Thelma and Louise Imperialism (re-post)

 
Originally posted by LittleBill on Sunday, February 18, 2007

Over the Cliff with George and Dick?

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.

Engelhardt asks if we are going Over the Cliff with George and Dick?

Let me make an argument about Bush administration Iran policy -- about the possibility that a regime-change-style, shock-and-awe air assault might someday be launched on Iranian nuclear facilities and associated targets -- based on no insider knowledge, just the logic of George-and-Dick's Thelma-and-Louise-style imperialism.

Of course, we all know at least half the story by now. Is there anybody in official Washington -- other than our President, Vice President, the Vice President's secretive imperial staff, assorted backs-against-the-wall neocon supporters lodged in the federal bureaucracy, and associated right-wing think tanks -- who isn't sweating blood, popping pills, and wondering what in the world to do about our delusional leaders?

You only have to pick up the morning paper to find the most mainstream of official types in an over-the-top mode that, bare months ago, would have been confined to the distant peripheries of political argument. There's Senator Joe Biden, the very definition of a mainstream man, grilling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about whether she believes the administration already has the authority to attack Iran and swearing, if she does, that it "will generate a constitutional confrontation in the Senate, I predict to you." (You can add the exclamation point to that comment or to similar ones from the likes of Senators James Webb and Chuck Hagel among others.) Or how about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on presidential pronouncements in January?

"Much has been made about President Bush's recent saber rattling toward Iran. This morning, I'd like to be clear: The President does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking Congressional authorization -- the current use of force resolution for Iraq does not give him such authorization."

Former officials are now crawling out of the Washington woodwork to denounce Bush/Cheney policy in Iraq and Iran with the fervor (however masked by official Washington language) of an exorcism. There, for instance, is former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in front of Congress, more or less predicting the end of the Roman… sorry, the American empire:

"The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability… If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large… A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated…"

There are three retired high military officials, Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard (former assistant to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara), U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Hoar (former Centcom commander), and Navy Vice Adm. Jack Shanahan issuing a public letter insisting that attacking Iran "would have disastrous consequences for security in the region, coalition forces in Iraq and would further exacerbate regional and global tensions." There's Paul Pillar, former CIA analyst for the Middle East, in the Washington Post warning: "Avoiding the next military folly in the Middle East requires that the agenda for analysis and debate not be so severely and tendentiously truncated as before Iraq."

Even Secretary of State Rice, new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and hardline National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley seem to be exhibiting a certain degree of anxiety, sending back the intelligence dossier gathered by our embassy in Baghdad on Iranian interference in America's Iraq. (You know, "foreign" interference on our home turf.) Assumedly, this was because the latest doctored intelligence, claiming the Iranians are supplying advanced IED technology that is causing American deaths looks as hollow as the administration's cherry-picked and doctored intelligence on Iraqi WMDs before the 2003 invasion.

On the face of it, as Juan Cole long ago pointed out at his Informed Comment website, there's something suitably George-and-Dick wacky about claims like this, implying that the Iranians are arming the Sunni insurgency. How times have changed, however. Unlike in 2002-2003, officials and former officials are finally making such points in very public ways. Take, for instance, Bruce Riedel, a former top Middle East expert on the National Security Council, who recently bluntly told USA Today, "There is no evidence that the Sunnis are being assisted by Iran."

The Rice/Gates/Hadley send-back may, of course, turn out to be little more than the Iranian equivalent of Secretary of State Colin Powell sending back similarly wacky administration claims about Iraqi WMD before preparing his infamous UN presentation that led to the invasion of 2003. But if so, there's certain to be a lot more mainstream skepticism, criticism, and noise this time around.

After all, to anyone not delusional -- which leaves out you-know-who and his Vice President -- a massive air assault on Iran, surely involving bunker-busting missiles with staggering explosive power, would seem to be an act of madness. It would be immensely destructive to Iran (and yet almost surely a rallying point for its fundamentalist regime); bloody in its repercussions for the U.S. (especially our troops in Iraq); imperiling to U.S, allies in the region; and, for the global economy, a potential energy catastrophe. A series of explosive events -- some thoroughly unexpected and so never war-gamed by U.S. military strategists -- could unravel the oil heartlands of the planet, making the administration's last several years in Iraq little more than an hors d'oeuvre before a banquet of catastrophe. The decision to attack Iran would be the equivalent of setting off an advanced IED directly under the main highway of what's left of global order.

You don't have to rely on me for this. In his confirmation hearings, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates -- claiming that any attack on Iran would be a "very last resort" (when Bush administration officials have regularly called it a "last resort" or insisted "all options are on the table") -- offered his own bloodcurdling scenario for the aftermath of such an assault:

"It's always awkward to talk about hypotheticals in this case. But I think that while Iran cannot attack us directly militarily, I think that their capacity to potentially close off the Persian Gulf to all exports of oil, their potential to unleash a significant wave of terror both in the -- well, in the Middle East and in Europe and even here in this country is very real… Their ability to get Hezbollah to further destabilize Lebanon I think is very real. So I think that while their ability to retaliate against us in a conventional military way is quite limited, they have the capacity to do all of the things, and perhaps more, that I just described."

And that's just a smattering of the hair-raising news from a hair-tearing town in crisis.

Fatwa Time

The possibility of an attack on Iran has been a long time on the horizon. You'd have to start back at that moment before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when, as Newsweek reminded us, one quip of the bolder neocons was: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." You'd have to go back to January 2005, when reporter Seymour Hersh, in a New Yorker piece, "The Coming Wars," wrote, "In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran," and added that, in close cooperation with the Israelis, "the Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer."

You'd have to go back to March 2005, when ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern pointed out at Tomdispatch.com that "Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men… who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as ‘the crazies'" and who, he warned, might well head for Iran next.

You'd have to go back to August 2005 when, in the American Conservative magazine, former CIA official Philip Giraldi warned: "In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran" -- possibly involving an "unprovoked nuclear attack" on that country. A contingency plan was, he claimed, being drawn up in the Pentagon, "acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office."

You'd have to check out a second Hersh New Yorker piece from April 2006, "The Iran Plans," in which he reported: "Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups." He added that, increasingly, insiders believed the President's goal was not simply aborting the Iranian nuclear program, but Iraq-style "regime change," and that, against Pentagon opposition, "the nuclear option" -- the possibility of using a "bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon" -- had made it into initial planning for a full-scale air assault on Iran. You'd have to check out the work of former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter (who was laughed out of the room in 2002-2003 for claiming that Saddam Hussein probably had no stocks of WMD, or even WMD programs, left), and who recently published a book whose title says it all: Target Iran.

These men -- some classic conservatives – and others like them are now, if anything, even more passionately convinced that the Bush administration is headed for the Iranian cliff before its time in office ends, possibly as early as this spring.

But it took more than their work for so much of official Washington to panic. It took the administration's decision to send the USS John C. Stennis, a second aircraft carrier task force into the Persian Gulf (with hints that a third could follow); it took the announcement of what Juan Cole has termed George Bush's "fatwa," allowing the U.S. military to take out Iranian agents anywhere in Iraq ("Announcing open hunting season on all Iranian visitors to Iraq," Cole wrote, "is like playing Frisbee with nitroglycerin. Bush has gone looking for trouble and is likely to find it…"); it took the detention by U.S. forces of various Iranian officials in Iraq and the invasion of an Iranian office in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan; it took the President's announcement of a decision to emplace Patriot anti-missile systems in the smaller Gulf states; it took a sudden, massive, and eerily familiar ratcheting up of administration rhetoric about Iran and Iranian influence in Iraq (as NBC's Tim Russert put it after a meeting with the President, "There's a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue -- in the country and the world -- in a very acute way"); it took rumors that the Air Force was gearing up for an anti-Iranian surge along the Iranian-Iraqi border; it took the refusal of officials like John Negroponte to say whether or not they believed the administration already had the right to whack Iran without returning to Congress for permission; it took reports about the readying of new bases in Bulgaria and Rumania for a future Iranian air campaign; it took rumors that the Pentagon's latest strike plan against Iran includes "more than 2,300 ‘high value' targets."

And it took, of course, the administration's ongoing catastrophe in Iraq, which drives everything before it, as well as Bush's pugnacious (if hopeless) "surge plan" reaction to rejection in the November midterm elections; it took the President's insistence on victory in a situation where loss was so obviously on the agenda that you didn't need scads of dollars and the sixteen agencies of the U.S. intelligence Community to make the point in a National Intelligence Estimate; it took Vice President Cheney's delusional insistence, in a duke-it-out interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, that the administration's Iraq policy would be "an enormous success story."

And, of course, it took all those eerie parallels with the administration's behavior in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, not to speak of the realization that this administration, devoted as it is to an unfettered commander-in-chief-style of Presidential power, believed it already had authorization aplenty to attack Iran. It took what increasingly looks like the beginnings of a systemic nervous breakdown in Washington, a feeling that a thoroughly avoidable disaster loomed, along with (as Robert Parry wrote recently) "a sense of futility among many in Washington who doubt they can do anything to stop Bush." It took all of the above and more to bring home the possibility that our leaders might one day actually take the house down with them, that they might indeed gun the car and head directly for the cliff with something between sneers and smiles on their faces.

Over the Cliff?

So feel free to imitate official Washington. Be scared, very scared. An attack on Iran, if it were to happen, promises a special mixture of two fundamentalisms deeply engrained in our top political and military officials that may, in the end, combine into a single lethal brew -- and that will, in the bargain, give American policy in the Middle East the full-blown look of a war on Islam. Though our President is a Christian fundamentalist, neither of these Washington fundamentalisms are, in the normal sense, religious or particularly Christian.

The first -- the bedrock faith of the Bush administration and its neocon supporters since September 12, 2001 -- is the religion of force. Our self-styled "wartime" Commander-in-Chief, and the Vice President head an administration that has long been in love not just with the American armed forces, but with the dazzling military possibilities that seemed open to them as leaders of the last standing superpower. Its high-tech destructive capabilities, they believed, gave them the power to go it alone in the world, shocking and awing a post-Cold War assemblage of lesser states into eternal submission. Force -- the threat of it, the application of it -- was the summa cum laude of their go-it-alone university of power (vividly demonstrated, at a theoretical level, in the single most important strategic document of these last years, their 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America).

At the height of their self-dazzled sense of power back in 2001-2003, they saw force as their own special Tao, their Way in the world; at their depths -– now -- reaching back into their problem-solving quiver, they naturally find only the same arrow that's always been there; a belief system, a religion for all occasions.

In the case of a possible future assault on Iran, the larger fundamentalism of the Church of Force will surely combine with the only significant force the Pentagon has on hand -- air power. The belief in air power's ability to fell regimes and change the political essentials, to bring whole peoples to their knees, is long-lasting and deep-seated. Since well before World War II, we've been living with a belief system in which bombing others, including civilian populations, is a "strategic" thing to do; in which air power can, in relatively swift measure, break the "will" not just of the enemy, but of that enemy's society; and in which air power is the royal path to victory.

That this has not proven so; that, most recently, it did not prove so in Afghanistan, in shock-and-awe Iraq, or in Israel's air assault last summer on Lebanon matters little. Faith in the efficacy of air power (as opposed to its barbarism) is fundamentalist in nature and so not disprovable by the facts on the rubble-strewn, cratered ground.

As a result, the strength of the belief that "it" -- force, air power -- will do the trick the next time, if only you have the nerve not to listen to the Nervous Nellies, if only you double down on your bet, if only you commit to it, should not be underestimated.

Do you remember that period before the invasion of Iraq when the neocons and their various admirers and clustering pundits were proclaiming us quite literally the New Rome and speaking of a Pax Americana globally (and a Pax Republicana domestically) that would last forever and a day? They were, in fact, intent on describing a jungle world of failed states at the peripheries of our globe, the sort of planet that needed an imperial power like… well, like us… for order. That, of course, was before the Bush administration managed to bring a jungle world of chaos to Iraq and so to the heart of the global energy system -- and they all fell imperially silent.

I've been wondering in their stead, what sort of empire are we? Empires are usually settled and ruled areas (except at their frontiers), not jungle worlds. So if, say, Sudan or the Congo or Afghanistan or Somalia is a failed state, are we then, under George and Dick, simply a failed empire? Do we now rule (as opposed to threaten) anything? Are we an empire at all -- even at home where a vast, ungainly government is being privatized into a new kind of (ever more expensive) chaos and the federal budget is being driven over a military-industrial cliff -- or are we Kong (before he underwent his most recent cinematic transformation into a loving softie)? Or are we a Three Stooges version of the imperial, or is it just that Dick and George, all four hands on the spinning wheel of state, are heading for that cliff intent on liberating us all?

In that over-the-top interview with CNN's Blitzer, Vice President Cheney, in essence, accused him of, as the Washington Post put it, "embracing defeat."

What an apt phrase for Dick himself -- and for his presidential pal! Having long embraced a fantasy of victory, they now show every sign of wrapping their arms around their own Iraq defeat as if it were victory, and -- with the enthusiasm of Thelma and Louise, trapped by all those cop cars -- taking the only path that seems open to them. As the alternatives grow ever starker -- surrender to all those "Democrat" electees, to the reporters and the critics, the cavilers and the antiwar demonstrators, the ragtag insurgents, the alien Mullahs, and even the panicked Republicans in their own ranks -- what's left but that liberating, exhilarating trip over the cliff?

Unlike the movies, where any review can tell you the ending before you even enter the local multiplex, life -- even political life, even geopolitical life -- is a remarkably unsettled, as well as unsettling thing.

Nothing assures us that some predetermined fate will actually drive us all over that cliff. But if, before November 2008, we do head in that direction, a small suggestion: Don't bother to buckle your seatbelt. It's not going to be that sort of a trip to the bottom.

 

12 comments:

DB Cooper said . . .

This post has been removed by the author.

February 19, 2007

DB Cooper said . . .

Yes, a valuable piece. The Mission creep of Bush and Cheney continues. Now our intervention in Iraq is being transformed into a long-term confrontation with Iran. Why else would we take on the Shi'ite militias when most of our occupation's casualties are at the hands of the Sunnis? Has Congress passed on this? Have the American people?

February 19, 2007

an average patriot said . . .

Little bill
Okay I got it! There was an extra period after com. Anyway I will go back and read your post but it is even worse. I was sent something very sobering this morning that does not make American newspapers or news because it is being kept from us. I will be posting on it tomorrow.

February 19, 2007

Beach Bum said . . .

Serious bad moon rising. We are in very deep trouble with no bottom in sight.

February 19, 2007

Vigilante said . . .

JOKE ALERT:

Bear comes into a inn, walks up to the bar, puts two paws on the counter and says:

"I'll have a . . . . . . . . Coors"

The bartender says, "Sure, but why the pause?"

The bear says, "Hell, ain't I a bear?"

February 20, 2007

an average patriot said . . .

Hi little bill
Just wanted to let you know I linked to Paws de Deux

February 21, 2007

LittleBill said . . .

Vigilante,I'm glad you have time for such silly stuff. I also hope you watched the Eepybirds.

February 21, 2007

Non-Partisàn said . . .

It's a dangerous precedent, starting the telling of bear-in-a-bar jokes in a blog - could get out of PAW.

February 21, 2007

Vigilante said . . .

Quite true, N.P. I'll try to get back on topic, acknowledging that I'm quite BEARISH on Bush's Baghdad surge.

February 21, 2007

pekka said . . .

Wow, Little Bill, this is some flashy site you got here! Somehow, it just not you...it's more like that vulgar Vigil. :)

I limit my reading ususally to what's printed on the serial boxes but made an expetion here. Glad I did, for the information was good. Sad I did, because it is so depressing and down right spooky.

February 21, 2007

LittleBill said . . .

Glad to hear from you again, Pekka. PLEASE don't leave me, even if I resemble Vigil. I kind of like the title I chose and the picture that goes with it. That Mercury sure keeps me young.

February 22, 2007

an average patriot said . . .

Hi little bill
Just thought I would see if you had something new. I have to tell you I just love that picture with little bill and Mercury. I hope she has grown a little more than the picture shows. She looks so diminutive.

February 22, 2007

Be Patient on Democracy and Save Lives (re-post)

 
Originally posted by LittleBill on Sunday, February 18, 2007

John Arquilla, a frequent contributor to Insight, is a defense analyst in Monterey. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, he says What Iraq Needs Is a Few Good Dictators. Excerpts:



The near-religious belief in policy circles that only a functioning Iraqi democracy can ward off chaos completely misses the point that more-dictatorial rule would have a greater chance of success. The only hope for restoring security is a strong set of hands at the controls. Not another Saddam Hussein, but more likely a few military leaders, one from each of Iraq's three main ethnic and religious groups.

A slavish devotion to the "democracy project," the centerpiece of both neoconservative and liberal thought in foreign policy today, prevents this "authoritarian option" from even being considered. And our bullheadedness has brought American foreign policy a long way down the path to ruin in Iraq.

The key problem with the too-rapid shift to democratic governance there has been the lack of cultural preparation for pluralism. Iraqis simply have no democratic traditions, because they live in a country carved out of the shattered fragments of the Ottoman Empire after World War I ended almost 90 years ago. Thereafter, Iraq was mostly ruled by a succession of autocrats until the American invasion in 2003.

Many have pointed to the success of turning Germany into a responsible democracy in 1945 as an example of what can be done in Iraq. But this is a false analogy. From its unification in the 19th century, modern Germany had considerable democratic experience, both as a constitutional monarchy under the kaisers and during the period of the Weimar Republic. Nazism was an aberration, not the norm, and Germans quickly reverted to their democratic trajectory once the nightmare years were over. The Iraqi case is simply not comparable.

The other big problem with forcing democracy on Iraq is that it foments conflict among opposing groups. The minority Sunnis are fated to be outvoted again and again when it comes to having a voice in a democratic Iraq, or to sharing the resource wealth of the land. From their perspective, democracy is the path to becoming dispossessed, and violent resistance is their only logical recourse.

Sadly, there is nothing in the new Iraqi constitution like the Connecticut Compromise leading up to the U.S. Constitution that protected the rights of small states (by giving them the same number of senators as big states) at the dawn of our own republic. The American Founding Fathers knew the dangers of factions, and sought to minimize them. In Iraq, our vision of democratic "proportional representation" has only encouraged the large factions to throw their weight around.

So, Iraq needs authoritarian rule right now. And probably for many years to come. By creating a three-man junta -- one Shiite, one Sunni and one Kurd -- all the societal bases can be covered, making sure that each group's interests are weighed. Clearly, the junta would have to make decisions on a consensus basis to ensure that one member couldn't be steamrolled by the other two.

They should be military men, because their primary function will be to put an end to the continuing civil war. Generals will have the best chance of motivating the Iraqi military to save their country by restoring order. No further American training is necessary. All the Iraqis need is a profound sense of mission.

However, a small number of American forces could remain for a while, as insurance against the junta coming apart and to deter any field forces from "going rogue." U.S. troops could probably also help in going after al Qaeda operatives who try to slip into Iraq.

The bottom line is that this authoritarian option would soon see order restored, as the Sunnis would have been brought into active partnership, enjoying their share of national resources, along with the Shiites and Kurds. And Iraqi troops themselves would put an end to the ethnic cleansing going on in so many places across the country.

All this will likely require some finesse from time to time. For example, the junta would probably want to send in predominantly Shiite units to mixed Baghdad neighborhoods to protect imperiled Sunnis. This would be a powerful signal of national purpose and unity.

But this kind of maneuvering is a lot easier to pull off than the far-too-complex and confusing concepts that have bedeviled American counterinsurgent efforts during the past three years.

What remains is to consider whether President Bush and the new Democratic congressional leadership might consider jettisoning the idea of continuing to foist "democracy now" on Iraq. At first blush, it seems that neither side could possibly be persuaded to empower a junta in place of elected leaders.

Bush has made it clear that spreading democracy is his principal strategic aim in the war on terrorism. He believes that our form of government is least likely to be permissive of terrorism. He also believes that this kind of political freedom is, in his own words, "a gift from the almighty."

. . . . .

But it must be done, or Iraq will continue to burn. Perhaps a good way to think about this problem is to envision it in terms of ultimate rather than immediate results. That is, dictatorship in Iraq now may well create the stability necessary to nurture a durable democracy in the future.

This was Ronald Reagan's line of reasoning when he pursued "constructive engagement" with authoritarian regimes. His goal was the spread of democracy, but he knew that it could not come in the same way or at the same time to all.

And Reagan's approach proved wildly successful. Two decades after his presidency, Latin America is almost entirely democratic, where it had once been full of dictatorships. Asia has also seen a sharp growth in democracy, with only a few juntas (such as in Burma) holding out.

Among Muslim countries, Turkey is a prime example of steady liberalization, within the context of continued emphasis on security requirements. Much the same can be said of Iran, where the junta is religious rather than military, but a similar amount of democratic change has occurred. And more is coming, if we play our cards right and lose the axis-of-evil rhetoric.

Whether we are willing to acknowledge it or not, American foreign policy is already on this constructive engagement track vis-à-vis a number of Muslim countries. For all our talk about spreading democracy, we are in no hurry to see it come to Pakistan, for example, where free elections might bring radical Islamists to power and give them control of nuclear weapons.

Similarly, elections in Saudi Arabia might see a rabidly anti-American government put in place in a land with its finger on the pulse of the global oil economy. We are grateful for authoritarian rule in this great sheikhdom, and there is no sense of urgency about the need for democracy now in Riyadh.

So why the fevered rush to political pluralism in Iraq, a country with virtually no democratic cultural roots? This is especially ill-advised when forcing representative rule on a highly divided land will only cause more conflict.

Now is the time to reflect on the fundamental flaws I have highlighted in our "democracy project." And to replace our mindless devotion to bringing immediate elections to war-torn lands with a more thoughtful emphasis on order and security first.

If we can open ourselves to this authoritarian option in Iraq, there is still a good chance to bring a stable, equitable peace to a land whose sufferings we have unwittingly done so much to cause.

 

2 comments:

Vigilante said . . .

A very excellent find, Lil'Bill! Point on with the last series of my posts. And, I'll add something to today's post to it, also. What I like best is:

"They should be military men, because their primary function will be to put an end to the continuing civil war. Generals will have the best chance of motivating the Iraqi military to save their country by restoring order. No further American training is necessary. All the Iraqis need is a profound sense of mission."

This goes to what I've been thinking, if not expressing that well: the primadonas in the so-called Iraqi parliament do not represent the future of Iraq - half or more of them are living in Europe. The future leaders will be found from within the militias. Secondly, there is no reason for us to hang around for the purposes of teaching Iraqis how to shoot (and to pay them to show up to be taught). There's plenty of on-the-job learning about firearms that's been going on for the past four years. There's no shortage of fighters. Motivation is what's been lacking and our leaving will straighten that out.

February 18, 2007

Vigilante said . . .

Following Petty Larseny's link to a Rumsfeld-Woodward interview, I read Rummy speaking about occupation as a double-edged sword:

"And I always felt that foreign troops are an anomaly in a country, that eventually they're unnatural and not welcomed really. I think I used the characterization of a broken bone. If you don't set it, everything grows around the brake and you end up with that abnormality."

That's the problem, isn't it? Bush's legacy will not tolerate leaving an 'abnormality' behind in Iraq. To him, leaving behind unresolved civil strife (worse case scenario) or separate sectarian militia strong men (best case scenario) would be an intolerable mutation of 'his mission'. That is why he thinks we must 'stay the course'.

February 19, 2007

Samantha

Samantha (4/02/1992 - 12/31/2006)
by Frank Gerety

Samantha was born April 2, 1992. Her Mother was Rotweiler and the Father Dalmatian. We called her a Rotmation. Somehow you would expect a rugged and intimidating dog from that combination, but she was the nicest and most friendly dog I have ever seen. At least she was with humans. With other dogs she was quite shy. Once a little dog weighing in at about 2 pounds, came running down a driveway snarling and barking. If she hadn’t been on a leash she would have run all the way home with me yelling at her to stop. Most dogs, after seeing her, all 80 pounds, would treat her with some caution.

I am getting ahead of my self. After we adopted her I decided she should be a trained dog. All dogs that we have owned before had minimal training. I was satisfied if they recognized their name. Not Samantha, she was going to learn all of the commands. (Sit, down, come, heel, …) So,…, Samantha and I enrolled in dog training school along with about 15 other dogs and owners. We met at McKenzie Field in the evening. It was rainy and the field was always wet. We did the sitting part pretty good. I would grab her collar and lay my elbow along her back. Then I would issue the command sit, pull on the collar, and push down with my elbow. She resisted, but the combination of pulling on the collar and pushing down with my elbow did the trick even if she didn’t like sitting on the wet grass. The command down however was another thing. Lie down in that wet grass and mud, not on your life. I was persistent though. After all I was the boss, so I pushed, pulled and eventually she was down. Me too! Both of us rolling around on the ground, and by now everyone else had stopped to watch.

We made it through the course and were awarded a certificate of completion. I thought we deserved a little more than that, maybe Miss Congeniality. Anyway we had no more concerns about training. We had a certificate. In case any one asked about training I would just say she is certified!

An off shoot of the training was our regular walk. We usually walk about a mile. This gave us a chance to practice the sit and heel commands. We met a lot of neighbors that I hadn’t known before and they didn’t know Sammy. When I saw them coming our way there was usually a look of confusion. They were thinking, “What should I do? Should I walk out on the street, get over on the lawn? This dog looks pretty big.” About that time I would say sit, and Sammy would sit and smile at our neighbor. Quite often to my amazement they would say what a nice puppy. (All 80 pounds of her)

It didn’t take too long before most people in our neighborhood knew Sammy. It was in those first two or three years that we learned a little about her appetite and her tastes. Actually she had no taste. She would eat anything. This is why she liked our backyard. She ate oranges, avocadoes, persimmons, apricots and walnuts. I probably should relate a little more about the oranges. This was one item that she needed a little help with the peeling. I discovered her taste for oranges one day when I had been working in the back yard. I figured it was time for a break, so I picked a couple of oranges and began to peel one. About this time I noticed, hard to ignore, that she was sitting in front of me and drooling all over my shoes. Hah, I thought, she certainly won’t eat an orange. I took a section of the orange, held it up, and then dropped it for her to catch. She caught it and gulped it down in a flash. I had created a monster. She’ll always want half of my orange. Oh well, we finished that orange, one section for her and one section for me. What the heck, we ate another one. From that day forward I couldn’t peel an orange without her nose bringing her to me for her rightful share.

The apricots had me a little worried because of the pits. I couldn’t always beat her to the fallen apricots so I watched to see if she did swallow the pits. No she didn’t. She would chew a couple of times and then the pit would pop out of the side of her mouth.

The walnuts were also worrisome. She would crack the shells with her powerful jaws and then eat the kernels. She probably did swallow some shells, but that never bothered her. I shuddered when I thought of all of the things she ate that I didn’t know about.

She also would eat vegetables. One time I was preparing broccoli and I cut off the thick stem. It slipped from my hands and hit the floor. There was a black streak and Sammy had the stem. Within a minute she had chewed it up and swallowed the whole thing. I wish we had her when we were raising our family. The boys would slip their string beans into a plastic container when we weren’t looking. We could have used Sammy as an example.

We bought a camper just before we got Sammy. I think that she thought we bought it for her. She knew when we were going on a trip. I would be carrying food, clothes, and other supplies out to the camper. If I stopped, she ran in to me. She watched every aspect of our preparations and tried to ensconce herself in the camper long before we were ready to leave. She has been on every trip we’ve made except our trip to Alaska.

We started having her sleep on the floor on a blanket. When we were on the road she would sit in between the front seats. There was no escaping Sammy. Soon she began putting her head on Alice’s lap. Alice would rub those silken ears and pet her. This was really living. The next step was to crawl onto Alice’s lap. Alas, as she grew older she grew bigger. She overwhelmed Alice and she had to push her off.

Partly as compensation we allowed her to ride and sleep on the couch. She thought that was great. She could lie there with her head just over the end of the couch and over my right shoulder. We had finally reached a truce and we all rode happily on our trips. Some of our many trips were the Sierras in a spot known as Red’s Meadow. Her first trip to Red’s she met Kathleen who came up to be with us. Kathleen wanted to sleep in her own tent and invited Sammy to sleep with her, which seemed just right to Sammy. She curled up right next to Kathleen.

She was with us on all of those trips and proved to be a great trail and fishing dog. She handled our communication. This was of great value for us because the last 3 or 4 years I haven’t been able to climb those mountains and canyons like I used to, but Alice can. As a result the gap between Alice and me would grow as we climbed the mountains. Sammy would always stay with the one in front, but when there was a bend in the trail she would get worried about me. Many times I would see her charge down the mountain and around the bend. When she saw me she would screech to a halt, take a good look and trot back up the trail to be with Alice.

This trait was particularly useful when we got to our stream and started fishing. I think it really upset her when we didn’t stay together. Her job of keeping track of both of us increased 100%. For us though, it helped immensely. When we fish a stream we spread out, never fishing the same place at the same time. That’s why we fish the Wilderness areas. The people in the Valley of the San Joaquin fish too close to each other. In our spots, we very seldom see another fisher person. So, there we are, fishing the same stream, but in different spots. When the one behind catches up, we yell,” Going by” so that we know where the other one is. Sometimes, after fishing for a couple of hours, I would ask myself,” Is Alice ahead or behind?” That was before Sammy. With Sammy along all I had to do was look, and if I saw Sammy I knew I was ahead. If I didn’t see her, Alice was ahead. What a system! Too bad I can’t sell it to NASA.

The “Official Greeter”, that was Sammy. When the doorbell rang she would go to the front door and express her delight that someone came to visit her. It didn’t matter that they came for other reasons; she knew that the real reason was they wanted to pet her while her tail swung back and forth. That was one of the things that people mentioned in their cards. We received cards from our 6 grandchildren, the two children next door, and several friends that heard about her passing. I often thought of how surprised a burglar would be to be greeted in this manner, and there is no doubt that she would greet him in the same gracious way.

The last few years I have discovered the therapeutic value of a little afternoon nap. Sammy was way ahead of me. She always realized the value of a little nap, in the morning, afternoon or evening and happily joined me with my amateurship naps. This usually happened after lunch when I would take a book and lie down to read until I fell asleep. She would follow me until I horizontally settled in and she would “Hurmpf” and settle in beside me. When I woke up, there she was, still beside me.

Sammy had a good life, right up to about 1:30 PM Dec.. 31, 2006.

The day started nicely. I played 2½ sets of tennis, came home and read the paper and had a cup of coffee. I took Samantha for a short walk to the park and back, and then we did our usual routine which consists of her sitting while I walk a short distance away. I say “Come” and she trots over and sits. I give her a biscuit. Then we repeat 2 more times.

Then she wandered around in the back yard for awhile. I picked some persimmons and gave her a nice ripe one.

Then she wandered around the inside of the house and finally slept a bit. I had lunch and around 1 o’clock I turned on a football game. A few minutes later Alice came in and said” Come and look at Samantha. I think the time has come.”

Samantha was lying in the living room, panting rapidly, legs thrashing in search of the floor, and some blood on the floor from her drool.

With the help of a neighbor we got her into the car and took her to CARE Emergency Hospital. They were very kind. We spent a little time with her in a private room rubbing her ears and head. Then we called the doctor in and she gave her a shot that put her to sleep. Then she injected the second shot that took her out. She looked just like she always has when she lies down to sleep. I really miss her.

More Thoughts Which Occur to Me

As I have indicated before, the morality of capitalism concerns me deeply. Capitalism depends on some people to make other people rich, either by their labor, or by purchasing their product.

The original founder of a rich family may have made his money by the sweat of his brow, but his inheritors for following generations may not be called upon to do any work other than lifting a pen to write checks to their accountants.

The public in general is encouraged - even urged - to spend money, and our national leader has called upon the public to do just that as a patriotic duty to help our economy.

With the availability of credit cards and mortgages, many people who could not otherwise afford the luxuries for which they yearn are drawn into the whirlpool of debt from which they cannot arise.

The result is that we have created a lifestyle which is unnecessarily sought by most people, rich or poor. It is both morally and ethically corrupting, especially in its effects upon the have-not people of the world.

It is incumbent upon thinking people to consciously seek out a more moderate lifestyle, one that will reward more people who deserve it, as well as one that is concerned for the effect humans have upon the Earth. (In that connection, I can't believe my ears every time I hear a member of the administration or of Congress say that we can't afford to do the things that will help to stop global warming because that will put so many people out of work. Follow that thinking to the end of its logic!)

Related to the glorification of wealth is the growing coarseness of our civilization, with the have-nots becoming more physically aggressive and the haves becoming ever more devoted to the bawbles which wealth can provide. The violence and sexual license of our media, in particular, should be a warning to all parents who care about the world their children will face. (In this connection, it becomes easier to understand the nations which oppress their women with dress and lack of education.)

To Our Armed Forces . . .

. . . from a WWII Vet

Patriotism does not require that you do not use your own mind to think, even in the armed forces. Certainly, especially when you are being led into harm’s way, it is necessary for your leaders to do what they can to unite you, as a military unit, as an army, and as a nation. However, especially in this present world where information as far more readily available than it was in the past, it is best to consider that information which is available to you, regardless of source, military or civilian, through education or experience, and work it through your own mind and come up with your own conclusions.

Consider, for a moment, sayings which may or may not be true:

• Ours is the richest and greatest nation in the history of the world.


• “I’m a uniter, not a divider.”


• “You’re either with us or with the enemy.”


• If you do not support the war, that means you do not support the troops.


• If we cut and run, those who have given their lives will have died in vain.


• We believe in Democracy and the Constitution of the United States.


• We must stay the course for victory.


• Loyalty to our Commander in Chief is imperative.


• Many world leaders (Hitler, for example) commanded loyal troops and supporters but did or do not deserve their support.


• Victory is not deserved unless the cause is moral and noble.

• Deciding for another country what its government should be is not moral and only thoughtlessly noble – and very possibly done for self-aggrandizement.

• We need to fight the terrorists in Iraq so that we won’t have to fight them here.

- so –

• If the terrorists are still threatening us, we need to fight them in Denmark so we won’t have to fight them here.

If I give my life for another, it can be as a soldier in a foreign land or as an ordinary human being anywhere, it will be because of my moral values regardless of how I got into the situation and of my own volition, and I will not have died in vain.

English as a 2nd Language for Republicans - 101B

You don't modify a noun with another noun.

In his state of the union speech, how many people watching noticed that Bush referred to the results of last November's election as producing 'a new "Democrat majority" in Congress?

I did. I notice it every time a semi-literate Republican uses that term. Bush never apologized, of course. (He never apologizes, does he?)All he said on NPR Monday was,

That was an oversight. I'm not trying to needle…. I didn't even know I did it. . . I didn't mean to be putting fingernails on the board. I meant to be saying, Why don't we show the American people we can actually work together? Gosh, it's probably Texas. Who knows what it is? But I'm not that good at pronouncing words anyway.

In his case, some may grant his honesty, because he is the worst-spoken American president. But Maura Reynolds, writing in today's Los Angeles Times is not willing to cut him that slack. She says it's a deliberate slurring of the Democratic Party to refer to it as the 'Democrat Party'. Reynolds quotes Daniel Weiss, chief of staff to Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez):

It's a long-standing intentional partisan political slight. It's kind of like flashing colors in a gang. It's code. It says, 'I'm one of you, I'm a right-wing conservative.'

The issue of whether it is a slur to refer to the Democratic Party without the "-ic" has become an irritant. It comes at a time when Democrats and Republicans are trying to figure out whether they can work together, after years of fierce partisanship in the nation's capital.
Roderick P. Hart, a professor of communications and government at the University of Texas in Austin explains:

The word 'democratic' has such positive emotional valence … so they politicize it to use it as a term to describe a group of political rivals.

Hart says that "Democrat Party" is not common usage in Texas and notes that the only people who use it were "sitting Republican legislators."

But Reynolds has done her research:

The use of the term "Democrat Party" goes back decades. One explanation sometimes offered is that Republicans began to use it to hint that corrupt Democrats were not terribly "democratic" and had no right to use that word to describe themselves. Others say it was adopted because it sounds annoying and echoes the word "bureaucrat," with its negative connotations.

Whatever the initial impulse or rationale, the term became controversial as far back as the 1950s. Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) famously used it to deride Democrats during his hearings investigating whether Communists had infiltrated the U.S. government. During the 1956 Republican convention, the usage was so common that it prompted the New York Times to report that dropping the "-ic" had become official party policy.

"'Democratic' as an adjective is not descriptive of the party as it exists today," GOP spokesman L. Richard Guylay explained in that report, referring to allegations of vote-fixing by the Democratic Party's political machine in large cities. "I can't consider the party of the Pendergasts or Tammany Hall as a democratic party."

In 1957, writing about the phenomenon in American Speech, the quarterly journal of the American Dialect Society, scholar Ignace Feuerlicht wrote: "It will be interesting to see whether 'Democrat Party' will stay with us or go out of existence again or be revived and revitalized at intervals just before successive national elections."

Feuerlicht seems to have been prescient: A search of a database of presidential speeches and remarks shows that use of the term has increased during election seasons and has been aimed primarily at partisan audiences.

President Reagan used it more in 1984, the year of his reelection campaign, than at any other time in his presidency. In the case of President Bush, the term shows up in his remarks more in 2004 and 2006 — both election years — than during the rest of his time in office.

In fact, Bush's usage of the term increased dramatically last year; according to the American Presidency Project, based at UC Santa Barbara, the president was recorded using the term 22 times in 2006 — more than in the previous five years of his presidency combined.

The term also is commonly used by other Republican leaders. On Monday afternoon, the office of the top GOP leader in the House, Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio, issued a news release asking, "What is the Democrat strategy in Iraq?"

Some Democrats doubt that the president is truly unaware of the pejorative tone of the term, but others acknowledged that it might have become such common parlance among Republican politicians that Bush used it without understanding its origin or undertones.

Reynolds gives Roderick Hart the last word:

It sounds illiterate to me. It's a noun used to modify a noun, and everyone knows you use an adjective to modify a noun.

There you have it, Folks: the reason why English isn't the official language of the American people is that almost half of our political 'leaders' haven't mastered it yet.

Herein endeth Lesson #2!

English as a 2nd Language for Republicans - 101A

Unless you are in uniform, George Bush is not your Commander-in-Chief.

Excerpts from Garry Wills, At Ease - Mr. President, New York Times. Wills is professor emeritus of history at Northwestern. He says the expression of commander-in-chief is one of the most abused terms in our political lexicon:

. . . . The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.

But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.

There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.

But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient clearance.

When Admiral William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized the gulf war under the first President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker said that the admiral was not qualified to speak on the matter since he no longer had the clearance to read classified reports. If he is not qualified, then no ordinary citizen is. We must simply trust our lords and obey the commander in chief.

The glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those aggrandizements. We are reminded, for instance, of the expanded commander in chief status every time a modern president gets off the White House helicopter and returns the salute of marines.

That is an innovation that was begun by Ronald Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower, a real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order. (George Bush came as close as he could to wearing a uniform while president when he landed on the telegenic aircraft carrier in an Air Force flight jacket).

We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided military symbols at Mount Vernon. We are not led — or were not in the past — by caudillos.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient last book, “Secrecy,” traced the ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens. Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our Constitution.

This is Lesson #1.

Interview with a Taliban Commander

Excerpts from Claudio Franco's Taliban explain how and why they fight:

The unit's commander, who gave his name as Musa Khan, was a short, lean 40-something man sporting the mustache-less beard of hard-line militants.

Musa Khan said his unit had 25 to 30 fighters, a handful of whom were deployed on the hilltops surrounding the interim base, securing all the potential access routes to the camp. This is how the Taliban operate in the eastern provinces, Musa Khan explained through a translator that they are organized in

groups of 20 to 40 lightly equipped men who are extremely mobile and effective in this rugged terrain.

They can move across their zone of operations -- from Karongal to Shaygal in the north, Chowki to the south, Nuristan to the west and the mountainous Kamdesh area along the Pakistan-Afghan border to the east, in essence almost anywhere in the 3,000-square-mile region -- in a matter of hours, invisible to anything but helicopters. "And those can't fly too low," he said, pointing at the rocket-propelled grenade launcher by his side.

Over the years, Musa Khan has learned to trust the stringent logic of hit-and-hide tactics:

The U.S. helicopters cannot land if we are around, and they can't always target us from the air. They know we only need a split second to hit them and disappear. We only assemble with other units for large-scale attacks. With a few hours' advance notice, we can be virtually anywhere in the province. Once we have split up, it's extremely difficult to locate us without risking being hit.

The movement's leadership is growing in confidence, the commander said, and the same applies to the rank and file:

There are five young men ready to enlist for every fighter killed by coalition forces, and this is something you can't buy with money.

Enlistees also get paid approximately $140 per month by the Taliban, compared to $100 paid by the Afghan National Army.

Afghanistan has grown used to being the victim of others' foreign policy interests. NATO's expansion to the east is a sign that the U.S. is tired. Bush's strategists think that fighting under NATO command will shield the U.S. from the backlash resulting from their eventual defeat in Afghanistan.

Away from their commander, the mujahedeen were remarkably talkative. Hamid, whose black, Kandahar-style turban stood out among the ubiquitous pakol, the traditional felt berets of the Afghan east, knew about "a constant flow of arrivals from Pakistan" -- they were Arabs, he said, but he didn't know precisely where they came from.

Some of them stay for six months and then go back, nobody knows where. They pay a lot to get in and out. None of them will talk, but they come here to train, I guess. Al Qaeda has its own network in Konar and Nuristan (provinces); they don't need us.

Hamid said the Afghans and the Arabs have a common enemy, but don't necessarily like each other. He described the Arabs as firebrand Islamists who don't obey orders and are obsessed with martyrdom.

They won't stop shooting even when they are told to. And they always write messages home before a battle -- they get ready to die. I know them well, and I don't like them; they just don't trust Afghans.

The fighters are confident about the conflict's outcome.

The American troops move slowly, they carry pounds of body armor and equipment. You can't win if you can't move on these mountains. Their helicopters are the only real danger for us, but we have learned how to hit them, even without Stingers.

You must understand, that one Arab is worth 10 Afghans in terms of religious zeal. They truly hate the West and all Westerners, without exception. They would never allow the press on these mountains. They are not fighting our war, but their own personal jihad. Protecting their own people and achieving martyrdom are their first priority.

Musa Khan said he is convinced that growing numbers of Afghans would prefer a return of the Taliban and strict Islamic rule:

Our people have learned the truth about (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai and his democracy. The Taliban are an alternative to corruption and incompetence. We aim to be a political movement, but won't disarm until the last infidel is gone. Afghans don't need democracy, but the return of the Islamic Emirate.

It's just a matter of how many corpses the American public will need before realizing that 'Enduring Freedom' was definitely a bad idea. It took 10 years for the Russians, and you are already halfway through. Do you really want to be as stupid as the Russians?

Jugnu Mohsin

Colleagues, I have to share with you another sterling feature of BBC, "The Interview". As I have said before, no one (in the world) does Interview better than the 'Beebe'. This morning's subject was Jugnu Mohsin. BBC describes her as

one of Pakistan’s leading journalists. She is the co owner of and columnist for Pakistan’s leading satirical magazine the Friday Times. Based in the country’s cultural capital Lahore she is a very well known figure in the small elite that dominate Pakistani politics and social scene. In fact many leading Pakistanis read her articles with a slight sense of foreboding – wondering whether this week Jugnoo has them in her sights.

Friday Times editor Najam Sethi and publisher Jugnu Mohnsin, (husband & wife), were winners of a 1999 Press Freedom Award.

If you have a block of time, you should give it a listen. Because I woke up this morning in the middle of it, I initially mistook her as an American discussing my country. You can listen to it while you take time to clean up your desk.

State of the Nation

Well, at least this time he didn't do the Bush Bounce or smirk or wink. He almost looked presidential. However, he did manage to fool some of the people again into a small rise in support for his war.

As usual, Bush invited carefully selected guests of honor to make himself look good to the groups they represent. The young woman entrepreneur is to be admired and commended. And the two men are outstanding genuine heroes. The unfortunate thing is that he used them as examples of how noble, generous, and courageous the American people are. All this hyperbole despite the fact that a very small percentage of Americans have been willing to give their lives for their nation or Bush's cause. For example, I do not know a single soul who is presently serving in the armed forces, and I doubt that very many of us do.

Another angle Bush used was at the end of his speech, when he said words to the effect that many of us may not have voted for the war, but we did not vote for failure. There is a moral point here that still bothers me. He led this country into a war of his choosing through lies and deception. Because of that, he does not deserve victory, nor unfortunately, do the people of this nation who either followed him or were dragged inadvertently into it. He should apologize to the world and our citizens, declare defeat for himself, and withdraw. We should consider our nation lucky if we can work out some agreement under which NO sides are losers. Like them or not, we are not the only perfect humans in the world, and other nations and beliefs have to be considered.

Surging Deeper?

San Francisco author Adam Hochschild's books include Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. He is writing a book on World War I. This piece also appears in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Digging a deeper hole
Like World War I, Iraq surge is move doomed to fail

If we needed more evidence that those surrounding President George W. Bush have a tin ear for the lessons of history, it came recently when National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley referred to increasing the number of American troops in Iraq as "the big push" that would bring victory closer.

"The big push" is a phrase that came into the language with another troop surge that was supposed to bring another war to victory. For months beforehand, the big push was how British cabinet ministers, propagandists, generals and foot soldiers talked about the 1916 Battle of the Somme. (It is even the title of a book on the subject.)

World War I had been in a deadly stalemate for the better part of two years. A string of horrific battles had revealed the huge toll of trench warfare: Defenders could partially protect themselves by building deeper trenches, concrete pillboxes and reinforced dugouts far underground. But when you attacked you were disastrously vulnerable -- out in the open, exposed to deadly, sweeping machine gun fire as you clambered slowly across barbed wire and water-filled artillery shell craters.

So, what did the Allies do? They attacked. In numbers of men involved, it was at the time history's largest battle. The plan was to break open the German defense line, send the cavalry gloriously charging through the gap, and turn the tide of the war. The result was a catastrophe. The British army lost nearly 20,000 soldiers while about 40,000 more were wounded or went missing -- all on the first day. German machine gunners, after waiting out the long preliminary bombardment in their fortified bunkers underground, returned to the surface in time to mow down the advancing soldiers. After 4 1/2 months of fighting, British and French troops had suffered more than 600,000 casualties and the big push had gained them roughly 5 miles of muddy, shell-pocked wasteland.

Like the big push of the Somme, the big push in Iraq is a reapplication of tactics that have already proven a calamitous failure. As the outspoken retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, puts it, it's like finding yourself in a hole and then digging deeper. Every piece of evidence from nearly four bloody years makes clear that Sunnis and Shiites alike are driven to rage by the very presence of American soldiers walking Iraqi streets, barging into Iraqi homes and arresting or killing people who may or may not be insurgents. Furthermore, the people arrested or killed, however unsavory, are sometimes the only force protecting their communities against attacks from the opposite side in an extremely bitter civil war. Therefore, as sociologist Michael Schwartz explained the matter recently, a previous joint U.S.-Iraqi counterinsurgency drive in Baghdad, of exactly the type now being planned, actually increased civilian casualties.

There are huge differences, of course, between World War I and the fighting in Iraq. But even beyond the optimistic talk of the big push, there is nonetheless another eerie resemblance between the two conflicts. In both cases, a great power was itching to launch an invasion, and seized on a handy excuse to do so. For the Bush administration, of course, the excuse was Sept. 11. From a long string of insider revelations, we know that its top officials were hungry to invade Iraq, looked eagerly for the most far-fetched connections between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11, and, even when not really finding them, invaded anyway -- while continuing to vaguely imply the connections were there.

Something remarkably similar happened in 1914. Austria-Hungary was a shaky empire of restless ethnic minorities ruled by a German-speaking elite in Vienna. Nearly half the population was Slavic, including many Serbs. As a result, the imperial rulers in Vienna felt threatened by the very existence on their border of the independent nation of Serbia, small though it was. They were determined to invade it, possibly partition it, and so stamp out pan-Slavic and Serbian nationalism once and for all. They drew up detailed invasion plans. Then, most conveniently, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, the emperor's nephew and the heir to the throne, was assassinated while on a visit to the provincial city of Sarajevo. Like the White House after Sept. 11, the imperial palace in Vienna promptly began an eager search for a connection to the Serbian government. Frustratingly, however, the archduke had been killed on Austro-Hungarian soil by Gavrilo Princip, an Austro-Hungarian citizen. The assassin, an ethnic Serb, indeed had help from a shadowy secret organization of Serbian nationalists, but no connection to the government of Serbia has ever been proved. No matter. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia anyway. Other countries quickly jumped in on both sides, and a conflagration began that remade the world.

Part of that remaking, ironically, was the cobbling together after the war of three provinces of the defeated Ottoman Empire into what was first a British protectorate and then, after 1932, independent Iraq.

There is a final resemblance between the present bloodshed there and World War I. Both conflicts were fought for a curiously shifting set of noble-sounding goals. With Iraq, the Bush administration has tried on for size finding weapons of mass destruction, combatting Islamist terrorism and installing democracy in the Arab world. In World War I, the Allies first talked of coming to the defense of innocent, invaded little Belgium, then of defeating German militarism and of defending the British and French way of life.

Once Woodrow Wilson brought the United States into the conflict, he spoke of "the war to end all wars." It didn't. The humiliation of the losers and the catastrophic loss of life on both sides did nothing to end all wars and much to light the fuses of later ones -- especially the Russian civil war and World War II.

The longer the war in Iraq goes on and the more American troops are planted by big pushes in a highly combustible part of the world, the more we will continue to stoke a widespread humiliation and anger whose consequences are already guaranteed to haunt us for decades to come.

The One-Sided Religious War

Although the current war has been labeled as the War for Freedom, that title is really misleading, as well as being extremely nebulous. The war, we are told, is a war to prevent the Islamic world from taking over our so-called democracy. In actuality, the war is a religious war on both sides. We have a president who has unwavering religious beliefs, and he has made very good use of the Christian right as his base from which to garner support. In spite of the fact that his speeches are heavily laced with mention of God and Christ, he has avoided using those words as motivation – only freedom.

Religious belief varies to a great degree in this country, from sect to sect, and from one individual to another. The same is probably true around the world, although there are countries in which it is not wise to let individual belief be known. Try to envision, therefore, how you as an individual would react if another nation, especially a nation with a religious motive were to invade.

Would you rise up as an individual to protect your country? Many Americans are heavily armed, but mostly with fairly unmilitary arms, and mostly to kill other Americans for one reason or another. But would that stop you from coming to the defense of your country? If you were a devout Christian, would you be willing to give your life for Christ? If you were an atheist, but also an American, would that make you any less likely to die for your country? And just what labels do you think the oncoming hordes would use to describe us? Terrorists? Insurgents? Extremists? Do you think they would know whether each and every one of us was an evil adversary? Do you think they might believe that some of us could simply be trying to protect our families, our homeland, and our way of life with whatever we had at hand?

Do you suppose that there are any people like those I’ve just described in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Meet Chuck Hagel

By Robert Scheer

Chuck Hagel for president! If it ever narrows down to a choice between him and some Democratic hack who hasn't the guts to fundamentally challenge the president on Iraq, then the conservative Republican from Nebraska will have my vote.

Yes, the war is that important, and the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic candidate, still can't or won't take a clear stand on the occupation is insulting to the vast majority of voters who have.

Sen. Hagel is a decorated Vietnam War vet who learned the crucial lessons of that Democrat-launched debacle of post-colonial imperialism. Even more important, he has the courage to challenge a president from his own party who so clearly didn't. Hagel said,

The speech given by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam. We are projecting ourselves further and deeper into a situation that we cannot win militarily.

To ask our young men and women to sacrifice their lives to be put in the middle of a civil war is wrong. It's, first of all, in my opinion, morally wrong. It's tactically, strategically, militarily wrong.

If Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, another Democratic darling, has uttered words of such clarifying dissent on the president's disastrous course, then I haven't heard them. Instead, too many leading Democratic politicians continue to act as if they fear that if they are forthright in opposing the war, they will appear weak, whether on national security or the protection of Israel, and so ignore the clear, strong voice of the American people that just revived their party's fortunes.

Ever since President Ronald Reagan painted foreign policy as a simplistic war of good versus evil, the Republican Party has been in the thrall of neocon adventurers. Yet, the national emergence of Hagel reminds us that, two decades earlier, it was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a war hero and a Republican, who was the only president to clearly challenge the simplistic and jingoistic militarism that most Democrats embraced during the Cold War. It was Eisenhower, in fact, who refused to send troops to Vietnam, and his Democratic successors who opened the gates of war.

True conservatives, going back to George Washington, have always been wary of the "foreign entanglements" that our first general and president warned against in his farewell address. And it is in that spirit, recognizing the limits to U.S. military power, that Hagel spoke this past Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, late of an oft-opportunistic Democratic Party that saw fit to nominate him as recently as 2000 for the vice presidency, had just finished accusing those who don't support President Bush's escalation of the war of being "all about failing." In his defense of the indefensible, Lieberman baldly repeated many of Bush's lies that launched this war four years ago. Said the fear-monger,

The American people ... have been attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy that we're fighting in Iraq today, supported by a rising Islamist radical super-powered government in Iran. Allowing Iraq to collapse would be a disaster for the Iraqis, for the Middle East, for us, that would embolden the Iranians and al-Qaida, who are our enemies. And they would follow us back here.

Never mind the ridiculous image of "super-powered" Iran invading the United States, or the fact that foreign jihadists -- arriving after the overthrow of anti-fundamentalist strongman Saddam Hussein -- make up only a tiny fraction of the combatants in Iraq.

The question is how the apparently intelligent Lieberman doesn't understand that the main task of our troops for most of their stay in Iraq has been, de facto, to expand the power of Shiite theocrats trained for decades in Iran. Tehran couldn't have baited a better trap.

In any case, Hagel refused to bite on Lieberman's apocalyptic vision, which somehow manages to skip the hard truth that Iraq has collapsed because of our involvement, not despite it. Hagel responded, in what amounts to a radical opinion in paternalistic, arrogant Washington:

[T]he fact is, the Iraqi people will determine the fate of Iraq. The people of the Middle East will determine their fate. We continue to interject ourselves in a situation that we never have understood, we've never comprehended [and] we now have to devise a way to find some political consensus with our allies [and] the regional powers, including Iran and Syria.

To say that we are going to feed more young men and women into that grinder, put them in the middle of a tribal, sectarian civil war, is not going to fix the problem.

Words of wisdom that set the standard for anyone running for president.

Mr. Bush, Meet Walter Jones

Widely published throughout the Internet today, is this column by Pat Buchanan:

America is four years into a bloody debacle in Iraq not merely because Bush and Cheney marched us in, or simply because neocon propagandists lied about Saddam's nuclear program and WMD, and Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda, anthrax attacks, and 9/11.

We are there because a Democratic Senate voted to give Bush a blank check for war. Democrats in October 2002 wanted the war vote behind them so they could go home and campaign as pro-war patriots.

And because they did, 3,000 Americans are dead, 25,000 are wounded, perhaps 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, 1.6 million have fled, $400 billion has been lost, and America stands on the precipice of the worst strategic defeat in her history.

Yet, Sens. Clinton, Biden, Kerry, and Edwards – all of whom voted to give Bush his blank check – are now competing to succeed him. And how do they justify what they did?

"If only we had known then what we know now," they plead, "we would never have voted for the war." They are thus confessing to dereliction in the highest duty the Founding Fathers gave Congress. They voted to cede to a president their power to take us to war.

Now they wash their hands of it all and say, "It's Bush's war!"

And now George Bush has another war in mind.

In his Jan. 11 address, Bush said that to defend the "territorial integrity" of Iraq, the United States must address "Iran and Syria."

These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

The city sat bolt upright. If Bush was talking about Iranian agents inside Iraq, he has no need of a second aircraft carrier in the Gulf, nor for those Patriot missiles he is sending to our allies.

But does Bush have the authority to take us to war against Iran?

On ABC last Sunday, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, while denying Bush intends to attack Iran, nonetheless did not deny Bush had the authority to escalate the war – right into Iran.

George Stephanopoulos:

So you don't believe you have the authority to go into Iran?

Stephen Hadley:

I didn't say that. That is another issue. Any time you have questions about crossing international borders, there are legal questions.

Any doubt how Attorney General Gonzales would come down on those "legal questions"? Any doubt how the Supreme Court would rule?

Biden sputters that should Bush attack Iran, a constitutional crisis would ensue.

I don't believe it. If tomorrow Bush took out Iran's nuclear facilities, would a Senate that lacks the courage to cut funds for an unpopular war really impeach him for denying a nuclear capability to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Bush's lawyers would make the same case Nixon made for the 1970 "incursion" into Cambodia – and even a Nixon-hating Democratic House did not dare to impeach him for that.

Bush's contempt for Congress is manifest and, frankly, justified.

Asked if Congress could stop him from surging 21,500 troops into Iraq, Bush on 60 Minutes brushed aside Congress as irrelevant.

I fully understand [the Congress] could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward.

Asked if he had sole authority "to put the troops in there no matter what the Congress wants to do," Bush replied, "In this situation I do, yeah."

Is Congress then impotent, if it does not want war on Iran?

Enter Rep. Walter Jones, Republican of North Carolina.

The day after Bush's threat to Iran, Jones introduced a Joint Resolution, "Concerning the Use of Military Force by the United States Against Iran." Under HJR 14, "

Absent a national emergency created by attack by Iran, or a demonstrably imminent attack by Iran, upon the United States, its territories, possessions, or its armed forces, the president shall consult with Congress, and receive specific authorization pursuant to law from Congress, prior to initiating any use of force on Iran.

. . . . No provision of law enacted before the date of the enactment of this joint resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of military force by the United States against Iran.

If we are going to war on Iran, Jones is saying, we must follow the Constitution and Congress must authorize it.

If Biden, Kerry, Clinton, and Obama refuse to sign on to the Jones resolution, they will be silently conceding that Bush indeed does have the power to start a war on Iran. And America should pay no further attention to the Democrats' wailing about being misled on the Iraq war.

Failure Was At The Beginning

The latest pretext for continuing the war in Iraq is that failure would be disastrous for us and the Middle East.

Our failure in Iraq took place at the very beginning around the planning table in the White House when Bush and his men decided to invade. Bush's stature, in his own mind, had taken on the heroic trappings of history's greatest military leaders, and his belief that, like Jesus, he had been chosen by God.

The result of that terrible error is that Bush has made his entire nation hated around the world, by a majority of the people he is purportedly trying to save in Iraq, and now his administration by most of his own countrymen. This hatred will assuredly continue to grow in each and every case.

His only hope to ameliorate the tragic consequences of his failure is for him to take personal blame for what has happened and totally withdraw our forces from the Middle East NOW.

Hypotheticals

Have you noticed how often Bush's representatives have answered questions about what would the government do if such and such happened by sidestepping a straight answer? This is particularly true of his spokesman, Tony Snow. His favorite sentence, one which he uses frequently, is "I'm not going to get into hypotheticals."

At the same time, Bush's entire foreign policy platform is built on hypotheticals, all of them very bad for us. If we pull out of Iraq, not only will the terrorists win, but the entire Middle East will descend into chaos, and Al Quaeda, Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc., etc., etc. will pursue us back to and inside the boundaries of our country.

How can he be so sure that that scenario is the one that will ensue? Isn't it quite logical and possible that what they have in mind is simply getting us out of their part of the world? And wouldn't it also follow that if we brought our troops home, they would greatly expand the forces available to protect us here in our own land? And isn't it also possible that the Middle East will continue to heave regardless of who wins and who loses?

Bush's hypotheticals are directed toward frightening the citizens of this country into continuing to support his war, and thus his imagined position as a great military leader, all of this while he does not consider it necessary to endanger the lives of the children of his base, the rich and the overtly religious, by calling for a draft.

The Democratic Plan for Iraq:

In two Words....

Are We Lemmings?

Having watched several moments of "sports" battles, especially in basketball and soccer games on television news programs in recent months, as well as the various wars going on, and a general lack of personal "purpose" in life, the following thoughts come to mind:

I'm not a scientist, so I can't speak with any authority, just rumination, but I have been wondering if homo sapiens is moving closer to his outer limits as a species. Certainly there have been wondrous spikes in his development, and great troughs as well, both in individuals and in cultures, physically and intellectually.

But now we are at a point beyond which we may not be able to go. Science has reached a point where it is trying to create human beings synthetically, rather than as Nature (or God, if you will) created us. And at least a few mad scientists hope to someday find the key to living forever. (They seem to have overlooked the fact that population is out of control worldwide, while the Earth's resources are rapidly dwindling.) There is startlingly little intellectual or spiritual development beyond that already extant that enhances life or living.

Like numberless species before us, we appear to have developed beyond the capacity of our environment to support us, and, like lemmings, we are unknowingly running off a cliff in an inadvertent vast species suicide.

New Years Resolutions

Nora Ephron Resolves to Eat More Cheese:

1. I resolve to be a better human being this year, and that includes trying to remember the names of people I have just been introduced to. It also includes trying to remember the names of people I already know. Last year I bumped into someone I was certain I knew, in a mall in Las Vegas, and realized after about a minute that it was my sister.


2. I resolve to go to Madrid. I went to Madrid once, but I don't remember it. I'm pretty sure I saw a Goya in a museum there, but I may merely have seen a photograph of a Goya in the museum and confused it with an actual experience. At this point there's no way to know.


3. I resolve to go to the Tiffany show at the Met. I have definitely not been to the Tiffany show at the Met. One of my biggest regrets in life was not buying a Tiffany lamp in 1964 when they cost only $10,000, even though I didn't have $10,000 in 1964. Had I bought a Tiffany lamp back then, it would probably have been lost in the tragic moving-truck episode of 1979, along with a Saul Steinberg drawing that was the only valuable thing I owned at the time and which, naturally, I had failed to insure, thus causing me to make a New Year's resolution in 1980 to overinsure everything forever, something I always forget to do.


4. I resolve to write a blog about those incredibly irritating little stickers that are stuck to the fruit and tell the cash register at the grocery store whether you are buying Fuji apples for $1.29 a pound or Gala apples for $1.29 a pound. I meant to write about this last year but it slipped my mind.


5. I resolve to eat more waffles, even though this resolution is in direct conflict with my most important resolution of the New Year, which is to lose two pounds. Waffles are amazing. When I'm dying, I don't want to regret not having eaten more of them. Incidentally, one of my most successful New Year's resolutions, which I made in 1990, was to eat more cheese. I recommend it highly as a resolution and as a way of life, although, come to think of it, it's one of the reasons why I now have to lose two pounds.


6. I resolve to watch that movie by Jean Renoir I can never remember the name of but it's French and it's supposed to be the greatest movie ever made.


7. I resolve not to resolve to read Proust. Because you never do and then you just feel like a failure.


8. I resolve to get off America Online and find another internet service provider that doesn't shut down on you while you're in the middle of an email or fail to make a full connection when you log on. It's hard to leave America Online. But this year I am going to. And I am not going to forget.


9. I resolve to finish reading Fiasco.


10. I resolve to memorize once and for all the difference between the Sunnis and the Shia, although I knew the difference a few months ago and, to be perfectly honest, it didn't really seem to matter that much. I mean, let's just get out of there and let them sort it out.


11. I resolve to cook a timballo. I want to make one just like the one they made in the movie Big Night, which came out ten years ago. Why it's taken me so long to make a timballo, I don't know. I guess I just forgot.