March 2004

March 31, 2004

If At First You Don't Succeed

The Bush Administration hasn't given up the hunt for banned weapons in Iraq, despite David Kay's insistence that "...most others at the working level recognized the correctness of the assessment that those weapons don't exist."

Kay's replacement, Charles Duelfer, in announcing that the hunt continues, argues that, "We do not know whether Saddam was concealing [weapons of mass destruction] or planning to resume production once sanctions were lifted."

Not to be outdone, John "The kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world" Bolton has opened his mouth again, now warning that Cuba "remains a terrorist and [biological weapons] threat to the United States."

For the record Cuba's and Iraq's combined 2001 military expenditures totted up to $2.2 Billion dollars -- about $584 Billion fewer than the United States plans to spend on its military for fiscal year 2005.

Hey, here's an idea: let's pre-emptively invade Grenada again. Better safe than sorry, right?

March 29, 2004

Can't They Find Something More Important To Do?

While John Kerry hits the slopes and criss-crosses the country campaigning, one can't help wonder how much time is left over for actually performing his duties as Senator. (Of course, since his performances have largely been rubber-stampings of Bush Administration policies, maybe it's better he stays on vacation...)

Meanwhile, The Superbrain is on vacation, again, at his ranch in Texas. We've all heard that the September 11th attacks were preceded by the longest vacation in Presidential history. It didn't seem to faze him. Even when he's not on vacation, Bush has plenty of time to (try to) eat pretzels and watch Monday Night Football -- but no time for reading a newspaper.

Is it so much to ask of the President, during his four years in office, that he set aside the goofing off, and, you know, put some attention into his job? It's not as if there aren't any, ah, items needing attending to.

The jobless rate soars, the Iraqi occupation spins out of control, the pace of al-Qaeda attacks intensifies, global warming warnings mount, infrastructure crumbles...and the President snoozes in his hammock.

March 18, 2004

Stop Making Sense

Fighting terrorism with bombs, with operations of 'shock and awe', with missiles, that does not combat terrorism it only generates more radicalism. The way to fight terrorism is with the rule of law, with international legislation, with intelligence services. This is what the international community should be talking about.

This uncommon bit of common sense came yesterday from Spain's incoming prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who, after his party's victory on Sunday, said some things Juan Cole called "a gale of fresh air." Cole's translation:

"Tonight I commit myself to commence a tranquil government and I assure you that power is not going to change me," affirmed Zapatero between the applause of hundreds of people who congregated to celebrate the triumph. . "My most immediate priority is to fight all forms of terrorism (Mi prioridad mas inmediata es combatir toda forma de terrorismo). And my first initiative, tomorrow, will be to seek a union of political forces to join us together in fighting it. " After defining himself as "prepared to assume the responsibility to form the new government", Zapatero described his priorities. . "I will set out to strengthen the prestige of democratic institutions . . . to move Spain into the vanguard of European development and to guide myself by the Constitution at every moment" . . . "the government of change - he added - will act from the dialogue, responsibility and transparency. It will be a government that will work by cohesion, concord and peace."

Clearly a victory for Al Qaeda.

March 14, 2004

Who's The Lesser Evil?

Gabriel Kolko -- in this blogger's estimation, our most indispensable historian -- argues that because a second Bush term would possibly intensify the international enmity elicited by its bumbling unilateralism, it could be preferable to a Kerry Administration:

Kerry is neither articulate nor impressive as a candidate or as someone who is likely to formulate an alternative to Bush's foreign and defense policies, which have much more in common with Clinton's than they have differences. To be critical of Bush is scarcely justification for wishful thinking about Kerry. Since 1947, the foreign policies of the Democrats and Republicans have been essentially consensual on crucial issues -- "bipartisan" as both parties phrase it -- but they often utilize quite different rhetoric.

Critics of the existing foreign or domestic order will not take over Washington this November. As dangerous as it is, Bush's reelection may be a lesser evil because he is much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power.

Kolko echoes thoughts that have been rattling through your narrator's head -- regarding the domestic political milieu -- since witnessing the apoplectic reaction to Ralph Nader's announcement of his candidacy.

It is becoming clear that all-too-many Kerry supporters view November's plebiscite as an end in itself. That, if Kerry should prevail, the reaction of a too-large proportion of his voters will be overwhelming relief -- "Whew! That was a close one!" -- followed by a repeat of Clinton-era apathy and apologetics.

Whereas, a Bush victory couldn't but propagate the amazingly diverse and widespread lobbying and protest movement which saw the New York Times declare public political involvement the World's "second superpower". From the unprecedented pre-war protest mobilisations, to the hundred-plus official municipal renunciations of the PATRIOT Act, to the overwhelming response to the FCC's proposed further relaxation of media ownership restrictions, to the virtual implosion of the WTO, to the solidarity actions of "internationals" in Iraq and Palestine; the accomplishments have been many, and the momentum is gathering.

So even though a Kerry administration would no doubt be marginally less nefarious in its designs, in the absence of activist mitigation of these designs, the net effect could well be more disastrous than a second Bush Administration.

Kerry has learnt from Howard Dean that inflammatory rhetoric scores political points. But if he wants our votes, he should promise, no later than the Democratic Convention; to (at a minimum) unilaterally withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan; to repeal the PATRIOT Act, the Bush tax cuts, the "No Child Left Behind" Act, the Medicare Act, and the "Help America Vote" Act; to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court; to pull out of NAFTA and the WTO; to disavow "salvage" logging and drilling in the ANWR; to disentangle church and state; to extend full civil- and due-process-rights to so-called "illegal combatants", women, homosexuals, immigrants, the elderly and disabled, and minorities; to implement universal health care and renounce the attempts to privatise Social Security.

For, these are not the fringe propoundings of Mescaline-eating hippies and Molotov-throwing anarchists. They are the bread and butter issues of moderate-liberal voters who regard George Dubya's reign as the most horrific Presidency in their lifetimes.

If Kerry can't at the very least promise (irrespective of whether he actually plans to keep his promises) to differentiate himself from George Bush as concerns the most pressing issues of those most likely to vote for him, why in the Holy Hell should anybody vote for him?

If he won't do so, those opposed to the Bush Presidency ought to write in Dennis Kucinich (who would make such promises, in a heartbeat) come November, and then, regardless of whosoever the voting machines tell us has prevailed, redouble our activist and grassroots organising efforts. Casting a ballot once every for years cannot be considered an in any way acceptable substitute for persistent participation throughout the duration of each four-year cycle.

March 03, 2004

What's So "Civil" About War, Anyway?

The developing brouhaha over the legality of last year's war upon Iraq is instructive.

It has come to light that the UK's military commanders, just days before the outbreak of hostilities, refused to go to war without an "unequivocal" affirmation from Attorney General Lord Goldsmith. Goldsmith, initially hesitant, finally acceded -- after, according to a new book, the Bush Administration advised Tony Blair to "get yourself some different lawyers."

The war's illegality is a slam-dunk: the Bush and Blair Administrations new full well that a new resolution would not only be vetoed by France, China, and Russia; but also that it wouldn't even receive a majority vote in the Security Council. The Administrations also knew full well that Iraq posed no threat whatever to either its neighbours or to the Anglo-American "homelands", and that 90% of the world's population was virulently opposed to the war for this very reason.

But anybody with an ounce of common humanity would also be well aware that no matter how many legal loopholes the Administrations might attempt to jump through -- the Bush Doctrine of "preemptive war", UN Resolution 1441, the right of "self-defense" -- that it would not be very nice (to say the least) to undertake the blitzing of a completely helpless nation with a "shock and awe" aerial bombardment, to be followed by an occupation allowing the country to descend into a complete anarchy from which it has even now only very partially recovered, while proceeding to institute an "economic shock and awe" regimen of all-out privatisation of the country's resources.

Before the war's inception, any number of human rights organisations and NGOs warned that a war could kill tens of thousands of people, touch off a staggering refugee crisis, place the country's most vulnerable at grave risk, and cause environmental disturbances that would plague the country for generations.

The most dire of these warnings did not come to pass ("only" 20,000 - 50,000 Iraqis were killed during the war, for example) -- perhaps owing in large part to the war's massive worldwide unpopularity having spooked the Bush Administration into scaling back its maximal bombardment scenarios. But the war was undertaken with the knowledge that a great many experienced and respected organisations believed that they could come to pass.

In short, we don't need a bevy of laws and lawyers to determine for us the immorality of the war, and the disregard for human life by its planners that its initiation signaled.

But this is the Bush Administration all over.

Take the case of Depleted Uranium -- perhaps the most underreported story of the post-Cold War era. In 1996, the United Nations

Urged all States to be guided in their national policies by the need to curb production and spread of weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminate effect, in particular nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, napalm, cluster bombs, biological weaponry and weaponry containing depleted uranium...

The United States proceeded to fire off both Depleted Uranium munitions and Cluster Bombs over Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq; as well as firebombs "remarkably similar" to napalm in Iraq.

So much for International Law. The United States has known of the hazards of DU since at least 1991, when a since-leaked secret memo warned that, "There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment." The memo continued

Therefore, if no one makes a case for effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal.

And this is the basis upon which Colonel James Naughton defended the U.S. military's use of Depleted Uranium at the outset of the second Gulf war:

In the last war, Iraqi tanks at fairly close ranges -- not nose to nose -- fired at our tanks and the shot bounced off the heavy armour...and our shot did not bounce off their armour. So the result was Iraqi tanks destroyed -- US tanks with scrape marks.

Adding salt to the wounds, Naughton remarked that the Iraqis "want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them."

Now let's think about this for a moment. Nobody had argued the effectiveness of the munitions -- just as nobody had argued the effectiveness of "nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, napalm, cluster bombs, biological weaponry".

By the Bush Administration's logic, Saddam Hussein could have rightfully argued that his gassing of the Kurds, having killed masses of people, should have been allowed to remain in his arsenal. That his phantom weapons programmes, comprising as they did (in the words of George W.) "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised", should have been allowable.

Indeed, by this logic bin Laden could argue that highjacking jet airliners and slamming them into skyscrapers, this tactic having leveled the Twin Towers to the ground, are a perfectly lethal, thus perfectly acceptable tactic. And we don't need to strain too much to imagine the reaction if Saddam or bin Laden had offered these arguments as justifications for their crimes.

But the UN didn't urge "all states" to discontinue the use of weapons of mass destruction because of their effectiveness on the field of battle. It did so because of their destructive nature off the field of battle, and after the time of battle. It did so because "collateral damage" -- especially widespread, indiscriminate "collateral damage" -- is morally reprehensible.

What about the case of the Guantanamo detainees? The Bush Administration argues that because it has designated the detainees "illegal combatants", and because they aren't being held on U.S. soil, that the Administration is not bound by Habeus Corpus and laws mandating due process generally. (Note that the designation "illegal combatant" has no basis in International Law. In fact, given that the United States invaded Afghanistan, let alone that it did so without UN authorisation -- not the other way around -- the designation is lexically non-sensical.)

But our judicial system derives (purportedly) from universal notions of human rights and justice. Any five-year-old would know that -- the existence of a loophole (even were it viable) notwithstanding -- snatching people up from their homes, transporting them to the other side of the globe, and indefinitely holding them incommunicado and without trial in conditions which induced 32 suicide attempts before the introduction of "a separate category -- manipulative self injurious behaviour...applied to individuals deemed to have merely feigned suicide attempts" -- many of whom Donald H. Rumsfeld apparently believes would be found innocent if brought to trial -- is not exactly the surest way of administering "justice", no matter how the Administration might choose to "categorise" its prisoners. Any five-year-old? Hell, a two-year-old probably wouldn't have much difficulty with the concept.

Two final examples.

The commission investigating the events of 9/11, "struggling to get similar cooperation [to that offered by Al Gore and Bill Clinton] from President Bush and administration officials," is considering a subpoena to compel Condoleezza Rice to testify in public. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack counters that, "As a matter of law and practice, White House staff have not testified before legislative bodies."

In other words, so long as our asses are covered by "law and practice", fuck you very much in your attempts to determine the cause of the attacks in in the hopes of preventing something similar happening again.

Lastly, in response to public pressure to close the School of the Americas -- our very own "terrorist training camp", located at Fort Benning, Georgia, from whence sprung many of this hemisphere's most notorious thugs -- in 2001 the School was simply renamed, and a requirement for "students" to complete "eight hours of instruction in" human-rights related subjects was added. Noticing that the grassroots protests which have seen tens of thousands annually "cross the line" in defiant witness of the facility's ignoble curricula, the Bush Administration last September announced the establishment of a new "International Law Enforcement Academy" to eventually take the school's place -- located safely out-of-reach of those pesky protesters...in Costa Rica.

Oooookay. That's one way to have your cake, and eat it too.

For an Administration as steeped in the teachings of "the Christ", as hell-bent upon viewing the world in Manichean terms, as great a champion of the mores "civilised world", as abhorrent of "people that will kill on a moment's notice, and they will kill innocent women and children" as this Administration professes to be, its legalistic song-and-dance in service of its commission of actions heretofore "utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy" are the more highly suspect -- as any fule (or any five-year-old) should kno.

Which makes the American public's and the mainstream media's willingness to applaud and/or ignore such machinations the more distressing.

March 01, 2004

Oscar Hates America

Wow. What a tough night for Oscar-watching warbloggers. It wasn't enough that anti-war actors like Viggo Mortensen, Tim Robbins, and Sean Penn were proven right by events in Iraq after the warblogs and their followers called them idiot traitorous assholes. They had to win Oscars, too.

And an anti-war director won an Oscar for an all-time anti-war movie.

Does the vast Hollywood left-wing conspiracy know no bounds?