probably remember it was a year ago that we were having a similar conversation after president Assad was accused of the chemical weapons attack in Damascus that killed hundreds of people, and President Obama was seeking support for military strikes in Syria at that point as well.
MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour): Racing south on the highway between Iraq’s Kurdish capital, Irbil, and Baghdad, miles of open desert unfold, dotted by villages and towns. But just a quarter of the way down, Iraq’s most vital commercial lifeline becomes the frontline.
The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has advanced to within 650 yards of the road. Kurdish forces Colonel Wria Hasan took us to one of many well-manned Kurdish Peshmerga outposts guarding the new frontier to show us just how close the militants’ forbidding flag flew.
What keeps the ISIS forces from just moving across this road?
COL. WRIA HASAN, Peshmerga (through interpreter): If they came closer, we could stop them, and we could move their way, but there are a lot Arabs living there.
MARGARET WARNER: So you’re saying it will be a very bloody battle if you tried to advance that way?
COL. WRIA HASAN (through interpreter): Yes it would be bloody, and many civilians would die.
MARGARET WARNER: Colonel Hasan was escorting us in his armored SUV to the town of Jalawla, 100 miles northeast of Baghdad, in southern Diyala Province. The province is now partly controlled by the Kurds since the Iraqi army collapsed before the Islamic extremists’ onslaught in mid-June.
We’d come to explore why, over the past month, the famed Peshmerga army, considered one of the best in the region, had also fallen back at several points along its internal frontier against the Islamist group.
General Mahmoud Sengawi commands this southern region, and on our way to the front, I asked him why he was now fighting to take back the strategically located town of Jalawla. ---- GEN. HUSSEIN MANSOUR (through interpreter): There, we have problems larger than weapons. Arabs in those towns support ISIS. Jalawla has always been a bastion of Baathist support. There are 1,200 former high-ranking Baathist officers there. It’s always been a bastion of terrorists, even when the Americans were here.
MARGARET WARNER: To test that notion, we had Mohammed Mala Hassan, mayor of Khanaqin, where the Peshmerga are based, take us in his convoy of heavily armed men to meet one of the many Sunni Arabs he said have fled to Khanaqin from Jalawla.
Amer Yusef, a successful contractor, left with his family of 13 in June as the Islamic State began infiltrating Jalawla. He has a decidedly negative view of the Islamist group.
He said it’s true some Sunnis are with them, but often the extremists are more brutal with Sunnis.
AMER YUSEF, Contractor: (through interpreter):They are a terrorist organization that wants to harm us. They have harmed most of the families who have stayed in the town.
MARGARET WARNER: Many people say all Arabs here support the Islamic State. Is that true?
AMER YUSEF (through interpreter): I have a close friend who was a member of the municipality, my neighbor, and he is a Sunni Arab. They killed him few days ago. After taking him and his brother to their Sharia court, his brother said they killed them.
MARGARET WARNER: The Islamic State says they’re doing all of this in the name of pure Islam.
AMER YUSEF (through interpreter):No. They everyone’s enemy. Who are they killing the most? Christians or Muslims? They have killed mostly Muslims, both Sunnis and Shiites.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Following this week’s cease-fire collapse, there was heavy fighting again today between Israel and Hamas. Members of the Palestinian group’s military leadership were among the casualties. Hari is back with that.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Thousands marched through the streets of Gaza today in the funeral procession of three senior Hamas military commanders. The men, identified as Mohamed Abu Shamala and Raed al-Attar, plus Mohammed Barhoum, were killed by a pre-dawn Israeli airstrike. The militant group quickly decried the killing.
SAMI ABU ZUHRI, Hamas Spokesman (through interpreter): The assassination of the al-Qassam leaders in Rafah is a big Israeli crime that will not succeed in breaking the will of our people. And the occupation will pay the price, God willing.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meeting with U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa, hailed the intelligence behind the attack and vowed there’s more to come.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, Prime Minister, Israel (through interpreter): I want to commend the excellent work of the operational and intelligence units of the Shin Bet security service. We will continue to work together to reach the targets, to restore peace and security for an extended period to the citizens of Israel.
HARI SREENIVASAN: A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike missed Mohammed Deif, the top Hamas commander, but his wife and infant son were killed.
Ordinary Gazans appealed today for an end to the aerial assault.
AMAL LADIYALI (through interpreter): Every day, there are men, women, elderly people, and children getting killed, everybody. They mock us by giving us a bit of food to distract us. They are killing us and burying us at the same time.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Meanwhile, a mortar round fired from Gaza seriously wounded one man in Southern Israel today. Overall, more than 100 rockets were fired, leaving Israelis within their reach to ponder staying or leaving.
LARRY BUTLER: This is my home, and I will stay here. And I just hope these people — maybe — it will all calm down. It has to calm down. It can’t get much worse.
HARI SREENIVASAN:It was the June killing of three Israeli teenagers and the apparent revenge killing of a Palestinian teen that sparked this conflict. A top Hamas official has now acknowledged for the first time that his group kidnapped the Israeli teens.
There were also accusations about the collapse of peace talks in Egypt this week. Officials of the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, claimed the Gulf state of Qatar pressured Hamas to scuttle the effort.
War, huh yeah
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, oh hoh, oh
War huh yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it again y'all
War, huh good God
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me
Oh, war, I despise
'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go off to fight and lose their lives
P.J. TOBIA (NewsHour): As fighting in Gaza moves into a fourth week, a parallel battle is taking place on a different front — waged online through social media. Both Hamas and Israel are seeking to control the message behind the fighting, and are taking to Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms to influence the public’s perception.
ADEL ISKANDAR: It is a competition for likes, recommends, tweets, retweets
P.J. TOBIA: Adel Iskandar is a professor of global communications at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He says both sides of the conflict are pursuing similar objectives with online content.
ADEL ISKANDAR: They realize that their footprint can be much wider, and they can reach sort of the deep crevices and far-out places in online if they’re able to build platforms that are solely their own, that they can control exclusively and send their messages out.
P.J. TOBIA: Iskandar points to Facebook pages created by Hamas and Israel.
ADEL ISKANDAR: So pages dedicated to this particular conflict, or in the case of the Israeli Defense Forces, the operation itself, or specific aspects of the operation, specific spokespersons’ offices that derive from the Israeli Defense Forces.
The same goes with Hamas. Hamas has a very, very integrated system, communications system, not just in terms of a satellite network which broadcasts 24 hours a day, but they also have Facebook pages, dedicated Facebook pages, for each of their brigades as well.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): With the late-breaking news of a humanitarian cease-fire due to take effect within hours, we return now to the ongoing battle between Hamas and Israel and questions being raised about whether either side is violating the laws of war.
Joining us are retired Lieutenant Colonel Gary Solis. He had a 26-year career in the Marine Corps, served two tours in Vietnam and became a military lawyer and judge. He’s now on the faculty at both George Washington and Georgetown University law schools. And retired Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Corn, he had a 22-year career in the Army, where he served as a lawyer. He’s now a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.
And we welcome you both to the NewsHour.
To you first, Colonel Corn. We want to talk about both sides in this conflict. Let’s start with Hamas. What is it that you believe Hamas is doing that violates international law?
LT. COL. GEOFFREY CORN (RET.), South Texas College of Law: Well, I think the two most obvious examples are the deliberate attack on civilian population centers, with apparently no effort to target specific military targets in Israel.
Just firing missiles in the direction of Israeli population centers is a clear violation of the law. And the other is locating their vital military assets within the midst of the civilian population in an apparent attempt to make it more difficult for the Israeli Defense Forces to target those assets, which is also a clear violation of the law.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what international law are you referring to?
LT. COL. GEOFFREY CORN: Well, the international law that I’m referring to — and I’m sure my friend Gary will refer to — we call the law of war, or it’s often called international humanitarian law.
And it’s one of the oldest bodies of international law. Many of these rules are codified in treaties that are binding on nations throughout the world, including the Israelis. And even the rules that are not applicable as a matter of treaty law, apply to all parties to a conflict as a matter of what we call customary international law.
COMMENT:The worst mistake was the creation the Gaza strip. Having two hostile populations on each side (border) of Israel is a blunder. The population of Gaza should be in Palestine (aka West Bank), and what is now Gaza should be an integral part of Israel. Unfortunately it's too late.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): In the Middle East, tensions are running even higher, as fighting between Israel and Hamas intensified again today. Militant rockets reached Israel’s two largest cities, while Israeli airstrikes killed at least 25 people inside Gaza.
There was chaos in the streets of Gaza, as Palestinians ran for shelter, while Israeli forces blasted the coastal enclave. Airstrikes and naval gunfire sent plumes of smoke billowing into the skies, reducing homes and buildings to piles of rubble. The Israeli military called It Operation Protective Edge and released aerial video showing the results. It said the targets included homes of Hamas militants who fire rockets into Southern Israel, plus concealed launch sites.
President Shimon Peres said his nation was left with no choice.
PRESIDENT SHIMON PERES, Israel: They are shooting at our children, at our mothers, at our civilians. What for? We cannot compromise with death. We cannot compromise with rockets. We cannot compromise with this sort of behavior. And we shall stop them.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The Israelis said more than 130 rockets were fired from Gaza in the last 24 hours. Some were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, including two rockets that targeted Tel Aviv, the deepest strike so far.
Later, air raid sirens also sounded in Jerusalem, but the military said there were no casualties. The government urged citizens living near Gaza to stay close to bomb shelters.
President Obama appealed for peace in a guest column for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He wrote: “All parties must protect the innocent and act with reasonableness and restraint, not vengeance and retribution.”
But Hamas warned there would be no letup.
SAMI ABU ZUHRI, Spokesman, Hamas (through interpreter): The resistance is defending the Palestinian people. The occupation threats and crimes will not break our will. We will continue to defend our people against these crimes. We warn the occupation not to continue its crime against our people.
JUDY WOODRUFF: In turn, Israeli officials warned their offensive will go on until the rockets stop. They also left open the possibility of a ground invasion. Tanks and artillery have already massed along the Gaza border, and the Israeli government has authorized calling up 40,000 reservists.
SUMMARY: More rocket attacks and airstrikes ratcheted up tensions between Israel and Palestinians. One militant rocket reached as far as Tel Aviv, while Israeli air force strikes killed at least 25 people inside Gaza. Judy Woodruff talks to Josef Federman of The Associated Press from Jerusalem about the capabilities and motives of both sides, as well as the sense of fear gripping the region.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to the Middle East, where there has been a major escalation of tensions just in the last few hours. It follows days of unrest sparked by the deaths of three Israeli teens and a Palestinian teenager. Three Israeli suspects in the killing of the Palestinian teen confessed to the crime today.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned the teen’s father and vowed the killers would be brought to justice. Tonight, Hamas fired dozens of rockets into Israel, claiming revenge for Israeli airstrikes overnight which they say killed six of its members.
A short time ago, I spoke to Josef Federman, whose story covering — who has been covering a story for the Associated Press.
Josef, thank you for talking with us.
Bring us up to date on what is going on. What is each side doing?
JOSEF FEDERMAN, The Associated Press: Well, it’s been a pretty busy day here.
Things are heating up in Southern Israel along the Gaza border. Gaza militants have fired about 100 rockets today into Israel or at Israel. Israel has responded with some limited airstrikes earlier in the day. Now, the rocket fire heated up, really intensified this evening. There was a barrage of nearly 50 rockets after nightfall.
Some of them flew — or they set off alarms deep inside of Israel, about 50 miles away from the border, reaching almost the outskirts of Tel Aviv. So this is seen as a bit of an escalation. Israel hasn’t responded yet to this latest barrage, but we’re expecting a pretty long night.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How is this different from what normally has been taking place there?
JOSEF FEDERMAN: Well, most of the time, the rocket fire is pretty limited to — when there are attacks — and there are periods when it’s quiet altogether — but usually it’s limited to one or two or a handful of rockets that are fired at very short distances into open areas.
Now we are seeing just an intensity that we haven’t seen for several years, where it’s dozens and dozens each day. The distance that they’re flying is a lot further and many of them are reaching populated areas.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
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