October 04, 2003

Amen to that!

You know of course where this panel comes from?
The panel, led by Edward P. Djerejian is from the James Baker law firm that lobbies for the Saudis.

Amen!

A damn good article that hits it on the head. If I didn't know better I'd have thought I wrote it.
Bravo to all concerned for writing and posting the article.

There is a thing called PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE or la conviviencia as it was called in Spain. Unfortunately it didn't work because the Moslems constantly had fundamentalist outbreaks, assassination plots, counter revolutions and massacres which led to counter massacres and pogroms. So when it comes to shared values and why can't we all get along all I can say is "isn't it pretty to thing so". But history also teaches us that some cultures and ideological movements CANNOT live in peace. Like a cancer they must destroy the host or be expelled by the host. I don't know if this is true perhaps the Arabic world will modernize but then maybe the Queen of England will renounce the throne, disestablish the Anglican church, embrace the Catholic faith and a life of poverty. Perhaps. But it seems far more likely that she and her Hannoverian/Battenberg lot will hold on to her power and money (well the money anyway). There is a saying: "those who can keep and those who can take." Liz wants to keep. Al Qaida wants to take and to destroy. They already believe they are in a life or death struggle that justifies every murder and cruelty.

It also seems likely that Al-Qaida thugs will be with us for a long time as is "moderate" Islam (I hate everybody and want to see them dead or converted or in total submission to Allah point of view). Perhaps there will be a liberal Islam but I don't think I will live to see it. Until that time Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm and keep it coming. Remember the Madhi the only thing that slowed him down was a wall of led from a British Square and plenty of sharpnel and grape shot besides. Do unto to others BEFORE THEY DO UNTO YOU is a very good model. The world is a dangerous place.Thank God we still have a few tough me left in Britain, AUstralia and the USA (I am not sure about France and Canada). They'll have to prove it to me.

and you wonder why.

Ari Fleischer claimed that the current campaign against Iraq is totally compatible with the history of America's past actions on the world stage, always dedicated to the good. And Bush himself has declared that our nation is involved in a global struggle of good versus evil, with the United States always and unambiguously representing good. Anyone with even slight knowledge of U.S. history will recognize that both statements are false. Only in a society where the majority of citizens appear to have been numbed by the unrelenting bombardment of commercial messages and brain-altering television could such obvious propaganda be believed.

In reality, since its inception the United States has been involved in over 100 wars and, since World War II, countless covert CIA operations involving the subversion and overthrow of democratically elected governments and support for some of the world's most bloody and rapacious dictators. (To name a few: Iran, Guatemala, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, and the former Zaire.) The death toll from such actions has been at least six million, according to John Stockwell, a former CIA agent, who provided that estimate more than 10 years ago. How many more have died since that date can only be guessed at.

Hence "terrorism" is nothing new. It was practiced by the U.S. military in its war against the Philippine people at the beginning of the 20th century, a war initiated by the U.S. government against a nation which had struggled to free itself from the oppression of the Spanish Empire only to find itself, after a bloody conflict in which one million Filipinos died, conquered by another imperial power. Soldiers wrote home about massacres such as the burning of a village and the killing of a thousand civilians in one night and on one island the U.S. commander issued an order for the killing of all males over the age of 10. Many Americans condemned their country's aggression, the distinguished Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton describing it thus: "This miserable war in the Philippines, this bastard 'imperialism,' this childish temper of the people, this turn of affairs toward barbarism..." And William James, another Harvard intellectual, wrote: "God damn the United States for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles."

It was practiced by the U.S. military in a host of campaigns in Central America and the Caribbean during the first half of the 20th century -- in Haiti, in Santo Domingo, in Nicaragua, in Honduras, in Cuba. One who took part in those campaigns, General Smedley Butler, who retired in the late thirties after serving as Commandant of the Marine Corps, described himself as a "high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers ... a racketeer for capitalism," who helped in the "raping of half a dozen Central American republics..."

It was practiced by the many dictators the U.S. supported -- with money, with weapons, with diplomatic cover, and with warships and the Marines when the people of a country such as El Salvador or Nicaragua indicated a desire to free themselves of a tyrant. The pattern was depressingly regular and widespread but let the example of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua illustrate the point. Three members of this family ruled the country from 1933 to 1979, accumulating hundreds of millions in property, in business enterprises, in overseas bank accounts. Thousands of opponents of the regime were arrested, tortured, many brutally murdered. Throughout this period the support of the U.S. government was unwavering.

When a guerrilla army led by the Sandinista Front for National Liberation finally drove the last Somoza from power and set up a government dedicated to alleviating the suffering of the desperately poor majority -- through programs in literacy, health care, agrarian reform -- the Reagan administration began a covert war, using what was little more than a band of mercenaries to terrorize the civilian population. I was twice in Nicaragua during this period (1984 and 1988) and saw the consequences of the contra war and the embargo which together achieved the results desired by Washington -- scarcity of many essentials, hyperinflation, and a population increasingly weary of burying their young people. Thus in 1990, when the Sandinistas organized an election described by observers as "free and fair" (of course, most of those observers did not know that the CIA was paying people to vote for the UNO opposition), the Sandinistas lost the election. Some have asked me, How could that be, if the Sandinistas were so popular? A Nicaraguan commentator provided the obvious answer. "If you are sitting at a table with an empty plate in front of you and a man with a gun at the back of your head, you don't have much choice."

Terror, in other words, has been a staple instrument of U.S. policy since at least the beginning of the 20th century and has been used by all of our client states in the western hemisphere and beyond, from Indonesia to Zaire, where Mobutu, a dictator and robber of staggering proportions, slaughtered tens of thousands of his citizens. And when the CIA orchestrated the first of its covert actions, the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953 and put in power the Shah, who subsequently killed thousands of his opponents and accumulated millions for himself and his family, it set in motion a chain of events still haunting the American people. (One might argue that had this event not taken place, there would have been no revolution in Iran, no "hostage crisis," and probably no Reagan victory in 1980. What is certain is that the United States would not have represented "the Great Satan" to millions in Iran.)

A book published in the late 1990s, "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire" by Chalmers Johnson, provides, in my view, a kind of guidebook to the course of American history in the late 20th century and a frightening preview of the U.S.-dominated world of the 21st century. Johnson argues that America's aggression against the peoples of the global South will lead inevitably to violent reactions, a prophecy that was proven correct on September 11, 2001. He speaks of the "profligate waste of our resources on irrelevant weapons systems" and of terrorist actions against U.S. installations as "portents of a twenty-first century crisis in America's informal empire, an empire based on the projection of military power to every corner of the world and the use of American capital and markets to force global economic integration on our terms, at whatever costs to others."

Now to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. And George W. Bush. There can be no doubt, of course, that Saddam is a man capable of great evil, though hardly any worse than many of the dictators the United States has supported and protected. Moreover, there appears to be solid evidence that the United States sold Iraq "disease-producing and poisonous materials" during the Iran-Iraq war (1985-1988), as reported in a September 26, 2002, column by Robert Novak. Moreover, the argument that the U.S. should initiate a war with Iraq because of that country's defiance of U.N. resolutions is hardly convincing in light of unqualified U.S. support for Israel, which has time and time again defied the repeated U.N. resolutions calling for it to end the occupation of Palestinian lands, the destruction of Palestinian homes and vineyards, and to withdraw to pre-1967 borders.

This American refusal to condemn Israel for behavior parallel to Iraqi actions which led to the Gulf War and its continuing economic support of Israel, to the tune of two billion dollars annually, can hardly endear our country to the Muslim masses in Jordan or Egypt or Pakistan who watch, night after night, as the Israeli army uses weapons provided by the U.S. to kill Palestinian civilians. One need not condone suicide bombings leading to the death of Israeli citizens -- and I surely do not -- in order to understand that the festering sore represented by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes peace in the Middle East impossible, no matter what George W. Bush may say to the contrary.

In addition, we now know that for years Israel had a clandestine nuclear weapons program and is reported to possess today more than 20 such weapons loaded on missiles surely capable of reaching Baghdad and the capitals of other Islamic states in the region. Yet there has been no call from Washington for Israel to give up its weapons of mass destruction. In short, the United States operates with an absolute double standard in its dealings with the nations of the Middle East, as it has elsewhere in the world. And people ask, Why do they hate us?

Therefore, the Bush administration's determination to "get" Saddam, with or without U.N. approval, ought to give pause to anyone at all familiar with recent American policies vis-ŕ-vis the developing nations. What should be clear by now is that the multiple invasions, low intensity warfares, covert actions, etc., have been designed not to foster democracy or improve the lot of the billions who live in abject poverty in Africa or Asia or Latin America, but to protect American "interests," i.e. the raw materials, the ores and timber, the oil -- especially the oil -- which our gargantuan consumer appetite demands and which the multinational corporations control.

In this context, one might ask, Why was it so difficult to meet some of the apparently reasonable demands of Osama bin Laden, i.e. that the United States withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia, since in his view and that of many other Muslims, their presence "pollutes" several of the most holy sites of the Islamic faith? Only the most gullible, I think, would believe that the answer is not control of the oil of that country -- and of surrounding countries. One is forced to conclude that a major goal of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and others in their circle of oil barons is to establish absolute American hegemony over the sources of petroleum across the globe. (The current U. S. military presence in Columbia and, as most recently reported, in Peru, ostensibly as part of the "war on drugs" but according to many independent observers actually an effort to insure the availability of major oil deposits in the region for the multi-national corporations, provides yet another instance of this phenomenon.)

The recent enunciation of the so-called "Bush Doctrine," that the United States reserves the right to launch preemptive strikes against any nation that it believes harbors hostile intentions -- or which endangers "American interests" -- is merely the overt expression of a belief that has lain covert in the machinations of American policy makers for decades.

The Empire now reveals itself and its ruthlessness for the whole world to see, and apparently they don't like it, as anti-American sentiment erupts in the most unlikely places, for example, in a formerly secure ally, South Korea. As Chalmers Johnson predicted, the chickens will come home to roost, and those who will suffer are not policy makers nor the generals who carry out the orders to invade -- and surely not the CEOs of the multi-nationals -- but ordinary citizens such as those killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. For fifty years, American leaders were busy creating a "national security state," but in the 21st century it has become abundantly clear that the last thing this state offers its citizens is security.

A Yale law professor, Jack Balkin, has written that the doctrine of preemptive strike is dangerous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the possibility that attacks on other countries will lead to our country being attacked. He notes in addition that such a doctrine and its likely consequences could very well result in "the perpetual military campaign of future presidents," used to distract the voting public from domestic or foreign policy failures. Balkin concludes: "The president is right about one thing ... Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president."

OK, I think I've got it now, thanks. In sum: The USA is evil, always has been, always will be (Israel too!)--and is justifiably attacked by its enemies. Osama bin Laden is reasonable; George W. Bush is belligerent and bullying, a clear menace to the world. Saddam, I guess, was just a bad man no worse than any other. (And one could say the same about Hitler, Stalin, or even Pol Pot.) Everything is about oil, the oil. (Well, not everything, but most of it anyway.) And, of course, it is the ruthlessness of America that is to blame for the situation in Korea, not--heavens no!--the lunacy of that dear but so very misunderstood leader to the north.

My eyes have been opened, and I rejoice, for now truly I see!

Mojave3:
You forgot to include the part about how the U.S. went to war against Hitler to pull the country out of the depression. Oh, and the part about how U.S. cold war belligerence prevented Communism from working in the Soviet Union. And those damnable Jews, insisting on speaking of a " holocaust", when that term really applies to the AIDS epidemic America has inflicted on Africa. Fortunately we remember the full litany so can fill in the omitted parts. Thanks.

Mojave- 3,

United States of America- 250,000,000.

ESAD, socialist, tranzi, pomo, hate America, anti Liberty, deluded, miseducated, brain dead, lackwit, dessicated fecal matter tangled on the hirsute posterior of an evolutionary dead end failed mutation.

When you see Noam Chumpsy again, please carry out a murder/suicide pact.
Do it For The Chiiiiiiiiildren!

Consider the interaction between the Arab nations and the West over the last 100 years. In the early 1900s, as the Ottoman empire collapsed, Britain, France, Germany and Russia negotiated among themselves about how to divide the spoils, with absolutely no consideration for the nationalist sentiments of the Arab populations. Then, in 1917, the British unilaterally promised historical Palestine to the European Jews, with not even the pretense of consulting the 450,000 Arabs who lived there. As the century progressed and the importance of Arab oil reserves became apparent, once again Western leaders - this time joined by the United States - decided they must do everything in their power to secure access to this precious resource, and that democratic reforms in the Arab world would have to take a back seat to obtaining oil to feed the West's economy.

Fast forward to the present day. We have invaded two countries (Afganistan and Iraq) and removed their governments with no clear vision of rebuilding. We have made threats against two other nations (Syria and Iran) based on flimsy evidence. We actively support repressive regimes, such as those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, so long as they keep the oil flowing. And we continue to unilaterally support the third generation of European and American colonists in Israel.

It would be safe to say that if some country on the other side of the world treated us as we have treated the Arabs - taking their land, plundering their natural resources, ignoring the political aspirations of their people - we would react in much the same way.

Mojave3
Wrap yourself in the rhetoric of despots, hide your face from the realities of history and walk hand in hand with those who would end your obviously miserable life. You have studied well but learned nothing, Said, Chomsky and Lenin will show you the way. The sound you hear is your train to oblivion pulling into the station, All Aboard.

I'm not sure much analysis or commentary is needed. I believe the US can reply politely along these lines:

"Fuck you and the values you rode in on."

Mojave, in case you missed it, the United States and Israel have done more to promote the Palestinian dream of a free and independent state than has Arafat, Syria, Jordan, and all the suicide bombers in the entire mid-east. But until the realization sinks in that murder is not diplomacy, and will get them nowhere, the Palestinians will remain a sadly disappointed and bereft people.

Mojave:
Umm the turks aren't arab. Neither are the afgans. They are all majority muslim though.

So 1. Your actual point should have been West vs Islam.

2. Your argument counters itself. You asserts that the US is at fault for not installing democracies post WWII which is only accomplishable by invasion (for structural reasons, the CIA is not good at this sort of thing by itself so backroom establishment is not possible). However, virtually in the same breath, you condemn the US for invading to install democracies.

Only in a delusional (sorry, but it's true) panglossian world could the US accomplish what you are asking of it which as I summarize is:

1) US should not interfere in the middle east
2) US should make certain the middle east doesn't royally (pun intended) screw itself over.

Explain, if you would, how you can alter externally alter the state of a system without external intervention. Not only am I interested, but so are physicists and logicians.

Ethnicities in related countries
For mojave's education, here's the CIA Factbook citation for Turkey, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Of particular interest is Ethnic groups.

Turkey
Turkish 80%, Kurdish 20% (estimated)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/tu.html

Afghanistan
Pashtun 44%, Tajik 25%, Hazara 10%, minor ethnic groups (Aimaks, Turkmen, Baloch, and others) 13%, Uzbek 8%
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/af.html

Saudi Arabia
Arab 90%, Afro-Asian 10%
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sa.html

Iraq
Arab 75%-80%, Kurdish 15%-20%, Turkoman, Assyrian or other 5%
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html

Mojave:
A few more points:
What resources have we plundered? Is paying well above market price for oil plundering? That is what we do after all thanks to OPEC (the point of a cartel after all is to increase the price of a commodity above the market rate).

Taking Land:
We sure have a funny way of owning Arab land as this is what's implied by taking land (if we took it, we must have owned it at least at some point, and by your argument, I presume you mean that we own it now, correct?)

Syria, Iran - Flimsy evidence?!?
Iran is clearly pursuing WMD (Syria, by all appearances has some stockpiles of CW and BW, but nothing too active). Syria and Iran both effectively occupy Lebanon through Hamas and Islamic Jihad (I think occupation of Muslim lands was one of your sticking points)

Israel - You seem to like democracy. We "unilaterally" support both current democracies in the Middle East - Turkey and Israel - against the thuggocracies on their borders. What's the problem with that? I thought you wanted the US to champion democracy.

React in the same way- You know you're implicitly supporting suicide attacks in that statement (in effect saying that they're justified), right? While reprehensible of a statement as that is, it is actually incorrect. The US has a "Fight with Honor" mentality. Which is why we didn't make Afghanistan a nuclear wasteland (we could've saved a lot of American lives that way, but that's not our style, and that's a good thing). Which is why the Kosovo criticisms of "Come down and fight like a man" stung so much when we were only bombing from the air. Which is why when we do screw up and kill noncombatants, we apologize and have court-marshalls. What in the history of the US gives you the indication that we would react in a similar manner? Note that as part of the "Fight with Honor" when the other side fights dirty first, all bets are off (though we generally are slow to do this).

Mojave arguing day continues:

Our bastards: Yup. You've damned the US for supporting bad people. Sometimes the expediencies of the situation demand this. The prevailing theory during the Cold War was the domino theory which in effect meant that we simultaneously opposed communism every where we possibly could. Sometimes this meant dealing with devils for the expediency of the moment (like allying with Stalin to defeat Hitler and Tojo or any of the examples you cited).

To the US's credit, after the larger problem was removed (the soviet union), it has fairly systematically extricated itself from these bastards (Noriega, Marcos, Mabuto, and now Hussein). This further implies that the US's only reason for involvement with these unsavory characters was the defeat of the S.U. (otherwise why we cut ties - it's not to our economic advantage to cut the ties)

So either a) you couldn't see the forest for the trees at the time and still can't now, b) or believe the US could've won the Cold War with numerous appendages tied behind its back (seeing how the outcome of the war was in doubt into the 80's, I doubt this).

Of course, it could just be you think everyone greeting each other with "Zdravstvuite Comrade" was a preferable outcome.

Bush preemption doctrine (BPD):
You've missed out a key point of the BPD - there's an assumption that the side being preempted is irrational.

Note rational here is in the strict game theoretic sense. For a player to be rational in a game, he must be able to assess the situation, do a cost-benefit calculation for itself, and then act in a way that maximizes its benefit. When any one of these three are violated, the player is said to be irrational and the analysis gets real messy (trembling hands and the like).

If the other side is rational, then deterrence works fine and dandy. Case in point Cold War and mutually assured destruction. This is also the tact that we're currently taking with Syria (they have a history of behaving rationally, at least before Bashar). Normally you only have to consider the Nash Equilibirums (best-rational-response steady-state solutions). Actions which the other side would clearly have no rational interest in engaging in (such as MAD), can be sharply discounted.

However, when the other side is irrational, or presumed irrational, the calculation changes dramatically. The actions of the irrational player are impossible to predict and all contingencies must be considered. Thus the entire outcome space considered. A very negative result (such as losing NYC) must be considered.

Israeli-Palestinian moral relativism is just stupid. Do you also blame the home owner when he shoots the intruder? Do you blame the person who defends himself from attack? The Jews once tried just sitting there and taking it and 6 million of them died (not counting other attrocities throughout the ages including the pogroms in the Middle East at the beginning of the 20th century). Somehow, they haven't quite felt like grabbing their ankles and saying, "Please sir, can I have another?" And no one, other than the US, seems willing to see the events like they really are.

Bush the greatest danger: 1) Citing a fool (Jack Balkin) makes the fool or the position no less foolish. (My dog said "arf" when I showed him this post. I concur 100%) In terms of facts, however, I agree with the fool. However, if you'll permit an extended analogy: Today, the city faces a single organization with guns, manifesting an agressive bullying attitude towards drug dealers and gangs. Should this group miscalculate, the city may be plunged into chaos and bloodshed. These people, sure of the rightness of their cause, truly is the most powerful group in town. Thank God we have the cops and the streets have been getting cleared of violent thugs.

Thank God we have a President willing to
clear the world of thugs.

Yes, Bush is the most powerful man on earth, but dangerous? Like the police (in general), that only depends on which side you're on. Law-abiding or not.

2) Is Bush really using Iraq to distract away from the economy and other issues? Why else was a tax cut of such high importance? I'm actually afraid that the war will fall too far into the background.

I admire those (Jody) with the patience and eloquence to dissect long and tiresome screeds by deluded cranialimpactedcolon liars like mojave3. I don't think they deserve such replies and experience has shown that it does no good. They never admit that they are wrong, much less change their minds.

Nevertheless, Jodyand others, very well done! Perhaps some other less dogmatic would be asshats will be spared the indignity of 'intellectual' (even corporeal)suicide.

As for this piece of idiotarianism:

"It would be safe to say that if some country on the other side of the world treated us as we have treated the Arabs - taking their land, plundering their natural resources, ignoring the political aspirations of their people - we would react in much the same way."

No, mo-jive0, we wouldn't "react the same way." WE do not routinely and as a matter of national policy, target civilian populations for suicide bombings.
And I would like to see another country that has the balls to try to inflict their will upon us as you suggest. The last ones to try to do so, even to countries other than ourselves, are now in the trash heap... THANKS TO US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, with a hearty FOESAD, I bid you a disdainful "Get lost!"

Something for our side to remember - for better of worse, we have an adversarial form of governement now where losses for one party are strictly gains for the other. As an extension of our politics, our society also appears to be becoming more adversarial as well.

If I may geek out for a moment and presuming that people here at least kinda know what I'm talking about, DC is a two person loosely competitive repeated game with an infinite horizon. As such, theory tells us it is possible to enforce virtually any steady state (level of civility) with the proper punishment/reward strategies. In general, the tit-for-tat strategy is the best strategy a player can adopt. In the two player case, it is also the best strategy, presuming play starts with both in the reward phase. However, when these conditions aren't met, a downward spiral of increasingly stronger measures to the worst of all possible outcomes is likely.

There's really only two ways to respond to this cycle - 1) one side assumes the other is rational, sucks it up and takes it like a man for a little while the other figures out what's going on. 2) just assume the worst of the other side and do whatever you can to maximize your utility with this assumption (Note this can lead to VERY bad things).

Case in point - Israel assumed that the Palestinians (Arafat) were rational and largely just took it like a man until Arafat just walked away from the peace process. Since then, Israel has been taking steps to limit how the Palestinians can hurt them (the wall and various incursions) and considering ways to make the Palestinian leadership rational (by removing irrational leaders, such as Arafat).

To my point: name calling won't help in the long run. Tit-for-tatting won't help in the long run (like the nuclear judicial option, just wait until tables are turned).

I honestly think this is a serious problem we're now domestically facing. I for one, prefer option 1) to option 2) as a little effort now may save a lot of pain later. I take the time because I think the other side is rational, and in general they do respond in time.

I think this is a problem Bush also recognizes which is why they've not generally responded to attacks with attacks in kind (Teddy virtually says Bush committed treason, Bush says, Teddy, that's not civil).

As a side note, this is why I don't think the Plame affair originates at the top of the Bush admin - it just doesn't jive with what I've seen to date. Plus it's just dumb. Not that Bush can't occasionally be dumb, but this would be uber-dumb.