Some of us LIKE to be the evil we deplore, Part I. While the US has been struggling to assure the world that it's people are fundamentally good after an illegal war based on lies, and after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, there are folks who think that goodness is a misplaced value. These folks apparently include a few famous commentators. Eric Zorn's Notebook: PAUL HARVEY: AH, GENOICDE AND SLAVERY, NOW THAT'S A GOOD DAY! (6/24/05) (which I found through fair.org) quotes cranky commentator Paul Harvey, who thinks we worry too much about our national image, and recalls the good ol' days:

Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving small pox infected blankets to native Americans.

Yes, that was biological warfare!

And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous.

And, yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.

And so it goes with most nation states, which, feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded, and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry and up and coming who are not made of sugar candy.

So, basically, he thinks that was the way to go, but that we're too NICE now.

Because Abu Ghraib and bombing Baghdad was all about "nice."

I wonder what Mr. Harvey is putting on his cereal in the morning.

Sheehan Glad Bush Didn't Meet With Her (washingtonpost.com, 8/30/05):

"I look back on it, and I am very, very, very grateful he did not meet with me, because we have sparked and galvanized the peace movement," Sheehan told The Associated Press. "If he'd met with me, then I would have gone home, and it would have ended there."

Hurricane Cindy. I haven't written about Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who became a nationwide peace celebrity by camping outside Bush's Texas ranch, and refusing to leave until either the end of August, or until he spoke with her.

Bush continued his ranch vacation, and didn't speak to her.

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | In search of an Iraq exit strategy (news.bbc.co.uk, 8/27/05) describes the shift in American politics and opinion polls that has resulted in a bereaved mother being the symbol of a movement to withdraw troops from Iraq.

What's funny to me is that there have been many, many other bereaved mothers who joined the pro-peace side early on. They did not become media darlings. Why not? Because the media perceived the country as heading toward war, and didn't want to interrupt that momentum with dissidents. Not even millions of dissidents worldwide, but certainly not a few mourning mothers.

Timing is a funny thing.

Another contributing factor causing Riverbend to wonder why Americans believe the oddest things: When “Old News” Has Never Been Told - U.S. media produce excuses, not stories, on Downing Street Memo (fair.org, Extra! July/August 2005).

U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq (washingtonpost.com, 8/14/05):

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

Who knew.

I never reported on Riverbend's take on the Administration's speech. Baghdad Burning (7/1/05):

In Bush's Iraq, there is reconstruction, there is freedom (in spite of an occupation) and there is democracy.

"He's describing a different country," I commented to E. and the cousin.

"Yes," E. replied. "He's talking about the *other* Iraq... the one with the WMD."

Ouch.

Riverbend's commentary on the speech is quite interesting, and also quite sad: it's sad to know that there are people who believe every word the politician utters, because it's convenient.

How many more nasty revelations are needed? General admits to secret air war (timesonline.co.uk, 6/26/05):

The American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.

The US public is already a bit scandal weary: I'm not sure there's room for this one.

If nothing is successfully being rebuilt, where is all the money going? Oh. Of course. When the tsunami disaster hit southeast Asia last December, I had a sad thought. That sad thought was that the survivors of that tragedy, all those people who had lived along the coast in small villages, would never be able to rebuild their homes there. This would not happen because of safety concerns: this would happen because the disaster was an opportunity for multi-national corporations to demand choice property in exchange for a little 'assistance' in relocating people away from prime tourist beaches.

I was cynical, but I was correct. I didn't make the logical extension to other 'rebuilding' projects around the world, but I should have. Naomi Klein has. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (thenation.com, 4/14/05):

Three months after the tsunami hit Aceh, the New York Times ran a distressing story reporting that 'almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding.' The dispatch could easily have come from Iraq, where, as the Los Angeles Times just reported, all of Bechtel's allegedly rebuilt water plants have started to break down, one more in an endless litany of reconstruction screw-ups. It could also have come from Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai recently blasted 'corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable' foreign contractors for 'squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid.' Or from Sri Lanka, where 600,000 people who lost their homes in the tsunami are still languishing in temporary camps. One hundred days after the giant waves hit, Herman Kumara, head of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement in Negombo, Sri Lanka, sent out a desperate e-mail to colleagues around the world. 'The funds received for the benefit of the victims are directed to the benefit of the privileged few, not to the real victims,' he wrote. 'Our voices are not heard and not allowed to be voiced.'

But if the reconstruction industry is stunningly inept at rebuilding, that may be because rebuilding is not its primary purpose. According to Guttal, 'It's not reconstruction at all--it's about reshaping everything.' If anything, the stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask this deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. And on this front, the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently that the privatizations and land grabs are usually locked in
before the local population knows what hit them.

(Bold emphasis mine.) Klein is making a POSIWID connection - what is the purpose of the rebuilding system? Is it to rebuild things for locals, or for large entities to pocket large sums of disaster aid?

This is probably the single best article I've read on the profits of destruction. Not since I read a construction magazine article gloating about the lucrative contracts won by American countries to rebuild schools and hospitals US forces had bombed in the former Yugoslavia (!!!) have I read something this direct in connecting what I read in the paper with names of the big beneficiaries of the spoils of war.

If you read just one article about war profiteering this month, choose this one.

Elections!?! No, not that... Well, if they must. Yaaay, elections! That is my excessively short summary of what happened in Iraq earlier this year. But Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has a much more detailed report, which is worth reading in its entirety. Defeated by Democracy (www.fair.org, May/June 2005 issue of Extra!) details how the Bush Administration fought tooth and nail against elections, but eventually gave in. Here is an excerpt:

From the very start, the administration was determined to install its handpicked favorites in positions of power in Baghdad and to exclude Iraqis with broader public support. For nearly a year, it watched helplessly as that strategy gradually came unglued. Only after its preferred game-plan decisively collapsed - in the face of an armed Sunni insurgency, the popular rejection of U.S.-supported Iraqi exiles, and crucially, the threat of a massive Shiite uprising - did the Bush administration reluctantly bow to pressure from Islamists and allow a free vote.

This article is made extra-creepy by the quotes from pundits who had opposed democracy in Iraq - which they knew was unlikely to lead to a government friendly to US interests - suddenly claiming great victory for Bush in his massive concession to popular Iraqi demand.

It's fascinating. It's great to have this retrospective in one place, even with the creepy quotes. Go read this now.

When governments won't act: The Final Session of The World Tribunal on Iraq Begins in Istanbul (SF Bay Area Indymedia 6/24/05) (indybay.org) reports on citizen's groups assembling to hear testimony and decide what should be done about the crimes of war performed in Iraq.

This is symbolic, but also a very intriguing idea. What if people around the world were permitted to pass judgment on the occupation of Tibet by China? Or on the Chechan demand for a separate nation? Or on any number of current situations in which bully nations get their way unlawfully, merely because they are large? This was the idea behind the United Nations, but with the Security Council filled only with the big nations, and with the big nations willing to 'look the other way' at each others' indiscretions toward weaker countries, the system is rigged against democracy.

This is an idea worth thinking about.

Intermissions: There have been big gaps in my messages here, because so little has really changed. Am I surprised that American forces are abducting and torturing people, just like the despot they replaced? No. Am I thrilled that two of the three Iraqi groups turned out to vote for pro-fundamentalist parties who want the US out ASAP and religious-based law? No. Can I bear to read the daily death tolls? No. Is it thrilling that Americans, happy to claim the election as their sole victory, are now eager to wash their hands of the country and leave it in ruins, with a few massive military bases in place (complete with bowling alleys, apartments, movie theaters, and other things for US personnel only)?? Guess.

There are headlines enough of 'more of the same,' and so I've just been tagging those that have interested me, rather than trying to link to ALL of the major stories.

I'm tired of looking at what the warmongers achieved: war, death, ruin, hate, and hopelessness. It hurts.

*

Speaking of hurting, I finally had a chance to see the film Hotel Rwanda, about the genocide there. European colonizers chose to divide their subjects along imaginary ethnic lines, sowing division and playing favorites and encouraging intergroup exploitation. When they left (and at the time the movie is set in), the masses were able to act out their hatreds. When waves of retribution killings began, the US and other nations chose to do nothing. Millions died.

Now, the same conflict has spilled over into neighboring countries, and the US... doesn't care. The US government has been too busy denying that genocide is occurring in the Sudan to pay much attention. The US is also still pretending to be really upset about massacres Saddam Hussein engaged in during the Reagan Administration, even though at the time the US was eager to appease Iraq, and in response to the massacres only signed a UN resolution from condemning chemical weapons attacks generally, refusing to name Iraq (gwu.edu) or the specific, cruel massacres that come up so often in rhetoric now.

Also, the US doesn't seem too upset about Turkey doing bad things to Kurds: only the former Iraqi government's crimes seem worth attending to.

Having no credibility on humanitarian grounds, I'd like the phrase "humanitarian grounds" to simply stop appearing in reports on Iraq, lest the reporting be perceived as sarcasm.

Who's Paying for Our Patriotism? By Uwe E. Reinhardt (washingtonpost.com, 08/01/05) notes that very few Americans are DIRECTLY affected by the war in Iraq. It's easy to "stay the course" when others are sacrificing on your behalf -- such as all those National Guard troops who have lost their jobs (if not their lives), and whose families are hurting financially -- and when you can simply ignore their plight.

The comments about how little fundraising for military has been done by people who claim to 'support our troops' is harsh, but makes an interesting point. If "support" doesn't mean anything but buying a cheap, foreign-made sticker, OF COURSE it's easy.

Slightly misleading title: Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs (washingtonpost.com, 08/03/05) isn't just about soldiers acting creatively to do bad things. It discusses the involvement of "OGAs" ("Other Government Agencies"), including the CIA, PLUS US-funded mercenaries, in the routine interrogation and torture of detainees, using tactics employed in multiple US-military-controlled locations.

The particular story described is of an alleged insurgent leader who turned himself in to negotiate the release of his sons, and was later beaten and suffocated to death by U.S. forces. The government attempted to classify details of the killing. Now that criminal charges are pending, those involved insist that the killing - no, too active, let's just say "death" - was unfortunate, the beating and suffocation that caused the death were completely appropriate.

As a side note: this is how they treat people who turn themselves in!! The heck with winning hearts and minds - someone should just persuade these folks not to kill people who show up to talk, even if the US doesn't like what they say.

Another sad benchmark: Seven U.S Marines killed in Iraq, toll passes 1,800 (ca.today.reuters.com, 08/02/05).

Sadr quotes Bush? BBC NEWS | Resistance in Iraq 'legitimate' (07/19/05):

'Resistance is legitimate at all levels be it religious, intellectual and so on,' Mr Sadr said, in his first interview with Western media.

'The first person who would acknowledge this is the so-called American President Bush who said 'if my country is occupied, I will fight'.'

BBC NEWS | 25,000 civilians 'killed in Iraq' (07/19/05).

The Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq 2003-2005 says 37% of all non-combatant deaths were caused by US-led forces.

Insurgents are said to have caused 9% of the deaths, while post-invasion criminal violence was responsible for another 36%....

"On average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since the invasion of March 2003," said Mr Sloboda.

"It remains a matter of the gravest concern that, nearly two-and-a-half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed."

A Scholarly Look at Terror Sees Bootprints In the Sand (washingtonpost.com, 07/09/05) describes some research into certain styles of attacks by Robert A. Pape, a professor who does a bit of consulting for the military.

'Well, I was actually surprised' to discover that 'what over 95 percent of all suicide attacks around the world since 1980 until today have in common is not religion, but a clear, strategic objective: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.'

This is a worthwhile read about potential causes for terrorism. Which make a lot more sense than 'they hate us because we love freedom/fries/rock/whatever.'

It's also one of those articles with odd opposing viewpoints. Pape's analysis is on suicide bombers, and so one of his critics points out that suicide bombers can't exist in occupied country A because they don't exist in occupied country B under similar conditions. And then misses the entire sideline about U.S. military bases in places with unpopular regimes.

I'm not sure if criticism that makes no sense is intended to help or hurt. Surely there are other, more substantive, competing theories than are quoted here. 'Still, it's worth reading.

How do YOU define a terrorist act? Greenpeace Commemorates 1985 Ship Bombing (washingtonpost.com, 07/09/05). For those of you who don't recall this, back in 1985 the French government, hostile over interference and publicity from Greenpeace over their nuclear activities in the Pacific, planted bombs in the Greenpeace ship 'Rainbow Warrior,' then docked in New Zealand, killing one person. (This was a ship that I, as a small child, had enjoyed during a school field trip years earlier.) The article describes all that and more. But this is the part that caught my eye:

New Zealand branded the attack 'an act of state-sponsored terrorism' and, after years of open hostility with France, won a multimillion-dollar reparations payment and what Greenpeace has called an 'unconvincing apology.'

Pierre Lacoste, who headed France's counter-espionage agency at the time, said in an interview last week with The New Zealand Herald that the drowning of photographer Pereira was an accident that weighed heavily on his conscience. 'I would perfectly understand it if New Zealanders considered this act to be an act of terrorism, to sink a boat in a port where there are just yachtsmen, peaceful people,' he told the newspaper. 'It does not really deserve to be called that, but if it is felt in that way, that is reality,' he said.

So, Mr. Lacoste doesn't think that blowing up an unarmed, advocacy group's ship in a civilian harbor is a terrorist act?? SERIOUSLY??

If only the reporter asked Mr. Lacoste what he WOULD have met that qualification!

I think this is one of those unfortunate examples of 'terrorism is in the eyes of the beholder,' which makes the moral posturing of nations against some acts, but not others, seem so hollow.

Another tragedy, and another debate: BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | London bombs: The Iraq question:

In February of the following year the same committee reported: 'The war in Iraq has possibly made terrorist attacks against British nationals and British interests more likely in the short term.'

And it was later revealed that, before the war, the Joint Intelligence Committee had also warned that military action against Iraq might 'heighten', rather than reduce, the terrorist threat to western interests.

Sad state of affairs, supposedly reflecting 'freedom being on the march': BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraq rebuilding fails to deliver (06/22/05):

In the last few days, for example, more than 40 Iraqis have been killed in bomb attacks against police trainees, and at a Baghdad restaurant.

It has become so commonplace the rest of the world hardly notices any more.

I fear that some of this indifference is caused by the brief, manufactured, pseudo-euphoria that came when many Americans justified all the suffering in Iraq with the appearance of elections there, and now feel that 'our work there is done' and we need not be concerned with either the outcome of the elections, nor the state of the nation.