Bush Says Iraqis Face Moment of 'Choosing'

Bush Says Iraqis Face Moment of 'Choosing'

U.S. Urges All Sides To Exercise Restraint

President Bush warned yesterday that sectarian violence is confronting Iraqis with a "moment of choosing," as administration officials pleaded with all sides of the country's religious and ethnic divides to show restraint.

Bush said that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, had met with the leaders of an array of Iraqi factions in an effort to promote unity over reprisals.

The latest bloodshed poses a new challenge to the Bush administration's strategy for reconstruction and eventual troop withdrawals. The sectarian attacks threaten to paralyze Iraq's fledgling political process while prompting fears that unrest could wash into neighboring countries.

Bush and senior officials sounded a newly grim note yesterday about the near-term difficulties. Several independent analysts said the attacks will raise political pressure to bring U.S. troops home, even as they underscore that Iraq is too unstable to allow a precipitous withdrawal.

Speaking in Washington to the American Legion, Bush blamed the violence on insurgents intent on disrupting Iraq's democratic progress, and he predicted the violence is likely to continue.

"The days ahead in Iraq are going to be difficult and exhausting," the president said. Still, he pleaded for patience, saying that Iraq's leaders are committed to stopping civil strife and that the will of the moderates will eventually take hold.

More than 100 people across Iraq have been killed in attacks and counterattacks between Sunni and Shiite Muslims touched off by the bombing earlier this week of the Askariya shrine, a revered Shiite site in Samarra. The attacks prompted the Iraqi government to impose a curfew in Baghdad and three provinces. That led to a sharp reduction in the violence yesterday as U.S. and Iraqi troops worked to maintain the peace.

In a telephone briefing with reporters, Khalilzad called the situation "a moment of, of course, danger, but it is also a moment of opportunity."

"In crises such as the one caused by this attack," he said, "there is an opportunity to bring people together and to defeat goals of those who want to promote a civil war in this country."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, returning from a week-long visit to the Middle East, said Arab leaders expressed fear violence will spread.

"There is a concern that sectarian tension that outsiders are stoking in Iraq, that those same outsiders might try and stoke sectarian tensions in other parts of the region," Rice said.

The prospect of a wider regional war erupting between Sunni and Shiite populations if civil war broke out in Iraq has been a concern of many analysts.

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Iraq’s Cambodian Jungle: How American ‘Nation-Building’ Fueled Civil War

Iraq’s Cambodian Jungle: How American ‘Nation-Building’ Fueled Civil War
Published on Friday, February 24, 2006 by Candide's Notebooks

The standard line about Iraq right now is that the country is on the verge of civil war. That “simmering hatreds” are boiling to the surface. That “sectarianism” is to blame. All those regurgitated clichés of the Orientalist canon may well be true.

But what convenient detractions from a three-year-old certainty rendered by the American invasion. What ideal way to shift the blame, indemnify the invader, and make this third anniversary of Iraq’s “liberation,” approaching at the speed of a panicked Bradley Fighting Vehicle, look like a job gone awry only because Iraqis couldn’t get along.

Sure, the destruction of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra, allegedly by Sunni militants, was not going to get a kinder reception than the destruction of the 16 th century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, in India, by Hindus, in December 1992.

That barbaric eruption led to riots across India and Pakistan that left more than 1,000 people dead and renewed fears of a sectarian breakdown on the subcontinent, possibly even another reason for India and Pakistan to go at it a fourth time in six decades. The fears were exaggerated.

The discovery that religion is south Asia’s radioactive variant was not. It’s that very variant the neo-cons ignored when they celebrated the invasion of Iraq as a turning point in Mideastern destiny.

It has been a turning point, with the wrong assumptions at gunpoint. The problem wasn’t Iraq’s WMDs or Iran’s nukes. It’s the region’s religious warheads.

There’s no easier way to arm them than with Western-fueled resentment, no quicker way to set them off than with the permanent reminder of an alien army of provocateurs, the same Anglo provocateurs whose boots not so long ago, in every grandfather’s memory, flattened the culture with colonialism and called it progress.

Conversely, there are more credible, more Wilsonian ways to diffuse the warheads, beginning with Woodrow Wilson’s aversion to assuming mandates and protectorates over regions better left to sort out their issues on their own, but with available help when requested.

That’s the approach Francis Fukuyama, the ex-neocon, is now advocating in his belated berating of the neocon catastrophe in Iraq: “[T]he United States does not get to decide when and where democracy comes about. By definition, outsiders can’t ‘impose’ democracy on a country that doesn’t want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.”

In other words, the so-called “liberal” approach advocated all along by those who don’t see bombs as quite compatiblke with democratic nation-building..

The strength of the West in relation to the East has never been in its impositions and colonialisms. That’s when it’s been at its weakest, at its most repugnant, morally and politically. Western strength has been derived, paradoxically, from restraint: by valuing example above force, persuasion above imposition. (World War I and II were not battles between East and West but primarily within the West.)

That strength, at the moment, has been made null and void by the American occupation of Iraq—by Abu Ghraib, by Guantanamo, by the parody of democracy in Afghanistan and the emerging tragedy of democracy in Iraq, Iran and Palestine, where extremism is not only ascendant, but triumphant and virtually unrivaled.

Iraq is not “on the verge” of civil war. It has been at war the moment Americans replaced one tyranny with a pluralism of tyrannies three years ago. Iran blamed the explosion in Samarra on Israel and the United States.

Israel, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq. But American responsibility for Samarra is as evident as American responsibility for the looting and chaos that followed the early days of the occupation—and of course the chaos and low-grade civil war that hasn’t stopped since.

The powder keg was always there. It was to be a sign of American wiles and strategy—of foresight or ignorance—either to diffuse the keg or light the match. With Bush at the helm, the American occupation had no choice but to suck fire. That fuse is what the Anglo-American occupation force represents in Iraq.

The Orientalist narrative of Muslim-on-Muslim violence happening as if in a vacuum all its own is the expedient way for Western conservatives to translate the latest events to their convenience.

It’s also an opportunity. Here’s the Bush administration’s chance to claim that it’s done all it could. Sectarian battles aren’t its game ( South Carolina’s Republican primary fatwa against John McCain notwithstanding). Time to go. Time to let them sort it out.

The going won’t be literal, to be sure: The administration isn’t oiling those permanent military bases for nothing, nor does it want to have an Arab Yalta tattooed on its retreating rear. No, this would be a stealth retreat from the turbulence of the Iraqi street to the safety of U.S. garrisons on the barbarians’ rims, something even John Murtha could applaud. No retreat, no surrender, but redeployment. At least for now.

But it’s the Cambodian get-away scheme all over again: Nixon bombs Cambodia back to the Neolithic from 1970 to 1973, killing somewhere in the six figures, destabilizing the country with Lon Nol’s complicity and setting the stage for the Khmer take-over and ensuing genocide. Nixon shrugs, acts blameless.

It was a civil war, after all, and he had his own civil war on his hands, compliments of a couple of reporters from the Washington Post. With Kissinger as his Oz, Nixon spun Cambodia into just another American attempt at battling Communism in the name of freedom. The Khmers mucked it up.

And by 1973, Kissinger was throwing in the towel, Nixon was facing impeachment, and the Khmers were biding their time until their final, if brief, victory in 1975 (until the Vietnamese finally ended their killing spree in 1978). A similar scenario is unfolding in Iraq.

The United States has done nothing if not destabilize the country under the guise of building up democracy for the last three years. Bombings and night raids tend not to do democracy’s bidding. Insurgents have picked up strength. On both sides.

A Khmer-like genocide might not be in the offing, although with Lebanon and the Balkans in recent memory, and with Saddam’s tradition of facile massacres still humidifying the Mesopotamian air with the scent of unavenged blood, you never know: a genocide may well result still, giving the region’s Vietnam—Iran—an opportunity to intervene.

The moment the United States invaded the way it did and occupied the nation as boorishly as it did, the outcome couldn’t have been any different than it is now. It isn’t the Arabs who are repeating history. It is the United States repeating its own, a few time zones to the east. Same continent. Same errors, same Nixonian hubris.

Naturally, Arabs — those “barbaric” Sunnis and Shiites — will get all the blame. But the vilest fanatics are in the White House, comfortably enabling destruction from their “situation room.” The only difference between them and the barbarians who blow up mosques is a matter of dress and language, and, of course, method. The results are the same.

Judge Orders U.S. to Identify Detainees

Judge Orders U.S. to Identify Detainees

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A U.S. federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Thursday to release the identities of hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to The Associated Press, a move which would force the government to break its secrecy and reveal the most comprehensive list yet of those who have been held at the U.S. navy base in Cuba.

Some of the hundreds of prisoners in the war on terror being held at Guantanamo have been imprisoned as long as four years. Only a handful have been officially identified.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York City ordered the Defence Department to release uncensored transcripts of detainee hearings, which contain the names of prisoners in custody and those who have been held and later released. Previously released documents have had identities and other details blacked out.

The judge ordered the government to hand over the documents by March 3 after the Defence Department said Wednesday it would not appeal his earlier ruling in the lawsuit filed by the AP.

On Jan. 23, Rakoff ordered the military to turn over uncensored copies of transcripts and other documents from more than 550 military hearings for detainees at the prison camp.

U.S. authorities now hold about 490 prisoners at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Most have been held without charges since the camp opened four years ago, prompting complaints from human rights groups and others.

“AP has been fighting for this information since the fall of 2004,” said Dave Tomlin, assistant general counsel for the news organization.

“We’re grateful to have a decision at last that keeping prisoner identities secret is against the public policy and the law of this country.”

The military has never officially released the names of any prisoners, except the 10 who have been charged.

Most of those who are known emerged from the approximately 400 civil suits filed on behalf of prisoners by lawyers who obtained their names from family or other detainees, said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which represents about 200 detainees.

“They have been very resistant to releasing the names,” Ratner said.

“There are still people there who don’t have a lawyer and we don’t know who they are. They have disappeared.”

The Defence Department earlier released transcripts after the AP filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act but the names and other details of prisoners were blacked out.

The Defence Department said it would obey the judge’s order.

“The DOD will be complying with the judge’s decision in this matter,” said navy Lt.-Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Law experts said the case has wide-ranging implications.

“The government has tried to maintain Guantanamo as a black hole since they opened it,” said Jonathan Hafetz of the New York University School of Law.

“This is bringing it within the mainstream of the justice system and says we’re not going to have secret detentions at Guantanamo.”

In his ruling last month, Rakoff rejected government arguments releasing the prisoners’ names from 558 transcripts should be kept secret to protect their privacy and their families, friends and associates from embarrassment and retaliation.

The judge had given the government a month to decide whether to appeal and the U.S. Solicitor General decided not to pursue the case further, said Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York.

Nobel Laureates Join Call to End Iraq Occupation

Nobel Laureates Join Call to End Iraq Occupation

SAN FRANCISCO - Three Nobel laureates are throwing their weight behind an international coalition in demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and calling on the public to protest the occupation by taking part in nonviolent lawbreaking at U.S. military bases.

Joining the Global Call to Action coalition are Northern Ireland's Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who shared the 1976 peace prize, Britain's Harold Pinter, who won the 2005 literature prize, and Argentina's Adolfo Perez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 literature prize.

Over the coming year, Global Call to Action has planned a series of mass protests along with civil disobedience in cities around the world. The first protest is scheduled for major cities worldwide on March 25, the third anniversary of the Iraq War.

Planned events ''involve participants risking arrest as a way of showing their conviction that the occupation must end,'' said Danny Malec, a spokesman for the coalition's coordinating committee. ''Furthermore, the actions will make it more difficult for those engaged in the war and occupation to ignore the opposition to it.''

The Nobel laureates had agreed to take part in the actions in some way, Malec said without providing specifics.

Maguire, who won her prize for organizing Northern Ireland's largest nonviolent marches during one of the worst periods of killings there, said ''the USA and UK, out of fear, or worse, used the politics of revenge and the old ways of militarism, war, invasion and occupation of Iraq.''

Describing the continuing occupation as ''the business of violence, death, and exploitation,'' she said in a statement that ''it must be blocked and stopped by responsible citizens.''

Pinter, who challenged militarism and the Bush administration in his acceptance speech, said it was ''crucial'' that people grasp that the Iraq war was based on lies.

''The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,'' Pinter said.
''The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public. To define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all.''

Esquivel won his award after initiating a campaign to persuade the United Nations to create its human rights commission and for recording human rights abuses in Latin America.

The three tenors join U.S. activist and Gold Star Families for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan, whose son died on military duty in Iraq, and signatories from more than 30 countries in supporting Global Call, the coalition said.

A number of public organizations also have chimed in with the call and are expected to take part in protests. These include Code Pink, School of Americas Watch, Peace People, Pace e Bene, Christian Peacemaker Teams, International Movement for a Just World, and Shalom Center.

Malec said civil disobedience was being planned for Washington, D.C., Boston, Hartford, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and other U.S. cities.

Overseas venues included Rome, Pretoria, Madrid, Managua, Buenos Aires, and San Salvador, Malec added.

''As the U.S. population has turned against this war, we look to the support of our allies, the majority of the world's population, as we transform our private discontent into public clamor,'' said Joe Mulligan, Global Call to Action's Iraq spokesperson.
''We invite people to organize wherever they are to help bring an end to this unjust occupation of a sovereign nation.''

Participation in civil disobedience could lead to legal repercussions, the coalition warned potential members.
I value how Thoreau thought and wrote.

Nonviolent civil disobedience has been used to foment change in unresponsive governments around the world, most famously in India, but has not been widespread in the United States since the days of Martin Luther King Jr.

To what extent the public climbs on board with illegal resistance planned for the coming year remains to be seen, activists acknowledge, but they appear in little doubt that the public is growing more restless for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

A recent Zogby Interactive poll said that 55 percent of the U.S. public wanted a phased withdrawal of American forces from Iraq while 46 per cent favored an immediate withdrawal.

President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address last month, ruled out a withdrawal of troops from Iraq any time soon. BU*SH*IT

''A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison, put men like [Osama] bin Laden and [Abu Musab al] Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country and show that a pledge from America means little,'' he said, referring to the head of al Qaeda and the terrorist network's top man in Iraq. so you sold our ports to the arab emrites

Bush is not alone. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, also has warned that American and coalition troops should not leave Iraq prematurely.

In polar opposition to Bush's stance, Maguire said withdrawal is the only way the UK and U.S. can calm Iraq. DUH-BYA

''Actions [like the ongoing Iraq war] bring forth counter-violence and have for the foreseeable future made the world a more dangerous place for us all. The occupation of Iraq should end and an inquiry into those responsible in the UK and USA administrations, who illegally took the world to war, should begin,'' Maguire said.

With some 8,500 troops still deployed in Iraq, the British government announced earlier this month that it intends to lower the number of troops assigned there.

Britain has said in late March it plans to begin withdrawing about 600 troops on a humanitarian reconstruction mission in the Iraqi city of Samawah.

The U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein's regime began in March 2003. At least 2,248 American soldiers have died since military operations began and more than 16,500 troops have been injured--25 percent of them severely, according to official figures.

By most estimates, more than 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed and some 100,000 wounded.

In dollars, total U.S. spending on the war reached $251 billion as of Dec. 30, 2005, according to Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz. That amounted to about $200 million a day or more than $138,000 a minute.

UAE, Jolted by Port Deal, Is Key Western Arms Buyer

UAE, Jolted by Port Deal, Is Key Western Arms Buyer

UNITED NATIONS - The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the center of a growing controversy over its proposed management of U.S. port terminals, is one of the world's most prolific arms buyers and a multi-billion-dollar military market both for the United States and Western Europe.

The energy-rich Persian Gulf nation is currently taking delivery of about 8.4 billion dollars worth of military equipment, mostly state-of-the-art fighter aircraft, ordered from the United States (6.4 billion) and France (two billion) over the last five years.

The delivery of 80 U.S.-built F-16 E/F fighter planes -- described as one of the biggest single arms packages to a Middle Eastern nation and finalized back in March 2000 -- is to be completed only in 2007.

U.S. President George W. Bush's threat to veto any attempts to block last week's deal permitting a state-owned UAE company to take over the management of six U.S. port terminals has underlined the significance of the political and military relationship between the two countries.

Despite growing bipartisan opposition to the deal -- mostly prompted by a fear-psychosis that U.S. ports should not be managed by a state-owned Arab company because of possible terrorist infiltration -- Bush says the UAE has been a strong U.S. ally in the fight against global terrorism.

He also sees no risk in a Middle Eastern company overseeing U.S. ports and shipping terminals despite potential terrorist threats.

But an equally significant fact in the longstanding bilateral relationship is that the UAE is a vibrant arms market not only for the United States but also its allies in Western Europe, particularly France and Britain.

"The UAE (arms) market is definitely important to the United States," says Tom Baranauskas, a senior Middle East analyst at the Connecticut-based Forecast International, a leading provider of defense market intelligence services.

"Just the order for 80 of the newest-generation F-16E/Fs" alone was a major buy from the United States, he said.

"Interestingly, there are already upgrades planned for these fighter planes even though they have not completed delivery," Baranauskas told IPS.

The upgrades and maintenance of the already delivered aircraft -- and proposed new arms purchases -- will have to be ensured only by a continued military relationship between the UAE and the United States.

But he also pointed out that the UAE military's procurement priorities are shifting, "and this shift may affect the U.S. competitiveness, and actually benefit Europeans more than the United States".

Besides French Mirage fighter planes, the UAE has also taken delivery of about 36 British Aerospace Hawk 100 trainer/ground attack aircraft, four warships from Germany, and two frigates from the Netherlands. Additionally, France has supplied about 400 battle tanks in a deal worth nearly 3.8 billion dollars.

With an armed force of only about 50,000 to 60,000 troops, the UAE is considered one of the world's best equipped militaries. A country which does not receive any U.S. military aid, the UAE pays hard currency for all its weapons purchases.

Projected orders for military equipment from the United States exceeded 650,000 dollars in 2005, with an anticipated increase to about 1.9 billion dollars in 2006, according to estimated figures released by the U.S. State Department in early February.

According to Forecast International, the UAE's military budget for 2006 is estimated at about 3.7 billion dollars, compared with 20.2 billion dollars by Saudi Arabia, the Middle Eastern nation with the largest single defence budget, followed by Israel (9.9 billion dollars), Iran (7.9 billion dollars) and Kuwait (4.9 billion dollars).

A country with the world's third largest oil reserves and the fifth largest gas reserves, the UAE has a per capita income of over 17,000 dollars, with oil accounting for 30 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 75 percent of national revenues.

The unprecedented rise in oil prices in world markets -- from about 12 dollars per barrel in 1998 to 65 dollars last week -- has increased the purchasing power of countries such as the UAE.

Baranauskas said that "looking at the UAE inventory of weapons, particularly fighter planes, it is quite obvious that the Emirates does rely heavily on the U.S. as a source".

But it is also obvious that the UAE does not "put all its eggs in one basket" as evidenced by the procurement of French and British weapons systems.

"If I had to hazard a guess on the potential impact of the current imbroglio, there will be increased interest on the part of the UAE military to move to further arms source diversification" -- and away from relying too heavily on the United States.

"You could already see some UAE unhappiness over a failed deal to buy Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft due to the U.S. refusal to fully transfer Link-16 secure communications technology," he added.

The Europeans traditionally have been more willing to sell equipment without strictures, and well-equipped militaries with the wherewithal to buy high-tech equipment are not going to settle for systems that cannot be used to their full capabilities because the U.S. refuses to provide the full-up version, Baranauskas said.

"Yet, Israel usually gets such full-up versions. The double-standard here is noted and duly filed away in memory, to possibly rebound in a later competition," he added.

'Big Brother' Watching E-mail, Computer Data: US Report

'Big Brother' Watching E-mail, Computer Data: US Report

Fast-evolving Internet and communications technology is outpacing privacy laws and leaving a treasure trove of personal data prey to government surveillance, a new report warned.

The survey by the non-profit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) appeared as debate rages over a domestic wiretap program in the United States and government lawyers demand search records held by firms like Google.

The government complains that new technology makes its job more difficult, but the fact is that digital technology has vastly augmented the government's powers.

Center for Democracy and Technology report

"The gap between law and technology is widening every day, and privacy is eroding," said Jim Dempsey, the CDT policy director who authored the report.

"What makes this even more troubling is that most users of these new technologies don't realize they are putting their privacy in jeopardy."

Modern consumers live in an age when web based e-mails pileup on services like Microsoft's Hotmail and Google's Gmail, and all kinds of files from personal photos to bank, medical and travel records are stored online.

Few computer users realise however, that web based e-mail is subject to much weaker protections than messages stored on home computers.

While the government needs a warrant, issued by a judge, to search someone's home computer, it can access a person's webmail account with only a subpoena, issued without judicial review.

In another example, the ubiquitous cellphone makes communication on the move easy -- but it has a downside, in that it can be used theoretically by government agencies to pinpoint an individual's location.

There are no existing laws laying out explicit standards for government location tracking, so official use of such technology is only controlled by an inadequate patchwork of laws and precedents, the report said.

Few people realise that privacy laws drafted before, or in the early days of the technological revolution, do not adequately cover new vaults of online data, the report warns.

"The government complains that new technology makes its job more difficult, but the fact is that digital technology has vastly augmented the government's powers," the report cautions.

"More information is more readily available to government investigators than ever before," the report said.

And it is not just the pace of change that raises new privacy questions, the report added, citing new government powers enshrined in the Patriot Act, designed to combat terrorism which provide wider government powers.

It’s Munich In America. There Will Be No Normandy.

It’s Munich In America. There Will Be No Normandy.

This is it, folks. This is the scenario our Founders lost sleep over. This is the day they prepared us for.

Outside the Philadelphia convention Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government he and his colleagues were crafting. His reply? “A republic. If you can keep it.” And that is just the question at issue today. Can we keep it?

Sure, it can sound melodramatic to use the f-word (no, not the one Churlish Cheney hurled at Patrick Leahy), and I have mostly avoided doing so for just that reason. Especially where the politically less informed are concerned, arguing that America is slipping into fascism can be the first and last point they’ll hear you make.

But, nowadays, even George F. Will is worried. You know you’re in a seriously bad place when that happens.

America may not be a fascist country today, but it’s not for want of trying. I have no question but that through Dick Cheney’s dark heart courses the blood of Mussolini. No wonder the damn thing’s so diseased. And I have no doubt that Karl Rove has only admiration and envy for Joseph Goebbels. Hey, why can’t we do that here? (Hint: We are.)

America is not a fascist country (if it was, you wouldn’t be reading this), but pardon me if I don’t defer to Bush defenders and ringside Democrats who consider me hysterical for worrying about the direction in which we’re heading.

These are the same people who’ve spent the last two decades denying the existence of global warming, while we now learn with each passing week how much worse than we had ever imagined is that environmental wreckage. These are the same people who said Iraq would be a cakewalk, and planned accordingly.

These are the same people who prepared us for 9/11, the Iraq occupation, Hurricane Katrina and the prescription drug plan, and who have set new records for ineptitude in responding to those crises.

These are the people who can’t get body armor on our troops, three years after launching the war, and who are getting flunking grades in terrorism preparation from the 9/11 Commission four years after that attack. One wounded soldier had to pay for his body armor before he would be discharged. The military burned it.

These are the same people who have turned a massive surplus into a record-setting debt, and coupled it with equally breathtaking trade deficits. And now they want to cut federal tax revenue even more.

Yes, he is the president, but golly gee, Sargent Carter, he sure seems to make an awful lot of mistakes!

So forgive me if I don’t trust their judgement on matters of rather serious importance.

Forgive me if I don’t stand by hoping they’re right as the two hundred year-old experiment in American democracy goes down the toilet.

Besides, I thought being a conservative meant taking the prudent course, anyhow. Even if there was only a one in a hundred chance that a grenade was live, would you play with it?

Wouldn’t it have been better to have acted ‘conservatively’ with the fate of the planet at stake, and assumed that global warming might be real?

And, likewise, shouldn’t we worry about what is happening to American democracy now, while we still can?

The truth is, there is a government in office which seeks such complete power and dominance that even some conservatives have started to notice.

Too blind to see the true intentions of this bunch, they can at least figure out that an imperial presidency created by George Bush might one day be inherited by Hillary Clinton (complete with her plans for a revolutionary dope-smoking lesbian Marxist state and global UN domination, enforced by an armada of black helicopters), so now even these fools are getting nervous about where this goes.

They know that the only difference between the monarchism our Founders so reviled and contemporary Cheneyism is that the technology of our time allows George Bush to turn George III into George Orwell.

It’s Munich in America, people. I'd rather be in Munich

We can dream the pleasant dream that if we just stand by quietly while the Boy King gobbles up some of our liberties, he won’t want any more, but that would be a lot like Chamberlain dreaming that a chunk of Czechoslovakia would be enough to appease Hitler. It wasn’t, and it won’t be.

Do I overstate the concern? The New York Times recently editorialized “We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers – and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.”

The Times should know. Between rah-rah’ing the war for Bush, sitting on the Downing Street Memos as if they were banana import trade policy documents, and covering for Judith Miller while she covered for The Cheney Gang, they have about as much blood on their hands as does Donald Rumsfeld.

But if even the Times can work up the concern to print a line like that, we’re in a world of hurt.

And we are, in fact, in a world of hurt. Those shreds of parchment on the floor of the National Archives aren’t from Mrs. Washington’s shopping list, I’m afraid to say.

It is true, of course, that other presidents – even the best of them – have taken enormous liberties with the Constitution, especially during wartime. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, FDR jailed Americans on the West Coast for the crime of having Japanese ancestry, Truman and Eisenhower stood by while McCarthyism ripped a gaping hole through American civil liberties, and Nixon and his plumbers went to work on his political enemies in the name of national security.

Of course, we now look back on those episodes as among the most shameful in American history. But the present crew is even more dangerous for their intentions of creating permanent war to justify permanent repression.

Already they’ve torn large chunks out of the Constitution.

Article One creates the legislative branch, that which the Founders intended to be the most powerful and consequential.

Today, we have a president who makes the stunning assertion that he is the “sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs”. This Congress seems mostly to agree, even though the Founders gave them the power to declare war, to fund all governmental activities, to ratify treaties and to oversee the executive. Who, us? Bye-bye Article One.

Article Three creates a Supreme Court to adjudicate disputes (especially over governmental powers) and to protect the Constitution. But BushCo can’t be bothered to follow even the Court’s tentative interventions into due process concerning Guantánamo and beyond. And why should it? By the time they get done with loading the damn thing up with ‘unitary executive’ fifth-column shills like Roberts and Alito, it will be a moot court, just like the ones in law school. Once the Supreme Court becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the executive branch (about one vote from now), it’s bye-bye Article Three.

The First Amendment guarantees the freedom to assemble in protest. But protest is a joke in Bush’s America. People are kenneled off into pens so far from the president he is never confronted with any contrary views at all, apart from the odd funeral he has to show up at but Rove can’t script.

The halls of Congress are ground zero for American democracy, much boasted about at home and jammed down the throat of the world (except when the results don’t favor American corporate or strategic interests).

But go there and sit in the balcony wearing a t-shirt with the number of dead soldiers in Iraq printed on it and see how fast you get a lesson in Bush’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights.

And that little display at the state of the union address was no freak event, either. That kind of thing happened all the time during the 2004 campaign. At Bush rallies, people were getting arrested for the bumper-stickers on their cars.

The First Amendment also protects freedom of the press. That freedom has not been eliminated, per se, but it has been effectively neutered beyond effectiveness.

Between the White House intimidating most of the press, coopting the rest, stonewalling information requests, planting stories in the American and foreign media, and buying off journalists, today’s mainstream media has too often become a pathetic megaphone for White House lies, and that includes those supposed bastions of liberalism, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bye-bye First Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees “against unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation”.
Can you say “NSA”? “Guantánamo”? “Abu Ghraib”? It’s bad enough that Bush has authorized himself to bug anybody, arrest anybody, convict anybody and silence anybody, but his NSA chief doesn’t even appear to have read the Fourth Amendment.

That whole thing about probable cause was lost on him, as he and his president simultaneously trampled the separation of powers and checks and balances doctrines by eliminating two out of three branches of government from their little surveillance loop.

Meanwhile, informed estimates repeatedly assert that the majority of detainees rotting away in Guantánamo are there either because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time simply and got swept away like so much garbage into a dustpan, or were reported as al Qaeda so that one Afghan clan could use the US military to burn another.

And so there they sit, unable to be charged, to be tried, to exercise habeas corpus, to have representation, to confront witnesses – unable now even to starve themselves to death in protest. (But they are being tube fed laxatives...)

If this wasn’t precisely the fear of the Founders when they put this language into the Constitution, then Dick Cheney is a poster boy for the ACLU. Strike the Fourth Amendment.

And take with it the Fifth (no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”), the Sixth (“the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury”, the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense”), and the Eighth, providing against “cruel and unusual punishments”). Boom, boom, boom.

In a disgusting display of legal sophistry, the administration would argue that these provisions don’t apply because of jurisdiction, which of course was the entire purpose for putting their gulag in Guantánamo in the first place.

As if it is not American territory since we ‘lease’ it from Cuba. As if Castro could send in the police to clean up the open sore of Bush’s human rights travesty there, and the US could do nothing about it, since it is Cuban land. Right.

But even if Fun With Domestic Jurisprudence is to be their game, the actions of the administration also represent a massive breach of international law, since the Geneva Conventions prohibit precisely these sorts of horrors which the Creature from Crawford has visited upon the poor SOBs caught in his dragnet.

Your scissors are probably getting a bit dull by now, but this means that not only is international law in scraps, but you can also go ahead and cut out Article Six of the Constitution as well, which provides that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land”. Ah, how ‘quaint’. How very ‘obsolete’.

Such treaties may be the supreme law in some land, but apparently not in Bush Land. Or, at least not if you don’t mind another cute legal charade, in which a new category of POWs called “unlawful combatants” is fabricated with the intention of rendering – with disingenuousness extraordinaire – the detainees as falling outside the Geneva provisions.

That’s precious, as if a ‘lawful’ Bush all of a sudden got religion for the fine points of international jurisprudence. Except, of course, when it came to the need for obtaining a Security Council resolution to invade Iraq. Except when it comes to the International Criminal Court, which the Bush junta has been desperately trying to undermine at every opportunity (gee, I wonder why, given the Court’s mandate to prosecute war criminals). Except for nuclear nonproliferation. Except for the use of white phosphorus in Falluja. Apparently the only legal distinctions these guys follow are the ones Bush orders Alberto Gonzales, that paragon of legal independence and the rule of law, to create for him out of whole cloth. That international law.

There’s not much left of the Constitution now that these guys have tortured it as if it were some personal project in Lynndie England’s basement. Of course, they’ve made damn sure that the Second Amendment is fully protected, to the point where John Ashcroft wouldn’t investigate the gun purchase records of the 9/11 hijackers.

You gotta love that. I wish they gave the rest of the Bill of Rights a tenth of the attention the Second Amendment gets. Heck, for that matter, I wish they’d even interpret the Second Amendment properly. Maybe in my next lifetime.

Meanwhile, arguably the three most brilliant inventions of the Constitution are separation of powers, the guarantee of civil liberties, and federalism.

Even the latter – which has least to do with foreign affairs or checking executive power, and therefore has been least assaulted – is under duress as the Bush Gang attack state power any time it strays from their regressive political agenda, for instance with respect to euthanasia, medical marijuana or affirmative action.

In fact, all three of these key constitutional doctrines are suffering under a brutal assault from a regime which finds democracy and liberty fundamentally inconvenient to their aspirations for unlimited power. The administration absurdly claims to be bringing democracy to the Mid-East.

(After that whole WMD thing went MIA, and Saddam’s links to al Qaeda proved equally credible, what the hell else were they going to say?). But far from the ludicrous claims that they are agents for the spread of democracy abroad, they are busy unraveling it with furious industry here at home.

It is, I’m afraid, Munich in America, and now we must decide whether to appease the bullies and pray for happy endings, or fight back to preserve a two hundred year-old experiment in democracy. Despite all its flaws and failures, Churchill was still right about it: Democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others. And that makes it worth fighting for.

But the spot we’re in now is actually worse than Munich, because there will be no Normandy in this war, and no Stalingrad. No country with the deterrent threat of a nuclear arsenal can ever be invaded by another country or group of countries, regardless of the magnitude of the latter’s own military power.

That means we’re on our own, folks. If we flip completely over to the dark side, nobody will be storming our beaches and scrambling up our cliffs to liberate us from our own folly.

Hell, if they weren’t so worried about the international menace we represent, they’d probably be laughing at us, anyhow, thinking how richly we deserved the government we got.

But there’s nothing funny about this situation. Hitler dreamed of a thousand year reich, but didn’t count on the resilience of an endless army of Slavs, or the technological prowess of a nation of shopkeepers’ great-grandchildren hammering his would-be millennium down to a decade.

If the US goes authoritarian (or worse), on the other hand, who will play Russia or America to our Germany? The answer is no one, and it is not apocalyptic paranoia to fear a very, very long period of unrelenting political darkness, once the curtain comes down.

Is this the beginning of the end for American democracy? Maybe. I have no doubt that unchecked Cheneyism intends precisely that. It’s therefore up to the rest of us to stop it. It’s up to us to say yes to Philadelphia, and no to Munich. Because there will be no Normandy.

Now we find out if we can keep Mr. Franklin’s republic, after all.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (pscdmg@hofstra.edu), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.

Bush Would Veto Any Bill Halting Dubai Port Deal - New York Times

Bush Would Veto Any Bill Halting Dubai Port Deal - New York Times

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — President Bush, trying to put down a rapidly escalating rebellion among leaders of his own party, said Tuesday that he would veto any legislation blocking a deal for a state-owned company in Dubai to take over the management of port terminals in New York, Miami, Baltimore and other major American cities.

Mr. Bush issued the threat after the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, publicly criticized the deal and said a thorough review was necessary to ensure that terrorists could not exploit the arrangement to slip weapons into American ports. Mr. Bush suggested that the objections to the deal might be based on bias against a company from the Middle East, one he said was an ally in fighting terrorism.

"If there was any chance that this transaction would jeopardize the security of the United States, it would not go forward," Mr. Bush said, discussing a government review of the deal that began in October and ended on Jan. 16 without producing any objections from officials in his administration.

The president added, "This is a company that has played by the rules, that has been cooperative with the United States, a country that's an ally in the war on terror, and it would send a terrible signal to friends and allies not to let this transaction go through."

The White House was taken by surprise when Mr. Frist and Mr. Hastert joined Democratic leaders in Congress and other prominent Republicans, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, in calling for the government to stop the deal from closing next week as scheduled.

"We have not received the necessary assurances regarding security concerns," Mr. Bloomberg wrote in a letter to the president on Tuesday evening. He said he was joining New York's two Democratic senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, in calling for a 45-day investigation of the deal under a federal law that governs the review of foreign investments.

Mr. Frist gave the White House only an hour's notice before breaking ranks and saying that "the decision to finalize this deal should be put on hold." He said that if a delay did not occur, he would "plan on introducing legislation to ensure that the deal is placed on hold until this decision gets a more thorough review."

The response from the White House set up a confrontation between Mr. Bush, who has said his primary goal is protecting the American people, and the leadership of his party in Congress, which is approaching midterm elections.

Mr. Bush rarely makes veto threats, and he has not vetoed a single bill in his more than five years in office. He issued his remarks after calling reporters into his conference room aboard Air Force One while flying back to Washington from Colorado, and then repeated them for television cameras after stepping out of his helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House.

The White House appeared to have considered the deal routine, especially because so many foreign firms — from Singapore, Denmark and Japan — run major port terminals in the United States and have for years. But Senator Schumer, in an interview, said:

"I don't think China or Britain or many of the others have the nexus with terrorism that Dubai has. What kind of controls do they have to prevent infiltration?"

Mr. Bush's aides rejected that line of thought, saying the company in question, Dubai Ports World, which is owned by the government of Dubai, would have no control over security issues at the six terminal operations it is seeking to buy, at New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans. The company would not own the ports but would operate some of the terminals in these cities.

They pointed out that a similar purchase involving the container-handling division of the CSX Corporation, which was bought by Dubai Ports in December 2004, went through with no objections. In that case, none of the terminals Dubai Ports assumed control of were in the United States.

But the central argument of the deal's proponents is that the United Arab Emirates have aided the United States in pursuing terror groups.

"We have naval visits there and landing rights," said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, which has set a briefing on the subject for Thursday. "We have to move carefully in considering the implications of what we do." We imposed that right to land there.

But Dubai's record is hardly unblemished. Two of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks came from the United Arab Emirates and laundered some of their money through its banking system. It was also the main transshipment point for Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear engineer who ran the world's largest nuclear proliferation ring from warehouses near the port, met Iranian officials there, and shipped centrifuge equipment, which can be used to enrich uranium, from there to Libya.

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Congressmen worry about ports deal with Dubai firm

Top News Article | Reuters.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers will seek quick action in Congress to block a deal under which a state-owned Dubai company would manage major U.S. seaports, they said on Tuesday. IMPEACH BUSH

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer and Republican Congressman Peter King, who is chairman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, would push the legislation as soon as Congress resumes on Monday, Schumer's office said in a statement.

King said on Sunday the Bush administration had failed to put adequate security conditions on the deal, which has raised concerns about the safety of strategic facilities considered vulnerable since the September 11 attacks.

King said that before the administration approved the sale of British firm P&O, which manages six U.S. ports, to Dubai Ports World of the United Arab Emirates, it failed to determine whether the company could be trusted.

The UAE company would control management of ports in New York and New Jersey, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Miami.

"In light of these critical functions being transferred from a private company based in Britain to a United Arab Emirates government-owned company based in Dubai ... Sen. Schumer and Congressman Peter King will announce their emergency legislation to suspend the Dubai port deal," the statement said.

FULL INVESTIGATION

It said the legislation would require a full investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and Congress would have authority to stop the sale.

Congressman Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, and Rep. Vito Fossella, a New York Republican, were to hold a news conference at the Port of Miami on Tuesday with a spokesman for the shipping firm suing to stop the ports' operations from being sold to Dubai Ports.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also backed calls by Schumer, a Democrat, and other legislators for further review of the contract, a spokesman said. "Their concerns need to be met and addressed," the spokesman said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has defended the deal, saying the administration approved it after a classified review and included provisions to protect national security.

New York's other U.S. senator, Democrat Hillary Clinton, said last week she planned legislation to ban companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations, and Republican Gov. George Pataki has also criticized the deal.

U.S. seaports handle 2 billion tonnes of freight each year. Only about 5 percent of containers are examined on arrival and since September 11, 2001, security experts in New York have been particularly concerned about ports' vulnerability to attack.

U.S. officials have praised the United Arab Emirates for steps to protect its booming financial sector against abuse by terrorism financiers.
Money for the September 11 attacks was wired through the UAE's banking system, according to U.S. officials. Two of the September 11 hijackers were UAE citizens.

Lawmakers Deride Assurances on Arab Port Firm

Lawmakers Deride Assurances on Arab Port Firm

WTF????

U.S. terms for approving an Arab company's takeover of operations at six major American ports are insufficient to guard against terrorist infiltration, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said yesterday.

"I'm aware of the conditions, and they relate entirely to how the company carries out its procedures, but it doesn't go to who they hire, or how they hire people," said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.).

They're better than nothing, but to me they don't address the underlying conditions, which is how are they going to guard against things like infiltration by al Qaeda or someone else, how are they going to guard against corruption?" King said.

King spoke in response to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's comments yesterday about conditions of the sale. King said he learned about the government's terms for approving the sale from meetings with senior Bush administration officials.

Chertoff defended the security review of Dubai Ports World of the United Arab Emirates, the company given permission to take over the port operations. This is homeland security?

Chertoff said the government typically builds in "certain conditions or requirements that the company has to agree to to make sure we address the national security concerns." But Chertoff declined to discuss specifics, saying that information is classified.

"We make sure there are assurances in place, in general, sufficient to satisfy us that the deal is appropriate from a national security standpoint," Chertoff said on ABC's "This Week."

London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. was bought last week by DP World, a state-owned business. Peninsular and Oriental runs major commercial operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

A Miami company, Continental Stevedoring & Terminals Inc., has sued in Florida, challenging the deal. A subsidiary of Eller & Company Inc., Continental says it will become an "involuntary partner" with Dubai's government under the sale.

Lawmakers from both parties are questioning the sale as a possible risk to national security.

"It's unbelievably tone deaf politically at this point in our history," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said on "Fox News Sunday."

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), on CBS's "Face the Nation," said, "It is ridiculous to say you're taking secret steps to make sure that it's okay for a nation that had ties to 9/11, [to] take over part of our port operations in many of our largest ports. This has to stop."

At least one Senate oversight hearing is planned for later this month.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is working on legislation to prohibit companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from running port operations in the United States, said Chertoff's comments showed him that the administration "just does not get it."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) joined some relatives of Sept. 11 victims at a news conference to urge President Bush to personally intervene. The president "should override the agreement and conduct a special investigation into the matter," Schumer said.

Radio Left :: Why it mattered that Cheney kept shooting secret

Radio Left :: Why it mattered that Cheney kept shooting secret

Now that the jokes have died down and speculation about an indictment of Cheney for attempted murder has dissipated, here’s the reason it was important to report on the shooting promptly.

You might not have guessed, but I’m not a big fan of Vice President Dick. And I do believe that he has a right to a private life. The media did not need to be stalking him on a hunting trip.

However, once the shooting occurred, Vice President Dick accompanied his friend to the hospital. Despite his secretiveness, his face is well known. Dozens of people at the hospital would have seen him – even if he was secluded in the intensive care unit. Someone was likely to call the local paper to say they just saw Cheney in the hospital. With his history of heart disease, the conclusion could be that it was Cheney, not his friend, in intensive care.

Cheney’s excuse that he wanted an accurate report to be issued before releasing any information is ridiculous. A simple statement that said, “The Vice President accompanied a friend who was injured in a hunting accident to Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial. More information will be released later.”

The purpose is to avoid speculation that could send the world into a frenzy if it were, indeed, the Vice President who was hospitalized in critical condition. And it would have avoided speculation of a cover-up.

But the jokes would have still been there.

Radio Left :: What is the price of hate? $363.8 million

Radio Left :: What is the price of hate? $363.8 million

The Service Leaders Defense Network reports that a new Blue Ribbon Commission of military experts today estimated the total cost of implementing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law to be $363.8 million. and then some

SLDN defends those kicked out of the military under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and lobbies against the policy itself.

“‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ places an unnecessary burden on American taxpayers by asking them to fund a discriminatory law that hurts military readiness,” said C. Dixon Osburn, Executive Director of SLDN.

“The choice is clear: spend $364 million on firing patriotic Americans or spend the same amount on three dozen Blackhawk helicopters, 4,000 sidewinder missiles, or enough body armor vests to outfit the entire American fighting force in Iraq. Our priority should always be defense and national security.”

The commission looking into this waste of a third of a billion dollars included William J. Perry, former Secretary of Defense and Dr. Lawrence J. Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense.

“Our nation has lost the talents and expertise of 10,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender patriots who want to serve our nation. When we fire Arabic translators, helicopter pilots, combat engineers and troops on the ground simply because they are gay, every American pays the price,” Osburne said.

While appealing to true conservatives who would be concerned with such an abhorrent waste of money, the organization does not understand the value of hatred by the extreme right-wing.

Those advocates of discrimination do not care about having translators to prevent future attacks or armor to protect troops. These people did not serve in the armed forces and neither will their children. What is the right-wing answer to national security? Ban gay marriage. Spend hundreds of millions of dollars to institutionalize hate and dismiss all the troops we want despite dwindling enlistment.

Amnesty International

Amnesty International

USA: Amnesty Welcomes UN Call to Close Guantánamo Bay – But it Is Tip of Iceberg

WASHINGTON - February 16 - Amnesty International welcomes today’s United Nations report calling for the closure of the US military detention centre at Guantánamo Bay and urges governments, human rights defenders and its members around the world to send a clear message to the US government that it is time for Guantánamo to go. The UN experts also concluded that interrogation techniques authorized for use at the facility violate the Convention against Torture; that international human rights law is applicable to the facility and that the US is obliged to either bring the detainees to trial under US law or release them. Susan Lee, Director of Amnesty International’s Americas Programme said: "The report confirms concerns which AI has repeatedly raised with the US government. We have consistently called for the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay to be closed. The US can no longer make the case, morally or legally, for keeping it open.” Guantánamo Bay is just the tip of the iceberg. The United States also operates detention facilities at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq and has been implicated in the use of secret detention facilities in other countries, also known as 'black sites'. All these facilities, including Guantánamo Bay, must be opened to independent scrutiny. All detainees should have access to the courts and should be treated humanely. These are basic principles that cannot be overridden even in time of war or national emergency. To date the US has rejected any independent inquiry into its overseas detention facilities, nor has Washington been prepared to cooperate with a Council of Europe investigation into 'rendition' of terrorism suspects. The selective disregard for international law by the United States in the context of the 'war on terror' has enormous influence over the rest of the world. When the US commits serious human rights violations it sends a signal to abusive governments that these practices are permissible. This is why Guantánamo Bay is so important: it tells other governments that they can commit human rights violations in the name of counter-terrorism too.

See No Evil, Become That Evil: Supporting the War As An Act of Unpatriotic Cowardice

See No Evil, Become That Evil: Supporting the War As An Act of Unpatriotic Cowardice

Nowadays, Americans have to actively journey far out of their way to blind themselves to how the country was utterly duped into fighting a completely unnecessary war in Iraq.

Last week, the former chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell called the WMD rationale for the invasion “a hoax on the American people."

This week, the top CIA official in charge of intelligence assessments on Iraq reported that the administration “used intelligence not to inform decision making, but to justify a decision already made," and that “it went to war without requesting – and evidently without being influenced by – any strategic level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.”

Add these to the revelations which have already been made by other top officials and those with access to them – Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, Bob Graham, Bob Woodward (along with Powell’s chief of staff and CIA spooks, a bunch of radical anti-American lefties if ever there were any).

Not to mention certain inconvenient facts on the ground, like the complete absence of WMD in Iraq and a war that’s gone completely off the rails. It’s getting to the point where you have to very badly want to believe whatever the president says in order to do so. It’s getting to the point where you have to actively hide from the evidence in order to keep your faith-based war politics safe from the cognitive dissonance induced by overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.

Unfortunately, that is precisely what many conservatives are now choosing to do.

And to some extent, I don’t even care. If some forty percent of the American public is crouched in such a state of perpetual fear, I guess they have problems enough without being further burdened by somebody’s extended rants on the existential threat which willful ignorance poses to a democracy.

And to some further extent, I don’t even care that they still bolster their own ideological insecurities by throwing down yet again the card which the regressive right plays so well (they must have 53 of them in their decks): the attack labeling critics of the president’s patently failed policies as traitors and threats to American security. By the way, that group includes a heck of a lot of people nowadays. Just once I’d like to see Bill O’Reilly question the patriotism of the 57 percent of Americans (that’s 171 million of your fellow citizens, Bill) who disapprove of the way Bush is handling Iraq. But, alas, more likely that will have to wait for another lifetime...

No, even though conservatives make it their business to constantly worry about my sexual proclivities, I will not return the favor. They are free to indulge themselves in as much private political masturbation as suits them.

But what I do mind, I really have to say, is their loudly-proclaimed belief that they are patriots, and that they support the troops in Iraq.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could further misunderstand the intentions of the American Founders to create a republic on these shores. Nothing could be more corrosive of democracy. And nothing could be less supportive of our troops suffering in the bottomless pit George Bush created for them in Iraq.

I don’t care if someone concludes on the other side of an educational process that this war really does make us safer, that it really was morally justified, and that those beliefs really do support the troops over there. That’s fine – do your homework and reach whatever conclusion you reach. But, goddammit, if you’re gonna make those claims, the very least you can do is to genuinely examine the facts. The very least you can do is transcend your own fears just enough to learn the truth about the war.

People are dying in Iraq by the tens of thousands, and that destructive project is entirely dependent on the acquiescence of the American people in allowing it to continue in their name, and financed by their tax dollars (or, more accurately, by their children’s tax dollars which will be used to pay back the massive loans we are racking up in China and Japan).

No one who is a true patriot can support such a grave policy decision until they have seriously examined it. No one who really supports the troops can put them in harm’s way without studying and analyzing carefully the justification for doing so.

Anyone who does otherwise is, in fact, an unpatriotic coward.

For what could be more unpatriotic than to support a war – the most serious decision a government can make – without learning the facts? What could be less supportive of the troops than to allow them to go kill, to die and get maimed without being sure there is a good justification for doing so? And if the reasons for thoughtlessly sending people off to war are either laziness or fear of one’s own inadequacies, what could be more despicable?

Recently I published an essay suggesting that the President of the United States was at war with Americanism, for all the obvious reasons (see the Bill of Rights for further elaboration). That piece produced the following emailed response (with the subject line: “Get A Life”) from a conservative reader: “I read your article. Have you ever had any family or friends hit by the terrorists? In my opinion you are just another loser liberal. I served in the military.(Yes, and It was BU*SH*IT) Did you? Go ‘W’.”

So I wrote back at some length, posing some difficult questions for my interlocutor to consider.

He did not. But he did write back to tell me of his surprise at receiving my note and his admiration at my actually responding. I get this all the time. I think the shock troops of the fearful right must be so bought into their own stereotypes (and perhaps also inadvertently reflecting their own level of political comprehension) that they figure all of us on the other side are just mindless Michael Moore clones taking our marching orders from Havana. They seem so surprised when you show them that you can think on your own, that you’re willing to engage in dialog, that you have facts to support your arguments, and that you can actually string two coherent sentences together, back to back.

That became more evident when my correspondent wrote “I don't follow or believe the likes of Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Hillary and of course, the great Jesse. I have to assume these are the leaders you follow. Your arguments mirror these jerks.” Leaving aside the rich irony of his presumption that I’m a fan of Hillary Clinton’s, what I think this comment reveals is a mind set in which politics is a game where citizens pick the ‘leaders’ they then slavishly follow and support, never quite coming to their own conclusions or interpretations. In my book, it is a politics which is a lot more reminiscent of either baseball or religion than it is of citizenship in a participatory democracy.

Which brings to mind another comment my friend on the right made in this second and last note to me, after apparently believing he had parried the questions I posed to him: “I will concede you are a good writer. You must teach English.” This I took to actually mean, “Your words make a lot of sense, and so does the evidence you present, but that can’t be right because you’re a liberal and these ideas contradict my political gospel. Therefore you must be tricking me with your fancy rhetoric.”

After receiving from me just a handful of challenging questions, my right-wing correspondent replied “How do you know the W planned to invade Iraq before 9/11? How do you know Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? How do you know the W is a liar? All liberal propaganda.”

And then he concluded with this: “Please do not write back. I will not open your mail again. I see neither of us winning this war of words. I'm too busy thinking about more important issues.”

Clearly, he is saying that he doesn’t want to think about this stuff. Rather than letting me answer his questions, which is easily and conclusively done, he immediately writes it all off as “liberal propaganda”. But, just to make sure no errant facts should crawl beneath the door and invade his warm cocoon of self-deceit, he then not only asks me not to write back, but insists that he will refuse to look at anything I send. Why he didn’t just come right out and say “See No Evil”, I don’t know.

‘Course, I wrote him back anyhow. ‘Course, I know he read my note, too – though he was careful not to give me the satisfaction of telling me so.

I have no desire to pick on this nice gentleman, who appears from his own description to be a good family man, successful career guy, etc. I just think he is entirely reflective of a very pervasive mentality in this country, and that this mentality is crippling us. Agreed!

This is the reason why those of us on the thinking left are just so incredulous, so paralyzingly shocked at the support that exists for George Bush. It is as if someone wrote the textbook on how to be a disastrous president and he walked into the part as an object lesson.

Imagine if everyone, left and right, had sat down five years ago and agreed (which to some large degree we probably could have) on the criteria to define a successful presidency. We probably would have included items like protecting American security from foreign attack, proactively protecting against natural disaster and responding competently when it hits, building on the federal surpluses in order to pay down the national debt, honest and open government, improving relations with our allies and American moral leadership in the world, making the world environmentally safe for our children, improving the standard of living for all economic classes, serving as a force for peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, preventing WMD proliferation and discouraging it by our own actions, deploying American forces prudently so as not to decimate the military, genuinely supporting the troops by providing them proper armor and numbers adequate to the task, and more.

What is so shocking is that George W. Bush has failed every objective test, including all those which virtually all Americans, regardless of their ideological commitments, would have agreed to five years ago. But what is even more shocking is the degree to which this has pushed so many of us into simply going post-empirical, so that we can avoid the ugly task of confronting a reality contrary to our political beliefs. The absolute easiest way to see this is just to consider what these folks would be saying if we took the entirety of the last five years’ historical record, completely intact, and simply changed one word. Imagine the howls of foaming outrage which would bellow across the land if this president, with this track record of unending failure, was named Clinton.

I don’t know what’s gotten into the perhaps forty percent of Americans who cannot seem to be dissuaded from supporting this president, regardless of how badly he screws up. What I do know is that we progressives need to think broadly and deeply about this very question if we hope to save the republic from Cheneyism, the Founders’ worst nightmare come to life. These legions of the willfully mindless are the death knell of American democracy if ever there was one.

I suspect the causes for Bush’s support are multiple. Obviously, if you’re one of the narrow sliver of Americans in the economic elite and all you care about is your own wallet, Bush is your man. Moreover, poll data shows that ridiculous percentages of Americans believe that they will be joining that club one day and so are tempted to swallow anything, including a war consuming their neighbors’ children, to receive their precious would-be, someday, tax cuts.

I think other Americans are simply tuned out of politics for a variety of reasons, making them easy prey for the Rovian tactic of employing simplistic, emotional-button laden politics, of which conservatives are now the undisputed masters. Between educational failures, shameful media commercialization and trivialization of news, and pounding conservative ideology that government is the problem, we have dumbed down sufficiently to become a very politically unsophisticated country, perfect fodder for the politics of fear, caricature, personalization and slogan which the right employs ruthlessly, even against such radical leftist threats like John McCain.

Some Americans undoubtedly don’t have time for politics. With a criminally low minimum wage of five bucks and change, many people have to work all the time to stay afloat. It is especially ironic that they can’t spare the time somehow to change the government’s law (if not the government itself) so that they could then get some rest. At a campaign stop, the president once marveled at the greatness of America when a woman announced that she worked two-and-a-half jobs. No wonder he and his ilk would. Low wages, high profits, prostrate politics – hey, what’s not to like about that? (Oops, sorry – am I engaging in ‘class warfare’? We can’t have that.)

But many of us have that free time – especially those among the more potentially influential segments of society – and we spend it mesmerized by yet another football game on the idiot box, yet another life lived vicariously in the pages of celebrity magazines, yet another pathetically self-affirming episode of reality TV degradation. I know it’s easy for me to preach. I love my work, and if I had to dig ditches or wait tables for twelve hours, I’d probably be inclined to collapse in exhaustion at the end of each shift, no more interested in intellectual stimulation than physical.

But I still think we have an obligation to muster up the energy to do more, especially if we’re fond of calling ourselves patriots. We have eighteen year-old kids, fellow citizens who are willing to slog through the hell George Bush created on Earth, all in the name of protecting our security. Can we not give up one game and educate ourselves about their lot? Can we not forego one more breathless article on why Brad left Jen, and devote that time to learning about the war being fought in our name? Could we not turn off American Idol and instead read the Downing Street Memo?

And if we can’t, could we at least please just stop calling ourselves patriots who nobly support our troops in the field? If ol’ Zell Miller were to experience a momentary lapse into sanity, he might rightly ask, “Support the troops? With what? Bumper stickers?”

Never mind that the last years’ deluge of such ‘stickers’ (tellingly magnetic, not actually stuck on) are fading, when they can be seen at all. I guess we can’t even be bothered with that anymore.

There is a war going on in Iraq which is fast consuming America’s blood, treasure, reputation and security. The simple fact is, this war goes on in our name. The rest of the world certainly believes that, and they are right to do so. Whether they are also right to condemn we individual Americans for our actions in Iraq is a matter we ought to care about, for reason of our reputation and honor alone. But, of course, a better reason is that people are dying there with our acquiescence.

Patriots? Supporters of the troops? I say if you can’t be bothered to learn about this war which your taxes, votes and silence enable, you are a traitor and a coward.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (pscdmg@hofstra.edu), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.