Peace and Justice Post

CounterPunch, August 24, 2007

A Hegemonic Hubris

By Paul Craig Roberts

No pullout from Iraq while I’m president, declares George W. Bush.

On to Iran, declares Vice President Cheney.

Israel is a “peace-seeking state” that needs $30 billion of US taxpayers’ money for war, declares State Department official Nicholas Burns.

The Democratic Congress, if not fully behind the Iraqi war, at least no longer is in the way of it.

Nor are the Democrats in the way of the Bush regime’s build up for initiating war with Iran.

The Bush regime says it is going to designate part of Iran’s military — the Revolutionary Guards — a terrorist organization, whose bases and facilities Bush intends to bomb along with Iran’s nuclear energy sites. Three US aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran. B-2 Stealth bombers are being fitted to carry 30,000 pound “bunker-buster” bombs to use against hardened sites. Politicized US generals assert that Iran is providing arms and aid to the Iraqi resistance to the US occupation. The media are feeding the US population the same propaganda about nonexistent Iranian weapons of mass destruction that they fed us about nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. A former CIA Middle East field officer, Robert Baer, has written in Time magazine that the Bush regime has decided to attack the Revolutionary Guards within the next 6 months. Remember the “cakewalk war”? Well, this time the neocons think that an attack on the Revolutionary Guards will free Iran from Islamic influence and cause Iranians to back the US against their own government.

Lies, unprovoked aggression, and delusional expectations — the same ingredients that produced the Iraq catastrophe — all over again. The entire Bush regime and both political parties are complicit, along with the media and US allies.

According to Baer, the Bush regime has given no consideration to whether Iran’s response to a US attack might be different than to welcome it as liberation. What if Iran really were to arm the Iraqi resistance and/or to sink our aircraft carriers? How can any government, even one as incompetent, delusional and unaccountable as the Bush regime, initiate war without any thought to the consequences?

The Bush regime’s planned war against Iran casts light on the large increase in military armaments that the US is supplying to Israel. With Iraq in chaos and civil war, an attack on Iran leaves as opposition to Israel only Syria and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel cannot finish off the Palestinians until Hezbollah is destroyed. An Israeli attack on Syria while the US attacks Iran would leave Hezbollah without supplies in the face of a new Israeli attack.

The agenda unfolding before our eyes may be the neoconservative/Israeli/Cheney plan to rid the Middle East of any check to Israeli territorial expansion.

Nicholas Burns said that the $30 billion in military aid was not conditional on any Israeli concessions or progress toward resolving the conflict with the Palestinians. Israel’s ghettoizing and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian West Bank proceeds apace.

Meanwhile in America, while more money is poured into more war, condemned bridges collapse killing Americans who trusted their government to provide safe infrastructure. Devastated residents of New Orleans remain unaided. Financial difficulties deepen for more Americans as falling home prices and jobs lost to offshoring push more Americans into desperate straits. The US dollar continues to fall as the government’s war debts build up abroad.

Except for the armaments industry, where is the gain to America in Bush’s wars? Before Bush invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had stamped out drug production. The US invasion has brought it back.

On August 22 Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that US troops are the “greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.” Tell that to the 650,000 dead Iraqis and the 4 million displaced Iraqis, and the tens of thousands of slaughtered Afghans, and the coming civilian deaths in Iran. Tell that to all the bombed civilians from Serbia to Africa who are blown to pieces in order that a US president can make a point. Bush goes far beyond George Orwell’s “Newspeak” in his novel, 1984, when Bush equates US hegemony with liberation.

America’s hegemonic hubris is a sickness. A country that tolerates a war criminal while he openly plans to attack yet another country is definitely not a light unto the world.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

L.A.Times

The Pentagon has a disturbing relationship with private evangelical groups.

By Michael L. Weinstein and Reza Aslan
August 22, 2007

Maybe what the war in Iraq needs is not more troops but more religion. At least that’s the message the Department of Defense seems to be sending.

Last week, after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering “freedom packages” to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended.

What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies. Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which “soldiers for Christ” hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers.

The packages were put together by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called Operation Straight Up, or OSU. Headed by former kickboxer Jonathan Spinks, OSU is an official member of the Defense Department’s “America Supports You” program. The group has staged a number of Christian-themed shows at military bases, featuring athletes, strongmen and actor-turned-evangelist Stephen Baldwin. But thanks in part to the support of the Pentagon, Operation Straight Up has now begun focusing on Iraq, where, according to its website (on pages taken down last week), it planned an entertainment tour called the “Military Crusade.”

Apparently the wonks at the Pentagon forgot that Muslims tend to bristle at the word “crusade” and thought that what the Iraq war lacked was a dose of end-times theology.

In the end, the Defense Department realized the folly of participating in any Operation Straight Up crusade. But the episode is just another example of increasingly disturbing, and indeed unconstitutional, relationships being forged between the U.S. military and private evangelical groups.

Take, for instance, the recent scandal involving Christian Embassy, a group whose expressed purpose is to proselytize to military personnel, diplomats, Capitol Hill staffers and political appointees. In a shocking breach of security, Defense Department officials allowed a Christian Embassy film crew to roam the corridors of the Pentagon unescorted while making a promotional video featuring high-ranking officers and political appointees. (Christian Embassy, which holds prayer meetings weekly at the Pentagon, is so entrenched that Air Force Maj. Gen. John J. Catton Jr. said he’d assumed the organization was a “quasi-federal entity.”)

The Pentagon’s inspector general recently released a report recommending unspecified “corrective action” for those officers who appeared in the video for violating Defense Department regulations. But, in a telling gesture, the report avoided any discussion of how allowing an evangelical group to function within the Defense Department is an obvious violation of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment.

The extent to which such relationships have damaged international goodwill toward the U.S. is beyond measure. As the inspector general noted, a leading Turkish newspaper, Sabah, published an article on Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Sutton, who is the U.S. liaison to the Turkish military — and who appeared in the Christian Embassy video. The article described Christian Embassy as a “radical fundamentalist sect,” perhaps irreparably damaging Sutton’s primary job objective of building closer ties to the Turkish General Staff, which has expressed alarm at the influence of fundamentalist Christian groups inside the U.S. military.

Our military personnel swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, not the Bible. Yet by turning a blind eye to OSU and Christian Embassy activities, the Pentagon is, in essence, endorsing their proselytizing. And sometimes it’s more explicit than that.

That certainly was the case with Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. The Pentagon put him in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in 2003. The same year, Boykin was found to be touring American churches, where he gave speeches — in uniform — casting the Iraq war in end-times terms. “We’re in is a spiritual battle,” he told one congregation in Oregon. “Satan wants to destroy this nation . . . and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.” The story wound up in newspapers, magazines and on “60 Minutes.” And, of course, it was reported all over the Muslim world. The Pentagon reacted with a collective shrug.

American military and political officials must, at the very least, have the foresight not to promote crusade rhetoric in the midst of an already religion-tinged war. Many of our enemies in the Mideast already believe that the world is locked in a contest between Christianity and Islam. Why are our military officials validating this ludicrous claim with their own fiery religious rhetoric?

It’s time to actively strip the so-called war on terror of its religious connotations, not add to them. Because religious wars are not just ugly, they are unwinnable. And despite what Operation Straight Up and its supporters in the Pentagon may think is taking place in Iraq, the Rapture is not a viable exit strategy.

Michael L. Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, wrote “With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military.” Reza Aslan, author of “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” is on the MRFF advisory board.

Information Clearing House

Ramifications of the proposal to add Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to the list of terrorist organizations

By Jeremy R. Hammond

08/23/07 “ICH” — – This month saw yet another escalation of the U.S. policy of isolating and pressuring Iran as the White House announced its intention to add Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. There is something to be learned from this about the nature of U.S. foreign policy if we care to examine the implications; and the ramifications of such a decision could be quite serious and potentially deadly, so it warrants a look.

The announcement was preceded by yet another declaration from the Pentagon that Iran was supplying “explosively formed penetrators” (EFPs) to Shiite militias combating the U.S. occupying forces in Iraq. The weapon is basically an improvised explosive device which projects a slug of metal upon detonation capable of penetrating armor. July, the Pentagon said, was a record-breaking month for incidents in which U.S. forces were faced with such weapons.

The actual evidence implicating the Iranian government in supplying the weapons is scant and relies upon two assumptions. The first is that Iraqis are not capable of assembling such a weapon, or at least not capable of manufacturing the required components, and the devices must therefore be supplied from elsewhere. The second is that the use of components manufactured in Iran could not occur without the knowledge and blessing of the Iranian government. Both assumptions are questionable, but the claim is given much the same appearance as fact as claims of Iraq’s WMD were prior to that invasion.

Continued . . .

Chicago Tribune, August 22, 2007

Bush claims U.S. exit could lead to a killing field, but some historians dispute analogy

By MICHAEL TACKETT

WASHINGTON — President Bush attempted Wednesday to drape war policy in Iraq in the lessons of World War II-era Japan and Vietnam as part of a broader argument for continuing the military campaign despite fierce opposition at home and abroad.

But his remarks to a VFW convention in Kansas City, Mo., also invited stinging criticism from historians and military analysts who said the analogies evidenced scant understanding of those conflicts’ true lessons.

In drawing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, Bush said: “Then as now, people argued that the real problem was America’s presence, and if we would just withdraw, the killing would end.” But, he added, “The world would learn just how costly those impressions would be.”

It struck some historians as odd that the president would try to use Vietnam — arguably the most divisive issue of the last 40 years — to rally the nation behind his policy in Iraq.

“If we get into a Vietnam argument, the country is divided, but if you are going to try to sell this concept that the blood is on the American people’s hands because we left and were weak-kneed in Asia, that is a very tenuous and inane historical argument,” said historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University.

Brinkley, who wrote both a flattering book on John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign and edited the private diaries of President Ronald Reagan, said Reagan was careful to rarely talk about Vietnam because of the passions it inspired.

Bush spoke just weeks before the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, will present his assessment of the so-called troop surge in Iraq, a report that most believe will be critical in determining the level of political support that the president will be able to sustain for the war.

Several officials, including prominent Democrats such as Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have recently returned from Iraq and reported signs of military progress. Those assessments, however, have been leavened by an ever-bleaker view of Iraq’s political leadership on the part of those officials as well as Bush, who on Tuesday said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government must “do more” to achieve political stability.

In his address to veterans, the president compared the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the later use of kamikaze pilots to the terrorists who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. Because the United States helped to rebuild Japan, despite concerns about the cost and conflicting cultural mores, that nation became a flourishing democracy and strong ally.

But unlike the situation in Iraq with Saddam Hussein, the U.S. allowed the emperor of Japan to retain at least ceremonial power, mindful of the tradition of allegiance to the emperor in an almost homogeneous society.

Bush used Vietnam as an example of what might happen in Iraq if U.S. forces were to be withdrawn precipitously, contending that Iraq would be a killing field much like Cambodia in 1975 and that hundreds of thousands would flee for their lives like the Vietnamese boat people. His strong implication was that a lack of resolve in the U.S. contributed to that disaster.

“There are many differences between the wars we fought in the Far East and the war on terror we’re fighting today,” the president said. “But one important similarity is at their core, they’re ideological struggles. The militarists of Japan and the communists in Korea and Vietnam were driven by a merciless vision of the proper order of humanity.”

The remarks set off a discussion in Washington of both the aptness of Bush’s comparisons and the political wisdom of renewing yet another discussion in this country about the consequences of the Vietnam War.

Several analysts said that the president’s characterizations were at best a strained view of history. “If in fact he is drawing analogies between Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, one wonders what in the world Iraq has to do with it,” said Robert Hathaway, director of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “The Iraq who we attacked in 2003 had no connection to 9/11.”

Some found the Vietnam comparison even less persuasive. “This was history written by speech writers without regard to history,” said military analyst Anthony Cordesman. “And I think most military historians will find it painful … because in basic historical terms the president misstated what happened in Vietnam.”

Indeed, the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam did not create a domino effect of spreading communism, as was feared at the time. Instead Vietnam went to war against two neighboring communist states, Cambodia and China. Now Vietnam has embraced some free-trade principles and is a trading partner with the U.S.

Cordesman noted that human tragedies similar to those that occurred in the aftermath of U.S. involvement in Vietnam already have taken place in Iraq.

“We are already talking about a country where the impact of our invasion has driven 2 million people out of the country, will likely drive out 2 million more, has reduced 8 million people to dire poverty, has killed 100,000 people and wounded 100,000 more. One sits sort of in awe at the lack of historical comparability.”

Twelve Palestinians killed in 24 hours — human rights org 8/22/2007 PM

GAZA, Aug 22 (KUNA) — The Palestinian Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights accused on Wednesday Israel of escalating its military aggression in Gaza Strip which witnessed the demise of 12 Palestinians in the last 24 hours. The center said in a statement that two of the 12 Palestinian victims were children who were in direct shelling at Biet Hanoun, north of Gaza, emphasizing Israel’s continuous policy of targeting children. Last Monday evening, Israeli forces also killed six Palestinians in Al-Buraij camp and yesterday, three other Palestinian youth were targeted by a missile in Al-Qararah area, it said.

The center added that last night, an Israeli land-to-land missile was fired north of Biet Hanoun, killing two boys, 11-year-old Fadi Al-Kafarnah and 12-year-old Abdul-Qader Ashour, while injuring Ahmad AlBe’e, 13, in the left leg.
The center also mentioned the arrest of eight fishermen today, among them five Palestinians under the age of 18. It condemned the ongoing Israeli escalation in Gaza, including premeditated and unlawful killings of Palestinians.

Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights is a Palestinian non-governmental, non-partisan organization based in the refugee camp of Jabalia in Gaza Strip.

Information Clearing House

“Inshallah”

By Cindy Sheehan from Amman

“The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. – “Chronicle of Young Satan” Mark Twain“

08/20/07 “Camp Casey Peace Institute” — – -The above quote from Mark Twain is how things have always been throughout the ages and throughout our American experience. These sentiments allowed an entire native population to be virtually wiped out and for black Africans to be enslaved for generations. Who cares if 600,000 Filipinos were wiped out during the Spanish-American War to “liberate” them from Spain, but to really have a coaling station for our Navy, or hundreds of thousands of Japanese slaughtered by the evil h-bomb when those people weren’t even white, Christian Americans? Now this slimy rationale is allowing for the decimation of the Iraqi people and we have killed a million during this war to plant permanent bases there as we have permanent military facilities in Japan and the Philippines to this day.

Our small peace delegation that traveled here to Amman, Jordan to meet with refugees and other prominent Iraqis, like physicians and parliamentarians, have been humbled that these oppressed people would turn to us, their oppressors, for help. That they would trust us enough to know that we will help them says a lot about the Iraqi character and just how desperate they are!

Everyone that we have met stabs me in the heart again. We listen to their stories and we apologize on behalf of our country and they all, without fail, look at us with weary smiles filled with resignation of their fate and say: “inshallah” or “If God wills it.” I wish I had that simple faith, but I can’t believe that any God, except George’s God of hatred, destruction, greed, and murder would “will” what is going on here in the Middle East.

Continued . . .

Alternet

What the Rise of Democratic Movements in Latin America Means for the Rest of the World

By Nadia Martinez, YES! Magazine. Posted August 20, 2007.

As the people of Latin America build democracies from the bottom up, the symbols of power are changing. What used to be emblems of poverty and oppression — indigenous clothing and speech, the labels “campesino” and “landless worker” — are increasingly the symbols of new power. As people-powered movements drive the region toward social justice and equality, these symbols speak, not of elite authority limited to a few, but of power broadly shared.

The symbolism was especially rich last year in Cochabamba, Bolivia, when the new minister of justice made her entrance at an international activists’ summit. Casimira Rodríguez, a former domestic worker, wore the thick, black braids and pollera, a long, multilayered skirt, of an Aymara indigenous woman. As she made her way through the throng, Rodríguez further distinguished herself from a typical law-enforcement chief by passing out handfuls of coca leaves.

Throughout the region, marginalized people are rising up, challenging the system that has kept them poor, and pursuing a new course. In country after country, people are selecting leaders who strongly reject the Washington-led “neoliberal” policies of restricted government spending on social programs, privatization of public services such as education and water, and opening up borders to foreign corporations.

Continued . . .

Reuters, Aug 21, 2007

By Paul Tait

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq has made “extremely disappointing” progress toward reconciling its warring sects, the U.S. ambassador said on Tuesday, just three weeks before he is due to present a pivotal report on Iraq to the U.S. Congress.

In some of the bluntest language used by a U.S. official toward Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s fractured coalition government, ambassador Ryan Crocker also warned that U.S. support for Maliki’s administration was not open-ended.

“Progress on national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned, to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself,” Crocker said.

More . . .

Socialist Worker online

August 17, 2007 | Editorial

GEORGE W. Bush’s strategy in Iraq is to keep the U.S. occupation going indefinitely–these days, we’re told, to prevent Iraq from becoming a base for al-Qaeda in the “war on terror.”

So it’s little wonder that so many people have looked to the field of Democratic presidential candidates to provide a plan to bring the troops home. But these Democrats are promoting plans that would keep the U.S. military on the ground in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

“Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years,” the New York Times observed.

Continued . . .

Huffington Post. Posted August 18, 2007

Neocons beat the drums for another war

By Gareth Porter.

I was never one of those who believed the Bush administration was getting ready to attack Iran in 2006 or early 2007. But it is now clear that at least Vice President Dick Cheney is conspiring to push through a specific plan for war with Iran. And Senator Joe Lieberman is an active part of that conspiracy.

We have known for a long time that Cheney wants a major air attack on Iranian nuclear sites and other military and economic targets. But an August 9 story published by McClatchy newspapers reveals that, instead of waiting for a decision to go ahead with such a strategic attack against Iran, Cheney now hopes to get Bush to approve an attack on camps in Iran where Iraqi Shiite militiamen have allegedly been trained in recent years.

Continued . . .