[Peace] News notes 2005-08-14

[Carl Estabrook]

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	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
	for the Sunday, 14 August 2005, meeting of AWARE,
	"Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
	(Sources provided on request; some are indicated.)
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	The tumult and the shouting dies;
	The Captains and the Kings depart:...
	--Kipling

[1] The Bush-2 administration has always been divided between looters and
killers, potentially at war with one another.  To the latter group belong
the neocons, who for a decade cried up the "new imperial grand strategy"
(in the words of Foreign Affairs, journal of the Council on Foreign
Relations) that was to begin with the conquest of Iraq.  Their hands on
the levers of power, the invasion of Iraq was all but announced in
September, 2002, in the National Security Strategy of the Bush
administration, as were the planned subsequent attacks on the rest of the
"axis of evil," Iran and North Korea -- and anyone else who might get in
the way, like Syria.

[2] The first Bush-2 administration was given over to neocon machinations,
the result being the deaths of tens of thousands, but in the second -- in
part because of the unholy mess they made of Iraq -- the killers have
given way to the looters.  Representatives of the very wealthy -- whom
Bush referred to in a carefully planned *bon mot* as "my base" --
originally promoted the son of the former president out of the obscurity
for which his talents destined him.  The White House, with Karl Rove as
the active center, is more a stronghold of the looters than the neocons,
who hold out amongst the civilian in the Pentagon, now opposed not only by
the old CIA but perhaps by a growing number of uniformed military
officers.  A retired general, a known war criminal from the Gulf War of
1991, said this week that the US army can barely last out the summer in
Iraq, and in a curious incident last month one of the few four star
generals was fired, ostensibly for adultery, a rare occurrence (the
demotion I mean); he "reportedly made an enemy of Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld for opposing the Rumsfeldian 'transformation' of the military
into a more 'flexible' instrument of the Bush Doctrine and the neocons'
imperial vision" [J.  Raimondo].  But the neocon captains and kings seem
to be leaving faster.

[3] Paul Wolfowitz has been sent away to the World Bank, where his primary
task seems to have been to secure his girlfriend's job.  The architect of
the Iraq invasion had not been able to subvert the Turkish government or
secure its military overthrow, even though the Clinton administration had
been able to commit the worst ethnic cleansing of the 1990s in concert
with that government.  Douglas Feith, once described by Gen. Tommy Franks
as "the dumbest fucking man on the planet" -- he should know -- has
departed the Pentagon to no tears.  (His replacement is a Cheney tool, a
much-hated and unsuccessful ambassador to Turkey in the wake to the
Wolfowitz debacle.)  John Bolton has been sent off to the UN, where
right-wing administrations have stashed dangerous ideologues to get them
out of the way since Kennedy did that to Adlai Stevenson.  And Scooter
Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, may be the reason the New York Times
reporter and neocon conduit Judith Miller is still in jail, keeping mum to
avoid a charge of espionage.  (Of course there are places, like the
vice-president's office, where killing and looting came together -- where
the Bush people might say, wrenching the words from a much better poet,
"all our compulsions meet, are recognised, and robed as destinies.")

[4] Could it be that the Valerie Plame scandal actually represents an
attempt by the administration's killers to implicate the looters --
Libby-to-Miller-to-Rove, like Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance?  It's happened
before, when the killers put up truckling looter Colin Powell to do their
public dirty work at the UN.  This week Michael Powell, a looter by family
tradition ("I haven't done badly," his father Colin used to say), cashed
out his government work at the Federal Communications Commission by
becoming a well-paid executive of the corporations he was supposed to
regulate and didn't.  As Paul Krugman says about this tendency among the
Bushies -- he gives many examples -- "It may not be technically illegal,
but it smells to high heaven."

[5] Where the killers and looters got in one another's way, in the
occupation of Iraq, the administration's arrogance and incompetence were
revealed.  The occupation of Iraq should have been a walk-over: in the
twentieth century, the Nazis had less trouble with France, the Soviets
with Eastern Europe, or the Americans with military occupations from the
Caribbean to East Asia.  The Israelis have maintained a particularly
brutal and racist occupation for almost 40 years.
	In additon to the US military shambles in Iraq, "Knight-Ridder
reports that auditors have uncovered massive fraud in the Iraqi Defense
Ministry, through which 'senior U.S.-appointed Iraqi officials' appear to
have drained sums 'nearly equal to the estimated $1.3 billion allocated'
for the Ministry's annual budget" [Cursor].
	On the whole, the killers are more dangerous than the looters, as
murder is worse than peculation.  In fact, the greed for money may
mitigate the killing impulse.  The lesser thug can be bought off.  The
Nazis were in general incorruptible: they ran a clean administration, not
particularly subject to bribes.
	For the neocon killers, it seems to be becoming the case, as
Kipling continues, "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Nineveh
and Tyre!" Those destroyed ancient cities are the modern homes of the
Ba'ath and Hezbollah.  The Bush killers' attempt to demonize them -- and
those associated with them by blood or faith around the world -- seems now
not to be working well.  Analysis of polls this week found "only Nixon
faring worse than President Bush in public opinion at this point in his
presidency.  A new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll finds that 'an unprecedented
57 percent majority say the war has made the U.S.A. more vulnerable to
terrorism' [obviously true] with one in three saying that the United
States should withdraw all troops from Iraq" [Cursor].
	Meanwhile, the BBC reports that "The US government is trying to
stop fresh images of prisoner abuse in Iraq being made public [with the
astonishing because quite true claim] they will aid the insurgency, when
more examples of the US torture policy are revealed."

[6] Of course the neocons may yet have another throw in them, and that
could be immensely dangerous.  They've got the president talking tough
about Iran's nuclear program -- legal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
while those of US-allies (and Iranian neighbors) Israel and Pakistan are
not.
	"German Chancellor Schroeder directly challenged Mr Bush's comment
that 'all options are on the table' ... 'Let's take the military option
off the table. We have seen it doesn't work,' Mr Schroeder told [an
election rally] to rapturous applause from the crowd" [BBC]. Schroeder is
involved in a difficult election campaign; he won the the last one by
opposing, at least in public, the invasion of Iraq.
	The Pentagon leaked to Time magazine for maximum exposure this
weekend the charge that Iranian teams bearing a new type of "improvised
explosive device" are responsible for recent deaths of US military in
Iraq.  "The number of roadside bomb attacks by insurgents against U.S.
military supply convoys in Iraq has doubled in the past year, the general
in charge of logistics for American military forces in Iraq said on
Friday"  [Reuters].
	The Time article goes on to describe portentously Iran's relations
with Shi'ites in Iraq and Lebanon. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay
Khalilzad, appeared on a Sunday talk show to speak of "Iranian activities
that undermine the current system." And there was apparently shock and
outrage in Washington when South Korea said this week that of course North
Korea should be able to produce enriched uranium as the Iranians were
doing.  And there was also a sufficient number of anti-Chavez articles
this week, reminding us that, if we need a war emergency closer to home,
Venezuela is always there.
	"As a result of administration policy, Americans are far more
likely than the Japanese to expect another world war in their lifetime,
according to AP-Kyodo polling 60 years after World War II ended. Most
people in both countries believe the first use of a nuclear weapon is
never justified" [AP]. The US of course has refused to renounce the first
use of nuclear weapons, and there are reports -- probably purposeful leaks
-- that the US is considering that in Iran.

[7] Meanwhile the Democrats confirm their irrelevancy, grown out of their
service to the same corporate masters as the Republicans.  Crimes that
should have led to impeachment and imprisonment are now reduced to the
outing of a CIA spy.  "Plamegate is rapidly turning into a liberal parlor
game, a new version of Clue ('It was Rove in the White House with a
telephone')" [uruknet].  Like Watergate 30 years ago, it's an example of
gnat-straining and camel-swallowing.  "A Gestapo-style murder of a Black
organizer set up by the FBI, made public at the same time [as Watergate]
is unknown.  The whole Watergate affair ... is a very dramatic
demonstration of the subordination of the media and intellectual class to
power and privilege ... this very dark day in the history of the media is
described as their finest hour"  [N. Chomsky].
	The putative Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, Hillary
Clinton, presses for the expansion of the army by 90,000.  As the editors
of Counterpunch.org sagely remark, "In 2006 the Democrats will be
campaigning on a Stay the Course strategy in Iraq while the stricken
president will be opting for a de facto cut-and-run policy as urged by
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Hagel-Paul in 2008! The dream peace
ticket! Who needs Democrats?" Amen.

[8] Some of the only public opposition to the killing and looting came
this week from the demonstration in Crawford, Texas, by Cindy Sheehan, in
the name of her son, killed by the Bush administration, while the
right-wing media labeled her "treasonous."  (We might recall, that
founding father Patrick Henry exclaimed in far less trying circumstances,
"If this be treason, make the most of it!" -- and the Bush administration
and their media toadies will try. )
	I began with Kipling, despite Orwell's remark that "A civilized
person would prefer not to quote Kipling."  Kipling wrote, shortly after
his son was killed on the Western Front in 1917,

	"If any question why we died,
	Tell them, because our fathers lied."


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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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