Individual Liberty—Progress—Humanity—Ethics—Rule of Law
"...if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties—if that is what they mean by a "liberal," then I am proud to be a liberal."
Tariq Ali writes for Tom Dispatch from time to time. His view of Afghanistan is likely to give you a headache. It did so to me. Could it be that the Bush Administration saw the Afghans as an unruly bunch whose fate would be better managed by removing American arms to Iraq, where (on paper) we would be assured a tidier victory?
It is pretty clear that so far Americans have done almost everything they possibly could to make the Afghan situation worse. Tom Englehardt gets this message directly from the Russian Ambassador in Kabul, Zamir N. Kabulov (sic), whose chagrin comes from the fact that Americans have up to now aped the disastrous policies of the Soviets in Afghanistan ... "Now," he added, "they're making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright."
Obama has the opportunity to look at the region with new eyes ... and new intelligence ... and from the outset shift our course. There are significant issues, of course: bin Ladin, Pakistani nukes, China, Russia, campaign rhetoric and promises, and worst of all that pride which goeth before the fall. Let us hope that Petraeus and Obama and the Secretary of Defense each thoroughly understands and tells the truth about our prospects in Afghanistan before doing anything else "uncopyrighted!"
James Carroll, whose OpEd column appears in the Boston Globe Monday's, wrote about the confluence of anniversaries that mark the sordid history of Twentieth Century warfare ... and, therefore, of our remembrances of veterans of all these wars. Carroll takes the time to explain why WWI was the signal event of the past century and the havoc created by that war and its undiplomatic aftermath. Truly the world could hardly have been worse served than it was by the Treaty of Versailles and the political leaders there ... including our stubborn idealists, who traded good common sense for a League we would never join.
I think that nearly every American understands that WWII was "caused by" WWI. At least they understand that the punitive treaty against Germany did nothing to insure peace or primacy of the U.K. and France. In fact, the horror of that war was absorbed by the populace of the winners and left them both angry (very much like America after Pearl Harbor and 9/11), vindictive, and irrational, but also very much unable to commit to peace-keeping (very much like America after the Iraq War).
As a combat veteran of the Vietnam War I take Veteran's Day as society's thanks for my service and for the service of those who survived or did not survive the wars they were in. Thanks to Carroll's essay I have a different view of the process now. It is not enough to deploy and undeploy troops. We must face each future when veterans come home with a resolve to fixing the problems that military force cannot.
If you watch Keith Olbermann's Countdown you know on a day to day basis how long it has been since George declared victory in Iraq. Professor Andrew Bacevich at Boston University has something a bit more pithy to say about that. In today's TomDispatch Bacevich (a retired Army colonel) dispatches the Army and the Pentagon as a pack of underperforming louts whose missions were not accomplished, and in fact still present opportunities for their own humiliation. It is a good essay that you should have under your belt as the McCainites busy themselves with claims of victory and military prowess. They are sadly wrong and mistaken.
Big, fat Russia is at war (informally) with the now independent nation we call "Georgia," which lies mostly south of the Caucasus Mountains and on the east coast of the Black Sea. Georgia is the place where Joe Stalin came from as Iosip Vissarionovich Djugashvili. It is composed of several ethnic areas: Abkhasia, Batumi, and pockets of mountain folk, the largest group being the South Ossetians, which if you look closely at the map are barely discernable in an area outlined with a dotted line. The New York Timesreport on the Russian bombing inside Georgia and the massing of troops to take and secure the tiny area known as South Ossetia describes but does not explain the Russian action.
South Ossetia is not be be confused with North Ossetia, which lies on the north side of the Caucasus ... and which incidently is the area just to the west of Chechnya. South Ossetia leaned toward Moscow when the "heavy" hand of Georgia tried to assimilate the South Ossetians into greater Georgia. Since North Ossetia is nominally part of the Russian "PreCaucasus" (since the middle of the nineteenth century) in the same way that Chechnya is part of Russia, Russia decided to help the South Ossetians and boldly ventured into this Hatfields and McCoys area of the world to preserve the "independence" of South Ossetia from Georgia.
I am really happy that a respected writer and analyst has reached the conclusion that Iran will not be attacked just because time is running out on this "administration." Tom Englehardt has studied the same set of facts and understands statecraft and foreign relations as well as any, so the fact that he came to the same conclusion I did ... albeit on a different array of principles and facts ... is reassuring. Perhaps it is important to say to Iran (and we sometimes have Iranians in Iran reading ALP) that the wording above is important. Bombing the hell out of Iran for reasons extrinsic to the American political cycle are very much in play, it's just that Cheney has been painted into a corner just now and there doesn't seem to be any way out for him short of destroying the Republican Party deliberately.
Here is a good article expressing the abyssmal ironies of our time in politics. The war is inevitable, he says, and sending out a bill that will pass, has got to be the most sure-footed politics ever. What ever happened to principles, morality, prudence, or even sanity!
Chris Hedges, the former Middle East Bureau Chief of the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an author of note, has a new book out called Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians the source of the material presented in this essay appearing in TomDispatch today. The essay is about reality, not about the mythos of yellow ribbons on neighborhood automobiles, nor is it about the jingoist sentiments of Congressmen or the myopic bravado of Neocon madmen. The reality is that the anthropological descriptions of human beings making war are fundamentally wrong. We make war, that much is a certainty, but we know not what we do until we do it, and then it is too late.
It might be good to watch the "natives" dancing around their fires and beating their drums of war, that is, it might be good to watch with different eyes, with an understanding that the transition from idealism to atrocity happens in the blick of an eye and persists for a lifetime. Not only do we dehumanize the victims of our warfare, we dehumanize ourselves and commit large numbers of our own countrymen to endless, nightmarish horror.
David Cole has written an important article in the New York Review of Books June 12th edition, entitled "The Brits Do It Better". (Unfortunately, the article is not available openly on the internet.)
The similarities between the British and the American approaches to terrorism reside in the realm of civil liberties. While one might think that a nation and culture without a written constitution would be at greater risk of losing civil liberties, one would be wrong. The Brits have, as David Cole describes, managed to do better at preserving rights than have we.
Thomas Powers has written a scathing essay and book reviews in the New York Review of Books this week. You will want to read this one for the commentary on Rumsfeld, which Thomas suffers as a fool very poorly. In fact, Rumsfeld was a collosal failure as Secretary of Defense and has cost this nation untold losses in the military and in national respect, both internationally and self-respect as well. Bush, of course, needed the RNC and Congress to flush him out of the Pentagon. But the damage was already done and we have the aftermath to deal with, as does the next President.
It seems to me and to UK General Rose that the only realistic approach is to declare victory for the Iraqis and get the hell out!
Rob Kall, the Executive Editor and Publisher of OpEdNews reports recently revealed comments by former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld that remind us of the awful situation into which we have fallen in the last decades. Rumsfeld is clearly a sociopathic person, one whose intellect disguises (from some) the powerful immorality that seethes in that sickened brain. His buddy, Richard Bruce Cheney is doubtlessly sicker yet. The question is how can a country keep such people from public office, given the freedoms we cherish and will not give up?
That is only one question. The feeling abounds among Democrats these days that once we win the White House back, we will be home free. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The rabid Neocons will live for another day and will, illegally, manipulate international affairs through their corporations and connections in the military to obstruct the nation's foreign affairs. They have done it before—Iran-Contra and the subversion of President Carter in Iran—and now that they have a taste for it, you can be sure that as long as they are free, they will do it again ... and again.
Rumsfeld's comment that the nation needs another 911 is the proof that these people are wholly without morality or conscience. They must be prosecuted for the crimes they have committed and to prevent the ones they will surely do.
There has been a spate of articles in the media over the past week or so about the U.S. Air Force's interest in extending its bailiwick into near and cislunar space. It seems to them like the logical extension of high altitude aircraft and ballistic missile forces. They advertise on television to recruit men and women into their cyberspace defense systems. It seems that space is the key word for the graduates of that academy at the base of the Rocky Mountains where religious zealots in the faculty, administration, and student body harassed cadets into chapel for a good dose of religious fundamentalism.
James Carroll gives this rush to a new arms race a sober look this morning from his column in the Boston Globe. The only thing missing is the notion of the nuclear weapons multiplier and the multiplied consequences. China and Russia are players in this deadly game which, we should know by now, no one can actually win.
Our correspondent in NYC sent us this piece from The American Conservative, which in its own unquestioning way announces that the plans are being implemented up to the GO order from Bush for a limited (surgical) strike into Iran. What makes them think any strike will result in limited response? Do they care?!
And you thought it would happen in October!
You might consider buying an electric car as gasolne will be $10/gal within weeks of such an exploit.
The Washington Post and the New York Times lead with the story out of the Department of Justice that Justice lawyers have developed a rationale for CIA ignoring the Geneva Conventions in some circumstances. The news items center on the concept of doing (or not doing) something that would be considered "an outrage against human dignity."
First, any outrageous act is not only an affront to the dignity of the target person, but also the perp, as it were, since that person's behavior denies the essential component of human reason and grace. The pictures of the men and women taunting and torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraeb prison in Iraq show Americans descended downward into bestial behaviors. But, none of the commentary today deals with that.
Tom Englehardt's essay today is an excellent summary of the futile foolishness of our engagement in Iraq. It does not bother with the consequences of our disengagement, since that is unlikely in the next 700 or so days, except to say that neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia profits much from the situation in Iraq no matter what it is. It's that bad!
William Astore, once an Air Force officer and a person with sufficient inside information to form a credible opinion, has quite a bit to say about U.S. readiness and nuclear weapons in TomDispatch. His thesis, sort of a "Report from Cheyenne Mountain," (not in the least echoing the Report From Iron Mountain which parodied the mentality that constructed Cheyenne), is that we are not grown up enough to have nuclear weapons and have survived only by accident. Well, maybe that's my thesis, but I will rest my case on a joke I receive by email yesterday.
Tony Judt, University Professor at NYU, writes occasionally for the New York Review of Books. His essay this week, captioned in the title of this posting, is about recent history and historical consciousness and slippery slopes. It is one of those pieces of American thought that slips into the fabric of then and now and reveals a very unpleasant truth, one which we would scarcely deny, but which, nevertheless, we have denied in ways that are insidious and probably fatal.
When I was a boy Hans Kohn wrote about The Mind of Germany, partly to advance a thesis about Germans, but also to begin to explain what Tony Judt also explains in this present essay somewhat more concisely. We do not learn much from recent history because we do not see past the loom of iconic figures and national conceits. There is a reason there are so many fights over textbooks in America. People with positions want their positions to survive and to dominate. So, the question is whether we understand the 20th century well enough to see how far from reality we have strayed?
The UK Guardian has an article this morning about a document that purports to detail the plan of the U.S. to keep an "open ended" military presence in the country. The article seems to be carefully worded to achieve the headline, but on the other hand, there is nothing really surprising about this. The interest is that another scrap of paper emerges that will, doubtlessly, follow the Downing Street Memorandum into oblivion.
The fact is that few people have a 100% aversion to our presence in Iraq. There remains that crumb of doubt at the corner of the mouth ready to provide just the tiniest nourishment to a longer stay, despite the wishes of Iraqi wherever they may be found to be done with the U.S. for once and for all. Let's see if this latest British revelation turns into anything on Petraeus Week.
Robert Fisk, thought by some to be a maverick reporter, writes in the Independent yesterday (courtesy today of OpEdNews) about the failure to learn anything from the War in Iraq. It is a diatribe, in a way, but good for getting things off your chest. Fisk alludes to the reasons we do not learn, but he does not state them plainly. The plain and ugly fact is that people predisposed to believe one thing cannot hear things that do not fit their preconceptions. This is true in athletics, Texas Hold'Em, politics, and statecraft.
The editors of the Washington Post greet the 5th anniversary speeches of President Bush and the candidates rather coldly in this editorial. I think that most of us have long since understood that you cannot put Humpty back together again. Once invaded, bombed, savaged, and humiliated Iraq is different place from the Iraq of January 2003.
To reiterate the fact that Cheney and Bush and their advisors (Rumsfeld, Rice, and the Neocons like Perle) have botched this war so badly that no one will be able to cobble together a reasonable peace is almost irrelevant. The history of the Iraq War will not provide much of an answer to how to end the war, if competent management is to replace what has been happening so far.
I have a German friend who has emigrated to Canada for reasons that some Americans would understand, but would probably misfile in their heads, jumping over the differences between Germans and Americans at the turn to the 21st century. She reminds me often enough of the great anger I had after the 9/11 terrorist attack, the destruction of those beautiful buildings in New York with the three thousand beautiful people inside them. She reminds me that once upon a time I was in favor of taking Saddam Hussein out, ridding the world of another dangerous tyrant, safeguarding the middle east and ourselves against another tinpot savage who promised to have nuclear weapons soon and had already used poison gas against Iranian troops and the Kurds inside his own country.
