Category: Politics

Neither Afghanistan nor the world needs this right now, but Afghanistan is about to explode, and with it goes the only (arguable) accomplishment of our junta’s “war on terrorism.”

But the man in the garden was worried. He was not an American. He was one of the “coalition allies”, as the Americans like to call the patsies who have trotted after them into the Afghan midden. “The Americans don’t know what to do here now,” he went on. “Their morale in Afghanistan is going downhill – though there’s no problem with the generals running things in Tampa. They’re still gung-ho. But here the soldiers know things haven’t gone right, that things aren’t working.
….
The truth is that Afghanistan is on the brink of another disaster. Pakistan is now slipping into the very anarchy of which its opposition warned. And the Palestinian-Israeli war is now out of control. So we really need a war in Iraq, don’t we?

And the backlash against the Americans is growing alarmingly.

The US special forces boys barged into the Kandahar guest house as if they belonged to an army of occupation. One of them wore kitty-litter camouflage fatigues and a bush hat, another was in civilian clothes, paunchy with jeans. The interior of their four-wheel drives glittered with guns.
They wanted to know if a man called Hazrat was staying at the guest house. They didn’t say why. They didn’t say who Hazrat was. The concierge had never heard the name. The five men left, unsmiling, driving at speed back on to the main road. “Why did they talk to me like that?” the concierge asked me. “Who do they think they are?” It was best not to reply.
“The Afghan people will wait a little longer for all the help they have been promised,” the local district officer in Maiwind muttered to me a few hours later. “We believe the Americans want to help us. They promised us help. They have a little longer to prove they mean this. After that …” He didn’t need to say more. Out at Maiwind, in the oven-like grey desert west of Kandahar, the Americans do raids, not aid.
Even when the US military tries to bend its hand to a little humanitarian work, the Western NGOs (non-governmental organisations working with the UN) prefer to keep their distance. As a British NGO worker put it with devastating frankness in Kandahar: “When there is a backlash against the Americans, we want a clear definition between us and them.” You hear that phrase all the time in Afghanistan. “When the backlash comes…”
It is already coming.

We’ve totally squandered our moral advantage and wasted lives and property to no good purpose–in fact to an effect which will be disastrous for us and the world.

He was elected (by an overwhelming majority), he’s an intellectual, he’s savy, shows good leadership abilities, appears to be concerned for the welfare of his nation and of the world, gives good speech, shows charisma, and is an attractive, figure. He’s the President of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, and he is just about the exact opposite of George W. Bush, from top to bottom, beginning to end, and there’s the rub. Americans can’t digest this.

President Mohammad Khatami of Iran struck out at President Bush and other senior American officials at a news conference here today, saying they had “misused” the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States “to create an atmosphere of violence and war” across the world that could sow the seeds for still more destruction.
Mr. Khatami’s visit to Afghanistan, Iran’s eastern neighbor, was the first in 40 years by an Iranian head of state. He warned that American leaders, in widening their campaign against terrorism, could unleash a chain reaction that would engulf countries other than the intended targets in a new round of violence. He implied, without saying so explicitly, that the United States itself could be among the victims.
“The events of Sept. 11 were horrific, but the American leaders misused them, too,” Mr. Khatami told reporters gathered in the old royal palace here in the Afghan capital after talks with President Hamid Karzai. The attackers “did it because they wanted to create an atmosphere of violence and war in the world, but we know with certainty that in today’s world all our fates are linked.”
“Those who plan to launch this war shouldn’t think that the effects will be felt only where they attack,” he continued. “To believe that you can make people submit by force is wrong. We know that this approach only brings anger and destruction.”

I absolutely agree. Does that mean I’m a part of the “axis of evil?”

[This is my friend’s first, brief, report following his arival in Palestine. The text is that of his contact in New York who will regularly be in touch with Steve by cellphone while he’s there.]

I spoke with Steve on the phone this morning (Wednesday 8/14). He
says he is fine and really has very little to report at this time.
He is staying in Jerusalem through tonight. Tomorrow night he will
be in Bethlehem, and the following night (Friday) in Beit Sahor.
Also, Brooklyn NYC Council member Bill DiBlasio* is part of a
delegation visiting Israel and is speaking this evening at the King
David Hotel. Steve plans to go and let DiBlasio know what he thinks.
There are lots of international activists in Nablus. They are
staying with the families of Palestinians who have been shot, to
protect them from having their homes blown up**.
When I spoke to him, he was on a dirt road in the West Bank, just
outside of Jerusalem at a settlement called Gilo***. Last time he was
there he got shot at a lot, but this time his group has found the
Israeli army camp abandoned.

* A number of Council members are currently visiting Israel, but there are no plans for any of them to speak to Israeli arabs or Palestinians.
** The Israeli government has re-introduced its policy of destroying the homes of supected “terrorists.”
*** Gilo is an Israeli settlement on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem

[I posted it as “politics.” but should it really be “happy?”]
Somehow I missed this story until now.
Calls to the government’s TIPS number, it was discovered this past week, were being answered by the “America’s Most Wanted” television program. “We’ve been asked to take the FBI’s TIPS calls for them,” a reporter was told.

To find out [how the Operation TIPS program would work], I logged on to the Citizen Corps Web site, went to the Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS) page, and signed up as a volunteer. I quickly discovered that TIPS is having a devilish time getting off the ground. After an initial welcome from the Justice Department, I heard nothing for a month. When I finally called two weeks ago to ask what citizens were supposed to do if they had a terror tip, I was given a phone number I was told had been set up by the FBI.
But instead of getting a hardened G-person when I called, a mellifluous receptionist’s voice answered, “America’s Most Wanted.” A little flummoxed, I said I was expecting to reach the FBI. “Aren’t you familiar with the TV program ‘America’s Most Wanted’?” she asked patiently. “We’ve been asked to take the FBI’s TIPS calls for them.”
Has Ashcroft turned his embattled volunteer citizen spy program — which has been blasted by left and right alike — over to Fox Broadcasting’s “America’s Most Wanted”?

[Tom Tomorrow‘s penguin character said recently, in an entirely different context, “I should just retire now. Political satire is now officially redundant.” This finally did it for me; I guess I’m slow.]

Barry says it. I can’t add a word.

No, Iraq did not throw UN weapons inspectors out of the country in 1998, and, yes, UN weapons inspectors did exceed their mandate sufficiently to collect eavesdropping intelligence used in American efforts to overturn the government. They left because they were told we were about to bomb Iraq, and they were indeed spies.
Facts are irrelevant to the warlords in Washington, but some of us prefer to relate to things other than myths. FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) alerts us to the sins of just one media outlet, USA Today, but it seems to me that these same false stories are ubiquitous in the American press and TV news.

An August 8 USA Today article that described how Saddam Hussein is “complicating U.S. plans to topple his regime” repeated a common myth about the history of U.S./Iraq relations. Reporter John Diamond wrote that “Iraq expelled U.N. weapons inspectors four years ago and accused them of being spies.”
But Iraq did not “expel” the UNSCOM weapons inspectors; in fact, they were withdrawn by Richard Butler, the head of the inspections team. The Washington Post, like numerous other media outlets, reported it accurately at the time (12/17/98): “Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad, in anticipation of a military attack, on Tuesday night.
“USA Today wouldn’t have to consult the archives of other media outlets to find out what happened: A timeline that appeared in the paper on December 17, 1998 included this entry for December 16: “U.N. weapons inspectors withdraw from Baghdad one day after reporting Iraq was still not cooperating.” USA Today also reported (12/17/98) that “Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov criticized Butler for evacuating inspectors from Iraq Wednesday morning without seeking permission from the Security Council.”

But there’s more.

As for Iraq accusing weapons inspectors of being spies, Diamond might have mentioned that this accusation has proven to be correct. The Washington Post reported in 1999 (1/8/99) that “United Nations arms inspectors helped collect eavesdropping intelligence used in American efforts to undermine the Iraqi regime.”
USA Today was clearly aware of the spy story, since the paper wrote an editorial excusing it. Headlined “Spying Flap Merely a Sideshow” (1/8/99), the paper argued that “spying on Saddam Hussein is nothing new and nothing needing an apology. But the Clinton administration suddenly is scrambling to explain why it did just that.” The paper added that the information gathered “no doubt found uses other than just weapons detection. That may not be playing by the books, but it’s understandable and probably inevitable.”

But this is all irrelevant, since both the Bushie gang and, apparently, the majority of Americans think it’s really better not to let sleeping dogs lie.

David Budbill navigates a few of the world’s religions to see how we got to where we are today and where we might go from here, in his latest notes, “Christians and the War on Terror.”

When I was a student at Union Seminary in New York in the early 1960s, I had to take a church history course. Our text was called THE HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, a huge tome, which I retitled THE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST. What I learned from that course is that the carnage wreaked upon the world by the Christian Church down through the ages makes the Taliban look like bad guys from a skit on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.
There’s a strong desire in the United States these days to return to those golden days of yesteryear and mount again a Holy Crusade against the heathen infidel, a desire to return to the idea that if conversion of the heathen by introduction to The Book–The Bible–doesn’t do the trick, then conversion by the sword is not only necessary but sanctified and Godly.

But both the message and the weaponry has changed since the last age of colonialism.

Here at the beginning of the 21st Century it’s not so much The Bible that is “The Book” as it is the book of Capitalist Materialism and today the sword is not literally a sword, but rather more likely a laser guided bomb delivered from a plane so high up in the sky it is invisible. These differences not withstanding, a new Crusade has begun.
Whether it is in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, The Philippines, Georgia, Palestine, Cuba, Libya, Syria or WhoKnowsWhereElse–the list of those included in The Axis of Evil gets longer every day–it is clear that this new Crusade, this Pax Americana, with which we now attempt to blanket the entire world, is a Holy War.

But hold, we can still visualize an alternative, if still only a dream, to the current horrible reality, which should have remained only a nightmare.
[the last few lines of Chapter 80 of Lao Tzu’s Tao Teh Ching]

Their food is plain and good, and they enjoy eating it.
Their clothes are simple and beautiful.
Their homes secure.
They are happy in their ways.
Though they live within sight of their neighbors,
and their chickens and dogs call back and forth,
they leave each other in peace as they all grow old and die.

Budbill’s regular “Cyberzine” itself assumes the very gentle, but indomitable, presence of the individual in the natural world of which it is an integral part.

I just can’t resist adding one final, possibly very perverse, thought to the item posted just below. With apologies to the millions whose lives were destroyed by its most horrible works, perhaps in some measure we should be extraordinarily grateful that the Soviet Union lasted almost half a century after World War II. I’m beginning to realize that its presence and the rival power it represented was, at least in some respects, a very good thing, keeping us and the world safe from our very worst impulses and excesses until the end of the century.

The deadly-menace nutcases in Washington now say “we” (using whatever ordinary or special units we want to invent and use) have the right to go anywhere at any time to murder anyone for any reason, without telling anyone and without any ultimate accountability to anyone.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is considering ways to expand broadly the role of American Special Operations forces in the global campaign against terrorism, including sending them worldwide to capture or kill Al Qaeda leaders far from the battlefields of Afghanistan, according to Pentagon and intelligence officials.
Proposals now being discussed by Mr. Rumsfeld and senior military officers could ultimately lead Special Operations units to get more deeply involved in long-term covert operations in countries where the United States is not at open war and, in some cases, where the local government is not informed of their presence.* This expansion of the military’s involvement in clandestine activities could be justified, Pentagon officials believe, by defining it as “preparation of the battlefield” in a campaign against terrorism that knows no boundaries.

*Can we imagine, the tables turned, how we would look upon any country on earth doing the same thing on our own territory, regardless of its excuses?
[I only note in passing that the NYTimes news story is exclusively concerned with the legal or precedent issues involved in putting such operations into the hands of the regular military rather than the C.I.A. The fact that we would violate every international relationship and every international law with impunity and without expectation of retribution is not discussed. So I will.]
While many would argue we’ve been in this filthy business for much of the last fifty years or so, I guess we’re now going to be less shy about admitting it. What is also new is our confidence that we now have the absolute right to do anything we want to do, having been hurt on September 11 so embarassingly and to a degree we imagine unprecedented in world history. The bottom line however is that, for the first time since the beginning of the Cold War, no one can stop us, or so we think now.
I believe we are wrong to assume invulnerability when it comes to our latest plans for aggression. Aside from the immediate internal costs, economic and psychological, of this endless war to end terrorism, the world will be beating a path to our doors, and even beyond, not because they like us this time, but becasue they want to see us stopped, if not destroyed. No fortress America and no war against a virtually incorporeal foe can make us safe, but it can and will destroy our liberties and even our prosperity. The horrible violence Israel is suffering today, and that which it is visiting upon others, is a preview, and probably a mild preview, of what is in store at home for a rogue-nation America in terrible fear of its vulnerability and decline.
Will Congress save us from this stupidity, this horror? A fool’s dream; expect nothing and we will not be disappointed. The Supremes? Their moral status may never have been so abysmal; their weight, if counted, will be thrown into the court of the enemies of the republic.

Travel adventures within the West Bank:

[The general secretary of the Tulkarm Blood Bank Society, Azzam Al-Araj, writes,] There is a curfew in effect in my town in Palestine. When I take the risk of walking to my office, which is about a mile from my house, I often bring my 8-year-old son, Mahmod, to show that I am not a threat to the Israeli forces in the town. But he does not always accompany me. In June I made it from Tulkarm to Toledo, Spain, to spend a month with my colleagues from throughout the Middle East, including Israelis, to talk about the future of civil society and governance in our region.
I am not going to describe in detail the killing of Palestinians, the stifling curfew, the malnutrition among Palestinian children, the house demolitions going on around me, or my wife’s daily trauma when each member of my family leaves to go to work or class and she remains home to pray that we all return home safely. Instead, I am going to tell you a story about hope overcoming occupation. It is a mundane tale, really, compared with all that is happening here, and yet in a small way it is important.
In order to attend the international institute in Toledo, I left my home in Tulkarm on Monday, June 17, at 5:30 in the morning with the intention of taking a flight on June 22 from Amman, Jordan, to Madrid.

The distance between his town and Amman is 60 miles, but only for crows, these days. Azzam needed five days, and he almost didn’t make it. The story which continues his account is anything but mundane, at least in a world we would want to live in.