Dubya in Bucharest

Is this just more unbridled hubris, simply another case of sheer stupidity or both? Perhaps it’s just a grandstand move, like the recent Mid-East ‘Peace’ effort to try to balance the historic record of Dubya’s administration.

Bush went to the NATO summit in Romania to campaign for the admission of the former Soviet states, Ukraine and Georgia, into the ranks of NATO and to pressure allies to increase troop commitments in Afghanistan.

First of all, the war there should have been resolved years ago. With the full assistance of the UN and NATO and clear, concerted attention to the stated objective of capturing Bin Laden and neutralizing Al-Qaeda, it quite probably could have been.

The grand distraction of the illegal war in Iraq allowed the primary mission to fail as it was turned over to Pakistan to fulfill; Pakistan which had fully supported the Taliban before and after 9-11. That failure allowed the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to become resurgent by escaping, regrouping, rearming and reinforcing in the Tribal Areas along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border from which they launched a campaign to re-take Afghanistan. (Mullah Rashid Akhond, the overall military commander of the Taleban in Wardak, a central province bordering Kabul, claims to have 2,000 active fighters ready for a spring offense.) Hence, Bush is using what little clout is left him as an out-going president at his last NATO summit to insist on additional military assistance from NATO countries.

In his own little world of Biblical import, Bush also chose to take several punches at Putin, the out-going president of Russia by promoting missile bases and radar installation in Russia’s front yard and the pushing for the admission of two former Soviet states, Ukraine and Georgia, as NATO members.

Putin, obviously not understanding that Bush serves a higher power, counter-punched with a combination of logic and reason. He first questioned the reason for the very existence of NATO, saying the purpose of the alliance was to counter the perceived threat during the Cold War of a country which doesn’t exist anymore, the Soviet Union. He added, "This thesis is rather strange – if one is a member of NATO, there is democracy, and if not, no democracy. This is nonsense. NATO is not a democratizer," he said.

But Bush is the ‘Democratizer’ bunny who has never let reason or logic stand in his way and he wants the Ukraine and Georgia to join the ranks of the newly ‘democratized’ NATO countries which were formerly Warsaw Pac members. There are already ten such members and two more waiting in queue. Bush would like to ask them all to supply troops to the fight in Afghanistan.

Evidently, he and his advisors have forgotten what took place in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. It is unlikely that the people of the Ukraine, Georgia, Romania and the other former members of the Soviet bloc which are now NATO members have forgotten.

Nearly 14,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed and nearly half a million suffered wounds, injury and debilitating illness before Moscow withdrew its forces in defeat. It is generally accepted that the collapse of the Soviet Union, at least in part, came as a result of that war.

I would doubt that any of the former Soviet Bloc would want to go through that again, especially given the dire situation in Iraq and the state of the US economy. The fact that the hat-in-hand request is coming from Dubya, the lame duck would be enough to give them pause. Time will tell.

NATO, responding to the strong objection from Moscow, rejected the admission of Ukraine and Georgia. More troops from Canada, Spain and France will be headed to Afghanistan, though, so the quagmire will mire on. That should make Dubya and the other remaining neo-cons happy; two never-ending wars spiraling out of control at the same time. That must be an historical first.

http://www.newssafety.com/hotspots/documents/AKEAfghanistan27.03.2008.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7327944.stm

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,544189,00.html

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080401/nato_afghanistan_080401/20080401/?hub=Specials

http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/410713

A Million Iraqi March

An odd combination: military action leaving hundreds dead followed by a call for peaceful demonstrations.

On Thursday Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for 1 million Iraqis to march against U.S. “occupation” next week, to “express your rejections and raise your voices loud against the unjust occupier and enemy of nations and humanity, and against the horrible massacres committed by the occupier against our honorable people.”

One million is the estimate currently given for the number of Iraqis who have died since the illegal invasion of their country by the US-led Coalition Forces.

The date of the march will be on the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad in the city of Najaf, an Islamic Holy City, site of the shrine of Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph. Najaf also contains one of the largest cemeteries in the world and according to Imam Ali, any Muslim buried there will enter paradise.

Let’s pray that the cemetery will not grow larger as a result of this demonstration.

Contemptible News Ninnies

You know, what irks me about CNN (other than the fact that for all of the people and equipment they have in the field, they barely clear the bar as a news source at all) is their incessant self-promotion. Why are they compelled to tout themselves as a news source and lionize their reporters? Why do they insist on telling us again and again that CNN can be seen in all the finest hotels around the world?

I’m watching. I’m watching. You have me as a viewer, now give me something engaging to watch.

If you got the goods, CNN, stopping jawing about it and hold forth. Stop boring us with hype on how good you are and show us some solid evidence of your professed excellence in the form of comprehensive, responsible, unbiased journalism on substantive and relevant topics.

Greed and the Rumba Line

Sorting through all of the information, dis-information, lies, obfuscations and specious assertions, one might never know 'WHO' pulls the strings in this world. Labeling 'THEM' Bilderbergers, CFA, NSA, Tri-lats, WMF or the Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, only allows the mind to focus for awhile on the problem. The problem is as old as humanity, one of the Cardinal sins - Greed. Greed for power and money to be exact; the other sins, Pride, Sloth, Envy, etc, all follow in a demonic rumba line to Greed.

Perhaps the most important precept to keep in mind is the dictum made by 'Deep Throat' to Woodward and Bernstein - 'Follow the Money'. For it is the adoration of money and the power it buys that has brought us to this condition. I know that is a very simplistic assessment. It is a 'thumbnail'. The 'elevator pitch'.

My intention here has not been to demonize Bush or any of his administration. They are not demons. They are ruthless, greedy men who should be held accountable for their actions the same as any other criminal. For what they have perpetrated are crimes against the Constitution of the United States, the American People and the World. Impeachment is one legal process by which we call an elected governmental servant of the people to accounts. The unelected members of his cabinet should also be indicted and prosecuted by the World Court just as Milosevic and other war criminals have been.

I understand fully that impeachments and indictments will not solve the problems of the world, no more than prosecuting murderers and rapists will end murder or sexual assault. As a country founded on the rule of law, impeachment, indictment and prosecution are the tools that we have allowed ourselves to utilize to keep in check those who would illegally serve themselves to the detriment of the greater good.

I feel as many do: I fear for our country. I fear that we may have lost our constitutional republic except as a formality of hollow rituals and meaningless elections. As Mayer Amschel Rothschild said "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws."

That is the heart of the matter. Our nation has devolved into a corporate fascism: corporatism. It's not as heinous as the brand of fascism witnessed in Germany or Italy. It is a kinder, gentler form of fascism that allows its subjects to go about the business of making a comfortable life for themselves but only within certain prescribed parameters by which the rulers, the corporate managers will benefit. Democratic self-rule, government by the people is off the agenda except as a sop to keep the people pacified.

Whether, Johnny Mac, Hillary the Pill or Barack O'Mama gets elected, they will be ham-strung by all of the concessions and deals and compromises they have already made to the corporate managers in exchange for the millions in their campaign war chests.

The War in Iraq was a series of monumental blunders brought about by greed and hubris with horrendous, far-reaching consequences. Anyone who cannot accept that is being willfully blind. It may well bring about the unraveling of the American Empire and the near collapse of the economy. McCain and ‘more of the same’ of the past 8 years is not what I would prefer for the USA. Whether Hillary or Obama can set some things to right is a question I hope both of them will have a chance to answer to our satisfaction.

As black as that vision is, I do have faith. Not in Divine Intervention or the Second Coming. I have faith in the spiritual evolution of humanity. The spirit I refer to is that by which each of us can look beyond our petty desires and see and fell empathy with the great family of Man. Like any faith, it is constantly being tested.

Dubya's Re-surgitation

Well, now that is a really good one, Georgie. Even the most audacious lies will serve the cause. Here is Dubya laying out the recent up-tick in violence in Iraq in plain terms for us:

President Bush: “This offensive builds on the security gains of the surge and demonstrates to the Iraqi people that their government is committed to protecting them.”

By killing them, but that’s beside the point, I guess.

Last week, before the Medhi Army of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ended its unilateral cease-fire, Bush told us the surge was working because violence (or deaths from violence) was down by 50%. (As Patrick Cockburn, Iraq correspondent for the London Independent said on Democracy Now! last night,"50% of a bloodbath is still a bloodbath.")

Now, we’re expected to believe that the surge is working precisely because of the recent increase in hostile military actions in Basra and Baghdad and elsewhere. Evidently, despite the cease-fire, Medhi militiamen were targeted for attack by US supported Iraqi forces. Now they're shooting back and firing mortars into what was formerly known as 'the Green Zone'.

The Prez went on to say:

President Bush: "There is a strong commitment by the central government of Iraq to say that no one is above the law. "

Other than the USA, Israel , Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR and other select friends, of course.

A side note: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is trying to be nice - in the midst of a bloody crack-down - saying he would extend a deadline for Mahdi fighters to lay down their arms until April 8^th. (Let’s not all laugh at once.)

Then Bush gave us yet another caveat, lest we begin to hallucinate a light at the end of the tunnel.

President Bush: This operation is going to take some time to complete. And the enemy, you know, will try to fill the TV screens with violence. But the ultimate result will be this: terrorists and extremists in Iraq will know they have no place in a free and democratic society."

I don’t suppose there’s any real need to point out that there were no terrorists or extremist in Iraq before the illegal US invasion in 2003. Other than Saddam, his two demonic progeny and their henchmen, all of whom benefited in the most vulgar degree from the largess and friendship of St Ronnie, the Communicator’, Rummy ‘the in-fighter’ and everyone’s favorite Dick way back before Saddam left his back yard without permission for some mischief in Kuwait, that is.

Perhaps, though, I might just attempt to assert that those that the Dubya Administration and others call ‘terrorists and extremists’ would actually have legitimate recourse to rectify social and political conditions unfavorable to their community if they actually lived in a ‘free and democratic society’. Some might see that as ‘putting the cart before the horse’. I see it more as ‘the chicken and the egg’.

Of course, as VP Dick made clear last week, my opinion, like those of any other American, doesn’t matter a whit. What matters is what they in Bush the Younger's Administration think and what they want us to believe.

Up is down. Black is white. Might makes Right. The Surge is working.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/28/headlines

The Red, White and Blue Surge

“The ‘Surge’ is working.”

It’s the abracadabra mantra of the Bush administration and its adherents. If they say it often enough, they expect we’ll believe them. It’s a tactic that worked well enough for them when they chanted ‘WMDs’ leading up to the war. We can’t blame them for trying. (But we can try them for lying.)

What amazes is the brazen, unabashed arrogance by which they make this specious, perfidious declamation. The most disturbing example of this comes from everybody’s favorite ‘Dick’, the vice-president, Mr Cheney. Here is an excerpt from an interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC’s Good Morning America:

Cheney: “On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.”

Raddatz: “Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.”

Cheney: “So?”

Raddatz: “So? You don’t care what the American people think?”

Cheney: “No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.”

Funny, maybe I’m being naïve but I’ve been under the impression that the United States of America was a representational democratic republic; ‘of the people by the people for the people’ and all that. Here’s the VP of the nation stating on a national television broadcast that the voice of the people is not something he or the administration needs to heed.

Let’s give ol’ Dick the benefit of the doubt and check what the American people have to say.

According to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted between March 14 and March 16, 66% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq.

During roughly the same time period, 59% of respondents in a CBS News poll said they felt the US should have stayed out of Iraq and 65% disapproved of Bush’s handling of the situation in Iraq.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll taken between Feb. 28 and March 2, 2008 found that 63% felt the war was not worth fighting.

According to the Pew Research Center survey conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International Feb. 20-24, 2008, 54% think the U.S. made the wrong decision in using military force against Iraq.

(There may well be polls that found substantial support for the war in Iraq - the student body at Pat Robertson’s Regent University, for instance – but I discovered none.)

Note that these polls were taken after the Bush apparatchiks had been chanting the mantra for months in news reports, press conferences, interviews and the like. Apparently, the majority of the US public polled had not been swayed.

Regardless of the polls, the VP says, “So?”

In a speech given at the Pentagon to mark the fifth anniversary of the illegal US invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq, Dub-ya proclaimed that the US is safer after its invasion of Iraq, adding that the troop 'surge' had succeeded in promoting stability there. "Because we acted the world is better and the United States of America is safer. Because of the troop surge, the level of violence is significantly down. Civilian deaths are down. Sectarian killings are down. Attacks on American forces are down.”

Pardon me, Mr Bush, but are you smoking jimson weed? What bizarro-world are you using as a benchmark if you consider the world and the United States a better, safer place since the invasion? Maybe you should ‘follow your bliss’, don a uniform and stand on the front lines before you spew such nonsense. (ref: this blog, March 17, 2008 ‘Irony #2’) Or how about taking a nice stroll outside the ‘Green Zone’ without a security detachment to discover for yourself how safe the world is for US citizens? Might I suggest Fallujah, Karbala or Tikrit?

Just as detached from reality is Dubya wanna-be, John McCain. Johnny Mac was in London trying on the ‘president’s new clothes’ and sizing up Gordon Brown for a dog collar when he offered his own syntactically fractured version of the party line.”We are now succeeding in Iraq and Americans, at least, I believe, are in significant numbers agreeing that the present strategy of the Surge is succeeding.”

Better check the polls, Mr Candidate.

100 more years. 100 more years.

To be fair, arrogant delusions about this ghastly conflict are not limited to the Neo-cons and Republicans. On the stump in Detroit, Senator Hillary Clinton, outlining her plan to draw down troop levels in Iraq said “… the Iraqi government has to take responsibility for its own future. We have given them the precious gift of freedom and it is up to them to decide whether or not they will use it." (Italics are mine.)

“We have given them the precious gift of freedom…”

Talk about arrogance. One can imagine an Iraqi widow wondering what the return policy is on such a blood-soaked gift.

"When you have at least 200 Iraqis dying every month in attacks on a per capita equivalent ... I don't know how anyone can characterise that as a success.” Hady Amr, a Middle East analyst at the Brookings Institution in Doha, Qatar, told Al Jazeera that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a strategic disaster. Mr Amr said: “The US took a country that had a lot of problems, a totalitarian state, and turned it into a haven for terrorism."

So, by what criteria is the ‘Surge’ working? Granted, the total number of fatal attacks against ‘Coalition Forces’ and sectarian violence is down from the disastrous highs of 2006 and 2007. Much of this reduction of violence, however, is due to the Mehdi Army cease-fire called by Muqtada al-Sadr last August, though that substantial fact is seldom mentioned in the corporate media and only in passing, never fully investigating the implications.

How could any rational individual call a return to the bloody, black days of 2005 ‘progress’? One must assume that the present level of slaughter, mayhem and atrocity is acceptable to the Bushites as long as they breathe deeply and keep chanting.

The ‘Surge’ is working.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/20/headlines

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/20/iraq.main/

http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm

The Daily Show video: Iraq , the First Five Years

The Road to Hell

Let’s begin with a parable; the parable of ‘the boy, the bird and the stone’.

A small child throws a stone and kills a songbird. The child might not have intended to kill the bird; perhaps he meant only to chase it away or practice his throwing arm. Whatever the intent, whatever the boy’s motive, the bird remains dead. The Audubon Society would care nothing about the child’s motives. And neither would the bird.

The Brookings institution is a well-known Washington think-tank upon which many administrations of the US government have depended for non-partisan research for almost a century. Kenneth M. Pollack is the Director of Research at the Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He is an expert on national security, military affairs and the Persian Gulf, was Director for Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council and spent seven years in the CIA as a Persian Gulf military analyst.

In an article posted on the Brookings website on March 16, 2008, Mr Pollack had this to say:
“If we leave behind a raging civil war in which the Iraqi people are incomprehensibly worse off than they had been under Saddam Hussein and the Middle East more threatened by the chaos spilling over from Iraq than they ever were by the dictator’s arms, then no one will care how well-intentioned our motives.”

How well-intentioned our motives? Motives?

Mr Pollack, with all due respect, please re-read your statement. Note the words “…a raging civil war in which the Iraqi people are incomprehensibly worse off than they had been under Saddam Hussein…” and the part where you say “and the Middle East more threatened by the chaos spilling over from Iraq than they ever were by the dictator’s arms…”.

If that is a proper assessment of the situation in Iraq – and I think that it is, with little room for disagreement – what does it matter what our motives were?

A recent World Health Organisation report estimated that 151,000 civilian Iraqi men, women and children were killed between March 20, 2003 and June 2006. The estimated number of civilian Iraqis killed by violence in 2007 is in the neighborhood of 22,000 to 24,000 according to Iraq Body Count, a British firm dedicated to making this grim tally. Do you expect the surviving family members of the 175,000 Iraqis killed as a result of American foreign policy to care a whit about the motives of the US?

Neither the Brookings Institution, the Pentagon nor even the Red Cross/Red Crescent, to my knowledge, have offered an estimate of the number of Iraqi men, women and children wounded since the onset of the invasion. (Here’s quite the party killing parlor game: Pick a number. Twice those killed? Three times the number killed? Four times? A factor of 10?) What do the wounded and suffering care if our intentions were well-meant?

The ICRC states “five years after the outbreak of the war in Iraq, the humanitarian situation in most of the country remains among the most critical in the world. Because of the conflict, millions of Iraqis have insufficient access to clean water, sanitation and health care. The current crisis is exacerbated by the lasting effects of previous armed conflicts and years of economic sanctions.” The once developing nation of Iraq has been reduced to the dire, retched state of one of the poorest third world countries. Will the children dying of thirst and dysentery in the shell of a bombed out neighborhood clinic pause to weigh the pros and cons of our intentions?

Please, Mr Pollack, tell me what had the Bush administration intended when they rail-roaded the US Congress and the American people into this illegal war? The term ‘well-intentioned motive’ does not spring to my mind. ‘War profiteering’ does and that’s a matter that should be discussed along with war crimes and war reparations, but let’s leave that for another time.

To his credit, Mr Pollack has belatedly seen the light. Or at least, he’s caught a glimpse, for he goes on with this carefully worded under-statement, “…what I most wish I had understood before the invasion was the reckless arrogance of the Bush administration.” He then calls the Bush administration’s handling of the war “clumsy, careless and rash”. Clearly, Mr Pollack now thinks, like the majority of Americans, that waging war in Iraq was a blunder.

Better late than never?

Now, presumably, he and his fellow Saban Center intellectuals will spend months or years ciphering the tactics, strategies and operations to deduce where the fatal errors lay that lead to yet another less-than-successful, though valiant American crusade to bring the gift of freedom and democracy to an oppressed people.

Better luck next time?

The greater issue Mr Pollack and most of his profession seem blissfully oblivious to, however, is precisely the one which should be triggering red flag alerts and setting off klaxons and sirens of warning. Most of the rest of the world is aware of it. Much of the world resents it. Some of the world hates us for it. Some hate it enough to fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up in crowded markets to express their resentment and hatred for it. The issue referred to is not ‘our love of freedom’. It is not ‘our noble vision of a democratic world’. It is not our magnanimity, our wealth, our life-style, our sports heroes, our films or our music. The issue that gets under the skin of the rest of the world is the self-deluded, self-righteous, self-serving credo that the government of the US, while capable of the most egregious acts, is nevertheless motivated by only the most high-minded of intentions and ipso facto should be excused for its various transgressions.

(‘Transagressions’ is the euphemism that would be preferred in polite company. To come closer to the truth as understood by much of the rest of the world, transgressions should be read as ‘crimes against humanity’. Anyone with a shred of moral integrity need only recall Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and Panama for past examples of such ‘transgressions’. )

It is said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” That might be, but the larger paving stones on the road to hell are undoubtedly greed, murder, torture, corruption and hubris.

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2008/0316_iraq_pollack.aspx

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22537.pdf

http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/iraq-report-170308