DebateGate

One of America's greatest writers has died.  Kurt Vonnegut, whose "Sirens of Titan" was first recommended to me by a long-vanished proto-hippie friend in the early 1960s, wrote an imaginative blend of science fiction and satirical political commentary that kept me and millions of other fans entertained, amused and reflective for decades.  "Sirens" was turned into a movie but the film was as nothing compared to the book.  His other early works were "Slaughterhouse Five," "Welcome to the Monkey House" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," to name just those that I can recall off the top of my head, all of them brilliant and entertaining.  I always meant to go back and re-read, now I'm going to have to.  To any of you readers out there, if you're not familiar with Vonnegut's work (although I can't imagine a reader who isn't) I'd say this would be a good time to look into it.  To Kurt himself, if he's able or willing to look into the goings-on at this board, I'd like to express the appreciation I never bothered to express during his life and am very sorry I didn't.

P.S. "Cat's Cradle."  That's another early work, the name that failed to come up a minute ago as I was writing the above, but just as good as the rest of them.

Four Years Later... And Counting
Billboarding the Iraqi Disaster
By Anthony Arnove

As you read this, we're four years from the moment the Bush administration launched its shock-and-awe assault on Iraq, beginning 48 months of remarkable, non-stop destruction of that country … and still counting. It's an important moment for taking stock of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Here is a short rundown of some of what George Bush's war and occupation has wrought:

Nowhere on Earth is there a worse refugee crisis than in Iraq today. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some two million Iraqis have fled their country and are now scattered from Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Iran to London and Paris. (Almost none have made it to the United States, which has done nothing to address the refugee crisis it created.) Another 1.9 million are estimated to be internally displaced persons, driven from their homes and neighborhoods by the U.S. occupation and the vicious civil war it has sparked. Add those figures up – and they're getting worse by the day – and you have close to 16% of the Iraqi population uprooted. Add the dead to the displaced, and that figure rises to nearly one in five Iraqis. Let that sink in for a moment.

Basic foods and necessities, which even Saddam Hussein's brutal regime managed to provide, are now increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary Iraqis, thanks to soaring inflation unleashed by the occupation's destruction of the already shaky Iraqi economy, cuts to state subsidies encouraged by the International Monetary Fund and the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the disruption of the oil industry. Prices of vegetables, eggs, tea, cooking and heating oil, gasoline, and electricity have skyrocketed. Unemployment is regularly estimated at somewhere between 50-70%. One measure of the impact of all this has been a significant rise in child malnutrition, registered by the United Nations and other organizations. Not surprisingly, access to safe water and regular electricity remain well below pre-invasion levels, which were already disastrous after more than a decade of comprehensive sanctions against, and periodic bombing of, a country staggered by a catastrophic war with Iran in the 1980s and the First Gulf War.

In an ongoing crisis, in which hundred of thousands of Iraqis have already died, the last few months have proved some of the bloodiest on record. In October alone, more than six thousand civilians were killed in Iraq, most in Baghdad, where thousands of additional U.S. troops had been sent in August (in the first official Bush administration "surge") with the claim that they would restore order and stability in the city. In the end, they only fueled more violence. These figures -- and they are generally considered undercounts -- are more than double the 2005 rate. Other things have more or less doubled in the last years, including, to name just two, the number of daily attacks on U.S. troops and the overall number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded. United Nations special investigator Manfred Nowak also notes that torture "is totally out of hand" in Iraq. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein."

Given the disaster that Iraq is today, you could keep listing terrible numbers until your mind was numb. But here's another way of putting the last four years in context. In that same period, there have, in fact, been a large number of deaths in a distant land on the minds of many people in the United States: Darfur. Since 2003, according to UN estimates, some 200,000 have been killed in the Darfur region of Sudan in a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign and another 2 million have been turned into refugees.

How would you know this? Well, if you lived in New York City, at least, you could hardly take a subway ride without seeing an ad that reads: "400,000 dead. Millions uniting to save Darfur." The New York Times has also regularly featured full-page ads describing the "genocide" in Darfur and calling for intervention there under "a chain of command allowing necessary and timely military action without approval from distant political or civilian personnel."

In those same years, according to the best estimate available, the British medical journal The Lancet's door-to-door study of Iraqi deaths, approximately 655,000 Iraqis had died in war, occupation, and civil strife between March 2003 and June 2006. (The study offers a low-end possible figure on deaths of 392,000 and a high-end figure of 943,000.) But you could travel coast to coast without seeing the equivalents of the billboards, subway placards, full-page newspaper ads, or the like for the Iraqi dead. And you certainly won't see, as in the case of Darfur, celebrities on Good Morning America talking about their commitment to stopping "genocide" in Iraq.

Why is it that we are counting and thinking about the Sudanese dead as part of a high-profile, celebrity-driven campaign to "Save Darfur," yet Iraqi deaths still go effectively uncounted, and rarely seem to provoke moral outrage, let alone public campaigns to end the killing? And why are the numbers of killed in Darfur cited without any question, while the numbers of Iraqi dead, unless pitifully low-ball figures, are instantly challenged -- or dismissed?

In our world, it seems, there are the worthy victims and the unworthy ones. To get at the difference, consider the posture of the United States toward the Sudan and Iraq. According to the Bush administration, Sudan is a "rogue state"; it is on the State Department's list of "state sponsors of terrorism." It stands accused of attacking the United States through its role in the suicide-boat bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. And then, of course -- as Mahmood Mamdani pointed out in the London Review of Books recently -- Darfur fits neatly into a narrative of "Muslim-on-Muslim violence," of a "genocide perpetrated by Arabs," a line of argument that appeals heavily to those who would like to change the subject from what the United States has done -- and is doing -- in Iraq. Talking about U.S. accountability for the deaths of the Iraqis we supposedly liberated is a far less comfortable matter.

It's okay to discuss U.S. "complicity" in human rights abuses, but only as long as you remain focused on sins of omission, not commission. We are failing the people of Darfur by not militarily intervening. If only we had used our military more aggressively. When, however, we do intervene, and wreak havoc in the process, it's another matter.

If anything, the focus on Darfur serves to legitimize the idea of U.S. intervention, of being more of an empire, not less of one, at the very moment when the carnage that such intervention causes is all too visible and is being widely repudiated around the globe. This has also contributed to a situation in which the violence for which the United States is the most responsible, Iraq, is that for which it is held the least accountable at home.

If anyone erred in Iraq, we now hear establishment critics of the invasion and occupation suggest, the real problem was administration incompetence or George Bush's overly optimistic belief that he could bring democracy to Arab or Muslim people, who, we are told, "have no tradition of democracy," who are from a "sick" and "broken society" – and, in brutalizing one another in a civil war, are now showing their true nature.

There is a general agreement across much of the political spectrum that we can blame Iraqis for the problems they face. In a much-lauded speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Sen. Barack Obama couched his criticism of Bush administration policy in a call for "no more coddling" of the Iraqi government: The United States, he insisted, "is not going to hold together this country indefinitely." Richard Perle, one of the neoconservative architects of the invasion of Iraq, now says he "underestimated the depravity" of the Iraqis. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Democratic frontrunner in the 2008 presidential election, recently asked, "How much are we willing to sacrifice [for the Iraqis]?" As if the Iraqis asked us to invade their country and make their world a living hell and are now letting us down.

This is what happens when the imperial burden gets too heavy. The natives come in for a lashing.

The disaster the United States has wrought in Iraq is worsening by the day and its effects will be long lasting. How long they last, and how far they spread beyond Iraq, will depend on how quickly our government can be forced to end its occupation. It will also depend on how all of us react the next time we hear that we must attack another country to make the world safe from weapons of mass destruction, "spread democracy," or undertake a "humanitarian intervention." In the meantime, it's worth thinking about what all those horrific figures will look like next March, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion, and the March after, on the sixth, and the March after that…

Put it on a billboard -- in your head, if nowhere else.

Anthony Arnove is the author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal (American Empire Project, Metropolitan) and, with Howard Zinn, of Voices of a People's History of the United States (Seven Stories).

Professor, Nikos Kazantzakis is one of the greatest Greek writers ever born.  Most people know him through his novel "Zorba"  (movie version, "Zorba the Greek" with Anthony Quinn) but "Christ Recrucified" is one of his best.  (Small confession:  I liked "Zorba" even better than "Christ Recrucified," because it didn't really deal with religious issues, only with the character of man, in this case, classical Hellenic (non-religious) man, but they are both excellent works.)

I really hope you enjoy it. 

from the Juan Cole website today - www.juancole.com

<<The Iraqi National Party of Iyad Allawi is threatening to bolt from the 'national unity government.' Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Adnan Pachachi gave a speech in which he complained that the government of Nuri al-Maliki had not followed through on previous pledges to give Sunni Arabs a greater role in decision making. The Iraqi National List, which only has 25 members in the 275 member parliament, is made up of a mixture of Sunni and Shiite secular nationalists, some of them ex-Baathists. The problem with the 'national unity' government is that it was always a pious hope rather than a political reality. In actuality, the Shiite religious parties have nearly a majority, and on most issues they could get the Kurds to vote with them. This condominium of separatist Kurds and fundamentalist Shiites can always win a simple majority in any parliamentary vote, and that is what counts. As long as the Shiites stick together, and as long as they keep the Kurds with them by giving the latter concessions on autonomy, they just don't need Allawi's list or the Sunni Arab blocs.

<<If the story were only about Allawi's list withdrawing from the government, that would be unimportant. But its context is widespread rumors among expatriate Iraqis in Jordan that if the surge doesn't work and Nuri al-Maliki doesn't prove a reliable partner, the US might engineer a coup and put Allawi in power. As an ex-Baathist, he would be willing to deploy the iron fist, and, if that didn't work, would be a plausible negotiator with the Sunni Arab guerrillas. So if the withdrawal threat is tied to the menace of a coup, it is significant.>>

I predicted in a much earlier post that the U.S. would encounter the same problems and try the same solutions as it did in its earlier criminal aggression against Viet Nam, namely the so-called "dance of the puppets," a kind of revolving-door succession of coups and assassinations giving each new puppet a shot at subduing his countrymen for the benefit of his U.S. overlords until, hopefully, the right sort of iron-fisted dictator would emerge.  All under the facade of a "democratically elected government," natch.  So we are, or may be - - according to Prof. Cole - - coming closer and closer to closing the circle.  The U.S. started with a pliable Ba'athist thug, Saddam, and may well finish with another one, Allawi, minus only the Ba'ath Party socialist program and plus the lion's share of the oil revenues and obscenely lucrative "reconstruction" contracts meant to soak up whatever share of the oil revenue would have had to be left, if only for appearance's sake, with the natives.

from the Juan Cole website

<<American Jews, Blacks, Fiercest Opponents of Iraq War

<<77% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war, according to a new Gallup poll. Only Black Protestants are more opposed, at 78%. >>

I can't tell you how good this makes me feel.  After all the attempts of Bush and his neocon shits to prostitute themselves for the American Jewish vote  (or apparently the AIPAC dollar would be more accurate) the Jews of America stayed true to their basic liberal principles and oppose this fraudulent, criminal act of aggression.  And kudos to the black Prods as well, God bless them.  Who says ALL the news coming out of America has to be rotten and depressing? 

Looks like there are SOME victims of fascism, racism and militarism who have not forgotten who the real enemy is.

 
 
 
   

 
   
 from www.antiwar.com

I tried to trim it down some.  Looks like the locals might be solving their own problems their own way and working out solutions beneficial to the region that don't leave the U.S. in control of anything that doesn't belong to them.  Of course, the movement is just in its infancy, but the article points out some interesting initiatives.  The U.S. feeds on local conflicts like a hungry vulture, but if there are no conflicts, the vulture has to fly away to find other prey.



February 22, 2007
Is Washington Being Sidelined on the Middle East?
 
by Leon Hadar
[The Bush admnistration isn't doing a hell of a lot now to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians.]

But recently the U.S. president seems to be unable or unwilling to play the role assigned to him in that old Mideast script. Take the recent diplomatic coup achieved by Saudi Arabia when it succeeded in brokering a deal between the two leading Palestinian factions, allowing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah Party to join a government headed by the radical group Hamas.

The accord not only brings an end to the bloody fighting between Fatah and Hamas, but also creates conditions – like setting the stage for overcoming Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel – that are more conducive for restarting negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli officials. Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could hold direct talks with President Abbas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian Authority.

But while America's Arab allies, members of the European Union (EU), and Russia have welcomed the Saudi-brokered deal, Bush administration officials have expressed wariness and have given it the diplomatic cold shoulder. In fact, the lack of diplomatic progress during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip to the Middle East was a direct result of Washington's refusal to back negotiations between Israel and a Palestinian government that includes Hamas.

An even more dramatic sign that Washington is refusing to play its old role has been the diplomatic pressure it has been exerting on the Israeli government to refrain from opening a diplomatic dialogue with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

Indeed, according to reports in the Israeli press, Assad has sent the Israelis diplomatic messages expressing interest in negotiating a peace accord that would include recognition of and diplomatic ties with Israel in exchange for the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The proposal has been taken seriously in Israel and has been debated by members of the Israeli political elite and public. But the Bush administration has argued that Israeli negotiations with Syria would reward a regime accused of cooperating with Iran to challenge U.S. interests in the Middle East. There is little doubt that the hostile U.S. response tipped the balance in Jerusalem in favor of those who oppose talks with Syria.

The current role that Washington seems to have taken on vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli peace process, including its skeptical reactions to Saudi mediation in Palestine and to the Syrian proposal, suggests that the old script has ceased to reflect current foreign policy realism and has acquired an air of surrealism.

In a way, the change demonstrates an erosion of U.S. influence in the Middle East, which is a direct result of the implementation of the neoconservative agenda that has led to the disastrous political and military situation in Iraq. These policies have produced a series of developments that counter the neocon goal of attaining hegemony in the region, including the emergence of Iran as a regional power, the growing tensions between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the failure of Israel to dislodge Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, the electoral victory of Hamas, and Turkey's increasing impatience with U.S. policy.

It's not surprising that changes in the alignment of forces in the Middle East make it more difficult for the United States to use its military and diplomatic power to affect policy outcomes in the region. After all, the status and success of the United States as the indispensable mediator between Israelis and Arabs was tied directly to its ability and willingness to pursue that costly task during the competition with the Soviet Union (the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace accord) and after the first Gulf War (the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, which aimed to jump start peace negotiations between Israel and its neighbors).

There is a direct correlation between the rising U.S. push for hegemony in the Middle East and mounting anti-American sentiments there – a situation that emphasizes U.S. ties with Israel. Yet these ties make it less likely that Washington would be willing to challenge Jerusalem's policies, further eroding the U.S. position as an "honest broker" in the eyes of many Arabs.

Now that the cost of the U.S. drive for power in the region is producing countervailing pressures at home and abroad, U.S. capacity and determination to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process has been weakened and has created a diplomatic vacuum in the Middle East that is gradually being filled by regional – and outside – players. The diplomatic role that Saudi Arabia has played in mediating the intra-Palestinian conflict parallels its discussions with Iran to stabilize Lebanon, its move to co-opt Syria into the Arab-Sunni camp, and its support for the Arab-Sunnis in Iraq.

Similarly, U.S. failures in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine have created disincentives for Washington to engage Iran and Syria, a step that it fears could be perceived as a sign of weakness. But both Syria and Israel share common interests in ending their military conflict that do not necessarily correspond to those of Washington. In fact, a deal between Damascus and Jerusalem could threaten the U.S. position by sidelining it to the diplomatic margins. That could also happen if Saudi Arabia increases its diplomatic role in the Middle East and moves in the direction of engaging Iran instead of confronting it.

From that perspective, when U.S. officials and pundits warn of the "chaos" that would follow a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, they are actually expressing their anxiety over their real nightmare scenario – a Middle East in which the United States is marginalized to a position of little power, with the other players in the region making deals with each other with little consideration of U.S. concerns. In other words, the formation of a regional security structure in the Persian Gulf that involves Saudi Arabia and Iran but not Washington, an organization that could facilitate cooperation between Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria to stabilize Iraq, and foster moves toward a peace agreement between Israel and Syria.

Preventing such a scenario is probably the driving force behind the idea of attacking Iran's nuclear and military sites to help reassert the U.S. position in the Persian Gulf and other parts of the Middle East. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their neoconservative advisers are hoping that such a strike would weaken Iran's power and lessen the "threat" that a deal between the Saudis and Tehran could pose to U.S. hegemony. Similarly, the continuing conflict between Israel and Syria helps sustain the position of Washington as a powerful outsider whose services are required by the local players. It's the classic role of an imperial power pursuing a "divide and conquer" strategy.

At the end of the day, the only peace that the Bush administration wants to spread in the Middle East is one that preserves the U.S. dominant position, a Pax Americana. But whether Washington can continue to secure that role remains the central geopolitical question of the moment.

Reprinted courtesy of RightWeb.
 

 
 
 
 

 
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from www.antiwar.com

February 21, 2007
So What if Iran Is
Interfering in Iraq?
Faulty premises will lead us to another war 
by Michael Perry

Anti-warriors and even formerly gullible reporters are taking issue with Bush's claims that Iran is supporting the Iraqi insurgents, but this could represent a serious strategic mistake in our efforts to prevent another war.

Choose your battles wisely.

We are witnessing the Bush administration's attempt to frame the debate about a (supposedly unplanned) military confrontation with Iran. Bush wants the debate to be about whether Iran is supporting the Iraqi insurgents. Why? First, because this is a debate that Bush can win. Second, holding such a debate postpones discussion of much more important issues, in particular the unspoken assumption that if Iran is supporting attacks against the U.S. military in Iraq, then the U.S. has reasonable grounds to wage war against Iran. Also postponed (perhaps until it's too late to matter) is a debate on the broader proposition that a military confrontation with Iran is necessary, or even useful, to the American people.

If the key question is whether or not Iran is supporting the Iraqi insurgents, Bush will win. Despite the administration's shameful lies preceding the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and regardless of the quality of the evidence that Bush shows, it is probably true that the Iraqi insurgents are getting material support from individuals within Iran, albeit individuals completely unconnected to the Iranian government. Borders never have been as solid as the lines mapmakers draw to represent them. With virtual certainty, we can say that there are some weapons moving into Iraq from Iran – perhaps not a significant amount, but a quantity greater than zero. So Bush could win the debate on a technicality: some Iranians are helping the insurgents kill American soldiers.

Furthermore, it is possible that the Iraqi insurgents are receiving material support from individuals in the Iranian government and military, without the knowledge of the Iranian leadership. Think about it. The U.S. invaded and occupies Iran's neighbor, in clear defiance of international law, in violation of the most basic moral precepts, and in disregard of world opinion. From its forward base in occupied Iraq, the U.S. presents an obvious threat to the people of Iran. At least some individuals in the Iranian government may have perceived this threat and reacted, perhaps overreaching their official authority to do so.

But let's go even further and say, for the sake of argument, that the Iraqi insurgents are receiving officially authorized aid from the Iranian state. It is true that having a neighboring nation in chaos does not generally benefit any country, but the Iranians have been under the gun from the U.S. for a very long time – decades, in fact. The recent threats and provocations from the Bush administration make it clear that Iran is an imminent target. I'm quite sure the Iranians realize that the quagmire in Iraq is the primary impediment to an American invasion of Iran. Troubles for U.S. forces in Iraq may buy the Iranians more time. Could the Iranians be so blind to their own self-interests?

Beyond the practical justifications for Iranian involvement in Iraq, there are also moral rationales. If Russia were to invade Mexico, at least some in the U.S. government would support the Mexican insurgents against the Russian occupiers. And most Americans would back such assistance. Aiding one's neighbors against an unwelcome occupation is not only reasonable, it is generally considered worthy of respect.

If we engage Bush in his debate, on his terms, then we might score a few quick victories. The shoddy quality of Bush's current "evidence" is just as apparent as before the Iraq invasion, but eventually some genuine proof of Iranian "interference" may arise. And if such proof does surface, we will have missed the opportunity to refute the unspoken assertion that the U.S. should attack Iran if it is supporting Iraqi insurgents. By then, the bombs will already be falling, shredding delicate flesh and scarring the land – perhaps with nuclear warheads.

We must frame the debate about the actions of our supposedly democratic government. Quit arguing over whether Iranians are aiding their neighbors and, by extension, defending themselves. They have every right to – the U.S. is the aggressor in Iraq, and will be again if it attacks Iran.