The holidays are upon us, and the news outlets are obsessing about “Black Friday” – good thing? bad thing? – to the point where no other news really seems to matter. It was a lead story on NBC and PBS evening news, I’m certain, and my morning newspaper is chock full of nuts waiting in long lines at 6:00 a.m. for the doors to swing open on the cultural utopia that is Best Buy. Just doing their patriotic duty, as defined by our commander-in-chief. It’s not really just about fighting and dying… They also serve who borrow and spend, right? Float the economy for Dubya. Fight a short, sweet, victorious war for Dubya. (Hurry up… only 14 months to go.) Still the pavlovian networks pump out the pabulum, and if you don’t listen too closely it can almost seem like things are just as right as they need to be. War is over (if you want it), NPR – just don’t report on the sucker and it will go away.

Fact is, it’s really more about how the story is reported on. Following it like a sports story (as they typically do) ensures that those responsible for the killing of thousands and the destruction of a society will not be held accountable. Violence is down? That means the score is up for the home team. Meanwhile, the other side is boiled down to “Al Qaeda” in northern and central Iraq and Iran elsewhere. (Though today I heard a story that brought both together in one handy package.) Then when (and if) we finally leave Iraq, they can report on the shithole we leave behind without ever mentioning our part in creating it. (Hell, they’ve already dropped any mention of our involvement in Iraq prior to 2003, so this should be easy.) There are precedents. Just the other day, I heard two stories back to back that illustrate the mainstream media’s capacity for encouraging collective denial about our consistently interventionist foreign policy over the past sixty years. Both stories were on NPR Morning Edition. The first was about a former Khmer Rouge official being brought up before the Cambodia tribunal. Not one word about what we did to Cambodia – not one. They talked to Sydney Schanberg about how Cambodians still burst into tears – understandably so – when you bring up the Khmer Rouge years. I wonder what happens when you mention the preceding five years, when we fomented a military coup and dropped more ordinance on that tiny country than the allies used in all theaters during World War II? Short answer: it doesn’t get mentioned. No tribunal for Henry Kissinger, I guess.

Then there was a story about refugees in Somalia and the appalling conditions they’re living under. Now, I wouldn’t expect the reporter to talk about the nearly $1 billion in aid we gave to the murderous Siad Barre regime in the 1980s that tore the country apart, nor would I expect them to talk about how our 1992-3 “humanitarian” intervention mostly managed to get a bunch of Somalis killed. But they could have brought up what happened earlier this year, when we supported Ethiopia’s invasion both diplomatically and militarily (mostly with air power). Yet another mess we’ve gotten someone into, and yet even this very recent involvement was not worthy of a single reference on NPR’s radio broadcast (though, to be fair, there is a brief review of history on their Web posting, for those who bother to check). This should be encouraging to those in the White House and Congress who supported the Iraq war. So long as we perpetuate this fantasy that we are all about helping people – Iraqis, Somalis, Cambodians – we will continue to become embroiled in these endless conflicts that bleed both invader and invaded dry, and benefit only war profiteers and geostrategic power players.

Just remember … when they claim to be helping, they’re only helping themselves.

luv u,

jp

The military establishment went to Congress this week to argue for that fat supplemental spending package Bush requested for the Iraq and Afghan wars. The air was thick with dire warnings. We don’t have enough troops to defend the nation against attack. Half of the army’s equipment is tied up. Without some $200 billion more in supplemental funding, civilian workers at military bases all across the country will be laid off for the holidays. How’s that for rattling their little brass cup? I’ll tell you, $470 billion per annum just doesn’t buy what it used to. Seriously… you’d think with a budget of that magnitude, the Pentagon could find a way to keep both of Bush’s phony wars going and still send all those defense department civilian employees home with a holiday bonus. So cancel a couple of useless weapons programs – you could do it with your eyes closed.

I mean, isn’t this exactly why you don’t start wars for no good reason – because they’re costly in about a dozen different ways? Now we’re hearing from the generals about how thin the army is stretched, how they need more money, more soldiers, more gear…. and yet no one seems interested in attaching blame to this seemingly authorless crisis. Sure, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Just look at that rostrum full of Democratic candidates for president. Out of eight, there’s only one of them – Kucinich – who was actually faced with the decision whether or not to support Bush’s war plan and turned it down. The rest either weren’t in Congress in 2002 (talk is cheap) or voted for the resolution (who’s sorry now?). They bear substantial responsibility, but the ones who planned this war and deliberately stoked the fires of fear in advance of it are primarily at fault. Now that more than 3,800 Americans are dead, thousands wounded, upwards of a million Iraqis dead, 4.5 million made refugees, plus a ballooning military budget already blown, it’s about time we talked about calling these people out. But aside from Kucinich’s impeachment articles, no one seems to have the stomach for it.

Of course, now that the catastrophe has already occurred in Iraq, the war’s defenders are trying to cast the smoking ruins of that nation as a panorama of victory. (Spoiler alert: the war’s serial hardships will be blamed on those who were against it from the very beginning – stay tuned.) Seems like every time I hear a report from an embedded reporter with a U.S. patrol somewhere in “Indian country”, some public affairs officer will at some point pipe up with the comment that while things in Iraq are “not perfect,” they’re better than they were. Not perfect? Who sent that piece of copy down the firing line? Is that some not-too-subtle way of suggesting that the American people expect too much of this mission? Trust me, Mr. President, no one is anticipating “perfection”, though it could very well be that, by Bush’s standards, we’re getting pretty close. After all – the goal here is to establish permanent bases in Iraq, and they are doing it. Their manifest indifference to the suffering of others – Iraqi and American alike – merely indicates that such hardship is immaterial to reaching that goal. Just one of many costs to be taken into account.

So, in a sense, it looks as though a hardy “mission accomplished” is in order after all. This is the kind of lack of perfection Bush, Cheney, and crew can comfortably live with.

luv u,

jp

Our great ally in the “global war on terror” and Cheney’s favorite military dictator Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule last week, just ahead of a ruling by his nation’s supreme court on whether or not he could remain both president and army chief at the same time. (Hey… he’s multi-tasking. What’s wrong with that?) Before they could rule against him (as they were expected to do), he dissolved the court and appointed puppet justices in their stead. Case dismissed! Or rather, Court dismissed! Musharraf’s placing his political opponents in fetid jails (or under house arrest for those of a more lofty social rank) and general (no pun intended) heavy-handedness sufficiently embarrassed the Bush administration (to the extent that it is capable of being embarrassed) into pressing for Pakistani elections and a call for Musharraf to “take off his uniform,” in Dubya’s words. Sure, it took a few days for them to react, but then it always takes at least that long for them to figure out that they need to do something. (See: Katrina) My guess is that the impulse came from either Rice or Gates (who was put there after the Baker-Hamilton commission to keep half an eye on things).

Here again, our lunatic foreign policy has made the world a far more dangerous place. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation run by the military. Its intelligence service (ISI) contains elements that are very close to the Taliban and, to a lesser extent, Al Qaeda. Because Pakistan shares a long border with Afghanistan (one so rugged as to be nearly impossible to secure) as well as deep cultural ties with Pashtun Afghans, the country has had an abiding interest in the political affairs of its neighbor, not surprisingly. Of course, our CIA managed proxy war in Afghanistan during the Reagan years leveraged that relationship, building with the assistance of the ISI a substantial army of “Arab” Afghans to fight the Soviets, from which sprang Al Qaeda. Our current war in Afghanistan put substantial pressure on Pakistan, the Musharraf regime being compelled by the U.S. to turn against its longtime allies, the Taliban. (In effect, they convinced Mullah Omar’s crowd to fold shortly after the U.S. invasion.)

The subsequent war in Iraq has only increased the pressure. Though Afghanistan was always largely a war by proxy, U.S. forces and intelligence resources were transferred to Iraq, leaving that conflict to fester. As Iraq went septic, Iraqi insurgent tactics were increasingly exported to Afghanistan, where suicide bombings – virtually unknown in that country a few years ago – are now quite common, as are roadside bombings. Seeing a resurgent Taliban, our fearless leaders have pushed applied more air power, which means more indiscriminate killing on both sides of the Pakistani border, while pushing Musharraf to do more with his own forces. The result of the latter has been a kind of scorched earth policy in Waziristan, where collective punishment by the Pakistani army is relatively commonplace. This has raised the anger level against Musharraf’s regime, and has likely produced more extremists than it has eliminated. Now we’re threatening Iran with attack, raising the potential of an all-out regional war. And I’m sure Dubya is scratching his head and wondering why Pakistan is falling apart. Didn’t he shake Musharraf’s hand and see good in his soul, like he did with Putin, Blair, and Howard? What part of “useful to the U.S.” do the Pakistani people fail to understand?

Don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty of blame to go around on this policy, the roots of which stretch back decades. But Bush and his crew are pouring gas on the fire… and we keep tossing them matches.

luv u,

jp

The casualty numbers are in for October, and man god damn things are going swimmingly over in Iraq. Only 34 U.S. dead – that’s just a little more than one a day (a bitter pill for someone to swallow, but no one who counts, apparently). I don’t recall what the Iraqi corpse figure was – it had four digits, for sure – but (and this is important!) the first digit was smaller than last month’s. Progress! Or so we’re told by the administration, the “commanders in the field”, the mainstream press, and supporters of the “surge” in general. This is, after all, best framed (from their point of view) as some kind of ball game wherein the winning team is the one with the highest (or lowest) score. It makes the war easier to sell, report on, and defend. But war differs from sports in one very important respect – in sports the object is simply to win, so numbers count; on the other hand, there is typically a strategic or tactical purpose to any war, and this one is no exception. While we should be thinking about why we’re in Iraq, the “surge” cheering section wants us to think about how well we’re doing. There’s light at the end of the tunnel! they tell us… but what’s the destination?

All of you who have been opposed to this stupid war from the very beginning, as well as those who’ve turned against it along the way, be prepared to hear some crowing. You can hear it already, I’m sure – the armchair admiral next door, perhaps, who probably believes that if we had listened to those “cut-and-runners”, Al Qaeda would be in charge of Iraq right now. They still think (as they are encouraged to) Al Qaeda is like Wal-Mart: a huge, vertically integrated global enterprise in which every suicide bombing is instantaneously tabulated by a sophisticated inventory system somewhere in Waziristan. Of course, that’s what our political culture wants us to think, and it’s rubbish. Whereas there is a lot more terrorist activity globally now since the invasion of Iraq (no accident), outfits like Al Qaeda in Iraq are made up principally of Iraqis, many of whom now comprise the “Anbar Awakening” council. These cut-throats have ethnically cleansed large areas of central Iraq, and are now in the process of cutting deals with us for oil concessions and reconstruction funds – hence the tactical cease fire. So much for quelling the violence of others – we’re merely underwriting it.

Hearing our military commanders and political leaders (the “experts”) talk, you’d think we’d invaded Iraq just to keep Sunnis and Shi’as from killing one another – part of our broader strategy of spreading sunshine wherever we go, right? Two points relating to that. First, with probably close to a million dead and at least 4.5 million driven from their homes (2.5 million in Jordan and Syria), the human catastrophe has already largely taken place, the direct result of our invasion. Second, we invaded to establish that “enduring relationship” Bush now speaks of; a long-term military presence in the heart of the middle east’s richest oil producing region. In this respect, the mission has succeeded, because now both major U.S. political parties support the idea of staying in Iraq for years to come. If the administration, the major parties, or our military leaders gave a damn about the Iraqi people, they would make some minimal effort to a) determine how many have been killed, injured, or displaced by our invasion, and b) pay reparations for the terrible toll we have taken on their lives and their nation. This won’t happen (unless we insist upon it), and our so-called experts – Republican and Democrat – will do and say anything it takes to keep our military in the heart of Iraq. That’s the point of this game.

Rummy’s rap. Looks like former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may have a bit of a Kissinger problem. At a conference in Paris, he narrowly avoided being hit with a civil action by several human rights organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, over his participation in torture. Seems torturers have to watch their step in Paris these days. Dommage.

luv u,

jp

These are unnerving times. I feel as though, once again, we stand at the edge of catastrophe and yet we are unable to summon the will to stop it. I don’t mean to depersonalize that observation – I include myself in that broad “we”. Sometimes I wonder whether, years from now, I will look back on these days and curse myself for being so limp and impassive in the face of disaster. For the second time in just a few years, we seem to be sleepwalking into war. Our lame duck leaders, eager to demonstrate their relevance, are almost certain to bring about some kind of attack on Iran. Many in the Democrat-led congress are walking in lock-step with them (and sometimes a step or two ahead), particularly those with presidential ambitions. At the same time, Israel has struck a site in Syria, raising the question of what will come next (and from where) and Turkey is poised to invade northern Iraq.

With all of this (and quite a bit more) seemingly going septic at once, our ever-trusty mainstream news media is playing the same role it did in the run up to the Iraq invasion. I took a few moments to watch PBS’s Washington Week this Friday and was treated to the kind of superficial news analysis I’ve come to expect from a program sponsored by Boeing and the mining industry. It closely resembles sports coverage, actually – how the players are positioned and what their next move will be. We hear all about our leaders’ assessments of whether or not a given strategy – e.g. additional sanctions on Iran – will work, but little to nothing about why we’re doing it in the first place. Sure, they’ll regurgitate the administration’s rationales, most of which would fit on a bumper sticker – Iran is killing U.S. soldiers, Iran is building nuclear weapons, Iran is responsible for all known diseases, etc. Clearly, no one besides us has any business either contemplating a nuclear deterrent or maintaining a presence in Iraq… not even when they share a long border with Iraq, have suffered a particularly brutal invasion by Iraq in the past, and now see their neighbor occupied by an openly belligerent superpower.

The Hitler/Germany/1938 analogies continue to fly. Don’t wait for the New York Times to deconstruct them – best to do it yourself. It’s easy. Just ask yourself, is Iran occupying another country? No. Are they the most technologically advanced industrial and military power in the region, let alone the world? I think not. Are they issuing ultimatums? No, though Bush and others have tried to characterize some of Ahmadinejad’s comments as such (without accuracy). So… why are the nominal leaders of both political parties apparently pushing for an escalation, perhaps a military attack? Is there anything in this situation that could justify such an aggressive action? Don’t we already have two hands full with pointless war? What, we’re going to carry one in our teeth now? I hate to sound like Bob Dole, but … where’s the outrage? Sure, most of us will not be forced to fight any of these wars, but if we keep starting them willy-nilly like this, we will ultimately get bit on the ass, even way back here at home.

Bush suggests that he wants to avoid a general war in the middle east. If so, he’s going about it exactly wrong. I think we all need to tell our representatives that, and make clear that we’re not going to sit on our hands while they pour gas on the fire they started.

luv u,

jp