CONDOLENCES TO THE CONDOLEEZZA, BUSH’S BLUNDERBUSS

I just this morning read Condoleezza Rice’s report in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs. Interesting how she reported on our current foreign affair objectives without once showing us how Bush has screwed them all up. For example, on Page 7, she believes that the rise of an alliance of certain unnamed democracies in Asia along with Japan and Australia will counterbalance the increasing influence of China in that region. She forgets to mention that a recent poll in Australia shows that Australians trust China more than they trust America. So much for that alliance.

About Iraq, she writes that “the cost of this war in lives and treasure, for Americans and Iraqis, has been greater than we ever imagined.” (Page 21) I wonder if she or Bush or Cheney ever read any popular magazines, like Newsweek, for example, before they illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. I recall very clearly reading in many places and hearing on many TV shows just how costly our invasion and occupation of Iraq would be. Were some of our news media more astute and informed than the government which carried on the invasion? Humnnnn? Also under this heading, she failed to mention why we did not, therefore, invade other dictatorships whose practices were worse than Hussein’s.

She also continued to assert the now defunct reason for our invasion of Iraq, that is the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein. She did this by going to the fallback position of the Bush administration, that Saddam was willing and ready to reconstitute his invisible weapons of mass destruction. Her assertion was an act of mind reading that surpasses the abilities of all previous American Secretaries of State, beginning with Thomas Jefferson and including James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams. (Page 21) I wonder if she’ll take up tea reading after her stint in American government?

Anyhow, I didn’t mean to make this an endlessly long recapitulation of Rice’s essay in Foreign Affairs. But you might enjoy reading it yourselves. Nowhere does she take Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld to task for their blunders and failures. I think this failure of nerve on her part makes the entire presentation suspect and weak.

Note how her paragraph, following, would be more honest if she just mentioned how our American values have been most compromised, not by liberals, but by you know who and his lackey and by Republicans in general since the start of the Reagan era:

“Ultimately, however, what will most determine whether the United States can succeed in the twenty-first century is our imagination. It is this feature of the American character that most accounts for our unique role in the world, and it stems from the way that we think about our power and our values. The old dichotomy between realism and idealism has never really applied to the United States, because we do not really accept that our national interest and our universal ideals are at odds. For our nation, it has always been a matter of perspective. Even when our interests and ideals [i.e. under the Bush administration or when Republicans invaded Chile and overthrew a democratically elected government] come into tension in the short run, we believe that in the long run they are indivisible.”

AMERICAN NAIVETÉ AND AMERICAN TERRORISM
by James Loewen (Photo credit to Sally McCay)

The deeper I get into this textbook, Lies My Teacher Told Me, the more agog I am. I have certainly been naïve when it comes to American history, and I am certainly guilty of having had, in my past, a too unrealistic view of American foreign policy and the domestic aims of its leaders. Chapter after chapter this book thrills me. I have the 1995 edition. There is now a revised 2007 edition. Can the following be true, that the neocons are following George Kennan’s view of the world? What kind of ideal America do they represent to the rest of the world in our name?

[SNIPPET]

… the realpolitik view. George Kennan, who for almost half a century has been an architect of and commentator on U.S. foreign policy, provided a succinct statement of this approach in 1948, As head of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, Kennan wrote in a now famous memorandum:

• We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population, In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real test in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction—unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization.

Under this view, the historian or political scientist proceeds by identifying American national interests as articulated by policymakers in the past as well as by historians today. Then s/he analyzes our acts and policies to assess the degree to which they furthered these interests.

High school American history textbooks do not, of course, adopt or even hint at the American colossus view.... they omit the realpolitik approach. (p.210)

[PASTE IT]

Looking at Kennan’s statement above, we can now see why we have been doing what we’ve been doing in the world. The next passage shows how this policy might have been applied to Iraq. In fact, Loewen’s comments about the Nixon past are so prescient about the Bush Jr. fiasco, I can hardly believe it.

[SNIP]

Richard Rubenstein has pointed out, "the problem will not go away with the departure of Richard Nixon," because it is structural, stemming from the vastly increased power of the federal executive bureaucracy. Indeed, in some ways the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan-Bush administrations, a web of secret legal and illegal acts involving the president, vice-president, cabinet members, special operatives such as Oliver North, and government officials in Israel, Iran, Brunei, and elsewhere, shows an executive branch more out of control than Nixon's. Textbooks' failure to put Watergate into this perspective is part of their authors' apparent program to whitewash the federal government so that schoolchildren will respect it. Since the structural problem in the government has not gone away, it is likely that students will again, in their adult lives, face an out-of-control federal executive pursuing criminal foreign and domestic policies. To the extent that their understanding of the government comes from their American history courses, students will be shocked by these events and unprepared to think about them.

"Our country may she always be in the right," toasted Stephen Decatur in 1816, "but our country, right or wrong!" Educators and textbook authors seem to want to inculcate the next generation into blind allegiance to our country. Going a step beyond Decatur, textbook analyses fail to assess our actions abroad according to either a standard of right and wrong or realpolitik. Instead, textbooks merely assume that the government tried to do the right thing. Citizens who embrace the textbook view would presumably support any intervention, armed or otherwise, and any policy, protective of our legitimate national interests or not, because they would be persuaded that all our policies and interventions are on behalf of humanitarian aims. They could never credit our enemies with equal humanity. (p.223)

[PASTE]

And going further, Marine Corp General S.D. Butler shows that this has been America’s aim, to dominate the world for the exclusive benefit of our national corporations, since at least 1900.

[SNIP]

[Here’s] … a shot of the realism supplied by former Marine Corps Gen. Smedley D. Butler, whose 1931 statement has become famous:

• I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras ‘right’ for American fruit companies in 1903. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. (p.214)

[PASTE]

Finally, with following list of specific American wrong doings in the world community, an honest American can at least understand why the Reverend Jeremiah Wright could claim that American neocons' acts of terrorism in the world might be coming home to roost for average, more decent Americas. In short, the attack on America’s twin towers are the direct result of George Kennan’s policy, acted on through and by American neocons, though they were not always called by that name. We must not blame the average American for the neocon atrocities, but we can blame ourselves for our ignorance and naiveté. Perhaps we can even blame our textbooks for misleading us in so many areas. Remember, these are acts of terror as defined by our own government as to what constitutes a terrorist government.

[SNIP]

1. our assistance to the shah's faction in Iran in deposing Prime Minister Mussadegh and returning the shah to the throne in 1953;
2. our role in bringing down the elected government of Guatemala in 1954;
3. our rigging of the 1957 election in Lebanon, which entrenched the Christians on top and led to the Muslim revolt and civil war the next year; [why do they hate us?]
4. our involvement in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of Zaire in 1961;
5. our repeated attempts to murder Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba and bring down his government by terror and sabotage; and
6. our role in bringing down the elected government of Chile in 1973. [Also killing a young American.] (p.215)

[PASTE]

HARPER'S IS A GOOD MAGAZINE

It's been awhile since I've looked into a Harper's Magazine. One day while I was at Barnes & Noble having a latte at their Starbucks, I decided to pick up this Harper's (April 2008) because they had a cover story about "contagious cancer". That got my attention, but once into reading, I came across an informative piece of writing from Iraq via a woman who lives in Syria about all the Iraqis who are refugees in the world, millions of them. Their stories made me cry. I was surprised at myself. And there is also this biting story by artist John Berger (p.46) about the Mexican Zapatistas in which this piece about Maria Concepcion appears. So read it, and buy a Harper's if you get a chance. It's a damn fine magazine. Did I get the name in often enough? Maybe you already know that.

(SNIP)
Speaking of sincerity makes me suddenly think of a photo of a woman who is not wearing a mask. I cut the photo out of the daily newspaper La Jornada. Her name is Maria Concepcion Moreno Arteaga. Mother of six boys, whom she brought up alone. Forty-seven years old, living in a village 200 kilometers north of Mexico City, she earned her living as a washerwoman. Three years ago she was arrested by the Mexican government security forces and thrown into jail on the totally false charge of being involved in the traffic of illegal immigrants. One day Maria Concepcion found herself before six such migrants in rags, who had made it across more than half the country and were pleading for water. So she gave them water and a wedge of something to eat because, given their plight, "there was no way possible to say no”.

After being falsely charged she spent more than two years in prison. Her work in prison was the making of logos, labels for free-market clothes. With the few pesos handed over to her for this forced labor, she bought soap and toilet paper to keep clean.

The message of her eyes in the photo is: There was no way possible to say No.
(PASTE)

Photo credit to Marco Pelaez/La Jornada, Mexico

TODAY'S HAIKU: too true too

Spring birdbath:
the crows leave sparrow skulls
in the rainwater.

Frightened by the
old man in the mirror,
my hair retreats.

USUALLY MY POSTS ARE ABOUT…

politics, science and literature, but I just happened to come across these photos on the Huffpo site. Even at the ripe old age of 70 and with a little help from Viagra, I can rise to this occasion. My great grandparents from before the days of the Great Depression would not understand it at all… or would they? Or at least my wonderful great grandfather on my grandmother’s side of dad's family might respond and understand. He was a drayman who drove a team of horses for a brewery in Dayton, Ohio. Have men ever been immune to a well-turned ankle? Look at the ankle on that chick! Hey! Where is that ankle.... Never mind!

"Proving she's still an American Beauty, actress Mena Suvari looked a figure of confidence as she showed off her slim physique in a revealing bikini."



NOW FOR SOMETHING
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

The following explosive and revealing letter by a serviceman in Iraq, I got via the Huffpo site also which directed me to a website run by a fellow named Spencer Ackerman.

from ’s Ackerman's blog:

"A friend of a friend just received the following email from a junior officer serving in Iraq. It makes for especially powerful reading in the wake of the Second Sadrist Intifada. Reprinted with permission.


"[Name redacted],

"I agree that the war was a great strategic mistake. The way I see it, Saddam Hussein was a secular leader and therefore a huge stumbling block to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Yes, he was an evil person and he was our enemy (since Gulf War I) but he was also an enemy of Bin Laden and the Shia extremists etc. If he did have WMDs, he would have used them for regional influence. He never would have given them up to terrorists or risked provoking the US by using them against us. Now, with Saddam gone we have a vaccum that can only be filled by Shia extremists who are more of a terrorist threat than Saddam.

"So I agree that coming here was a big mistake for those reasons and others. As far as things on the ground, the outlook isn't much better. In my opinion, what everyone fails to realize is that this is not a counterinsurgency. If we wanted to stay in Iraq, then it would be a counterinsurgency. But it is clear that our goal is to turn over power and pull out. So, in building our strategic endstate, it's pointless to set goals that relate to our presence in Iraq. If the "insurgency" is a function of our being there, then it is not an insurgency in terms of our endstate. For example, if one of our goals is to stop IED attacks on US forces, that is pointless. When we leave, there will be no more IED attacks on us forces. So our endstate needs to be different. We need to ask "if we left tomorrow, what would happen in Iraq?" and from there, we need to determine which of those anticipated results are unacceptable to us. Then we must aim our efforts on making sure those unacceptable results do not occur.

"When I look at the problem that way, it becomes almost impossible to find a purpose in what we do. Regardless of what we do, the Shia are going to take control. They have completely infiltrated all the security forces. The only kind of leader who could keep them in check was a tyrant like Saddam. And when the Shia take control, as soon as we leave, they are going to be as brutal as they like against the Sunni and there will be little we can do about it. That is what will happen whether we leave tomorrow or in ten years. As far as the foreign fighters, they will leave Iraq when we do. So what are we trying to accomplish here? Train the Iraqi forces? History shows that training forces in the Middle East can backfire. Any training we offer these people will find its way to our terrorist enemies.

"Things are heating up as well. The Shia are getting more aggressive. We lost a man the other day and another was seriously wounded a week or so later. We're facing a high risk with very little potential payoff. We are able to make a difference at the local level. Some of the people are very kind and appreciate our help. That is the only positive thing I can see coming out of this.

"Very Respectfully
"Junior Officer XXXX"

PS: I wonder why we have to hide the soldier's name? His disagreeing with the Bush fiasco should only get him replaced by a soldier who puppets the Bush/McCain plan like Patraeus replaced the general who disagreed with Bush. What the hell was his name? Is he still in the service?

THE VALLEY OF ELAH

I recommend this film for it’s emotional power and for the performances by all concerned, but if you don’t like films with unhappy endings, you don’t want to see it, but if you are addicted to the truth, then you must see it. The screenplay is a knockout. Films which get under the skin of a situation are rare, and this one gets far under the skin of the Iraq situation. It works at so many levels, it’s a Twin Tower of Power all in itself. There’s one line at the end of the film about the American flag that works at so many levels, your head will spin—“It’s been used a lot.” You’ll see what I mean when you actually see the film.

OKAY! IT’S FALL IN OLD FORT VANCOUVER!