The Rag Blog

U.S. leadership is being tested in the Mideast. We might fail unless we change direction.

02/11/07 “Los Angeles Times’ — – THE WAR IN IRAQ is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions. It is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties, as well as some abuses, are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

Yet major strategic decisions in the Bush administration continue to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals ? perhaps not more than the fingers on one hand. With the exception of the new Defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, these are the same individuals who have been involved from the start of this misadventure, who made the original decision to go to war in Iraq and who used the original false justifications for going to war. It is human nature to be reluctant to undertake actions that would imply a significant reversal of policy.

From the standpoint of U.S. national interest, this is particularly ominous. If the United States continues to be bogged down in protracted, bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and much of the Islamic world.

Here, for instance, is a plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran: Iraq fails to meet the benchmarks for progress toward stability set by the Bush administration. This is followed by U.S. accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran, culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran. This plunges a lonely United States into a spreading and deepening quagmire lasting 20 years or more and eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.?

Indeed, a mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potential expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the decisive ideological struggle of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and Al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack that precipitated U.S. involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative, however, overlooks that the Nazi threat was based on the military power of the most industrially advanced European state and that Stalinism was not only able to mobilize the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine.

In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism. Al Qaeda is an isolated, fundamentalist aberration. Most Iraqis are engaged in strife not on behalf of an Islamist ideology but because of the U.S. occupation, which destroyed the Iraqi state. Iran, meanwhile, though gaining in regional influence, is hardly a global threat; rather, it is politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that the United States must respond militarily to a wide Islamic threat with Iran at its epicenter is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

02/10/07 “Counterpunch” — – In a very interesting analysis last month, the former chief of staff of the Russian Army, Gen. Leonid Ivashov, predicted a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran by this April. “Within weeks from now,” he wrote, “we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc.” I’m afraid this has the ring of truth.

Then you have Gen. Oded Tira, chief artillery officer of the Israeli Defense Forces declaring last month that “an American strike on Iran is essential” for the very existence of the Jewish State. Suggesting that “President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran,” he urgently appealed to the resurgent Democratic Party to work towards that Israeli goal. “As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence,” he declared, “we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure.”

Tira specifically urged the Israel Lobby in the U.S. to “turn to Hilary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran.” The Lobby seems to be doing a great job at that, Tira’s criticisms about Democrats’ “foolishness” notwithstanding. All the Democratic presidential frontrunners have assured AIPAC or Israeli audiences that they’re at least as hawkish on Iran as the unpopular Bush. Meanwhile the Israeli allegation that Iran poses an “existential” threat to itself, made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the U.S. Congress last year, has insinuated its way into American official discourse.

Referring to the vaguely defined “war on terror” in general, Cheney recently told Fox News, “This is an existential conflict. It is the kind of conflict that’s going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years.” His daughter Elizabeth (Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and the VP’s liaison with the spooky new “Office of Iranian Affairs”) wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last month, “America faces an existential threat We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can’t negotiate with them or ‘solve’ their jihad.” The administration, still led by neocons clustered around Cheney, has embraced the Israeli rhetoric of paranoiac prophesy. It has decided to attack the Islamic Republic, to end its existence, for the self-defense of Israel and America. To gain support it must sow fear and must demonize Iran, ratcheting up the rhetoric week by week.

The “informational war machine” to which Ivashov alludes has been shoveling out disinformation faster than the public can digest, no doubt on the assumption that rumors even if later disproved can usefully damage reputations and set up targets for attack. The Straussian neoconservatives who tirelessly campaigned to foist their Noble Lies about Iraq on the American people up to the Iraq attack in March 2003 might not much care if the lies they tell now about Iran are exposed down the road. What they want is regime change soon and therefore, a compelling casus belli or two.

During the lead up to the Iraq War, the main charge against Baghdad (skeptically received at the UN) was that it possessed weapons of mass destruction threatening the whole world including New York City, which President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials warned could result in a mushroom cloud over the Big Apple. Bush and Cheney intimated to certain audiences that Iraq posed a particular threat to Israel, but in general this issue was downplayed, probably because the administration wanted to avoid the accusation that it was going to war “for Israel” as opposed to America or the mythic but impressive-sounding “international community.”

This time it’s different. Although Israel attacked and destroyed Iraq’s French-built Osiraq nuclear rector in 1981 (in an illegal action then condemned by the Reagan administration and virtually all other governments, although Cheney and his neocons find inspiration in it today), and although the Israeli government enthusiastically greeted the invasion of Iraq, it didn’t overtly campaign for the war. But now it is feverishly beating the drums for a U.S. war on Iran. And as Cheney has pointedly noted, if the U.S. doesn’t attack Iran, “Israel might do it without being asked.” Most likely it will, if it happens, be a joint effort.

President Nixon, a very good poker player, once defined the art of brinkmanship as persuading your opponent that you are insane and, unless appeased by pledges of surrender, quite capable of blowing up the planet.

By these robust standards George Bush is doing a moderately competent job in suggesting that if balked by Iran on the matter of arming the Shi’a in Iraq or pursuing its nuclear program he’ll dump high explosive, maybe even a couple of nukes, on that country’s relevant research sites, or tell Israel to do the job for him.

In Washington there are plenty of rational people in Congress, think tanks and the Pentagon who think he’s capable of ordering an attack,– albeit not a nuclear one — with bombers carrying conventional explosive and with missiles from US ships in the Persian Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardner, who’s taught at the National War College recently sketched out on this site the plan as it could unfold: already the second naval carrier group has been deployed to the Gulf area, joined by naval mine clearing ships. “As one of the last steps before a strike, we’ll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. When that happens, we’ll only be days away from a strike.”

Gardiner cautioned that “It is possible the White House strategy is just implementing a strategy to put pressure on Iran on a number of fronts, and this will never amount to anything. On the other hand, if the White House is on a path to strike Iran, we’ll see a few more steps unfold.

“First, we know there is a National Security Council staff-led_group whose mission is to create outrage in the world against Iran. Just like before Gulf II, this media group will begin to release stories to sell a strike against Iran. Watch for the outrage stuff.”

As regards “the outrage stuff”, here on cue comes the New York Times’ Michael Gordon with a front page story today, February 10, headlined “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made by Iran, US Says”, and beginning “The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.”

An amazing thing happened in a courtroom at Fort Lewis, Washington on Wednesday. The U.S. Army was in the third day of what to all appearances was a kangaroo court martial of Lt. Ehren Watada, over his refusal to deploy for what he believes to be an illegal war in Iraq. (Noted one courtroom observer: “I had images of robe-clad kangaroos hopping through my head…”) The judge, Lt. Col. John Head, had seemingly done his best in the trial’s first two days to ensure conviction, while Watada had steadfastly maintained his belief that he had a duty not to follow an illegal order to deploy to Iraq.

Then, suddenly, the Army blinked, and there was a mistrial. And due to double jeopardy issues, the Army may be unable to retry Watada, or to give him anything as punishment beyond a dishonorable discharge.

Essentially, Head coerced the mistrial, ruling that Watada “did not understand” a pre-trial stipulation, prepared by the Army and signed by Lt. Watada last week, which dropped two additional charges in exchange for Watada acknowledging, among other things, that he willfully refused to deploy. Head had already ruled that Watada could not use his reason for refusal -– the illegality of the Iraq conflict -– as a defense, and so Head had excluded all of the defense team’s witnesses to that effect. To the judge, this then meant Watada was acknowledging guilt in the pre-trial stipulation. But when the Watada team successfully motioned to include a jury instruction that Watada be found innocent if he “reasonably believed” that what he was doing was legal, after prosecution witnesses had already testified to that effect, the Army’s case fell apart. Head, in his haste to control the damage, wound up declaring a mistrial over Watada’s objection.

Head tentatively set a retrial date in mid-March. But a judge or prosecution cannot simply abandon a trial in mid-proceeding over the defense’s objection because it doesn’t like the way a trial is going. That’s what double jeopardy is about, and Watada’s attorney has already said he will fight any effort to retry the lieutenant. That’s why, Wednesday night, Army spin doctors were doing their best to express satisfaction with the bizarre outcome by noting how it shows the fairness of the military justice system –- rather than by reiterating the Army’s belief that Watada acted illegally.

02/10/07 “The Independent’ – — Could Rifaat al-Assad’s day in court be growing closer? Yes, Rifaat – or Uncle Rifaat to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria – the man whose brother Hafez hurled him from Damascus after he tried to use his special forces troops to stage a coup. They were the same special forces who crushed the Islamist rebellion in Hama in February 1982, slaughtering up to – well, a few thousand, according to the regime, at least 10,000 according to Fisk (who was there) and up 20,000 if you believe The New York Times (which I generally don’t).

Either way, I’ve always regarded it as a war crime, along with the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila camps in Beirut by Israel’s Lebanese militia allies a few months later. Ariel Sharon, who was held personally responsible by Israel’s own court of enquiry, is an unindicted war criminal. So is Rifaat.

That’s why the faintest breeze blew through my fax machine this week when I received a letter sent to the UN Secretary General by Malik al-Abdeh, head of the London-based Movement for Justice and Development in Syria. Abdeh left his Syrian town of Zabadani before the Hama massacres – he works now as an IT consultant for a multinational – so he’s hardly able to breathe the air of Sister Syria. But then again nor can Rifaat, who languishes – complete with bodyguards – in that nice EU island of refuge called Marbella. And refuge he probably needs. Because Abdeh is asking the UN to institute an enquiry into the Hama bloodbath in the same way that it is powering along with its tribunal into the murder almost two years ago of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

Ouch. In the letter Abdeh describes how “warplanes and tanks levelled whole districts of the city (of Hama) … the evidence clearly suggests that government forces made no distinction between armed insurgents and unarmed civilians … the assault on the city represents a clear act of war crimes and murder on a mass scale”. The letter has now been passed to the UN’s legal head, Nicolas Michel, who is also involved in the Hariri murder case. The sacred name of Rifaat has not been mentioned in the letter but it specifically demands that “those who are responsible should be held accountable and charged…”.

Now, of course, there are a few discrepancies in the facts. The Syrians did not use poison gas in Hama, as Abdeh claims. They certainly did level whole areas of the city – they are still level today, although a hotel has been built over one devastated district – and when Rifaat’s thugs combed through the ruins later, they executed any civilians who couldn’t account for their presence.

But of course, the Hama uprising was also a Sunni Muslim insurrection and the insurgents had murdered entire families of Baath party officials, sometimes by chopping off their heads. In underground tunnels, Muslim girls had exploded themselves among Syrian troops – they were among the Middle East’s first suicide bombers although we didn’t appreciate that then. And the Americans were not at all unhappy that this Islamist insurgency had been crushed by Uncle Rifaat. Readers will not need any allusion to modern and equally terrible events involving Sunni insurgents to the east of Syria. And since the Americans are getting pretty efficient at killing civilians along with gunmen, I have a dark suspicion that there won’t be any great enthusiasm in Washington for a prosecution over Hama.

But still… What strikes me is not so much the force of Abdeh’s letter but that it was written at all. When the Hama massacre occurred, neighbouring Arab states were silent. Although the Sunni prelates of the city called for a religious war, their fellow clerics in Damascus – and, indeed, in Beirut – were silent. Just as the imams and scholars of Islam were silent when the Algerians began to slaughter each other in a welter of head-chopping and security force executions in the 1990s.

STEWART, Minn. — It took two years of hell to convince him, but finally Jonathan Schulze was ready.

On the morning of Jan. 11, Jonathan, an Iraq war veteran with two Purple Hearts, neatly packed his US Marine Corps duffel bag with his sharply creased clothes, a framed photo of his new baby girl, and a leather-bound Bible and headed out from the family farm for a 75-mile drive to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud, Minn.

Family and friends had convinced him at last that the devastating mental wounds he brought home from war, wounds that triggered severe depression, violent outbursts, and eventually an uncontrollable desire to kill himself, could not be drowned in alcohol or treated with the array of antianxiety drugs he’d been prescribed.

And so, with his father and stepmother at his side, he confessed to an intake counselor that he was suicidal. He wanted to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.

But, instead, he was told that the clinician who prescreened cases like his was unavailable. Go home and wait for a phone call tomorrow, the counselor said, as Marianne Schulze, his stepmother, describes it.

When a clinical social worker called the next day, Jonathan, 25, told again of his suicidal thoughts and other symptoms. And then, with his stepmother listening in, he learned that he was 26th on the waiting list for one of the 12 beds in the center’s ward for post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers.

Four days later, on Jan. 16, he wrapped a household extension cord around his neck, tied it to a beam in the basement, and hanged himself.

In life, Jonathan Schulze didn’t get nearly what he needed. But in death, this tough and troubled Marine may help get something critical done.

The apparent failure of the Department of Veterans Affairs to offer him timely and necessary care has electrified the debate on the blogs and websites that connect an increasingly networked and angry veterans community. It has triggered an internal investigation by the VA into how a serviceman with such obvious symptoms faced a wait for hospital care.

Maryam Rajavi, along with husband Massoud, leaders of the Marxist-Islamic Mujahedin-e Khalq cult and terrorist group, will provide “evidence” in an attempt to finger Iran, thus conjuring up unpalatable memories of Ahmed Chalabi.

“The Bush administration is haunted by the history of intelligence blunders about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction as the United States tries to document that Iran is providing lethal help to Iraqi fighters,” reports Yahoo News, or maybe that should be news for yahoos.

In fact, the Bush administration is not “haunted by the history of intelligence blunders,” as there was no blundering, or for that matter intelligence, but simply a series of calculated lies and fabrications, designed to pave the way for the invasion of Iraq. As should be obvious, the “Bush administration,” or rather the unelected neocons, are plotting a repeat in Iran.

“After weeks of preparation and revisions, U.S. officials are preparing to detail evidence supporting administration’s claims of Iran’s meddlesome and deadly activities. A briefing was scheduled Sunday in Baghdad.”

Translation: the neocons jumped the gun, they need more time to tweak their fairy tale about Iran providing assistance to their enemies, the Sunni resistance, comprised in large part of former Ba’athists, who invaded Iran and fought a bloody war (over a million people killed)—admittedly a large pill to swallow, but then the American people, and even most members of Congress, are accustomed to swallowing large pills. Soon enough, we will see this latest neocon scam in all its putrid glory, plastered all over newspapers, the internet, and on Fox News. Millions will mindlessly parrot the official line and demand Iran be reduced to a glass parking lot.

“The Iran dossier, some 200 pages thick in its classified form, was revised heavily after officials decided it was not ready for release as planned last month. What is made public probably would be short, and shorter on details than the administration recently had suggested.”

Shorter on details because the less details provided, the less chance the neocons will be tripped up by their lies, not that such has stopped them in the past. As the shameless lies about Saddam’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, and Osama and Saddam colluding together demonstrate, never mind the inconsistencies bordering on absurdity, the neocon fairy tales cannot stand the light of day, they dry up in short order and blow away.

“No one who has seen the files has suggested the evidence is thin. But senior officials—gun-shy after the drubbing the administration took for the faulty intelligence leading to the 2003 Iraq invasion—were underwhelmed by the packaging.”

No clue precisely who has seen this classified “evidence” and declared it to be not “thin.” It remains a mystery. As usual, we are offered mere silhouettes under the predictable cover of “senior officials,” question marks masking their identities. In fact, no “drubbing” occurred after the 2003 invasion, no congressional investigations worth the name were conducted, no official charges ensued.

“Officials from several intelligence agencies scrutinized the presentation to make sure it was clear and that ‘we don’t in any way jeopardize our sources and methods in making the presentation,’ State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday.”

“The dangerous patriot: “The one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism . . . which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory.” James A. Donovan, Colonel, US Marine Corps

“Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control.” Lord Acton (1834-1902)
“If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject… ” William Graham Sumner

On September 20, 2002, George W. Bush, in conformity with the path that Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Rice and Co. had traced for him, adopted a hegemonic foreign policy and issued the famous hubristic “Bush Doctrine”. His then Security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and her assistant, Philip D. Zelikow, drafted much of the 2002 report titled “The National Security Strategy of the United States”, which has come to be known as the “Bush Doctrine” of pre-emptive wars and of American assertive military hegemony around the world.

Eight months before, in his January 29, 2002 first State of the Union Address, Bush, inspired by his neocon and theologian speech writers, had singled out three disparate countries as belonging to an “axis of evil” (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea), even though two of these countries had been at war at each other for years (Iraq and Iran) and the third (North Korea) had no visible political ties to the first two. Bush also expressed his intention that the United States control both the Earth and Outer Space, no matter what the other 191 countries of the world think and no matter what international law and international treaties call for.

On Earth, the neocon Bush-Cheney administration’s goal was to invest so much in military gear, and to take military actions if necessary, that no other country would ever challenge its status as the world’s sole military superpower.

The intention was to establish a military New American Empire for the 21st Century, along the lines of the British Empire in the 19th Century.