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Political Rants

The war dog that didn’t bark in the night

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I’ve heard a few stories this week about mission creep in the U.S. led response to Russia’s Ukraine invasion. Frankly, it would surprise me if there wasn’t any. This is something empires do, and the United States has done it multiple times in not at all subtle ways. Libya is probably the most glaring recent example of this. First we’re going to save the people of Benghazi; then, well, we’re going to act as the Libyan rebels’ air force. That’s when you get people back home saying, did we sign up for this?

Well, now we have members of congress going around saying that this is a proxy war against Russia, which speaks to the intention behind the policy. Granted, Seth Moulton was the source, but still – he probably hears a lot from the national security establishment on this. Trouble is, there’s a proxy only on one side – ours. This is not like Syria. Russia has a direct interest in this war, not a supporting role. Given what we’re hearing about intelligence sharing, it’s kind of a miracle that we’re all still here.

Unannounced, unmolested visitors

But intelligence sharing is not the only thing going on behind the scenes. There must be a substantial amount of de-confliction taking place, or even relatively high level conversations. The reason I think this is that Russia has the capability to strike anywhere in Ukraine by air, via either planes or medium range ground-to-ground missiles. And yet, when American dignitaries – congress members, cabinet officials, the first lady – show up in Kviv, there are no Russian strikes. Coincidence? I think not.

This cannot be chalked up to not knowing about the trips. Russia hits these cities at random, at will. But when important people from the U.S. are in town, the missiles stop. This is not a coincidence. It’s evidence of some rudimentary rationality on the part of Russian leadership – they don’t want World War III. Frankly, there are a lot of things they could be doing militarily that they haven’t opted for. That’s not cause for praise, of course – if someone with a gun stabs you to death, it doesn’t mean you should praise them for not shooting you. But in this case, it means that things can, indeed, get a lot worse.

Going over the top

All that said, there remains a better than strong chance that this Ukraine conflict will result in a broader war, and perhaps nuclear escalation. The pieces are all in place to make that happen. It seems clear, based on recent reporting, that the Biden administration has been sharing targeting information with the Ukrainians that has contributed to bringing about the deaths of numerous Russian generals. If it’s being reported, it was certainly known already to the Russian leadership. Now the whole world knows, and they have egg on their face.

In recent days, the Russians have been zeroing in on Ukraine’s supply lines from the West. They hit Odessa as part of this campaign, reportedly. We know there are American and European operatives working in Ukraine. How long before some of these people are hit, captured, killed? If the Ukrainians continue to succeed on the battlefield with our weapons, how long before Russia strikes at the source of these weapons, if only obliquely? It might turn out to be a light tap on the arm, but that might be all that’s needed.

What doesn’t help is American politicians spouting off about turning this into another Afghanistan, as Seth Moulton was kind of saying on Fox the other day. I expect this idiocy from Republicans … but Democrats should know better, somewhat.

Damn the ICBMS – full speed ahead!

I got into a Twitter skirmish with a Congressional candidate a couple of weeks ago over the topic of Ukraine. He is an independent, and he was advocating removing Putin from power. I asked him how he proposed to do this, and after some hedging he said through military action. When I pointed out that this would likely lead to World War III, he basically accused me of not caring about the suffering of Ukrainians, and called me a “coward” because I was not willing risk nuclear war to advance his regime change policy.

The thing that’s truly frightening about this is that other people – progressives, even – seem to think this makes sense. This is the problem with having a massive military that can project power all around the globe at will. We use it too much – like Russia, only worse – and get used to the idea of it being a solution to all problems, when it, in fact, solves none.

If we try to pull an Iraq or a Libya on Russia, it’s game over. That’s the reality, like it or not.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

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While you were looking over there

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As Russia continues to do what Russia always does, this time in Ukraine, other atrocities try to keep pace. The Saudis put 81 people to death this past week in one of their execution sprees. Ali AlAhmed shared some photos of the victims on Twitter, and it’s worth scrolling through the list just to afford these people a small portion of the humanity being accorded, quite rightly, to Ukrainians.

Then, of course, there’s Yemen – still Yemen. Over the weekend, UNICEF reported that almost 50 children were killed or maimed in January alone, adding to the more than 10,000 child casualties recorded since the war began, with our nod and crucial material support, in 2015. Yemen remains among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, and yet it has fallen from the front page, particularly in America.

Proximity, proximity is everything

It’s not surprising or outrageous that the mainstream corporate media, and much of the independent media, spends most of their time on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s a huge story, and it should be reported on. But some crises fail to command the attention that Ukraine has garnered over the past three weeks. Yemen is chief among them, but certainly not the only instance.

The reason? Impossible to be precise, but it’s not hard to discern a pattern. If an atrocity is being committed by an official enemy, it is all over the media. If, on the other hand, the atrocity is being committed by us or by a close ally, it gets much, much less coverage, by and large. Count the number of stories about the war in Yemen that have run in U.S. major media. You will have fingers left over. Now compare that with this wall-to-wall Ukraine coverage.

Conclusion: Ukraine is being attacked by someone we don’t like; Yemen is being attacked by an ally who’s dependent on our help to conduct the war. The less likely it is that we can stop a war, the more likely it is that our media will focus on it.

Sticking to what you know

Russia’s military, at Putin’s behest, is doing what they know how to do: blowing things up. That’s how they get people to bend to their will. It’s the sharpest imperial tool in their toolbox by far. They destroy whole cities and drive people into the wilderness. That’s all they know.

Bombs, missiles, shells, and bullets are what’s available to Putin. But he doesn’t have a corner on imperialism. The United States, on the other hand, has more than one way to skin a country. When we put a nation under sanction, it hurts very badly. We can shut off access to international financial institutions. We can starve whole populations and ruin their public health infrastructure. This is what we did to Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s, between two spates of bombing. That’s how we bent them to our will.

Russia doesn’t have that. If they sanction someone, it doesn’t mean much. They don’t have anywhere near the leverage of the U.S. in international finance. All they have is the bombs.

Finding the exit

Maddeningly, this attack on Ukraine, all in the space of a few weeks, is doing what was done in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq at the height of those conflicts – destroying societal infrastructure on a massive scale. Much as you have to admire the Ukrainians’ courage and stubbornness, I hope the sides aren’t getting so entrenched that some settlement can’t be reached.

This war will end. The question is, how much of Ukraine will survive that long? If Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and others are any indication, it’s better to find a way to settlement sooner rather than later. I think that’s one channel by which the international community can help.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Wearing out our welcome in iraq

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Biden dropped bombs on Iraq and Syria again this week, this time using F-15s and F-16s. This is the president’s second large action against what the administration describes as Iranian-backed groups. They claim this action is in self-defense, invoking the U.N. Charter (presumably article 51). Nancy Pelosi piped up with her own cry of support for the attack, stating that “protecting the military heroes who defend our freedoms is a sacred priority.”

Now, what the fuck freedoms are these heroes defending? And how is it self-defense to hit back against local forces that are resisting our presence in their own country? A country, mind you, that didn’t ask us to invade in the first place and that has explicitly asked us to leave. Like all empires, we have an expansive sense of our own sovereignty. We feel put upon when the locals rise against us.

What’s different is lesser than what’s the same

I know, we were all happy when Donald Trump had the nuclear launch codes taken away from him. And his assassination of Soleimani was an obvious and reckless provocation coming from an administration that put Iran on notice in its first week and tore up the JCPOA. That said, they still stride around the Middle East like they own the place, and that should be just as unacceptable to us as when Trump did it.

Even worse, the Biden foreign policy team is leaving bad policies in place from the previous regime. They are essentially in agreement with much of it, and because they are generally more competent than the last crew, they in some ways may pose an even greater threat to the cause of peace.

And again, what the hell are we doing in Iraq, anyway? Our troops should leave now. In fact, they should never have been there in the first place.

Death of a Salesman

Of course, there was a reason why they went there in the first place. The Bush administration sold the war in Iraq to the American people – or at least to enough of them for the tanks to start rolling. An important part of that sales effort was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who died this week.

I’ve never made a habit of dancing on people’s graves, and I’m not about to start now. Suffice to say that this man did a lot of damage in his life. He helped to push two disastrous wars that resulted in the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of people. Simply put, he was a horrible man in many respects.

Of course, he had a lot of help in this sales job. The mainstream press was a tremendous help. At the height of Rumsfeld and Bush’s popularity, before the Iraq war went predictably down the drain, the press was even painting Rumsfeld as some kind of warped sex symbol. I remember having a hard time with that as I waited in supermarket checkout lines, looking at People magazine or Us or whoever was blowing Rumsfeld that week. Jesus, how nauseating can you get?

Anyway, one of the main architects is now gone. Time to stop this stupid ass war, once and for all.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Enter The Blob.

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As anyone who listens to my podcast, Strange Sound, knows, I’ve had serious differences with the Biden team on foreign policy from early on in their campaign. What first gave me pause was the fact that the “issues” section of their campaign web site included no foreign policy items whatsoever, except one or two bank-shot mentions of other countries in the context of discussions about domestic policy issues, like immigration and energy policy. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as Donald Rumsfeld once told us, and in this context the cliche is true – while Biden’s outward-facing platform was a blank slate on foreign policy, there was definitely a there there, even if we couldn’t see it. And, no great surprise, the Biden foreign policy is basically built around the return of the blob (a.k.a. the imperial foreign policy establishment that has dominated administrations of both major parties since the American empire began).

We saw evidence of this in stark relief this past week with the bombing of “Iranian-backed” elements in Syria. Immediately we saw mainstream commentators like Richard Haas on television describing this as a measured and appropriate response to what they described as Iranian provocations, parroting the administration line that the U.S. needed to do this to show the Iranians that they can’t do whatever they want in the region without consequences. (That privilege we reserve to ourselves, of course – hence the raid.) The Biden administration is taking the path of least resistance, returning to the settled imperial order of confronting Iran at every opportunity, imposing conditions on them unilaterally, and not taking responsibility for our own disastrous policy decisions over the past four years (which, themselves, compounded the disastrous policy decisions of the preceding 75 years).

The fact is, the Biden administration is building on that bad policy. While Anthony Blinken has not openly endorsed Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, he is leading the State Department in returning to something that still looks a lot like that recognition, while keeping the American embassy in Jerusalem – a decision that cements in place this open defiance of the very concept of a two-state solution. The Biden State Department is still calling Juan Guaido the “interim president” of Venezuela when he is, in fact, no such thing and has no standing as the leader of that country – a delusional policy originated by the Trump crew. Biden is unlikely to withdraw U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a criminal quid-pro-quo over recognition of Israel, brokered by the Trump administration. Don’t even get me started on Saudi Arabia. In fact, as far as I can see, the only policy Biden appears poised to reverse is Trump’s opening to North Korea – literally the only good thing the man ever did (albeit by accident).

With respect to foreign affairs, war and peace, we appear to be locked into place, regardless of which major party runs the White House. Bad news for anyone who might have hoped this presidential transition would bring a saner approach to the world. Doesn’t seem likely.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Enemy of my enemy.

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It’s not hard to see how Donald Trump’s presidency could be good for the war caucus that encompasses parts of both parties. The deep neocon types oppose some of Trump’s foreign policy decisions, thereby endearing themselves to centrist Democrats who are always eager to make new friends (on the right). Then if a Democrat wins the presidency next year, the neocons would hope, I’m sure, to ride into Washington with her or him. There are two, maybe three Democratic presidential candidates  who would say no, but the others … I’m not so sure. I have no doubt, though, that some of them would serve as a tunnel back to power for the hyper interventionists.

That’s not to say that Trump represents any alternative to an imperial foreign policy. A recent Nation editorial by Bob Borosage describes Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds in Syria as giving peace a bad name – this is a fair point, but the Trump foreign policy bears very little resemblance to anything the anti-war movement ever advocated. His abrupt policy change in northern Syria initiated violence rather than stopping it; moreover, he is simply moving troops to another part of Syria in violation of that country’s sovereignty, supposedly “guarding” their oil fields. That is textbook, old-school imperialism. Combine that with his movement of troops to Saudi Arabia, his tearing up of the Iran Nuclear Accord, his withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement with Russia, and his showering of the Pentagon with unprecedented billions, and you have a full-on militarist presidency, every bit as dangerous as the Bush II regime at its most bellicose.

Not too late for a come back, guys.

What is particularly problematic about this political moment is that Trump’s erratic behavior and lack of any definable ideology on foreign policy (or, apparently, any nuanced knowledge of the world in general) gives traditional militarists an opportunity to paint themselves as a more reasonable, stable alternative. This must be rejected. If we are going to make the herculean effort to defeat Trump in next year’s election, it shouldn’t be for the sake of merely replacing him with a Bush clone. We need a new, anti-imperial approach to the world; one that emphasizes cooperation and harm reduction as well as human rights. The urgent goal of turning back terminal challenges like climate change and nuclear war requires that we change course in this way, not simply tweak our current hegemonic policy around the edges.

In short, we need to ask more of ourselves and our leaders than simply ridding ourselves of this mad president.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Lookout, Buchanan.

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There’s no question but that Donald Trump is the worst president in my lifetime, and I’m fairly certain he’s a serious contender for the worst president in American history. In most of the surveys I’ve seen, that position is held by pre-Civil War POTUS James Buchanan (1857 – 1861), but I think Buchanan’s one distinction is under serious threat … he may be surging to second worst by the end of Trump’s current term.

Of course, Trump doesn’t see it that way. His ranging, incoherent cabinet meeting this past Monday gave him the opportunity to crow about the greatest economy in American history, his single-handed defeat of ISIS, his deal-making acumen, and so on. Sure, he got Turkey mixed up with Iraq at one point, but who’s counting? He claims to be fulfilling a promise to bring American troops home, and one wishes that were true, but of course this claim – like everything else that comes out of his festering gob – is a cheap, transparent lie that wouldn’t fool a five-year-old. Like previous failed presidents, he sold the Kurds down the river, and they are paying a heavy price for his carelessness and self-dealing. (Trump freely admitted prior to the 2016 election that he had a conflict of interest with regard to Turkey, referencing his signature twin towers in Ankara; he still makes a lot of his money there.)

Look out, Jim. He's gaining on you.

You would think it would be easy to compare Trump unfavorably to other recent presidents, but the picture does get kind of complicated kind of fast. There was a discussion of this on Morning Joe this week, wherein Joe, Mika, and historian Jon Meacham talked about leaders putting the nation ahead of their own narrow political interests. Sounds good, but the example Joe gave was that of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in 1998, at the height of the impeachment conflict, working together to find a way “to contain Saddam Hussein.” I think what he’s referring to is the Iraq Liberation Act, passed in October 1998 and signed by Clinton, which provided the foundation for the 2003 war. This act came through at the peak of our sanction regime against Iraq that cost the lives of 300,000 Iraqi children, conservatively – a cost Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described as worth it. In other words, bad example.

Self-dealing and corruption are bad things, to be sure. They are not the only bad things, however, and we do ourselves no favor by forgetting the failed policies of past leaders in an attempt to single out the current president. It is obvious where he comes from, and we must beat him  next year. But we must also accomplish so much more than that one goal. Status quo ante is not enough.

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jp

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Bus hat.

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It’s probably best for me to start by saying that I was always against U.S. military involvement in the Syrian civil war – this was the case during the Obama administration and it remains the case now. But because our troops have been there in numbers exceeding 1,000 for years now, and that we have worked them into Syria’s complex web of security guarantees, alliances, and bitter enmities, it seems only right that we should consider the consequences of whatever decisions we make, whether it means pulling troops out or putting more in. This is a situation in which every power is in it for its own gain, and that includes the United States. That’s why the goddam war is still going on … and thanks to Trump this week, it’s likely to move into a new and more deadly phase.

The Syrian Kurds, who made the mistake of fighting for us as part of the conflict in their country, are now in the crosshairs of a massive military operation by Turkey – an incursion into northern Syria with the aim of establishing a buffer zone between the Turkish frontier and the Kurdish population, which Erdogan considers an enemy. Trump has chosen to throw the Kurds under the bus, so he has proven that he is, after all, an American foreign policy traditionalist. Our foreign policy establishment has been arranging bus hats for that dispossessed people since the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. (See Jon Schwarz’s article in the Intercept for a thumbnail history of our various betrayals of the Kurdish people.) It’s a little mystifying as to why mainstream foreign affairs talking heads are so unhappy with Trump right now. He just pulled a Kissinger.

Trump's expandables

The only fortunate thing for the Kurds of Syria is that a broad swath of American articulate opinion supports them. The trouble is, Trump doesn’t, and apparently Erdogan has something the fat boy wants, hence the policy about-face. Or maybe it’s because, as Trump incoherently said, they didn’t help us during World War II. In any case, Americans tend to love Kurds when they are useful, like they’ve been in Syria, like they were in Iraq in 1991 and after. They also hate and undermine them when they stand in opposition to friendly countries, like the Turkish Kurds in the 1990s. But that’s half a loaf, at least – other stateless peoples, like the Palestinians, don’t even get that.

Like so many others we have on our heads, this bloodbath could have been avoided.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Do no harm?

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Former secretary of defense under Donald Trump James Mattis has a book out, so he’s making the rounds of all the talk shows, talking about leadership, acting as though his reluctance to criticize the president is somehow rooted in personal integrity. What he won’t talk about on the book tour is how his “leadership” responded to policies that any person of average integrity would take issue with. Mattis sat still when Trump started banning Muslims from entering the country. He said nothing when Trump began separating children from their parents at our southern border and putting them in cages. He was silent as Trump praised white supremacists as “good people” in the wake of Charlottesville. When did he finally throw in the towel? When Trump decided to remove troops from Syria. That tells you much of what you need to know about Mattis.

Steve Inskeep’s fawning interview on NPR had few high points. Somehow Mattis saw fit to claim:

“From a Roman general, I used no better friend, no worse enemy. We were going in to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam. We were not going in to dominate them. I didn’t want triumphalism. I wanted to go in with a sense of first do no harm.”

First do no harm? Seriously? He has a funny way of showing it. One of Mattis’s bragging points was always his pivotal role in the various battles of Fallujah, a bloody massacre in which the U.S. military’s first act was to commandeer the city hospital. It’s kind of ridiculous to refer to such operations as “battles”, when the enemy they are fighting are so outgunned. In any case, the Iraqi casualties in Fallujah were so high that the city was left out of the Johns Hopkins study of Iraqi deaths caused by the 2003 invasion because they felt it would skew the numbers. That study, first published in 2005 I believe, numbered Iraqi deaths at more than 500,000 as a result of the war. It was revised later to something like 650,000. Do no harm?

Mr. Kindness himself.

The example he gives of a young officer choosing not to shoot up a building in Baghdad in order to spare civilians sounds apocryphal in light of the stories that have come out of that war. Robert Fisk described the U.S. tank shell that destroyed the building that housed Reuters journalists, among others. That was more along the lines of common practice, frankly. The U.S. military doesn’t exactly walk around on tip-toe. How any senior commanding officer attached to this atrocity can have the gall to speak proudly about his humanity in the context of imperial war is beyond me.

Save your leadership lessons, mad dog. You lost all credibility the moment you signed on to the criminal enterprise that was the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Who would you sanction?

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We have had Cuba, Iran, and North Korea under sanction for decades; Venezuela under sanction for a number of years now.  These examples are all for political reasons, of course. In the cases of Cuba and Iran, we dole out punishment for the unforgivable crime of “stealing” something quite valuable from us … specifically, Cuba and Iran. With North Korea, it’s basically get-back for their not having lost the Korean war after we reduced their country to rubble in the early 1950s. It was the same situation with Vietnam for a couple of decades, before we half-forgave them for what we did to them. (Not a typo.)

If, of course, we didn’t have a craven foreign policy, who would we call out? I have a few candidates.

Balsonaro’s Brazil. Make no mistake – the reason why there have been more than 70,000 fires in the Amazon this year is because this clown fascist has been encouraging ranchers, miners, loggers, and soybean farmers to clear this irreplaceable resource for further exploitation. Balsonaro is similar to Trump in as much as he represents all of the worst tendencies of his nation, rolled up into one big greasy ball. A sane U.S. foreign policy would oppose this mad regime with every tool in the toolbox, support the freeing of Lula and the aspirations of Brazil’s workers and landless peasants.

Great candidates (for sanctions)

Modi’s India. The BJP Hindu nationalists are flexing their muscles after their electoral win, with Modi at the helm. In the Indian administered sector of Kashmir,  they are engaged in a massive shutdown of free speech and free expression. Modi has cut the region off from the rest of the world and is arresting dissidents, harassing Muslims, and basically encouraging his Hindu nationalist followers to reek havoc on the majority Muslim community. A sane U.S. foreign policy would take issue with this in a big way. It just astounds me the degree to which this story is being ignored in America. If India were an official enemy, you would hear no end of this.

Netanyahu’s Israel. The Israelis are, once again, dropping bombs on people they don’t like, attacking targets in two locations in Lebanon – Beiruit area and the Bekaa Valley (see Rami Khouri’s article in The New Arab). They also bombed a Hezbollah arms depot in Iraq and a purported Iranian position in Syria. They are throwing gasoline on a burning fire and getting away with it. I am convinced that they do not want to fight a conventional war with either Hezbollah or Iran. They want us to fight it.  This, and countless offenses against Palestinians, should carry a substantial cost in terms of U.S. aid … if we had a sane foreign policy.

That’s a big if, regardless of who wins the presidency next year. But I would sooner go with a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in the driver’s seat than the current ass-clown.

luv u,

jp

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Uniformly unjust.

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Our president – who should really think twice before putting on that tux (one word, Mr. President: cumberbund) has been contemplating a pre-emptive pardon for former Navy Seal Edward R. Gallagher, who faces court martial for premeditated murder, attempted murder, obstruction of justice, and more. Gallagher’s fellow Seals have called him out for some pretty heinous acts, including stabbing to death a young ISIS fighter who was in custody, wounded, and basically helpless, then parading the body in photos and conducting a re-enlistment ceremony over it. For Trump, of course, this makes Gallagher a hero, because he fits the First Man-baby’s warped notion of toughness – I expect nothing more from the likes of him.

Gallagher has another defender in congressman and Iraq war veteran Duncan Hunter, who sees nothing wrong in killing people in custody and using old men, young girls, etc. for target practice. Hunter’s position is basically that Gallagher’s crimes are no different from what he, Hunter, did in Fallujah, where he credibly claims to have killed hundreds of civilians. Of course, the military leadership disagrees – there is a thing called the Uniform Code of Military Justice and, more generally, accepted laws and norms of warfare, and for a variety of reasons the generals want to keep good order and discipline in the ranks. Granted, the laws of war tend to be loose enough to drive a tank through, but they do exist and they exist for specific reasons having to do with maintaining good order and discipline and perpetuating the myth that our mission is always the betterment of the peoples we invade and subdue. (Abusive practices also open our own captured service members to similar abuses.)

Our instrument in the levant

Strangely, Hunter almost stumbles onto an uncomfortable truth here. In a certain respect, there isn’t a lot of difference between firing artillery rounds into civilian neighborhoods in Fallujah and shooting civilians like turkeys in Syria. Both are predictable outcomes of the criminal decision to send our massive military into these countries in the first place. That decision is not made by the service members who fight the wars – it is ultimately made by us. Nowadays almost no one wants to own the war in Iraq (aside from crackpots like Bolton), but by not restraining our own government from proceeding with it back in 2003, we are all responsible for what has resulted from that decision. Hunter and Gallagher were the instruments of that policy, and as such, in a sense are less culpable than we are … or, as citizens themselves, certainly no more so. With respect to killing young prisoners in cold blood, Gallagher probably bears a higher level of responsibility than someone just mechanically pulling the lanyard, trigger, or whatever to destroy a distant “enemy”.

It’s hard for me to argue with Gallagher’s prosecution. But if justice were to be served, we should all be up there with him.

luv u,

jp