Peace and Justice Post

• Film shows airstrike that killed 12 and crew laughter
• Analyst accused of trying to bring discredit on forces

Chris McGreal in Washington

The Guardian/UK, July 6, 2010

Private Bradley Manning: in military custody in Kuwait. Photograph: APA US army intelligence analyst was today charged with leaking a highly classified video of American forces killing unarmed civilians in Baghdad and secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.

Private Bradley Manning, who had a top-secret security clearance, has been held in military custody in Kuwait since his arrest in Iraq in May over the video, which caused great embarrassment to the US military establishment. It showed an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency. The air crew is heard falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead. WikiLeaks gave the video the title Collateral Murder.

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Posted by Mehdi Hasan, New Statesman,  July 5,  2010

Blogger Philip Weiss has them, and they’re not pretty.

I’ve written the cover story for this week’s New Statesman, on the rise and rise of David Petraeus and America’s “cult of the generals”.

Here’s an extract:

Twelve of the 43 men who have served as US president have been former generals – including the very first occupant of the Oval Office, George Washington. Nonetheless, there has not been a general in the White House since Dwight D Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander in the Second World War and architect of the D-Day landings, left office in 1961 (ex­coriating the “military-industrial complex” on his way out). But the rise of the generals in recent years, exemplified by the hallowed status of Petraeus, has altered the dynamic. If a general is elected to the White House in 2012 or 2016, the grip of this cult on the US polity will once again have been demonstrated.

Interestingly, in an unrelated story on the supposedly declining power of the Israel lobby in today’s Guardian, the paper’s Washington correspondent Chris McGreal writes:

Senior figures in the American military, including General David Petraeus who has commanded US forces in both wars, have identified Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land as an obstacle to resolving those conflicts.

McGreal is referring to the general’s official “posture” statement on US Central Command – which Petraeus was in charge of, before being redeployed by President Obama to Afghanistan a fortnight ago – in which it says:

The [Israel-Palestine] conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR [Centcom’s Area of Responsibility] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.

Petraeus’s prepared statement caused uproar in pro-Israeli circles back in March, when it was published, and some on the right and the left automatically assumed he must be a private supporter of the Palestinians and that he had suddenly and bravely decided to stand up to to the Israel lobby inside the United States.

But guess what? In a gaffe which hasn’t yet attracted the same amount of press as Stanley McChrystal’s bizarre interview with Rolling Stone, Petraeus accidentally leaked an email exchange of his – with the belligerent, neoconservative, pro-Israeli columnist Max Boot – to an activist named James Morris, who then passed it onto blogger Philip Weiss:

Last March General David Petraeus, then head of Central Command, sought to undercut his own testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that was critical of Israel by intriguing with a rightwing writer to put out a different story, in emails obtained by Mondoweiss.

The emails show Petraeus encouraging Max Boot of Commentary to write a story– and offering the neoconservative writer choice details about his views on the Holocaust:

“Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?! And that I will be the speaker at the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in mid-Apr at the Capitol Dome…”

Petraeus passed the emails along himself through carelessness last March. He pasted a Boot column from Commentary’s blog into in an “FYI” email he sent to an activist who is highly critical of the U.S.’s special relationship with Israel. Some of the general’s emails to Boot were attached to the bottom of the story. The activist, James Morris, shared the emails with me.

You can read the full details here.

Meanwhile, here’s a taster of Clayton Swisher’s amusing response on the Al Jazeera blog:

It’s not clear what miracles Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel can work for General Petraeus now that he’s the top officer in Kabul.

Based on these emails Petraeus apparently authored, subsequently leaked to blogger Philip Weiss, it seems the former Central Commander thought a private dinner with Weisel and a Holocaust Museum stint might boost his pro-Israel bonafides (“some of my best friends are Jewish!”).

I guess the good general is keener on being the next US president, and not upsetting the Israel lobby in the meantime, than some had assumed.

Anuj Chopra, Foreign Correspondent, The National, July 4, 2010

Protesters throw stones at soldiers in Srinagar. Scenes like this are increasingly common in Kashmir. Dar Yasin / AP

CHINKIPORA, INDIA // Covering their faces with green scarves, a dozen protesters blocked an arterial road leading up to this village in north Kashmir with large boulders.

Policemen in riot gear assembled on the other side. Amid slogans of “Azaadi, Azaadi”, or freedom, the crowd soon began aiming rocks at the policemen, who hit back with tear gas shells. After a lull, the rattle of gunfire rang in the air.

Scenes like this one in March are now increasingly common in Kashmir. Until some years ago, stray incidents of stone pelting were limited to Srinagar’s Jamia mosque, usually occurring for brief spells after Friday prayers. But in recent months, kann’e jang – stone pelting – has emerged as a potent form of resistance, especially among Kashmiri youth, spreading to the restive valley’s towns and villages.

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By John von Radowitz, Press Association, The Independet/UK, July 5, 2010

ESA

The ‘ghost’ of the Big Bang

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blesse

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

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