It was a real Rove moment. George W. Bush at the rostrum in front of a room full of 9-11 victim families, announcing his new policy on the disposition of detainees held in the never-ending “war on terror.” (God forbid our official enemies should declare a similar “war on air power” or “war on artillery”). Dubya pulled most of his trademark non-sequitur facial expressions ( the “by crackee” squint-smirk, the long “get it? get it?” glare) and was generally in form for this photo-op as he promised to bring the 9-11 plotters to justice for the nearly 3,000 lives lost on that awful day. And yet, as well received as his words were among that group, I wonder if anyone there pondered how Bush has brought about, by his own count, at least ten times as many deaths in Iraq — and really more like 50 times as many by the most realistic reckoning — as a result of the war of choice he initiated in the name of their fallen loved ones. I know that a good many 9-11 families are none too happy about being used in such a manner… and they can expect the memory of their loss to be invoked regularly in the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections.

So what is this thing called guilt? What meaning does it have if it is only applied to those who lack the power and resources to avoid apprehension and prosecution? Recent experience suggests it has very little meaning at all except as a marketing tool — recall the Saddam trial and all of his unindicted Reagan-era co-conspirators. Actually, I had occasion to hear one of the great legal minds behind the administration’s war on terror this week. NPR’s “Day to Day” was interviewing John Yoo, author of Bush’s legal justification for torture and detention without due process. Yoo drew a distinction between “war time” and normal circumstances, arguing that it is not practical to apply the niceties of constitutional rights to combatants captured on the field of battle. Of course, what he didn’t discuss was how many of these “combatants” were pulled from their homes in, say, Lahore or Karachi, and thrown into a black hole where they were beaten, humiliated, and held without legal recourse for up to three years before being released on the admission that they were innocent all along. In Yoo’s legal world, it’s okay to hold someone like that until the end of the “conflict” (i.e. forever) — just arrest everyone you can get your hands on (or pay a bounty for) and sort them out later.

Fact is, this denial of rights is criminal in the extreme, and the Bush team knows it. That’s why they are so dead set against any international legal architecture of justice — not because they fear U.S. soldiers will be dragged off to the Hague (as they claim) but because they see themselves in the dock one day, facing charges of unlawful abduction, torture, mass murder, and the supreme crime of waging aggressive war against a nation for no legitimate reason, at the cost of many tens of thousands of lives. So as you pause for your solemn moment of silence this Monday, think not only of those who perished in the 9-11 attacks, but also of those who have died since as a result of our political culture’s thirst for blood and our own indifference to the suffering of others. Let us duly mourn our failure to stop this before so many were forced to pay with their lives (including nearly as many Americans as died on that fateful day five years ago).

And so long as your head is bowed, think of that Pet Goat Bush was reading about as the WTC burned and ask yourself why the hell this man is still being allowed to run our nation into the ground.

luv u,

jp

The smoke has barely cleared from Israel’s bombing of Lebanon and the chattering/scribbling classes are already climbing over one another to claim the “master narrative” (in po-mo language), telling us what lessons may be drawn (and quartered) from the recent bloodletting. I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard plenty of the official Israeli line — about attempting to create a “new reality” in southern Lebanon; about the international community’s responsibility to implement all provisions of the ceasefire (i.e. take up the fight that Israel could not win); about how the U.N. had ignored Israel’s warnings about the build-up of arms in Lebanon over the past six years. (Israel’s deputy U.N. ambassador Daniel Carmon even questioned on DemocracyNow! whether “all the civilians in southern Lebanon were purely innocent civilian(s).” All of this constituting a rationale for not lifting their naval blockade of Lebanese ports, not allowing even western organizations to clean up the massive oil spill the IDF created, and not entirely removing its forces from Lebanon. I think the amazing thing is that Israel can arrogate to itself the right to block shipping and aid to Lebanon without any serious international consequences. Who died and left Olmert god, anyway?

We are supposed to see the malevolent hand of Tehran and Damascus in Hezbollah’s success, but this is a very weak gambit. Sure they get money and arms from Iran… just as Israel gets much more of both from the United States. But I think Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery is right when he points out that the biggest reason for Israel’s poor performance in the second Lebanon war is the corrosive effect on the IDF of Israel’s 39-year occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. They no longer have the skills to fight a reasonably well-organized and adequately armed adversary because they’ve been using their tanks, missiles, and helicopter gunships mainly against civilians and lightly-armed militants, as well as stone-throwing boys. What tactical sophistication is needed in a place like Gaza, where your bulldozers, tanks, and pilotless drones can lay waste to any housing unit you care to target? There has been almost a sense of outrage at Hezbollah’s capacity to resist the Israeli invasion. They’re not fighting fair! (Translation: they’re fighting back.)

The fact is, the only meaningful military capacity Hezbollah possesses is a defensive one, as well as a largely random retaliatory one. So their real offense in this conflict has been not to crumble like so many Arab armies before them. This is getting up Dubya’s nose in a serious way, because he cannot attack Iran now without having missiles rain aimlessly down on northern Israel. It’s not just the fact that these people can repel an attack — it’s that they now have some semblance of a deterrent; a primitive variant on Mutual Assured Destruction, like the North Koreans, whose massed artillery casts a shadow over Seoul (not to mention Washington’s desire to “take them out”… and I don’t mean to dinner.) So “Project Democracy” is in trouble. Of course, Dubya’s concept of “democracy” is fully congenial to Israel’s taking 30 democratically elected Palestinian parliamentarians prisoner and the PAN evidently stealing a presidential election in Mexico.

Just try to remember: when Viktor Yushchenko rallies the masses against a fraudulent election in Ukraine, it’s a good thing. When AMLO does the same thing south of the border… not so good.

luv u,

jp