The Rag Blog

It took some time and effort, but, with the aid of TPM readers, we’ve obtained two complete lists of monthly Iraqi civilian casualties from January 2006 forward. Taking these numbers on their own terms, they do not bear out the claims made by the Bush administration and U.S. military that the surge has reduced Iraqi civilian casualties. Comparing each month’s death toll in 2007 to the death toll from that same month in 2006, the numbers show that surge has not made Iraq safer for the civilian population. By some measurements, Iraqis are in greater danger than a year ago.

It’s a sign of how skewed the debate over the Iraq War is that these numbers are not readily available. Different Iraqi government agencies present different casualty figures. The U.S. military’s own casualty total is said to rely on the Iraqis, but it’s unclear which Iraqi agency it uses or what adjustments are made to the Iraqi figures. Even as today’s testimony from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is considered a possible make-or-break moment for U.S. policy on Iraq, with the Bush Administration and the Pentagon touting the success of the surge in reducing civilian casualties, there is no general agreement on what civilian casualties have been or on what the most accurate methodology for tallying casualties is.

NEW YORK — Americans don’t know how their government works. Democrats, in control of Congress, are taking advantage of our ignorance to continue the Iraq War. Which brings up two questions: Why won’t the “antiwar” Democrats act to stop the carnage? And why aren’t reporters calling them on it?

“Democrats,” writes Charles Babington in an Associated Press item that appeared in hundreds of newspapers, “control both chambers [of Congress] but lack the numbers to override President Bush’s vetoes of bids to mandate troop withdrawals from Iraq.” It’s a half-truth at best: the Democrats’ narrow majority is less than the two-thirds majority they’d need to override a presidential veto. Here’s the full truth: it doesn’t matter.

In June Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra! Magazine wrote: “If the Democrat-controlled Congress wanted to force the Bush administration to accept a bill with a withdrawal timeline, it didn’t have to pass the bill over Bush’s veto–it just had to make clear that no Iraq War spending bill without a timeline would be forthcoming.”

Democratic leaders know that. And here’s how I know they know: days after taking control of Congress, on January 30, they invited five constitutional law experts to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask them how they could end the war. Four out of five of the experts swore that the Democrats could stop the Iraq War just…like…that.

“Today we’ve heard convincing testimony and analysis that Congress has the power to stop the war if it wants to,” said Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI). Yet eight months later, there’s still no end in sight.

The Dems won the 2006 elections with promises to end the war. Weeks after taking over Congress, however, Republicans spooked them with one of the most ludicrous talking points of all time. Cutting off the money, they said, would abandon U.S. soldiers at the front, their ammo dwindling as Al Qaeda insurgents swarmed over them. (Actually–the fact that I have to write this speaks to the American right’s intellectual dishonesty–the troops would go to the airport. They would board airplanes. They would fly home.)

Democrats worry that they’ll be portrayed as weak on defense if they act unilaterally to pull out of Iraq. Irony of ironies, they’re wussing out to avoid looking wimpy. Forcing Republicans to vote with them to end the war, they calculate, would give them political cover. Extra! continued: “Democrats may not have wanted to pay the supposed political costs of [cutting off funding], but news coverage should have made clear that this was a choice, not something forced on them by the lack of a veto-proof majority.”

Rather than set the record straight, the media continues to spread the Democrats-can’t-stop-the-Republican-war meme this week:

Michael Duffy, Time magazine: “If Democrats had more votes–particularly in the House–they might be able to force Bush to change course. But Bush will fight any resolution fencing him in with a veto that, as things stand now, the Democrats cannot override. But the President’s critics will continue to try, hoping to attract moderate Republicans who are fearful of losing their seats next year.” Occasionally Time invites me to its Christmas party. If I score an invite this year, my present for their fact-checkers will be a copy of the Constitution.

Marcella Bombardieri, The Boston Globe: “In the Senate, Democrats have only a 51 to 49 majority, far from the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster and the 67 needed to override a presidential veto. All efforts to force a troop withdrawal have failed, and the party will have to count on substantial Republican defections to make any further progress this fall.” I’ll be checking the Globe for a retraction.

Brian Knowlton, The New York Times: Knowlton dutifully quoted Democratic Senator Joe Biden’s claim that there were “political limits on his party, even with the Congressional majority it has held since the November midterm elections. ‘This is the president’s war,’ [Biden] said. ‘Unless we get 67 votes to override his veto, there’s nothing we can do to stop this war…'” Not only did the Times fail to call Biden on his brazen lie, it gave him the last word.

You’d think the Democrats would want to end the Iraq War before their likely retaking of the White House, but that’s because you’re a human being, not a politician. Politicians are happy to dispatch hundreds of young American men and women to certain death (along with thousands of Iraqis), if the bloodshed squeezes out an extra half percentage point at the polls. Reid and Pelosi prefer to run against a disastrous ongoing Republican war than point to a fragile Democratic-brokered peace.

Agrofuel development has arrived on the global stage. Just this year, the number of declarations, dollars, and development plans that have gone to agrofuels are unparalleled in any other sector. An idea that languished for decades has suddenly become the darling of politicians, big business, international financiers, and the media.

This fact alone should make us worry. Since when has an ecological response to fossil fuel use found favor with governments and corporations alike? Agrofuels have been touted as the solution to the most pressing problems facing U.S. society and the planet. Promoters claim they reduce greenhouse gas emissions, stave off the end of industrial growth based on fossil fuels, are sustainable and renewable, increase energy security, and help farmers.

But a closer look reveals that in many ways the rosy future envisioned by agrofuels promoters looks like the worst of the past.

Promoting Agrofuels

Scientists and ecologists still hotly debate the pros and cons of agrofuels. Studies contradict each other on whether net energy generation is positive or negative, whether greenhouse gas emissions and pollution increase or decrease, and how costs and energy efficiency sort out. However, the political consensus has been swift and mighty. In a few short years, an alliance of the world’s most economically and politically powerful forces has emerged to promote “biofuels.”

Who is behind the “biofuels” boom and why?

In his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush proclaimed the goal of substituting 20% of gasoline with agrofuels in 10 years. The European Union has set a similar benchmark. At its latest meeting the G-8 wholeheartedly endorsed major efforts to develop agrofuel use and the international financial institutions have created multibillion-dollar loan portfolios to that end. The Interamerican Ethanol Commission is chaired by Jeb Bush, Brazil’s former Minister of Agriculture and agribusiness leader, Roberto Rodrigues, and Luis Moreno, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Business is equally, if not more, enthusiastic. Four highly globalized sectors come together in advancing agrofuel research, investment, and production: the agribusiness, oil, automotive, and biotech industries.

Since the beginning of agrofuel production, agribusiness companies including ADM, Cargill, Bunge, and Dreyfus have jumped on the bandwagon. With government subsidies flowing liberally and huge profits to be made across the globe, agrofuels are more attractive now than ever. In 2005 they represented a US$15.7 billion market, with 15% growth over the year before. ADM, the leading refiner, produced one billion gallons of ethanol in 2006 and plans to increase capacity by 550 million gallons over the next two years. Cargill owns an increasing number of ethanol refineries and contracts or owns sugarcane plantations in Brazil.

Oil companies look to agrofuels to prolong their life and diversify their business. Agrofuels do not necessarily require changes in patterns of consumption or restructuring the fossil-fuel based economy. By mandating a 5-10% component of ethanol or biodiesel in regular gasoline, the use of fossil fuels can be stretched out several generations.

Likewise the automotive industry can maintain or even increase sales as people are obliged to buy new cars adapted to ethanol use. All this can be done while burying the arguments of those who urge the ultimate taboo in a capitalist system—a reduction of consumption.

The last of the Big Four, the biotech industry, may seem a less obvious beneficiary but stands to make tremendous gains at a time when it faces growing opposition. Reaching agrofuel production goals requires converting crops to fuel use, increasing yields, and lowering costs. Genetically modified (GM) crops provide a way toward short-term gains on the last two points. GM varieties of corn and sugarcane specifically adapted to ethanol production are already in widespread use. In fact, since 90% of U.S. ethanol comes from corn and most of the U.S. corn crop is genetically modified, ethanol has earned itself the nickname of “Monsanto moonshine”—Monsanto Corporation being the leader in GM corn as well as other genetically modified crops. Research focuses on engineering plant genes for even higher yields and traits that facilitate processing. Much of this new produce is likely to be unfit for human consumption.

With promoters like these, one fact becomes glaringly obvious: the agrofuel revolution is anything but revolutionary. Transition to agrofuel use exemplifies reforming a system in order to perpetuate it.

Re-Mapping the Americas

The biofuels boom has been launched in the Western Hemisphere by the Interamerican Ethanol Commission and through proliferating binational pacts—most notably the one between George Bush and Brazil’s Lula de Silva last March. The plans threaten to re-map the agricultural and political economy of the Americas.

Changes in land use under the agrofuel strategy will transform landscapes and lives, not only in the United States but throughout the hemisphere. Even with increased crop yields and genetic modification, U.S. agrofuel production will fall far short of the recently set goals for agrofuel consumption. Offshore sourcing provides a cheap and reliable source. In the Americas, Ecuadorian agribusiness plans to expand sugarcane production by 50,000 hectares and clear 100,000 hectares of natural forests for oil palm production. In Colombia oil palm production is already dubbed the “diesel of deforestation.”

Brazil is the laboratory of the future in the ethanol department. Eighty percent of its cars are able to run on ethanol and ethanol comprises 40% of auto fuel. Brazil already provides 60% of the world’s sugarcane ethanol, grown on three million hectares of land. Brazil produces 17 billion liters a year and aims to control 50% of the global ethanol market according to the Brazilian National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES). To meet its ethanol growth goals, Brazil plans to clear another 60 million hectares for sugarcane production.

The first casualty of the reorganization of agricultural production is the small farmer. No one would idealize the conditions of peasant farmers in Brazil or in the rest of Latin America. In most countries, rural areas concentrate two-thirds or more of families living in poverty. But agrofuels production offers no real prospects for improving their lot. On the contrary, Brazil’s experience shows considerable danger of deterioration for one of society’s most vulnerable groups.

James Thorlby of the Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil reports that plantation agrofuel production displaces farmers who then have two choices: they can become plantation laborers or urban slum-dwellers. He notes that in the state of Pernambuco 45,000 families have been displaced by monocrops. Other analysts fear that landless peasants who are unable to find work in plantations will be forced to clear land in natural areas protected for their biodiversity. The concentration of land and distilleries in the hands of rural elite and transnational corporations pushes family farmers out of entire regions.

The new alliance between the U.S. government and its allies in the region to convert Latin America into a source of agrofuels not only benefits transnational corporations and big business; it also helps counteract the growing influence of Venezuela and other countries seeking to break away from U.S. hegemony. The ethanol alliance seeks to consolidate a new power line in Latin America that runs directly between the United States and Brazil, with the dynamic force being the transnational corporations with interests in both countries. If this alliance is consolidated, it will erode the Bolivarian plan to integrate the continent following a model of state-regulated economies and with the support of Venezuelan oil. It would also undermine efforts to strengthen the Southern Common Market.

In the deal, Brazil gains capital to develop ethanol-producing technologies within its own borders and to export them to Central America and Caribbean nations. In addition to investment and credits, the São Paulo industrialists can count on government policies that will allow them to extend agribusiness into the Amazon and other regions now populated by small farmers.

The United States gains greater independence from Middle East oil by importing more cheap Brazilian ethanol. It also begins to redraw the map of energy integration in Latin America based on Brazilian ethanol rather than Venezuelan oil and Bolivian gas, thus neutralizing the power of nations it considers uncooperative.

Cargill, one of the largest owners and operators of ethanol production in Brazil, is expanding its operations in the South while continuing to protect its corn interests in the North through U.S. government import tariffs on ethanol. As monocropping by agribusiness for biofuels absorbs huge tracts of land, small food farmers who have long resisted international market control of land and resources are becoming an endangered species in areas of the agrofuels boom.

Because I have written about the physics of the World Trade Center fires and collapses of September 11, 2001, I have recently been asked by several people to comment on “9-11” during this sixth anniversary of the events. Because 9/11 happened a long time ago, as time is now experienced by the now-now no-history-cache wireless-wired over-caffeinated infotainment public mind, people have solidified their views on the subject, and new commentary is unnecessary. Those who have moved beyond 9/11 see it as blowback from decades of inhuman US foreign policy. Those who cannot accept the realization that “the natives” successfully struck back will instead find comfort in the hypothesis that 9/11 was an engineered catastrophe, and the ultimate puppeteers were those who pull the strings of the US government.

I consider the first school of thought to be of rationalists and realists, and the second school to be of irrationalists and fantasists. “Faith-based” is a synonym for irrational, and a strong belief in conspiracies — with insufficient evidence — is an irrational expression of fear. And it is fear, ultimately, which is at the root of the obsession by so many with 9-11. We, in these United States, are deeply afraid because we are deeply uncertain about the continuation of our personal comforts (jobs?, housing?, health?, global energy resources?), and even our personal survival (crime?, military draft?, more 9-11s?). If you can see through to the source of your fear, you will be free. I can never tell you anything more important.

The psychology of fear is involved, but I am impatient with it, thus “unsympathetic”. The presence of a large population of fearful people creates opportunities for alert charismatic opportunists to profit, by resonating with the archetypes of the shared mass-mindedness and stroking it to spasms of “comfort” — as the fictional Elmer Gantry did. In our commercialized world, the infotainment produced for this purpose is now a torrent. One of the mantras of the faith (of a US government conspiracy to engineer 9/11 and its subsequent perceptions in the public mind) is that “we need an ‘independent’ investigation” to expose the inner workings of the presupposed conspiracy, thus ‘awakening’ the American people to popular unanimity in toppling the Bush Administration and punishing all its associated hench-people. After this, nirvana supposedly. Much of the mail I get from conspiracists (my term for school #2) takes me to task for failing to support the idea of the desired investigation.

For the record, I am in favor of further investigation. Seymour Hersh did it in 1969 to uncover the My Lai massacre by US troops in Vietnam (based on the original heroic investigation by a soldier, the late Ron Ridenhour) and he had no clearance for classified information, nor any subpoena power. Yet, he produced results that awakened the American public and prompted government hearings (“investigation”). This “independent” and public investigation of My Lai was a result of Hersh’s reporting, not a precursor to it. So, I encourage all conspiracists to investigate to their heart’s content (in fact, why don’t they?). I am sure this investigatory frenzy will thrash out like that of the Kennedy assassination, and in 40 years we’ll finally know for sure: it was airplanes crashing into the buildings (1), insulation knocked off steel, fire, metal creep, and a massive oil-fed fire in WTC 7 (2).

Isn’t it amazing that reality is not put off by our preferences among improbabilities, that it does not find it necessary to unfold in a reflection of the hierarchies of cause-and-effect, controlling persecutors and helpless victims which our uncomprehending minds insist on projecting upon it? Isn’t it amazing that non-white “natives” from far away can make so many white people in the most powerful white people’s country scared? Reality couldn’t possibly turn out that way if we can’t imagine it, could it? Are we really to believe that a small band of swarthy raiders from Islamic lands could possess the imagination, the cunning, the determination, the ruthlessness, the grit and the courage to scare the living hell out of the superpower populace? How is it possible for these “nobodies” to have a greater impact over us than our own powerful lords? Are we to believe that “the natives” smote us? Reality can present us with “an obvious” that our racist thinking is blinded by: “Dick Cheney,” “Project for a New American Century”, “controlled demolition” (3); inhale, “connect the dots”, regain your equilibrium, now you see that the world is as it SHOULD be.

Why is it so imperative to the conspiracists to convert everybody else? No one prevents them from “investigating,” no one prevents them from running engineering simulations of the Towers collapses to demonstrate their claims “scientifically” (commercial software is available to do this, and various universities, like Purdue, are touting their research software by applying it to the 9/11 events). Why the missionary zeal to infect me with their disease? Really, it’s a virus; it propagates by corrupting consciousness — like the invasion of the body snatchers — so the new human carrier is propelled into a rabid invasion of the consciousness of others.

The moon rises low over the night horizon this time of year, and probably calls out the zombies in greater numbers. Let them enjoy their dreams, their moaning and dancing releases their tension, and the tight coil of their consciousness will keep them captivated for the duration. They want us to meld into their trance, and we want them to awake and help with the tasks at hand. But, really, neither of us has the right to direct other lives to the purposes we deem important. Leave them to their revels. Why antagonize them? Let us make do with those we can talk to.

And, after all this wrangling, what have we done to 9/l1?, but forgotten the only two lessons worthy of carrying out of it, and after such a high price paid for them, too:

— the anguish of the victims and the sacrifices of the rescuers are wasted if we fail to recognize the universality of human anguish and our direct contributions to it.

[1] Giulio Bernacchia, http://www.911myths.com/Another_Expert.pdf.

[2] From Mr. K. S. by e-mail to MG, Jr. on August 27, 2007:

“WTC7 Collapse, So What?”

Hi,I read your piece on the CounterPunch site with some interest. I was just a tourist to New York on 9-11, so I come to you not as an expert on any of this. But, I have read, and consumed hundreds of hours of information on the Kennedy assassination over the last forty plus years. So, I’m familiar with the wild theories fueled by the paranoia of US Government secrecy. Many of these suspicions seem to be well founded, some not. But, I was there at 9/11. Hasn’t anyone looked at local or national footage during the afternoon of 9/11? That building was an inferno all day long. To me it was really special. I’ve never seen a 47-story building burn like that. Every once in a while the wind would shift off the water, and you’d feel the heat come down the street two, three blocks away depending on where I was standing at the time. It was a huge fire, with flames coming out of most of the windows on the north side of the building. It was raging. I don’t know how it could have survived. What is the conspiracy about this building? The NYFD, and the rest of them knew it was going to collapse, they started running away from the area waving and screaming for everybody to get back. I figured I’d better run too. When you see all of them rescue people running, it’s time to go. Then the whole street shook, it was unnerving, or disorienting like losing your equilibrium, it was weird. But, what’s the conspiracy? That building burned for what, seven hours? That scene reminded me of the Pearl Harbor pictures, I mean with the raging fires and the twisted metal of those battleships; the result of the intense heat. If you were down there, you’d appreciate the scope of the fire.Thanks,Ken S.

[I do not release the name/address for the sake of privacy; if this causes you to dispute the authenticity, so be it]

Homework project: how long do explosives and detonators remain intact in a fire? See (3).

[3] Zachary Wick, “WTC CD?”, http://www.911myths.com/WTC_CD.pdf.

“I believe it is imperative that we never lose our voice of dissent, regardless of political pressure. As Martin Luther King, Jr said: ‘there comes a time when silence is betrayal’…However, it is unforgivable that Congress has been unwilling to examine these matters or take action to prevent these circumstances [executive branch crimes] from occurring again.” – Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), Introduction to Constitution in Crisis (2006)

09/12/07″ –“ICH” — – Pigs of War come in both political colors of red and blue. We are all unfortunately very familiar with the red pigs. The pigs of war who manipulated, cherry-picked, stove-piped and manufactured intelligence to suggest to the world that Saddam had mushroom cloud producing WMD and something to do with the tragic events of 9-11 that occurred six years ago now.

Many blue politicians are pigs of war and they willingly went along with the deceptions and even parroted red pig talking points whenever they got a chance but now claim that the “fiendishly clever” George fooled them into believing the nearly unbelievable. I don’t know about you, but I take small comfort in that excuse. When we have a system of government where our supposed public servants can profit off of war along with the corporations that pad their bank accounts both blue and red pigs benefit and young people needlessly lose their lives sometimes killing other humans in the process.

Our troops and the people of Iraq are the ones getting trapped between our pusillanimous politicians. These dear human beings become ciphers in purely political calculations from Congress and only an exercise in abstraction from pundits, poets, publishers and the majority of the average American who has not been personally touched by this excremental occupation. In Iraq, every citizen has been personally touched and the American occupation is a living, fire-breathing, palpable entity that has intruded its imperialistic self into every aspect of their daily lives.

How do I know that Congress is playing politics with human hearts? All one has to do is observe the lack of action on the part of the red and blue pigs to come to this sad but inevitable conclusion. Apparently, MAJORITY Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) has spent more time over his summer recess trying to convince red pigs to go against George’s war plan than he spent trying to coalesce his blue caucus into something that would not resemble the red pigs so closely that the blur becomes purple. He and Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) have already decided that they do not have enough votes to end the occupation just as they decided that impeachment was “off the table” even before they were elected! So they will happily hand over to George more of your tax money and China’s money to continue the killing fields in Iraq. Why are they so miserly with democracy, but generous with our treasury and with our dear human treasure?

I got two very overt answers to this question one day in Congress this past spring when I was on the Hill. In one of my meetings with Congressman Conyers, he told me that it was more important to put a Democrat back in the White House in ‘08 than it was to “end the war.” After I recovered from my shock, I knew it was confirmed that partisan politics is exactly what is killing our children and the innocent civilians in Iraq. My next stop was in a Congresswoman’s office who has always been 100% correct about the war. She is a lovely woman with a lovely heart and does not in anyway qualify (and there are a few dozen others who do not) as a blue pig. She had tears in her eyes when she told me: “Cindy, when I go to Speaker’s meetings and we talk about the war, all the talk is about politics and not one of them mentions the heartbreak that will occur if we don’t pull our troops out, now.” People are dying for two diverse but equally deadly political agendas. The red pigs want to keep the war going because they feed out of the trough of carnage and the blue pigs want to keep it going for votes! Either way is reprehensible.

There is a lot of chatter about the Petraeus (written and produced by the White House) report. Will the general recommend drawing down troops — even if he does, three-five thousand doesn’t even bring the number down to pre-surge levels — and the report says, in direct contradiction to the GAO report on the surge, that sectarian violence in Iraq is down 75%, without saying that the red pigs have re-defined the term “sectarian violence.” All I know is that the report will paint a rosier picture than what really exists on the ground in Iraq and like Ron Paul said the other day in the Fox News “Leader of the Red Pigs Wannabe” debate: “How can anyone believe anything they say?”

The blue pigs won’t believe the report, but they will expediently go along with the red pig request to further fund the disaster because they believe that it will mean political victory in ‘08.

It is up to we the people to care more about humanity and democracy than either the reds or the blues and it is mandatory that we mount campaigns to defeat the pigs and their masters: the war machine.

Twenty-one families here in America and dozens more in Iraq have felt the sting of the lethal politics of war just since the beginning of September, and the beat goes on.

What if instead of pigs of war in our government, we had elected officials who put humanity before politics and people before profits? Maybe the horrible twin tragedies of the Bush Regime and 9-11 would have never occurred within our borders and the rest of the world could look up to the USA with respect as a true leader in world peace instead of glaring at our shocking and awful quest for empire off the backs of the many who benefit the pocketbooks of the few? It’s not to late, but we are getting there.

Silence is betrayal and the silence of a host of blue pigs is the biggest betrayal of all.

The following essay is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State:

09/12/07 “Common Dreams” — — When Martin Luther King Jr. publicly referred to “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government,” he had no way of knowing that his description would ring so true 40 years later. As the autumn of 2007 begins, the reality of Uncle Sam as an unhinged mega-killer haunts a large minority of Americans. Many who can remember the horrific era of the Vietnam War are nearly incredulous that we could now be living in a time of similarly deranged official policy.

Despite all the differences, the deep parallels between the two war efforts inform us that the basic madness of entrenched power in our midst is not about miscalculations or bad management or quagmires. The continuity tells us much more than we would probably like to know about the obstacles to decency that confront us every day.

The incredulity and numbing, the frequent bobbing-and-weaving of our own consciousness, the hollow comforts of passivity, insulate us from hard truths and harsher realities than we might ever have expected to need to confront — about our country and about ourselves.

Of all the words spewed from the Pet Crock hearings with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, maybe none were more revealing than Petraeus’s bid for a modicum of sympathy for his burdens as a commander. “This is going on three years for me, on top of a year deployment to Bosnia as well,” he said at the Senate hearing, “so my family also knows something about sacrifice.”

There’s sacrifice and sacrifice.

“It is as bad as it seems,” longtime activist Dave Dellinger told a gathering of protesters outside the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach as it prepared to re-nominate a war-criminal president. “We must achieve a breakthrough in understanding reality.”

I listened, agreeing. But it was, and is, easier said. How do we truly grasp what’s being done in our names, with our tax dollars — and, most of all, with our inordinate self-restraint that tolerates what should be intolerable?

“The following 13 principles emerged from several years’ work with social change leaders in the “Leading with Spirit” program. We offer these not as definitive truths, but rather as key learnings and guidelines that, taken together, comprise a useful framework for “spiritual activists.”

1. Transformation of motivation from anger/fear/despair to compassion/love/ purpose. This is a vital challenge for today’s social change movement. This is not to deny the noble emotion of appropriate anger or outrage in the face of social injustice. Rather, this entails a crucial shift from fighting against evil to working for love, and the long-term results are very different, even if the outer activities appear virtually identical. Action follows Being, as the Sufi saying goes. Thus “a positive future cannot emerge from the mind of anger and despair” (Dalai Lama).

2. Non-attachment to outcome. This is difficult to put into practice, yet to the extent that we are attached to the results of our work, we rise and fall with our successes and failures-a sure path to burnout. Hold a clear intention, and let go of the outcome-recognizing that a larger wisdom is always operating. As Gandhi said, “the victory is in the doing,” not the results. Also, remain flexible in the face of changing circumstances: “Planning is invaluable, but plans are useless.”(Churchill)

3. Integrity is your protection. If your work has integrity, this will tend to protect you from negative energy and circumstances. You can often sidestep negative energy from others by becoming “transparent” to it, allowing it to pass through you with no adverse effect upon you. This is a consciousness practice that might be called “psychic aikido.”

4. Integrity in means and ends. Integrity in means cultivates integrity in the fruit of one’s work. A noble goal cannot be achieved utilizing ignoble means.

5. Don’t demonize your adversaries. It makes them more defensive and less receptive to your views. People respond to arrogance with their own arrogance, creating rigid polarization. Be a perpetual learner, and constantly challenge your own views.

6. You are unique. Find and fulfill your true calling. “It is better to tread your own path, however humbly, than that of another, however successfully.

7. Love thy enemy. Or at least, have compassion for them. This is a vital challenge for our times. This does not mean indulging falsehood or corruption. It means moving from “us/them” thinking to “we” consciousness, from separation to cooperation, recognizing that we human beings are ultimately far more alike than we are different.
This is challenging in situations with people whose views are radically opposed to yours. Be hard on the issues, soft on the people.

8. Your work is for the world, not for you. In doing service work, you are working for others. The full harvest of your work may not take place in your lifetime, yet your efforts now are making possible a better life for future generations. Let your fulfillment come in gratitude for being called to do this work, and from doing it with as much compassion, authenticity, fortitude, and forgiveness as you can muster.

9. Selfless service is a myth. In serving others, we serve our true selves. “It is in giving that we receive.” We are sustained by those we serve, just as we are blessed when we forgive others. As Gandhi says, the practice of satyagraha (“clinging to truth”) confers a “matchless and universal power” upon those who practice it. Service
work is enlightened self-interest, because it cultivates an expanded sense of self that includes all others.

10. Do not insulate yourself from the pain of the world. Shielding yourself from heartbreak prevents transformation. Let your heart break open, and learn to move in the world with a broken heart. As Gibran says, “Your pain is the medicine by which the physician within heals thyself.” When we open ourselves to the pain of the world, we become the medicine that heals the world. This is what Gandhi understood so deeply in his principles of ahimsa and satyagraha. A broken heart becomes an open heart, and genuine transformation begins.

11. What you attend to, you become. Your essence is pliable, and ultimately you become that which you most deeply focus your attention upon. You reap what you sow, so choose your actions carefully. If you constantly engage in battles, you become embattled yourself. If you constantly give love, you become love itself.

12. Rely on faith, and let go of having to figure it all out. There are larger `divine’ forces at work that we can trust completely without knowing their precise workings or agendas. Faith means trusting the unknown, and offering yourself as a vehicle for the intrinsic benevolence of the cosmos. “The first step to wisdom is
silence. The second is listening.” If you genuinely ask inwardly and listen for guidance, and then follow it carefully-you are working in accord with these larger forces, and you become the instrument for their music.

13. Love creates the form. Not the other way around. The heart crosses the abyss that the mind creates, and operates at depths unknown to the mind. Don’t get trapped by “pessimism concerning human nature that is not balanced by an optimism concerning divine nature, or you will overlook the cure of grace.” (Martin Luther King) Let
your heart’s love infuse your work and you cannot fail, though your dreams may manifest in ways different from what you imagine.

By the Satyana Institute (http://www.satyana.org/principles.html).

Text of a presentation for the Latin American Studies Association Conference to be held September 5-8 in Montreal, Canada.

Over the course of more than 10,000 years, the rich biodiversity of the Andes-Amazon region has created a culture that is closely interlocked with Pachamama (Mother Nature). This culture is marked by deep knowledge of nature and is highly agricultural. Ours is one of the seven zones of the world to have originated agriculture. It has yielded the greatest variety of domesticated species.

This has given rise to a cosmic vision different from the Western outlook that views the creator as a superior immaterial spirit who created man in his image and likeness and created nature to serve him. For the indigenous cosmic vision, humanity is a daughter of and part of Mother Earth. We must live in her bosom in harmony with her. Each hill or peak, each river, each vegetable or animal species has a spirit.

Indigenous, collectivist mentality is strong enough to have endured solidly through 500 years of invasion and the dictatorship of individualism.

The Quechua and Aymara name for the campesino community is ayllu. It is bound by strong ties, many expressed in work (ayni, mink’a, faena) [1] and in all aspects of life. The community is not restricted to persons. It entails a close communal relationship with cultivated species, with medicinal species, with animals and plants that tell cultivators about seasonal variations [2], and, more broadly, with all animal and vegetable species, with rain, and with the land.

The development of agriculture and tending of livestock, which in other latitudes led to slavery and feudalism, led in Abya Yala (the Americas) to new forms of collectivism. In the Andes zone it led to a state that extended over the territories of six present-day countries – Tawantinsuyo (called “empire” by the invaders out of the same ignorance that led them to call the llama “big sheep.”)

It’s true that the new forms of collectivism gave rise to privileged castes and wars of conquest. But in no part of the continent was production based on slave labor or the feudal system.

– For more than 10,000 years our culture domesticated 182 plant species, including around 3,500 potato varieties.
– Our people know 4,500 medicinal plants.
– Tawantinsuyos planned agriculture based on a system of watersheds and micro watersheds or basins.
– They built long aqueducts, taking care to avoid land erosion.
– Terracing was practiced on the slopes and “waru-waru” [3] in the altiplano (highlands) [4].

– Special technologies were used from zone to zone.

Across the entire Tawantinsuyo territory they created storage buildings (qolqa) to supply food to the population whenever some climatic shift undermined agriculture.

Although there were privileged castes, hunger and misery did not exist. Orphans, persons with disabilities, and the elderly were cared for by the community.

The invasion

The backbone of this social organization, of the agricultural infrastructure and food reserves, was crushed by the invasion.

Europe was then passing from feudalism to capitalism. The invasion was a capitalist action. They came looking for spices, believing they had reached India. They found none, but did find gold and silver.

Mining had existed as a marginal activity, but it now became the center of the economy. To exploit the mines they used a system worse than slavery. The slave owner is concerned about the health of his slave just as he’s interested in the health of his donkey. The mine owner in Peru received annually a certain quantity of indigenous people in order to “indoctrinate” them. Regardless of how many of them died, the next year he would receive the same number. Hence, youth and adults were sent into the mines and never left until they died. Because of this, young indigenous people committed suicide and mothers killed their children to free them from torment. This practice diminished following the Tupac Amaru rebellion.

Agricultural work took place through a feudal system. The Europeans took the best lands from the community and converted them into latifundios (huge estates or latifundia). Community inhabitants became serfs on their own lands. They had to work freely for the feudal lord in exchange for permission to cultivate a small plot for their own needs.

For many reasons a huge decline in agriculture took place:

– Canals, terracing, and waru-warus were destroyed because of ignorance and lack of care.

– Until this day no planning in terms of watersheds and micro watersheds has been carried out. Chaos took hold and persists.

– With the importation of foreign domestic animals to the zone, the environment deteriorated. The auquenidos (camelid) [5] cut pasture grass with their teeth, but cows, horses, and sheep uproot it.

The invaders vented their superstitions on our crops. Our agricultural mentality didn’t suit their cultured ways. So the “exterminators of idolaters” went after plants like the papa, also known as Santa Padre (Holy Father). They renamed it patata, the word used in Spain. This passed into English and other languages as “potato.” They also damned kiwicha or amaranto (amaranth).The coca plant, which the famous doctor Hipólito Unanue called the “supertonic of the vegetable kingdom,” is to this day the target of superstition and excessively harmful prejudice in “refined” circles.

The invaders pillaged the food stockpiles located across the territory to cope with times of hunger brought on by climatic irregularities.

Taking their behavior as a whole, we find that European imposition of hunger and misery — their cultural contribution — was even more deadly than their massacres and the smallpox they spread among us.

Rebellions and republic

From the beginning, our people rebelled against the invaders. Numerous insurrections took place, beginning with Tupac Amaru II’s rebellion. It spread all the way to Bolivia and lasted even after his cruel torture and assassination.

Later the so-called Revolución de la Independencía took place. It did not signify any noticeable change for the indigenous population.

The generals of “independence” were awarded “haciendas” (the new name for the feudal latifundia), “Indians” and all.

The hacienda system consisted basically of the free labor of the colono (serf) for the hacienda. There were other aspects to this serfdom.

The colono had to turn over some of his animals that grazed on natural pastures to the master. He made long treks with pack mules burdened with hacienda produce. They lasted days and he had to sleep out in the open. The owner mistreated him physically and morally. He could jail him and rape the women. The serf’s children did not go to school either because they had to work, or there were no schools, or the master forbade it.

Our land struggle in the 1960s

The hacienda feudal system lasted until the second half of the last century.

The spread of capitalism to the countryside weakened it in many ways:

– New large-scale mining absorbed labor from the haciendas.
– New mechanized latifundia expelled the serfs and employed an agricultural proletariat.
– New high-priced crops required more labor time, pressing the hacienda owner to demand more work from his serfs and to expel them in order to take over their plots. The serfs, on the other hand, needed more time for their own labors and resisted the theft of their plots.

We organized ourselves to struggle against the new outrages. Given the intransigence of the landlords, the struggle became a fight for possession of the land.

Our defensive action not only set us against the landlords but also against the government which defended the feudal system.

In over 100 haciendas we refused to work for the landlords. But we continued to work our own plots. This was in practice an agrarian reform. The government repressed us with arms and we defended ourselves with arms. The military government of the day crushed the armed self-defense; but it took note that it would be impossible to re-implant feudal serfdom. It opted to pass an agrarian reform law — only in this zone — legalizing campesino possession of the land. But indigenous campesinos in other zones of the country rebelled and took over haciendas. This was violently repressed, but could not be effectively contained. Hence, a subsequent reformist military government felt obliged to decree an agrarian reform at the national level.

In this way, we took advantage of capitalism’s weakening of the feudal system to take over the land. In this same epoch the Brazilian campesino movement was shattered. Capitalism triumphed there. Its victims are now struggling courageously in the “Landless Workers’ Movement.”

For this reason Peru is, with the likely exception of Cuba, the country of the continent with the greatest proportion of landowners, either of communal or private plots.

Some campesinos from the epoch of struggle for the land feel the qualitative change. “Now we are free,” they say. They consider that breaking down feudal servitude also broke them free from the yoke that had gripped them.

Following the rupture they worked for education, building schools and paying men and women teachers. Later they fought to get the state to pay them. They built health centres and fought to get the state to pay for health services.

They got the vote and elected their own mayors. They fought against mining pollution. They struggled to assume in a collective manner police and judicial functions, to replace corrupt cops and judges. They fought against corrupt authorities of any stripe — and for many other things.

They feel that breaking from feudal servitude freed them to spread wings and carry the struggle forward.

Current struggles

Most current struggles of indigenous campesinos are against the killing of Pachamama, Mother Earth; against depredations by the large companies, mainly mining, but also petroleum and gas. Previous Peruvian governments were servants of feudal lords; today they serve the great multinationals. They act against the Peruvian people and against nature.

Living conditions are another cause of struggle. There is more and more unemployment, and the standard of living is falling. In the countryside this is due to excessively low prices for farm products. This is linked to the struggle against the Free Trade Agreement with the United States that will demolish our agriculture for the benefit of large, subsidized imperial firms.

The indigenous movement, together with the rest of the Peruvian population, is fighting against corruption and to get their own representatives into local governments. People often suffer betrayals because there is no system for authentic democratic control.

Our allies

The indigenous movement is not alone. Although it is the most vigorous and persevering, it is not unique. The rest of the people are struggling together with us.

Intellectuals called indigenistas, whether indigenous or not, merit special mention. Ever since the oppression of the original peoples of our continent began there have been individuals who have struggled against it and to defend our culture.

The work of Father Bartolomé de las Casas is known.

In Peru there were notable political figures like González Prada and Mariátegui. Writers like Clorinda Matto, Ciro Alegría, José María Arguedas. Painters like José Sabogal. Musicians like Alomía Robles, Baltasar Zegarra, Roberto Ojeda, Leandro Alviña, and so on.

The meaning of our struggle

We are defending our culture in its diverse aspects: our cosmic vision, social organization, our rituals and agricultural know-how, medicine, music, language, and many others.

We do not claim that our culture is superior to others. We are struggling to stop it from being considered inferior.

We want to be respected as equals.

We have been educated to harmonize equality and diversity. Peru is a mega-diverse country, both geographically and demographically. We have 82% of the world’s 103 natural life zones. Our inhabitants speak 45 different languages. The great Inca Sun God celebration was not exclusive. It had a procession of different peoples with diverse gods. The notion of “one God” did not exist. We are for the equality of the diverse; we are against homogenization (igualitarismo).

On the one hand we respect diverse individualities and particularities. On the other, we oppose individualism. Ours is a culture of solidarity.

We don’t seek a return to the past. We know we must make the best in general of advances in human culture.

That does not contradict our resolve to go back to our own roots. Our past will be vividly present in our future.

We love and care for Pachamama. We fervently yearn to return to basing our economy on our rich biodiversity, through agriculture and natural medicine, along with any modern advances that do no harm.

We don’t want our social system to be based on the deep-seated, antisocial individualism that the invaders brought here. We intend to recover and strengthen at all levels the vigorous, collectivist solidarity and fraternity of the ayllu, making use, as well, of universal knowledge that is not harmful.

As a member of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission’s 2007 delegation, I spent a week interviewing parents, leaders of women’s groups, and government officials about the killing of young women in Guatemala. We wanted to know why the number of murdered women in Guatemala has more than doubled since 2000.

We also wanted to know why less than 20 of the more than 3,000 cases of murdered women have been resolved by the justice system.

Shortly after college, I moved to Guatemala City and worked there as a teacher for two years, from 2004 to 2006. I learned to teach drama, learned to dance salsa, and also learned, fairly quickly, that most of the friends I would have in Guatemala would be males. I rarely saw women my age out at night, and many of the young female teachers at my school were prohibited by their families from leaving home after dark. I bemoaned what I attributed to a macho culture and conservative family values and made friends instead with women from outside Guatemala and with Guatemalan men. Only this summer did I begin to fully understand why women in Guatemala do not come out at night.

Women – mostly between the ages of 13 and 30 – are being raped, tortured, mutilated, murdered, and left often in very public places. These brutal murders, and the failure of the state to address even one percent of them in meaningful ways, have left women rightfully terrified, wary of making themselves vulnerable by leaving home at night.

As a delegation of nine Americans from all over the United States, we extended solidarity to parents of victims and to groups working for women’s rights in Guatemala. In our meetings, we also asked why the murders of women have increased so dramatically in recent years, why the government has done so little to address the problem, and what role we might play in changing the tide of violence. Because so few of the murders have been investigated, very little specific information exists about why women are killed and who is responsible for their suffering and deaths. There were no simple answers to our questions. But by speaking with people whose daily lives are deeply affected by violence against women in Guatemala, we were able to better understand the broad causes of femicide and we found ways to contribute to the work of effecting positive change.

The Rise of Feminism in a Macho Culture

“This is a country where patriarchy dominates on an institutional and familial level.” – Dora Bagley of the Presidential Secretariat on Women (SEPREM) [1]

As more and more Guatemalan women seek to attend school and enter the workforce, they risk confrontations with a male-dominated society that often employs violence to force women back into limited roles within the home. The emergence of feminism has been made both painful and slow by machismo, an ancient force whose heavy boots we heard marching through stories of both domestic and political violence against women.

At the Coordinating Group of Traditional Midwives of the State of Quetzaltenango (CODECOT), a midwives’ association in Quetzaltenango, Maria Cecilia Escobar explained that many women face resistance from their husbands even to enter into the traditional field of midwifery.[2] According to Escobar, wives are beaten for attempting to leave the home to attend the workshops given by CODECOT. As Sandi Mendoza of the Association for Community Development of Panabaj (ADECCAP), a Mayan association in Panabaj, said, “The majority of men won’t let their wives participate in workshops where they would learn about their rights. They’re afraid that their wives will learn how to support themselves and won’t need their men anymore.”[3]

Women who speak out against this deeply entrenched sexism face even greater threats to their security. Many of the women’s groups we met with reported that they have been followed, threatened, or even attacked. Sandra Moran, director of Sector de Mujeres (Women’s Sector) in Guatemala City, recounted several recent attacks on her organization’s office. She said the intruders broke in, ransacked the office, stole files, and left behind threatening notes and a trail of blood. She called the break-ins “very symbolic” of the fierce resistance to women’s empowerment and said she thought her group was being targeted because “We have been very present denouncing femicide in the streets. But we’re going to continue with this work because it’s so important.”

Norma Cruz, director of Fundación Sobrevivientes [Foundation Survivors], a center for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, recounted a recent trip to the department of Chiquimula to investigate the brutal rape, burning, and murder of an eight year old girl with Downs Syndrome. Knowing they could be targeted because of their mission to investigate and denounce the violence, she and her colleagues armed themselves with firearms. “We know this is a contradiction,” said Cruz. “We do not support violence. But we’re not going to allow one more woman to die.”

Most women, however, are not able to protect themselves in the way Cruz has from politically motivated and gender-based violence. Maria Cristina Gómez, a women’s rights activist with the organization Ixqik Women’s Association, worked to stop violence against women and increase women’s political participation in the department of Petén in northern Guatemala. On June 3, Gómez, her son, and her daughter, also a women’s rights activist, were gunned down in Petén. Gómez and her son were killed in the attack, and her daughter was seriously injured. Not long afterward, other members of the staff of Ixqik received phonecalls threatening that they would meet the same fate if they continued the work of defending and promoting women’s rights in the area.[4]

The violent clash between rising “feminismo” and ancient “machismo” has only been heightened by a recent period of increased poverty. As in the United States, increased poverty in Guatemala is tied to increased violence, and according to official statistics, extreme poverty in Guatemala rose from 16% in 2000 to 21% in 2004. As times get tougher, men must get tougher too. Lacking employment, young men seek security in the violent brotherhood of gangs or in the lucrative world of narco-trafficking. Admittance into these clubs, however, is typically dependent on a man’s ability to prove that he is macho, and the fierce machismo of organized crime sustains itself in part through violence against women. Vengeance is enacted or territory is marked by murdering the women (girlfriends, sisters, mothers) associated with rivals. Exacerbating the gang violence is a Washington policy (begun in 1996) to immediately deport gang members in the US to their country of origin. Young men who fled Guatemala’s civil war during the eighties are now being repatriated in growing numbers. They return to their homeland as violent criminals, often without any remaining family ties in Guatemala and without much possibility of gaining legal employment.

Extreme poverty also forces women onto dangerous paths. While competition for scarce resources can drive men into violent illegal organizations, extreme poverty in rural areas compels many young women to migrate to Guatemala City in search of jobs. Women as young as fourteen or fifteen arrive in the city with plans to earn the money they will need to survive on their own and help support relatives at home. Severed from a protective network of families and small communities, young women are made vulnerable in an increasingly violent urban setting.

A History of Violence and Impunity

“Historically, since the conquest, women have been attacked and abused. What has prevailed is impunity in the violation of the human rights of women.”
– Giovana Lemus of the Guatemalan Women’s Group (GGM) [5]

While the rise of extreme poverty, gang violence, and feminism do put women at significantly greater risk, these recent factors, also at work in neighboring countries, do not explain the unparalleled surge of femicide that is unique to Guatemala. In addition to entrenched and violently enforced sexism, Guatemalans live with a culture of violence born out of a 36 year long civil war. It is this long history of violence and impunity that distinguishes Guatemala as the most dangerous place for women in Latin America.

After Guatemala’s civil war claimed an estimated 300,000 lives, most Guatemalans were ready to embrace the peace promised by the 1996 Peace Accords. Although military activity was initially curtailed, however, the Guatemalan people have experienced little respite from the constant violence. “We are culturally conditioned to violence,” said Juan Pablo Arce Gordillo, Human Rights Advisor for the Ministry of the Interior.

Maggie, a lawyer with Nuevos Horizontes [New Horizons], a women’s shelter in Quetzaltenango, explained that this cultural conditioning affects women in violent households: “The problem is that most women are victims of violence and don’t recognize it. We tell them, ‘Listen, you’re in a situation of violence.’ And they say, ‘No, I’m not. This is normal.’”

Not only was Guatemala’s civil war one of the longest and bloodiest in Latin America, but it was also a particularly ruthless war for unarmed female civilians. Although women made up only a very small part of armed forces on either the government or the guerilla’s side, an estimated 25 percent of the deaths were women. Many of these killings took place when entire communities were systematically massacred in a state-sanctioned campaign aimed at undermining the rural base of guerilla forces. During these attacks, the rape and torture of unarmed women by the military was not uncommon.

Now, more than ten years after the signing of the Peace Accords, the pattern of killings is disturbingly similar. In a gruesome show of power, the murderers consistently sexually assault, torture, disfigure, and dismember female victims before abandoning them in ditches, trash cans, or garbage bags. These women suffer distinctly more brutal and sadistic ends than the many men who are murdered in Guatemala every day. Rosa Franco, whose 15-year old daughter, María Isabel, was raped, beaten, tortured, bound with barbed wire, and killed, said, “What’s happening today is the same as what happened during the war.”

The similarities between the killings during the war and more recent murders of women have led many women’s groups to suspect that the perpetrators may be the same as well. And their suspicions are made more plausible by another common factor: impunity. Ninety-eight percent of human rights abuses committed during the war remain unprosecuted, and 99 percent of femicide cases since 2000 remain unprosecuted. Many of the men responsible for atrocities during the war have integrated themselves into high levels of the government, and many of the men trained to kill unarmed civilians are now leading narcotrafficking cartels, clandestine “security” groups, or police forces.

According to Congresswoman Nineth Montenegro, “Organized crime has grown like never before, and it’s permitted in the Public Prosecutor’s Office and in the police. The police themselves are involved [in the killings of women].” And because these powerful criminal groups have strong links to the government, bribes or threats buy easy access to “a weak justice system that doesn’t care about the deaths of women.”

Edda Gaviola, executive director of the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH), a renowned human rights legal group, also linked impunity in Guatemala with powerful forces of organized crime.[6] She pointed to the continued existence of illegal clandestine “security” groups that are tied both to the state and to narcotraffickers. According to Gaviola, these clandestine groups, reportedly headed by former military officers, are implicated in the extrajudicial killings of poor urban youth – both men and women – assumed to delinquents, as well as killings related to narcotrafficking and organized crime.

Gaviola also confirmed that corruption and organized crime extend into the police and could be a major contributor to the deaths of women in Guatemala. CALDH’s research shows that areas with high levels of femicide correspond with areas with high levels of police corruption and crime.

The cycle of violence and impunity is perpetuated even at the highest levels of government. Nowhere is this more glaringly apparent than in the discourse surrounding the September 9 elections in Guatemala. The propaganda of over twenty political parties plasters walls, dangles from trees, and competes for space on roadside rocks. And because the biggest concern of most Guatemalans is the escalating violence, the central promise of nearly every candidate is increased security. For one leading presidential candidate, Otto Perez Molina, this means implementing a policy called “mano dura” (tough hand) which can include anything from the militarization of the police to social cleansing in urban areas. However, Molina himself is a known killer. As a former general, present in Quiché during the massacres of the eighties, he is an embodiment of Guatemala’s continuing impunity. Nevertheless, many Guatemalans prefer the strong arm tactics of a dictator to the unpredictable violence of the streets. For this reason, some human rights groups suspect that the candidates themselves are behind a sharp increase in violence in the months leading up to the election.

09/10/07 “Toronto Sun” — – We all know what “deja vu” is. But I recently read of a condition psychiatrists call “jamais vu.” That’s where one sees something very familiar, but cannot identify it.

Both the White House and U.S. military seemed gripped by jamais vu.

Many of the same mistakes made in the Vietnam War are being repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, but neither the White House, Pentagon, nor U.S. field commanders seem to recognize or understand them.

This week, Gen. David Petreaus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will issue a report on the “progress” his troops are making in Iraq in the face of serious problems, and hint at future troop reductions.

The report will speak of important security successes in Baghdad and Anbar province. Gen. Petreaus is a very smart, highly respected commander, but one suspects his report will unfortunately be the latest example of jamais vu syndrome.

U.S. commanders in Iraq, like their Canadian counterparts in Afghanistan, keep proudly reporting how their men have occupied villages or towns, killed scores of “suspected terrorists” (usually thanks to air attack), and forced the enemy to flee.

They do not seem to understand they are fighting a fluid guerrilla war in which territory and body counts mean little.

GUERILLA WAR

Mao Zedong perfectly described the principles of such guerilla war: “When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue.”

The “successes” being reported from Iraq and Afghanistan are illusory.

We heard exactly the same story during the Vietnam War, when U.S. military spokesmen trumpeted daily glowing reports about enemy body counts, strategic hamlets created, Viet Cong tunnels blown up, hearts and minds won over, and smiling children waving little American flags.

While the U.S. was “winning” all these little daily battles, Communists were winning the war.

Institutional memory rarely exceeds 10 years.

Most of Vietnam’s bitter lessons, paid for by the blood of 58,000 Americans, have been totally forgotten by the White House and Pentagon.

But don’t blame the soldiers. Once again, U.S. fighting men in Iraq and Canadians in Afghanistan have been sent into no-win wars by their poorly informed, badly advised civilian masters, and ordered to keep coming up with rosy progress reports.

I have covered numerous guerilla wars in my time and have never seen Western powers win a single one. Yet we keep forgetting this hard lesson.

We have also forgotten the great Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s warning after Korea, “never fight a land war in Asia.”

AVOIDING BLAME

Bush appears determined to keep the war going until his term expires to avoid blame for defeat in Iraq.

Congress is trying to lay all the blame on Bush, get him to admit defeat, and evade its own shameful role in authorizing the trumped-up Iraq War.

But Congress is in a jam. If U.S. troops do withdraw, Iraq may fall into even worse chaos than it now suffers — which a Democratic president will inherit.

In an election year, Republicans will blast Democrats as “defeatists” for “cutting and running” and “losing Iraq.”

That’s why worried leading Democrats are now backing off calls for total withdrawal and mumbling about partial pullbacks and “training Iraqi forces.”

Meanwhile, the administration refuses to admit Iraq has no real government or army, and is an anarchic stew of competing Shia militias, tribal chiefs, death squads, 22 Sunni resistance groups, and breakaway Kurds. Iran is becoming the real power in Iraq.

Polls show 80% of Iraqis want U.S. forces out. The U.S. occupation is largely responsible for unleashing Shia ethnic cleansing that has created four million Iraqi refugees.

History does not repeat itself, but men’s mistakes and follies do.