[Peace] News notes, 2005-08-07

[Carl Estabrook]

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	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
	for the Sunday, 7 August 2005, meeting of AWARE,
	"Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
	(Sources provided on request; some are indicated.)
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[1] The "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT) seemed to go away this week, as
administration officials begin suddenly to deny it was a war at all but
rather a "Strategy (or Struggle) against Violent Extremism": GWOT was to
be replaced with SAVE.  In spite of presidential chief of staff Andrew
Card's famous remark anent the Iraq invasion that you don't roll out a new
product in August, a major advertising change seemed to be underway, with
the startling appearance of a front-page picture in the Financial Times
(recently voted the world's leading newspaper) of the president, for the
first time ever, standing by the bedside of a wounded US soldier.

[2] It was hard not to see in the new campaign the dominating hand of Bush
mentrix Karen Hughes, recently installed in a propaganda position in the
State Department. But it didn't seem to last long: the picture was not
picked up by US newspapers, and the president himself aborted the charm
offensive shortly after it began.  Speaking to reporters at mid-week, he
complained that no one had told him about the change and insisted that he
wanted to be a war president.  (I usually think that the poets get there
first, but they seem to be late to this carnage party: the 59th Edinburgh
Fringe, the world's biggest arts festival, has opened with theme "War on
Terror.")

[3] In spite of the president's cluelessness, it's clear that the
administration, with an eye on its plummeting poll numbers and the
congressional elections 15 months away, is preparing to trumpet a
withdrawal from Iraq for the 2006 election as it trumpeted the war for the
2002 election. (See N. Solomon, "Withdrawal Scam.") There are two sorts of
withdrawal, actually quite opposed to one another:
   (a) withdrawal of half or more of US forces, which the US will probably
try to do in the next year, as a flurry of recent leaks in the US and UK
have suggested, with the maintenance of permanent bases in midst of the
world's greatest oil-producing region, which the the US original war aim;
or
   (b) withdrawal of all US forces, mercenaries and corporations, along
with abandonment of the permanent bases we're building in Iraq -- which
this administration has no intention of doing.  (Neither would a
Democratic administration.)
   A similar ambiguity surrounds the use of the word "withdrawal"  when
it's applied to the Sharon/Bush plan for Gaza, to be implemented this
month: it's clear than no withdrawal of the military occupation is
planned.

[4] The administration's problem -- much more than the probably
inconsequential Plame case (after all, we should all be outing CIA spies,
especially now we know it's not illegal) -- is that public opinion is
running against it. Less than 40% of Americans approve of Bush's handling
of the war, and -- even more surprisingly -- less than half of Americans
think that George Bush is honest [AP-Ipsos].  In a special election in
Ohio (yes, Ohio) for a solidly Republican seat, a Democratic challenger
who was perceived as anti-war came close to winning.  In fact he was
anti-war only in a Kerry sense ("We can do it better"), but the vote in
his favor has to be seen as an objection to administration policy.

[5] Amazingly, in spite of the tide in public opinion, the Democrats are
now to the *right* of the administration on the war, calling for more
troops to be sent to Iraq, as Hillary Clinton says.  The Democratic
Leadership Conference (DLC) -- the controlling big-business caucus within
the Democratic party, who have produced everyone from the Clintons to Air
America's Al Franken -- held a convention in Columbus, Ohio (yes, Ohio),
last week in which they astonishingly failed to mention the war, except to
support it.

[6] In the real war, as opposed to Washington propaganda, it was another
terrible week.  Twenty-two American marines were killed in an insurgent
bombing of a troop transport and the ambush of two marine sniper teams on
the upper Euphrates, along the Syrian border.  In the south, US-backed
police opened fire on citizens protesting the desperate state of public
services, water, electricity, etc.  Today alone 35 people are reported
killed in a series of attacks [AJ].

[7] The Washington Post this week described how US army interrogators
tortured an Iraqi general to death, and how the the CIA employed an Iraqi
death squad, of the sort that they have been establishing in Latin America
for decades.  In Australia (but not in the US) there was much comment
about leaked emails (who leaked them?) that asserted that the military
trials at Guantanamo would be rigged.  The emails, written by two former
US prosecutors, claim juries would be stacked to deliver guilty verdicts,
prisoner abuse complaints were ignored and evidence against accused men,
including Australian David Hicks, was marginal at best [Herald
Sun/Australia].

[8] As of this week, "More than two thousand soldiers, almost all of them
young American boys and girls, have had the life blasted out of them
because they were [ostensibly] sent by their commander in chief to find
weapons of mass destruction that did not exist ... The occupation of Iraq
is almost a thousand days old now, and as the self-serving justifications
for invasion wither in the desert sun, as the neo-conservative 'Bush
Doctrine' collapses in a swelling flood of blood and total failure, as
more and more people see impeachment as a moral necessity, as those who
stand in opposition wonder what they can do to thwart a corrupt and crazed
administration that exists entirely without checks and balances, there
remains one act of defiance and strength and solidarity that cannot be
ignored. On Saturday, September 24th, there will be a protest in
Washington DC. This gathering could possibly dwarf all previous
demonstrations against this administration." [W. R. Pitt]

[9] This weekend in 60th anniversary of the US atomic attacks on a
defeated Japan, crimes still defended in the US by the obvious lie that
they saved the lives of many Americans and Japanese who would have been
killed in an American invasion (which could not have been launched until
the next year).  In fact Japan was so prostrate that the US could openly
firebomb Japan's capital (considered a war crime by all before the war)
without reprisal; an invasion in 1946 was seen to be necessary only
because of the unjustifiable American demand for "unconditional
surrender," which no country could accept; and Japan feared attack from
the USSR.  Hiroshima -- and even more Nagasaki -- were deadly experiments
on human subjects.  (Hiroshima was not a military target; it was chosen
because it was an undamaged city, so that the effects of the blast could
be more precisely measured; Nagasaki, by no stretch of the imagination
militarily useful, was a test of a different sort of bomb.) As diaries and
memoirs reveal, the attacks' primary political purpose was the
intimidation of the USSR.

[10] The legacy today is that "nuclear weapons may ... fall into the hands
of terrorist groups. The recent explosions and casualties in London are
yet another reminder of how the cycle of attack and response could
escalate, unpredictably, even to a point horrifically worse than Hiroshima
or Nagasaki. The worlds reigning power accords itself the right to wage
war at will, under a doctrine of "anticipatory self-defence" that covers
any contingency it chooses ... There have been efforts to strengthen the
thin thread on which survival hangs. The most important is the nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty, which came into force in 1970 [during one of the
most liberal administration's in US history] ... The NPT has been facing
collapse, primarily because of the failure of the nuclear states to live
up their obligation ... to eliminate nuclear weapons, [and so experts
agree that] 'there is a greater than 50 per cent probability of a nuclear
strike on US targets within a decade' ... The Washington leadership has
put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and
resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then
trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq. The threat and use of
violence is stimulating nuclear proliferation along with jihadi terrorism
... 'the president is right that Iraq is a main front in the war on
terrorism, but this is a front we created' ... The probability of
apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too
high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity. While speculation
is pointless, reaction to the threat of another Hiroshima is definitely
not. On the contrary, it is urgent, particularly in the United States,
because of Washington's primary role in accelerating the race to
destruction by extending its historically unique military dominance."
[N. Chomsky]

[11] There was an hysterical outburst from the vice-president's office
this week, threatening a nuclear attack on Iran in the event of a new
terrorist attack, even if Iran is not involved.  But it was probably a
sign of the weakness of the neocons in favor of the business-oriented wing
of the party -- like the nomination of a tool of big business, John
Roberts, to the Supreme Court, rather than an ideologue. Furthermore, the
indictment of two Israeli lobbyists on spying charges, and the quick
departure of an Israeli spy from their embassy back to Israel, probably
thwarts a neocon attempt to promote an Israeli attack on Iran, once the
neocons decided that they couldn't stampede the US into a war with Iran as
they did with Iraq.  Their plan was clear: "First Iraq, then Iran," as the
Israeli PM said to a British paper before the Iraq war.

[12] In the UK, PM Tony Blair went nuts this week, after the bombing of
London transport 0n 7/7 and the copycat bombing demonstration two weeks
later.  In a 12-step program (sic), he called for the the ending of some
civil liberties and the deportation of "militants," even to countries with
the death penalty.  Unlike the American government, the British are at
least open about the call for torture by "extraordinary rendition."  In
contrast, dissident Labourite and mayor of London Ken Livingstone offered
"Three ways to make us all safer" in the Guardian: "Support the police,
treat Muslims with respect and pull out of Iraq."  Don't expect to hear
such sense from American officials, mayors or otherwise.

[13] As an example, consider the brief and superficial remarks to a sham
"town meeting" in Urbana on August 1 by our Congressional representative,
Timothy Johnson.  He managed once again to avoid the question of the war
-- as he did up until the Congressional resolution that supposedly
authorized it (but see the present US Constitution, article 1, section 8,
clause 11), in October of 2002 -- which he then voted in favor of. Now
that he has the blood of thousands and thousands of people on his hands,
we should be demonstrating at his every appearance, demanding to know what
he's doing to stop the war -- and to punish those who lied to us into it.

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	    C. G. Estabrook <www.newsfromneptune.com>
	   "News from Neptune" (Saturdays 10-11AM), and
	"From Bard to Verse: A Program of the Spoken Arts"
	 (Saturdays noon-1PM) on WEFT, Champaign, 90.1 FM,
	    Community Radio for East Central Illinois
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