Category: Terrorism

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Tony “Kappo” Blair Rises to the Occasion!

Tony Blair is determined to stamp out terrorism. Good for him. He’s like a reformed smoker– how could anybody have ever been so rude as to smoke in public? I can’t believe it. We must save them from themselves!

So he is proposing new legislation which makes it illegal to be a terrorist. Yay! Now we can arrest them all.

The new law allows the British Government “to deport anyone who fosters hatred, or advocates violence to further beliefs, or justifies acts of violence.”

How do we know who to arrest? That’s easy. They are Arabs. Oh wait– no, no, no– that would be racist. No, no, no. No mention of race, please, we’re British. We will arrest Frenchmen, Americans, Canadians, Poles, and even Catholics, if they “advocate violence” or “justify acts of violence” for the purpose of furthering beliefs. Not Arabs. Unless they advocate violence. And certainly not Moslems. Unless they’re Arabic.

Now will they arrest General Pinochet, if he happened to drop by for medical treatment again? How about Fidel Castro? How about Pat Robertson? George Bush?

The problem with laws that are passed as a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived crisis, is that they often serve more of a political than a practical function. It is already illegal to commit murder or arson in Britain. And the idea of arresting people who “advocate” violence is a fig leaf to be used to justify legal action against people against whom the government otherwise has absolutely no evidence, or patently unreliable or unconvincing evidence. It’s the kind of law that can be used to threaten people with long jail sentences in order to encourage them to provide information about other people who can be arrested, who can in turn be threatened. It’s the kind of law the police always insist will result in convictions because they very often just “know” who the bad guys are but can’t arrest them because of onerous restrictions issued by the courts actually requiring evidence and such.

The Government gets to make it look like it’s actually having an effect on terrorism and the general public can rest assured that the last names of the people prosecuted are never going to be “Smith” or “James” or “Wilson” or even “Blair”.

Blair also wants it to be illegal to attend a terrorist training camp. Is that going to be retroactive, like in the U.S.? Can we now prosecute Charles De Gaulle? Oops! Of course. Because the Vichy government was not legitimate, like, say, the governments of Egypt or Libya.

You think, of course not, but there’s no “of course” about it. Didn’t De Gaulle advocate violence against the government of France? You didn’t like that government? Neither did I. But I didn’t read the part of Blair’s legislation that lays out which terrorists are okay.

How is a terrorist training camp different from an enemy’s military training camp? I suppose terrorists don’t have an embassy, or loans from the IMF, or fighter jets. But there is a rather compelling case for the idea that most of the training camps in Afghanistan before the U.S. led invasion were actually branches of a national government’s military. You could certainly make the case that Afghanistan deserved to be invaded, because it harboured terrorists who may have been partly or wholly responsible for 9/11, but it is ridiculous to declare that every soldier who defended Afghanistan against the American-led invasion was a terrorist. They were soldiers. Their country was invaded by a large, belligerent foreign power. They were defending their homes and families against a foreign invader. They might have been defending a bad government, but up ’til now, we have never held soldiers responsible for the sins of their leaders.

Under Blair’s and Bush’s criteria, every German and Italian soldier in World War II could have been deemed a terrorist.

One of the reasons Blair feels Britain needs stronger anti-terrorism laws is that Canada and the U.S. have stronger anti-terrorism laws. Our citizens have too many civil liberties. Mr. Prime Minister, we cannot allow a civil liberties gap!

The fact that Anne Coulter had kind words to say about Tony Blair should have tipped me off as to just how vile this man is. He’s the ultimate defective permutation, a hybrid of nanny-liberalism and crypto-fascist authoritarianism. He and Janet Reno should govern Nevada together.

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The Dreaded Judge Roberts

For a man with such a reputation, John Roberts took a somewhat ridiculous position at the Senate confirmation hearings on his appointment as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Roberts basically said that he had no over-arching judicial policy. He was a pragmatist. He simply used the methods most appropriate to the case at hand. Therefore, he is unbiased.

On the contrary, by refusing to espouse a particular judicial philosophy, be it “originalist” or “constructionist” or “majoritarian” or whatever, he keeps his options open. If a particular outcome would favor the president’s ability to use torture on those …. what are they? Prisoners of war? No– Bush denies that. Kidnap victims? Whatever– in Guantanamo Bay, then he’ll use it. If he needs a different judicial philosophy to justify arresting 12-year-old girls with French fries, he’ll use that. And if he needs a third philosophy to justify granting gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits, by golly, he’ll use that. The outcome is always the same: whatever favours conservative political and social policy.

If I were a Senator on the Judiciary Committee, I would have asked this question. Sir, you deny that you have an ideology or a particular philosophical outlook on issues that might come before the Supreme Court. You also deny that it is possible for you to discuss how or why you might rule one way or the other on any particular issue that comes before the court. If you were me, what exactly is it that you would like to know about a candidate for the Supreme Court before voting in favour of his appointment. And how, given that you won’t answer any questions about how you would rule on anything, would we prevent ourselves from appointing a complete idiot to the position?

You mean like Scalia? Or Thomas? Or Rehnquist?

If I had been on the Senate…   this what I would have asked Judge Roberts:

Have you had any contact at all with any poor people in your life?

Given the large number of convictions that have been reversed through DNA testing in the past few years, how can you justify making judgments that make it more difficult– not less– for review of capital cases?

Please describe, if you can, how you made a judgment in favor of “the little guy” at some point or another in your career. You can’t? Not one? Oh– because the “little guy” has never, ever been right in any of the cases you’ve heard…

What can we tell prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to make them feel less upset about being tortured by the good guys, the light of the world, the hope for the future: America?

If you ever travel abroad somewhere, try to imagine something you think you might learn from other people in different cultures? All right– never mind. If you went to Disney Land and it snowed….

I can’t wait to see how conservative Republicans react when the next Democratic president nominates someone to the Supreme Court.

I am sure they will insist that the nominee cannot be asked any specific questions about his or her views on affirmative action, gay marriage, or physician-assisted suicide. No no no. That wouldn’t be right.

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Monument to Conformity: The WTC Memorial and REAL Political Correctness

Was there ever a better illustration of the rank hypocrisy of the Republican Party than this: they are building a monument to “freedom”– upon which they lavish their tearful adoration– that will exclude anybody they don’t like.

The museum, the “International Freedom Centre”, is out of the new World Trade Center. Gone. Excluded. Rejected. Dismissed. Because in spite of the efforts of “patriotic” Americans like George Bush, because it was being built in a tax-payer funded government owned building, it would and could not guarantee that it would only ever pander to and praise those patriotic values espoused by the paragons of virtue, Tom Delay, Dick Cheney, George Bush, and his fellow Republicans.

The law is clear: it would have to actually allow for freedom of speech.

Yes, Governor Pataki put the fix in, not only for the museum, but for every occupant of the new building, who must now pass a litmus test of political Republican orthodoxy before being allowed in. Naturally, some of the tenants have declined to give enlightened people like Bill Frist or Donald Rumsveld a veto over what sort of speech should be permitted there. The Republicans, you see, identify mindless obedient conformity with true “patriotism”.

A patriot does not stand for freedom of speech.

Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles, a pilot of one of the 9/11 planes, had screeched that she must be the one who decides what may or may not go into the new World Trade Centre because anyone who disagrees with her shrill views on the meaning of 9/11 just isn’t American like her, even if they too lost relatives in 9/11.

This is so ridiculous, and repulsive, and absurd that it strains credulity, as they say. The monument to American freedom must be unfree, and cowards who cannot abide the slightest dissidence must control the design of a monument to courage, and puritanical Republican harpies must control the expression of democracy.

Don’t let conservatives bullshit you: this is real political correctness.

 

Here is what Debra Burlingame and Governor Pataki and Anne Coulter would deny you: freedom to consider both sides of the issue– a link to a website with eloquent discussion of the issue.

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Police State

The disparity between rhetoric and reality is now a yawning chasm. America never ceases, for a second, to rhapsodize about freedom and liberty and justice and the American Way. And then, without the slightest inkling of opposition or dissent, casually renews the Patriot Act, making it legal for the government to spy on whoever it wants whenever it wants with impunity, tap your phones, read your mail, or search your home– without even having to tell you that you are under suspicion, without even having to tell a judge.

Nobody knows which way Judge Roberts is going to vote on abortion or environmental regulations (well, actually, we do): this guy has already ruled in favor of the government’s right to hold people prisoner for as long as they like simply by designating them “prisoners of war”.

And Americans run the flag up the pole and salute and sing their anthems, completely unconcerned.

And the police continue to flog the illusion that these police state provisions have helped them catch terrorists. They don’t have a single real terrorist (just a gaggle of impulsive youths who were entrapped) to show for it, but that hasn’t even slowed them down: we need to spy on people to keep America safe.

When this measure was introduced, it included “sunset provisions”, which everyone happily pronounced would ensure that this glaring intrusion on everyone’s civil rights would expire in four years. Just as I always expected, the Republicans are now trying to make those provisions permanent. That is ghastly. That is just maybe the most outrageous act by an outrageous congress. And the Democrats, petrified of being portrayed as intelligent and wise, are rolling over like sheep.

[Last minute correction: most Democrats voted against the bill. That’s actually interesting, because the perception used to be that you could not win re-election if your opponent could accuse you of a lack of enthusiasm for bombing or killing or suppressing civil liberties.]

Why hasn’t a single prominent politician dared to stand up and announce he will oppose government use of torture against prisoners, no matter what the charges? (Actually, John McCain and some other senators have.) Do people really think that that is unpalatable?

I suspect that if, say, John Edwards, made it a prominent feature of a campaign (an early start on 2008), it would set off all kinds of alarms in the White House. Right now, Bush can nudge, nudge, wink, wink, declare that of course he’s opposed to torture, while allowing his staff and officials to carry it out. But if someone prominent were to make it an issue, I have a feeling that Karl Rove would issue immediate instructions: no more torture. It just don’t look good defending it in public, or answering reporters questions — “Mr. Edwards says that he would fire any official involved in any kind of torture– would you, Mr. Bush?”

Then go ahead, George, make a joke about it.

Russ Feingold was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. He deserves the medal of freedom but, of course, he’ll never get one.

In fairness, the Senate’s version of the same bill is considerably less draconian. But it’s rather pathetic that anyone would see this version as “enlightened”. We’ll allow the rack, but not the red-hot pokers to our civil liberties.

Added October 5: Judge Roberts, in his hearings before the Senate, declared that the President has the power to order the torture of prisoners, if Congress was “supportive”.

That’s a strange reading. Why would a Supreme Court Justice care if Congress was “supportive” of an unconstitutional act?

Judge Roberts, should the President arrest witches? If Congress is “supportive”…

What Mr. Roberts has really said is that torture is “constitutional” (since a mere Act of Congress could allow it).  I would not be alone in vehemently asserting that it is NOT.

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Arresting George W. Bush

I know what you’re thinking: you can’t arrest the President of the United States!

Here’s my idea. I want to set up a camp on Manitoulin Island (that’s up there north of Tobermory, if you didn’t know where it was) with a bunch of cages and holding cells and guard dogs. Then I’ll get a couple of friends and go down to the White House and arrest George Bush and Tom Delay and John Ashcroft and Condoleeza Rice, and take them there and lock them all up.

If the Secret Service tries to stop us, we’ll inform them that George Bush is a threat to peace and good order and commerce and must be locked up.

If they ask what proof we have, we’ll tell them that we don’t need any proof. Do they really expect us to wait around for Bush to commit a nefarious act before locking him up? Not in today’s post-0303 world. I mean, March, 2003, the date of the invasion of Iraq.

If he wants to call his lawyer, we’ll inform him that, sorry, he doesn’t get access to a lawyer until we’re good and ready to let him have access to a lawyer.

If he says, what about my rights, we’ll laugh our heads off. Your what? Hoo haw! It’s all right for those pansy liberals like Ted Kennedy and John McCain to talk about rights– but we’re in a war. This is a war on our nation and our values. It is a war on common sense and good taste and my personal happiness. If I sit around and wait for pansy legislatures to provide me with the correct legal frame-work and documentation in order to proceed with arresting the most dangerous man in world…

And after they admit that we are fully vetted legally, and we get them up to Manitoulin Island and into the compound…. we bring out the water-boarding equipment and cattle prods and electrodes.

Honestly– I just want to hear what they have to say.

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Leonard Cohen Farts at the WTC

Leonard Cohen is over 70 and he’s been living in Los Angeles for too long.

As soon as I realized that he had a song about 9/11 on his new album (Dear Heather), I knew what it would be about, and I knew what it would sound like. That is depressing.

I knew it would express this coy expectation that the old radical left would somehow approve of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, or think America deserved them in some way, and that Cohen himself was just too smart to be taken in by that. At the same time, he would modulate the stridency of the right– so he couldn’t be accused of being too conventional or, heaven forbid, reactionary. He would feign disinterest, and neutrality, coyly, to try to imbue what is fundamentally an utterly conventional response to the event with some kind of mystique:

Some people say
They hate us of old
Our women unveiled
Our slaves and our gold
I wouldn’t know
I’m just holding the fort

I’m just holding the fort, as if I am above partisan politics and hold only reasonable views on the matter. Or worse– what is “reasonable” is what I am now about. I have forgotten what is so unreasonable about the reasonable.

“I wouldn’t know”, as if, unlike everyone else, his judgment is grounded in thoughtful reflection, not knee-jerk platitudes.   This, from a man who doesn’t seem to be aware of the history of American involvement in the Middle East, the interventions, the coups sponsored by the CIA, the extraction of oil, the tolerance of authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and, before 1979, Iran.

So he thinks, why on earth are they mad at us?  We haven’t done anything.

And then he stops short of giving an actual opinion. He wants you to project your own feelings about the subject onto his ambiguous lines:

Did you go crazy
Or did you report
On that day

But if you knew it was coming, the mystique is gone. It’s gone. Cohen is too smart to wrap himself in the flag, but he’s got a pin on his lapel. He is too smart to resort to slogans, but comes down safely on the side of those educated but insular suburban minds of middle America like the editorial board of the New York Times or the reporters at “60 Minutes”.

I’m really quite progressive on many issues, but, after all, America really does have enemies.  Am I still hip?

Added March 2005:

I don’t mind that he plays his politics close to the vest. What I mind is that it is a weak song. “Some people say” takes you nowhere. What people? Who?  Why do they say that? And, Leonard, do you think people should go crazy, or should they report for duty? You don’t seem to care. If you don’t care, you have nothing to say. If you have nothing to say, don’t say waste the space on your album.

Neither option, of course, provides you with the option of yawning. Neither does Cohen seem even dimly aware of the fact that America is not the center of the universe, and just because 9/11 was tragedy does not mean that yawning is not an option.

He did far better on “There is a War” from New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1976):

There is a war between the left and right
A war between the black and white
A war between the odd and the even…
Why don’t you come on back to the war,
That’s right, get in it.
Why don’t you come on back to the war,
It’s just beginning.

That was a provocative song. You might or might not agree with him, but at least he came at with creative energy and inspiration.

Or how about “The Future”:

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
And stuff it up the hole in your culture

You see, it’s not his politics that have gone soft.  It’s his aesthetic.  “The Future” implies as conservative an outlook as “I’d Love to Change the World“, with, perhaps more subtlety.

By the way, like Neil Young and Bob Dylan, Cohen’s talent does not translate into film: the “official video” is terrible.   Cohen obviously had no clue of what to do in front of a camera.  I just watched it.  My God– they bleeped out “crack” and “anal sex”.  What kind of fucking regime is managing Cohen’s videos now?  (Cohen himself changed “anal sex” to “careless sex” in live performances:     Here’s the live version with the self-bastardization.)

That is unspeakably disappointing: the grocer of despair has become the checkout cashier of minor annoyance.  The background singers, by the way, in this live version don’t cut it: where’s Julie Christensen?

[2011-03] I don’t think I gave enough credit to those lyrics from “There is a War”. Is the natural state of humanity war? War with each other, because every soul seeks to possess reality, to extend the ego to every conquerable continent, emotional or otherwise? Yeah… “I wouldn’t know”.

I’m not sure where Cohen comes down on The Patriot Act, but I know lame lyrics when I hear them: “some people say” and that very tired and boring “I’m just holding the fort”. Rolling Stone Magazine seems to think he’s attained a kind of zen-like simplicity that is deeply profound. I think that if anybody else had written those lyrics, Rolling Stone would not be bending over backwards to explain why those lyrics are not merely sophomoric.

Leonard, it’s time to retire. No, wait– I can see that you already have.

An interesting cover of “There is a War”.

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Another Deadly Fearsome Mighty Horrifying Scary Frightening Enemy of America

Meet Mr. Purna Raj Bajracharya from Nepal.

Mr. Purna Raj Bajracharya is a Buddhist. We know that Buddhists are normally harmless, but not Mr. Bajracharya. Mr. Bajracharya was spotted in New York video-taping offices in which some FBI agents, under the every-watchful scrutiny of the relentless John Ashcroft, were determinedly rooting out every last vestige of terror activity in the U.S. Mr. Bajracharya claimed he was a tourist.

The other images on his video included a pizzeria.

The FBI immediately snatched up Mr. Bajracharya and locked him in a 9 foot by 6 foot cell for three months. The lights were kept on 24 hours a day. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches is the only possible explanation. Some prisoners in this detention centre in Brooklyn were stripped and beaten. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches.

And then. And then they realized that perhaps Mr. Bajracharya was a Buddhist from Nepal taking video of New York to show to his esteemed family back home.

So they put him into an orange jumpsuit, shackled his arms and legs, and hauled him off to the airport. Mr. Bajracharya begged to be allowed the dignity of wearing his own clothes. The FBI said no. Why? Because we are sonsofbitches– that’s why.

This is how we treat the innocent. Even the FBI admits that Mr. Bajracharya is innocent. It doesn’t matter. Under George Bush, the unthinkable is now not only acceptable, but required: the innocent can be locked up, abused, assaulted, and humiliated with complete impunity.

You don’t care, do you. Because you are white and middle class and you don’t have an accent. You are safe in America in 2004. Because you are not Mr. Bajracharya. Because you can sing your anthems, wave your flags, and march in your parades, with no shame for your government’s rank hypocrisy.

I am enraged at this treatment of an innocent man.  The FBI agents responsible should be fired and charged with abusing their authority and jailed  for at least 90 days in a 6 by 9 foot cell.

The FBI’s behavior is not merely outrageous.  It deserves the term “fucking outrageous” because it is.  It is emblematic of the monstrous failure of the current government to uphold the basic principles of decency and justice that make the world livable for most of us.

It’s hard to bring myself to even address the issue because it is so overwhelmingly obvious to me that you would think that any sane person would agree: if the FBI really insists on arresting people without the slightest grounds for suspicion, could they not at least treat them well until they have completed their investigations?

This treatment of Mr. Bajracharya is police brutality. It is abuse. It is oppression. It is the act of a police state. It is the ultimate expression of George W. Bush’s vision of Amerika. And I have yet to hear or read of a single Christian Bush supporter who feels that it is wrong or immoral to do it.

Added June 2006: where is the outcry from those who claim that the “Christian” Mr. Bush has “restored” ethics and integrity to government? How dare you claim you vote for Bush because he stands for Christian values, and then turn your back on Mr. Bajracharya?

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John Ashcroft Captures an Actual Terrorist!

John Ashcroft, Attorney-General of the United States, has announced many, many arrests of people he claims are terrorists. If you check into these stories, you will find that most–if not all– of these arrests are actually of individuals who are guilty of nothing more than being suspiciously Arabic.

But lo and behold, the top law enforcement officer of the United States of America has finally arrested a bona fide terrorist, a man with actual bombs, guns, remote-controlled detonators, and a load of cyanide. Yes, John Ashcroft has finally caught himself an actual living, breathing, sweating terrorist.

And you aren’t going to hear much about it.

Why? Because the terrorist’s name is William Krar. Not Arabic at all. And he is no associate of Osama Bin Laden. Mr. Krar is a good old-fashioned all-American White Supremacist. Where’s the fun in that?

Doesn’t fit the official White House narrative does it? Doesn’t play well to the heart-land, does it, which sometimes holds to it’s bruised bosom the heartless souls of patriots like Timothy McVeigh, who may have gone a little astray, but, after all, grasped the essential dialectic of our time. No no no– America’s enemies are out there, they are not us, they don’t look like us.

There are persistent rumors that a “olive-skinned” man was seen in the Ryder Truck with McVeigh the day of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Now Krar and his cyanide.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times reports that an FBI spokesman asked an industry group for help dealing with the top domestic threats today: eco-terrorists and animal rights activists.

Stirring, isn’t it? Osama Bin Laden and Heather Graham at the same fund-raiser.

It’s spin. You don’t hear about Krar because the Bush administration needs you to believe that we need to spend $200 billion demolishing a two-bit dictator in Iraq to feel safe. The Bush Administration doesn’t want you to believe that you might end up being safer if a well-managed domestic police force was doing it’s job properly instead of chasing illegal immigrants or pot-smokers.

Krugman also reports that John Ashcroft is using every government data base available to search for terrorists. Every data base except one: the one that contains information about people who applied for gun permits.

To use that information, Ashcroft believes, would be to violate Americans’ civil rights.

If you’ve stopped laughing by now at the idea that John Ashcroft cares about anybody’s civil rights, read on: it is utterly amazing that the press has little or no curiosity about these stories. It’s waiting for signs that Bush will lose the election, before lining up their potshots.

Then we will hear how they had always known that Ashcroft was just a little over the top.

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Quagmire

The eerie thing about the Bush press conference on April 13 is how much he sounded like Lyndon Johnson. All the same arguments he made about staying in Viet Nam— no matter how grim it looked– are now presented by George W. Bush– in that same drawl– to justify staying in Iraq. He even has the beginnings of what some people used to call Johnson’s “shame-faced” expression.

You felt bad for Johnson (I did– a little) because it wasn’t through malice or greed that he got into Viet Nam. It was just plain stupidity.

That doesn’t mean Iraq is inevitably going to be like Viet Nam. I think it is fairly likely, but I’m not willing to give up entirely just yet.

But it does bring to mind a few interesting issues related to game theory.   What is game theory?  Suppose that you entered an auction in which you are required to pay even if you lose the bidding? At a certain point, you will realize that you are bidding more than the item is worth. But if you stop bidding, you get nothing. So you can’t stop.

In other words, suppose your soldiers are killed even if you don’t win the war? That’s what happened in Viet Nam. As the war progressed, the cost to the U.S. (in soldier’s lives) became higher and higher compared to the value of winning the war and stopping the spread of communism dead in it’s tracks. Therefore, the cost of losing the war also became higher and higher. Whereas the U.S. could have withdrawn relatively painlessly in 1963 (as John Kennedy seems to have intended), by 1965 the cost of withdrawing had become immense, and was growing larger by the moment. So Johnson felt he had no choice but to continue “bidding” it up. It took another eight years before Richard Nixon finally ended the bidding, and the U.S. lost the item (Viet Nam) and 55,000 lives.

So, if, in 1963, the U.S. public knew that it would cost 55,000 lives, they would probably have never tried to “purchase” the victory.

It would be hard to believe that the Bush White House is too stupid to realize that they are in precisely this kind of auction in Iraq. The more expensive the overthrow of Saddam becomes, the more unacceptable it will appear to be to withdraw. The more unacceptable it is to withdraw, the higher the U.S. must “bid”.

That doesn’t mean the U.S. should withdraw. Not necessarily. Not yet.

The U.S. could win this war. It could turn over political power to an Iraqi government at the end of June and establish a democracy in the heart of the middle east. All that oil will keep flowing for America’s SUV’s. Iraqi’s will start establishing new businesses and industries and enjoy the fruits of capitalism: new cars, wide-screen tv’s, personal computers, iPods… The country won’t be wracked by continuous civil war between the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Kurds. There won’t be terrorists who perceive the democratic government to be a sell-out to the decadent west. Iran will mind it’s own business. Syria will block the border. Israel will be safe.

Or does that all seem rather unlikely to you now?

It is up to the American public, with an election coming up in November, to assess George Bush’s grip on events. Does the U.S. have a realistic chance of obtaining it’s objectives in Iraq? Or will it devolve into an endless cycle of violence, repression, retribution, and chaos?

I don’t think John Kerry has a viable alternative plan. That’s the nature of a quagmire. But Kerry will be hamstrung by circumstance. If he withdraws American troops, he leaves Iraq in the hands of violent, intolerant extremists, or, perhaps, civil war. If he stays, he may have to deal with increasing numbers of casualties and the inevitable comparisons with Viet Nam. I don’t see how Kerry can be a white knight on this issue. All the voters can do right now is punish the man who got them into this mess with an electoral defeat.

Nixon took over for Johnson in 1968. It took him 5 years before he could withdraw from Viet Nam, in 1973, with “peace with honor”. Shortly afterwards, South Viet Nam collapsed. Thirty years later, it’s easy to look back and see what should have been readily apparent at the time: all of the death and destruction of the Viet Nam War was for nothing.

The problem is that real U.S. objectives in Iraq are not the same as the objectives that appear to be at stake in public statements about the U.S. position. The U.S. claims that democracy and the freedom of the Iraqi people are at stake. I think that George Bush really believes it, but even George Bush’s friends admit he doesn’t think deeply about anything.

The problem is that the U.S. doesn’t really care about democracy or freedom in any other Arab dictatorship. The U.S. seems to smile fondly on the governments of Egypt and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and obviously has no interest in the victims of oppression in Sudan. So why does it care about it in Iraq? It doesn’t. The real objective, all along, was to depose Saddam, to punish him for having fought George Bush Sr. and for his arrogant refusal to allow the U.S. unfettered access to it’s alleged weapons laboratories, and, of course, to ensure a ready supply of cheap oil for the massive engine of the U.S. economy.

If these are the real stakes, the real thing that the U.S. is “bidding” on, it becomes clear that Iraq will not be free to choose, even in a supposedly free election, a government that is inimical to the interests of the United States. Any political party that declares itself to be opposed to U.S. interests in Iraq, will be declared to be an enemy of democracy, and will not be permitted to contest an election, even if a majority of Iraqi citizens appear to support it.

What the U.S. is doing right now, with it’s interim ruling council, is trying to ensure that the outcome of any future election will be to it’s liking, while appearing to represent the will of the majority of Iraqi citizens.

That may all be beside the point. The real question is, can the U.S. impose a democracy upon a nation that is unwilling to stand up for itself against the violent tactics of a minority of Islamic extremists? The general population of Iraq might prefer a democracy to an Islamic republic, but they don’t appear to be willing to fight for it. There are no demonstrations or rallies in support of the U.S., or the interim ruling council. The Iraqi policemen and soldiers the U.S. is training flee at the first sign of a mujahidin. There is no political party or leader with popular support to speak in favor of continued U.S. occupation. The members of the interim council that are friendly to the U.S. will be perceived to be stooges of the West, almost by definition.

It is fundamentally irrational for the U.S. to attempt to impose a democracy upon a nation that doesn’t want it badly enough to pay even a portion of it’s cost. If people are unwilling to fight for it now, why would they be willing to fight for it after the U.S. leaves and the Islamic fundamentalists have even more room to maneuver?

If the U.S. couldn’t plant democracy in Kuwait after liberating it from the first Iraqi invasion, why does it think it can plant democracy in Iraq? If our “friends”, the Saudis, have no inclination to hold democratic elections, why should Iraq?

If Libya now meets our standard of good world citizen….

It’s not going to happen. The U.S. can never leave. It’s going to get uglier and uglier as the U.S. is forced to aggressively defend itself against determined fanatical enemies.

My guess is that the U.S. will eventually begin to devise some kind of window-dressing, a strategy that would allow it to pull most of it’s soldiers out of Iraq without appearing to be surrendering the country to the forces of darkness and chaos. It may take five more years before they begin this process, and then another five years before it really gets under way. Some kind of Iraqi strong-man congenial to the U.S. will have to emerge, with the backing of the new Iraqi army. Radical Islamic movements will have to be violently repressed. Iran will grow interested.

Quagmire.

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Preemptive Injustice

Charles Krauthammer, in the Washington Post, is a little more transparent than most official government spokesmen when he declares that the U.S. would be foolish to wait for terrorists to actually commit any crimes before going after them.

It would be foolish to wait for a crime to be committed before punishing the offender.

The fact that he actually wrote such a statement is baffling to me, but it must be supposed that he knows or thinks he knows that such a statement would actually make sense to some people, if not the Bush Administration.

I note that he only offers two options: do nothing, or pre-emptive attacks. Among other things, it’s a dishonest statement. There is a large constituency out there for the idea of addressing the root causes of terrorism, like the disenfranchisement of entire ethnic groups, or economic oppression, or neo-colonialism. That would be a third option: address the root causes of terrorists. Krauthammer would probably scoff at such an idea. For one thing, it would require you to be empathetic to the needs of others. Real men don’t do that..

At the most obvious level, of course, the statement makes no sense at all. I feel silly doing this, but if Krauthammer is right that his statement will make sense to a lot of people, then I guess I need to convince myself as well, that I’m not crazy.

1. We don’t know who is going to actually commit a crime (a terrorist act) until the crime is committed. So if we decide that we will go out and arrest people who haven’t committed crimes yet because only a fool would wait until the crime was actually committed, we have indeed entered a brave new world of criminal justice. We are going to start busting people who we think might think about committing crimes in the future.

2. It does indeed sound foolish to wait until someone robs you or assaults you before you assault them. So go out and find the person who is going to do that awful thing to you and assault them first, to deter them. Does that make sense to you? If it does, the Bush administration may have a job for you in the State Department.

3. Okay, so that sounds absurd. What do we do? What we have always done. You try to ensure that people who commit crimes or acts of terrorism are punished. You try to root out the causes of crime and terrorism. Great Britain fought terrorism in Ireland with pretty well nothing but brute force for about 100 years. It was not until they made progress in negotiations with the IRA that the possibility of peace in Northern Ireland became a reality. They’re not there yet. It’s not smooth sailing. It’s hard work. You understand the temptation to just lock them all up. But brutality has been tried and it has failed to stop the terror. If the Catholics in Northern Ireland feel that they are exploited and oppressed by the Protestant majority, there will be two, maybe three replacements for every terrorist you lock up or kill.

You can never bring an end to terrorism with brute force alone, unless you are willing to countenance genocide. And even then, you’ll never get them all. The state of Israel is testimony to that.

4. You can’t possibly know for sure what anyone is going to do in the future, no matter what you think they are thinking or even planning today. For every murder committed, there must be hundreds of murders contemplated. For every member of Al Qaeda, there are dozens of young Moslems who decide that part of their passage into manhood is the experience of a few months at a military training camp in Afghanistan. Most of these men will never become terrorists, but we are now arresting and imprisoning young Moslem men who went to these camps before an act of Congress made them illegal. They are charged with being a member of a terrorist organization.

This is a hideous perversion of justice, but it is countenanced by most people today because of frenzied government warnings about imminent terrorist threats. We are frightened into acquiescence when most of us should know better.

5. This is a self-perpetuating contrivance to justify increasing government authoritarianism and militarism. By labeling Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil”, we strengthen the hand of the hard-line reactionaries within Iran and weaken the reform movement. We give credence to the mullahs’ belief that the West is out to get them, like we were in 1953 when we installed the Shah.

6. What is the difference between defending your country and terrorism? Who were the terrorists in Viet Nam? The Viet Cong, who were defending the results of the elections that brought socialists to power in the former French colony? Or the foreigners who entered their country with bombs and grenades and napalm and attempted to prop up a failing, corrupt government? Who were the terrorists in Nicaragua? The Sandinistas who eventually won the first free elections held after the fall of Somoza, or the Contras? Who had legitimacy? Who represented the will of the people?

7. Does Krauthammer sound familiar? A little like Henry Kissinger discussing the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile? Thousands were tortured or murdered because of the CIA’s pre-emptive support of pro-American forces in the Chilean military. Would Krauthammer be in favor of renewed interventionism in Latin America? Do we need some more dictatorships in Brazil and Argentina to preemptively suppress terrorist movements?

Or would we, perchance, be better off supporting democracies in those countries– and preemptively preventing the kind of oppression that gives rise to terrorist movements in the first place.

When you can’t catch the burglar, simply arrest the paper-boy, so at least you can tell people you’ve done something about crime.

“When dealing with undeterrables (sic) (like al Qaeda) or undetectables (sic) (like an Iraq or an Iran passing WMDs to terrorists) there is no such thing as containment. There is no deterrence, no address for the retaliation. There are two options: do nothing and wait for the next attack, or get them before they acquire the capacity to get you. That is called preemption.” Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

I know the “sic” is rude, but I can’t help it if the Washington Post decides that their columnists can just make up new words nowadays.