Kidnappers from North Korea

Imagine this - under cover of night, spies from a communist country silently paddle, in a small inflatable boat, to the shore of a nearby nation. Quietly moving among the houses near the beach, they grab a child, holding a cloth over the victim's mouth so that no scream is heard. They take the victim back to the sea, and paddle away.

Many years later, that child - or perhaps another person, surgically altered to look like the kidnapping victim - reappears at home, to the joy of family and friends. What the welcoming parents and neighbors do not know, however, is that returning child, now grown up, is actually a spy for the communists.

This scenario sounds like a movie, but it is fact. The Guardian reports on what eventually happened to some of these kidnapping victims:

Five Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korean spies at the height of the cold war returned to Japan yesterday to be reunited with relatives they have not seen for almost a quarter of a century.

The five, the only confirmed survivors among 13 Japanese nationals North Korea has admitted abducting in the 1970s and 80s, arrived at Haneda airport in Tokyo yesterday afternoon on a government-chartered plane. They will spend about two weeks in Japan before returning together to North Korea.

For many years, the North Korean government insisted that it had never abducted any Japanese citizens. Continued pressure from the Japanese and other nations, including South Korea and the United States, eventually caused the North Koreans to admit to their crimes. The communists hoped that by doing so, they might gain some diplomatic advantage among the free nations.

after years of denials, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, told Mr Koizumi during bilateral talks in Pyongyang that his country's special forces had indeed kidnapped Japanese and used them to teach their language to spies.

The exact number of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Koreans remains unclear; likewise, how many of those victims are still alive is not precisely known. The Yale Daily News reports that

With the North Korean government recently admitting to kidnapping Japanese citizens throughout the 1980s, University of Hawaii sociology professor Patricia Steinhoff — who has had direct contact with the kidnappers — offered a personal perspective of the situation at a lecture.

Professor Steinhoff explained, according to Yale reporter Chris Fortson, about the complicated political environment inside Japan at the time of the abductions - there was a significant communist underground group hoping to abolish freedom in Japan, and some Japanese may have willingly defected to North Korea at the time.

One of the more bizarre aspects of this already-strange episode centers around a group of Japanese communists terrorists. Wanting to refine their terrorism skills, they hijacked an airplane in order to fly to Cuba. They hoped to be able to overthrow the Japanese government and create a communist dictatorship. But they never made it to Cuba. The airplane which they had hijacked turned out to be a short-range aircraft. They landed in North Korea, and remained there. The Japanese communist terrorists, known as the Yodogo group, were happy to remain in a communist country, and the North Koreans were happy to have them. To provide the Yodogo terrorists with wives, the North Koreans began kidnapping Japanese women.

Steinhoff ended her lecture by presenting a list of all those she believes were kidnapped. While the North Korean government admitted to kidnapping only 13 Japanese citizens, Steinhoff said she believes there were more than 30 Japanese victims, including the Yodogo wives.

By 2008, although North Korea had admitted the crime and some victims had been returned to Japan, the issue was not yet put to rest. The New York Times reported that

For decades, the North denied responsibility for the disappearance of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, despite Japanese news reports that agents had been spotted on Japanese soil.

But during a visit to Pyongyang in 2002 by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, admitted that North Korean agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese as part of a program to train Japanese-speaking spies.

The North released five of them along with their children, but said the other eight had died over the years.

Japan has said that it believes that some of them may still be alive and that there may be other abductees in North Korea. The abductions became a highly emotional and politicized issue in Japan, one used by the Japanese right to whip up anger against the North and to argue for Japan’s remilitarization.

Although the conflict resulting from these kidnappings was primarily between Japan and North Korea, it eventually involved other nations. South Korea and Thailand allied themselves with Japan; citizens from both of those countries had been abducted by North Korea. The United States, although not directly involved, engaged on the matter as well; the U.S. hoped to gain leverage in its talks with North Korea about nuclear weapons. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote that, in 2002, America's allies worked to simultaneously normalize relations with North Korea and persuade it to abandon its nuclear weapons program. In the United States, there were competing views. Some felt that we should work to normalize relations with North Korea in order to make progress on the weapons negotiations; others felt that we should focus first on the nuclear arms talks, in order to make progress toward normalization later:

Yet our allies were moving forward with the North. As we were deliberating, Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan visited Pyongyang in an effort to normalize relations between the two adversaries and resolve the crisis over Japan's abducted citizens. In one of the more bizarre revelations in modern international history, the North admitted that it had in fact kidnapped Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s to steal their identities and use them to train North Korean spies how to speak Japanese. The issue was deeply emotional for the families of the abducted and for the Japanese people as a whole. Kim's promise to allow the citizens to leave (to this day only partially fulfilled) encouraged Koizumi, though of the thirteen who had been abducted only five were still alive. The Japanese foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, pressed both Colin and me to send a U.S. delegation to North Korea. Koizumi made the same request of the President a couple of days later in a phone call.

The Japanese request to Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and President Bush was seen as progress by some, and as appeasement by others. In Japan, the issue stood on its own. In America, the abduction issue was almost always seen in the larger contexts of normalization and of negotiations about nuclear weapons. On October 9, 2008, President Bush met with Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Steve Hadley. The discussion centered around North Korea, its current position on the official list of terrorist nations, and a "verification proposal" which was part of the arms negotiations process. Vice President Dick Cheney, who was also present at the meeting and who had been in Japan speaking with the families of the kidnapping vicitms, writes:

The issue of Japan came up. We had known for some time that the Japanese government was very unhappy that we might lift the terrorism designation. They were concerned in particular about Japanese citizens, many of them children, who had been abducted by the North Koreans decades earlier. I had met with some of their families during my trip to Asia in 2007, and the stories of lost children were heartbreaking. Now, the Japanese perceived we might be contemplating removing North Korea from the terrorism list without a resolution of this issue, and their diplomats had been in repeatedly to see my deputy national security advisor, Samantha Ravich, and others on my national security staff. The Japanese were also troubled by our apparent willingness to take the North Koreans at their word, to trust this rogue regime. Secretary Rice denied there was any objection from the Japanese and told the president they had simply asked for a delay of twenty-four hours so they could "handle their political situation." This was inaccurate. Later that day I received a message from our ambassador in Japan, Tom Schieffer, which I would pass on to the president. Schieffer, who had been one of the president's partners when he owned the Texas Rangers, had grown increasingly concerned about our North Korean policy and was now reporting that the Japanese found the "verification proposal" unacceptable as presented. Schieffer also passed along a warning from the prime minister of Japan: Given North Korea's history of duplicity, it was essential to get any agreement with them in writing.

Within the Bush administration, then, there were substantially different views: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wanted to proceed along the path toward normalization with North Korea, while Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to place more pressure on North Korea so that it would back away from nuclear weapons and back away from kidnapping. In October 2006, Condi Rice had been in Japan, speaking with the Japanese government both about North Korea's nuclear weapons and about the abductions. She writes:

Tokyo wanted North Korea's program stopped, but feared that we might make a deal with Pyongyang before the tragic Japanese abduction cases could be resolved. While Foreign Minister Taro Aso mentioned the issue of the abductions at our joint press conference, I focused on the nuclear issue at hand and the Security Council resolution. I didn't want to get a deal to halt North Korea's nuclear program only to have to resolve the abduction issue fully before it could go into effect. It would be a constant balancing act throughout the next two years.

The United States agreed with Japan that both issues were important: the kidnappings and the nuclear weapons. But Japan wanted the abductions resolved before finalizing any agreement about nuclear weapons; the United States - or least some of its diplomats - wanted the weapons issue resolved without necessarily waiting for a final resolution to the kidnapping issue. By late 2007, Secretary of State Rice would note that the Six-Party Talks (Russia, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and the U.S.) were continuing; South Korea, Japan, and Australia - along with the U.S. - represented the spirit of democracy in the Pacific,

but Japan was emerging as a weakening link in that chain. I've mentioned Prime Minister Koizumi's determination to undertake long-delayed, much-needed bureaucratic and economic reforms. When he left office, Japan fell back into consensus politics again, with essentially interchangeable prime ministers who never seemed to move the country forward. It was increasingly depressing to go to Japan, which seemed not only stagnant and aging but hamstrung by old animosities with its neighbors. And I was concerned too about my personal chemistry with the Japanese, who believed I was too interested in resolving the North Korean nuclear issue and unwilling to hold the line on the abductions. It began to feel as if the Japanese wanted the Six-Party Talks to fail lest they lose their leverage with us to help them with the admittedly tragic abduction issue.

Japan's ability to find ways to creatively respond to the abduction issue may have been hindered by internal political dynamics; those dynamics, in turn, may have been partially caused by Japan's demographic crisis: a lack of children. The Japanese had failed to have enough children for several decades. The Japanese economy was crippled by having too few people in the pre-retirement age group. Too few workers and too many retirees make for a non-sustainable funding structure for healthcare and other governmental services; the lack of workers also hurt Japan's businesses. While not directly tied to the issue of North Korean abductions, Japan's child shortage affected both the flexibility of its political leaders and the emotional reaction on the part of Japanese voters. Condi Rice had to work carefully with the Japanese diplomats.

For the remainder of the term, I'd fight to avoid linkage between the two issues. We could only say that we'd press the North Koreans to resolve the questions about the kidnapped Japanese citizens but if we could constrain - even end - Pyongyang's nuclear program, we needed to do that. Maintaining that position was very difficult. Tom Schieffer, the President's good friend and former co-owner of the Texas Rangers, was ambassador to Japan (having already served as ambassador to Australia). Tom was a great guy but sometimes a little too insistent in making Tokyo's case. After one incident in which Tom called the President - not me - about Japan's complaints, we had a discussion about the appropriate chain of command. He hadn't meant to cross the line, and we never had difficulties again. But I know it was hard on Tom because the Japanese were hypersensitive and insecure. Therein lay the problem: we needed a confident Japan as a partner in a changing Asia, and with the end of Junichiro Koizumi's term in office in 2006, those days had seemed to disappear.

A diversity of views continued within the Bush administration. Various approaches were recommended by the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Vice President. Long discussions analyzed various approaches, seeing the merits and the flaws in each. In contrast to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney wrote:

America's position in the world is strengthened when we stand with allies. In this instance we failed to do that, instead sidelining two key allies - Japan and the South Koreans - in our bilateral dealings with the North. Accepting a fundamentally flawed "agreement" also meant that we turned our back on an issue of critical importance to the Japanese, one that we had committed to helping them resolve: the return of their lost children.

Discussions inside the Bush administration continued to weigh the idea of removing North Korea from the list of nations known to engage in state-sponsored terrorism. On the one hand, it might yield progress in the nuclear arms talks; on the other hand, it was clear that North Korea had not abstained from state-sponsored terrorism, and still constituted a threat to peace, safety, and dignity in western Pacific. Secretary of State Rice noted:

The Japanese were lobbying hard against the lifting of the designation, though. They worried, as before, that there would not be enough pressure on the North to resolve the abduction issue. We'd tried to help, and indeed, Pyongyang had agreed to some small steps, including a plan to reopen investigations into the abductions issue and answer questions about the fate of the victims.

By October 2008, The New York Times could report

The Bush administration announced Saturday that it had removed North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism in a bid to salvage a fragile nuclear deal that seemed on the verge of collapse.

Beyond this point, one can only speculate about what would have happened if the United States had had a chance to continue to pursue some kind of policy regarding North Korea. The election of November 2008 brought an end to foreign policy, and instead ushered in an era in which the relations between the United States and other countries would be conducted in the service of other goals. There has been no substantive action by the U.S. regarding these issues since late 2008. An American Diplomat, Kurt M. Campbell, who bears the impressive title Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, managed to offend Japanese sensibilities by encouraging their government to ratify an agreement about parental abductions - the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction - which does not bear on the North Korean kidnappings. Campbell was advocating for an agreement which addressed situations in which divorced parents of a child lived in two different countries, and in which one parent had abducted a child from the other parent, creating a case of international kidnapping. The Japanese found it offensive that they were being urged to take this action against abductions - urged by an American government which had done nothing after 2008 to help them retrieve their own children from the North Korean kidnappers. The Japan Times reported in May 2012:

Relatives of Japanese abducted by North Korea said they were upset by remarks by Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat on East Asian affairs, in their meeting Monday at which he urged Japan to address the issue of parental child abductions.

If the United States returns, at some future point in time, to formulating foreign policy, there will be a question waiting for them: what, if anything, is to be done about the Japanese children kidnapped by North Korea? Until such time, America will have no clearly articulated foreign policy, and the needs of domestic politics inside the United States will drive the State Department's relations to other nations, including Japan and North Korea.

The Invasion of Italy

The swinging scimitars of Islam raced, in less than a century, westward from Arabia, devouring Egypt, northern Africa, and Spain. In 732 A.D., exactly a century after Muhammad's death, Muslims attempted a mass military invasion of France, but were turned back by the armies of Charles "the Hammer" Martel. To the east, they had already conquered Persia and Syria; they were partway through Turkey - still known as 'Asia Minor' or Anatolia at the time. As historian Harold Lamb wrote:

Two obstacles checked the rush of the Muhammadans upon Europe. A certain Charles the Hammer, king of the Franks, withstood them in the west. And in the east they were flung back from the walls of Byzantium. But the real reason for the ebbing of the tide was that the Muhammadans had split up into different factions, each holding to its portion of the conquered lands.

The stated goal of Muhammad's immediate successors, the "righteously guided" caliphs, was to establish a single caliphate, dominating Europe, Africa, and Asia. This caliphate would eliminate all other religions, and establish Islam as the only faith for the world. This goal was frustrated, not only by resistance with which Charles Martel and the Byzantines defended themselves, but also by internal divisions and power-struggles. Nonetheless, the amazing military strength of Islam had captured a huge amount of territory, and their occupying armies kept local populations subjugated:

Their conquests brought them face to fact with the barbarians who had quartered themselves on the ruins of the Roman Empire and had become Christians. Europe became the neighbor of near-Asia. The front line of Christendom could look across at the advanced posts of Islam. No-man's land had disappeared.

It seemed as if a stalemate might occur: Islam might content itself with northern Africa, southwestern Asia, Spain, and Turkey. Europe might content itself with what remained to it. But the Spanish were not content to remain subject to a foreign occupying army.

In the west, where Spain was the battleground, the Christian Franks retook the passes of the Pyrenees and gained ground steadily. In the east the Muhammadans gradually edged across Asia Minor.

During the next phase - the second century of Islam - Muslims would organize a sustained invasion and occupation of Italy, or more precisely, the southern half of the Italian peninsula. This objective would require naval power; troops would leave northern Africa from points near Carthage, capture islands along the way, and storm Italy.

It was in the center that the Muhammadans held the upper hand - in the sea itself. The Arabs took kindly to sea. They built ships and changed slowly from warriors to warrior-merchants. They made themselves at home on the islands, especially Sicily, and they sailed up the Tiber almost to the walls of Rome.

In fact, the residents of Italy would suffer greatly at the hands of the Muslims. Italy was in no way prepared to defend itself against an invasion from the sea. Historian Will Durant wrote that

Having conquered Syria and Egypt, the Moslem leaders realized that they could not hold the coast without a fleet. Soon their men-of-war seized Cyprus and Rhodes, and defeated the Byzantine navy (652, 655). Corsica was occupied in 809, Sardinia in 810, Crete in 823, Malta in 870. In 827 the old struggle between Greece and Carthage for Sicily was resumed; the Aghlabid caliphs of Qairwan sent expedition after expedition, and the conquest proceeded with leisurely bloodshed and rapine. Palermo fell in 831, Messina in 843, Syracuse in 878, Taormina in 902. When the Fatimid caliphs suceeded to the Aghlabid power (909) they inherited Sicily as part of their domain. When the Fatimids removed their seat to Cairo their governor of Sicily, Husein al-Kalbi, made himself emir with nearly sovereign authority, and established that Kalbite dynasty under which Moslem

occupational armies in Sicily achieved maximum strength. The Islamic domination over Mediterranean islands was a long and bloody process. The island of Corsica, for example, was first attacked by Muslims from northern Africa in 713 A.D.; Byzantines, Lombards, and Franks were able to defend effectively until 806, when Muslims from Spain - a subgroup of the Islamic armies occupying the Iberian peninsula - also began to attack Corsica. Caught in a pincers movement, Corsica was continually attacked by Moorish Muslims from Spain on the one side, and Muslims from northern Africa on the other side. Islamic troops occupied parts of the island, sometimes for several years, but the Franks continued to defend. Until 930 A.D., frequent Muslim attacks continued.

Starting in 705 A.D., the Muslims of northern African began attacking the island of Sardinia. Due to the savagery of the assaults, the town of Tharros - which had been continuously inhabited for centuries - was permanently abandoned. Other towns, like Caralis and Porto Torres, were evacuated and left empty for several years, but later repopulated when the area became safe again. Such permanent safety would appear after intense fighting in the years 1015 and 1016, when forces from the Italian mainland aided the Sardinians in defending themselves.

The long years of Islamic onslaughts against Crete, Malta, and Sicily were even more vicious. But islands were only an means to an end: the Muslims wanted to invade and hold more territory on the European continent itself. French coastal cities were besieged, like Narbonne, which was occupied by Islamic armies until it was freed by Pepin the Short in 759.

All of this was a prelude to the invasion of Italy. Italian coastal cities had long been subjected to raids by Muslims: a hit-and-run tactic in which one or more ships approached, soldiers from those ships would enter the town, grab anything of value they could take, kill men, rape women, and set the town on fire on their way out. After years of such raiding, a large-scale invasion took place in 841 A.D., in Bari, a port city in southeastern Italy.

Spreading throughout the peninsula, Islamic armies would occupy the southern parts of Italy for several decades. Although they did not permanently hold Rome, it was raided and sacked in 846.

The Italy strategy was conceived by the Muslims as part of a broader approach to Europe - Spain in the southwest, Byzantium in the southeast, and Italy - together with the southern coast of France and various Mediterranean islands - in the central south. This strategy was designed to keep European defenses spread thin; it succeeded to the extent that Spain was held for centuries, and to the extent that the Byzantine territory continually shrank over the centuries.

Whether Europe survived because of its defenses, such as they were, or whether it survived because internal factional competition prevented the harmony needed to coordinate the hoped-for worldwide caliphate, remains unclear. But in any case, the invasion of Italy was a central part of the unfolding events.

China, Too?

Archeologists, paleontologists, and historians have noted that every - or almost every - known civilization practiced human sacrifice in its earliest stages of development. In Mesopotamia, we find it in Sumer and Akkad. Elsewhere in the Ancient Near East, it was practiced by the Phoenicians and Hebrews. Further afield, Egyptians and Persians offered human victims to their idols.

Throughout Europe, the earliest Germanic and Celtic tribes killed adults and children on altars. The practice is found not only in the earliest phases, but also in more advanced stages: the Greeks were engaging in the practice as late as 480 B.C., when Themistocles slew sacrificial victims on the evening before the Battle of Salamis. The Romans, panicking as Hannibal advanced on the city during the second Punic War, gave human offerings to their idols.

North, Central, and South America saw plenty of human sacrifice, not only among the Incas, Aztecs, and Maya, but also among the Zapotec, Olmec, Nazca, Moche, and Chavin civilizations. India engaged in the practice also.

What about China? China seems often to be historically on a different track. Might China perhaps have avoided this atrocity? Sadly, that is not the case. As historians Patricia Ebrey, Anne Walthall, and James Palais explain,

in addition to objects of symbolic value or practical use, the Shang interred human beings, sometimes dozens of them, in royal tombs. Why did they do this? From oracle bone texts, it seems that captives not needed as slaves often ended up as sacrificial victims. Other people buried with the king had chosen their fate; that is, his spouses, retainers, or servants could decide to accompany him in death. Those who voluntarily followed their king to the grave generally had their own ornaments and might also have coffins and gave goods such as weapons. Early Shang graves rarely had more than three victims or followers accompanying the main occupant, but the practice grew over time. A late Shang king's tomb contained the remains of ninety followers plus seventy-four human sacrifices, twelve horses, and eleven dogs. Archeologists often can identify sacrificial victims because they were decapitated or cut in two at the waist.

The 'oracle bones' were bone fragments on which texts were written or inscribed; the bones were then heated, and the cracks which developed as jagged zigzags on the surface of the bone would intersect the text. Priests attempted to discern, from the locations of such intersections, a divine meaning. In this case, the meaning might dictate who would become a sacrificial victim.

From roughly 1500 B.C. to 1045 B.C., the Shang dynasty dominated China. While the practice of burying victims with kings in royal tombs can be construed as a type of human sacrifice, a much clearer form of human sacrifice is when victims are offered directly to idols.

Human sacrifice occurred not only at burials. Divination texts refer to ceremonies where from three to four hundred captives were sacrificed. In 1976, twelve hundred victims were found in 191 pits near the royal tombs, apparently representing successive sacrifices of a few dozen victims. Animals were also frequently offered in sacrifice. Thus, a central part of being a Shang king was taking the lives of others and offering the victims up on the altars.

The example of the Shang dynasty in China, then, strengthens the hypothesis that human sacrifice was a universal, or nearly universal, practice in the ancient world. This, in turn, highlights the significance of Abraham and the Hebrews as the first culture to reject this practice.

Winning the Cold War - Why It was Important

The struggle for eastern Europe and parts of Asia centered on the concept of human rights and civil rights. After 1945, Soviet Communism and Maoist Communism sought to expand and take over neighboring nations. Personal freedom was endangered in places like East Germany or Czechoslovakia.

The series of events which culminated in the West's victory - how the United States and other western democracies won the Cold War - is long and complex. One chapter of that history centers on Poland, and on a movement called "Solidarity" - a labor union which resisted the Soviet occupational government. Led by Lech Walensa, who later became the leader of Poland after it was freed from Communist control, Solidarity created an significant hindrance to the Marxist totalitarian government - but at a high price. Anyone who dared to question the Soviet Communist dictatorship was treated ruthlessly. Historian Ann Coulter writes:

In one famous case from the eighties, the Soviets brutally murdered the charismatic Catholic priest Jerzy Popieluszko, who had spoken out against the Communist regime in Poland, urging resistance and inspiring Solidarity. After arrests and "car accidents" failed to stop him, he was brutally beaten and murdered by three Security officers in 1984 and his body dumped in Vistula Water Reservoir.

When Communism manifests its essential nature - the violence which eventually erupts from apparently pacifistic utopian schemes when they encounter obstacles - it becomes clear why the Cold War was so important: had the Communists won, millions of human beings and large portions of the globe would be subjected to slavery and tyranny.

Any scheme for creating an ideal society, no matter how well-intentioned, and no matter how peaceful, creates an immense amount of psychological and emotional pressure: if perfection is within our grasp, we should do everything possible to achieve it! Thus even morally noble utopians gradually persuade themselves that violence is permissible in their cause: yes, violence is bad, but how great an achievement will be the result. From Rousseau to Marx, neither of whom wanted war, interminable bloodshed resulted. The social engineering which arises from the notion that humans and human society are perfectible leads consistently to the violation of rights - the very rights which it hopes to institute.

Phases of Ur

The city of Ur, located near where the Euphrates River flows into the Persian Gulf, has a long history, and is important for many different reasons. So much has happened there, over such long stretches of time, that it is difficult to gain an overview of its rich history. To make its narrative more accessible, it can be broken into manageable segments.

The earliest phase includes the founding of the city, sometime after 4000 B.C., in a transitional era between the neolithic age and the bronze age. The first society to live at Ur did not do so for long, as it was destroyed in a flood which wiped out all settlements in the Ancient Near East. The city was rebuilt by settlers who had a better knowledge of copper, and by a later group - "protoliterate" - which was early in the process of learning to write.

The second phase of Ur's history includes its first two dynasties. By 2700 B.C., Ur had become powerful and wealthy. It became the center of an expanded area, the Sumerian kingdom, which it ruled. It grew to include the whole Mesopotamian Valley. When a Sumerian king died, he was buried with his government officials, servants, and a group of women. By 2700 B.C., this practice was already an old tradition. Inscriptions from this era record that Sargon of Akkad, a ruler from a region north of Ur, was expanding and occupying the region around Ur. Traders from Ur at this time had contact with merchants as far away as India. The magical and superstitious practices of this phase - perhaps not quite yet religions - included human sacrifices, atop ziggurats, intended to persuade idols to grant good weather, good harvests, and military successes.

Sometime after 2200 B.C., Ur had freed itself from Akkad's influence and was once again an independent kingdom ruling the surrounding region. This was the third dynasty. A large and impressive ziggurat was built during this third phase, manifesting complex engineering. It shows that the citizens of Ur had developed advanced principles of architecture, including columns, arches, domes, and vaults, and the sophisticated mathematics needed to design them. The structure demonstrated the principle of entasis, in which an optical illusion is produced: a curved line appears straight, and a straight line appears curved. Some of these architectural and mathematical innovations occurred as early as the first two dynasties.

A fourth phase of Ur's history saw the city lose its political importance, no longer the seat of a major monarch. Its significance in terms of import and export remained for a while, but then it fell into disrepair and neglect.

A fifth phase saw the city's financial and cultural status revived, as it became part of the Neo-Babylonian empire. Between 605 B.C. and 562 B.C., king Nebuchadnezzar II substantially rebuilt the city. Politically, however, Ur was ruled from Babylon as part of the empire, and shared its sudden rise, relatively brief era of supremacy, and quick demise when the Persians overtook the empire.

During the sixth phase, Ur was part of Cyrus's empire, given freedom to carry on its local religion and culture as long as it paid taxes and gave military support to the Persians. The city, however, began to decay, as the Euphrates River gradually changed its course, making agriculture impossible. Sometime after 317 B.C., Ur was abandoned, and the desert sands gradually covered its remains for archeologists to find 2000 years later.

The city is deserted now, visited by archeologists and the most adventurous tourists. Two miles away is a small railroad station, named 'Ur Junction', keeping the ancient name of the great city alive in modern times.

Ur is mentioned often in certain history courses. The city has played significant roles in various scenarios over the ages. But in any discussion of an event relating to Ur, it must first be established, during which phase of Ur's history that event took place. These phases are meaningfully different from one another, and provide the backdrop for such narratives.

Women Removed from Islamic Universities

The Islamic government of Iran has chosen to enforce Sharia law, the traditional law of Muslims, and prevent women from studying at universities. The Telegraph reports that:

Female students in Iran have been barred from more than 70 university degree courses in an officially-approved act of sex-discrimination which critics say is aimed at defeating the fight for equal women's rights.

This is part of the same Islamic tradition which kept women from attending school in Afghanistan.

In a move that has prompted a demand for a UN investigation by Iran's most celebrated human rights campaigner, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, 36 universities have announced that 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year will be "single gender" and effectively exclusive to men.

'BSc' stands for Bachelor of Science, and is the British abbreviation; in the U.S., 'BS' is the standard way to refer to such degrees. While women have been barred by the Muslim government from studying many subjects at Iranian universities, men have been barred from none.

Senior clerics in Iran's theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women.

The Islamic leadership - the imams and mullahs - is working to keep women legally and socially inferior to men.

Under the new policy, women undergraduates will be excluded from a broad range of studies in some of the country's leading institutions, including English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management.

Similar measures are being taken in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. In those countries, unlike Iran and Afghanistan, the measures to oppress women are organized through the political party known as The Muslim Brotherhood. In Iran, such measures are being forced onto the oil industry - a major source of the region's wealth and power - by the ayatollahs. Islam has a commanding hold on the Iranian economy:

The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.

If female graduates are often jobless - a questionable assertion at best - it is either because they face discrimination in the Muslim-dominated industry, or it is because they've chosen to be wives and mothers. In either case, there is no justification for preventing women from studying. Ebadi wrote a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, and to the high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay.

"[It] is part of the recent policy of the Islamic Republic, which tries to return women to the private domain inside the home as it cannot tolerate their passionate presence in the public arena," says the letter, which was also sent to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in Iran. "The aim is that women will give up their opposition and demands for their own rights."

Beyond education, the larger issue is simply personal freedom and individual liberty for women. There are already many regulations in the Islamic state of Iran which prevent women from exercising rights. This latest move simply indicates the trend toward even fewer freedoms for women, removing the few rights or liberties they had left. Until this latest legislation, women had been making substantial progress within Iranian universities:

Sociologists have credited women's growing academic success to the increased willingness of religiously-conservative families to send their daughters to university after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Legal and social equality for women - long a hallmark of cultures in Europe and North America - remains elusive in the Middle East; in these cases, things seem to be getting worse rather than better.

Good Stuff and Bad Stuff in Egypt

Modern Egypt as we know it - in contrast to the ancient Egypt of Pharaohs and pyramids - began with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In the early 1800's, Yugoslavian regions like Serbia began to be more autonomous within the empire, and oppressed nations like Greece fought for, and gained, independence and freedom in 1830. Historian William Duiker writes:

Meanwhile, other parts of the empire began to break away from central control. In Egypt, the ambitious governor Muhammad Ali declared the region's autonomy from Ottoman rule and initiated a series of reforms designed to promote economic growth and government efficiency. During the 1830s, he sought to improve agricultural production and reform the educational system, and he imported machinery and technicians from Europe to carry out the first industrial revolution on African soil. In the end, however, the effort failed, partly because Egypt's manufactures could not compete with those of Europe and also because much of the profit from the export of cash crops went into the hands of

landlords who were inexperienced at exporting such cash crops, and who were more interested in ensuring a continued lack of social mobility - keeping Egyptian peasants locked into the strict Muslim class structure which had dominated the region for centuries. These landlords were wealthy and would continue to be wealthy, whether or not the export business was successful. The ones harmed by the failure of export businesses were the peasant class, who stood to experience a modest gain in income, and the middle class, which was tiny but might have enlarged had the exporting been successful.

Egypt's first pass at modernizing - and the results of this attempt - are telling and predicative. Industrialization in any culture is a traumatic process: in England, Europe, and America, it caused urban misery until an economic equilibrium was reached in which child labor, long hours, and low wages were eliminated. But in a post-colonial Islamic nation like Egypt, industrialization goes past "traumatic" and into "utterly destructive" conditions - on top of which, it is doomed to fail. Industrialization was predestined to come to naught in Egypt because the rationalization of processes rests upon a world-view fostered by the calm logic of medieval Scholasticism, and upon the children of Scholasticism: physics, mathematics, and chemistry. Egypt's Muslim population - from peasants to aristocrats - had a worldview which didn't intuitively mesh with the rationalization of processes and industrial engineering management.

The Suez Canal is an example. Duiker writes:

Ever since the voyages of the Portuguese explorers at the close of the fifteenth century, European trade with the East had been carried on almost exclusively by the route around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. But from the outset, there was some interest in shortening the route by digging a canal east of Cairo, where only a low, swampy isthmus separated the Mediterranean from the Red Sea.

The land route between Europe and the East, which had been the original trade route before the Portuguese discovered the sea route, had become too dangerous, as the caravans traveling in both directions were attacked by raiders. One of those raiders was in fact Muhammad, the founder of Islam. His early source of income had been raiding the caravans traveling the region of Mecca and Medina. Trade between Europe and the Far East declined and languished for several centuries, only to flourish again when the Portuguese route was discovered.

The Ottoman Turks, who controlled the area, had considered constructing a canal in the sixteenth century, but nothing was accomplished until 1854, when the French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps signed a contract to begin construction of the canal. The completed project brought little immediate benefit to Egypt, however, which under the vigorous rule of the Ottoman official Muhammad Ali was attempting to adopt reforms on the European model. The cost of construction imposed a major debt on the Egyptian government and forced a growing level of dependence on foreign financial support. When an army revolt against the increasing foreign influence broke out in 1881, the British stepped in to protect their investment (they had bought Egypt's canal company shares in 1875) and set up an informal protectorate that would last until World War I.

Sadly, Egypt's story is one of financial opportunities gone bad. Although Muslim raiders succeeded in scaring away European traders who wanted to go through the Middle East to get to the Far East, it was a Pyrrhic victory - they "succeeded" in losing a tremendous economic opportunity: if European traders had continued using the land route to the Far East during the early Middle Ages, the countries of the Middle East could have managed this trade for a permanent continuous revenue stream. Trade using the Portuguese route around the southern tip of Africa represented lost opportunities for the Middle East. The Suez Canal was a chance to get back into that game: building, owning, and operating that canal guaranteed steady income. The Portuguese route was no longer the best path - now most shipping would once again go through the Middle East. But why was Egypt unable to operate the canal at a profit, when the French and the British were able to do so? What is it about the culture of Middle East which prevented this success? We cannot blame Arab culture, because the Arabs have been successful businessmen over the centuries. After the rise of Islam, Arabs continued to be astute traders, but it is important to note that not all Arabs became Muslims. The skills required to be a successful trader are different than the skills required to run a corporate operation like the Suez Canal. Although Egypt lost its financial opportunity in the Suez Canal, it would regain its political independence.

National consciousness had existed in Egypt since well before the colonial takeover, and members of the legislative council were calling for independence even before World War I. In 1918, a formal political party called the Wafd was formed to promote Egyptian independence. The intellectuals were opposed as much to the local palace government as to the British, however, and in 1952, an army coup overthrew King Farouk, the grandson of Khedive Ismail, and established an independent republic.

Khedive Ismail ruled Egypt from 1863 to 1879, and King Farouk ruled from 1936 to 1952. Having gained independence from the British, Egypt spent approximately thirty years under a monarchy. Ethnically speaking, Egypt is not a strictly Arab society.

Technically, Egypt was not an Arab state. King Farouk, who had acceded to power in 1936, had frequently declared support for the Arab cause, but the Egyptian people were not Bedouins and shared little of the culture of the peoples across the Red Sea. Nevertheless, Farouk committed Egyptian armies to the disastrous war against Israel.

In the late 1940's and early 1950's, Farouk symbolized the fence-riding character of Egypt's role in the Middle East. Not truly Arab, but often engaged in Arab causes, the Islamic identity of a vocal political faction inside Egypt would sometimes be decisive, or sometimes be overruled by other Egyptians.

In 1952, King Farouk, whose corrupt habits had severely eroded his early popularity, was overthrown by a military coup engineered by young military officers ostensibly under the leadership of Colonel Muhammad Nagib. The real force behind the scenes was Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser (1918 - 1970), the son of a minor government functionary who, like many of his fellow officers, had been angered by the army's inadequate preparation for the war against Israel four years earlier. In 1952, the monarchy was replaced by a republic.

Under Nasser, and later under Anwar Sadat, Egypt seemed to have a chance to exploit its economic opportunities in a meaningful way - a chance to assume its place at the table of modern, economically significant, nations.

In 1954, Nasser seized power in his own right, and immediately instituted a land reform program. He also adopted a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs and expressed sympathy for the Arab cause. The British presence had rankled many Egyptians for years, for even after granting Egypt independence, Britain had retained control over the Suez Canal to protect its route to the Indian Ocean. In 1956, Nasser suddenly nationalized the Suez Canal Company, which had been under British and French administration. Seeing a threat to their route to the Indian Ocean, the British and the French launched a joint attack on Egypt to protect their investment. They were joined by Israel, whose leaders had grown exasperated at sporadic Arab commando raids on Israeli territory and now decided to strike back. But the Eisenhower administration in the United States, concerned that the attack smacked of a revival of colonialism, supported Nasser and brought about the withdrawal of foreign forces from Egypt and of Israeli troops from the Sinai peninsula.

Nasser's next project was to form a United Arab Republic; the first step was to unite Syria and Egypt in 1958. He hoped to include, eventually, all the other Arab nations, but he was unsuccessful in persuading them to join. The kings of Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia saw that this was a socialist plan to take money away from their kingdoms. Eventually, even the union between Egypt and Syria failed, in 1961. Nasser's political vision continued along the Pan-Arab line: to create political ties between Arab nations. This led to Egypt's close ties to Yemen and Algeria, to Egypt coordinating the anti-Israel activities of the Arab nations, and to Egypt's support for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Nasser was, however, humiliated when Israel gained territory in the Six-Day-War of 1967. He died in office in 1970, and was replaced by Anwar Sadat. Nasser's

socialist approach has had little success, and most governments, including those of Egypt and Syria, eventually shifted to a more free enterprise approach while encouraging foreign investment to compensate for a lack of capital or technology.

The chimera of socialist economics disappointed Egypt. Cultural problems accompanied economic problems.

In 1928, devout Muslims in Egypt formed the Muslim Brotherhood as a means of promoting personal piety. Later, the movement began to take a more activist approach, including the eventual use of terrorism by a radical minority. Despite Nasser's surface commitment to Islamic ideals and Arab unity, some Egyptians were fiercely opposed to his policies and regard his vision of Arab socialism as a betrayal of Islamic principles. Nasser reacted harshly and executed a number of his leading opponents.

By this point, it was becoming clear that peace and progress were permanently impossible for some segments of the Middle East. Although the millions of ordinary people who live there certainly desire both, a variety of cultural or social factors prevent both peace and certain forms of political and economic progress. Whether leaders are sincere or corrupt, Egypt - and one may generalize to a number of other nations in the Middle East - seems to swing back and forth between ruthless secularist dictators and harsh Islamist theocracies. Neither provides a particularly kind environment. Following Nasser's sudden and unexpected death in office, Anwar Sadat became Egypt's next leader.

Sadat soon showed himself to be more pragmatic than his predecessor, dropping the now irrelevant name of United Arab Republic in favor of the Arab Republic of Egypt and replacing Nasser's socialist policies with a new strategy based on free enterprise and encouragement of Western investment. He also agreed to sign a peace treaty with Israel on the condition that Israel retire to its pre-1967 frontiers. Concerned that other Arab countries would refuse to make peace and take advantage of its presumed weakness, Israel refused.

In 1973, the Yom Kippur War took place, as Egypt and Syrian forces attacked Israel. The results were inconclusive. A cease-fire was reached, and Henry Kissinger maintained a fragile peace for the next several years by means of his diplomacy. In 1978, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Sadat signed the Camp David Agreement, which provided a constructive peace for several years. This diplomacy ended, however, by

the assassination of Sadat by Islamic militants in October 1981. But there were deeper causes, including the continued unwillingness of Muslim governments to recognize Israel.

After Sadat's death, Hosni Mubarak became president. Mubarak was president of Egypt for a total of twenty-nine consecutive years. He was overthrown in 2011; the revolutionaries pointed to corruption in government, lack of free speech, police brutality, less than free elections, and economic unpleasantness. Although these serious charges did, indeed, have some truth to them, Mubarek also had some positive features: he had maintained a peace, or at least a ceasefire, with Israel for many years, and had created good trading relations with a number of other nations. The revolutionaries of 2011 took a calculated risk: they got rid of Mubarek without knowing exactly what type of government they would get next. Historian Michael Savage writes that

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak had long been a U.S. ally and had kept the radical Muslim Brotherhood out of power for more than 40 years prior to Obama's intervention. The president suddenly insisted at the beginning of February 2011 that a transition to a democratic government in Egypt "must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now."

Historians note that Mubarak had good, or at least tolerable, diplomatic relations with a variety of nations, and with U.S. presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush - and even with Obama's first two years in office. What changed, that suddenly Mubarak's removal from office was a demand? Mubarak had acted in the interests of Europe and America - and in his own interests, to be sure - in keeping the Muslim Brotherhood out of power: the Muslim Brotherhood, which represents not the peaceful moderate Muslims, but rather the violent extremists; the Muslim Brotherhood which does not merely have links to terrorist organizations, but which rather explicitly encourages and supports them; the Muslim Brotherhood which takes, not a nominal interpretation of Islam which is conducive to nonviolent coexistence, but rather the most orthodox and literal interpretation of the Qur'an demanding aggression. Hosni Mubarak, whatever his sins, had at least accomplished that much for peace.

The revolution of 2011 hoped for a democratic government, but had no concrete reason to expect one, and no plan was in place to institute one. To the contrary, a plan was in place - a plan unknown to most of the revolutionaries in the streets - a plan to discard the desire for democracy as soon as it had been exploited to remove Mubarak.

With that absurd statement - the idea that transitions of power in the Middle East could be peaceful and could result in democratic governments - Obama revealed one of two things: Either he

had been inadequately informed about the true nature of the situation in Egypt, a failure in information-gathering, or he believed that whatever replaced Mubarak would be better than Mubarak, even though it would not be democratic. Either his

advisors are hopelessly naive regarding what's going on, or he is secretly on the side of Muslim radicals and believes that the overthrow of our allies will hasten their rise to power.

Regarding the accuracy of the information presented to President Obama in various briefings, the question arises whether the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood has been discerned by those who advise the president:

Less than two weeks after Obama made his mincing declaration that Mubarak must go, his Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood was "largely secular." Within hours, the administration refuted Clapper's absurd claim, reinforcing the fact that its foreign policy is chaotic at best, subversive at worst.

Although Mubarak was an unsavory character - nobody will claim him as a champion of human rights - he did at least maintain a peace effort with other nations in the Middle East, and maintain some degree of domestic tranquility. The seizure of power by the Muslim Brotherhood ensures the increased probability of open war in the region, and violence by the Egyptian government against its own citizens.

In addition to revealing the administration's ineptitude, its positions with regard to Egypt helped reveal where Obama really stands: firmly against a strong ally of the United States and Israel. While the Mubarak regime was dictatorial, it did maintain order in the streets and suppress Islamist radicals. It also maintained peace with Israel.

It is useful to recall the distinction between "Islamic" and "Islamist" - the former refers to a faith, the latter to political ideology and the agenda attached to it. Mubarak had protected the Egyptian people from the oppression of such radicals, and been an ally to the United States. What was to be gained by his ouster? The government which would replace him was not guaranteed to be as friendly to the U.S., and would likely be less friendly. The regime which would take his place would grant no more civil rights to Egyptian citizens, and probably less. The revolutionaries in the streets would be bitterly disappointed. Having gotten rid of a bad dictator, they would find themselves under an even worse government.

Within a matter of weeks, Mubarak stepped down. As ... the Muslim Brotherhood was moving toward taking over Egypt, the Egyptian military stepped in and took charge.

Although some observers still hoped that the military would merely oversee a transitional period, the wiser revolutionaries in Egypt understood quickly that the game was over. They had been duped. Obama's

support of the ouster of Mubarak - under whom Coptic Christians were allowed to worship in peace - has led to the rise of violence toward Christians by Muslims. In October 2011, 26 Coptic Christians were killed and hundreds more wounded in attacks by the Egyptian military. The attack occurred as Christian groups marched through Cairo in protest against the burnings of their churches. Egyptian Muslims pelted them with rocks as they moved along, and by the time they had reached their destination at a radio and TV broadcasting facility, the army started shooting into the crowd and trying to run over the protesters with their vehicles. Observers predicted that the event would cause a massive emigration of Christians from Egypt.

The violent factions which Mubarak had held back were now unleashed - violent scenes like these were free to repeat themselves throughout Egypt. Mubarak was no angel - he was a thug - but he had also engineered a way to keep Coptic Christians and Muslims living together in the same country with a minimum of friction. The occasional incidents of violence by Muslims against Copts prior to the end of the Mubarak regime would be multiplied many times over after he left power.

In the wake of the murder of more than two dozen unarmed Christians by the Egyptian military, the president called on Christians to show restraint! How were they supposed to do that? By allowing more of their brethren to be murdered by the military? The president continued: "Now is the time for restraint on all sides so that Egyptians can move forward together to forge a strong and united Egypt." The loss of life was "tragic," but Christians need to put it behind them?

Observers noted Obama's under-reaction to the open aggression against an unarmed pacifistic religious minority within Egypt.

No international sanctions against the Egyptian military? No condemnation of an obvious hate crime against Christians? No withdrawing of U.S. foreign aid from Egypt?

Reasonable surveillance and reconnaissance certainly would have predicted the scenario of domestic violence which erupted once Mubarak was gone.

After Mubarak's ouster, the Egyptian military demonstrated that it was incapable of maintaining order. Reports began to emerge out of Egypt that indicated there were no police on the streets in Cairo and other cities. Coptic Christians, who make up about ten percent of Egypt's population, were clashing with Muslims, and the result was extensive casualties. Ambulances were nowhere to be seen, and the wounded were transported to medical facilities in garbage trucks. Roadblocks were frequently set up, not by the government, but by lawless thugs who stopped traffic and stole valuables from the occupants of the automobiles they detained. Without a functioning police force, vigilante groups sprang up, taking the law into their own hands. Reports also surfaced that the Egyptian army was partnering with the Muslim Brotherhood to perform "virginity tests" on women who protested in Tahrir Square.

Unspeakable acts of violence against women multiplied, perpetrated by the military, by the Muslim Brotherhood, and by unaligned thugs. Nobody was there to stop them. Around the world, the "girl in the blue bra" became a symbol for women who were mistreated, beaten, and worse by the Muslim Brotherhood. As time went on, it became clear that large and larger parts of the military were controlled, visibly and invisibly, by the Muslim Brotherhood. This eruption of mayhem was predictable. What was the strategy of the Obama administration? Perhaps it thought that if President Obama urged restraint, via TV and radio and internet and newspapers, his influence would steer the Egyptian population.

Just as the revolutionaries in the streets during the "Arab Spring" had their hopes dashed, so also were America's hopes for an ally dashed - Egypt after Mubarak would not be an ally, would not work for peace in the Middle East, and would not restrain the worst excesses of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Peaceful and moderate Muslims were also dismayed; they are not represented by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt is under military rule with the ouster of Mubarak. Although there remain deep divisions between Islamists and those who favor a secular government, the overwhelming likelihood is that the Islamic Brotherhood will prevail. With Mubarak gone, the transition to either a military government or one founded on Islamic law is guaranteed.

Although there are formalities yet to be accomplished, it is a done deal. While there is a nominal struggle between militarists and the Muslim Brotherhood, the reality is that there are enough connections between the two that the practical effects will be the same no matter which side wins. As the Los Angeles Times reported on July 11, 2012,

Months of multi-stage elections in Egypt have resulted in a slow-burning power struggle between the ascendant Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mubarak-allied generals of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

With hopes for freedom and democracy dashed, the revolutionaries have gone home. They are not protesting in the streets. They have resigned themselves, after a brief flicker of hope during the Arab Spring, to a long Arab Winter. The L.A. Times notes that "things in Egypt are incredibly quiet."

Whether the new Egyptian president, Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, continues to consolidate his power, or whether the military gains might, is a question of no significant outcome. The case is clear: in a part of the world in which things can never be good, in a part of the world in which the only variation is between bad and worse, Egypt has taken a turn for the worse.