Tag: war

Categories
Art Art Feature

Just Desserts

To fully experience Delta Axis @ Marshall Art’s current exhibition “Activation,” you had to be there opening night eating cake and looking at brutal images of war.

Creatures flayed beyond recognition were strewn across a butcher block in Rob Canfield’s savage, beautiful oil Slaughterhouse, and the figure that screamed in Canfield’s Thin Red Line looked like the old woman undone by treachery in Bronzino’s 16th-century masterwork Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time.

Jonathan Yablonski’s sleek, 21st-century image of war hung on the opposite wall. Slender lines soared skyward and narrowed at the top of a black skyscraper backdropped by a blood red sky. A human skeleton as large as the high-rise brought to mind the hordes of humanity whose toil and blood build economic and military empires.

In her mixed-media collage, Native, Leila Hamdan painted what it feels like to be hidden away, shamed, and treated like disposable property. A woman totally covered by a black burka, except for eyes that smoldered with rage and regret, shapeshifted into the thick neck, squat torso and stubby legs of a work-horse.

Conceptual artist Sanjit Sethi baked three large cakes for viewers, including one titled “Axis of Evil,” which was decorated with silhouettes of North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. We ate the cake from paper plates that were imprinted with the American flag.

Colored pencils and John Morris’ sardonic color-it-yourself print Coloring Colonialism lay on a table against the far back wall. Some viewers added a line or a touch of color to bear witness to the horror depicted. Some viewers turned away. Others, intoxicated by this show’s heady mix of celebration, patriotism, and brutality, colored the scene in ways that further debased the men and women being burned alive by Spanish Conquistadors.

The cakes have been eaten, but the provocative, brutally honest paintings and prints are still on view.

At Delta Axis @ Marhall Arts through November 3rd

Rob Canfield’s Thin Red Line at Delta Axis @ Marshall Arts

Emotional battles are fought in Memphis College of Arts’ exhibition, “Threads 11×1, Eleven Artists A Single Vision.”

We see the inner turmoil in Gwyneth Scally’s sienna-red painting Raven, in which a woman howls, tears at her flesh, and tries to crawl out of her skin as her left foot morphs into a bird of prey. We see foreboding in the stern, sad face of a little girl whose left arm is tied to a billowing black cloud in Emily Kalwaitis’ pencil and acrylic wash titled Held. Kristin Martincic’s ceramic sculptures are filled with unresolved longing. Two white legs in Waiting materialize out of an equally white wall, bend at the knees, and strain to touch the plot of real grass just beyond reach on the floor below.

Conceptual artist and writer Buzz Spector tops off these hauntingly noir works with Black Waterfall, a mixed-media sculpture in which tattered threads unravel and cascade down seven feet of black denim, bringing to mind torn curtains and pierced veils. Instead of white light, Spector and the other artists in this exhibition explore the shadows, the unresolved angers and fears, the dark clouds that gather inside and above us all.

At MCA through November 8th

Running in conjunction with this weekend’s RiverArtsFest in South Main is the “RiverArtsFest Invitational Exhibition” at Jay Etkin Gallery. Roger Cleaves’ robotic, cartoon-like characters skulk, stalk, strangle, and stab each other across every square inch of his paintings. In sharp contrast to Cleaves’ sly satire, Cynthia Thompson sculpts delicate understated paper works that tell us about the quiet, gentle wisdom of the body, and Ian Lemmonds’ images of plastic toys combined with evocative light create a tableau of possibility and joy. At Jay Etkin Gallery, October 26th-October 28th

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

MAD AS HELL: Bush Quacks On As Democrats Turn Tail

George Bush is no lame duck. You aren’t lame when you’re
getting your way on everything. At a press conference this week, instead of
quacking like a duck, he was strutting like a peacock, and warning the world
of how relevant he still is. The Decider Guy is dancing with the stars. A 24%
approval rating, a (still mostly) lapdog press and Orwellian delusions
continue to assure him that he can do as he damn well pleases. In other
words, he has another18 months to take this country farther down a rat hole.
And the one thing he knows for sure is the gutless opposition has no serious
plans to stop him.

Yesterday, the president and his party succeeded in
denying millions of poor American children healthcare by vetoing a bill to
expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Never mind that the
money spent on forty days in Iraq would have paid for at least ten million
poor kids to be insured for an entire year. We have the money for funding
perpetual wars, but not for our nation’s poor, sick children. This
administration, with the help of Congress, killed the bill.

Even more appalling, Bush and the Republicans fought to
get legal immunity for the telecommunications companies who helped this
government engage in spying and criminal phone tapping of innocent, private
citizens. Never mind that protecting the criminals who colluded with the
right-wingers will destroy the individual privacy and hitherto protected
freedoms of all Americans. So where did Congress line up on this despicable
piece of legislation? Right behind the Republicans, of course.

Most alarming, however, was another bizarre “Bring-It-On”
display when Bush seemed jacked up when alluding to a possible third world war
involving Iran. (Excuse me, “nukyuler armed Eye-ran.”) Jocularly chuckling at
questions regarding a potential engagement of war with another country in the
Middle East, he sounded more and more like a petulant, dangerous child.

While Bush was flipping off sick children, ripping up the
Constitution and rattling war sabers, where was the opposing party– the
majority party that was sent to Washington last year explicitly to stop Bush
from doing further damage? Pissing up the proverbial rope, as usual. Since
the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared impeachment of this president
to be off the table, it is the Democrats who are quickly making themselves
irrelevant. Bush and the Republicans control the agenda, determine the course
of action, and dictate the outcome. The Democrats continue to believe that
simply keeping their heads down will somehow propel them into an electoral
landslide in 2008! While Bush continues to gain relevancy by finding new and
novel ways to continue his campaign to expunge the planet of any life form
that disagrees with him, the congress merrily assumes the
earthworm-on-dry-pavement position.

In all this mess, it is the American people who seem to be
the least relevant to the politicians. Predictably, the president will continue
to carry on the Iraq war, but the one thing voters were counting on last year
when they elected a Democratic majority was having that majority use the
Constitutional powers available to them to stop the funding of the war.

And while Bush continues to destroy our Constitutional
freedoms, the Democrats astoundingly still cower in fear of being called
unpatriotic. This administration has flagrantly flouted the will of the people,
but the people figured out a long time ago not to expect anything different from
Bush. Congress, however, in its failure to confront the president, is also
ignoring the will of the people; so it is no surprise that they, not Bush, have
the lower approval rating.

-Make no mistake, Americans are sick and tired of Bush and
the Republicans, but they are more exasperated with and sickened by
Congressional Democrats who claim to be Bush’s adversaries, yet act like never
ending enablers. Like parents offering nothing more than repeated empty threats
to a destructive, out-of- control adolescent, the Democrats are the ones who are
becoming increasingly irrelevant and dare I say –lame? Perhaps they should heed
the words of the last Democratic President who said the American people would
rather support someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is right and
weak.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Class War?

President Bush’s visit to Memphis this week was a real eye-opener. I have read that the war in Iraq being waged by this administration is a class war, but I had not seen it so blatantly played out.

I was holding a sign that read “STOP THE WAR” as I took part in a peaceful protest. Bush was attending a political fund-raiser nearby for Republican senator Lamar Alexander.  The ticket price was $1,000, and if you wanted to super-size, you could spend $10,000 and get your picture taken with the man himself.

Guests for the Bush event parked at the Pink Palace lot. I couldn’t help but notice that every car that pulled in was a brand-new BMW, Mercedes Benz, large SUV, or Cadillac. They were all luxury cars. And the occupants, in their expensive dark suits, starched white shirts, and red ties, all looked spit-shined and neat, just like their vehicles. The women were dressed to kill, hair just so, accessorized and tanned. It was really weird how neat and perfect they all looked. They all seemed giddy with anticipation and didn’t give us the time of day. They were there to support the president.

In contrast, the 60 or so people I was standing with looked very different. We were a bedraggled bunch, mostly college students standing up for our right to assemble and speak our opposition to this mess that has been created in Iraq against our will. There wasn’t anyone among us in a suit. Where we parked, there were no shiny cars, just used vehicles. And there were a lot of us on bikes.

Polls say that two-thirds of Americans are against the war. That means there should have been more of us standing on the corner than there were attending the fund-raiser, but we were outnumbered at least four to one. Maybe it was because people who have a lot of money have more flexible schedules. Maybe it was because we just weren’t organized enough and nobody got the word. Maybe meeting the president seemed more important than standing on a corner holding a sign for peace.

Whatever the case, I found myself very comfortable with the people I was standing with, even if we were the minority. I firmly believe that what we did was the right thing to do. But I sure hope more people show up to stand with us next time. Maybe even somebody in a suit.

Billy Simpson
Memphis

The “Seniorphobic” Flyer?

It has been a while since the Flyer has rattled my cage, because someone has decided that all of us at the Frayser-Raleigh Senior Center don’t need to read your paper anymore.

Has the Flyer become “seniorphobic”? I would find that hard to believe, but nevertheless, I haven’t had my Flyer fix in three weeks.

Now, I can’t sit in my easy chair and smoke my pipe while listening to “Axis Bold As Love” and reading the only Memphis newspaper that seems to truly care about this city.

Please correct this travesty and don’t leave this faithful reader and some of his friends out in the cold.

Frank M. Boone

Memphis

Editor’s note: We will look into the situation and make sure your senior center remains on our delivery list.

Bush and the Devil

Americans need to wake up to the fact that President Bush has been making deals with the devil.

We know how the State Department has protected the killers at Blackwater, but there are more sinister killers that are coming to light. Arms dealers like Tomislav Damnjanovic, who operated out of Belgrade under Slobodan Milosevic during the Bosnian conflict, is now being paid with our tax dollars to run arms into Iraq and Afghanistan. While doing this, he is also running arms to terrorists linked to al-Qaeda in Somalia. This is according to U.N. investigators.

Damnjanovic also helped supply Libya’s air force and army with illegal arms shipments. In fact, almost anywhere people are being murdered by rebels or their own governments, this dealer of death is shipping arms and making money.

This is the man that our professed born-again Christian president is doing business with.

If you support Bush, you might want to start asking some tough questions of your senators, such as, why they have not protested or asked why America is doing business with killers who have no respect for freedom or the American way of life.

Jack Bishop

Cordova

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Support the Troops?

The debate over the Iraq war has devolved into a struggle
over whether the political combatants in that fight “support the troops.” The
Republic party (the equivalent of what the president cynically—or maybe just
ignorantly—likes to call the “Democrat” party), which continues to support the
President’s “stay the course” strategy in Iraq, continues to assert that any
attempt to end the war and bring our troops home constitutes a failure to
support the troops.

That’s a little like saying that any attempt to cure cancer
is a failure to support the livelihoods of the medical professionals who
diagnose and treat it. And, many of the so-called anti-war politicians in
Washington counter that assertion with the equally sophistic phrase that it is
possible to oppose the war, but support the troops.

All of this made me want to examine, closely, the whole
“support the troops” meme the right wing likes to trot out (and the chickenshit
Democrats buy into) as the ultimate justification for the continuation of the
war, and the conclusion I came to is that supporting the troops is both a false
mantra, and worse, is not justified by the facts.

Let’s start with the premise that the purpose of a standing
military is to defend the U.S. from attack. Indeed, since funding for the
military is part of the “defense” budget, there’s no arguing that point. Since
we all know, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war,
that few, if any, countries have the power, much less the ability (or even
desire), to attack the U.S. (at least not conventionally, as by launching an
amphibious force or parachuting onto our shores), one has to wonder, has that
purpose outlived its usefulness.

Even if one were to posit as a given the “threat”
represented by the “axis of evil” (i.e., Iran, North Korea, China), the
inescapable fact is that the threat from those countries (if one truly exists,
rather than being ginned up by an administration that uses the fear of attack as
its ultimate political weapon) is that they will launch a nuclear attack on the
U.S. Why else are the neocons beating the war drums against the prospect of
Iran’s development of a nuclear capability, and why else is this president
spending billions of dollars on a “missile defense shield” which has, in
testing, been a demonstrable failure?

Now, of course, a standing army will not have any ability
to defend the U.S from nuclear attack. It’s a little like the scene from one of
the “Indiana Jones” movies where the colorfully-attired tribesman brandishes a
long and lethal-looking scimitar in threatening gestures aimed towards our hero,
only to have an amused, but obviously not intimidated, Jones pull his gun and
shoot the flamboyant warrior dead on the spot.

In other words, don’t bring a sword (even if it’s a big
one) to a gun fight. Similarly, don’t bring a rifle, pistol or even a canon to a
fight with someone who has a nuclear weapon. No matter how sophisticated a
standing army is, it is no match against ICBM’s. But, we also know that there
are no countries who currently have a delivery mechanism for any nuclear weapons
(the laughable “test” conducted by North Korea several months ago proved that),
though the joke that’s told about the Chinese lack of a delivery system is that
with a population of a billion people, they can just pass the weapon, hand to
hand, across the ocean.

We also know, because our president and his sycophants have
been telling us this since at least September 11, 2001, that terrorism (and the
terrorists who use it) is an unconventional form of warfare. They use the word
“asymmetric” to describe the “enemy” in the “war on terror,” and tell us that,
among other things, this kind of war is different because it isn’t state
sponsored, the combatants don’t wear uniforms, etc. That, of course, is one of
the rationales this administration has used for denying “enemy combatants” the
essential rights granted under the Geneva Conventions and other international
treaties, thereby exposing American troops to similar mistreatment in the event
they are captured.

So a conventional military force isn’t the right vehicle to
fight an unconventional (i.e., “war on terror”) war, if we’re to credit what
we’ve been told. And, if we’ve learned one thing from the debacle that Iraq has
become (and should have learned from the earlier misadventures of, for example,
France in Algeria, Russia in Afghanistan, or even our own experience in
Vietnam), it is that conventional troops are almost powerless to fight a war
against terrorists and insurgents.

So what other purpose does a standing army serve? The
answer is all too simple: to fight conventional wars (and, not incidentally, to
line the coffers of what Dwight Eisenhower so presciently called the “military
industrial complex”). That means to land troops by air or sea on “enemy”
territory, conduct military operations, the purpose of which is to kill as many
of the enemy (whoever we declare them to be) as they possibly can.

That’s what our military did in the days immediately
following our initial invasion of Iraq. It’s also what our military has done in
wars going back to the War of 1812, including, but not limited to, World Wars I
and II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War (the latter of which was also a war
against an insurgency, and we know how well that turned out). In other words, a
standing army is an excuse to fight conventional wars in an era where
conventional wars have become all but useless, with the exception of wars whose
purpose isn’t to defend our country from attack.

In order to accomplish the purpose of its conventional
military operations of late, the U.S. has been relying on the services of a
so-called “all-volunteer” corps of fighters. Of course, these fighters aren’t
volunteers, in the conventional sense, since we all know that the dictionary
definition of a volunteer is “a person who performs a service willingly and
without pay.” Hence the nickname for the state of Tennessee as the “Volunteer
State,” a term that originates from the outpouring of volunteers (in the truest
sense) from that state to fight in the War of 1812.

No, the current “all volunteer” military is anything but
volunteers (except, and only, to the extent they are to be distinguished from
the “involunteers” in prior wars, who were drafted, usually against their will,
to serve). They are, in fact, job applicants who have a variety of motivations
for wanting the job.

For some, it’s the signing bonuses (as much as $20,000,
depending on the speed of deployment and the duration of the commitment) the
military is dangling to entice applicants, especially given the difficulty it’s
been having meeting its recruitment quotas. For others, it’s the benefits that
come from military service, including educational benefits and medical benefits
(illusory as it appears those benefits have become) following their service. For
some, it’s the fact that the military is the employer of last resort for a
variety of slackers and dead-enders, including felons, high school dropouts and
even skinheads, neo-Nazis and gang members. It is no accident that the vast
majority of volunteers for the military come from the lower economic rungs of
our society.

For many, however, it’s a combination of jingoistic
patriotism and a desire to engage in legitimized, permissible, sanctioned
violence. How else can we explain the fact that the military has now begun
accepting volunteers who have a history of committing violent crimes?

The members of the military, whether they be ground or air
forces, are trained, to put it simply, to kill. If they did stateside what
they’re paid to do “in theater,” they would be considered criminals, but put a
gun in the hand of a 20-something, wet-behind-the-ears soldier, tell him he’s
fighting for a great and glorious cause, and let him loose on the enemy du jour,
and just about anything he does with that weapon is OK, even if includes killing
innocent civilians.

And if he can’t find enough enemies to shoot at through
normal tactics, he can always (as we found out in the last few days) bait the
field of battle with enticements to potential insurgents and terrorists to up
his kill rate. In other words, our military thinks it can do something to
facilitate the killing of human beings that the laws in most states prohibit a
hunter from doing to kill wildlife. Is this a great military, or what?

A good friend of mine, who was a fighter pilot in Vietnam
(and, among other things, dropped napalm and agent orange on civilians in that
country), told me that among the patches some pilots had sewn onto their flight
suits was the motto “We Control Violence.” When you have the ability to fire
canons or drop bombs (the kind that kill people instantly by blowing them up, or
that take longer to kill them by giving them cancer or other fatal diseases)
from the air, or fire 50 millimeter bullets from a sniper rifle on the ground,
there’s no doubt that, as far as the victims of your firepower (especially when
those victims are what the military calls “collateral damage”) are concerned,
you certainly do control violence.

It might have been more accurate if that patch had said “We
Control Life.” Let’s not forget, though, that the military is the spearhead for
the effectuation of our foreign policy. If that policy includes “regime change,”
or the imposition of our form of government, and if that policy dictates that
tens of thousands of innocent civilians be killed in that effort, then the
military is the vehicle by which that policy is accomplished.

So the question is, is the military (especially in its
activities in support of Bush’s policy in Iraq) worthy of our support. Are the
men and women who “volunteer” to accomplish Bush’s objectives praiseworthy?
Remember, Bush never served in combat (thanks to his daddy’s connections with
the Texas Air National Guard), nor did most of the chickenhawk neocons who
engineered the war in Iraq. None of them, nor any of their family members, was
ever going to fight the war either. Without obedient, compliant, and credulous
men and women to fight Bush’s war, there would/could be no war.

So is the military entitled to a pass for wittingly doing
the president’s bidding because they’re “just following orders?” You may
remember this as part of the infamous “Nuremberg defense,” a rationalization
that was debunked at the war crimes trial following World War II, and has been
made obsolete in, among other places, the Uniform Code of Military Justice which
empowers soldiers to disobey unlawful orders. Is the military entitled to a
pass, much less our admiration, because they dutifully (some might say blindly)
follow the orders given by their commander-in-chief, or are they complicit in
the atrocities that accompany the combat in which they engage?

Why, one might ask, aren’t more members of the military
speaking out against the policy in Iraq, and why aren’t more members of the
military taking other action (e.g., deserting) as they see the effects of that
policy on the ground? Could it be because they agree with the policy, and if so,
aren’t the policy and their service in its support inseparable?

Let’s admit something: anyone who has volunteered for
military service since the war in Iraq started knew they might be sent to fight
that war, and many, suffused with an overwhelming sense of “duty, honor,
country” volunteered precisely for that reason. Pat Tillman, the NFL quarterback
who was killed by his own troops, only to have that fact covered up by the
military and the Bush administration, was the poster child for that motivation.

So we have to assume that they not only agreed with the
policy effectuated by that war, but that they were eager to serve as the tools
(or, if you like it better, vehicles) of the apparatus that has given us that
war for the last five years. They are not unwitting victims, innocent bystanders
or accidental tourists in this war; they are the means for its accomplishment.

The people who are fighting the current war may be cannon
fodder to the cynical politicians who want to keep them there, but they are the
personification of those politicians’ policies. Therefore, it is impossible to
oppose the war, but support the people who, by volunteering to fight it,
implicitly (if not explicitly) support it and make it possible.

Of course, this rationale may not be as applicable to the
members of the National Guard and Reserve, who have been, essentially,
conscripted to fight, and who may or may not support the policy they are being
forced to fight for, but even they realize, when they sign up for duty
stateside, that they can be drawn into a foreign war, and we’re not seeing any
mass rebellion or revolt by these troops either against the administration’s war
policy.

In terms of admirability, I suggest there are many
categories of people (and the jobs they perform) that are far more worthy of
support than the members of the American military who are being used, with their
knowledge and accession, as a means of foisting an unjustified, and
unjustifiable, war on the American (not to mention the Iraqi) public. Police
officers, firefighters, teachers, nurses, and even garbage collectors are, in my
opinion, worthy of far more admiration, respect, and yes, support, than the
people who kill in pursuit of George Bush’s insane policies.

The U.S. military in Iraq isn’t defending this country.
Even General Petraeus (speaking of tools) couldn’t make that argument in his
recent “show and tell” before the Congress. It isn’t making this country any
safer; it isn’t lessening the threat of worldwide terrorism (in fact, just the
opposite) and it isn’t defending the American way of life (unless you think the
American way of life is unbridled violence, either of the domestic variety—as
the recent upswing in national crime statistics suggests—or of the kind we
export).

Of course, the same political machinations which cause
Democrats to drink the “support the troops” Kool Aid being served up by our
president and his party’s members are what prevent those same political
calculators from coming anywhere near saying that the military is far less than
the admirable, self-sacrificing, infallible institution it is portrayed as
being. That’s why the well-deserved (if less-than-delicately worded) criticism
of Petraeus contained in the recent MoveOn.org ad in the New York Times mustered
the indignant outrage it did, even from enough Democrats in the Senate to pass
an embarrassingly irrelevant resolution condemning the ad.

Apparently, criticizing a general who manipulates the facts
to fit the policy is akin to treason, or at least to blasphemy, to our elected
officials, including many chickenshit Democrats. Never mind that when Bush has
been critical of what generals have told him, he flat out fired them. Now that’s
what I call supporting the troops.

I realize my analysis and conclusions about the “support
the military” cliche make it seem like I probably don’t believe in the sanctity
of such American institutions as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie or Chevrolet
either, and truth be told, I don’t. Baseball has become a money-grubbing,
sleazy, corrupt industry; hot dogs are laced with harmful chemicals, apple pie
contributes to an epidemic of obesity (besides, I prefer peach) and Chevrolet
builds more gas guzzling vehicles than any other manufacturer, thus contributing
to our dependence on foreign oil and, indirectly, to the terrorism that has been
spawned by our petro-centric foreign policy.

However, nothing I’ve said should be interpreted as a
desire to see American soldiers harmed in any way. Quite the contrary. Just
because American soldiers volunteer for service knowing they may be grievously
injured, or even killed, doesn’t mean they deserve either of those fates And
just because they have volunteered to serve a corrupt, indefensible policy also
doesn’t mean they deserve to be punished by being injured or losing their lives.

They are entitled to every safeguard and protection from
harm this country can give them (rather than the lip service they are frequently
paid), and to the fulfillment of promises that get made to induce them to serve,
whether that is effective body armor (rather than the garbage they’ve been
getting as a result of a corrupt procurement process), vehicles that will
protect them from explosions or adequate medical care following their service.
Which is why what they deserve is to be removed, immediately (if not sooner)
from a situation that exposes them to such risks for all the wrong reasons. If
there is to be any punishment meted out as a result of what has turned into a
criminal war, that will be for an appropriate tribunal to decide.

Nor would it be valid to draw the inference that I’m some
kind of pacifist. I would be the first to call for military action were any
foreign power to attempt to come ashore in amphibious vehicles on Long Island,
Boca Raton or San Diego, or invade the U.S. by any other conventional means (and
that includes fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan). And far be it from me to
suggest any kind of reallocation of resources, either financial or human, away
from defending our country against a bogus “war on terror” to defending our
country against real risks, like dread diseases, and a pathetic health care
system that cause (or do little to prevent) the deaths of more people in this
country every single day than were killed on September 11, 2001.

My point about the military is only that it is manipulative at best, and dishonest at worst to justify a continuation of the war based on the need to “support the troops,” and the rush to glorify the military or act like that institution is somehow sacrosanct ignores reality, especially when that reality dictates that institution deserves no more honor, or support, than the dishonorable mission it is fighting.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Pulling the Plug (Again!)

I said, some months ago (“Time To Pull the Plug,” December,
’06), that it was time for Congress to defund the war in Iraq. It has now become
apparent that’s the only way we’re going to get out of Iraq in anything
approaching a reasonable period of time In the time since I wrote that piece,
hundreds more American soldiers have died, thousands more have been permanently
disabled, and we’ve spent additional billions of dollars on this tragic, futile
war. The electorate spoke loudly and clearly last November about their antipathy
for the war. Their mistake was thinking their vote would bring an end to the
war, just as the Iraqis’ mistake was thinking that voting for a government would
actually give them a government.

The feckless Democrats have knuckled under to a Republican
autocrat, choosing to play a dangerous game of political chicken with Bush
instead of exercising their electoral prerogative. If Bush thought he was given
“political capital,” after a close election victory in ’04, Democrats were given
the bank in ’06. Yet, they’ve cowered in their corners, afraid of the political
consequences of doing what they were elected to do. What sense does that make?

And the Democrats’ excuse? We don’t have enough votes to
override a veto, they say, while they engage in pathetic maneuvering, posturing,
and worse, empty table-thumping. The only thing the Democrats can do to end the
war is the very thing they have the power to do, without worrying about whether
or not the President likes or approves of it—cut off funding. Congress has
what is so colorfully called the “power of the purse.” Under the Constitution,
Congress decides whether, and how much, to fund wars. It has the power, under
the terms of Article I, Section 8, to “raise and support armies.”

Many people may not realize that, thinking that anything
Congress does is subject to Presidential approval (through signing) or
disapproval (through veto). But the truth is, Congress can end this war, ALL BY
ITSELF. So why hasn’t it done so? Because it has bought into the spin of an
administration that enjoys one of the lowest approval ratings in history that
cutting off funding for the war is cutting off funding for the troops (even
though that is manifestly untrue). And if Congress did that they’d probably face
the folks who drive around in cars with those magnetic “Support the Troops”
stickers rising up in revolt, right? Wrong.

The Democrats have allowed Bush (and his various henchmen)
to define funding for the war as either being for “spreading democracy,”
“fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”, or being
against the troops. With the notable exception of Congressmen Martha and
Kucinich, and of late, Chris Dodd, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be
cowed by an administration whose “support” for the troops has manifested itself
in vehicles that don’t protect troops from being blown up, involuntarily
extended tours of duty and woefully inadequate health care when they leave the
military. So who’s really supporting the troops?

In addition to the “not supporting our troops” trope, the
Republicans also have their go-to talking point, namely that if troops are
withdrawn, the result will be a catastrophe. This from the same people who
claimed there were WMD’s in Iraq, that the war would be short (and cheap), that
we’d be greeted as “liberators,” and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war. In
other words, Bush and his cadre of neocon war drummers were wrong about every
single thing they predicted about the war. But now we’re supposed to believe
their prediction about what will happen when we withdraw? That defies logic.

The President’s speech on Thursday, which followed his
alter ego, General Petraeus’ dog and pony show before Congress (which revealed
that he himself can’t say that the war in Iraq is making the U.S. any safer),
revealed, at long last, his (Bush’s) true agenda. We all know that the U.S. is
building the largest embassy in the history of civilization in Iraq, and that
it’s been building permanent military bases in Iraq, so we knew Bush et al. were
planning on a long-term presence in that country. But now we know that he’s
planning on an indefinite presence, because he has finally told us so. The
“enduring relationship” he announced during his speech has been interpreted as
nothing short of the kind of commitment we’ve seen in Korea.

In other words, American troops will be stationed in Iraq
for at least the next 50 years (which is probably how long it would take to get
the Iraqi army to “stand up” anyway). Of course, Korea isn’t in the midst of a
civil war, and few, if any, American soldiers who have been stationed there for
the last 50 years have died as a result of any combat. So, in the face of
overwhelming opposition to the war, the public’s belief that American troops
should be promptly (within a year) and totally withdrawn, and an approval rating
lower than most used car salesmen have, what does the President do? Why, of
course, he calls for our troops to be permanently stationed in Iraq.

I’ve thought, for some time, that Bush has gone “Captain
Queeg” (the deranged commander of a battleship in the novel—and a role so
convincingly played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie of the same name—The Caine
Mutiny) on us, or worse, that he’s figured out how to hold us all hostage to his
insanity, while we (and especially the Democratic party) have been suffering
from a bad case of Stockholm syndrome. The sailors on the U.S.S. Caine mutinied
in order to prevent the ship from capsizing. Our ship is severely listing,
thanks to our “Captain Queeg’s” insanity. If we don’t take over control of this
ship soon, and convince the Democrats in Congress that the only way to do that
is to stop funding for the war, we may find our ship of state capsizing as well.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: “…But to Do and Die.”

Bush has bought himself another year in Iraq. Mission
accomplished — again! Barring a miracle (doubtful) or impeachment proceedings
(inconceivable), our brave troops are guaranteed to be stuck in Iraq for the
next 16 months. Kick the can on down the road.

The buildup to this Crocker/Petraeus dog-and-pony show
has been coming for months, and arrived on the Hill like a big whoopee
cushion. General David Petraeus, Bush’s new poodle, threw out some stats,
flipped a few charts, and pointed to tables indicating the so-called surge is
working. Surge splurge. This rigged report, contradicted by a host of recent
independent reports, was total poppycock and to quote the immortal words of
Bob Dole, “You know it, I know it, and the American people know it.”

Petraeus, like the other cast members in this show, tried
to stick to script. There were a few shockers, however, when the general was
forced to extemporize.

Petraeus made the claim that the surge of 30,000
additional troops is working to improve the security of Iraq. However, he also
announced that the same number of troops will soon be leaving Iraq. If Iraq
is so safe as the result of the 30,000 troops, why would we suddenly
jeopardize the nation’s safety by pulling them out? It was a simple question
the general tap-danced around and, like the other lies Bush and his lackeys
have told, this boner brazenly defies all logic. It reminds us of their
continuing whopper that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

When Senator John Warner astutely asked the most
important question in the hearings, “Is the strategy this administration laid
out making us safer?”(a Howard Baker moment), Petraeus squirmed like a greased
pig until blurting out, “I don’t know.” Petraeus then volunteered stutteringly,
that in fact, he just could not say for sure if we are safer or not as a
result of being in Iraq. Imagine that! Almost a trillion dollars, over 3,500
casualties, and five years into a war – a war he is supposedly leading, this
general does not know if being there has made us any safer. Not one to suffer
fools, Warner’s insightful question led the general to admit, however
indirectly, that the entire war policy of this president has been a failure.
It was deja vu, as we suffered another “heck of a job, Brownie” moment.

The other revelation that should get everyone’s focus off
Britney Spears is the news that, as General Petraeus later strongly implied in
a news interview, it would soon be necessary to obtain authorization to take
action against Iran within its own borders, rather than just inside Iraq.
This is a confirmation of several reports made chiefly this year by the New
Yorker’s Seymour Hirsch claiming we currently are, and have been, fighting
a proxy war with Iran within the borders of Iraq. Bush, lacking any clear
record of achievement in Iraq, is now wanting to drop bombs on Iran.

Let’s be clear about what is happening right before our
eyes: our government, of the people, by the people, and for the people is openly
stating, by way of its highest general, that it is of no consequence to this
administration whether the people of the United States or the people of Iraq
obtain their desire to stop this occupation. After years of being told that if
we fight them over there, we won’t have to fight them over here, we learn, by
the military’s reluctant admission, that we are no safer over here for having
invaded Iraq over there. Unfortunately, only a brave few in either the congress
or military have mustered the grit to call this form of governance and military
aggression by its real name—–tyranny.

General David Petraeus, ever the good soldier, has followed
the orders of his commander in chief. He seems to have adopted, literally, the
words of the poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” by Lord Tennyson:

Not tho’ the
soldier knew

Someone had
blunder’d,

Their’s not to make
reply

Their’s not to
reason why,

Their’s but to do
and die.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Progress Report

Last week, comedian and satirist Bill Maher said, “The surge is working — not the actual surge, but the phrase ‘the surge is working’ is working.”

It would be hard to come up with a more succinct summation of our current Iraq contretemps than Maher’s. The Government Accounting Office’s Iraq report, commissioned by Congress, stated that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 15 of the 18 benchmarks set out by the military and the Bush administration to indicate progress in Iraq.

But, as this administration has done since the very beginning of this ill-fated Iraq debacle, when one set of stated goals isn’t met, it simply moves the goalposts. Six months ago, we were told the goal of the surge was to allow the Iraqi government to make political progress. They were to meet the aforementioned 18 benchmarks.

Oops. No political progress occurred. Just the opposite, in fact, unless you consider meeting three of 18 benchmarks sufficient progress. So now we’re being told that the goal of the surge is to provide increased security for the Iraqi people. Meanwhile, certain administration insiders and some of its supporters in Congress are calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He was the man the people of Iraq voted into office via parliament during the much ballyhooed elections awhile back. Purple fingers, remember?

Ah, but here’s the rub: Iraq is majority Shiite and so is Iran. So when the U.S. took out Saddam and instituted democracy in Iraq, we created a potential ally for Iran. Who could have anticipated such a result? In our opinion, Maliki would be well-advised not to take out any long-term magazine subscriptions. And Iran? Well, let’s just say Vice President Dick Cheney wants to attack sooner than later, and President Bush has called Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a “terrorist threat.”

In the midst of all this, General David Petraeus is supposed to provide another progress report later this month. It is widely assumed that since the report will also serve as a de facto summation of his own efforts in Iraq, Petraeus will give himself — and the surge — high marks.

This five-year game of “whack-a-mole” would be funny in its ineptitude if it weren’t so tragic. How many times do the American people have to hear the phrase “six more months” before they realize it’s a shell game? It reminds us of the big sign on the patio wall at Neil’s in Midtown: “Free Beer Tomorrow.” And, of course, the sign says the same thing tomorrow — and the next day and the next. The joke is there ain’t no free beer.

The administration’s tactics seem ever more clearly to be an elaborate stall, the goal of which is merely to keep as many troops as possible in Iraq for as long as possible. “Six more months.” “The surge is working.” “Support the troops.” “We can’t cut and run.” Pick your poison, and these guys have tried it.

And now, shortly before Petraeus’ report is due, the president makes a “surprise” visit to Iraq. And, surprise! The surge is working.

Why are we not surprised?

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: (AP Photo/Frank O. Braynard Collection)

The most important issue facing America is not even being debated by the presidential candidates. With the exception of Ron Paul, all of the candidates are acting on the assumption that America’s interventionist foreign policy should continue. They only differ on the details of the intervention.

Since Paul doesn’t have a chance of winning, I can therefore guarantee that regardless of who wins the nominations and regardless of who ends up in the White House, we will be saddled with the same failed interventionist policy. As in the past, it will preclude peace and result in conflicts that ultimately will bring America down. We can squander blood and treasure only so long before we collapse. Then we will join the heap of has-been empires like the British, French, Dutch and Soviets.

That’s why I have no interest in the presidential race.

The United States has no moral or legal right to interfere in the internal affairs of any other nation. It is not threatened by any nation-state and therefore has no need of allies. An ally is someone who fights on your side during a war. When the war ends, the need for alliances ends.

George Washington — still the wisest man ever to serve as president — warned us against interventionism. He warned us against the influence of foreign lobbies. As he said, there is no reason for America to involve itself in the intrigues, feuds, and wars that plague most parts of the world. Our only contact with the outside world should be in trade and commerce.

The problem of terrorism, which is a direct result of our interventionist policies, is not a war. It is a conflict with a few individuals. If we stopped our interventionist foreign policies, the problem of terrorists would gradually fade away. In the meantime, terrorism can be handled by intelligence and police work. It is not a fight the military can win.

The concept of a preemptive war should be an abomination to every American. Preemptive war is a war of aggression. It was the policy of Hitler’s Germany and of the Japanese imperial government. To our national shame, apparently many Americans support the concept. They should never again criticize the Japanese for Pearl Harbor, the Third Reich for the invasion of Poland, or the Soviet Union for the invasion of Afghanistan. Click your heels and salute. You are no different from the people who cheered for Hitler.

The concept of a so-called humanitarian war, trotted out by Bill Clinton to justify intervention in the Balkans, is a contradiction in terms. War itself is a crime against humanity. No sane person can justify inflicting death and destruction in the name of humanitarianism.

The great tragedy caused by the interventionists is that they sabotage the peaceful and prosperous country that America could be. It’s no mystery why the infrastructure is beginning to fail. It’s no mystery why public education fails in so many places. It’s no mystery why health care is becoming increasingly unaffordable. Look at the cost of the empire — the military and intelligence budgets, the cost of the wars. Between the military-industrial complex and the new war-service industry, the treasury is being sucked dry by the worst people for the worst reasons.

In the meantime, what are the presidential candidates talking about? A few social schemes. Different strategies for intervention. They are like the first-class passengers on the Titanic, sitting around discussing their business deals and various affairs. They show no sign of awareness of the real world outside the televised game show called Win the Nomination.

Who’s ahead? Who zinged who? Who cares?

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: (AP Photo/USAF)

The evolution of excuses for blundering into and maintaining the Iraq war is becoming comical. The first excuse was weapons of mass destruction. Do you remember the constant talk about weapons of mass destruction, “the worst weapons in the hands of the worst dictator”? Do you remember how President Bush said the sole reason for the war was to disarm Saddam Hussein? Do you remember how we were warned about a smoking gun that could be a mushroom cloud? Do you remember how Iraq was an “imminent” threat to the world? Do you remember how a 65-year-old dictator, widely acknowledged as not the smartest guy in the world, was compared to Hitler, who had put together a regime and an army that conquered Europe?

Well, oops. Not a single weapon of mass destruction was found in the country. Furthermore, the Iraqis had said there were no weapons of mass destruction. To cover their behinds, U.S. officials started peddling the story that Saddam wanted people to believe he had weapons of mass destruction. That U.S. lie didn’t fly because Saddam and his government repeatedly denied that the weapons existed. Furthermore, Iraq had invited in U.N. inspectors who were verifying the absence of weapons, which was one reason Bush forced the inspectors out by going to war. He had to start his war before the inspectors proved his bogus intelligence amounted to a pack of lies.

Enter the second excuse: Bush wanted to spread democracy in the Middle East, starting with Iraq. That never progressed past elections because, as everyone familiar with the country knew or should have known, a vote would elect a Shia majority with two fractious minorities, Kurds and Sunnis. This is the government that has proven to be totally ineffective. It also greatly increased the influence of Iran. It has sparked the civil war in Iraq.

Bush lately has hinted that his faith in democracy is weakening by implying that a reasonable authority would be acceptable. Trouble is, the U.S. can’t even find a dictator willing to take the job, given the present situation.

Now, when the issue has become getting Americans home from a war that has lasted longer than World War II, the final excuse is to trot out the empire’s favorite ambiguity: stability. If we leave Iraq, instability will result. It’s hard to believe anyone can say that with a straight face. Iraq is unstable already. It’s in the midst of civil war, with a million refugees and displaced people, hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, its economy a total wreck, and virtually all work on repairing the infrastructure at a standstill.

Ironically, the last time Iraq was stable was when Saddam was in power. Iraq is unstable because we made it unstable. We destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, its economy, and its government. We did. One of the most shameful lies peddled by the Bush administration has been to blame the poor state of Iraq’s infrastructure on Saddam. We destroyed that infrastructure with wars, bombings, and medieval sanctions. The miracle is that with all we were doing, Saddam managed to produce more electricity and more oil than our occupation has been able to produce.

Finally, how is it the U.S. can claim that after four years, there is no trained Iraqi army and police force able to handle security? We send kids into combat with about 16 weeks of training. And why is the U.S. building the largest embassy in the world in a Third World country that is in chaos?

What “Herbert Hoover” Bush has done is destroy the credibility of the U.S., sully our reputation almost beyond repair, demonstrate the weakness of our leadership and the vulnerability of our military, and convince many people in the world that we are an evil nation of idiots led by fools. Let’s at least hope that he destroys the Republican Party, too. It deserves a zero existence.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.