The Rag Blog

The press has almost completely blacked out this news in mainstream press. A long time Chicago activist, artist and contributer to the Chicago jazz scene has burned himself alive in an act of protest against the iraq war. He is only one of 10 Americans in history to have done this. Buddist monks did this during the VietNam war. On Friday, November 3, a man doused his body with gasoline and set himself afire to protest the war in Iraq. He died quietly in flames. His name was Malachi Ritscher.

I have had one previous opportunity to serve my country in a meaningful way – at 8:05 one morning in 2002 I passed Donald Rumsfeld on Delaware Avenue and I was acutely aware that slashing his throat would spare the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people. I had a knife clenched in my hand, and there were no bodyguards visible; to my deep shame I hesitated, and the moment was past.

The violent turmoil initiated by the United States military invasion of Iraq will beget future centuries of slaughter, if the human race lasts that long. First we spit on the United Nations, then we expect them to clean up our mess. Our elected representatives are supposed to find diplomatic and benevolent solutions to these situations. Anyone can lash out and retaliate, that is not leadership or vision. Where is the wisdom and honor of the people we delegate our trust to?

To the rest of the world we are cowards – demanding Iraq to disarm, and after they comply, we attack with remote-control high-tech video-game weapons. And then lie about our reasons for invading. We the people bear complete responsibility for all that will follow, and it won’t be pretty.

Two years from the end of its last mandate, the failure of the forty-third presidency of the United States, sanctioned by the ballot boxes during the midterm elections on Tuesday November 7, affects the entire planet.

Five years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the reality on the ground is anything but reassuring. Between the war lords and the return of the Taliban, the authority of president Karzai is at best symbolic, in spite of the support of the United States and the presence of the NATO forces. The situation has worsened in particular because of the concessions that the Pakistani president, General Musharraf, had to make in order to pacify the tribes in Western Pakistan, and Afghanistan has never before produced such a large quantity of drugs.

In Iraq, the rebuilding is impossible without a return to internal peace, and the preconditions for internal peace are today out of reach. The various communities are tearing each other apart. The country is threatening to explode. The rate of the losses of the occupying forces is increasing. The distress of the American military is clear. As this situation is prolonged, their objective possibilities of intervention elsewhere in the world are reduced. The credibility of the superpower has been severely affected.

Washington has let the situation in the Middle East spoil, since George W. Bush never wanted to or never dared interfere. Prisoner of its ideology, this administration did not understand that no reconciliation between the Judeo-Christian and Moslem worlds is conceivable, unless there is a viable settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. By letting Israel carry out its war of thirty-four days against Lebanon, the position of Washington has weakened even more, from the simple fact that the Hebrew State, even though it did not militarily lose this war, nor did it win it. We are here in the domain of psychology and for Israel not to win a war is to lose it.

Such is the context in which Iran and North Korea scoff at America. Did Iran really make the choice to obtain nuclear weapons fast? A more probable assumption is that Tehran wants to reach the nuclear threshold, i.e. to develop technologies which would one day allow it to cross the final straight line. This is the case of Japan.

I will be 84, come the end of the “war on terror.”

“There is every prospect of the ‘war on terror’ extending for 30 years or more,” declares a report released by the Oxford Research Group, an independent think tank in Britain. “What is required is a complete re-assessment of current policies but that is highly unlikely, even with the recent political upheavals.”

Professor Paul Rogers, who authored the report and is associated with the oldest university in the English-speaking world, believes “recent political upheavals,” i.e., the Democrat victory in Congress, will not change the course of events. Democrats are not about to engage in a “complete re-assessment of current policies,” but rather continue them, as there is little difference between Democrats and Republicans when you turn them upside down.

“Most people believe that the recent elections mark the beginning of the end of the Bush era but that does not apply to the war on terror,” writes Rogers. “In reality there will be little change until the United States faces up to the need for a fundamental re-think of its policies.”

I’m afraid the economy will need crash, the world community will turn against the United States, its people reduced to the sort of penury and humiliation suffered by the Germans at the midpoint of the last century before a “re-think” occurs.

Both Democrats and Republicans are on schedule with the “clash of civilizations,” although they differ only slightly in style, not substance.

Many Iraqi ministers are staying away from work, fearing attacks from militias or insurgents.

Violence has exacerbated in Baghdad with street battles reported daily in several parts of the city.

Despite the presence of tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops, residents say there is no street in Baghdad where one can feel safe.

“We live in a city which has gone wild,” one resident, refusing to be named, said.

Gunmen have already kidnapped a deputy minister and attacked the convoy of another, killing two bodyguards.

More than 100 people are being killed every day while the government and its U.S. masters are powerless in the face of the spiral of sectarian violence.

A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting in its way.

The White House’s concern was not that the Democrats would cut off funds for the war in Iraq but that future legislation would prohibit it from financing operations targeted at overthrowing or destabilizing the Iranian government, to keep it from getting the bomb. “They’re afraid that Congress is going to vote a binding resolution to stop a hit on Iran, à la Nicaragua in the Contra war,” a former senior intelligence official told me.

You see it in the movies all the time. The hero, having vanquished his foe after a long and arduous struggle, rescues him from a certain death—usually the villain hangs from a window ledge, begging for his life, and the good guy proves his nobility by saving him. We all know what happens next: The villain pulls out a concealed weapon and tries once again to kill his savior.

In the movies, it’s just a way to morally insulate the hero from the ramifications of killing—this way, the audience’s bloodlust can be satisfied without moral qualms. It’s a nice cliché, but let’s face it: in real life, you’d let the guy drop the first time.

With the Democrats finally in charge of congress again, it’s Bush hanging from that ledge. And, while it might seem kind or even noble to extend a hand, the right thing to do is not just to let him drop; it’s to stamp on his bloodied hands to hasten his fall.

Republicans are scared to death about the Democrats’ subpoena power, and Detroit’s maverick rep John Conyers’ imminent status as chairman of the House Judicial Committee. But it appears they have little to fear. Next House Speaker and fundraising diva Nancy Pelosi has assured us that the new Democratic majority will not impeach Bush.

This is as unacceptable as it is predictable. The case for impeachment is a no-brainer. This administration has broken the law so egregiously and so often the list of charges could fill a book. You know at least some of the list by now—lying about Iraq, torture, domestic wiretapping, war profiteering, paid journalist plants, producing fake news, ignoring laws passed to rein him in, collusion with corporations, negligent homicide in the Katrina disaster, et cetera, et cetera. The Bush team makes Watergate look like a panty raid. Despite their fetish for secrecy, there is ample evidence of at least some of these crimes, and investigations would yield more.

Bush needs to be impeached because Bush worshippers just plain deserve it. It was they that were giddy with self-righteous rage, so desperate to take Clinton down that they didn’t care how pathetic their excuse was. They need to be paid back, and to know they asked for it. They need to be demoralized and dismissed before they take the government back and damage it further. They need, after all, to know their reign was a colossal failure, a blight on the record. They need to know that now and forever, George W. Bush will be to presidents what OJ Simpson is to all-star running backs. These people understand things in terms of winning and losing, and they need to know that, in the end, they lost.

Bush needs to be impeached because the only language these people understand is power. Their hearts will not be touched by forgiveness. Any mercy is a sign of weakness to them. If you want to earn a thug’s respect, you’ve got to kick his ass up and down the block. No negotiation. No compromise. Slash and burn. Teach these assholes a lesson. Leave them broken and gasping in a puddle of their own urine. Don’t ever let them forget the humiliation and the shame of it.

Dogged by serious allegations of human rights abuses in Iraq, a leading profiteer from the Iraq war engages in intimidation campaigns against journalists in America who seek to expose its practices.

Consider the unique problems faced by the corporate suits at CACI International, a defense contractor whose services have included “coercive” interrogations of prisoners in Iraq — interrogations most people simply call “torture.”

Think about the image problems a major multinational corporation faces after becoming inextricably linked with the abuses at Abu Ghraib, a firm whose employees have contributed to the iconic images of the occupation of Iraq — the symbols of American cruelty and immorality in an illegal war. What can a company like that possibly do to protect its brand name after contributing to the greatest national disgrace since the My Lai massacre?

FT. LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may be leaving under a cloud of criticism over his handling of the Iraq war, but his invasion plan — emphasizing speed over massive troop numbers — has consistently been held up by the administration as a resounding success.

With Iraq near chaos 3 1/2 years later, a key Army manual now is being rewritten in a way that rejects the Rumsfeld doctrine and counsels against using it again.

The draft version of the Army’s Full Spectrum Operations field manual argues that in addition to defeating the enemy, military units must focus on providing security for the population–even during the heat of a major combat operation.

“The big idea here is that stability tasks have to be a consideration at every level and every operation,” said Clinton Ancker III, head of the Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate and an author of the guide.

The field manual is the authoritative guidebook on how to conduct ground operations, which officers use to develop tactics for military endeavors, including war, counterinsurgency and peacekeeping. When completed, the manual will be taught to officers at all levels.

Before the war, Rumsfeld prodded Gen. Tommy Franks and others to design an invasion plan to fit his beliefs about how modern militaries should fight. When Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed and Baghdad seemed to fall in just 21 days, Rumsfeld and his emphasis on speed over mass got the credit.

But after the initial military success, the Pentagon was criticized for not doing enough to plan for postwar stability. And Rumsfeld drew objections for his dismissive attitude toward the disorder and looting in Iraq, particularly when he said, just days after Baghdad’s fall, that “stuff happens” in democracies.