The Rag Blog

The Bush administration now looks as if it is preparing the ground work to implement what many have referred to as a back door draft. Recently the administration has issued muster orders to a group of Army veterans who are in the Individual Ready Reserve otherwise known as the IRR for short. The IRR is a list of veterans who have served their time on active duty, but are on a list for a period of time and subject to recall in case of a national emergency. Initially it was reported that the Army was only doing a pilot muster which would consist of a group of 5,000 veterans who lived around particular military bases. Now according to a large group of angry Army veterans who have written posts on different military based Internet message boards, it appears as if this was a lie and the muster order is much wider spread than was originally let on by Army officials. The Army has rarely called for a muster of IRR members and many believe that this could be a precursor to another IRR recall.

The Army has previously attempted a recall of the IRR with many who were recalled refusing to show up. The Army finally abandoned the recall after it received a great deal of bad press for the call up disrupting the lives of those who have honorably served. The Marines also issued a limited recall of their IRR last year.

The following was reported in the Stars and Stripes regarding this new so-called pilot muster.

The pilot muster will begin in mid-July and run through August. IRR members who are ordered to report for this summer’s pilot program will go to one of four Reserve centers: Tacoma, Wash.; Fort Totten, N.Y.; Fort Meade, Md.; or Los Alamitos, Calif.

According to posts by current members of the Army IRR, they have received muster orders to report to local military bases besides the four Reserve centers. Here are just a couple of them.

I am one of the 5,000 to be mustered and I have 3 months left in my obligation. Unlike this article my orders were not for any of those locations. It was, instead, at a reserve center nearby.

Oh, and this crap about all 5,000 living within a 50 mile radius of one of four bases is not true. We do not live anywhere near Washington, New York, Maryland OR California. The letter specifies my husband report to El Paso, Texas. Furthermore, if the Army is having such a hard time tracking down their IRR soldiers then how the hell are they managing to get these muster letters to the right people?

Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul, Patagonia to Mexico City, journalists and academics, trade unionists and businesspeople, as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me why the US public tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over the last two decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001?

“You cannot win the peace unless you know the enemy at home and abroad.” US Marine Colonel from Tennessee.

07/08/07 “ICH” — – Why, they ask, is a public, which opinion polls reveal as over sixty percent in favor of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, so politically impotent? A journalist from a leading business journal in India asked me what is preventing the US government from ending its aggression against Iran, if almost all of the world’s major oil companies, including US multinationals are eager to strike oil deals with Teheran? Anti-war advocates in Europe, Asia and Latin America ask me at large public forums what has happened to the US peace movement in the face of the consensus between the Republican White House and the Democratic Party-dominated Congress to continue funding the slaughter of Iraqis, supporting Israeli starvation, killing and occupation of Palestine and destruction of Lebanon?

Absence of a Peace Movement?

Just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 over one million US citizens demonstrated against the war. Since then there have been few and smaller protests even as the slaughter of Iraqis escalates, US casualties mount and a new war with Iran looms on the horizon. The demise of the peace movement is largely the result of the major peace organizations’ decision to shift from independent social mobilizations to electoral politics, namely channeling activists into working for the election of Democratic candidates – most of whom have supported the war. The rationale offered by these ‘peace leaders’ was that once elected the Democrats would respond to the anti-war voters who put them in office. Of course practical experience and history should have taught the peace movement otherwise: The Democrats in Congress voted every military budget since the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The total capitulation of the newly elected Democratic majority has had a major demoralizing effect on the disoriented peace activists and has discredited many of its leaders.

Absence of a National Movement

As David Brooks (La Jornada July 2, 2007) correctly reported at the US Social forum there is no coherent national social movement in the US. Instead we have a collection of fragmented ‘identity groups’ each embedded in narrow sets of (identity) interests, and totally incapable of building a national movement against the war. The proliferation of these sectarian ‘non-governmental’ ‘identity’ ‘groups’ is based on their structure, financing and leadership. Many depend on private foundations and public agencies for their financing, which precludes them from taking political positions. At best they operate as ‘lobbies’ simply pressuring the elite politicians of both parties. Their leaders depend on maintaining a separate existence in order to justify their salaries and secure future advances in government agencies.

The US trade unions are virtually non-existent in more than half of the United States: They represent less than 9% of the private sector and 12% of the total labor force. Most national, regional and city-wide trade union officials receive salaries comparable to senior business executives: between $300,000 to $500,000 dollars a year. Almost 90% of the top trade union bureaucrats finance and support pro-war Democrats and have supported Bush and the Congressional war budgets, bought Israel Bonds ($25 billion dollars) and the slaughter of Palestinians and the Israeli bombing of Lebanon.

The Unopposed War Lobby

The US is the only country in the world where the peace movement is unwilling to recognize, publically condemn or oppose the major influential political and social institutions consistently supporting and promoting the US wars in the Middle East. The political power of the pro-Israel power configuration, led by the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), supported within the government by highly placed pro-Israel Congressional leaders and White House and Pentagon officials has been well documented in books and articles by leading journalists, scholars and former President Jimmy Carter. The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) has over two thousand full-time functionaries, more than 250,000 activists, over a thousand billionaire and multi-millionaire political donors who contribute funds both political parties. The ZPC secures 20% of the US foreign military aid budget for Israel, over 95% congressional support for Israel’s boycott and armed incursions in Gaza, invasion of Lebanon and preemptive military option against Iran.

The US invasion and occupation policy in Iraq, including the fabricated evidence justifying the invasion, was deeply influenced by top officials with long-standing loyalties and ties to Israel. Wolfowitz and Feith, numbers 2 and 3 in the Pentagon, are life-long Zionists, who lost security clearance early in their careers for handing over documents to Israel. Vice President Cheney’s chief foreign policy adviser in the planning of the Iraq invasion is Irving Lewis Liebowitz (‘Scooter Libby’). He is a protégé and long-time collaborator of Wolfowitz and a convicted felon.

Libby-Liebowitz committed perjury, defending the White House’s complicity in punishing officials critical of its Iraq war propaganda. Libby-Liebowitz received powerful political and financial support from the pro-Israel lobby during his trial. No sooner did he lose his appeal on his conviction on five counts of perjury, obstructing justice and lying, than the ZPC convinced President Bush to ‘commute’ his prison sentence, in effect freeing him from a 30 month prison sentence before he had served a day. While Democratic politicians and some peace leaders criticized President Bush, none dared hold responsible the pro-Israel lobby which pressured the White House.

The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) – numbering 52 – and their regional and local affiliates are the leading force transmitting Israel’s war agenda against Iran. The PMAJO, working closely with US-Israeli Congressman Rahm Emmanuel and leading Zionist Senators Charles Schumer and Joseph Lieberman, succeeded in eliminating a clause in the budget appropriation setting a date for the withdrawal for US troops from Iraq.

In contrast to the successful vast propaganda, congressional and media campaigns, organized and funded by the pro-Israel lobbies for the war policies, there is no public record of the big oil companies supporting the Iraq war, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon or the military threats of preemptive attacks on Iran. Interviews with investment bankers, oil company executives and a thorough review of the major Petroleum Institute publications over the past seven years provide conclusive evidence that ‘Big Oil’ was deeply interested in negotiating oil agreements with Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Islamic government. ‘Big Oil’ perceives US Middle East wars as a threat to their long-standing profitable relations with all the conservative Arab oil states in the Gulf. Despite the strategic position in the US economy and their great wealth ‘‘Big Oil’ was totally incapable of countering their political power and organized influence of the pro-Israel lobby. In fact Big Oil was totally marginalized by the White House National Security Advisor for the Middle East, Elliot Abrams, a fanatical Zionist and militarist.

Despite the massive and sustained pro-war activity of the leading Zionist organizations inside and outside of the government and despite the absence of any overt or covert pro-war campaign by ‘Big Oil’, the leaders of the US peace movement have refused to attack the pro-Israel war lobby and continue to mouth unfounded clichés about the role of ‘Big Oil’ in the Middle East conflicts.

The apparently ‘radical’ slogans against the oil industry by some leading intellectual critics of the war has served as a ‘cover’ to avoid the much more challenging task of taking on the powerful, Zionist lobby. There are several reasons for the failure of the leaders of the peace movement to confront the militant Zionist lobby. One is fear of the powerful propaganda and smear campaign which the pro-Israel lobby is expert at mounting, with its aggressive accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ and its capacity to blacklist critics, leading to job loss, career destruction, public abuse and death threats.

The second reason that peace leaders fail to criticize the leading pro-war lobby is because of the influence of pro-Israel ‘progressives’ in the movement. These progressives condition their support of ‘peace in Iraq’ only if the movement does not criticize the pro-war Israel lobby in and outside the US government, the role of Israel as a belligerent partner to the US in Lebanon, Palestine and Kurdish Northern Iraq. A movement claiming to be in favor of peace, which refuses to attack the main proponents of war, is pursuing irrelevance: it deflects attention from the pro-Israel high officials in the government and the lobbyists in Congress who back the war and set the White House’s Middle East agenda. By focusing attention exclusively on President Bush, the peace leaders failed to confront the majority pro-Israel Democratic congress people who fund Bush’s war, back his escalation of troops and give unconditional support to Israel’s military option for Iran.

The collapse of the US peace movement, the lack of credibility of most of its leaders and the demoralization of many activists can be traced to strategic political failures: the unwillingness to identify and confront the real pro-war movements and the inability to create a political alternative to the bellicose Democratic Party. The political failure of the leaders of the peace movement is all the more dramatic in the face of the large majority of passive Americans who oppose the war, most of whom did not display their flags this Fourth of July and are not led in tow by either the pro-Israel lobby or their intellectual apologists within progressive circles.

The “fair and balanced” network that is FOX News has struck again. On the June 21 segment of The O’Reilly Factor viewers were treated to a “report” about lesbian gangs terrorizing the nation. Seriously. One Rod Wheeler, a Fox News crime analyst breathlessly reports about gangs of lesbian roving our city streets, beating up heterosexuals, and indoctrinating kids while at it. Again, seriously.

Said Wheeler, a former Metropolitan D.C police officer:

“Well, you know, there is this national underground network, if you will, Bill, of women that’s lesbians and also some men groups that’s actually recruiting kids as young as 10 years old in a lot of the schools in the communities all across the country. And they actually carry a number of weapons. And they commit a number of crimes…we’ve actually counted, just in the Washington D.C. area alone, that’s Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, well over 150 of these crews. … And they — like I said, they recruit these kids to be members of these gangs.”

Thank heavens we have Fox to let us know the real threat in the U.S. isn’t straights gay-bashing us, it’s us attacking them! And according to Wheeler some of the women carry pink pistols.

Naturally, Bill being the excellent journalist he is, vetted all Wheeler’s claims before airing them to a national audience, right? Not so fast. Thanks to the excellent Southern Poverty Law Center — a civil rights watchdog group — we know that isn’t the case. The SPL contacted several police headquarters in the region and they have no idea what Wheeler is talking about. And when the group contacted Wheeler he couldn’t provide the name of a single police chief, cite a media source, or any other proof to back up his claims about lesbian gangs in the D.C. area.

Turns out Wheeler is a member of Jericho City of Praise, a conservative mega-church actively working against gay rights. Hmm, I wonder what might be behind Wheeler’s outlandish claims? As for O’Reilly, this is yet another in a long line of homophobic garbage reports he has filled our airwaves with. Both he and Fox are forces of evil in this world. But what really gets me are the numerous gay folks at Fox who delude themselves into thinking their presence somehow helps gay visibility. I’m sure the network treats their gay employees just fine. That will never stop them from demonizing us again and again.

Here is a link to Wheeler’s website or drop him an email at info@rod007.com. As always, be polite when making your point.

Attention all AfterEllen.com readers: the jig is up! Our secret “national underground network” of violent lesbian gangs aimed at criminal activity and recruiting girls into the homosexual lifestyle has been exposed, and we must now move to Plan B (colonizing Mars).

Yes, that’s what Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor actually suggested last week (except for the Mars part, although I’m sure someone will suggest shipping us all there any day now) in a segment they aired about the growing problem of lesbian gangs terrorizing heterosexuals by stabbing and beating them, and brandishing pink guns (as if any self-respecting lesbian would carry a pink gun).

The claims were made by host Bill O’Reilly and “Fox crime analyst” Rod Wheeler (picture above, right), a former homicide detective who is clearly either mentally unbalanced, confused, willing to say anything to get on camera, or thinks every woman who isn’t interested in him is a lesbian (or D, all of the above).

I could analyze how ridiculous and unsubstantiated Wheeler’s claims are, point out their similarity to the outrageous stories the Nazis made up about the Jews back in the day, or question how such clearly inflammatory and inaccurate assertions based on distorted information got past even Bill O’Reilly’s fact-checkers, but other bloggers have already done so quite handily (see here, here, here, and here, plus check out this gay male take, and this well-researched rebuttal).

Instead, I’ll just make fun of it. Because what else can you do in the face of such insanity? (Well, besides telling Fox what you think about these outlandish claims, boycotting companies that advertise on The O’Reilly Factor, and reading more about O’Reilly’s record of distortion, all of which I plan to do shortly).

Here are a few of the choicer statements made in the segment:

O’REILLY: In Tennessee, authorities say a lesbian gang called GTO, Gays Taking Over, are involved in raping young girls. And in Philadelphia, a lesbian gang called DTO, Dykes Taking Over, are allegedly terrorizing people, as well.

Yes, and here in my New York apartment, we have regular meetings of LSOC (Lesbians Sitting on the Couch), where we brandish hard plastic remotes menacingly at our television set while cruelly biting down on popcorn kernels. Quick, catch us before we strike again!

O’REILLY: When they recruit the kids, are they indoctrinating them into homosexuality?
WHEELER: Yes, as a matter of fact, some of these kids have reported being forced into performing sex acts and doing sex acts with some of these people.

That’s right, don’t be mislead by the fact that 97% of pedophiles are male — it’s lesbians who are the real danger to your children!

O’REILLY: …it makes sense that, if you had lawless gay people, they would do this kind of thing, but you don’t associate it, you associate homosexuality more with a social movement, not a criminal movement, but you’re saying this is all over the country, detective?
WHEELER: It’s all over the country. It’s mainly in your larger cities, you go from New York to California to wherever you want to name, you can see these organizations.

Um, hate to break it you, Ron, but those “movements” happening “all over the country” are called “pride parades,” and the only thing criminal about them is the sports bra-only look some lesbians try to pass off as actual outfits.

WHEELER: “We’ve counted, just in the DC area alone, over 150 gangs or crews or networks.”

First of all, let me thank you for your feedback surrounding the O’Reilly Factor discussion on Lesbian Gangs. I received several e-mails from viewers, some positive and some negative, offering comments and constructive criticisms. Some of the e-mails I received were threatening and simply hostile. Click here for a sample e-mail I received from one viewer.

During the O’Reilly Factor segment on June 21st, while engaged in a discussion on Lesbian gangs, I inadvertently stated that gang members carry pistols that are painted pink and call themselves the “Pink Pistol Packing Group.” I was not referring to the gay rights group “Pink Pistols” who advocates for the lawful rights of gays to carry weapons for protection. Further, I mentioned that there are “over 150 of these gangs” in the greater Washington DC area. What I actually meant is that there are over 150 gangs in the Washington DC area, some of which are in fact lesbian gangs. Lastly, I mentioned in the segment that there is this “national epidemic” of lesbian gangs. A better choice of words would have been to say that there is a growing concern nationally, and especially in major urban areas, of increased gang activity, which includes some lesbian gang activity.

I apologize for any misunderstanding this may have caused.

Sincerely,

A Surge Of Hypocrisy

The United States entered World War II in 1941 to block the extension of a utopian, extremist worldview called Nazism. Despite the fact that Imperial Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, it perceived Nazi Germany as the greater threat to world peace and waged war against the racial state. Hitler’s extension of “totalitarianism, racism, militarism, and overt aggressive warfare” had to be stopped at all costs. [1] The fate of humanity was in the balance. As America entered the war against Hitler’s utopian, racial fanaticism, many felt a surge of hypocrisy in the action. Why was the United States going off to fight a state that was committed to segregation supported by law and racial hierarchy when things looked almost no different at home? How could the United States claim to be fighting injustice and racism abroad when it was allowing injustice, segregation, and overall racism to flourish within its borders? This double-standard was never addressed in this time, has yet to be reconciled in America’s history, and most surely never will.

An Artificial Parallel

Over sixty years after World War II has ended, the United States has once again undertaken a global endeavor. This time, to eradicate fanatical Islamic-terrorists who are bent on destroying freedom and democracy. Apparently, our new enemies embody goose-stepping fascists with a religious twist. Hence the phrase, ‘Islamo-Fascists,’ created and perpetuated by the media. The great purpose of this broadcasted phrase—among many others—is to imbed the idea that the United States is somehow taking on an endeavor comparable to that of World War II (The Good War). By creating an artificial parallel between the enemies of World War II and those of today, the public relations industry and those within governmental institutions, wish to mislead the American population into feeling that a foreign policy of preventive global aggression is just and right. Tactics are of no concern, as the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. What is done must be done to ensure humankind’s freedom. After all, the enemy is of Second Great War proportions.

No doubt, there are religious-extremists in the world who would like to see a global utopia manifest, and who will even go as far as trying to implement it. There is no denying this. Historical and current examples are abundant. However, the propagandistic tendency of the media to portray most, if not all, Muslims as fanatics who want to create, and export, a Caliphate (the Islamic form of government representing the political unity and leadership of the Muslim world) that will be “as Fascist as Nazi Germany was,” in a convert or die approach, as well as the overall comparison to the 20th century European fascist movements, to foster fear and xenophobia in the American population to keep them in their hermetic, insular condition is wholly misleading. [2]

First, fascism is a system based on the fusion of government and corporations. Also known as Corporatism, the two institutions work in concert to bring profit to a tiny minority and discipline to the rest of the population, which acts as the workforce. Second, it is a post-democratic occurrence. In other words, “[i]t is a phenomenon of failed democracies…” [3] Third, fascist movements are limited to state territories where the people’s passions are channeled “into the construction of an obligatory domestic unity around projects of internal cleansing and external expansion.” [4] Hence, it is a state-centered utopian project that expands itself by way of force from the inside out. Fourth, fascists use the state of confinement’s institutions (political, economic, and military), usually those of a democratic society, to seize control and implement their utopian visions. Fifth, it is a state-centered “political religion” that mobilizes “believers around sacred rites and words, excite[s] them to self-denying fervor, and preache[s] a revealed truth that admit[s] no dissidence.” [5] In essence, the state is extremely insular and seen as the most important entity of all. As Robert O. Paxton describes in The Anatomy of Fascism:

The [state] community comes before humankind in fascist values, and respecting individual rights or due process gave way to serving the destiny of the volk or razza. Therefore each individual national fascist movement gives full expression to its own cultural particularism. Fascism, unlike the other “isms,” is not for export[, it does not seek to convert the outside world]: each movement jealously guards its own recipe for national revival, and fascist leaders seem to feel little or no kinship with their foreign cousins. [6]

The so-called illusive, global network of Islamic terrorists who are apparently committed to destroying freedom and democracy worldwide and, most of all, America, for its having been born—of course not because of its policies in the Middle-East—have no such political, military, and/or economic institutions through which to wage combat on the scales presented to the American public. On the contrary, most of these groups are sparse, disconnected factions comprised of Third World populations in a deep political and economic crisis that most often “eclipse religion.” [7] Most foreign extremists ” are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern [imperial] democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that [they] view as their homeland.” [8] Moreover, “[f]undamentalist Muslims offer little loyalty” to any given state, as “Islam is their nation.” [9] Many Muslims also feel a kinship with those outside their religious world, especially in times of crisis. Was it an anomaly that the Muslim world rallied to denounce the attacks of 9/11 and support the United States during its time of grievance? [10] And finally, as Paxton asserts:

The principal objection to succumbing to the temptation to call Islamic fundamentalist movements like al-Qaeda and the Taliban fascist is that they are not reactions against a malfunctioning democracy. Arising in traditional hierarchical societies, their unity is, in terms of Émile Durkheim’s famous distinction, more mechanical than organic. Above all, they have not “given up free institutions,” since they never had any. [11]

In February of this year, a global poll of twenty-seven countries, some Muslim majority countries included, was taken by the BBC World Service. A majority agreed with the sentiment that most radical groups are sparse, disconnected factions comprised of Third World populations in a deep political and economic crisis that most often “eclipse religion.” [12] A majority also believed that common ground can be found in what has been ludicrously labeled, “the clash of civilizations.” [13] So, what the media portrays as ‘Islamo-Fascism,’ in order create an artificial parallel between the enemies of World War II and those of today to dupe the population into supporting a policy of preventive global aggression to fend off a ‘global enemy’ of Word War II proportions by any means necessary is not only misleading, it is also ignorant, dangerous, and “intellectually dishonest.” [14] At base, it is just a “way to cut short any discussion of neo-imperialism.” [15]

All this is not to say that there are not deranged, ultra-orthodox, fanatical perverts of Islam, or any other religion for that matter, who are bent on creating a utopia of their own through wanton violence and destruction. This is also not to say that some radical groups cannot conjure the ability to attack the United States. 9/11 proved that they can. It is, however, to say that the American public has been misled, for some time now, about the magnitude and true reality of happenings outside, even inside, their country. It is to say that what they have been led to believe—that there are ‘fascist’ Muslim killers on the prowl everywhere waiting to strike at their throats because they are free—is certainly not the case. It is also to say that a policy of “full-spectrum dominance” to achieve hegemony is surely not the path to security. [16]

A Resurgence Of Hypocrisy

GENEVA, July 6 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency made a fresh call Friday on donors to help countries hosting hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees and said Syria and Jordan were still waiting for help despite expressions of support made during a major international conference on Iraq in April.

“It is unconscionable that generous host countries be left on their own to deal with such a huge crisis. We strongly urge governments to step forward now to support them in dealing with this situation and renew our call for international solidarity and burden sharing,” UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva on Friday.

Main host countries Syria and Jordan, with an estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees between them, are struggling to cope. Syria continues to receive about 2,000 Iraqis a day, and about 30,000 a month end up staying.

“The growing refugee population and the communities that host them are facing enormous hardships that will only get worse if the international community doesn’t put its money where its mouth is,” Redmond said.

At April’s UNHCR-organized conference, the UN refugee agency told the more than 400 delegates from governments and international and non-governmental organizations that its US$60 million programme for Iraqi refugees and displaced was just a drop in the ocean compared to the huge needs in the region.

While contributions to UNHCR have been generous, now totalling some $70 million with another $10 million pledged or in the pipeline, the organization has said it cannot do everything alone.

“We stressed then – and we say it again – donors must provide direct bilateral support to these host countries whose schools, hospitals, public services and infrastructure are seriously overstretched because of the presence of millions of Iraqis they have so generously welcomed,” Redmond said.

In Syria, for example, only 32,000 of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugee children in the country are actually in school. Syria, with 1.4 million Iraqis, is the only country in the region that allows free public school access for all Iraqi children. But there is not enough space to take them all in.

To try to cope, Syrian education officials have been forced to convert scores of public schools back to the double-shift system, which the country had planned to end by 2010. A whole generation of Iraqi children is in danger of missing out on an education.

UNHCR is working with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to have at least 150,000 Iraqi children in school in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon by the end of this year. But the task of providing more classrooms, teachers, educational materials and other support must be done in coordination with the Syrian education ministry – and it is not getting the help it needs.

The health infrastructure is also under severe strain and thousands of Iraqis are suffering because they cannot get proper help. “Every week, we’re seeing sick and maimed Iraqis – including many burn and trauma victims – arriving in Syria in search of medical help,” Reedmond said, adding that UNHCR had set up three primary care medical posts and was building two more.

“But it’s not enough. We’re currently referring 10,000 Iraqis a month to Syrian doctors and health care facilities, including 3,000 to hospitals. About 15 percent of those 3,000 are in urgent need of serious medical help,” he added.

I’ve been musing a bit lately on a failed scheme from my youth. As some of you know, after college I headed directly to PhD school, to a program in social ethics. I found out pretty quickly that I wasn’t quite cut out for the hard-core academic life. But along the way I had a brilliant idea for a dissertation. Since I was studying ethics, I thought, why not write my dissertation on the best person in the world?

And who might that be? This was my topic of conversation and speculation whenever anyone would talk to me those days. Mother Theresa? Nelson Mandela? Martin Luther King?

Meanwhile I was living with two other graduate students in a big empty house in Echo Park. This was in the late 1970’s, when a lot of Southeast Asian refugees were making their ways to Los Angeles. The Jewish community got revved up during those days and took some leadership in sponsoring refugees. I called up a synagogue and asked if I could help them with their refugee family. “Sure,” they said. “Can they live with you?” That’s how my roommates and I had the great pleasure of hosting Pruong Pin and his family — refugees from rural Cambodia, four years in a Thai camp and then on an airplane to the USA, to their first electricity, first flush toilets, first telephones, many firsts.

The three of us hosts had the greatest admiration for Pin in particular, for his remarkable humor and flexibility and grace under what must have been mind-boggling challenges. We’d see him cuddling his two-year-old and so-gently teasing her, struggling gamely to formulate a question about our lives with his handful of English words, trying to work our blender and shooting coffee and ice cubes all over the ceiling. Pin and his family lived with us for something like six weeks. When they moved into their own apartment, we found scraps of paper all over the house that said, in Pin’s first handwriting, PRUONGPIN12345678910. We even found those letters and numerals written on the back of our old naugahyde couch. We thought about Pin and his wife trying on their own to learn to write, along with everything else they had to learn, and their courage almost made us cry.

So one day I thought about my imaginary dissertation; why am only I thinking of the most famous great people, the ones whose goodness has been the most monumental? Do you have to change the world to be truly good? Maybe, in fact, the best person in the world was living right in my house. What could possibly be any better than being warm and sweet and sane, consoling your family, making friends, laughing? Not even to mention surviving upheaval, traversing worlds, and keeping your center while doing so?

I was thinking about this again recently because of a project I’m involved with. I’m part of a group which is trying to do, I dare say, some very good things. To do these things we are making proposals and securing grants (successfully, thank you!) and hiring staff and so on. We actually have an ambitious plan and a substantial budget. But everyone is overworked, and we are a little panicked about the benchmarks we have set. And we need to raise even more money to reach our goals, and these themselves are set to be bigger in year two than they are in year one and so on. There is never enough…

And, even though I understand the economy of good deeds, how the world’s need is enormous, and how you can never do enough, and more deeds are always better then fewer, for a moment I found myself flashing back to my search for “the best person in the world.” And it has gotten me thinking about the virtue of moral smallness.

You may well know (if only from Andre Schwartz-Bart’s tragic novel) about the tradition that there are, at any given moment, at least thirty-six righteous people who, by their goodness, assure the continuation of the world. These lamed-vavniks (lamed-vav spelling “36”) are hidden. You won’t see them on the front page of the Times. Bill Moyers will not interview them. They chop wood for the poor widow in the middle of the night and leave it anonymously outside her door. They make conversation with the most awkward person at the party.

Only now as I am writing this do I think of my beloved text about “deeds without measure whose reward is without measure…” I have never really considered the first part of this formula. Who can take the measure of a deed? Who can say that something accomplished on a world scale is more important than something accomplished around a dinner table at home? And what are these deeds without measure? Honoring your parents. Showing up for people’s simchas and their sorrows. Making peace between friends who are at odds. You know the list. Deeds which are, for the most part, small, intimate, local. When a new baby is blessed, we say, “Zeh ha-katan, gadol yihyeh.” “This little one, may he become great.” Great yes, indeed — but may she not entirely forget the importance of being small.

I know well that the peace and joy of my household is built on many small kindnesses. So too the road I live on, and the several interlocking communities of which I am a part. So I can extrapolate that small generosities and hidden goodnesses actually do sustain the world.

Rosh Hodesh Ellul begins Tuesday, August 14. With Ellul comes the formal time of taking stock — of our lives, our achievements, our deeds, our successes and our failures. Far be it from me to discourage any of you from anything grand. But I hope we will not lose sight of the small gestures: those we have made and those made towards us, those we have wished for and those we have failed to offer. “May our deeds be small…”

I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful, freilich summer. We’ll get back to larger matters soon enough!

In the 1989 Marine Corps Gazette article where I and four colleagues first laid out the Four Generations of Modern War, we foresaw two potential futures. One, the way the world has gone, was 4GW. The other, the direction the Pentagon has taken, became known as the Revolution in Military Affairs, or, more recently, Transformation. This vision of future war, a vision anchored in hi-tech, high-price “systems,” is, I am happy to report, militarily dead.

While its corpse still twitches in Iraq and Afghanistan, its obituary was published in April, in Israel, when the Winograd Commission published its report (is Winograd, one wonders, the city in Galicia where old Polish generals go to die of cirrhosis?) On May 29, a summary of its findings by Haninah Levine was made available by the Center for Defense Information. The defense industry fat cats must have read it and wept.

The Winograd Commission was established to examine the Israeli debacle in Lebanon last summer. According to the Levine summary, its first lesson is, “Western militaries are in active state of denial concerning the limitations of precision weapons.” Speaking of the then-IDF Chief of Staff General Dan Halutz – Israel’s first and, I suspect, last Chief of Staff drawn from the Air Force – Levine writes:

Halutz encouraged the civilian leaders to believe that Israel could launch a precision air and artillery offensive without getting dragged into a broad ground offensive. … the failure of Halutz and the General Staff to appraise the enemy’s abilities correctly at the outbreak of the war stemmed not from incorrect intelligence or analysis, but from a willed denial of the limitations of the IDF’s precision weapons.

In how many valleys of Afghanistan is the same sad lesson being taught? In how many towns of Diyala province in Iraq, or streets in Sadr City?

Levine continues,

The Winograd Commission traces studiously the origins of the General Staff’s error of judgment. The commission outlines the changes which took place in Israeli military doctrine over the preceding decade in response both to strategic developments…and to technological developments – the so called “revolution in military affairs,” whose keystone is the advent of precision air-to-surface and surface-to-surface weapon systems…

The first lessen of the Second Lebanon War is… that wishful thinking concerning the capabilities of precision weapon systems overpowered the General Staff’ s analytical abilities…. Faith in advanced air and artillery systems as magical “game-changing” systems absolved the General Staff from the need to consider what capabilities (such as distributed and hardened facilities) the enemy possessed, and led the IDF into a strategic trap it had recognized in advance.

This lesson, I think, can be extrapolated in two useful ways in the American context. First, the strategic or more precisely doctrinal, trap set by the RMA has long been recognized. The trap, quite simply is that for the RMA to succeed, it had to contradict the nature of war.

The RMA reduces war to putting fires on targets. It promises to use new technology to make everything targetable. But this means it also promises to eliminate uncertainty, to make war transparent, to eliminate the quality that defines war, the independent hostile will of the enemy. In other words, it is bunk. The fact that it is bunk was evident to a great many people from the outset, even people in Washington.

Why, then, did it get as far as it did (it remains DOD policy even today)? Here we can extrapolate again from the Winograd Commission’s finding: the RMA’s hi-tech systems are indeed magically “game changing.” But the game they change is the budget game, not war. The RMA has given the Pentagon such magical results as bomber aircraft that cost more per unit than the Navy’s ships (the B-2), three fighters for one billion dollars (the F-22), and the most magical system of all, the Army’s Future Contract System, a system no one can describe but costs more than any program in any other service. Boy, that’s magic! Even the Wizard of Id must be jealous.

The fact is, Pentagon policy has nothing to do with war, which has a great deal to do with why we are losing two wars. The Pentagon is the last Soviet industry. It is not about producing a product, least of all a product that works. It is solely, entirely, about acquiring and justifying resources. That the RMA does supremely well.

(NewsTarget) An increasing number of doctors are contesting the claim that annual mammograms decrease women’s risk of dying from breast cancer.

Danish researcher Dr. Peter Gotzsche first made this claim in a study published in “The Lancet” in October 2006. Gotzsche had re-analyzed the studies originally done on the benefits of mammograms and found them unconvincing.

Since then, other doctors have begun to assert that in addition to failing to offer protection, mammograms — which involve exposing patients to radiation —may actually increase women’s risk of cancer.

“The latest evidence shifts the balance towards harm and away from benefits,” said Dr. Michael Baum of University College in London.

According to Canadian columnist Dr. W. Gifford -Jones, women between the ages of 40 and 49 who have regular mammograms are twice as likely to die from breast cancer as women who are not screened.

“Experts say you have to screen 2,000 women for 10 years for one benefit,” he wrote recently.

Gifford-Jones also points to other risks, from the physical to the psychological. According to some authorities, the squeezing of women’s breasts during mammograms may rupture blood vessels, causing cancer to spread to other parts of the body and actually increasing a patient’s risk of death.

He also pointed to the trauma suffered by women who receive false positives from their mammograms, and to the dangerous sense of security felt by those who receive false negatives.

Studies show that mammograms fail to detect cancer 30 percent of the time in women aged 40 to 49. In addition, it can take eight years before a breast tumor is large enough to detect, by which time the cancer could have spread to other parts of the body.

A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) concluded that–as of a year ago–600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.

That wasn’t the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge.

The U.S. and British governments quickly dismissed these results as “methodologically flawed,” even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no concrete reasons for rejecting the study’s findings, and they ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that it was “a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict zones”; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).

Reputable researchers have accepted the Lancet study’s results as valid with virtually no dissent. Juan Cole, the most visible American Middle East scholar, summarized it in a particularly vivid comment: “the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible [in a little over three years] for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.”

Despite the scholarly consensus, the governments’ denials have been quite effective from a public education point of view, and the few news items that mention the Lancet stody bracket it with official rebuttals. One BBC report, for example, mentioned the figure in an article headlined “Huge Rise in Iraqi Death Tolls,” and quoted at length from President Bush’s public rebuttal, in which he said that the methodology was “pretty well discredited,” adding that “six-hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just… it’s not credible.” As a consequence of this sort of coverage, most Americans probably believe that Bush’s December 2005 figure of 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (less than 10% of the actual total) is the best estimate of Iraqi deaths up to that time.

COUNTING HOW MANY IRAQIS THE OCCUPATION HAS KILLED

These shocking statistics are made all the more horrific when we realize that among the 600,000 or so victims of Iraqi war violence, the largest portion have been killed by the American military, not by carbombings or death squads, or violent criminals–or even all these groups combined.

The Lancet interviewers asked their Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died and who was responsible. The families were very good at the cause of death, telling the reporters that over half (56%) were due to gunshots, with an eighth due each to car bombs(13%), air strikes (13%) and other ordinance (14%). Only 4% were due to unknown causes.

The families were not as good at identifying who was responsible. Although they knew, for example, that air strike victims were killed by the occupation, and that carbomb victims were killed by insurgents, the gunshot and ordinance fatalities often occurred in firefights or in circumstances with no witnesses. Many times, therefore, they could not tell for sure who was responsible. Only were certain, and the interviewers did not record the responsible party if “households had any uncertainly” as to who fired the death shot.

The results are nevertheless staggering for those of us who read the American press: for the deaths that the victims families knew for sure who the perpetrator was, U.S. forces (or their “Coalition of the Willing” allies) were responsible for 56%. That is, we can be very confident that the Coalition had killed at least 180,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006. Moreover, we have every reason to believe that the U.S. is responsible for its pro rata share (or more) of the unattributed deaths. That means that the U.S. and its allies may well have killed upwards of 330,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006.

The remainder can be attributed to the insurgents, criminals, and to Iraqi forces. And let’s be very clear here: car bombs, the one source that was most easy for victims’ families to identify, was responsible for 13% of the deaths, about 80,000 people, or about 2000 per month. This is horrendous, but it is far less than half of the confirmed American total, and less than a quarter of the probable American total.

Even if we work with the lower, confirmed, figured of 180,000 Iraqi deaths caused by the occupation firepower, which yields an average of just over 5,000 Iraqis killed every month by U.S. forces and our allies since the beginning of the war. And we have to remember that the rate of fatalities was twice as high in 2006 as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or something over 300 Iraqis every day, including Sundays. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.

HOW COME WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS?

These figures sound impossible to most Americans. Certainly 300 Iraqis killed by Americans each day would be headline news, over and over again. And yet, the electronic and print media simply do not tell us that the U.S. is killing all these people. We hear plenty about car bombers and death squads, but little about Americans killing Iraqis, except the occasional terrorist, and the even more occasional atrocity story.

How, then, is the US accomplishing this carnage, and why is it not newsworthy? The answer lies in another amazing statistic: this one released by the U.S. military and reported by the highly respectable Brookings Institution: for the past four years, the American military sends out something over 1000 patrols each day into hostile neighborhoods, looking to capture or kill insurgents and terrorists. (Since February, the number has increased to nearly 5,000 patrols a day, if we include the Iraqi troops participating in the American surge.)

These thousands of patrols regularly turn into thousands of Iraqi deaths because these patrols are not the “walk in the sun” that they appear to be in our mind’s eye. Actually, as independent journalist Nir Rosen described vividly and agonizingly in his indispensable book, In the Belly of the Green Bird, they involve a kind of energetic brutality that is only occasionally reported by an embedded American mainstream journalist.

This brutality is all very logical, once we understand the purpose and process of these patrols. American soldiers and marines are sent into hostile communities where virtually the entire population is supports the insurgency. They often have a list of suspects’ addresses; and their job is to interrorgate or arrest or kill the suspect; and search the house for incriminating evidence, particularly arms and ammunition, but also literature, video equipment, and other items that the insurgency depends upon for its political and military activities. When they don’t have lists of suspects, they conduct “house-to-house” searches, looking for suspicious behavior, individuals or evidence.

In this context, any fighting age man is not just a suspect, but a potentially lethal adversary. Our soldiers are told not to take any chances: in many instances, for example, knocking on doors could invite gunshots through the doors. Their instructions are therefore to use the element of surprise whenever the situation appears to be dangerous”to break down doors, shoot at anything suspicious, and throw grenades into rooms or homes where there is any chance of resistance. If they encounter tangible resistance, they can call in artillery and/or air power rather than try to invade a building.

Here is how two Iraqi civilians described these patrols to Asia Times reporter Pepe Escobar:

“Hussein and Hasan confirm that the Americans usually come at night, sometimes by day, always protected by helicopters.’ They “sometimes bomb houses, sometimes arrest people, sometimes throw missiles'”