What If the Nazis Get It First?

Posted on July 30, 2007 by RagBlog

From the appearance of present-day Amerikkka, it seems the Nazis did get it first.

The Decision to Risk the Future: Harry Truman, the Atomic Bomb and the Apocalyptic Narrative
by Peter J. Kuznick
July 28, 2007, Japan Focus

I

In his personal narrative Atomic Quest, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arthur Holly Compton, who directed atomic research at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory during the Second World War, tells of receiving an urgent visit from J. Robert Oppenheimer while vacationing in Michigan during the summer of 1942. Oppenheimer and the brain trust he assembled had just calculated the possibility that an atomic explosion could ignite all the hydrogen in the oceans or the nitrogen in the atmosphere. If such a possibility existed, Compton concluded, “these bombs must never be made.” As Compton said, “Better to accept the slavery of the Nazis than to run a chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind.”[1] Certainly, any reasonable human being could be expected to respond similarly.

Three years later, with Hitler dead and the Nazis defeated, President Harry Truman faced a comparably weighty decision. He writes in his 1955 memoirs that, on the first full day of his presidency, James F. Byrnes told him the U.S. was building an explosive “great enough to destroy the whole world.”[2] On April 25, 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Brigadier General Leslie Groves gave Truman a lengthy briefing in which Stimson reiterated the warning that “modern civilization might be completely destroyed” by atomic bombs and stressed that the future of mankind would be shaped by how such bombs were used and subsequently controlled or shared.[3] Truman recalled Stimson “gravely” expressing his uncertainty about whether the U.S. should ever use the bomb, “because he was afraid it was so powerful that it could end up destroying the whole world.” Truman admitted that, listening to Stimson and Groves and reading Groves’s accompanying memo, he “felt the same fear.”[4]

Others would also draw, for Truman, the grave implications of using such hellish weapons. Truman noted presciently in his diary on July 25, 1945, after being fully briefed on the results of the Trinity test, that the bomb “may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.”[5] Leading atomic scientists cautioned that surprise use of the bomb against Japan could precipitate an uncontrollable arms race with the Soviet Union that boded future disaster for mankind. The warnings reached Truman’s closest advisors if not the President himself. Truman nevertheless authorized use of atomic bombs against Japan, always insisting he felt no “remorse” and even bragging that he “never lost any sleep over that decision.”[6] For over sixty years, historians and other analysts have struggled to make sense of Truman’s and his advisors’ actions and the relevance of his legacy for his successors in the Oval Office.

In an incisive and influential essay, historian John Dower divides American interpretations of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into two basic narratives–the “heroic” or “triumphal” and the “tragic.”[7] The “heroic” narrative, shaped by wartime science administrator James Conant and Stimson, and reaffirmed by all postwar American presidents up to and including Bill Clinton, with only Eisenhower demurring, justifies the bombing as an ultimately humane, even merciful, way of bringing the “good war” to a rapid conclusion and avoiding an American invasion against a barbaric and fanatically resistant foe. Although Truman initially emphasized revenge for Japan’s treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor, subsequent justifications by Truman, Conant, Stimson, and others stressed instead the tremendous number of Americans who would have been killed and wounded in an invasion.[8] As time passed, defenders of the bombing increasingly added generous estimates of the number of Japanese who the atomic bombings saved. While highlighting the decisive role of atomic bombs in the final victory had the unfortunate consequence of downplaying the heroic efforts and enormous sacrifices of millions of American soldiers, it served American propaganda needs by diminishing the significance of Soviet entry into the Pacific War, discounting the Soviet contribution to defeating Japan, and showcasing the super weapon that the United States alone possessed.[9]

This victor’s narrative privileges possible American deaths over actual Japanese ones.[10] As critics of the bombing have become more vocal in recent years, projected American casualty estimates have grown apace–from the War Department’s 1945 prediction of 46,000 dead to Truman’s 1955 insistence that General George Marshall feared losing a half million American lives to Stimson’s 1947 claim of over 1,000,000 casualties to George H.W. Bush’s 1991 defense of Truman’s “tough calculating decision, [which] spared millions of American lives,”[11] to the 1995 estimate of a crew member on Bock’s Car, the plane that bombed Nagasaki, who asserted that the bombing saved six million lives–one million Americans and five million Japanese. The recent inclusion of Japanese and other Asian casualties adds an intriguing dimension to the triumphal narrative, though one that played little, if any, role in the wartime calculations of Truman and his top advisors.

To this triumphal narrative, Dower counterposes a tragic one. Seen from the perspective of the bombs’ victims, the tragic narrative condemns the wanton killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the inordinate suffering of the survivors. Although Hiroshima had some military significance as a naval base and home of the Second General Army Headquarters, as Truman insisted, American strategic planners targeted the civilian part of the city, maximizing the bomb’s destructive power and civilian deaths. It produced limited military casualties. Admiral William Leahy angrily told an interviewer in 1949 that although Truman told him they would “only…hit military objectives….they went ahead and killed as many women and children as they could which was just what they wanted all the time.”[12] The tragic narrative, in contrast to the heroic narrative, rests on the conviction that the war could have been ended without use of the bombs given U.S. awareness of Japan’s attempts to secure acceptable surrender terms and of the crushing impact that the imminent Soviet declaration of war against Japan would have.

Each of these narratives has its own images. The mushroom cloud, principal symbol for the triumphal narrative, has been almost ubiquitous in American culture from the moment that the bomb was dropped. Showing the impact of the bomb from a distance, it effectively masks the death and suffering below.[13]

Survivors on the ground, however, unlike crew members flying above, vividly recall the flash from the bomb (pika), which signifies the beginning of the tragic narrative, and, when combined with the blast (don), left scores of thousands dead and dying and two cities in ruins. No wonder many Japanese refer to the bomb as pikadon and the mushroom cloud that so pervades the American consciousness has been superseded in Japan by images of the destruction of the two cities and the dead and dying.

The Smithsonian’s ill-fated 1995 Enola Gay exhibit was doomed when Air Force Association and American Legion critics demanded the elimination of photos of Japanese bombing victims, particularly women and children, and insisted on removal of the charred lunch box containing carbonized rice and peas that belonged to a seventh-grade schoolgirl who disappeared in the bombing. Resisting efforts to humanize or personalize the Japanese, they objected strenuously to inclusion of photos or artifacts that would place human faces on the bombs’ victims and recall their individual suffering. For them, the viewpoint should have remained that of the bombers above the mushroom cloud, not the victims below it. It is worth noting that, prior to the change in military policy in September 1943, U.S. publications were filled with photos of Japanese war dead, but no U.S. publication carried photos of dead American soldiers.[14]

For one who has confronted the still-smoldering hatred that some American veterans feel toward the Japanese six decades after the U.S. victory, it is stunning how little overt anti-Americanism one finds in Japanese discussions of the bombings. The Japanese, particularly the hibakusha (bomb-affected persons), have focused instead on their unique suffering. Drawing on the moral authority gained, they have translated this suffering into a positive message of world peace and nuclear disarmament. In fact, a vigorous debate about Japan’s responsibility for its brutal treatment of other Asian peoples began in the early 1980s, picked up steam with the revelations by comfort women in the early 1990s, and has raged unabated, especially among Japanese intellectuals and politicians, since 1995, fueled, in part, by regular criticism from China and South Korea.[15]

In recent summers, I have been startled, during my annual study-abroad course in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the frequency with which some Japanese, particularly college students, justify the atomic bombings in light of Japan’s wartime butchery and the emperor’s culpability for Japan’s colonialism and militarism. Perhaps this should be expected given the multi-layered silence imposed on Japan in regard to atomic matters–first by Japan’s own government, humiliated by its defeat and inability to protect its citizens, then by official U.S. censorship, which banned publication of bomb-related information, then by the political exigencies of Japanese dependence on the U.S. under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, which blunted criticism of U.S. policy, and finally by the silence of many bomb victims, who faced discrimination in marriage and employment when they divulged their backgrounds.

Many hibakusha remain incensed over their treatment by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), which the U.S. set up in Hiroshima in 1947 and Nagasaki in 1948 to examine but not treat the bomb victims.

Adding insult to injury, the ABCC sent physical specimens, including human remains, back to the U.S. and did not share its research results with Japanese scientists or physicians, results that could have been helpful in treating atomic bomb sufferers.[16] Anthropologist Hugh Gusterson, who spent three years studying weapons scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, explains the process of dehumanization whereby American scientists turned “the dead and injured bodies of the Japanese into bodies of data” and then sought additional American subjects for further experimentation. By turning human beings into dismembered body parts and fragments and calculating damage instead of wounds, coldly rational scientific discourse allowed Americans to study Japanese victims without ever reckoning with their pain and suffering. One scientist even got annoyed with Gusterson for saying the victims were “vaporized” when the correct term was “carbonized.”[17]

Although Dower is undoubtedly correct that the heroic and tragic narratives, those of victors above and victims below the mushroom clouds, dominated the discussions surrounding the 50th anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these two narratives by no means exhaust the range of interpretive possibilities. Missing from much of the debate has been consideration of what I call the apocalyptic narrative, a framework for understanding U.S. actions that has even greater relevance to today’s citizens who must continue to grapple with the long-term ramifications of nuclear war, particularly the threat of extinction of human life. While this third narrative has important elements in common with the tragic narrative, maintaining, as did much of America’s top military command, that surrender could have been induced without the use of atomic bombs, it does not see the Japanese as the only victims and holds Truman, Byrnes, and Groves, among others, to a much higher level of accountability for knowingly putting at risk all human and animal existence.

Nor does the apocalyptic narrative have the kind of easily identifiable images associated with the other two narratives. Unlike the religious association with Armageddon or the images of alchemical transmutation in which destruction leads to rebirth and regeneration, nuclear annihilation is random, senseless, final, and universal. As with the end-of-the-world images associated with the existential crisis of 1929-1930, the post-apocalyptic nothingness resulting from nuclear annihilation is devoid of redemptive possibilities. The late 1920s and early 1930s cosmological theories coupling the concept of heat death with that of the expanding universe anticipated, in the distant future, a barren, lifeless planet drifting aimlessly through time and space in a universe indifferent to human existence. Such a vision, popularized by British astronomers James Jeans and Arthur Eddington, was reflected in the work of influential American thinkers like Joseph Wood Krutch and Walter Lippmann. Although the proximate causes differ, with nuclear annihilation resulting from human technological rather than natural destruction, the symbolism, once human life and consciousness have been expunged in Truman’s “fire destruction,” is in other respects similar.[18]

By unleashing nuclear weapons on the world as the U.S. did in 1945, in a manner that Soviet leaders, as expected, immediately recognized as ominous and threatening, Truman and his collaborators were gambling with the future of life on the planet. Scientists at Chicago’s Met Lab had issued reports and circulated petitions emphasizing just this point before the bombs were tested and used, warning against instigating a “race for nuclear armaments” that could lead to “total mutual destruction.”[19]

In order to force immediate surrender and save American lives by delivering a knockout blow to an already staggering Japan, or, as Gar Alperovitz alternatively argues, to brandish U.S. might against and constrain the Soviet Union in Europe and Asia, or, as Tsuyoshi Hasegawa contends, to exact revenge against Japan while limiting Soviet gains in Asia, Truman willingly risked the unthinkable. He did so without even attempting other means to procure Japanese surrender, such as clarifying the surrender terms to insure the safety and continued “rule” of Emperor Hirohito as Stimson and almost all of Truman’s other close advisors urged him to do, but which he and Byrnes resisted until after the two atomic bombs had been dropped; allowing Stalin to sign the Potsdam Proclamation, which would have signaled imminent Soviet entry into the war; or announcing and, if necessary, demonstrating the existence of the bomb. What terrified many scientists from an early stage in the process was the realization that the bombs that were used to wipe out Hiroshima and Nagasaki were but the most rudimentary and primitive prototypes of the incalculably more powerful weapons on the horizon–mere first steps in a process of maximizing destructive potential.

Physicist Edward Teller impressed this fact on the group of “luminaries” Oppenheimer assembled in the summer of 1942, looking past the atomic bomb, which he considered as good as done, toward development of a hydrogen bomb, thousands of times more powerful, which became the focus of most of their efforts that summer.[20] Not all scientists shared Teller’s enthusiasm over this prospect. As Rossi Lomanitz recalled: “Many of us thought, ‘My God, what kind of a situation it’s going to be to bring a weapon like that [into the world]; it might end up by blowing up the world.’ Some of us brought this up to Oppenheimer; and basically his answer was, ‘Look, what if the Nazis get it first?'”[21]

In July 1945, physicist Leo Szilard drafted a petition signed by 155 Manhattan Project scientists urging the President not to act precipitously in using atomic bombs against Japan, warning: “The atomic bombs at our disposal represent only the first step in this direction, and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in the course of their future development. Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for the purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.”[22] Arthur Compton observed, “It introduces the question of mass slaughter, really for the first time in history.”[23] Stimson, whose finest moment would come in his desperate postwar attempt to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle, told the top decision makers, including Groves and Byrnes, on May 31, 1945, that the members of the Interim Committee did not view the bomb “as a new weapon merely but as a revolutionary change in the relations of man to the universe…; that the project might even mean the doom of civilization or it might mean the perfection of civilization; that it might be a Frankenstein which would eat us up.”[24] Oppenheimer correctly pointed out to the participants in that same Interim Committee meeting that within 3 years it might be possible to produce bombs with an explosive force between 10 and 100 megatons of TNT — thousands of times more powerful than the bomb that would destroy Hiroshima.[25]

Hence, the apocalyptic narrative, applying an ethical standard to which leaders of the time could realistically be held, and an understanding of short-term and long-term consequences that should be expected of policymakers, indicts Truman, Byrnes, and Groves not only for the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki but for behaving recklessly and thoughtlessly in inflicting a reign of terror on the rest of humankind. In 1942, Compton assessed the odds of blowing up the world and decided it was not worth the risk. In 1945, Truman contemplated the prospect of future annihilation but apparently gave it little serious consideration. To make matters worse, he did next to nothing to make amends for his wartime shortsightedness when the opportunity to control nuclear weapons presented itself again during the first year of the postwar era.

Throughout that first year, Henry Wallace, who Roosevelt had asked to stay on as Secretary of Commerce after Truman replaced him as Vice President, struggled valiantly to avert an arms race and ease the threat of nuclear war . When Wallace persisted in criticizing administration policy toward the Soviet Union and the bomb, Truman ousted him from the Cabinet. In his address to a national radio audience on the night he submitted his letter of resignation, Wallace again voiced the theme that provoked Truman’s ire, charging that the U.S. government’s present course may mean “the extinction of man and of the world.”[26] That Truman bears so much responsibility for creating this perilous state of affairs, regardless of his conscious intentions, justifies the application of such a harsh standard of judgment and demands a closer look at the man and his early presidency. For if Harry Truman, a relatively decent man, could behave so irresponsibly, what assurance is there that future presidents, under comparable circumstances, might not do the same? In fact, several have already come frighteningly close.

Read the rest here.

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

Kick the Bastards Out

Posted on July 30, 2007 by RagBlog

Race is the Tripwire for the Progressive Movement: John Conyers and Impeachment
by Rev. Lennox Yearwood
July 27, 2007, After Downing Street

On July 23, Cindy Sheehan, Ray McGovern and I met with U.S. Rep. John Conyers about the issue of impeachment. We delivered a petition for impeachment with one million American signatures. While we met, 400 activists waited in the halls outside of his office along with a hoard of media to find out what the outcome of the meeting would be. The meeting was a very significant moment for the progressive movement from a historical standpoint. The movement for impeachment and the immediate reactions to why John Conyers was publicly targeted on this issue reflect how race continues to be, as my dear friend Bill Fletcher says, the tripwire for the progressive movement.

Rep. Conyers is a great mentor to me and my respect for him is unquestionable. He has been fighting for peace and justice and civil rights for decades inside and outside of Congress. He is a man for the people and for America. So, it was a truly disappointing moment on Monday, when we realized – as mentor and mentee – that we do not agree on his role as the Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary committee to uphold our constitution by holding our President and Vice President accountable for their impeachable offensives.

After concluding our meeting I stepped into the hallway with Cindy Sheehan and Ray McGovern to inform the crowd that he refused to put impeachment back on the table. We then returned to his office and sat down, refusing to leave until Capitol Police arrested us.

Since Monday, our action has been criticized on two fronts. First, by the tedious “maintain the Democratic party line no matter what” folks who think that we should wait Bush out until November 2008 and get back at him by voting in a Democrat for President. Second, by folks who have interpreted our targeting of Rep. Conyers, a deeply respected African-American leader in Congress, as an attack that is fundamentally racist by the White leftists of the anti-war movement.

To uncritical supporters of the Democratic Party, I say this is not a time for partisan politics. To use the American people’s frustration with Bush as political leverage in the 2008 elections, and to ignore the constitutional responsibility the legislative branch has to hold the executive branch accountable through the impeachment process, flies in the face of our democracy. People are dying in Iraq because of Bush’s lies; people are being tortured in Guantanamo because of Bush’s disregard for the Constitution and international law; and the American people are loosing faith in our democracy. But, Congress doesn’t get that, and that is why their current approval rating is lower than Bush’s.

To my African-American counterparts who take issue with the White progressive anti-war movement, I understand your criticism of our recent action in Mr. Conyers office, but I do not agree. It was extremely difficult to challenge a man that means so much to African-Americans, but impeaching Bush is critical to the future of our country. We cannot let the precedent stand that Bush has established, which severely oversteps the bounds of executive power. We cannot send the message that such actions will not go unpunished, or at least unchecked.

Impeachment begins in the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, which Rep. John Conyers chairs. He is in the position to begin the impeachment process or keep it from happening, and no other human being is in that position. In addition, Rep. Conyers is the recognized authority on Capitol Hill both on impeachment and on the impeachable offenses of Vice President Cheney and President Bush. He and his staff literally wrote the book on them before the Democrats won the majority last November: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/constitutionincrisis.

Moreover, the action on Monday was not a first resort – it was a last resort. There is no other recourse against Bush for the American people after impeachment, and if Rep. Conyers does not put forth impeachment then we have no recourse and the Democrats will have failed us.

This moment is not about race, it is not about John Conyers, and it is much bigger than the divides within our movements. This moment is about our future as a country, because humanity is at stake. The Bush administration’s hunger for war has caused so much instability in our world that we face a state of permanent wars.

The challenge we face as activists and leaders is how can we possibly bring an end to this madness when the Democrats in power are not with us? We need a broad-based movement that can hold our elected officials accountable and to create such a movement we need to address our internal divides. The reason many African-Americans have interpreted our action against Rep. Conyers as racial betrayal goes deep into the tradition of the progressive movement. How we can begin to address this is something I will discuss in an upcoming article.

In the meantime, for the sake of our country and our world, let us all work to impeach Bush and Cheney now.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. is the President of the Hip Hop Caucus. The Hip Hop Caucus is a national, nonprofit, non-partisan organization meant to inspire and motivate those of us born after the ‘60s civil rights movement.

Source

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

Victory, Undefined and Unachieved

Posted on July 30, 2007 by RagBlog

Operation Enduring Occupation: American Lies and Iraqi Nationalism
By ROBERT FANTINA

The international tragedy of not learning history’s lessons can be monumental. In the case of the Iraq war the result of not heeding the past is perhaps the worst it has been in centuries.

One wonders what led the U.S. and the world to its current situation. What caused a nation once respected as a beacon of peace and freedom (whether or not that reputation was ever deserved) to descend into the immorality of a pre-emptive strike, another overthrow of a sovereign government and finally the chaos of monitoring a bloody civil war in Iraq?

As is so often the case, the answers can be found in history, a history that is often ignored amid imperial designs masquerading as paranoid thoughts of dire threats to the American way of life.

In the June 1985 issue of ‘Monthly Review’ the following was stated: “Are we going to take the position that anti-Communism justifies anything, including colonialism, interference in the affairs of other countries, and aggression? That way, let us be perfectly clear about it, lies war and more war leading ultimately to full-scale national disaster.”

Today the communist bugaboo, so effectively used by several Cold War presidents, is passé; the former Soviet Union is struggling with severe economic issues and has long since ceased to be a world leader. So a new enemy had to be invented. With Iraq sitting on much of the world’s oil supplies, and a U.S. president who, along with much of his administration, has a long history of involvement in the oil industry, radical Islam is the new big bad wolf. The attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001 enabled this newest monster to take a very tangible form for the American public, which threw itself behind Mr. Bush as he marched soldiers off to Afghanistan to find the perpetrator of that disaster, overthrow the repressive Taliban that was said to be hiding Osama bin Laden and oh, by the way, allow Union Oil of California to build a pipeline through the country, something the Taliban had forbidden.

The association with radical Islam was easily transferable from Afghanistan to Iraq. On February 5, 2005, then Secretary of State Colin Powell solemnly told the world from the podium of the United Nations that Iraq had not accounted for its stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons. “We have evidence these weapons existed,” said he. “What we don’t have is evidence from Iraq that they have been destroyed or where they are.”

He spoke of the nerve gas VX, stating darkly that a single drop could kill a person. That U.N. inspectors were searching the country, and receiving cooperation from Saddam Hussein as they did so, was not sufficient for Mr. Powell and his boss, Mr. Bush. The inspectors were ordered out of the country by the United States, and 130,000 American soldiers invaded, unleashing unprecedented terror upon the Iraqi people.

So Mr. Bush, a complete stranger to combat and war himself, pulled the strings, forcing these dedicated Americans unnecessarily into harm’s way. Two months later he declared victory. Yet, inexplicably, the war did not end; thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died since he stood in full uniform (which he, of course, never donned in actual battle) on the deck of the aircraft carrier the Abraham Lincoln. Four years later, with ‘victory’ both undefined and certainly unachieved by whatever definition one may want to ascribe to it, he decided to escalate the war.

As he watches for the results of his ‘surge,’ the president has either forgotten, or perhaps never learned, a vital lesson, one journalist James Cameron succinctly described regarding Vietnam. “A nation of peasants and manual workers who might have felt restive or dissatisfied under the stress of totalitarian conditions had been obliged to forget all their differences in the common sense of resistance and self-defense. From the moment the United States dropped its first bomb on the North of Vietnam, she welded the nation together unshakably.”

Certainly, this is not entirely true of Iraq, but the parallel is striking. The Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds have not forgotten their centuries-old differences, but have united in one area: their hatred for and resistance to the U.S. occupation of their country. The America presence in their country only distracts them from any possible reconciliation with each other. This reconciliation will take years to achieve, but U.S. soldiers patrolling the streets and monitoring the actions of Iraqi citizens, often killing them as they do so, will only prolong the already painful process. The beginning of the end of the war will only be achieved when the last U.S. soldier leaves.

When, one wonders, will that be? The New York Times reported that the Bush Administration foresees that U.S. soldiers will remain in Iraq at least until 2009. The current plan, developed by General David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker includes the following: “The coalition, in partnership with the government of Iraq, employs integrated political, security, economic and diplomatic means, to help the people of Iraq achieve sustainable security by the summer of 2009.” The term ‘coalition,’ of course, is a euphemism for ‘American military,’ since the American military presence in Iraq has been by far the overwhelming majority. In June of 2007 the U.S. had approximately 166,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq; the next largest contingent, numbering approximately 5,500, was from Great Britain.

So current U.S. government plans are to maintain the occupation of Iraq until at least 2009. And since the American presence in Iraq only perpetuates the violence there, one can easily predict that that date will be pushed out again and again, until such time that the American public is so fed up with the continuing waste of American lives that it finally demands an end. It took years for that to occur during the Vietnam era; one can only hope that the American public has learned the lessons the current administration has missed, and will insist on U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq sooner, rather than later.

Robert Fantina is the author of Desertion and the American Soldier.

Source

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

A Lemming Parade

Posted on July 30, 2007 by RagBlog

The March to the Edge of the Cliff
By Siv O’Neall
Jul 29, 2007, 01:48

Mankind is blindly marching straight towards the edge of the cliff. Our so-called leaders are busy filling their pockets with gold and making sure they are first in line, that they can yell louder and grab faster than all the rest of us and that they can reach farther into whatever we’re heading for. The fact that it’s a morass and that it’s going to suck us all up, nobody seems to care about.

Every one of the big guys wants to be the first one to cross the line at the goal. What goal? Total destruction, but that is not yet clear to anybody. Or so it seems. Let the show go on. Let’s kill more innocent people, let’s buy up competing corporations, let’s lead the pack of thieves in money speculation, let’s bankrupt more small companies, let’s suck up the retirement savings of the little people, let’s fool the idiots who think we’re here to govern the world. We are here to take care of ourselves and our bank accounts. Who cares about the world? Who cares about tomorrow?

All the politicians and corporate leaders of the world seem to be set on exhausting the planet, killing off all the superfluous people and having a party when it’s all over. Who is leading the pack? Well, Cheney & Co., clearly. Is there anybody left who can put the brakes on that clique? When they are busy destroying the world, when they happily plan to nuke Iran, when they start bombing the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, when they let the Palestinians kill each other off and yell hooray on the sidelines, is there anybody left who will stop Cheney & Co.? They are so busy dancing a victory dance because the oil and arms industries are making huge profits that they don’t even see how the planet is burning. Corporate profits are soaring, so to hell with the dollar that’s going down. It’s good for exports and who cares if we owe trillions in debt to China and Japan? We don’t intend to pay it back anyway.

The poor people are dying of AIDS and starvation. Who cares as long as the pharmaceutical industry is making a fortune? Who cares if millions of children are without health insurance? They are the children of the poor and they are not good for anything anyway.

Let the little people lose their life’s savings in the big bankruptcies, the big money holders always save themselves and their fortunes. What matters is that business goes on. We can always fool enough people into believing that such and such stock is safe. When the bottom falls out, the CEOs will already be gone with their package intact and they’ll pick up the lead somewhere else where people can be fooled into investing. As long as there is a war on, corporate profits are safe.

Iraq is in our way for taking over the world. There are more countries in the way, but let’s take one at a time. Let’s first invade and take over Iraq. Oh damn, Iraq is not going too well. Well, let the bastards kill each other off and then we’ll take over when things calm down. They’ll sort things out between themselves and we’ll play ball with the winners after the civil war is over. In the meantime, let’s nuke Iran. We can’t have an Islam world power reaching from Morocco to Indonesia.

September 11 was a godsend. What would we have done if we hadn’t been able to scare the people into paralysis and dumbness? What would we have done if it hadn’t been for Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? There seems to be clear evidence that we are secretly supporting Al Qaeda, making sure they will not disappear. No surprise. And as for bin Laden, we have to go on pretending he’s still alive so we have a precise target in our war on terror. It’s lies and propaganda that keep the world going. It’s what we say that matters, not what we do. We can make the imbeciles believe anything we want them to believe. Repeat it often enough and it becomes the truth. We create our own reality.

If the Dems pick up some backbone and begin to realize that resistance to a dictatorship is possible, we’ll have to arrange for a repeat of the attack on the homeland. It’s essential that the executive should not in any way be limited in his power. What Cheney says stands, George will always go along and Rove is around to oil the wheels and keep the spin machine going.

The world has to see that it doesn’t serve any purpose to isolate the U.S. We don’t need the rest of the world. We are the leaders, we run the show, we decide how the Middle East is supposed to be cut up and reshaped.

Oh they say China is coming on big. That’s a lot of bull. China has no international standing and they are too heavily weighed down by poverty among their own people. After all, China is not even a civilized nation. No, there is nobody who can ever stand a chance to surpass America, the United States of America. America is the leader of the world and we have made sure that the world knows. One head of government after the other is coming on board the U.S. ship of State. Europe is veering to the right and the leaders are more and more interested in being on good terms with the giant in the west.

Besides, it’s Big Money that’s running the world and all we have to do is make sure that the big corporations are centered around us. Europe is playing our game once again and the rest of the world is sufficiently in awe of our military and financial power to want to be on good terms with us. Look at India. They were more than happy to clinch the deal about nuclear power in March 2006. That was a clever move, whoever thought of it. And as for Africa, it’s being robbed by the IMF and the World Bank and there is no way African states can ever get in our way to power. Besides, the people are dying of AIDS and that’s good riddance of useless people who are just overcrowding the planet.

We’ll just get a major stake in the oil in the Middle East and the world is ours. Israel will help us take care of Syria and Lebanon, and Palestine will never go along with our requirements for a peaceful solution with Israel so they are out of harm’s way. The Palestinians will go on self-destroying and nobody even knows that we helped kindle the fire. Smart move there. And now that we’ve poured fuel on the civil war in Iraq, they will soon self-destroy as well. As long as the different branches of Islam can’t stop the infighting, we can safely count on being the winners in the end.

They say the United States is a wounded beast. Just wait and see what we can accomplish. Nobody can beat us. We have our own people eating out of our hand since they’ve been told and retold for centuries that we’re the best, we’re the greatest, the most moral, we’re God’s chosen people! America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. They would never dare tear that myth apart. Patriotism and religion keep them going.

Ok, so where do we go from here? We’ll nuke Iran and then we’ll see the Iranians toe the line that we set out for them. Who ever said the United States was a loser? Just wait and see.

© Copyright 2007 by AxisofLogic.com

Source

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

If These Fucking Hadjis Learned to Drive, …..

Posted on July 30, 2007 by RagBlog

Please note the post title reflects our desire to emphasise the horrible racism, arrogance, and disrespect exhibited by the US military in Iraq. And anyone has to wonder why they hate us ….

Accustomed to Their Own Atrocities in Iraq, U.S. Soldiers Have Become Murderers
By Chris Hedges, Adbusters. Posted July 27, 2007.

After four years of war, American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.

All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in “atrocity producing situations.”

In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress pushes troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. This hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find.

The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing — the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm — to murder — the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.

After four years of war, American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The American killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor, and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed with this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish.

The reality behind the myth, however, is very different. The reality and the ideal clash when soldiers and Marines return home, alienating these combat veterans from the world around them, a world that still dines out on the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. But slowly returning veterans are giving us a new narrative of the war — one that exposes the vast enterprise of industrial slaughter unleashed in Iraq for a lie and sustained because of wounded national pride and willful ignorance. “This unit sets up this traffic control point and this 18 year old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun,” remembered Geoffrey Millard who served in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division. “And this car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split second decision that that’s a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts 200 rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three.”

“And they briefed this to the general,” Millard said, “and they briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. They briefed it to him. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, ‘if these fucking Hadjis learned to drive, this shit wouldn’t happen.'”

Those who come back from war, like Millard and tens of thousands of other veterans, suffer not only delayed reactions to stress, but a crisis of faith. The God they knew, or thought they knew, failed them. The church or the synagogue or the mosque, which promised redemption by serving God and country, did not prepare them for the betrayal of this civic religion, for the capacity we all have for human atrocity, for the lies and myths used to mask the reality of war. War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians. This bitter knowledge of betrayal has seeped into the ranks of American troops.

It has unleashed a new wave of embittered veterans not seen since the Vietnam War. It has made it possible for us to begin, again, to see war’s death mask.

“And then, you know, my sort of sentiment of what the fuck are we doing, that I felt that way in Iraq,” said Sergeant Ben Flanders, who estimated that he ran hundreds of convoys in Iraq. “It’s the sort of insanity of it and the fact that it reduces it. Well, I think war does anyway, but I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people, the only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with. And everybody else be damned, whether you are an Iraqi, I’m sorry, I’m sorry you live here, I’m sorry this is a terrible situation, and I’m sorry that you have to deal with all of, you know, army vehicles running around and shooting, and these insurgents and all this stuff.

“The first briefing you get when you get off the plane in Kuwait, and you get off the plane and you’re holding a duffle bag in each hand,” Millard remembered. “You’ve got your weapon slung. You’ve got a web sack on your back. You’re dying of heat. You’re tired. You’re jet-lagged. Your mind is just full of goop. And then, you’re scared on top of that, because, you know, you’re in Kuwait, you’re not in the States anymore … so fear sets in, too. And they sit you into this little briefing room and you get this briefing about how, you know, you can’t trust any of these fucking Hadjis, because all these fucking Hadjis are going to kill you. And Hadji is always used as a term of disrespect and usually, with the ‘f’ word in front of it.”

Read the rest here.

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

Junior Is Finishing Prescott’s Project

Posted on July 30, 2007 by RagBlog

Bush Fulfills His Grandfather’s Dream
by David Swanson | Jul 28 2007 – 2:01pm |

It’s remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather’s major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl’s grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd documenting President George W. Bush’s grandfather’s involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.

Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he’d received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.

If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush’s early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya’s middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott’s business dealings went better, and he entered politics.

Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as “Hitler’s Angel.” During the 1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware of both Thyssen’s political activities and the fact that the companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S. government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.

Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush’s businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America. (Is this starting to remind anyone of our current president’s relationship to the freedom of the press?)

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933. Here’s how the BBC promoted its recent story:

“Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.”

Actually, if you listen to the 30-minute BBC story, there is not one word of so much as speculation as to why this story is so little known. I think a clue to the answer can be found by looking into why this BBC report has not led to any U.S. media outlets picking up the story this week.

The BBC report provides a good account of the basic story. Some of the wealthiest men in America approached Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, beloved of many World War I veterans, many of them embittered by the government’s treatment of them. Prescott Bush’s group asked Butler to lead 500,000 veterans in a take-over of Washington and the White House. Butler refused and recounted the affair to the congressional committee. His account was corroborated in part by a number of witnesses, and the committee concluded that the plot was real. But the names of wealthy backers of the plot were blacked out in the committee’s records, and nobody was prosecuted. According to the BBC, President Roosevelt cut a deal. He refrained from prosecuting some of the wealthiest men in America for treason. They agreed to end Wall Street’s opposition to the New Deal.

Clearly the lack of accountability in Washington, D.C., did not begin with Nancy Pelosi taking Dubya’s impeachment off the table, or with Congress’ decision to avoid impeachment for President Ronald Reagan (a decision that arguably played a large role in installing Prescott Bush’s son George H.W. Bush as president), or with the failure to investigate the apparent deal that George H.W. Bush and others made with Iran to not release American hostages until Reagan was made president, or with the failure to prosecute Richard Nixon after he resigned. Lack of accountability is a proud tradition in our nation’s capital. Or maybe I should say our former nation’s capital. I don’t recognize the place anymore, and I credit that to George W. Bush’s efforts to fulfill his grandfather’s dream using far subtler and more effective means than a military coup.

Bush the grandson took office through a highly fraudulent election that he nonetheless lost. The Supreme Court blocked a recount of the vote and installed Dubya.

Prescott’s grandson proceeded to weaken or eliminate most of the Bill of Rights in the name of protection from a dark foreign enemy. He even tossed out habeas corpus. The grandson of Prescott, that dreamer of the 1930s, established with very little resistance that the U.S. government can kidnap, detain indefinitely on no charge, torture, and murder. The United States under Prescott Bush’s grandson adopted policies that heretofore had been considered only Nazi policies, most strikingly the willingness to openly plan and engage in aggressive wars on other nations.

At the same time, Dubya has accomplished a huge transfer of wealth within the United States from the rest of us to the extremely wealthy. He’s also effected a major privatization of public operations, including the military. And he’s kept tight control over the media.

Dubya has given himself the power to rewrite all laws with signing statements. He’s established that intentionally misleading the Congress about the need for a war is not a crime that carries any penalty. He’s given himself the right (just as Hitler did) to open anyone’s mail. He’s created illegal spying programs and then proposed to legalize them. Prescott would be so proud!

The current President Bush has accomplished much more smoothly than his grandfather could have imagined a feat that was one of the goals of Prescott’s gang, namely the elimination of Congress.

Source

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

It Sounds Like BushCo Talking

Posted on July 28, 2007 by RagBlog

Sharistani: Iragi oil unions not legit

WASHINGTON, July 26 (UPI) — Iraq’s oil minister said Iraq’s oil unions are not legitimate and have no more standing in the debate over the oil law than an ordinary citizen.

“There are no legal unions in Iraq,” Hussein al-Shahristani said Wednesday in response to a question about various factions’ positions on the controversial oil law. “Those people who call themselves representatives of the oil workers have not been elected to the position.”

Shahristani spoke to UPI by phone from Baghdad.

Saddam Hussein outlawed worker organizing in the public sector; subsequent U.S. occupying powers and now the Iraqi government do not recognize the workers’ rights to organize.

Despite that, workers have come together and leveraged their power. Since 2003 they’ve blocked numerous attempts to privatize management of both oil and other facilities and stopped work over disputes — most recently early last month over the oil law and other unmet demands.

Earlier this month workers in the southern, oil-rich town of Basra marched in protest against the oil law and demanded Shahristani’s resignation.

The law would govern exploration and development of Iraq’s 115 billion barrels of proven reserves and unknown reserves to be found in under-explored areas. But the law is stuck over central government vs. regional/local control over certain oil fields. And the unions, along with other political elements, have led the charge that the law allows for contracts they see as too friendly to foreign oil companies.

Source

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

The Green Zone Is Safe, And Sometimes It Is Dangerous

Posted on July 26, 2007 by RagBlog

The Baghdad Death Map: Iraqis Offer Their Own Security Assessment of Baghdad Neighborhoods
By ZEYAD KASIM 06/30/2007 00:55 AM ET

In their distinctive style of morbid humor, resourceful Baghdadis are circulating emails presenting their own personal assessment of the security situation in the capital. The detailed lists of what neighborhoods and areas are safe and what to avoid completely, because of Mahdi Army or Al-Qaeda activity or the random car bomb, are quite different from those found in Iraqi government or U.S. military statements. As many parts of the capital have become no-go zones for members of either the Sunni or Shia sect – or sometimes for both, it is a challenge for Baghdadis to identify areas where they are able to move freely and areas where they should better stay out.

The following is a translation of one such email making the rounds among residents of Baghdad and on Iraqi Web forums. The sarcastic email, which was written in Iraqi slang, attempts to classify the districts of Baghdad based on their level of danger. According to the author, the safest neighborhoods are the ones where the odds of staying alive are 50%:

The situation in different areas of Baghdad in regard to takfiri gangs of the new age: Al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, and their spiritual leaders – the forces of liberation.

fall into four different categories: safe, relatively safe, dangerous, and relatively dangerous. They are classified as follows:

– A safe area: where the probability of you staying alive is 50%.
– A relatively safe area: where the probability of you staying alive is 40%.
– A relatively dangerous area: where the probability of you staying alive is 30%.
– A dangerous area: where the probability of you staying alive is 20 to 10%.

Read the rest here.

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

Announcements

Posted on July 26, 2007 by RagBlog

Sat. Sept. 1st — Ft Worth protest

Looking for a fun way to spend Labor Day weekend?
PROTEST OUTSIDE THE REPUBLICAN STRAW POLL.

That’s right, the Republicans are coming to Fort Worth, along with the national media, to hold their publicity-hungry Straw Poll. We want to use this opportunity to make our own voices heard against the war, so we’re conducting the American People’s Poll on Iraq, right outside the Convention Center. We have the 800-900 blocks of Main blocked off for this protest on Saturday, September 1st, with the main activity happening from 1:30 to 3:30. We’ll have national speakers and a lot of excitement. Think about all those tv cameras with nothing better to do than focus on our signs.

More information at: http://www.texansforpeace.org/peoplespoll/

We are seeking ENDORSERS among other organizations, from anywhere in the country. If you can endorse, please e-mail me at aburgin@texansforpeace.org.

Thanks!
Alyssa Burgin,
Texans for Peace

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

Changing the Nature of the Food Supply

Posted on July 26, 2007 by RagBlog

Pasteurized almond rule has some going nuts: On September 1, almost all almonds must be pasteurized

MADERA, California (AP) — Raw, organic almonds form the basis of Karyn Calabrese’s garlicky nut pate, her vegan pie crusts and vanilla ice cream custards.

But under a new federal rule requiring that virtually all almonds be pasteurized to prevent foodborne illness, the Chicago restaurateur will have to substitute a new nut, or go to vast lengths to import her raw almonds from across the globe.

Industry representatives say tightening food safety rules to subject almonds to heat treatment will help expand the market for California farmers, who grow about 80 percent of the world’s almonds in a flat strip of land sandwiched between the Pacific coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains.

But the regulation, set to take effect September 1, has also angered everyone from organic farmers to followers of the restrictive raw foods diet.

“The almond is the king of the nut world and a main staple for raw foodists,” said Calabrese, whose elegant restaurants feature small plates of raw, vegan food, none of which has been heated above 110 degrees. “I haven’t even thought out what I’ll do because it’s just such a mind-blowing situation.”

Almonds have become increasingly lucrative as they’ve gained popularity with health-conscious consumers. California farmers expect to harvest 1.3 billion pounds of almonds this year, a bumper crop worth more than $1.4 billion.

Following Salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004 that were traced to raw almonds, the Almond Board of California rallied for a federal rule requiring all almonds in the state to be pasteurized to keep bacteria from infecting the nuts while they dry in the orchard or while they’re processed.

“We consider it unacceptable to continue shipping a product that could contain a microorganism that could make somebody sick,” said Richard Waycott, president and CEO of the board, a marketing arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We’re really confident that this program is a win-win for everybody because it does not alter the product.”

In pasteurization — a process also used for milk, juice and eggs — the shelled and hulled nuts typically are laid out on a conveyor belt that passes them through a moist burst of steam to heat the kernels’ surface to about 200 degrees, killing any pathogens present. An alternative process sends the nuts into a chamber where they’re sprayed with propylene oxide gas.

Major almond buyers such as Mars Inc., Kraft Foods Inc. and The Hershey Co. reviewed a study by the board to determine if the process impacted the nut’s quality, taste, texture and appearance, and found it had no effect, Waycott said.

Once treated, the pasteurized almonds are ready for sale and can be legally shipped throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico, said Michael Durando, chief for the marketing order administration branch at USDA.

Growers can apply for exemptions if they can prove that their manufacturing process — be it dry roasting, blanching or any other traditional treatments — achieves pasteurization. They also can sell small quantities of raw, unpasteurized almonds direct to customers at farm stands or at certified California farmers markets, but can face penalties if they’re caught selling more than 100 pounds a day to any one person.

That’s not enough volume for Berkeley-based Living Tree Community Foods, which soon will start importing its raw almonds from Spain to make its “living” nut butter. Company officials said its customers are concerned about the health effects of propylene oxide, a gas listed as a possible carcinogen by the International Agency on Cancer Research.

Federal guidelines found that extremely low residue levels of the gas had no harmful effects, Waycott said. But the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, asked the USDA to hold off on implementing the rule to solicit an independent study on the chemical.

The rule was developed over three years of careful discussions between industry representatives and agriculture officials, and won’t be reconsidered, Durando said.

Madera-based farmer Mike Braga, whose organic nuts are favored by live food fans and grocery chains such as Trader Joe’s, said he won’t break the law by continuing to sell raw almonds. But if customers aren’t demanding it, he said he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be able to freeze his almonds instead of pasteurizing them.

“We’re going to lose our entire raw market,” Braga said. “If such good almonds are available here, why should our customers have to import them from Europe?”

Source

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

Democrats: Another Piece of the Ruling Class

Posted on July 25, 2007 by RagBlog

Tomgram: Ira Chernus, Democratic Doublespeak on Iraq

Start with the simplest, most basic fudge. Newspapers and the TV news constantly report on various plans for the “withdrawal of American troops” from Iraq, when what’s being proposed is the withdrawal of American “combat troops” or “combat brigades.” This isn’t a matter of splitting hairs; it’s the difference between a plan for full-scale withdrawal and a plan to remain in Iraq in a different military form for the long term. American combat brigades only add up to perhaps half of the troops we presently have in that country.

There is, in fact, quite a gap between withdrawal from that embattled land and the withdrawal of some American troops, while many of the rest hunker down on the enormous, all-but-permanent military bases the Pentagon has built there over the last four years — while defending the largest embassy on the planet, now nearing completion (amid the normal woes that seem to go with American construction and “reconstruction”) in Baghdad’s heavily fortified but distinctly insecure Green Zone. And yet, thanks to the carefully worded statements of leading Democratic (and Republican) politicians now criticizing the Bush administration, as well as generally terrible reporting in the mainstream media, most Americans who don’t make it to the fine print or who don’t wander widely on the political Internet, would have no way of knowing that withdrawal isn’t withdrawal at all.

Ira Chernus, Tomdispatch regular and author of Monsters To Destroy, takes a careful look at the leading Democratic candidates for president and raises a few crucial, if largely unasked, questions about the nature of the positions they are taking on the Iraq War. Tom

******************

The Democrats’ Iraqi Dilemma: Questions Unasked, Answers Never Volunteered
By Ira Chernus

Pity the poor Democratic candidates for president, caught between Iraq and a hard place. Every day, more and more voters decide that we must end the war and set a date to start withdrawing our troops from Iraq. Most who will vote in the Democratic primaries concluded long ago that we must leave Iraq, and they are unlikely to let anyone who disagrees with them have the party’s nomination in 2008.

But what does it mean to “leave Iraq”? Here’s where most of the Democratic candidates come smack up against that hard place. There is a longstanding bipartisan consensus in the foreign-policy establishment that the U.S. must control every strategically valuable region of the world — and none more so than the oil heartlands of the planet. That’s been a hard-and-fast rule of the elite for some six decades now. No matter how hard the task may be, they demand that presidents be rock-hard enough to get the job done.

So whatever “leave Iraq” might mean, no candidate of either party likely to enter the White House on January 20, 2009 can think it means letting Iraqis determine their own national policies or fate. The powers that be just wouldn’t stand for that. They see themselves as the guardians of world “order.” They feel a sacred obligation to maintain “stability” throughout the imperial domains, which now means most of planet Earth — regardless of what voters may think. The Democratic front-runners know that “order” and “stability” are code words for American hegemony. They also know that voters, especially Democratic ones, see the price of hegemony in Iraq and just don’t want to pay it anymore.

So the Democratic front-runners must promise voters that they will end the war — with not too many ideologically laden ifs, ands, or buts — while they assure the foreign-policy establishment that they will never abandon the drive for hegemony in the Middle East (or anywhere else). In other words, the candidates have to be able to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.

No worries, it turns out. Fluency in doublespeak is a prime qualification for high political office. On Iraq, candidates Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson don’t meet that test. They tell anyone and everyone that they want “all” U.S. troops out of Iraq, but they register only 1-4% in the polls and are generally ignored in the media. The Democrats currently topping the polls, on the other hand, are proving themselves eminently qualified in doublespeak.

Clinton: “We got it right, mostly, during the Cold War”

Hillary Clinton declares forthrightly: “It is time to begin ending this war…. Start bringing home America’s troops…. within 90 days.” Troops home: It sounds clear enough. But she is always careful to avoid the crucial word all. A few months ago she told an interviewer: “We have remaining vital national security interests in Iraq…. What we can do is to almost take a line sort of north of, between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and basically put our troops into that region.” A senior Pentagon officer who has briefed Clinton told NPR commentator Ted Koppel that Clinton expects U.S. troops to be in Iraq when she ends her second term in 2017.

Why all these troops? We have “very real strategic national interests in this region,” Clinton explains. “I will order specialized units to engage in narrow and targeted operations against al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the region. They will also provide security for U.S. troops and personnel and train and equip Iraqi security services to keep order and promote stability.” There would be U.S. forces to protect the Kurds and “our efforts must also involve a regional recommitment to success in Afghanistan.” Perhaps that’s why Clinton has proposed “that we expand the Army by 80,000 troops, that we move faster to expand the Special Forces.”

Says her deputy campaign manager Bob Nash, “She’ll be as tough as any Republican on our enemies.” And on our friends, he might have added, if they don’t shape up. At the Take Back America conference in June the candidate drew boos when she declared that “the American military has done its job.… They gave the Iraqi government the chance to begin to demonstrate that it understood its responsibilities.… It is the Iraqi government which has failed.” It’s the old innocent-Americans-blame-the-foreigners ploy.

More importantly, it’s the old tough-Americans-reward-friends-who-help-America ploy. We should start withdrawing some troops, Clinton says, “to make it clear to the Iraqis that … we’re going to look out for American interests, for the region’s interests.” If the Iraqi government is not “striving for sustainable stability…. we’ll consider providing aid to provincial governments and reliable non-governmental organizations that are making progress.”

Clinton’s message to the Iraqi leaders is clear: You had your chance to join “the international community,” to get with the U.S. program, and to reap the same benefits as the leaders of other oil-rich nations — but you blew it. So, now you can fend for yourselves while we look for new, more capable allies in Iraq and keep who-knows-how-many troops there to “protect our interests” — and increase our global clout. The draw-down in Iraq, our signal that we’ve given up on the al-Maliki government, “will be a first step towards restoring Americans moral and strategic leadership in the world,” Clinton swears.

“America must be the world’s leader,” she declared last month. “We must widen the scope of our strength by leading strong alliances which can apply military force when required.” And, when necessary, cut off useless puppet governments that won’t let their strings be pulled often enough.

Hillary is speaking to at least three audiences: the voters at home, the foreign-policy elite, and a global elite she would have to deal with as president. Her recent fierce criticism of the way President Bush has handled Iraq, like her somewhat muddled antiwar rhetoric, is meant as a message of reassurance to voters, but also to our elite — and as a warning to foreigners: The next President Clinton will be tough on allies as well as foes, as tough as the old cold warriors. “We got it right, mostly, during the Cold War.… Nothing is more urgent than for us to begin again to rebuild a bipartisan consensus,” she said last year in a speech that cut right to the bottom line: “American foreign policy exists to maintain our security and serve our national interests.” That’s what the bipartisan consensus has always believed.

Read the rest here.

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment

Children As Prisoners

Posted on July 25, 2007 by RagBlog

The Police State Takeover Of Schools
Published on Tuesday, July 24, 2007.
Source: Infowars.net – Steve Watson

Schools have become hi-tech prisons. Children all across America and the UK are being conditioned to accept that they are not free and that they must submit to draconian laws and measures for their own safety. Soon enough children will not even know what it is like to act as a private individual within society. Don’t believe this? Read on.

All over the United States and Britain children are increasingly being subjected to measures that wouldn’t look out of place in maximum security prisons.

Everyday we post reports from mainstream news sources documenting this disturbing trend.

Today The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that schools across America are banning backpacks that are made of non see-through materials .

If students walking between classes want to use a backpack, it must be made of clear plastic or mesh so its contents can be seen at a glance. Cloth backpacks can be carried into the school in the morning but must be stored in lockers.

So the students should all now feel much safer due to the fact that they can all see each other’s personal items right? Wrong.

The move has unleashed a torrent of protest from some Wissahickon students, who say high schools are coming to resemble “prisons or police states,” in the words of one. Brandon Hemmen, a senior, said the clear bags will make it easy for thieves who already rip off students every day. And “bags will get mixed up; we’ll have to use name tags,” he added. “This is wrong. They can’t take all our freedoms away.”

A second item today comes from Security tech website Security Park which reports that Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania is to deliver the convenience and security of contactless payments by cell phone to students and the faculty.

Beginning in July, Slippery Rock University’s 8,500 students, faculty and staff will receive a new official campus ID card and a separate contactless token designed for use with their mobile phones.

Using either the card or the phone, they will be able to make payments at on-campus locations as well as participating merchants in the surrounding community….

The new mobile phone tokens incorporate the same standards-based contactless technology (ISO 14443) used worldwide by MasterCard, Visa and leading card issuers in the payment and identity sectors.

Good, prepare the kids first and then bring in the cashless society nationwide, with an ID card of course, which you will need to be able to buy and sell. We have long warned of the dangers of a cashless society putting total control into the hands of state regulated and private corporations and the break down of basic freedoms that it encompasses.

Still don’t feel there is anything to worry about in schools?

Do a prisonplanet.com google search on the word “school”, you will be confronted with literally hundreds and hundreds of news articles from the past few years that detail the police state takeover of schools all over the US and throughout the UK.

There are far too many to mention, however, a quick overview of linked headlines follows.

Read the rest (with mega-links to pertinent evidence, such as forced fingerprinting, pervasive security cams) here.

Posted in RagBlog | Leave a comment