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On Alternatives
By Paul Street at Jan 11, 2007 |
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It was nice to see Congress show some backbone today in grilling the mendacious war criminal Condaleeza (Chevron) Rice and new Pentagon chief Robert Gates. Liberal Democratic Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) raised the issue of actually de-funding the war, something that Ted Kennedy (D-MA) talked about yesterday. Moderate Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (Nebraska) said that Bush's “surge” promises to be the worst U.S. foreign policy action “since the Vietnam War.” Fighting populist Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) gave a decent speech denouncing Bush's plan on the floor of the House; he wasn't alone. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told Rice that people in the administration aren't suffering and sacrificing for the terrible war they are prosecuting. The White House expects less privileged others to die and get maimed for their horrible policies, she said.
Let's have more of this sort of confrontation and talk. It was good to see a little bit of heated, serious and honest civic debate – at least loosely aligned with actual public opinion (imagine) – grab headlines away from the president's predictable effort to push his case surrounded by members of the armed services.
People who care about democratic culture ought to be very alarmed by now about the way Bush now regularly surrounds himself with favored “real Americans” in military uniform while announcing deadly policies opposed by the large majority of his merely civilian majority. Not good.
Thankfully, the Idiot-in-Chief is now facing increasing opposition from the active duty military, the majority of which (according to a December 2006 Army Times poll) now opposes his war.
But yes let's have more of this sort of conflict and tough questioning. Let's have serious congressional investigation of the deceptive case the White House made for its illegal war, of human rights abuses committed during the war, of corruption in the awarding of contracts and of …all the rest. Such investigations may become seedbeds for an overdue constitutional crises leading to impeachment and removal of Cheney and Bush.
But what should be done about Iraq as an alternative to Bush's pathetic re-escalation and his imperial oil war? The creepy Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks is right when he says today that “if the Democrats don't like the U.S. policy on Iraq over the next six months, they have themselves partly to blame…the Democrats have been fecund with criticisms of the war, but when it comes to alternative proposals, a common approach is Social Darwinism on stilts: We failed them, now they're on their own” (“The Fog Over Iraq,” NYT, 11 January 2007, A27).
The standard conventional wisdom out there is that the question of “what to do about Iraq” is just enormously complex and involves agonizing choices between difficult options, all of which are “bad.” “There are no good options.” How many times have we heard that phrase in recent months?
I disagree that it's too complex and that there are “no good options.”
Here is what a civilized United States – a U.S. that actually cared about democracy, human rights, international law, the people of the Middle East and the world etc. – would “do about Iraq.” It would stop talking about the occupation of Iraq as a “mistake” and starttalking abut accurately and honestly as a crime: a truly great transgression for which it must make reparations and be held legally and morally accountable. It would end its military invasion and occupation and work with international agencies and other states within and beyond the region to guarantee Iraqi security through a global peacekeeping force. It would dismantle all permanent U.S. military installations in Iraq. It would abolish all laws/rules opening the Iraqi economy to foreign and predominantly U.S multinational corporate exploitation. It would renounce all U.S. designs on Iraqi petroleum reserves. It would convert a massive portion of the sum it currently spends on militarily attacking Iraq to the provision of basic health, social, and infrastructural service and reconstruction in Iraq. It would work with Iraqis and international agencies to assist and enable the holding of genuinely free and fair Iraqi elections devoid of U.S. pressure.
It would pay massive reparations for the simply incredible damage it has inflicted on Iraq over many years and indeed decades, not just during the current open military assault. In determining the nature and scope of these reparations, it would inquire into and then responsbily attend to the needs and desires of the victims. It would work with international authorities to investigate, prosecute, try, and sentence the top guilty parties behind the invasion in accord with the well-known Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and numerous national and other international legal and policy instruments.
Those in my opinion are reasonable alternatives. You start by ceasing and desisting from illegal international aggression. You begin by calling off the assault. You move to meeting others needs and accepting responsibility. You offer your criminal “leadership” up for accountability. You acknowledge, apologize, and pay for what you have done – the hundreds of thousands you have killed and maimed, the water systems and food supplies and roads you have destroyed and polluted, the resources and opportunities you have stolen, the exodus you have forced, and the….[fill in the blank]. You contribute to healing as best you can. You ask for help from international others in and empower those others in proper accord.
This isn't “cut and run” and viciously saying to the Iraqis (as many Democrats now seem to advocate) “now you are on your own. We tried to help you [right!] but it didn't work and now you need to stand up on your own. See you – FYI we've redeployed some forces over the horizon to attack you once all Hell breaks loose again oh and by the way we've got some permanent bases here to keep a watch on all that oil and we expect you to give American oil firms the lion's share of your petroleum Production Sharing Agreements. Sorry about the sonic booms and the continuing daily bombing.”
Doing the right (the left) thing along these lines is so obviously basic from an elementary perspective of civilized internationalism and yet it is frankly inconceivable to all but a select few if any of those congresspersons from the corporate-imperial Democratic Party. It's almost impossible in the current U.S. political, institutional and ideological framework to even have a public conversation about these alternatives. At least it's incredibly difficult to have such a dialogue beyond the lunatic fringe…the political skid row that passes for an organized left in the U.S. Even mentioning these sorts of alternatives (which make perfect sense to most of the morally and politically cognizant world) marks you as some sort of dangerously unbalanced “crank” in the United Orwellian States, where "war is peace" and "love is hate." Sad but true.
I just did a piece on Bush's speech; I hope it will be on ZNet's main page sometime in the next few days. If not I'll put it up here. Here is the link to a piece I did on growing military opposition to Bush's Iraq policies.
I hate to say this but if the civil society is going to continue to be so intractably narrow and authoritarian, then perhaps the crazy criminal war that the out-of-control Messianic Militarist (sadly beyond the reach of even James Baker's butterfly nets) is escalating can only be stopped by the military itself. Many leading military officials are less than pleased with the way that the civilian armchair fascists Cheney, Dumbya, Rumbo, and Rove, etc. have run the military into the ground. The petrocorporate Chickenhawk's war has been reviving terrible Vietnam memories in the officer corps. Maybe its time for an actual rebellion (less bitching and more order-refusing please) within the ranks of the armed forces. Whatever, let's continue to work to coordinate opposition in civil society with opposition inside the military.
just saw quote
By Kissenger, Clark at Jan 17, 2007 12:20 PM
from New York Times (use Bugmenot if you need a password)
via DailyKos
Looking for some stats:
How many 'terrorists' have been killed in Iraq and/or Afghanistan?
How many civilians in Afghanistan?
How many non-U.S. soldiers have been injured and/or killed in Iraq?
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The standard elite charge of "you have no solutions"
By Kissenger, Clark at Jan 14, 2007 14:47 PM
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Deja vu all over again
By Kissenger, Clark at Jan 13, 2007 14:28 PM
From and article written by Bobby Muller:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/46549/
In 1968, shortly after Clark Clifford (Gates?) succeeded Robert McNamara (Rumsfeld?) as Secretary of Defense, Secretary Clifford met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the war in Vietnam. He quickly learned that America's top military leaders did not know how many troops were needed nor did they know what constituted victory.
During March 1968, despite this discovery, President Johnson agreed to send 24,500 more troops to Vietnam on an emergency basis. President Johnson and Secretary Clifford thought that this increase in U.S. troops would lead to U.S. victory there. And in an address to the nation on March 31 President Johnson stated: "We have no intention of widening this war."
At that time, approximately 24,000 U.S. service members had died in Vietnam. By the end of that war (in April 1975), more than 58,000 U.S. troops had been killed. More U.S. soldiers died winding down the war than had in starting it. In addition, by the end of the war, the United States had greatly expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos (Iran and Syria).
Our moronic leader(s) would do well to remember George Santayana's famous dictum: "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."
History does repeat itself, but,unfortunate for georgie and the boys (who never learned), it is too late.
R
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Responses
By Kissenger, Clark at Jan 13, 2007 02:41 AM
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turn off your TV
By Kissenger, Clark at Jan 13, 2007 00:47 AM
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Tolstoy's Insights into Our Delusions of Militarism
By Kissenger, Clark at Jan 12, 2007 22:54 PM
When Paul Street says the discussion should shift from the Iraq invasion and occupation being a "mistake" to being a "crime" he crosses the line from insanity into civilized discourse. Civilized people and sane arguments are the "fringe" as he rightly says. But what kind of uncivilized insanity are progressive looking in on? What kind of barbaric incivility are we on the fringes of? Fortunately there is an old but good model for this problem: Leo Tolstoy's book The Kingdom of God is Within You, published in the early 1890s. It is a key book in Gandhi's awakening. (The book is free online at www.gutenberg.org, the link is http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7tkhw10.txt.)
Tolstoy makes a great argument that militaristic societies put their citizens into a hypnotic trance--a trance much like a stage hypnotist stimulates--but it happens over a long time . . . gradually. The militarism trance strips citizens of a part of the conscience and renders them unable to apply simple, healthy, normal standards of right and wrong to the government when they torture and murder people. Paul points out some of the key applicable standards: international laws, Nuremberg, etc. And his argument presupposes that the rules that govern others, and by which we have ruled against war criminals, would, of course, apply to us. But in the militarism trance, no such assumption exists. Like a person in a trance who thinks he is a chicken, a citizen in this trance, Tolstoy argues, thinks he or she is beyond the normal, everyday, healthy conscience that knows right from wrong.
Tolstoy says this in the book:
". . . the whole power of the army and the state is based in reality on this delusive emancipation of men from their duty to God and their conscience, and the substitution of duty to their superior officer for all other duties."
So Paul Street, and all true progressives, know that in the case of the Iraq invasion and occupation, the true issues are immorality and illegality--crimes--not "mistakes" or "errors" or other distractions from that which is completely obvious to anyone with an intact conscience.
But the corporate-regime Democrats with their imperial assumptions of American supremacy, along with their Republican counterparts, cannot even think that international laws and normal, everyday standards of right and wrong apply to them or their government. So corporate-regime Democrats play the brutal, bloody game of empire, speak of "mistakes" and "failures" and fall in to Bush's trap. (Progressives like Lee, Woolsey, McDermott and Kucinich are strangly absent from the corporate media.)
Rosa Brooks just outlined the contours of the trap, and as she says at the end, unless they "refuse to play the game" (I'd say unless they wake up out of their militarism trance and get normal consciences.) They will "just lose." For, as she argues, if they stop Bush, they get blamed for the disaster, and if their opposition is weak and ineffective (which is more likely) Bush will get the "decent interval" he needs to pin the upcoming disaster on them as he leaves office.
Her article is here:
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0112-22.htm
What do people with intact consciences do when surrounded by a whole culture dominated by the delusional?
I hope someone figures it out.
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John Edwards: "We've done more than talk in Iraq"
By Kissenger, Clark at Jan 12, 2007 22:20 PM
Look at how my post characterized a lot of the leading Dem rhetoric on Iraq (consistent with the Brooks quote I gave): "This isn't 'cut and run' and viciously saying to the Iraqis (as many Democrats now seem to advocate) 'now you are on your own. We tried to help you [right!] but it didn't work and now you need to stand up on your own. See you – FYI we've redeployed some forces over the horizon to attack you once all Hell breaks loose again oh and by the way we've got some permanent bases here to keep a watch on all that oil and we expect you to give American oil firms the lion's share of your petroleum Production Sharing Agreements. Sorry about the sonic booms and the continuing daily bombing.'”
Okay, now look at the following quotes from Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, wrapped in the following passage from a Jeffrey Goldberg essay I read after writing the above post:
"John Edwards, by contrast [with Obama, P.S.], argues that America has fulfilled its commitment to the Iraqi people. 'We've been there for a few years,' he said. 'We've devoted enormous resources, human and otherwise. And now we've reached the place, I think, where the Iraqis are going to have to take responsibility.' I asked [Edwards] if he believed that America had a moral repsonsibility to the Iraqis because the Bush Administration chose to topple a dictatorship only to replace it, albeit inadvertently, with chaos and what looks like civil war."
" ' My view of Darfur is, we've done nothing but yap. We - as a lot of American families can tell you - we've done a lot more than talk in Iraq. And I think you just reach a place where you have to say, *We've done our part, and now it's time for you to step up the plate.* You can't police places forever.' " (Goldberg, "The Starting Gate: Foreign Policy Divides the Democrats," The New Yorker, January 15 [2007]. p. 34)
Yes, we have most certainly "done a lot more than talk" TO Iraq. Yes, we've certainly "done our part" to further dismantle that nation.
Holy shit. And I had naively thought Edwards was a little better.
I'm going to make way for some other ZNet bloggers for a bit. That's five straight from Street.
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Someone said it better than
By Tbarnich, Tb at Jan 12, 2007 20:00 PM
Someone said it better than I:
your point: all wars of the post-World War II era have been manufactured by the "military-industrial complex" in order to serve its economic interests. This is, of course, pure Chomskyite paranoiac conspiracy theory and is impossible to either prove or disprove, since it is based on theoretical conjecture and absolutely no evidence whatsoever. By definition, therefore, it is ahistorical and anti-intellectual balderdash. Which is, of course, the point.
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Hold on there Hank/changes
By Kissenger, Clark at Jan 12, 2007 13:04 PM
Hank you missed the irony. To me the people of the left are absolutely the rational advocates of peace and justice. The difficulty is that dominant war media and corporate-imperial political instititons tend to relegate the sanest people to the official lunatic fringe...to house them on a political skid row. These completely reasonable proposals I outline strike "mainstream" commentators, policymakers, policy 'experts" and politicians as looney tunes. I have met looney people (especially now these days 9/11 conspiracy theorists) on the left but I've many met more on the center and the right not to mention apoliticals. Yes we need to increase the size of the left fringe.
I rewrote part of the original post for those who care to take a second look. The conclusion was unsatisfactory so I redid (that may not be a word) it. Also added a sentence (closer to the top) on congressional investigations and impeachment. Changes/additions are marked in boldface.
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Hey, look at
By Hassan, Sheik at Jan 12, 2007 11:04 AM
Hey, look at this:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070112/ap_on_re_as/cambodia_khmer_rouge
Just like Chomsky - I guess all those refugees have been lying all these years.
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Paul Street - Alternatives
By Beringer-Newlin, Gretchen at Jan 12, 2007 02:48 AM
You say that in America it's impossible to have a resonable conversation about the war on Iraq with anyone beyond the "lunatic fringe, the political skid row..."
I think I can identify an an oxymoron here: Resonable/lunatiics
If the "lunatics" are the only ones responsive to reasonable dialogue, why are you calling them lunatics? And what are you doing that is so much more effective (besides pontificating). Or I should say, what do you expect those of us on the "political skid row" to do?
I don't think the problem is the activists, or the anti-war left, it's the lack of more of them that's the problem.
--Hank
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