Tag: Iran

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Back to the Future in the Middle East

2019: “Wow, what a year I was! Y’all will never see the likes of me again. Twelve months of impulsive Trump tweets, GOP campaign aides going to prison, the Ukraine brouhaha blowing up, wacky Rudy going nuts on television, wild hearings in the House of Representatives, and finally, impeachment! Boom! Top that!”

2020: “Here, hold my beer. How about war in the Middle East, as a starter?”

Ah, the Middle East, home to so many great American foreign policy decisions. Remember those weapons of mass destruction that were hidden all over Iraq in 2003? The ones that the Bush administration (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell, et al.) used as “evidence” to start a war that got 4,400 Americans killed and 31,000 wounded in action; the war that also resulted in an estimated 500,000 or so Iraqi deaths?

Turned out, of course, that there weren’t actually any weapons of mass destruction to speak of. Oops. Sorry, dead people. But at least the Bushies had to go through the process of trying to convince Congress that a dire threat existed before launching missiles and a subsequent invasion.

With the Trump administration, such Constitutional niceties are being ignored. Trust us, they say. We knew about some nasty plots to kill Americans that were about to be carried out by Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, so we assassinated his ass at the Baghdad airport. Ironically, the evidence — which we’ll probably never see — was provided by the same “deep-state” intelligence agencies that have been demonized for months by the president and his supporters. Guess they cleaned up their act.

In lieu of consulting with Congress or even the Gang of Eight, the president let a few friends at Mar-a-Lago in on the news in advance, so they could adjust their stock portfolios, plus Senator Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, his children, Vladimir Putin, and others in his inner circle. After the strike, the president tweeted a message to Congress that he stated would “serve as notification” of his right to do whatever he wanted in the Middle East. Trump followed that with a tweeted threat to Iranian leaders that the U.S. had a list of 52 “cultural sites” that would be targeted if the Iranians dared to respond. Sure, that’s a war crime, but so what? The president then, literally, returned to the golf course and continued to tweet, presumably between shots.

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told the media that the Pentagon would not target cultural sites, despite the president’s continued insistence — live and via tweet — that we would.

All this caused me to wonder what would happen if for some reason Twitter went out of business. How would the president communicate with Congress or the American people or foreign friends and adversaries? Facebook? Instagram? Tik-Tok? The importance of Trump’s favorite social media platform will be a subject future historians will be mulling over for years, I suspect. But I digress.

So, here we are, seven days into the new year, the new decade, on the brink of conflict in the world’s most volatile region — home to Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran. Oh, and Afghanistan, just on the other side of Iran, lest we forget. What a complex stewpot of hideous outcomes could be concocted within the confines of this tortured hunk of planetary real estate.

Does anyone think there’s a plan or a strategy here? Does anyone have confidence that this president would shrink from using nuclear weapons if Iran responds in a way that threatens his fragile ego? More important, does anyone have confidence that anyone around this president would or could stop him? It’s a “no” from me, on all counts. A Republican congressman told CNN on background this week that when Trump gets ready to act, “You can’t out-escalate him.” How reassuring.

2020 is upping the ante.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Sect Appeal

The two main sects within Islam are not at all like the various sects within Christianity, or, for that matter, within Judaism. Sunnis hate Shiites and Shiites hate Sunnis. Since the middle 7th century, each side has taught and preached that the other side is practicing a corrupt form of Islam. It is because the other side is practicing corrupted Islam that the true followers (whichever side that is) believe it is their obligation to teach about the denial and the destruction of the other. 

It began with the death of Muhammad in 632. Muhammad failed to declare a successor. That decision caused a divide among his followers. Sunnis believed that the best successor should emerge from among the students of Muhammad. Shiites believed that Muhammad’s mantle of leadership should be passed down through the family. 

Sunni is the larger sect, comprising about 85 percent of Muslims. Shiites comprise the remaining 15 percent. There are other, smaller sects but their numbers worldwide are dwarfed by these two groups. The largest country with a Shiite majority is Iran. Iraq also has a majority of Shiites, about 60 percent. 

Every once in a while, Sunni or Shiite leaders announce their intention to unite the factions in order to confront a common enemy. The pitch always sounds good, but almost always falls flat. The common enemy they most often speak of is the West — specifically Israel and the United States.

If these two Muslim sects were to stop their conflict, the Middle East would be a different place. Not a peaceful place, but a place with differently focused conflict. For instance, much of the tension in Syria is Shiite versus Sunni. The conflict in Yemen is Shiite versus Sunni. And the power struggle engaging Iran and Saudi Arabia is, of course, Shiite versus Sunni. 

And yet, despite the conflict, every Friday over the past few weeks, Shiites and Sunnis in some Iraqi cities have come together in major squares. By the tens of thousands, sometimes even by the hundreds of thousands, they have gathered united, as one voice, in protest over the current divisive situation. The slogans they are shouting and the placards they are raising say, “Sectarianism is dead” and “Stop stealing from us in the name of religion.”

Iraqis are coming together in main squares in Baghdad and Basra to call upon their politicians to stop quarreling and quibbling. The protesters want services — education, water and electricity. For years, their politicians have told the citizens of Iraq that the problem in government is religious sectarianism — Shiites versus Sunnis — and now many young people in Iraq are saying that they aren’t buying it any more. 

Young Sunnis and young Shiites want accountability. More crucially, they want to know why ISIS has succeeded in taking over huge swathes of Iraq. In today’s world, if anything is to unite Sunnis and Shiites, it will be ISIS. To put it succinctly, other than the West, right now, the only thing that Shiites hate more than Sunnis and Sunnis hate more than Shiites is ISIS. The Iraqi people want unity among conventional Muslims to fight and rid Iraq of extremist ISIS. 

Shiite militias are operating under an umbrella called Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), while Sunni tribes are much more loosely aligned in their fight and are against ISIS more independently — tribe by tribe. In the end, through unity of forces, they could possibly be successful and turn their country around. But it is a long shot. 

The fear of ISIS brutality is everywhere in Iraq. While gathering in town squares as a way of protest is empowering, the fear of beheading at the hands of ISIS is still, understandably, a major disincentive to organizing, fighting, and resisting. When 800 ISIS members marched into Mosul in June of last year, 55,000 Iraqi police and soldiers ran away. A city of two million people collapsed into the hands of 800 ISIS members. 

So, while Shiite-Sunni unity is the only real chance for success in fighting ISIS, given their ancient hatred for each other, coupled with ISIS intimidation, I don’t see Muslim unity in Iraq’s immediate future.

Micah D. Halpern’s latest book is Thugs: How History’s Most Notorious Despots Transformed the World through Terror, Tyranny, and Mass Murder.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Foreign Affairs Should Move to the Front Burner in Congressional Races

Former University of Memphis law professor Larry Pivnick, whose underdog candidacy for Congress in the 8th District is discussed in this issue, turned up at a meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club last week with copies of

a broadside he intended to pass out in support of his campaign. On a single sheet of paper were crowded 12 bullet points, dealing with foreign policy issues relating to Israel/Hamas, eastern Ukraine, and other potential flashpoints on most of the continents of the known world.

Another subject, that of the amount of attention, which the media owe a candidate like himself, a certifiable longshot, came to occupy Pivnick, however — to the point that, when his time came to say a few words, he ditched his intended subject and discoursed instead on the problems that political neophytes like himself have in transcending anonymity.

“Discoursed” is something of a euphemism; the (usually) mild-mannered ex-academic, who normally lectures in what might be considered a professorial style, was hot under the collar and, as a result, was making his points sharply, concisely, and directly — in a mode, in other words, that might work for him out on the hustings.

As for the discarded 12-point position paper, it is highly doubtful that there were — or are — any votes in it, however Pivnick might choose to deliver it. It has been a long time since foreign policy played a major role in determining the outcome of American political contests, and the further down the power chain you go — to the level of congressional candidates, say — the more minute is the impact of such matters on the electorate. That’s the bottom line — especially so, one might conjecture, in the mainly rural and agriculture-oriented 8th District, despite the inclusion of a hunk of eastern Shelby County in the redistricting that followed the census of 2010.

Even more to the point, freshly elected congressmen have almost no say on which committees they’re assigned to (Foreign Affairs is a plum for the well-tenured) and not much post-assignment influence in them for years to come. The more’s the pity. The fact is that rarely have so many global issues posed such direct import on the future of domestic circumstances in the United States — perhaps not since the end of the Cold War.

Or should we say the original Cold War. There may be further surprises to come from the hand of Vladimir Putin, but there is no great mystery as to what he is up to — a wholesale revision of the adverse circumstances imposed on Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union under the terms of what former President George H.W. Bush used to call “the New World Order.”

That “order” is now under enormous strain and may not last. Clearly, the Middle East is undergoing unprecedented jihadist ferment virtually everywhere, and the decades-long standoff between Israelis and Palestinians is igniting disastrously, once again. There are multitudes of other such issues, and there would be worse things indeed than having a few more foreign policy mavens on hand in Washington, where they might find that their concerns have jumped all the way to the front burner.

Categories
News

Memphis MoveOn.org Delivers Petition to Congressman Cohen’s Office

About 20 people gathered in front of the downtown federal building at noon today to deliver a petition urging Congressman Steve Cohen to affirm that President Bush has no congressional authority to attack Iran.

The demonstration, sponsored by MoveOn.org, was part of a national campaign in which hundreds of similar events took place around the country. Over 160,000 people nationwide signed MoveOn’s petition. Locally, volunteers gathered 200 signatures from Cohen’s district.

The petition drive was sparked by President Bush’s recent remark that “Iran is still dangerous” despite new findings by the National Intelligence Estimate saying Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003.

The petition asks Cohen to support House Joint Resolution 64, which says the 2002 authorization of force against Iraq does not give Bush the authority to wage war in Iran.

Though Cohen was not present to accept the petition, members of his staff accepted the papers. They said the petition will be sent to Cohen’s Washington D.C. office.

“President Bush is talking about World War III and it’s really scary,” said local MoveOn organizer William Shepherd. “Someone needs to express the will of the American people. Evidence shows that most people are against attacking Iran.”

–Bianca Phillips

MoveOn.org
Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

I hate to give up, but on many levels I think it’s time to throw in the towel. I was going to write this for the younger readers out there, who may not remember Warner Brothers’ Henery Hawk cartoon. If you’ve never seen it or don’t quite remember it, it’s the one in which the tiny, puffed-up, overly aggressive chicken hawk ran around like a steroidal maniac looking for chickens to kill and eat but never succeeding because he just wasn’t quite mature enough. In fact, I found this description on a popular website for cartoon fans: “When their [Warner Brothers’] biggest stars found themselves in predatory situations, it was always in the latter role; they got their laughs by foiling those trying to hunt and kill them. Henery was a rare predator protagonist, whose laughs came from his inability to bring home anything to eat. It wasn’t that he had any inborn failings in that regard. His extreme aggression would no doubt make him a very competent chicken hawk, provided he didn’t starve to death before developing his skills. It’s just that he was too young and inexperienced to know a chicken when he saw one and far too small to do much about it if he did.” I was going to write about this as a way to explain the latest antics of the National Embarrassment (aka George W. Bush), but apparently I am behind the times and someone else already has laid rubber on the Information Highway before I could get to it. All of this is in reference, of course, to Bush’s latest insult to the intelligence of the human race by imposing his own personal sanctions on the people of Iran. Yes, according to Bush, it is the people of Iran who are the problem, make no mistake. He can veil it any way he likes — putting the blame on the country’s military — but the military will never bear anything near the brunt of these sanctions like the average Iranian citizen. Unless of course, Bush fulfills what appears to be his and Dick Cheney’s ultimate dream: starting World War III. All of these sanctions are based on the Iranian government having the “knowledge” to create nuclear weapons. No. My mistake — NUKECULAR weapons — as Bush continues to pronounce it, not caring how stupid he sounds. Yep, now we are punishing other countries for having “knowledge.” Guess there’s no real threat they will try to punish Bush. Cheney, maybe. But not W. Puffy. Why would anyone in his position of power even utter the phrase “World War III,” much less try to strike fear in the hearts of the great unwashed (read: those who still believe anything he says) about such a thing? Unless, of course, he really is crazy. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt after he hosted the Dalai Lama and presented him with that big congressional honor. I thought maybe he had finally had a drink and chilled out. His eyes even seemed to separate a little so that they weren’t a half-inch apart. He came closer than he has in almost eight loooong years to bearing some slight resemblance to a human being. But no. Here he goes again. War! What is it good for? Absolutely something! It might make Blackwater another billion dollars or so and take our minds off the fact that he just vetoed health-care insurance for millions of children. And our Democratic-controlled Congress isn’t much better, in that they didn’t have the gumption to stand up to him. And they will probably confirm Michael Mukasey as the new attorney general, even if he does believe in torture. Of course, the National Embarrassment probably thinks waterboarding was a sport popular in California before the fires. I’m surprised it wasn’t addressed during FEMA’s recent “press conference,” during which employees of the agency tossed softball questions at their boss. But what does it really matter? If all keeps going as it is and the military keeps flying nuclear warheads around the U.S. and leaving them on military-base tarmacs for nine hours while everyone goes to lunch, we’re likely to bomb our own country and be done with it. Oops!

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Fruitcake Trade

I had been thinking recently that I might start a business that would export fruitcakes to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. That was the most appropriate export I could think of. But the president has put the kibosh on that idea with his tough new sanctions.

Sanctions imposed by President Bush or Congress are always described as tough, but they only apply to Americans. Anybody in any other country who might like to sell fruitcakes to the Iranians is free to do so.

My point is that sanctions are generally stupid, since they affect only American businesses. As much as the president and Congress might wish otherwise, U.S. laws apply only in the U.S. American businesses can be barred from doing business with a country that displeases American politicians, but the ban doesn’t apply anywhere else.

And it does seem to me that I have at least heard rumors that today there is something called a global economy. Americans can’t invest in Cuba or in any of the other countries on the politicians’ scat list, but Europeans, Asians, and others can and do.

Other than substituting empty gestures for real action and appeasing domestic lobbies, I really don’t see what good sanctions do. It’s no longer 1945. We are not the only surviving industrial power. No matter what product you desire, you can find it in lots of other countries.

This empty gesture is just part of the buildup to attacking Iran militarily. As some noted expert recently said, you have to be living on a different planet to imagine that Iran is or ever would be a threat to the world.

Unfortunately, the president and Vice President Cheney apparently do live on another planet, because after a number of lies, they attacked two countries that were even less of a threat than Iran could ever hope to be.

Never mind that the Israeli foreign minister just said publicly that Israel would not be threatened by a nuclear Iran. Never mind that Iran says it wishes only to enrich uranium enough to fuel its reactors for generating electricity. Never mind that Iran does not have the capability of attacking either us or Israel.

I’d bet a dog that the president has convinced himself that we can stage another “shock and awe” show that will take out Iran’s nuclear facilities and its military assets in one easy surgical strike. Strategic bombing has been overrated ever since World War II. The president might know a lot about baseball, but he knows practically nothing about war.

Ask an American veteran who sat on an invasion fleet for days while naval guns and airplanes blasted some small Pacific island to smithereens. He will tell you that when he went ashore, the Japanese were still there ready to fight.

Our bombing campaign against Serbia no doubt killed Serb and Albanian civilians, but when it was over, the Serb army forces came out of Kosovo virtually intact. The famous shock-and-awe show made for good television but missed its intended target: Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants.

If you hope that bombing can take out Iran’s nuclear facilities and its military assets, you are hoping for something that only a magic fairy can deliver. And please, to talk about a “surgical” strike with bombs is like saying a sawed-off shotgun can be fired with pinpoint accuracy. You cannot bomb any urban area without killing innocent civilians.

Nobody can know for sure what will happen if our Great Leader decides to attack Iran, but anybody will tell you that it won’t be good. Come to think of it, maybe we all should send fruitcakes to the fruitcakes in the White House, if we can find the address of the planet they are living on.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Why Are We Still in Vietnam…er, Iraq?!

Let’s proceed from the assumption that there are winners
and losers in wars (although a case can certainly be made that wars create
nothing but losers).

Let’s further proceed from the assumption that every war is
fought for a purpose. And, let’s further proceed from the assumption (and,
sadly, it’s a big one) that the purpose of fighting a war is not to enrich the
people who inevitably get rich from fighting wars (in the case of Iraq, the
Blackwaters, Halliburtons, General Dynamics and Exxon Mobils of the world).
For a somewhat more contrarian thesis, read my article entitled

“Support the Troops?”

Given these assumptions, it is reasonable to assess the
success of a war by measuring it against its stated objectives. In Iraq, the
objective (supposedly) is not only to provide security and a stable, democratic
government in Iraq, but to prevail in what this administration likes to call the
“war on terror.”

And, since Iraq has been characterized by this administration
as the “central front” in that war, and since one of the stated purposes of
fighting on that “central front” is to “fight them over there so we don’t have
to fight them over here,” it is certainly valid to measure the success of all
those purposes and objectives against the results that have been achieved. That
measurement, and those standards, are sometimes referred to as “metrics.”

There is little question that the war in Iraq has, at least
thus far, failed to achieve the objectives the administration has set out for
it. Remember that, as a condition for implementing the “surge,” there were
“benchmarks” that were supposed to be achieved. Well, in September, the General
Accountability Office issued

its report saying that the majority of the benchmarks had not been achieved.

And it is generally acknowledged that the overarching objective of the war in
Iraq, namely political reconciliation, hasn’t been achieved, and, based on
statements made recently by Iraqi officials, isn’t likely to be achieved,

ever.

But there are other “metrics” by which the success of “war
on terror” may be measured. One of the standards by which that success must be
measured is the answer to the following question: is the U.S. being made safer
from terrorist attack by fighting in Iraq. If the “fight them there…fight them
here” slogan is to have any meaning, surely this is the first question that must
be answered.

Astonishingly, not even the folks who are in charge of
fighting the war, either on the battle front or on the intelligence front, can
answer that question. Who can forget General Petraeus’ startling admission,
during his

recent testimony before Congress, that he didn’t know whether the war was
making us safer.

Here is the man who is running this war, who is watching the
troops under his command be killed and maimed on a daily basis, and he can’t
even tell us whether their sacrifice is worth it. This is un-freaking
believable! Perhaps even more revealing was the recent interview conducted by
NBC’s Iraq correspondent, Richard Engel, with

the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Admiral Scott Redd.

This newly created agency is supposed to be, according to its mission statement,
leading the fight to “combat the terrorist threat to the U.S. and its interests”
When asked directly by Engel, “are we safer today,” and after a long,
uncomfortable pause (not unlike the one Petraeus exhibited in response to the
same question),

Redd replied: “tactically, probably not; strategically, we’ll wait and
see.”

What the hell does that mean? Wait for what, 3,800 more
American combat deaths? See what, al Quaeda continue to

use the war as a recruiting tool? Well, Admiral Redd won’t have to wait or
get to see anything (at least not at the NCTC): two days after he gave that
interview, he abruptly

announced his resignation from the NCTC.

Just another example of where
speaking truth to power gets you with this administration.

A

recent report issued by the American Security Project answers, with a resounding “no,” the question of whether we’re winning the war on terror. ASP is a
self-described “non-profit, bi-partisan public policy research and education
initiative dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of a range of
national security and foreign policy issues” (read: think tank) whose board of
directors includes Gary Hart (the former Senator), John Kerry (the former
presidential candidate), George Mitchell (also a former Senator) and General
Anthony Zinni (the former commander of CENTCOM, and long-time critic of the war
in Iraq).

It answers the question in cold, statistical fashion. Using ten
objective criteria for determining the results of the “war on terror,” the
report concludes, not surprisingly, that we are losing that war. From a
“massive and dramatic increase in Islamist terrorism since 2003” to “Al Qaeda’s
[expansion of] its reach globally,” to the increasing perception in the Muslim
world of the U.S. as an “aggressive, hostile and destabilizing force,” the
report paints a dismal picture of the effect of the war in Iraq on the “war on
terror.”

The report’s quantification of terrorist attacks is
startling. It finds that the number of such attacks, worldwide, has increased
exponentially. It does not suggest that just because the U.S. hasn’t been
attacked it is therefore safer, and therefore doesn’t need to worry about
terrorism elsewhere in the world, because those aren’t “American interests,” a
position espoused, either ignorantly or dishonestly (but most revealingly), by
the Vice President’s wife in a recent
interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”

As the NCTC’s mission
statement acknowledges, even our intelligence community recognizes that our
“interests” go beyond our borders. And, of course, there is now the depressing
fact that the war in Iraq has resulted in the death of
more Americans than were killed on September 11th.

The mantra of the Vietnam era, equally applicable to the
current era, was most poignantly revealed in a song by the group known as
Country Joe and the Fish. The chorus of their song “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To
Die” included the question “And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting
for…” My question is: Joe, where are you now that we need you?

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Corker Says Constituents and “Common Sense” Come Before Political Loyalties

CREDIT: jb

In a visit to Shelby County Wednesday, Bob Corker, the
Republican who was elected to the U.S. Senate last year over Democrat Harold
Ford Jr. in a tight race that drew ample national attention, made it clear that
partisan issues are the least of his concerns.

Both in a luncheon address to Rotarians at the Germantown
Country Club and in remarks to reporters afterward, former Chattanooga mayor
Corker emphasized a “common sense” approach in which “I strive to make sure that
everybody in the state is proud of the way I conduct myself…to understand issues
as they really are, devoid of some of the rhetoric that surrounds these
issues…[and] the political whims of the day.”

Take his response when asked whether embattled GOP senator
Larry Craig, busted in the infamous “wide stance” airport-restroom case, should
resign for the good of the Republican Party:

Corker said Craig’s predicament was a matter for the
“people of Idaho” and the Senate Ethics Committee. “I don’t try to get into all
the political ramifications of this or that. The way to get a whole lot more
done is to focus on issues.” Somewhat disdainfully, he added, “There are all
these messaging amendments that we do, all about making one side look bad and
the other side look good. Democrats do it, and Republicans do it. It’s a total
waste of time.”

Helping The Med

As to how that even-handed outlook affected his stand on
issues, Corker was explicit. He talked of applying pressure on the
Administration, especially on recent health-care issues he considered urgent for
his constituents. “I know for a fact that I played a huge role in this [latest]
TennCare waiver thing. I have to say I had to put a hold on the Bush
nominations to make it happen. I thought it was important for our state.”

And there was his vote and enthusiastic support recently to expand SChip (the
federal State Children’s Health
Insurance Program) so as to increase funding for Tennessee by $30
million and to permit Medicaid payments for patients at The Med from Arkansas
and Mississippi. Both Corker and Tennessee GOP colleague Lamar Alexander
strongly supported the bill, which passed but was vetoed last week by President
Bush.

“I was glad to have worked out these issues
that have plagued the Med for so long. It’s ridiculous that people from Arkansas
and Mississippi have used the facility for so long and don’t pay for it. What’s
the logic in that?” Corker said, vowing to try to get the Med-friendly
provisions re-established in a veto-proof compromise measure yet to be
fashioned.

Corker made a pitch for the Every American Insured Health Act,
a bill he has sponsored that, he said, would modify the tax code so as to
guarantee universal access to private health insurance “but would not add a
penny to the national deficit.”

Contending that “what I’m trying to do is to add to
the equation a real debate, a real solution,” the senator said his proposal had been
“slammed” on the same day by both a conservative columnist and a liberal
columnist, leading him to conclude, “I’m pretty sure we got it just about
right.”

Corker said that executives of key national corporations,
saddled with large health-care costs for their employees, were “waling the halls
of Congress trying to get us to move to a government-run system so they can
alleviate. that expense which makes them non-competitive.” Without some
alternative form of universal access, he said, such a government-run system was
inevitable.

With 800,000 Tennesseans and 47 million Americans lacking
health-care coverage, there was also a “moral obligation” to make coverage universal,
Corker stressed.

Relations with Iran and Syria

As a member of both the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
and the body’s Armed Services committee, Corker says he is focusing hard on
issues relating to war-torn Iraq, a country he has visited twice, and
neighboring Iran, subject of much speculation these days concerning possible
future hostilities between that country and the U.S.

Here again, the senator stressed his determination to
maintain independence of judgment. “I’ve had some very tense moments with this
administration – in the first two months I was up there [in Washington]
especially. There were some underwhelming meetings.”

Corker is dubious about the current political leadership of
Iraq {“things cannot go on as they are”) but supportive for the time being of
the current military strategy of General David Petraeus, with whom he stays in
contact.

On Iran, Corker said there was “some concern in the
Senate that the president might take action” and emphasized that “he [Bush]would have
to have Senate authority to do that.” Corker reminded reporters that after his
election he had said on CBS’ Face the Nation that diplomatic negotiations
with both Syria and Iran were necessary.

“We don’t want to overplay our hand in Iran,” he said.
“There’s a group of people there who want to be our friends. If we move into
Iran unilaterally others [in the region] will step back from being our friends.”

Corker, who was a construction executive before entering
politics, related the current diplomatic situation to his experience in
labor-management negotiations in Tennessee. “If you don’t talk with your enemies
they remain your enemies. There’s a lot to be learned just to be in somebody’s
presence,” he said.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Best of Memphis

Once again, the Flyer‘s “Best of Memphis” issue has both entertained and infuriated me. I realize that polling is an imperfect art and the (sometimes) lowest common denominator will determine the winner. And yes, I like Huey’s hamburgers.

But seriously, how can a multi-million-dollar golf course such as Spring Creek Ranch possibly be tied (for third-best golf course) with a goat track like Overton Park? And how can a pedestrian “Italian” restaurant like Pete and Sam’s possibly be in consideration for “Best Italian” in the same garlic breath as Ronnie Grisanti’s?

I could go on: “Best Service” had Texas de Brazil first, followed by Chick-Fil-A??? Holy crap! That’s just insane. And Mud Island Amphitheater winning third in “Best Place To Hear Live Music”? Yeah, like what, twice a year?

I know the Flyer doesn’t have any control over the voting, but, people, please — show some common sense!

Ricky Gardner

Memphis

I want to know how Geoff Calkins and Wendi Thomas win “Best Columnist” every year when the Flyer offers us such stellar and superior talents as Jackson Baker, John Branston, Mary Cashiola, and Bruce VanWyngarden?

Haven’t you people ever heard of stuffing the ballot?

Mary Warren

Memphis

War Ethics

As I watched the excellent PBS Ken Burns series The War this past two weeks, I was struck how American expectations and standards seem to have changed since World War II. Think about what President Bush is reviled for in Iraq.  

Under an order signed by Roosevelt, well over 100,000 U.S. citizens — mostly based solely on their race — were sent to concentration camps and much of their property was stolen. For years after Pearl Harbor, Americans weren’t told the extent of our losses in men and ships. GIs in Europe, three years after we got into the war, had such lousy equipment to fight in winter, they were stealing from the German dead to try to keep from freezing.

The Allies killed 35,000 German civilians in one night in one city. A million Japanese civilians were burned out of their homes in one day in one city. German Army prisoners were executed out of hand, and an experienced U.S. soldier protesting this was warned he might get shot too.

“Intelligence failure” hardly seems an adequate term for the massive surprise military attack on Pearl Harbor after FDR had been in office for years. Of course, the U.S. in 1940-’41 had a military smaller than Romania’s, years after Germany and Japan were arming to the teeth.

If you don’t like Bush, fine — there’s a lot not to be happy with. But maybe think about what you accept without reservation in one president before you curse another.

Herbert E. Kook Jr.
Germantown

Air America

Because I still mourn the loss of Air America Radio, I am writing in response to the letter from the gentleman in Germantown (“Letters,” September 27th issue) and his reference to a “disgruntled” listener (and the three other listeners).

There were actually a lot more than three listeners and would probably have been many more if we had been made aware Air America wasn’t going to be available in our area. He mentions “hate,” and I won’t say there wasn’t some in evidence, but I guess it was just the wrong flavor for him, because I didn’t hear it directed at homosexuals, minorities, pro-choicers, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, or war protestors.

The “bile” being spewed was more directed at those who were perceived to be failing in their duty to protect and defend our Constitution and to respect our country as a nation of laws. How can dissent be un-American? Is that not what created this country? I would ask the gentleman, and anyone else, if you had been around in 1776, would you have stood with the king or the colonists?

Linda Cowart
Germantown

Iran and the U.S.

I keep hoping the damage the elected heads of state of Iran and the U.S. can do is reaching its limits.

It is a sad commentary on democracy when an “Ahmadina-Bush” is chosen. For my part, I vow never to vote for a Republican again, as I did in several races in the last general election.

Let’s send a message and work to take back our country from the election thieves of 2000!

Greg Williams

Memphis

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: KHZ | dreamstime.com

If I were an American soldier in Iraq, I’d be tempted mightily to say, “Good luck and goodbye,” and then start for home. I can’t see losing even one more soldier in a war over a country in which 99.9 percent of the American people have no interest.

Iraq had no effect on the American people before President Bush’s illegal invasion of it. It has no effect on us now, unless you have loved ones being fed into the meat grinder that is making futility sausage. What possible difference does it make to us who rules Iraq?

As a matter of fact, we should not only pull all of our troops out of Iraq but also withdraw them from Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and anywhere else they happen to be in the Middle East. If our leaders had the brains to do this, they would discover that the people in that part of the world are quite capable of running their own affairs.

Some of them might kill each other, but eventually things would settle down. It is, after all, one of the oldest civilizations in the world. In the meantime, no one in that part of the world could use us as an excuse for doing anything, and it wouldn’t be Americans who are getting killed.

I would also pull out of Afghanistan and say to the government, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda, you fellows work this out among yourselves, because frankly we don’t give a damn. Your hardscrabble country isn’t worth 10 bucks, much less the billions we’ve spent on it. If you need water, dig a well; if you need food, grow it. Goodbye and good luck.

The American people have been conned into accepting the idea of an empire, when there is no need for one. Wherever there is oil, it will be available for sale because it is otherwise worthless, and why should we care from whom we buy it? Some of the worst people in the world are sitting on big oil reserves, and you know what? Their oil burns just as well as anybody else’s.

The imperialists have created the illusion that we are in control of the world and if we weren’t, everything would fall apart. That’s not true. First of all, we are not in control of the world. Secondly, we are not the world’s only remaining superpower. We could not whip China or Russia in an all-out war and probably not even Iran.

It’s true that we have a lot of fancy weapons, but we bought them all on credit, and it won’t be long before our credit will be maxed out. The Chinese have already demonstrated that they can take out satellites, and I’m sure the Russians have that capability too. The problem with relying on high-tech solutions comes when your high tech crashes. Knock out those satellites, and the U.S. will not only be blind but impotent.

Furthermore, we’re trying to be an empire on the cheap. To run an empire, you need lots and lots of cannon fodder. Since we stupidly decided to have an all-volunteer Army, we can’t afford too much cannon fodder. How many of our soldiers could we lose before everyone started screaming “stop the war”? We’ve lost a little over 3,500 troops in Iraq so far, and pressure is starting to build.

What the knuckleheads in Washington have created is an empire of delusions and illusions. It’s time for the nation to wake up and adopt a realistic foreign policy, which is trade and friendly relations with anybody who wants it. As for those who don’t, we simply ignore them. We don’t need to be anybody’s enemy.

As for defense, defending our space is easy and cheap. As another mark of imperial stupidity, the rulers of the empire can’t even do that while they fail overseas.

Charley Reese writes for the Lew Rockwell syndicate. He has been a journalist for 50 years.