Antiwar.com Blog

Brian Doherty soothes our fears about the Bush administration–or does he?

Fears and anxieties about American empire don’t need to be rooted in any perceived fever swamp, where only openly sinister and nakedly pecuniary motives push American foreign policy. Undoubtedly politicians and their friends in the corporate world try to make the best out of circumstances as they evolve, but still, I imagine that the boys behind Bush could have put their heads together and come up with some other way for his administration to line Halliburton’s silken pockets without the huge risks, both geopolitically and in domestic politics, of waging war in Iraq. It is easy enough to believe that the administration’s foreign policy actions are driven by a very sincere belief that the world would be a safer, freer, more orderly place under the suzerainty of the United States government, and that this goal is worth pursuing at almost any cost.

But just because the goals of the imperialists aren’t nakedly evil doesn’t mean their path is wisest for the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the United States’ citizens—you know, those old-fashioned goals for which governments are instituted among men. Immanentizing the Eschaton is not in the current U.S. Constitution, though the Bush men (calling them conservatives or men of the right seems inappropriate) might contemplate adding it by amendment after they are through roadblocking gay marriage.

Solid commentary, well worth your time. Read the whole thing.

By the way, I haven’t been through Iraq’s interim constitution with a magnifying glass yet, but I don’t think it bans gay marriage. What gives?

Brendan O’Neill takes a swing at antiwar legalists:

The focus on the pre-war intelligence and legality suggests that while some in the anti-war camp have technical quibbles about the current war in Iraq, they do not take a principled, political stance against Britain and America’s right to intervene abroad. That many of Blair’s critics have made intelligence failings and legal questions their main focus, rather than the war itself, indicates that their opposition is based more on tactics than principle. It is not that they are politically opposed to the intervention in Iraq, but that they were not convinced by the imminent nature of Saddam’s threat or the urgency of launching a war without first securing a legal ‘yes’ from the United Nations.

On the fundamental issue of intervention many of these critics cannot argue with Blair, because they fully accept the premise of his international mission to cure the world’s ills; they support Western intervention.

Procedural questions are important, if for no other reason than that they undercut all the pious braying about the “rule of law” and “democracy” Bush and Blair claim to be exporting. That said, O’Neill is absolutely right to nail intervention schizoids such as Robin Cook and Clare Short, who supported the Kosovo war, for their lack of principle. And don’t even get me started on John Kerry. What a profoundly dispiriting menu of political options in the great arsenals of democracy!

Jo Wilding’s commentary while traveling inside Iraq creates a brief but valuable glimpse of what is happening inside the country and how the war has affected the lives of Iraq’s people. Here, the circus performers, traveling past minefields, watch the celebrations in Kurdish Erbil on the signing of Iraq’s interim constitution.

Whatever it means for the rest of Iraq, in Kurdistan the interim constitution was celebrated, giving the Kurds a federal state of their own for the first time ever. Drums announced the coming of the parade, men and boys, the red, white and green of the Kurdish flag, with a many-pointed gold star in the middle, the placard featuring Mustafa Barzani, the murdered Kurdish leader. The Kurds have been stateless people in the empires of others more or less forever, ruled by the Ottomans, the British, the puppets of the British and, until 1991, the Baathists. Winston Churchill authorised the crushing of their demand for an independent state in Kurdistan in the 1920s with poison gas.

Sinan and Selim are studying English at Salahudin University in Erbil. It’s a strange thing, but a lot of Kurdish people are unaware that the weapons they talk about, the weapons Saddam used against them, were sold to him by the UK, the US, Germany, France and so on, paid for with funding granted by the US in the full knowledge of what he was doing to the Kurds. We talked about the war, why it happened. Kurdistan wasn’t the target of much bombing and there are no troops on the streets, no house raids, no detentions without charge, no random shootings. People here know as little about what’s going on in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq as people in Jordan do. It’s another country … read more

Be sure to stop by Jo’s photo gallery as well.

What is the Circus2Iraq? In their own words: “A small group of performers and activists currently in Iraq performing and running circus skills workshops for the kids. People are traumatised, tired and worn down by years of war and sanctions and are still without many basic necessities. We are not aid workers. We think the best thing we can do is bring a bit of colour, a bit of normality, a bit of playfulness and make people smile.” Visit the Circus2Iraq website for more information about this great group of caring people.

What happens when you send Republican neocons to oversee writing a “New Constitution” for Free Iraq?

You get stuff like this:

The individual has the right to security, education, health care, and social security. The Iraqi State and its governmental units, including the federal government, the regions, governorates, municipalities, and local administrations, within the limits of their resources and with due regard to other vital needs, shall strive to provide prosperity and employment opportunities to the people.

No kidding, that’s in Article 14.

How about a right to bear arms? Republicans believe in that, right? Apparently not:

It shall not be permitted to possess, bear, buy, or sell arms except on licensure issued in accordance with the law.

Wow, how Jeffersonian! That ought to go over big with the Badr Brigades and the Kurdish Peshmerga, not to even mention the fact practically every Iraqi household is armed.

….Bush’s first major advertisement blitz loudly evokes details from the 2001 terrorist attacks that left 3,000 people dead — including firefighters carrying a flag-covered stretcher out of smoldering New York rubble, sirens blaring in the background — it is mute on the campaign in Iraq.

In fact, the commercials mention the 2001 recession, corporate scandals, the popping of the technology-stock bubble, job losses, the need to improve schools and health care, but not one word about the US-led occupation.

I think this is because of the “Not My Fault” theme of George Bush’s campaign. Notice that every item he does mention in his ad has been blamed on someone else. The guy just cannot admit that he ever did anything wrong or accept responsibility for any failure. Since there isn’t any aspect of the Iraq invasion or occupation that is either going right or turned out anything like Bush said it would, it has to be ignored.

cross-posted at UnFairWitness

• NY Times: Greg Powell, a lawyer for one of the freed men, Ruhal Ahmed, 21, from Tipton, said Thursday that Mr. Ahmed was on his way to meet his family. Mr. Powell said he had met his client in a London jail and found him in good health, but said the treatment by the Americans had amounted to “torture.”

  “What I have learned from him is, Guantánamo Bay is a kind of experiment in interrogation techniques and methods,” he said. “And they do have extremely interesting stories to tell about what went on there.”

• USA Today: Dergoul was freed first Wednesday night. Max Clifford, spokesman for his family, said he would be taken to a private place to be reunited with his family.

  He said Dergoul was in a mentally fragile condition and was having difficulty walking.

  “Physically he is not in a very good condition,” said Clifford. Clifford said Dergoul had told his family he had been traveling in Afghanistan when he was captured and was in “the wrong place at the wrong time.”

• Reuters: Speaking for two of the men, Gareth Peirce, a lawyer, said that the police had been “compounding two years of injustice”.

  Ms Peirce said she was concerned that her clients could suffer long-term trauma
  as a result of their experience. She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Their story is an extraordinary one. They have emerged from an extraordinary and terrifying ordeal that would profoundly affect the strongest individual.”

LA Times: All four men who were arrested on their return to Britain from U.S. military detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were released Wednesday without charge, police said.

A fifth man, Jamal Harith, had not been arrested when the group arrived Tuesday at Northolt Royal Air Force Base west of London, and he was freed within hours. The four released Wednesday had been identified as Rhuhel Ahmed, Tarek Dergoul, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul.

Tony Blair will undoubtedly be expected to explain why these British citizens were allowed to languish for two years in Camp X-Ray when an interrogation of a few hours duration in Bitain was sufficient to convince prosecutors that they were not “security risks.” Over 600 prisoners remain in the American gulag in Cuba.

The European Parliament, which passed a resolution yesterday calling for the release of some 20 Europeans held in the Guantánamo Bay facility without charges, had this to say: ….relations with the United States were “invaluable and could be a force for good in the world,” but said President Bush’s decision to detain prisoners outside U.S. territory risked damaging those ties.

It said Washington’s fight against terrorism “cannot be waged at the expense of basic shared values, such as the respect for human rights and civil liberties – a situation that is currently happening at Guantanamo Bay.” (Guardian)

So low have the Americans sunk under this administration that they are lectured about human rights and civil liberties on the world stage. Pathetic.

cross-posted at UnFairWitness