Mama and Papa Hitchens have some strange children.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has an important (and creepy) addition to the moderation vs. extremism debate -- which Kevin Drum returns to.

The front page of today's Los Angeles Times has an interesting article on Salam Pax.

More good stuff on the sidebar links

Mac-a-ro-nies

A Moveable Beast

Best of the Blogs

That Said

Testify!

Kerim's News Weblog

The Bloviator

Le Prêtre Noir

The Mahablog

I have enormous respect for Kevin Drum. I learn things from him all the time. But his sense of what constitutes the "center" is downright claustrophobic. I may just start a collection to get him out of Orange County.

I don't need to refute what Kevin said about liberal "extremism." Atrios already did it, and did it well. But, in addition to the flaws in the argument that Atrios identifies, I couldn't help but notice what a good example the post is of what Barry at Alas recently called "the white guy's fallacy." A quote: "Remember Adrien Brody's reaction when he won his Academy Award on Sunday? Everyone loved it — it showed genuine warmth and spontaneity."

Well, obviously not "everyone," because Kevin goes on to quote a killjoy who "was not amused." And I'm with Killjoy. Politics and feminism have little to do with it. Kevin and I simply saw very different moments. Where he saw "warmth and spontaneity," I saw calculation. I might have seen a spontaneous burst of joy if he had bear-hugged her, but that graceful, Fred and Ginger dip looked to me like someone who had figured out ahead of time how to be the front page photo in the LA Times' Calendar section the next day (which, in fact, he was). I thought he was using Halle Berry to show off and advance his career, and while that may not be unusual in Hollywood, it's still rude and ugly.

And Kevin's suggestion that it was okay because Halle Berry was recently a Bond girl is just plain offensive. I don't care if she spends her life dancing naked with poles, it doesn't give anyone the right to maul her if she doesn't want to be mauled.

When the kiss ended, I was doing something that probably very few men were doing -- looking at Halle Berry's face. I was very curious about what her reaction would be. To me she looked embarassed. But smiling. She looked confused at the stupid line about that being part of her "gift basket." During Brody's speech, the camera moved back to her a few times, and she still had that deer in the headlights look. I didn't hear most of Brody's speech, because I was too busy looking at Halle Berry and feeling embarassed for her.

It's a look, an embarassment, I think most women know from the inside, because we've all been in positions where men have said something or done something that makes us feel like a piece of meat, but we just stand there and smile because we know we'd look foolish (or put our jobs in danger), if we said anything. "Everyone" thinks it's funny after all. For some odd reason, "everyone" doesn't always include us.

It's certainly possible that I'm over-reading Halle Berry's expression based on my own experiences. It's equally possible, though, that Kevin missed it because he's never been treated like that. The difference is, I don't assume "everybody" shares my sense of what happened. I know my experience and perceptions aren't universal. I just don't understand why so many nice, intelligent middle-class white guys assume theirs are.

UPDATE: Mac Diva also has an interesting response to Kevin's post.

UPDATE 2: More from Alas and Pandagon.

UPDATE 3: And a very thoughtful and intelligent essay on the need for both moderates and "extremists" (a word I increasingly dislike, but I'll come back to that some other time) by Sam over at Pedantry.

Ha!

A few notes on media coverage of the war

• The Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post both ran interesting articles this week looking at what news reports in various parts of the world cover, and what they miss. Americans are seeing very little coverage of civilian deaths in Iraq, or of antiwar protests raging in the Muslim world -- which are prominent on television in the rest of the world. American reporters also aren't asking the kind of skeptical question European reporters are. The Post article notes that both American and Arab media are playing to local biases, but its emphasis is on Arab bias, and our failure to get our point of view across to the Arab world (apparently that Americans are also getting a distorted and sanitized view of the war is less important to the Post.)
  
  
• The New York Times notes that Donald Rumsfeld's strategy of embedding reporters to create empathy between the press and the military has produced coverage "so positive as to verge on celebratory." Reliance of official government sources has led to some embarassing mistakes. The Guardian is keeping track.
  
  
• CNN reports that Bush thinks the press is too skeptical, not celebratory enough -- and he's getting ticked off about it. Picking up the ball, conservatives are already suggesting that the problem isn't the setbacks in the war, the problem is the unpatriotic media that reports them.
  
  
• British journalist Terry Lloyd was killed near Basra. A cameraman with Lloyd's team said they were fired on by British tanks after they were approached by a group of Iraqi soldiers who were attempting to surrender.
  
  
• The "best newsman in Afghanistan" was, until recently, reporting for the Christian Science Monitor in Iraq. Last week, U.S. Marines escorted him out of Iraq after the Pentagon accused him of revealing too much information in an interview. The CSM insists that the information was already available in maps and in US and British radio, newspaper, and television reports.
  
  
• According to Ha'aretz, two Israeli journalists and a Portuguese colleague were picked up by U.S. troops, accused of espionage, and beaten.
  
  
• The Defense Department has agreed to allow Reporters Without Borders to send a representative to a battalion operating in Iraq to check on how journalists are being treated.
  
  
• Ironically, there's an interesting article in this week's Village Voice by Sydney Schanberg on the "itch" that makes reporters want to cover war. The irony lies in how little you see, in today's coverage, of the factors that drove Schanberg in southeast Asia in the '70s:
  
  
  This may sound corny, even naive, but a reporter can come honestly to believe in the importance of delivering the full face of war—families decimated, bent refugees walking in endless streams, children orphaned, uplifting acts of honor and friendship, unspeakable acts of cruelty and depravity, bravery, betrayal, human lives saved by Samaritans, human beings lying in pieces from explosive projectiles. People should have to look upon all of that.
  
  If ours is truly a democracy, the people should be told and shown—even if they wish to turn their eyes away—exactly what is being waged in their name. No sugarcoating. No sanitizing. Just a faithful picture of the wild convulsion that is war.
  
  
  Not corny at all. Just, unfortunately, becoming rarer by the minute.

God, I am grateful for Anne Lamott:

I am going to pray for George Bush's heart to change, so that he begins to want to be a part of the human family. He really doesn't want to gather at the table with God's other children, because he might have to sit with someone he hates. Iraqi soldiers, or someone like me. I really, really know this feeling. It is something he and I have in common. But I don't think Bush believes that all people deserve to be fed, and I do. Pretty much. He believes in serving the poor, if they are the deserving poor. But I am going to pray for him to be OK today, to feel loved, and to be fed, because I think that if you want to change the way you feel about someone, you have to change the way you treat them. I'm going to try to treat him better. Maybe I will send him a little something; socks perhaps, or felt pens. Or balloons. He's family. I hate this, because he is a dangerous member of the family, like a Klansman. To me, his policies deal death and destruction, and maybe I can't exactly forgive him right now, in the classical sense, of canceling my resentment and judgment. But I can at least acknowledge that he gets to eat, too. I would not let him starve, and I will sit next to him, although it will be a little like that old Woody Allen line that someday, the lion shall lie down with the lamb, although the lamb is not going to get any sleep. That's the best I can do right now. Maybe at some point, later, briefly, I will feel a flicker of something more. Let me get back to you on this. (READ THE WHOLE THING)

I assure you, there's nothing in this blog today as worth reading as...

• Elton Beard's transcription and Cowboy Kahlil's analysis of an interesting Aaron Brown interview of Daniel Ellsberg (which reveals a lot about both Brown and Ellsberg.)
  
  
• Ampersand on "the white guy's fallacy."
  
  
• Jeff Cooper on affirmative action.
  
  
• Mark Kleiman on how stupid bills become law, why soldiers fighting out of uniform are not terrorists, and why non-violent resistance in Romania, Chile, and the Philippines could not be a model for a country like Iraq.
  
  
• Kevin Raybould on casualties and support for war.

Daily Kos has been down all day. This is worse than not being able to get coffee in the morning. I'm having withdrawal symptoms. I need my news fix from someone who knows what he's talking about!

UPDATE: Hooray! He's back!

Hmmm....Jim Capozzola, who has one of the best blogs around, is getting somewhat serious about running for Senate and Gary Hart, who might run for president, is get somewhat serious about blogging. Do you realize this country could end up in the hands of intelligent, even literate, people? What a concept!

The Coalition of the...hey, how did I end up on that list?
Slovenia? Nope. Solomon Islands? Nope. I almost feel sorry for an administration that's so desperate for friends it has to invent them.

Something is missing from John Burns' New York Times article on the "explosions" that struck a market in the Shaab neighborhood of Baghdad, killing -- according to the NYT, the numbers elsewhere vary -- 17 civilians. It's not that I think Burns' facts are wrong. Obviously, I have no way of knowing. The details are slightly different from one news source to another, but the basic story is the same: On Wednesday, two explosions -- the Times was the only newspaper I looked at that nursed any serious doubt that they were American bombs -- struck a working-class neighborhood in Baghdad, and killed somewhere between 14 and 20 people.

"Killed" is the antiseptic way of putting it. You could phrase it differently:

From the Washinton Post:

Ali Abdel-Jabbar watched helplessly as his friend, Mohammed Abdel-Sattar, lay on the ground, his legs torn off. He lived. Across the street was the severed hand of Samad Rabai, tossed gracelessly in a pool of blood and mud. He died.

From the Los Angeles Times:

She said she had witnessed the burnt corpses and strewn body parts, the missile craters, the twisted automobiles and the vacant faces of dozens of people who had lost loved ones or were left homeless by the twin blasts. It was, she said, the worst thing she had ever seen.

"It is like Judgment Day," she said.

From the Guardian

Two men from the district, Tahir, 26, and Sarmat, 21, were idling away the day in a small shop that sells water heaters. In an instant the shop gave way, swallowing up the two men.

The sideways force of the blast spewed chunks of masonry and body parts across a six-lane highway. Sizzling chunks of shrapnel tore through plaster facades, leaving pockmarks on the interior wall. Brick shop fronts collapsed, amid cascades of glass that extended for 200 metres. Two cars hurtled in the air, landing on their sides.

The lethal impact of the blast was augmented by cruel circumstance. Several witnesses said an oil tanker had been parked in the area moments before the bombing. Five cars along a slip road were carbonised, and flames licked the first-floor windows of buildings.

One of the burnt-out cars had contained a family with three children, said Hisham Madloul, picking his way through the bloodstains and debris in flip-flops.

"There were three families in the building upstairs and many children," he said.

From the Times of London

There were burnt out shells of five cars on the road. Witnesses said that a mother and child were in one of the cars.

From the Independent

At least 15 cars burst into flames, burning many of their occupants to death. Several men tore desperately at the doors of another flame-shrouded car in the centre of the street that had been flipped upside down by the same missile. They were forced to watch helplessly as the woman and her three children inside were cremated alive in front of them. The second missile hit neatly on the eastbound carriageway, sending shards of metal into three men standing outside a concrete apartment block with the words, "This is God's possession" written in marble on the outside wall.

The building's manager, Hishem Danoon, ran to the doorway as soon as he heard the massive explosion. "I found Ta'ar in pieces over there," he told me. His head was blown off. "That's his hand." A group of young men and a woman took me into the street and there, a scene from any horror film, was Ta'ar's hand, cut off at the wrist, his four fingers and thumb grasping a piece of iron roofing. His young colleague, Sermed, died the same instant. His brains lay piled a few feet away, a pale red and grey mess behind a burnt car.

What's wrong with John Burns' narration begins to be apparent in the first paragraph:

Two large explosions that detonated simultaneously in a working-class district of Baghdad this morning, killing 17 civilians and wounding 45, set off a scramble by Iraq to blame the United States for indiscriminate bombing, and prompted a suggestion from the Pentagon that the Iraqis themselves might have been responsible.

There's nothing wrong with Burns' skepticism -- although it seems extreme, and no one else seems to share it. The Washington Post comes closest, noting that the Pentagon denied responsibility, but also reporting that US military officials in Qatar admitted that they were targeting the neighborhood and fired weapons at the time of the bombing. The Times of London, in a separate article on the Pentagon's reaction, points up the contradictions.

But the problem isn't just that Burns is the only reporter to buy so completely into the Pentagon's -- let's face it -- somewhat tortured explanations. The really disturbing thing is the emphasis he gives those explanations. In the first paragraph, after barely telling us what happened, he immediately mentions the Pentagon's theory that the Iraqis themselves could have done it, a charge he repeats in the second paragraph. In the next paragraph, he goes on to write about how the Iraqis are exploiting the deaths, with "lurid coverage" on TV (who would have guessed that the Iraqis were watching Fox News and taking notes?), and rallies by "local party bosses." Eight paragraphs in, he returns to the Pentagon denials.

We're eleven paragraphs into the story before he begins to share any details about what happened, and then wraps the details in a caveat: "witnesses who remembered anything very clearly about the moment of detonation were few, and hard to find."

Odd. Other reporters didn't have a hard time finding witnesses.

Even when Burns writes about the horrible details, he seems to think that it would be unprofessional, or perhaps unpatriotic, to have a normal human reaction to the carnage. He can't tell you about the severed hand, or the "fragments of human remains, including brain tissue" without pointing out that "officials" were there to make sure reporters noticed everything. He ties himself in a strange emotional knot: Bad people want me to care about this, so therefore I won't care too much about it.

Anybody in America paying attention over the past eighteen months knows that politicians are going to exploit tragedy. If it happens in Washington, it will happen in Baghdad. That's worth commenting on. At another time, it may be worth dwelling on. But it isn't -- or shouldn't be -- the main story.

Imagine reading a newspaper on September 12, 2001, and havng to comb through paragraph after paragraph of statements politicians made about a horrible mass murder that took place a day earlier, before finally, halfway through the story, finding out exactly what happened. The idea of structuring the story that way is obscene, as if the fact that thousands of people died were less important than what use politicians made of those deaths. Human priorities were not hard to sort out on September 12. When people die like that, the only thing to do at first is grieve. The only thing to do second is celebrate their lives. Anything else is an abomination. When a few clueless leftists spoke -- even weeks afterwards -- of understanding "root causes," they were, and deserved to be, castigated. To every thing there is a season, and the season of understanding can not follow too hard upon the season of grief.

We understood that when Americans died. We need to understand that the same thing is true when Iraqis die.

There is, as I said, something missing from the way the New York Times covered the story of more than a dozen deaths in a marketplace in Baghdad. What's missing is the basic human understanding that death matters, and human beings deserved to be mourned. John Burns buries the story in context and rationalizations designed to make us care less about people who died. Skepticism is a wonderful quality in a reporter, but Burns goes beyond that, to a cynicism that robs us of normal human reactions -- reactions we need if we're going to hang on to our humanity. It diminishes the people who died. It dehumanizes readers. War does that all by itself. We don't need one of the best newspapers in the country to help the process along.

"Television is not the truth! Television is a goddamned amusement park!" -- Howard Beale

This is discouraging. A consulting company that advises television news directors on everything from set design to hiring to story selection -- their claim to fame is developing the smiley face "Action News" format that began homogenizing local news in the '70s -- is currently sharing with their clients the result of a survey in which viewers said that the last thing they want to see right now is anti-war protests. Not that you should refuse to cover protests, the company is telling news directors. You have an obligation to tell both sides of the story, and all that old-fashioned, Edward R. What's-his-name crap. But since nobody wants to see that stuff, you can bury it late in the newscast, and minimize the amount of time you devote to it. Wouldn't want viewers to get bored now, would we?

Almost half of all Americans turn to cable news as their first source of information about the war. Only 11 percent look at something other than television.

UPDATE: (Via Atrios) Drastically limiting the amount of time you devote to anti-war protests is one way to pass yourself off as a legitimate news source, while still entertaining the audience. Fox found another way. What's next -- Pop-Up News?

UPDATE 2: For Broadcast Media, Patriotism Pays; Consultants Tell Radio, TV Clients That Protest Coverage Drives Off Viewers

"The United States behaves like a salesman with a fantastic product who tries to force people to buy it at gunpoint. If democracy is to flourish elsewhere, we have to keep our hands off." -- Emma

Go read the whole thing -- it's very good. As is the post below it on "political English."

If you're old enough to remember Vietnam, this is an ominous headline that dredges up horrible memories.

I've turned off the tv for the duration of this war, because I have an 8-year-old in the house, and I really don't know how to explain any of this to her. I could come up with an explanation for why my country is dropping bombs on people, but it wouldn't be one I believed, and I'm not going to lie to someone who trusts me as much as she does. I can't believe anything my government is telling me right now. For some reason that makes it more important that my children know they can trust what I tell them. I need a little island where the truth exists, just so I can prove to myself that the truth exists.

But there are truths you can't tell an 8-year-old.

I've just about stopped reading newspapers, except for random bits and pieces here and there that catch my attention, because I can't make sense of the news. It makes me feel helpless, and I know that trying to figure out what's going on during a war is insane. Just assume everyone is lying is intelligent advice, but not good for the soul.

Some scattered thoughts and stories, some weird, overlapping mix of the personal and the political elbow each other in my head:

I know something about thugs. My father drank and gambled away money for food and rent. He knocked my mother's teeth out and left her bruised more times than I can begin to count. We ran away, and he caught up with us. We ran away again, and then my mother let her crazy, Irish, offer-it-up religion shame her into going back. Again and again, for thirteen insane years. Once, when I was about twelve and disagreed with my father about something -- a war, as a matter of fact, a horrible, stupid war -- he grabbed my hair in the back and slammed my forehead into a wall. Over and over, until I nearly passed out. In my mind, there are no firm boundaries between personal and political violence.

My father fought in World War II and brought home medals, a sense of righteousness, and a belief in brute force. The "good war." He brought it home, but it was not good.

When I was thirteen, he left. I have a very vivid memory of that night. My mother was at work. I watched him pack. He was drunk, crying, and I felt sorry for him. He kept telling me how everyone loved his father, and he wished he was like him, but he couldn't be. And then he started screaming that he could have been a better father if he just had a daughter who was worth something. He grabbed my face in one big hand and said that if anybody asked me how come I didn't have a father, I better tell them it was because I didn't deserve one. I couldn't figure out if he was angry or sad, and not knowing scared me more than anything. I locked myself in the bathroom for awhile, and when I came out, the apartment was silent. I remember going from room to room, doing something very weird -- looking in the closet and under the bed and in hidden corners, even in the narrow space beside the refrigerator where my mother kept the broom, not trusting that he was gone, terrified that he would leap out at me. And then, when I believed he was gone, and I was safe, I started to cry, because I had made his life so miserable, and now that he was gone -- and somehow I knew that time it was for good -- I had no way to make it better.

I haven't seen him since. A few years ago, out of curiosity, I checked his name on a social security website and discovered that he died about ten years ago. Over the course of several days, I went back and looked at that information quite a few times, half expecting it to change. But finally it sank in, and I sat at the computer with a great wave of relief washing over me, a sense of safety I don't think I've ever experienced in my life. And then I started to cry in big gulping gasps. And for the life of me, I can't explain why.

And all of that enormously over-simplifies the emotions I have when it comes to my brutal father and his longing for a decent child.

Human emotions are enormously complicated. Everyone knows that about herself. Everyone sees that in her friends and family. Why don't we carry that knowledge into our reading of the news? Why, when we read about people in other countries, do we expect them to be less complex, less human than we are?

There's an article in the New York Times today about Iraqi refugees, who despised Saddam Hussein, and fled to Jordan, now returning to fight against the United States. Another, in The Guardian, reports Iraqis returning from Syria. Thousands of Iraqis have returned in the last ten days. I think I know how they feel. Well, "know" is probably the wrong word for that sticky web of thought and feeling. Let's say I think I've felt something similar to what they feel.

From the first time I heard the neoconservative dream that Iraqis would refuse to fight for Saddam and welcome American "liberators" with open arms, it seemed to me not only highly unlikely, but dehumanizing as well. As if oppressed people don't have the same mixed-up emotions that the rest of us have. As if complex inner lives were unique to technologically advanced societies. We want to believe that there's a small number of bad Iraqis who fight for Saddam, and an enormous number of good ones who are on our side, or will be as soon as they can break free enough to express their true emotions. After all, we're good, right? How could they fail to see that?

While I'm sure there are some people who fall into those neat categories, I expect most Iraqis don't know what side to be on right now. And that confusion really shouldn't be hard for any human being to understand. Oppressor or invader -- there aren't any good choices.

Shaping expectations of people to suit your desires -- assuming people will act the way it would be convenient for you if they acted -- seems to me one more way we refuse to see people we want to make war on as human beings with faces and emotions and lives.

Liberal Oasis has an important post up on the complexities of the situation in Basra.

UPDATE: And the Independent explains why the collapse of the water supply is potentially so disastrous.

Lynn Gazis-Sax, who spent some time working with peace groups in the former Yugoslavia in the early nineties, has an interesting post up on something I've wanted to know more about for some time: the role of non-violent resistance movements in the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic. Her notes on how outsiders can help support such movements -- and, unfortunately, sometimes do unintentional damage to them -- are especially worth reading.

Lynn links to her husband's blog, which, I just discovered, is full of wonderful insights and passionate writing. Pax Nortona joins the blogroll.

The Red Queen Goes To War
In less than a week, the percentage of Americans who think the war will be over quickly dropped from 62 to 43 percent. In a single day, the percentage who thought the war was going "very well" dropped from 44 to 32 percent. Over the weekend, the percentage who thought the war would be over within weeks dropped from 53 to 34 percent. That's not a change in public opinion, it's whiplash. Seventy percent of Americans still think we didn't make a mistake invading Iraq. Well, they tell pollsters they believe that, anyway. I'd love to see the expression on the face of someone saying, this war is going much worse than I expected, but no, it's not a mistake. Sure, it's possible to hold both beliefs, but it has to have an internal cost. Given the emotional conflicts inherent in the responses, it sounds an awful lot like trying to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

The administration is doing its best to help the Red Queens believe the impossible. Who? Me? I didn't say anything about a short, easy war.

Liars.

UPDATE: Liberal Oasis has a good collection of before and after quotes about how the war is supposed to go.

Kip's mom started out taking photographs of her own children, and went on to take photographs of strangers. Go look at Tina Manley's photos of Iraqis. And when you see the pictures of smoke and fire on your television, hold these images in your head.

Remember last year when our friends in the government tried to slip a provision into the Homeland Security Bill protecting Eli Lilly from lawsuits by parents of autistic children? They pulled the provision out as soon as people started complaining, but it looks like the same crowd is assuming we're so busy paying attention to their war right now that we won't notice that they're trying to pull the same stunt all over again. No, actually this time it's even worse. MaryBeth at Wampum has all the details -- and what you can do about it. Make a phone call. Fight. Don't let them use the fog of war to reward contributors by stealing from sick children.

The Nation has an interesting feature up on its Website with dispatches from around the world reporting on reactions to the war. We've thought and written a lot about the war's effect on Iraq, and the ways in which it changes and endangers the United States, but already you can see more ripples in the world at large:

• In Pakistan which, unlike Iraq, has nuclear weapons -- the US had to close its embassy and evacuate non-essential staff as street protests intensified.
  
  
• In Egypt antiwar activists and demonstrators, including members of the Egyptian parliament, a local journalist who works as a stringer for the Los Angeles Times, and children as young as 15, were beaten by police, arrested, and in some cases, subjected to torture.
  
  
• Iranians have been firing on British and American forces.
  
  
• We forgot about Afghanistan again, and attacks are increasing.
  
  
• Poland apparently sent troops to Iraq, but forget to tell its citizens.

The day the war started, I wrote in e-mails to several people that I thought there was a decent chance that the administration was right about one thing -- southern Iraq would fall easily, and there would be enormous joy in Basra. Life would be better. But two things haunted me. One was a suspicion that the press would record those initial encouraging pictures, and ignore what happens later. I didn't expect the occupation to be nearly as easy as the take-over. The other thing that bothered me was that humanitarian groups have been saying for months that not enough preparation had been made for what would happen if things didn't go according to plan. Even if things ran smoothly, brushing aside those concerns seemed morally negligent to me. You don't depend on luck and dreams when people's lives are at stake.

Things aren't going according to plan. They aren't going as well as I expected them to, let alone as well as Bush's crazier advisors expected them to. The power was cut in Basra, which means the main water treatment plant is not operating, which means most people in Basra have no access to clean water. I've seen several headlines about "thirsty" Iraqis, which infuriate me with how seriously they underplay the extent of the problem. The temperature in Basra at this time of year goes over 100 degrees. Dehydration is a real threat. Dysentery and cholera could break out if the situation goes on much longer. Moreover, Basra and the nearby port of Umm Qasr were supposed to be bases for distributing humanitarian aid throughout southern Iraq. The situation is a lot more serious than a few thirsty people.

There are two bits of encouraging news today -- one of them undeniably good, the other a mixed bag. First, the very good news. Yesterday, the Red Cross asked for security guarantees from both sides that would allow them to send engineers to repair the plant. Today they got it, and an ICRC engineering team is working on repairs.

The second piece of "good" news is that coalition forces have decided Basra is important. Yesterday, the attitude was: Things didn't work out the way we expected; oh well, on to Baghdad. Basra wasn't considered a military priority. Today the humanitarian crisis may have made it a priority. Or maybe not -- the British have sent mixed signals about whether they plan to try to enter Basra. There also are reports of a popular uprising in the city, with British troops firing in support.

With some luck, disaster might be avoided in Basra. But it strikes me that the situation there capture in miniature why this war is a mistake. We discount the potential for setbacks, and aren't prepared when they happen. We create a humanitarian crisis through neglect, until the only way to "solve" the problem is through violence -- and then we'll use that as proof that violence is the only solution. It's such a horrible, insane way to operate.

It must be nice to be smart...
When Eve Tushnet has "scattered thoughts," they're often more to the point than my most carefully considered ones. Scattered among her thoughts on the war is a discussion of the difficulty of building an internal and non-violent resistance movement to overthrow a totalitarian dictator. I have a feeling that's something I'm going to be writing more about, although I need to do some more reading and thinking, but one point that Eve makes I found especially insightful: "You can do it if you have a deep, positive vision driving you forward." Eve, quoting Jane Galt, cites the Catholicism of the Poles. Unfortunately, that intense Catholicism has a downside as well. (It sometimes seems to me that every positive vision has an twisted one squirming around inside it -- just wondering: is the opposite also true?).

For Eve, the difficulties and impediments demonstrate the impracticality of non-violent resistance. To me they're the seeds of further questions. What, in other instances, has provided that "deep, positive vision?" And how do you get there?

But even though I tend to approach the issue from a different angle, I think Eve's point remains valid and important, and I think it's true not just for overthrowing dictators, but for any continuing struggle. Opposition only takes you so far. When all you have is opposition, failures and setbacks turn into cynicism and passivity. Faith is a source of optimism for me, but how could anyone not be aware of its capacity to twist into something ugly, to comfort thugs, and give monsters reason to go on?

For me, it seems so obvious that what we're doing isn't working, that any thoughts about how something better "doesn't work because..." needs to lead instantly to, "Okay, how do we get past that because?"

Questions, always more and more questions....

Aid May Take Weeks To Get Into Iraq, Officials Say

Kevin (whose links Blogger is messing with) found "Empathy in Our Time," -- a pretty good reading of Bush's "advice" on how we should feel toward Iraqis. I probably would have thought it was funny if I hadn't seen it shortly after watching Victoria Clarke respond to a reporter's question about the humanitarian crisis developing in Basra, which is due to a power cut that has left the city without a source of clean water since Friday. (Nobody knows whether Allied bombing or the Iraqis caused the outage.) Clarke noted that aid was "poised at the borders," and ready to be brought to Basra as soon as the situation there is stable. The language was so noble. The welfare of the Iraqis is extremely important to us. We are doing everything we can. And anyway, the real problem is that the Iraqi army was doing something nobody expected them to do -- fight back. Apparently they didn't get the memo that said the Shiites would welcome us with open arms. (They are welcoming us with arms -- they just forgot the "open" part.) In other words, no matter what happens, it's not our fault. If the Iraqis would just give up, we wouldn't have these problems. Her argument was too close for comfort to this.

Halliburton isn't waiting until the war is over and the occupation has begun to make a profit on this war. They're already at work in Kuwait and Turkey.

The promised humanitarian aid is not reaching Iraq. The administration planned for everything going well, and now that things are not going as planned, NGOs can't get in to deliver needed food, water, medicine, hygiene kits and shelter materials. The water treatment plant in Basra has been non-functional since Friday because of power cuts. Another frustration -- reflecting a disagreement that's been brewing for a while -- is that the military is insisting that NGOs carry military badges instead of their own id cards, which independent humanitarian groups fear will tar them as an arm of the military, and endanger them, in addition to making it harder for the people they need to help to trust them.

Salam Pax is back.

When I started this blog, I intended it to be only slightly more public than the notebooks full of meandering thoughts, memories, story ideas, bits of overheard conversation, place descriptions, notes about telling moments and gestures, and so forth, that I'd kept for more than twenty years. My writing in those notebooks was becoming more and more political. I'd always glued newspaper articles into my journals, and written about them, but mostly, in the past, they were odd little pieces from the back of the paper, some of them weirdly comic, some tragic, and some a mixture of the two -- things that felt like story sources. I found myself, at the end of 2001, clipping more from the front pages, and trying to make sense of things that nothing in my faith, education, or experience helped me make sense of. And yet I felt that probing deeper into faith and memory -- not abstract knowledge of politics, or anything else -- was my key to understanding what was going on. A blog seemed like a decent way to do the same thing I was doing in journals without hunting for scissors, or getting glue and newsprint all over my fingers.

I knew that once I put it on the web, a few people would stumble across it and read it -- which I thought was funny; why would anyone want to read someone else's boring journal? -- but it certainly never occurred to me that on an average weekday close to 2,000 people would drop by. I still don't get it. I've always thought that I wrote horrible first drafts, and almost by definition a blog post is a first draft. And I have no special knowledge or insight that would redeem the awkwardness of quick writing. I wasn't in any way kidding, or being modest, when I wrote at the top of this blog that I had more questions than answers. An undeniable fact: I don't know what I'm talking about. I hope, through writing, to figure out what I'm trying to say.

An audience changes things. Knowing people are reading what I write, I feel obliged to write what I'm pretty certain of, what I'm comfortable saying. And sometimes that's fine. The good side of having a blog is that when I find a story buried that I think more people should know about, I have an opportunity to spread it around a bit. And when I feel like there's something I absolutely must say, something I'm sure of, I know someone's listening.

The down side is that the more certain I am of anything, the more likely I am to be wrong. Truths -- or at least the truths I'm privy to -- are quieter, less sure of themselves, and often wrapped in contradictions.

The other down side is that having an audience makes me somewhat hesitant to do what I started out doing -- rambling, playing with contradictory thoughts and facts, trying to deal with my own confusion and ignorance.

This war confuses me so much, knocks me over with so many emotions that I don't even have names for, that I really need the kind of semi-private journal this was originally intended to be so I can write stupid things, things I'm not sure of, things I'm not entirely comfortable saying. Because at the moment, I really have no answers at all.

Where is the anti-war movement going and where should it go? I don't know. I'm swirling in contradictory thoughts.

How is the war going? How would I know? I know I've gone from checking Kos once a day, to several times a day, because his obvious knowledge makes the news less crazy and chaotic. But I'm still lost in the sense that for me "How is the war going?" is an unanswerable question, not just because I don't know enough about military matters to judge, but because I can't imagine what a good outcome would look like. How well something is going depends on how close you are to achieving something you want to achieve. What I want is for everybody to come home safe and nobody to die. (But even putting aside the fact that there isn't the remotest possibility of that happening, I'm not sure it would be a good thing to turn back now anyway.) Or for the right-wingers' fantasies to come true, and the Iraqi army just folds, and everyone in Iraq views this as a liberation, not an invasion, and no one else dies. (And besides the fact that several stories in yesterday's news seem to confirm my sense that that was always a pipedream, even that would not be a blessing. A curse wrapped in a blessing, perhaps -- an easy victory, few deaths, and an encouragement to look for more such "easy" wars.) I think when this war started, something broke that can never be completely repaired.

I don't think there's much point in demonstrating against a war that you can't stop. This isn't Vietnam. It will be over relatively soon, and the important thing is to find a way to limit the damage, to put pressure on Bush not to abandon Iraq the way he abandoned Afghanistan, and to make sure that if he lets his corporate friends suck it dry, everyone knows about it. Move on, and plan ahead. I think that one day, and the next day I see some of these people and these people, on television, and feel the gloom lift momentarily, in a way that has nothing to do with anything practical, but is important nonetheless. They won't change Bush's mind, they won't stop the war, but they reminded me that I'm not alone, they made me feel encouraged about the long-term possibilities of stopping the change in this country from republic to empire, and they made me feel guilty for sitting there watching CNN while they were out there in the cold. And guilt is a great energizer. And I think a community was carved out of opposition to this war, and it's very important not to let that get away from us. And I think that demonstration fed the community more than my search for little scraps of redemption in the dirt.

What I really think is meandering around somewhere between those contradictory ideas.

Letters

I think demonstrating against this war is hugely important -- as important as it ever was. We knew it would probably happen. I was never protesting in the dream I would help prevent it. I pretty much knew it would happen. But with continued protest the chances increase of it ending more quickly (and yes, they should come home right this second) and protest also serves to help undermine a terrible and empire-minded administration.  It is, I would argue, much like Viet Nam, where people said it would be over quick; this isn't going to be over quick. The occupation promises to be long and brutal and full of death on both sides -- or all sides. 

The protests also serve to alert the compromised media to how people feel ( I still hope this march on the media can happen, but I don't know). And I think the horrid double standards about things like the Geneva Convention. (Why was showing the Taliban in custody alright but not US soldiers?  Oh, because the Taliban were terrorists? Something tells me the Iraqis think of the US as terrorists).  Protests are geared to all kinds of things, and to just feel like you have given up makes all the protests one has worked on kind of pointless. Men like Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the rest must be somehow made accountable, and if not, then at least I tried, and I feel better and more courageous for having made the effort. I also learn from the constant discussion and protest. I learn and refine my position and learn how to educate people, and maybe that will make a difference.  I am sick of this god damn 'support the troops' crap. How about supporting the veterans of the first Gulf War who still have nothing from the US government for their suffering, and let's support the people who resist and not only the robots who follow orders in an ugly and immoral and criminal war. Those who take the risk to refuse cooperation are the ones I care about.

I want to support the relief workers and those who fight for the rights of the poor and the forgotten. Not Tommy Franks' men, not the jingoistic FOX news lunatics or the lackies on CNN or the vetted press pool and the embedded quislings who are covering a censored war.  Where are questions about DU? Where are questions about Halliburton and where are questions about occupation and exactly who is going to run the oil fields again?

No, I think I want to keep protesting -- and again, it's not just going to be over quick.

I think you must know that. The repercussions will go on and on and on.

Onward....regards, JS

I think that if there were "register to vote" booths at all events, something useful and positive could come out of all the protests and marches. If there were some indication that these actions might actually effect Bush, he might pay attention. -- Matt Ball

I am responding to the confusion you expressed recently in your blog.  I am an amateur student of history (rather than an academic with a vested interest in the "conventional wisdom"), and I am not nearly so at a loss in this situation as you have expressed.  Here are some comments that will allow you to take a step back, maybe get a better perspective.

The most important battle field right now is not in Iraq, but in the UN Security Council in New York City. The US is going to be called to account for its illegal behavior.  The US government is going to be forced to make a decision: stay in the UN, and abide by the rules; or leave the UN, making it yet another "League of Nations".

An 80 year old man, who had spent most of his professional life working in the UN, said this was what the UN was all about, debating war rather than simply fighting.  He was proud to have lived to see this day.  He considered this to be a great success. Remember, when he was a young man, the League of Nations failed.

OK, so "Duct Tape W" is an ignorant religious fundamentalist who sees nothing wrong in violating international law and trashing the UN.  He is about to discover that this is a small planet, really like an island, and acting like a damn haole isn't going to work for very long. The only thing bigger than the US is the Rest Of the World (ROW), and right now the ROW is pretty united against the US.

What allows a dictator to become a dictator is everyone else going along.  Humans are social animals; they tend to go along.  We can let dictators use this tendency to establish dictatorships, or we can use this tendency ourselves by protesting, thus encouraging more people to protest, to NOT go along, to increase the cost of doing business.  We live in a profit-driven system, where the majority of the profits accrue to the people at the top, the people who advise governments.  If "business" doesn't happen, they suffer the loss disproportionately.  Protesting is far more effective than you think.

In 1968, LBJ had just raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans to pay for the war in Viet Nam, and anti-war and civil rights protests were increasing in the US.  Then the Tet Offensive demonstrated that the Vietnamese Nationalist forces were far from defeated.  The wealthiest Americans were not happy. LBJ did not run for re-election, even though he was entitled to. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated; Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and cities burned; the police had a riot during the Democratic Convention in Chicago.  The Establishment was losing it.  Eventually, the President had to resign in disgrace.

The US has been a world Empire since WWII.  Sooner or later that Empire will collapse.  The mechanism bringing about that collapse will be the foreign trade deficit (this is what destroyed the British Empire -- upon which the sun never set, they boasted). The cost of the foreign trade deficit is decided by foreign bankers, who set the interest rates upon the money they loan the US to pay for the excess foreign goods the US imports.  So, far, they have not wanted to raise interest rates because they wanted to encourage US consumption, and the foreign trade deficit has grown larger, making the US more dependent upon the foreign bankers.  When they "lose confidence" in the ability of the US to pay back the loans, interest rates will rise, and imports will become expensive. Think of $4.00 for a cup of black coffee, and $10.00 for a gallon of gasoline.  Sooner or later, it will happen.  Maybe sooner now. -- CV

My heroes have always been cowboys
I've been meaning to add ReachM High Cowboy Network Noose to the blogroll, and I just got a great excuse to do so. Check out this salute to women bloggers, which is not only nice, but gives me a whole bunch of blogs I didn't know to check out.

And a note to George Bush: Real cowboys like women.

On BBC news last night, there was a mention of civilian casualties in Northern Iraq, including children, along with pictures that went by too fast to sink in. I'd had the tv on CNN (occasionally switching over to the networks) for several hours and never heard anyone mention them.

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

In a press conference yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld lectured reporters on why "shock and awe" is not comparable to the bombing of Dresden, because the weapons are so much more accurate than anything that could have been imagined during World War II, and every effort has been made to avoid civilian casualties. It must be the standard Secretary of Defense Gulf War speech -- Dick Cheney delivered it the last time. Nevertheless, I suspect it's mostly true. The US has nothing to gain, and everything to lose from massive civilian casualties. And destroying the infrastructure (the cause of a huge number of post-war civilian deaths in Gulf War I) would be foolish if you're planning to run the place after the war. Self-interest ought to make the Pentagon as careful as is humanly possible, even if compassion isn't kicking in.

I know, I know. I'm absurdly optimistic. I'm told there's no cure for it, either.

Although any more stories about errant cruise missiles landing in Iran might make me a little more mistrustful of Rumsfeld's ode to those nearly perfect weapons.

One small thing disturbed me, though. Rumsfeld repeatedly used the word "humane" to describe the campaign. On the left side of the tv screen, Donald Rumsfeld, his voice filled with uncharacteristic emotion, was speaking of the "humane" effort, and on the right side was Baghdad -- all fire and sparkling orange mushroom clouds. By the time this war is over, the word "humane" may no longer have any meaning.

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

There have been several worthwhile articles recently about civilians and war. The most level-headed is Michelle Goldberg's recent piece in Salon which comes to the sensible conclusion that it's impossible to come to a conclusion -- humanitarian groups take all the worst-case scenarios into account, most of which will not happen, while war advocates either assume everything will go perfectly (which is at least as unlikely as all the worst-case scenarios playing out), or assume it doesn't matter.

I can't accept, though, as Michelle Goldberg seems to, that those approaches are equally wrong. If you plan for the worst, you have nothing to answer for morally if things go better than expected. All you have is relief. On the other hand, if you risk people's lives without caring what the consequences are, or because you stupidly assume there will be no consequences, you have a great deal to answer for if things go wrong. In fact, I think even if luck holds and everything goes right, the lack of concern is, in and of itself, worthy of condemnation.

Also worth reading:

• Sarah Sewall argues that while the Pentagon may have good intentions, they don't make every effort they could to study war's impact on civilians, mainly because they don't want to know. Knowing might force them to take steps they'd rather not take.
  
  
• The New York Times deals intelligently with the "tough judgment calls" that are sometimes involved when weighing civilian lives against military needs. They muddy the waters a bit, though, by setting up a dichotomy that doesn't exist. On the one hand are evil leaders like Saddam, who deliberately put civilians in harm's way, making it impossible for the good leaders to bomb in good conscience, no matter how benevolent their intentions. On the other hand, there are good leaders who are faced with moral dilemmas like whether to destroy power grids that have both military and civilian uses.
  
  The US did just that during Gulf War I -- by bombing Iraq's power grid, we created food shortages, destroyed water-purification and sewage treatment systems, and disrupted medical care. The NYT notes that Human Rights Watch said the 1991 bombing violated the Geneva Conventions, but fails to mention that Pentagon officials admitted that what they described at the time as "collateral damage," was, in fact, a deliberate targeting of civilians. By destroying facilities that couldn't be repaired (because of sanctions), they hoped to increase the pressure on Saddam to disarm, or even to pressure Iraqis into rebellion. However noble the goal of getting Saddam out, specifically targeting civilians to accomplish that isn't a moral dilemma, it's a war crime.

Letters

Re: Dresden and Baghdad

No, no, this is nothing like, though not for the reason Rumsfeld said.

In Dresden, the Allied forces deliberately started a firestorm -- something that does not require nuclear weapons, though it is much more easily done with nuclear weapons.  I do not believe there is any intention to do that to Baghdad--it would serve no purpose, and I am sure most US generals would refuse to do such a thing.

Talk of Dresden is harmful to the credibility of peace advocates in the eyes of opponents with even a little bit of military or historical knowledge.  The risk to Iraqi civilians is not incineration but dehydration, disease, and perhaps starvation.  Which kill just as surely but with far less drama.  Again, I am sure our general staff intends to avoid such an outcome. But -- "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy" and devastating accidents are a real risk.  War is, of all the tools of statecraft, the most unpredictable.  I can only wonder that it is the chosen instrument of our current governing coalition. They rule the wealthiest nation on earth, and the one with the most powerful military -- and this is what they come up with?  "This too is nothingness, a striving after wind."  But one need not ally oneself with the nothingness. -- Randolph Fritz

Thanks for the well-reasoned response. I haven't written much about "shock and awe," except to note that I'm shocked by the casualness with which seemingly sane people spoke of enormous violence (I was even more shocked by the threat to use nuclear weapons -- even if it wasn't a very serious threat, the threat alone breaks an important taboo.)

My understanding of military matters is virtually nil, but, like you, I have been concerned that setting up an expectation of enormous civilian casualties, especially direct casualties, was a trap for the anti-war movement. And I think it's a trap that's been deliberately set. We didn't dream up the "enormous casualties" scenario. The author of the plan referred to "shock and awe" as being like Hiroshima. Someone at the Pentagon said there wouldn't be a safe place in all of Baghdad. I know that's a psychological manipulation they're pulling on the Iraqis, but it's difficult not to take them at their word. I think human beings can be forgiven for finding that kind language disconcerting.

But they're already pulling the rug out from under anyone who was trusting enough to believe them. Bush says the war will be longer and harder than "some people" have suggested. As if the people who were recently making that suggestion were not Bush and his cronies. I guess in that case, it's their supporters they're undercutting, since the anti-war movement obviously hasn't been spreading the idea that it would be a "cakewalk." Although I've assumed that they were probably right that the first stage, the military stage, would be relatively easy -- barring unforeseen circumstances; as you say, war is always unpredictable. There will be joy and relief and parades for American and British liberators. And there will be resistance. Hope will meet betrayal. We're dealing with a psychologically complex situation here, and anyone who tells you he knows how Iraqis will react to being simultaneously liberated and invaded is lying. No one can predict the proportions of relief and anger. No one can make any reasonable predictions about this situation.

It's the second stage -- the stage where Iraq becomes the fifty-first state -- that I, and I think most people who oppose the war, have worried about most. That, and the possibility that it would drag on longer than expected, and the less dramatic deaths you (along with most aid groups) spoke of -- dehydration, disease, starvation -- became a factor. I think it's unconscionable that they haven't really prepared for that, even if the odds of it happening are, I hope, small. And I don't really believe they are small.

Rumsfeld berates reporters for making comparisons to Dresden and Hiroshima, as if those kinds of comparisons were not handed down months ago from the Pentagon itself. As I said, I've been wary of that for some time, but my frustration is not directed at the people who bought the lie and were outraged by its implications, but at the people who started the lie.

Best,

JD

My God, talk about gloating! In today's Guardian, Richard Perle is already exulting in victory -- not just over Saddam, but over the UN. In fact, it's hard not to notice that he seems happier about destroying the UN than about ending Saddam's brutal reign. Saddam is just a menace, the real evil is the "liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions." Let's not forget, Perle admonishes us, who held "moral authority" during Saddam's rule. (Please do forget, however -- Perle does not say, but must think -- who armed and encouraged him.) Apparently, we're all supposed to get in line behind the idea that the UN is responsible for Saddam's crimes.

As the Perle antidote, read Michael Kinsley. Kinsley's almost always good, but he's especially good when he's writing -- as he is in today's Washington Post (building on a theme from two weeks ago) -- about why process matters, and why formal constraints on power -- national and international -- are essential. Even if people are constantly pushing at the boundaries, or trying to slip around them, the existence of those boundaries is a good thing. We can't eliminate hypocrites, but if clear rules exist, we can at least shame them.

Maybe. There isn't a lot of shame in this administration. A great deal that is shameful, but no capacity to be ashamed. They'd like us to believe that the rules and constraints we think exist aren't really there at all. The Constitution is a pretty, but fragile little tchotchke -- something you might need to put out of sight until things calm down. International law does not exist unless a great power wants to invoke it. Moral standards apply to things like sex and drugs, not war and peace, not compassion. There are no standards, there is only power and expediency (but just for the hell of it, we'll call that morality). A person who believes that whatever he does is good, simply by virtue of the fact that he is the one doing it, is not shameable. He's made himself into a little god, and a god is never embarrassed.

Never mind. Tune them out. I've been thinking a lot lately about Dorothy Day's admonition to pay no attention to the trappings of the cold war: the bomb shelters, the scrambling under desks, the fear. She believed that ordinary people had a weapon against the powerful: our refusal to let them prepare us mentally for nuclear war, our refusal to accept the premise that it was survivable.

I started thinking about Dorothy during that silly moment when the administration was trying to get everyone focused on how to survive a terrorist attack. My first thought was that Dorothy would not have bought plastic sheeting and duct tape. My second was that when Bush and Ashcroft were still children -- hard as it is to imagine John Ashcroft ever having been a child -- she already understood how powerful people used fear as a means of control. My third -- after Americans virtually laughed duct tape out of existence -- was that Dorothy would have been proud of us. One of our finer moments, really.

But I think there's another mental game they're playing with us, in addition to the manipulation of fear. It is extremely important to them that we all buy the notion that might makes right, that power is all that matters. If you don't believe that, be prepared to be called naive, unpatriotic, perhaps even immoral. (I think the reasoning behind the immorality part is that unless you are willing to blow people up in support of your values, you clearly don't have any, or at least the aren't very important to you; your values are what you are willing to kill for -- but I'm probably not the best person to explain the reasoning of people whose highest value is power. Ask Richard Perle.)

Leaning on Dorothy's example, I'd say that anyone who reasserts that we have a Constitution and we plan to keep it, and that international law and global institutions may be weak, but they are meaningful, and could be -- must be -- made more so, and that, no, God is not on your side, it is you who have a duty to be on God's (and no, those are not the same thing.), anyone who affirms those things is making it harder to turn this country into a ruthless empire.

I got an e-mail from a lovely gentleman this morning telling me that the "damn liberals" have to learn one thing: "You have no control." Fighting back starts with not believing that. Fighting back starts with trying to figure out what Dorothy Day would have told him about how much control we really do have.

UPDATE: Lisa English polishes off Perle.

I assume this combination fell together accidentally, but it's interesting nonetheless.

The Washington Post, like a lot of newspapers on line, puts links to articles related to the one you're reading on the side. After reading this article -- Mexican President Says He Is Against War In Iraq -- at the bottom of the page, you come to a "related" series on "Mexican justice," or the lack of it.

I kept staring at the links, and then poking around, reading a few of the articles, wondering why someone at the WP thought the fact that the rule of law does not function particularly well in Mexico was relevant to the president's position on Iraq.

I'm sure I'm wondering about nothing (I tend to do that), and that the series happened to be what the Post had on hand about Mexico. Still, I couldn't help but think that if I supported this war, I might look at those articles and think, what right does the president of a country where they practice torture, throw children and poor people convicted of minor crimes into brutal jails, rarely investigate, let alone prosecute, rapes, and where burying a man alive can pass for justice -- what right does he have to suggest that what the United States is doing is wrong?

But I don't support the war, and I don't believe that a list of horrors that take place in a country tells me much of anything about the ethcial standards of the country, and so I just find it momentarily fascinating that first, the horrible stories I'm reading about Mexico look an awful lot like the stories I've been reading from the Muslim world the past two years (and which I've been told are unique to the Muslim world), and second, that I've moved rapidly from thinking about a war that is supposedly designed to bring democracy to a country, to a demonstration of how difficult democracy is to achieve.

(Via Sisyphus)

The rich history of "supporting the troops" but not their orders

What's next? I'm still too numb to think about it. I'm hoping that all the best case scenarios come true, that "shock and awe" was a bluff, that the humanitarian groups were overly pessimistic. I'm praying for miracles. It can happen. I'm not praying that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell and Rice will grow consciences. Some things are so beyond the possibility of miracle, it would be presumptuous to ask for them.

Patrick, Tim, and Chris are thinking more clearly about the future than I am.

UPDATE: You know what I kind of fumbled around saying about how praying for some miracles seems presumptious? I said it really badly. If I had said it well it would have come out like this.

Nathan and Barry both have more thoughtful commentary on the death of Rachel Corrie. I also received two letters in response to my comments that I think should be heard:

March 18, 2003

Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine

Many of you will of heard varying accounts of the death of Rachel Corrie, maybe others will have heard nothing of it. Regardless, I was 10 metres away when it happened 2 days ago, and this is the way it went down.

Rachel Corrie, 23, Killed by Israeli Bulldozer

We'd been monitoring and occasionally obstructing the 2 bulldozers for about 2 hours when one of them turned toward a house we knew to be threatened with demolition.  Rachel knelt down in its way.  She was 10-20 metres in front of the bulldozer, clearly visible, the only object for many metres, directly in its view. The Israelis were in radio contact with a tank that had a profile view of the situation.  There is no way she could not have been seen by them in their elevated cabin.

They knew where she was, there is no doubt.

The bulldozer drove toward Rachel slowly, gathering earth in its scoop as it went. She knelt there, she did not move. The bulldozer reached her and she began to stand up, climbing onto the mound of earth. She appeared to be looking into the cockpit. The bulldozer continued to push Rachel, so she slipped down the mound of earth, turning as she went. Her faced showed she was panicking and it was clear she was in danger of being overwhelmed.  All the activists were screaming at the bulldozer to stop and gesturing to the crew about Rachel's presence. We were in clear view as Rachel had been, they continued.

They pushed Rachel, first beneath the scoop, then beneath the blade, then continued till her body was beneath the cockpit. They waited over her for a few seconds, before reversing. They reversed with the blade pressed down, so it scraped over her body a second time. Every second I believed they would stop but they never did.

I ran for an ambulance, she was gasping and her face was covered in blood from a gash cutting her face from lip to cheek. She was showing signs of brain hemorrhaging.  She died in the ambulance a few minutes later of massive internal injuries. She was a brilliant, bright and amazing person, immensely brave and committed.  She is gone and I cannot believe it.

The group here in Rafah has decided that we will stay here and continue to oppose human rights abuses as best we can.

Sincerely,

Tom

(Forwarded by John Steppling)

I have been reading your blog with much admiration and appreciation for the last few months.  It is what I believe blogs are supposed to be: a space for reflection, conversation, deep exchange, in short a place of education.  As a disheartened former university professor who has been on the front lines of the decline of thinking and learning, I'm especially grateful to find a place where that process I hold so dear is being nurtured.

So first, thank you.

Yesterday you wrote something that I felt I had to respond to, however:

"Barry wrote a second piece about the death of Rachel Corrie yesterday, this time about an issue that I think is terribly important. So many people have focused on the guilt or innocence of the driver whose bulldozer ran over her. But I don't think anyone really believes that the driver deliberately murdered a young woman. It was, almost surely, a horrible accident, and I'm sure the driver responsible is suffering enormously, and deserves more sympathy than blame."

I've italicized the sentence that prompts me to write to you.  It's actually very easy for me to believe that the driver deliberately murdered a young woman in that context. My ability to believe this does not come from some deeply -seated anti-Semitism or from a rabidly pro-Palestinian position.  You put into words part of why it is easy for me to believe this:
 
One of the saddest things about living in a militaristic society is the way its values feed some of the ugliest human instincts. You have to turn off something decent and caring inside yourself in order to go to war without going mad. That's true, I think, even for decent people fighting an unavoidable war. It is even more true of an illegal and unjustifiable war. A conscience just gets in a bully's way.

This post of yours so crystallized for me what's wrong and frightening about our contemporary situation.   When you commented on what a culture of militarism does to our values and how it gives space and license for the unimaginable in basically decent folks to be released, you've echoed one of the organizing principles of the anti-militarization movement.   It's that recognition that has frightened me about the move to the right in US society over the course of my adult life.  The escalation of that process post 9/11 is what has prompted me to seek solutions and sanity. 

It's a bad, hideous, frightening, dangerous component of current US culture.  From what I understand, however, in Israel that same movement is even more developed, it's sharper.  I would encourage you to explore the websites and work of various Israeli peace groups (many of which are women-led and feminist inspired) like New Profile, Women in Black and Coalition of Women for Peace who are vigilant in articulating and trying to counter the militarization of not only the culture and the society in Israel, but also the spirit.  Part of the contribution of the peace work that people like Rachel Corrie are engaging in, is to highlight the process and the consequences of the dehumanization of Palestinians by the IDF.  (We see a similar cultural process in the US when cases of Police shootings/beatings of young men of color are reported.  Remember Amidou Diallo and the acquittal of the officers who shot him?...)  After the incursions into the West Bank and the near destruction of the Jenin camp and Ramallah last April, one of the lesser publicized but incredibly telling details of the carnage left in the IDF wake, was for me, the descriptions of homes, schools, offices smeared with urine and feces, (the soldiers defecated on children's art work!).  That was a line that was crossed, a signal of something omnious.  I felt enormous foreboding as I read those details.  I feared, not only for Palestinians, but for our collective sanity and humanity.

That process of dehumanization and its consequences has increased exponentially in the current IDF incursions and Operations.  There are countless documentations of this, so I'll spare you that. It is, in fact, one of the reason so many reservists and young conscripts have refused to complete their military service in these Territories.  Not only are they refusing to do these things to fellow human beings, but they also refuse to become so dehumanized and desensitized themselves.  Rachel Corrie's death has to be understood in that context, I think.  If we begin to understand precisely those dangers of living in a militaristic society and how they work not only on the bodies and lives of marginalized people, but also on our own values and our consciousness, then its not so hard to believe that he may have deliberately killed her.  Not due to any kind of "inherent evil" but a specifically produced context of values and structure of feeling that makes killing her, if not the right thing to do, then an understandable thing to do. 

The vicious comments and even the satirical comments that she "had it coming" somehow, are also part of the production of that context and structure.  While I'm often torn, because I don't even want to grant them any attention, the degree to which they help to produce the very thing they are making fun of, I often feel the need to counter not so much the comments themselves, but that process.
 
One last thing -- I met Rachel Corrie's parents the other night.  I was at a vigil called in her memory before the Israeli Embassy here in Washington, DC and her parents came.  They spoke with every person who was at that vigil (at least 100 people) and accepted their condolences.  But they also thanked everyone, not just for coming and expressing sympathies, but for understanding why she died and what her work meant.  There are very few occasions in my life where I have witnessed such grace, courage and wisdom up close.  I will never accept a characterization that this young woman was naive, foolish, or did not understand what she was doing. After meeting her parents that's impossible to believe. It's very clear that she knew the risks, understood the need, and chose to act on a very informed basis.  That's not foolishness, it's courage.  Our military would call it making "the ultimate sacrifice". And I was able to thank her parents for the gift to all of us that their daughter's life was.

Warmest regards,

Lane Browning

Quote
Kip: "I know enough to know the struggle for peace isn’t over. It has just begun. Just barely begun. Embarking on a war, someone said somewhere at some point, is like entering a dark room; there’s no way of knowing what will come. So curse the darkness—repudiate it, spit in its face, drag your heels against the hands that pull you into it, curse it—but light a candle, too. (You can do both.) Light a candle. Speak out. Forgive us all our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, but write the fall of every bomb on your heart, and never forget: Never again. Swear it."

A plague on both their houses (and locusts, while you're at it)
Julia: "Saddam Hussein is hoping that the world is too concerned about innocent civilians to hold him to account. George Bush is hoping that America is too concerned about our soldiers to hold him to account."

Quote
"Imagine how it would feel if we could be on a path of increasing compassion, diminishing brutality, diminishing greed -- I think it might actually feel wonderful to be alive." -- Wallace Shawn

The whole thing is thoughtful, honest, despairing, inspiring and humane.

198 Methods of Nonviolent Action

I've gotten far more mail today than I normally get -- mostly from people just saying, "Thank you." For nothing. Just thank you for writing. I'm not sure why.

I apologize if I don't answer it all. There really are more letters than I can respond to, although believe me, I do appreciate them.

But reading all this very kind mail on an edgy and horrible day has me wondering. I wrote below about war bringing out some of the worst sides of people. But I wonder if maybe it brings out something good, too -- kind and generous instincts, some deep-down belief that through small, individual actions we can begin to heal the world. There seem to be an awful lot of people who've decided to be generous to someone (me) today.

Thank you, everybody. And you're welcome.

UPDATE: This really is "Be Kind To Jeanne" Day, isn't it? Thanks, Devra.

"If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later." -- Mohandas Gandhi

My local newspaper crossed a line. Yesterday (or maybe it was the day before, I'm not sure, bits of news and information just seem to be tumbling over each other lately), they printed a letter from someone complaining about another letter, which had mentioned Iraqi children. Yesterday's writer was outraged by the mention of those children. They are a gun pointed right at us, she said. We need to kill them all before they get a chance to grow up and kill us.

They've printed nasty letters before, God knows. For several months at the end of 2001, I stopped looking at the letter page entirely, because there were so many graphic calls for vengeance -- a pornography of violence, painful to read. I also feel that no one should be held to account for anything they say when something so horrible happens that grief and fear and anger can't even be peeled apart. As far as I'm concerned, everybody gets a pass on anything stupid, mean, hateful, or bad in any other way, that they said in the last four months of 2001. Even Ann Coulter. (Okay, maybe not Ann Coulter -- fashioning your anger into a good career move is evil.) Some people are at their best during times of tragedy, but I think to demand that grieving, frightened, confused people be at their best is too much to ask. So the less I know about the stupid things people said, the better.

But this is different.

I'm not surprised that there are Americans who believe their safety lies in the deliberate murder of children. I spend too much time on the internet to be surprised by that. I am stunned that the newspaper in this gentle town would publish a letter demanding those murders. I wrote a letter complaining about it, but I doubt it will have any effect. (Well, not on the newspaper anyway. Writing it made me feel stronger, although I'm not sure that matters.) There's a deeper problem when even reasonable people don't immediately recognize that there are levels of hatred we can't put in a newspaper as if they were part of civilized people's range of opinion. If glorying in children's deaths sneaks across the boundary line dividing the monstrous from what is considered acceptable, what's next? Once a boundary like that has been crossed, just saying, "Don't do that again," doesn't even approach being a strong enough reaction.

I find myself wondering if the woman who wrote that letter used to be a decent person -- or perhaps, in some ways, still is.

***************************

Barry wrote a second piece about the death of Rachel Corrie yesterday, this time about an issue that I think is terribly important. So many people have focused on the guilt or innocence of the driver whose bulldozer ran over her. But I don't think anyone really believes that the driver deliberately murdered a young woman. It was, almost surely, a horrible accident, and I'm sure the driver responsible is suffering enormously, and deserves more sympathy than blame.

And yet, it was not really an accident. As Barry points out, it's the inevitable result of a long history of disregard for human life. (And, it has to be added, coming from people whose own lives have been monstrously devalued.) Once you start down that path, the deaths that result aren't accidental, even though there's no individual you can pin the blame on.

An Israeli tank came to Rachel Corrie's memorial service yesterday. Israeli forces fired teargas and stun grenades to break up the service. A convoy of vehicles -- including the bulldozer that killed Rachel -- passed by. A witness said he was fairly certain it wasn't a deliberate attempt to disrupt the service. The convoy was on a job, destroying building somewhere else, and passed that spot by coincidence. They didn't choose to be there, but that doesn't make it an accident.

***************************

"The inevitable deforming of the personalities of decent guys, for what one hopes is a temporary period, is one of the chief moral reasons why one should never fight "optional wars." -- Jim Henley

***************************

Easter is a celebration of new life. Resurrection, if you will. (The return of the earth to life, if you won't.) Where do machine guns, grenades, and knives fit in?

***************************

To this day, no one knows how many Iraqis died in Gulf War I. Estimates range from 2,500 to more than 200,000. Among the problems in coming up with a reliable number is the fact that the number depends on when you stop counting. If someone dies years after the war because an illness they develop that they wouldn't have developed if it hadn't been for a water-treatment plant destroyed during the war, does that count? Or is it an accident?

Something goes horribly wrong when you don't even ask that question.

***************************

I would not put it past Saddam Hussein to launch an attack on Iraqis, and blame it on the US. But there is something twisted and strange about looking for a culprit before you have a crime. It's worrisome as well. What are you capable of if, before you begin, you give yourself absolution.

***************************

One of the worst aspects of war, as Jim Henley says, is the "deforming of the personalities of decent guys." I wonder if the flip side is true, and everything people do to hang on to human decency, to keep from becoming immune to horror, is a step out of the cycle.

It gets lonely being a Southern Baptist, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to make much difference what the clergy think: People who attend church regularly are more likely to approve of going to war than people who don't.

"France's role in blocking a credible U.N. disarmament program was shameful." -- Thomas Friedman

Maybe. But could we spare a little blame for the country that did everything it could think of to politicize and undercut the inspections process? I think that might also qualify as "blocking a credible U.N. disarmament program.

Am I missing something, or is it shocking that the president asks one of his top military advisors for an estimate of how long a war with Iraq will take and Donald Rumsfeld tells the general not to answer the president's question? What, he doesn't want the president to worry his pretty little head with messy details?

Rumsfeld sees this sort of action as reasserting civilian control over the military which supposedly "eroded during the Clinton administration," but when did civilian control over the military translate into, "When planning a war, pay no attention to what the military says. We know more about how to run a war than they do."

Eskimos have -- what? -- 500 different words for snow? Members of this administration must have at least that many euphemisms to express its arrogance. I suppose it's all a matter of what's important to you.

UPDATE: I'm informed by someone who obviously knows a great deal more about it than I do, that people in the far north have, at most, about a dozen words for snow. As far as I know, no one has yet tried to count Donald Rumsfeld's arrogant euphemisms or twists of language.

Salon has a must-read article on how -- strange as it may seem -- companies with close ties to the Bush adminstration are going to make a great deal of money out of Saddam's defeat. There's an interesting prediction in the article that Halliburton won't receive the first contract for rebuilding, because that would be so outrageous, even the Bush Leagues wouldn't have the nerve to try it. A year ago, I would have bought that. Now I think they'd sell their souls and say Jesus told them to do it.

UPDATE Via Matthew Yglesias, the Wall Street Journal has more on the "audacious" and corporate-friendly plan to destroy and then rebuild Iraq.

European officials, and even some prominent Iraqi dissidents, have reacted to the current U.S. plans with disbelief. They charge that efforts to keep the U.N. and non-U.S. contractors on the sidelines will delay reconstruction in Iraq and stir deeper ill will toward Washington. Some U.S. humanitarian groups charge the Bush administration has downplayed the difficulty of the postwar work in the hopes of scoring some quick public-relations points.

And Digby...well just go read.

F.A.I.R. has documented something that's been obvious for a long time: Television news is downplaying the civilian deaths and humanitarian disaster that are coming in Iraq. The UN and human rights and humanitarian aid groups have repeatedly warned that no one is ready to deal with the enormous amount of civilian suffering that could be created by this war -- the hunger, the lack of potable water, the refugees and asylum seekers. The networks have failed to report any of these warnings.

When they mention the possibility of civilian deaths at all, it's only to provide cover -- before the fact -- to the military. And so there have been reports about the warm and fuzzy Pentagon's "growing concerns" about enormous civilian casualties, stories about the difficult job the military will have playing both soldier and humanitarian, as well as reminders -- before anything has even happened, mind you -- that any deaths will be either accidental, or the fault of Saddam Hussein. It's an interesting point of view for someone trained as a journalist to take: We don't have to wait until something happens to investigate the cause because even before it happens, we know that it will be either an accident or someone else's fault. The Pentagon told us so.

Predicting ahead of time that civilians will die when you drop bombs on them is probably stretching the definition of accident a little too far.

A related issue the networks aren't interested in is the frustration of aid groups with what they see as an attempt by the military to make them into the "happy face" of an invasion, and with the Bush administration's plans to ignore experienced development NGOs and give money for much of the work that those groups would normally do to friends and contributors. The administration is offering $50 million dollars to aid groups (those who will take it -- many won't, with the strings attached), and $1.5 billion to private companies (the latter figure could rise as high as $30 billion over the next 3 years).

In Afghanistan, women are being imprisoned for things like running away from an arranged marriage, or marrying for a second time. Afghans are struggling to create a constitution that meets international standards of human rights, within the context of a male-dominated culure that holds little respect for the rights of women. Meanwhile, at the US Air Force Academy, 56 rapes and sexual assaults have been investigated in the last ten years (and that's an improvement -- they didn't bother to keep records of sexual assaults for the first twenty years after women were admitted.) The victims describe a male-dominated culture that protects rapists, and intimidates women, discouraging them from going public with their complaints. What do these two stories have in common? No hurry. Take your time. Nothing's going to change for awhile. You have plenty of time to think about your answer.

Sunday's NY Times had one in what seems to be a continuing series of articles lying about American involvement in Iraq in the '80s -- or at least twisting the truth by omission. The latest installment noted that Iraq had identified an American biological supply house and a French scientific institute as sources of all the germ samples it used to create its biological weapons. The article also reminded readers of something the Times had previously reported: that the suppliers for Iraq's nerve gas and chemical weapons were several European companies and two small, now defunct American companies.

But last year, the Washington Post reported that weapons inspectors in Iraq after the Gulf War compiled lists of foreign suppliers that included names of far from small, and far from defunct companies like Union Carbide and Honeywell. The Washington Times reported that more than 30 companies -- including 10 American companies -- helped Iraq build its nuclear program. A German newspaper - Die Tageszeitung specifically identified 12 American companies -- including Unisys, Hewlitt-Packard, and Dupont -- that helped Iraq with its nuclear weapons program, in addition to the single American company the NYT identifies as the source of germ samples, and one of the two companies (Alcolac) that the NYT named as providers of chemicals. The world, including the US, created Iraq's arsenal.

The NYT isn't flat out lying. Their report on who helped with chemical and biological weapons matches up with the list in Die Tageszeitung (in fact, the Times includes an American company that it claims helped with the chemical weapons program -- Al Haddad -- which I can't find on the German paper's list). But it's omitting names of companies that helped with nuclear weapons and conventional weapons, as well as the missiles capable of carrying biological warheads. Not a lie, but the narrow focus gives a very misleading impression of the extent of our responsibility for Saddam's arsenal.

The Other War

(shhhhh....the one we're not supposed to mention)

The good news is that al Qaeda's leadership might be on the verge of collapse. The bad news is war with Iraq is turning out to be a great recruiting tool (not much of a surprise there), particularly in Pakistan (remember them -- the ones who actually do have nuclear weapons?), where anti-American groups are calling for nuclear attacks on American warships in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the once secular Iraq itself is turning increasingly to an intolerant brand of faith that may mean Islamist anger is another problem we'll have to deal with in a post-war Iraq -- within the country as well as outside it. One more headache for the new (unelected -- no surprises there, either) president of Iraq -- George Bush.

One of the saddest things about living in a militaristic society is the way its values feed some of the ugliest human instincts. You have to turn off something decent and caring inside yourself in order to go to war without going mad. That's true, I think, even for decent people fighting an unavoidable war. It is even more true of an illegal and unjustifiable war. A conscience just gets in a bully's way.

Read Tbogg on the reaction of coldly vicious people to the horrible death of Rachel Corrie. Those people were always mean. But in Bush's America, they're encouraged to tell themselves that their ugliness is noble. But sadder still is the fact that even good, caring, and intelligent people let their best instincts slip under current conditions, and try to tell themselves that other human beings don't really matter much. Monkey Media Report explains.

After you read that, go to Counterspin and Alas and say a prayer of thanks for people hanging on to human decency in an age that so devalues it.

UPDATE Amnesty International condemned the killing of Rachel Corrie and called for an independent investigation of her death. They renewed a call for the US to suspend transfers to Israel of military equipment which have been used to commit human rights abuses, and argued that because Rachel Corrie was an American citizen, the US government has a special responsibility to see that her death is properly investigated.

Looking for Alternatives

Part I: Chekhov's Gun and Pirandello's President
Part II: Michael Walzer's Off-Ramp
Part III: Tyrants and Reckless Drivers

Part IV: Sojourner's Truth (Which Might Turn Out To Be Nothing But A Rant)

This could easily be the most pointless thing I've ever written. I'm writing about looking for alternatives to war on what is clearly the eve of a war. I have no idea where this is going.

On Friday, I decided I wasn't going to post anything over the weekend, because I wanted to take some time to think and write about Sojourner Magazine's Alternative to War for Defeating Saddam Hussein, which I mentioned last week. It's a difficult piece for me to write about. (A curious slip: I first typed that it was a "difficult peace" to write about -- which could not be more true, and which is, in strange essence, the topic of this post.)

I thought it was an interesting and worthwhile proposal, although with some pretty obvious flaws. In fact, I'd known about the proposal for quite awhile, but didn't mention it because of those flaws. It's extremely sketchy for one thing -- which is probably inevitable considering that it covers a lot of ground, and yet is only long enough to point in the direction of a different road, not to map out the details. But nevertheless, that sketchiness opens it up to the charge that it's not well-considered. Moreover, I was pretty sure it would seem naive to most people. The way it's written, it doesn't take into account that we live in a world of cynics and people who can't even imagine that anything can be accomplished without violence (even though, again and again, it has been), and who, oddly enough, think that mental limitation makes them smarter than everybody else. (Those are the nice people. The not so nice ones are those who call you names and threaten you for daring to consider the possibility that anything could be accomplished without violence. It's astonishing how threatening non-violence is to some people.)

After I wrote about Michael Walzer's and Jessica Tuchman Mathews' proposals for a tighter weapons embargo and stronger inspections, I realized that eventually I was going to have to write about the Sojourner's piece, because while part of it -- the part that comes closest to being a realistic "proposal" -- simply picks up on and summarizes Walzer and Mathews (another source is Winning Without War (pdf.), by David Cortright, George Lopez, and Alistair Millar, which is a far more detailed look at the options for tightening the weapons embargo), it also goes beyond their proposals in ways that I think are important to talk about.

But, to be honest, over the weekend I lost interest in writing about it as the news seemed to get worse and worse. And then, this morning:

• Leaders Declare That Diplomatic Effort at the UN Ends Today
  
  
• In Kuwait, Commander Tells Fighters War May Be 'Just a Few Days Away'
  
  
• UN Says Staff Could Be Evacuated In Less Than 48 Hours
  
  
• NBC, ABC Pull Reporters From Baghdad
  
  
• With War Imminent, UN Inspectors Leave Iraq
  
  
• UN's Blix Says Iraq War Looks Likely
  
  
• Baghdad Girds For Battle

Not a lot of ambiguity there. Under the circumstances, what's the point of writing about alternatives to war? Hell, I'm just a citizen of this country. I don't even own a single oil well. Why would anyone care what I think?

Get the little one to school, wash the breakfast dishes, grab the iPod, slap on headphones and go for a walk in the hills War. War on War. Happiness Is A Warm Gun. Masters of War. Bad Moon Rising. Only A Pawn In Their Game. Even my iPod is bugging me today, trying to make me feel powerless, and I'm starting to think I'm getting too old to climb hills. But it rained hard yesterday, and today is beautiful. The storm knocked out the power in a lot of places, but today the hills are a green you rarely see around here. It always amazes me how suddenly brown hills turn green, with just the tiniest encouragement. A regularly occurring miracle. California has two seasons -- brown and green. We haven't had enough rain this year, but today we're emerald.

Unfortunately, that green doesn't seem to be a sign of anything hopeful.

Bob Marley carries me up the trail.

Won't you help me sing, these songs of freedom...

The hills around here, the morros, are green and rocky, made of congealed lava, their beauty shaped by violent old eruptions. You start out on a pleasant green trail and before long realize it's going to be a lot harder than you expected.

Wondering: Is it just me, or is it not possible to have a bad thought about humanity while listening to Louis Armstrong's trumpet?

Mahalia Jackson sings I Will Move On Up A Little Higher

This is what you see when you get a little way up. And this is the view from the top. I've never made it all the way to the top, but the journey's spectacular, even if you don't make it all the way.

I click over to the Billie playlist. And the mixture of sadness and endurance in her voice is perfect.

Yes, the strong gets more, while the weak ones fade...

I've often wondered about that lyric. Who's the strong and who's the weak? Billie Holiday, broken and tough, shifts between categories, finding strength in what knocks her down. Her saddest songs are also some of her most defiant.

Last week, I linked to a speech by a former assistant Secretary General from the time of the UN's origins, who suggested that what is unique about this moment in history is not that some leaders are determined to wage war for wealth and empire -- Good Lord, how old is that? -- but that virtually the whole world is against it, and not afraid to say so. People -- a lot of people -- are looking for alternatives. Their ears and minds are open. They're ready for a conversation.

And that's what's valuable about the religious initiative. It opens the conversation.

Part of the initiative, the immediately "practical" part, adds nothing to Walzer or Mathews, although it introduces their ideas to normal human beings (the kind without blogs and political obsessions), who are more comfortable with the language of "moral dilemma" than of VX and MOAB and Resolution whatever. Getting people who care more about ethics than politics involved is a good thing. A lot of them have been absent for a long time, and we've missed them.

As I suggested when I was writing about Walzer, plugging leaks in the monitoring system that still allows weapons-related materials into Iraq, and allowing inspectors to destroy anything banned that the Iraqis themselves don't destroy (or order airstrikes to destroy it) accomplishes what we say we want to accomplish, without a war, or at least with only as much violence as is absolutely necessary for the task. You could, reasonably, stop right there if you're looking for an alternative.

Nobody's looking for an alternative.

Stocks Surge As Start of War Seems More Certain

Sweet Jesus. Don't hit us over the head with the irony, huh? A modest rise would have been obvious enough.

But it's worth talking about anyway -- an alternative, I mean -- because this is about more than ensuring that a madman is disarmed. The question is, what is it about?

Read Salam's rant again, because he's saying something that ought to strike deep: The world screwed up. Badly. The world -- both the US and the UN -- didn't care about human rights or the violations of the arms embargo until all of a sudden it decided it had to solve those problems instantly, in the worst possible way -- by bombing Iraq.

I think Salam is actually much too kind. It wasn't a matter of not dealing with a problem. It was a matter of creating a problem, because there were profits to be made, and games of power politics to play. And the absolutely outrageous thing about this whole situation -- the reason I'm so angry that I'm not sure any of this is making any sense -- is that the people who have suffered from this lousy arrangement for their entire lifetimes (and that includes middle-aged people, because Saddam was as much a menace when he was Ronald Reagan's buddy -- and earlier, when the CIA was giving him lists of Communists and leftists to kill -- as he was when he became George Bush's enemy) are going to suffer more, and the people who created the problems will get fat contracts to carry them into happy retirement and have plenty of blood money left over to pass on to their children. Round and round it goes, them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose -- and I find it hard to be as sanguine about it as Billie.

I'm 50 years old, and the insanity of that cycle has never been more obvious in my lifetime. That's why, on a single day, more than 12 million people, roughly a million of them Americans, said no.

There is, almost certainly, no more "alternative" to this war. There's an alternative to the next one. There's a way to break the cycle. It's not carefully mapped out because nobody's cared enough to map it before now. A lot of people care right now. And it's time to begin drawing the map. The Sojourner piece talks about using international tribunals and non-violent resistance and humanitarian aid and dealing with the roots of problems before they rot. They talk about trying new ways because the bankruptcy of what's been tried in the past has never been clearer.

I don't know exactly what will work. I know exactly what won't work -- all the bullshit that's been tried. Letting people create problems and then paying them to clean them up. Bombing people into democracy. No more.

Go read Where Is Raed? Now. Please.

Pass it on...

Let your church know: The Alternative to War For Defeating Saddam Hussein, which is being promoted by the Christian social justice magazine Sojourners, is available free (or at minimal cost if you need more than 100 copies) in a Sunday church bulletin format here.

These blogs are about as different from one another as it is possible to be -- from in-your-face to scholarly to quiet religious reflection. (You'll have to read them to find out which is which.) The only thing they have in common is that I like them all and am adding them to the blogroll:

Little Red Cookbook

Annatopia

Amitai Etzioni Notes

Muslim Wake Up!

Eszter's Blog

De spectaculus

Not For Sheep

Interesting Monstah

Shock & Awe

Hegemoney

"The aggregate quantity of crisis in the world appears to have surpassed the information-processing capacities of both the US government and the world's media organizations." -- Matthew Yglesias

Having gone to Berkeley, not Harvard, I'd just say, "Shit, things are so fucked up nobody can tell his ass from a hole in the ground." But I have to admit, I envy Matt's classy way with words. (Although shouldn't that be crises?)

Some inspiration for weary and discouraged peacemakers:

Dr. Robert Muller, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, now Chancellor emeritus of the University of Peace in Costa Rica was one of the people who witnessed the founding of the U.N. and has worked in support of or inside the U.N. ever since. Recently he was in San Francisco to be honored for his service to the world through the U.N. and through his writings and teachings for peace. At age eighty, Dr. Muller surprised, even stunned, many in the audience that day with his most positive assessment of where the world stands now regarding war and peace.

............edit...........

"I'm so honored to be here," he said. "I'm so honored to be alive at such a miraculous time in history. I'm so moved by what's going on in our world today."

Dr. Muller proceeded to say, "Never before in the history of the world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war".

............edit...........

We, the world community, are waging peace. It is difficult, hard work. It is constant and we must not let up. It is working and it is an historic milestone of immense proportions. It has never happened before -- never in human history -- and it is happening now -- every day, every hour -- waging peace through a global conversation. He pointed out that the conversation questioning the validity of going to war has gone on for hours, days, weeks, months and now more than a year, and it may go on and on.

............edit...........

"So this," he said, "is a miracle. This is what "waging peace " looks like."

No matter what happens, history will record that this is a new era, and that the 21st century has been initiated with the world in a global dialogue looking deeply, profoundly and responsibly as a global community at the legitimacy of the actions of a nation that is desperate to go to war.

............edit...........

Now, Dr. Muller asserts, there are two superpowers: the United States and the merging, surging voice of the people of the world.

(READ THE WHOLE THING)

I love Dr. Muller non-Pollyannish optimism. For me, it offers an important reminder that no matter what happens, the work you do in the cause of peace and justice is not wasted.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners has published his proposal for a way to disarm Saddam and remove him from power without war, which I mentioned yesterday (and plan to write more about soon), as an op-ed in today's Washington Post. Sojourners has a page where you can send a copy of the essay to Bush, Blair and Kofi Annan (and download a PDF version to print and distribute) here.

UPDATE: The plan has won the coveted Max Sawicky seal of approval, but Matthew Yglesias says it's a plan for war, not peace. I disagree, but I'll have to come back to the issue later.

The BBC, the NYT, the Guardian, and the Sydney Morning Herald have all recently had good articles on aid agencies' attempts to prepare for a looming humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The UN put out an appeal for $120 million -- which is probably a conservative estimate of what they need -- and at the moment, with war imminent, have only a quarter of that amount. The head of the International Rescue Committee has complained that the way the US has merged military and humanitarian efforts is already obstructing the NGOs efforts by keeping vital information classified.

I'll get you, my pretty...and your little farm workers, astronauts, military bases, and oil contracts, too.
Bush and Company pressured Mexico over their Security Council vote on war. Okay, maybe "pressured" is too mild a word for warning that your citizens might be in danger if you don't vote our way. Try threatened. Okay, maybe bullied. They tried it again with Germany. The latest victim is Russia, which was threatened with loss of space, security and energy co-operation, as well as the loss of "economic opportunities in liberated Iraq."

One Moscow analyst noted that Putin would have preferred bribes to threats. Ah well, live and learn.

If you want to, you can be just as cynical and opportunistic as Bush, Inc., even if you don't have quite as much cash available. For $5, you can place a bet on when the war will start. If you win, you get paid in gas. Seems appropriate.

Actually, it isn't really as cynical as some of the moves of our current administration. The proceeds (minus the twenty percent of the take that goes to the winner) will go to humanitarian groups helping civilians in Iraq. But there are probably better places to put your money.

The New York Times seems to have difficulty telling what's news and what isn't. Isn't news, by definition, new? I pick up a newspaper wanting to know what's changed since yesterday, what are the latest important developments. Paul Krugman zeroes in today on a development that a lot of bloggers have been writing about -- the "epidemic of epiphanies" in which former supporters of Bush's Iraq policy have publicly changed their minds. But the Times also has an article about liberal hawks, which is pretty much a short version of an article they ran in the NYT Magazine last year. Not that there aren't still "liberal hawks" around, and they aren't worth writing about, but the news is about what has changed, and what has changed is that their ranks have thinned. The Times betrays not the slightest awareness that things have shifted in any way since their magazine piece ran in December.

First John Ashcroft tries to make it harder for women fleeing violence and sexual slavery to claim asylum, then he does his level best to see that advocates for battered women are less effective. Do they, by any chance, need an attorney general in Saudi Arabia? Because we have one we'd like to get rid of.

Nah, never mind...women have enough problems over there.

UPDATE: Trish Wilson has more.

A brief history of American-sponsored "regime change" in Iraq

This isn't the first time we've tried regime change in Iraq. In 1963, the CIA helped out in a coup that overthrew Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who had deposed a Western-friendly Iraqi monarchy five years earlier. Our reasons for wanting Kassem out are familiar. He was determined to have enough arms to rival Israel. He threatened Western oil interests. He spoke openly of challenging America's dominance in the Middle East. And he was brutal. Britain and Israel supported American intervention. France and Germany opposed it.

One thing about Kassem was different from the current focus of regime change: He was mildly pro-Communist.

Among the Iraqis who shared America's fear that Kassem would turn Iraq into a Communist state was a young, low-level Ba'athist named Saddam Hussein, who was a frequent visitor to the American embassy. After the coup that toppled Kassem, Saddam worked as an enforcer for the Ba'athists, murdering hundreds of people -- mostly leftists and Communists -- who were considered dangerous to the Ba'ath takeover. The lists of people to eliminate were supplied by the CIA. As an attaché at the US embassy in Baghdad at the time explained: "The Ba'ath Party had come to control. We were very happy. They got rid of a lot of communists. A lot of them were executed, or shot. This was a great development."

The 1963 coup didn't bring the Ba'ath Party to power. That didn't happen until 1968, at a time when the Iraqi government had begun developing its own oil, and was edging toward giving the concessions for new oil fields to the USSR and France. The Ba'ath Party promised that if they took over power, they would give the concessions to the United States. Once again, the US helped the Ba'athists, who succeeded in taking over this time. Soon Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business in Baghdad.

The alliance didn't last long. Soon Saddam was demanding arms the US was unwilling to give, and he turned to the Soviet Union. Our monster wasn't ours any more.

So the last time we tried to change an unfriendly Iraqi regime, we ended up with Saddam Hussein. This time we're hoping things turn out better -- without much evidence to support that hope. In fact, according to a classified State Department report not only is it unlikely that democracy will take root after an American intervention, if it did, it would probably bring Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United States to power.

This cycle is getting old.

Looking for Alternatives

Part I: Chekhov's Gun and Pirandello's President
Part II: Michael Walzer's Off-Ramp

Part III: Tyrants and Reckless Drivers

John Steppling writes:

God, I have to comment on that piece in the NYRB since I got so mad reading it that I tore my otherwise good copy of the paper in half.

I returned from a debate last night where a similar question was asked: What to do with tyrants like Saddam if we don't overthrow them?  It's a basically imperialist question right from the start. What to do about China's warehousing of dissidents in mental hospitals, what to do about Israeli aggression and settlers, what to do about big oil polluting the coastlines of the world, what to do about America's 1644 nuclear warheads, what to do about reforming the UN, what to do about Mugabe and Charles Taylor and the slavery of diamond miners, what to do about the starving children of coffee growers in Central America. I mean, one can go on for a long while, but if Iraq had only asparagus to export we wouldn't be having this discussion.  The US armed Saddam in the 80s (remember those pesky 8,000 pages that got...uh...edited?) and they in a sense had both dogs in the fight during the Iran-Iraq war since Reagan had contacts with Iran (Iran-Contra came out of that). So I don't feel it's incumbent on me to have an exit strategy. How about just bring the troops home? How about just don't bomb and incinerate hundreds of thousands of civilians, and how about let's not contaminate the entire country for tens of decades with depleted uranium?

The right wingers, and even moderates, seem to think that if you oppose the war it's your job to answer all these questions, when it isn't. It's their job to explain why Saddam was sold anthrax and other germ agents. It's their job to explain why the budget for aid is around one billion and the budget for war is around one trillion. It's their job to explain the lack of evidence and outright lies of this administration (and Britain's). I didn't write the imperialist-minded policy papers (Richard Perle did, and so did Wolfowitz and others). I didn't call the rest of the globe "dark corners" -- that was Bush.

No, I don't need exit strategies. I want to stop a near genocidal blueprint in a country that hasn't attacked anyone, anyone in eleven years. Tyrants exist, and if we want to get rid of them then we need to support reform, everywhere, and to genuinely try exporting something besides business and corporate exploitation. There are no sound bite solutions to this. The whole system needs reform and re-thinking, but what nobody needs (except Halliburton and Lockheed-Martin) is this war.

Anyway, onward, JS

Gee, I wasn't having enough problems writing the next part of this series? Now you have to make me feel like the whole idea of doing it is stupid?

I'm kidding. Well, half kidding. I did have something in mind for a third post on the topic, and I started and tore up three versions of it yesterday. But after reading your letter, I think I'm beginning to figure out why it's giving me so much grief: I'm trying to argue two contradictory points at the same time. (Well, that's part of the problem. The other is that I'm not much of a manifesto writer. I can't lay things out in neat, simple lines -- unless I'm going for a joke. I prefer to throw around a lot of dumb and half-baked ideas and hope that eventually I stumble over a good one hidden among them.)

I mean, I agree with everything you said, and was writing something similar yesterday in my trashed drafts. You don't have to know how to drive to recognize that someone else is doing so recklessly, and telling a reckless driver to slow down and pull over before he hits someone is perfectly reasonable. This war is a horrible idea, and it will do great damage to this country, and to Iraq, as well as to the hope for effective international co-operation, and to the idea that the rule of law applies to everyone. That's a good enough reason to oppose it. And I don't think any opponent should feel a moral or practical responsibility to do any more than that.

I agree with you that prattling about how we should solve other people's problems is arrogant and imperialist on its face. And what's more, I resent having to answer George Bush's questions. This gang of bullies and clowns created the problems in the first place -- and made fortunes and careers off those problems. It's inevitable that not only will their "solutions" be stupid and self-serving, but that their very way of viewing the problem will be off-base.

And yet...

The possibility of someone like Saddam Hussein developing nuclear weapons is genuinely frightening, and I don't think it's an issue that can just be brushed aside. (The problem of keeping WMDs from insane religious fanatics -- other than our own home-grown insane religious fanatics who, unfortunately, already have them -- is also a problem. I think it's totally unrelated to Saddam, but an important issue nonetheless -- and one that we're ignoring while fixating on Saddam.) And the horror of life in Iraq is something people ought to care about. As well as the situations you mentioned in China, Zimbabwe, and Liberia (and many others). I suppose I'm in danger of getting sanctimonious here, but I just think it's in all of us to care about others, and our souls are in danger -- or our humanity, if you prefer, although I'll always see it as something holy -- if we turn that off.

Of course, our souls are probably even more in danger when we care only when it's convenient or, worse, lucrative. There's a temptation, when you witness the self-serving "compassion" emanating from this administration, to get angry about the hypocrisy, and then drop the subject, as if compassion itself couldn't be anything but hypocritical.

Maybe that's politically effective -- I don't know. Maybe -- if the only purpose is opposing the war -- it's more effective to point to the inconsistency, as proof that our ruling mafia doesn't care a fig for the things they say they care about. And I think that if someone asked me belligerently, "What would you do about Saddam Hussein?" I'd have the same response you did. A hostile question rarely deserves an honest answer. A hostile questioner usually can't hear an honest answer anyway. But I just feel that if you respond, "Well, what would you do about Robert Mugabe or Charles Taylor -- or oil companies that use slave labor and goon squads in Burma to get their pipelines built?" without genuinely caring about those horrors, caring enough to try to formulate some real answers yourself, you risk becoming nearly as cynical as Bush, Inc. You end up using people's suffering to score political points -- and that, to me, is unconscionable, whether it comes from the left or the right, and even if it is done in as good a cause as stopping an immoral war.

A few weeks ago, the Christian Science Monitor published an angry opinion piece by an Iraqi-American (unnamed because he has family in Iraq), asking anti-war protesters if they would care about human rights in Iraq after they managed to stop Bush's war. His questions were rhetorical and argumentative, and at times, it seemed to me, out of touch. How do you answer questions like these?

Will you demand that the United Nations send human rights inspectors to Iraq? Or are you only interested in weapons of "mass destruction" inspections, not of "mass torture" practices?

Will you also insist that such human rights inspectors be given time to discover Hussein's secret prisons and coercion as you do for the weapons inspectors? Or will you simply accept a "clean bill of health" if you can't find the thousands of buried corpses?

Will you pressure your own countries to host millions more Iraqi refugees (estimated now at 4 million) fleeing Hussein's brutality? Or will you prefer they stay in bondage?

Will you vigorously demand an international tribunal to indict Hussein's regime for crimes against humanity? Or will you simply dismiss him as "another" dictator of a "sovereign" country?

Will you question why Hussein builds lavish palaces while his people are suffering? Or will you simply blame it all on UN sanctions and US "hegemony?"

Will you decry the hypocritical oil and arms commerce of France, Germany, Russia, and China with the butcher of Baghdad? Or are you only against US interests in Iraqi oil?

Will you expose ethnic cleansing of native Iraqi non-Arabs (Kurds, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Turkomens), non-Sunni-Muslims (Shiite), and non-Muslims (Christians, Mandaens, Yezidis)? Or are these not equivalent to the cleansing of Bosnians and Kosovars?

Will you show concern about the brutal silencing of the "Iraqi street"? Or are you only worried about the orchestrated noises of "Arab and Islamist streets" outside Iraq?

Will you hear the cries of Iraqis executed in acid tanks in Baghdad? the Iraqi women raped in front of their husbands and fathers to extract confessions? Or of children tortured in front of their parents? Or of families billed for the bullets used to execute military "deserters" in front of their own homes?

Point me in the direction of the speeches George Bush has given demanding that human rights inspectors be sent to Iraq, or the genuine calls for an international tribunal to indict Saddam for war crimes (as opposed to vague promises to try him after we get rid of him, unless he wants to leave first, and then we'll just forget anyone ever mentioned the word "justice.") The people making those demands have been annoying liberals with their silly human rights values at Amnesty and HRW. And if George Bush gets his war, there will still -- I hope -- be a bunch of starry-eyed liberals demanding that the needs and rights of Iraqi citizens come before Halliburton's profits. How did things get so turned around that people like Cheney and Rumsfeld are viewed by some people as idealists, and you and I are the cynics?

The CSM piece disturbed me because the author has posed many questions about the motives and concerns of the antiwar movement that he thinks have obvious answers, and I feel equally certain that, at least for me, the answers are the opposite of what he thinks. But sometimes I'm not all that sure he's wrong about a lot of anti-war people. I mean, I accept that for some anti-war libertarians that's part of a consistent, principled position: It's the Iraqis' problem, it has nothing to do with us, and they have to solve it for themselves. I don't agree with that. I will never accept turning your back on massive human suffering. But I guess I understand it as a consistent point of view.

But I think that Iraqi author is right that there's at least a strain on the liberal side of the anti-war movement, that thinks war is the only thing that kills people, and will be perfectly satisfied if war is avoided, a side that wouldn't think much about Iraq after that. I think that's why left-wing cheering of France has bothered me for awhile (not as much as the stupid right-wing French bashing, but it has bothered me). The right is right that France has it's own business agenda, and it's no improvement on ours. I mean, the right-wing's reason for bringing all this up now is suspect and hypocritical as all get out (you can't criticize French oil interests without criticizing American as well, and vice versa), but so far I haven't seen anyone take down their argument. And if you mistrust it -- as, I have to admit, I do -- coming from the right, look at the HRW link above, which notes that when they attempted to bring a civil suit against Saddam at the World Court, they couldn't get a single European country to sign on, at least in part because countries were afraid they'd lose business opportunities after the sanctions were lifted. I've seen peace march signs that say, "France Is Right," and my take on that is, France is temporarily on the right side, but that doesn't make it right.

Okay, I wandered away from the topic, which was -- I think -- Michael Walzer's essay on alternatives to war and why, in some ways, even being asked to propose alternatives is offensive. I understand that, and in my heart I feel the same way, but if we acknowledge that the world figured out long ago that Saddam was a petty menace with a not utterly unrealistic ambition to be a bigger menace, and that it was important to control the weapons he could build, and that he wasn't going to give in easily to those controls -- and I don't think many people deny that -- then disarming Saddam (or, at least, assuring ourselves that he has been disarmed) is a problem we have to deal with. And I want to hear suggestions from people who have no financial interest in Iraq and no bizarre plans to rule the universe, because if honest people don't propose anything, then all the plans will be made by thugs.

Maybe they'll be made by thugs anyway, but we can try.

What I like about Walzer's proposal is, first, that it pins down the real problem -- or one of them anyway. There are really two problems -- weapons and human rights -- and Walzer only deals with the first. (And the same is true of Jessica Mathews' proposal, which is basically a more specific, fleshed out version of Walzer's). I think that's important -- pinning down the problem -- because the way Bush and Company have dealt with this, it has the stink of a solution in search of a problem. The reasons for war have shifted so often, sane people gave up on figuring them out long ago. Just by setting down what the real problem is, you stop jumping through Bush's hoops, and trying to respond to every garbage explanation he invents. I also think they're responsible proposals for dealing with that one immediate problem. They don't guarantee peace. If Saddam decides to fight it out no matter what, it could eventually lead to war -- but at that point he'd be weaker, and we'd have more support for that war. And we could legitimately say that we'd tried everything.

What I don't like about the proposals is that what they leave out tends to confirm that Bush and Company are right in the way they define the problem. And they're not. The problem is not weapons in the hands of an uncooperative brute, it's weapons -- period. And especially the godawful amount of money that's made from them, encouraging manufacturers to look for more and more markets, and buy politicians to help them create those markets, and not be terribly choosy about who they sell to. Well, the issue of weapons sprawl is a lot more complicated that that, but that'll have to do as a summary for now. But it's a bigger problem than Saddam Hussein, and it involves more powerful countries and companies, which makes it a lot harder to solve than the problem of a petty tyrant. I don't mind honing in on the single problem of this particular armed madman, as long as we all realize that even if we disarm him, we've barely nicked the real problem. And to deal with the real problem, we have to look a lot closer to home.

And then there's the fact that the "alternatives" ignore human rights, which brings me back to that nagging CSM piece. I mean, I don't know if it gets under everyone's skin, but it gets under mine. I take those questions quite seriously. (The author's attitude and assumptions annoy me, but I still take his questions seriously. So, I guess I was wrong: Sometimes hostile questions do demand and deserve a straight answer.) And I'm not going to be comfortable until I see an alternative that begins to deal with those problems. Bush's "solution" doesn't, but that doesn't mean it's not a real problem. I know sometimes there are problems with no solutions, but it doesn't mean I have to get comfortable with that.

And actually, there is another alternative out there which does at least attempt to deal with human rights problems -- An Alternative to War for Defeating Saddam Hussein: A Religious Initiative. But I've written way too much already, so I'll have to come back to that.

(To be continued)

The Washington Post has been doing a series on "The War on The Web," looking at how pro- and anti-war groups are using the internet to express their opinions. Today's installment contains an especially good collection of links to religious groups opposed to the war.

With all the bad news down coming down lately, a couple of pieces of glorious news certainly make this a time for a prayer of thanks: Elizabeth Smart, was found alive, and the Supreme Court halted the execution of a man who many people believe is innocent -- ten minutes before he was scheduled to die.

A Brazilian writer says "thank you" to George Bush.

Old Friends
Why do I have the feeling that when Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld get together they're not talking about football or what movies to see? They seem to have so many other interests in common. Smashing Iraq and then rebuilding it, for instance.



Trish Wilson has the story on ABB, an energy company with Swiss and Swedish branches, that had Donald Rumsfeld on its board of directors until 2001, when he stepped down to become Secretary of Defense.

Guess which company is in line for a $20 billion job building electrical power plants in Iraq.

That's not bad enough?

Guess which company is on the infamous list of American and foreign corporations that helped Iraq build its arsenal (the list that was conveniently excised from Iraq's weapons declaration).

That doesn't bother you?

Guess which company had a $200 million deal with Pyongyang, back in early 2000, to help build nuclear power stations in North Korea -- while Rumsfeld was on the board. The right wing never stops telling us that Clinton should never have let that happen. Are they going to lecture Rumsfeld about how wrong it was to make money off it?

You probably think you've heard everything there is to say on the subject of torture. But go read Noli Irritare Leones on the need to remember that we are human beings, and that there are limits to what we can do, and The Head Heeb on torture and the drug war.

The LA Times has a very good article today -- Gauging Promise of Iraqi Oil -- on the jockeying for position in post-war Iraq going on among oil companies -- American and foreign. It sounds, from the beginning, as if the Times has given up the struggle to make this administration appear less than venal:

Maybe it's a coincidence, but American and British oil companies would be long-term beneficiaries of a successful military offensive led by the United States and Britain to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Industry officials say Hussein's ouster would help level the playing field for U.S. and British firms that have been shut out of Iraq as Baghdad has negotiated with rivals from other countries — notably France, Russia and China, three leading opponents of war.

A post-Hussein Iraq also would be a bonanza for the U.S.-dominated oil-services industry, which is in the business of rehabilitating damaged infrastructure, reversing declining output from aging fields and providing essential support work to drillers and explorers. A leader in that industry is Halliburton Co., where Dick Cheney was chief executive before becoming vice president....Read the rest.

The LAT has a related article -- Postwar Plans Shift Into High Gear -- which includes information about Donald Rumsfeld's plans to use seized Iraqi assets, money from the oil-for-food program, and "contributions from allies" (don't laugh -- we've still got Bulgaria) to pay for Iraqi reconstruction. The money, as I mentioned yesterday, will be going to one or more of five American companies, including Dick Cheney's beloved Halliburton (which, by the way, is still paying him), which have been asked to bid on the job of rebuilding the country after we bomb it. Rumsfeld also announced that we've already begun rounding up a work force: the Iraqi army is "being communicated with privately at the present time" and given instructions on how to be seen as "nonthreatening." It's important to look out for their safety, because we're counting on them to do the construction work.

The New York Times also published an article today about postwar reconstruction, but somehow didn't see fit to mention Halliburton, or even the fact that companies are currently bidding for the job.

Twilight Zone Moments

• I love the way the Turks seem to be taking lessons in hypocrisy from George Bush these days. Kurdish soldiers are gathering at the Turkish border to repel an expected attack. The Turks say that they might enter northern Iraq, but only "to distribute relief supplies." An unelected president will establish a democracy in Iraq and the Turks will provide humanitarian relief -- who could be against that?
  
  
• A panel of national security experts, including James Schlesinger and Jeanne Kirkpatrick criticized Bush for not being up-front about the costs and risks of war with Iraq, and for scrimping and poor planning for humanitarian needs. How bad do you have to be if Jeanne Kirkpatrick is criticizing you for not caring enough about humanitarian needs?
  
  
• Kofi Annan warned yesterday that if the Bush administration went ahead with plans to attack Iraq without Security Council approval, it would be in violation of the UN charter. Which would put the United States -- I was going to say ironically, but irony doesn't begin to cover it -- in the same position as Iraq: a rogue state in violation of the UN rules. Ari Fleischer explained that it was a matter of morality. If the UN fails to act (well, it is acting, but Ari means fails to act in a way George Bush approves of) it will have demonstrated its moral bankruptcy, just as it did when it failed to intervene in Rwanda. That would be the same Rwanda that, in 2000, candidate George Bush said he would have ignored.
  
  
• Colin Powell has used the presence of foreign fighters' in the Ansar al-Islam camp in northern, Kurdish-controlled Iraq to suggest a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. But military aid comes from Iran, which has not exactly been on friendly terms with Saddam.
  
  
• The Pentagon has hired an art director to design a set on which Tommy Franks can give war updates. The set will include "a soft-focus elongated map of the world, as if to suggest that the world is united behind them," and a projection screen ready to show videos of the action. Saddam's generals will probably have a table and an Iraqi flag. Just in case anyone is confused about who has the superior technology and culture.
  
  
• Who says the whole world opposes this war? Who says you can't even buy support for this war? That just plain isn't true. We have 31,000 mercenaries on our side.
  
  
• President Bush recently telephoned Hamid Karzai to apologize for the rude American senators who insulted him by suggesting that things were not exactly going smoothly in Afghanistan.

There's an interesting article in today's NY Times about the concept of "universal values." The article's a bit ethnocentric, focusing on the way some Asians are abandoning their "arrogance" in believing that "Asian values" are superior and universal, and coming around to accepting Western values. But buried in there is at least an awareness that the old East-West division concerns important and complex issues: "competition versus consensus; the rule of law versus personal relationships; a dynamic, even rowdy society versus stability and order." It also acknowledges that human rights and justice are universal values -- but that doesn't mean they can -- or should -- take the same form in every society.

I love the final anecdote in the article. The UN tried to set up a Western-style legal system in East Timor, but ran into a problem: East Timorese usually confess to any crimes they've committed. The only way you can get an adversarial system to work in East Timor is to teach defendants how to lie.

Devra had them a few weeks ago. Jeff Cooper has them now. Anybody got a cure for the Bush Blues?

US Taking Bids for Rebuilding Iraq
Bechtel, Halliburton in running for huge, emergency-basis contract

This, of course, comes only days after a subsidiary of Halliburton was handed a Pentagon contract to rebuild Iraq's oil fields. Should we all just give up now and admit we live in a country of Dick Cheney, by Dick Cheney, and, above all, for Dick Cheney? I'm going to go cry now. There isn't even any pretense any more that this is our country.

The Bush administration, preparing what would be the most ambitious U. S. rebuilding project since the aftermath of World War II, expects in coming days to award a construction contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to begin remaking Iraq, U.S. officials said Monday.

The huge umbrella contract, the first to be awarded, would pay for construction and repairs to roads and bridges, as well as schools, hospitals and mosques, officials said. Other large deals are under negotiation to jump- start a reconstruction effort that would follow an overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

A handful of U.S. construction giants -- including San Francisco's Bechtel Group Inc. as well as Halliburton Co. and Fluor Corp. -- were invited to bid for the work on an emergency basis. Analysts said the companies hope to win the contract and position themselves for such future projects as the repair and development of the country's oil industry.

......edit......

The move bypassed the usual rules that would have permitted a wider array of companies to seek the contract.

......edit......

Construction industry executives said the firms are competing fiercely in part because they believe the work could provide an inside track to postwar business opportunities. A significant prize: oil industry contracts.

"It's a sensitive topic, because we still haven't gone to war, but these companies are really in a position to win something out of this geopolitical situation," an industry executive said.

And it turns out the amazing Trish Wilson is psychic.

UPDATE: The SF Chronicle took the article from the Washington Post, which went with a less vice-president-offending headline:

Companies Selected To Bid on Iraq Reconstruction:
Initial $900 Million Contract Would Pay for Rebuilding of Roads, Bridges and Other Infrastructure.

A member of the British Parliament descibed the process as "vomit-making," which seems to me a restrained and polite way of putting it. The Guardian notes that only American companies need apply. At least Iraqi soldiers get to do the work. No wonder the Pentagon is being so secretive.

So you want to do a show about the Christian response to war. What eminent theologian comes to mind as the ideal person to discuss the complexities of the topic, to analyze and explain the rich Christian tradition in thinking about war and peace. If you said Bob Jones, you apparently think just like Larry King (and you should be ashamed of yourself.)

How often have you heard bloggers and their readers describe themselves as a "community." Let's find out if it's true. One of the most interesting and articulate members of the community, Sean-Paul Kelley, had planned an academic trip through Central Asia this summer, doing research for his masters thesis. The tickets were bought, the visas were approved -- and then his grant was cancelled because of "constraints caused by Federal funding cuts." If you want a little incentive to help him out, imagine a thoughtful blogger reporting from Central Asia. A $35 contribution will get you an autographed copy of the book as soon as it's written. Or you could just do it because he's a nice person who needs some help. If you can, drop by The Agonist and put whatever you can afford in his PayPal jar.

Must reads
I'm checking out on keeping up with news and blogs for the next few days, while I work on a long (and still developing) post on alternatives to war. But there are a few things up right now that are so important I'd like to come back to them later, and don't want anyone else to miss them now. So, if you haven't read them already, go read:

• Jeralyn on a new low for the Bush administration -- kidnapping and interrogating small children.
  
  
• Atrios on the execution of an innocent man and the smearing of journalists as terrorists.
  
  
• Zizka on what to do when the war starts.
  
  
• Kevin on his change of heart.

Looking for Alternatives

Part I: Chekhov's Gun and Pirandello's President

Michael Walzer's Off-Ramp

There are two ways of opposing a war with Iraq. The first way is simple and wrong; the second way is right but difficult.

The first way is to deny that the Iraqi regime is particularly ugly, that it lies somewhere outside the range of ordinary states, or to argue that, however ugly it is, it doesn't pose any significant threat to its neighbors or to world peace.

That's the opening of an interesting essay by Michael Walzer in the NY Review of Books, which focuses on alternatives to war. There's a lot in it that's thought-provoking, but I have some problems with it right from the opening sentences. That the Baathist regime is ugly, I have no doubt. But "particularly ugly?" Those words echo the British and American charge that Iraq represents a "unique horror," a charge human rights advocates reject because, unfortunately, Iraq is far from unique, and because the British and American governments' discovery of Iraq's horror seems conveniently timed.

One of the things that confuses me when I read overly enthusiastic proponents of war is the way they revel in Saddam's atrocities, as if they've never heard of civilian massacres or people tortured in prison. I don't know whether to pity their ignorance or envy their innocence. They want to see themselves as realists, in contrast to all us hopelessly dreamy liberals, and yet I wonder what kind of cozy bubble they all must dwell in, never, it would seem, to have heard news from Liberia, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Chechnya, or Myanmar. Or from the prisons of Turkey and Egypt, for that matter.

But what am I thinking? We have a president who, until very recently, didn't know that there were both Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. What are the chances that his acolytes could find Myanmar on a map?

Michael Walzer's no warblogger, and no doubt he could tell you more about the prison-state of Myanmar than I can, so I don't know what he means when he says Iraq is "particularly ugly." One thing I know about countries run on torture and intimidation is that until they're cracked open, nobody outside really knows how bad they are, and so to compare levels and kinds of brutality seems foolish. And cruel. Does it matter to the citizens of a brutal society if there's another that is marginally worse?

Iraq is a nightmare, and no human being should be forced to live in the conditions that exist there. I wish there were no other countries like it, but, unfortunately, I'm neither naive enough to believe that, nor cynical enough to assert it without belief.

It's not a matter of semantics. If you view the problem as one evil man running a nightmare state, there's an obvious and simple solution: Get rid of that man. But if you're aware that "the range of ordinary states" contains a great many that are powered by intimidation, and you think human rights violations are equally important whether or not the country in which they're committed has oil, then you know you need a different tool -- unless you plan to smash your way across continents, crushing every bit of evil in your path, almost certainly becoming, in the process, the monster you first intended to destroy. The problem is not an individual. The problem is the brutality -- no matter where it takes place. Even, I might add, if it takes place in your friend's back yard -- or your own.

A threat to his neighbors? I think if he were an immediate threat to his neighbors, those neighbors would be more worried than they appear to be. But how much of a threat he could become, I don't know. The reason I don't trust Bush and do trust the inspection process, is that I don't believe anybody else knows either (and then there's the fact that I can't trust Bush to tell the truth, even if he does know).

Walzer goes on to argue that the only decent way to be against the war is to acknowledge that Saddam is both a monster and a threat, and to support a stepped-up version of the embargo and the no-fly zones, as well as indefinite UN inspections. He expanded on the idea in a recent NY Times op-ed, calling for a "little war" instead of the big war that seems so likely to go horribly wrong. Walzer's "little war" would extend the no-fly zones (and challenge other countries to join the US and Britain in enforcing them), extend the sanctions to countries that don't co-operate in the current sanctions, punish companies that try to sell military equipment to Iraq, and expand the UN monitoring system.

It's an off-ramp from the road to war, but there's an enormous down-side. The "permanent system of coercion and control" that the "little war" implies has costs that would be borne by innocent Iraqis, Walzer argues, and anyone who is against the war had better deal with that. The sanctions can probably be aimed a little better, but they will still hurt ordinary people. Enforcing the no-fly zones risks civilian deaths. Saddam would be left where he is. A short war would probably hurt Iraqis less than years of that kind of control and continued dictatorship, but no one can guarantee that a war would be short and its regional consequences limited (which is the topic of another, equally interesting, NYRB article by Avishai Margalit.) The best thing to be said about Walzer's proposed "little war" is that it is somewhat better than the alternative, and significantly less likely to lead to catastrophe.

Walzer offers an exit strategy. There aren't a lot of people doing that right now, so I'm tempted to latch on. But I find Walzer's suggestions both interesting, reasonable in many ways, and ultimately unsatisfying. I could pick at his argument, tossing some parts aside and keeping others. The sanctions, for instance, were never intended to prevent Saddam from acquiring weapons, they were intended as a means of spurring Iraqis to dump him. They don't work, and the only thing they accomplish is hurting innocent people. There's no excuse for continuing them. Unless we're talking about strengthening the arms embargo -- which I think we could do (and Walzer's suggestion that we ought to go after companies that violated that embargo sure sounds like a good one. One of the things we absolutely have to deal with -- and no one is currently talking about it much -- is how thuggish governments around the world are aided by businesses. Unfortunately, it's the least likely of Walzer's suggestions to happen.)

I have little problem with the no-fly zones. Legally, they may be a little dicey, but they seem to do more good then harm. If nothing else, they allow the Kurds to continue a democratic experiment which could provide a real model and which proves that democracy in the Muslim world is not a contradiction in terms -- and that experiment, far from being likely to be extended after the war, is threatened by it.

Permanent inspections? Again, no problem. In fact, along with Amnesty International, I'd like to see the Security Council send more inspectors in -- human rights inspectors. Take human rights violations as seriously as you take weapons violations. Sometimes it takes patience -- it took seven years to get UN human rights observers back into Iraq -- but witnesses have been shown time and again to make a difference. Monsters thrive in the dark.

I think that's at least in the neighborhood of what Walzer's suggesting at the end -- and this is where his argument really draws me in -- when he says that we need an anti-war movement that focuses not just on stopping war, but on creating "a strong international system, organized and designed to defeat aggression, to stop massacres." I agree with him, and I think in the long run, a "strong international system" to control both the spread of weapons and violations of human rights is the only hope.

And yet I'm not entirely satisfied with that agreement. Walzer suggests that the peace movement won't latch on to his suggestion because of its complexity. (And he has a point: "What do we want?" -- "A strong international system, organized and designed to defeat aggression" doesn't exactly trip across the tongue as a peace march chant.) But that's not the only problem. The major problem, is that we don't yet have that strong international system. The UN is a pretty remarkable, if underfunded, social service agency, but my impression is that its record on protecting human rights and controlling the spread of weapons is less stellar. I don't mean to bash the UN. Throwing up your hands and saying, "The UN doesn't work," is pointless. After admitting it hasn't lived up to its initial promise, and doesn't do enough to solve the problems we face today, it seems to me the next step is not resigning yourself to war and repression, but either figuring out how to make it work better, or coming up with some alternatives.

To be honest, one of the reasons I want the inspections process to continue is that I want to UN to prove itself, to find a way to make the process work. I think humanity will have taken an enormous step forward if we have a precedent for an international body dealing with illegal weapons without resorting to war.

My long term problem with the manner in which Walzer promotes an "international system" is that he implies that this is exactly what the US has always wanted, and it's just those whiny French and Russians who won't go along. I'm not going into a huge defense of the French or Russians, who have their own political and economic reasons for doing whatever they do, but we aren't moving one step in the direction of an effective international anything unless we acknowledge how often the US has been an impediment to international co-operation, and how often it has armed thugs, including Saddam. A "strong international system" is going nowhere if it's nothing but a code for "do what the Americans say."

Walzer's short term solution is nearly as weak, because it offers so little hope. It leaves Saddam in power, and the people of Iraq suffering. To be honest, I'd love to grab any excuse not to go to war, but I'm not thrilled with that one. Decent and well-meaning people often latch on to war's promises because they see something genuinely bad and believe they can blow it away. They can't -- but the promise is a point of inspiration and hope. There is no equal inspiration in a plan to marginally reduce the threat and probably (although we can't really be sure) reduce the number of innocent people who die. It's better than war, it gives everyone a chance to save face, take a deep breath and come up with a better alternative, and if that's the best anyone's got to offer, sign me up. But my soul is not going to get up and dance to that music.

Maybe I'm asking too much of politics, but I want something a little more inspiring.

(To be continued.)

Looking for Alternatives

Chekhov's Gun and Pirandello's President

"If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it." -- Anton Chekhov

I'm wondering, this morning, if Chekhov knew as much about politics and war as he did about writing plays. If you put more than a quarter of a million guns on the stage, do they have to be fired? Is there any way out of this lousy script?

Bush's performance at his press conference last week has been described as everything from calm to medicated. Maybe that's the same basic idea. But other things came to my mind as I watched him. One was this article on preparations for war -- or, more accurately, the lack of them -- in Baghdad. The reporter describes a city that is astonishingly calm because...is there any other choice? Honestly, watching Bush, I sensed that same resignation, a weird sort of boredom with the process. As if even he knows it's crazy, can't explain it and has given up trying, wonders how he got here, and yet feels like he's in one of those dreams where you're driving on a mountain road and suddenly realize you don't have a steering wheel. Like people in Baghdad, he's turned himself off and is just waiting for it to be over.

That's probably giving him too much sympathy, of course. People in Baghdad aren't in charge of this madness. Bush is. But there's something similar in the emotion.

The other thing that came to mind -- I seem to be stuck in a literary rut -- is one of my favorite plays: Pirandello's Enrico IV. Enrico is a wealthy nobleman who lapses into madness after falling off a horse during a pageant in which he is playing the part of Henry IV of Germany, and believes that he really is the emperor. (You may now insert whatever comments you feel are appropriate about a wealthy member of the American aristocracy who believes he is president.) He's surrounded by an odd collection of friends and servants who encourage him in his delusion. (The first time I saw the play, more than twenty-five years ago, that seemed a bizarre detail, but somehow it no longer does. Pirandellian is now, apparently, simply a description of ordinary reality.) After many years, Enrico regains his sanity, and yet continues to play his part, and force his friends to play theirs, because he enjoys the control he has over them -- everyone has to exist in his world -- and because it is easier to "live" a scripted life than deal with reality's complexity. There are no decisions to make. Everything is pre-ordained, and the only thing you have to do is keep your mask from slipping.

Follow the script. Recite your lines. Wait for the applause.

I'm not sure exactly why Enrico kept coming to mind, but I think it was Bush's repetition of the phrase that it was his "job" to "protect America" (or some variation on that theme). There's nothing especially remarkable about the words, I suppose, but there was something in the robotic repetition that made me think that Bush was locked into a shallow and simplistic notion of what a president was, thin and brittle as a Halloween mask, and no matter how uncomfortable the mask gets, it's the only one he has, and he's not about to take it off. He walks through the role of president the same way Pirandello's Enrico walked through the role of Holy Roman Emperor. The only difference is that Enrico was aware that he was wearing a mask. Bush is not.

To play a part without being aware that you're playing a part -- that was Pirandello's definition of madness.

Is there any way out of Bush's crazy play? Any way to get rid of the gun in the third act? (To be continued)

Sean-Paul has a thoughtful and interesting post up explaining his move from "liberal hawk" to war opponent.

There's an article in today's NYT that epitomizes what bothers me about the paper. It deals with why many Kurds don't trust the United States. I think anyone who's paid attention to the haggling over Turkish support the past few weeks has to realize that the Kurds have very good reasons not to entirely trust the US government. And that's just recent history. Stretch back a few years. The US encouraged them to fight Saddam and then abandoned them. That's a "betrayal" that's often mentioned, because the solution would appear to be making sure you fight with them all the way to Saddam's overthrow this time around. Less convenient, and therefore less often mentioned, is the nastier American "betrayal" of the Kurds -- continuing to arm Saddam even after Halabja, and providing the means by which the Turks murdered their own Kurds.

But instead of acknowledging the legitimate reasons for Kurdish mistrust, the NYT focuses on the spread of crazy rumors -- Osama bin Laden is a CIA agent, the US is invading Iraq to create a greater Israel -- to suggest that any opposition to the US must be based on delusions. The Times identifies the "classic propaganda" technique of seizing on an American "mistake" and "recasting it as a malicious defining characteristic of an evil society." Fair enough. But the author seems to have overlooked another classic bit of propaganda: Rewriting history so that policies become unintended "mistakes," (we helped a genocidal maniac kill people, but, honest, we didn't really mean to, it was an accident) and America, far from being accountable for its own actions, is the victim of misunderstanding and malicious gossip.

The NYT has a long and disturbing -- if somewhat vague -- article on interrogation techniques. Toward the end, buried in a section on treatment of prisoners who've been handed over to Egypt (which practices torture), comes a detail that connects up with the article mentioned below on democracy: An Egyptian human rights advocate complains that while the US used to at least criticize Egypt for its human rights violations, it no longer does so. Torture may be ineffective, as another piece in today's Times argues (although I wish the Times would make it equally clear that it's wrong and that we don't do it because "we're the fucking United States of America"), but on the bizarre hope that we might get something from it (and in the bizarre belief that a sin is not a sin unless you commit it with your own hands), we're suddenly willing to shove the possibility of developing democracy in Egypt into a dark prison for another generation or so.

The NYT looks at America's love-hate relationship with democracy abroad. It's much too sympathetic toward the idea that sometimes it's necessary to choose "stability" over genuine democracy. Sometimes it is, but the Times ignores instances when the US has chosen to work with dictators for reasons that had a lot to do with business interests, or perverse notions of what constitutes American security, and nothing to do with choosing the more democratic of two undemocratic forces. Nevertheless, it's an interesting summary of the "gap between preachment and practice."

Gary Hart argues that war on Iraq is irrational, and Jimmy Carter argues that it is wrong. You can combine the two essays into a powerful intellectual and moral case against war.

I overheard a sad bit of conversation yesterday. Two young men, about twenty years old, standing on a corner watching an anti-war march go by, and one said to the other, "War won't be bad. It'll be over fast." I wish I could give him this article from today's Washington Post about what other men their age have discovered about war.

Norman Solomon, writing in today's Observer notes that the American press still hasn't picked up last week's Observer story about the US spying on UN Security Council members. The NYT is "still definitely looking into it." No rush or anything.

Rupert Murdoch: If the Founding Fathers didn't want us to lie, why did they give us the First Amendment?

I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by this, but I am. A journalist working for Fox sued the company because it pressured her to air a story that she knew, and could prove, was a lie. Fox's lawyers argued that it isn't illegal to lie on a news broadcast, that, in fact, the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie. A Florida Appeals Court ruled in Fox's favor, and Fox ran a report afterwards that they were "totally vindicated by the verdict."

Fox's new motto: We lie, you try to figure out the truth.

It goes without saying that the results of an online poll are "unscientific." But once you put one up, you're sort of obligated to put up the results as well, aren't you? Even Wolf Blitzer does that. But apparently Bill Frist doesn't have the integrity of Wolf Blitzer. (That might be the ultimate insult: Less honest than Wolf Blitzer...) Frist runs a poll begging people to support a war, gets an answer he doesn't want to hear, and then not only disavows his own poll, but removes it from his website. I'm sure he'll put it back as soon as he figures out how to rig it to get the right answer. Tacky, Senator, very tacky.

A must read from the NYT
This is where terrorism breeds -- among trash-collecting children with no escape but a hate-filled madrasa.

New to the blogroll

The American Sentimentalist

Archpundit

Best of the Blogs

Charles Murtaugh

Orcinus

Real Live Preacher

Readers talk back:

• Human Rights Watch calls for the arrest of government officials charged with war crimes. Is that a bad idea?
  
  
• Can we keep the Democratic nominee for president a secret?
  
  
• How dangerous is the "radioactive material" that was stolen from Halliburton in Nigeria?

We've tried a dumb and inarticulate president. That didn't work out too well. How about a smart and witty senator who can wrestle a complex sentence, craft a brilliant essay, break your heart, slay dragons, and still have enough brain cells left over to help our intellectually less endowed senators solve all the problems in the world? Rumor has it, he even has Kennedy hair. What more could we ask for? Run, Jim, run.

Need an excuse to have a party?

Poll Shows Bush Would Lose to Democrat in Election

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

LETTERS:

"This month, we find that an unnamed Democrat would edge out President Bush," said Quinnipiac University Polling Institute director Maurice Carroll. ... So all we have to do is make sure the Democratic nominee's name doesn't get out.

Move.on is collecting signatures for a petition to deliver to the Security Council, urging continued inspections, not war. It says on their page that they will deliver the petition today, but actually they will continue collecting signatures through tomorrow, and deliver the petition on Monday. Go sign it. And don't you dare read anything else here until you do!

Briefly....

• A UN report says that "Taliban-like restrictions" remain for women in much of Afghanistan.
  
  
• UNICEF is working on a joint project with the Afghan Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Women's Affairs to produce a textbook specifically aimed at illiterate women.
  
  
• Saddam Hussein gassed his own people. And Margaret Thatcher helped him.
  
  
• George Bush -- environmentalist. (Maybe he should try wearing earth tones...)
  
  
• Colin Powell -- defender of religious freedom.

The deaths of the two prisoners at Bagram that I mentioned recently were ruled homicides. Jeralyn and her readers comment. Jonathan Turley has a good op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times on "emerging evidence that the United States may be operating something that would have seemed unimaginable only two years ago: an American torture facility." And, for your soul's sake, don't miss Emma on why all this matters.

I've been waiting for somebody to ask this question

Mokhiber: Ari, you have said in the past that every step will be taken to protect innocent and civilian life in Iraq. During the first Gulf War, the United States intentionally bombed water storage facilities and sewage treatment plants. This led to the deaths of an estimated half million civilian Iraqis from cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid. In what sense is that protecting civilian and innocent life?

Ari Fleischer: In the event force is used, the United States military takes particular care to make certain that targets that are attacked are only military targets. There can never be an absolute guarantee in war, of course, but every care is taken by our military to make certain that every target is a military target with a military objective.

Mokhiber: Then why did we intentionally bomb the water treatment facilities?

Ari Fleischer:I don't know about your facts. I'm not certain in what you are saying. I didn't work here in 1991. You may want to talk to the Pentagon about anything that took place then.

Come on, Ari, most of us learned on our first jobs that, "I don't know, I just started working here," is not an acceptable answer. Never mind, sweetie. You're educable. I've got a homework assignment for you.

Does Ken Pollack's The Threatening Storm make the case you think it does? Chris Suellentrop, at Slate, says Pollack makes a case for war -- but not this one.

UPDATE: Hesiod and Tom Spencer both have interesting thoughts on this article.

Salon has a very interesting interview with Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. The interview touches on a lot of important topics, but the most interesting part for me was Roth's concern -- one I share -- that if war begins, the anti-war movement will give up in despair. My concern is equally over an anti-war movement that could develop a self-righteous "we told you so" attitude toward problems. As Roth points out, if war erupts, a massive mobilization will be needed more than ever to put pressure on the Bush administration to protect civilians, to deal with the hellish situation its war creates for innocent people, and not to allow Iraqi human rights to be further ignored by the institution of what Kanan Makiya recently called "Baathism with an American face."

Howard Kurtz is amused by Arab bickering:

"A conference of Muslim nations hastily called for what was described as a last attempt by the Islamic world to help avert a war against Iraq degenerated into a shouting match today," says the New York Times.

"The leaders failed to publicly reconsider a proposal calling on Saddam Hussein to go into exile, although the idea first broached several days ago by the United Arab Emirates was the buzz of the corridors. . . .

"The underlying tensions erupted in the elegant Ritz Carlton hotel ballroom when the vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim, told the Kuwaiti minister of state for foreign affairs, Mohammed Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah, to 'shut up, you monkey.'

"The Iraqi followed up with an Arab epithet, 'Curse be upon your mustache, you traitor.'"

Now that's class.

Yeah, those war criminals are a riot. Izzat Ibrahim was deputy commander-in-chief during the 1988 genocidal campaign against the Kurds. The crimes he's alleged to have committed are subject to universal jurisdiction, which means any country he enters can arrest and prosecute him for crimes against humanity. Cut the racist snickering, Mr. Kurtz, and, along with Human Rights Watch, make the more important point: Qatar should immediately arrest this war criminal.

And I'll add another important point: before George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld make any more comments about war crimes trials for Baathist officials after the war, they should be putting more pressure on their oily friends to grab opportunities like this now. Unless of course we don't really care about human rights, but are only interested in putting on a show.

COMMENT:
I'm not comfortable with the notion of arresting government officials on diplomatic missions because they happen to be genocidal killers or war criminals or whatever. In all seriousness, you could arrest  a great many government officials for those sorts of crimes, possibly including Americans. (Morally speaking, I'm sure some former and current American government officials are guilty of mass murder or of aiding and abetting mass murder, but I don't know international law and so whether they could befound guilty in court is a different question.)

Most Arab rulers practice torture against their subjects -- Saddam is merely the most extreme example. For that matter, I think you could prosecute Israeli officials and not just Sharon, though certainly he'd be at the top of the list. (Sharon's first act of mass murder that I know about offhand was in 1953, when he led an army unit on a retaliatory mission after an act of Palestinian terrorism -- Sharon and his men killed 69 Jordanian civilians.) Surely there are some Turkish military officials (and political ones as well) who could be held accountable for their own atrocities against the Kurds. The list of possible suspects is endless.

This isn't the issue of whether we should hold war crimes trials for government leaders when we know that in practice only certain select criminals will be prosecuted. I could live with that, I suppose, at least in the short run -- you have to start somewhere.  People can point out the hypocrisy of prosecuting deposed dictators such as Milosevic (or Saddam) when Kissinger is running around loose and who knows -- maybe with such pressure Kissinger will eventually be brought to justice.  Okay, not likely.

But when you start arresting people who are still in power, I think you've crossed a different line. You're taking away diplomatic immunity. It'd be nice if the world weren't filled with government leaders and officials who by all rights ought to be serving life sentences, but it's been that way all through history.  If we start arresting people simply because they are guilty of terrible crimes, no dictator could come to the UN.  No ambassador could visit any other country without worrying about either real or trumped-up charges.  And the only reason American diplomats and Presidents would be safe would be because of our military power. -- Donald Johnson

My ignorance, in this case, is not bliss. It's damn frustrating. Does anyone know how seriously we should be taking the business of the "radioactive material" that went missing in Nigeria? The story seems to have sort of flown under the radar of the major media, although I did hear Bill O'Reilly cite it recently as another reason to attack Saddam Hussein (you try to figure him out...I gave up long ago).

The first reports emphasized only the danger of anyone handling the material, but we're now up to warnings that it could be used to build a "dirty bomb." And then there's the new information that the previously unidentified clumsy company that managed to loose the stuff was -- oh, God, this is getting weird and old -- Halliburton. But they're investigating. I don't want to be picky or anything, but if this is as dangerous as it sounds, I think I'd like someone other than the vice president's old company investigating.

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

LETTERS:

Saw the comments on your blog regarding missing radioactive material and the possiblility of using it to construct a dirty bomb. According to this BBC article, Al Quaeda may already have one. It doesn't seem to have received much coverage in the American press. -- Harold

I think, not too much.  It depends on what it is and how much, of course.  My guess is it's the kind of stuff used for geological studies or the kind of residue that construction x-ray testing equipment can produce after a really long time.  It's a high level emitter, if, as the article says, it's an immediate radiation-poisoning hazard, but in some ways that's good -- high-level radioactives have short half-lives.  And it's metal, which means it's not likely to get into water and it will be difficult to use in bombs and whatnot.

We don't know much, so things might be bad.  But most likely it's just a hazard to whoever gets near it. -- Randolph

The thing about dirty bombs and radioactive materials is that you can build a dirty bomb out of pilfered medical supplies (some of which turn up in old junk yards). There are a LOT of civilian radioactives (but non-fissionables) out there, and as far as I can tell the missing Nigerian stuff falls into that category.

Googling around:

Which radioactive materials could be used to make a dirty bomb?

"Many types of radioactive materials with military, industrial, or medical applications could be used in a dirty bomb. Weapons-grade plutonium or uranium, as well as freshly spent nuclear fuel, would be the most deadly but are also the hardest to obtain and handle. Medical supplies such as radium or certain cesium isotopes, used in cancer treatments and X-ray machines, could be used, although they generally would be less dangerous. As little as a measuring cup's worth of radioactive material would be needed, but experts say that such small amounts  would be unlikely to cause severe harm, especially if scattered over a wide area."

Do terrorists have such radioactive substances?

"It's hard to say, but some experts think they might, and many experts worry that determined terrorists could acquire them. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a Vienna-based division of the United Nations, has documented almost 400 cases of trafficking in nuclear or radiological materials since 1993. Many such supplies are subject to few controls or are poorly guarded, particularly in the former Soviet Union. Reports also have cited weak protection of spent fuel at U.S. nuclear facilities; other experts worry about the security of the nuclear facilities in Pakistan, India, and other developing countries."

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

In Goiania, Brazil, four people died and more than 34,000 people had to be individually screened for contamination after a man in 1987 found an abandoned medical device filled with cesium-137 in a junkyard.

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

In February [2002], a missing medical gauge containing exactly this amount of cesium-137 [enough to make a "dirty bomb" capable of contaminating 40 city blocks] was discovered in a North Carolina scrap yard. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it receives nearly 300 reports of lost or stolen radioactive materials every year.

The Senate Majority Leader is conducting an online poll to find out if you think it's time to invade Iraq. Go tell him what you think. Now!

(Link via The Agonist)

Colleen Rowley is back, and it might be a good idea to pay attention. The woman has a record, after all, of both accuracy and integrity (neither of which our current administration can claim.)

In a letter to Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, Rowley said that he had a responsibility to warn the White House that the bureau would not be able to "stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq." She also said that many of her colleagues share her opinion that an American invasion of Iraq would result in more domestic terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and that the F.B.I. is not prepared to deal with the threat. Rowley sent a copy of the letter to The New York Times, she said, because it was important to publicize her views before an American attack on Iraq.

There are some devastating critiques of current policy in the letter. Rowley notes that the security of the country has been "weakened by the diversion of attention from al-Qaeda to our government's plan to invade Iraq," and that Mueller has made it clear that the FBI "is depending almost solely upon the good graces of Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush for its continued existence." That pressure creates a "special challenge to those...who are responsible for providing unbiased, objective intelligence and national security advice to the country's leaders." Put more bluntly: You can't tell them what they don't want to hear.

Moreover, Rowley charges:

• The FBI is inventing numbers of possible al-Qaeda terrorists in the US without data to back it up, either because it wants to gain the support of the administration, or because it wants to help the administration gain support for its proposals.
  
  
• The Administration is deliberately confusing Americans about the alleged connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
  
  
• The FBI has still made little or no effort to interview Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid, because the focus has been on prosecution, not on preventing another terrorist attack.
  
  
• European intelligence services are doing a good job of investigating and dismantling al-Qaeda cells, but tension over Iraq is screwing up our relationship with them.
  
  
• The color-code warnings cause panic-stricken people to call the FBI unnecessarily, and take resources away from important investigations.
  
  
• FBI headquarters has encouraged the detention of immigrants merely for p.r. reasons -- to "supply grist for statements on our progress in fighting terrorism."
  
  
• There is a danger that our new "preemptive strike" policy may encourage "a more permissive attitude towards shootings by law enforcement officers in this country."

Rowley goes on to note that the FBI knows a lot more about dealing with madmen with weapons than George Bush does, and that it might be a good idea if Mueller shared the wisdom of their experience:

I believe the FBI, by drawing on the perspective gained from its recent history, can make a unique contribution to the discussion on Iraq. The misadventure in Waco took place well before your time as Director, but you will probably recall that David Koresh exerted the same kind of oppressive control over members of his Branch Davidian followers, as Saddam Hussein does over the Iraqis. The parallel does not stop there.

Law enforcement authorities were certain Koresh had accumulated a formidable arsenal of weapons and ammunition at his compound and may have been planning on using them someday. The FBI also had evidence that he was sexually abusing young girls in the cult. After the first law enforcement assault failed, after losing the element of surprise, the Branch Davidian compound was contained and steadily increasing pressure was applied for weeks. But then the FBI decided it could wait no longer and mounted the second assault with disastrous consequences. The children we sought to liberate all died when Koresh and his followers set fires leading to their mass death and destruction.

The FBI, of course, cannot be blamed for what Koresh set in motion. Nevertheless, we learned some lessons from this unfortunate episode and quickly explored better ways to deal with such challenges. As a direct result of that exploration, many subsequent criminal/terrorist "standoffs" in which the FBI has been involved have been resolved peacefully and effectively. I would suggest that present circumstances vis-a-vis Iraq are very analogous, and that you consider sharing with senior administration officials the important lessons learned by the FBI at Waco.

The only thing I'd argue with in that statement is the naive belief that this administration might be willing to listen to people who actually know what they're talking about. But you've got to give Rowley credit for at least trying.

Although Colleen Rowley is still working within the system, her letter has a tone and spirit similar to that of John Brady Kiesling's recent letter of resignation from the Foreign Service, and serves as one more reminder that Bush and Company are frightening some of our best civil servants, and making it impossible for them to do their jobs effectively.

What do you know? Republicans do circular firing squads too. Don't miss Joe Conason today on Sami Al-Arian and the GOP Jihad.

I hate it when people write fascinating and important things that I'd really like to comment on, but don't have time to. But don't miss Ampersand's posts on Ashcroft's dangerous threat to women seeking asylum and his analysis of rhetorical strategies of anti-feminists.

Powell Says US Can Wage War on Iraq Without Turks...and Kos explains why it's not going to be easy.

The recent Virtual March hit the White House and Senate with tens of thousands of phone, fax, and e-mail messages. In Europe, that protest technique may be about to become illegal.

UPDATE: Or maybe not.

Top General Sees Plan to Shock Iraq into Surrendering

We can't forget that war is inherently violent. People are going to die. As hard as we try to limit civilian casualties, it will occur. We need to condition people that that is war. -- General Richard B. Myers

I don't want to get all Dorothy Dayish on everybody again, but the way to fight back against the madness is not always in the streets. Part of it is internal. I don't ever want to be "conditioned" to accept innocent people dying as just part of the game. I absolutely refuse.

Some good news for a change: A pilot project is beginning in Afghan schools to teach children about human rights. Easy to mock in a country run by warlords, but it really could be a step in the right direction.

"There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief" -- Bob Dylan

The NYT headlines a question: Can Bush Alter Course, Or Is War Inevitable? A few days ago I put on my old Dorothy-Day-Catholic-social-justice-aging-hippie-peacenik cloak to rant about rebuilding Iraq instead of destroying it, and even suggested that I thought Bush could benefit politically from doing so (for me, that's the down side). I think this says pretty much the same thing in a more rational and systematic way. And in the Washington Post, William Raspberry makes what seems to me a very good case that it's time to shift away from the war vs. no-war argument, and toward a discussion of what we should do instead of war to solve the weapons and human rights problems in Iraq.

John Ashcroft has a soul mate in Kent, Ohio. Why do some people think anything that has to do with women is pornographic? Does their only experience with breasts come through pornography? (Via Alas.)

Kevin Raybould is right on target in his analysis of what's wrong with Nicholas Kristoff's silly piece on the media and religion. The problem isn't a liberal media sneering at conservative Christians. The problem is a media that is barely aware of Christians who are uncomfortable with a shallow and often mean-spirited religion.

Some of us are simply more comfortable with this man's quiet religion:

I'm very much interested in choices and what it is and who it is that enable us human beings to make the choices we make all through our lives. What choices lead to ethnic cleansing? What choices lead to healing? What choices lead to the destruction of the environment? The erosion of the Sabbath? Suicide bombings or teenagers shooting teachers? What choices encourage heroism in the midst of chaos?

The media seems utterly unaware of people for whom God is as much a question as an answer.

The long, sad history of Kurd screwing.

Salon's top story today is the US media's mysterious silence about the American government's "dirty tricks" campaign against members of the UN Security Council -- a story that has been reported around the world, but that major American newspapers have either ignored or downplayed. Strangely, the Observer reporter who broke the story agreed to interviews with NBC, CNN, and Fox News, but all three called to cancel.

Well, maybe not so strange.

While I'm complaining about the lack of coverage of important news and serious opinion that would undercut the media's longing for war, just a reminder: A campaign to organize a "virtual march" on the American media is ongoing. If you have ideas, or want to help, get in touch with Karen Underhill, David Miller or John Steppling at info@massolit.com

And read Molly Ivins' latest essay on the lack of reporting on the downsides of war, and the open letter to the media from journalists and editors about where the media has gone wrong and what needs to be done.

The New York Times has a disturbing story this morning about a 22-year-old Afghan man who died in American custody from "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease." His death certificate describes the mode of death as "homicide." Two other prisoners describe being forced to stand naked, with their arms raised and chained to the ceiling and their feet shackled, wearing hoods that made breathing difficult, being kept immobile for long periods, and being deprived of sleep for days on end by guards who kicked them to keep them awake.

The military is investigating.

Another Afghan man also died in American custody. His family has never been given any explanation about the cause of his death.

The two men were held at Bagram Air Force Base, which an article last December in the Washington Post described as one of a number of secret facilities used by the Central Intelligence Agency to interrogate terrorist suspects. Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the president asking for an investigation into the methods of interrogation employed at the detention center.

There are reports that the US may have taken Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Afghanistan, possibly to Bagram.

It shouldn't be necessary to say that treating people like this is wrong, but maybe it is.

Read Talk Left on John Ashcroft's plan to change regulations that allow abused women to apply for asylum. Why is this crowd so hostile to women?

I recently linked to a post by Kieran Healy asking important questions about the history of military interventions by democracies that have led to the establishment of stable democracies. I don't have an answer, but it occurred to me this morning that the Christian Science Monitor did an article back in January looking at other instances when the US has dislodged foreign leaders (and as a point of comparison, also examined the successes and failures of non-violent popular uprisings -- particularly in Yugoslavia.) Znet also has a useful History of US Interventions from 1945 to 1999.

I just figured out something I like about blogs. Newsweek broke an important story about the unreliability of some of the information Bush and Company were spreading about Iraqi weapons. But they buried the story. Ampersand brought it to everyone's attention. Hesiod ploughed through the documents to find more examples of the credibility gap. And, finally, Jim Henley used the uncovered information in an excellent critique of Ken Pollack's case for war. No media stars, just a lot of worker bees contributing to getting a story out.

Briefly...

• The LA Times has a good article on Sam Hamill and Poets Against the War.
  
  
• The Washington Post reports on private contractors -- including the rather disreputable DynCorp -- going to war. Several hundred companies will send about 20,000 contractors to a war with Iraq. And apparently the British are catching on to the notion that war can be profitable, as well.
  
  
• The Independent reports that Donald Rumsfeld has asked President Bush to authorize the use of toxic gases, banned by international treaties. Britain, as an ally, would be an a particularly bad situation if the US used the weapons, since they drafted the convention that banned them.
  
  
• An Italian writer has appealed to the Pope to go to Iraq to act as the ultimate human shield.
  
  
• The Christian Science Monitor looks at the damage Bush's budget will do to education, healthcare, child-care, housing, and other social needs.

The situation in northern Iraq is looking more and more complicated and contentious.

The New York Times has picked up and expanded on the story some of the British press covered a little over a week ago about the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-backed militia made up of Sciri (Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) soldiers, many of them deserters from the Iraqi army. Sciri is an Iraqi opposition group representing the Shia majority.

The NYT reports that they have set up camp large enough for more than a thousand troops about 11 miles inside Iraq, 135 miles from Baghdad. Out of curiosity, I glanced at a map of Iraq, and I could easily be way off base here, but 135 miles north of Baghdad looks uncomfortably close to Kirkuk, the oily city both the Turks and the Kurds want.

Local intelligence reports note that the brigade has been conducting training with gas masks and in urban combat.

The Badr Brigade is estimated to have about 15,000 troops in all, according to the Times (the BBC says 10,000). Kurdish officials say that the brigade has asked them to allow 5,000 troops to enter the Kurdish enclave, but they haven't made a decision yet. According to the Times, the Kurds have a long-standing relationship both with Sciri and Iran, and Sciri has long had a prickly relationship with the United States.

The NYT article, like a London Times article a week ago, suggests that the presence of Iranian-backed troops in northern Iraq represents a move by the Kurds to protect their interests, which the United States seems to have lost interest in. They're looking, in essence, for a new set of allies, or at least a fall-back set if the current ones prove unreliable.

One of the biggest controversies at the recent conference of Iraqi dissidents erupted over language which would have "welcomed" the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by American forces, which Sciri objected to. The final statement was carefully worded so as to express appreciation for the American effort to build a broad coalition to overthrow Hussein and not to explicitly reject a short period of American military rule.

That praise for building a coalition is an interesting rhetorical device: Praise someone for doing what they haven't done, in the hope that the praise will encourage them to do so.

The NYT, in its coverage of the dissidents' conference, emphasizes the ethnic and religious differences that divide the opposition, and while I'm sure that's an important factor (and one that virtually every article I've read on the Iraqi opposition mentions), the controversy over American involvement seems to suggest that there's another area of contention: a disagreement over whether or not it is possible or desirable to have another country fight your battle for liberation.

Some more interesting stuff about the Iraqi opposition

• In Sunday's LA Times, Barham Salih, prime minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, had a diplomatically worded appeal to the US to help create a real democracy in Iraq.
  
  
• LA Weekly has an interesting article this week on Iraqi leftists -- opponents of Saddam, who also oppose an American invasion, but want to see international support for an Iraqi-led military uprising.
  
  
• From the NYT: Forget Hussein. Iraq's Kurds Are Free Already
  
  
• The Christian Science Monitor notes that the Iraqi opposition has found something to agree on -- none of them like the US plans.
  
  
• Must-read from the NYT Magazine: George Packer's Dreaming of Democracy

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times also has an article on the Badr Brigade. The print edition has a map showing their camp about 100 miles southeast of Kirkuk. The LAT also contains a bit of important historical background: During the Kurdish civil war in the '90s, in which the Kurdistan Democratic Party battled The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Turkey backed the KDP, Iran helped the PUK. (And if you think that's complicated, keep in mind that the KDP, in addition to its alliance with Turkey, also briefly allied with Saddam Hussein, allowing his troops into Kurdistan to attack the PUK and the Iranians. Curiouser and curiouser...)

Are you as sick of this garbage as I am?
The Observer broke the story. The Independent picked it up. Brit Hume mentioned it on Fox News, only to flick it away.

A leaked National Security Council memo discloses that Bush and Company have been using wire taps and "dirty tricks" to spy on UN representatives, especially targeting Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea, and Pakistan -- the countries whose votes for war with Iraq are still considered available.

Still waiting to hear from the liberal American press. Could be a long wait.

On a related note, some people are trying to organize a "virtual march" on the media to protest the lack of serious anti-war commentary in the American press. It's not hard to find people who know more than Wolf Blitzer, and we can all recite by heart the opinions of Lawrence Eagleburger. Time for some new voices, folks. (And maybe time for journalists who recognize an important story when they see one, as well.)

If you've got any ideas for a big mobilization to get lots of people to contact CNN and all the rest -- not just letters dribbling in, but a concerted effort -- or if you want to help with the project, e-mail Karen Underhill, David Miller or John Steppling at info@massolit.com

Michael Finley has a very good post up on what to say to people who call you anti-American.

Kevin Drum's evolving opinion on war with Iraq is always interesting to read, first because he takes complications seriously, and second, because he takes into account how new information and developments alter the situation. That's something you don't see much on the left or the right, and even though Kevin and I disagree on the war (although he seems to have shifted a little in my direction), it's a point of view I really appreciate.

Last night's post deals with an especially interesting issue, first explored by Matthew Yglesias. Just as a hypothetical question, if Bush were to back away from war with Iraq, would it hurt him politically?

Matt says backing down would be politically "catastrophic," and Kevin notes that "Karl Rove is well aware of the domestic fallout from failing to invade." But I'm not so sure. Of course backing down after you've made such a big show of waving your manhood around makes you look a little stupid. But this is an administration that resisted working through the UN, and then, when pushed to do so, spun a resolution in the UN as a huge vote of confidence for its position. Most Americans either oppose the war or offer their support with extreme reluctance. I really think Bush could find a way to back off and spin it as a success, spin the story that he's said all along that he wasn't committed to going to war (which, in fact, he has said) and that the damn press just made him look like a war-monger. Unfortunately, I don't think he'll back down, but if he did it skillfully (and the one thing this crowd is good at is skillful manipulation), I think he could even benefit politically.

There's a disturbing story in today's New York Times about sexual abuse and harassment in the military, and the key to the whole problem comes right at the beginning. Since 1951, the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services has dealt with women's issues, including sexual harassment. Last year "conservative administration advisors" started a campaign to disband the panel because it was fostering "radical feminism" that the military didn't need. Not wanting to see women sexually abused makes you a radical feminist? Okay, I'll take that label. I hope every other decent human being will, too.

In any case, the right-wingers didn't succeed in shutting the panel down, but they did get all of its members replaced and stopped it from advising the military on sexual assault and offering an independent body for women who have been harassed or assaulted to complain to.

Personally, I want to know who those "conservative administration advisors" are, and why they think this is something only crazy feminists care about, and why our "compassionate conservative" administration is listening to them.

Kieran Healy has a couple of questions that I'd like answers to as well:

• Since WWII, how many autocratic or totalitarian countries have been invaded by a democracy, had the bad guys deposed, and a stable democratic regime installed?
  
  
• How does this number compare to the number of invasions or other interventions that resulted in puppet governments, friendly autocrats, messy long-term military occupations, or outright disasters?

NOTE: Everybody's links are messed up today. The post is dated March 1 and titled Strategy and Realism.

Must-reads from the blog world

Amy Welborn on the pope's view of war with Iraq. (Scroll down to February 26, if necessary, and if you're approaching from the left, try not to get too defensive about being called robotic and anti-Semitic. Once you get past that, it's a very thoughtful and interesting post.) (Via Eve Tushnet)

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

South Knox Bubba has some useful information for Bushwatchers.

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

Ted Barlow on Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan and Afghanistan.

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

Hesiod on people who smear teachers.

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

Finally, and most importantly, Ampersand discusses the news that the administration has been lying about the testimony of an Iraqi defector, and asks, "If the case for war is so clear, why lie so much to make it?"

• The entire transcript of Hussein Kamel's testimony can be found here. (It's a pdf. file.)
  
  
• The original, buried Newsweek article asserting that Kamel told CIA, British intelligence and UN inspectors that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons is here.
  
  
• The FAIR analysis of the significance of the Newsweek story is here.
  
  
• A briefing by Dr. Glen Rangwala is here.
  
  
• And if, after reading all this, you think it might be a good idea if the media let Americans in on the secret that the administration lied, and that its case that Saddam Hussein even has banned weapons is, while certainly not disproven, a lot shakier than we've been lead to believe, you can go to FAIR's media contact list to find out who to write to.

UPDATE: I haven't looked over how they've covered it yet, but the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post both have stories on the Kamel testimony today. The most recent mention of Kamel's name in the New York Times came in Ken Pollack's recent op-ed, in which he is used as an example of a defector who "reported that outside pressure had not only failed to eradicate the nuclear program, it was bigger and more cleverly spread out and concealed than anyone had imagined it to be" -- an allegation Kamel's testimony doesn't support.

UPDATE 2: In his NYT op-ed, Ken Pollack names three Iraqi defectors -- Hussein Kamel (sometimes spelled Kamal), Wafiq al-Samarrai, and Khidhir Hamza -- who provided information about Iraq's failure to eradicate its nuclear program. Hesiod, reading through all of Kamel's testimony, discovered that he completely discredits Hamza, referring to him as a "professional liar." Looking at a document by Hamza, without knowing its source, Kamel says, "It is full of mistakes. The author has no knowledge." The interviewer says that they have come to the same conclusion. The sources of information about Saddam's weapons are looking less and less reliable. Hesiod has a lot more on the administration's dissolving credibility.

Experts See High Risk of Strife in Iraq if Hussein Is Deposed

Just an off-hand thought: I've read dozens of articles like this one, about the chaos that will erupt in Iraq if Saddam Hussein is overthrown, with Kurds battling Arabs and Shiites battling Sunnis, and probably Turkomens and Assyrians and God knows who else fighting as well. And every time I read something like that I wonder: Doesn't it matter how he's overthrown?

A coup that eliminated Saddam and brought another dictator to power, one more friendly to the United States, wouldn't change a thing. There would still be a thug keeping things together. The Bush Administration has encouraged that kind of change, with its talk of over-looking war crimes committed by anyone who helped get rid of Saddam. Rumsfeld even suggested Saddam himself might escape prosecution if he took off and let a more co-operative monster take his place. But the suggestion makes anyone who actually would like to see a free Iraq cringe. You'd avoid the chaos, but I can't see any improvement there -- at least not for Iraqis, and I was sort of vaguely under the impression that their well-being was supposed to matter.

If a foreign power (that would be us) comes in and kicks out the thug, all hell breaks loose, and every ethnic tension and unsettled score that's been squashed for nearly a quarter of a century gets up and starts swinging. The foreign power (still us) can fashion itself as the new Saddam Hussein, once more squashing all the tensions, but, I don't know, that doesn't sound like us. At least not the "us" I grew up with. There's always the possibility that Iraqis will overlook their differences and come together in a common cause. The most likely common cause would be kicking out the foreign invader (that would still be us). But somehow that vision of a united Iraq doesn't thrill me.

Digby put up a wonderful post yesterday (which -- damn Blogger! -- I can't link to, so just scroll to February 28, We Don't Need Your Stinking War). It's a comment on an article that appeared last year in Sojourners, the Christian social justice magazine, on how to overthrow Saddam Hussein without an army. The article, With Weapons of the Will offers examples of nonviolent resistance -- and not just Gandhi and Dr. King. It is extremely important that anti-war people who care about human rights remember that oppressive rulers -- some of them every bit as ruthless and powerful as Saddam -- have been brought down by nonviolent resistence movements: Augusto Pinochet, Ferdinand Marcos, Slobodan Milosevic, for instance, and -- an example the Sojonours piece doesn't mention -- the Ceausescus in Romania.

Don't people become more united when they join together to overthrow a dictator, rather than have a foreign power come in and replace the dictator?

Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping has some thoughts on how the U.S. could encourage non-violent resistance in Iraq, if it were of a mind to.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character. -- Henry David Thoreau

George Bush has a dream. The good guys will swarm into Iraq, blow up a lot of stuff, kill some bad people (and probably a lot of innocent ones, too, but that will be an accident so it won't count), string up Saddam Hussein, install an American as the new leader, get the oil pumping again (with plenty of profits for his friends, but that will only be noticed on the Business pages of newspapers, and only hard-core Republicans read those), and the soul-stirring glory of that vision will "show the power of freedom to transform that vital region by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions."

And throughout the Middle East, little children will grow up warmed by the dream that some day they too may be conquered by an imperial power, and live out their precious little lives joyfully adding to Dick Cheney's wealth.

Or something like that. The vision's a little blurry around the edges.

I don't know about anyone else, but that vision leaves my soul shaken, not stirred. Goodness, boy, if you've got to fantasize, at least throw a little imagination into it. There are more than 200,000 Americans in the vicinity of Iraq right now. How about asking the UN to pressure Saddam Hussein to let some of those Americans, working with multinational agencies, repair the water treatment facilities we destroyed during Gulf War I? (Arm-twisting and bribery are acceptable in this case -- although probably unnecessary.) How about sending some of them in with food and medicine? They could rebuild roads, schools, hospitals, and homes. (Heck, let them build churches and mosques while they're at it. I promise not to say a word about the separation of church and state.) If they run out of practical things to build, they can start working on concert halls and museums -- to display and explore our earliest history, not destroy it. (And since Bush is permitted to indulge his craziest fantasies, I think I should be allowed to indulge mine. I have a dream of a hands-on children's museum and exploratorium in downtown Baghdad -- but take care of the water treatment systems first.) Iraq was an economically thriving country before the Gulf War, sanctions, and continuing rule by thuggery destroyed it. There's plenty of work for those 200,000 Americans (with a multinational coalition joining in -- I bet even France would contribute soldiers to that fight.)

There's a hole in that pretty picture, of course. Saddam Hussein would not be enthralled with the idea of a multinational coalition having free rein in his prison-state, helping his prisoners get so healthy and strong and connected to the outside world that they didn't have to put up with his shit anymore. But I don't think he was thrilled with the idea of inspectors crawling all over his palaces either, and we managed to ram that one through. What, in God's name, is the point of being the most powerful country on earth if you can't do some good with that power?

See, I have a dream, too. And at least mine doesn't sound like it was stolen from a script Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected.