Friday, May 14, 2004

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 11:10:21 PM     From Billmon in Jordan In essence, Ali said, it doesn't matter whether the United States is loved or hated - it doesn't even matter whether its intentions are fundamentally good or evil. All that matters is that the chaos in Iraq be stopped, or at least contained, because the threat it poses to a country like Jordan is too enormous to take much pleasure in seeing the Americans defeated. I have no idea whether that's the majority view here. But, knowing something about Jordan's fragile history, and the fact that the Jordanians have ended up the losers - in one way or another - in every war since the end of the Ottoman Empire, I wouldn't be surprised if it is at least a common opinion. That doesn't absolve the Bush administration or the U.S. military of guilt for the brutal measures they're now using to try to salvage the neocons' Iraq misadventure, but it suggests that many Jordanians, at least, may be more worried about the consequences of American failure than they are about the conversion of Iraq into an American imperial protectorate. In other words, they may be fear being crushed by the hegemon's fall more than they hate living in the hegmon's shadow. But, then again, I may be reading too much into a casual conversation with someone hoping for a nice tip at the end of the ride. ... In 1991, with the Cold War over and the Gulf War won, the way seemed clear for change - and peace, and maybe even a tiny bit of justice - in the region. It seemed like only a matter of time before Saddam was overthrown or killed. The PLO, deflated by Saddam's failure, was desperate to get on the right side of the winners. American prestige in the region was at its height, and an American president claimed, at least privately, that he would use that prestige to force an Israeli Likud government to make painful concessions. Everywhere, extremists seemed to be on the defensive. Nobody had heard of Osama bin Ladin. But now, as each news cycle brings word of some fresh disaster or pointless atrocity, it's obvious how chimerical the mirage of the early '90s actually was. To the point where it's hard to think of anything to say about the mess in the Middle East that isn't just a more complicated way of repeating the word "failure." Or maybe "stupidity." And, of course, "hubris." Like the Jordan River, which feeds the Dead Sea, America seems determined to find its way to the lowest point on earth. Unlike the Jordan, though, it can always sink even lower - and probably will. ********

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 4:55:09 PM     The last week I've spent time watching c-span on the Internet, mostly for the Senate and House hearings on Iraq. I've been impressed by the qualities of some folks I did not know, and distressed by the general dumbing down of some of the congress. But yesterday I accidentally tuned into to a senate session with Senator Hollings giving a speech on the history of the civil rights movement and brown vs Board of education. I was shocked by his capacity, his memory, his passion  - and the floor was empty. Delivered without notes, he knew the names, dates, and details of the personal involvement of people across the spectrum, such as the feelings of a group of black children walking nine miles to school being passed by the white school bus. He ended by saying that from the beginning he heard "this will take ten years, to end segregation" then "twenty years," "thirty years" and here it is fifty years later and that school is ninety nine percent black today." To have such civilized and knowledgeable people in a Senate that does not listen, yet feels powerless in the face of large scale changes - well, seems to me this is a deep waste of something precious. ********

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 4:46:59 PM     Interview on line with teh soldier's lawyer in the Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24592-2004May13.html Guy Womack: No. The best evidence of anything is a picture and The Washington Post published a picture Friday of last week that shows a civilian contractor intelligence employee gripping a naked Iraqi prisoner in a pile of three prisoners and it also shows four Army military intelligence personnel who are directing the setup of an interrogation. Spec. Graner is in the photo standing, watching. So we have visual proof of what we have been saying. If you read Sivits' statements given under oath to CID investigators, he denies any wrongdoing himself yet according to the government he is going to be pleading guilty to some crimes this coming Wednesday, May 19, so it is very clear that his sworn statements are false. I cannot imagine how the government can prevent the emergence of many other names and threads. ********

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 11:28:51 AM     Background on why Zarqawi survives shoing interaction betwen strategy and speech writing. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_03/003430.php ********

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 11:21:13 AM     Ralph Peters, a faurly military minded guy, wrote about Rumsfeld in the blatantly militarist new York Post where he is a columnist, http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/20841.htm Differing opinions are punished in today's Pentagon - and every field general who has spoken plainly of the deficiencies of either the non-plan for the occupation of Iraq, the lack of sufficient troops (in Iraq or overall) or any aspect of Rumsfeld's "transformation" plan has seen his career ended. It isn't treason to tell the truth in wartime. But it verges on treason to lie. And Rumsfeld lies.... What of that much-touted transformation so beloved of the neocons? In fact, it's just a plain old con, with nothing neo about it. The Office of the Secretary of Defense hasn't canceled one of the real budget-buster weapons systems designed for the Cold War and kept alive by lobbyists.... Rumsfeld's "vision" was to lavish money on the defense industry and administration-friendly contractors, while sending too few troops to war, with too little battlefield equipment, inadequate supplies and no long-range plan.... Contractors grow rich. The Army grows exhausted. And every single prediction about the future of warfare made by the Rumsfeld gang proved incorrect..... Even if none of the above mattered, Rumsfeld needs to go because he has utterly lost the trust of the officer corps. He isn't a leader. He's an arrogant ideologue unfit to serve our democracy And read also the Military Times editorial. http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2903288.php ********

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 11:05:53 AM     Why has none of the Senators in the hearings asked the obvious _ whoauthorized this use of the hoods, they were ordered and delivered, planned for..? http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2903288.php There is no excuse for the behavior displayed by soldiers in the now-infamous pictures and an even more damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Every soldier involved should be ashamed. But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership. The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes. ********

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 10:55:44 AM     The issue of race and migration is poised to be more active- and poisonous. Learning languages, enjoying travel, help. I know for myself, being fairly articulate in Spanish, it is much easier for me to feel at home through speaking Spanish with Mexicans in Mexico than to feel at ease with Mexicans in the US speaking Spanish. Here is an interesting article by Carlos Fuentes, on Huntington's ideas abut the place and future of Mexicans in the United States. http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2004_spring/fuentes.html to see the whole The Mexican as exploiter | Huntington’s new crusade is directed against Mexico and the Mexicans that live, work, and enrich life in the northern nation. As far as Huntington is concerned, Mexicans do not live—they invade; they do not work—they exploit; and, they do not enrich—they impoverish, since poverty is part a Mexican’s natural condition. All of this, when taking into account the number of Mexicans and Latin Americans in the United States, constitutes a cultural threat for that which Huntington dares to mention: the Anglo-American, Protestant, and Anglo speaking white race. Are Mexicans invading the US? No, they are simply obeying the laws of the job market. There are job offers for Mexicans because there is a North American labor need. If some day, there were to exist full employment in Mexico, the US would have to find cheap labor from another country for the jobs whites, Saxons, and Protestants—naming them as does Huntington—do not want to fill, since they have either surpassed these levels of employment, or because they have grown old, due to the fact that the economy of the US has passed from the industrial period, to the post-industrial, technological, information age. Do Mexicans exploit the US? According to Huntington, Mexicans constitute an unjust burden for the US economy: they receive more than they give back. All of this is false. California earmarks a billion dollars a year to educate the children of immigrants. But if it were to do otherwise—listen up, Schwarzenegger—the state would lose $16 billion a year in federal aid to education. Similarly, Mexican migrant workers pay $29 billion a year more in taxes than the services they receive. ********

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 10:44:55 AM     Following up on yesterday's elections in India India's New Era http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25770-2004May13.html By Salman Rushdie Friday, May 14, 2004; Page A25 The fall of the Indian government is a huge political shock that strikingly echoes the only comparable electoral upset, the defeat of Indira Gandhi in 1977. Then as now, just about the entire commentariat was convinced that the incumbent would win; then as now, the opposition was widely written off; then as now, India's voters left the politicians and media with egg on their faces. Both elections are high points in the history of Indian democracy. An ornery electorate that doesn't do what it's supposed to do is a fine and cheering thing.   In the 21/2 years before the 1977 election, Gandhi's autocratic "emergency" regime, initiated after she was found guilty of electoral malpractice in 1975, had been guilty of many civil and human rights abuses, including forced sterilizations and vasectomies. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was not by any means a dictatorship, but its leaders have turned a blind eye to some terrible deeds, notably the mass killings, mainly of Muslims, in the state of Gujarat, where the BJP-led state government itself is accused of a role in the slaughter of 2002. The Congress Party's success in Gujarat suggests that voters have been sickened by what they have seen, just as Gandhi's fall in 1977 was an expression of national disgust at her government's brutalities. The oldest Indian rivalries of all have resurfaced in this election, as they also did in 1977. Then as now, much of the urban bourgeoisie voted for the government, while the impoverished Indian masses, in particular the rural poor, mostly voted against it. The Indian battle for centrality in the debate about the country's future has always been, to some degree, a battle between the city and the village. It is between, on the one hand, the urbanized, industrialized India favored by both the socialist-inclined Jawaharlal Nehru and the free-market architects of "India Shining," the new India in which a highly successful capitalist class has transformed the heights of the economy; and, on the other hand, the agricultural, homespun India beloved of Mahatma Gandhi, the immense countryside India where three-quarters of the population still lives and which has not benefited in the slightest from the recent economic boom. It's no accident that the ruling alliance lost heavily in Andhra Pradesh and in Tamil Nadu, precisely the states that wooed information technology giants such as Microsoft to set up shop, turning sleepy "second cities" such as Madras, Bangalore and Hyderabad into new-tech boom towns. That's because while the rich got richer, the fortunes of the poor, such as the farmers of Andhra, declined year by year. The gulf between India's rich and poor has never looked wider than it does today, and the government has fallen into that chasm. ********

Posted here Friday, May 14, 2004 at 10:16:38 AM     Most stories seem today to be behind the scenes: Colin Powell after he said Bush and Rumsfeld were frequently briefed on the IRC reports.. the way people are postiioing themseles around te Iraq story, the prisons, the june 30 date.. I recommend reading JuanCole  www.juancole.com for a detailed look at the intersecting issues from the Iraq perspective.   ********