How the Baghdad bombing changed humanitarian affairs

This essay is part of an occasional feature on this blog that presents compelling stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, IsraelStine and the Trumped Up Enemy of the Month. A list of all pieces in this series can be found found here.

Ten years ago today, a bombing obliterated United Nations headquarters in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, killing 22 aid workers and UN staff members. This piece on the BBC website highlights how this attack fundamentally changed the work of not only the UN, but also of humanitarian aid organizations around the world. A subsequent bombing of the facilities of the Red Cross, generally considered the most respected humanitarian organization in the world, also had a shattering effect. In the subsequent decade, aid workers have increasingly found themselves the target of combatants, not merely bystanders.

Random thoughts

PRIORITIES
The American people had no problem with kidnapping random and sundry foreigners on foreign soil, guilty or not, and “renditioning” them to torturous regimes under the pretext of national security. We had no problem with funding such tortuous regimes with oodles of your tax money (but God forbid we help working Americans get health care). We had no problem with our agents doing the torturing themselves. We had no problem with the horrors revealed in Wikileaks’ Afghan and Iraq war logs (sorry I can’t link to them as Wikileaks’ site curiously appears to be down). Heck, we had little problem with the insane and counterproductive aggression against Iraq in the first place, even after the WMD fairy refused to show us where those weapons were. But we draw the line at airport pat downs and body scanners?

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NATIONAL 'DON'T USE YOUR BRAIN' DAY
First, there was a national “Don’t Buy Gas” Day protest. Now, there’s a “Buy Nothing” Day. Do people realize how stupid and pointless these one day protests are? Do you seriously think you’re sending a warning to the consumerist economy by refusing to spend a dime on useless crap today but then going out and buying useless crap tomorrow? Is the self-indulgence of empty symbolism really that powerful? If you really want to send a message, don’t change your day. Change your dang lifestyle.

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ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ONE, ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ALL
If teachers should be held “accountable” via their students’ test scores, shouldn’t corrections officers be similarly held “accountable” via their released prisoners’ recidivism rates?

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THE JUDICIARY HIJACKED BY THE MOB
So Mike Huckabee is gloating that he and his fellow theocrats helped oust several Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of equal protection of the law for gay citizens. He claimed that the ruling sent a message.

It sent a message indeed: beyond a certain level, we shouldn't have elected judges.

The system here in New York is fine. Trial court judges are elected. But appellate court judges, those who set precedents, are appointed by the governor and approved by the legislature but to a limited term of office. This gives them a certain degree of accountability but shields them to a certain extent from mob fury.

The judiciary is not supposed represent the "will of the people." It's supposed to uphold constitutions, including minority rights protections, regardless of what the hysteria or scapegoat of the day happens to be.

And it sent another message about why electing judges is dangerous: it lends itself to the same corruption of outside money as the election of politicians.


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OXYMORON OF THE DAY
New York’s governor-elect wants the judiciary to intervene in a few close election recounts to ensure that we have a “functioning Senate” in January. It’s amusing that he thinks the courts can impose this. Between being run by boobs and criminals (convicted, indicted and not-yet-indicted), NYS hasn’t had a functioning Senate in several years.

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MONEY WELL SPENT?
The US alone has spent $56 billion on “Afghanistan reconstruction.” For reference, if the US had instead divvied up that money equally and directly given it to the people, that would have put $2000 in the hands of every single Afghan.

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FORTUNATELY NO ONE EXPECTS COHERENCE FROM SPORTS ANNOUNCERS
Soccer commentators should be thrashed for improper use of the word 'unlucky.' Hitting a shot 15 feet over the cross bar or, worse, out for a throw in is NOT unlucky; it's incompetent. Unlucky is the FC Dallas player who scored the own goal on Sunday night.

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RADIATING FURY
Last month, Hundreds of gallons of radioactive water from a cleanup at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory spilled from a drainage pipe into the Mohawk River in NY’s Capital District, according to an article in the Albany Times Union. A failed sump pump system caused about 630 gallons of tainted water -- containing Cesium-137, Strontium-90, uranium and plutonium -- to overflow into a culvert draining directly into the river, [the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation] reported.

The T-U described these as ‘known carcinogens.’

I can’t imagine why there’s public reticence about the expansion of nuclear power as an energy source.

Non-shock of the week: Iraq invasion helped terrorists

Documents reveal that al-Qaeda gained influence in Iraq only AFTER the US invasion.

Yes... the same US invasion that was justified by the fradulent claim that it was designed to expel al-Qaeda from Iraq.

That the aggression against Iraq helped increase terrorism exponentially is not a new revelation.

But it's a reminder that the people who conjured up the invasion should not be enjoying a peaceful retirement. In fact, they should not be enjoying freedom at all.

Real sacrifice in "fake America"

You remember during the 2008 campaign when that loathsome Sarah Palin divisively talked about the south and midwest (bastions of GOP support) as the "real America"? It was part of the typical conservative strategy to act like the right alone owned and defined patriotism to manipulate toward its own belligerent ends.

ABC News points out that the greatest burden per capita of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is borne by the state of Vermont, generally regarded as the most liberal state in the country and one which the arrogant Palin would smugly classify as being the anchor of "fake America."

Your tax dollars in action!

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Every year, the non-governmental organization Transparency International publishes a Corruption Perception Index.

2005 was the first year that the index ranked both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2005's index of 158 countries, there were 17 countries more corrupt than Iraq and 34 countries more corrupt than Afghanistan.

In last year's index of 180 countries, Afghanistan was the 5th most corrupt country in the world and only Somalia was more corrupt than Iraq.

Even notoriously corrupt regimes like Equatorial Guinea, the DR Congo, Nigeria and Cameroon as well as the lands run by the much demonized Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe are better off than the US-occupied former countries.

This is just one illustration of the wonderful Progress that's being made in those occupied lands and proof that we were right to Stay the Course.

If I've forgotten any empty catch phrases, please leave them in the comments field.

A truly lame lame duck ducks

"They say we're disturbing the peace. But what really disturbs them is that we're disturbing the war." -Howard Zinn

By now, most of you have probably heard that during a particularly patronizing press conference by President Bush in Baghdad, an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the American misleader as well as a number of verbal insults. It is the only accountability for this massive crime against humanity that Bush is likely to ever face.

Shoe throwing is one of the most serious insults in Arab culture. The journalist was wildly praised in the Arab media. An ironic reaction in a region that, Bush and his cronies claimed, was supposed to be magically transformed into a pro-American utopia after the invasion of Iraq.

The journalist's boss pointed out that the reporter was no disgruntled Saddamite and pointed out that "his family was arrested under Saddam's regime." The journalist ' his actions were for Iraqi widows and orphans,' according to the BBC.

Following the shoe 'assassination attempt,' some brain dead journalist actually asked Bush if he felt threatened by the incident. American soldiers are out there dodging IEDs. Iraqi civilians are being targeted by savage militias and homicide bombers. And someone had the gall to ask Bush if he felt threatened by a flying shoe?

Worse yet, Bush continued to pontificate about how the incident provided that the 'new' Iraq was so fantastic because a guy was free to throw shoes!

The journalist was arrested and hauled away. This shows how completely ignorant Bush is of any notions of what real freedom is all about. If you get arrested for doing something, then BY DEFINITION you are NOT really free to do that something. It doesn't take Einstein to understand this.

Worse yet are unconfirmed reports that the journalist is being tortured in US custody. He allegedly suffered a 'broken hand, ribs, suffered internal bleeding and sustained an eye injury.' I hope he enjoys his 'liberation.'

The rumors may or may not actually be true, though the charges were made by the journalist's brother. But it's a mark of how far America's reputation has fallen that the rumors are completely plausible. Do the delusional still think 'they hate us because we're free'?

This presumption of guilt what happens when you have an immoral administration allergic to the most fundamental notions of civilization deciding to essentially legalize a barbaric practice like torture... in the name of 'freedom.'

‘Kill them all’

If you support a progressive agenda, then support a progressive candidate.


I’d never considered George W. Bush to be a bloodthirsty savage, just callous and indifferent to human life... at least the non-fetal kind.

This piece on the memoirs of former Iraq commander Gen. Ricardo Sanchez certainly made me rethink my position.

World's most prominent pro-war and pro-peace advocates meet

So I see there is going to be a meeting between President Bush and one of the most prominent critics of the Iraq Aggression in particular and US imperialism in general. I know Bush is far too arrogant to open his mind to anyone, let alone the world's most influential Christian. But I still wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall there...

Gen. Colbert?

Truth is the first casualty...

This morning, my brother sent me an email entitled, "Ethno-sectarian competition."

When I say the subject line, my first thought was that it was a rant about the Olympics.

Turns out it was actually a politically correct euphemism by Gen. David Petraeus to describe the civil war in Iraq.

It's sad when our miltary leaders dishonor themselves into spouting the same mealy mouth obfuscation as ordinary self-serving politicians. Petraeus' tortured explanation is more worthy of something from the satirical site The Onion than of a high-ranking general.

After five years of "Liberation," Iraqis are leaving their country in droves because Americans won't

Five years after the launching of the Iraq Aggression, our fearless Leader declared the invasion a "major strategic victory in the broader war on terror."

But Bush's propaganda is belied by reality.

It's easy to be fearless when you're making such declarations from the safety of the Pentagon. But whenever Bush or any of his cabinet members go to Iraq, they have to slink in under cover of darkness because it's so dangerous.

I've already detailed the many ways in which the Aggression has been a disaster, both for Americans and Iraqis. And how it's been a great triumph for the theocrats in Iran.

And a recent poll of Iraqis showed that while many feel that some things are better now than under, still 57 percent want all foreign troops to leave the country immediately. Additionally, 81 percent of non-Kurdish Iraqis view Americans as occupiers, not liberators.

And most to the point: only a third of all Iraqis believe that the Occupation is doing more good than harm.

Only 11 percent felt the Occupation forces were doing enough to restore basic services like drinking water and electricity, services that were taken for granted under Saddam's regime.

This is echoed by the Red Cross. The resolutely, sometimes frustratingly, neutral organization called the situation in Iraq one of the most dire humanitarian emergencies in the world.

And while far right ideologues will call into question the integrity of one of the most respected organizations in the world, just as they do to anyone who isn't a blind apologist for this Disaster, reality continues to smack us in the face... none more so than the Iraqis themselves.

There's one fact that screams for attention.

The number of Iraqis seeking asylum in 2007 nearly DOUBLED as compared to 2006.

If things are getting better, then why are people fleeing at an unprecedented rate?

This in 2007, after five years of US control of Iraq.

The Iraqis obviously aren't sure how much more "Liberation" they can take.

And here's one more fact, after half a year of the vaunted Surge.

35 percent of Iraq's pre-war population remain either refugee in other countries or displaced within Iraq.

These are facts that speak clearly to the situation because they are actions taken by people not to save their jobs or what's left of their integrity, but to save their lives. As such, they speak with much more authority than some ideologue pontificating from a keyboard in a comfortable American suburban living room.

Or from the White House.

Fundraiser for Iraq vets' org

Matt Funiciello passes along information on the following fundraiser that will benefit Iraq Veterans Against the War. The film will be shown tomorrow at 7:30 at the Rock Hill Bakehouse Cafe in Glens Falls.

Wed Mar 19
7:30 pm
** FILM FUNDRAISER **
Donations will be taken, 100 % of which will go to Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW)
Suggested donation is $5.00 dollars. We will pass along every cent to aid the IVAW in its current "Winter Soldier" hearings in Washington.

WINTER SOLDIER (1972)
Vietnam Veterans Against The War
96 min.
RT Rating = 100 %

In 1971, with the My Lai massacre still vivid in the public consciousness, 109 Vietnam War veterans gathered in a hotel in Detroit and, in front of news journalists and a collective of young filmmakers, spoke frankly about their experiences in Vietnam. They called themselves the Winter Soldiers and their testimonials are devastating: women raped and disemboweled, children murdered, prisoners thrown from helicopters, ears severed, villages burned, and families slaughtered.

Almost instantaneously, a pro-war backlash set out to discredit the veterans and their stories, and though their brave confessions were hailed by many senators and congressman, the news media never aired any of the footage. The filmmakers who were present, including Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A.), masterfully edited the three days of interviews into a single 96-minute presentation.

Almost as harrowing as the accounts themselves are the haunted looks and the trembling voices of the young men as they speak openly of becoming debased monsters who were willing to commit atrocities. Though the film seemed to be inexorable evidence that Vietnam war crimes were commonplace rather than anomalous, the film received scant screenings, and the stories never reached the majority of the American public.

During the 2004 presidential election, the Winter Soldier Investigation resurfaced in regards to John Kerry's involvement with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and his role as a pivotal organizer of the event. A group of veterans, indignant over any supposed defamation of soldiers and their actions, set out to attack Kerry's wartime credentials, and to paint the Winter Soldier stories as spurious and fabricated.

In 2005, more than 30 years after it was made, WINTER SOLDIER received general distribution, and the film remained as unsettling and pertinent than ever. The charges that the men were imposters seem ludicrous in the face of these blistering and self-crucifying descriptions.

And the winner of the Iraq Aggression is...

What does it say that every time G. Walker Bush or R. Bruce Cheney or J. Sidney McCain or the War Secretary of the day goes to Iraq, it's secretive, unannounced and cocooned by a massive security detail.

But when the nutjob in charge of Iran pays a visit to Baghdad, it's a very public, grandiose state visit.

How is this possible?

According to some, the "Surge" has made the country a near paradise. One has to ask: the country or the Green Zone?

Those who actually risk their lives to go to Iraq see a different picture than the ideologues.

So not only has this Aggression been disastrous in human terms (mostly Iraqi, of course), in terms of the physical destruction of Iraq's infrastructure and in terms of the defraying of Iraqi society, but the Aggression has destroyed our own influence and credibility (even in the eyes those we claim to have 'liberated') while dramatically increasing the influence and credibility of those we call not just the Enemy, but Evil.

Anyone with an ounce of understanding of human nature knew this was always going to be the case. But such people have not been running this country for some time.

Ahmadinejad can have a grandiose state visit. Bush has to slink in and out under cover of darkness. Does this sound anything like the portrait of a 2008 Iraq that the militarists presented us back in the day? I thought they'd be giving Bush flowers and kissing his feet.


5 years.

Over 500,000,000,000 of our tax dollars wasted.

Nearly 4000 American soldiers have lost their lives to help accomplish all of the above.

And oh by the way, an estimated 150,000 Iraqi civilians have died during the "Liberation." Some estimates are much higher. But there are at least 80,000 that have actually been documented.

What have the results been?

-The myth of a Saddam-al Qaeda link has been discredited;

-Saddam never had weapons of mass destruction, just like pre-war critics such as the much-smeared Scott Ritter and Hans Blix insisted. (You'll remember that all the 'evidence' of the WMD program presented by the militarists in 2003 dated from 1998 and earlier);

-The Middle East is now far more unstable because of the refugee crisis provoked by the Aggression;

-The number of acts of and deaths from terrorism has skyrocketed since the Aggression was launched in 2003. In fact, the rate of deaths due to terrorism has gone up ten-fold since the Aggression was launched;

-The massive flow of refugees out of Iraq into countries like Jordan and Syria demonstrates that living conditions in Iraq are more desperate than even under a genocidal autocrat.

And ultimately, this is the most damning fact of all because it represents the decisions made by people who are most affected by what the US government has done, by the forces it's unleashed. It represents decisions made by people whose lives we claimed we wanted to improve.

Millions of Iraqis have made the agonizing decision to leave their homeland because of the mess we've created.

Despite the b.s. coming out of some people's mouthes, many hundreds of thousands of people have concluded that they feel safer in an Outpost of Tyranny than in 'Liberated' Iraq.

After all this, it's clear that aside from this country's biggest welfare recipients ("defense" contractors), the biggest winner of the Aggression has clearly been Iran.

And it's even clearer who the losers have been.

How the Defeatest Dems surrendered on Iraq

Rolling Stone has another interesting political piece on 'The Chicken Doves.'

It explores how the Democrats rode to control of Congress on a wave of anti-war support. And how they proceded to betray the anti-war movement by not doing anything about... the war.

This turn of events shouldn't have surprised anyone. Readers of this blog know that during the 2006 campaign, I warned that Democrats were more interested in APPEARING anti-war than actually DOING SOMETHING anti-war. I saw this locally, with fake anti-war Congressional candidate Kirsten Gillibrand. And I saw it nationally with fake anti-war Democratic 'leaders' Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

And so it has proven to be the case in power.

The RS piece examines how the Democrats take non-stop verbal shots at evil President Bush but when push comes to shove, they don't actually do anything to stop him, or even slow him down.

Now, there probably are some Democrats in Congress who really want to do (as opposed to just say) the right thing.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a fellow caucus member, says Democrats should have refused from the beginning to approve any funding that wasn't tied to a withdrawal. "If we'd been bold the minute we got control of the House — and that's why we got the majority, because the people of this country wanted us out of Iraq — if we'd been bold, even if we lost the votes, we would have gained our voice."

The Democrats came to power with a mandate to at least draw down our participation in Iraq's civil war. But while President Bush was more than willing to use every last ounce of his non-mandate in the first term, Democrats refused to use their real mandate.

The Democrats' so-called leaders love nitpick at Bush's prosecution of the war, but they've always found excuses not to truly challenge him on it.

I'm not sure if the 'leaders' of the Democratic Party really want the war to end. If it did, they would lose it as a fake issue. Just like I doubt Republican leaders really abortion to become illegal, for the same reasons. How can you tell?

Republicans never criminalized abortion when they controlled Congress. And Democrats de-funded the war now that they control Congress. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.

The end of the war would mean the Dems lose a way to blackmail left-of-center voters into voting for the lesser of two evils. They would lose a major way of smearing people who vote for Nader or for other smaller party candidates; the 'a vote for a smaller party candidate is a vote for the Republicans' bald faced lie is more effective when the Republicans are running a war.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe deep in what passes for their hearts, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and their minions really do want the war to end. But they might be surprised to learn that the catastrophe is not just going to magically stop. The only way it's going to stop is if people make it stop. The only way it's going to stop is if people stand up to Bush.

Pelosi and Reid can make it stop not by wishing, not by hoping and certainly not by cowering. They can make it stop only by taking action. And Pelosi and Reid and their delegations have far more power to actually make it happen. Does God decree that hundreds of billions of American tax dollars be wasted on this human disaster? No. It's the Congress that does that. And it's the Congress can stop it.

Anti-war folks have been repeatedly betrayed by the Democratic Party. Yet many keep sticking with the party despite these betrayals. I don't want to offend anyone but in many ways, it reminds me of the battered spouse dynamic.

John Kerry was the quintessential example of this. A party whose rank-and-file was overwhelmingly anti-war nominated a man whose platform was essentially, "The war was a superfantastically awesome idea, just badly run."

And anti-war Democrats all rallied behind the pro-war Kerry in the hope of... ending the war. They raged against any anti-war person who wanted to vote for a candidate who was actually... anti-war.

In 2006, it was very similar. The Democratic line wasn't "The war is a bad idea. We're going to end it." Their line was, "We're too chicken to take a strong position on the principle, so we'll bitch and moan about the details."

In 2008, one of the Democrats remaining is taking a position almost identical to Kerry while the other isn't talking about it much at all. Taking a strong position, we're told, would hurt the Democrats' chances.

It's about time that anti-war voters tell the Democrats that their chances will be more hurt by continuing to be cowards on this hugely important issue.

It reminds me a lot of gay rights. Democrats want to be associated with pro-gay rights without actually taking actions that advance the cause of gay rights. Most gays are content with the Democrats being pro-gay rights in theory, but not in action. Yet if you look at the other side of the coin, most gay bashers insist that their politicians (mostly Republican) take bigoted ACTIONS, cast bigoted votes, push bigoted referenda.

Many gays continue to give their blind support to action-less Democrats not so much out of hope but out of fear. And many anti-war folks do the exact same thing.

The difference between voting Democrat and voting Republican is the difference between the country going downhill at 50 mph and it going downhill at 75 mph. The ONLY way to change the fundamental direction of the country is to vote for and get involved with a smaller party, such as the Greens. Only when the Democrats realize that inaction has consequences will there be even the most microscopic hope of the party reforming itself. And since most ordinary voters can't give millions in campaign bribes, the only way they can punish the Dems is to refuse to hand them their vote.

The Democrats have proven that they are either unwilling or unable to end our participation in Iraq's civil war, despite its irrelevance to American national security and despite their own control the purse strings. Even if they haven't completely ended our participation in Iraq's civil war, how much closer are we to that objective since they took power in Congress? Not one step.

Sure, there's a little more oversight. There are hearings about things that have embarassed the president and his cronies. But in the end, that's the only thing the Demcorats are concerned about: embarassing the president and his cronies. Because when it comes to bringing to an end our participation in Iraq's civil war, having the Democrats in power hasn't made one iota of difference whatsoever.

We complain a lot about politicians. We complain about unrepresentative politics. But if voters don't have the guts to do the right thing and act on their conscience, why should their politicians be any different? Maybe the problem is that our system is too representative. Maybe Jefferson was right: we do tend to get the kind politicians we deserve. If we want politicians who take action, we need to do the same.

Update: Noam Chomsky has his own thoughts on why withdrawing from Iraq's civil war is a non-issue in the Democratic race. Chomsky is not my favorite writer, but this piece is very much worth a read.

The real winner of the Iraq invasion

Who's the real winner of the US aggression against Iraq? According to most observers including The Christian Science Monitor, the winner was Iran, a country routinely condemned by the Bush administration as a threat to every planet in the cosmos.

An illustration: when President Bush goes to Iraq, it's usually secretive, slinking in under the cover of darkness and never leaving the relative security of the Green Zone. Usually these visits are short, because of security fears. This despite the fact that US forces and its allies supposedly control the country.

Iran's president was given the very public pomp and circumstance traditionally associated with state visits. The Iranian leader even felt comfortable enough to travel overland to Baghdad's airport to the presidential palace, a trip that nearly all other dignitaries take by helicopter.

The standard line is that the United States 'liberated' Iraq from tyranny. But if that's really the case, how come Iraqis aren't more grateful?

Or maybe Iraqis know what Americans, well-known to be willfully ignorant (or self-deceptive) about human nature, choose not to see: the main thing that's happened in Iraq is the swapping of one form of tyranny for another.

Former Iraq commander calls for withdrawal

So now retired Lt. Gen Ricardo Sanchez has called for US troops in Iraq to be withdrawn within a year.

Sanchez's comments in support of Congressional legislation are all the more damning considering that he was actually the commander of US occupation forces in Iraq from 2003-04.

He condemned Iraqi politicians for their failure to show any leadership. "The improvements in security produced by the courage and blood of our troops have not been matched by a willingness on the part of Iraqi leaders to make the hard choices necessary to bring peace to their country," he said.

If a Bush appointee who implemented Bush's policies and who knows the military situation in Iraq better than nearly any other American has come to this conclusion, when will Congressional Democrats finally grow a spine?

If our former top soldier in Iraq can't provide the craven Democrats enough political cover to do what's right, then clearly they have no business running the Congress.

It makes you wonder when well-meaning liberals will finally figure out that the corporate-controlled Democratic Party is either unwilling or unable to implement a progressive agenda and, therefore, they ought to hitch their cart to another horse.

How Senate Republicans support our troops... or at least one of them

I'm already on record as criticizing MoveOn.org's obnoxious 'General Betray-us' ad. But at the same time, I'm annoyed to see that the US Senate wasted time debating and passing a resolution to that effect.

President Bush spouted, Most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org - are more afraid of irritating them than they are of irritating the United States military,"... somehow ignoring the fact that resolution passed the Democrat controlled Senate by an almost 3-to-1 margin.

The vote came on the same day that Republicans blocked a bill that would've provided longer leave to troops serving in Iraq. The bill proposed by Sens. Jim Webb (a former Republican Navy Secretary under Ronald Reagan) and Chuck Hagel (a Republican), both military veterans, received 56 votes in favor, but short of the 60 required.

I imagine this might've caused a bit more 'irritation' in the ranks of the US military than a newspaper ad.

In the eyes of Senate Republicans, condemning some left-wing activist group is a higher matter of national importance than giving a break to the men and women fighting in Iraq supposedly for our freedom.

Soldiers are stuck in Iraq's hellhole ad infinitum with no plan from the White House and no demand of one from Congress. But at least some people have a plan... even if it's to score cheap political points while our soldiers and innocent Iraqis continue to die.

Blaming Mr. Maliki

Recently, Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin have called for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to resign. So has French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner. President Bush took some potshots at Maliki a few weeks ago.

The Iraqi leader hit back, telling all these people basically to mind their own damn business.

He's right. Americans should mind our own damn business and start withdrawing from of Iraq immediately.

Unfortunately, Maliki's become the convenient whipping boy for Democratic and Republican politicians alike who are too cowardly to look in the mirror at their own failings.

Attacking Bush's Iraq policy-of-the-week is risky because the far right will pass this off as undermining the troops. And calling for a withdrawal of US troops risks being tarred as 'surrender,' rather than returning Iraqi sovereignty to Iraqis. This may represent intellectual deceit designed to stiffle serious debate, but historically, such smearing has worked. Bush can't directly attack his own policy for obvious reasons (which is why it changes constantly). And most politicians in Washington voted for the Iraq aggression in the first place. So they don't want to directly admit the obvious: they messed up.

Scapegoating Maliki may be the safest option for the careers for Washington politicians, but is undermining a moderate leader in a snakepit in the interests of anyone else? We can see how well that strategy worked in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon.

The whole rush to blame Maliki for everything under the sun seems more than a bit tawdry. Especially when the fundamental problems are nearly all related to security, a domain which Maliki's government has little practical control. When Sen. Clinton holds her admit up and admits she screwed up in voting for the Iraq invasion, then maybe she just might have the right to criticize the way Maliki is trying to clean up the mess her vote authorized.

Maliki is not an executive president who can snap his fingers and get things done (nor is he the spouse of one). And his party does not command a large parliamentary majority, in contrast to Tony Blair during most of his premiership.

The Iraqi leader heads a shaky coalition government in a 'democracy' that's only a few years old and whose security (such as it is) is provided by an occupying foreign force. If the US couldn't stabilize Iraq during Paul Bremer's tenure when he was essentially the country's absolute monarch and ruled by fiat, how can any one expect that of any coalition prime minister?

Maliki is only one man in a system explicitly designed to prevent the return of a single strongman. Italy has changed prime ministers 36 times in the 61 years since becoming a republic. That's the risk in setting up a parliamentary democracy in a divided country. Having a bunch of foreign politicians dictating things from half way around the world isn't going to make things any better. Clinton, Levin, Kouchner and Bush should mind their own damn business and run their own countries and let Maliki run his.

Actions, reactions

Newsitem: Regarding the iPhone... Apple launched the eagerly awaited phone exclusively on AT&T's network in June, and immediately faced criticism for how resistant it was to any modification.

Observation: Resistant to modification? Impossible to use outside narrowly confined systems? This is so unlike Apple.



Newsitem: Regarding author Ayn Rand... Who is Ayn Rand? More than two decades after her death, readers still debate the morality and cultural influence of the provocative Russian-born author whose "objectivist" philosophy culminated in her 1957 magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. The 1,192-page novel unapologetically fictionalized an individualist philosophy that praises selfishness, scorns charity, and turns monopolists into paragons of virtue. Biographies by spurned lovers and collections of her letters reveal Rand as a passionate, sometimes tempestuous, personality, a woman with devoted loves and sworn enemies, who relished sex and dabbled in swinging, and demanded absolute loyalty from her disciples.

Observation: Because nothing screams radical individualism more than 'absolute loyalty' to someone else.



Newsitem: President Bush has announced that the new war strategy in Iraq looks promising.

Question: Does this mark 25th 'promising' new war strategy in Iraq or 28th? I've lost count.

Followup: Bush says a US pullout from Iraq would make the country as bad as Vietnam after the US withdrawal.

Observation: Since 4 million (civilians alone) perished during the Vietnamese civil war, I think our esteemed leader should be more concerned that Iraq will become like Vietnam was BEFORE the US withdrawal.

What if Iraq becomes another Vietnam?

While most pro-war folks (of the few who remain) attack anyone who makes the slightest hint at an Iraq-Vietnam analogy, President Bush has embraced such comparisons. He warned that a precipitous withdrawal would trigger the kind of upheaval seen after the departure of the US forces who were propping up the South Vietnamese dictatorship.

"Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people," he said. "The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens."

Of course, this is pure deceit on the president's part. No one argued this. The main argument was that continued US participation in the Vietnamese civil war was having worse consequences than withdrawal would. And this argument was vindicated by the course of events.

The Vietnamese civil war lasted for 16 years. Some 4 million Vietnamese civilians were killed and countless more injured, orphaned and displaced. Only a small fraction of these occured in the year and a half following the withdrawal of US forces when the South Vietnamese army (numerically much larger than the North's) was fighting for its own country.

The US political leadership of the time tried to make the public swallow hysterical predictions of chaos and menace to American security should the Vietnamese civil war be decided by... the Vietnamese. They also peddled the delusion that military might could settle a fundamentally political conflict.

The UK Independent also has a good piece addressing Bush's pap.

And what if Iraq does become another Vietnam, as Bush warns?

What Bush doesn't mention is that while Communist Vietnam became a totalitarian state, its regime didn't murder anywhere close to the 4 million civilians who were "collateral damage" in the war to save them.

What Bush doesn't mention is the politically incorrect fact that while it's hardly paradise on Earth, Vietnam is a less horrific, more stable place in 2007 than it was when US troops withdrew.

What Bush doesn't mention is how many times has communist Vietnam attacked or threatened America since 1975: zero.

Bush threatens Iraqi leader, grovels to UN

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki caused waves recently when he took an opportunity to praise Iran. He said discussions with Iran's loudmouth president had been positive and that that, "Even in security issues there is no barrier in the way of co-operation" between the two countries.

This politically incorrect comment infuriated Iraq's American overlords. President Bush threatened that if the Iraqi prime minister dared disagree with his declaration of Iran's inherent Evilness, then the US leader would be forced to have a 'heart to heart' talk with him. If the prospect of having to listen to president's voice for an hour doesn't bring Maliki into obedience, then nothing will.

The US president might finally be realizing how disastrous the situation in Iraq is. Despite being right about Saddam's mythical weapons of mass destruction, the UN went into Iraq to help rebuild the country following the US aggression. This decision, by then secretary-general Kofi Annan (one of the few truly great world figures of our time), was extremely controversial among UN staff but gained him no favor with a US administration determined to whip up anti-UN fervor. It's a sad example of doing the right thing and pissing everyone off anyway. The UN withdrew its staff from Iraq's Eden when a car bomb killed 22 staff members at its Baghdad headquarters in 2003.

But after spending most of the last five years attacking and undermining the international body at every turn (and then blaming it for everything else), Bush is now on his hands and knees grovelling to the United Nations to return to the country. Washington got the Security Council to approve an expanded UN presence in the country.

The UN actually knows something about the difficult and complicated task of nation building, having successfully contributed to such efforts in places like Mozambique. This is a lot harder than the task of nation destroying, so perfected by the Bush administration. The neo-cons have struggled with nation building because it's not something that can be achieved with belligerent rhetoric, religious fervor and dropping random bombs.

In crawling back to the only body (however flawed) with any real international legitimacy, perhaps the White House has finally realized how discredited America is in Iraq, how that discredit is paralyzing progress and that only the UN has even a marginal hope of helping to clean up the gargantuan mess it created.

Perhaps.