BetrayUsReport

MoveOn Is Not New to Supporting War

davidswanson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:04:50 -0400

By David Swanson

While General David "Betray Us" Petraeus must be thrilled with his conversion from traitor to saint in the eyes of the pseudo-left and amazed that such things can be accomplished simply by changing the political party of the president, the group that formerly bashed him with an ad in the New York Times and now supports whatever Obama does is not as new to supporting wars as this simple story suggests.

Sure, MoveOn tripled its membership by opposing the invasion of Iraq and now won't utter a word against the escalation of war in Afghanistan or the continuation of war in Iraq, but MoveOn's opposition to war never extended to opposing pro-war Democrats, and did not survive the Democrats' congressional victories in 2006. The Congress that was elected in 2006 to end the war voted in March 2007 (and repeatedly thereafter) to fund it. Congresswoman Barbara Lee was not permitted to offer for a vote her amendment, which would have funded a withdrawal instead of the war. Groups that supported Lee's plan over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's included United for Peace and Justice, Progressive Democrats of America, US Labor Against the War, After Downing Street, Democrats.com, Peace Action, Code Pink, Democracy Rising, True Majority, Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, Backbone Campaign, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Voters for Peace, Veterans for Peace, the Green Party, and disgruntled former members of MoveOn.org.

True Majority was a late addition to the list. The organization polled its members. Did they favor the Pelosi bill to fund the war but include various toothless restrictions on it, or did they favor the Lee plan to use the power of the purse to end the war by the end of the year? Needless to say, True Majority's membership favored the Lee plan.

MoveOn polled its membership without including the Lee alternative, offering a choice of only Pelosi's plan or nothing. Amazingly, Eli Pariser, then director of MoveOn, admitted that the reason MoveOn did this was because they knew that their members would favor the Lee amendment. The following is from a report on Salon.com:

"Pariser defends his e-mail. He says that the group already knew that its members would have supported Barbara Lee's plan, but whatever MoveOn did, it would never have passed. What MoveOn didn't know was what its members thought about the Pelosi plan. 'The choice that we needed to make as an organization was, Do we support this thing or not?' Pariser says. 'And so I think the e-mail was a very fair presentation of the choice that was actually in front of the organization.'"

Pariser was simultaneously admitting that he knew his members favored the Lee amendment to quickly end the war by defunding it, and claiming that he did not know whether his members preferred Pelosi's weak anti-war gestures to nothing at all. This made no sense. Were we supposed to imagine that Pariser honestly believed there was some chance that his membership would read his praise for Pelosi's bill and then vote for nothing at all instead of supporting it? Of course not. The point of the poll was to allow MoveOn to announce that its membership supported Pelosi rather than Lee. The poll served to give cover to "progressive" Democrats in Congress who gave their support to Pelosi after having intended to vote no on Pelosi's bill unless it included Lee's amendment.

Pariser believed he knew better than MoveOn members what was good for them. He didn't let them make the supposed mistake of backing Lee rather than Pelosi, because Lee's amendment supposedly could never pass, while Pelosi's bill could. There are three problems with this, other than the arrogance and dishonesty. One is that, as Bob Fertik pointed out, even if Lee's amendment did not pass, a vote for it would have helped to build war opposition in Congress, Pelosi's bill could have still passed too, and other amendments could still have been denied a vote.

The second problem is that we have no proof that Lee's amendment could not have been passed. A third of the Democrats had already taken similar positions. The leadership could have brought another third on board. And relentless pressure and threats and bribes of the sort that Pelosi in fact aimed at progressives could have brought many of the right-wing Democrats along. And if it had failed, and the Republicans and Republican-lite Democrats had voted down the bill, it would have been clear who stood where, and Pelosi could have announced victory and the end of the war. The Pentagon had more than enough money to safely bring the troops home right away without Congress passing any bill at all.

The third problem is that, even if Pelosi had insisted on passing a bill, it is not at all clear that voting down this particular bill would have been worse than passing it. Pelosi would have been forced to come back with another bill, as she knew she would be anyway when her bill failed in the Senate or was vetoed. But the second bill could have been drafted with more influence from the progressives if they had voted down the first bill. In fact, if the Progressive Caucus ever stood up for what it was supposedly committed to, maybe it wouldn't have to complain about being ignored and disrespected and the only caucus Obama hasn't met with.

But, how can we be sure that Pariser viewed his poll of MoveOn members not as a contest between Pelosi and nothing, but as a contest between Pelosi and Lee? Well, because Pariser told the news journal the Politico just that:

"In the poll, MoveOn.org gave its members a choice of supporting, opposing or being 'not sure' of the plan proposed by the Democratic leadership, according to an e-mail sent to members Sunday by MoveOn.org official Eli Pariser. It did not mention a more aggressive withdrawal proposal backed by [Rep. Lynn] Woolsey, [Rep. Maxine] Waters and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). Pariser said MoveOn.org had held out as long as possible before backing the leadership proposal. 'We were basically declining to take a position as long as we could to strengthen the hand of the progressives. We did the poll at the last time we felt we could have an impact on the final vote.' He said he would support the progressive proposal if it came to a vote. 'We'll encourage people to vote for that and for the supplemental,' he said. 'We are trying to end the war. That's the mandate.'"

So, Pariser held off as long as possible to run a rigged poll and announce support for Pelosi's bill, in order not to actively work against the Lee Amendment. But working to support the Lee Amendment never crossed his mind, and he avoided asking his members about it because he knew they would favor it. But the progressives were not at that point pushing for a pretentious and meaningless vote on Lee followed by backing for Pelosi. They were pushing for a Yes vote on Lee and a No vote on Pelosi unless it included Lee.

If Pariser thought he knew so much about what was possible and what was not, why didn't he lay that case out to MoveOn's membership? Why didn't he offer the choice of backing Lee's position but make his argument that it would be futile? Did he not trust MoveOn members to make the right decision? That seems strange given the lines that can be found at the bottom of any MoveOn Email:

"Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at…."

Clearly MoveOn needs to work on distinguishing "member driven" from "member funded." So do a great many other organizations. I offer MoveOn only as an example. And the work would not be difficult, I think, consisting -- as it would -- primarily of refusing to be corrupted by the influence of party leadership. Many organizations resist this influence in some cases, but not in others. Some resist it entirely.

More than anything else, we need well-organized and powerful activist organizations, and media outlets, that are truly independent. Wars should not be the play things of partisan politics. Citizens' independent organizations should not approve of the greatest horrors yet conceived or oppose them, solely dependent upon the party membership of the war makers. This amounts to playing games with people's lives and the security and well being of all of us.

The war in Afghanistan has not been justified, is no more morally defensible than the war in Iraq, and is guaranteed to result in disaster, if we do not ask the right questions now.

Our government has committed to removing all troops from localities in Iraq by the end of June 2009, and removing them from bases in the country by the end of 2011, but the military is openly planning to violate that first commitment and to rename troops as "non-combat" troops. Sadly, their deaths and injuries, and those they cause, will be all too real. What are your congress member and senators planning to do this summer if troops have not been removed from localities or if the Iraqi people have not been permitted to vote, as promised, on the future of the occupation? You should feel free to raise such questions even if MoveOn will not.

You should also feel free, if you want to support peace, to get involved in any or all of the organizations that put peace ahead of party, organizations that collectively are much larger and more active than MoveOn: United for Peace and Justice, Progressive Democrats of America, US Labor Against the War, After Downing Street, Democrats.com, Peace Action, Code Pink, Democracy Rising, True Majority, Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, Backbone Campaign, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Voters for Peace, Veterans for Peace, the Green Party, and many more.

Generals' Revolt Threatens Obama Presidency

dlindorff — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:57:14 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

If an article by Gareth Porter in run by InterPress
is correct that CentCom Commander Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq
Commander Gen. Ray Odierno, backed by a group of lower-ranking
generals, are planning to mount a public campaign to try and undermine
President Obama’s plan for a withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months, Obama
needs to act fast and nip this dangerous act of insubordination in the
bud.

It was a similar act of insubordination on the part of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff that effectively destroyed the Clinton administration
almost from day one. Recall that one of President Clinton’s first acts
following his inauguration was to make good on a campaign promise to
end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military. His
initial order was to simply end the ban on homosexuality in the
military. But the Joint Chiefs publicly rebelled, and Clinton caved,
coming up with the ridiculous and unworkable “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
policy, under which gays and lesbians could serve in the military, but
had to hide their sexual orientation or face ouster.

When Clinton, as commander in chief of the armed forces, allowed
his generals to defy his orders, and, instead of sacking them all for
insubordination and stripping off their stars, left them in their
offices and surrendered to their objections, he didn’t just cave in to
the military. He also alerted the Republican opposition that he was a
political pushover.

Obama, on a much more serious issue—the conduct of and termination
of a war—is now apparently being more or less openly defied by his top
generals, who after all get their glory and power by having troops in
battle, and who are also worried that a collapse of the puppet regime
in Iraq could leave them looking like losers. They are thus opposing a
pullout from Iraq (and a hardly precipitous one at that!) out of
self-interest and self-preservation.

If Commander in Chief Obama allows this insubordination and
political opposition to exist among his senior generals, his presidency
is toast. He will be a prisoner to a militarist policy in Iraq and
Afghanistan that will drag down his presidency in the same way that
Lyndon Johnson’s presidency was destroyed by the generals running the
Vietnam War. Furthermore, just as Republicans in Congress saw Clinton’s
weakness in his dealings with the Joint Chiefs and began dogging his
every move, they, and Obama’s opponents among the Blue Dog Democrats in
Congress, will see weakness and move against him.

There is only one answer to this challenge to presidential
authority: President Obama must sack both Petraeus and Odierno, and any
other general who tries—openly or behind the scenes--to move
politically against his military strategy and orders. The model for
this action is President Harry Truman—widely viewed, whatever his
faults, as a forceful leader—who fired the popular Gen. Douglas
McArthur when McArthur went behind his back to Republicans in Congress
to push for a wider war in Korea.

This is not just a matter of salvaging an Obama presidency. It is
also a profound constitutional issue. There is no greater threat to
democratic freedom than a military that refuses to accept, or that
actively works to undermine civilian authority. Generals and admirals
certainly have a right to object to the decisions made by their
commander in chief, but they cannot act in defiance or those decisions
while in uniform. Admiral William Fallon took the right course of
action. Opposed to Bush/Cheney administration plans to attack Iran, he
chose to resign his post as CentCom Commander and to resign from the
military. If Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Odierno oppose Obama’s plan for a
pullout from Iraq, they should do the same and then speak out if they
wish.

For the past eight years, the biggest threat to American democracy
was that a president and vice president attempted to convert the office
of president into a military dictatorship, with the position of
commander in chief subsuming and replacing the position of president.
Now the danger is that the nation’s top generals are trying to
eliminate or emasculate the president’s role as commander in chief,
making the generals the leaders of the nation’s military. Both dangers
are equally threatening to constitutional government.
___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now
available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Is it true? Auto industry is being subsidized?

no_more_boneheads — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:14:34 -0400

Are taxes being used to subsidize the auto industry to produce more efficient gas burning cars?

The rich are getting bailed out again?

I want my taxes being used to support a start up company that isn't part of the corrupt establishment. A company that will develop an alternate energy source for transportation. Either electric or renwable fuel. Is it to much to ask for the government to think beyond 1 year?

Oh ... Yes... That is why we went into Iraq. Now we need a market for that oil. Afghanistan is the forward base just in case Russia or China gets any ideas. But lets blame it on some foreigner, as a monster, to get us into war. Now I'm just joking.

But why bother subsidizing an intermediate step? Why not go the distance and subsidize alternative fuels? I saw the caption flash across the news screen that the auto industry is being subsidized.

The Real Reason Lehman brothers not bailed out

no_more_boneheads — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:28:30 -0400

Hello,

I haven't wanted to be involved in politics but i can't hold my tongue anymore. Here is the real reason why Lehman brothers wasn't bailed out. This company also contributed to non-profit health agencies also. So what is this governments stance? Get rid of affordable health care by cutting down the companies that donate? Read this

http://www.reuters.com/article/idINN1127961720080911?sp=true

By Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc is a big player
in donating to political campaigns, which could be a plus if the
struggling investment bank needs federal help, said a watchdog group on
Thursday.

Lehman shares fell 42 percent on investor fears about the company's
future, with its chief executive scrambling to sell assets to cover
devastating real estate market losses.

Both presidential candidates have gotten a lot of money from Lehman employees -- Democratic candidate Barack Obama to the tune of at least $370,000, and Republican John McCain, $117,000 -- according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

Speculation was making the rounds on Capitol Hill on Thursday about
whether the government would come to Lehman's rescue, fueled by
Sunday's federal takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
and the government-engineered rescue of Bear Stearns earlier this year.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters on
Thursday, "I'm hoping that Lehman Brothers will turn around. People
that I talk to say they think that it will."

In the 2008 election cycle, Lehman political action committees,
employees and their immediate family members have given $1.9 million to
all federal candidates, said the center, which posts its campaign
finance data at www.opensecrets.org.

Lehman donors ranked fourth on Wall Street in total 2008 campaign
giving, trailing Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Morgan Stanley and UBS AG,
the center said.

"If Lehman Brothers needs a helping hand from the federal
government, they know who to call," Sheila Krumholz, the center's
executive director, told Reuters.

"Like nearly every bank on Wall Street, Lehman and its employees
have been major financial supporters of lawmakers, who may now feel
compelled to return the favor," she said.

Lehman donors have sent 64 percent of their 2008 donations to Democrats and 36 percent to Republicans, the center said.

The company is also on track to spend approximately $800,000 on
lobbying this year, with most its political influence work focused on
tax and housing issues, the center said.

Lehman shares closed down $3.03 to $4.22 on the New York Stock
Exchange, climbing from lower levels near the end of trading on a
report about a possible buyout bid from Bank of America Corp.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Petraeus Surrenders in Iraq

Bob Fertik — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:37:32 -0400

The position of George Bush and John McSame on Iraq has been consistent, adamant, and simple: victory not surrender. So when will Gen. Petraeus be court-martialed?

"We have to let go, and we're not reluctant to do that. And the Iraqis are not reluctant to take control," Gen. Petraeus said.

Could there be a clearer statement of surrender than this?

Petraeus' surrender appeared in yet another article about an all-but-signed "deal" to extend the U.S. military occupation beyond the 12/31/08 expiration of the U.N. mandate. But just like every previous "deal," this latest one is nowhere near "done."

President George W. Bush is almost certain to accept the agreement, according to U.S. officials. The administration believes that the deal doesn't require congressional approval and won't present it to U.S. lawmakers.

Oh really? What if U.S. lawmakers insist it does require their approval?

The situation is more complicated in Iraq. The draft agreement must be approved by several layers of Iraqi political leaders. Several members of Mr. Maliki's cabinet have voiced opposition to elements of the deal. The Iraqi Parliament, which also has to sign off on the deal, is in recess until the end of next month.

So the Iraqi parliament is more important than the U.S. Congress? That might be ok if Iraq was paying $12 billion per month for the occupation, but U.S. taxpayers are paying the bill while Iraq is running a $79 billion surplus due to soaring oil prices.

But what about the Iraqi parliament? We know its main objection is to immunity for U.S. contractors and troops. Bush gave up on immunity for contractors months ago, but continues to insist on immunity for troops. Did Bush finally accede to Iraq's demands? No.

One of the last remaining roadblocks had been whether U.S. military personnel would enjoy immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. Mr. Humood, Iraq's chief negotiator on the agreement, said joint committees of U.S. and Iraqi officials will be formed to resolve such issues when cases arise.

Ah, the old case-by-case trick. Will Ayatollah al-Sistani buy it? No. Will Muqtada al-Sadr? No. Will Iraq's Parliament? No.

Once again, the Bush administration is lying about the "deal" being "done." Once again, it looks like 12/31/08 will come and go without a signed deal, and our troops will have to come home.

Killing the News in Iraq: Justifying the Unjustifiable

dlindorff — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:35:14 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Reuters may be “satisfied” with the Pentagon’s investigation
concluding that US troops were “justified” in their slaying of the news
organization’s working journalist Waleed Khaled back in 2005, but the
rest of us shouldn’t be.

Khaled and his driver were killed by US troops when they came on a
firefight involving US troops and Iraqi police who were allegedly under
attack. The Pentagon report into the incident concluded that the two
men came onto the scene, and American forces, seeing Khaled’s videocam
and tripod, thought it was a rocket launcher. They reportedly fired
warning shots. When Khaled’s driver did the logical thing, backing
slowly from the scene, US troops “assumed it was an insurgent tactic”
and fired to “disable” the vehicle, killing the two men.

First of all, let’s note that Khaled is not the only journalist to
have been killed by US forces in Iraq. There has been a pattern that
makes it clear that journalists who step outside the controlled bubble
of the embedded propagandist traveling with the troops are fair game,
which explains why we in America know so little about the reality of
the US assault on the people of Iraq.

But beyond this journalistic issue, what this story tells us,
besides the fact that an innocent reporter and his innocent driver,
just doing their jobs, were murdered by overly aggressive US soldiers
(whose initial response, and that of Pentagon “investigators,” appears
to have been to cover up their actions) is that any innocent parties
who stumble into a battle zone are liable to be slaughtered by US
forces in Iraq.

The only thing that distinguishes this tragic incident from
hundreds of others like it that occur routinely in Iraq is that Khaled
was a journalist employed by a major Western news organization with the
clout and prominence to demand a real, and public, investigation into
the case.

For Iraqis killed under similar circumstances, not only is there no
investigation; there is simply no report of their deaths. As US
commanders have famously and disgustingly said, “We don’t do
bodycounts.”

There is a reason why ordinary Iraqis are almost unanimously
opposed to the neo-colonial “deal” the Bush is trying to force their
puppet regime to approve, granting US forces legal immunity and a free
rein in Iraq to attack and arrest anyone they choose, and to be
protected from arrest by Iraqi authorities for any of their actions in
that country. Iraqis daily see the US behaving like Nazi stormtroopers,
killing their countrymen with impunity, and they want it to stop.

Anyone who thinks that running this kind of brutal occupation is
going to end any way but disastrously is delusional. Imagine if we had
Iraqi troops running around the US blowing up innocent drivers without
fear of any consequence. We’d have an army of vigilantes taking
action—which is just what is happening in Iraq.

The situation in Iraq for ordinary Iraqis has actually been getting
worse, as the Pentagon turns increasingly to aerial bombardment and
even the use of remote-controlled Predator drones, run by video jockeys
back in the US, to conduct its attacks on “suspected insurgents,”
instead of sending ground troops. This approach may reduce US
casualties, but it inevitably increases the number and the percentage
of so-called “collateral damage” deaths of innocent non-combatants.

Khaled’s murder by American troops is a personal tragedy for his
colleagues and his family, but at least it serves to demonstrate, if
anyone is paying attention, the wretched reality of the
Bush/Cheney/Democratic Congress war and occupation of Iraq.

Returning veterans of the war who have joined Iraq Veterans Against
the War IVAW), have been bravely speaking out against this ongoing
horror. They tell of soldiers and marines so brutalized and frustrated
by their repeated deployments to Iraq that all they want to do is
survive and get home. They tell of troops who hate all Iraqis, calling
them “hajjis” and “ragheads,” who are doped up and sent out on patrol
with diminished judgment—a sure recipe for the kind of thing that
happened to Khaled and his driver. One IVAW member, Camilo Mejia, who
refused redeployment and was sentenced to a year in the brig for
desertion, in an excellent book titled “Road from ar Ramadi: The
Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Camilio Mejia, an Iraq War Memoir”
(Haymarket Books), also writes of how US commanders push their troops
into pointless confrontations at which civilians are often the victims,
because they want to go home with combat badges on their chests.

Just ask yourself for a moment, what should Khaled and his driver
have done, when they came on the scene of the firefight? If they had
simply stopped their car, having already been fired on (and no doubt
not knowing who was doing the firing)? Sitting still was clearly a bad
option. Going forward was suicide. So they did the only logical thing:
they backed up slowly—surely the least threatening option available.
But the US troops saw that action as “a typical insurgent tactic,” and
opened fire on them.

If retreat is seen as an enemy “tactic,” then there is really no
hope for some innocent person caught up in a firefight.

No wonder over a million Iraqis have died in this criminal war, most of them victims of American weaponry!

No wonder Iraqis overwhelmingly want the US out of their country!

No wonder even the puppet regime established by the US is opposed
to the Bush/Cheney effort to establish a permanent occupation, with
legal immunity for US forces, with 58 permanent bases around the
country, and with the US getting control of the air and the right to
bomb at will!

The story of Khaled’s murder—and the fact that the Pentagon can
call it “justified”--should make it crystal clear that the only answer
to the ongoing crisis in Iraq is for the US to leave the country
immediately.
___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

The Clock is Ticking for A US Attack on Iran

dlindorff — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:54:18 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I admit to feeling a little like the weatherman who keeps saying it's going to rain, and who eventually is proven correct. I feel certain that the Bush/Cheney regime is going to launch a disastrous attack on Iran, but have made several calls, which have been proved wrong, beginning back in October 2006, when I wrote that it looked like several aircraft carrier battle groups were being put in position for the assault, but then it was called off.

Now it looks like the attack is coming soon.

The Washington Post's Ann Scott Tyson is today reporting in an article headlined, Joint Chiefs Chairman Says US Preparing Military Options Against Iran, that Admiral Michael Mullen, the nation's top military officer, thinks the US military is not stretched too thin to take on Iran, and that Iran is becoming an "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq.

This article comes only a day after a US civilian ship under contract to the US military to deliver supplies to Iraq fired on Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf--just the kind of aggressive action that could lead to an Iranian reaction and trigger a full-blown US response.

The Persian Gulf is now crammed full of US attack ships, ranging from a missile-armed nuclear sub to aircraft carriers packed with tomahawk cruise missiles and fleets of attack aircraft larger than most nation's entire air forces (and also with nuclear weapons).

Other things also point to an attack, most significantly the pushing out of Adm. William Fallon as Central Command chief, and now his replacement by Gen. David Petraeus, who is widely seen as a "political" general who is essentially a yes-man for Bush and Cheney.

I would say the die is cast, and that it awaits only the pretext.

There would be no melodramatic Congressional debate over the reasons for going to war against yet a third nation this time around. Thanks to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in October 2001 to authorize the attack on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Iraq, which Bush and Cheney have illegally and outrageously interpreted as a declaration of a global and unending "War on Terror," the administration is claiming it has the right to attack any nation it defines as "terrorist" at any time, without authorization. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton helped promote war against Iran a few months ago by backing a Senate resolution authored by Sens. Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyle that defined the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a "global terrorist" organization. That was all Bush and Cheney needed, as Clinton, Lieberman and Kyle clearly knew.

In what has to be one of the understatements of the century, Adm. Mullen said he knew that conflict would be "extremely stressing" and "distrous on a number of levels."

Indeed it would. Troops in Iraq are already on their fourth and even fifth rotation, and the "surge" troops in Iraq for the past year are being sent home, not because their job of "stabilizing" Baghdad is done (hardly! violence is increasing!), but because there's nobody left to replace them, and they've been there for 15 brutal months.

Worse yet, oil prices have hit a record $122/barrel and are causing a US and even a global recession--but that figure will be doubled the minute any US attack on Iran begins. This is because war with Iran would immediately bring all oil shipments through the Persian Gulf, which supplies 20-25 percent of the world's oil, to a halt. Even if not one tanker were sunk, no insurer would cover a tanker in that region. Moreover, Iranian sappers, and their allies in Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, could be expected to take out vulnerable pipelines, refineries and even well-heads in retaliation to any attack.

So an attack on Iran would mean global economic collapse.

Hold on to your hats. I hope I'm proved wrong yet again, but I'm afraid we're in for a bumpy ride. Even if there is no attack, the level of threats against Iran now emanating from the White House and the Pentagon are sufficient to keep driving oil prices skyward.

Americans should look at those pump prices and see Bush's and Cheney's faces in the digital display.

They should also think of the gas they pump as blood, because it is going to be spilled in prodigious quantities if the US goes through with an attack. Not only would countless innocent Iranians be killed by US bombs and rockets and by any radiation released by attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities (the more so if the US or its Israeli ally use nuclear bombs in that attack), but the toll of US military casualties could be expected to soar, as Iran's Shia allies in Iraq predictably turn on American forces in support of Iran.

Clearly this is all madness, but it is also predictable madness. The Bush/Cheney regime is finishing out its last year as the most disastrous, most unpopular, most loathed presidency in the nation's history, and may even be facing criminal prosecution once out of office. It has approached each election since taking office by upping the military jingoism. I see no reason to see their political strategy changing. It is critical to them that John McCain and the Republican Party hang onto the White House, and in their view, getting the US into an all-out war with Iran is just the way to do that.

They may be right.
_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philsadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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On Waking Sleeping Giants

dlindorff — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:27:26 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

During my six-year sojourn in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, one of the things I came away with was a sense of how generally un-nationalistic and non-patriotic the Chinese people were.

Caught up in the struggle first to simply survive and then, in the mid-90s, to try and grab onto the moving train that was China’s new Great Leap into Capitalism, average mainland Chinese, whether out in the remote farmlands of western Anhui Province or in the rundown houses lining the hutongs of Shanghai or Beijing, had no time for patriotic displays or nationalistic concerns.

When Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing would beat the drum of nationalism over Taiwanese independence efforts in the 1990s, it evoked mostly yawns among average Chinese people, and in fact, to Beijing’s embarrassment, a popular computer game featured a war-game in which Taiwan defeated the People’s Liberation Army.

That all started to change when the US, early in the first term of President George W. Bush, taunted the Chinese by flying a spy plane into Chinese airspace, damaging a Chinese fighter jet that flew up to intercept it, and getting forced down itself on Hainan Island. That incident aroused a lot of anger among ordinary Chinese who felt that the US was pushing their country around, and who felt pride at their country’s willingness and ability to stand tough and take the American plane hostage.

Now, the Tibet uprising, which has garnered global support, particularly in Europe and the US, has further inflamed Chinese nationalism, with most Chinese seeing Tibet as part of China’s historic imperial realm, and the global backing for Tibet nationalists as a throwback to 19th Century and early 20th Century imperialist attacks on China by the West.

In a way, the Tibetan riots have been a golden opportunity for China’s sclerotic Communist Party leadership, which has been feeling growing pressure to open up the political system, but which can now ride a wave of unthinking nationalism and push those democratic pressures aside, at least for a time (much as 9-11 allowed Bush and Cheney to do the same to democratic traditions and the rule of law in the US).

The 2008 Olympics set for Beijing, which many Chinese democrats had hoped would force China to open up space for them, thanks to the wave of western tourists and journalists and all the global media attention that they would bring to the country, will now be held under tight police guard on the largely trumped-up excuse of threats of Tibetan terrorism.

There is a lesson here for America, though I doubt that the policymakers in Washington are of a mind to take it. That lesson applies to Iran.

The neoconservatives who have dominated the Bush administration, and who appear to be gaining the ear of Republican presidential presumptive nominee John McCain, and whose neoliberal relatives in the Democratic Leadership Council also seem to have Hillary Clinton in their pocket, all talk of taking a hard line with Iran over its alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Bush and Vice President Cheney talk openly of attacking Iran, and indeed Cheney may have been preparing for just such a disastrous action with his so-called “peace trip” to the Middle East last month (a trip that was followed by a nationwide five-day mobilization in Israel, and by calls from the Saudi government for preparations for a possible wave of nuclear fallout to hit that country). McCain, meanwhile, has entertained supporters by bastardizing a Beach Boys hit and singing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb! Bomb Iran!” Hillary Clinton, for her part, signed on to a war-mongering piece of legislation sponsored a few months ago by Senate warmonger-in-chief Joe Lieberman (D-CT), which gratuitously designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a “global terrorist” organization—an open invitation for Bush to order an attack on military bases in Iran.

The problem with this mad strategy of attacking Iran is that its effect would be to galvanize the Iranian people, who like the Chinese, currently have little love for their repressive theocratic government, and little interest in nationalist heroics, not to mention little innate hostility towards America, and to turn them into super-patriots ready to fight and die for their country.

Like China, Iran is an ancient and proud civilization, and one of the oldest continuous polities in the world today. Its culture, thousands of years old, helped to engender what we today call Western civilization. Its writers, poets, musicians, scientists and artists have produced ideas and creations to rival those of any other nation on the globe.

If the US were to attack Iran—even if that attack were carefully targeted at only government buildings, nuclear facilities and military bases—the country’s largely apolitical population would predictably stand together as one to rally in defense of their nation. Just as the Chinese people have rallied ‘round the flag as China is attacked—in this case from within by Tibetan separatists and from without by supporters of a Free Tibet—Iranians would rally ‘round the flag if their country came under attack—especially if that attack came from the same country which undermined and overthrew their popular democratically elected government half a century ago, installing the hated Shah.

Now talk about stupid policies!

I agree that China has no business owning Tibet—any more than the US should own Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, or the lands it stole from the indigenous peoples of America. And I agree that the mullahs who rule Iraq with an iron hand are a despicable bunch of bigots and misogynous sociopaths who should go back to their mosques and stay out of politics—just as bone-headed fundamentalist church leaders should stay out of politics here. But threatening these countries, as America did with its spy plane flights near China in 2001 and with its current rhetoric about “regime change” in and war against Iran, is not the way to achieve those ends.

If China ultimately lets Tibetans have self-determination or independence, it will be because the Tibetans demanded it and because the Chinese people agreed to let them have it—or it will be because central authority in China, and with it control over its boundaries—has collapsed, as it historically has done a number of times.

Similarly, the if Iran ultimately ousts its theocratic leadership and returns to the democratic path so abruptly derailed by the CIA two generations ago, it will be because its own long-suffering people made that change, not because of the American military and America’s blustery leaders. In fact, American politicians and generals can only delay that day by their threats and by any actual ill-conceived military action.
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Dave Lindorff, a Philadelphia-based journalist, was a two-time Fulbright Scholar in China, and majored in Chinese language at Wesleyan University. He has lived in Shanghai, Xian, Hong Kong and in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Listen to the General on Iraq (No, not Petraeus!)

dlindorff — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:06:02 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

In a couple days, Americans will be deluged with effusive, praise-filled stories in what passes for news organizations, print and electronic, in the US, quoting Gen. David Petraeus on the glories of his and President Bush’s brilliant so-called "surge" strategy in Iraq.

There will be little critical comment on his report, which will claim that the surge is working but that Iraqi’s “need to do more” to take advantage of the surge in stability to create a stable government in Baghdad.

He will claim, and the media will help him here, that the collapse of President Nouri al-Maliki’s “defining moment” attack on the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra, with 1000 of his crack troops and two leading officers defecting to the other side, and Maliki himself having to be rescued by American troops, was a minor event. He will claim that the rise in violence in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq back to pre-surge levels is of no significance—a statistical aberration.

And President Bush will ask for another $102 billion from Congress to continue funding his catastrophic war in Iraq.

Just to keep our sanity and clarity, it would be good to listen to another general, Lt. General (ret.) William E. Odom, who on April 2 testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Gen. Odom told the committee that the last time he had testified about Iraq was in January of 2007. He had been asked about the “surge”. He said, “Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.”

Gen. Odom said, “Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province. More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic."

Odom went on to say, “No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.”

As for the Bush claim that Sunni Muslims in western Iraq and Fallujah were now siding with the US (the government never mentions that they are being handsomely paid to do so), Odom said,
“Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.”

Odom said America was buying Sunni backing in just one region for $250,000 a day, and he warned, “we don’t own these people, we rent them.”

Then Odom let fly a real bomb. “As an aside,” he told the committee, in a statement that you won’t read in your daily paper or hear on the TV news, “it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.”

Saying the Bush administration’s argument that it could build a stable democratic government by working with local strongmen in Iraq, he challenged the senators to “Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. “

The general’s conclusion: “We face a deteriorating political situation with an over-extended army. When the administration's witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.”

Odom instead called for immediate withdrawal, “rapidly but in good order.” He said, “Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq.”

He said if Bush and Cheney would simply stop threatening “regime change” by force as a policy, and in specific if it stopped threatening Iran, it would lead Iran to reduce its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to change its policy toward Iraq, too. The US “needs to make Iran feel more secure,” he said.

Odom took the occasion to debunk arguments against early and rapid withdrawal. To those who say the US needs to continue to train Iraqi forces, he said, “Training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.

To those who warn of chaos following a US withdrawal, he recalled the warnings of a “domino” effect if the US left Vietnam, he said, “the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not.” He added, “The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.”

Finally to those oppose withdrawal warning it would create regional instability, he countered, “ This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran's regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards."

Odom concluded, “I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.”

Congress--and the two candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, both of whom are hedging their way towards a continued military presence for years in Iraq--should listen to this general, and not to the one whom the recently resigned (or sacked) Central Commander, Admiral William Fallon, called an “ass-licking little chickenshit,” Gen. Petraeus.

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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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4000 US Dead in Iraq: Maybe What We Need is a National Spittoon

dlindorff — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:57:45 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Well, the toll of wasted American lives in Iraq has hit 4000. But hey, who’s counting?

Certainly not the folks in the White House and the Pentagon, and certainly not John McCain, the prospective Republican nominee for president, who thinks the war is going just dandy.

But it’s worth noting that about a year ago, around the time that Bush’s “surge” plan got implemented with the addition of some 30,000 additional troops to the Iraq theater, the number of dead was about 3000. So it’s fair to say that Bush’s “surge” policy—his “escalation of the war in order to end it” plan—has directly led to the deaths of 1000 more young American men and women.

And what has he achieved with this bonus sacrifice?

Yesterday, Iraqi fighters—reportedly most likely members of the Mahdi Brigades, who are Shia, and thus supposedly on “our” side—fired a number of rockets and mortars into the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, which is where the American government and military leadership in Iraq cowers behind blast walls and eats American food while Iraqis suffer and die in what’s left of their their destroyed and ravaged country. Bombers set off car bombs in several locations, killing dozens of people, and four more Americans were killed in ambushes.

Another day in Iraq.

“The surge is working,” says Bush and his lackey McCain, who made a quickie photo-op fly-in to Iraq just in time for the latest slaughter (and then showed his astonishing ignorance by saying the Iranians were backing and training Al Qaeda in Iraq).

If this is “working,” what would “not working” look like?

Well, if you’re wondering about that, just give it a few months and we’ll see. That’s when the troops that were added will be removed again, which means things will be back where they were when Bush felt the need to send in more reinforcements because things were going to hell.

Well you might ask, at huge cost in money and lives, what did this “surge” accomplish. Besides making sure that another 1000 soldiers would come home in boxes, and thousands more would come back maimed for life? It’s a good question.

What is presented as a government of Iraq has yet to really run the country, which is still the property of the US military. That “government” has yet to pass a law establishing control and distribution of the profits of the country’s main resource: oil. The Sunni forces, dubbed “The Awakening” by some PR whiz in the White House basement, have awakened to the fact that they are being used by the US, and are currently going out on strike from their US-financed butchery. Basra has long since been turned over to the armed gangs that grew up there under the British, who have pretty much packed up and gone home at this point.

At a cost of untold billions of dollars, and an extra 1000 American lives (and who knows how many Iraqi lives, which nobody has been counting since day one of this misbegotten invasion), all Bush managed to accomplish with his “surge” was to move the eventual day of reckoning back a year.

But then, that was the whole idea. I’m sure if he could get away with it, he’d keep those extra 30,000 soldiers and marines in Iraq right through next January, just to keep things tamped down until he leaves office and hands the whole mess off to his successor. Unfortunately for him and his mentor, Calamity-Dick Cheney, there is no way for the military to maintain that kind of troop level for another nine or 10 months, though. The troops are exhausted, their supplies are depleted, vehicles are being kept on the road by pirating parts from destroyed or broken ones, and there’s nobody in reserve back stateside to rotate over there. That has to be a big worry for GOP candidate McCain, whose oxymoronic (and moronic) Vietnam-era mantra of “peace with honor” and call for a permanent occupation of Iraq will look pretty unpalatable to voters if the violence in Baghdad starts returning to early 2007 levels. And it appears to be doing just that already even with the extra troops still in place.

Really, for that matter, we could say that all 4000 of those American dead (I’m being generous here, since many of the dead were immigrants, some illegal, who signed up with a promise of citizenship if they fought for Uncle Sam, who has been busy deporting their relatives once they died on the job), are wasted lives, because the Iraq that existed before May 19, 2003 really no longer exists. With an estimated one million Iraqi’s killed by the American-caused war and ensuing chaos, and another four million turned into refugees—this in a country of 24 million—with the country effectively divided into at least three irreconcilable parts, with Turkey invading and attacking the Kurdish north, and Iran bolstering the Shia majority, the land once known as Babylon is now a classic “failed state” held together only by the continued presence of the American military, whose very presence, ironically, is also the prime cause of all this misery and mayhem.

Bush talks of “victory” being possible. McCain talks of fighting on until “victory.” But neither man could tell us what “victory” would mean in Iraq.

So America will stumble onward, as the body count continues to rise. More wasted lives sent home in boxes or on hospital gurneys. More national treasure down the drain. Until we hit the next milestone: 5000 dead and six years of an endless, criminal war.

At some point, of course, all this will end, as it eventually ended in Indochina.

Then we can erect another war monument on the Washington Mall to this new list of wasted lives—the ones who Bush once famously said were “just numbers.” (That was back when the number was “just” 2500.)

Maybe this time around, we could have construct a spitting basin somewhere near the monument, with the names of Bush, Cheney and all the members of the Congress, Republican and Democrat, from 2002 through the end of the conflict, whenever that is, who voted to authorize, and then continued to fund this disastrous war, etched on its bottom. Instead of coming to look for the names of loved ones, or after doing so and making the ceremonial rubbing of the name onto a piece of paper, visitors could express their feelings towards the authors and enablers of this war at the national spittoon.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net