The NYC Transit Authority eliminates the subway token in a few days, and with it passes out of existence what is dubbed by some “the most disgusting nonviolent crime ever to visit the subway”. You have to have some sympathy, however, for the desperation of the perpetrators… NY Times [vai Richard Homonoff]
Post-Traumatic Bush Syndrome,
A Suggested Addendum for the DSM IV: “Editor’s Note: The following diagnostic regimen has NOT been approved by, or for that matter even submitted to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) as such, but considering the press of world events and the headlong expansion of the American military presence in the Middle East and elsewhere, we felt it behooved us to help our readers get ahead of the global game…”
" stirring dull roots with spring rain …"
Thank you, Mark, for welcoming me back from my vacation. I have to point to your compilation of pointers to George Lakoff resources, including the “Metaphor” series, essential reading on how to think about the war (scroll down). And, on the same day, Mark observes the sixth anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s death, reverently.
Cultural Creatives in Action:
Our origin springs from the discovery that we are part of some 50 million socially and environmentally concerned people who value and support a worldview of compassion, peace, and less materialism, and who view nature as sacred — a group identified in the book The Cultural Creatives (Ray and Anderson, 2001).
The Icon and The Raven:
Over the past few decades, iconic musician Lou Reed has worked with a gallery of talented visual and performing artists — Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, his girlfriend Laurie Anderson, just to name a few. Now he’s tackled what he says is his toughest challenge yet: dramatizing the works of Edgar Allen Poe in music, sound and spoken voice. NPR
‘I Love My Country But…’
One Woman Enrages War Rally with Her Heartfelt Message. They have come carrying flags, wearing patriotic caps and jackets and sweatshirts — one family in a minivan plastered with praise for President George W. Bush and a bumper sticker that says “If 90% of you are for military strikes, the other 10% should be tried for treason.”
Angelica Amaya carries a simple homemade sign that says “I love my country but . . . ”
She has pasted a photograph of a young Iraqi woman on the sign and written below: “Are you willing to kill her to get to Saddam? “ If it is not already clear, I love the abstraction my country, but there’s much that sickens me about my countrymates, the jingoist boosters of the war, at this point. Dubya’s disingenuousness as to the reasons for the war aside, how is support for the au courant justification, that we are trying to liberate the Iraqi people, compatible with the “kill the gooks” sentiment that has overtaken the population as it does in all American wars? It appears that only the most cursory capacity for discriminating levels of abstraction exists in the common thought process. That Iraq is ‘the enemy’ maps inexorably to demonization of Iraqis.
William Rivers Pitt’s New Book Now Available:
truthout‘s senior writer William Rivers Pitt has just come out with his second book, The Greatest Sedition is Silence. The book details the last four years of politics in America, and delves into topics of discussion that have been left aside by the mainstream media. The mysteries and morality surrounding the 9/11 attacks, Enron and the economic meltdown, the 2000 Election, the media and a myriad of other important issues are discussed. Through it all, Mr. Pitt exhorts his readers to get involved in the workings of their country, and to not remain silent in the face of so many calamities.
Airstrike Targets Hussein, Sons:
The LA Times spins this around the likelihood that Saddam was killed in the airstrike, while the NY Times‘ report on the bombing is more cautious.
Civilization’s Obscene Ghost:
America’s war with Iraq in the tender years of the 21st century comes as a shock to many of us. Like Europeans in 1914, we had come to believe that our country had to a large extent renounced war as an instrument of national policy.
This may be a short and efficient war. But already there has been death, in limited numbers among our own troops, doubtless in far greater numbers among those we call our enemies. Homes, buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed and will continue to be, however precisely aimed our bombs; there will be hunger and disease; there will be the misery of refugee camps and orphanages.
What one misses in most talk about the current war is any sense of its human cost. What is wholly lacking in current political discourse is any recognition of the obscenity of war. It’s as if we’d reverted smoothly to that primitivist thinking about death identified by Freud: We must be heroes, and the death of our enemies is greatly to be wished. I don’t doubt our leaders’ desire to minimize casualties and to control, to the extent possible, “collateral damage” — our nice euphemism for the inevitable killing of civilians by mistake. But it would be more honest if our death-dealing were discussed openly and fully.
War may be a failure of conflict resolution by peaceful means. It is also a kind of failure of civilization.
— Peter Brooks, Sterling professor of comparative literature and French at Yale University and author of several books, including Reading for the Plot and Troubling Confessions, LA Times [via CommonDreams]
Still no WMD:
“Smoking gun” site in Iraq turns out to contain pesticide. A facility near Baghdad that a US officer had claimed might finally be “smoking gun” evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons production turned out to contain pesticide, not sarin gas as originally thought.
A military intelligence officer for the US 101st Airborne Division’s aviation brigade, Captain Adam Mastrianni, told AFP that comprehensive tests Monday determined the presence of the pesticide compounds. Agence France Presse [via Yahoo]
Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Cross Burning —
ruling Monday the history of racial intimidation attached to it outweighs the free speech protection of Ku Klux Klansmen or others who might use it. Washington Post. A good precedent, upholding the sometimes less than obvious principle that particularly odious speech crosses the line to become action (although therein, of course, lies a slippery slope, with discretion in the hands of the wrong people…) Interestingly, the Court voted 6-3 to uphold the ban but only thought that it did not violate constitutional free speech guarantees by a 5-4 margin. The outlier, with some tortured reasoning, was — you guessed it — Clarence Thomas. It is hard to say whether it is better or worse since he started presuming to think on his own in the past few years, rather than silently vote the conservative party line. Certainly more entertaining to watch his foot-in-mouth disease.
US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush —
I continue to be sickened by the enthusiasm the evangelists are showing for the war and its perpetrators. Here’s one of the latest examples. ABC News
Annals of Depravity (cont’d.):
Jury finds parents guilty of assault, endangerment for baby’s strict diet: …Assistant District Attorney Eric Rosenbaum said the couple treated their daughter, Ice, like a gerbil, feeding her a diet of ground nuts, juice, herbal tea, beans, cod liver oil and flax seed oil and no breast milk or formula. SF Chronicle
Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying —
Sean-Patrick Kelley of the noted Agonist site has been lifting items word-for-word without attribution from Stratfor, says Wired News. Kelley admits it.
So back to reality?
“Rouse yourself! Sit up!
Resolutely train yourself to attain peace.
Do not let the king of death, seeing you are careless,
lead you astray and dominate you. “Sutta Nipata II, 10
I was privileged to be incommunicado on a tropical island for a week, not following the war news until I devoured a New York Times when we got to the airport yesterday afternoon. Unsurprisingly, no WMD have yet been found in the advance to Baghdad (Reuters/Yahoo!), and the “nerve gas antidote” of last week turns out not to be (Ananova). According to Al Jazeera, Britain may be admitting there may in fact be no WMD to be found in Iraq. The civilian death toll continues to mount horrifyingly (CTV.ca). Areas “pacified” and “secured” by US-UK forces remain unwelcoming and chaotic (Le Monde) and humanitarian crisis is looming if not already upon the people of Iraq (Al Jazeera). The hardliners in the dysadministration seem to be winning the internal battle (Independent/UK [via Commondreams]) over whether we will ‘rebuild’ or ‘annex’ Iraq (NY Times) and whether we will continue to undermine the UN as facilitator of any of the higher aspirations of the world’s nations toward peace, cooperation or prosperity. Tony Blair by some accounts (Sydney Morning Herald) isn’t faring so well politically; price to pay for allowing one’s best intentions to be co-opted by American rapacity. Unsurprisingly, the Arab world sees through the US propaganda line (NY Times)
More surprising to find in taking the pulse of the war after a week’s absence is the seemingly rapid and wholesale drift in American public opinion, how malleable to the propaganda effort the public’s mind and will appear to be. When US forces were bogged down halfway to Baghdad, even generals on active duty were brimming with contempt (Guardian/UK) for Rumsfeld, calling him another McNamara and denouncing him for prosecuting this war “on the cheap.” The dysadministration spin has been an ever-shifting crafty attempt to soften the public underbelly (Washington Post) about how the war might take much longer than anyone had been promised and to obfuscate its purpose enough that the public will no longer recognize how it is being lied to.
It seems to have worked. Just a week later, as the invading forces encircle Baghdad, , things are little different than what was expected — US forces are still taking heavy casualties (Al Jazeera), with accumulating friendly fire incidents (Al Jazeera)
(and who killed those fleeing Russian envoys?) not to mention the many thousands of Iraqi soldiers slaughtered (Boston Globe: “…to send a message to both the Iraqi leadership and civilians that coalition forces could move into the city at will…”) and inestimable civilian deaths — and yet, while there is little rejoicing in Iraq, Americans are swept up in the euphoria of ‘winning’… Meanwhile, outside the US, doubts about US pie-in-the-sky claims to have the situation nearly licked and disdain for US ‘liberation’ rhetoric (Pacific News Service) accumulate… with the worst yet to come, street-by-street and house-by-house through the Iraqi capital.
The War’s Dirty Secret: It’s About Changing United States, Not Iraq.
The effort to turn Iraq into a democracy, in other words, is making the U.S. less of one. Our opposition party has disappeared, corporate interests dictate public policy, and the feds may be rummaging through your e-mail.
There’s a dirty secret no one has told you, and here it is: This war is not about changing Iraq, it’s about changing America. LA Times
Tech Heads Drop Trou for a Friend;
Technology is sexy again.: A San Francisco art and technology group’s latest production is a calendar featuring naked babes posing with machines. It’s the perfect gift for your favorite technology fetishist.
“It’s just the right amount dirty and the right amount cute,” said Violet Blue, who appears in white panties and motor oil (actually maple syrup) in the calendar.
The Survival Research Labs calendar release is a part of a benefit being held Tuesday for kinetic artist and musician Tim North, who was diagnosed with cancer early this year. Wired News
More on ‘Conscientious Objection’ in the ‘Volunteer Army’,
via American Samizdat: Marine who said no to killing on his conscience:
The first American conscientious objector from the Iraq war will give himself up at a marine base in California this morning. He said he believed the war was “immoral because of the deception involved by our leaders”. [thanks, brooke]
Fighting not to fight:
Of 2.7 million men and women in the active and reserve forces in the US, 29 were discharged as conscientious objectors in 2002.
The Center on Conscience and War in Washington, which counsels prospective COs, reported 3,500 calls for advice in January, twice the normal rate.
Wacky Voices of Dissent:
Who ever said that impassioned political discourse can’t be zany fun?!! SpazOut NY [thanks to Thomas Schmidt]
U.N. to Set Standards on Use of the Term ‘Elite’:
“Every time any media outlet mentions the Iraqi Republican Guard they always preface it by calling it elite. However, there is no internationally accepted definition for ‘elite.’ I think we face the real possibility of cheapening the use of the word if standards aren’t set,” said United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Powell continued, “I think it’s sad that we’ve degenerated into some sort of elite relativism where you only have to be better than the next guy to be considered elite even if that next guy sucks. Any person that goes through two weeks of training shouldn’t be called elite.”
As part of the standard settings procedure the U.N. plans to send in an elite team of inspectors to measure the Iraqi troops’ eliteness level. BBSpot
Army chaplain offers baths for baptisms:
In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there’s an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.
It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.
”It’s simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,” he said. The Miami Herald
Related: Are Christian evangelists eyeing Iraq? Dedicated workers of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Samaritan’s Purse — two of the biggest evangelical Christian missions in the US — are reportedly waiting on the Jordanian border for the signal to enter the battle-scarred country.
Baghdad under attack: attempts to preach Christianity in Iraq is bound to set off alarms
Both organisations insist that their priority will be to provide food, shelter and other needs to the victims of the war. But they don’t deny that if the situation presents itself, they will preach their Christian faith in a country that is predominantly Muslim. Al Jazeera
[O]peration [I]raqi [L]iberation —
Visualizing the Costs: A lot of people don’t really understand how much money is at stake with the Iraq “crusade”. This diagram could help you to understand what the USA is doing, and what are its main goals. [via walker]
Tech Heads Drop Trou for a Friend;
Technology is sexy again.: A San Francisco art and technology group’s latest production is a calendar featuring naked babes posing with machines. It’s the perfect gift for your favorite technology fetishist.
“It’s just the right amount dirty and the right amount cute,” said Violet Blue, who appears in white panties and motor oil (actually maple syrup) in the calendar.
The Survival Research Labs calendar release is a part of a benefit being held Tuesday for kinetic artist and musician Tim North, who was diagnosed with cancer early this year. Wired News
Vacation beckons…
My family and I will be away, and I will not be adding anything here, for a week. Please follow me back here on the 5th or the 6th. My best to all my readers until then.
A Role for the U.N. in Iraq’s Future:
“The best — and perhaps only — hope of leaving Iraq with a democratic political structure is by making its rebuilding an international effort.” NY Times editorial
And: Hearts and Minds: “Americans should be able to find common ground, for all sides dream of an Iraq that is democratic and an America that is again admired around the world.” — Nicholas Kristof, NY Times op-ed
Delusions of Power:
“In the last two years Dick Cheney and other top officials have gotten it wrong on energy, on the economy — and their mistakes keep getting bigger.” — Paul Krugman, NY Times op-ed
Smallpox Vaccination Is Linked to 2nd Death:
“A second health care worker has died of a heart attack after receiving a smallpox vaccination, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported yesterday…
She was among seven health workers to suffer heart problems 4 to 18 days after receiving the vaccine voluntarily, as part of the United States’ effort to prepare medical teams to cope with bioterror attacks. Three volunteers had heart attacks, including another woman who died; two had chest pain; and two had heart inflammation.
In addition, 10 military recruits had heart inflammation after being vaccinated for the first time; all recovered, said Col. John D. Grabenstein, the Army’s deputy director for vaccines…” NY Times
Shades of grey:
Could Hans Blix have done anything to stop the war? An interview with The Guardian:
His office, on the 31st floor of the United Nations, with a striking view of the Chrysler building, is decorated with aerial pictures of Baghdad. “A lot of these buildings have probably been bombed now,” says his press spokesman, dashing his pen across vast swathes of the city, pointing out the government ministries.
Blix believes there was nothing he could have said that would have convinced the Americans not to go to war at this time. “They would have wanted a clear-cut guarantee that [the Iraqis] did not have weapons of mass destruction,” he says. “I could not have given them a guarantee that if they had waited a few months more there would have been results.”
Could anyone have given them a guarantee?
“Not at this stage. Now we’ll see if occupation does it. If we had come out and said on the basis of what we had and said, ‘We can solve this in three months,’ they would have said, ‘You’re not credible.’ “
Two Movements:
The new alliance between anti-war protesters and foreign-policy realists: “What does an antiwar movement do with a war likely to be over in a matter of weeks? Plenty, it turns out.
The antiwar movement is actually two rather different movements that partly overlap. One movement is in the streets and on the internet — often led by radicals, sometimes joined uneasily by liberals. The other is pragmatic and mainstream. Both were nonplussed but only temporarily by the outbreak of war, and neither has gone away.” — Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect
Perle Out.
Rumsfeld Adviser Resigns as Head of Pentagon Panel: Richard N. Perle has resigned as chairman of an influential Pentagon advisory board following disclosures of business dealings that included his meeting with a Saudi arms dealer and a contract with a bankrupt telecommunications company seeking Defense Department permission to be sold to Chinese investors. NY Times Is this another news event driven by webloggers’ revelations and hounding?
War game was fixed to ensure American victory, claims general:
The biggest war game in US military history, staged this month at a cost of £165m with 13,000 troops, was rigged to ensure that the Americans beat their “Middle Eastern” adversaries, according to one of the main participants. General Paul Van Riper, a retired marine lieutenant-general, told the Army Times that the sprawling three-week millennium challenge exercises, were “almost entirely scripted to ensure a [US] win”. Guardian/UK I was pointed back to this August, 2002 article by someone who speculates that this might have something to do with the hard time the invading forces are having this week. The current war is scripted too, only they failed to persuade the majority of the players.
US defeat in Iraq ‘inevitable’ — Ritter
The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.
“The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win,” he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here on Tuesday evening.
(..)
“Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost,” Ritter added. News24.com (South Africa)
To clarify:
Rebecca Blood wrote in response to my ‘conscientious objector’ post below to point out, quite rightly, that ‘conscientious objector’ status requires a military draft, and doubted the appropriateness of the word in an all-volunteer military. To which I would reply that this is true legalistically, but I was using the term conscientious objector more figuratively — no, really more literally — to indicate any who come to have objections as a matter of conscience. It is also worth pointing out that a volunteer army does not necessarily fill up with people in ethical agreement with their country’s military policy. More typically, enlistees, especially in peacetime, have not troubled themselves about the morality of joining the military in the face of the opportunity it represents. Rebecca comments, “But I have difficulty seeing military enlistees as unwilling victims in a terribly unfair scheme: a willingness to fight when called is an important–and obvious–part of the deal, not a hidden clause in the contract.” I beg to differ. Recruitment ads emphasize all sorts of fun and exciting things one will experience as a member of the military, and none of them are warfighting. And, even without conscription, many joining the military do not experience themselves as having much choice in the matter. Lives are being wasted tragically for misguided and devious reasons, and it is a comforting illusion to tell ourselves that dying soldiers knowingly assumed the risk. In that sense, developing and acting on conscientious objections is an opportunity waiting to happen. Rebecca: “…if you are in the military and have suddenly come to the conclusion that killing other people isn’t the career you had hoped for, objector.org is interested in helping you.” (And don’t forget, parents, while we’re on the topic, that the ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act requires schools to give military recruiters and the Selective Service access to the names of all students unless the parents specifically notify the school that sharing their child’s name is prohibited.)
As Rebecca points out, the Selective Service has always recognized the moral validity of objecting to war on the grounds that it is wrong — with several important constraints. It is fairly easy if you are a devout member of an established religious church or sect with well-defined pacifist doctrine. But if you come by your war objection through a less conventional route, the burden is upon you to justify it. During the Vietnam era, when I registered as a C.O., I had to jump through hoops to make the argument on the basis of my homegrown and eclectic theology, not exactly Jewish, not exactly Christian, Buddhist or animistic, nor secular humanist… (These days, as a mental health professional, I might also construct an objector’s position based on my familiarity with the core tenet of post-traumatic stress disorder, that something unutterable is done to the essence of being human by exposure to experiences outside the bounds of what it is equipped to endure, but that’s for a different conversation…) . And the Selective Service has always been inflexible about the requirement of absolute pacifism, i.e. objection to all war rather than a specific war. To make an intellectually honest assertion that one deserved C.O. status, one would have to search one’s soul for a position of conscience on challenging but predictable questions like the one about intervening against Hitler. Again, in asking here where the conscientious objectors are, I am broadening the term to encompass the plausible position of objecting specifically to this illegitimate ill-intentioned ill-advised morally compromised dirty little war. But, Rebecca, you’re right, it is probably more confusing than it is worth to have called them ‘conscientious objectors.’
Ill Logic?
“I have complete faith that the US military, along with the help our allies are providing, will wind up dislodging Saddam Hussein from power, hopefully sooner rather than later. When that happens, the aspirants to American empire who have sunk their claws into the current administration will no doubt crow about their general brilliance. Before it’s too late, let’s be sure to remember that they’re the same people who thought that no ground invasion was needed to overthrow Iraq’s government — that we could just send a few guns over and provide air support and the Iraqi opposition would take care of these things themselves. It was the military that demanded that the invasion be an all out effort involving lots of troops on the ground. Of all the things the Bush administration has gotten wrong, listening to the military on this one is one thing they got right.” rc3
Colburn, whose levelheaded clarity I usually appreciate, goes on to make a ‘lesser of evils’ argument I find insidious. Bringing down the Iraqi regime with a proxy war or airstrikes would be far worse for the Iraqi people than the status quo invasion scenario, he suggests, since the ground forces are taking such measures to prevent civilian casualties. Is this war a lesser of evils? Only if you buy into many questionable assumptions about inevitability or necessity. And then there’s the one about how long we are going to be able to afford the luxury of preventing civilian casualties. Although we’re denying that we targeted them (which isn’t really the point, is it?) and suggesting that it might have been an Iraqi missile rather than one of ours (will we go on to say they did it deliberately to frame the US and reap the propaganda benefits?), at least fifteen were killed in an errant missile strike today on a Baghdad marketplace. CNN
It also may be a fiction to assume that the efforts to avoid civilian casualties come from our commanders’ humanitarian scruples. I think the policy is more likely to be a function of our efforts to preserve the last tattered vestiges of the goodwill of the civilized world we used to have as our allies. In other words, a function of the Bush administration’s utter failure at diplomacy leaving the military in the untenable position of not being able to defend themselves adequately because of stringent PR restraints. As such, our calculation of the profit-risk balance of maintaining that effort may be very volatile. Prepare yourself to see the Pentagon quietly ignoring such constraints when it is expedient or necessary; and, of course, taking no responsibility for the consequences to the Iraqi populace.
Not Our Fight: William Saletan enters a plea that we continue to fight a different war than the Iraqis in this sense. This would be a morally determinative choice to differentiate us from the terrorists, he feels. He is not so naive as to believe the unsubstantiated (and ludicrous) claims of direct links between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda, but follow his logic. I’m not sure, however, we haven’t definitively lost the battle to be any better than the terrorists we claim to oppose already.
(I)n 1991 we and the Iraqis were waging the same war: They were trying to destroy us, and we were trying to destroy them. Now we’re waging two different wars: Saddam Hussein wants a war of destruction while we want a war of decapitation that leaves Iraq intact. The current “war” is really a struggle between those two wars. If we fight a war of destruction — even if we “win” it — we lose.
Remember this as you’re reading the latest news or watching the latest video from Iraq. Many developments that look like gains are really losses, and many that look like losses are really gains. When U.S. or British troops go into Basra, Umm Qasr, or Nasiriyah to finish off Fedayeen fighters, that’s a loss, not a gain. Every shot we fire in a city, and every bomb we drop, increases the probability of civilian casualties, which in turn raise the level of civilian anger against us and make it harder to separate Saddam from his people. Every day we spend hunting snipers in outlying cities, even if we kill them all, is a day in which we’re stalled on the way to Baghdad while U.S.-friendly regimes in the Muslim world grow more unstable
(…)
The killers of Sept. 11 exploited the fact that they were willing to shed the blood of civilians and we weren’t. The killers of Basra, An Nasiriyah, and Baghdad are exploiting the same difference. While ruthlessness in attack is worse than ruthlessness in defense, the logic of asymmetry binds them together. I don’t know whether Saddam’s henchmen should go to The Hague for sponsoring terrorism. But they certainly ought to go there for using human shields.. Slate
Off Target:
“(The charges in) William Safire’s recent two part series “The French Connection” in The New York Times, reprinted in the International Herald Tribune… have been relayed around the globe, in newspapers, magazines and Web sites, fueling the rising storm of outrage against the French.
But Safire’s double broadside is more Francophobia than fact. He is way off beam; his articles are filled with error and innuendo. What makes matters worse is that editors at both The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune knew there were serious questions about Safire’s charges, yet the papers went ahead and published the second part of his series.” TomPaine Are people finding any serious Francophobia out there? Even the most pro-Bush pro-war people I brush elbows with seem disdainful of the ‘Freedom fries’ jingoism, and I’m hearing about all sorts of corporate lobbying on behalf of the preservation of the trans-Atlantic alliance, since European subsidiaries of American firms are usually a significant contributor to their gross.
I’m trying
a commenting system here again, using Enetation. I played around with several of these when they first started appearing several years ago and they seemed to slow down the loading of the weblog page intolerably for me and at least some of FmH’s readers. There was also a question of the intermittent overload of the comments server making the comments system unavailable. Recently, I woke up to the possibility that these systems have matured; they’re being used broadly and I don’t hear any griping. I don’t know how Enetation compares with some of the other tools out there; perhaps, if you have one to recommend, mention it in a comment to this post? I’m particularly interested in knowing if you have found a system to be stable, reliable and perennially accessible. In any case, can at least a few people try to post test comments to this post to be sure that Enetation works for everyone?
I won’t know if this is slowing down page loads for some of you with a slower net connection unless you tell me either. Please do. For now, I’ll keep the little ‘speech balloon’ icon which lets you send me an email comment on a post too, but if Enetation or something similar works out, expect that to go away. I much prefer the potential for cross-conversation among my readers. So please try out the system…
The Saddam Show –
R.I.P. Daniel Patrick Moynihan:
Former Senator dies at 76: “The lanky, pink-faced lawmaker, who preferred bow ties and professorial tweeds to the Senate uniform of lawyer-like pinstripes, reveled in speaking his mind and defying conventional labels.
Known for his ability to spot emerging issues and trends, Moynihan was a leader in welfare reform and transportation initiatives, and an authority on Social Security and foreign policy.” The Nando Times
Urban Warfare:
The Underdog’s First Battlefield Choice: “Since Stalingrad and Berlin in the Second World War, to the American assault on Hue, Vietnam, in 1968 and on to the war zones of Beirut or Nablus, Belfast or Mogadishu, urban warfare has become a central part of the underdog’s arsenal— a fight without scruples for the high ground of propaganda that exploits civilian losses and denies the intruder’s superior might.
And it is precisely that messy, manipulative and murderous kind of fighting between conventional forces and elusive defenders that could beckon Americans as they approach Baghdad.” NY Times In fact, a street-to-street battle negates almost every technological advantage the US brings to asymmetric warfare.
High-Tech Media Go to War:
“The Pentagon might be showing off a lot of cool, high-tech weaponry in the Iraq war, but it’s the journalists who are putting technology to use in ways not imaginable in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.” — Cynthia Webb, Washington Post Links to many other news stories showing off the changing face of battle coverage.
Ex-military say force is too light:
Commanders from the 1991 Gulf War say the Pentagon has deviated from expectations by advancing with fewer troops. With the Pentagon rushing thousands of soldiers from Texas to the Persian Gulf, a number of 1991 Gulf War ground commanders said Monday that the U.S. invasion force moving rapidly to Baghdad is too small and should have included at least one additional heavy Army division.
“In my judgment, there should have been a minimum of two heavy divisions and an armored cavalry regiment on the ground. That’s how our doctrine reads,” said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division during the 1991 Gulf War.
(…)
McCaffrey’s comments are part of a heated debate among current and former ground commanders and strategists about a war plan built upon the concept of a “rolling start,” in which combat actions begin before the arrival of all ready forces, which are then brought forward or held back, depending upon how the battle proceeds.The Wichita Eagle Every media piece second-guessing the military strategists hastens to add, however, and in almost identical language, that the “ultimate outcome is not in doubt,” only how long it will take. I wonder…
Related: Mark Kleiman raises some interesting “questions from a non-specialist” and, in doing, displays a deeper incertitude similar to my own:
1. To what extent were war plans, and especially the relative economy of ground forces, shaped by overoptimism about the prospects for a coup, mass Iraqi defections/surrenders, and uprisings in support of the liberating forces? I know Barry McCaffrey has been complaining about this. Is he right?
2. Were the troops in the field given overoptimistic views of the likely reaction of the enemy? (There have been several reports of US soldiers surprised that the Iraqis were fighting back.)
3. If there was overoptimism, to what extent was it shaped by a White House intolerant of bearers of bad tidings?
What strikes me as odd is that the very same people who described SH’s rule as “Stalinist” — which seems to be a good description — also expected the regime to fold quickly in the face of an attack. That never really added up. Does the name “Stalingrad” ring a bell?
Phil Carter, an ex-military officer whose weblog, Intel Dump, is attracting a fair bit of attention, answers here. In part:
Mark, you may be eerily prescient. Stalin was undoubtedly a more evil tyrant than Saddam Hussein, but the Soviet people fought for him anyway. Why? Largely because World War II was a war of national survival for the Russian people. This kind of war mobilizes people to fight in a way like no other. America believed after Pearl Harbor that it was fighting WWII as such a war, and thus no cost was too high. We did not feel the same way in Vietnam; our enemies did. Israel’s performance in the Golan Heights in 1973 provides another instructive example of how armies fight in wars of national survival when their back is against the wall. Soldiers and civilians fight hard when they believe in their hearts and minds that their nation, their family, and their way of life is at risk. Whatever atrocities Saddam has inflicted, he has managed to convince his people that they are fighting a war of national survival.
There’s more: “Is the Allied Strategy in Difficulty? The world’s generals give their verdict.” Independent/UK
US general with Iraq role linked to hardline Israelis:
“The retired general named as civilian governor of occupied Iraq has visited Israel on a trip paid for by a right-wing group that strongly backs an American military presence in the Middle East.
Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, the co-ordinator for civilian administration in Iraq, put his name in October 2000 to a statement blaming Palestinians for the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence and saying that a strong Israel was an important security asset to the United States.
The statement was sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which pays for retired US military officers to visit Israel for security briefings by Israeli officials and politicians. Richard Perle, one of the architects of the US invasion of Iraq, is a member of the institute’s board of advisers, as was Vice-President Dick Cheney before he took office in 2001.” Independent/UK [props to One of Four]
Where are the ‘conscientious objectors’?
Exactly, Brooke! Bravo. I too have been very uncomfortable with the “Support our Troops” mantra. You mention “only following orders”, of course, deliberately evoking Nuremburg, but the better analogy would be Vietnam. It took courage for segments of the peace movement then to demand moral conscience (read: noncollaboration) from the troops, but it was the right thing to do. Rather than the gospel which said that returning Vietnam vets suffered from their nonrecognition and abandonment by the American people, many suffered more from their own ethical misgivings about what they had been forced to do in the name of justice and freedom (just as heads of state and military leaders find the courage, when retired and no longer ’embedded’, to become peacemakers). If there were a way to communicate some pressure of conscience to the ethically unformed and challenged 18- and 19-year-olds who are dying and killing in Iraq, that would be “supporting our troops.”
Here’s more on ‘following orders’, relative to the US POWs shown to the media by Iraq:
Al-Jazeera satellite channel showed a US soldier lying prone on a camp bed in a bare concrete room, his face covered in blood, wounds in his side and arm.
He was propped up for the interview by a reporter from Iraqi television. Asked his name, he replied haltingly: “Edgar, my name is Edgar.” He said he was from Texas.
Another who identified himself as “Private First Class Miller”, was asked why he had gone to Iraq. In a strained voice he said: “I was told to come here.” They were from the 507th Maintenance Company, from Fort Bliss, Texas, rather than a combat outfit. “I just followed orders,” he said. “I came to fix broke things. I don’t want to kill anybody.” Guardian/UK
On the topic of the media display of the POWs, US officials lost no time arguing that it was a violation of the clause in the Geneva Convention proscribing humiliation of prisoners to show them on television (whereas, our televising the long lines of Iraqi POWs the prior day was not?). The indignity to which they were exposed, however, was not by the Iraqis but the indignity of war itself and, moreso, of a war with only the thinnest veneer of a lying rationale, if that is becoming clear to our forces there. (Can you imagine that US infantry forces might start scratching their heads about why the Iraqis are not welcoming us as their liberators? why, if we were in such imminent danger of a CBW attack fro Iraq that we had to preemptively disarm them, there has been no deployment of CBW on the battlefield yet?) I would think US families and authorities would actually want visual confirmation that missing soldiers were captured and alive when that was the case. The ICRC agrees that media display of POWs does not automatically amount to indignity:
Amanda Williamson, a Red Cross spokeswoman, said it would not automatically be a contravention. “There’s an article that prisoners should not be exposed to public curiosity, but this was not envisaged to include the media, so it’s not a violation per se to put them on TV.” Whether they were being exposed to public curiosity would depend on how they appeared on TV’ [via also not found]
Ginsberg’s Howl Heard in Court:
On this day in 1957, U.S. Customs agents seized 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl [text here] on the grounds of obscenity…, leading to a trial that October — before a judge who was a Sunday school teacher, and who had recently been in the news for sentencing five shoplifters to a screening of The Ten Commandments. Nonetheless, it was soon clear that the prosecution had little response to the long line of scholars and critics who testified to the literary importance of Howl — many comparing it in importance to Leaves of Grass – and the judge’s ruling was unequivocal:
I do no believe that “Howl” is without even “the slightest redeeming social importance.” The first part of “Howl” presents a picture of a nightmare world; the second part is an indictment of those elements in modern society destructive of the best qualities of human nature; such elements are predominantly identified as materialism, conformity and mechanization leading toward war. . . . It ends in a plea for holy living. . . . In considering material claimed to be obscene it is well to remember the motto: “Honi soit qui mal y pense” [Evil to him who thinks evil]. Today in Literature
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull… [more]
Synapse Chip Taps into Brain Chemistry:
The reality of the electroneurological interface is at hand. Jack in! New Scientist
Pot-Calling-Kettle Dept:
Whenever Jeff Jarvis accuses someone else of intellectual snobbery, I have to laugh. Especially when a former TV Guide writer thinks he understands the subtleties of the subliminal effects of the media better than any of a number of psychologically astute types who have made it their life’s work to do so. I’m talking, of course, about Jarvis’ kneejerk rejection of the idea that media coverage of war can desensitize us to its horror. He reduces the argument to a ridiculous caricature (no one but the Doctor can tell the difference between media entertainment and reality) and thinks he’s been profound when he lambasts the caricature.
The Coalition of the Fawning:
In This War, We Report What They Decide — ‘In the unwritten code of media bigfoots, name-brand journalists don’t criticize each other. But there was Breslin, in his column, taking Tom Brokaw to task for a tacky and exploitative interview with the mother of a dead serviceman. For good measure, he threw in the texts of some signs he had seen at a New York peace march: ““U.S. Media – The Coalition of the Fawning”; “TV Networks-Stop Using the War to Up Your Ratings”; and “Networks Don’t Cover Peace.”
No human with an ounce of emotion can watch young kids under fire and not respect them, fear for them, feel for them. That’s the reason we need skeptical journalists on the home front to counterbalance the ‘embeds’ who will, quite naturally, start feeling parental, protective, and proud of the troops they cover. The Administration understands this all too well.’ TomPaine
Kurd-Sellout Watch:
From the incisive Ethel: “The latest installment of Timothy Noah’s Kurd sell-out watch reports something I’ve been predicting for well over a year: the Cabal will not only sell out the Iraqi Kurds (again) but also be *SHOCKED! SHOCKED AND APPALLED!* to discover that the Kurds have really been terrorists all along. The initial trial balloon for this is being floated at – where else – the War Street Journal.”
An Allergic Reaction To The Bush Doctrine —
Why the Dogs of Cyberwar stay leashed:
As the U.S. and U.K. campaign to “shock and awe” the Iraqi leadership and population continues, as “bunker buster” bombs hit the Iraqi Presidential palaces and coalition forces attempt to disrupt the command and control of the Iraqi military, one widely-reported offensive capability is nowhere in sight: the United States has not yet officially used the tools of cyberwarfare.
The U.S. military has reportedly developed impressive offensive cyberwar capabilities, including the ability to use microwave or other electronic impulses to disrupt or destroy electronic components. If this is true, why have we not yet seen an all out cyberwar? The Register
The Al Jazeera images of US P.O.W.s:
There is no suitable measurement for the horror we at truthout.org felt upon viewing these photographs. We have seen a great many wretched things come to pass in the last two years, but little of that – perhaps only 9/11 itself – can rival the woe brought by these images. These are our American children, our sons and daughters, lost in a conflict far from home. The editors and writers of this publication have stood, since the first rumbles of war were heard this past summer, staunchly against an attack on Iraq. Our reasons are myriad, and have been carefully and meticulously detailed on these pages. Manifest among our reasons was a dread that images such at these would become all too common.
There are few areas of service to America more honorable than that of military service. Our sons and daughters step to the line and take their oath because they believe their nation to be the best on earth. Implicit in that oath, however, is a leap of faith on the part of these troops. They trust that they will not be used, that their lives will not be spent, in actions and wars that do not merit the shedding of their blood. They trust their leaders when they put on the uniform. In this matter of war on Iraq, that trust has been betrayed, and these children of ours have paid the highest price for that betrayal.
We take no joy from showing these images. We mean absolutely no disrespect to the brave soldiers who have lost their lives, to their families and friends, and to those who continue to fight. We honor them in our souls, and thank them for their sacrifice and trust. At the end of the day, however, we are an information service. These pictures vividly demonstrate the cost of war in Iraq upon our beloved children. If you would know what war is, what this war has become, then you must look and understand.
May God be with these men and women, and with their families, and with us all. truthout
You can click on a link to go on to view the images (which are not only of the captured but of the killed) …or not.
Why I Hate Dr. Sears:
“…I read The Baby Book. And in my sleep-deprived brain, I came to the conviction that Dr. Sears was right about everything–even though I would have preferred it if he weren’t–and that if I really loved my child as much as I was certain I did, I would quit my job and sell my husband’s camera equipment so I could invest in more nursing bras, since I’d be needing them for some years to come. Through Dr. Sears’s eyes, I could see that my frequent desire to escape from my screaming infant meant that I was insufficiently bonded with her. That was a horrible thought. But I also knew the cure prescribed by Dr. Sears: ask those around me to lift some of the burdens of cooking and laundry from my sagging shoulders, so I could spend more time breastfeeding and sleeping with the baby. Then undoubtedly I would begin to love her the way nature intended me to: sublimely, unfailingly, with all my other interests in life falling away like dandruff to leave only the single pure desire to give my daughter everything she needed, everything she wanted, everything that every baby should have.
Oh, I wasn’t completely taken in. I figured out within the first couple of chapters that Dr. Sears’s whole family-bed-sleeping-exclusive-breastfeeding-non-working-mother thing was a little extreme, and that his occasional nods to diversity (“do what works for your family”) were probably inserted at the insistence of his editor. I never took him to be any counterpart to beloved Dr. Benjamin Spock, who assured a generation of mothers that they were doing just fine, that babies were resilient.” Brain.Child
When Teaching the Ethics of War Is Not Academic:
…(I)n the spring of 1998 I developed a new elective course, “The Code of the Warrior,” which in turn inspired my book, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present. The aim of both the course and the book is to examine the values that are explicit and implicit within the “warrior ethos” and to try to make sense of those values in a modern American context. My students and I study the warrior’s codes associated (in fiction or in fact) with the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, the Celts, medieval knights, Zulus, Native Americans, Chinese monks, and Japanese samurai. We talk about how the purpose of a code is to restrain warriors, for their own good as much as for the good of others. The essential element of a warrior’s code is that it must set definite limits on what warriors can and cannot do if they want to continue to be regarded as warriors, not murderers or cowards. For the warrior who has such a code, certain actions remain unthinkable, even in the most dire or extreme circumstances. Chronicle of Higher Education
Here’s one more reason
to be anti-war. Internet Week
Power tool:
“Perhaps the least surprising thing about the second Gulf war is that it began with a volley of Tomahawk missiles. Since they were first used in the 1991 conflict, they have become the ultimate symbol of US military power. Oliver Burkeman reveals how a hi-tech weapon that promised blood-free combat changed the way America thinks about war.” Guardian/UK
Many opposed to war find the adulation of precision-guided weaponry to be like the worship of Mammon, mollifying — realistically or not — those concerned with civilian casualties and helping to make war more conceivable and thus more likely. The war planners are able to think the unthinkable, and for the American consumers it is treated as little more than a video game. But this is nothing new; those who opposed the Vietnam War frequently cited the impersonality of high-altitude bombing as sanitizing war then too and making it more palatable to the warmongers and the viewing audience. In Gulf War I and as the buildup to Gulf War II mounted, many wsere lulled by the thought that, in addition to higher-and-higher-tech, we might be perfecting lower-and-lower-bodycount war as well. The gospel was that, after Vietnam, the American public would not accept a war with virtually any casualties; and that it was feasible to prosecute a war without losing our own (except from those pesky helicopter crashes that seem to happen so often; we must be skimping horribly on our maintenance budget, or our training for technicians, despite soaring defense expenditures). That turns out to be laughable, arrogant, deluded thinking. But it remains to be seen, as fierce Iraqi resistance persists and US body counts defy all expectations, whether it will turn the tide of popular opinion.
“Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box…”— Country Joe MacDonald
Operation Anglosphere:
The Sound of Silence?
“I don’t think it will be anything like radio during the Vietnam War, when radio was the voice of the revolution and the voice of the other side. Now you’re not going to get any of that: you’re going to get the voice of the corporate world.” NY Times
US Believes Russians in Baghdad Aiding Iraq: Europe Russia Wires Middle East Columnists Search the World Special Reports
“The United States believes Russian company technicians are in Baghdad helping the Iraqis operate electronic jamming systems that could impair the U.S.-led war against Iraq, a U.S. official said on Monday.” Washington Post
Again, the law of unintended consequences of our overweening rush to unilateral war; could this escalate to a direct US-Russian rupture and unimaginable widening of the conflict? The Russians have investments to protect in Iraq, and if they are jamming GPS signals, this is a big deal; our so-smart bombs are not-so-smart anymore. Of course, however, Russia denies doing this; perhaps a third party diverted Russian technlogy to the Iraqis?
Something Suspicious Is in the Air:
“Little did I know that my inquiry would become a suspicious activity in itself.” — Courtland Milloy, Washington Post
What Windows knows:
“
For those who oppose war, what now?
“Are we to ignore our own consciences because he has determined to ignore our protests?” — Peter Gomes (Harvard University Chaplain), Boston Globe
Crimes of War:
Action Alert:
“According to a Drug Policy Alliance action alert, a pair of bills moving through Congress could effectively spell the end of live music and dancing in the United States.” Take measures in three easy steps at this site.
Perle’s Plunder Blunder
Maureen Dowd: “
Experts to hunt for banned Iraqi weapons:
“Teams of technical experts, now preparing enter Iraq, are on a search and destroy mission – to find and secure Saddam Hussein’s alleged chemical and biological weapons. They are likely to follow closely behind the US and UK ground troops who entered Iraq on Thursday.
Former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer is preparing for service with the teams. He told New Scientist from Kuwait that “finding the weapons themselves may well take some time – unless of course, some are used”.
The “mobile exploitation teams” are being organised by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the part of the US Department of Defense that handles weapons inspections under treaties, and helps destroy old Soviet weapons. New Scientist
Related: US Checking Several Possible Chemical Sites:
“U.S. forces pressed to find the first cache of Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons, seizing a suspected chemical factory in southern Iraq and checking other sites based on leads from captured Iraqis and documents.
Officials cautioned it was premature to conclude any forbidden weapons had been located.” The Star (Malaysia)
Thre’s more: US Interviewing POWs to Find Chemical Sites:
“The U.S. military is moving quickly to interrogate more than 2,000 Iraqi POWs — including two generals — for information about the location of chemical and biological weapons.
But so far, no tips have led U.S. forces to uncover any of Saddam Hussein’s deadliest weapons. ” USA Today
And:
Chemical weapon find report ‘premature’: US
Reports that US troops have found a suspected chemical factory in Iraq were “premature”, the Pentagon said today.
Officials were trying to determine whether the plant, near the city of An Najaf, which US troops reached today on a push to Baghdad, was involved in making chemical weapons, officials said.
(…)Meanwhile, Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for UN weapons inspectors, said the weapons inspectors are not aware of any large-scale chemical sites which could be used to make chemical weapons in An Najaf. However, there are many such dual-use sites in other parts of the country because of Iraq’s petrochemical industry.” Sydney Morning Herald
Virus causing deadly pneumonia revealed:
“The mystery respiratory illness that has caused worldwide alarm and killed 16 people belongs to the paramyxovirus family, tests on patients in Germany, Hong Kong and Singapore strongly suggest.
But although the identification of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) will come as an enormous relief to public health officials, there are no effective drugs to treat it.” New Scientist
Yet another emerging viral disease than appears to have ‘jumped’ from its animal origins to human infection.
Curry spice combats alcohol-related liver disease:
“A vital ingredient of curry prevents alcohol-related liver disease, a study of rats has found.
Curcumin, the substance that gives the spice turmeric its distinctive yellow colour, stopped the changes caused by excessive alcohol consumption that lead to liver damage.
The research adds to the repertoire of benefits already shown by curcumin, which include anti-oxidant properties and anti-cancer activity.” New Scientist
So — epidemiologically — do curry-eating human populations have less alcohol-related liver damage per liter consumed?
Director Moore criticizes U.S.-Iraq war:
If there’s anyone you would want to muzzle during the Oscars to prevent politicizing the banal festivities, it would by Michael Moore. Too bad he won, Mr. Bush.
‘I was a naive fool…
…to be a human shield for Saddam‘. The human shields appealed to my anti-war stance, but by the time I had left Baghdad five weeks later my views had changed drastically. I wouldn’t say that I was exactly pro-war – no, I am ambivalent – but I have a strong desire to see Saddam removed. Telegraph/UK
In Click Languages, an Echo of the Tongues of the Ancients:
“Do some of today’s languages still hold a whisper of the ancient mother tongue spoken by the first modern humans? Many linguists say language changes far too fast for that to be possible. But a new genetic study underlines the extreme antiquity of a special group of languages, raising the possibility that their distinctive feature was part of the ancestral human mother tongue.
They are the click languages of southern Africa. About 30 survive, spoken by peoples like the San, traditional hunters and gatherers, and the Khwe, who include hunters and herders.
Each language has a set of four or five click sounds, which are essentially double consonants made by sucking the tongue down from the roof of the mouth. Outside of Africa, the only language known to use clicks is Damin, an extinct aboriginal language in Australia that was taught only to men for initiation rites.” NY Times Science
Issue 22 is out:
![//www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/images/war.135.gif' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/images/war.140.gif "Get Your War On")
‘Liberated’ Iraqis Question U.S. Motives
An ABC News reporter travelling with the US ground forces into Iraq observes Doubts and Questions:
Slow Aid and Other Concerns Fuel Iraqi Discontent Toward United States. “Traveling unescorted into Safwan today, I got a far different picture. Rather than affection and appreciation, I saw a lot of hostility toward the coalition forces, the United States and President Bush.”
Headless Headlong:
The Iraqis are certainly acting as if they are headless Telegraph/UK
Saddam seriously injured, Cabinet told: Tony Blair’s War Cabinet was told by intelligence chiefs yesterday that Saddam Hussein survived last week’s cruise missile attack on his bunker in Baghdad, but sustained serious injury.
The Telegraph has learned that ministers were told at a special 40-minute briefing that the Iraqi leader had been so badly wounded he needed a blood transfusion.
His son, Uday, is also thought to have been injured and may even have been killed. Some American officials also claimed yesterday that another of Saddam’s relatives, Ali Hassan al-Majid – known as “Chemical Ali” for his involvement in the infamous 1988 Halabja chemical weapons attacks – had been killed. Telegraph/UK
Genetic link may tie together pesticides, ADHD, Gulf War syndrome and other disorders
“Research at the Salk Institute has identified a gene that may link certain pesticides and chemical weaponry to a number of neurological disorders, including the elusive Gulf War syndrome and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).” EurekAlert!
Baghdad Civilians will Fight Invaders:
This scenario strikes fear into the hearts of tacticians. Stalingrad keeps being mentioned. And then there’s Mogadishu. Who knows how well-armed the civilian population is? truthout
On the Verge?
Even while US forces prosecute the Iraqi invasion smoothly and on schedule, an anxious person might think there are ominous signs the world may match US arrogant impetuousness in unforseen and cataclysmic ways.
‘Three missiles fired by U.S. jets taking part in attacks in Iraq landed over the border in southwestern Iran, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said on Saturday.
Quoting an unnamed military commander, IRNA also said that U.S. and British military jets violated the Islamic Republic’s airspace several times on Friday and Saturday during operations against targets in southern Iraq.
“In two cases, rockets from American planes hit (southwestern Iran),” the commander said. The rockets fell in the area of Maniuhi, close to the border with Iraq. The commander gave no further details and there were no reports of casualties or damage.
Another rocket hit an oil refinery depot on Friday evening in the city of Abadan, about 30 miles east of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, government officials and witnesses told Reuters. Two guards at the depot were injured in the blast.’ NY Times
If these were US/UK missiles, I can understand the first two landing just over the border but someone who knows more about how these things operate would have to dispel my suspicions that hitting an oil refinery depot 30 miles off-course could not have been accidental. Perhaps some commander got the brilliant idea, after the first two missiles strayed over the line, of making a gratuitous hit on Iran look inadvertent. Iraq, Iran, they sound alike, look alike, they’re both evil® in the commander-in-chief’s assessment, and they stand in our way in the same way in the global War for Peace. To be fair, however, given that US planes strayed over the border, these could have been Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles firing on them, the Times article suggests.
On the other side of Iraq, everyone is watching Turkish troop movements into Iraqi Kurdistan. Could Turkish designs on this region and fears of Kurdish nationalism emboldened by a US defeat of Iraq (more than Turkey’s stated aim of controlling an influx of refugees from the fighting into Turkey) have motivated Turkey all along in preventing US deployment on a northern front? In its arrogance, US strategic planners never counted on Turkey daring to flout our demand for cooperation. This miscalculation could broaden the war immeasurably in a manner we never bargained for, even if we’ve taken Baghdad within the next 48 hours. “Germany’s Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher has warned its crews on NATO planes protecting Turkey will be withdrawn if it becomes involved in the war; and a top Russian official has warned the war could spread if Turkey gets involved.” ABC News [via truthout]
And while we’re on the topic of the threshold,
‘North Korea says the situation on the Korean Peninsula was deteriorating to the “brink of a nuclear war” because of US-South Korean war games.
And in its first official response to the war on Baghdad, North Korea called the military action in Iraq “a grave encroachment upon sovereignty”.
It also accused the US of planning to attack North Korea after Iraq. ‘ Sydney Herald Sun [via truthout]
"Minute after minute the missiles came,
with devastating shrieks“. Robert Fisk reports from Baghdad on its bombardment, making it real… United for Peace
Looking very serious now…
Nick Bostrom’s home page: “Welcome! This page will tell you something about me and my goals. You will also find a selection of my writings in philosophy of science, ethics, transhumanism, probability theory and more, plus a work of poetry in Swedish which you will be unable to read.” Bostrom is an
Oxford University Research Fellow.
National guardman changed his name to a toy:
“I got a letter from a general at the Pentagon when the name change went through and he says it was great to have the employ of the commander of the Autobots in the National Guard.”
The Whole Wide World:
More on: Is the Baghdad Blogger for real? Paul Boutin comments on the net evidence so far. [via bOing bOing]
Consequence-free
Says Ray at Bellona Times:
To a more extreme extent than we’ve ever known before (the bloated Republican puppets of the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties being more openly pulled by the strings of their puppet-masters), the United States is under the power of the consequence-free. Bush went AWOL, and speaks as a patriot; he failed in business, and remains rich; he snorted and drank and raised those who snort and drink, and pushes life imprisonment for dabblers; he lost an election, and became President; he dragged the FBI off his Saudi business associates and some of them attacked our country and Bush hid and bin Laden still hides, and Bush was praised for his bungling; he squanders our national treasury and destroys our tax base and increases government spending on anything that might profit his domestic business associates, and I still don’t see the so-called fiscally responsible turning against him. He keeps inviting disaster, and retribution keeps passing harmlessly through him and onto the nation.
Whether Saddam Hussein is dangerous or not is beside the point. When I want to complain about dangerous leaders, I can see closer examples… [more]
"Minute after minute the missiles came,
with devastating shrieks“. Robert Fisk reports from Baghdad on its bombardment, making it real… United for Peace
Wepponzamassdestrukshun??
This Ha’Aretz article on the military operations notes that no Scuds have been found so far by US forces in Western Iraq, and Israel is downgrading its alert status.
…U.S. Army General Tommy Franks, commander of the allied forces operation in Iraq, said that it was not known whether Iraq still had the capability of firing Scud missiles at countries in the region.
“One doesn’t know whether the regime has the ability to strike any neighboring country with missiles,” Franks said in response to a reporter’s question on Iraqi strikes against Israel, in his first press briefing since the start of the war on Thursday.
No caches of chemical or biological weaponry have been found yet either. When the evidence is finally brandished triumphantly, probably in the face of serious world attention to their glaring absence, will you believe the timing? Even if you actually believe we did go in there to disarm Iraq?
"God Damn You
…and I mean that sincerely, George W. Bush. Far be it for me, a sinful man who has backslid more times than Robert Downey Jr., to personally single you and your murderous cohorts out.
I gladly defer to Bishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama and Jimmy Carter and the Pope, more conversant in things scriptural or theological than I, or any of your unenlightened inner circle, will ever be. I will let them speak the truth, as far as any of us can know it here on this earth. To a person, they condemn your most unholy and unjust of wars in Iraq.” — Alan Bisbort, American Politics Journal
Bin Laden’s victory:
A political system that delivers this disastrous mistake needs reform, says Richard Dawkins: “Osama bin Laden, in his wildest dreams, could hardly have hoped for this. A mere 18 months after he boosted the US to a peak of worldwide sympathy unprecedented since Pearl Harbor, that international goodwill has been squandered to near zero. Bin Laden must be beside himself with glee. And the infidels are now walking right into the Iraq trap.” Guardian/UK
We Begin Combing in Five Minutes!
We know Bush Junior is not ready for prime time, but here’s some confirming evidence: We Begin Combing in Five Minutes! (washingtonpost.com) “…(A) technician accidentally flipped a switch that fed the images of a not-ready-for-prime-time Bush — his eyes darting to and fro as a female stylist sprayed, combed and patted down his hair.” Footage was aired on BBC-TV, CBS and another British channel. “A BBC spokeswoman told us that her network promptly realized the video was not for broadcast ‘but they couldn’t pull away because of technical difficulties.’ ” Was this done on purpose? A fuming White House, insisting the footage was “unauthorized”, seemingly thinks so. A senior official observes that ‘…this kind of thing has happened more than once…’ and insists that from now on it will be Presidential staffers rather than network personnel who flick the switch turning on the feed at Bush’s press conferences. Washington Post
Fire when ready?
Sydney Morning Herald coverage of the ground war makes note of conflicting reports suggesting that US forces are using napalm as they advance into Iraq. Napalm is illegal under a 1980 United Nations convention. But then we don’t have any truck with what the UN wants anymore, do we?
Marchers blow the whistle for encore
Hundreds of thousands of peace marchers – as many as 700,000, according to organisers as they totted up the numbers mid-afternoon, but police insisted it was under 100,000, and even CND put the numbers just at 150,000 – were swarming past him; and, though the weather may have been markedly warmer than that which greeted the phenomenon that was the 15 February march, hearts were colder.
Britain’s biggest wartime demonstration was a more dour, determined and altogether angrier affair. Gone, it seemed, were the ranks of the well-dressed middle-classes, most of whom had been holding a placard for the first time, who swelled the first event to such historic proportions. Instead, the more bizarre groupings and banners (South London Home Educators; Sex Workers of the World Unite – and, yes, you can bet that heads were craning to see who was holding the poster) were almost lost in the sea of CND, SWP and Socialist Alliance posters, and their messages were not the stuff of musical comedy. ‘Weep with the Widows of Iraq.’ ‘Bomb Texas, they have oil too.’ The Workers’ Revolutionary Party Young Socialists, in particular, built a number of bridges with the rest of the nation by carrying the simple, pithy, ‘Victory to Iraq.’ Guardian/UK
Related: Global Day of Protest Against War on Iraq — A 200K poster in PDF format “listing the 603 cities, on all seven continents, that held protests on F15, along with crowd estimates for many of the largest turnouts.” [via monkeyfist]
And why in the world, in articles like this, does the New York Times keep saying “thousands of protesters” when it is talking about hundreds of thousands… two orders of magnitude greater?
An Air Of Empire —
The Heavy Price of Dominance: “Americans — whether they support or oppose war with Iraq — need to realize the consequences of the status we may shortly assume … the beginning of empire.” — Leon Fuerth, formerly national security adviser to vice president Al Gore and now a research professor at George Washington University. TomPaine
Pre-Emptive Diplomacy:
In a little-used U.N. legal procedure, any nation can by-pass logjams in the Security Council and take an issue directly to the General Assembly. Has the time come for the GA to vote to condemn the Iraq War as a breach of international peace and security? Globalvision News Network
Asymmetrical strategies:
What are the military options for Iraq? How will the US deploy their firepower? What is the likelihood of street battles in Baghdad? Paul Hirst, the author of War in the Twenty-First Century, assesses the options. open democracy
Has ‘fragging’ of senior officers in this dirty war already begun?
I was prepared to hear about a grenade attack at a US military camp in Kuwait but floored to hear that an American soldier is the prime may be a suspect. CNN
While of course the suspect may be mentally unstable and not a principled objector, the followng links are offered as Related: Not in a soldier’s name: Interviewed by television crews in the desert, the officers and men on the frontiers of Iraq put a brave face on it all. “We’re here to do a job.” But killing, and being killed, isn’t just a job. At least, some of them know it. Once in the service, it is very, very hard to quit. Comradeship is no mean virtue.
But in the US, it has become an issue. The Quakers, in North Carolina, have established a hotline to counsel disturbed members of the armed services. It is much in demand. Many Americans are devout Christians. Do they listen to church leaders, or do they follow their fundamentalist president, who still believes in crusades? It is tragic and ironic that Christian fundamentalism plays unwittingly into the hands of the Islamic fundamentalism it purports to despise. Guardian/UK
And: “A few in military refuse to fight ‘wrong war’. Activists call stance brave; critics say it’s cowardly.” USAToday
Now, I Am the Terrorist
So Are You. Americans are not often afforded the opportunity to witness a war crime live on television. Today’s actions bring to mind a war crime from a generation ago: The shooting of a prisoner by Vietnamese General and American ally Nguyen Ngoc Loan. General Loan put a pistol to the head of this bound prisoner and blew his brains into the street, an image that millions of Americans saw after it had taken place. We are here again today. The poverty of the Iraqi people leaves them bound, unable to escape the wave of steel. We have blown their brains out. We have incinerated them in place. We will continue to do so, and you can watch it from your couch. Today, you are the terrorist. — William Rivers Pitt, truthout
"Bush is an idiot,
but he was right about Saddam Paul Berman, one of the most provocative thinkers on the left, has a message for the antiwar movement: Stop marching and start fighting to spread liberal values in the Middle East.
(…)
Terror and Liberalism, Berman’s bracing new book, suggests that just as liberal-minded Europeans and Americans doubted the threats of Hitler and Stalin, enlightened Westerners today are in danger of missing the urgency of the violent ideologies coming out of the Muslim world.
The argument put forward by Berman, who is one of the most elegant and provocative thinkers to emerge from America’s New Left, will both infuriate and engage those on all sides of the political spectrum. In a recent interview with Salon, Berman insisted that while he does not support the Bush administration — actually, he detests how President Bush has handled the case for war and warns “we will pay for it” — he thinks it was also dangerous for the antiwar movement to ignore the threat that was posed by a ruthless Iraqi regime that killed a million people and threatened the stability of the world. ”
So you think the way he’s presenting this war to the world is really where he’s gone wrong.
Yes, it has been wretched. He’s presented his arguments for going to war partly mendaciously, which has been a disaster. He’s certainly presented them in a confused way, so that people can’t understand his reasoning. He’s aroused a lot of suspicion. Even when he’s made good arguments, he’s made them in ways that are very difficult to understand and have completely failed to get through to the general public. All in all, his inarticulateness has become something of a national security threat for the United States.
In my interpretation, the basic thing that the United States wants to do — overthrow Saddam and get rid of his weapons — is sharply in the interest of almost everybody all over the world. And although the U.S. is proposing to act in the interest of the world, Bush has managed to terrify the entire world and to turn the world against him and us and to make our situation infinitely more dangerous than it otherwise would have been. It’s a display of diplomatic and political incompetence on a colossal scale. We’re going to pay for this.
Then what is it that the public doesn’t understand? What hasn’t he been able to get across?
One thing he hasn’t gotten across is that there is a positive liberal democratic goal and a humanitarian goal here. Iraq is suffering under one of the most grotesque fascist tyrannies there’s ever been. Hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people, have been killed by this horrible regime. The weapons programs are not a fiction. There’s every reason to think that Saddam, who’s used these weapons in the past, would be happy to use them in the future. The suffering of the Iraqi people is intense. The United States is in the position to bring that suffering to an end. Their liberation, the creating of at least the rudiments of a liberal democratic society there, are in the interests of the Iraqi people and are deeply in the interests of liberal society everywhere. There are reasons to go in which are those of not just self-interest or self-defense, but of solidarity of humanitarianism, of a belief in liberal ideals. And Bush has gotten this across not at all.
Do you believe Bush has such motives?
It’s not right to utterly dismiss these motives. A lot of people look at Bush and sneer a little too easily and think that these motives cannot possibly have anything to do with him or his policies. This is a mistake too.
In Afghanistan, everybody sneers at the achievements of the United States and its allies because we see the warlords in the provinces, we see the extreme suffering, we see all the things that haven’t been done. But what has been done has really been quite magnificent. A hideous tyranny was overthrown, a new government was established in more or less the way that any liberal democrat would advise: Afghans were consulted from around the country, more or less democratic councils led to the forming of a new government with a new leader for Afghanistan who is not a warlord or a corrupt figure or a friendly religious fanatic but who is in fact a man of modern liberal democratic ideals.
Bush announced that the war in Afghanistan was going to be fought on behalf of women’s rights. Everybody deeply laughed at that and for reasons I can understand because in the United States Bush has not been a promoter of women’s rights. Still, the result of the war was in fact that women’s rights in Afghanistan have made a forward leap larger than anywhere in the world in history. From a certain point of view this has been the first feminist war in all of history.
He’s unable to do that partly because the man is fatally inarticulate and he’s also unable to do that, I’m sure, because he’s confused ideologically about whether he’s really in favor of the do-good aspect of his program or indifferent to it.
He hasn’t given us much of an indication that he’s preoccupied with these humanitarian issues. Maybe he simply isn’t.
He hasn’t straightened it out in his mind. His initial instinct was to oppose this sort of thing. He was against nation-building. Events have driven him to engage in nation-building, but he’s done it in a halfhearted way. Although he’s done some of these things which are admirable, he has not been able to enlist the world’s sympathy or support. He’s left people all over the world in a position where they have no way to regard his motives as anything other than the most cynical.
But I should add that although Bush is hugely to blame for this — it’s just tragic that the United States is led by such an inarticulate and intellectually confused and unattractive figure who personally makes me cringe — other people should be standing up and trying to fight for issues of humanitarianism and social solidarity, of women’s rights and liberal freedoms.
One of the scandals is that we’ve had millions of people marching through the streets calling for no war in Iraq, but we haven’t had millions of people marching in the streets calling for freedom in Iraq. Nobody’s marching in the streets on behalf of Kurdish liberties. The interests of the liberal dissidents of Iraq and the Kurdish democrats are in fact also our interests. The more those people prosper, the safer we are. This is a moment in which what should be our ideals — the ideals of liberal democracy and social solidarity — are also materially in our interest. Bush has failed to articulate this, and a large part of the left has failed to see this entirely.
Salon Books
Tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine has a profile by Berman of Sayyid Qutb, whom he dubs <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/magazine/23GURU.html?pagewanted=all&position=top%20%20
“>The Philosopher of Islamic Terror and ideological hero of al Qaeda. [thanks, walker]
Outbreak –
Why a deadly disease might be coming your way soon: this scare story takes off from a “massive report issued this week by the U.S. Institute of Medicine, Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response. It might as well have the subtitle: How We’re Blowing It.” Slate
But none of this is new. Investigative journalist Laurie Garrett said it all in another (also massive) tome almost a decade ago, The Coming Plague: newly emerging diseases
in a world out of balance, and I’ll bet with far less turgid prose. [As loyal readers of FmH know, I try to follow this stuff in an occasional department here of ’emerging infectious disease news’.]
The War Machine –
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The military’s laptop of choice provokes shock and awe: The author drools over the beefy hunk of machinery seen in videos from the front and reportedly widely deployed. This is either tongue-in-cheek or over-the-top; do you suppose the writer drives a Hummer? Slate
Construction Paper
Why liberals need an affirmative position on Iraq
With the U.S. invasion of Iraq under way, American liberals seem at a loss for how to respond. In recent months, most lined up against unilateral war; now that war has begun, the only semi-coherent message emerging from progressive ranks is one of rejectionism. But that tack is a mistake. And it is one liberals could pay for dearly — at the ballot box and in the department of intellectual credibility — in future years. When it comes to questions of war, Iraq and reconstruction, liberals need to start thinking constructively, and fast.
Liberals held a wide variety of views on the necessity of war during the months leading up to invasion. We were no exception: One of us fully supported the administration’s war plans while the other was critical of the president’s unilateral course. But that is all in the past. War is now a reality. And it seems to us that the only moral and practical option for liberals is to begin immediately campaigning for a more ambitious, comprehensive and compassionate reconstruction of Iraq than the one the Bush administration is likely to embrace — while supporting the war effort that will lay the groundwork for such plans to be enacted. — Nick Penniman and Richard Just, TomPaine and The American Prospect
A Double Standard on Dissent
The president’s party took an early run this week at shutting down criticism with an all-hands-on-deck attack on Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, a Vietnam-era veteran who had the nerve to criticize the diplomatic failures leading up to this war.
“I’m saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced to war,” Daschle said on Monday, “saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn’t create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country.”
The way the Republicans reacted, you’d have thought Daschle had endorsed Saddam Hussein for reelection. “Those comments may not undermine the president as he leads us into war,” said House Speaker Dennis Hastert. “And they may not give comfort to our adversaries, but they come mighty close.”
But a different standard seemed to apply after President Clinton launched his 1999 air campaign in Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians from another dictator. — EJ Dionne, Washington Post
What can Eritrea possibly do to help the US in Iraq?
In times of strife, it is good to know who your friends are. So, in the absence of support from traditional allies such as France and Germany, it will come as welcome news to our troops in the Gulf this week that when the going gets tough, Azerbaijan is right behind them. The “coalition of the willing”, as Colin Powell has called it, is the list of 30 countries that responded positively to a phone call from Washington, seeking their support against Iraq. Starting with Afghanistan, ending with Uzbekistan and with 15 countries in between preferring to remain anonymous, it is an imaginative list, eschewing the usual suspects to give those nations not used to playing a role on the world stage a chance to shine. Albania, for example. And Georgia. Guardian/UK
