Discontented Soul

What if the U.S. doesn't like what the voters like in the Mideast and beyond?
by Juan Cole
Published on Thursday, February 24, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

With the emergence of Shiite physician Ibrahim Jafari as the leading candidate for Iraqi prime minister earlier this week, the contradictions of Bush administration policy in the Middle East have become even clearer than they were before.
President Bush says he is committed to democratizing the region, yet he also wants governments to emerge that are friendly to the U.S., benevolent to their own people, secular, capitalist and willing to stand up and fight against anti-American radicals.
But what if democratic elections do not produce such governments? What if the newly elected regimes are friendly to states and groups that Washington considers enemies? What if the spread of democracy through the region empowers elements that don't share American values and goals?...

© 2005 LA Times

Fables of Freedom and Democracy:Will Lebanon's Story have a Happy Ending?
by Laurie King-Irani

Published on Friday, February 25, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

...For many who actually live in the Middle Eastern countries that Bush and other neoconservatives fantasize about, notions of "independence" and "democracy" have lost their formerly fabulous sheen, magical appeal and transformational qualities. Those calling for democracy now in Beirut, and those cheering them on from afar, are accused, and perhaps justly so, of falling for the Bush administration's dangerous and delusional rhetoric about "untamed fires of freedom." Regime change in Iraq, heralded as "complete" by George W. Bush as he strutted about in a flight suit while living out his military fantasies in May 2003, actually began a dozen years earlier with his father's rout of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and the beginning of a UN sanctions regime that, along with Saddam Hussein's unrelenting cruelty, undercut the Iraqi people's ability to be actors in a political drama that affected them so deeply. One need look no further than the days of the uprising in southern Iraq in February and March of 1991 to understand why many throughout the Middle East are increasingly nervous about Lebanon's "independence uprising." Nor need one look further than the Bush administration's disappointment in April 2003 that so few Iraqis were welcoming US troops with open arms to appreciate how bizarrely fabulous is the neoconservatives' conception of social and political realities in the Arab world.
Furthermore, those held beyond the reach of the rule of law, in breach of the Geneva Conventions in Guantanamo, a legal no-man's land beyond institutions, accountability, or even interstitiality, are not just symbols of US failures in and towards the Middle East, but are, more ominously, harbingers of a future world order devoid of justice, due process, fairness and accountability at the national and international levels. As long as a place like Guantanamo can exist, democracies - and the rule of law on which they rise or founder -- are threatened across the globe. Only a child or a madman can believe President Bush's fables of freedom when they are juxtaposed with the horrors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
It is not cynical, then, but quite logical to ask whether it is independence and freedom or exploitation and submission that the world's superpower truly desires for the Arab world. Istiqlaal (independence), requires trust, dignity, justice, and equality. Istighlaal (exploitation), entails submission, humiliation, corruption, and fear. In the language of fables, is the US an evil or a benevolent stepmother? Is the Middle East about to give birth to democracy? And if so, was the child conceived naturally, miraculously, or through some sort of political artificial insemination?...

How Long Can Bush Get Away With Lies?

by Andrew Greeley
Published on Friday, February 25, 2005 by the Chicago Sun Times

One hears new rationalizations for the war on this side of the Atlantic. After the hearings on Secretary of State Rice, a Republican senator, with all the self-righteous anger that characterizes many such, proclaimed, "The Democrats just have to understand that the president really believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." This justification is not unlike the one heard frequently at the White House, "The president believed the intelligence agencies of the world."
Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?
It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed...

Is This Your Ownership Society?
by Holly Sklar
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service

Published on Friday, February 25, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Would you invest in a company that cut your wages, laid off your cousin, polluted your neighborhood, cut your health insurance and raided your retirement fund? If so, you'll love President Bush's "ownership society."
At a time of rising support for socially responsible business, Bush's ownership society offers less social responsibility, less opportunity and accelerating dis-investment in the future...

Kansas Prosecutor Wants Abortion Patients' Files
by PJ Huffstutter
Published on Friday, February 25, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

CHICAGO — The Kansas attorney general, as part of a criminal investigation into child rape and late-term abortions, is demanding that two health centers hand over the medical records of about 90 female patients, including minors...

Putin Loses His Smile After Lecture from Bush On Democracy
by Andrew Osborn
Published on Friday, February 25, 2005 by the Independent/UK

President George Bush subjected Russia's Vladimir Putin to a public lecture on the fundamentals of democracy yesterday, injecting a chill into a relationship that has - until now - been characterised by bonhomie.
Meeting in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, Mr Bush emerged from a three-hour meeting with the Russian President joking and smiling and full of warm words. But his frequent references to "Vladimir" and the "fella" were peppered with targeted criticism of the state of democracy in Russia with which the more hawkish members of his administration are said to have lost patience...

© 2005 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

Europe is tacitly condoning the Bush regime's appalling practices
by Victoria Brittain
Published on Thursday, February 24, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)

George Bush is this week having an extravagantly orchestrated series of meetings with Europe's leaders, designed to show a united front for the creation of democracy around the world. Tony Blair talks of our "shared values". No one mentions the word that makes this show a mockery: torture. It is now undeniable that the US administration, at the highest levels, is responsible for the torture that has been routine not only, as seen round the world in iconic photographs, at Abu Ghraib, but at Guantánamo Bay and Bagram. Meanwhile, in prisons in Egypt, Jordan and Syria (and no doubt others we do not know about), Muslim men have been tortured by electric shocks to the genitals, by being kept in water, by being threatened with death - after being flown to those countries by the CIA for that very purpose.
How can it be that not one mainstream public figure in Europe has denounced these appalling practices and declared that, in view of all we now know of cells, cages, underground bunkers, solitary confinement, sodomy and threatened sodomy, beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, mock executions and kidnapping, President Bush and his officials are not welcome?...

Iran Nuclear Program Creates a Furor Likely to Be Futile
by Stephen Zunes
Published on Thursday, February 24, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Having already successfully fooled most of Congress and the American public into believing that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration is now claiming that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program.
If we decide to once again believe such claims, do we risk being drawn into another disastrous military confrontation based upon false allegations? Or, if we reject such claims, will we -- like the villagers in the famous fable of the boy who cried, “Wolf!” -- find out too late that the alarm this time was for real?...
Even if we are to assume that Iran desires nuclear weapons, however, it would be a mistake to assume that the Islamic Republic would use them for aggressive designs. Indeed, the Iranians may have good reasons to desire a nuclear deterrent: In early 2002, Iran was among three countries -- the others being Iraq and North Korea -- labeled by President George W. Bush as part of “the axis of evil.” Iraq, which had given up its nuclear program over a decade earlier and later allowed IAEA inspectors back in, was invaded and occupied by the United States. By contrast, North Korea, which reneged on its agreement and has apparently resumed production of nuclear weapons, has not been invaded. The Iranians may see a lesson in that.
In addition, soon after coming to office, the Bush administration decided to unfreeze its nuclear weapons production and launch a program to develop smaller tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use. It is important to remember that the only country to actually use nuclear weapons in combat is the United States, in the 1945 bombings of two Japanese cities, a decision that most American political leaders defend to this day...
The Bush administration has rejected such a call, however, insisting that the United States has the right to decide which countries get to have such weapons and which ones do not, effectively demanding a kind of nuclear apartheid...

Regaining My Humanity
by Camilo Mejia
Published on Thursday, February 24, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors—the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.
I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.
And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren’t helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn’t want us there. We weren’t preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn’t find a single good reason for having been there, for having shot at people and been shot at.
Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.
By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.
When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, it did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me—they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price Humanity has paid for war.
Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don’t believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.
I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified, I did not want to stand up to the government and the army, I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.
I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive me.
One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.

FDA Chooses Drug Industry Health Over Public Health
by Ritt Goldstein
Published on Wednesay, February 23, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to ensure the safety and quality of drugs reaching the public, acting on the taxpayers' behalf. As of Friday (February 18), an extraordinary three-day FDA Advisory Committee meeting is finishing, but investigation suggests business interests have superseded public health at the agency.
In a last-minute reversal, the FDA allowed a prominent drug safety scientist to offer testimony about new, unpublished research at extraordinary three-day hearings on the risks and benefits of a controversial class of painkillers known as COX-2 inhibitors.

© 2005 Ritt Goldstein

Is Another World Possible?

A Water Activist Reports from Porto Alegre
by Arnie Alpert
Published on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

The Sunday morning workshop on forced privatization of water and power began like so many other World Social Forum events: no one from the sponsoring organization was there at 9 a.m., thirty minutes after the workshop was supposed to start. A dozen or two dozen people sat around in the lean-to structure chatting in several languages.
As this was the fourth day of Forum workshops, participants were by then accustomed to events that didn't start on time or didn't take place at all. I found myself with three North American students and offered to share what I knew about water privatization.

I have heard your interviews on the last two mornings, firstly that with Neil James of the Defence Forces Association, and then with the chap from the Vietnam Veterans’ Association. I have a question (or two) for each:
· Neil James was quick to claim that there was no parallel between Vietnam and Iraq. Why did he or his Association not rush to similarly disavow the parallels between the pre-war strategic situation vis-à-vis Iraq and the strategic situation in Europe prior to WWII, which was a cornerstone of the Bush/Blair/Howard drumbeating? Does he believe that the situations WERE the same? Looking at it another way, can he tell me exactly what the DFA is independent OF? Certainly it doesn’t seem to be independent of “Western strategic interests” as defined by the eminences grises of the Project for the New American Century.
· The gentleman from the Vietnam Veterans’ Association claimed that there should be no protests against our involvement in Iraq because of the effect it has on the morale of troops serving there. In other words, once troops are committed, those in the “homeland” should stand rock-solidly behind them. Let me pose a question based on the “favourite war” of our current crop of politicians — if this gentleman had been an anti-Hitlerite German who had by some miracle survived until 1939, would he have sat beside his radio and cheered as the valiant German army unleashed shock ‘n’ awe on the hapless Poles?
For the benefit of both gentlemen, I am of the generation who was prepared to go to jail rather than fight for Uncle Sam in Vietnam. I ALWAYS support our troops, but I think that the best way to do that is to bring them home from a dirty war being fought for Dubya’s God and Cheney’s Oil!

Neocons Fret Over Tilt to Europe
by Robert Kuttner
Published on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 by the Boston Globe

"America supports a strong Europe," George W. Bush told an appreciative audience at his first major European speech in Brussels Monday, "because we need a strong partner in the hard work of advancing freedom in the world." But many on the right disagree, and the warm words conceal strenuous infighting among conservatives over the shape of the administration's Europe policy...

If America Keeps Marching, It Could Very Well Be in the Direction of a Nuclear Apocalypse
by Scott Ritter
Published on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun

North Korea's dramatic public revelation that it possesses nuclear weapons represents a stark challenge for the Bush administration.
The North Korean claim, if true, underscores the failure of President Bush's nonproliferation policies that since the beginning of his first term had been subordinated to a grander vision of regime change. That policy was intended to transform strategically vital regions of the world into Western-style democracies supportive of the United States and the Bush administration's vision of American global dominance...

© 2005 Baltimore Sun

The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann
Published on Tuesday, February 22, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

This weekend - February 27th - is the 72nd anniversary, but the corporate media most likely won't cover it. The generation that experienced this history firsthand is now largely dead, and only a few of us dare hear their ghosts.
It started when the government, in the midst of an economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist. Some, like Sefton Delmer - a London Daily Express reporter on the scene - say they certainly did not, while others, like William Shirer, suggest they did.)...

God Owes Us an Apology
by Barbara Ehrenreich
Published in the March, 2005 issue of The Progressive

The tsunami of sea water was followed instantly by a tsunami of spittle as the religious sputtered to rationalize God's latest felony. Here we'd been placidly killing each other a few dozen at a time in Iraq, Darfur, Congo, Israel, and Palestine, when along comes the deity and whacks a quarter million in a couple of hours between breakfast and lunch. On CNN, NPR, Fox News, and in newspaper articles too numerous for Nexis to count, men and women of the cloth weighed in solemnly on His existence, His motives, and even His competence to continue as Ruler of Everything.
Theodicy, in other words - the attempt to reconcile God's perfect goodness with the manifest evils of His world - has arisen from the waves...

Hiding behind a 17-5 decision announced today to evacuate all Israeli settlements from Gaza, the Israeli Cabinet also officially signaled its intent by a vote of 20-1 to annex another 7% of Palestinian territory. On February 21, the cabinet published the new route of the Apartheid Wall, indicating that the huge settlements of Maale Aduminim and a large cluster of settlements called Gush Etzion lying east and south of Jerusalem would enclosed by the Wall and thus become part of Israel.Under the new route, it is reckoned that 10,000 Palestinians, not 93,000 as originally envisaged, would be put under direct Israeli rule. But the 177,000 or more Palestinians living in East Jerusalem will be cut off from the rest of the West Bank. The Palestinians are still expecting to name their capital in Jerusalem.Four settlements in the West Bank are to be dismantled -- as yet unnamed -- but what remains unclear is the fate of middle-size settlements lying in "northern West Bank," Ariel (pop. 17,000), Karne Shomron (6,400), Alfei Meneshe (5,500), Oranit (5,000), Beit El (4,500), Sha'are Tikva (3,700), Kedumim (3,000), and dozens of others scattered throughout the northern and southern sections of the West Bank, including Kiryat Arba (6,000). Originally the Israeli military line for the Apartheid Wall, as announced in 2002, would have annexed 20% of the the land of the West Bank.The Israeli Cabinet decision violates UN resolutions, the ruling of the International Court of Justice, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and other international rulings affecting the settlements.There has been no official response from the Palestinian Authority President's office. Clearly the Israeli Cabinet's decision is only the opening salvo in what will be a long and complicated negotiation -- and one already presaged by President Bush's April 14, 2004 statement which endorsed the Gaza evacuation plan. As Hanan Ashrawi is reported in the Associated Press to have said, "Israel is creating facts on the ground in the West Bank. Sharon wants payback in the West Bank for the disengagement from Gaza, particularly Jerusalem."For a map of the new route, see The New York Times.

The President has an enormous political gulf to bridge. The trouble is, he doesn't even know it's there
by William Pfaff
Published on Sunday, February 20, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)

President George W Bush arrives in Europe this week in the belief that the European Nato allies can be persuaded to 'turn away from the disagreements of the past' and open 'a new chapter' in transatlantic relations, as Condoleezza Rice, on her European trip, advised them to do. He is likely to go home without the concessions he wants...
His trip will fail because he and his administration do not understand what really divides most continental European governments from the United States today. At the same time, Europeans are mostly unwilling to confront these issues, because of the trouble with Washington they imply. But, unacknowledged or not, they count.
First is the definition of the crisis. Few Europeans believe either in the global 'war on terror' or the 'war against tyranny', as Washington describes them.
American claims about the threat of terrorism seem grossly exaggerated, and the American reaction disproportionate and even hysterical...
The second cause of transatlantic disagreement is the American claim to global domination, and its hostility to Europe's acquiring political or military power commensurate with European economic power.
This claim rests on the argument that an international system in which there is more than one major power is no longer acceptable...

The third basic disagreement is that the US has repudiated the system of absolute state sovereignty that has governed international society since 1648, and is the basis of modern international law...
Any challenge to American primacy by another state, or by the European Union, is perceived a cause of international instability and therefore a potential source of disorder or war.
This American role is avowedly benevolent, and in the eyes of many Americans, certainly including President Bush, it is of divine origin (Woodrow Wilson also believed this). Within the present administration, there are those who believe cosmic forces are in play and responsible for America's emergence as the sole superpower. The American belief in a divine commission goes back to its religious origins in the 17th century, and is not open to logical refutation. Even secular interpretations of American destiny assert a moral claim, expressed thus in the 19th century: 'The United States has achieved the highest possible form of political system and that this great system can be extended to the rest of humanity ... Because America is exceptionally good, it both deserves to be exceptionally powerful and by nature cannot use its power for evil ends.'...
The claim America now makes is that destruction is a creative principle in politics as well as economics. 'Creative destruction' produces new order. This is a form of Utopianism....

© 2005 William Pfaff

Today Australia is distracted by the “heart-warming human-interest story” of Health Minister Tony Abbott’s reunion with the son he gave away nearly thirty years ago. Meanwhile, Employment Minister Kevin Andrews is planning major changes to the Social Security system, declaring that Australia’s post-WWII experiment with insuring income-security for all is “dead.”
How typical of this despicable government, which employs sleight-of-hand and populist valley-girl-speak in place of sensible and equitable policy. WELL, HELLOOOOOOO!!!!!!

The Dangerous Implications of the Hariri Assassination and the U.S. Response
by Stephen Zunes
Published on Saturday, February 19, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

The broader implications of the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was seen by many as the embodiment of the Lebanese people’s efforts to rebuild their country in the aftermath of its 15-year civil war, are yet to unfold. A Sunni Muslim, Hariri reached out to all of Lebanon’s ethnic and religious communities in an effort to unite the country after decades of violence waged by heavily-armed militias and foreign invaders...

Attacking Iran Would Bring Disaster, Not Freedom
by Shirin Ebadi
Published on Saturday, February 19, 2005 by the lndependent (UK)

It is hard not to see America's focus on human rights in Iran as a cloak for its larger strategic interests.
Condoleezza Rice has given assurances that a military attack by the United States on Iran "is simply not on the agenda at this point".
But notwithstanding Rice's disavowal, recent statements by the Bush administration, starting with President Bush's State of the Union address and Vice President Dick Cheney's comments about a possible Israeli military attack on Iran, are reminiscent of the rhetoric in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And Rice herself made clear that "the Iranian regime's human rights behavior and its behavior toward its own population is something to be loathed."
American policy toward the Middle East, and Iran in particular, is often couched in the language of promoting human rights. No one would deny the importance of that goal. But for human rights defenders in Iran, the possibility of a foreign military attack on their country represents an utter disaster for their cause...