Dubya Bush likely received a valuable political lesson from his father, but may have been only half listening. “War will make you popular,” I can imagine the old man saying, “…so long as it’s short and successful.” Junior probably wandered off about when he heard the “so long.” As a result, the younger Bush shares his father’s love of bombing and invading other countries, but lacks George Senior’s horse-sense about picking the right fights – namely, easily winnable ones. Hence Operation Iraqi Fiefdom and, in effect, the war in Afghanistan as well, which by any reasonable standard is also a dismal failure in achieving the original stated objective (i.e. destroying al Qaeda and capturing/killing Bin Laden). So… how do you finesse such spectacular under-achievements? Well, if you’re none too subtle and you have a very low opinion of the masses, you move the goal posts. And you do it again and again. That’s certainly the modus operandi in both of these wars, but particularly in Iraq, where six month strategies stretch into 18 months with barely a word from the president on the last set of “benchmarks” left unmet.

Perhaps it’s just Dubya himself, the substandard student, the frat-boy drunkard, never making the grade but expecting promotion nonetheless (and seldom encountering disappointment in that regard). It could be that he simply doesn’t understand what objectives are. But I think the problem goes far beyond this one man. We have to confront the likelihood that if this war had gone successfully and ended quickly, it would have been popular even with the same odious goals and bogus rationales. Sure, I know… that’s like saying, “If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.” But this war would have been wrong even if it had been short and easy. It would also have been enthusiastically supported by something like a majority of Americans, and maybe a far greater proportion. Remember Panama, Grenada, and “Desert Storm.” Kill a few thousand locals and we’re standing tall. Everybody waving their little flags.

That makes me wonder about us, quite frankly. Do we really need to be directly connected to suffering before we recognize it for what it is and act accordingly? Does the dead person have to be a relative or a friend or a close neighbor for us to give a shit? Perhaps. I remain convinced that the American people have the power to stop the Iraq war if we insist upon it. It just hasn’t hit most of us yet, so we ignore it. We are so quiet about our distaste for the war that the Bush administration has actually felt bold enough to abandon the fiction that our presence in Iraq is a short-term necessity. Indeed, they have started talking in terms of a permanent military presence in that country. Now… this, of course, was manifestly obvious from the beginning, and they have been building permanent bases there for four years, but until now they’ve at least softly denied that there was an intention to stay permanently. Not anymore, apparently. Likely we’ll be presented with the mirage-like possibility of troop reductions – Petraeus’s announcement of next spring’s drawdown like it’s something new; Gate’s vague suggestion of further reductions by the end of next year.

Question is, when do we get to zero? Answer: never. They didn’t take Iraq just to leave it later. They want to stay, and only the American people can derail that policy.

luv u,

jp

September is here, and the progress reports are rolling in on the Iraq project. The president brought several high ranking administration officials along on a “surprise” visit to a fortified base in al-Anbar province, there to crow in his trademark way about what he sees as evidence of success in his “surge” strategy, but which is actually the result of a coincidence of purpose between U.S. forces and Sunni tribal leaders there who had resolved to rid themselves of al-Qaeda types some time ago. I can’t tell you how many times I heard about insurgent groups in central Iraq turning against that stark minority of foreign jihadists through the course of last year. That is not the work of our military strategists – that is probably the Iraqis taking on a destructive force they feel they can actually defeat, as opposed to fighting the U.S., which they can bleed but not defeat. No one should kid themselves into thinking that this is the beginning of a long-term alliance, unless our government is planning on playing the imperial minority-rule card again, and lord knows that game won’t work now. The moment Sunnis push the jihadis out, they’ll turn the guns back on our troops… if they’re still in country.

But Bush’s Iraq policy isn’t even mainly about Iraq anymore, it seems; it’s really more about Iran now. Iran is practically every third word out of the administration’s mouth these days, a fact illustrated by the mainstream media coverage. Pat, prefabricated phrases linking Iran to extremist Shiite militias and weapons causing American deaths (explosive-force penetrators, etc.), sourced to various military and administration officials, appear with sickening regularity. Reading and listening to all this, you might be excused for forgetting that the principal parties in the U.S.-backed ruling bloc in the Iraqi parliament are Dawa and SCIRI, both of which are led by former exiles and both of which have extensive ties to Iran. If Washington has a problem with Iranian influence in the middle east, they might have considered that factor before invading Iraq on false pretenses. For fuck’s sake, Iraq is probably 60% Shi’a and shares a long border with majority Shi’a Iran. Is this going to change any time soon?

Of course, now that we’ve invaded Iraq and caused more Iraqi deaths than Saddam himself, we are demonstrating the degree to which we and the reviled “Butcher of Baghdad” see eye-to-eye. We despise the Iranians, as did Hussein. We persecute Moqtada al-Sadr and his many followers – the poorest of the Shi’a poor – as did Hussein. We live in Saddam’s palaces, fill his prisons with dissidents, torture our enemies, and pray for a “strong man” to emerge who will preserve Iraq’s territorial integrity and serve as our local administrator. Imagine for a moment that our government’s fondest wish were to be fulfilled and a stable, pro-American government coalesced in Baghdad – one that would tolerate the permanent presence of the U.S. military. What would happen next in this extremely unlikely scenario? Probably a repeat of the 1980s – an attack on Iran launched in part from Iraqi soil, which is, in a sense, what is happening right now. The decades may change, but the broad themes remain the same.

Bush’s war policy may be a joke, but it’s not a very funny one. If they succeed in prolonging this project indefinitely in the face of majority public opposition, we may be in for similar adventures in the coming years.

luv u,

jp

Gonzales is out, or very nearly so. As some wag has probably suggested by now, I’m sure, he’s headed back to Texas to spend more time waterboarding and warrantless wiretapping the wife and kids. With his departure and that of Rove, both lobes of Bush’s substandard brain will have shuffled down the highway to the land of yellow roses, god help it. The old Texas mafia is disbanded, and Dubya now nearly stands alone amongst assorted replacements and second tier “Bushies”, like Condi Rice and Chertoff. (Media child that I am, this reminds me of the final seasons of “The Waltons,” with no mother, no grandma, no grandpa, an ersatz “John-Boy”, somebody named “Miss Rose”, and the guy who played Patty Duke’s father.) The only constant is Cheney, and he’s very much alive in this embattled White House, at the very center of greatly expanded presidential powers and, paradoxically, greatly diminished presidential influence around the world. Even after monumental failures of judgment, Cheney is still driving policy, pushing the same discredited and disastrous agenda that has cost so many lives overseas and consumed so many resources at home.

True, Cheney is one of the most strongly disliked, unpopular political figures in America. But don’t think that fact will slow him down. There are troubling signs that our cockeyed VP is pushing for war with Iran as soon as this Fall; another full-blown marketing campaign, like during the run-up to the Iraq war, may ensue in the coming weeks. (See this posting on Juan Cole’s valuable blog.) Now that the press has offered limp mea culpas over their complicity in whipping up war fever in 2002-03, you may be tempted to believe that they will not repeat the same sorry performance again so soon. Don’t get your hopes up. If the administration wants war, the mainstream media will be right on board. Per Cole, Barnet Rubin reports that “the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects” will be leading the charge, per Cheney’s “instruction”, delivering a “heavy sustained assault on the airwaves” to generate support for war on Iran. Hypersensitive media institutions like the major broadcast networks, NPR/PBS, and major newspapers will fall in behind these drunken admirals of the gutter press, even if they are leading us into the reef. All it will take is a cry of treason or two to make them snap to attention.

Given the climate of the country today and the bankruptcy of Dubya’s current endeavor in Iraq, it seems unlikely that even a well-crafted scare campaign could drum up majority support for yet another war. But they don’t particularly need or want majority support. It would be nice to have, I’m sure, but they don’t really care that much. If they can keep the hardcore reactionary base on board, they’re fine with that. Barnett’s sources suggest that they consider 35-40% enough of a mandate for them to attack another country without provocation – that this level of public consent is “plenty.” I suppose it’s not surprising. They’re in the final 18 months of their reign and from their point of view, they’ve accomplished everything they set out to do. We now effectively have a permanent presence in Iraq, our public sector institutions are crumbling around us, hundreds of billions of tax dollars have been squandered on well-connected contractors, and trillions have been added to the national debt, making major “structural adjustment” of the U.S. economy far more likely in the coming years.

In short, these fuckers don’t need public support. If they did, they’d never get anything done.

luv u,

jp

I feel like Rip Van Winkle in reverse; like I’ve awoken years in the past instead of years in the future. Dubya Bush going from VFW to military academy assembly selling the Iraq war. Democrats hedging their positions, hoping to land on the winning side. Pro-war ad campaigns funded by arch-reactionary swift-boaters. Improbably optimistic National Intelligence Estimates, at least in their highly redacted declassified form. What is this, 2002? Are we starting from scratch yet again? This is the product of our political culture’s “ballgame” approach to foreign policy adventures, wherein the central question becomes “will it succeed?” Is this the question we ask when someone commits murder and holds a family hostage? Do we console our consciences with the notion that, well, he did kill that old man and that baby, but at least he’s finally got that household under control? (Right – before someone jumps all over my shit, let me make it clear that I don’t consider our troops to be the “murderer” here. They are the weapon, the instrument of policy that is initiated by our democratically elected leaders, so ultimately it is we who bear responsibility for what they are ordered to do.)

In his speech to the VFW, Bush drew some analogies between the Iraq war and the wars in Korea and Vietnam. (I should say his speechwriters drew the analogies, since he clearly knows nothing about U.S. foreign policy, past or present.) One point was that, like Vietnam and Korea, Iraq is an “ideological” struggle. This is truer than he knows. Both Korea and Vietnam – while very different wars – were fought over the establishment of a U.S.-led global economic system. Iraq was invaded to breathe life into that same superannuated imperial body. The “ideology” of which Dubya speaks was perhaps best articulated by his father – “What we say goes.” That position faces the opposing ideology of “yankee go home.” We fight for freedom – the freedom to do what we want with other people’s lives and property. They fight for, as Robert Fisk puts it, “freedom from us.” So in that way Bush is unintentionally correct, though he and his conservative pundit supporters (like the little fuck on the PBS News Hour) appear to know nothing about the Vietnam war (nor, apparently the Iraq war).

The rest of Bush’s selling points are just laughable, frankly. Grim as the situation is, I couldn’t resist a guffaw when I heard Dubya tossing around that hallucinogenic contention about how we left Vietnam too soon. (Strange argument for someone who did his level best to avoid going there himself.) He raised the specter of the “boat people” and the “killing fields” that await our departure from Iraq. Not sure if he’s quite been paying attention over the last four years, but that scale of human catastrophe has already been taking place in the unfortunate land he chose to invade, with more than 2 million external refugees, a similar number of internal refugees, and between 500,000 and 1 million killed, plus god knows how many grievously wounded, orphaned, widowed, etc. This is an upheaval easily on the scale of that which accompanied and followed our criminal invasion and destruction of Indochina. (See journalist Nir Rosen’s recent articles for some on-the-ground reporting on this.) So since what Bush claims to be his worst fears have already been realized, why are we staying in Iraq?

This is old wine in new bottles, folks. We are not wanted in Iraq, we have no right to be there, and we should leave with all deliberate speed. Once we get that underway, we can talk about reparations… and accountability.

luv u,

jp

The ample-assed “brain” of Dubya, Karl Rove, announced his departure from the White House this week, and the air waves were thick with pundit-wisdom on this supposed genius of the modern political arena. How easily public figures earn such designations. I always think of Henry Kissinger, hailed in his time as a brilliant geostrategist and practitioner of cold war realpolitik, whose ham-fisted policy of stalemate in the middle east contributed very substantially to the outbreak of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war (not to mention the continuing disaster in Israel/Palestine) and whose Nobel Prize-winning Paris Peace Accord was sabotaged by the man himself before the ink was dry. Rove’s reputation is similarly inflated, and we often hear about his meticulous district-by-district, precinct-by-precinct analysis, his get out the vote strategies, etc., but honestly – what did the guy really accomplish? He basically lost the 2000 election against Gore, who was about as flat-footed a candidate as could have been imagined at the time, then very nearly lost four years later (with all the advantages of 9/11 at his back) to John Kerry, more than Gore’s equal in the flat-footed category. Where’s the magic?

Seems much of Rove’s vaunted talent is about luck, much about a very entrenched G.O.P. electoral machine (crucial for Ohio in 2004), and three parts right-wing media echo chamber – the talk show yammerers, tabloids, and reactionary bloggers that push the pusillanimous and profit-obsessed mainstream media to the right on just about every issue. Without those natural advantages, Rove/Bush would have gotten nowhere. For Christ’s sake, the Democrats handed their ass to him on a plate and he practically handed it back… twice, pulling off razor-thin victories that made JFK’s 1960 win look like an electoral landslide. How do their two elections compare with LBJ in ’64, Nixon in ’72, Reagan in ’84, or even Dubya’s father in ’88? Pretty poorly, that’s how. And as a political strategist/advisor, what has he managed to accomplish between elections? His boss enjoys abysmal approval ratings, his administration in a shambles. If it weren’t for the total ineptitude and disingenuousness of the Democratic leadership, I doubt there would have been an administration left for Rove to quit by this time. Seems to me a bona fide political genius might have managed to keep his man from scraping his ass all the way to the finish line.

My guess is that the Democrats will miss Rove more than the Republicans. He makes a good target – he is obnoxious and despicable, to be sure – and it fits into the general narrative that everything was swell until the Mayberry Machiavellians came to town. That is the theme of the Hillary campaign… back to the future. Don’t buy it, friends. As much as Bush has been able to destroy the U.S. empire merely by strolling through it, Bill Clinton was culpable for considerable misery, including an eight-year campaign of economic strangulation and bombing against Iraq that cost at least 500,000 lives. There are marginal differences, but nothing to get too giddy about. And while Rove bears substantial responsibility for the carnage that has occurred since, he isn’t the mastermind the Dems make him out to be. In fact, a cursory look at the past fifty years of electoral history shows him to be a third-rate Svengali, less accomplished than Michael Deaver or James Carville.

The most influential figure over the past three election cycles was named Bin Laden. And that fucker cast his votes with hijacked planes.

luv u,

jp