What The New York Times Leaves Out

Last Sunday, the New York Times published an article on how important it will be to keep civilian casualties in Gulf War II to a minimum -- not just for humanitarian reasons, but for political ones as well. Support for the war in this country is, at most, hesitant, and televised pictures of dying civilians would quickly shrivel that support. It would also create greater hostility to American troops in Iraq, making reconstruction all the harder, not to mention sparking anger all over the world. If we had a reasonable and competent administration, it would be easy to assume the Times was right. Bush and Company have everything to gain from planning for humanitarian needs and minimizing causalities. Any fool can see that. The only question is whether this particular collection of fools can see it. At least we can hope they've noticed one special thing to be gained: the opportunity to discredit their critics by proving fears of a humanitarian catastrophe ill-founded.

Of course, that fear of massive casualties and a humanitarian disaster didn't come out of nowhere. It grew in reaction to an administration that spoke of using nuclear or biochemical weapons, and of employing a strategy of "shock and awe" -- which sounds an awful lot like an act of terrorism. Fear grew in reaction to an administration which has given little cooperation to humanitarian organizations trying to plan for the emergency. The best we can hope for, I think, is that this was nothing but bravado -- little boys waving their sharp sticks and hoping to freak out the grownups, or the other little boys -- and that in the end they will do everything possible to keep from harming innocent people.

But there's a contradiction between the adolescent attitude toward grotesque weapons and strategies that this administration has demonstrated, and the Pentagon's apparent caution, as described by the New York Times. A reasonably informative article about the threats to civilians in Iraq would have at least mentioned the contradiction, and the reasons for fear. A decent model would have been Anthony Dworkin's article in The Guardian, which looked at why the "shock and awe" strategy deeply concerns human rights groups, while still demonstrating that it's not unreasonable to think -- or at least hope -- that civilian casualties might be minimal.

But there's an even more important objection to the NYT article that should be made: It is historically evasive. A reader recently forwarded to me a letter he sent to the Times complaining about important facts the article omitted, and pointing out that those evasions were part of a pattern that revealed a particular kind of bias at the Times. Let Donald's letter explain it:

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To the editor:

James Dao's piece on civilian casualties was conspicuously incomplete. The fact is that in Gulf War I the US did attempt to avoid blowing up civilians because of the public relations problem, but at the same time they deliberately hit civilian infrastructure in order to accelerate the effects of the sanctions and cause civilian suffering. We know this because the Pentagon admitted it to the Washington Post. And we know what Human Rights Watch said about this -- it was a violation of the laws of war -- because they say so in their online study "Needless Deaths in the Gulf War." We know that they knew the destruction of water treatment plants would cause epidemics, because anyone with a triple digit IQ would know this, and because it is stated in declassified Pentagon documents.

So the NYT stresses the Pentagon's attempt to avoid the obvious sort of civilian casualty, and omits mention of its confessed attempt to cause them in a more subtle way. Similarly, earlier this week the NYT gives its readers a history of Turkey's relationship with its Kurds and yet you neglect to mention the fact that the US gave Turkey advanced weaponry knowing how it would be used. (See Human Rights Watch for more details, but of course you know them.)

Coupled with all the other stories that have appeared elsewhere in the mainstream press, which I will list below, it is clear that the NYT has made a choice not to publish facts about US policy, past or present, which would show it in an extremely bad light. The most charitable assumption I can make is that you think this is a patriotic duty. But whatever the motive, you are lying by omission.

Other stories which I've missed in the NYT (though maybe they were there, since I don't claim to read every single line) --

• The Washington Post reports that the US sends prisoners to other countries to be tortured. (Dec 26,2002)
  
  
• A US government statistician was nearly fired for calculating the number of civilians who died as a result of health effects in the first Gulf War. (I think her name is Daponte and the total was in the neighborhood of 100,000, much larger than the 3000 blown up as collateral damage that you mention in the Dao piece. The story has appeared in numerous places, including Business Week ). This shows the government tried very hard to conceal information it found embarrassing. The NYT is a partner in that endeavor.
  
  
• The Washington Post (Dec 30, 2002) goes into detail about US support for Iraq and its weapons programs during the 80's. It seems there was more to it than just two currently defunct US companies, as reported in the NYT.

Notice that none of this is meant to argue for or against an invasion of Iraq. Presumably the US has some incentive to avoid civilian casualties, direct and indirect, for the reasons mentioned in the Dao piece. It also has an incentive to blame Saddam for any that ensue. But that is no reason for your whitewash of current and past American actions and it indicates that no one should trust the NYT to report the truth about the upcoming war if there is something our government would like to cover up.

Donald Johnson

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In a follow-up, Donald notes that in the past, the NYT seemed more willing to report honestly about American actions abroad, and particularly praised Ray Bonner's reporting from El Salvador in the early '80s. (Although it should also be noted that the Times pulled Bonner out of Central America and reassigned him to the paper's Business section after he wrote a story on a massacre by the Salvadoran army, which had been trained in anti-guerrilla warfare by the U.S. Military -- a story which embarrassed the Reagan administration and led to a right-wing campaign to smear the reporter.) Donald also notes that they've had good coverage of "US crimes that no longer have any political resonance," including condemnation of US support for Jonas Savimbi and revelation of lies about US involvement in Angola; a series of articles on US complicity in the Guatemalan military's acts of genocide; and a recent article mentioning US support in the mid '60s for the Indonesian military's killing of somewhere between 300,000 and 1 million people. But, as Donald points out, that's old and not immediately relevant history. The Times has a record of being far too reluctant to report current crimes, or past ones that have a direct connection to current events, even when other papers have reported the information.

When it comes to foreign affairs, the New York Times probably has the best resources of any paper in the country. Anyone who wants to know what is going on outside the United States is dependent, to some extent, on the NYT. But anyone reading the Times ought to be aware that they seem to have a history of leaving certain kinds of information out of their stories. Caveat emptor.

Coalition of the Billing, Part...oh, who knows, I lost count long ago...
The United States offered Turkey a package of textile trade concessions as a reward for letting U.S. troops use the country as a jumping-off point for an attack on Iraq, and agreed to agreed to allow Turkish troops to enter northern Iraq and observe the disarmament of Kurdish militias once fighting has stopped.

Via Atrios -- and go over there to join the conversation -- I came to this U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation, written to Colin Powell, a cri de coeur (assuming I'm still allowed to use French) that everyone must read. Below is an excerpt, but really, go read the whole thing.

The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.

The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam. The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo?

---------------edit-----------------------------

Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far. We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America’s ability to defend its interests.

I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration.

This is still America, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Karzai Seeks to Keep Aid to Nation on U.S. Agenda

The man in the emerald cloak was everywhere in Washington 13 months ago -- conferring with ambassadors, greeting members of Congress, and as a prime symbol of America's success in battling terrorism, sitting with the first lady in the gallery as President Bush delivered his State of the Union address. U.S. forces had destroyed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, just in from Kabul, the Afghan capital, was the man of the moment.

Karzai, now the president of Afghanistan, is back in Washington making many of the same rounds -- but the capital's attention is largely elsewhere. With the White House firmly focused on Iraq, Karzai is here to prod the administration to not forget his country.

Something came to mind as I was reading about Hamid Karzai's attempt to get a president with an infamously short attention span to pay attention to the hard and unphotogenic work of reconstruction. Someone described Karzai's situation years before he found himself in it:

The End and the Beginning

by Wislawa Szymborska

(translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

Read the rest

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.' Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes." -- Fred Rogers

Fred Rogers' death this morning has set me to thinking a lot about children. And lately, of course, I've been thinking a lot about Iraq. The focus has all been on whether or not a war is justified and necessary. I don't think it is, but that's not what concerns me today. Children in Iraq have suffered enormously under the last twelve years of sanctions. At least 500 thousand children have died unnecessarily. If there's a war, things will only get worse. If somehow, miraculously, we manage to avoid a war, things aren't going to get any better.

It seems like a good time to mention an organization working to alleviate some of the suffering. All Our Children is a $1 million campaign, organized by a consortium of religious organizations, to meet health care needs of Iraqi children by providing antibiotics, anesthesia, IV solution kits, and methods for accessing clean drinking water.

Those critical needs will remain whether there's a war or not. I don't, to be perfectly honest, trust the Bush administration to care much about that, and I don't think private groups can make up the difference. But they can make some difference. It's a very good time to make a contribution to "All Our Children," or one of the other NGOs like CARE that will deal with the consequences of war (or, hopefully, with the crises that remain even if there is peace). Iraqi children are our children, too, after all. We're all part of the same neighborhood.

Mr. Rogers died early this morning. And I'm literally writing this through tears. I feel like I lost a member of the family.

As I've written before, probably in more detail than I should have, I grew up in a brutal family, and reached adulthood with no idea of what a family was, or how you were supposed to take care of a child. And then, eighteen years ago, I had a kid. And I didn't have the vaguest idea how the hell to take care of him. I could figure out how to feed him and clothe him and change diapers, and I knew it was a good idea to play with him and read to him, but there was something intangible, something I'd never learned at home, that I knew I was missing. I learned it from Mr. Rogers.

For the first couple of years, I counted on a love so huge it made me glow every time I looked at my baby to carry me through. That's really not a bad way to deal with a child who can't talk yet. Just love him and keep your eyes on him. But it wouldn't have been enough once I had a kid who asked questions and talked back. In my family, asking questions and talking back was dangerous.

Thank God for Fred Rogers. Literally, I've thanked God over and over for Fred Rogers. I never let my son watch much television when he was little (or when he was a teenager, for that matter) because I'm one of those annoying mothers who thought that it was mostly crap and I wasn't about to turn my child over to people who wanted to throw crap at him. We watched Sesame Street once or twice, but didn't like it. It was too loud, too bright, and there was too much happening at one time. It made both of us squint and back away. And then one day, we discovered Mr. Rogers.

My son, before he turned three, began learning to tell time, because he wanted to be sure he didn't miss Mr. Rogers.

Everyone makes fun of Fred Rogers. The slow, careful speech; the "you're special" talk addressed to millions of kids -- from an adult point of view, it's faintly ridiculous, and seems condescending. But God never made a human being less condescending than Fred Rogers.

Let me tell you a little bit about my son to try to explain why I believe that. He was -- still is -- unusually bright. Before he turned two he memorized every book I read to him. Hundreds of books. He couldn't read, but he'd sit down with a book and recite it, turning the pages in the right place, and when he did it in public, people thought he was reading. At three, he could read most picture books. Before he started kindergarten, he was reading chapter books. And the Los Angeles Times (not everything in it, but he'd check the front page every morning to see if there were any articles about dinosaurs or evolution or space). He was passionate about the things he learned, and very verbal, and if anyone gave him the slightest opening, he'd seize the chance to tell everything he knew. I can't tell you how many adults I've seen with their mouths hanging open while a tiny kid went on and on about Australopithicus afarensis or something. Unfortunately, most people would then say the words that annoyed my son more than any other: "Aren't you a smart little boy?"

How is anyone supposed to answer that question? It's condescending and stupid, and whenever anyone said it, I'd see my son's big blue eyes get as beady as George Bush's, and he would just shut down, and refuse to talk to the person any more.

You'd think a kid who hated being talked down to that much would despise Mr. Rogers, right? No way. No matter how smart my son was, he was still afraid that he might go down the drain with the bath water, and that if he went to a new place, there might not be a bathroom, and that if he got angry, he would turn into a monster and no one would love him anymore. He wasn't sure that Margaret Hamilton wasn't really green and mean, with an army of flying monkeys at her command, until he saw that obviously gentle woman with Mr. Rogers, and truly understood to the bone that Oz was all pretend, and the wicked witch was just a nice old lady like Nonna. I didn't understand at first how much he needed to know that, but Mr. Rogers did.

Fred Rogers had an astonishing gift for knowing exactly what worried kids, and more than that, a gift for brushing away their concerns without at any time making it seem like there was anything wrong with that concern. Just try to strike that perfect tone. You probably can't do it, for the same reason you can't sing like Aretha Franklin. It's a glorious gift that God didn't hand out to everyone.

But even without the gift, you can learn from, and be inspired by a genius. From Fred Rogers I learned that when you're around kids, you wear comfortable shoes and clothes you don't care much about so you can get down on the ground, because the only way to talk to another human being, including a child, is face-to-face. I learned that if you listen to them, children say amazing things. Not just cute and clever things. They're seeing the world for the first time and are enthralled by its beauty, and if you get down on the ground with them, you've got an opportunity to see it for the first time too, even if you're thirty-something. Surely there must always have been lizards, cocoons, constellations, and hermit crabs – but I swear I never noticed any of them until my son pointed them out to me, and then I couldn't stop being aware of how amazing they were.

And I learned that each child is "special." Ever since my son was three, I've volunteered at his schools, and over the years worked with hundreds of children, and I've never met one that wasn't gifted. Even three and four year olds will show signs of some astonishing gift that sets me raving about some breathtaking child and his innate ability to make another child feel welcome, or to persevere in a task that I would have given up on in half the time, or to plan a complicated project and see it through. There's no way to see the gifts that people who have barely entered the world have, to see how "special" they all are (and Fred Rogers spent enough time with individual children so that wasn't just a word to him) without believing in God, and knowing to the bone that beauty and grace come into the world with every human being.

Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. If he ever mentioned God on his show, I missed it. But he was one of the greatest witnesses to the power of a life of faith I've ever seen.

If you tried to call your senators yesterday as part of the Virtual March on Washington and didn't get through, you weren't alone. Try again on Thursday. And if you still get a busy signal, call the local office number, which you can find here.

Let's see. Donahue is out because the media thinks it’s a bad time for not mouthing exactly the same banalities everyone else is mouthing. And fighting terrorism apparently means never having to say you're sorry – at least not to a Yemeni immigrant. Hesiod gave me plenty to get mad about today. Thank goodness he also gave me someone to laugh at.

Who opposes this war? Everyday people. And they're everywhere.

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"If we don't have allies in Iraq, peacekeeping could employ the entire deployable army," -- Loren Thompson, defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, explaining Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's statement that peacekeeping and humanitarian operations after a war with Iraq would probably require "several hundred thousand soldiers."

Today's the day. Join the Virtual March on Washington.

MUST READ: Max on war and oil.

No comment
A high school junior wore a tee-shirt to school with a picture of Bush and the words "International Terrorist." The vice principal sent him home because he wasn't allowed to wear a shirt that "promotes terrorism."

Well, this is interesting:

A strange spectacle in court: As the USA prepares for a war against Iraq, it is being sued by Iran for its previous close relationship to Saddam Hussein. At the International Court of Justice, Teheran is accusing the United States of delivering dangerous chemicals and deadly viruses to Baghdad during the eighties.

Estimates of the number of refugees a two-to-three month war with Iraq will produce start at around half a million and go up over a million. Iran has joined Turkey, Syria, Kuwait and Jordan among countries planning to turn refugees back at the border. Where will they go?

The alliance with Turkey isn't the only way the Bush is shafting the Kurds. If the US attacks Iraq, the Kurds would be a likely Iraqi target, so, naturally, they've asked the US for gas masks, protective suits, and antidotes to biological agents. According to an article in today's Christian Science Monitor, with everyone predicting no more than a few weeks before an inevitable war begins, they still have lots of nice words and no gas masks. One Kurdish leader goes so far as to suggest that American officials would like to see another mass murder of Kurds because it would be to their political advantage to point to dead Kurds as proof that Saddam did indeed have deadly weapons.

At least times are good for some people.

The continuing saga of the shifty AIDS money

The story so far: The NY Times, the Washington Post and the LA Times all reported a few weeks ago that Bush was changing the "global gag rule" -- barring distribution of U.S. funds to foreign clinics that provide abortion or abortion counseling -- so that social service agencies in Africa and the Caribbean could get funds for AIDS treatment, even if they also provided contraception and abortion services. That was an important development, because AIDS treatment and reproductive services are often provided by the same agencies. Without that change, many poor communities, which can only afford one clinic, would have to choose between treating AIDS and providing reproductive health care to women. Combining services also makes AIDS victims more likely to go for help, because it relieves them of the stigma of going to a clinic labeled as exclusively for people with AIDS.

Chapter II: As is so often the case with the Bush administration, the good news turned out to be a little less than the truth. Not only were they not relaxing the gag rule, they were extending it.

To its credit, the Washington Post published an editorial on Sunday exposing and condemning the fraud. LA and NY have still not been heard from.

UPDATE: Twenty members of Congress (by some strange coincidence, not a Republican in the bunch) signed a letter to Colin Powell calling on the administration to drop plans to extend the global gag order. The letter states, "Our international AIDS policy cannot be subverted in order to satisfy the qualms of any group with specific concerns over a single policy issue that has little relevance for other countries." I think the simple translation of that is: It's bad enough that anyone in this country pays attention to a bunch of misogynist religious nuts. It would be really unfair to inflict them on a continent that already has plenty of its own problems.

Hallelujah! The Catholic Church will not sell exclusive rights to the Virgin. It's sad, though, that they even considered it.

President Bush told reporters that Iraq's generals should "clearly understand that if they take innocent life, if they destroy infrastructure, they will be held to account as war criminals."

I'd appreciate that threat a lot more if it were true for everyone, and if I thought Bush had any understanding that the purpose of war crimes trials is justice, not encouraging coups, and if the decision not to try someone for war crimes had more to do with what crimes they had committed than whether or not they were "willing to cooperate with United States forces," or have "technical expertise" that is "deemed crucial to running a post-Hussein government."

How much will war with Iraq cost? The Pentagon is estimating higher costs than Bush and Company are willing to admit, but even the Pentagon's numbers seem optimistic, taking into account only what "defeating Iraq and occupying the country for six months" could cost. Does anyone believe we will only be in Iraq for six months? The Pentagon numbers also leave out the cost of humanitarian assistance and reconstruction. Although maybe the Pentagon is just taking Ari Fleischer at his word when he says that Iraq will have to "shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction" -- a suggestion which is both callous and "economic and political folly." Or maybe people in the Pentagon simply noticed how quickly Lawrence Lindsey disappeared from the administration after saying that the cost of the war would be as much as $200 billion.

Good intentions can be evil,/Both hands can be full of grease./ You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace. – Bob Dylan

Devra asked a intriguing question awhile ago (it's taken me awhile to write this, which is why the link is a little old): Is it better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons?

Devra's question brought to mind something else I read recently, something that briefly discombobulated me. In a pretty good column about Dick Cheney (mostly recycling old information, but you can't reiterate too often how bad our vice-president is), Arianna Huffington mentioned that Cheney had lobbied for an end to U.S. sanctions on Iraq.

Did I read that right? Dick Cheney and I were, for the better part of a decade, on the same side? I think it's time to go take a really long shower.

I started googling, hoping Huffington was wrong, but of course she wasn't – and when I thought about it, Cheney's opposition to sanctions made perfect sense. Sanctions get in the way of business. Why should the fact that a tyrant is torturing and murdering his opponents stop people from trying to make a profit? As recently as April, 2001, Cheney's energy task force was considering the possibility of lifting sanctions on Iraq (as well as Iran and Libya), not out of any humanitarian concerns, obviously, but because sanctions "affect some of the most important existing and prospective petroleum producing countries in the world."

That isn't exactly why I oppose the Iraqi sanctions. Some time ago, I was writing something about the sanctions, and tried to find an online copy of Joy Gordon's "Cool War," which Harper's had published in November. Unfortunately, Harper's hadn't made it available online then, but they have now, and it's still well worth reading. Gordon spent three years researching the sanctions and came to the conclusion that the United States had manipulated the program in ways that purposely increased human suffering without damaging Iraq's ability to make weapons. That, and a few hundred thousand other small reasons, are why I'm against the sanctions. That's a reason Dick Cheney might have appropriated if he had needed a pretty face to cover his greed.

Keep in mind that for most of the lifespan of those murderous sanctions, Bill Clinton was president. And Dick Cheney and I were on the same side. I can't think of very many issues on which I'd be both against Clinton, and on the same side as Cheney. But sometimes weird things happen. Politics is politics and nobody expects it to be pretty. And if Cheney's energy committee had gotten rid of the sanctions, I would have been far happier about the lives that might have been saved than about the base motives for doing it. If the right thing is accomplished, the motives don't matter – at least not for that one thing.

So, my immediate answer to Devra's question is that doing the right thing is always best. Actions are what count, and perfectly pure motives are a rare – perhaps non-existent – thing in this world anyway.

The problem with thinking on a case by case basis like that, though, is that in the long term, bad motives tend to lead to bad actions. Every once in awhile someone does a good thing for a bad reason, but as a general rule believing that profits are more important than people leads to some pretty nasty behavior and inhuman policies. And you don't have to look past Dick Cheney for proof of that.

And while the person whose heart is in the right place might unwittingly do the wrong thing from time to time, I'd trust a compassionate person over a greedy one to do the right thing far more often. And I wouldn't blame anybody too much for doing the wrong thing for the right reason.

Which brings me to the question of war. I can't point to a specific post, but among the reasonable proponents of war that I read regularly -- CalPundit, The Agonist, and Matthew Yglesias -- a question has come up a few times about how many anti-war people would support the war if they didn't have a strong sense (shared, I think, by all three of my pro-war examples) that the Bush administration was acting from base motives.

Personally, I don't think I would support this war anyway. I don't find even the most reasonable of arguments about WMDs convincing – at least not convincing enough to overcome my very strong prejudice against war. I think the dangers outweigh any good that could come out of this war, even if we had wise, skillful, and trustworthy leaders. The fact that we don't adds to my wariness, but the wariness would be there no matter what.

But what if I'm wrong for the right reasons? What if this administration, despite their motives, managed to accomplish some good in Iraq, or even in the Middle East as a whole? What if they did the right thing for the wrong reasons?

I think that's basically what Kevin Drum was asking recently – damn, people are asking hard questions lately – in a wide-ranging and thoughtful post on possible results of the war. What if -- he asked war opponents -- the war turned out to be swift and decisive, with few casualties, and in addition, democratic institutions began to take root in Iraq, with protection of the Kurds and other minorities, humanitarian needs were dealt with adequately, and there was a rapid reconstruction. Suppose, even, that – I assume were talking about quite a few years in the future here – the democracy built in Iraq began to spread to the rest of the Middle East? Suppose, in essence, that the neocon fantasy turns out to be true. Would that convince you that, despite your earlier concerns, the war turned out to be a positive move?

Given every move this administration has made so far, that stretches my imagination a lot farther than it likes to go. But maybe, like me, my imagination is getting a little creaky in the joints and could use stretching. So, okay, for the sake of argument, I'll go there.

Just to make this even more complicated, let's throw in another damn fine, and closely related, question. Barry, at Alas, a blog recently pointed out that there is one very good result that will surely emerge from this war – an end to sanctions. Does that mean anyone who opposes sanctions should support the war, because obviously some good will come out of it? Barry deals immediately with the moral conundrum this leads to. It's "morally perverse" to tell our government it's okay to wage war in order to stop itself from inflicting harm on people. All kinds of unknown things could happen during a war which could make life even worse than under sanctions. And it is just plain weird to hand the solution of a problem over to the people who are causing it. And yet the truth is, it's impossible to imagine a real world scenario, other than war, that puts an end to sanctions.

I had a weird, related thought – okay, more like a fantasy (neocons don't have exclusive rights to political fantasies) -- during the haggling over the price of Turkish support. What if the Turks pushed too far, I thought, and in the end got cut out of the deal? Wouldn't that be a good thing, really? It would force Bush to work with the Kurds, who might gain enough power to actually create the independent Kurdistan that they've dreamed of, but had to give up hope on. Maybe it would even – as the Turks feared – spread to include the Turkish Kurds. Wouldn't that be a wonderful result of this war – one Bush didn't count on, plan for, or care about?

It would have been. But it would have been even better if we helped the Kurds build on what they've already achieved in their protected zone, and those democratic institutions spread by force of example, instead of by force of arms. Not just because force of example is abstractly "better," but because "democracy" imposed by force isn't likely to put its roots down very deeply, if at all. A "good" you stumble over just doesn't have the staying power of a good you're committed to.

In the long run, I think how things come to be matter as much as what comes to be. But it may be faith, more than reason, that carries me to that conclusion.

I suspect there will be some good that comes of this war. There will be positive consequences – along with some negative ones – that we haven't even thought of yet. Grace has a habit of showing up in the ugliest places. And still, the United States going in, either on its own, or with a coalition of the bought and bullied, and overthrowing a government without any immediate threat, only because (under the most generous interpretation) it feels threatened, or (using a less generous interpretation) because it has something to gain – I can't imagine that I would ever say that such a thing turned out to be for the best. It's a horrible precedent that makes the world a more dangerous and brutish place. And I hope the few signs of grace that emerge from the rubble – and I'm sure there will be signs of grace, especially at the beginning, while everyone's on their best behavior, before the press gets bored and goes looking for the next war -- don't ever seduce any of us into believing it is a good model for future action.

Even if some bits of good come out of it, doing it for the wrong reasons, and in the wrong way, will make a difference.

Don't miss…

Ruminate This on Bernadette Devlin's arrest and deportation.

Quote
"We aren't going to go home from whatever we do in Iraq." -- General Anthony Zinni

UPDATE: Go to The Road to Surfdom for more on military opposition to the war.

Another day, another verse of the Can't Trust the Mayberry Machiavelli Blues. The White House is starting to sound like a CARE press release, warning that as many as 2 million Iraqis could be made homeless by the coming war, and discussing its strategy for dealing with the catastrophe. Now there was a time when I thought that the president talking like the head of an NGO was a positive development, but after food packets that lured people out into mined fields in Afghanistan, a magically vanishing education budget, and an AIDS proposal that that ended up looking like welfare for pharmaceutical companies, I'm unpacking my fine-toothed comb.

My cynical response:

What the hell took you so long? Relief groups have been complaining for months (warning: pdf.) that they haven't been privy even to unclassified information about plans for humanitarian aid. The administrations' renowned secrecy and lack of interest in proposals by NGOs, and unconscionable delays in approving licenses for NGOs to conduct assessment missions have made it extremely difficult for relief organizations like CARE and Refugees International to develop plans and prepare adequately for the emergency. According to Ken Bacon, of Refugees International, they kept being told that a decision to go to war hadn't been reached, so it was "premature" to start planning for humanitarian relief (it didn't seem to stop Bush and Company from planning for the war, however.) It's hard, even, to say, "Better late than never," because even if these plans are adequate, a lot of time was lost, and people will suffer and even die because of it.

Next question: Why is the military taking over a job that could be better done by NGOs? Initially, the military will have to be responsible for the work. The UN has already pulled out half the foreign aid workers it has in Iraq. There's nobody else who can do the job. But the administration has appointed Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general, to head the office of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance, and while he has some good, relevant experience – he was in charge of Kurdish resettlement in the months after the first Gulf War – and no one seems to have anything negative to say about him, some relief workers are worried that he has too close ties to the Pentagon, and that the Pentagon is trying to run the show. There have been problems in Afghanistan for humanitarian workers because of the military's aid and development work. Afghans see the American military and NGOs as the part of the same force – which can make it difficult for aid workers to gain people's trust. In some cases, it can even put workers lives at risk.

The importance of this distinction is apparent in an interview Mark Grossman, undersecretary of State for political affairs, did with NPR:

LYNN NEARY: And one other thing--I know you make a distinction between the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government...

GROSSMAN: Absolutely.

NEARY: ...in terms of the Iraqi people not being the enemy. On the other hand, the Iraqi people may regard the US military as the enemy. The very people who now perhaps are trying to assist them in humanitarian ways might be the same people they regard as those who caused the problems in the first place. How do you deal with that?

GROSSMAN: Well, first of all, I can imagine that the Iraqi people are more than tired of the regime that they've been living under for all these years, and second, one of the reasons that we've done so much planning and have tried to be so objective-oriented in this regard is so that if our military forces have to be used, then the thing that the Iraqi people will see immediately after their liberation are people who are coming to restore exactly the kinds of institutions and efforts that you were talking about. So I'd like to see, you know, Iraqis recognize immediately that the United States and its coalition allies are there to restore the water, to get the power back up, and also to consider the areas of future governance of Iraq so that people there have a chance to run their own lives.

.....................................

That conversation is troubling for two reasons. Assuming that the Iraqi people are going to see the American military as saviors is a horrible idea. It might turn out to be true. But if it doesn't – and the chances are good that it won't – you will be putting people in a position of depending for aid on people they view as the enemy. If you care about those people's lives, it makes much more sense to help NGOs get in and take over as quickly as possible, and allow them to act as independently as possible, without forcing them to work with the military. They'll be able to accomplish more if Iraqis don't view them as a branch of the US military.

It's also disturbing that Grossman seems to see providing aid as part of the public relations strategy: We want Iraqis to "recognize immediately that the United States and its coalition allies are there to restore the water, to get the power back up." Combine that with the fact that, according to the LA Times, "The White House made a special effort to invite members of the international press corps, a strategy intended especially to reach Arab audiences, who fear that a U.S.-led war could cause widespread misery," and that Grossman brags about how closely the administration has worked with NGOs (that's not what the NGOs are saying), and the whole thing is starting to sound less like a real plan for reducing misery, and more like a p.r. gambit.

NOTE: Andrew Natsios says the NGOs are lying about how little involvement they have had in the preparations. That seems to say a lot about the relationship this administration has with humanitarian organizations.

Good source of information:
The Human and Humanitarian Consequences of a War on Iraq

Action
Sign Amnesty International's petition asking the Security Council to send humanitarian and human rights monitors to Iraq to assess both the current situation and the impact of any military action on civilians.

I'd like to pose a moral question that I don't have a satisfactory answer to in the hope that someone has a good response.

Humanitarian organizations are increasingly aware of the manipulation and abuse of their aid. Some examples:

• During the 1991-92 famine in Somalia, aid agencies, without enough resources to feed hundreds of thousands of starving people, paid exorbitant fees to armed militias to protect them and their supplies. It's not just the waste that's at issue. It's the fact that humanitarian groups, obviously without meaning to, ended up helping militias kill people.
  
  
• In 1994, Hutus in Rwanda began a genocidal campaign that in three months killed at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The genocide ended only when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front took control of the country, at which point as many as 2 million Hutu fled to refugee camps in Zaire. As hunger and disease swept through the camps, aid from the West began to pour in. Among the recipients of the aid were people who were responsible for the genocide in Rwanda. Ironically far more Western aid ended up going to the architects of the genocide, now in refugee camps in Zaire, than to the victims in Rwanda. Worse, the Hutu genocidaires took control of some of the camps, seized the aid and sold it to buy weapons. The "humanitarian" refugee camps ended up sheltering murderers conducting cross-border raids to continue the genocide.
  
  
• In North Korea, as many as three million people may have died from starvation and related illnesses since 1995. But refugees who have fled the country say that aid meant for famine victims is not getting to those who need it but is going to citizens deemed to be loyal to Kim Jong Il. Some aid organizations continue to work in North Korea, but they have no control over how aid is distributed. The problem isn't just that some, or even most, of the food is being siphoned off. The bigger question is to what extent that aid keeps a monstrous regime afloat. Does the aid feed the monster instead of the children? Would the regime be threatened if it didn't have the food to offer as bribes?
  

All of that went racing through my head when I read that Colin Powell was talking about resuming food aid to North Korea. Food shipments were stopped three months ago. My instinct is to say give the food and hope at least some of it gets to people who need it. But if you give aid without any control over, or even knowledge of, how it's distributed, and it keeps monsters in power, or allows murderers to go on rampages, aren't you, in some sense, morally responsible for what happens? I don't in any way mean that as a slam on Colin Powell. It seems to me a genuine moral conundrum.

What would Ike do?

Liberal Oasis has a great interview with investigative reporter Greg Palast, talking about democracy, war, oil, globalization, and the frustrations of being a real reporter in a fluffy media world. Definitely worth checking out.

Then, while you're thinking about the media, go read Jim Capozzola's obituaries for the late, great Washington Post and Salon, may they rest in pieces.

The US has enormous economic power over some of the non-permanent members of the Security Council. Bulgaria has gotten $31.5 million in US military grants since 2001, and an additional $97.1 million in aid. Pakistan is receiving $50 million in military grants. Cameroon receives about $200,000 yearly for military training. Angola receives about $100,000 for military education and training, and about $19 million in development assistance. The US provides about $500,000 annually for military training of Chilean soldiers and awarded the country about $1.5 million in military grants this year. Mexico will get over $44 million in development assistance this year. And then there are other incentives.

Isn't it pleasantly surprising that this doesn't seem to be paying off? Some unknown person in the administration was quoted in the LA Times this morning, saying, " "We have no tricks left in our bag."

Time to stop threatening and start listening? Just a suggestion.

Paul Krugman has an interesting theory this morning about why it isn't working with at least one country – Mexico:

Consider the astonishing fact that Vicente Fox, president of Mexico, appears unwilling to cast his U.N. Security Council vote in America's favor. Given Mexico's close economic ties to the United States, and Mr. Fox's onetime personal relationship with Mr. Bush, Mexico should have been more or less automatically in America's column. But the Mexican president feels betrayed. He took the politically risky step of aligning himself closely with Mr. Bush — a boost to Republican efforts to woo Hispanic voters — in return for promised reforms that would legalize the status of undocumented immigrants. The administration never acted on those reforms, and Mr. Fox is in no mood to do Mr. Bush any more favors.

Mr. Fox is not alone. In fact, I can't think of anyone other than the hard right and corporate lobbyists who has done a deal with Mr. Bush and not come away feeling betrayed.

Isn't it a good thing to know that in the absence of decent and trustworthy behavior, all the bribes and threats in the world get you nowhere? At least that's the way it looks today.

UPDATE: The Agonist suggests Bush will get Chilean and Angolan support for the resolution; MSNBC quotes "diplomatic sources" who say the "financial and other inducements" are working -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan will all vote for the resolution.

Counter-terrorism experts and a senior US intelligence official interviewed by the Christian Science Monitor, say that Al Qaeda stands to gain from a US invasion of Iraq. Yes, I realize you know that already – but you're not a counter-terrorism expert or an intelligence official, so that doesn't count.

I'll be back with some links and rants and maybe even a little coherent thought later today.

What does John Ashcroft have against women?

On March 1, the INS moves over into the Department of Homeland Security, and Ashcroft loses his chance to harass immigrants and refugees, so apparently he decided to sneak in one final horrendous act – denying asylum to women fleeing gender-based human rights abuses including sexual slavery, honor killing, and government-tolerated domestic violence.

Bravissimo!

Hesiod says listen to Rush -- and take notes.

Prosecutors See Limits to Doubt in Capital Cases

Judge Laura Denvir Stith seemed not to believe what she was hearing.

A prosecutor was trying to block a death row inmate from having his conviction reopened on the basis of new evidence, and Judge Stith, of the Missouri Supreme Court, was getting exasperated. "Are you suggesting," she asked the prosecutor, that "even if we find Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?"

Frank A. Jung, an assistant state attorney general, replied, "That's correct, your honor."

For the life of me, I can't understand how any prosecutor could live with his or her conscience after arguing that post-conviction claims of innocence shouldn't even be looked at because we need finality and would prevent "very few unjust executions."

Exoneration isn't even enough.

(Via Kos)

Why Ken Pollack Is Wrong

People are crazy and times are strange
Read Peter Arnett on how reporting what he saw in the first Gulf War got him branded a traitor. Then read how CNN and MSNBC are toning down the graphics and trying to look classier and more serious in preparation for war. From Peter Arnett to Connie Chung in a little over a decade. Well, at least MSNBC is sending Arnett back to Baghdad.

UPDATE: It gets worse. According to Newsweek, MTV and the tabloid "Inside Edition" had reporters participating in combat-training boot camps sponsored by the Defense Department. MTV has one of Teen People's Hottest Stars Under 25 already in Kuwait. His parents were "way political," and that probably makes him as qualified to cover a war as most of the people who will be doing it.

The Kurds might be to Iraq what the warlords have been to Afghanistan, but seem pretty resistant, at least, to fundamentalists' attempts to co-opt their struggle.

It gets harder and harder to keep track of all the reasons for war:

Politics
From the New York Times: "But what administration officials and Republicans close to the White House also concede is that the president's ability to sell the public and Congress on one of the most ambitious domestic agendas in decades is linked to the outcome of the potential war in Iraq, with victory a turnkey to legislative success. A victory, they say, would give momentum to the president's plans to cut taxes and overhaul Medicare, which right now face objections even from some members of Mr. Bush's own party… The White House strategy is to push the centerpiece of the agenda, Mr. Bush's $670 billion package of tax cuts, into the legislative process now, so that the proposal will be up for debate on Capitol Hill this spring and summer — when it is possible that the president will have emerged victorious on Iraq…The president marching in with an 85 percent approval rating can push through far more than the normal political process will allow…Democrats and Republicans say that for all practical purposes, Medicare, prescription drugs and Mr. Bush's proposal to eliminate the dividend tax, to name just his top domestic priorities, are waiting for Iraq."

Greed
From Arianna Huffington:"Boys, boys, you're all right. Sure, it's Daddy, oil and imperialism, not to mention a messianic sense of righteous purpose, a deep-seated contempt for the peace movement and, to be fair, the irrefutable fact that the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein. But there's also an overarching mentality feeding the administration's collective delusions, and it can be found by looking to corporate America's bottom line. The dots leading from Wall Street to the West Wing situation room are the ones that need connecting. There's money to be made in post-war Iraq, and the sooner we get the pesky war over with, the sooner we (by which I mean George Bush's corporate cronies) can start making it. The nugget of truth that former Bush economic guru Lawrence Lindsey let slip last fall shortly before he was shoved out the oval office door says it all. Momentarily forgetting that he was talking to the press and not his buddies in the White House, he admitted: "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy… Clearly, our national interest runs a distant second when pitted against the rapacious desires of special interests and the politicians they buy with massive campaign contributions. Oil and gas companies donated $26.7 million to Bush and his fellow Republicans during the 2000 election and another $18 million in 2002. So does it really come as any surprise that Cheney's staff held secret meetings in October with executives from Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips – and yes, Halliburton – to discuss who would get what in a post-Saddam Iraq? As they say, to the victors – and the big buck donors – go the sp-oil-s."

Ineptitude and Arrogance
From Molly Ivins: "Bush once described something as ''the language of diplomatic nuanced circles.'' One could wish he were rather more practiced in it. It is not reassuring to be told we are going to war because he ''has already seen this movie'' and is bored by it. Far be it from me to discourage blunt speaking, but issues of war and peace are not aided by displays of petty impatience. There is something deeply unserious about it.

It is this cavalier streak in our foreign policy, the contemptuous dismissal of peaceful alternatives, that makes some Europeans conclude this administration is dangerous. What your mama told you about flies and honey is still true. Why not try persuasion instead of bullying? For that matter, why not see if the inspections work before racing into this ''preventive war?''

Republican leaders are hearing more and more anti-war sentiments from their constituents, but are still trying to convince themselves that hesitation about the war represents a minority view. Tell them they're wrong.

There sure are a lot of us.
The numbers are one thing, but the pictures are truly amazing.

Remember Afghanistan?

• The selling of young girls as brides is increasing.
  
  
• 1.2 million Afghan refugees are expected to return from Pakistan and Iran this year. The repatriation will cost somewhere around $195 million. So far donors have given $15.4 million. The last wave of returning refugees also caught relief agencies without adequate resources.
  
  
• Up to 4 million Afghan children may be starting school next month.
  
  
• Humanitarian aid workers are coming under increasing attack by both Islamic militants and bandits, as are development projects like schools, hospitals and roads. Relief organizations expect the violence to increase if the US attacks Iraq. Most have decreased their staffs and are beginning to talk about evacuation.
  
  
• The German Defense Minister recently said that threats to foreigners would worsen in case of an American attack on Iraq, and announced that it would be possible to evacuate peacekeeping troops within a week, if necessary. A spokesmen for the International Security Assistance Force quickly denied rumors that Germany, which supplies 1,700 of the 4,500 troops in the ISAF, was planning to pull out of Afghanistan.
  
  
• Hamid Karzai announced that he had assurances from both Bush and Blair that war with Iraq would not distract them from reconstruction of Afghanistan, and that he may not run in the Afghan presidential elections required next year.
  
  
• Afghanistan's justice system is a mess -- short of funds and trained staff, and susceptible to bribery and intimidation. The Supreme Court Chief Justice, Fazl Hadi Shinwari, is a cleric with strong links to a fundamentalist political party. He has no formal training in secular sources of law -- an implicit requirement in the constitution. Shinwari has expanded the number of Supreme Court judges from nine to 137, many of whom are also unqualified in secular law. According to Robert Templer of the International Crisis Group, "there are fears that the Afghan justice system has been taken over by hard-liners before the Afghan people have had a chance to express their will in a democratic process."
  
  
• There has been considerable pressure from Islamic groups on the framers of the new Afghan constitution to incorporate a conservative interpretation of traditional Sharia law. The groups have said it must reflect Afghanistan's deeply conservative society, not Western values.
  
  
• Afghanistan is an NRA dream come true.
  
  
• Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan signed an agreement for a $3.5 billion gas pipeline project passing through the three countries. The Afghan Petroleum and Mines Minister assured his counterparts from the other two countries that the pipeline passing through Afghanistan will be "totally safe."
  
  
• There are signs that al Qaeda is regrouping along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
  
  
• The US is floating the idea of NATO control of the peacekeeping force.

War Is A Local Issue
My local school district had to close three schools this year, and also eliminate art, music, and P.E. in the lower grades. The jazz band my son played in throughout high school has also been axed. The district had to cut $2 million from the budget. This year we've been getting weekly letters from the principal asking everyone to write to the governor because next year the cuts will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.5 million from the district's $52 million General Fund. At that rate, we just start squeezing as many little bodies as we can fit into classrooms.

That's what came to mind last week when I read that the LA City Council had deadlocked on an antiwar resolution because, as one Councilman said, "This is a place to talk about police reform, not the Persian Gulf."

Well, to be honest, it didn't come to mind until after I read the comments of Eric Garcetti, the Councilman who introduced the resolution. He suggested that among all the other reasons for opposing the war is the fact that the billions of dollars the war will cost could be better spent meeting citizens' needs. That includes schools.

And police. Also last week, there was an article in the LA Times about the impact the military build-up is having on police, fire, and other emergency services. To put it simply, a lot of our first responders are in the reserves. In case of a terrorist attack in this country, the person you need may be in Iraq.

On Wednesday, the resolution failed, but on Friday it was back, with the language tweaked a bit, and this time it passed, making Los Angeles the largest of more than one hundred cities to put itself on record against the war.

It was, after all, an important local issue.

I haven't quite given up yet. Somehow I still believe that despair is one of the greatest sins, and I'm encouraged by people who continue to behave as if peace were possible. Some days, though, it is extremely hard to sustain any optimism. Reading this headline last week -- U.N. Reduces Humanitarian Staff in Iraq -- literally made me start to cry. And then resolve to keep believing that peace is a real possibility.

Nevertheless, this is well said, and I share both the frustration and the hope.

(Via Counterspin)

Some things I didn't know about Kirkuk, the oil-burdened city in northern Iraq that just about everyone would like to claim:

• CIA teams have been scouting out Iraqi Kurdistan. There are indications that two airstrips north of Kirkuk currently being cleared could be used by U.S. forces, possibly to assist in seizing the oil fields.
  
  
• The Turks say they have 12,000 troops inside northern Iraq. There are at least 300 soldiers under Turkish command in Arbil, a Kurdish city 90 kilometres from Kirkuk. The soldiers in Arbil are Turkomans, an Iraqi minority that claims Kirkuk as its ancestral home. (The NY Times has a good article today on this Turkish-led force and why the Kurds fear it.)
  
  
• Kurds haven't been a majority in Kirkuk since at least 1947. At the time, they made up 25 per cent of the town, and 53 per cent of the province. They were outnumbered by the Turkomans.
  
  
• Reports from Kurdish refugees fleeing the city say the Iraqi army has brought in a brigade of the elite Republican Guards, along with extra heavy artillery and rockets. The army has also built trenches around the city, and reinforced the military presence on the roads leading to it.
  

Where al Qaeda shops for weapons
North Korea, Russia, Iran, Pakistan…

News from the Coalition of the Billing

Today's LA Times has good coverage of what the Bush administration may have to offer some small countries on the Security Council in exchange for a vote giving the United States authority to go to war. In order to get a majority, Bush needs five votes from the six uncommitted nonpermanent members -- Guinea, Mexico, Pakistan, Angola, Cameroon and Chile.

After all the publicity about the Turkish bribe, they're trying to avoid paying cash this time, but there are still inducements available.

Mexico could demand changes in U.S. immigration law to legalize the status of 3 million Mexicans believed to be working illegally in the United States.

Chile's in a harder place. Last year, the country signed a free trade agreement with the United States, but it still needs to be approved by the U.S. Congress. On the other hand, last month, Chile's Congress ratified a free trade agreement with the European Union. Trying to tip the balance a little, Colin Powell did an interview on Chilean television last week, and apologized for American involvement in the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power.
………………

The Turks are still making demands, insisting that their troops in northern Iraq outnumber American troops by as much as 2 to 1. The Kurds, meanwhile, warn that peshmerga guerrillas will resist any Turkish intervention, and that if the Turks enter Iraq, Iran will also feel free to intervene.

It looks like the Turks have a deal, which will be presented to the Turkish legislature for its approval on Tuesday. The numbers muddle me, but it seems the big breakthrough was not an increase in the total amount the Bush administration was willing to pay, but an increase in how much they were willing to pay immediately. According to the Washington Post the Turks -- who you have to give grudging credit to for how well they seem to understand Bush and Company – were even haggling over who was going to pay for the plastic identification tags American troops would wear while stationed in Turkey.

Worse than the bribe is the continuing sell out of the Kurds. Apparently still up in the air is a Turkish demand that the Kurds be disarmed after the war. The Turks plan to have tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of troops in northern Iraq -- "several times more than the number of the American troops," according to the Turkish foreign minister. The LA Times says that Turkish television reported Friday night that the United States had given in to a demand that Turkish troops be allowed into the Kurdish enclave, even close to the oil-rich cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. An American official said that the role of Turkish troops would be "primarily humanitarian," but it's unlikely the Kurds will see it that way.

Unfortunately, no one seems to think it's important to work out those details before the fighting begins. Administration officials said it would all be arranged by Turkish and American military officials during the war. Turkey and the United States, after all, have "a long record of military cooperation." Well, yeah -- that's what makes some of us nervous. According to Human Rights Watch, the United States was "deeply involved in arming Turkey and supporting its arms production capacities," which allowed the Turks to conduct a war against Kurdish insurgents which resulted in "19,000 deaths, including some 2,000 death-squad killings of suspected PKK sympathizers, two million internally displaced, and more than 2,200 villages destroyed, most of which were burned down by Turkish security forces." Cooperation isn't always a good thing.

…………………..

There's been a lot of interesting writing about Turkey in blogs this week:

• Don't worry. The Iraqis are the ones who will pay the Turkish bribe.
  
  
• We aren't talking about a toe dipped in the Kurdish enclave. The Turks are going all the way.
  
  
• The no-fly zone doesn't apply to the Turks.
  
  
• Just keep telling yourself: It's not about oil.

…………………..

Turkey isn't the only country being bought off, of course. Today's Guardian looks at how much a few other countries are charging for their consciences.

I'm not persuaded by Ken Pollack that inspections still can't work. And I think he's way off base in suggesting that the Bush administration has "done a pretty good job" in planning for the "day after" war with Iraq. But reading his interview with Josh Marshall, it struck me that toward the end of the interview, he is saying in a hesitant way what John B. Judis said more directly in last week's LA Times:

If our initial goal had been the reasonable and important one of preventing Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, there was a host of options that could have been pursued, such as a demand for inspections coupled with the threat of an air campaign against any potential military target. If these efforts had failed, their failure would have created far more support for an invasion than currently exists. Instead, the Bush administration began by demanding "regime change," declaring its willingness to fight a preventive war, and sending troops. It took the very last, fateful step before it had taken the first. As a result, the troops are there, and we have to use them or risk a credibility crisis.

I won't get into whether or not we need to take that step in order to avoid a "credibility crisis." Pollack makes much the same case, but in all honesty, I don't think the Bush administration has a shred of credibility left to lose. And unfortunately it's our credibility as a nation that these losers are shredding.

But no matter which side of the war issue you fall on, I think you have to admit that at this point we don't have any good options. I still think the idea Jessica Tuchman Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offered recently for "truly muscular inspections," is preferable to war, and still has a chance to work, but it would have had a better chance of working a year ago before Bush and Company made every sensible country unwilling to work with us except for a fee (with the promise in writing). If we have the limited choices before us at the moment, it's because of Bush's screw-ups.

Apparently "new Europe" thinks a lot like "old Europe."

• 82 percent of Hungarians oppose war.
  
  
• 75 percent of Poles oppose war.
  
  
• 76 percent of Czechs oppose a war without a second U.N. resolution—and 67 percent oppose it even with one.

Why their democratically-elected leaders support it is a whole other story, which you'll find in an interesting article at Slate. It probably also didn't hurt that we were willing to help with the writing.

The Archbishop of Canterbury told Bush and Blair to stop covering their war in religious language: "There is no war that is holy and good in itself and to bring the heavy artillery of a religious kind, to say that is the only way of resisting evil, is something that has to be watched out for."

How much will the war cost?

Thomas Spencer notes that Peter Arnett will be reporting from Baghdad for MSNBC, and also links to a related, older post of his own – a must-read examination of how the media has changed for the worst since the days when Arnett last reported from Baghdad.

Privatization of Oil Suggested for Iraq

A State Department advisory panel of Iraqi petroleum experts has concluded that Iraq's state-owned industry would benefit from privatization -- a provocative idea in a region that evicted foreign oil companies three decades ago.

Maybe it's just that oil men have been running the company…I mean the country…too long, and I've grown cynical, but this makes me uncomfortable.

The article goes on about all the reasons this should not be alarming – goodness, of course this would all be in the hands of Iraqis, the Bush administration would never try to exploit the situation, because after all that would make the United States look terrible, and anyway after the war, foreign oil companies are in for a windfall providing engineering, construction and oil field services, they won't need to go looking for oil exploration deals, and Iraqis would be furious is they started to see Iraq's oil reserves sold off to foreign interests – but I still don't like it.

Administration officials have promised that they would make sure Iraq's oil riches were held in trust for the Iraqi people in the event of Hussein's ouster.

Maybe my discomfort has something to do with how quickly we went from a pledge that we "would not support replacing one dictator with another." to "Baathism with an American face."

UPDATE: More on Iraq and foreign oil companies from the New York Times, including this not unexpected tidbit: "Analysts said restoration of fields and facilities would probably be the first opportunities open to foreign concerns, mainly the oil field services companies like Schlumberger and Halliburton. You knew Cheney was in there somewhere, didn't you?

You Say You Want A Resolution
I'm not sure if it's the nature of the times, my lack of knowledge about how diplomacy works, or an innate mental muddle, but I'm confused.

We don't really need a UN resolution, because...well, because we say so. But Security Council approval would make things easier. There doesn't seem to be any chance of unanimous Council approval anymore, so now the United States and Britain will try to persuade 9 of the 15 members of the Security Council to back a resolution authorizing the use of force, and then challenge France, Russia or China to veto the will of the majority. Let them look out of step with the world for a change.

The US has Britain, Bulgaria, and Spain on its side. Four votes. The pressure is on the undecided "middle six" -- Angola, Guinea, Cameroon, Mexico, Chile and Pakistan. But the three African countries signed a declaration at a Franco-African summit expressing support for the continuation of the inspections. That seems like a pretty decisive rejection of the Bush administration's position to me, but what do I know? And I never was good at math, but with three of the six votes missing, doesn't that make it a little difficult to get the needed five?

And yet, Bush is still planning to present a new resolution to the Security Council, which would be kind of embarrassing if it failed. Is Bush counting on something that I'm not taking into consideration?

Angola	The US recently gave $4.1 million for the settlement of Angolan refugees; potentially Africa's biggest oil exporter, Angola needs American financing and technological help to take advantage of that potential; American oil companies are by far the country's biggest investors.
Cameroon	America and Britain backed Cameroon in a court fight with Nigeria over oil rights; over the objections of environmentalists and human rights advocates, the World Bank last year approved loans for a $3.7 billion project to build an oil pipeline from Chad to Cameroon's Atlantic coast.
Guinea	The desperately poor country is kept afloat by $50 million per year of American aid and military training.

Added to the blogroll

Where Is Raed?

MidEastLog

Back to Iraq 2.0

Today's New York Times has a good summary of the history of bad relations between the Turks and the Kurds, and a timeline of important events in Kurdish history. The Los Angeles Times looks at fighting among the Kurds. The BBC makes it personal, with the story of a Kurdish fighter from Kirkuk.

Paul Krugman, writing about the Bush administrations do-it-yourself reconstruction plans for post-war Iraq, is a must read today.

The Washington Post has the latest update on how the Iraqi opposition has been cut out of the post-war plans, which doesn't exactly sound like the model of Middle East democracy Bush describes.

And via Matt Yglesias and Oliver Willis comes news the news that Saudi Arabia has proposed leading a coaliton of Arab nations that would occupy Iraq, with Turkey "playing the leading role in the Islamic force," which might explain why they seem to be warming to the idea of war.

In comparison, what Krugman calls Bush's "Martial Plan" looks reasonable. It seems like everytime you choke on a suggestion this administration puts out, it turns out there's another one waiting in the wings that's even worse.

Joe Conason's right. Reports that Saddam read the anti-war demonstrations as support for him – however bizarre that reading – are disturbing. The last thing the anti-war movement wants to do is encourage Iraq not to co-operate with inspectors. Write to the Iraqi UN mission and the Iraq News Agency. Demand immediate cooperation with UNMOVIC.

Ha!

It was inevitable, wasn't it? Ivory Coast spam.

And while we're on the subject, and since we're all now convinced that a leader responsible for the murders of his own people must be overthrown, it's time to intervene in the Ivory Coast, right?

How do you finance a war and a tax cut?
You can always steal the money from military families, renters, firefighters. and hungry school children.

How much will the war cost?

I knew there was a catch. Less than a week ago, White House officials said that Bush was changing his policy of barring American money from going to social service agencies providing AIDS treatment and education if they also offered reproductive services (even if they used other money to provide those services) Now, according to a leaked State Department memo, it seems that the change will only apply if NGOs have separately administered programs -- which they don't, because they don't have enough money to deal with the crisis as it is without adding another layer of bureaucracy.

The sensible and compassionate "policy change" made the New York Times. It will be interesting to see if they cover the not so nice, fundamentalist-stroking fine print.

Is it really a good idea to encourage people not to vote?

NOTE: Ampersand suggests there's a reason for the strategy – but I still agree with Julia that it's a dumb one. Discouraging people from voting is not a good precedent to establish.

Just an off-hand thought: I wonder how many people there are in the United States who believe that both of these statements are valid:

• From The LA Times: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned Iraqi military commanders Wednesday that using human shields against U.S. bombs would be punishable as a war crime."
  
  
• From Human Rights Watch: Human Shields in Iraq Puts Obligations on U.S

I must admit, it bothers me a lot that American military planners "fear that civilian casualties would further inflame world opinion," rather than worrying about how to respond to Saddam's war crimes without committing war crimes of their own. World opinion is important; human lives are irreplaceable. Rumsfeld is right, using human shields is a war crime. But so is attacking targets shielded by civilians unless there is an overwhelming military necessity to do so.

Another helping of Turkey

• The New York Times confirms that one of the things the Turks are holding out for is access to the oil in Kirkuk, the town from which the Kurds were expelled, and which they want to return to and possibly even claim as their capital:
  
  "The Turks want to control the operation at Kirkuk, at a minimum through a pipeline," the official said. "That's in a way a better deal for them than American aid."
  
  But Mr. Bush and his aides have often said Iraq's oil is for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and they realize that any discussion of guaranteeing access to the oil to Turkey — or any other nation — would make it appear that the war is about oil rights, not weapons of mass destruction.
  
  The official said giving Turkey guarantees was impossible "without breaking an awful lot of crockery," including "looking disingenuous to our Kurdish friends" in northern Iraq.
  
  I love the way this is phrased: We don't want to make it "appear" that the war has anything to do with oil. We're worried about "looking disingenuous" to the Kurds. Like the Kurds haven't already figured out where they stand.
  
  
• Another sticking point seems to be Bush's well-earned reputation for – um, how do I put this nicely? – mendacity. According to the Financial Times, the Turkish negotiators told George Bush "that they required more binding guarantees than his word." It takes a thief, and all that.
  
  
• The Bush Administration, in a tactic blatantly ripped off from Ted Stevens, is threatening to cancel Turkey's military aid if they don't do what they're told. Well, it worked on the GAO.
  
  
• Seven thousand Turkish troops have moved into northern Iraq in the past few days. The Turkish military is also forcing Iraqis, who are trying to escape the coming conflict by fleeing across the Turkish border, back into Iraq.
  
  
• The Kurds are pissed.

The BBC has more on the Iranian-backed SCIRI troops entering the Kurdish controlled area of northern Iraq, with local villagers and a Reuters reporter confirming yesterday's report in the Financial Times. SCIRI (Supreme Council for Islamic Resistance in Iraq) is the main Iraqi opposition group representing the country's Shia majority. The London Times suggests that the troop movement represents a decision by the opposition to take matters into its own hands, now that the Bush administration has apparently lost interest in their cause, and as an example of "the sort of problems that will plague the US-led coalition in the post-Saddam era."

There's an intriguing series of articles in The Guardian today on the war and the Web, specifically

• an overview of how various sides are using the internet to get their point of view across, and the potential to spread information about how things are going once the war starts;
  
• a piece on how anti-war groups use the Web for mobilization;
  
• a round-up of anti-war sites;
  
• a report on cyber-attack – theirs and ours;
  
• and even a pretty interesting piece by Glenn Reynolds on warblogs.

And while we're on the subject of internet activism, everybody's already prepared a fax or signed up to make phone calls as part of the February 26 Virtual March on Washington, right?

The Wasington Post has picked up the story the Los Angeles Times examined in a pair of articles in late January and early February – the Bush administration's frightening interest in "low-yield" nuclear weapons. Minus the fright. The WP article is so nonchalant about the threat of using nuclear weapons the piece sounds like it were written by a drugged schizophrenic – still talking crazy, but sounding remarkably mellow while doing so. The closest thing to an awareness that the plan is crazy is this line:

One of the most controversial features of the Nuclear Posture Review is that it seemingly left the door open to using nuclear weapons for a preemptive attack on a threatening foreign country. The new study of low-yield nuclear devices would be compatible with that provision.

That doesn't sound terribly alarming, does it?

NOTE: Strangely, my old links to the original LA Times articles are no longer working. You can still read the original LA Times article on the possible use of low-yield nuclear weapons in Iraq, the follow-up article on the Pentagon's program, and William Arkin's commentary from the Times at Common Dreams.

(Via Lean Left)

What kind of people send sailors and Marines off to risk their lives in a war and meanwhile slash funding for their kids' schools?

Do you really need to ask?

Here's a picture of the small anti-war march in my small city last Sunday. I'm putting it up mainly because I spotted a friend of my husband's and I thought that was kind of cool.

Cost of Reconstruction of Iraq? $0

Ari Fleischer says, Iraq can pay for its own reconstruction.

I think I should just drop my newspaper subscriptions and channel the money I save to some of the better blogs. I swear, I wouldn't know any of the really important news unless I read Atrios every morning. Why just today I learned:

• The General Accounting Office dropped the suit to force Dick Cheney to reveal records of the White House energy task force that he headed after Ted Stevens, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, threatened to cut its budget.
  
  
• Five thousand Iraqi opposition troops, financed, trained and equipped by Iran, have crossed into Northern Iraq.

Either one of those beats this who-cares story from the front page of today's LA Times.

AN UPDATE ON IRAQ, TURKEY AND THE KURDS:

• The price of Turkey has risen to $32 billion.
  
  
• The Washington Post explores the motives of the Kurds. They already have the autonomy they wanted, why fight? According to the Post, at this point, it's all about revenge.
  
  
• The fight for control of Iraqi oil is getting more and more complicated. In an interview with the LA Times last year, Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, claimed the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk as the "the symbol of the suffering of the Kurdish people" and insisted that it would have to be part of Kurdistan. Turkish politicians have threatened to invade if the Kurds take control of Kirkuk. Another Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was, at the time, more conciliatory. Times have changed. Talabani now says that there is nothing Kurdish leaders can do to stop Kurds in Kirkuk and Mosul (another oil-rich Northern city) from taking up arms to fight for the two cities, or displaced Kurds from rushing back to reclaim their former homes.

The Kurds of Northern Iraq are furious about an American decision to abandon the pesky idea of a democratic Iraq. According to Kurdish leaders, Bush plans to keep the current regime in Baghdad in place – except for replacing Saddam and a few officials with U.S. military officers. Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya calls the planned government "Baathism with an American face." Tony Blair seems to have retreated into an embarrassed silence on the matter. To be fair, Jalal Talabani, leader of half the Kurdish enclave still supports American intervention in Iraq, and criticizes the opposition, as does Barham Saleh, who controls the eastern half of Kurdistan.

Although they no longer expect to gain much from the war, the Kurds are preparing to be among the worst victims of the fighting. Kurdish television is broadcasting nightly tips on how to survive a chemical attack. Kurdish leaders have asked the U.S. and the U.N. for antidotes to biological agents, gas masks, and protective suits, but have not had a response. The U.S. has sent Patriot antimissile batteries to Israel and Jordan to protect them from chemical attacks – but nothing for the Kurds, who are more likely targets.

Meanwhile, Ankara is so fearful of (the extremely unlikely possibility of) Kurdish independence growing out of an American war on Iraq, that it's taking preemptive action against the 12 million Turkish Kurds, and fighting between the Turks and Kurds has begun again after a four year lull. And, in a huge setback for the Kurds, and human rights in general, Bush has bought a 26 billion dollar Turkey , and dragged it into what Nathan Newman describes as a "Coalition of the Bribed" (although the Turks are still haggling over the price of their "support.")

And speaking of the "coalition of the bribed," the Catholic Institute for International Relations issued a statement of concern about the economic incentives the Bush administration is offering small countries with key votes on the Security Council. Some of them are good things in and of themselves, like aid to Angola for refugee relief. Others are dicey -- like siding with Cameroon in an oil dispute with Nigeria (unfortunately for Nigeria, it's not on the Security Council, which makes it, at the moment, worthless.) In either case, it's hard to imagine Bush offering any of this aid without strings attached. He can't honestly persuade anybody that this war is necessary, so he just buys the votes he needs. Force of habit, I guess.

But of course the Bush Leagues are not in any way to blame for this mess. The real villains are – as always -- liberals.

Proving that some people can find a way to blame the left for anything, Christopher Hitchens wannabe Nick Cohen wrote a piece for last Sunday's Observer arguing that if democracy never arrives in Iraq (which at this point is looking like a pretty sure bet), it will be the fault of the European left (I'm not sure if he's exempting the American left, or just isn't aware that we exist), because they ignored their "natural allies" among Iraqi democrats and socialists.

It seems to me it was the other way around. At some point, the Iraqi opposition, including the Kurds, took a look at all the shimmering American power Bush was promising to unleash in their name and made a decision. They trusted that people who had previously helped to kill them (both in Iraq and Turkey) who betrayed them, and who shared none of their values, were going to help them achieve their dream of a democratic, possibly even socialist, Iraq. They abandoned the left -- who, for the most part, actually do share their values -- because the left has no big, shiny weapons to offer. The left continued to wish them well, hope things worked out, and believe they made the wrong choice.

Some of those dissidents are just beginning to realize that the left may have been right. Along with Cohen's piece, Sunday's Observer ran an essay by Kanan Makiya -- a piece the White House tried to stop Makiya from publishing – accusing Bush of trying to set up a government of "Iraqi quislings palatable to the Arab countries of the Gulf." It is, Makiya charges, nothing less than an act of "appeasement of the existing bankrupt Arab order," and it will turn the Iraqi democrats into "an opponent of the United States in the streets of Baghdad the day after liberation." Bush, in other words, didn't just sell out the Kurds to Turkey, he sold out the entire Iraqi opposition to Saudi Arabia's fear of anyone in the Gulf getting any silly democratic notions in their heads.

Part of Makiya's essay reveals the dissidents' tragic error:

We, the democratic Iraqi opposition, are the natural friends and allies of the United States. We share its values and long-term goals of peace, stability, freedom and democracy for Iraq.

Those are American values. They're not George Bush's values. That Makiya still doesn't completely recognize the distinction between the two is evident in his final sentence:

To the President who so clearly wants to see a democratic Iraq, and to the American public that put its trust in him, I say: support us.

That request is pathetic because it's addressed to the wrong people. Now that he is beginning to recognize that the Iraqi dissidents, and especially the Kurds, have been betrayed, it's time he noticed something else: Americans who would truly welcome a democratic Iraq, and who don't assume it would be an American-controlled Iraq, stopped putting their trust in George Bush long ago.

I think there's some strange symbolism in the fact that Saddam Hussein just made a lot of money dumping dollars and buying euros, but I don't want to think about what it is.

Any day now Nicholas Kristoff is going to join Tom Friedman on my list my "how can such a smart person be so stupid" list, and his column in today's NY Times will be the prime example. George Bush's trouble, according to Kristoff, is that he's acting like an overly idealistic liberal. Liberals undermined humanitarian relief in Afghanistan by scorning the military? Gimme a break. George Bush cut $34 million from the U.S. contribution to the United Nations Population Fund out of concern for poor Chinese women forced to have abortions? Sure. I won't even touch the claim that liberals are responsible for the sex industry in Cambodia and Bangladesh, because they're opposed to sweatshops. That's just beneath contempt.

The killer line is this one: "Mr. Bush and his aides, like Bobby Kennedy, dream things that never were and say why not."

All dreams are not the same, Mr. Kristoff. And if Bobby Kennedy was dreaming of a theocratic American empire beholden to interests of large corporations, he sure had me and a lot of other people fooled.

Hey, look, me and skippy have gone all academic and stuff.

John Steppling wrote from Poland this morning to remind me that I left Warsaw off the list of cities with anti-war marches over the weekend -- between 5 and 10 thousand people showed up, depending on who was counting.

Don't want to leave out San Francisco, either, which was a day later than most places, but got 200,000 people into the streets.

And then there's SLO Town. We were a day late, too (hence the nickname: SLO Town), but 1769 people came (there was a man on the corner with a clicker counting us as we left the park), which isn't bad for a city of about 40 thousand.

There was a condescending article about the march in the local paper this morning, contrasting the fun the marchers seemed to be having with the seriousness and discipline of the National Guardsmen at Camp Roberts. The reporters apparently didn't notice all the VFW caps in the anti-war crowd. Maybe they came late, and didn't hear the main speaker, who was a veteran of Korea. And maybe they missed the biggest applause line of his speech – when he asked all the veterans to raise their hands so we could see how many people there were who knew what war was all about. That's the best excuse I can come up with for writing a piece suggesting that teenage boys and girls playing "war games" possessed a gravitas that war veterans in their sixties and seventies lacked.

But there was, no doubt about it, some silliness in the crowd. The chanting bongo player. The guitar-strumming roller blader. The guy on the recumbent bike with a flaggy-looking shell. The dog with the sign draped over him that said, "I piss on Bushes." (Okay, to be honest, I kind of liked that last one.) My son said, "At least nobody brought giant puppets or a didgeridoo."

I was there with two teenage boys – my son and his best friend -- and it was their utter lack of gravitas that made the silliness bearable. Silliness can be decidedly depressing, especially if the peole around you seem to be taking their silliness too seriously.

At one point, the call and response got downright weird:

Who do you believe: George Bush or Dr. Blix?

You have no sense of absurdity if you don't think 1700 people standing in a park yelling "Dr. Blix" is bizarre.

The boys refused to chant, which was a good thing. I don't chant either. I don't recite the pledge of allegiance and I don't chant at peace rallies. All the power of the nuns never compelled me to join in group prayers back in school. I think I'm too fond of the crazy anarchy of language – you never know where it's going – to be good at choral recitations. My kid takes after me, and his friend was the other verbal anarchist at his high school. When the inevitable and excruciating chanting of What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now! broke out, my son said something like, "Isn't peace something you achieve only through a long-term commitment to economic and social justice? It's not the kind of thing that if you scream NOW! loud enough, someone will come and give you some because they want you to shut up." He was serious, but he managed a Jon Stewart delivery. It's one of the things I like best about him: He can't say something important without mocking the pretentious implications of what he's saying at the same time.

My son's friend said he remembered going to an anti-war march before the first Gulf War, when he was five. He still remembered some of the chants. He also recalled that when his parents told him they were going to an anti-war march, he thought they meant you actually had to go to the war, to tell the people to stop fighting. He was expecting to march between lines of soldiers firing at each other. Well, that's one approach.

Nobody fired at us yesterday, unless you count a single verbal shot: A guy in a truck yelled, "What are you going to do about that World Trade Center in New York, huh?" (My answer -- "Personally, I think they should forget about rebuilding and just create a memorial garden in honor of the victims, but I know that's wildly impractical, and anyway, since I'm not a family member of any of the victims, or even a New Yorker any more, I think my opinion is pretty irrelevant. Do you have any thoughts on the subject?" – was kind of hard to yell back at a moving truck, so I didn't say anything. I doubt he would have considered my response satisfactory in any case.)

I felt sort of ridiculous, marching down the tree-lined main street. San Luis is just too pretty and tranquil a place to invite thinking about fear, danger, petulance and body bags. You go downtown to forget that sort of thing. Tourists come from all over to walk around our quaint little downtown and forget that sort of thing.

We marched past the tourists and the cafes (we have way too many cafes in this town), and the wildly out-of-place Victoria's Secret, and that odd store that sells old metal lunch boxes, Afro wigs, and lava lights, getting smiles and nods from people eating ribs at the sidewalk tables in front of Mo's (I'm not sure if the approval was for us or Mo's ribs -- maybe both), past the eerie looking guy with the Bible verse sign – picture John Carradine with really greasy hair -- who marches downtown all the time, but was seated on a bench yesterday (it's a pain when amateurs cut into your marching territory), and all the way, the kids made fun of the signs and chants:

A people united, cannot be defeated.

Actually, see, it's the whole "united" thing that creeps me out.

It takes a bomb to raze a village.

See, I didn't know Genghis Kahn even had the bomb.

Blow bubbles, not bombs.

Well, I wasn't really planning on blowing any bombs, but thanks for the advice.

My son's friend said he went up to the scary Bible verse guy one day and started a conversation, and he turned out to be a lot nicer than he looks. He has a lot of weird ideas about the Bible, and thinks almost everyone but him is going to hell, but as strange as he looks, it's possible to have a conversation with the man. You'd expect him to just yell Leviticus-something-or-other at you and hit you with his sign, and it's kind of amazing when he doesn't. It's just that he creeps everyone out so much that they all want to pretend he's not there. Everyone wishes he would just go away, and take his strange religion with him.

My son's friend was wearing a tee-shirt that said, "John Ashcroft says I'm a terrorist." He has a very sweet baby face and wears green braces. He asked me if peace marches were less "sucky" during the Vietnam War.

I told him they were definitely not "sucky," mainly because the word didn't exist. They were, however, often silly, self-righteous, and dull.

And important. A way of keeping your soul and values intact in a time of madness, if nothing else.

Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace is organizing teach-ins on non-violent alternatives to war with Iraq for the week of February 24-28. Anyone interested in having their church, school, or community participate can download an organizer's packet, which contains links to several good articles on both practical and moral reasons for opposing the war.

The whole world is walking


If you want something to feel good about this morning, run your cursor over the front pages around the world, and check out these numbers:

500,000 - New York, United States
100,000 - Seattle, United States
30,000 - Los Angeles, United States
3,000 - Chicago, United States
10,000 - Philadelphia, United States
1,000 - Puerto Rico, United States
25,000 - Vancouver, Canada
100,000 - Montreal, Canada
10,000 - Toronto, Canada
3,000 - Quebec City, Canada
12,000 - Edmonton, Canada
20,000 - Montreal, Canada
15,000 - Toronto, Canada
10,000 - Mexico City, Mexico
5,000 - Buenos Aires, Argentina
2,000 - Sao Paulo, Brazil
5,000 - Havana, Cuba
1,000,000 - London, England
30,000 - Glasgow, Scotland
20,000 - Belfast, Northern Ireland
100,000 - Dublin, Ireland
1,300,000 - Barcelona, Spain
60,000 - Seville, Spain
660,000 - Madrid, Spain
2,000,000 - Rome, Italy
50,000 - Athens, Greece
10,000 - Toulouse, France
100,000 - Paris, France
500,000 - Berlin, Germany
15,000 - Vienna, Austria
40,000 - Bern, Switzerland
50,000 - Brussels, Belgium
70,000 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
500 - Prague, Czech Republic
60,000 - Oslo, Norway
35,000 - Stockholm, Sweden
25,000 - Copenhagen, Denmark
1,000 - Moscow, Russia
2,000 - Kiev, Ukraine
100 - Mostar, Bosnia
5,000 - Cape Town, South Africa
4,000 - Johannesburg, South Africa
5,000 - Tokyo, Japan
1,000 - Hong Kong, China
2,000 - Dhaka, Bangladesh
10,000 - Calcutta, India
150,000 - Melbourne, Australia
100,000 - Sydney, Australia
5,000 - Canberra, Australia
1,500 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
5,000 - Auckland, New Zealand
25,000 - Baghdad, Iraq
200,000 - Damascus, Syria
2,000 - Tel Aviv, Israel
10,000 - Beirut, Lebanon
5,000 - Amman, Jordan

(Via Atrios' comment section.)

Slogans from the New York rally.

What a U.S. invasion of Iraq looks like from the point of view of poor Egyptians.

My small town's anti-war march won't be until tomorrow. But goodness, this is beautiful, impressive, and -- Hallelujah, children! -- extremely encouraging. (Translation of the last link: That's 3 million people in Rome!)

How much will war with Iraq cost?

The low range totals $127 billion, the high $682 billion.

Estimated Military Deployment, Combat, and Redeployment Costs Low Mid High 17 billion 40 billion 79 billion 150,000 troops for one month 250,000 troops for three months 350,000 troops for six months

Estimated Cost of 5-year Military Occupation Low Mid High 26 billion 51 billion 105 billion 50,000 troops first year, 25,000 troops 2nd year, 12,500 troops years 3-5 100,000 troops first year, 50,000 troops 2nd year, 25,000 troops years 3-5 150,000 troops first year, 100,000 troops 2nd year, 70,000 troops years 3-5

Estimated Cost of Humanitarian Assistance Low Mid High 1 billion 3 billion 10 billion $500 per person for 1 year For 1 year $500 per person for up to four years

Estimated Cost of Reconstruction and Recovery

Low Mid High 10 billion 30 billion 105 billion

Estimated cost of Governance First year Total over five years 5 billion 12 billion

---------------------------------

NOTE: I realize this doesn't look very good, mainly because of all the white space I can't seem to get rid of. It's my first attempt at a table, and I don't really know what I'm doing, but I did want to save the information. Advice is welcome. Snide remarks about computer illiterates are not.
---------------------------------
UPDATE: Thanks to Kevin for helping me solve my white space problem.
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FURTHER UPDATE: And to John Paul Davis who made it work in different browsers, and sent me fool-proof instructions for doing a table. With the emphasis on fool-proof

I've gotten to be extremely wary about everything Bush does, but this looks like good news: A few days after he moved into the White House, Bush issued an order barring any U.S. money to international groups that use their own funds to support abortion. He decided to change the policy so that social service agencies in Africa and the Caribbean can get funds for AIDS treatment, even if they also provide contraception and abortion services. That's important because AIDS treatment and reproductive services are often provided by the same agencies.

Good piece by Eric Boehlert on how the media markets fear and feeds the ad campaign for war.

Another aspect of the tragedy in Ivory Coast: Child slavery

The most recent survey of conditions on West African cocoa farms, completed by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture for the U.S. Agency for International Development, estimated that nearly 300,000 children work in dangerous conditions on cocoa farms in the four countries surveyed -- Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon -- the vast majority of them in the Ivory Coast.

The report, released in July 2002, says that of the 300,000 children, more than half (64 percent) are under 14 years old. Twelve thousand had no connection to the family on whose cocoa farm they toiled, but only 5,100 of them were paid for their work. Almost 6,000 were described as "unpaid workers with no family ties," provoking advocates to refer to them as "slaves." The rest work on their families' farms, kept home from school to do punishing work during the all-important harvest seasons…

Since 70 percent of the population of the Ivory Coast is involved in cocoa farming, the fall of cocoa prices in 1999 and 2000 greatly increased rural poverty and led to the cutting of teachers' salaries, a reduction in government spending for healthcare, and, according to a report by the International Labor Rights Fund, to "the widespread use of cheap child labor."

Right now, because of civil unrest in the Ivory Coast, cocoa supply is down and cocoa prices are higher. But farmers have not benefited from the higher prices, since many are not even able to get their product to port. Watchdog groups like Global Exchange, Save the Children and the International Labor Rights Fund insist that without minimum pricing to ensure a steady income, farmers are not likely to make major changes in labor practices -- and pay -- on their farms…

For right now, at least, the civil war in the Ivory Coast that has been raging since September overshadows the child labor problem -- the issue of child soldiers is pressing as well. (It is believed that some of the child laborers are being "drafted" into military service.) But a plan for accomplishing the goals after the civil unrest is resolved appears elusive.

Some good coverage of the anti-war movement:

Many of the latest brand of antiwar activists are first-timers from a wide spectrum of society.
The LA Times takes a fair look at the size and diversity of anti-war America.

…………………

Links to other Times articles on opposition to war.

…………………

Despite opening with the misleading statement that most Americans favor going to war, the Christian Science Monitor follows with a worthwhile piece on religious opposition to war and how much of it is filtering down to the pews.

Drop everything and go read Trish Wilson's post on American companies that helped Iraq build chemical and biological weapons. And don't forget the name Bechtel, because it appears to be right up there with Halliburton as an example of the horrors of the military-industrial complex. In 1988, the company signed a contract with Iraq to manage the engineering and construction of a petrochemical plant near Baghdad. They also helped Iraq develop conventional weapons. It was all legal. In 1982, the Reagan Administration had taken Iraq off its list of countries alleged to sponsor terrorism, making it eligible to buy things those on the list couldn't buy. But at that time, Iraq had been using gas on its enemies for years. In 1990, George Schultz, former Secretary of State under Reagan, and at that time President of Bechtel, warned the company to get out of Iraq, because "something is going to go very wrong in Iraq and blow up and if Bechtel were there it would get blown up too." No big concerns about lost business though. By 1991, Bechtel had a contract to clean up Kuwait. First you make money helping them build the weapons, then you make money cleaning up the mess they make when they use them. Nice deal.

The whole story is worse.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Don't tell the kiddies, but sometimes people make stuff up.

All the really smart and interesting people seem to hang out in the comment section of Alas, a blog. I swear, in the afternoon I look at what Barry's posted for the day, and next morning I discover that the entire world has congregated there in the evening and all through the night to discuss what he's said. (And by the way, what are you people doing up at 1 a.m. reading blogs? Don't you sleep?) It's like a college dorm in the shape of a blog.

Check out Barry's Confessions of a Nader Voter and follow it up with the extended (and heated) discussion that follows on progressive principles and tactical voting. Fascinating and important stuff.

MORE: Emma and Nathan Newman both urge the Democratic Party to get out of the middle of the road before it gets run over.

The NY Times covers Israel's reaction to the Belgian court decision I mentioned yesterday – that Belgium could try Ariel Sharon for war crimes after he leaves office.

Read Mike Finley on war and poetry.

The LA Times profiles MoveOn.org and looks at how the peace movement has changed since Vietnam.

 A couple of weeks ago, I made a small attempt to educate myself about what was going on in Ivory Coast, then filed away the information I found, because I couldn't pull it together in a way that made sense to me, and anyway, there seemed more urgent things to write about. There is, after all, a war brewing. But in Ivory Coast, there's already a war, which is looking increasingly genocidal.

I still don't have a hold on this, but on the theory that a lot of other people probably don't understand it any better than I do, I thought I'd share my attempts at cutting through my own ignorance.

First, The Head Heeb did an excellent series of nine posts on the civil war in Ivory Coast, starting here. (The rest of the posts are linked on his sidebar.) Some other good summaries have been done by:

The Observer: Ivory Coast on the Brink

The BBC: Hate Politics in Ivory Coast

The New York Times: Ethnic Cleansing: Misrule in Ivory Coast

World Press Review: Rebellion in Côte d’Ivoire: Solving the Ivoirian Puzzle

Human Rights Watch: Côte d’Ivoire: Government Targeting Civilians (with links on the page to complete HRW reports)

But for anyone unwilling to wade through all those links, here's quick and superficial history (and please feel free to let me know if I've gotten something wrong – because I probably did):

……………………….

Ivory Coast used to have one of the strongest economies and one of the most stable governments in Africa. Millions of migrant workers from across West Africa settled there, encouraged by President Felix Houphouët-Boigny's 'Open Door' policy. They worked primarily on the country's fruit and cocoa plantations.

Houphouët-Boigny ruled Ivory Coast from 1960 until his death in 1993. His government was corrupt and autocratic, but he got two things right: He appointed officials from different ethnic, regional and religious backgrounds -- keeping a lid on ethnic rivalries for thirty-three years -- and he built a strong economy.

The strong economy and the diversity ended not long after he died. Cocoa prices plummeted. The three leaders that have ruled since then -- Henri Konan Bédié, General Robert Gueï and Laurent Gbagbo -- have exploited ethnic and religious divisions to secure and maintain power. That's the oldest trick around, of course -- if you can't give people a functioning society, you can at least give them someone to blame for why things aren't working.

The three leaders were Christians from the southern part of the country. Outnumbered by Muslims from the north, they invented a xenophobic policy called "Ivoirité," which held that southerners were the only pure Ivoirians. Bédié, in fact, originally introduced the concept of Ivoirité mainly to exclude his political rival, Alassane Ouattara (the prime minister under Houphouët-Boigny) from participating in the 1995 presidential elections. Ouattara, a Muslim, was accused of being of Burkinabe ancestry. Millions of Burkinabes, Malians and Guineans in the north, as well as Ivoirian Muslims, took the exclusion of Outtara as a xenophobic attack on themselves, as well as a ham-handed attempt to limit their power.

Over the years, Ivoirité has evolved into a more and more dangerous policy, targeting both "foreigners" (many of whom were actually born in Ivory Coast) and northern Muslims. Northerners were removed from positions of power. "Foreigners" were stripped of their right to vote. Ordinary northerners and immigrants faced daily harassment from the authorities, including the police and military. They were blamed for all the country's economic problems. Shantytowns with large immigrant populations were attacked.

In October, 2000, Ivory Coast had a close presidential election, in which Laurent Gbagbo, defeated Robert Gueï. Gueï's followers never accepted the results of the election. On September 19, 2002, 750 troops who had been recruited by ex-President Gueï, staged a failed coup, during which Gueï was killed. They were apparently joined by Ouattara supporters who had deserted the army and fled to Burkina Faso when Gueï was in power. A thousand French troops were sent in to protect Gbagbo. The leadership of the rebellion isn't clear, but the government, and the Ivoirian media, blame Ouattara and the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré. The rebels were branded terrorists. Muslims and foreigners were assumed to be part of the rebellion.

Since September, Ivory Coast has been split in two. The southern part is controlled by Gbagbo, the north by the rebel Mouvement Patriotique de la Côte d'Ivoire (MPCI). There is also a rebellion in the west. There are three rebel factions, and the connections between them aren't entirely clear.

A quarter of a million people have fled from Ivory Coast since September, and 600,000 have been lost their homes but remain in the country. A peace accord was signed in January, calling for a coalition government, but it isn't holding. Anti-French riots have broken out, primarily among supporters of the government, who think that the French forced Gbagbo to give too much to the rebels. (Ironic, considering that it was the French who kept Gbagbo's government from toppling during the coup, and in December the rebels accused them of siding with the government.) And in the meantime, The UN Commission for Human Rights has warned of "death squads" and xenophobic propaganda aimed at encouraging hatred, similar to the situation that preceded the genocide in Rwanda. In December, a mass grave, containing the bodies of 120 people was discovered in the rebellious western part of the country. The government, after originally claiming not to have been involved in the massacre, later acknowledged that the people had been killed by Ivoirian troops, but insisted they were rebels who died fighting. Local village residents say they were civilians, mostly immigrants, rounded up and killed after a raid by Ivoirian troops. According to Human Rights Watch, the government is indiscriminately blaming northerners and foreigners for the rebellion, and targeting them for attacks. People have been arbitrarily arrested and even killed for their political affiliations, religion, and ethnicity.

The concept of Ivoirité has turned into an excuse for murder.

That sketchy description leaves out a lot of important details, including the roles of ECOWAS, France, and the surrounding countries, particularly Burkina Faso and Liberia (whose countryman have been targets of Ivoirian xenophobia.) There's even been some evidence that Libya may be exploiting the tragedy to increase its influence in West Africa.

UPDATE: First correction: Ivory Coast's economic downturn began before the death of Houphouët-Boigny.

General Tommy Franks is being investigated by the Pentagon for possible abuses of office. If he's found guilty, the Bush administration has already come up with the perfect punishement – make him rule Iraq.

Picture of the day

Way back in September, I wrote a dumb post insulting engineers, which led to a wide-ranging discussion among readers about the values of humanities and technical educations. For anyone still interested in the topic, today's LA Times has a good article on Caltech's attempt to teach history, literature, philosophy, foreign languages, music theory and art studies to budding techies, and how the goal of humanities education has moved from knowing "enough to polish one's parlor manners" to having "a grasp of the world outside the laboratory." One computer science student said what several people suggested at this site last year, "Without the humanities requirement, our minds would atrophy from too much science."

UPDATE: More at CalPundit.

Yesterday, a Belgian Court ruled that Ariel Sharon could not be tried for war crimes, because, as prime minister, he has immunity. The case against him can proceed, however, after he leaves office.

War crimes tribunal for Saddam?

An interesting exploration of the topic up at MSNBC. Some key points:

International law advocates say it would be a defeat for the cause of human rights if Saddam were allowed to go into exile and given amnesty instead of being brought before a tribunal.

…………..

One nettlesome issue facing the advocates of international tribunals: Even if a tribunal could get its hands on them, wouldn’t Saddam and his accomplices be able to use such a trial to whip up sympathy among Muslims and Arabs?

…………..

Rickard and other Professor Michael Scharf, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and a former State Department legal adviser, said there would be a distinct advantage to using a U.N.-created ad hoc tribunal to try Iraqi leaders.

"There would be some Islamic judges and a neutral prosecutor," he said. "The record, which would be detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law — hundreds of pages — would be more likely to be accepted, especially in the Islamic world, thereby strengthening our war against terrorism rather than undermining it."

In a statement sent to the Security Council, a coalition of more than 200 international lawyers and jurists challenged Bush's understanding of international law, and said ''there is no precedent in international law for the use of force as a preventive measure when there has been no actual or imminent attack''. Last week, 45 experts on international law disputed the president's assertion that the United States does not need Security Council authorization to attack Iraq.

The New York Times has a good article on Iranian victims of Iraq's chemical weapons. Unfortunately, although it headlines Western complicity in building those weapons, it also repeats an error The Times first disseminated in December -- that, according to the weapons declaration that the Iraqis gave to the UN, Iraq's only American suppliers were two companies that are now defunct. The real number is 24, and the list includes major, and still very much alive, American corporations.

Avoiding war doesn't mean you've achieved peace: Whoever triumphs it will not be the people of Iraq: a Franco-Russian victory means Saddam remains in power, stronger than before, an Anglo-American victory means a blood bath followed by an uncertain future. In either scenario the victors are the oil companies -- they walk away with the profits no matter what, while the people of Iraq are left poor and powerless. Many see the anti-war movement as solely addressing the peace issue, but in fact the implications of this conflict go far wider. We need to look at our lifestyles and our economies which drive our government's conquests. We need to address deeper issues regarding the role of corporations in our society and our insane dependency on oil.

Bill Clinton seems to have a much better understanding of the AIDS crisis in Africa than George Bush does. Speaking to a group of scientists specializing in AIDS treatment and research, he praised Bush's proposal to triple the amount of money the United States gives to fight AIDS, but added what most AIDS experts have said – the money should be funneled primarily through the UN's already up and running (ok, at this point, staggering) Global Fund.

Reason number 5000-and-something why electing Democrats matters (even if, like me, you don't like Democrats all that much):

Why did the GAO drop efforts to get the records of Dick Cheney's energy task force? Kenneth M. Walker, the comptroller general, "suggested that Congressional leaders had urged him not to bring an appeal. When he brought the suit, Democrats headed two Senate committees and asked him to pursue the issue, first raised by two senior members of the Democratic minority in the House. Now Republicans are in charge of the Senate and its committees, and they see no reason to question the preparation of an administration policy they support."

I have no idea if Cheney has anything to hide or not. (Okay, I have suspicions, but I don't know.) But we're about to go to war, at least partly for control of the world's energy market, and one thing citizens desperately need to know is how much influence oil companies have on this administration.

This is an outrage that should not have been buried at the back of the New York Times

UPDATE: Amazing. I just heard Rush Limbaugh spin this story as an example of the perfidy of the liberal media. See, the story was buried in the back of the papers because the courts threw it out, thereby exonerating Cheney and proving that liberals never had a case to begin with, and were just attacking Cheney for dastardly political purposes. This whole thing about Cheney and the oil companies is nothing but liberal propoganda. The press didn't want you to know that Cheney turned out to be innocent, so they buried the story.

Sure.

"This just reinforces that bad guys hang with other bad guys, that they swim in the same cesspool." -- a senior Bush administration official, discussing the bin Laden tape.

Afghanistan just became the 89th country to ratify the statute creating the International Criminal Court and place itself under the jurisdiction of that court. That means warlords who commit atrocities can face ICC prosecution. Unfortunately, diluting the idea that international law should apply equally to everyone, Afghanistan apparently also signed a deal with the U.S. not to surrender Americans to the court.

In Motion Magazine takes a look at who armed Saddam, and asks some good questions:

* Why aren't U.S. and European scientists, who invented and produced lethal materials for Saddam, subject to interrogations, like their counterparts in Iraq?

* Are U.S. companies sending their deadly material to other dictators?

* Why are there no Congressional hearings on the companies that profit from war and suffering, the traffic in arms?

* Where are the headlines, the front-page stories in the mainstream media?

The Bush administration has backed humanitarian groups into an ethical corner. The good news is, they've offered a 900 thousand dollar grant for aiding refugees from a war in Iraq. The bad news is, first, the money is supposed to be spent on internet and computer facilities to link NGOs preparing for war, which humanitarian workers fear the military could use to track their activities, and second, if you take the money, you get to serve as the nice face of an invasion, and may end up taking orders about how aid is given. CARE, for one, has turned the money down.

Joe Conason asked a good question yesterday: While Andrew Sullivan, and other pro-war Catholics, are busy castigating anyone who supports the war as pro-Saddam, why doesn't he add the pope, who has consistently opposed the war, to his list?

I'm not a brawler by nature, and I don't link to warbloggers (intelligent supporters of the war, yes, warbloggers, no) so you'll just have to take my word that the "John Paul is in league with the terrorists" meme is out there. Even though I avoid right-wing websites for the most part, I've come across it a few times. Sullivan agrees with these people most of the time. How come he's not joining them now?

Some thoughts on the Bin Laden tape

* Clearly, there's no there there. Read the transcript, not just a line here and there out of context, and anyone whose reading level is a little higher than George Bush's has to see a spoiled child, in danger of being marginalized, screaming, "Hey, don't forget about me." Cut away the fatty grandstanding and the meat you're left with is this: Osama hates America and urges his followers to fight, even if the United States is attacking "infidels." He's claiming a partnership not with Saddam, but with the Iraqi people. That's the same distinction George Bush tries to make – this is not a war against Iraq, it's a war against Saddam – and equally delusional (Just a hunch, but I don't think Iraqis are going to see either GWB or OBL as liberators.) Along with Maureen Dowd and the editors of the New York Times, I hear a man excited at the prospect of his enemy doing something incredibly stupid that will, he hopes at least, bring him lots of new converts. If there's something in there that's news to you, you've been in the bunker too long. Despite language and logic looped into a hangman's knot, he's pretty clear: Fight for God, not the "infidel" Iraq. We'll get the "infidel" later.

* The creepiest sentence on the tape is this one: " Regardless of the removal or the survival of the socialist party or Saddam, Muslims in general and the Iraqis in particular must brace themselves for jihad against this unjust campaign and acquire ammunition and weapons." Is anyone in the White House concerned that OBL sees an America versus Iraq war as an opportunity for his followers to acquire weapons? Shouldn't that plan make us a little nervous?

* I used to respect Colin Powell, and assume he was accomplishing whatever small good could be accomplished inside a corrupt administration. Forget it. The respect is gone. Yesterday William Saletan explained some of the reasons for no longer believing a word Powell says, but that was before anyone had heard the tape. After reading the transcript, no literate person can come to the conclusion Powell did: "This nexus between terrorists and states that are developing weapons of mass destruction can no longer be looked away from and ignored." Powell is no fool, so I have to assume he's willing to twist anything to make it mean what it would be convenient for it to mean.

UPDATE: Liberal Oasis shares my opinion of Colin Powell -- but quadruple the anger level.

* The New York Times knitted the story of the OBL tape into its coverage of George Tenet's testimony that the C.I.A. had evidence of an link between Iraq and al Qaeda. There's already reason for skepticism about Tenet's testimony. But reading about it while being reminded of Powell's slight of hand tends to undercut Tenet even more. In the case of the bin Laden tape, we can see the evidence for ourselves, and see that it doesn't hold up. That doesn't incline me to believe that the evidence I'm not being shown is being analyzed any better.

* The Guardian notes that OBL's rhetoric is at times "almost Churchillian" – an interesting reminder that Churchillian rhetoric doesn't make you Churchill.

* Some days, the LA Times acts like a real newspaper, and a good one at that. Their story on the OBL tape subheads both what the White House says the tape means, and the criticism of the convenient analysis. It gives a fair hearing to terrorism experts who say the White House interpretation is way off base. Contrast the NY Times first story, as well as this morning's update, neither of which give the administration a single discouraging word – unless you want to count "Mr. Hussein has denied any connections to Al Qaeda" as an attempt at balance.

(Via Julia, who's even less Republican than I am.)

How Republican Are You?
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Pretty accurate, although describing me as a "cynic" might be a bit of a stretch.

When I mentioned the "Rice for Peace" campaign awhile back, I got a couple of e-mails from people who didn't like the idea of wasting food – which I certainly understand. Maybe you'll like this idea better: Send prayers. Catholic Relief Services has a campaign to e-mail the following prayer to the White House:

As we stand at the brink of war, this is my prayer for you:

Be an instrument of peace.

Peace with justice.

Peace with hope.

Peace without war.

Amen.

You can also download and print a card with the prayer on it to send by snail mail.

A question in your nerves is lit/ Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy, ensure you not to quit. -- Bob Dylan

* Is anyone still optimistic about the possibility of avoiding war? I've always viewed myself as one of the world's more annoyingly optimistic souls, but war really does look unstoppable. Yesterday I read about the peace envoy that Pope John Paul sent to Baghdad, described as "a mission to the extreme limits of hope," and was grateful that at least one person's hope extends beyond even my limits. I am doing my level best at the moment to do what the pope has asked the world to do – not act "as if war is inevitable."

* Would it be better to act as if war were inevitable? Iraq is about to be hit not only by a war but by a humanitarian disaster. Sixty percent of the population is entirely dependent on the government for food. Aid agencies are warning that if power and sanitation systems – which never fully recovered from the Gulf War bombings – are damaged, there could be disastrous outbreaks of cholera and dysentery. There are very few NGOs operating in Iraq, outside of the Kurdish-controlled north. They've been stopped both by the Iraqi government, and by sanctions, which make it almost impossible for them to work. Among the handful of humanitarian organizations currently in the area controlled by Baghdad are CARE and Caritas Iraq, a division of Catholic Relief Services. A recent note from the Caritas Iraq office described, with chilling simplicity, their preparations for the coming war: "We are preparing to be massacred." Because they haven't been able to get into the country, some NGOs are basing their assessment of needs on information that is several years old. And while the US seems to be full of plans for after a war, they've shown little interest in current preparations for protecting and caring for civilians. The Bush administration, for example, recently decided to snub a meeting in Geneva focusing on the logistics of humanitarian aid. The US has contributed less than half the money the UN says is needed to get food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies to Iraqis. (And since it appears to be Bush's personal war, the moral responsibility for getting those supplies in place is his as well. Think of it as a down payment on the cost of a unilateral war.) The military says, Trust us -- we'll take care of everything, but relief organizations say they've been trying to get some information, and some degree of coordination of efforts, going for months, with no response. I have the impression that very few Americans – pro- or anti-war – are aware of the situation, and some days I think the odds of forcing Bush and Company to deal with the disaster they're about to create are better than the odds of stopping the war, and it would make more sense to focus attention there, hopefully accomplishing some small good, instead of fighting a losing battle to stop the war. But the people on the ground are still fighting to stave off war -- and I guess I'll trust their faith over my hand-wringing.

* Does the UN matter? That's not a rhetorical question. Assuming that Bush and Company are going to have their war no matter what anyone says, does it make any difference whether they have Security Council backing or not? The administration has been telling the UN to either get behind us or become irrelevant. Irrelevance a valid concern for the UN. If the United States is strong enough, and has an administration arrogant enough, to simply ignore world opinion, then the UN does become irrelevant. I can't see, however, how allowing itself to be pushed around by its strongest member is going to make it any more relevant. Are there any good choices for the UN? And, for that matter, is the whole idea of international law as a protection for small countries gone? An op-ed in last Sunday's LA Times makes the case that it is – and that the world is about to get much more dangerous because of that loss – and I find it pretty persuasive.

* Does American public opinion matter? I've given up on trying to read polls. They're up, they're down, they're blowin' in the wind. But my instincts tell me most Americans have a sense that this war doesn't smell right. They can't explain why, but they know that if there's a necessity for war, it shouldn't be so damn hard to explain why we have to fight. Are Americans going to jump on board as soon as war starts, especially if it's "successful" – meaning few Americans die and the Ba'athists are a bad memory? What about when they realize the cost of the war?

* What will the cost of war be? I don't mean, exactly, the cost in either money or lives. I'm thinking more of long term consequences. I mentioned recently the shock on the faces of people in Oprah Winfrey's audience when Tom Friedman spoke of the need for a 20-year occupation of Iraq. Actually, the sad thing is, the best scenario anyone seems able to come up with about the outcome of this war is a two decade imperial reign. But I don't hear very many people, other than Friedman and Christopher Hitchens, who seem to believe that Bush and Company are going to pour money into Iraq. As Paul Krugman points out, this administration has displayed a "consistent unwillingness to take responsibility for solving difficult problems." A more likely scenario grows out of Joe Biden's description of the administration: "Some of these guys don't go for nation-building. They think it's cheaper to just go back and empty the swamp again if you have to." Empty the swamp again. I take it that's another way of saying we'll just keep fighting more and more wars as they spring up in reaction to what we do. Friedman's imperialism looks good in comparison.

* Could winning a war be as bad as losing it? Chris Bertram and D-squared Digest have both waded into that question, which is so morally complicated that at the moment I don't even want to go there.

* If you have moral objections to countries gassing people, doesn't that mean you shouldn't do it yourself?

* In a year, will Saddam Hussein have vanished, and will George Bush have added another name to the list of people he wanted dead, and whose names he's afraid to mention?

Just wondering….

Reporters debate theology with Ari Fleischer

Russell Mokhiber: Ari, two things. A group of bishops and pastors from the National Council of Churches, the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, among others -- sent a letter to the President last week. They said they want a meeting face-to-face with him because they're "uneasy about the moral justification for war on Iraq." Will the President meet with these church leaders?

Ari Fleischer: As always, we'll fill you in on the President's schedule. But I want to emphasize again the President is a deeply religious man, and there are many people in a variety of religions who are going to have different thoughts about how to keep the peace and whether or not to go to war with Saddam Hussein. The President will respect their thoughts, and he will act as he sees fit as Commander-in-Chief to protect the country.

Mokhiber: One question on that. You just said the President is a deeply religious man. Jesus Christ was an absolute pacifist. How does the President square his militarism with Jesus' pacifism?

[At this point, other reporters in the room challenge Russell's assertion that Jesus Christ was an absolute pacifist. One says "no he wasn't." Another says "How about the -- at the temple with a whip, where he beat the hell out of those money-changers? Does that sound like he's an absolute pacifist, Ari?"]

Fleischer: I think there may be a debate in the press corps about your question, Russell.

[Press conference ends, with reporters shouting. Ari walks out without answering the question.]

The Politics of AIDS Funding
* The New York Times reported last week that at the global trade conference in Doha last December, U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick attempted to work out a deal to help poor countries circumvent patents on drugs for AIDS, but that the Bush Administration, under pressure from pharmaceutical companies, insisted that he block a proposal to allow poor countries to buy inexpensive generic drugs for all major epidemics, bringing the negotiations to a standstill.

* Is anyone but me old enough to remember the cold war era jokes about Russians who couldn't do anything without phoning Moscow for instructions? Joke update: According to an article in today's Guardian, the US trade delegation at the WTO conference in Geneva held up a deal yesterday that would get more affordable drugs to poor countries because the US needed more time "to take soundings from its drugs industry."

* The President used his State of the Union address to call for emergency funding to fight AIDS in Africa, but he's obstructing Congressional efforts to get money quickly to programs that are already up and running. In November, the Senate unanimously passed a bill authorizing 2.5 billion dollars to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, of which no less than 1.25 billion was supposed to go to the Global Fund, the UN mechanism set up to allow donors to pool their resources and reduce the bureaucratic maze poor countries had to wander through in dealing with many donor agencies. Right-wingers killed the bill in the House. The main Senate sponsors of the bill were Senators Frist and Kerry. Now that the president has put AIDS funding out front, Frist wants to press Congress to pass the same bill, but, weirdly, the White House is pushing back, demanding that the total funding be reduced, and the amount given to the Global Fund be reduced, or even eliminated entirely. Congressional sources say Frist, because of close ties to Bush, and a desire to run for President, may go along. It wouldn't be the first time.

More on The Vatican and Iraq

* According to the Washington Times, Michael Novak's moral case for war seems to be based on the idea that a strike on Iraq would not be "preventive" at all, but is merely a continuation of a war with Iraq that began in 1991 and never really ended. The Pope was a strong opponent of the Gulf War.

* The Pope is sending Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who last year helped negotiate an end to the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, to urge the Iraqis to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors.

UPDATE: National Review Online has the text of Novak's lecture.

Your reading assignment for today is…

Tim Dunlop on blogging and all that jazz.

Trish Wilson's disturbing story on Michael Jackson, pedophilia, and father's rights.

Sean-Paul Kelley gets righteously angry about the expansion of the Patriot Act , and then wades through every one of Instapundit's links to survey conservative reaction (or lack of it).

Kieran Healy on democracy in action.

Slacktivist discovers that the war on drugs has become a war to protect oil.

A long excerpt from an essay by Wendell Berry that first appeared in Orion Magazine was printed as a paid advertisement in the New York Times today. First, read A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America. It contains some of the best writing that I've come across about the discomforting set of beliefs required in our strangely altered country:

Much of the obscurity of our effort so far against terrorism originates in this now official idea that the enemy is evil and that we are (therefore) good, which is the precise mirror image of the official idea of the terrorists.

The epigraph of Part III of The National Security Strategy contains this sentence from President Bush's speech at the National Cathedral on September 14, 2001: "But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil." A government, committing its nation to rid the world of evil, is assuming necessarily that it and its nation are good.

But the proposition that anything so multiple and large as a nation can be "good" is an insult to common sense. It is also dangerous, because it precludes any attempt at self criticism or self correction; it precludes public dialogue. It leads us far indeed from the traditions of religion and democracy that are intended to measure and so to sustain our efforts to be good. Christ said. "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." And Thomas Jefferson justified general education by the obligation of citizens to be critical of their government: "for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful [my emphasis] superintendence." An inescapable requirement of true patriotism, love for one's land, is a vigilant distrust of any determinative power, elected or unelected, that may preside over it.

And how's this for cutting to the heart of some of the most disturbing aspects of the way Bush asks America to deal with the rest of the world? The arrogance --

The rule of law in the world, then, is to be upheld by a nation that has declared itself to be above the law. A childish hypocrisy here assumes the dignity of a nation's foreign policy.

and the bloody commerce --

Further contradiction is that between war and commerce. This issue arises first of all in the war economy, which unsurprisingly regards war as a business and weapons as merchandise.

The whole essay is excellent. This is what genuine patriotism sounds like:

For a nation to be, in the truest sense, patriotic, its citizens must love their land with a knowing, intelligent, sustaining, and protective love. They must not, for any price, destroy its health, its beauty, or its productivity. And they must not allow their patriotism to be degraded to a mere loyalty to symbols or any present set of officials.

Read it. And after you've read it, pass it around.

Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles for Peace

Dozens of local governments around the country have passed anti-war resolutions. A lot of them have been in places you might expect, like Berkeley and Madison. But the support isn't limited to left-wing college towns. I live in a town that the New York Times described as a surprising place for such a measure to pass – somewhat liberal, but with a sizeable number of Republican voters. What the NY Times article might have added to make the surprising quality of the vote clearer is that we have a quite conservative mayor -- and, under massive pressure from constituents, he voted for the resolution. It's hard to describe how much that vote shocked people in this town. Let's just say I was more stunned by that one than I was by George Bush pressing for more funding for AIDS relief. And so far our mayor hasn't matched the president's ability to squirm out from under his promises.

Next stop L.A.

Six Los Angeles City Council members introduced a measure yesterday opposing unilateral war with Iraq. A second, competing measure calls on the president to exhaust all diplomatic options before resorting to force. The two measures have to go to committee before being voted on by the City Council. They could both lose. They could both win. One could lose and one could win. Or they could be blended into a single measure.

The important thing is that opposition is obviously spreading.

I'm really glad Jim Capozzola doesn't feel the same way about me that he does about Camille Paglia, because once he takes you down, you don't get up again.

A story problem from the third grade math test the president would like our kids to take:

Question: President Bush plans to spend $15 billion dollars over the next 5 years to fight AIDS. How much will he spend per year?

Answer: $1 billion, but he'll have to borrow from another column.

New math.

It's official. Nobody likes the Bush budget. If Andrew Sullivan won't defend it, who will?

A blogger interviews a blogger about blogging. But it's CalPundit interviewing Josh Marshall (scroll down, if necessary – blogspotty links) -- and very interesting.

Oprah Winfrey did a show on Iraq yesterday. I didn't see the whole thing, but what I saw was far better than I would have expected (except for the part where she was fawning all over Tom Friedman – Jesus, woman, he's Tom Friedman, not Tom Cruise.)

The focus on the first part was on how thoroughly the world opposes the war. She had CNN reporters doing person-on-the-street interviews in various capitals around the world, and – except in Kuwait -- all the people interviewed were universally against the war, and quite a few had disparaging things to say about Bush. This literally left Oprah trying to be "fair," and saying that she was sure there were some people in other countries who were in favor of the war, and who respected George Bush, but unfortunately the reporters weren't able to find any of them. Oprah may not be politically sophisticated, but she is too decent a person to play the rude "Why should anyone care about the opinion of foreigners?" game that most reporters play, so the criticism from abroad carried weight.

The latter part of the show consisted of an interview with Tom Friedman, and the interesting thing there was not Oprah's fawning, but seeing what happens to Friedman's suggestion that war with Iraq will have to be followed by a twenty year occupation when it hits the real world. People who follow news religiously – and for the most part, that's not Oprah's audience – have heard the call to imperialism so many times we've become numb to the idea. But when the camera turned to the audience after Friedman's suggestion, you could see the shock on their faces. Mouths open. Shaking their heads. Friedman looked increasingly ridiculous saying that this twenty-year occupation is what Americans have to be prepared for, while (mostly) women looked at him as if he were out of his mind. One man in the audience, in fact, rose to tell him exactly that. Watching the show was worthwhile if only to see Friedman get taken down.

The show was genuinely "fair and balanced," and important, I think, because it was probably the first time many women in Oprah's non-political-junky audience were exposed to some reasons for opposing the war. (Ironically, it was a proponent of the war who seemed to offer them the best reason to oppose it.) Oprah's been accused in the past of using her show for war propaganda. This is the first time I've seen the show in years, so I don't know if that's true, but if it is, she more than acquitted herself yesterday (whether she intended to or not).

Anyway, there will be a Part 2 on today (you can find out what time it's on in your city here.) Friedman will be back (and hopefully the audience will have more opportunities to tell him what they think of occupying another country), and Jessica Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will be there to debate him. The debate probably won't be anything new, but the audience reaction should be interesting.

Ha!

An interesting idea from Atrios' comment section:

Why can't the anti-war movement borrow a tactic from the anti-abortion whackos? Identify individuals who are making money off of death and misery and publicly shame them. So far, Cheney is only one who receives this kind of attention, but the attacks are brushed off as partisan politics. There must be 100’s of guys (thousands really) who are "pillars of their community" whose wealth is built off selling arms for profit. A campaign like that would be very effective at demonstrating the connection between war advocacy and profit, which I believe is a huge untold story about the upcoming war.

There is an old marketing adage that you don’t make money by selling razors, you make it by selling razor blades. An unused bomb is a lost business opportunity for the company that makes them. People – god fearing Americans – run many of these companies. I think their neighbors would be very interested to know how they support their lavish lifestyles. If it can work for the anti-abortion movement, it should work for an issues as basic (and legitimate) as war and peace.

So little time – so much research to do.

The Perpetual War Portfolio

James Nicholson, the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See has invited Michael Novak to the Vatican to make the case for war with Iraq. He'll arrive in Rome tomorrow for three days of meetings, including private sessions with Vatican officials, and a public lecture. Novak is one of several prominent Catholic conservatives who make a living -- and a pretty cozy one, at that -- posing as defenders of orthodoxy, while simultaneously undercutting the Church's teachings on commerce, corporate corruption, and war. He's a voice of dissent – reasonable dissent, but dissent nonetheless – posing as a voice of tradition. Novak is a Catholic theologian, and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who supports the Bush administration's position on the war. If there's a theological case to be made that pre-emption can meet the standards of a "just war," Novak is a good choice to make it.

But why is our secular government sending a theologian to make a theological case? That isn't a question only secularists are asking. On Tuesday, Catholic leaders sent a letter to the Ambassador protesting both the violation of the "time honored and legally protected right to the separation of Church and State," and the fact that a dissident theologian is being sent to Rome "to represent the U.S. Catholic community’s position on the morality of this war without any consultation with the recognized Catholic leaders in the U.S." Ambassador Nicholson insists this is a misunderstanding, that Novak is meeting with Vatican officials merely to express his own opinion as an individual, not to speak for American Catholics. But that's really avoiding the issue. Novak is going to Rome to argue the moral case for war – a war the Catholic Church opposes. That's a disturbing violation of the separation of Church and State, and it's also an insult to Catholics, because his trip is clearly an attempt to marginalize, perhaps even misrepresent, the Church's opinion, to suggest that the bishops represent one point of view, but here's another equally valid one. Normally, issues of the separation of Church and State involve a fear that the government will push religion (marginalizing non-religious citizens), or push a specific religion. In this case, it's an even more bizarre intrusion: The government is taking sides in an internal Church debate over what constitutes a "just war." And it's siding with those outside the established view of the Church.

Don't get me wrong – the debate is a valid one. Personally, I think Novak's utterly wrong, and the pope and American bishops are right, but there's plenty of room for dissent from non-infallible papal statements, and bishops' teachings. The American government, however, should not be taking sides in that debate – no matter how neatly a "moral" case for war suits their needs.

What do Novak and the administration hope to accomplish? That's something I can't quite figure out. A top Vatican official told National Catholic Reporter recently that he couldn't see any way Novak could persuade the Vatican of the morality of a "preventive war," the Vatican's anti-war stance seems to be hardening, and Novak himself has said that he doesn't expect to change the Church's position. So why do it? In his cover note, attached to the letter to Ambassador Nicholson, Father Stan DeBoe expressed concern that appointing a Catholic who dissents from Catholic teaching to make the moral case for war to the Vatican would only "confuse" those who were trying to understand the issue.

Confusing people who are making an honest attempt to understand an issue. The Bush admininstration wouldn't do anything like that, would it?

In a newsletter I get from SojoNet, there was an interesting letter recently from a reader who argued that while mainstream churches have been vocal about their opposition to war, little is said at the congregational level, and most churchgoers are only vaguely aware of their churches' stands. I live in a town with a very active Newman Center, and a relatively silent church (yet, despite that silence, I don't know any Catholics who aren't well aware of the bishops' stand on the war, or the pope's) so I could see reasons for both agreeing and disagreeing with the letter. I was very interested in the follow-up responses:

Steffie Belcher writes from South Bristol, Maine:

I am writing to support Susan Hunnicutt in her letter about the silence in the churches. I am grateful that most denominations have spoken against this war but have found the silence in the church Sunday to Sunday and in denominational and seminary related meetings/programs to be frightening. This is a time of crisis and our faith demands that we speak, discuss, pray, and act. It seems that people are afraid of offending people with the message of peace that is very clear in the gospel! How did the word "peace" become offensive? In the '60s this silence was disappointing - now it is very frightening!

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Rev. Anne-Marie Hislop writes from Davenport, Iowa:

As a pastor, I resent the sweeping generalization made by Susan Hunnicutt in last week's Boomerang. In her letter, she charges that the issue of the war is "not even raised" on the congregational level. That is far from true. I have just finished my third newsletter column in a row that speaks about the New Testament commands that we be peacemakers, love our enemies, and turn the other cheek. I remind them at every turn that "kill or be killed" is not a Bible quote. Try as I might, however, there is not much response. I agree with Ms. Hunnicutt that to some extent the war is a "non-issue," but not because the people do not care at all. They are frightened for themselves, their children, and grandchildren. Most of them have never met an Arab, few know a Muslim. Unfortunately, many listen to "Christian" radio, where they get a steady diet of fear-mongering and misinformation about "the other." Although I have spent time in the Middle East and try to educate them about the wonderful people in that part of the world, I am a lone voice crying for an hour or so a week. I am afraid my voice gets lost in a sea of other, louder voices that they hear on a daily basis beating the drums of divisiveness and calling for war.

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Michael Bauman writes from San Francisco, California:

Susan Hunnicutt's letter to Boomerang last week is sadly true. She wrote that: "National leaders of denominations may be in favor of peace, but they do not even raise the issue at the congregational level. Morally, this war is a total non-issue in contemporary American culture, and the failure of the churches to engage in conversation about this amounts to a deafening silence." Clergy must start preaching what is on their hearts, and not what their congregates want to hear.

Thank God, though, there are thousands of congregations across the United States, including my own Mennonite one here in San Francisco, that are speaking up on the immorality of this (and any other) war. I would suggest that if she is not a part of one of those, this would be a good time to do some church shopping. Those of us trying to be Christ-like need to share in the comfort of God's love in a congregation with similar aspirations. Good luck, Susan!

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Ron James writes from Detroit, Michigan:

I'd like to add my endorsement to the comment made by Susan Hunnicutt regarding "Churches united for peace." I am a Roman Catholic in the Metro Detroit area, and the pastor of my church has expressed clear opposition to this war on moral grounds, but the Archbishop of Detroit has been noticeably silent. We do have an admirable auxiliary bishop, Tom Gumbleton, who speaks out against this war unceasingly, but he is definitely a minority in the Catholic hierarchy. I think the Catholic press takes a very careful middle-of-the road approach on this huge moral issue, and it baffles me. For sure there are many churches opposed to this war, but not nearly as many as one would think.

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Ron Messenger of Flemington, New Jersey, writes:

We have a pretty ordinary church, yet it is impossible to speak up for peace without gathering stares and muttered comments. Last Sunday, a young man came to worship with a T-shirt emblazoned with a tough-looking guy holding an assault rifle and sporting a pro-war sentiment. On the other side was a meek young woman wearing a small angel pin with the word "peace" on it.

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Most of the letters seem too negative to me. But then I live in a fairly liberal town, one of several that has passed a resolution opposing war, and there's little cost to a church in speaking up, so what I see may not be at all typical A lot of the peace organizing here begins at the Newman Center (in fact, the Newman Center provides one of the few progressive voices on a pretty conservative college campus.) I'm curious, though, what people in other places are experiencing. Is the opposition of mainstream churches to war reaching most churchgoers?

Send rice.

A college student in Montana was detained and read her Miranda rights yesterday because she tried to send a half cup of rice and a Bible passage to the White House. The young woman says she's going to mail the rice again, although she doubts it will ever reach the White House.

If hers doesn't make it, maybe yours will. Send rice.

I noted yesterday that the Eisenhower story the "Rice for Peace" campaign was built around was wrong. I should have also added that the current campaign remains a valid one, the simple symbolism of it perfect without any mention of Eisenhower. Kip explains why at Long story; short pier.

What are you waiting for? Send rice.

And, to be honest, I think I found the story at least a little credible because it was about Eisenhower -- a military man who time and again demonstrated that he understood the cost of war. If you aren't religious, and don't want to send rice with a passage from the Bible, a famous quote from Eisenhower would make an equally valid and effective tagline:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Send rice.

You gotta read…

WampumBlog on the situation in the Ivory Coast (and what Glenn Reynolds doesn't know about it.)

Electrolite on Saddam's (economic) supporters at Fox News.

Ruminate This on what George Bush has in common with Spanish Fascists.

And -- because no list of great blog posts is complete without at least one Ampersand post -- Alas, a blog on how patriarchy hurts men (and then go read The Watch for a follow-the-links exploration of what it does to women.)

Hope beat out reason the other day, and I slipped and fell into an urban legend. It turns out the story about Eisenhower being influenced by bags of rice a pacifist group urged him to send to China wasn’t true. The story had the air of wishful thinking, and I should have checked it out before going with it.

And I should probably add snopes.com -- the myth debunking site -- to my bookmarks. It’s a useful tool, even though they don't seem to be able to read very well. In their correction of the story, they note that, "There is no indication in our files or in the New York Times article that this food for China campaign was intended as a protest against the possibility of the U.S. going to war with Communist China. It appears that it was strictly a humanitarian effort."

Well, that’s interesting, but irrelevant. No one ever suggested it was intended as an anti-war protest. What the "Rice for Peace" campaigners suggested was that Eisenhower was moved by the humanitarian effort, and translated concern for the welfare of the Chinese in one area – food – into concern in another area – no bombing. Those kinds of connections come naturally to people who care about social justice, but maybe they're hard to see if you're being too rational, and think that feeding people and not bombing them are two entirely different issues. To a political mind, they are different issues. To compassionate human beings, they're the same thing.

I guess realists have their blind spots, just like dreamers.

Gary Farber has more thoughts on the subject at Amygdala (but links are blogspotty, so you may have to scroll down).

The tension is building at The Story Point.

I'm surprised by how little notice has been taken of the fact that this administration is seriously considering using nuclear weapons in Iraq. The Los Angeles Times reported a little over a week ago that military planners had been examining lists of potential targets and were considering -- as a remote possibility -- the idea of using small "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons to destroy deeply buried targets where weapons are stored. As military analyst William M. Arkin noted in a Times Commentary the following day, the decision to break the half-century-old taboo against considering the use of nuclear weapons except in the case of an immediate threat, seems to have been made within a tightly controlled group, bypassing dissenters, including those in the military with the greatest experience and understanding of the issues involved.

On Friday, the Washington Times reported that besides considering the use of "bunker buster" nuclear weapons, Bush has specifically approved using nuclear weapons in response to biological or chemical attacks against "the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies."

Today's LA Times takes up the subject again, this time in a piece on the Pentagon's $1.26 billion "fast-track program" to design computers that will make nuclear weapons "usable." The "remote possibility" looks a lot less remote.

While it is certainly reasonable to be concerned about whether Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, or is anywhere close to acquiring nuclear weapons, could the major media spare a small measure of concern about the fact that George Bush not only has his hands on nuclear weapons, but seems to be making serious plans to use them?

Should a company be allowed to take a poor community's natural resources and traditional knowledge, and then sell it back to the same community?

The European Union is proposing to rein in the biotechnology industry in two important ways to keep them from exploiting the communities from which they take their resources. First, companies would have to reveal where they found any natural product they are trying to patent, and second, farmers in the community would be free to use and exchange seeds, even ones that had been patented.

Without that protection, subsistence farmers fear they will be forced to buy patented seeds that have been modified to produce only one harvest, instead of being able to use seeds they have saved from the previous crop.

The United Nations Environment Programme seems likely to support the proposal. WTO support is another issue entirely.

"The administration isn't afraid of rock stars and student activists — they are used to us. But they are nervous of soccer moms and church folk. Now when soccer moms and church folk start hanging around with rock stars and activists, then they really start paying attention." -- Bono

So here's what the soccer moms and church folk have in mind:

 In the 1950s, a pacifist group launched a campaign to feed starving people in China. They sent bags of rice to the White House, with taglines from the Bible: "If thine enemy hunger, feed him." It doesn't sound like the kind of thing that could change anyone's opinion. It sounds pretty silly and dreamy. But a decade later they learned that when President Eisenhower was considering the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict with China over Quemoy and Matsu, he repeatedly asked an aide how many bags of rice had come in. Tens of thousands, he was told. Eisenhower said that as long as Americans were that concerned with feeding the Chinese, he couldn't consider bombing them.

Could it work again?

My cynical side is telling me George Bush's Christianity is a sham, and this won't make a bit of difference. But I love the idea anyway. It's Sunday. Get out your Bible and set cynicism aside. Pem, at Deep Language draws attention to a grassroots movement started by the Boulder Mennonite Church to revive that nearly fifty year old campaign, and protest war with Iraq in a simple but striking way:

Put a half cup of uncooked rice in a plastic ziploc bag (with all the air squeezed out). Add a note saying,

"If your enemies are hungry, feed them. -- Romans 12:20.
Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack them."

Place the note and bag of rice in a bubble-pack padded manila envelope or small box and write on the outside of the package: Rice for Peace -- No War With Iraq. Address it to:

President George Bush
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

Attach $1.29 in postage. And mail it right away.

There are also printable flyers and posters available to spread the word about the campaign.

Worth reading:

The case for containment of Iraq over war.

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The White House Gets Religion on AIDS in Africa looks at the influence "church folk" had on Bush's AIDS proposal, and contains the worrisome information that "the White House says religious groups and faith-based organizations will be eligible for some of the money." There's no doubt that some faith-based organizations have done important work in the struggle against AIDS in Africa, but it is equally true that some of the alliances Bush has made with the religious right have worsened the AIDS crisis. A lot of desperately needed money could be wasted if it's put in the hands of people who get the vapors when they hear the word condom.

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Two interesting articles on the complexity of affirmative action: The New Calculus of Diversity on Campus argues that Asians are the biggest beneficiaries when affirmative action ends, and Asian Students: Not All of Them Are Pre-Med Violinists explores the problems of Filipino students, who face many of the same disadvantages as black and Hispanic students, and yet are "often judged against an even harsher standard than white applicants."

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Thousands Rally in Ivory Coast to Protest Peace Plan: This quote, from a supporter of the Ivoirian government, angry at the French for brokering a peace agreement which supposedly makes too many concessions to the rebels, threw me: "Ivoirians love America because America governs peace of the world." Well, it's nice to be loved, and at the moment I guess we Americans should be grateful for whatever love we can get, but I'm confused. The demonstrators were waving American flags and carry signs that said "We Trust in USA," and "Bush please help Ivory Coast against French terrorism." They're appealing to the United States to intervene on their behalf against the French. From the little I know about the situation in the Ivory Coast (and I'm going to have to read more), that doesn't seem to make sense. Unless there's just a gut feeling over there that the French don't seem to be getting along with the Americans lately, and they assume that anyone who doesn't like the French must be on their side, I can't figure out why they would expect the U.S. position to be different from the French. (In fact, it isn't: the American government has expressed support for the peace agreement -- which doesn't look like it's going to stand up, but that's another story.) Very strange.

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Jack Miles on the value of patience in the Iraqi inspections:
Two hundred inspectors have been at work in Iraq for about two months. Why not 2,000 for a period that will be deliberately left indefinite? So long as a date certain for the withdrawal of the inspectors is announced beforehand, no Iraqi dares to come forward.

But as inspections drag on and incriminating details leak out, stonewalling becomes more difficult and the likelihood of defection grows. The defection of an insider made a gigantic difference in the last round of inspections. Another such defection could do the same in this round. Why squander this time advantage by rushing forward?

If and when the hoped-for intelligence breakthrough comes, the Iraqi dictator will not suddenly display a willingness to disarm. But military action at that point will be more focused because we shall better know where Iraq has hidden its weapons.

Moreover, it will not come at the huge diplomatic cost that the same action undertaken today will exact. The Atlantic alliance will have survived a major test. But there is, finally, another, deeper motive for delay, and it is that delay holds the greater prospect for sparing the innocent whom the president so wants to spare. Some will see this motive as humanitarian. For me, frankly, it is religious. Like President Bush, I am a Christian; and for Christians, the lives of soldiers and civilians, Iraqi and American alike, are infinitely precious.

Jesus, whom Bush named during the 2000 presidential campaign as the political philosopher who has influenced him most, counseled his disciples to love their enemies. Granting that even a devout Christian may regard war as justified under some circumstances, a Christian ought still to be the most reluctant of warriors. So long as there is any reasonable chance to spare innocent lives (and remember that soldiers of a dictator are typically helpless conscripts), it is the duty of a Christian to seize that chance. As a Christian, I cannot wish my country to do anything less.

American soldiers are reportedly freezing their sperm in anticipation that Hussein will use sterilizing chemical weapons against them. Who can blame them? His ruthless use of these terrible weapons has already saved him from two defeats -- one at the hands of the Kurds, the other at the hands of the Iranians. Kenneth Pollack, author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq," and certainly no dove, predicts that American casualties in the coming war could be as many as 10,000. But beyond the battlefront casualties that delay may spare us, and beyond the home-front casualties that civilian defense can prevent, there remains the question of a potentially staggering loss of civilian life in Iraq...But if we can disarm the pitiless Iraqi dictator without inflicting comparable horrors on his people, it is our moral duty to do so. And if we cannot avoid war with Iraq, then let us commit ourselves now to binding up that poor nation's wounds when the war is over.

The ever-expanding blogroll:

Kieran Healy's Weblog

The Yellow Doggerel Democrat

Veiled 4 Allah

Unqualified Offerings

Noosphere Blues

Bear Left

and also

Roses of the Blogosphere -- links to blogs by women

On the renewed relevance of Pope John XXIII's encyclical "Pacem in Terris"

Somewhat more detailed information about the president's AIDS proposal:

Fact Sheet: The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

I'm shocked! (A summary of our week in the Twilight Zone):

Hans Blix says the Bush administration is lying about his report:

Dr Blix took issue with what he said were US Secretary of State Colin Powell's claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents.

Similarly, he said, he had not seen convincing evidence that Iraq was sending weapons scientists to other countries to prevent them from being interviewed.

Nor had he any reason to believe, as President George Bush charged in his State of the Union speech, that Iraqi agents were posing as scientists, or that his inspection agency had been penetrated by Iraqi agents and that sensitive information might have been leaked to Baghdad.

Finally, he said, he had seen no persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda.

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The world's most famous librarian tells poets to shut up:

The White House has cancelled a poetry forum over fears it would be taken over by ant-war protests.

The discussion was to be hosted by US First Lady Laura Bush on the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman.

But some poets indicated they wanted to protest about proposed military action against Iraq during the meeting on 12 February.

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The media tells the National Council of Churches to shut up:

The National Council of Churches will begin airing a television commercial today in which a bishop of the United Methodist Church, President Bush's denomination, says going to war against Iraq "violates God's law and the teachings of Jesus Christ."... Some national TV networks and local stations have rejected the antiwar coalition's efforts to buy advertising time, citing the controversial content of its ads... Nathan Naylor, a public relations executive involved in the ad campaign, said CNN, Fox and NBC declined to sell airtime on their national networks, so the coalition bought time locally from network affiliates and cable operators.

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Kevin Drum asks a thought-provoking question: Is it time to eliminate the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council?

Among the (twisting and turning) thoughts it provokes:

* Sure. The fact that an action could have broad, even all but unanimous support, and be blocked by a single member, is both deeply undemocratic, and a formula for paralysis.

* It's a good idea that isn't going to happen. In the past, as Kevin notes, the U.S. has been one of the most vehement defenders of the veto (and, in recent years, the most likely to use it), although it's certainly possible that a U.S. increasingly inclined to throw its weight around might begin to welcome the logic of Kevin's argument: Why should one country be allowed to stop us? But I suspect the emergence of a single great power -- especially one that seems as belligerent as this one does under its current administration -- would make the other permanent members of the Security Council less inclined to entertain the notion of giving up that power. And since the Security Council have a veto on everything, including giving up the veto, paralysis rules.

* The other members of the Security Council actually have something to gain from giving up the veto, if the U.S. were to press for the change. This administration, at least, has indicated that it feels no obligation to work with the UN if the UN gets in its way. By giving up the veto power, the power of one nation to block action, I think you'd be making it more likely that the U.S. would continue to work with the world and build a case for action when necessary, not decide that it has all the power it needs and isn't going to let international opinion stand in the way. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I do realize that contradicts my previous point. I'm just spinning 5 a.m. thoughts here, and trying to figure it out as I write.)

* Once you raise the issue of how paralyzing and undemocratic the veto power is, another question arises: Why are there permanent members of the Security Council at all? If the veto power makes the UN ineffective and undemocratic, surely the same can be said of the special privileges accorded to the permanent members of the Security Council. A handful of powerful countries -- reflecting nothing but the global power structure of 1945 -- dominate the UN and further their own interests. An interesting Christian Science Monitor article last year described the anger this two-tier system has provoked in much of the world, especially in the last decade, in which a UN dominated by the "industrialized North" increasingly deals with conflicts in the developing world. That developing world is getting understandably tired of being left out of the conversation.

* The Global Policy Forum, a UN reform group (and amazing source of news and information about the UN), has an interesting proposal: Eliminate both the veto and all permanent memberships, and create a Security Council of elected representatives from various regional groups (the way the non-permanent members are chosen now). That would not only increase the democratic legitimacy of the UN, it would probably also make it more effective. Just as eliminating the veto would encourage a single country powerful enough to act on its own to continue, nonetheless, to work with the rest of the world, a greater voice in the UN would encourage developing countries to see it as a place where their interests have a reasonable opportunity to be advanced.

* Coming back to that old sticking point: It's another good idea that I don't think has much chance to get off the ground. The World War II victors have cemented their position at the UN. What incentive do they have to give that up?