Discontented Soul

Too Much Stenography, Not Enough Curiosity
by Norman Solomon
Published on Thursday, February 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Curiosity may occasionally kill a cat. But lack of curiosity is apt to terminate journalism with extreme prejudice.
"We will not set an artificial timetable for leaving Iraq, because that would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out," President Bush said in his State of the Union address. "We are in Iraq to achieve a result: A country that is democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors and able to defend itself."
President Johnson said the same thing about the escalating war in Vietnam. His rhetoric was typical on Jan. 12, 1966: "We fight for the principle of self determination -- that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear."
Anyone who keeps an eye on mainstream news is up to speed on the latest presidential spin. But the reporters who tell us what the president wants us to hear should go beyond stenography to note historic echoes and point out basic contradictions...

Iraq Kudos Misplaced
by Ibrahim Kazerooni
Published on Thursday, February 3, 2005 by the Denver Post

Deprived of promised security, reliable electricity, jobs, proper sewage treatment, water and gasoline, the Iraqi people took charge in Sunday's election after nearly two years of disastrous and incompetent mismanagement of their country by the Bush White House.
While the Bush administration and the mainstream American media lather themselves in congratulatory self-adulation over the election, let us not forget that it was the threat of full-scale, armed rebellion from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the Shiite community that brought about Sunday's direct election...

Bush's Liberty Song Echoes Vietnam Tune
by Antonia Zerbisias
Published on Thursday, February 3, 2005 by the Toronto Star

When US President George W. Bush strode into the Capitol to give his State of the Union address last night, his supporters waved their darkened fingers at him in celebration of his triumph at the Iraqi polls...

© 2005 Toronto Star

There are countless examples of our inconsistent regard of large-scale death. The number of victims most often associated with World War II is six million - the number of Jews massacred. Yet we often overlook the 16 million civilians in the Soviet Union alone who perished in the war.
The British medical journal Lancet in October published a study placing the number of Iraqi deaths since the American invasion at between 8,000 and 194,000 - with the most likely number statistically being the midpoint, 98,000. Yet many dismiss Iraqi civilian casualties as a mere by-product of war.
It seems that we're more concerned about mad cow disease, which has killed about 140 people worldwide, than AIDS, which has killed more than 25 million.
I sometimes wonder if the human brain is wired to absorb the enormity of death on a mass scale. No other animal can even contemplate life at that level, and even for our species, the large-scale preservation of life has only been a topic of general discussion for maybe a couple of hundred years. We are the only species capable of genocide, and the only one capable of mercy - but we've had far more experience with the former than the latter.
Our inability to rationally process mass death makes us resort to arbitrary standards of analysis - a death close to us is more important than 10 far away. A death we cause is more easily pardoned than one other people cause. Death by natural disaster is more regrettable than death by war.

The Australian Labor Party has reached yet another nadir. Not content with tailing Lil Johnny and his band of Viking berserkers on everything from Iraq to abortion and gay marriage, they are now preparing to hand out millions in tax cuts to the wealthy — all in the name of winning “market share” among the aspirationals.
The shearers of 1891 [the founders of the ALP] would be positively spinning in their graves!

Freedom Rings in Iraq! Bush was Right All Along! American Wins! Or, you know, Not
by Mark Morford
Published on Wednesday, February 2, 2005 by San Francisco Chronicle

Beautiful thing, really, seeing repressed and weary Iraqis vote for the first time, and dance in the bloody bombed-out streets, and avoid the suicide bombers and of course not be able to travel between provinces or drive anywhere in their locked-down nation and by the way watch out for the snipers on the roofs.
It really is amazing, watching the deeply flawed system of democracy take hold in a raw and decimated nation like a thorny weed cracking through shattered concrete. All people deserve to be free and now Iraqis have a tiny bloody taste of it and this is always, always a good thing. I am not kidding.
So, should we be proud? Is Bush's thuggish and illegal pre-emptive attack strategy justified? Are Iraq's first-ever elections a defining moment in American political history? Are we all righteous and good and holy, despite all the dead bodies and the hatred?
Well, sort of. But then again, not really. Should Bush get some credit for all the cheering Iraqis who are now breathing sort of free? Well, no. Not even close...

© 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

Iraq's $200 Billion Election
by Robert Kuttner
Published on Wednesday, February 2, 2005 by the Boston Globe

The United States has spent nearly $200 billion dollars and lost more than 1,400 American lives so that Iraqis could attempt representative government. If, by some miracle, the result is a democratic and pro-western Iraq, President Bush can claim Mission Accomplished, for real.
But a great deal must still break right before that banner can be unfolded. One risk is endless insurgency and prolonged occupation. Another is that Iraqis will indeed elect a popular government, but not one that we like, or that likes us.
A recent New Yorker magazine profile of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi referred to him as Saddam Lite. This would not be the first time that the United States installed a friendly strongman with democratic trappings, only to have the enterprise backfire utterly.
Compare the effort spent to bring the rudiments of democratic process to Iraq with the feeble state of American democracy at home...

Independent Electoral Commission to keep the process honest. No such luck in the United States...
It is ironic that one of America's biggest worries is that the elected rulers of Iraq will want to turn it into an Islamist Shi'ite theocracy. Press reports refer hopefully to Allawi as a ''secular Shi'ite."
By that criterion, how should we describe George W. Bush? A secular Christian? I don't think so. He is more determined to remove the separation of church and state and turn America into a theocracy than any chief executive in our history.
Democracy is not just about honest elections and competitive candidacies. It is also about open debate, a fair legislative process, a broadly diverse press, wide tolerance, and personal liberties. On each of these fronts, democracy in our own land is frayed, and George W. Bush is the prime offender.
Bush's second inaugural address barely mentioned democracy at home. His speech portends an age in which the forms of democracy are loudly celebrated and nominally extended, while its vital heart is weakened.
My generation grew up thinking of the world neatly divided into democracies and dictatorships. In World War II, this was literally true (though our wartime ally, Joseph Stalin, was an awkward discordant note).
Likewise in the Cold War, the core story rang true - a democracy against an evil empire, though again America had some dubious dictatorial allies, and some dirty domestic secrets like the exclusion of blacks from voting.
But today, the world is a sea of gray: Our Russian ally, Vladimir Putin, his tame media and his kleptocrats; our Saudi ally, with its despotic monarchy and medieval view of women; our Pakistani ally, a military dictatorship with some parliamentary trappings; our Chinese trading partner, a combination of emergent capitalism, daubs of personal liberty, with tight one-party control.
Does George W. Bush plan on dislodging any of these in the name of his crusade to expand freedom? Not hardly.
The biggest risk of all is the continued, willful, ineluctable erosion of our own democracy. Imagine an inaugural address devoted to expanding the reach of democratic freedom at home. I hope we live to see one.

Post-Election Buzzkill: Why Iraq Is Still A Debacle
by Arianna Huffington
Published on Wednesday, February 2, 2005 by Arianna Huffington

Quick, before the conventional wisdom hardens, it needs to be said: The Iraqi elections were not the second coming of the Constitutional Convention.
The media have made it sound like last Sunday was a combination of 1776, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prague Spring, the Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Filipino "People Power," Tiananmen Square and Super Bowl Sunday — all rolled into one...
Long before the Bushies landed on freedom and democracy as their 2005 buzzwords, they already had their eyes on the Iraqi prize: the second-largest oil reserves in the world, and a permanent home for US bases in the Middle East.
This is still the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the election, as heart-warming as it was, doesn't change any of that.

A Progressive Alternative to the Bush Doctrine

by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Published on Wednesday, February 2, 2005 by The Nation

In his State of the Union address tonight, we can expect Bush to riff on a familiar theme: the onward march of "freedom." When it comes to this President though, watch the deeds, ignore the rhetoric....

[However] Crusades masquerading as foreign policy will weaken our security and divert precious resources from the real fight for hearts and minds in the Middle East and beyond...

The US needs to redefine security to meet the challenges of the 21st century, at a time when the world is increasingly interdependent...
The new definition of national security should include using US power to lead a global campaign to meet the UN's Millennium Goals--halving world poverty, cutting child mortality by two-thirds and guaranteeing every child primary education by 2015; strengthening multilateral and verifiable arms control treaties, encouraging nuclear disarmament and increasing funding for Nunn-Lugar and other programs aimed at eliminating nuclear stockpiles in the former Soviet Union; ratifying the Kyoto, ICC, ABM and other treaties to strengthen our alliances; reducing our dependence on foreign oil by forming a global alliance that invests in alternative energy sources; and engaging the world so that America becomes a source of hope, not fear
Democracy cannot be imposed from without on nations with different cultures and histories. Freedom, liberty and democracy are built not in the ashes of war and occupation but from a history of struggle, civic work and economic development. The American people have no appetite for a religious crusade. What they would like to see is a principled foreign policy. Progressives need to offer the American people an affirmative vision.

On the Nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General of the United States
by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd
Published on Wednesday, February 2, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

American Scar

by George Hunsinger
Published on Monday, January 31, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun / Maryland

WHEN THE Senate confirms Alberto R. Gonzales as U.S. attorney general, the vote will be the beginning, not the end, of public debate about our government's policy on torture.
The Abu Ghraib scandal is only the most visible sign that this policy is inconsistent. Officially, our government opposes torture and advocates a universal standard for human rights. Yet, at the same time, it has allowed ingenious new interrogation methods to be developed that clearly violate these standards. They include stress positions, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and desecration of religious objects. These practices, which should never be used, are no less traumatic than the infliction of excruciating pain.
For religious people, torture is especially deplorable because it sins against God and against humanity created in God's image. It degrades everyone involved - planners, perpetrators and victims.
More than 225 Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh religious leaders signed an open letter to Mr. Gonzales. They objected to his role in developing a narrow definition of torture and to his equally troubling assertion that some people are not subject to the protections of international law. They registered deep concern about our government's moral foundations, urging support - in practice, not just in words - for fundamental human rights...

The Only Option for Iraq
by William Pfaff
Published on Monday, January 31, 2005 by International Herald Tribune

ROME -- The Iraq insurgency is many things, but above all it is anti-American and nationalist.
The U.S. command in Baghdad still does not reliably know the composition of the insurrection. It variously describes it as "regime-remnants," ex-Baathists, foreign jihadists, criminals, "dead-enders," or members of Al Qaeda led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. All these are self-serving formulations for U.S. domestic political use. The important issue is what would happen to the insurgency in an Iraq that had regained its independence...

The source of the current “moral vacuum” does not lie in the 1960s, but in the 1980s.
In the “hippie era” the morality was, “Anything goes, AS LONG AS NO ONE GETS HURT.”
It was the 1980s revival of macho, Thatcherite capitalism, when managers made Sun Tzu’s The Art of War their bible, that has led to the current nostrum of “Because I Can!”

Had it Been Held in Zimbabwe, the West Would Have Denounced it
by Salim Lone
Published on Monday, January 31, 2005 by the Guardian/UK

Tony Blair and George Bush were quick to characterise yesterday's election as a triumph of democracy over terror. Bush declared it a "resounding success", while Blair asserted that "The force of freedom was felt throughout Iraq". And yet the election fell so completely short of accepted electoral standards that had it been held in, say, Zimbabwe or Syria, Britain and America would have been the first to denounce it...