Month: March 2006

That’s it folks. It’s time to stop pretending that this is America anymore. It’s not. After 60 years of the postwar Anglo-American empire, the Declaration of Independence has finally been formally annulled by the crime ring currently cloaking itself in the forms of a long-lost Republic.

According to Stars and Stripes, the American mission in Afghanistan is to be run by the Redcoats.

“STAVANGER, Norway — A NATO headquarters unit is in the midst of training for a deployment to Afghanistan that — as early as this summer — will see the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps assume command of all foreign troops in the country. It will be the first time since World War II that U.S. troops at war would be under the theaterwide command of a foreign officer, in this case, a British three-star general. It will also mark a historic expansion of NATO’s mission outside Europe, possibly providing a blueprint for alliance missions in Africa or elsewhere. [emphasis added]

“’I’ve absolutely no doubt’ NATO is ready to lead the force, the ARRC commander, British army Lt. Gen. David Richards, said in an interview. If attacked, ‘we will respond robustly to whoever wishes to take us on. The NATO [rules of engagement] are more than robust enough to deal with anyone who wishes to tangle with us.’

“Richards also said that member nations such as Germany and Italy have, in almost all cases, released their troops from ‘caveats’ that restrict how they can participate in the mission.”

And why not?

The USA already has its own Star Chamber courts (a game so rigged that some of the prosecutors have resigned rather than have to carry the shame of a victory), wars can be declared by the executive alone, just like in the Old World, and there are (so far) thousands of victims to the president’s claim to “inherent” “plenary“post-constitutional authority to declare any person an “enemy combatant” (a phrase was made up by White House lawyers so that they could keep the victims of their kidnapping outside of the protection of the law) – a power upheld by the new Chief Justice in his last job. The medieval savages that run our Defense Department the now hold the innocent victims of this “Grab whom you must, do what you want” policy at “ghost prisons” all over the world where they are routinely tortured. All of which makes one wonder how this government is any different or better than the empire its founders seceded from.

The truth is that the British tail has been wagging the US dog since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, and the fact that we are now occupying with, and now under, the British, territory which their empire had least been able to hold in their past, just goes to show that not much has changed in a hundred years except who’s paying for it all.

Don’t expect to hear much of anything from all the conservatives who – rightly – complained about Bill Clinton’s placing of US troop under foreign command during all of his so-called peacekeeping missions – this is George W. Bush giving orders to take foreign orders, and that makes it okay. You know, like when he renamed Americorps “The Freedom Corps” and nationalized the government schools?

I know what you’re thinking: despite being born with the last name of Horton, I am obviously just an anti-white racist. For what other possible reason in the world would I criticize this entangling alliance with Great Britain?

You’re right, of course.

Andrew Sullivan:

I’m aware of one person who clearly stated before the war that he believed that Saddam had no WMDs. That was Scott Ritter. This is not the same as saying that we didn’t know for sure, or should have waited some more; or that containment could have worked for a few months or years longer. I mean: an anti-war commentator, writer or speaker who clearly said that Saddam had no WMDs before we invaded and that therefore the war was illegitimate. I remember being told by many who were against getting rid of Saddam that we shouldn’t invade precisely because he had WMDs and our invasion would be the only occasion in which he’d use them. But I don’t recall anyone saying flat out that there were no WMDs in Iraq. But I may have missed someone. I’ll happily post such pre-war statements if you send them to me.

So anyone who opposed the war was supposed to prove a negative, or at least believe he/she could – otherwise, his/her arguments were no more plausible than the shrieks about Saddam’s nukes or his anthrax-laden unmanned aerial vehicles. An honest, reasonable person could have gone either way.

Bullsh*t. There was no shortage of sound arguments, both practical and moral, against this war. Not one of them required the arguer to do the impossible, i.e., demonstrate that there wasn’t a single canister of usable mustard gas anywhere in Iraq. A recap of the antiwar basics regarding WMD:

1. The whole WMD construct was a fraud. It allowed the War Party to conflate WWI-era battlefield weapons (e.g., mustard gas) and high-tech bioweapons of thus-far-limited destruction (e.g., anthrax) with nuclear weapons of transatlantic range. Moreover, the supplementary “dual use” construct meant that, in the absence of actual WMD, the War Party planned to hold up virtually any factory (see Khartoum, 1998) or laboratory as “evidence” of WMD production. It’s not hard to slam dunk when you lower the rim to five feet and expand it to encompass the entire court.

2. After years of inspections, the notion that Iraq possessed or was anywhere near possessing nukes, or the means to hit the U.S. with them, had been rendered unreasonable. (Andrew can post some of these if he’d like.)

3. Insofar as any war opponents made the WMD argument Sullivan describes, they were (a) talking about the use of battlefield weapons on invading U.S. troops (not U.S. territory) and/or (b) pointing out a suspicious recklessness in the warmongers’ approach to Iraq. If the hysterics sincerely believed their own claims about Saddam’s arsenal, then they sure seemed weirdly eager to thrust hundreds of thousands of young Americans (and millions of innocent bystanders) into the open jaws of Hell.

4. A lie is not a mistake, and there can be no doubt that the administration and its amplifiers lied when they repeatedly said they knew Iraq had WMD. If I say, “I believe Salma Hayek is in love with me,” I might be making an honest mistake, albeit one that reveals my ignorance of Ms. Hayek, my excessive self-regard, and ultimately, my lousy grasp of reality. But if I say, “I know Salma Hayek is in love with me,” and buttress that claim with half-truths, forgeries, and the suppression of evidence to the contrary, then I am lying. Period. The hair has been split to an irreducible point.

Those who opposed this war have nothing to answer for, especially not from the likes of Andrew Sullivan. Yet, as Sullivan clamors for the next war, we cannot simply ignore him and hope that others will do the same. All he has gleaned from the Iraq debacle is that Americans will believe anything, which makes him – like the al-Qaeda recruits getting on-the-job training in occupied Iraq – an even bigger menace to peace than he was before. I urge every blogger or columnist reading this to confront Sullivan, blog post to blog post. Let no whopper go unchallenged. Let no self-serving gibberish go unanswered. Please.

The real heroes of Afghanistan are its women, who over decades of oppression and brutality continue to struggle for peace and freedom. Their goals are the simple human ones of obtaining medical help, education, and freedom from religious fundamentalism. Their enemies have been and still are numerous and powerful, ranging from the Taliban to perfidious so-called aid agencies, “allied” governments, and the still-reigning warlords. RAWA remains the oldest, most effective organization that continues this struggle for the women of Afghanistan. RAWA supports Afghan Parliamentarian Malalai Joya in her efforts, often at the cost of threats to her life, to improve the plight of women in that country.

This month, Women’s History Month, Malalai Joya is touring the US and I urge our readers to go see her speak and listen to her story. She is the 27-year-old member of the Afghan National Assembly who gained international attention for standing up to the warlords who are once more in power. The schedule is as follows:

March 12 – Cambridge, MA – The Democracy Center, 45 Mt. Auburn St. in Cambridge, at 2 pm. Co-sponsored by Boston Mobilization, Women’s Int’l League for Peace & Freedom, CODEPINK Boston & Afghan Women’s Mission. For more information email rachfit@mindspring.com or call 617-493-5599.

March 13 – Washington DC – Social Work Auditorium, 525 W. Redwood Street, Baltimore MD, at 5:30 pm. Sponsored by University of Maryland School of Social Work and Division of International Health. For more information, email Aluckste@psych.umaryland.edu

March 15 – Washington DC – George Washington University, Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding from 12noon – 1pm. Please note, this event is INVITATION ONLY. If interested, contact aluckste@psych.umaryland.edu.

March 16 – Berkeley, CA – Talk and reception at University of California at Berkeley campus, Room 370 Dwinelle Hall, at 4 pm. Refreshments will be served. Sponsored by: Gender and Women’s Studies Department, U.C. Berkeley. Co-sponsored by: Global Exchange, Afghan Women’s Mission, Afghan Coalition, GABRIELA Network.

March 17 – Santa Barbara, CA – Press confererence at City Hall with Mayor Marty Blum and City Council members, at 12 Noon. For more information, call 805-569-2331, or email Sbrawa@aol.com.

March 18 – Santa Barbara, CA –Faulkner Gallery, Santa Barbara Central Library, 40 E. Anapamu St. at 5 pm. Co-sponsored by the Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee and the UCSB Women’s Center. For more information, call 805-569-2331, or email Sbrawa@aol.com.

March 20 – Ventura, CA – Ventura College Theatre, 4667 Telegraph Road Ventura College, 10:30 am. For more information, please call 805-654-6400. Sponsored by the Women’s Concerns Council.

March 20 – Glendale, CA – Glendale City College, 1500 N. Verdugo Blvd. Glendale CA, 90208 (Corner of Mountain), campus building TBA, at 3 pm. For more information, call (323) 788-3171

March 22 – Norwich, VT – Norwich Congregational Church, 15 Church Street, Norwich, Vermont at 7:30 pm. Sponsored by Dartmouth College Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Building Bridges Middle East-US, and the Women’s Network of the Upper Valley. For more information contact Jennfier Fluri 603-646-0886.

March 23 – New Haven, CT – Lecture at Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, CT, at 7:30pm. Sponsored by the Council for Middle East Studies, Yale University

Donations can be made to help fund Malalai’s US tour and the Hamoon Clinic, which Malalai Joya runs in Farah Province. You can make online credit card donations for the duration of her tour (have patience, this link is very slow). Or if you prefer to send a check, please make it payable to International Humanities Center – write “Malalai Joya” in the memo. (IHC is a registered 501-c-3 non-profit organization and donations are tax deductible to the extent of the law.) Mail checks to International Humanities Center, P.O. Box 923, Malibu, CA 90265.

However embarrassing a second death in six days might be, the Hague Inquisition probably breathed a sigh of relief when Slobodan Milosevic was found dead today. Continue reading “Milosevic dead, Tribunal relieved”

The Toledo Blade is reporting that the US Marine Corps is again conducting urban warfare training exersizes in the streets of the USA, this time attacking downtown office buildings in Toledo, Ohio.

Are we to believe that this is to help them in their imperial mission overseas? That downtown office buildings in Ohio more closely resemble the terrain in Iraq than custom built taxpayer set pieces on the hundreds of bases around this country?

Or is it simply that they want the soldiers and citizens to get used to seeing each other in such circumstances?

Andrew Sullivan – for whom every topic is ultimately just another opportunity for navel-gazing – offers his mea sorta culpa. Let’s have a mercifully abridged look:

In retrospect, neoconservatives (and I fully include myself [We know, Andrew, we know – Ed.]) made three huge errors. The first was to overestimate the competence of government, especially in very tricky areas like WMD intelligence. The shock of 9/11 provoked an overestimation of the risks we faced. And our fear forced errors into a deeply fallible system.

I was too trusting, too shocked, too afraid – too, in a word, human. Uh huh.

When doubts were raised, they were far too swiftly dismissed.

Were raised? Did they just wash ashore at high tide, or were they raised by the very people Sullivan has been calling traitors and dupes for the past four years?

[T]he miraculously peaceful end of the cold war lulled many of us into overconfidence about the inevitability of democratic change, and its ease. We got cocky. We should have known better. The second error was narcissism. America’s power blinded many of us to the resentments that hegemony always provokes.

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Could this be some sort of epiphany about empire and intervention? Get real:

Sometimes the right thing to do will spawn backlash, and we should do it anyway. But that makes it all the more imperative that when we do go out on a limb, we get things right. In those instances, we need to make our margin of error as small as humanly possible. Too many in the Bush Administration, alas, did the opposite. They sent far too few troops, were reckless in postinvasion planning and turned a deaf ear to constructive criticism, even from within their own ranks.

Like from me, Andrew Sullivan! I always said we should get things right!

The final error was not taking culture seriously enough. There is a large discrepancy between neoconservatism’s skepticism of government’s ability to change culture at home and its naivete when it comes to complex, tribal, sectarian cultures abroad.

I’ll give Andy a congratulatory “duh” on that one.

We have learned a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis and several thousand killed and injured American soldiers than for a few humiliated pundits.

But this self-effacing essay for Time magazine will help to even the score.

The correct response to that is not more spin but a real sense of shame and sorrow that so many have died because of errors made by their superiors, and by writers like me.

First rule of neocon punditry: by taking meaningless “responsibility” for the bad consequences, you can logically take credit for the allegedly good ones. But you must first remind the audience that there was really no better choice than the one you advocated:

All this is true, and it needs to be faced. But it is also true that we are where we are. And true that there was no easy alternative three years ago. You’d like Saddam still in power, with our sanctions starving millions while U.N. funds lined the pockets of crooks and criminals? At some point the wreckage that is and was Iraq would have had to be dealt with. If we hadn’t invaded, at some point in the death spiral of Saddam’s disintegrating Iraq, others would. It is also true that it is far too soon to know the ultimate outcome of our gamble.

Yeah, those goddamn French were probably just pissed at us because they wanted to invade Iraq, but we beat them to it. And this too-soon-to-know-the-ultimate-outcome bit is a moral monstrosity cloaked in banality. It’s NOT too soon to know the ultimate outcome of “our gamble” (what did Sullivan put on the table?) for the scores of thousands already dead. What Sullivan is saying is that if the Iraqis ever manage to overcome the suffering inflicted on them by the War Party (including its years of supporting Saddam), then Sullivan will accept their humble thanks. Think I’m being too harsh? Well, here comes, as Andy might say, the money shot:

What we do know is that for all our mistakes, free elections have been held in a largely Arab Muslim country. We know that the Kurds in the north enjoy freedoms and a nascent civil society that is a huge improvement on the past. We know that the culture of the marsh Arabs in the south is beginning to revive.

Blah, blah, blah. But, in conclusion, how does Andrew Sullivan feel about all of this?

Regrets? [Cue Sinatra. – Ed.] Yes. But the certainty of some today that we have failed is as dubious as the callow triumphalism of yesterday. War is always, in the end, a matter of flexibility and will. And sometimes the darkest days are inevitable – even necessary – before the sky ultimately clears.

What a friggin’ hack.