August 2005

August 31, 2005

Yowch!

From an unsigned Washington Post editorial:

President Bush, who has maintained his weeks-long holiday schedule without regard to the bloodshed in Iraq, is breaking off his summer idyll two days early to tend to the fallout from Katrina.

Who says the mainstream media can't bury the rapier when it really wants to? Trouble is, it so very rarely wants to...

Update, 9/1/05: And now it's the New York Times piling on:

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday... He...read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration... [...]

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

All well-and-good. But has the Times ever, even once issued an editorial edict such as the following concerning the equally dire humanitarian situation in Iraq?

Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi.

With Judy Miller holed up in the stoney lonesome, the path is presumably clear for it to do so.

The absence of any comparisons to the man-made, intentional, triumphalist destruction of Iraq is especially striking given the frequent references to the Gulf Coast as resembling a war zone. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour compared the damage to Hiroshima; while a Texas professor wondered, incredibly, "What do you compare it to? Dresden? Berlin?"

Uh, how about Fallujah; where the existence of a single building in a given city block is cited as evidence that "destruction is not total"; where hundreds of thousands of refugees spent the winter in camps outside of the city; where -- as opposed to New Orleans, where at least the hospitals have stayed operating as long as possible -- the hospitals were the first buildings destroyed? How about Baghdad, whose residents are suffering through the third year of intermittent-at-best electricity, and where the "coalition" fired off god-knows-how-many tons of Depleted Uranium?

The comparisons between the Gulf Coast and Iraq are so obvious, it would seem impossible to miss them. Yet just two days after crowing about "universal values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law", with regards to Iraq; the President lamented "one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history" -- and not a damn person called him out over the hypocrisy.

August 04, 2005

The Wartime President

I also want to talk to you about national security. Make no mistake about it, we are at war. We're at war with an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001. We're at war against an enemy that, since that day, has continued to kill.

President Bush is getting the kind of break most Americans can only dream of: nearly five weeks away from the office, loaded with vacation time.

The August getaway is Bush's 49th trip to his cherished ranch since taking office and the 319th day that Bush has spent, entirely or partially, in Crawford -- nearly 20 percent of his presidency to date...

The American death toll this week in Iraq rose to 27.

August 01, 2005

Is The Fat Lady Singing?

To hear Scott McClellan tell it, the so-called "War On Terror" is proceeding swimmingly:

We went in and liberated the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban that was supporting his activities has been removed from power. The remnants of the Taliban and the al Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden are on the run. We have worked to bring to justice, in one way or another, some three-quarters of the al Qaeda leadership and management structure. So we are dismantling the al Qaeda network.

But this is an ideological struggle that we are engaged in. It is a long-term struggle. We are continuing to pursue all those who seek to do harm to the civilized world. They will be brought to justice. We are now fighting the war on terrorism on the offensive by taking the fight to the terrorists overseas, so that we don't have to fight them here on our own shores.

Well, no wonder bin Laden hasn't been captured yet: we're only now fighting the "War On Terrorism" "on the offensive". What the fuck were we waiting for?

This new approach had better yield results pretty quickly, though, as a quick survey of recent news suggests that the curtain may well be closing on the Bush Administration's vaunted war for civilisation.

• It's not enough that Bush's leading "War-On-Terror" ally is exporting nuclear technology to the Third World, but it's also now playing host to the training camps formerly located in Afghanistan:

Pakistan's leading monthly magazine, Herald, has published a detailed eyewitness account backed with photographs on how youths are trained in militant camps in the central region of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Mansehra. The story was so accurate that the government could not deny it, although it issued orders to "fix" the publisher. [...]

According to a manager of the training camp, the report said, all the major militant organizations, including Hizbul Mujahideen, al-Badr Mujahideen, Harkat ul-Mujahideen and others, began regrouping in April.

The Herald report says that at least 13 major camps in the Mansehra region were revived during the first week of May. As the camps reopen, managers claim trained militants as well as new aspirants are flocking to enlist for jihad.

• But it's not all peaches 'n' cream in Afghanistan, either:

Dug into bunkers in an orchard in the remote village of Gazek Kula, armed with machineguns and rocketpropelled grenade launchers, dozens of Taleban fighters fought for hours with the Americans, about 50 of them to the death.

Weeks later the Americans were in action again, battling for almost 12 hours to oust at least 200 Taleban from the district headquarters in Miana Shin.

"It's the most intense combat I've ever seen. They fight harder than anyone in Iraq ever did. I really never expected anything like this. We all kind of thought the Taleban were gone."

• The Bush Administration's other great ally in South Asia, Uzbekistan, has given the United States its packing orders:

Uzbekistan has given the US six months to close its military base there, in its first move to sever relations with its former sponsor. The air base near the southern town of Khanabad, known as K2, was opened weeks after the September 11 attacks to provide vital logistical support for Operation Enduring Freedom in neighbouring Afghanistan. [...]

A U.S. defence department spokesman said at the weekend: "We got a note at the U.S. embassy in Tashkent on Friday; the gist of it was that we have 180 days to cease operations at the K2 airfield."

He added that the defence and state departments were evaluating "the exact nature" of the request. "K2 has been an important asset for the war in Afghanistan," he said. "We will have to evaluate what to do next."

• Meanwhile, in Mesopotamia, the new Iraqi government appears to be being pulled ever-more surely into Iran's orbit:

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has taken the first important steps in the sensitive process of normalizing relations with former foe and rival Iran. His three-day official visit to Tehran, which ended on Monday [July 18], was "very important and significant", say senior Iranian analysts.

In addition, the commanders on the ground acknowledge, yet again, that they're helpless in the face of the guerilla war:

"There is no doubt that the insurgency will rise in and around Fallujah over the next few months as a lot of political developments take place," Colonel Mark Gurganus, the commanding officer of U.S. marines in Fallujah, aid.

Anything else? Well, the war is now projected to cost, when all is said and done, $700 Billion; the Pentagon, unable even to bribe anybody to volunteer to get his or her ass shot off in Iraq, is facing a severe cannon-fodder shortage; Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low; 85% of Londoners blame the Iraq adventure for the attacks on their city...

...And, oh yeah, the "War On Terror" has been renamed. The new "slogan" (as the New York Times calls it) is the "Struggle Against Violent Extremism". Which, really, gets right to the heart of the matter: call it whatever the fuck you want -- "Cold War", "Drug War", "Terror War" -- it's all the same policy. Namely, bombing the Third World to shreds, starving the poor, and incarcareting whoever's left.

But the Democrats play the game much better than do the Republicans, whose eyes are too big for their stomachs, and whose corruption is so brazen that they end up shooting themselves in the feet time and again.

It may be difficult to believe that, having seized the Iraqi oilfields, the Bush Administration would then leave off. But it looks as though it doesn't have much choice. But buck up there, Imperialists sympathisers: even if the United States exits Baghdad tomorrow, it'll still have held the "Green Zone" twenty-seven months longer that Napoleon was able to hold Moscow...