Discontented Soul

Torture: Shock, Awe and the Human Body

by William Pfaff
Published on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 by the International Herald Tribune

A historian in the future, or a moralist, is likely to deem the Bush administration's enthusiasm for torture the most striking aspect of its war against terrorism.
This started early. Proposals to authorize torture were circulating even before there was anyone to torture. Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration made it known that the United States was no longer bound by international treaties, or by American law and established U.S. military standards, concerning torture and the treatment of prisoners. By the end of 2001, the Justice Department had drafted memos on how to protect military and intelligence officers from eventual prosecution under existing U.S. law for their treatment of Afghan and other prisoners...

The Politics of the Christmas Story
by James Carroll
Published on Tuesday, December 21, 2004 by the Boston Globe

The single most important fact about the birth of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, is one that receives almost no emphasis in the American festival of Christmas. The child who was born in Bethlehem represented a drastic political challenge to the imperial power of Rome. The nativity story is told to make the point that Rome is the enemy of God, and in Jesus, Rome's day is over...

Beware: the following may contain irony.

We’re in an era where security is a buzzword. Washington has a new Department of Homeland Security. Airports are run by Transportation Security officials. The war in Iraq is to supposed to ensure our National Security. There’s no shortage of tax dollars and spending for federal security-related activities… until we come to Social Security. So having heard what the President has to say on the matter, here is a different idea.
We all know Pentagon spending is driving this nation into debt. I think what we need is a little reform. Let’s privatize...

The Myth of National Victimhood - All Wrapped and Delivered for Christmas
by Thom Hartmann
Published on Monday, December 20, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

It's Christmas week - Adolf Hitler's favorite season after he declared an official merger of church and state - and, ironically, conservatives are using the occasion to mount a new and bizarre attack.
They said liberals are out to destroy Christmas. Cobbling together a few anecdotes (unsupportable attacks are always anecdote-based), they managed to imply a vast anti-Christian conspiracy bubbling just under the belly of America, and pushed that frightening implication into the minds of millions of Americans just in time for the holiday season.
Conservatives must constantly attack others (and focus on "morality") to keep hidden their own true agenda, which is no less than a return to the world of Scrooge & Marley, Inc. They're working to bring about a return to Robber Baron feudalism, with a stable, rich, and powerful ruling class, and an impoverished, frightened, and politically impotent working class...

Laughing Dragon, Dancing Bear
by Ray McGovern
Published on Friday, December 17, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

While President George W. Bush, his “neo-conservative” advisers, and centrist Democrats bask in the glow of America’s status as “the one remaining superpower in the world,” signs are mounting that other major powers do not intend to hunker down and suspend their own efforts to shape history...

My Case Against Pinochet
by Francisco Letelier
Published on Friday, December 17, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times

When I read that Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the 89-year-old former leader of Chile, had been placed under house arrest earlier this week and declared competent to stand trial for his many crimes, it was no abstract issue for me. This was a man, after all, who had a tremendous influence on my life, the man who robbed me of my father, who tore my family apart...

[Australians who try to scare their fellows with arguments that "The Age Pension will not last" should take note]

Social Security Suicide: Loony and Bizarre
by Molly Ivins
Published on Thursday, December 16, 2004 by the Boulder Daily Camera

Relatively recent writings on Social Security convince me of two things. One is that we should be looking for maximum skepticism in our sources on this subject. And the second is that anybody who starts with dismissive, condescending and absolutist views isn't worth reading or listening to on this subject.
There's a lot of fake objectivity out there, too. I personally think the Bush proposal for privatizing Social Security is loony, radical and unnecessary, but that's not an argument, it's a conclusion. It's the people who aren't willing to make the case that you have to watch out for...

Debunking ‘Centrism’
by David Sirota
To be published in the January 3, 2005 issue of The Nation

Looking out over Washington, DC, from his plush office, Al From is once again foaming at the mouth. The CEO of the corporate-sponsored Democratic Leadership Council and his wealthy cronies are in their regular postelection attack mode. Despite wins by economic populists in red states like Colorado and Montana this year, the DLC is claiming like a broken record that progressive policies are hurting the Democratic Party...

Bush's BS on SS
by Matthew Rothschild
Published on Saturday, December 18, 2004 by The Progressive

At Bush's so-called economic summit, which was more like a valley, he did what he does best: instill fear about a false threat.
And he made clear who his constituency is: the financial markets.
Even before the gathering of rightwing economists began, Bush set the tone in his weekend radio address when he said, "The system is headed toward bankruptcy down the road. If we do not act soon, Social Security will not be there for our children and grandchildren."
This is the worst kind of hype...

Down and Out in Discount America
by Liza Featherstone

Published on Saturday, December 18, 2004 by The Nation

...From Consumers to Workers and Citizens
It is crucial that Wal-Mart's liberal and progressive critics make use of the growing public indignation at the company over sex discrimination, low pay and other workers' rights issues, but it is equally crucial to do this in ways that remind people that their power does not stop at their shopping dollars. It's admirable to drive across town and pay more for toilet paper to avoid shopping at Wal-Mart, but such a gesture is, unfortunately, not enough. As long as people identify themselves as consumers and nothing more, Wal-Mart wins.
The invention of the "consumer" identity has been an important part of a long process of eroding workers' power, and it's one reason working people now have so little power against business. According to the social historian Stuart Ewen, in the early years of mass production, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modernizing capitalism sought to turn people who thought of themselves primarily as "workers" into "consumers." Business elites wanted people to dream not of satisfying work and egalitarian societies--as many did at that time--but of the beautiful things they could buy with their paychecks.
Business was quite successful in this project, which influenced much early advertising and continued throughout the twentieth century. In addition to replacing the "worker," the "consumer" has also effectively displaced the citizen. That's why, when most Americans hear about the Wal-Mart's worker-rights abuses, their first reaction is to feel guilty about shopping at the store. A tiny minority will respond by shopping elsewhere--and only a handful will take any further action. A worker might call her union and organize a picket. A citizen might write to her congressman or local newspaper, or galvanize her church and knitting circle to visit local management. A consumer makes an isolated, politically slight decision: to shop or not to shop. Most of the time, Wal-Mart has her exactly where it wants her, because the intelligent choice for anyone thinking as a consumer is not to make a political statement but to seek the best bargain and the greatest convenience.
To effectively battle corporate criminals like Wal-Mart, the public must be engaged as citizens, not merely as shoppers. What kind of politics could encourage that? It's not clear that our present political parties are up to the job...

Many of the signs and portents hovering around the beginning of a second Bush term look less than promising for partisans of peace. As cabinet members have resigned, they have for the most part been replaced by people whose salient qualities are less competence or expertise than personal loyalty to the president, several of them White House staffers with little discernible executive experience. Most of the architects of what even many partisans of the war are coming to view as at least a setback if not an outright disaster in Iraq – Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, Rice, and others – have been kept on or rewarded with higher positions.
None of this bodes well for the president getting anything resembling independent counsel from those who in theory should occasionally check his enthusiasms with a little straight, hard talk about the differences between aspirations and achievements. The president apparently doesn't want much of such potentially troublesome – but also potentially salvific – advice from his inner circle.
Perhaps the most significant signal that erring grievously – so long as the mistakes were made in pursuit of a presidential enthusiasm – will not only not be punished in this administration but rewarded, was the decision to give the previously prestigious Medal of Freedom to three of the more notable screw-ups in the administration. Let Andrew Sullivan, an enthusiastic supporter of the war until the problems of the postwar and the administration habit of denial of any less-than-rosy development made him grumpy, tell it: "The presidential medal of freedom goes to George 'Slam Dunk' Tenet, Tommy 'We Have Enough Troops' Franks, and Paul 'Disband the Iraqi Army' Bremer. It's one thing never to punish error, but to reward it so magnificently!"
Steve Clemons of the Washington Note blog also had some pointed and pungent comments, suggesting the "honor" could be renamed the "Spear Carriers for Empire" medal.
To top it off, we have had a neocon-like propaganda campaign against Iran and Syria similar to the one that led up to the Iraqi war. While President Bush confined himself most recently to warning Iran and Syria not to meddle in the upcoming election in Iraq, the Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard, and other members of the war-whooping crowd have as much as called for war as soon as possible against both countries.
And yet .... and yet.
Signs of Change
Even so, there are signs that reality may be catching up with those who actually make policy, as compared to those who sit on the sidelines and call for other old men to send more young men to their deaths.
I'm not quite sure what to make of the recent flap over Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and his comment to the media-coached soldier in Iraq who asked about getting more armor for the troops on the ground. "As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time," said the estimable Mr. Rumsfeld. I think the secretary was blindsided by the question and was winging it rather than offering a deeply-considered opinion. But sometimes off-the-cuff remarks offer insight into thought processes.
As neocon senior partner Bill Kristol noted in a Washington Post piece effectively calling for Rumsfeld's resignation, Rumsfeld's comments suggested a strong inclination to pass the buck, to avoid taking personal responsibility for miscalculations and mistakes at all costs.
I strongly suspect that what Kristol wants in the position, however, is somebody more capable of making more war more effectively rather than somebody who will be scrupulously honest and personally responsible. When he came into office, Rumsfeld had a notion that the U.S. military needed to be reformed in the direction of making it leaner, more mobile, and more high-tech rather than massive. The Iraq war put that question to one side for a while, though even in the run-up to the war there were disputes over how many troops would be needed, with Rumsfeld generally arguing for fewer.
If Rumsfeld sticks to his general view during a second term, it could bollix up dreams of increasing the size of the military so it will be better-equipped to carry out a virtually endless series of imperial housekeeping assignments. I think Kristol, who has called for a beefed-up military and more military spending, suspects Rumsfeld still wants a leaner military, so it's best to get him out of the way. That doesn't mean antiwar people should hope Rumsfeld stays, but it's something to consider.
Reality Bites
In circles beyond the rather small war-at-any-cost crowd, however, the reality of the war in Iraq and questions about the consequences of war on a more-or-less continuing basis are starting to matter. For starters, there's the little matter of money. The latest news is that the Bush administration will ask for $80 to $100 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, rather than the more "modest" $70 to $75 billion it had privately told members of Congress before the election that the tab was likely to be. Beefing up the armor, as virtually everyone has now promised to do, will probably add to the expense.
John Pike, a defense specialist at the military think tank GlobalSecurity.org, says the Iraq operation has "been running over a billion a week thus far. I think we're probably getting up to $2 billion a week fairly soon." Now that the election is over, is there a chance putatively fiscal conservatives will start to raise questions about these ongoing costs – especially if they get in the way of making the tax cuts permanent?
Whether cost becomes a factor or not, military morale is increasingly becoming a topic of conversation. Yesterday's Christian Science Monitor suggests that something more than the usual griping "is happening now in Iraq with what appears to be growing resistance from the troops." The Monitor counts deserters in the thousands, "resignations of reserve officers, lawsuits by those whose duty period has been involuntarily extended, and a refusal to go on dangerous missions without proper equipment." The Army National Guard is short about 5,000 of its recruiting goals. Soldiers and would-be soldiers seem to be simply losing confidence in the civilian leadership during this war.
Nightline Wednesday night and last night featured returning Iraqi military personnel who are opting for psychological counseling even in the face of pressure not to act like a "coward," implying that this war will produce thousands of people with long-term psychological problems. Other experts, as the New York Times reported yesterday, predict the same.
Whence the Troops
To be sure, much of the conditional optimism one might be entitled to feel is based on the fact that the Bush administration has so far been more restrained than the lobbyists for empire without end would like. But it's quite possible that this reluctance is based on a belated recognition of reality. If the Army doesn't provide enough troops to do the job effectively in Iraq, where are they going to find the troops for Iran, Syria, or (gulp!) North Korea? Can they raise more troops without stirring a more widespread antiwar sentiment? Can they even think about Social Security, tax reform, or anything else domestic if the next four years are dominated by war?

They have to be wondering.