Author: jameswagner

Over 3000 people are killed in one day in a vicious terrorist attack on our own shores, frightening most of the rest of the country absolutely out of their wits, and directing them toward an enthusiasm for domestic and foreign violence remarkable even by their own unhappy standards, both consequences from which the country has not recovered to this day.
In one of its first responses to the events, the White House immediately arranges for seven score foreign residents, VIPs from just one nation, to flee the country on special flights, this well before the Oval Office had allowed flight restrictions to be lifted for the general public, and before much was known (publicly) about those who had planned them.
We already knew about the flight(s) of the 140 Saudis and their families. The real news today is a report about the direct involvement of the White House. What’s still not part of the news is why it was done, and why those people in particular were spirited out of the country in secret.
Richard Clarke, who ran the White House crisis team after the attacks, but has since left the administration, said today, “The White House feared that the Saudis could face ‘retribution’ for the hijackings if they remained in the United States.”
The NYTimes article, which only appears on page A19 of today’s edition, does not explain why or even point out that in the days immediately after the attacks, the White House was apparently only concerned for the safety of certain wealthy Saudi citizens, even to the exclusion of all other nationals, regardless of their origin. Of course this was happening while the same Bush team was busy rounding up people from every Middle Eastern or Central and South Asian country but Israel. None of these people were given plane tickets that week.
Interesting that – and on both counts. I’m referring to the White House’s interesting decision two years ago and the Times decision to focus their report today so narrowly.
The story appears in an article in Vanity Fair out today. I haven’t seen it yet, but perhaps there’s more in that notorious, lefty political style mag than the oh-so-responsible Times found fit to print. In any event, I think the fallout from this story has only begun.

Illustration by David Olére, a Sonderkommando who survived nearly two years at Auschwitz
Anybody feel funny about this announcement?

The Israeli Embassy in Warsaw said three Israeli jets piloted by descendants of Holocaust survivors would fly over the former [Auschwitz death] camp at noon on Thursday. They were to be joined by two Polish MIG-29 jets.

Well, the authorities of the museum there do.

“It’s a cemetery, a place of silence and concentration,” a museum spokesman, Jaroslaw Mensfelt, said. He called the planned flyover “a demonstration of military might which is an entirely inappropriate way to commemorate the victims.”

[image from The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies]

It’s too delicious. Today there’s more from Daily Kos on the embarassment of what passes for the American government. He’s done his homework, citing the reaction of several sources around the world to the administration’s call this week for other nations to contribute money and blood to its own disaster in Iraq.
First, here’s part of his own excerpt from a Guardian guest piece by Richard Perle which appeared the day after the “war” began:

Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The “good works” part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions […]

Salon, snappier than some media sites, contributes these lines, among many more:

In other words, the rest of the world is to send its troops to get killed so that a U.S. president it fears and despises can take the credit for an invasion it bitterly opposed.
The rest of the world may be crazy, but it ain’t stupid.

But much of the world, including many in this country, while welcoming the comeuppance of the Bushites, has no wish to see Iraq suffer. We will have to hold our own evil-doers responsible, through our voices, our feet, the media, our votes, and definitely through impeachment and trial.
But there is no agreement about an alternative to the current U.S. involvement in Iraq, and in fact I haven’t seen any real alternatives proposed. Like so much else wrought in domestic and foreign policy by this stolen White House, the move was so unprecedented, the violence done was so great, resolution cannot be accomplished simply through interdiction.
We may never recover ourselves. How can we expect Iraq to do so?

but Halliburton is still in charge.”
Daily Kos gets it right – as usual. [We should all be reading him regularly.] The entire post:

US tells UN to screw off, but give us money and troops first
I can’t be too surprised about this, but it’s still shocking:

The United States went to the United Nations Wednesday to seek help with troops and money for Iraq, but said it would not give up command of military operations or its dominant role in the country.

Translation: Give us your money and blood, but Halliburton is still in charge.
Germany is unlikely to be swayed, as they want the UN to take control of the operations. And France wants a hard deadline for ending the occupation (which to be honest is a silly requirement). Russia seems to be sitting back enjoying the castration of the mighty US military.
We suddenly don’t look so tough anymore, huh?

Don’t do it UN’uns!