November 16, 2006
Only 31% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going
by Joseph Carroll
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
PRINCETON, NJ -- The situation in Iraq continues to be the top issue mentioned by Americans when asked to name the most important problem facing the country right now. More than a third of Americans name Iraq as the top problem, and is now, by one point, at the highest level seen on this measure since the focus on Iraq began four years ago. Other problems facing the nation as mentioned by Americans include the general state of the economy, healthcare, government dissatisfaction and corruption, immigration, and terrorism. Americans' overall satisfaction with the state of the nation remains quite low, with only 31% of Americans saying they are satisfied.
Most Important Problem
The Nov. 9-12, 2006 poll asked Americans to name, in their own words, the "most important problem facing this country today," repeating a long-standing Gallup trend question updated monthly. The war in Iraq ranks at the top of the list, with 36% of Americans mentioning this as the nation's most salient problem. The situation in Iraq has been at the top of the list each month since March 2004, at which time the economy and unemployment were greater public concerns. But, the percentage of Americans mentioning Iraq as the most important problem is up this month from 28% in early October -- and is now among the highest levels Gallup has ever measured.
Continued:
http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=25462
Thursday, November 16, 2006
The neocons' last stand
They scurried off Bush's sinking ship, but are still trying to stop a reversal of his Middle East policy
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday November 16, 2006
The Guardian
Even before the electoral repudiation of President Bush, the guardians of the Bush family trust surfaced as the presumptive executive committee of the executive branch. For years, George Bush Sr and his former national-security team have tried to rescue the president from himself - and from the clutches of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their neoconservative centurions. Earlier this year Bush Sr quietly approached a retired four-star general to inquire if he would be willing to replace Rumsfeld, but that premature coup came to naught. Several of the father's associates personally warned Bush Jr before the Iraq war that it would lead to sectarian civil war, only to be dismissed with disdain.
James Baker - the elder Bush's campaign manager and secretary of state, charged for decades with cleaning up family messes - is now chairman of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) and has assumed the aura of a regent. He is burdened with more tasks than those specified in his commission's brief about Iraq. Not only is he developing a whole new US foreign policy, he is trying to salvage whatever can be retrieved from the wreckage of Bush's presidency for its last two years and to prevent the Republican party, having lost the crown jewel of the Congress, from being permanently tainted.
Just before the electoral doom, the neocons scurried off the sinking ship. Richard Perle, former chairman of the defence policy board (DPB), put the onus on Bush in an interview for Vanity Fair: "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible." Kenneth Adelman, another neocon DPB member, who predicted that the invasion of Iraq would be a "cakewalk", said of Bush administration policy makers: "Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
Yet the neocons plot to confound Baker. Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, on the advisory panel of the ISG, says the ISG member Edwin Meese will oppose the recommendations.
The neocon logic in favour of the Iraq war was that the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad: an invasion would install an Iraqi democracy that would force the Palestinians to submit to the Israelis. Now near-unanimity exists on Baker's commission to reverse that formula. The central part of a new policy must be, they believe, that the road to Baghdad leads through Jerusalem.
In an article in the Washington Post in July, Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security adviser, who is very close to Baker, spelled out the notion that security and stability in the region, including Iraq, can only be achieved by re-establishing the Middle East peace process. Scowcroft's piece is a precis of Baker's views as well. On September 15, Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice's legal adviser and a former Scowcroft protege, echoed Scowcroft's ideas in a speech at Washington's Middle East Institute. Afterwards, Cheney pressured Rice and she rebuked her closest deputy, underlining her own weakness.
Then the electoral catastrophe intervened, giving Baker leeway (and sidelining Rice). Baker even summoned Tony Blair to testify on Tuesday in order to support a restart of the Middle East peace process. If Baker were to propose that, he knows - although he will not explicitly say so - that its enactment would require the firing of neocons on the national security council and Cheney's staff, in particular Elliott Abrams, the NSC's near-east affairs director.
If Baker actually advocates what he thinks, Bush will have to either admit the errors of his ways and the wisdom of his father and his father's men - or cast them and caution aside once again.
· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of How Bush Rules
sidney_blumenthal@yahoo.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1948667,00.html
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday November 16, 2006
The Guardian
Even before the electoral repudiation of President Bush, the guardians of the Bush family trust surfaced as the presumptive executive committee of the executive branch. For years, George Bush Sr and his former national-security team have tried to rescue the president from himself - and from the clutches of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their neoconservative centurions. Earlier this year Bush Sr quietly approached a retired four-star general to inquire if he would be willing to replace Rumsfeld, but that premature coup came to naught. Several of the father's associates personally warned Bush Jr before the Iraq war that it would lead to sectarian civil war, only to be dismissed with disdain.
James Baker - the elder Bush's campaign manager and secretary of state, charged for decades with cleaning up family messes - is now chairman of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) and has assumed the aura of a regent. He is burdened with more tasks than those specified in his commission's brief about Iraq. Not only is he developing a whole new US foreign policy, he is trying to salvage whatever can be retrieved from the wreckage of Bush's presidency for its last two years and to prevent the Republican party, having lost the crown jewel of the Congress, from being permanently tainted.
Just before the electoral doom, the neocons scurried off the sinking ship. Richard Perle, former chairman of the defence policy board (DPB), put the onus on Bush in an interview for Vanity Fair: "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible." Kenneth Adelman, another neocon DPB member, who predicted that the invasion of Iraq would be a "cakewalk", said of Bush administration policy makers: "Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
Yet the neocons plot to confound Baker. Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, on the advisory panel of the ISG, says the ISG member Edwin Meese will oppose the recommendations.
The neocon logic in favour of the Iraq war was that the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad: an invasion would install an Iraqi democracy that would force the Palestinians to submit to the Israelis. Now near-unanimity exists on Baker's commission to reverse that formula. The central part of a new policy must be, they believe, that the road to Baghdad leads through Jerusalem.
In an article in the Washington Post in July, Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security adviser, who is very close to Baker, spelled out the notion that security and stability in the region, including Iraq, can only be achieved by re-establishing the Middle East peace process. Scowcroft's piece is a precis of Baker's views as well. On September 15, Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice's legal adviser and a former Scowcroft protege, echoed Scowcroft's ideas in a speech at Washington's Middle East Institute. Afterwards, Cheney pressured Rice and she rebuked her closest deputy, underlining her own weakness.
Then the electoral catastrophe intervened, giving Baker leeway (and sidelining Rice). Baker even summoned Tony Blair to testify on Tuesday in order to support a restart of the Middle East peace process. If Baker were to propose that, he knows - although he will not explicitly say so - that its enactment would require the firing of neocons on the national security council and Cheney's staff, in particular Elliott Abrams, the NSC's near-east affairs director.
If Baker actually advocates what he thinks, Bush will have to either admit the errors of his ways and the wisdom of his father and his father's men - or cast them and caution aside once again.
· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of How Bush Rules
sidney_blumenthal@yahoo.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1948667,00.html
The Price of Imperial Arrogance
Thursday, November 16, 2006
by Stephen Lendman
Lyndon Johnson was a conflicted man about Vietnam almost from the time he took office. As early as May, 1964, he confessed his doubts about the conflict to his good friend Senator Richard Russell in one of the many phone calls he taped in the Oval Office. That was three months before the fateful Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave him congressional authorization for military action in Southeast Asia without needing a formal declaration of war for it. Later that year, he privately acknowledged the Tonkin Gulf incident never happened and told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara "we concluded maybe they hadn't fired at all." He was referring to the claimed attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two US destroyers which, on its face, seemed preposterous but which propelled this country deeply into the Vietnam conflict that didn't end until President Gerald Ford evacuated the last of the US forces and a few South Vietnamese collaborators in humiliation from the rooftop of the US Embassy in Saigon 11 years later in April, 1975. They left behind a nation in ruins, its landscape devastated and chemically poisoned that remains so today, and a few million dead Southeast Asians in three countries showing the kind of men Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were - imperial war lords who never had to answer for their war crimes as they never do under a system of victor's justice. The only compensation the victims got was their freedom from US aggression when realizing it couldn't win it decided to give up a futile fight and pull out.
Long before he left office, Johnson knew the war was unwinnable, and in 1965 told Secretary McNamara "I don't believe they're ever going to quit. And I don't see....that we have any....plan for victory - militarily or diplomatically" - spoken as he was about to escalate the conflict dramatically by shipping over many thousands more US forces that would eventually exceed a half million before things began to be scaled down in preparation for the final exodus in disgrace and defeat. Johnson did it even while confiding to his closest Senate friend, Richard Russell, that he was on the horns of his greatest dilemma. He had to find a way out of the Vietnam mess he felt was pointless but said he couldn't do it without being impeached - for Johnson, a classic Hobson's choice or in his own words "I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't." He asked his savvy friend for advice, but Russell told him he had none. Johnson felt trapped, and in May, 1964, (when the US commitment stood at a 16,000 troop strength level) he told Russell "We're in quicksand up to our necks, and I just don't know what the hell to do about it."
He did a lot about it, but made a criminal and coward's choice that destroyed him. It was apparent on March 31,1968, two months after the momentous Tet offensive showed how hopeless things were and how pointless it was to pursue an agenda certain to fail. Johnson addressed the nation on national television that night saying he wouldn't seek reelection for another term. His only way out was to "cut and run" because he was so unpopular he had no chance to win. Lyndon Johnson left office in January, 1969 a disgraced and defeated man. This powerful, bigger-than-lfe figure was never the same again, and four years later he was dead.
Audible Echoes of Vietnam Today
Today, echos of Vietnam are heard again resonating from the Middle East more loudly than 30 years ago. Does anyone in Washington high circles understand George Santayana's famous dictum that "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it?" And do people in those circles know about British playwright George Bernard Shaw who said "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history" and could have explained how doomed this adventure would be from the start? There are just as many damn fools now as in the past, but the most dangerous ones are those who won't admit they got it wrong till it's too late and then it's someone else's problem. The only debate now is whether it's already beyond fixing, and no solution acceptable to Washington will work.
The elite there should read all 1000+ pages of noted longtime Middle East-based British journalist Robert Fisk's new book called The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East and learn how they're making the same mistakes that doomed the British occupiers after WW I. In a recent discussion of his book, Fisk compared today with then and explained: (today in Iraq) "It is not just similar, it is 'fingerprint' the same." During the "war to end all wars" the UK under Prime Minister Lloyd George (the Tony Blair of his time) invaded Iraq in 1917 and claimed, like George Bush, we (the UK) come "not as conquerors but as liberators." After the war, the Brits arbitrarily carved out the territory they called Iraq from the former greater Mesopotamia that was under Ottoman rule for almost 400 years until the war ended it. They told Iraqis they would have "democracy," held a referendum to prove it, and "elected" a puppet monarch who understood who was really in charge. In 1920, there was an insurrection, and Fallujah was the first town bombed followed by a siege against Najaf. Lloyd George defended his actions on the floor of the House of Commons (which British PMs must do unlike in the US) and claimed "if British troops leave Iraq there will be civil war." Sound familiar?
Winston Churchill was Secretary for War and Air for a time under George in the 1920s and thought it was a waste of British soldiers putting down tribal or sectarian revolts. Instead he advocated using the new Royal Air Force to bomb villages and was unconcerned if it targeted innocent civilians along with the legitimate resistance struggling (like today) to be free from a repressive occupation. He also authorized what Saddam was condemned for - using poison gas for the first time ever against a civilian population and at the time wrote: "I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against 'uncivilised' tribes." In a 2002 BBC poll, this "uncivilised" war criminal was voted the greatest-ever Briton, and his bust is now prominently displayed in the Oval Office occupied by the current war criminal ensconced in it.
British rule in the country was turbulent and harsh until Iraq became nominally independent in 1932 and later finally freed itself from British control after the Baathists expelled the Brits for good in the late 1950s, 40 years after they first arrived and not long after Saddam Hussein joined the party he would lead 22 years later. It took the Brits all that time to learn what the Bush administration should already know - Iraqis won't tolerate a foreign occupation, especially one as harsh as the one now imposed on them. This hopeless adventure was doomed the moment George Bush signed off on it, but the arrogance of imperial power blinded the neocons in Washington to what should have been obvious to them and eventually will be - the battle of Iraq can't be won, and the only alternative is a full, unconditional and immediate withdrawal along with reparations paid to help rebuild the country we pillaged and destroyed.
That happening is wishful thinking even though many in high places understand the futility of "staying the (present) course" and are scrambling for an alternate solution. It remains to be seen what they have in mind and if they can get the ruling neocon cabal to accept it or manage to sidestep them if they don't. It won't be any easier convincing an administration nominally headed by a man who believes he's on a messianic mission to decide he made a mistake and be willing to change course than it was to get a former president with a working brain to do it in 1969. He and his successor "stayed their course" for another blood-soaked six years that scarred this nation and the people of Southeast Asia who paid the greatest price and won't ever fully recover until they reject the chains of neoliberalism that allow the dominant West to strangle them.
How Bad Is It in Iraq and On the Home Front
First consider the enormous and growing economic cost according to an estimate by Joseph Stiglitz - 2001 economics Nobel laureate, former Chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and chief economist at the World Bank until he quit his job in November, 1999 to speak publicly about his opposition to bank policies, and Linda Bilmes who teaches public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In January, 2006, they estimated the war's cost could reach $2 trillion but now believe that figure is low and may go much higher because of current and estimated future budgetary costs, the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted, the risk premium in oil prices from uncertainty in the Middle East, the growing cost of veterans' long-term medical care and disability benefit obligations, the human and capital investment needed to "reset" or restore the military to its pre-war strength and preparedness, and a host of other direct and indirect costs including the most accurate measure of the amount eventually to be needed for the war when all budgetary items are included now and into the future.
The government doesn't calculate the total cost as Stiglitz and Bilmes say it should because of the way the it does its accounting. It uses a "cash accounting" system that would make a CPA wince (and likely lose his accreditation) and only reports expenses when payments are made, not when they're committed for as most all businesses must do by "accrual accounting" methodology that includes future obligations assumed but unpaid. Add it all up according to Stiglitz and Bilmes and it comes to $2 trillion + and counting because future obligations not yet in reported budgets are huge for years to come that will drain many billions of dollars from the federal treasury and put an enormous strain on an economy already reeling from massive deficits that are far greater than the phony numbers reported to hide how bad the country's fiscal condition really is.
Stiglitz and Bilmes also point out that going to war with Iraq (and Afghanistan) was a matter of choice and so is staying there that raises the cost the longer the conflict continues (as well as in Afghanistan not included in their calculations). And they go much further saying as overwhelming as the $2 trillion + budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs are already, more must be added to them such as the expenses incurred by other nations and this country's intangible ones that include the following:
-- the cost of our reduced capability to respond to national security threats in other parts of the world.
-- the cost of high and rising anti-American sentiment in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere - most everywhere.
-- the price paid for the sham notion that this country defends and supports human rights and democracy.
-- the cost of the sharp decline of America's "soft power" from the Bush administration having tarnished the country's credentials, reducing Washington's ability to influence or prevail on crucial issues like trade, global warming, the international criminal justice system and much more.
Stiglitz and Bilmes don't say it, but they seem to suggest the "empire" is in decline economically and politically, and the Bush administration and its war on the world agenda had a lot to do with it. They may also be saying, or at least hinting, that this administration's budgetary recklessness did enormous fiscal damage to the country that by some estimates now place the national debt as high as $70 trillion when all future financial obligations are included; it also ran up a true 2005 budget deficit of $760 billion, not the fictitious $318 billion it reported; and it exacerbated a huge current account deficit now exceeding $800 billion and rising - meaning the nation leached at least $1.5 trillion in 2005 from these two sources alone plus whatever is hidden and so far unknown including from other government reported data that was cooked to look better than it is.
In a recent interview, Stiglitz went even further saying...."in this current administration, the defense industries and the energy industries have really been running the show and it has been disastrous." He discussed the mismanagement and ominous signs of a housing bubble now deflating. It was generated by a tsunami of irresponsible Federal Reserve generated printing press created prosperity under Alan Greenspan and still ongoing under the radar because the Fed stopped publishing overall M3 monetary aggregate figures in March, 2006 it wants to conceal. And that was exacerbated by the administration's reckless spending policies that now set up the possibility of a global economic depression Stiglitz believes can only be avoided by implementing big changes in how the US economy is managed going forward. He added how hard it will be to do it because of the entrenched interests in the administration saying...."this has been perhaps the worst six years of mismanagement of the macro economy," and that an implosion can only be avoided with careful management, but if the present course continues to be followed a global depression will result in 12 - 24 months.
The news isn't any better in the November 20, 2006 issue of Business Week in which writer Michael Mandel points out another startling fact in his feature article called "Can Anyone Steer This Economy?" In it he says sometime around a year from now "the US will hit a milestone. For the first time in recent memory" this country will import a dollar value of goods and services exceeding what the federal government collects in revenues that now amounts to $2.4 trillion a year. He goes on to say the US economy was once an "800 pound gorilla," but that's not true anymore because the global economy is overtaking us. The forces of globalization "have overwhelmed Washington's ability to control the economy." In today's brave new world order environment, giant corporations, called transnationals for a good reason, are free to offshore their manufacturing and other activities anywhere in the world and do it where the cost of doing business is cheapest - meaning, as Stiglitz and Blimes would likely conclude, this country is slowly sinking economically and the enormous financial obligations and burgeoning debt it's run up is only making it happen faster. Writer Mandel seems to agree saying "Washington is no longer the center of the economic universe".......or New York, Chicago or Los Angeles either.
The Pentagon may know a thing or two about this, worries about what effect it eventually will have on its future operations as well as a lot about its current impossible one in Iraq it likely wants to wash its hands of. It showed in a mid-October classified briefing leaked to the New York Times in which high-level military officials said conditions in Iraq are in a state of chaos beyond its control. This came out of the US Central Command in charge of the Middle East. It reported Iraqi government security forces can't cope with the violence that's "at an all-time high, spreading geographically."
When the most powerful military force in the history of the universe throws up its hands and effectively cries uncle, it shows how bad things are in the Kafkaesque maelstrom of Iraq. It also shows how hopeless this adventure was that should have been brain-dead and stillborn from the start - but you'd never know it from the head-in-the-sand comments of the "stay-the-coursers" in Washington that includes the president, vice-president and Democrat leadership even when their language changes. They're willing to fine-tune the tactical management of the operation as they're now about to do but never willing to give up the prize they've already invested so much in and can't afford to give up because the cost of doing it is so great. It's what journalist Robert Fisk meant when he said "the US must get out (of Iraq), they will get out, and they can't get out."
Here's more evidence of how bad things are and how impossible it's becoming trying to deal with it. In his November 1 column in the London Independent, unembedded journalist Patrick Cockburn wrote that "Baghdad Is Under Siege." It follows his article days earlier called "From 'Mission Accomplished' to 'Mission Impossible' in Iraq." From his vantage point on the ground, Cockburn paints a grim picture of out-of-control chaos. "Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city (Baghdad) to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital." He goes on to say food shortages in some neighborhoods are becoming severe, and the scale of daily killing is "massive" --
--1000 or more violent deaths weekly.
--Shia fighters controlling most of the city encircled by Sunnis.
--1.5 million Iraqis have fled their homes according to the Iraqi Red Crescent (a separate UNHCR estimate apart from Cockburn's article puts the number at 1.8 million Iraqis living in neighboring countries and another 1.6 million "internally displaced" within Iraq including those who left during the 1990s).
--Shia and Sunni militias control the country, not the US military, Iraqi army or police that are all impotent.
--the militias grow "stronger by the day because the Shia and Sunni communities feel threatened and do not trust the army and police to defend them."
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres confirmed through his chief spokesperson Ron Redmond on November 3 how bad things are in Iraq based on the number of refugees the conflict is generating. UNHCR says about 100,000 Iraqis now leave their homes each month in a desperate attempt to find safety. The UN agency estimates 2000 a day go to Syria, another 1000 a day cross into Jordan, some go to other countries and still others seek asylum in Europe. UNHCR also estimates an additional 50,000 Iraqis become "internally displaced" each month.
The immense refugee problem is the most visible sign of a failed US policy along with the out-of-control daily violence across most of the country killing 100 or more every day according to a UN estimate that's too low. It's the culmination of nearly 16 years of a US-directed reign of state-sponsored terrorism against the country and its people that slaughtered or caused the deaths of over two million Iraqi men, women and children and counting and left in its wake a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, vital sanitation, medical care, education, fuel and most everything else needed for sustenance and survival. Things aren't improving. They're getting worse as a brutal occupation grinds on and death squads roam freely including the US-directed "Salvador option" ones of the type National Intelligence Director John Negroponte once led in the 1980s when he was US Ambassador to Hondurus during the Reagan Contra wars when he directed the administration's terror war of that era against the Nicaraguans and Salvadorans fighting for their freedom.
Today it's happening again, and it's all part of an insane agenda to control the immense energy resources of the Middle East by brute force. The plan in Iraq is to do it by destroying all the institutions of a modern secular society along with the country's historical treasures to transform this once prosperous nation into an impotent desert kingdom populated by serfs. If the Baker Commission plan prevails, discussed below, it's likely to be divided into several autonomous regions under nominal Iraqi regional and national rule but centrally controlled by a dominant US authority headquartered in the US Embassy in the fortress-like Green Zone using a US-directed satrap Iraqi army and police to enforce order for its master in charge of everything. That may be the plan, but it's another story to make it work.
What has worked is the US campaign on the ground that created an epic humanitarian disaster by every measure imaginable on top of the destruction of essential services listed above that barely exist anywhere in most of the country:
-- desperate poverty and mass unemployment up to a 70% level.
-- 84% of the country's higher learning institutions burnt, looted or destroyed according to a UN International Leadership report.
-- archeological museums and historic sites, libraries and archives plundered deliberately.
-- daily targeted assassinations against academics, other teachers, senior military personnel, journalists, doctors, other professionals and anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time which can be anywhere.
-- nearly the entire country including parts of the Kurdish-controlled north now a lawless war zone with the US military and Iraqi security forces helpless to do anything about it and are just making it worse by their presence.
The Price Paid at Home
The US public has also paid an enormous price for the Bush administration's agenda and shows it in its anger over the hopeless war without end in Iraq, the endemic cesspool of Washington corruption and a general feeling of unease and mistrust with the political class in the nation's Capitol. But what about the rest - the annulment of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the loss of habeas and due process, the removal of checks and balances and separation of powers, and the end of republican government replaced by congressionally and judicially allowed tyranny.
Chalk it up to the power and influence of the corrupted corporate-controlled media. They effectively program the public mind suppressing the ugly truths in their dual roles as flag-waving support-the-troops America-uber-alles cheerleaders on the one hand and as court jesters on the other diverting attention from the important to the trivial. With due respect to George Orwell - in a time of universal corporate media deceit, if some in it told the truth it would be a revolutionary act. None there are that bold as it would likely cost them their jobs - except for one noted host of a one-hour nightly newscast and commentary so far allowed on MSNBC for whatever reason the network airs it.
The first casualty of war (and of all the other ways government ill-serves us) is truth at a time when that commodity is more needed than ever. It's not hyperbole to believe if people understood the neocon's domestic and foreign agenda it would spark a second American revolution - this time aimed at the criminal class in Washington who betrayed the nation's founding principles. The Bush administration, led by the Vice-President and de facto head of state, shamelessly used the 9/11 tragedy to stage a power-grab coup d'etat against free people everywhere. They declared war on the world for imperial gain and strangled a republic already on life support to establish a national security fascist police state in America signed into law in a contemptible act of lawlessness by George Bush on October 17 - a day that will live in infamy. He did it with little fanfare, public awareness or consent giving himself the power to rule like the dictator he once "jokingly" said he'd like to be.
In a White House signing ceremony for the occasion, George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act (aka the torture authorization act and lots more) that effectively annuls the Constitution and Bill of Rights and gives him the extraordinary authority (in violation of the Constitution) to designate anyone an enemy of the state on his say alone with no corroborating evidence. As noted British journalist John Pilger wrote in the New Statesman - anyone for any reason may now be labelled a "terrorist" for committing what Orwell called a "thoughtcrime" in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. We're all now "enemy combatants," and no one is safe from the reach of "Big Brother" in Washington.
The new law grants the chief executive what Pilger calls "the power of unrestricted lawlessness." He can now order anyone arrested, interrogated, tortured and incarcerated in a secret prison anywhere in the world, subject to the justice of a military tribunal with no competent defense or right of appeal. The new law annuls the right of habeas corpus and due process, effectively applies to all US citizens, and subjects everyone everywhere to the whims of a man who uses the power vested in him to wage permanent war on all parts of the world unwilling to genuflect and kiss his ring.
On the same day, George Bush went even further. He privately and quietly signed into law a provision revising the Insurrection Act of 1807 that along with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of federal and National Guard troops for law enforcement inside the country except as allowed by the Constitution or expressly authorized by Congress in times of a national emergency like an insurrection. The new Public Law 109-364 (HR 5122) called the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 allows the chief executive the right to claim a public emergency, effectively declare martial law, and deploy federal and National Guard troops anywhere on the nation's streets to suppress whatever he calls public disorder. It may be for any reason including against peaceful demonstrators demanding their rights of free expression and assembly we no longer have.
Without public knowledge or consent, the president of the United States signed away the last vestige of a free society with overwhelming congressional support that approved it 396 to 31 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate including all those Democrats we think will change everything post-November 7. As of October 17, 2006, the new law of the land effectively annointed George Bush Augustus Caesar subjecting everyone to the will and whims of a man who uses power recklessly, flaunts it with his audacious swagger, and has no concern for those he harms. This is someone who can't be trusted and was once described by his Texas aides when he was governor as a man who enjoys killing - referring to his indifference to those facing the death penalty in a state that executed more people under his authority than any other after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Is it any wonder a recent international poll published in the UK Mail & Guardian Online showed that in Britain and other countries people think George Bush is a greater threat to world peace than North Korean leader Kim Jong-il or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (both of whom, in fact, represent no threat unless provoked). The US public spoke even more loudly pronouncing their own judgment on November 7 by rejecting the Bush administration's agenda at the polls. They gave Democrats nominal control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the Republican sweep in 1994 even though what they'll get when the 110th Congress convenes on January 3 may be little different than what they turned out, and at least one Connecticut Senate "Democrat" turned "independent" can now be counted on to vote Republican any time the party that funded and elected him calls in its chips.
Today in Washington - Democrat, Republican or so-called Independent hardly matters anymore. For six years, the Democrats marched in lock step with the Republican leadership making it clear little will change in the new Congress. Post-election, George Bush repeated where he stands announcing no plans for a hasty exit from Iraq. At the same time, he made a change of the guard at the Department of Defense (DOD) appointing Robert Gates, replacing one controversial secretary and accused war criminal with an unindicted liar and equally controversial former Reagan and senior Bush official based on his past role in cooking the intelligence to fit the policy in the Iran-Contra scandal he was never held to account for, and his involvement in secretly arming Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. When he takes over from Donald Rumsfeld after an easy Senate confirmation hearing, expect one thing - the Pentagon under new management representing the same failed strategic agenda smoothed over with some already planned tactical changes that aren't likely to work any better under his aegis than the old ones did under his predecessor.
Nonetheless, the new secretary-designate was chosen by and is allied with the more pragmatic wing of the party represented by the president's father under whom he served in a number of capacities including as CIA director in its last two years after the heat of scandal that tainted him cooled down enough. The neocon opposition he's allied with will need whatever support he and others can provide given the state of things in Iraq, the neocons professed desire to "stay the course," and the new Democrat leadership wanting business as usual proving once again the criminal class in Washington is bipartisan. What's not even on the table in all the packaged for television post-election hoopla is the growing out-of-control conflict in Afghanistan or any plan for an equitable resolution of the long-running Israeli agenda of genocide in slow motion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories without which there can never be peace and stability in the volatile Middle East.
For now though, the dominant theme portrayed in the corporate media is the deceptive post-election afterglow designed to make the public think a change of agenda will follow one in the congressional leadership. Expecting that is like believing with enough convincing carnivores will become vegetarian and opt for new menu choices. The only likely change ahead will be on the tactical management of the war in Iraq with no dispute among the contesting parties on the overall plan for the country and region. It's part of the agreed on unchanged strategic agenda for world dominance, now focused on nailing it down in the Middle East with all that oil the world's ruling class will never relinquish control of because having it is as central to its hold on power as Samson's hair was to his.
So the battle being waged is only a skirmish pitting the power of a neocon administration with Bush and Cheney still in charge allied with the influential Israeli Lobby dead set against any change in the regional agenda vs. the Baker team and Democrat leadership with most others in the party kind of on both sides of the tactical policy choices.
The neocon-Zionist alliance got a boost with the appointment of hawkish ultra-right wing Avigdor Lieberman as deputy Israeli prime minister with a brief to handle Israel's "security threats." It was greeted in Israel by a Meretz party parliamentary leader calling the appointment a (Kadima party) "terrorist attack on democracy," to go along with George Bush's power grab on October 17 that signaled the denouement of democracy in America.
The script in Washington today is eerily similar to the 1930s in Germany where there, like here, it happened with a whimper, not a bang, only much quicker then. On March 23, 1933, less than two months after Hitler became Reichschancellor, the German Reichstag allowed the democratic Weimar Republic to pass into history by enacting the Enabling Act or Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Empire that legally established a Nazi fascist dictatorship. It gave Adolph Hitler absolute power and the right to enact laws and changes to the constitution without public consent and with little more than rubber-stamping from a now impotent Reichstag.
On October 17, the Congress of the United States gave George Bush similar power, the difference here being the legislators go through the motions of enacting laws proposed and written for them by corporate lawyers and lobbyists the president then ceremonially or quietly signs and alters with signing statements to modify whatever portions of them he wishes to change, add to or delete. It's still called "democracy, American - style" which is no democracy at all.
Hitler just called for the people to support him and used his anointing to unleash a reign of terror across the continent. It now remains to be seen how much more damage George Bush will do with his power and what the newly elected Democrat congress will do about it that early-on doesn't look like much of anything. Dare we imagine the price to be paid for more of the same ugly business as usual and a president given the power of a dictator to act as he pleases without restraint and a willingness to use it.
Serious Efforts to Change Course in Iraq but Not the Strategic Agenda
Along with events at home, the so-called Baker Commission (officially called the Iraq Study Group or ISG) is now making news ahead of what it's likely to propose which, details aside, will be a reassertion of more practical neoliberal economic and political interests in the Middle East over the belligerent imperial agenda of endless wars and occupation there that aren't working as they failed to do in Vietnam and are isolating the US now seen as an out-of-control hegemon pariah state. The Wall Street Journal calls the ISG "the foreign policy establishment's vehicle" and when it makes its recommendations "both sides assume (they) won't be resisted."
We'll soon learn if the Journal is right about a Commission that represents powerful business interests aligned with more practical former government so-called moderates and internationalists who fear the country may be heading for a political and economic train wreck without a change of course. No country can maintain a reckless borrow and spend policy forever without facing dire consequences eventually nor can it wage endless wars on the world for dominion over all of it without being destroyed on the shoals of its own hubris and imperial overreach. That's where the US is now that's led some of the savviest and most powerful people in Washington to believe a change in management tactics is essential while agreeing with the administration's overall strategy that never changes whichever party is in power.
James Baker formed the Commission he heads to fine-tune the process before the current one leads to the inevitable train wreck he and others fear with potential consequences even he and they can't imagine or predict. Baker is a noted Republican mandarin and a formidable figure in his own right having been a top official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and GHW Bush and having helped engineer the fraud-laden election of GW Bush in 2000 - something he may now regret. He's also been the longtime Bush family consigliere, is a man whose opinion is always taken seriously and is known to be the party's go-to Mr. Fix-It when the going is the toughest and the situation is in most disrepair.
Baker put together a bipartisan blue ribbon group of 60 high-level figures (with no neocons) co-chaired by former congressman and empire loyalist Lee Hamilton and working with four like-minded influential think tanks - the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the US Institute of Peace, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Baker's own James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy - all combined to give added weight to their forthcoming proposals due out during the post-election congressional lame duck session. They'll have the endorsement of the president's father, some top former officials in his administration and other influential power-brokers in Washington other than Dick Cheney who'll likely lead the weakening neocon opposition to them and on October 19 signaled his intentions using the language of "total victory" as the only acceptable course in Iraq. It remains to be seen if he really means it or if it's typical Cheney bravado putting out some red meat for the hard line faithful but knowing post-election he has to compromise and may have already done it.
Cheney has been the most potent man in town, in contrast to Baker who's one of the shrewdest, most practical, and when the stakes are greatest most ruthless, but the vice-president's influence may be waning based on a growing disconnect within Republican ranks combined with the Democrat's stunning electoral win on November 7. Jim Baker can exploit that and may now get added support in a quarter of Washington that would have been impossible a year or two ago. He's also got public sentiment on his side that shows up in the polls and in the mid-term election results from the types of candidates who fared best in them. The public is fed up with a war gone sour along with a cesspool of government corruption and blames the Bush administration and politicians supporting him for it.
It's the main reason for the president's sinking approval ratings (now at a low around 31% in at least one national poll cutting deeply into his once solid base) and the fact that many in the party see him as radioactive and want to keep a safe distance from a man considered politically harmful. Jim Baker is a consummate well-connected politician and as savvy and well-respected in Washington as anyone in this most political of all pieces of real estate in the world. He'll take full advantage of the strong tailwind in his favor to complete the job he's undertaken. Whatever his Commission proposes will be taken very seriously, and the way things work in Washington it may already be a fait accompli. Until an announcement is made, however, it remains to be seen what's in the Baker plan and how much of it will be revealed to the public - not the most important parts to be sure.
One thing almost for certain won't be in it - extending the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria. It's no secret the powerful Israeli Lobby and Washington hard liners have wanted forcible regime change in Iran for a decade or longer and now claim another reason to pursue it is the contrived pretext that Iran's fledging commercial nuclear capability is cover for its intent to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has every legal right to develop its commercial nuclear program, is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), unlike Israel (a known nuclear power and nuclear outlaw) that is not, and the US encouraged the Iranians to develop its commercial nuclear industry during the 25 year terror reign of its close ally at the time, Shah Reza Palevi - something unreported amidst the hostile anti-Iranian rhetoric today the Baker Commission will likely want to stop or at least curtail.
Baker and the other Commission members know any hope of ending the Middle East conflict depends heavily on getting Iranian and Syrian cooperation. If the Baker Commission recommendations prevail, there will be no extended war in the region targeting either country despite several recent ugly reports to the contrary. One was published on November 2 in Israel's Maariv Daily that French President Jacques Chirac asked George Bush at the recent UN summit if Israel could attack Iran to prevent it from getting the "bomb" to which the US president reportedly said: "We cannot rule this out. And if it were to happen, I would understand it." Another is a report circulating in many Western capitals in the wake of Avigdor Lieberman's appointment as Israeli deputy prime minister that even the Israel-uber-alles New York Times choked on calling him "the wrong partner." It said the Israelis will go it alone and attack Iran if the US won't do it and has given the Bush administration a six month deadline to decide.
Haaretz.com published a third report quoting Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh's November 10 comments that Israel must be ready to prevent Iran's nuclear program "at all costs." The minister added "I consider it a last resort. But even the last resort is sometimes the only resort....we must prevent this (Iranian) regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs." Still more anti-Iranian vitriol came out of the White House on November 13 during a photo-op session between George Bush and Ehud Olmert when the president seemed to rule out direct negotiations with Iran by calling for international isolation unless Iran "gives up its nuclear ambitions" which the Iranians have rightfully refused to do. On the same day, Condoleezza Rice told Maariv she believes Syria "is a dangerous state (because the country) is a way-station for Iranian arms that cross the Middle East."
Offsetting these reports was a positive one reported on November 7 by Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoting "a senior US official" (unidentified) saying "Israel will not target Iran's nuclear facilities because it has said this is a problem of the entire world. Israel understands that the only way to defuse the nuclear crisis is through diplomatic channels." That "understanding" takes on added importance in light of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's political weakness, following the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) drubbing at the hands of Hezbelloh in the summer Lebanon war. It showed in a recent poll of his approval rating that plunged to a low of 20% indicating his tenure as Kadima party leader is very shaky and uncertain. Add to that the Bush administration's embarrassing defeat in the mid-term congressional elections over the Iraq war, and it points to more diplomacy and no extension of the conflict in the region because the US public won't tolerate it.
Can Even the Redoubtable Jim Baker Pull A Rabbit Out of a Very Threadbare Hat
Whatever comes out of the ongoing policy discussions in Washington, it remains to be seen if there can be any resolution of the Iraq conflict short of a total and unconditional foreign occupation force withdrawal from the country the resistance and majority of Iraqi people demand as well as preventing an attack against Iran, Syria or any other country in the region. Jim Baker knows this, and if the Commission recommends anything less it almost guarantees more conflict that will only get worse.
At the same time, Baker isn't about to recommend a full withdrawal because without the muscle of the US military close at hand on some of the many dozens of bases Halliburton built for it - reportedly 106 of them from micro to super-large according to Bradley Graham in a May, 2005 Washington Post report. They include four super-bases with one or two other ones like it planned that represent an enormous investment of billions of dollars Washington isn't about to write off voluntarily or hand over to an Iraqi force nor will it give up the control of the country and region it wanted to achieve by invading in the first place. It also won't write off its largest embassy in the world inside the protected four square kilometer fortress-like Green Zone HQ in central Baghdad equipped with every imaginable high tech device for communications and security including ground-to-air missiles plus all the conveniences of a modern US city.
But what the US planned and wants isn't likely to be what Iraqis have in mind. In the end, the US may have to give up what it's no longer able to hold onto just like it did in Vietnam when it had to walk away from the enormous investment it made at Cam Rahn Bay, Danang, Saigon and elsewhere once the Pentagon gave up the fight and withdrew entirely. A lot of people now think it's just a matter of time before it faces another much more serious strategic and humiliating defeat in Iraq than the one in Southeast Asia.
We're a long way from that stage now, however, and whatever comes out of the Baker Commission will be a plan to avoid a Vietnam ending at all costs. It's likely to be something on the order of a Nixonian type Vietnamization with a hoped for effective Iraqi praetorian guard satrap army ready to take over security operations supported by US air power with a smaller US ground force redeploying to hunkered down positions inside their protected super-bases but ready to move out again any time as needed - much like the Israelis did it in their announced disengagement in Gaza only to go back in again full-force over the summer to reinstigate hostilities that are still ongoing with no sign of a letup.
Whatever the are, the best laid plans are never simple under any conditions, and accomplishing them in Washington is never easy - something Jim Baker understands as well as anyone. He also knows if Israel attacks Iran on its own (inconceivable without US approval), all bets are off. He has to head that off as well as build consensus and be willing to give a little to get what he and the Commission members want most - an exit/redeployment strategy with a reliable client state government in place (centrally and/or regionally) and an effective Iraqi security force firmly under US control. Anything short of that would create the possibility of Washington's worst nightmare - a majority Shiite ruled Iraq allied with Shiite Iran and possibly linked with the Saudi Shias located in the bordering eastern oil-rich part of the kingdom.
But even that possible disaster would worsen if a Tripartite Shia Middle East alliance controlling most of the world's oil joined either or both organizations formed to compete with the US for control of Central Asia's huge energy reserves - the Asian Energy Security Grid and the more significant Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that was formed in 2001 for political, diplomatic, economic and security reasons as a counterweight to US-controlled NATO. China and Russia are core members of both alliances and key countries like India, Venezuela, Iran and even Japan may join to add more heft to a Middle Eastern - Asian block jockeying with the US and the West for control of the most oil-rich part of the world. This worst of all possible nightmare scenarios is what the Baker Commission above all else will try to avoid, but it has its work cut out for it with no guarantee of success.
The Commission must pull off a near-impossible mission. First, it has to reach accommodation with the ruling neocon cabal on how to achieve their shared goal of world dominance - whether by the subterfuge of velvet glove neoliberalism or hard line iron-fisted militarism. Both sides are adherents to market-based imperialism based on the notion that all other nations must comply with the rules made in Washington or face the consequences. The debate then is what to do about the outliers. Baker, his Commission members and the president's father have nothing against persuasion by conflict as long as it's against targeted countries too weak to put up a good fight. The dominant interests of capital in the country love and support wars because when they're winnable the benefits for the bottom line outweigh the costs and potential risks.
Back in the 1980s, Jim Baker and the president's father had no qualms about the ugly Contra war the Reagan administration they served in waged against the people of Nicaragua and the ruling Sandinistas. The new government offended Washington by ousting the US-backed Somoza dictatorship, freeing Nicaraguans from serfdom and impoverishment and providing them with essential social services they never had before like free health care and education. Baker also supported the same odious business in neighboring El Salvador where the FMLN resistance was fighting the country's US-supported fascist dictatorship for the same things. He sided with the pathetic and illegal muscle-flexing invasion of Grenada in 1983, the toppling of Panamanian dictator and former CIA asset Manuel Noriega in 1989 because he dared disobey "the lord and master of the universe," and even the appalling Gulf war because the plan was narrowly focused to remove the threat of Israel's main enemy in the region, seize control of Iraq's immense oil reserves, get the Saudis, Kuwaitis and others to pay for the operation, come and do the job quickly, and leave with mission accomplished.
What the Bush neocons had in mind for Iraq in 2003 was none of the above, and it's likely Baker and some on the Commission were dubious about it from the start and possibly the Afghan war as well as they should have been. Both countries have a long history of successfully expelling invaders which is why GHW Bush and Brent Scowcroft, his National Security Advisor, warned the younger Bush about the perils of his agenda that included invasion and occupation. They feared the Iraq adventure was unwinnable and could have easily discovered the futility of the Afghan one by talking to the Russians and Brits who learned that lesson the hard way as the US is finding out now in both countries. Bush co-conspirator Tony Blair also might have told George Bush about Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of North West Frontier province in bordering Pakistan who understood the way events play out in that part of the world and once explained: "Unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over." That's true in Iraq as well as the Bush administration now knows and so does Jim Baker and his Commission members.
Baker may have felt that way back in March, 2003 even while never expressing it publicly. It's commonly believed he's never been allied with the ruling neocons and has always been more of a internationalist and pragmatic adherent to the art and practice of realpolitik. He's also very close to the Bush family and especially the president's father who's likely been a significant behind-the-scenes player in the Commission's formation and it's assigned mission. GHW Bush, Jim Baker and the heavyweight members on it are plenty worried about the mess in Iraq and know a change of tactics is crucial before it's too late. They also may agree with former Reagan administration National Security Agency (NSA) chief General William Odom's view for the need to "unmask the absurdity of the administration's case (to) stay the course and finish the job (as well as Odom's belief it's) "obvious the war was never in the US interest." Odom added "(It's) the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States."
That view was also expressed by Middle East expert Gilbert Achcar in his new book Perilous Power co-authored with Noam Chomsky. Achcar calls the Bush administration policy in Iraq "stupid" that will result in it going "down in history....as the undertaker of US interests in the region." It doesn't get any stronger and plainer than what Odom and Achcar believe, but it'll be even worse if the US ends up losing control of the greater Middle East's energy reserves because of the administration's colossal blunder and obstinancy. That possibility is central for the president's father, Jim Baker, and his Commission members assuring a significant change in management tactics is coming - but with no guarantee anything will work at this stage.
Baker must now craft an accord with the neocon leadership and newly empowered congressional Democrats who supported the war from the outset and won't go any further than criticize its management. He'll also have to confront and pacify the powerful Israeli Lobby as well as a caricature of a president who believes his cause is just and the Almighty directs him. Up to now, that opposition believed with enough super-weapons and unchallengeable military might it could rule the world forever as long as it didn't err and blow it up instead which is a real possibility. Adolph Hitler only guaranteed 1000 years, misjudged by 988, and might have blown it up himself if he had today's weapons of mass destruction. Baker and his realists face a formidable challenge, the stakes are enormous, and the potential cost of getting it wrong or failing because nothing will work at this stage is incalculable, especially if, in the end, the Iraqi resistance has the final say as it likely will. As they say, things are getting "interestinger and interestinger."
A Desperate Need for Change - But Will Anything Work at this Stage
The Baker team must come up with a sensible alternative agenda of the Hail Mary variety the ruling neocons will accept or at least reach accommodation with. To avoid a strategic policy meltdown, there must be consensus that the Iraq and Afghan wars can't be won, and the longer the US military remains in both countries in force the greater their losses will be, the larger the number of alienated countries no longer willing to support us will become, the more likely the unsustainable cost will move the nation closer to economic bankruptcy, and the harder it will be to reverse the mind-set of the majority of countries that now see this one as a moral pariah and greatest of all threats to world peace, security and stability.
Jim Baker has a formidable challenge trying to achieve a near-impossible goal to change the hearts and minds of the ruling establishment in Washington and Tel Aviv and convince Iraqis that rule by an even scaled back foreign occupying force inside its fortress-like super-bases and city-state sized fortified Embassy is in their best interest. As they say, the chance of pulling this off may be slim to none, and it's likely to prove again the painful lesson all empires learn sooner or later - the price for imperial overreach is always the same. It never works, and those ruling the waves thinking it does almost never spot the time when the tide begins to turn and they're swimming against it. They're so consumed by their own hubris and belief their way is just and right, they're blind to the futility of their agenda.
Overcoming an obstacle this great may be a job for Superman and then some and more than even a man like Jim Baker and his power-packed team can handle. He's smart enough to know there's no assurance he can do it, whether he'll go far enough or even if he does if it can make a difference at this late stage. It is assured whatever he does won't be with the public welfare in mind but only for the interests of wealth and power he represents and the elitist class of which he's a member in good standing. It's his job to pull their fat out of the fire the neocons lit and keep throwing more fuel on, or better stated, it's his task to put spilt milk back in its leaky bottle and keep it there.
As for the public, it's not even a player in this game and won't come out a winner whichever side wins or loses. Neither will the people in the Greater Middle East short of a near-impossible eventuality nowhere in sight - a full and unconditional US troop withdrawal from the region, the freedom of Iraqis and Afghans to run their countries out of Washington's clutches, a solution to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict not even being addressed, and an end to the joint US-Israeli partnership of imperial aggression in the region. Even with all that, it would only be a beginning but what a major one well stated by the old Chinese maxim that the "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step" or the joke about all those lawyers on the bottom of the ocean being a good start. At this stage, the best people of conscience, not at the table, can hope for is the beginning of a process that eventually will achieve the scenario just laid out that looks impossible now but one day may happen because enough people never stopped working for it in the region and around the world.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2006/11/price-of-imperial-arrogance.html
by Stephen Lendman
Lyndon Johnson was a conflicted man about Vietnam almost from the time he took office. As early as May, 1964, he confessed his doubts about the conflict to his good friend Senator Richard Russell in one of the many phone calls he taped in the Oval Office. That was three months before the fateful Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave him congressional authorization for military action in Southeast Asia without needing a formal declaration of war for it. Later that year, he privately acknowledged the Tonkin Gulf incident never happened and told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara "we concluded maybe they hadn't fired at all." He was referring to the claimed attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two US destroyers which, on its face, seemed preposterous but which propelled this country deeply into the Vietnam conflict that didn't end until President Gerald Ford evacuated the last of the US forces and a few South Vietnamese collaborators in humiliation from the rooftop of the US Embassy in Saigon 11 years later in April, 1975. They left behind a nation in ruins, its landscape devastated and chemically poisoned that remains so today, and a few million dead Southeast Asians in three countries showing the kind of men Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were - imperial war lords who never had to answer for their war crimes as they never do under a system of victor's justice. The only compensation the victims got was their freedom from US aggression when realizing it couldn't win it decided to give up a futile fight and pull out.
Long before he left office, Johnson knew the war was unwinnable, and in 1965 told Secretary McNamara "I don't believe they're ever going to quit. And I don't see....that we have any....plan for victory - militarily or diplomatically" - spoken as he was about to escalate the conflict dramatically by shipping over many thousands more US forces that would eventually exceed a half million before things began to be scaled down in preparation for the final exodus in disgrace and defeat. Johnson did it even while confiding to his closest Senate friend, Richard Russell, that he was on the horns of his greatest dilemma. He had to find a way out of the Vietnam mess he felt was pointless but said he couldn't do it without being impeached - for Johnson, a classic Hobson's choice or in his own words "I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't." He asked his savvy friend for advice, but Russell told him he had none. Johnson felt trapped, and in May, 1964, (when the US commitment stood at a 16,000 troop strength level) he told Russell "We're in quicksand up to our necks, and I just don't know what the hell to do about it."
He did a lot about it, but made a criminal and coward's choice that destroyed him. It was apparent on March 31,1968, two months after the momentous Tet offensive showed how hopeless things were and how pointless it was to pursue an agenda certain to fail. Johnson addressed the nation on national television that night saying he wouldn't seek reelection for another term. His only way out was to "cut and run" because he was so unpopular he had no chance to win. Lyndon Johnson left office in January, 1969 a disgraced and defeated man. This powerful, bigger-than-lfe figure was never the same again, and four years later he was dead.
Audible Echoes of Vietnam Today
Today, echos of Vietnam are heard again resonating from the Middle East more loudly than 30 years ago. Does anyone in Washington high circles understand George Santayana's famous dictum that "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it?" And do people in those circles know about British playwright George Bernard Shaw who said "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history" and could have explained how doomed this adventure would be from the start? There are just as many damn fools now as in the past, but the most dangerous ones are those who won't admit they got it wrong till it's too late and then it's someone else's problem. The only debate now is whether it's already beyond fixing, and no solution acceptable to Washington will work.
The elite there should read all 1000+ pages of noted longtime Middle East-based British journalist Robert Fisk's new book called The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East and learn how they're making the same mistakes that doomed the British occupiers after WW I. In a recent discussion of his book, Fisk compared today with then and explained: (today in Iraq) "It is not just similar, it is 'fingerprint' the same." During the "war to end all wars" the UK under Prime Minister Lloyd George (the Tony Blair of his time) invaded Iraq in 1917 and claimed, like George Bush, we (the UK) come "not as conquerors but as liberators." After the war, the Brits arbitrarily carved out the territory they called Iraq from the former greater Mesopotamia that was under Ottoman rule for almost 400 years until the war ended it. They told Iraqis they would have "democracy," held a referendum to prove it, and "elected" a puppet monarch who understood who was really in charge. In 1920, there was an insurrection, and Fallujah was the first town bombed followed by a siege against Najaf. Lloyd George defended his actions on the floor of the House of Commons (which British PMs must do unlike in the US) and claimed "if British troops leave Iraq there will be civil war." Sound familiar?
Winston Churchill was Secretary for War and Air for a time under George in the 1920s and thought it was a waste of British soldiers putting down tribal or sectarian revolts. Instead he advocated using the new Royal Air Force to bomb villages and was unconcerned if it targeted innocent civilians along with the legitimate resistance struggling (like today) to be free from a repressive occupation. He also authorized what Saddam was condemned for - using poison gas for the first time ever against a civilian population and at the time wrote: "I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against 'uncivilised' tribes." In a 2002 BBC poll, this "uncivilised" war criminal was voted the greatest-ever Briton, and his bust is now prominently displayed in the Oval Office occupied by the current war criminal ensconced in it.
British rule in the country was turbulent and harsh until Iraq became nominally independent in 1932 and later finally freed itself from British control after the Baathists expelled the Brits for good in the late 1950s, 40 years after they first arrived and not long after Saddam Hussein joined the party he would lead 22 years later. It took the Brits all that time to learn what the Bush administration should already know - Iraqis won't tolerate a foreign occupation, especially one as harsh as the one now imposed on them. This hopeless adventure was doomed the moment George Bush signed off on it, but the arrogance of imperial power blinded the neocons in Washington to what should have been obvious to them and eventually will be - the battle of Iraq can't be won, and the only alternative is a full, unconditional and immediate withdrawal along with reparations paid to help rebuild the country we pillaged and destroyed.
That happening is wishful thinking even though many in high places understand the futility of "staying the (present) course" and are scrambling for an alternate solution. It remains to be seen what they have in mind and if they can get the ruling neocon cabal to accept it or manage to sidestep them if they don't. It won't be any easier convincing an administration nominally headed by a man who believes he's on a messianic mission to decide he made a mistake and be willing to change course than it was to get a former president with a working brain to do it in 1969. He and his successor "stayed their course" for another blood-soaked six years that scarred this nation and the people of Southeast Asia who paid the greatest price and won't ever fully recover until they reject the chains of neoliberalism that allow the dominant West to strangle them.
How Bad Is It in Iraq and On the Home Front
First consider the enormous and growing economic cost according to an estimate by Joseph Stiglitz - 2001 economics Nobel laureate, former Chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and chief economist at the World Bank until he quit his job in November, 1999 to speak publicly about his opposition to bank policies, and Linda Bilmes who teaches public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In January, 2006, they estimated the war's cost could reach $2 trillion but now believe that figure is low and may go much higher because of current and estimated future budgetary costs, the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted, the risk premium in oil prices from uncertainty in the Middle East, the growing cost of veterans' long-term medical care and disability benefit obligations, the human and capital investment needed to "reset" or restore the military to its pre-war strength and preparedness, and a host of other direct and indirect costs including the most accurate measure of the amount eventually to be needed for the war when all budgetary items are included now and into the future.
The government doesn't calculate the total cost as Stiglitz and Bilmes say it should because of the way the it does its accounting. It uses a "cash accounting" system that would make a CPA wince (and likely lose his accreditation) and only reports expenses when payments are made, not when they're committed for as most all businesses must do by "accrual accounting" methodology that includes future obligations assumed but unpaid. Add it all up according to Stiglitz and Bilmes and it comes to $2 trillion + and counting because future obligations not yet in reported budgets are huge for years to come that will drain many billions of dollars from the federal treasury and put an enormous strain on an economy already reeling from massive deficits that are far greater than the phony numbers reported to hide how bad the country's fiscal condition really is.
Stiglitz and Bilmes also point out that going to war with Iraq (and Afghanistan) was a matter of choice and so is staying there that raises the cost the longer the conflict continues (as well as in Afghanistan not included in their calculations). And they go much further saying as overwhelming as the $2 trillion + budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs are already, more must be added to them such as the expenses incurred by other nations and this country's intangible ones that include the following:
-- the cost of our reduced capability to respond to national security threats in other parts of the world.
-- the cost of high and rising anti-American sentiment in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere - most everywhere.
-- the price paid for the sham notion that this country defends and supports human rights and democracy.
-- the cost of the sharp decline of America's "soft power" from the Bush administration having tarnished the country's credentials, reducing Washington's ability to influence or prevail on crucial issues like trade, global warming, the international criminal justice system and much more.
Stiglitz and Bilmes don't say it, but they seem to suggest the "empire" is in decline economically and politically, and the Bush administration and its war on the world agenda had a lot to do with it. They may also be saying, or at least hinting, that this administration's budgetary recklessness did enormous fiscal damage to the country that by some estimates now place the national debt as high as $70 trillion when all future financial obligations are included; it also ran up a true 2005 budget deficit of $760 billion, not the fictitious $318 billion it reported; and it exacerbated a huge current account deficit now exceeding $800 billion and rising - meaning the nation leached at least $1.5 trillion in 2005 from these two sources alone plus whatever is hidden and so far unknown including from other government reported data that was cooked to look better than it is.
In a recent interview, Stiglitz went even further saying...."in this current administration, the defense industries and the energy industries have really been running the show and it has been disastrous." He discussed the mismanagement and ominous signs of a housing bubble now deflating. It was generated by a tsunami of irresponsible Federal Reserve generated printing press created prosperity under Alan Greenspan and still ongoing under the radar because the Fed stopped publishing overall M3 monetary aggregate figures in March, 2006 it wants to conceal. And that was exacerbated by the administration's reckless spending policies that now set up the possibility of a global economic depression Stiglitz believes can only be avoided by implementing big changes in how the US economy is managed going forward. He added how hard it will be to do it because of the entrenched interests in the administration saying...."this has been perhaps the worst six years of mismanagement of the macro economy," and that an implosion can only be avoided with careful management, but if the present course continues to be followed a global depression will result in 12 - 24 months.
The news isn't any better in the November 20, 2006 issue of Business Week in which writer Michael Mandel points out another startling fact in his feature article called "Can Anyone Steer This Economy?" In it he says sometime around a year from now "the US will hit a milestone. For the first time in recent memory" this country will import a dollar value of goods and services exceeding what the federal government collects in revenues that now amounts to $2.4 trillion a year. He goes on to say the US economy was once an "800 pound gorilla," but that's not true anymore because the global economy is overtaking us. The forces of globalization "have overwhelmed Washington's ability to control the economy." In today's brave new world order environment, giant corporations, called transnationals for a good reason, are free to offshore their manufacturing and other activities anywhere in the world and do it where the cost of doing business is cheapest - meaning, as Stiglitz and Blimes would likely conclude, this country is slowly sinking economically and the enormous financial obligations and burgeoning debt it's run up is only making it happen faster. Writer Mandel seems to agree saying "Washington is no longer the center of the economic universe".......or New York, Chicago or Los Angeles either.
The Pentagon may know a thing or two about this, worries about what effect it eventually will have on its future operations as well as a lot about its current impossible one in Iraq it likely wants to wash its hands of. It showed in a mid-October classified briefing leaked to the New York Times in which high-level military officials said conditions in Iraq are in a state of chaos beyond its control. This came out of the US Central Command in charge of the Middle East. It reported Iraqi government security forces can't cope with the violence that's "at an all-time high, spreading geographically."
When the most powerful military force in the history of the universe throws up its hands and effectively cries uncle, it shows how bad things are in the Kafkaesque maelstrom of Iraq. It also shows how hopeless this adventure was that should have been brain-dead and stillborn from the start - but you'd never know it from the head-in-the-sand comments of the "stay-the-coursers" in Washington that includes the president, vice-president and Democrat leadership even when their language changes. They're willing to fine-tune the tactical management of the operation as they're now about to do but never willing to give up the prize they've already invested so much in and can't afford to give up because the cost of doing it is so great. It's what journalist Robert Fisk meant when he said "the US must get out (of Iraq), they will get out, and they can't get out."
Here's more evidence of how bad things are and how impossible it's becoming trying to deal with it. In his November 1 column in the London Independent, unembedded journalist Patrick Cockburn wrote that "Baghdad Is Under Siege." It follows his article days earlier called "From 'Mission Accomplished' to 'Mission Impossible' in Iraq." From his vantage point on the ground, Cockburn paints a grim picture of out-of-control chaos. "Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city (Baghdad) to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital." He goes on to say food shortages in some neighborhoods are becoming severe, and the scale of daily killing is "massive" --
--1000 or more violent deaths weekly.
--Shia fighters controlling most of the city encircled by Sunnis.
--1.5 million Iraqis have fled their homes according to the Iraqi Red Crescent (a separate UNHCR estimate apart from Cockburn's article puts the number at 1.8 million Iraqis living in neighboring countries and another 1.6 million "internally displaced" within Iraq including those who left during the 1990s).
--Shia and Sunni militias control the country, not the US military, Iraqi army or police that are all impotent.
--the militias grow "stronger by the day because the Shia and Sunni communities feel threatened and do not trust the army and police to defend them."
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres confirmed through his chief spokesperson Ron Redmond on November 3 how bad things are in Iraq based on the number of refugees the conflict is generating. UNHCR says about 100,000 Iraqis now leave their homes each month in a desperate attempt to find safety. The UN agency estimates 2000 a day go to Syria, another 1000 a day cross into Jordan, some go to other countries and still others seek asylum in Europe. UNHCR also estimates an additional 50,000 Iraqis become "internally displaced" each month.
The immense refugee problem is the most visible sign of a failed US policy along with the out-of-control daily violence across most of the country killing 100 or more every day according to a UN estimate that's too low. It's the culmination of nearly 16 years of a US-directed reign of state-sponsored terrorism against the country and its people that slaughtered or caused the deaths of over two million Iraqi men, women and children and counting and left in its wake a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, vital sanitation, medical care, education, fuel and most everything else needed for sustenance and survival. Things aren't improving. They're getting worse as a brutal occupation grinds on and death squads roam freely including the US-directed "Salvador option" ones of the type National Intelligence Director John Negroponte once led in the 1980s when he was US Ambassador to Hondurus during the Reagan Contra wars when he directed the administration's terror war of that era against the Nicaraguans and Salvadorans fighting for their freedom.
Today it's happening again, and it's all part of an insane agenda to control the immense energy resources of the Middle East by brute force. The plan in Iraq is to do it by destroying all the institutions of a modern secular society along with the country's historical treasures to transform this once prosperous nation into an impotent desert kingdom populated by serfs. If the Baker Commission plan prevails, discussed below, it's likely to be divided into several autonomous regions under nominal Iraqi regional and national rule but centrally controlled by a dominant US authority headquartered in the US Embassy in the fortress-like Green Zone using a US-directed satrap Iraqi army and police to enforce order for its master in charge of everything. That may be the plan, but it's another story to make it work.
What has worked is the US campaign on the ground that created an epic humanitarian disaster by every measure imaginable on top of the destruction of essential services listed above that barely exist anywhere in most of the country:
-- desperate poverty and mass unemployment up to a 70% level.
-- 84% of the country's higher learning institutions burnt, looted or destroyed according to a UN International Leadership report.
-- archeological museums and historic sites, libraries and archives plundered deliberately.
-- daily targeted assassinations against academics, other teachers, senior military personnel, journalists, doctors, other professionals and anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time which can be anywhere.
-- nearly the entire country including parts of the Kurdish-controlled north now a lawless war zone with the US military and Iraqi security forces helpless to do anything about it and are just making it worse by their presence.
The Price Paid at Home
The US public has also paid an enormous price for the Bush administration's agenda and shows it in its anger over the hopeless war without end in Iraq, the endemic cesspool of Washington corruption and a general feeling of unease and mistrust with the political class in the nation's Capitol. But what about the rest - the annulment of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the loss of habeas and due process, the removal of checks and balances and separation of powers, and the end of republican government replaced by congressionally and judicially allowed tyranny.
Chalk it up to the power and influence of the corrupted corporate-controlled media. They effectively program the public mind suppressing the ugly truths in their dual roles as flag-waving support-the-troops America-uber-alles cheerleaders on the one hand and as court jesters on the other diverting attention from the important to the trivial. With due respect to George Orwell - in a time of universal corporate media deceit, if some in it told the truth it would be a revolutionary act. None there are that bold as it would likely cost them their jobs - except for one noted host of a one-hour nightly newscast and commentary so far allowed on MSNBC for whatever reason the network airs it.
The first casualty of war (and of all the other ways government ill-serves us) is truth at a time when that commodity is more needed than ever. It's not hyperbole to believe if people understood the neocon's domestic and foreign agenda it would spark a second American revolution - this time aimed at the criminal class in Washington who betrayed the nation's founding principles. The Bush administration, led by the Vice-President and de facto head of state, shamelessly used the 9/11 tragedy to stage a power-grab coup d'etat against free people everywhere. They declared war on the world for imperial gain and strangled a republic already on life support to establish a national security fascist police state in America signed into law in a contemptible act of lawlessness by George Bush on October 17 - a day that will live in infamy. He did it with little fanfare, public awareness or consent giving himself the power to rule like the dictator he once "jokingly" said he'd like to be.
In a White House signing ceremony for the occasion, George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act (aka the torture authorization act and lots more) that effectively annuls the Constitution and Bill of Rights and gives him the extraordinary authority (in violation of the Constitution) to designate anyone an enemy of the state on his say alone with no corroborating evidence. As noted British journalist John Pilger wrote in the New Statesman - anyone for any reason may now be labelled a "terrorist" for committing what Orwell called a "thoughtcrime" in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. We're all now "enemy combatants," and no one is safe from the reach of "Big Brother" in Washington.
The new law grants the chief executive what Pilger calls "the power of unrestricted lawlessness." He can now order anyone arrested, interrogated, tortured and incarcerated in a secret prison anywhere in the world, subject to the justice of a military tribunal with no competent defense or right of appeal. The new law annuls the right of habeas corpus and due process, effectively applies to all US citizens, and subjects everyone everywhere to the whims of a man who uses the power vested in him to wage permanent war on all parts of the world unwilling to genuflect and kiss his ring.
On the same day, George Bush went even further. He privately and quietly signed into law a provision revising the Insurrection Act of 1807 that along with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of federal and National Guard troops for law enforcement inside the country except as allowed by the Constitution or expressly authorized by Congress in times of a national emergency like an insurrection. The new Public Law 109-364 (HR 5122) called the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 allows the chief executive the right to claim a public emergency, effectively declare martial law, and deploy federal and National Guard troops anywhere on the nation's streets to suppress whatever he calls public disorder. It may be for any reason including against peaceful demonstrators demanding their rights of free expression and assembly we no longer have.
Without public knowledge or consent, the president of the United States signed away the last vestige of a free society with overwhelming congressional support that approved it 396 to 31 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate including all those Democrats we think will change everything post-November 7. As of October 17, 2006, the new law of the land effectively annointed George Bush Augustus Caesar subjecting everyone to the will and whims of a man who uses power recklessly, flaunts it with his audacious swagger, and has no concern for those he harms. This is someone who can't be trusted and was once described by his Texas aides when he was governor as a man who enjoys killing - referring to his indifference to those facing the death penalty in a state that executed more people under his authority than any other after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Is it any wonder a recent international poll published in the UK Mail & Guardian Online showed that in Britain and other countries people think George Bush is a greater threat to world peace than North Korean leader Kim Jong-il or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (both of whom, in fact, represent no threat unless provoked). The US public spoke even more loudly pronouncing their own judgment on November 7 by rejecting the Bush administration's agenda at the polls. They gave Democrats nominal control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the Republican sweep in 1994 even though what they'll get when the 110th Congress convenes on January 3 may be little different than what they turned out, and at least one Connecticut Senate "Democrat" turned "independent" can now be counted on to vote Republican any time the party that funded and elected him calls in its chips.
Today in Washington - Democrat, Republican or so-called Independent hardly matters anymore. For six years, the Democrats marched in lock step with the Republican leadership making it clear little will change in the new Congress. Post-election, George Bush repeated where he stands announcing no plans for a hasty exit from Iraq. At the same time, he made a change of the guard at the Department of Defense (DOD) appointing Robert Gates, replacing one controversial secretary and accused war criminal with an unindicted liar and equally controversial former Reagan and senior Bush official based on his past role in cooking the intelligence to fit the policy in the Iran-Contra scandal he was never held to account for, and his involvement in secretly arming Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. When he takes over from Donald Rumsfeld after an easy Senate confirmation hearing, expect one thing - the Pentagon under new management representing the same failed strategic agenda smoothed over with some already planned tactical changes that aren't likely to work any better under his aegis than the old ones did under his predecessor.
Nonetheless, the new secretary-designate was chosen by and is allied with the more pragmatic wing of the party represented by the president's father under whom he served in a number of capacities including as CIA director in its last two years after the heat of scandal that tainted him cooled down enough. The neocon opposition he's allied with will need whatever support he and others can provide given the state of things in Iraq, the neocons professed desire to "stay the course," and the new Democrat leadership wanting business as usual proving once again the criminal class in Washington is bipartisan. What's not even on the table in all the packaged for television post-election hoopla is the growing out-of-control conflict in Afghanistan or any plan for an equitable resolution of the long-running Israeli agenda of genocide in slow motion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories without which there can never be peace and stability in the volatile Middle East.
For now though, the dominant theme portrayed in the corporate media is the deceptive post-election afterglow designed to make the public think a change of agenda will follow one in the congressional leadership. Expecting that is like believing with enough convincing carnivores will become vegetarian and opt for new menu choices. The only likely change ahead will be on the tactical management of the war in Iraq with no dispute among the contesting parties on the overall plan for the country and region. It's part of the agreed on unchanged strategic agenda for world dominance, now focused on nailing it down in the Middle East with all that oil the world's ruling class will never relinquish control of because having it is as central to its hold on power as Samson's hair was to his.
So the battle being waged is only a skirmish pitting the power of a neocon administration with Bush and Cheney still in charge allied with the influential Israeli Lobby dead set against any change in the regional agenda vs. the Baker team and Democrat leadership with most others in the party kind of on both sides of the tactical policy choices.
The neocon-Zionist alliance got a boost with the appointment of hawkish ultra-right wing Avigdor Lieberman as deputy Israeli prime minister with a brief to handle Israel's "security threats." It was greeted in Israel by a Meretz party parliamentary leader calling the appointment a (Kadima party) "terrorist attack on democracy," to go along with George Bush's power grab on October 17 that signaled the denouement of democracy in America.
The script in Washington today is eerily similar to the 1930s in Germany where there, like here, it happened with a whimper, not a bang, only much quicker then. On March 23, 1933, less than two months after Hitler became Reichschancellor, the German Reichstag allowed the democratic Weimar Republic to pass into history by enacting the Enabling Act or Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Empire that legally established a Nazi fascist dictatorship. It gave Adolph Hitler absolute power and the right to enact laws and changes to the constitution without public consent and with little more than rubber-stamping from a now impotent Reichstag.
On October 17, the Congress of the United States gave George Bush similar power, the difference here being the legislators go through the motions of enacting laws proposed and written for them by corporate lawyers and lobbyists the president then ceremonially or quietly signs and alters with signing statements to modify whatever portions of them he wishes to change, add to or delete. It's still called "democracy, American - style" which is no democracy at all.
Hitler just called for the people to support him and used his anointing to unleash a reign of terror across the continent. It now remains to be seen how much more damage George Bush will do with his power and what the newly elected Democrat congress will do about it that early-on doesn't look like much of anything. Dare we imagine the price to be paid for more of the same ugly business as usual and a president given the power of a dictator to act as he pleases without restraint and a willingness to use it.
Serious Efforts to Change Course in Iraq but Not the Strategic Agenda
Along with events at home, the so-called Baker Commission (officially called the Iraq Study Group or ISG) is now making news ahead of what it's likely to propose which, details aside, will be a reassertion of more practical neoliberal economic and political interests in the Middle East over the belligerent imperial agenda of endless wars and occupation there that aren't working as they failed to do in Vietnam and are isolating the US now seen as an out-of-control hegemon pariah state. The Wall Street Journal calls the ISG "the foreign policy establishment's vehicle" and when it makes its recommendations "both sides assume (they) won't be resisted."
We'll soon learn if the Journal is right about a Commission that represents powerful business interests aligned with more practical former government so-called moderates and internationalists who fear the country may be heading for a political and economic train wreck without a change of course. No country can maintain a reckless borrow and spend policy forever without facing dire consequences eventually nor can it wage endless wars on the world for dominion over all of it without being destroyed on the shoals of its own hubris and imperial overreach. That's where the US is now that's led some of the savviest and most powerful people in Washington to believe a change in management tactics is essential while agreeing with the administration's overall strategy that never changes whichever party is in power.
James Baker formed the Commission he heads to fine-tune the process before the current one leads to the inevitable train wreck he and others fear with potential consequences even he and they can't imagine or predict. Baker is a noted Republican mandarin and a formidable figure in his own right having been a top official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and GHW Bush and having helped engineer the fraud-laden election of GW Bush in 2000 - something he may now regret. He's also been the longtime Bush family consigliere, is a man whose opinion is always taken seriously and is known to be the party's go-to Mr. Fix-It when the going is the toughest and the situation is in most disrepair.
Baker put together a bipartisan blue ribbon group of 60 high-level figures (with no neocons) co-chaired by former congressman and empire loyalist Lee Hamilton and working with four like-minded influential think tanks - the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the US Institute of Peace, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Baker's own James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy - all combined to give added weight to their forthcoming proposals due out during the post-election congressional lame duck session. They'll have the endorsement of the president's father, some top former officials in his administration and other influential power-brokers in Washington other than Dick Cheney who'll likely lead the weakening neocon opposition to them and on October 19 signaled his intentions using the language of "total victory" as the only acceptable course in Iraq. It remains to be seen if he really means it or if it's typical Cheney bravado putting out some red meat for the hard line faithful but knowing post-election he has to compromise and may have already done it.
Cheney has been the most potent man in town, in contrast to Baker who's one of the shrewdest, most practical, and when the stakes are greatest most ruthless, but the vice-president's influence may be waning based on a growing disconnect within Republican ranks combined with the Democrat's stunning electoral win on November 7. Jim Baker can exploit that and may now get added support in a quarter of Washington that would have been impossible a year or two ago. He's also got public sentiment on his side that shows up in the polls and in the mid-term election results from the types of candidates who fared best in them. The public is fed up with a war gone sour along with a cesspool of government corruption and blames the Bush administration and politicians supporting him for it.
It's the main reason for the president's sinking approval ratings (now at a low around 31% in at least one national poll cutting deeply into his once solid base) and the fact that many in the party see him as radioactive and want to keep a safe distance from a man considered politically harmful. Jim Baker is a consummate well-connected politician and as savvy and well-respected in Washington as anyone in this most political of all pieces of real estate in the world. He'll take full advantage of the strong tailwind in his favor to complete the job he's undertaken. Whatever his Commission proposes will be taken very seriously, and the way things work in Washington it may already be a fait accompli. Until an announcement is made, however, it remains to be seen what's in the Baker plan and how much of it will be revealed to the public - not the most important parts to be sure.
One thing almost for certain won't be in it - extending the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria. It's no secret the powerful Israeli Lobby and Washington hard liners have wanted forcible regime change in Iran for a decade or longer and now claim another reason to pursue it is the contrived pretext that Iran's fledging commercial nuclear capability is cover for its intent to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has every legal right to develop its commercial nuclear program, is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), unlike Israel (a known nuclear power and nuclear outlaw) that is not, and the US encouraged the Iranians to develop its commercial nuclear industry during the 25 year terror reign of its close ally at the time, Shah Reza Palevi - something unreported amidst the hostile anti-Iranian rhetoric today the Baker Commission will likely want to stop or at least curtail.
Baker and the other Commission members know any hope of ending the Middle East conflict depends heavily on getting Iranian and Syrian cooperation. If the Baker Commission recommendations prevail, there will be no extended war in the region targeting either country despite several recent ugly reports to the contrary. One was published on November 2 in Israel's Maariv Daily that French President Jacques Chirac asked George Bush at the recent UN summit if Israel could attack Iran to prevent it from getting the "bomb" to which the US president reportedly said: "We cannot rule this out. And if it were to happen, I would understand it." Another is a report circulating in many Western capitals in the wake of Avigdor Lieberman's appointment as Israeli deputy prime minister that even the Israel-uber-alles New York Times choked on calling him "the wrong partner." It said the Israelis will go it alone and attack Iran if the US won't do it and has given the Bush administration a six month deadline to decide.
Haaretz.com published a third report quoting Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh's November 10 comments that Israel must be ready to prevent Iran's nuclear program "at all costs." The minister added "I consider it a last resort. But even the last resort is sometimes the only resort....we must prevent this (Iranian) regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs." Still more anti-Iranian vitriol came out of the White House on November 13 during a photo-op session between George Bush and Ehud Olmert when the president seemed to rule out direct negotiations with Iran by calling for international isolation unless Iran "gives up its nuclear ambitions" which the Iranians have rightfully refused to do. On the same day, Condoleezza Rice told Maariv she believes Syria "is a dangerous state (because the country) is a way-station for Iranian arms that cross the Middle East."
Offsetting these reports was a positive one reported on November 7 by Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoting "a senior US official" (unidentified) saying "Israel will not target Iran's nuclear facilities because it has said this is a problem of the entire world. Israel understands that the only way to defuse the nuclear crisis is through diplomatic channels." That "understanding" takes on added importance in light of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's political weakness, following the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) drubbing at the hands of Hezbelloh in the summer Lebanon war. It showed in a recent poll of his approval rating that plunged to a low of 20% indicating his tenure as Kadima party leader is very shaky and uncertain. Add to that the Bush administration's embarrassing defeat in the mid-term congressional elections over the Iraq war, and it points to more diplomacy and no extension of the conflict in the region because the US public won't tolerate it.
Can Even the Redoubtable Jim Baker Pull A Rabbit Out of a Very Threadbare Hat
Whatever comes out of the ongoing policy discussions in Washington, it remains to be seen if there can be any resolution of the Iraq conflict short of a total and unconditional foreign occupation force withdrawal from the country the resistance and majority of Iraqi people demand as well as preventing an attack against Iran, Syria or any other country in the region. Jim Baker knows this, and if the Commission recommends anything less it almost guarantees more conflict that will only get worse.
At the same time, Baker isn't about to recommend a full withdrawal because without the muscle of the US military close at hand on some of the many dozens of bases Halliburton built for it - reportedly 106 of them from micro to super-large according to Bradley Graham in a May, 2005 Washington Post report. They include four super-bases with one or two other ones like it planned that represent an enormous investment of billions of dollars Washington isn't about to write off voluntarily or hand over to an Iraqi force nor will it give up the control of the country and region it wanted to achieve by invading in the first place. It also won't write off its largest embassy in the world inside the protected four square kilometer fortress-like Green Zone HQ in central Baghdad equipped with every imaginable high tech device for communications and security including ground-to-air missiles plus all the conveniences of a modern US city.
But what the US planned and wants isn't likely to be what Iraqis have in mind. In the end, the US may have to give up what it's no longer able to hold onto just like it did in Vietnam when it had to walk away from the enormous investment it made at Cam Rahn Bay, Danang, Saigon and elsewhere once the Pentagon gave up the fight and withdrew entirely. A lot of people now think it's just a matter of time before it faces another much more serious strategic and humiliating defeat in Iraq than the one in Southeast Asia.
We're a long way from that stage now, however, and whatever comes out of the Baker Commission will be a plan to avoid a Vietnam ending at all costs. It's likely to be something on the order of a Nixonian type Vietnamization with a hoped for effective Iraqi praetorian guard satrap army ready to take over security operations supported by US air power with a smaller US ground force redeploying to hunkered down positions inside their protected super-bases but ready to move out again any time as needed - much like the Israelis did it in their announced disengagement in Gaza only to go back in again full-force over the summer to reinstigate hostilities that are still ongoing with no sign of a letup.
Whatever the are, the best laid plans are never simple under any conditions, and accomplishing them in Washington is never easy - something Jim Baker understands as well as anyone. He also knows if Israel attacks Iran on its own (inconceivable without US approval), all bets are off. He has to head that off as well as build consensus and be willing to give a little to get what he and the Commission members want most - an exit/redeployment strategy with a reliable client state government in place (centrally and/or regionally) and an effective Iraqi security force firmly under US control. Anything short of that would create the possibility of Washington's worst nightmare - a majority Shiite ruled Iraq allied with Shiite Iran and possibly linked with the Saudi Shias located in the bordering eastern oil-rich part of the kingdom.
But even that possible disaster would worsen if a Tripartite Shia Middle East alliance controlling most of the world's oil joined either or both organizations formed to compete with the US for control of Central Asia's huge energy reserves - the Asian Energy Security Grid and the more significant Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that was formed in 2001 for political, diplomatic, economic and security reasons as a counterweight to US-controlled NATO. China and Russia are core members of both alliances and key countries like India, Venezuela, Iran and even Japan may join to add more heft to a Middle Eastern - Asian block jockeying with the US and the West for control of the most oil-rich part of the world. This worst of all possible nightmare scenarios is what the Baker Commission above all else will try to avoid, but it has its work cut out for it with no guarantee of success.
The Commission must pull off a near-impossible mission. First, it has to reach accommodation with the ruling neocon cabal on how to achieve their shared goal of world dominance - whether by the subterfuge of velvet glove neoliberalism or hard line iron-fisted militarism. Both sides are adherents to market-based imperialism based on the notion that all other nations must comply with the rules made in Washington or face the consequences. The debate then is what to do about the outliers. Baker, his Commission members and the president's father have nothing against persuasion by conflict as long as it's against targeted countries too weak to put up a good fight. The dominant interests of capital in the country love and support wars because when they're winnable the benefits for the bottom line outweigh the costs and potential risks.
Back in the 1980s, Jim Baker and the president's father had no qualms about the ugly Contra war the Reagan administration they served in waged against the people of Nicaragua and the ruling Sandinistas. The new government offended Washington by ousting the US-backed Somoza dictatorship, freeing Nicaraguans from serfdom and impoverishment and providing them with essential social services they never had before like free health care and education. Baker also supported the same odious business in neighboring El Salvador where the FMLN resistance was fighting the country's US-supported fascist dictatorship for the same things. He sided with the pathetic and illegal muscle-flexing invasion of Grenada in 1983, the toppling of Panamanian dictator and former CIA asset Manuel Noriega in 1989 because he dared disobey "the lord and master of the universe," and even the appalling Gulf war because the plan was narrowly focused to remove the threat of Israel's main enemy in the region, seize control of Iraq's immense oil reserves, get the Saudis, Kuwaitis and others to pay for the operation, come and do the job quickly, and leave with mission accomplished.
What the Bush neocons had in mind for Iraq in 2003 was none of the above, and it's likely Baker and some on the Commission were dubious about it from the start and possibly the Afghan war as well as they should have been. Both countries have a long history of successfully expelling invaders which is why GHW Bush and Brent Scowcroft, his National Security Advisor, warned the younger Bush about the perils of his agenda that included invasion and occupation. They feared the Iraq adventure was unwinnable and could have easily discovered the futility of the Afghan one by talking to the Russians and Brits who learned that lesson the hard way as the US is finding out now in both countries. Bush co-conspirator Tony Blair also might have told George Bush about Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of North West Frontier province in bordering Pakistan who understood the way events play out in that part of the world and once explained: "Unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over." That's true in Iraq as well as the Bush administration now knows and so does Jim Baker and his Commission members.
Baker may have felt that way back in March, 2003 even while never expressing it publicly. It's commonly believed he's never been allied with the ruling neocons and has always been more of a internationalist and pragmatic adherent to the art and practice of realpolitik. He's also very close to the Bush family and especially the president's father who's likely been a significant behind-the-scenes player in the Commission's formation and it's assigned mission. GHW Bush, Jim Baker and the heavyweight members on it are plenty worried about the mess in Iraq and know a change of tactics is crucial before it's too late. They also may agree with former Reagan administration National Security Agency (NSA) chief General William Odom's view for the need to "unmask the absurdity of the administration's case (to) stay the course and finish the job (as well as Odom's belief it's) "obvious the war was never in the US interest." Odom added "(It's) the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States."
That view was also expressed by Middle East expert Gilbert Achcar in his new book Perilous Power co-authored with Noam Chomsky. Achcar calls the Bush administration policy in Iraq "stupid" that will result in it going "down in history....as the undertaker of US interests in the region." It doesn't get any stronger and plainer than what Odom and Achcar believe, but it'll be even worse if the US ends up losing control of the greater Middle East's energy reserves because of the administration's colossal blunder and obstinancy. That possibility is central for the president's father, Jim Baker, and his Commission members assuring a significant change in management tactics is coming - but with no guarantee anything will work at this stage.
Baker must now craft an accord with the neocon leadership and newly empowered congressional Democrats who supported the war from the outset and won't go any further than criticize its management. He'll also have to confront and pacify the powerful Israeli Lobby as well as a caricature of a president who believes his cause is just and the Almighty directs him. Up to now, that opposition believed with enough super-weapons and unchallengeable military might it could rule the world forever as long as it didn't err and blow it up instead which is a real possibility. Adolph Hitler only guaranteed 1000 years, misjudged by 988, and might have blown it up himself if he had today's weapons of mass destruction. Baker and his realists face a formidable challenge, the stakes are enormous, and the potential cost of getting it wrong or failing because nothing will work at this stage is incalculable, especially if, in the end, the Iraqi resistance has the final say as it likely will. As they say, things are getting "interestinger and interestinger."
A Desperate Need for Change - But Will Anything Work at this Stage
The Baker team must come up with a sensible alternative agenda of the Hail Mary variety the ruling neocons will accept or at least reach accommodation with. To avoid a strategic policy meltdown, there must be consensus that the Iraq and Afghan wars can't be won, and the longer the US military remains in both countries in force the greater their losses will be, the larger the number of alienated countries no longer willing to support us will become, the more likely the unsustainable cost will move the nation closer to economic bankruptcy, and the harder it will be to reverse the mind-set of the majority of countries that now see this one as a moral pariah and greatest of all threats to world peace, security and stability.
Jim Baker has a formidable challenge trying to achieve a near-impossible goal to change the hearts and minds of the ruling establishment in Washington and Tel Aviv and convince Iraqis that rule by an even scaled back foreign occupying force inside its fortress-like super-bases and city-state sized fortified Embassy is in their best interest. As they say, the chance of pulling this off may be slim to none, and it's likely to prove again the painful lesson all empires learn sooner or later - the price for imperial overreach is always the same. It never works, and those ruling the waves thinking it does almost never spot the time when the tide begins to turn and they're swimming against it. They're so consumed by their own hubris and belief their way is just and right, they're blind to the futility of their agenda.
Overcoming an obstacle this great may be a job for Superman and then some and more than even a man like Jim Baker and his power-packed team can handle. He's smart enough to know there's no assurance he can do it, whether he'll go far enough or even if he does if it can make a difference at this late stage. It is assured whatever he does won't be with the public welfare in mind but only for the interests of wealth and power he represents and the elitist class of which he's a member in good standing. It's his job to pull their fat out of the fire the neocons lit and keep throwing more fuel on, or better stated, it's his task to put spilt milk back in its leaky bottle and keep it there.
As for the public, it's not even a player in this game and won't come out a winner whichever side wins or loses. Neither will the people in the Greater Middle East short of a near-impossible eventuality nowhere in sight - a full and unconditional US troop withdrawal from the region, the freedom of Iraqis and Afghans to run their countries out of Washington's clutches, a solution to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict not even being addressed, and an end to the joint US-Israeli partnership of imperial aggression in the region. Even with all that, it would only be a beginning but what a major one well stated by the old Chinese maxim that the "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step" or the joke about all those lawyers on the bottom of the ocean being a good start. At this stage, the best people of conscience, not at the table, can hope for is the beginning of a process that eventually will achieve the scenario just laid out that looks impossible now but one day may happen because enough people never stopped working for it in the region and around the world.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2006/11/price-of-imperial-arrogance.html
Peace Movement
At a moment when public opinion has shifted definitively in the anti-war direction, author Chris Hedges explains why people become peaceniks.
By Tara McKelvey Web Exclusive: 11.15.06
At first, Chris Hedges seems pretty mellow – especially for a former New York Times war correspondent. On a recent November evening, Hedges, 50, dressed in a professorial-looking checkered jacket, was drinking seltzer water in a hotel bar during Chicago’s Humanities Festival. (The theme is “War and Peace.”) But once he started talking, he sounded as angry as any anti-war protestor on the mall. Here, the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and What Every Person Should Know About War describes why war is wrong, the military misguided, and some veterans’ groups fall short of their moral duty.
In your introduction to a book called Afterwar, you write, “War, at least the mythic version, is wonderful entertainment.” How is the Iraq war being marketed?
It’s not being marketed anymore. Now that the war has gone sour, the people who sold it to us – FOX News and CNN – are ignoring it. They couldn’t get enough of it when it was great. Now that the mythic narrative of war cannot be sustained, they don’t even talk about it.
Did the same thing happen with Vietnam?
There is a gap between the mythic notion of war and the sensory vision of war. When that mythic element implodes, as it did in Vietnam, then the press is free to report it in a sensory fashion.
I guess that’s what happened when the picture of the girl running after a napalm attack -- and other photos like that -- came out.
Those pictures would not have been possible if the attitude toward the war hadn’t changed. War is heavily cleaned up.
What about the Abu Ghraib photos?
Well, Abu Ghraib is an image -- not a war. It’s a powerful one of prison, and it had a huge impact. But it had more of an impact outside our borders than inside our borders. It’s fundamentally difficult for Americans to grasp what’s being done in our name in Iraq so they prefer to look at these things as aberrations. In fact, the Abu Ghraib images are true pictures -- not only of warfare but of moral morass. And those images don’t come close to portraying the horror of war.
I’ve been reading interviews with soldiers who’ve come back from Iraq. It’s all carnage.
If you’re talking about fighting, it’s industrial slaughter. If you haven’t been to a war, it’s hard to grasp the destructive power of those weapons. There are no whole bodies after you fire those weapons. And now there are IEDs. Most people are surviving the attacks, but they’re being horribly maimed -- with half their frontal lobe gone. In war, you pick body parts out of trees. Dogs eat the corpses. That’s been true in every war I’ve covered.
People don’t know about that.
People don’t know about war.
You talk about veterans’ groups in the introduction to Afterwar. What can you tell me about them?
Veterans’ groups fall into two categories: There are the groups like Veterans Against the Iraq War. They feel deeply betrayed. And there are the right-wing, patriotic veterans’ groups that don’t want to face their complicity in evil. They go after anyone who criticizes anyone or their country with a vengeance. The first group is made up of moral giants. And the others are moral trolls.
You write about your uncle -- the one who fought in World War II.
He was in the South Pacific and was badly wounded by a mortar blast. He refused to accept his medals, and I only heard him talk about the war one time. He said, “We filled our canteens up in a stream once. When we went around the bend there were twenty-five dead Japanese in the water.” He eventually drank himself to death in a trailer. There were tens of thousands of families who had sons and fathers who were as broken as he was. They were pushed aside because they didn’t read from the patriotic script.
You’ve said most veterans -- at least ninety-four percent -- get a friendly reception when they come home even when they’ve served in an unpopular war like Vietnam. Is this true today?
I don’t think anger is the problem. I think it’s that people don’t care. The worst is that people don’t really want to see the pictures. They ask a couple questions. It’s clear they don’t want to talk about it. It increases that sense of isolation you feel, that nobody understands -- and they don’t.
Who are the greatest war reporters?
Homer is great at capturing the horror of war. If you look closely at the motivation of the Greeks -- like Achilles -- you see they’re quite willing to sacrifice their own men for petty, trivial disputes. Achilles is a figure consumed with rage. In many ways, The Iliad is a poem about rage. Achilles is referred to as a monster because he loves slaughter and death. The most humane fighter -- Hector -- is killed. Morality is irrelevant. It’s force that rules. Virgil sells us the myth about war -- a nationalist epic about the love of empire. Thucydides is great. He understands how Athens’ expanding empire led it to became a tyrant abroad and then to become a tyrant at home. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, it finally imposed on itself.
Any parallels?
Yeah. That’s exactly what we’re going through.
What about redemption -- is there any after you’ve been through war?
The enterprise of war is death. It’s as close as human beings come to pure sin. Its goals are hatred and destruction. There are no just wars. There are inevitable wars -- if you’re in Sarajevo, and the Serbs are trying to kill you, then you defend yourself. That’s the point where war becomes inevitable. But as soon as you engage in war, you embrace a terrible form of depravity. It may be a supposedly just cause -- like in World War II. But during that time, we indiscriminately bombed German cities. War’s a dirty, horrible business. Redemption comes when those who have taken human life dedicate their lives to the nurturing and protecting of human life. It’s the only way to cope with the fact that you’re a paid killer. That’s the only route possible to cope.
You can drink.
That’s not a way to redeem yourself. It is a rough landscape, though. PTSD makes it very difficult to connect with other people. You’re isolated. You can’t connect with other human beings. Dostoevsky said, “Hell is the inability to love.” A severe trauma makes it very difficult to love. You’re sort of numb.
The trauma affects reporters, too.
Trauma’s trauma. After repeated exposure to trauma, your fight-or-flight switch gets broken. And you can’t read signals anymore.
Erasmus wrote, “Sweet is war to those who do not know it.”
No soldier or marine buys the myth of war -- not after about thirty seconds of combat. All the abstract terms of honor and heroism become hollow and obscene.
Tara McKelvey is a Prospect senior editor.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12213
America faces a future of managing imperial decline
Bush's failure to grasp the limits of US global power has led to an adventurism for which his successors will pay a heavy price
Martin Jacques
Thursday November 16, 2006
The Guardian
Just a few years ago, the world was in thrall to the idea of American power. The neoconservative agenda not only infused the outlook of the White House, it also dominated the global debate about the future of international relations. Following 9/11, we had, in quick succession, the "war on terror", the "axis of evil", the idea of a new American empire, the overarching importance of military power, the notion and desirability of regime change, the invasion of Iraq, and the proposition that western-style democracy was relevant and applicable to every land in the world, starting with the Middle East. Much of that has unwound with a speed that barely anyone anticipated. With the abject failure of the American occupation of Iraq - to the point where even the American electorate now recognises the fact - the neoconservative era would appear to be in its death throes.
But what precisely is coming to an end? Neoconservatism in all its pomp conceived - in the Project for a New American Century - that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world could be remade in the American image, that the previous bipolar world could be replaced by a unipolar one in which the US was the dominant arbiter of global and regional affairs. In fact, the Bush administration never came close to this. For a short time it did succeed in persuading the great majority of countries to accept the priority of the war against terror and seemingly to sign up for it: even the intervention in Afghanistan, in the aftermath of 9/11, elicited widespread acquiescence. But the US singularly failed to command a majority of states in support of the invasion of Iraq and garnered even less support when it came to global public opinion. It demonstrated its unilateral intent by ignoring its failure to gain assent within the UN and invading Iraq, but the subsequent failure of its Iraqi adventure has served only to reinforce its isolation and demonstrate the folly of its unilateralism. Its strategy in the Middle East - always the epicentre of the neoconservative global project - lies in tatters.
Elsewhere the neoconservative project was stillborn. North Korea was branded as part of the "axis of evil" but the US, in agreeing to the six-party talks as a way of handling the crisis on the Korean peninsula, tacitly admitted that it simply did not enjoy enough leverage to deal with the Kim regime. This was demonstrated more forcibly with its failure to prevent the recent nuclear test, and the US's subsequent dependence on China for seeking some means of engaging North Korea in dialogue. In fact China has now cajoled the US into accepting the need for it to do something it had previously resisted: entering into direct talks with North Korea, with China playing the role of honest broker. For all the neoconservative bluster, the US is simply too weak in east Asia - and China too strong - for it to be anything other than a secondary player in the North Korean crisis. It has been a striking illustration of the slow, remorseless decline of American influence in the region.
Meanwhile, in the region that it has dominated for well over a century, which it has traditionally regarded as its own backyard and in which it intervened with impunity throughout the cold war - namely Latin America - the US is now facing its bleakest ever situation, far worse than anything the Cuban regime represented during the cold war. The US is confronted with a formidable and well-resourced adversary in Chávez's Venezuela, and a continent in which the left has made extraordinary progress. The Bush administration, so far at least, has been quite unable to halt its growing isolation in Latin America and the left's onward march.
Even in the Middle East, the weakness of the neoconservative position has become increasingly evident in its handling of Iran, another member of the "axis of evil". As in the case of North Korea, the US, partly as a result of its preoccupation with the occupation of Iraq, in effect devolved negotiations over Iran's nuclear ambitions to the group of four consisting of Germany, France, Russia and the UK.
Although the west Europeans have been happy to do most of America's bidding, Russia has not and nor, it would appear, has China. Both are permanent members of the UN security council, and both are resistant to sanctions and the threat of military action. As a result, negotiations over Iran have been mired in something of an impasse. Of course, if the neoconservatives had felt strong enough, they could have forced the issue in a manner similar to their approach in Iraq. The point is that they did not. And now it would seem inconceivable that they can contemplate military action against Iran.
On the contrary, the tables appear to be in the process of being turned: the US, instead of seeking to isolate Iran, is now likely to need Iranian and Syrian support in helping to sort out the debacle in Iraq. Taken with the failure of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the continuing disaster of the occupied territories, we can see that the US is in retreat. Ever since 1956, it has been increasingly and formidably dominant in the region, with Israel riding pillion, and since 1989 it has been the overwhelming arbiter of events there. This year marks the beginning of the decline of American power in the Middle East, with untold consequences.
Here we can see the cost of Bush's adventurism for American imperial power. In failing to understand the inherent limits of US global power consequent upon deeper, though seemingly unrecognised, longer-term global trends, the Bush administration hugely overestimated American power and thereby committed a gross act of imperial over-reach, for which subsequent administrations will pay a heavy price. Far from the US simply conjoining its pre-1989 power with that of the deceased USSR, it is increasingly confronted with a world marked by the growing power of a range of new national actors, notably - but by no means only - China, India and Brazil.
Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the US seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline. And, as a footnote, one might add that this is a task for which pragmatists are rather better suited than ideologues.
· Martin Jacques is a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics
Martinjacques1@aol.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1948666,00.html
Martin Jacques
Thursday November 16, 2006
The Guardian
Just a few years ago, the world was in thrall to the idea of American power. The neoconservative agenda not only infused the outlook of the White House, it also dominated the global debate about the future of international relations. Following 9/11, we had, in quick succession, the "war on terror", the "axis of evil", the idea of a new American empire, the overarching importance of military power, the notion and desirability of regime change, the invasion of Iraq, and the proposition that western-style democracy was relevant and applicable to every land in the world, starting with the Middle East. Much of that has unwound with a speed that barely anyone anticipated. With the abject failure of the American occupation of Iraq - to the point where even the American electorate now recognises the fact - the neoconservative era would appear to be in its death throes.
But what precisely is coming to an end? Neoconservatism in all its pomp conceived - in the Project for a New American Century - that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world could be remade in the American image, that the previous bipolar world could be replaced by a unipolar one in which the US was the dominant arbiter of global and regional affairs. In fact, the Bush administration never came close to this. For a short time it did succeed in persuading the great majority of countries to accept the priority of the war against terror and seemingly to sign up for it: even the intervention in Afghanistan, in the aftermath of 9/11, elicited widespread acquiescence. But the US singularly failed to command a majority of states in support of the invasion of Iraq and garnered even less support when it came to global public opinion. It demonstrated its unilateral intent by ignoring its failure to gain assent within the UN and invading Iraq, but the subsequent failure of its Iraqi adventure has served only to reinforce its isolation and demonstrate the folly of its unilateralism. Its strategy in the Middle East - always the epicentre of the neoconservative global project - lies in tatters.
Elsewhere the neoconservative project was stillborn. North Korea was branded as part of the "axis of evil" but the US, in agreeing to the six-party talks as a way of handling the crisis on the Korean peninsula, tacitly admitted that it simply did not enjoy enough leverage to deal with the Kim regime. This was demonstrated more forcibly with its failure to prevent the recent nuclear test, and the US's subsequent dependence on China for seeking some means of engaging North Korea in dialogue. In fact China has now cajoled the US into accepting the need for it to do something it had previously resisted: entering into direct talks with North Korea, with China playing the role of honest broker. For all the neoconservative bluster, the US is simply too weak in east Asia - and China too strong - for it to be anything other than a secondary player in the North Korean crisis. It has been a striking illustration of the slow, remorseless decline of American influence in the region.
Meanwhile, in the region that it has dominated for well over a century, which it has traditionally regarded as its own backyard and in which it intervened with impunity throughout the cold war - namely Latin America - the US is now facing its bleakest ever situation, far worse than anything the Cuban regime represented during the cold war. The US is confronted with a formidable and well-resourced adversary in Chávez's Venezuela, and a continent in which the left has made extraordinary progress. The Bush administration, so far at least, has been quite unable to halt its growing isolation in Latin America and the left's onward march.
Even in the Middle East, the weakness of the neoconservative position has become increasingly evident in its handling of Iran, another member of the "axis of evil". As in the case of North Korea, the US, partly as a result of its preoccupation with the occupation of Iraq, in effect devolved negotiations over Iran's nuclear ambitions to the group of four consisting of Germany, France, Russia and the UK.
Although the west Europeans have been happy to do most of America's bidding, Russia has not and nor, it would appear, has China. Both are permanent members of the UN security council, and both are resistant to sanctions and the threat of military action. As a result, negotiations over Iran have been mired in something of an impasse. Of course, if the neoconservatives had felt strong enough, they could have forced the issue in a manner similar to their approach in Iraq. The point is that they did not. And now it would seem inconceivable that they can contemplate military action against Iran.
On the contrary, the tables appear to be in the process of being turned: the US, instead of seeking to isolate Iran, is now likely to need Iranian and Syrian support in helping to sort out the debacle in Iraq. Taken with the failure of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the continuing disaster of the occupied territories, we can see that the US is in retreat. Ever since 1956, it has been increasingly and formidably dominant in the region, with Israel riding pillion, and since 1989 it has been the overwhelming arbiter of events there. This year marks the beginning of the decline of American power in the Middle East, with untold consequences.
Here we can see the cost of Bush's adventurism for American imperial power. In failing to understand the inherent limits of US global power consequent upon deeper, though seemingly unrecognised, longer-term global trends, the Bush administration hugely overestimated American power and thereby committed a gross act of imperial over-reach, for which subsequent administrations will pay a heavy price. Far from the US simply conjoining its pre-1989 power with that of the deceased USSR, it is increasingly confronted with a world marked by the growing power of a range of new national actors, notably - but by no means only - China, India and Brazil.
Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the US seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline. And, as a footnote, one might add that this is a task for which pragmatists are rather better suited than ideologues.
· Martin Jacques is a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics
Martinjacques1@aol.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1948666,00.html
The Education of Lieutenant Rushing
How one Marine flack left the Control Room and Found Al Jazeera
Daniel Schulman
November/December 2006 Issue
At the time, Lieutenant Josh Rushing didn't give much thought to the filmmakers who followed him around the Pentagon's Central Command press operation in Doha, Qatar, for a few weeks at the outset of the Iraq War. But then, back in the States a year later, the Marine public-affairs officer got an anonymous voice mail. "I just saw your movie at Sundance," the caller said. "I just wanted to say thanks."
"I Googled my name and Sundance," Rushing recalls, "and up came all these stories" on Control Room, a documentary about theArabic satellite news channel Al Jazeera. He was startled to notice that "a lot of them weren't just about the movie—they were about me." The film had captured the earnest 30-year-old, with striking blue eyes and the signature high-and-tight haircut favored by his fellow Marines, as he grappled with his feelings about the war and the gulf between how the Western and Arab media were portraying it. Though Rushing, now 34, never strayed from his official talking points, he remembers being troubled that American reporters "were buying into the government's message without challenging it." Some journalists would ask him prior to on-air interviews if there were "any messages you want to get across today."
Amid the sudden publicity, Rushing ran afoul of the Pentagon. After defending Al Jazeera in an interview with the Village Voice, in which he suggested that the network showed a more realistic image of the war than the American media ("In America war isn't hell—we don't see blood, we don't see suffering. All we see is patriotism"), he was ordered to stop talking to the press. That didn't sit well with him. "It's a weird place to be in when there's a national dialogue about you and you can't take part in it," he says. "When I came back from the war, I was frustrated by what I'd seen. I felt that what America thought it knew about Al Jazeera was wrong, and the way that America was engaging or not engaging with Al Jazeera was not only wrong but dangerous."
Rushing resigned his commission after 14 years of service in the fall of 2004, a move that meant forsaking the pension and lifetime medical coverage he and his family would have received had he remained in the military for another six years. He took out a second mortgage on his Los Angeles home and went on the speaking circuit, addressing the film he'd been forbidden to comment on and offering his perspective on the oft-derided Arabic-language news channel that he saw as a vital way to engage the Muslim world.
By that winter, Rushing was running low on money and close to taking a job with a PR firm when he was approached by Al Jazeera, which was in the early stages of planning an ambitious English-language channel that would rotate its daily coverage among bureaus in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London, and Washington, D.C. Last fall, Rushing officially became one of the new faces of Al Jazeera International, along with such seasoned Western journalists as former ABC correspondent Dave Marash and BBC veteran David Frost. They were met with cries of treachery from the right; Rushing earned a special kind of scorn, with one conservative columnist calling him "a bigger boob than Anna Nicole Smith's entire chest combined," Al Jazeera's "American propagandist," and an "enemy-pandering nimrod" in the space of a single piece. There were online death threats, too—one urged special-ops troops to "take him out"—which worried him enough to hire bodyguards to protect his family.
As a correspondent covering the United States for the network, Rushing has made it his personal mission to pursue stories "that illustrate America to the world." In May, he traveled to North Dakota to shoot a piece about the emptying out of the rural towns of the Great Plains. During filming, a local sheriff—suspicious of the crew's Al Jazeera affiliation—alerted the Border Patrol. Generally, Al Jazeera's project has not been received with open arms in the United States. According to executive producer Joanne Levine, a major American accounting firm and an international bank have refused to handle Al Jazeera International's finances. The nascent network has also had difficulty securing distribution in the United States, which it insists has nothing to do with its image, and it missed its target launch date in May. Network executives will only say that Al Jazeera International will begin broadcasting before the end of the year. "I truly believe that once we're on the air, it's going to get easier," says Levine.
But the delays don't seem to bother Rushing; they've given him time to acclimate to his new profession. When he joined the network almost a year ago, he saw himself as a cultural emissary who could help the rest of the world understand the America he loves. Now, "more and more I see myself as a journalist," he says. "It's taking a long time to let go of that spokesperson side of me who wants to control the message and to embrace the side that's about letting the message be whatever you find. There's a real value to this journalism thing."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2006/11/education_of_lt_rushing.html
Daniel Schulman
November/December 2006 Issue
At the time, Lieutenant Josh Rushing didn't give much thought to the filmmakers who followed him around the Pentagon's Central Command press operation in Doha, Qatar, for a few weeks at the outset of the Iraq War. But then, back in the States a year later, the Marine public-affairs officer got an anonymous voice mail. "I just saw your movie at Sundance," the caller said. "I just wanted to say thanks."
"I Googled my name and Sundance," Rushing recalls, "and up came all these stories" on Control Room, a documentary about theArabic satellite news channel Al Jazeera. He was startled to notice that "a lot of them weren't just about the movie—they were about me." The film had captured the earnest 30-year-old, with striking blue eyes and the signature high-and-tight haircut favored by his fellow Marines, as he grappled with his feelings about the war and the gulf between how the Western and Arab media were portraying it. Though Rushing, now 34, never strayed from his official talking points, he remembers being troubled that American reporters "were buying into the government's message without challenging it." Some journalists would ask him prior to on-air interviews if there were "any messages you want to get across today."
Amid the sudden publicity, Rushing ran afoul of the Pentagon. After defending Al Jazeera in an interview with the Village Voice, in which he suggested that the network showed a more realistic image of the war than the American media ("In America war isn't hell—we don't see blood, we don't see suffering. All we see is patriotism"), he was ordered to stop talking to the press. That didn't sit well with him. "It's a weird place to be in when there's a national dialogue about you and you can't take part in it," he says. "When I came back from the war, I was frustrated by what I'd seen. I felt that what America thought it knew about Al Jazeera was wrong, and the way that America was engaging or not engaging with Al Jazeera was not only wrong but dangerous."
Rushing resigned his commission after 14 years of service in the fall of 2004, a move that meant forsaking the pension and lifetime medical coverage he and his family would have received had he remained in the military for another six years. He took out a second mortgage on his Los Angeles home and went on the speaking circuit, addressing the film he'd been forbidden to comment on and offering his perspective on the oft-derided Arabic-language news channel that he saw as a vital way to engage the Muslim world.
By that winter, Rushing was running low on money and close to taking a job with a PR firm when he was approached by Al Jazeera, which was in the early stages of planning an ambitious English-language channel that would rotate its daily coverage among bureaus in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London, and Washington, D.C. Last fall, Rushing officially became one of the new faces of Al Jazeera International, along with such seasoned Western journalists as former ABC correspondent Dave Marash and BBC veteran David Frost. They were met with cries of treachery from the right; Rushing earned a special kind of scorn, with one conservative columnist calling him "a bigger boob than Anna Nicole Smith's entire chest combined," Al Jazeera's "American propagandist," and an "enemy-pandering nimrod" in the space of a single piece. There were online death threats, too—one urged special-ops troops to "take him out"—which worried him enough to hire bodyguards to protect his family.
As a correspondent covering the United States for the network, Rushing has made it his personal mission to pursue stories "that illustrate America to the world." In May, he traveled to North Dakota to shoot a piece about the emptying out of the rural towns of the Great Plains. During filming, a local sheriff—suspicious of the crew's Al Jazeera affiliation—alerted the Border Patrol. Generally, Al Jazeera's project has not been received with open arms in the United States. According to executive producer Joanne Levine, a major American accounting firm and an international bank have refused to handle Al Jazeera International's finances. The nascent network has also had difficulty securing distribution in the United States, which it insists has nothing to do with its image, and it missed its target launch date in May. Network executives will only say that Al Jazeera International will begin broadcasting before the end of the year. "I truly believe that once we're on the air, it's going to get easier," says Levine.
But the delays don't seem to bother Rushing; they've given him time to acclimate to his new profession. When he joined the network almost a year ago, he saw himself as a cultural emissary who could help the rest of the world understand the America he loves. Now, "more and more I see myself as a journalist," he says. "It's taking a long time to let go of that spokesperson side of me who wants to control the message and to embrace the side that's about letting the message be whatever you find. There's a real value to this journalism thing."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2006/11/education_of_lt_rushing.html
Israelis mourn Gaza deaths
Obituaries published in Haaretz express 'deep sorrow' over Beit Hanoun victims. Edna Kovarski of Herzliya tells Ynet she published obituary because of shame she felt for what Israel is doing
Moran Rada
The readers of Haaretz daily newspaper in the past days were in for a surprise after three Israeli citizens published obituaries in the back pages of the newspaper which expressed their grief for the death of civilians in Beit Hanoun last week. The last obituary was purchased by Edna Kovarski of Herzliya, who paid approximately NIS 2,800 (USD 650).
Kovarski wrote in the obituary that she "bows her head in shame and deep grief for your heavy loss. The sane Israeli public is invited to join these condolences."
Kovarski told Ynet that since the morning hours she has been receiving calls from Israelis who wish to publish similar obituaries in the newspaper. "I published it because of the great shame of what we do and for all the dead and injured." The family members of those who were killed, called Kovarski and thanked her for the gesture.
Obituary published by Edna Kovarski: To Atamna family, I bow my head in shame
The first one to publish such an obituary was Moshe Simhovich of Jerusalem. According to him, after walking for two days frustrated and hurt because of the incident in Beit Hanoun, he decided to act.
"I thought this was a war crime what happened in Beit Hanoun. It bothered me that innocent people got hurt. I decided to publish an obituary because I thought a letter to the editor will not get published," he said.
According to the 71 year-old Simhovich, he has been approached by several people over the past few days who felt solidarity with the content of the ad and asked to publish more of them. "The people who continue in my way are regular folks, retirees, that I believe could do other things with their money. People care and I respect that a lot."
Simhovich also referred to the fatal attack on Sderot Wednesday morning and said that regretfully, his obituary is now buried deep in Sderot, and if the attack had not happened, maybe the ad could have made some noise. "The Palestinians shot themselves in the foot. I pissed against the wind and then it turned out that the wind was a storm," he said.
As to the future, Simhovich is certain that there will be another retaliation and more innocent people will be killed. "Now the IDF will come in and fire more shells and more civilians will die and the killing will continue. I think we need to show restraint, bite our lips, and go to the Palestinians with an offer they can't refuse."
Roi Mandel contributed to this article
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3328788,00.html
Moran Rada
The readers of Haaretz daily newspaper in the past days were in for a surprise after three Israeli citizens published obituaries in the back pages of the newspaper which expressed their grief for the death of civilians in Beit Hanoun last week. The last obituary was purchased by Edna Kovarski of Herzliya, who paid approximately NIS 2,800 (USD 650).
Kovarski wrote in the obituary that she "bows her head in shame and deep grief for your heavy loss. The sane Israeli public is invited to join these condolences."
Kovarski told Ynet that since the morning hours she has been receiving calls from Israelis who wish to publish similar obituaries in the newspaper. "I published it because of the great shame of what we do and for all the dead and injured." The family members of those who were killed, called Kovarski and thanked her for the gesture.
Obituary published by Edna Kovarski: To Atamna family, I bow my head in shame
The first one to publish such an obituary was Moshe Simhovich of Jerusalem. According to him, after walking for two days frustrated and hurt because of the incident in Beit Hanoun, he decided to act.
"I thought this was a war crime what happened in Beit Hanoun. It bothered me that innocent people got hurt. I decided to publish an obituary because I thought a letter to the editor will not get published," he said.
According to the 71 year-old Simhovich, he has been approached by several people over the past few days who felt solidarity with the content of the ad and asked to publish more of them. "The people who continue in my way are regular folks, retirees, that I believe could do other things with their money. People care and I respect that a lot."
Simhovich also referred to the fatal attack on Sderot Wednesday morning and said that regretfully, his obituary is now buried deep in Sderot, and if the attack had not happened, maybe the ad could have made some noise. "The Palestinians shot themselves in the foot. I pissed against the wind and then it turned out that the wind was a storm," he said.
As to the future, Simhovich is certain that there will be another retaliation and more innocent people will be killed. "Now the IDF will come in and fire more shells and more civilians will die and the killing will continue. I think we need to show restraint, bite our lips, and go to the Palestinians with an offer they can't refuse."
Roi Mandel contributed to this article
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3328788,00.html
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