The Rag Blog

Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton think a tough line on Tehran will sell politically. They could be right.

Oct. 17, 2007 | Future historians may conclude that the key issue in the 2008 presidential campaign was not Iraq, but whether the United States should go to war with Iran. Sparring over Iran dominated the Republican debate in Dearborn, Mich., last week, while a Senate resolution condemning Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as terrorists divided the Democrats, some of whom (including Sen. Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) feared that it might give Bush a pretext to launch another war. Unexpectedly, Tehran has emerged as a preoccupation of candidates — as a litmus test for attitudes toward war and domestic security.

The Republicans are competing to see who can wax most bellicose. The two candidates with the greatest need to compensate for their socially liberally pasts, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have been extra warlike. Giuliani in particular seems to be running for velociraptor-in-chief.

In an ABC interview on Sunday, Giuliani made fun of Romney for saying during the Dearborn debate that he would seek the advice of counsel before launching a war on Iran. Moderator Chris Matthews had asked, “If you were president of the United States, would you need to go to Congress to get authorization to take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities?” Romney had replied that the president “has to do what’s in the best interest” of the country “to protect us against a potential threat.” He said nothing about needing a congressional declaration of war; indeed, he was clearly suggesting that for him to strike Iran it would suffice to get a legal opinion that such an act did not require a formal declaration of war.

During his Sunday interview, Giuliani attempted to portray Romney’s brazen end run around the Constitution as evidence of wimpiness. “That’s one of those moments in a debate,” he told ABC News, “where you say something and you go like this [wiping his mouth with the back of his hand] … wish I can get that one back.

“Basically, right out of the box,” Giuliani continued, “first thing, you’re faced with imminent attack on the United States, I don’t think you call in the lawyers first. I think maybe the generals, the ones you call in first, they’re the ones you want to talk to.”

But Matthews, of course, had not asked Romney what he would do were the U.S. attacked. His question concerned a sudden U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, and whether the president should seek congressional authorization for such an act of war.

During the debate itself, Romney also took heat for not mentioning the need for congressional authorization, although the rebuke came from a lonely voice out of the GOP’s isolationist past. “You’re not allowed to go to war without a declaration of war,” said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. Paul declared flatly that the Constitution was clear and that Romney’s talk about consulting attorneys was “baffling.” He also maintained that “the thought that the Iranians could pose an imminent attack on the United States is preposterous.” When Giuliani shot back that Sept. 11 had been such an attack, Paul interrupted him. “That was no country,” snapped Paul. “That was 19 thugs. It has nothing to do with a country.”

Sen. John McCain tried to present himself as the voice of reason in the debate, saying, “Of course you want to go to Congress; of course you want to get approval.” Last spring, however, when badgered by a belligerent audience member at a South Carolina campaign event about how long the U.S. should tolerate Iran’s alleged bad behavior, McCain had been caught on camera singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb/ Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the old Beach Boys hit “Barbara Ann.” If any major Iranian political figure had made a similar jest about striking the U.S., it would not have been quickly forgotten in Washington. McCain’s ditty, and the relative lack of controversy about it, speak volumes about the aggressive mood in the U.S.

Among the Republican front-runners, debate about Iran occurs in a dark, upside-down fantasy land, where a weak third-world regime with no air force to speak of plots a military strike on the planet’s sole superpower. The third-world regime is led by a genocidal commander-in-chief who serves a global conspiracy; to stop him, the president of the superpower might be compelled, after a quick chat with a lawyer and a few bars of a golden oldie, to launch an aggressive war. (And even the part about a conversation with an attorney is seen by some of the candidates as an abdication of manhood.)

Perhaps because of his chest-thumping contest with Giuliani, Romney especially has shown a talent of late for putting the ignorant in fear-mongering. During the Dearborn debate, Romney alleged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had “spoken about genocide,” and said it was important not to “allow that individual to have the control of launching a nuclear weapon.” In an ad released after the debate, in a clear attempt to out-Giuliani Giuliani, Romney declaimed, “It’s this century’s nightmare, jihadism — violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism.” He told the cameras that the fundamentalists’ goal is to establish a “caliphate,” and wanted to “collapse” countries such as the United States as part of that goal. “We can and will stop Iran,” he added, “from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

President Ahmadinejad, whose job is more or less ceremonial, is not the commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. He has never advocated “genocide,” and his expressed wish that the “occupation regime over Jerusalem” (i.e., the Israeli government) eventually vanish has been mistranslated.

“You’re A Whole Different Person When You’re Scared” ~~ Warren Zevon, Hunter S. Thompson

10/16/07 “ICH ” — — My friend Bernie says since Democrats won the Congress, George Bush reminds him of a cartoon where this destructive Texas jackrabbit was careening headlong down a path, his eyes riveted on a rabbit hole in the distance. A tortoise, sunning himself at the side of the path, looked behind the rabbit where a baying pack of dogs, in hot pursuit, was gaining on him. The tortoise smiled. The poor bunny was in a race for his life. As he shot by, the tortoise called out lazily, “Think you’ll make it?” The rabbit, looking neither to the right nor left, shot back desperately — “I gotta make it…”

Bernie says Bush is running scared. So scared he’s “pantin’ like a lizard…”

Pantin’ like a lizard? Hah. Having been raised in New Mexico with me, Bernie should know that Bush is panting because, well, that’s what lizards do…Especially the venomous gila monsters, who are fun to chase, but only a fool would try to catch one. That’s why the few Democrats out there who appear to be chasing Bush are, in reality, just trotting along in his wake. I suspect they fear the holocaust he is capable of inflicting if they catch him.

For six long years, Bush has “water-boarded” all who oppose him — especially those in Congress — with a steady stream of 9-11. Each speech is laced with visions of 9-11 — 9-11 horror just over the horizon, 9-11 around each corner, 9-11 behind each tree. “Fear Itself” is the only option on the Bush-Cheney table, and they have used it relentlessly, not only to wage genocidal war in order to gain control of the world’s resources, but to seize dictatorial power and to control the quivering masses. Constant and repetitive warnings and false-flag alerts, evidence of plotters and planners skulking among us, hateful ideologies swirling above us like mushroom clouds — is it any wonder our elected representatives, once inside the Kingdom of Fear, lose all sense of direction, the ability to reason?

In his new book, “The Assault on Reason,” former vice president Al Gore shines the light of truth upon this Orwellian prison of fear in which we are held captive. In fact, Gore says more in his Introduction than most people can manage to get across in an entire book. He says there is a “connection between the withdrawal of reason from the public sphere and the resulting vacuum that is filled by fear, superstition, ideology, deception, intolerance, and obsessive secrecy as a means of tightening control over the information that a free society needs to govern itself according to reason-based democracy.”

Bernie says that sounds good, but as far as he’s concerned, they’re all just a bunch of spineless hypocritical weasels. “Something ain’t right here,” Bernie said. “These Democrats are different from the ones we sent up there. We elected them to do the two things they promised to do — stop the massacre in Iraq and impeach the shallow, warmongering fool who lied us into his greedy war. They’ve been there nearly 11 months and they refuse to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for their treasonous lies or the massive destruction that gets worse every day. Blood keeps gushing from the sands of Iraq. Bodies keep piling up.”

Bernie glared at me as he headed for the door. “Are they really scared, or are they just playing politics?” he asked. “Either way — how do they sleep at night — how in the hell do they sleep at night?”

If I knew the answer to that question, I’d know why my hero, Sen. Russ Feingold, gave a speech on the floor of the Senate in early October wherein he urged his peers to take a stand and insist the $150 billion war-funding bill include a timeline for beginning to withdraw troops because, he said, “There have been more than 3,600 killed in Iraq…”

I was aghast. Perhaps Feingold overslept that morning. Had he bothered to check, he would have discovered that, as he spoke, more than 3,800 of our soldiers and marines had been killed. He might even have mentioned the more than 37,000 injured and more than 21,000 suffering from disease and other medical problems. No matter how you stack them, that’s a lot of bodies piling up…

I’d know why another of my heroes, Rep. John Conyers, who had been out there hugging the peerless David Swanson and the courageous Cindy Sheehan — holding meetings in basements, whipping up articles of impeachment — suddenly shut up, backed off, and dove under his desk when the polls closed. Freaked out — after 21 terms in Congress!

I don’t know if House droid Nancy Pelosi experiences fear; if she sleeps, or even blinks, but her strident insistence that she alone is the Decider on impeachment is a power grab indicating either her ignorance of, or contempt for, the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 4 leaves no wiggle room, but is a mandate — “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Pelosi’s mantra that “impeachment is off the table” mirrors Bush’s 9-11 broadside, and is clear evidence that she is far more concerned with politics than with the faceless, invisible bodies that keep piling up because of her inaction. In a recent interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Pelosi said she is determined that Bush will not escape his legacy. “This war is Bush’s war and it’s Cheney’s war. And now,” she said, smacking her lips in delight — “this war is the Republican’s war…”

So there you have it. When Pelosi and other members of Congress were sworn in after the 2006 election, 2,761 American uniformed military had been slain. In the ensuing 11 months, while Democrats were caving in, kissing ass, and giving Bush everything he demanded to expand his war, an additional 1,072 of our young men and women have perished. With 13 months remaining for this administration, one must wonder how many more innocent Iraqi citizens and American military must die in order for Pelosi to write Bush’s legacy with their blood…

If Democrats in Congress actually read that document which they swore to “support and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic,” they would know that any member of the House can start impeachment proceedings by (are you listening, Rep. Dennis Kucinich?) merely tossing a resolution in the hopper for referral to the appropriate committee.

There is good reason for Americans to be scared, for as George Orwell said, “It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continous…The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects.” It’s them against us — a greedy corporate cabal protected by a cruel and sinister Dick Cheney and Bush, a vicious, brainless jackass who endowed himself with “wonder-working” masturbatory power to torture and kill at will.

I once read that the Constitution is our birth certificate. If we are to remain a legitimate republic and escape this Kingdom of Fear, we must impeach both of these illegitimate warmongers. We must resist being fatigued into compliance with murder and into relinquishing our freedoms.

As Hunter S. Thompson wrote so succinctly just prior to the 2004 elections, “We are down to nut-cutting time,” and, again, with Warren Zevron, Thompson admonished — “If you can’t run, walk…If you can’t walk, crawl…But don’t look down…It’s a long, long fall.”

Let us begin.

(Date of publication unknown)– — – Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices – 545 human beings out of the 235 million – are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.

I excluded all but the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.

No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislation’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY

Don’t you see how the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes.

O’neill is the speaker of the House. He is the leader of the majority party. He and his fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetos it, they can pass it over his veto.

REPLACE SCOUNDRELS

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 235 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts – of incompetence and irresponsibility.

I can’t think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in Lebanon, it’s because they want them in Lebanon.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses – provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. . . .

[It should be well understood] that the powers proposed to be surrendered [by the Third Congress] to the Executive were those which the Constitution has most jealously appropriated to the Legislature. . . .

The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war . . . the power of raising armies . . . the power of creating offices. . . .

A delegation of such powers [to the President] would have struck, not only at the fabric of our Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments.

The separation of the power of declaring war from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.

The separation of the power of raising armies from the power of commanding them, is intended to prevent the raising of armies for the sake of commanding them.

The separation of the power of creating offices from that of filling them, is an essential guard against the temptation to create offices for the sake of gratifying favourites or multiplying dependents.

The Blackwater scandal has gotten plenty of media coverage, and it deserves a lot more. Taxpayer subsidies for private mercenaries are antithetical to democracy, and Blackwater’s actions in Iraq have often been murderous. But the scandal is unfolding in a U.S. media context that routinely turns criticisms of the war into demands for a better war.

Many politicians are aiding this alchemy. Rhetoric from a House committee early this month audibly yearned for a better war at a highly publicized hearing that featured Erik Prince, the odious CEO of Blackwater USA.

A congressman from New Hampshire, Paul Hodes, insisted on the importance of knowing “whether failures to hold Blackwater personnel accountable for misconduct undermine our efforts in Iraq.” Another Democrat on the panel, Carolyn Maloney of New York, told Blackwater’s top exec that “your actions may be undermining our mission in Iraq and really hurting the relationship and trust between the Iraqi people and the American military.”

But the problem with Blackwater’s activities is not that they “undermine” the U.S. military’s “efforts” and “mission” in Iraq. The efforts and the mission shouldn’t exist.

A real hazard of preoccupations with Blackwater is that it will become a scapegoat for what is profoundly and fundamentally wrong with the U.S. effort and mission. Condemnation of Blackwater, however justified, can easily be syphoned into a political whirlpool that demands a cleanup of the U.S. war effort — as though a relentless war of occupation based on lies could be redeemed by better management — as if the occupying troops in Army and Marine uniforms are incarnations of restraint and accountability.

Midway through this month, the Associated Press reported that “U.S. and Iraqi officials are negotiating Baghdad’s demand that security company Blackwater USA be expelled from the country within six months, and American diplomats appear to be working on how to fill the security gap if the company is phased out.” We can expect many such stories in the months ahead.

Meanwhile, we get extremely selective U.S. media coverage of key Pentagon operations. Bombs explode in remote areas, launched from high-tech U.S. weaponry, and few who scour the American news pages and broadcasts are any the wiser about the human toll.

With all the media attention to sectarian violence in Iraq, the favorite motif of coverage is the suicide bombing that underscores the conflagration as Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence. American reporters and commentators rarely touch on the U.S. occupation as perpetrator and catalyst of the carnage.

One of the most unusual aspects of the current Blackwater scandal is that it places recent killings of Iraqi civilians front-and-center even though the killers were Americans. This angle is outside the customary media frame that focuses on what Iraqis are doing to each other and presents Americans — whether in military uniform or in contractor mode — as well-meaning heroes who sometimes become victims of dire circumstances.

Many members of Congress, like quite a few journalists, have hopped on the anti-Blackwater bandwagon with rhetoric that bemoans how the company is making it more difficult for the U.S. government to succeed in Iraq. But the American war effort has continued to deepen the horrors inside that country. And Washington’s priorities have clearly placed the value of oil way above the value of human life. So why should we want the U.S. government to succeed in Iraq?

Unless the deadly arrogance of Blackwater and its financiers in the U.S. government is placed in a broader perspective on the U.S. war effort as a whole, the vilification of the firm could distract from challenging the overall presence of American forces in Iraq and the air war that continues to escalate outside the American media’s viewfinder.

The current Blackwater scandal should help us to understand the dynamics that routinely set in when occupiers — whether privatized mercenaries or uniformed soldiers — rely on massive violence against the population they claim to be helping.

Terrible as Blackwater has been and continues to be, that profiteering corporation should not be made a lightning rod for opposition to the war. New legislation that demands accountability from private security forces can’t make a war that’s wrong any more right. Finding better poster boys who can be touted as humanitarians rather than mercenaries won’t change the basic roles of gun-toting Americans in a country that they have no right to occupy.

Why has not the Turkish parliament given tit for tat and passed a resolution condemning the Iraqi Genocide?

As a result of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, more than one million Iraqis have died, and several millions are displaced persons. The Iraqi death toll and the millions of uprooted Iraqis match the Armenian deaths and deportations. If one is a genocide, so is the other.

It is true that most of the Iraqi deaths have resulted from Iraqis killing one another. But it was Bush’s destruction of the secular Iraqi state that unleashed the sectarian strife.

Moreover, American troops in Iraq have killed more civilians than insurgents. The US military in Iraq has fallen for every bit of disinformation fed to it by Al Qaeda personnel posing as “informants” and by Sunnis setting up Shi’ites and Shi’ites setting up Sunnis. As a result, American bombs and missiles have blown up weddings, funerals, kids playing soccer, and people shopping in bazaars and sleeping in their homes.

Not to be outdone, Bush’s private Waffen SS known as Blackwater Security has taken to gunning Iraqi civilians down in the streets. How do Blackwater and Custer Battles killers escape the “unlawful combatant” designation?

One can only marvel at the insouciance of the US Congress to the current Iraqi Genocide while condemning Turkey for one that happened 90 years ago.

People seldom see the beam in their own eye, only the mote in the eyes of others. Every member of the Bush Regime is busily at work denouncing Iran for causing instability in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the US has invaded two countries, throwing them into total chaos, while beating the drums for war with Iran and conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and to attack Syria.

The indisputable facts are that the US and Israel have attacked four Middle East countries and are determined to attack a fifth. Yet, it is peaceful Iran, at war with no one, that Bush and Israel blame for causing instability in the Middle East.

Not content with its many wars in the Middle East, the Bush Regime is sponsoring wars in Africa and is setting up an African Command. The US government has been bombing and attacking other countries ever since the cold war ended. Instead of peace, the gang in Washington DC chose war.

Other than the Israel Lobby, the greatest supporters of Bush’s wars are Christian evangelicals, specifically the “rapture evangelicals” and the “Christian Zionists.”

I remember when Christianity was about saving one’s soul. Today it is about bringing on Armageddon. While the various evangelical Christians preach war in the Middle East, they condemn Islam for being a “warlike religion.”

Americans are so full of themselves that they are blind to their extraordinary hypocrisy.

The US government has broken every agreement with Russia by withdrawing from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, pushing NATO to Russia’s borders, conniving to place missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, and buying governments in former Soviet republics and installing US military bases therein.

When Russian President Putin finally has enough and protests, the US Secretary of State blames Putin for being difficult and restarting the cold war.

Few Americans realize it, but they take the cake.

International polls show that the rest of the world regard the US and Israel as the greatest dangers to world peace. Americans claim that they are fighting wars against terrorism, but it is US and Israeli terrorism that worries everyone else. The rest of the world knows that the wars are about US and Israeli hegemony and that the US and Israel are prepared to engage in whatever acts of terror are necessary to achieve hegemony.

That is the bare fact.

When the US dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US empire will come to an abrupt end. Sooner or later the rest of the world will realize this and, in an act of self-protection, dethrone the dollar.

If Somalia, occupied by U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops and in the midst of a chaotic, growing insurgency that has hardly been noted here, could well be our new Afghanistan, then what might Sudan be? Perhaps the starting point for the next disastrous oil war on this planet? Right now, in the American mind, Sudan is essentially Darfur, where a genocidal ethnic-cum-energy war run out of Islamist Khartoum is already underway — a subject which independent journalist David Morse took up at this site in 2005 and 2006.

Now, thanks to the support of the Nation Institute (which also supports Tomdispatch.com) and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Morse takes us along on a two-part journey he made with three young refugees, three “Lost Boys,” returning to the homes they fled years ago in the midst of a bitter civil war in southern Sudan. Though this region is largely ignored in the U.S. at the moment, that is unlikely to last for reasons Morse describes in his dramatic first-person account of traveling through the southern part of a Sudan poised at the edge of the abyss. Tom

10/15/07 “Daily Star” — — “We talk about democracy and human rights. Iraqis talk about justice and honor.” That comment from Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, made at a seminar last month on counterinsurgency, is the beginning of wisdom for an America that is trying to repair the damage of recent years. It applies not simply to Iraq but the range of problems in a world tired of listening to an American megaphone.

Dignity is the issue that vexes billions of people around the world, not democracy. Indeed, when people hear President George W. Bush preaching about democratic values, it often comes across as a veiled assertion of America power. The implicit message is that other countries should be more like us – replacing their institutions, values and traditions with ours. We mean well, but people feel disrespected. The bromides and exhortations are a further assault on their dignity.

That’s the difficulty when the US House of Representatives pressures Turkey to admit that it committed genocide against the Armenians 92 years ago. It’s not that this demand is wrong. I’m an Armenian-American, and some of my own relatives perished in that genocidal slaughter. I agree with the congressional resolution, but I know that this is a problem that Turks must resolve. They are imprisoned in a past they have not yet been able to accept. Our hectoring makes it easier for them to retreat deeper into denial.

The most articulate champion of what the administration likes to call the “democracy agenda” has been Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. When she talks about the universality of American values, she carries the special resonance of an African-American girl from Birmingham, Alabama, who witnessed the struggle for democracy in a segregated America. But she also conveys an American arrogance, a message that when it comes to good governance, it’s “our way or the highway.”

That’s why it’s encouraging to hear that Rice is taking policy advice from Kilcullen, a brilliant Australian military officer who helped reshape US strategy in Iraq toward the bottom-up precepts of counterinsurgency. Sources tell me Kilcullen will soon be joining the State Department as a part-time consultant. For a taste of his thinking, check out his September 26 presentation to a Marine Corps seminar (available at www.wargaming.quantico.usmc.mil.)

As we think about a “dignity agenda,” there are some other useful readings. A starting point is Zbigniew Brzezinski’s new book, “Second Chance,” which argues that America’s best hope is to align itself with what he calls a “global political awakening.” The former national security adviser explains: “In today’s restless world, America needs to identify with the quest for universal human dignity, a dignity that embodies both freedom and democracy but also implies respect for cultural diversity.”

After I mentioned Brzezinski’s ideas about dignity in a previous column, a reader sent me a 1961 essay by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, which made essentially the same point. A deeply skeptical man who resisted the “isms” of partisan thought, Berlin was trying to understand the surge of nationalism despite two world wars. “Nationalism springs, as often as not, from a wounded or outraged sense of human dignity, the desire for recognition,” he wrote.

“The craving for recognition has grown to be more powerful than any other force abroad today,” Berlin continued. “It is no longer economic insecurity or political impotence that oppresses the imaginations of many young people in the West today, but a sense of the ambivalence of their social status – doubts about where they belong, and where they wish or deserve to belong.”

A final item on my dignity reading list is “Violent Politics,” a new book by the iconoclastic historian William R. Polk. He examines 10 insurgencies through history – from the American Revolution to the Irish struggle for independence to the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation – to make a stunningly simple point, which we managed to forget in Iraq: People don’t like to be told what to do by outsiders. “The very presence of foreigners, indeed, stimulates the sense first of apartness and ultimately of group cohesion.” Foreign intervention offends people’s dignity, Polk reminds us. That’s why insurgencies are so hard to defeat.

People will fight to protect their honor even – and perhaps, especially – when they have nothing else left. That has been a painful lesson for the Israelis, who hoped for the past 30 years they could squeeze the Palestinians into a rational peace deal. It’s excruciating now for Armenian-Americans like me, when we see Turkey refusing to make a rational accounting of its history. But if foreign governments try to make people do the right thing, it won’t work. They have to do it for themselves.

Axis of Logic: Below, William Dalrymple’s treatment of the history of tolerance and humanistic ideals helps us put the West’s claim on universal values in perspective. Ordinary people throughout the world are awakening to the abuse of terms like “democracy”, “liberty” and “human rights” in Washington, London, Paris and other bases of neoliberalism. Due to the arrogance and overstepping of the elite and to the democratization of information via the Internet, ordinary people are gaining awareness and power in unity.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she intends to move ahead with a vote on a resolution that labels the deaths of more than a million Armenians during World War I as genocide.

The resolution has strained U.S. relations with Turkey and drawn criticism from the Bush administration.

“This resolution is one that is consistent with what our government has always said about … what happened at that time,” Pelosi said on ABC’s “This Week.”

When asked about criticism that it could harm relations with Turkey — a key ally in the war in Iraq and a fellow member of NATO — Pelosi said, “There’s never been a good time,” adding that it is important to pass the resolution now “because many of the survivors are very old.”

“When I came to Congress 20 years ago, it wasn’t the right time because of the Soviet Union. Then that fell, and then it wasn’t the right time because of the Gulf War One. And then it wasn’t the right time because of overflights of Iraq. And now it’s not the right time because of Gulf War Two.

“And, again, the survivors of the Armenian genocide are not going to be with us.”

But White House Spokesman Tony Fratto said bringing the resolution to a vote “may do grave harm to U.S.-Turkish relations and to U.S. interests in Europe and the Middle East.”

Turkey’s top general warned Sunday that ties with the United States will be irreversibly damaged if Congress passes the resolution, The Associated Press reported.

Turkey has recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations and warned of cuts in logistical support to the United States over the issue. The recall is only for a limited period of time, said a U.S. State Department official who talked to the ambassador.

“If this resolution [that] passed in the committee passes the House as well, our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again,” Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told the daily Milliyet newspaper, according to AP

The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 27-21 Wednesday to approve the nonbinding measure, which declares the deportation of nearly 2 million Armenians from the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923 was “systematic” and “deliberate,” amounting to “genocide.” The deportations led to the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people.

But Sunday, Pelosi stood by her previous assertion that the measure would be taken to a full vote if it passed the committee.

Newly installed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, tried to calm tensions by phoning his Turkish counterpart shortly after Wednesday’s vote.

Mullen told Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey’s chief of staff, that the Pentagon is working hard to inform Congress of what the military implications might be if the Turks were to respond by cutting off U.S. access to the air base at Incirlik in Turkey.

Seventy percent of U.S. air cargo bound for Iraq passes over or through Turkey.

The Armenian government and Armenians around the world, including many Armenian-Americans, have been pressing for international support for their contention that Armenians were the victims of genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

The Ottoman Empire disintegrated in 1923, replaced by the modern republic of Turkey, where the Armenian issue remains sensitive. Turks reject the genocide label, insisting there was no organized campaign against the Armenians and that many Turks also died in the chaos and violence of the period.

Though predominantly Muslim, Turkey, which borders both Europe and Iraq, is secular and pro-Western. In addition to its membership in NATO, Ankara is also seeking to become a member of the European Union.

Speaking later on ABC’s “This Week,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced the House committee’s vote — despite agreeing with the assertion that the killings amounted to genocide.

“I think it’s a really bad idea for the Congress to be condemning what happened 100 years ago,” the Kentucky Republican said Sunday. “We all know it happened. There’s a genocide museum, actually, in Armenia to commemorate what happened.

“But I don’t think the Congress passing this resolution is a good idea at any point. But particularly not a good idea when Turkey is cooperating with us in many ways, which ensures greater safety for our soldiers.”

Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham echoed those comments on CNN’s Late Edition.

“I’m not worried about World War I. … I’m worried about what I think is World War III, a war against extremists, and Iraq is the central battle front and Turkey has been a very good ally,” Graham said Sunday.

“We’ve had problems with Turkey, but the problem that Turkey has with the northern part of Iraq, if you think it is bad now, let the country fail.”
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Turkey has engaged in ongoing cross-border skirmishes with rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which launches raids from northern Iraq. The recent killings of Turkish soldiers brought the conflict to a boiling point, and Turkey’s parliament may consider a motion to approve cross-border incursions into northern Iraq as early as this week. Video Watch how the rebels are straining U.S.-Turkish relations »