Our man Bush is making the rounds of his usual haunts in Washington, gathering information and opinions on the findings of the Iraq Study Group from such diverse players as Vice President Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, and a bunch of generals. Judging by the various trial balloons they’ve released in their usual subtle fashion, I’m going to go way out on a limb here and predict that Dubya’s dramatic conclusion will be — wait for it! — send more troops. Yes, the “surge” strategy so beloved of John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Just what the voters so clearly demanded, eh? This makes sense, I’m sure, in Bush’s tiny mind for several reasons. 1.) He’s the decider. Nobody’s going to tell him (and Cheney) what to do in Iraq, especially not a bunch of aging minders (sent by poppa Bush) whose opinions differ from the original pair of aging minders Dubya brought with him to Washington nearly six long years ago. 2.) Sending more troops makes the Democrats look bad, since they were sent to Washington to do just the opposite, and I’m sure Bush assumes they don’t have the spine to force him into withdrawal. 3.) It’s like “stay the course”… only better, so he gets to cling to his thread of consistency while looking like he’s doing something new and being “tough”, all at the same time — a win / win / win.

Where does this leave the rest of us? Well, unless we kick up a fuss (i.e. call, write, e-mail, and lobby the White House and Congress) we’ll be up shit creek, though not half so much as those poor bastards who have to stay and fight a hopeless war of uncertain outcome and shifting objectives, none of which are worth the loss of a single life or limb. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that ending a war is as simple as casting a vote for someone who says s/he will work in that direction. Recall that in 1964, Lyndon Johnson was cast as the “peace” candidate (like Wilson in 1916). Though we are not the same nation today as we were back in the early 60s, it is best to recall that it took near insurrection at home and mutiny overseas to turn that bloody ship around, and even then the end came in a hysterical flurry of military force that left an entire region devastated and many, many thousands dead. I don’t think ending the war in Iraq would require massive civil disobedience, but the sucker certainly isn’t going to end itself.

One thing that is clearly indicated by the Iraq Study Group plan and the “Extension and Acceleration” (i.e. escalation) plan for which Bush now has a boner is that those at the center of power have not abandoned their core goals in Iraq, most significantly that of maintaining a long-term (perhaps permanent) military presence in that country, as well as substantial influence over its political and economic affairs. Among the ISG’s 79 recommendations (all of which the group claims must be implemented) is one that focuses on privatization of Iraq’s oil industry. Just this week the Iraqi parliament introduced legislation to allow exploration and development of petroleum resources by foreign contractors, an unprecedented move towards the kind of neoliberal economic model now being rejected in South America. I think that, once again, people are missing the central story here. The objective of the Iraq project is not to produce a democratic Iraq at peace with its neighbors as the administration suggests; it is to secure an Iraq that is amenable to U.S. military, political, and economic penetration. If that can be accomplished through the establishment of a secure democracy, it’s fine by Bush and company, but that’s by no means a requirement (see: Pakistan).

So Rumsfeld departs with the pirate ship still steady on course. Goodness gracious me.

luv u,

jp

We’ve heard from the vaunted Iraq Study Group, headed by primo G.O.P. fixer James Baker and every Republican’s favorite Democrat (short of Joe Lieberman) Lee Hamilton, and they’ve delivered what appears to be an elaborate face-saving scheme for an administration and a congress that has driven us into the deepest foreign policy ditch in a generation. Military and diplomatic experts of every stripe are hitting the airwaves talking about “phased redeployment” and “force protection”, but, perhaps most remarkably, there is now a broad acknowledgement that a) this war is a disaster growing worse by the day, and b) we are losing. Like the 9-11 commission, though, this group was tasked with focusing on the “what the hell do we do now?” more than the “wha’ hoppen?” of Operation Iraqi Fiefdom. There is no accountability assessment in this charge, and with good reason. Many of the people who cooked up this splendid little war are still in office and are unwilling to play the “blame game”… especially since they are, well, to blame.

Seems to me, though, that blame should be the first order of business, since it doesn’t involve any complex logistical considerations and might actually even save us from future catastrophes. The finger should be pointed in a very serious way at the architects of this war, and I mean everybody, from Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to congressional hawks of both parties and their pundit-class cheerleaders. These people should be driven as far from the levers of power as possible; they should be politically marginalized so that they will never again participate in any major decisions affecting the nation’s welfare. I mean, why the hell should we pretend as if this were an authorless crime, like some kind of natural disaster, when the perpetrators are standing around, tongue in cheek, planning the next war? Why the hell should we perpetuate this “good intentions gone bad” fantasy that was so liberally deployed when Vietnam was generally acknowledged to be unwinnable? These people destroyed a country, killed probably more than half a million people, sent thousands of our own troops to their deaths, and spent hundreds of billions of dollars we haven’t even earned yet… all on the basis of false claims about WMD’s that were deliberately exaggerated to scare us into war. Where’s the good intention in that?

Now Baker, Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds (whoops — wrong group) have submitted a recommendation to begin what looks like a pullout but is actually a relatively long-term commitment to leave behind thousands of U.S. troops as military trainers and special strike forces in a country where they are almost universally despised. This is basically “Vietnamization” — getting Iraqis to do our hopeless fighting for us, while we work on salvaging some part of the actual American project in Iraq — that of establishing a permanent U.S. presence in the heart of the world’s most productive oil-producing region. Not quite the same as “stealing their oil” (though we’re happy to help favored firms do that via privatization of Iraqi oil fields), this has been a central goal of U.S. planners since our expulsion from Iran. Saudi Arabia is too sensitive to support a large-scale U.S. military presence, and though we’ve got staging areas in Kuwait and Qatar, the plan is to secure Iraq as a political-military client state — crucially, one that possesses massive oil reserves relied upon by our major economic competitors in Europe and the Far East. So I guess the message to our troops is, “Sorry, folks — it wouldn’t be a rapture if someone didn’t get left behind.”

Diallo redux. Sean Bell’s funeral was held in Queens last week, victim of something NYC police call “contagious shooting.” Though officers are highly susceptible, this rare ailment only seems to kill young, unarmed black men. Must be related to “contagious anal rape with a billy club,” from which Abner Louima suffered some years back (a.k.a. Giuliani’s disease).

luv u,

jp

Say what you will about Jimmy Carter — I thought he was a pretty awful president in many ways, quite frankly — he has certainly brought attention to one of the greatest injustices of our time, for which effort he will undoubtedly be attacked ad derided as an anti-Semite. I must say, I have a great deal more respect for him this week than I did last. The guy has, more than any other ex-president in living memory, distinguished himself through his philanthropic work, earning the Nobel Peace Prize and the admiration of many. Rather than being content to settle back on his laurels and enjoy retirement, he has instead chosen to wade hip deep into one of the most acrimonious political issues going — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Carter is using his considerable prestige to gain a broad public hearing for what has long been the international consensus solution for that conflict, namely the end of Israeli rule over that less than one-quarter of mandate Palestine they’ve occupied since June 1967. He has also shone a light on the Palestinian experience in a way that is seldom (if ever) seen on U.S. television.

Of course, the Chuck Krauthammers of the world will remind us of every bad decision Carter has ever made, every war crime committed by a Palestinian, every concession they claim Israel has tried to make through the decades, to its own detriment. They will invoke the existential threat posed by extremists like Amadinejad and Nasrallah and claim that Israel’s 1967 borders were indefensible. Bullshit. Unlike in 1967, Israel does not now face a hostile Egypt, a hostile Jordan, a hostile Iraq. It is clear that the occupied territories and the plight of Palestinians both there and scattered throughout the region remain the only real obstacles to normal relations, with the possible exception of Israel’s formidable nuclear arsenal, still undeclared and yet undeniably real. Fact is, with the continued occupation of that small part of Palestine that was left to the Palestinians after 1948, Israel’s more expansive borders are indefensible precisely because those territories are filled with legions of people whose lives are being crushed by the mad pursuit of a greater Israel. It’s a pretty tight neighborhood, and the only way to have good neighbors is to be one.

Then there’s Amadinejad. What a gift to Israeli and American hawks that man is! His ludicrous fulminations provide them with the ammunition they need to maintain perpetual military confrontation. And the best part about him is that he doesn’t even run Iran. He is as powerless as Khatami was before him, subject to the will of Iran’s supreme clerical leader, the Ayatollah Khamenie. So he presents a pretty low-grade threat to any state that possesses enough conventional and non-conventional weapons to reduce the region to rubble. Add to that the fact that Israel’s politicians (to say nothing of their U.S. counterparts) regularly threaten Iran with attack, and it should come as no surprise that Iran might contemplate building their own nuclear deterrent (though it appears this remains in the contemplative stage at present). With his observations about the Palestinians, Carter is trying to defuse the bomb that is the modern Middle East… and as a result, he will no doubt be lumped together with the bomb-throwers.

All I can say to him is what my mom always told me: No good deed goes unpunished. If you feel resistance, you’re probably doing the right thing.

luv u,

jp