Explosion in the “Green Zone” this week, and a good number of the news accounts I’ve read have referred to the relative calm of the last few weeks in Baghdad. This is another one of those “flare ups” they’ve been referring to over the last four years; or worse, an attempt to keep the Iraqi Parliament from negotiating through key issues, such as the petroleum law. It bears pointing out that these are issues key to us, not them, and that if these people represented the vast majority of Iraqis, they wouldn’t be substantially made up of recently arrived exiles and wouldn’t have to meet in a fortified pillbox. Be that as it may, the finger of blame on this attack points inevitably to the “friendly” Iraqis. I heard one pundit opine (when she managed to tear herself away from talking about Don Imus) that this was an “inside job”. What that means I’m not certain (they only discussed Iraq for about 30 seconds), but as I’ve said before in these pages, when this Iraq policy is finally over, its failure will be the Iraqis fault… so much so that you will think they had invaded us.

From the beginning the onus has been placed on them. They were a rogue state menacing their neighbors. They were an existential threat to the United States. And yet, what the hell kind of way is this to defeat an existential threat? The last time one could claim our nation was engaged in a war with an enemy who could possibly destroy us was World War II. That brought about a national mobilization – young men were drafted by the million, many others volunteered for or were pressed into stateside service, legions were employed in war related industries, and people were taxed and had their consumption of essential goods regulated accordingly. If we are, indeed, fighting for our lives right now, why are so few of us actually involved in the fighting? Why aren’t we all being asked to sacrifice something for the salvation of America, just as the “greatest generation” was asked to do by their elders (the, I don’t know, “not-so-greatest generation”)?

Give up? Well, I’m gon’ tell yuh. It’s because we aren’t fighting for our lives. Not really. Sure there’s danger – there was danger during the cold war, too – but that danger is being aggravated by the war in Iraq, not reduced by it. There is no clear existential threat to the U.S. posed by the Iraqi insurgency, and that’s why our government feels it has the luxury to play only the safest political cards and avoid all the dicey ones. Draft? No need – we’ve got an all-volunteer force we can deploy again and again (and again…). Taxes? We’ll cut those and just borrow the billions we burn in Iraq – free money, folks! Vote for me!! Rationing? That’s just plain unAmerican and unnecessary… unless you’re (wait for it) under attack, which we plainly are not. We’re not fighting the Nazis across a 1,000 mile front. We’re not withering under the Luftwaffe’s nightly terror bombings. We’re fighting a war of choice, with the objective of securing a pro-western government in Baghdad and opening the Iraqi economy to the kind of extreme neoliberal exploitation that must surely inhabit Paul Wolfowitz’s piratical dreams.

Why can’t we trust Iraqis? Because they can’t trust us. This they know from experience.

God bless you, Mr. Rosewater. Just a word for Kurt Vonnegut, who passed away this week. Great thinker, great writer, great humanist. This old interview on Fresh Air gives you some idea why.

luv u,

jp

Perennial presidential candidate John McCain made his way to a Baghdad market this week, surrounded by a phalanx of U.S. soldiers, security guards, and kevlar body armor, then returned to the nearby Green Zone (i.e. crusader castle) alive. God be praised! What are we to make of this great triumph? That the incalculable suffering of the past four years has somehow been worth it now that McCain and some other bonehead politicians can go shopping in downtown Baghdad under heavy guard? Not sure, but I think they could have done that more easily before they started this stupid war. (One can only hope they’re not planning any shopping trips to Tehran in the near future.) It’s obvious that McCain is playing to the idiot Republican base – those folks that would support Bush if he knifed their grandchildren in front of them. And the administration, desperate for any sign of success in Iraq, is more than glad to glom onto the senator’s grandstanding.

Watching all this, you have to think that our leaders take us for abject morons. They assume that we remember none of the wild flourishes of rhetoric with which they regaled us four years, four months, or even four days ago. When we invaded Iraq, it was to advance a bold agenda of remaking the middle east, so we were told. Now the objective is holding Haifa street long enough for a senator to go sight-seeing. When the Mahdi army and the Sunni guerillas make the strategic decision to allow our troops to operate relatively unmolested in central Baghdad, we act as though we’d just defeated Pompey’s legions. For chrissake – surge or no surge, we’re only able to move an inch in that city because its inhabitants have chosen to tolerate our presence for the time being, probably in the hope that this will make us leave sooner. It’s not our city, nor will it ever be, and as a saner Republican senator recently observed, Iraq just doesn’t belong to us. Probably best to remember that as we ponder what to do next.

Perhaps there’s an opportunity for the anti-war movement in all of this happy talk. What the hell – if it’s going so well over there, why don’t we leave? Let’s call their bluff. Baghdad is safe? Fine! Everybody go home. That’s what a majority of Americans and a supermajority of Iraqis want, right? There’s one way to make everybody happy. Of course, that would bring us down to the core issue of this whole bloody enterprise – our government doesn’t want to leave Iraq. They didn’t go through all the trouble of contriving and sustaining this invasion just to be pushed out a measly four years later. For all intents and purposes, America is in Iraq to stay, which means we won’t leave until there is simply no other alternative. I happen to believe only Americans can bring and end to this, but so long as we as a nation behave as though the war doesn’t exist, it will go on and on and on.

That’s what the administration calls success. And friends… it sucks.

luv u,

jp

Things heated up this week in our serial overseas conflicts, to be sure. As of this writing, Iran is still holding some British soldiers, and there appear to be some flourishes of diplomatic activity in and amongst the public posturing. Though Bush and friends (including the ever-reliable Joe Lieberman, peace be upon him) engaged in some highly qualified pre-gloating over the “progress” being seen in Iraq as a result of the “surge”, people are still dying by the score over there. As Juan Cole points out, figures from the Iraqi government on February casualties ran somewhere around 61 deaths per day – that’s just slightly fewer than in January. Progress, Lieberman style! (What have you got for the health care crisis, Joe?) It makes you wonder if any U.S. politician really has any idea what a statistic like 60 deaths a day means in human terms.

As a consequence of this cock-brained optimism, the U.S. is alienating the few corruptible friends it has in the Arab world. One by one, Gulf states are making it known that they won’t play any role in an invasion of Iran. Even Saudi Arabia – second only to Texas in the Bush family’s desiccated heart – took the opportunity of this week’s Arab summit to call the American occupation of Iraq “Illegitimate.” Mildly put, but accurate, at least, and that was not the Saudi king’s only criticism of U.S. policy in the region. There were also a few words about that other occupation… the one that turns 40 this year. Abdullah reintroduced the Saudi plan for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, based upon Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders. Basically the same formula that’s been on the table since, well, 1967, and the basis of a longstanding international consensus on the question from which only the U.S. and Israel have consistently dissented. Bush must have seen this as a bit of a poke in the eye, particularly now that he’s staggering around, punch drunk.

Not to worry – the mainstream media, including the wildly left-radical (note: irony) NPR, have identified this solution as a non-starter, nothing new, off the table. Sure it is – because it’s the only plan that has a prayer of working. Still, it helped make for kind of a bad week for Dubya… not that he knows what a bad week really looks like. That takes being on the receiving end of his foreign policy, or being one of the poor sods tasked with carrying it out. Like most of us, Bush is pretty far removed from the experience of a National Guard member or reservist sent back on his/her third or fourth tour of duty; soldiers who’ve been wounded in Iraq, then denied proper care back home, discharged for “personality disorders” when they’ve obviously got PTSD and even serious physical injuries, some even having to pay back part of their signing bonus. Now, that’s a bad week.

All I can tell you young folks out there is – no matter how much they promise you, how bad the job market looks, how sorry your money situation is – listen to what Marvin tells you. Don’t. Sign. Up.

luv u,

jp

It’s been four years since the invasion of Iraq – four flaming candles on that bitter cake. (Make a wish!) Dubya, Cheney, and Rumsfeld’s “six days, six weeks… I doubt six months” war is now nearly old enough to attend kindergarten. How fast these little catastrophes grow up… my word! Seems like only yesterday we were stoking the furnace of martial fury, seldom very far below the surface of American life. Cheney and his “there can be no doubt” speech about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction; Bush’s yellowcake uranium scare and “mission accomplished” fan dance; Powell’s “slam-dunk” case before the U.N.; Condi Rice’s certainty about the sole utility of those bloody aluminum tubes. I can see them all scrolling by like tired old hits on a K-Tel “Sounds of the Seventies” collection. (Right up there with Billy, Don’t Be A Hero.) Now, some 48 months later, you would think by listening to our leading politicians that America’s entry into Iraq was the result of some involuntary process, like an extraordinary rendition. In the land of “the mother of all battles”, Operation Iraqi Fiefdom is surely the most motherless of all battles.

Still, these deadbeat dads and moms all seem to have their own ideas about how this little four year old should be brought up, and most of them involve having other people’s sons and daughters remain on Iraqi soil for a good long time. They are virtually all talking about some kind of “victory” and a Nixonian “peace with honor” – the peace of the grave, though invariably someone else’s grave. And as I mentioned last week, all but the most principled of congress members appear convinced that the Pentagon is incapable of withdrawing troops from a war zone in a safe and orderly fashion when so directed. If we follow this logic to its conclusion, they’re saying our troops can never leave Iraq, because to do so is just too damn dangerous. Of course, a long-term U.S. military presence doesn’t comport well with what we know of Iraqi public opinion, which overwhelmingly – something like 70 – 80% – favors our rapid departure. You’d never know it, listening to the Iraq war debate over here. I guess those Iraqis are just supposed to accept the blame for this disaster and keep their mouths shut.

We’re like a nuclear Rome, except somewhat less subtle. I heard a report on NPR about the U.S. takeover of a key bridge in Diyala province, where Sunni insurgents have held sway. There were the usual horror stories – probably true – about Al Qaeda types committing public execution and intimidating the locals. Of course, when the U.S. troops arrived, they took over a group of houses near the bridge, displacing the owners with a promise of compensation. Much of the report is taken up with an Army lieutenant telling Iraqis that, no, he didn’t have their money and that “we don’t come into town with a trunk of money to hand people cash for the things that have happened.” He was later heard impatiently turning away Iraqi soldiers who hadn’t been paid in god knows how long and who were complaining about 12 hour duty shifts with no salary, directing them to their dysfunctional government. I’ve seen similar stories over the past week or two – Iraqis being sent out into some very uncertain streets. This is how we made friends in Fallujah… and in the Mekong Delta, come to think of it. There it took us more than ten years to leave. So far, in Iraq, it’s four.

Rachel. Another grim anniversary. Four years since young Rachel Corrie was killed while doing what we all should be doing – stopping an out-of-control Israeli government from bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods in the occupied territories (while collecting billions from us each year). Not forgotten.

luv u,

jp

We’re just a few months into the new congress, and it’s becoming clear that the Democratic leadership doesn’t have the stomach for stopping the war in Iraq. This week the Senate failed to pass a pretty flimsy measure calling for a full withdrawal (on good news) by sometime in 2008 – not exactly good news for those shipping out to Iraq for a third or fourth tour of duty. There are many reasons for this continuing failure, but prominent among them is the Democratic leadership’s fear of appearing as though they don’t fully “support the troops.” For chrissake – how much effort does it take to knock that straw man over? Voting for funds to send soldiers into a bloody catastrophe is not “supporting the troops”; it’s killing and maiming the troops. If congress defunds this policy, the Pentagon will have plenty of money to get everyone home safe, of fucking course. And yet they remain unwilling to do what needs to be done… what they were elected to do.

What congress has been making a lot of noise about is the administration’s apparently politically motivated firing of a number of U.S. attorneys last year. At a time when Bush is sending badly wounded soldiers back into battle, some of whom cannot even wear body armor because of their injuries, Dems are expressing outrage over some wrongfully dismissed lawyers. Sure – the Bush White House is run out of its political office… so what’s new? How does that compete with the hell disaster of this war? Jeebus – this reminds me of the Watergate days. Richard Nixon presided over some of the most obscene abuses of law enforcement powers in U.S. history, namely the COINTELPRO program of domestic spying, political intimidation, and worse. That went virtually unchallenged. But when Nixon’s boys broke into Democratic party headquarters, that was a different kettle of fish entirely. The lesson is clear – ordinary people can be attacked with impunity, but not the powerful.

It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the crisis we have ignited in the middle east. Something like 2 million Iraqis have fled that country in fear for their lives; as many as 1 million now live as refugees in Syria, with up to 50,000 more crossing the border every month. Syria is not a wealthy nation like the United States or France – this influx is putting enormous pressure on that society. And yet the United States will only accept 7,000 Iraqi refugees this year, even though our unprovoked attack is the cause of this mass exodus. Even more appalling, our government will not accept anyone who has paid ransom to kidnappers because it considers such sums paid in desperation to be tantamount to supporting terrorism! Families driven out by terrorism (ignited by us) being accused of terrorism – an irony worthy of Joseph Heller.

So listen up, Dems. If Bush is the man with two brains (one named Cheney, one named Rove), best to concentrate more on the brain that’s killing people than the one that’s firing people. Get off your sorry asses and stop this ridiculous war now.

luv u,

jp