Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Invasion of Iraq: Undeclared Motives - Introduction
America in Iraq: why, where and where to (3)
I hope that we have by now established through the previous discussion that the present US administration invaded Iraq on flimsy evidence and had more or less an unconvincing case. The ‘declared motives’ were rather weak to say the least.
We are therefore left really in the dark. One has to find the most logical explanation in terms of events on the ground. These are murky waters. There is considerable danger of slipping into unsubstantiated, conspiracy-oriented explanations.
Numerous reasons for the true aims of the invasion of Iraq have been proposed. None has been, nor likely ever to be, publicly admitted! Some of these are evident (as will be seen from the discussion) but one cannot be certain which the most prominent reason is.
It is likely that the actual reasons are more than one; hence a number of forces within the US establishment could be seen to act in collaboration or in competition. For example there have been: Reports of conflict between the Pentagon and the State and CIA; Reports of conflict between the professional military people and the civilian (neocons) leadership of the Pentagon; Reports of conflict between the oil industry and the neocon approach; And there is of course always the ever present, yet almost invisible shadow of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex� as well as many other semi-phantom powers and special-interest entities.
All these should not confuse us. But they do seem to indicate that there was no overwhelming consensus within the US government establishment on the post-invasion plans. Some of these forces were not the ones initiating the policy. They probably fought over details or control of the implementation or to realize their own visions with the broadly defined objective.
***
Since we are operating in murky waters here, the logical approach would be to consider all possible options (which we may not know all of) and apply our known observation of what happened actually on the ground to those theses to find out which ones are likely to fit!
One problem is that there is a possibility of the existence of more than one objective and more than one force operating.
And there have been mistakes and errors which confuse the issue. In this case, it is always useful to go back to the beginning when mistakes and input from other parties have not yet confused the issues.
On top of that, there may have been not only tactical changes of US policy but possibly strategic changes due to discovered facts, changes on the ground and / or later discovered limitations to the original objectives. These may not be known in the short term due to the secrecy that usually shrouds the administration’s deliberations (especially those related to policy, foreign policy and particularly those related to national security).
This is truly a difficult task.
Past experience with the entities being considered may help… or it may be a hindrance! For examples, observers of US foreign policy usually form an opinion of their undeclared intentions from past experience. But we cannot do that if we want to convince an unbiased observer.
A possible criticism that may be expected is that it is not ethical to base an argument around speculation and guessing in the absence of concrete proof. Based on my previous arguments, particularly regarding the ‘evidence’ used to go to war I ask: is it acceptable to go to war on the basis of guessing and hints but not to attack war on the same bases?
The proposed tentative arguments have some quite strong points on their side that should encourage this pursuit: People are dead and dying everyday! Ordinary Iraqis whose country is being devastated and whose lives have been shattered, Americans who are losing sons and daughters everyday and the rest of the world, whose future is probably being shaped to some extent in Iraq today… all have a right to know. At least they have the right to inquire further!
There are also strong indications that the process of death and devastation will go on for a number of undetermined years. I cannot yet see any light indicating the end of this tunnel. Even the usual chorus of active rosy picture painters has been rather quiet lately.
In any case, we know that this route has led to disaster… or has it?! Some people may not even agree to this conclusion!
Basic assumption: No nation would go to war and risk the lives of its boys and girls and spend enormous amounts of money without (what are believed to be) good reasons.
Do we have to assume that those who decided to invade Iraq are rational? My personal position is: Yes!
In the following series of posts, I will address the main theories that have been put forward to explain the possible undeclared motives behind the invasion of Iraq:
1. Securing control over a major oil resource
2. Creating a country to neocon design and to “Project for the New American Century� requirements
3. Avenging 9/11
4. Creating a haven for foreign investment in a rich country
5. Eliminating Saddam’s long-term threat
6. Intentional Devastation of Iraq
7. Leading the world into conflict intentionally
Monday, May 30, 2005
Yes, Guantanamo Bay is illegal
The assertion that there is no violation of the Geneva Conventions in the American gulag archipelago, in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Airbase, Abu Ghraib, and other sites, is nonsense.
The prisoners are held at Guantanamo Bay in violation of Article 5 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
A competent tribunal is required before prisoners held by a signatory to the Geneva Convention can be removed from the protection of the Geneva Convention. Bush & Co failed to do this.
The persistent argument that Bush & Co only need to do this “if there is doubt” and Bush & Co had no doubt that all of their prisoners sent to Guantanamo Bay were not eligible under Article 4, is plain wrong on several levels.
First, it’s a clear misreading of the Geneva Convention. Article 4 specifies who is eligible to be considered a prisoner of war. Article 5 continues “Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.”
Second, many of those sent to Guantanamo Bay had not even committed a belligerant act before “falling into the hands of the enemy” - they were merely kidnapped, from the Gambia, from Bosnia, from Pakistan, from Afghanistan, and sent there, usually after a period of time in Bagram Airbase where at least two prisoners have been tortured to death for “refusing to confess".) Arresting and detaining civilians for years without due process is in violation of several articles of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.
Third, even if Bush & Co believed at the time that they had the kind of superpowers that can magically pick out al-Qaeda terrorists, detaining only the guilty in Bagram Airbase or Guantanamo Bay, that hypothesis (unlikely even at the time) has since been proven wrong so many times that I don’t think I need to link to any more specific incidents. (But you can read about some of them here.)
Prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay are held illegally: in setting up this detention center, Bush & Co made themselves war criminals.
Inspired by Charles Bird’s recent ugly post on the Amnesty International report on Obsidian Wings.
Self-loathing in America
I, like most Americans, am of “mixed” parentage. Primarily German-American on my paternal side, French, German and Lakota on my mother’s. A “mutt”, like many Americans, product of this big distillery of a country. I grew up in “mainstream”, “heartland” suburbia. For all intents and purposes, that makes me a white man. By blood, I am primarily a white man. In my heart, I am conflicted, and growing up, I tried mightedly to identify more with my Lakota heritage, even though I never visited the reservation until I was in my teens.
One might ask why I felt the need to do that. My white ancestors were good working folks, farmers. I wasn’t raised in a racist home. The answer is in my schooling. Like many children raised in the sixties, my school books were still full of stories of brave calvary riding against savages. I had little understanding of one side of my heritage. Then, in fifth grade, I got ahold of a copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and my heart broke. I loved school, and I was crushed that I’d been lied to for all of my young life.
We still lie to ourselves, about our history, about ourselves and about race and its role in the growth of this country.
Dissention breaks out on the left when race enters a conversation. Some feel that to bring up injustices delivered upon one group by the majority white culture is disrespectful, especially on days like today, Memorial Day. I would argue that what makes this country great, as well as sometimes a terrible danger to the world, is our conflicted history on relations between the races. We have had great leaders who’ve tried to lead us onto more righteous paths, though they’ve faced mighty opposition. Our continued unwillingness to deal with it poisons our politics, and our unwillingness as a people to look into that deep, dark, truthful mirror of a full accounting of our history all-but guarantees that venal, jingoistic racist men like the current administration will continue to cause more blood and needless suffering.
We need to speak clearly and plainly about our history, and not just the admirable parts of it. Some on the right would argue that we on the left want ONLY to speak of the bad. Perhaps, in some cases, that is true, but I’ve seen little evidence of it. What I know I want is a full accounting, and honest interchange, a bright light on the good, bad, shameful and hopeful. Most of all, we need to acknowlege that our political parties have exacerbated these problems, usually for short-term political gains. I won’t belabor the Republicans recent shameful history of voter suppression, of the ugliness of voter-purge lists in Florida and the shameful actions of the State of Ohio. One should also acknowlege that the Republican Party’s roots are in abolition, at least partly, and that their recent behavior does dishonor to that history.
It is also important to recognize that the Democratic Party has for many years built political machines on the backs of the black neighborhoods and the barrios and the reservations of this land. That crumbs were often thrown, and power bases by the likes of Mayor Richard Daley maintained, by appealing to the prejudices of white “ethic” voters. That when confronted by the shady dealings in Ohio and Florida, the Democratic Party offered little or no fight for the enfrancisement of black voters, and were quick to concede those defeats rather than fulfill promises to “count every vote.”
Now, in this time of reborn talk of Manifest Destiny, assertions of American Exceptionalism and Bush’s weird use of a 21st version of the “White Man’s Burden” to justify our ongoing crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the new American gulag of “detention” centers, we must confront this essential part of the American Experience. While Lynne Cheney and David Horowitz go about trying to muzzle schools and educational publishers, we have to confront this. Our mixed heritage as a country, our great crimes and great triumphs, our openness and our exploitation, have ALL gone into making this country what it is at the dawn of the Twenty First Century. If we don’t confront it, we will continue to repeat our crimes. If we don’t have this vital conversation, we will have another generation that will stumble upon books unsuspected, their hearts broken and another generation ashamed by what we’ve done, yet not paid the freight on.
We need desperately to confront race in this country, before it finishes us off, burned by it’s dark light from within.
note: I “fly” the flag above in the inverted position because I feel our country is in great danger, and our unwillingness to deal with the truth of our history is the root of that danger. I “fly” it thus as a symbol of distress, as allowed in the flag code of this country.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Tale of Two Presidents
Brothers under the Skin
[Another light note for your entertainment before we move on to the depressing subject of examining the undeclared motives of the Iraq war]
The president was elected under dubious procedures.
The other country was much smaller than his.
It had helped his country confront an earlier perceived ‘threat’.
He turned against it.
He invaded it under false pretexts.
He claimed he was freeing its people.
He bombed it and devastated it.
He encouraged looting its treasures and establishments.
He abolished the country’s police and army.
He caused the breakdown of law and order.
He encouraged chaos.
He caused the breakdown of all essential services.
He unleashed forces of darkness on that country.
Many people were killed at random.
Survivors lived in fear and misery.
He received words of gratitude from some of its people.
He instituted a government of cronies.
He tried to control it by force.
He failed.
He claimed victory.
…
Less than a year later, the Iraqi people rose up in arms against him.
The president was elected under dubious procedures.
The other country was much smaller than his.
It had helped his country confront an earlier perceived ‘threat’.
He turned against it.
He invaded it under false pretexts.
He claimed he was freeing its people.
He bombed it and devastated it.
He encouraged looting its treasures and establishments.
He abolished the country’s police and army.
He caused the breakdown of law and order.
He encouraged chaos.
He caused the breakdown of all essential services.
He unleashed forces of darkness on that country.
Many people were killed at random.
Survivors lived in fear and misery.
He received words of gratitude from some of its people.
He instituted a government of cronies.
He tried to control it by force.
He failed.
He claimed victory.
…
Less than two years later, the American people re-elected him with a higher majority.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Ann Herd is a Cunt
Offensive? This is offensive.
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan last year when his unit came under fire during a mission to drive out remnants of Taliban and al-Qaida forces. He was 27 years old.
His mother, Ligaya Lagman, has paid the ultimate price when she lost her child… the price of admission to the Gold Star Mothers, a group of women who all have one terrible thing in common; they’ve each lost a child while that child was fighting for our country. Ligaya Lagman, however, has been denied membership to Gold Star Mothers, Inc. because though she is a permanent U.S. resident and a taxpayer, she is not an American citizen.
Ann Herd, national President of Gold Star Mothers, could have explained their decision to deny membership to Ligaya Lagman in a million different ways. They would all have been wrong, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as offensive as what MSNBC reports that she said.
“There’s nothing we can do because that’s what our organization says: You have to be an American citizen. We can’t go changing the rules every time the wind blows.�
“...every time the wind blows.”
Ann Herd, you are a disgrace not only to everyone who has ever lost a loved one in combat, but to every American. Shame on you.
The American Gold Star Mothers, Inc.
2128 Leroy Place NW - Washington, DC 20008
Phone: 202-265-0991 Fax: 202-265-6963
E-mail us at goldstarmoms@yahoo.com
This explains a lot. Plus she’s from Dallas. Nothing against folks from Dallas, but when you add it all together… it just fits.
Dobermans, Dallaire and Darfur
As I watched the riveting documentary Shake Hands with the Devil so many emotions collided. Here I was watching horrible genocide unfold before me during a Democratic presidency and was appalled for my country, a President I fought for and a United Nations that I want to see strengthened. But then the more I saw the more the whole thing was put into context.
During a Q&A at January’s Sundance Film Festival, panelist Romeo Dallaire was asked how, in the light of the genocide he had witnessed as UN commander in Rwanda a little more than 10 years earlier, the events unfolding in Darfur could possibly be countenanced by a civilized world.
“Because black Africans don’t count,” the Canadian general said, as if telling his listener that the moon, in fact, is not made of green cheese. Dallaire’s questioner, a native of Congo, could only sit, stunned, and nod.
In Peter Raymont’s remarkable “Shake Hands With the Devil,” Dallaire goes back to the country where he was hung out to dry by the United Nations and its member states - black, white and otherwise - and given virtually none of the help he sought to stop the murders of 800,000 Tutsis by their neighbors, the Hutus. It was a world entranced by one black story, the O.J. Simpson trial, but uninterested in stopping the deaths of so many men, women and children who weren’t living atop oil reserves, or had not had their pictures in People magazine.
This whole horrible event happened on Clinton’s watch but at the same time they talk about how Clinton was ‘distracted at this time’. What a shame they don’t talk about the source of the distractions. The Dobermans, led by Newt Gingrich and his newly elected acolytes flush with newfound power had Clinton on the ropes since day one, whether it was Whitewater or Travelgate or Hillarophobia. Not only weren’t the Dobermans concerned about genocide in Rwanda, they made sure Clinton’s hands were tied for anything but the most select things. Day One, he was already being pummeled regarding gays in the military and for Healthcare with Hillary, and the GOP in the past 13 years has been anything but friendly toward the UN, usually quite the opposite.
Clinton should have fought for Rwanda the way he fought for the former Yugoslavia but even that was a complete hard sell to the nation and was not supported by the rabid Republican Dobermans, and he knew he could pull it off in the end only because it was white on white genocide and the intervention was short and sweet. How do you get segregated racist Americans to see black on black violence as anything but expediency?
The real reason this happened, as Dallaire well knows, is racism. Nobody cares about dark skinned people unless they have oil, pure and simple. In the midst of all of this Romeo Dallaire showed the kind of humanity in the face of the most horrible evil even while he is being hung out to dry by the rest of the world. In an era of few heroes, this man stands like a tower.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Blending Defeated
You might want to finish that Frappuccino before continuing.
Gristmill reports that the EPA’s pending decision to allow “blending” has been defeated. This is the yummy little process where treatment plants would be allowed to discharge untreated sewage after a heavy rain or snowfall as long as it is “blended” with treated sewage. Hey, if there’s sewage in the water, there’s sewage in the water. Does it really matter if it’s diluted? Yuck.
The agency had proposed letting that become the official policy for handling the huge volume of waste water that storms bring, but changed its mind after reviewing 98,000 public comments and the testimony at some congressional hearings.
Thank you, 98,000… plus reps Bart Stupak, D-Mich., E. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Jeff Miller, R-Fla., for helping make that happen.
If the EPA had adopted the policy, U.S. sewage plants might have avoided an estimated $90 billion or more in facility upgrades to allow for oxidation of pollutants in wastes after heavy rains.
$90B to keep shit out of the water? Sounds like money well spent.
Heavy Marine Layer
San Francisco is socked in today, we are under the heavy low fog we are famous for… Seagulls, flying and walking, can be seen from my house, shots on the news of the so-called South Beach area near the Bay Bridge are, well, shots of fog, the Bridge has fully disappeared over a couple hours of daylight…
So I am meuling around, getting more coffee, thinking this is a good day for a big old Victorian kitchen painted Pompeiian Red… the TV has Bush speechifiying… I hear the litany of “democracy” then he calls out the series of revolutions (we need one soon) the ‘’orange’’ revolution in the Ukraine, then the ‘’purple’’ revolution in Iraq (I had thought it was blue, who knew?) then more color affiliated revolutions—pretty lame really, makes me think of terror alerts. One would think this will get a big applause… Right? Memorial Day weekend kick off, and so on… USA! USA! ?? uh, Rah Rah...?
It does not.
Smatter of applause. More speech, smatter. It. is. so. slight.
I looked up where he is today: US Naval Academy at Annapolis MD. Commencement speech! Parents are there, right?
I read it is 976 graduates who receive their commissions today, and later he is handing out the diplomas… the atmosphere is low to ground, I swear I sense avoidance.
This works for me. May not work for Bush or Bolton, or Lugar, or Hatch or Frist or Warner… in fact, may not work for some DINOs loose in the land (those ‘’yes’’ votes for cloture on Bolton, even Feinstein and Lieberman managed to vote against cloture), but it works for me.
Democrats, get a clue, keep it up.
"Surrounding Baghdad Like a Bracelet"
From the AP via Yahoo on today’s sweep and secure offensive, a ‘’blockade’’ of Baghdad:
Operation Lightning will involve about a quarter of the 165,200 Iraqis estimated by the Pentagon to be part of police and military forces.
It will be followed by similar anti-terrorism moves across the country, part of an effort to shift the government stance toward the insurgency from a defensive to an offensive position, said Interior Minister Bayan Jabr and Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi.
"We will establish, with God’s help, an impenetrable blockade surrounding Baghdad like a bracelet surrounds a wrist,” al-Duleimi said. “With God’s help and the support of those who believe in their cause and defeating terrorism and fundamentalists, they will not allow anyone to break this cordon."
You will witness unprecedented security measures and none familiar to you,” he said. “We have to work together, government and people, because security is for all the citizens, not just the government."
The ministers said Baghdad would be divided into two sectors and 15 districts where police and emergency personnel would operate 24 hours a day.
“We will stand against anyone who tries to kill Iraqis and we will impose the law by adopting all tough measures,” Jabr said.
NYT also covered operations in the western suburb of Abu Ghraib:
Raids by Iraqi soldiers and police have netted 587 suspected insurgents since April, the ministers said, some of them foreign fighters. More than two thirds of those were arrested in the troubled western suburb of Abu Ghraib over the weekend, where mostly Shiite and Kurdish police and army commando units arrested 480 people in two days.
"The arrests targeted the well-known people of the area, and targeted Sunnis,” in and around Baghdad, said Taha al-Zobaiy, a 40-year-old farmer interviewed on Thursday.
The ministers cautioned that any arrests would be well-planned and not reckless.
Iraq will not “achieve security at the expense of human dignity,” Mr. Dulaimi said, adding that the government wished “to build good relations with people."
Here is a (test) phrase for the ages:
"The goal is not to secure the government, but to secure the people,”
Not a security we will survive, not in recognisable fashion anyway…
In the run up to war in summer of ‘02, there was little I could do, but I did read about the fall of Grozny, coming at the end of years of fighting, cease fires, truces, being held by rebels, changes in governent, some autonomy in 1997, then a second sustained assault by Russian troops beginning in the fall of 1999, a siege enduring several months.
On Monday night’s DemocracyNOW! I caught Janine di Giovanni, a searingly beautiful woman, Senior Foreign Correspondent with the Times of London, who, with a photographer, illegally walked into Chechnya, by twisted fate landing there at the fall of Grozny. The juxtaposition of her very alive beauty with scenes of apocalyptic horror was stunning.
As we turn away from the world, from the UN, from the ICRC, the NGOs, from Amnesty International, from the world community of nations (will we vilify anyone, anyone at all, but never Israel and the Neo con front men and women?) as we turn completely inward, USA!USA! contra mundi, the scene of the retreating Chechen army is worth a moment of contemplation. What position is held in war is not important in this metaphoric imagery, I was suffused with the vision this will be us in the ME, come one day. For all our power, we are surrounded by hundreds of millions with every reason possible to hate us....
AMY GOODMAN: Were you one of the only reporters to be there in the fall of Grozny?
JANINE DI GIOVANNI: Yes. There was myself, a German photographer, and a French woman who was working there, as well. We weren’t allowed into Chechnya, so we were there illegally. It was impossible for the Russian government to give you visas to get in, unless you went in with the Russian troops.
So, I smuggled myself into Chechnya, walked in, basically, with my satellite phone on my back. ... We got to the outskirts of Grozny, and the city fell. We hadn’t planned it that way. I suppose it’s a remarkable journalistic coup, but as a human being, it was absolutely terrifying, because, you know, you should never be in a city when it falls.
She continues:
We were with the retreating Chechen army, who had crossed a minefield, to get out of Grozny. They had bribed Russian soldiers to get out, but the Russians had lied to them and tricked them and sent them over a minefield. So, as soon as they began crossing it, they realized that they were—they had been, you know, hideously fooled.
And they began, you know, I think it was something like one in four of them blew up. So, there were these incredibly sad stories of some guys saying, I’ll go forward. You know, brother, I will go forward, and some went forward, sacrificed themselves. So when they got to this little suburb called Al Khankala, they were wearing winter white uniforms. I’ll never forget it, and they were covered in blood, and they were dragging the dead behind them. And because it was so unbearably cold, it was this kind of apocalyptic scene, and the line of the soldiers stretched for miles. And it was freezing cold, and we were stuck in this suburb, and there was one doctor. And he was amputating a lot of limbs, because these guys had gone over a minefield.
And he was set up in this school, and I remember going in, and I was walking, and my feet were sticking to something, and I looked down, and it was just blood everywhere. And I could hear these men screaming as he was operating because they didn’t have a lot of anesthetic. And I went into some rooms to talk to some of the men, and they were blinded and missing arms and missing legs. And it was just – it was like a scene out of hell. And then I started trying to call my office but, of course, as usual, the one moment I really needed my satellite phone, my batteries started dying. And there was no electricity. So I was desperately trying to find a generator to charge my batteries because it was my only link to the outside world.
And I suddenly realized I’m, you know, a lone foreigner here with the photographer and this other woman. There was no M.S.F. (Medicins Sans Frontieres), no U.N., no Red Cross. So, if something happened to us, that was it.
[Just heard it reported that we have lost 25 US military over 7 days in the Iraq theatre]
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Two Quick Points on Moral Relativism
The Amnesty International report is unsurprisingly being bashed by conservative bloggers, and nearly universal among their critiques is a strong distaste for "moral relativism." A comment in the AI thread on the Belmont Club summed up this position well (even though the link says "0 Comments" click it and you’ll see them):
It’s odd, isn’t it, how moral relativism works. A country like say, North Korea or Iran takes dissenters and throws them into the gulag and that’s government policy. In the US when someone mistreats a prisoner there is an investigation and the individual wrong-doers face criminal sanctions… that’s our government policy. And yet, somehow the two are equal. As bad as moral relativism is, though, it’s the fact that those who indulge themselves in this sort of thinking aren’t even aware there’s a problem.
I have two quick points I’d like to make about this: one specific and one general. Before that, however, I guess I should clarify that I feel this sort of critique of moral relativism requires a belief that there’s a higher truth or higher standard (perhaps determined by the standard that’s most consistent with a progressive approach toward human rights). That is, this POV argues there is a standard everyone else should look toward achieving, the yardstick by which all others should be measured, it can be determined, and eveyone else can be measured by it.
My specific point relates to the AI report. All the shouting about "how dare they" criticize us strikes me as willfully blind to the way that, by proclaiming our moral superiority, we are asking to be held to a higher standard. It seems to me that Amnesty’s point was that as the world’s remaining superpower, the US bears a bigger responsibility than North Korea or Iran to set an example. So any critique that doesn’t account for how the President declared himself qualified to preach to the rest of the world about such matters in his last Inaugural address, leaves a bit of a gap in how one is meant to interpret responsibility and credibility. I mean, it’s human nature for problems to arise, but when so many problems are arising (G-bay, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, extradition, false arrests in the US, etc.) AND the president is still declaring we’ll lead the way toward the end of tyranny, then I think AI and others have a right to suggest, because we’re holding ourselves up as an example of a higher standard, that we’re failing in equal measure to those holding themselves to a lower standard.
My general point is this: it seems to me that moral relativism is a good definition for the way many conservatives justify their opposition to advances in the gay rights movement in America. By insisting that their social customs and personal preferences should dictate the law, they’re ignoring the more progressive standards of many other countries on such issues. Opening up marriage and military service to gay people is definitely more progressive, and countries that have done so arguably hold the yardstick we should be measuring ourselves against.
Resolving when moral relativism is good and when it’s bad would seem a good use of some of these critics’ time.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
The North Korea Problem
Some folks here at the office were having a discussion about the threat from North Korea. Being good Republicans, they were trying to find a way to blame Clinton and the Democrats for it. I suddenly remembered something I’d let myself lose site of. For all intents and purposes, Bush purposely created this problem early on in his presidency.
If you remember back in the day of Big Dog, North Korea was planning on pulling out of the NPT. We talked them into keeping the monitoring equipment in place. Well, we actually started paying them to keep the monitoring equipment in place. Not the best situation, but much, much better than the one we’re in now.
Seeing how his plan to create a reason for war in Iraq out of thin air worked so beautifully, Bush began accusing NK of having nuclear aspirations. NK denied it, and the monitoring equipment was still in place, but of course we all know how these things work out. It doesn’t matter if NK denies working on plutonium enrichment. It doesn’t matter if inspectors say that nothing is there. It doesn’t matter if there is no evidence. It doesn’t matter that Bush is a lying fucking sack of shit. These are minor nusances.
So, Bush pulls the plug on our little arrangement with NK. No more financial support from the U.S. Yes, it was a less than ideal situation, but this is international politics, and a little bribery to keep a powder keg like NK and Li’l Kim in check is worth it when you considered the alternative. But it wasn’t worth it to George W. “Fuck-Stick” Bush. NK pulled out of the NPT, of course, and dismantled the monitoring equipment and fast forward to where we are now. One of the world’s biggest nut cases is hard at work on nuclear weapons, having been enabled by one of the world’s biggest menaces (our president), and there is very little we can do about it.
Anyway, I just wanted to remind everyone how we got here. We can’t forget these facts. The Department of Revisionist History will be juggling the timeline, just as they juggled the timeline on Iraq. (Remember how we started bombing Iraq because they kicked the inspectors out? That’s what a Republican will tell you. Actually, we told the inspectors to get out because we were going to start bombing.)
peace out
American Nosedive (Cont): Property Bubbles II
Our obvious interest on this site is to see everyone survive any slide, property prices or otherwise, and be on top on the other side and ready to roll on the Great Re-building…
Now, it is widely pointed out that property is being driven in part by cheap loans. And it is more discretely pointed out that the party to our national equation keeping interest rates low is.... China. And that if China moves out of the bond market, interest rates will spike to keep the incoming $$$ incoming.
From my post on property a month ago: “Capital that could in fact be doing something USEFUL such as powering worldwide growth beyond the quicksand we are all sinking in… is instead going into STUFF. And if things play out, as they remorselessly (and repeatedly) have in the past, when the wrong things are given the wrong valuation, what might we all soon be looking forward to? “
Steep Rise in Prices for Homes Adds to Worry About a Bubble in today’s NY Times ignores the China dimension and that possibility - but is plenty of food for thought anyway.
Home prices rose more quickly over the last year than at any point since 1980, a national group of Realtors reported yesterday, raising new questions about whether some local housing markets may be turning into bubbles destined to burst.
With mortgage rates still low and job growth accelerating, the real estate market is defying yet another round of predictions that it was on the verge of cooling. The number of homes sold also jumped in April, after having been flat for almost a year.
Nationwide, the median price for sales of existing homes, which does not factor in newly built ones, rose to $206,000 last month, up 15.1 percent over the last year and breaking the $200,000 level for the first time..... Adjusted for inflation, the median price - the point at which half cost more and half cost less - has increased more than a third since 2000.......
The History Of Property Bubbles
Even before this surge, housing prices had risen more steeply over the last 10 years than during any such period since World War II. A growing number of economists worry that real estate is to this decade what technology stocks were to the 1990’s, with many people assuming that home values will rise forever.
Over all, home prices have never fallen by a significant amount, and Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Friday that a national drop in price remained unlikely. But they have sometimes fallen sharply in certain locations, including New York and Los Angeles, and Mr. Greenspan, in his strongest warning to date, stated that some metropolitan areas were clearly showing signs of “froth."
Specific Geographical Areas
Prices continue to rise most rapidly in the places where they are already highest, including Florida, the Boston-Washington corridor and along the West Coast. In the late 1980’s, a typical house in San Diego cost about as much as two typical houses in Syracuse, according to the Realtors’ association; today, someone could buy six Syracuse houses for the price of one in San Diego.
Prices have jumped most sharply over the last year in the West - up 21 percent in April from a year earlier, compared with an increase of 14 percent in the calendar year 2004. Price increases also accelerated in the Midwest, to almost 13 percent, while they remained roughly similar in the Northeast at 16 percent, and the South, where they are up about 8 percent compared with a year earlier.
In a separate report, the Census Bureau said Tuesday that the percentage of homes worth at least a million dollars had almost doubled from 2000 to 2003. California had the highest share of million-dollar homes in 2003, with more than 4 percent valued above that amount. It was followed by Connecticut; Washington, D.C.; Massachusetts; and New York, where an estimated 2.1 percent of the homes were valued at more than $1 million. Nationally, 1 percent are worth more than that.
The Speculative Risks
"There’s clearly speculative excess going on,” said Joshua Shapiro, the chief United States economist at MFR Inc., an economic research group in New York. “A lot of people view real estate as a can’t lose.”.......
To economists worried about a bubble, the growing gap between house prices and almost everything else - rents, incomes, population growth - is the surest sign of trouble.......
Mr. Shapiro of MFR said that even a moderate rise in mortgage rates now had the potential to cause a price decline in some expensive markets. A rate increase would change the calculation for people buying residential real estate as an investment, he said, and could make other buyers realize that the recent price jumps could not continue.
Possible Counter Balances
But other economists predict that powerful demographic forces will keep prices increasing in most of the country. Many baby boomers are buying second homes, and their children - like many immigrants who have arrived in the last generation - are destined, in this view, to buy their first, continuing to stoke demand.
Construction companies have also avoided the kind of overbuilding that plagued some regions during the real estate downturn of the early 1990’s. Fewer than 2.5 million homes remained on the market in April, equal to only about four months’ worth of home sales, and that is near a record low.
Yeah. Well. Tell THAT to China and the bond market if they go funny on us.....
How to hedge? Some smart people are already on fixed rate mortgages, not over-leveraging generally, using value principles to boost their personal value equation, and joining the renting classes for the next period! Usual disclaimers....
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Nuclear Compromise
Little is averted, “the can is kicked down the road" is the best single sound byte. Three wretched judges elevated closer to a vote, Owen (the single line take down should have been “Enron and Rove”, cannot get easier) about to come to the senate for a vote [core of the deal, Owen advances to an up and down vote with cloture invoked 81 - 18, Inouye did not vote], Bolton, nominated to the UN, comes in likely this week for a vote. Vague comments from Lindsay Graham that not all of the three, possibly one (Brown) may not have R votes. That’s a shifting wind flying in front of the “good faith and standing” of the current Republican party.
Big Losers… well my early thought is both Frist and Reid lose, the natural focus on the “leader”, both Majority and Minority, is muted. I don’t view this as good overall tho the Majority Leader does not get my sympathy… Frist is one of the most awkward politicians I have ever observed (think of his interview with Steffy on AIDS and tears)... I think his chances for lasting prominence in the ‘08 primary run was highly dubious, however much pigs are observed in full flight these days.
Clearly a convenient and disposable tool of the WH, with a significantly less smooth persona than Lott (they are all pigs in lipstick, frankly), Frist had acquired a noticable odor in the weeks long run of this horror… my guess, it would have been an iffy vote for the R, likely this game of the centrist panel denied him the Democratic votes that pant with desire to cross the aisle. I had been figuring we possibly gained 3 but that perhaps 8 of ours would cross over…
One thing was clear, a public vote needed to be averted, on both sides.
There is a sense, should it play out that the panel of 14 matters, that this is the de facto power group: “they saved the senate”. Then realise that includes Lieberman… and brand spanking new baby senator Salazar who is lately fashioning a Goliath v Goliath for himself with Dobson. For all I know this is Catholic pique, I am suspicious.
Republicans, the majority party, of course retain the upper hand - and a “moderate” Christian (ever faith invoking but never fundie) sanctioned paddle for disciplining the little Dems… Susan Collins on Nightline made it clear that all of this came about due to over use of the filibuster by the Democrats… thus they are fractious children who must be subdued. McCain is on MSNBC saying that this was necessary due to Democratic ‘’abuse’’ of the filibuster. Mama and Papa are in agreement, the child is a problem. SS battles loom, Democrats had managed to hold off the Republicans in the months long run up to SS, now there is a “centrist” panel to always comment on Democratic strategy. SS moves up, I am sad to say.
Pryor, trusted uncle in the group is on again, he burbles ‘’trust’’. A very junior uncle, deputised to be a baby Republican, credentialed out of Arkansas… Republicans retain the upper hand.
A couple who were noodling with the centrists are not signatories… Blanche Lincoln and Obama. I take it they will be valued alternates… our centrist plate is very full.
Had this been anything but the judiciary Feinstein would have been part of the deal. However she holds the judiciary in regard and did fully resent what was done to the Clinton choices. She was present at the Sunday duck dinner at the Frist home, as was Pryor and Lincoln…
McCain (’’our noble war’’
obviously wins at least short term, he seems to like profoundly ugly politics inflicted on him in South Carolina… and Lieberman is elevated. Owen, the client of Rove supported by Enron, wins… Pryor will slide in like warmed cod liver oil…
Democrats will be fed vile medicine and the centrists will be doleing it out…
Oh, Filibuster? Did someone ask? That is a toy that the Democrats get to talk about, if they are very good and don’t ask to play with the toy. The child must promise each day to be very very good, to mind Mama, be Daddy’s girl and never ask for progressive toys.
Boxer and Feingold need to get megaphones… and avoid small planes, do not fly near mountains nor in winter… keep de icing. Nuclear compromise does not bode well.
Liberalism: Blog, Women, Workplace, And China Promoters Of...
The tea-leaves seem to me to be more and more aligning themslves toward the notion of good days for liberalism ahead. Four drivers for you here.
First, John Tierney, the hard-line anti-liberal winger on the NY Times columnist panel, has an out-of-nowhere piece today on women in the workplace - a piece which reads to me very much like liberalism being the wave of the future in the workplace.
"Even in tasks where they do well, women seem to shy away from competition, whereas men seem to enjoy it too much,” Professor Niederle said......
You can argue that this difference is due to social influences, although I suspect it’s largely innate, a byproduct of evolution and testosterone. Whatever the cause, it helps explain why men set up the traditional corporate ladder as one continual winner-take-all competition - and why that structure no longer makes sense.
Now that so many employees (and more than half of young college graduates) are women, running a business like a tournament alienates some of the most talented workers and potential executives. It also induces competition in situations where cooperation makes more sense.
The result is not good for the bottom line, as demonstrated by a study from the Catalyst research organization showing that large companies yield better returns to stockholders if they have more women in senior management. A friend of mine, a businessman who buys companies, told me one of the first things he looks at is the gender of the boss.
“The companies run by women are much more likely to survive,” he said. “The typical guy who starts a company is a competitive, charismatic leader - he’s always the firm’s top salesman - but if he leaves he takes his loyal followers with him and the company goes downhill. Women C.E.O.’s know how to hire good salespeople and create a healthy culture within the company. Plus they don’t spend 20 percent of their time in strip clubs."
Second, in a superb piece by Steve Gilliard , kindly pointed out by our reader and avowed Deaniac Susan S, Steve says this on liberalism and the powerful vehicle blogs have become in advancing its cause.
Blogs have breathed fresh air into the left because it creates two things:
One, a forum for actually doing things. I don’t agree with ANSWER or Indymedia’s politics, but, ANSWER, despite its flaws, actually does something. Unlike the navel gazing of the Pacifica Crowd, ANSWER can get things done. Their little stunt at the Ingauration was deeply appreciated.
Indymedia deserves no small amount of credit for actually covering the RNC last year. They risked arrest to cover a story and they are shaking off the lethargy of the WBAI/Counterpunch crowd. Counterpunch is another outfit of talk big, do little. They have conspiracies everywhere and have no plans on beating them back. It’s like a club of let’s watch the evil people and tell everyone how bad they are and they will rise up and stop them.
Most people, however, for various reasons, aren’t really going to join their bandwagon. They like the idea of less ideological conformity and more of a sense of contributing. Which is why Meetups were so successful until they decided to charge for them, creating a 95% drop off in membership. The left didn’t really trust in people power, despite all of the sloganeering. I mean, I heard umpteen calls for people power, yet the same people remained in charge for years. They liked democracy as long as they were the people in charge.
Blogs exchange information and encourage action, real, valid, political action. Letters and phone calls may not seem like much, but they work. They can change a lot more than protest after protest by a few people.
Two, blogs allow people to speak. The old new left was a top down model of activism. The “leaders” would decide what was right, and everyone else would follow along. Blogs create ideas, people engage each other and have a stake in what happens. The old new left wanted followers. Even WBAI was and is filled with people who want to lead, whom, they don’t care and what for, doesn’t matter as long as they get to be in charge.
Which is why an old Trotskyite like Horowitz switched sides. The right gave him a movement and some followers and he was willing to do their bidding. Michael Savage, another old leftie was eager to switch teams when there was money and power, even illusory power, involved. They joined the “winning” team. Hell, there was a long, hard road before them of people who had advocated the worst kind of leftist politics and then became rightists.
Blogs toss this all on their head, because it allows people to organize and work together without needing a “leader” to follow. So all the little Tom Haydens of the future can’t exactly get people in a room and pretend to lead them. There is a great deal more democracy with the blogs than with the movements of the past because there are just so many more voices.
Why do I believe this? Blog readership exploded after the election. Once people calmed down, and the media couldn’t charge we were wild eyed conspiracy freaks, our collective power just exploded. While Powerline embarassed themselves and Jonah Goldberg turned into a tool of ridicule, Kos, Atrios and Josh Marshall became more credible because of their work. Instead of retreating and blaming people, they kept working. The same old tired lefties, using politics as fashion statement and personal expression planned to go to Canada or some other foolishness. Luckily, such overt cowardice was limited, and most people became resolved to fight Bush. And as they did, it was easy to get some ideas and discussions on the blogs.
What blogs and the 527’s proved was that the collective action of many, beat the ideology and money of a few. The Democrats have been narrowcasting for years, picking this cause and that, and not seeing the larger picture. Mainly because there were no tools to see that picture. Now, the Dems have found their own direct mail, but with nearly minimal costs. The blogosphere’s reach is limited, but their multiplier effect is not. Stories come from it, more people read blogs every day, politicians now read them.
This sea change from the old new left, which was top down, is amazing. So I fully expect a lot more former draft-dodging hippies to blather on about how the “left left them”. Well, here’s the news, that left left everyone, most of us still choose to not endorse the GOP and their culture of greed and death.
And third, there is this piece today by Nicholas Kristof, another NY Times columnist, on the distinctly liberalising effects of blogs in China.
The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match - the Internet. The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history.......
.......the Internet is beginning to play the watchdog role in China that the press plays in the West. The Internet is also eroding the leadership’s monopoly on information and is complicating the traditional policy of “nei jin wai song” - cracking down at home while pretending to foreigners to be wide open........
The authorities have arrested a growing number of Web dissidents. But there just aren’t enough police to control the Internet, and when sites are banned, Chinese get around them with proxy servers........
So where is China going? I think the Internet is hastening China along the same path that South Korea, Chile and especially Taiwan pioneered. In each place, a booming economy nurtured a middle class, rising education, increased international contact and a growing squeamishness about torturing dissidents.
President Hu has fulminated in private speeches that foreign “hostile forces” are trying to change China. Yup, count me in - anybody who loves China as I do would be hostile to an empty Mao suit like Mr. Hu. But it’s the Chinese leadership itself that is digging the Communist Party’s grave, by giving the Chinese people broadband.
Those three and how many other pieces arguing the same thing: liberalism rising because it WORKS. And all in the same 24 hours…
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Page A27
As I was reading this, from the Sunday WaPo… on page A27, next to Pincus on A26, I was laughing so hard that I wanted there to be a page 2. Few laughs are on offer and I am not picky.
BAGHDAD—U.S. military commanders have prepared plans to consolidate American troops in Iraq into four large air bases as they look ahead to giving up more than 100 other bases now occupied by international forces, officers said.
...
The new, sturdier buildings will give the bases a more permanent character, the officers acknowledged.
Character, we need that. Memory too.
But they said the consolidation plan was not meant to establish a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq.
No, of course not establish.... It will be like other words we used, “pacification” instead of “stabilisation” for the post invasion period.... Just a word...but we knew what that meant, pacification, when it was published in the NYT a couple weeks prior to invasion. Curveball spun questionable gold from offal, the American troops massed in the desert and the Commander in Chief stumbled thru his March 6 presser. The major media published suspense - and fiction.
We will never “establish” our permanence. It will always be in the “offing”. A “fog fact”, part of the “battle rattle”. How do we all learn these words. We learn them because, for America, the better part of two decades is and forever will be rooted in some bar in South Viet Nam. So, like it or not we learn these things. There will be many many more bi-partisan (quick, lie back and think of Norquist) senatorial “fact finding” trips. Ever careful, they won’t trip over a single fact… Good lord, even Kate O’Beirne has been to Iraq. She “did” Iraq in March. Bet she squealed in joy, all those uniforms.
Instead, they said, it is part of a withdrawal expected to occur in phases, with Iraqi forces gradually taking over many of the bases inhabited by U.S. and other foreign troops. Eventually, U.S. units would end up concentrated at the four heavily fortified, strategically located hubs, enabling them to provide continued logistical support and emergency combat assistance, the officers said.
Oh, await the Beirut barracks incident. We will be bunkered, consolidated and exposed despite the hardened rooves. The Iraqi forces will not be able to take over [what? those 100 flimsy bases we draw back from? Won’t be happening], certainly not soon. The fog rises to mask the facts: later, sometime or other. Won’t be sooner.
How many more elections will take place in which we struggle not to speak of the blood pooling in the room? The hurricane of blood is off shore… it is not here but there, thus no urgency.
I have already figured out that as the official KIA rate hits around 3,000 it will be used to tell us again of 9/11. Soon enough, a christian Louis Lamour will rise to write of these days. Another thing I figured out, what took me so long, we need to destroy the UN, to destroy the validity of the ‘’blue helmets’’, which also are a form of employment for some of the poorer countries.... Bingo, private militaries will take over. Global hot spot after global hot spot. You know they want to… Google “Dyncorps” in the former Yugoslavia if anyone is fussing over the UN troops commiting rapes in Africa.
Wait, don’t give up, it gets BETTER:
The officers said a master plan for the positioning of U.S. forces in the Middle East, maintained by U.S. Central Command, did not envision keeping U.S. forces in Iraq permanently. Instead, it calls for what one Army colonel here described as “strategic overwatch” from bases in Kuwait, meaning U.S. forces there would be near enough to respond to events in Iraq if necessary.
I can name that plan: 1991. Kuwait has well established golf courses, and we did ship in before the invasion, on military transport planes, even as the boys and girls massed on the border and the ground temperature ratcheted up, we shipped in...golf buggies. For the officer class. Kuwait is the 51st state and Iraq is the back 40 and the shooting range. Or Kuwait is the bedroom community, gated on a golf course, and Iraq is the human game preserve with detention centers, air strips where we “cork screw” down to land and, of course, oil fields and water resources. In the terrible run up to war, Mo Dowd ran a column on the hideous yearning for empire amongst the top of the administration, it was entitled Lemon Fizzies on the Euphrates. She got that one right.
No timetable exists for turning over all the bases, the officers said. Any decision to begin reducing U.S. forces, they stressed, will be based on a variety of factors—chief among them, the strength of the insurgency and the ability of Iraq’s security services to fight it.
Although U.S. commanders have made clear they would like to begin drawing down troops from the current level of about 138,000 by some time next year, they say no decision has been reached.
By the time I read the above, I was tired laughing. Which was good, as the last graphs (ain’t it the way) get to it…
Under the new consolidation plan, three palaces will be turned over to the Iraqi government by the end of the year—two in Tikrit and one in Mosul—with more to follow later. ... But the fate of a number of other bases has yet to be determined. U.S. planners are exploring options with other national government ministries as well as provincial and local governments.
“The issue with returning a lot of these facilities to the government of Iraq is whether the government is prepared to provide the security, the care and custody,” said Maj. Noelle Briand, who heads a basing working group on the command staff. “My primary concern is that the government identifies the tenant that’s going in and how it’ll be able to provide for security.” [that is really quite funny, and to think the speaker was serious]
Among the major unresolved issues is the future of the Camp Victory complex. Also unsettled is what will become of U.S.-run detention facilities, which currently hold more than 11,000 prisoners.
U.S. officers say plans for further base reductions have not yet been considered.
“Four is as far as we’ve gone down in our planning,” Briand said.
OK got it, 4 bases out of 106. I am glad no one woke me to announce any of this… it got reported but there was no news, something like that. Hard to tell as it is so… nothing.
And here is a tidbit on Camp Victory [registration to The Toronto Star req.), reporting as of June of 2004 (we won’t be giving it up anytime soon):
If there were such a place as Stepford, Iraq, North Victory would be it. Here, the generals in command of the 1st Cavalry lord over what is emerging as one of the largest U.S. base camps built since Vietnam.
Among its attractions, a PX, or camp store, that would not seem out of place in the Wal-Mart portfolio. ...
Among the war souvenirs: coffee mugs bearing slogans such as “Total Whoopass: Operation Iraqi Freedom” and “(There is no) Hard Rock Café, Baghdad”; T-shirts emblazoned “Who’s Your Baghdaddio!”
North Victory boasts Iraq’s only Burger King, a mobile operation comprising two tractor-trailers — but only for those willing to use their own cash, rather than accessing the thrice daily catered meals courtesy of the Pentagon contractor, Gulf Catering Co. That food is served at no cost and in vast quantities in a massive new mess hall at North Victory that comes with attractions of its own.
Among them, two wide-screen televisions piping in the latest from ESPN and Armed Forces Network. And last Sunday, a uniformed Cavalry jazz trio just happened to be playing Miles Davis when the Star stumbled in. The tune was “Kinda Blue.”
It all adds up to something that is not quite America, but nowhere near Iraq.
The Star’s reporter was a little too free wheeling (real) in his reporting (several pieces, the description of Camp Victory is drawn from the longest and last article), he was swiftly escorted out of the country a few days after this appeared. One of the “complaints” was that Camp Victory ‘’did not have the only Burger King inside Iraq’’, there was also one at Baghdad International Airport. Another complaint was that young recruits had told him, and he had reported, that they were concerned for their security with some of the Iraqi police, it was hard to tell who was friendly and who was not. Real then, real now.
Likely no Qur’ans and no toilets at Camp Victory…
Ha. Ha. As Bobby Byrd would say…