We’ve heard from the vaunted Iraq Study Group, headed by primo G.O.P. fixer James Baker and every Republican’s favorite Democrat (short of Joe Lieberman) Lee Hamilton, and they’ve delivered what appears to be an elaborate face-saving scheme for an administration and a congress that has driven us into the deepest foreign policy ditch in a generation. Military and diplomatic experts of every stripe are hitting the airwaves talking about “phased redeployment” and “force protection”, but, perhaps most remarkably, there is now a broad acknowledgement that a) this war is a disaster growing worse by the day, and b) we are losing. Like the 9-11 commission, though, this group was tasked with focusing on the “what the hell do we do now?” more than the “wha’ hoppen?” of Operation Iraqi Fiefdom. There is no accountability assessment in this charge, and with good reason. Many of the people who cooked up this splendid little war are still in office and are unwilling to play the “blame game”… especially since they are, well, to blame.

Seems to me, though, that blame should be the first order of business, since it doesn’t involve any complex logistical considerations and might actually even save us from future catastrophes. The finger should be pointed in a very serious way at the architects of this war, and I mean everybody, from Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to congressional hawks of both parties and their pundit-class cheerleaders. These people should be driven as far from the levers of power as possible; they should be politically marginalized so that they will never again participate in any major decisions affecting the nation’s welfare. I mean, why the hell should we pretend as if this were an authorless crime, like some kind of natural disaster, when the perpetrators are standing around, tongue in cheek, planning the next war? Why the hell should we perpetuate this “good intentions gone bad” fantasy that was so liberally deployed when Vietnam was generally acknowledged to be unwinnable? These people destroyed a country, killed probably more than half a million people, sent thousands of our own troops to their deaths, and spent hundreds of billions of dollars we haven’t even earned yet… all on the basis of false claims about WMD’s that were deliberately exaggerated to scare us into war. Where’s the good intention in that?

Now Baker, Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds (whoops — wrong group) have submitted a recommendation to begin what looks like a pullout but is actually a relatively long-term commitment to leave behind thousands of U.S. troops as military trainers and special strike forces in a country where they are almost universally despised. This is basically “Vietnamization” — getting Iraqis to do our hopeless fighting for us, while we work on salvaging some part of the actual American project in Iraq — that of establishing a permanent U.S. presence in the heart of the world’s most productive oil-producing region. Not quite the same as “stealing their oil” (though we’re happy to help favored firms do that via privatization of Iraqi oil fields), this has been a central goal of U.S. planners since our expulsion from Iran. Saudi Arabia is too sensitive to support a large-scale U.S. military presence, and though we’ve got staging areas in Kuwait and Qatar, the plan is to secure Iraq as a political-military client state — crucially, one that possesses massive oil reserves relied upon by our major economic competitors in Europe and the Far East. So I guess the message to our troops is, “Sorry, folks — it wouldn’t be a rapture if someone didn’t get left behind.”

Diallo redux. Sean Bell’s funeral was held in Queens last week, victim of something NYC police call “contagious shooting.” Though officers are highly susceptible, this rare ailment only seems to kill young, unarmed black men. Must be related to “contagious anal rape with a billy club,” from which Abner Louima suffered some years back (a.k.a. Giuliani’s disease).

luv u,

jp

Say what you will about Jimmy Carter — I thought he was a pretty awful president in many ways, quite frankly — he has certainly brought attention to one of the greatest injustices of our time, for which effort he will undoubtedly be attacked ad derided as an anti-Semite. I must say, I have a great deal more respect for him this week than I did last. The guy has, more than any other ex-president in living memory, distinguished himself through his philanthropic work, earning the Nobel Peace Prize and the admiration of many. Rather than being content to settle back on his laurels and enjoy retirement, he has instead chosen to wade hip deep into one of the most acrimonious political issues going — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Carter is using his considerable prestige to gain a broad public hearing for what has long been the international consensus solution for that conflict, namely the end of Israeli rule over that less than one-quarter of mandate Palestine they’ve occupied since June 1967. He has also shone a light on the Palestinian experience in a way that is seldom (if ever) seen on U.S. television.

Of course, the Chuck Krauthammers of the world will remind us of every bad decision Carter has ever made, every war crime committed by a Palestinian, every concession they claim Israel has tried to make through the decades, to its own detriment. They will invoke the existential threat posed by extremists like Amadinejad and Nasrallah and claim that Israel’s 1967 borders were indefensible. Bullshit. Unlike in 1967, Israel does not now face a hostile Egypt, a hostile Jordan, a hostile Iraq. It is clear that the occupied territories and the plight of Palestinians both there and scattered throughout the region remain the only real obstacles to normal relations, with the possible exception of Israel’s formidable nuclear arsenal, still undeclared and yet undeniably real. Fact is, with the continued occupation of that small part of Palestine that was left to the Palestinians after 1948, Israel’s more expansive borders are indefensible precisely because those territories are filled with legions of people whose lives are being crushed by the mad pursuit of a greater Israel. It’s a pretty tight neighborhood, and the only way to have good neighbors is to be one.

Then there’s Amadinejad. What a gift to Israeli and American hawks that man is! His ludicrous fulminations provide them with the ammunition they need to maintain perpetual military confrontation. And the best part about him is that he doesn’t even run Iran. He is as powerless as Khatami was before him, subject to the will of Iran’s supreme clerical leader, the Ayatollah Khamenie. So he presents a pretty low-grade threat to any state that possesses enough conventional and non-conventional weapons to reduce the region to rubble. Add to that the fact that Israel’s politicians (to say nothing of their U.S. counterparts) regularly threaten Iran with attack, and it should come as no surprise that Iran might contemplate building their own nuclear deterrent (though it appears this remains in the contemplative stage at present). With his observations about the Palestinians, Carter is trying to defuse the bomb that is the modern Middle East… and as a result, he will no doubt be lumped together with the bomb-throwers.

All I can say to him is what my mom always told me: No good deed goes unpunished. If you feel resistance, you’re probably doing the right thing.

luv u,

jp

Charles Rangel (D-NY) has again raised the subject of reinstituting the military draft as a way of ensuring that the prospect of war will be treated by the powerful and well-connected with the kind of seriousness it merits. Of course, the proposal will go nowhere, but the reaction to it is always interesting. NPR’s resident political sports commentator Cokie Roberts, for instance, pointed out that people volunteer for today’s military, that they are there because they want to be there, and that, anyway, the military doesn’t want a draft. There’s a civics lesson in this somewhere, I’m sure of it. You won’t get that from me (unqualified, for sure), but this reaction is certainly worth a closer look.

Sure, people volunteer for the military, but very often they do so on the basis of some pretty specious recruiting claims (not to mention glitzy advertising that you and I pay for). Many times they come from depressed communities where there are few options for high school graduates to get an education, start a career, or even just find a decent-paying job. As far as wanting to be there is concerned, my first question is, wanting to be where? Iraq? Doubt it. There hasn’t yet been massive desertion or near insurrection like there was in Vietnam, but then these are, again, volunteers many of whom entered the armed forces not simply because they wanted to serve their country, but because they hoped to either make a career in the military or find a career through the experience. That and the culture of the modern military makes disobedience much, much more difficult than it would be for a draftee who didn’t want to be in the service in the first place.

Finally, the question of whether or not the military wants a draft seems kind of irrelevant to me. Last time I looked, they took their orders from the elected civilian leadership and not the other way around. (They didn’t particularly want to go into Iraq either, and look where we are.) Their reluctance stems, of course, from the Vietnam experience, but what the hell — people were drafted into America’s wars long before Vietnam. Was the problem… Is the problem the draft or the fact that the war was plainly wrong and immoral and no one wanted to fight it? Seems to me it’s the latter. What really bugs people about the draft is that it puts us in a situation where we can’t get into a war unless it obviously needs to be fought — i.e. that there is no alternative.

There’s another basic moral question here; one that Cokie and crew are unlikely to address. Just because people are willing to do our fighting for us, that doesn’t mean we should feel free to sent them on some hopeless, pointless, gratuitous mission like invading and occupying Iraq. I think Rangel’s point is that general conscription would make the decision to go to war a matter of keen interest to every part of society, from penniless kids in Appalachia and south Bronx to ivy league-bound prepsters and their parents. I find it grimly amusing that people are encouraged think of the Vietnam era as a time when people didn’t support U.S. troops and that today we’re behind them all the way. Back in the sixties, if you were an 18-year-old man, you were about two inches away from being a troop yourself. You likely had good friends and/or family members in the service — maybe a cousin, an uncle, or a brother overseas — and you were watching the mails for that draft notice. It’s nothing like that today. Nowadays, people slap a magnetic ribbon on their bumper and you’d think they just came back from a freaking U.S.O. show.

What the fuck — Cheney was no anti-war protester in the sixties; just a selfish slug who was unwilling to push himself away from his Thanksgiving dinner to get shot at in Vietnam. And while people criticize sixties radicals no end, the Cheney model is the one we all follow today.

luv u,

jp

Back in 1980 — what seems like ten thousand years ago now — I spent a year at the State University of New York College at New Paltz, about an hour north of New York City. It was a tumultuous year, the last of the Carter presidency, with the election of Ronald Reagan, the assassination of John Lennon, and — on a more personal note — the death of my brother Mark, a very excellent jazz pianist (among numerous other things), whose car was knocked off the road by some drunk up in Maine (a blood-alcohol brother of Dubya, no doubt… but I digress). It was also a full year of the Iranian hostage crisis, during which our nation was taken by a kind of hyper-nationalism hitherto unknown to me. Some may remember (amid the soaring gas prices) the jingoistic songs on the radio, the first bloom of yellow ribbons, and the like. I can remember walking through one of the classroom buildings at New Paltz and seeing some bulletin board graffiti that read, “Who needs the Ayatollah’s oil? We’ve got 15,000 Iranian students to burn.”

Those were indeed ugly times, as are these. But the madness of 1980 set the template for much of what followed, and we are still living with its repercussions. Iran remains official enemy number one — the “Great Satan”, in the parlance of the mullahs — their crimes against the U.S. a rap sheet that usually includes support for terrorism (mostly in reference to Hezbollah), nuclear ambitions, and posing an existential threat to Israel. Pretty thin gruel, as it happens. Yes, they give money and supplies to Hezbollah, but Hezbollah wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for Israel’s hysterical use of firepower over their 19-year occupation of Lebanon and thereafter. Yes, Iran does seek to enrich uranium, but these activities are still within the legal parameters of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and they have not demonstrated the ability to produce anything approaching weapons-grade uranium… though with a consistently belligerent nuclear-armed state (Israel) threatening them from just over the horizon, I wouldn’t be surprised if they should move in that direction. As for the existential threat to Israel, see the previous sentence. The only credible existential threat is the one directed at Iran by the regional nuclear power and by the global superpower (us). Amadenijad’s fulminations about Israel carry little weight a) because he is not the supreme leader of Iran, and b) because Iran does not have the capability to even begin to destroy Israel.

Israel, on the other hand, has the capability to destroy any state in the Middle East, with hundreds of undeclared nuclear weapons in their arsenal. And while the rest of the world is transfixed on the horror we’ve created in Iraq, Israel has taken this opportunity to kick the living hell out of the slum that is Gaza, firing missiles into densely populated residential neighborhoods and following their usual tactics. The IDF has iced so many children in the occupied territories that the western press hardly bothers to report on the phenomenon any more — it’s becoming remarkably unremarkable. All the while, our government — the only one that can effectively restrain Israel — is asleep at the switch, standing aside while the blood flows in Gaza, much as we did when Lebanon was savagely attacked last summer and when Jenin and Nablus were being pounded by the IDF. We have demonstrated in a multitude of ways how little we care about the lives and livelihoods of people in that area of the world. Repairing that will take more than a cosmetic changing of the guard at the Pentagon and some high sounding rhetoric.

In any case, twenty-six years of pointless enmity is enough. It’s time to start behaving like adults and make peace with the Muslim world like we did with Russia and China. Iran is a good place to start.

luv u,

jp

Whoa. Even the longest winning streaks run out one day, I guess. Prior to this last Tuesday, I was beginning to wonder if the Republicans could do anything that might lose them an election. It appears as though the voters have their limit after all. The Dems even took my local congressional district seat, which has been held by the GOP for more than fifty years. Who can doubt that there were more than a few bricks in the White House toilets come Wednesday morning? Rumsfeld immediately took the bullet, probably guessing that the Democrats would be satisfied with his departure and not drag him in front of a semi-hostile committee. (Good guess. Remember what they did after Clinton’s first election… yeah, that’s right — you can’t remember because there’s nothing to remember.) It’s distinctly possible, however, that foreign courts will be less forgiving. With universal jurisdiction on war crimes and ample evidence that Rumsfeld not only condemned but encouraged torture of detainees, he may need to plan his travel itinerary a bit more carefully from now on. (Tip: Ask Kissinger what travel agent he uses.)

So what does this Democratic victory mean, aside from the prospect of being able to say “Chairman Conyers” and “Chairwoman Lee”? Is this really a sea change, as some have suggested? Not likely. As I’ve mentioned here before in my usual haphazard way, working towards a Democratic resurgence in the House and Senate was a minimal political act — an attempt to shove a log into the juggernaut’s wheel-spokes (though it may be more akin to clipping a playing card to the forks of Bush’s bicycle). The Dems did not generate anything like a consistently progressive theme during the campaign (see Rahm Emmanuel); some talked a good game, while others mouthed the usual weasely platitudes that may easily be backed away from later on. It is during these first few weeks following an election when the betrayal of the voters typically takes place, and there are signs that such a process may be underway.

The air is thick with calls for bipartisan cooperation. Oh, sure — when the Republicans had total control of everything, it was “Fuck off an die, liberal Osama-huggers! We’ll make the laws ourselves and the president will spend his political capital as he sees fit.” Now that they’ve lost Congress, suddenly it’s time for everyone to come together for the good of the country. Something tells me that when the GOP wrenches control of the legislative branch back again, their attitude will be, “Well, we tried bipartisanship and it didn’t work, so fuck of and die, children of Saddam!” And the Dems will be shocked… shocked, as always. If they would only give as good as they get, just one time. Ah, well — it was a pleasure, at least, to see fuckers like George Allen, Rick Santorum, and Rich Pombo get the drubbing they so richly deserve. That, in itself, may have been worth the price of admission.

Now that that’s over, it’s back to pushing for an end to this lousy war, which is killing people in sickening numbers every day. So bug the shit out of that new congressmember, senator, etc. — no honeymoon!

luv u,

jp