The Real Agenda

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.

The New York Times | Editorial (read more. . .)

July 17th, 2006 || PermaLink

Mutually Assured Destruction in the Middle East

As those under the boot of Israel or America lose all hope for justice, as they give up on peaceful recourses to ameliorate their plight, as they fall into despair, it throws them, by default, into the hands of extremists. And as the extremists grow and their attacks became more deadly, it likewise helps silence those in Israel and the United States who call for compassion, restraint and understanding. It is difficult to argue with those holding up bloodied corpses. Each side finds it useful to keep the supply coming.

In this demented world, friend and foe need each other. Hamas and Hezbollah yearn, on some level, for Israeli airstrikes against civilians just as the hard right in Israel yearns in some dark way for suicide bombers. The indiscriminate violence of one justifies the indiscriminate violence of the other. The violence stokes the fear that is the driving force behind all messianic, violent movements—American, Jewish and Muslim. And since these groups have nothing to offer other than violence, they need fear to keep those around them compliant. The atrocities committed by one—real or imagined – make possible the atrocities of the other.

Does anyone in the Israeli government really believe that attacking Lebanon and killing more than 60 Lebanese civilians will ensure the freedom of the two captured Israeli soldiers? There have been hostages, including Israeli hostages, taken captive in Lebanon before, and most have been freed through long and painful negotiations. If the Israelis do believe in this violence, it is a sad indication of how out of touch they are with the world that opposes them.

We cannot ascribe equal amounts of moral blame to all sides. Israel is the oppressor in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. America is the oppressor in Iraq. And there can be no hope for a peaceful resolution to these conflicts until Iraqis are freed from American occupation and Palestinians are allowed to build a viable state. It is the distorting and dehumanizing effects of occupation that made possible the proliferation of extremist groups that, albeit on a smaller scale, simply hand back to the occupier some of their own medicine. The numbers, after all, make clear that most of the victims are Palestinian, Iraqi and now Lebanese civilians, although the numbers game can also obscure the fact that the murder of any innocent by any group is indefensible.

This is the world of the apocalypse. It is the world where those on either extreme become indistinguishable. And if we do not find a new way to speak, and soon, there will be untold suffering—not only for many innocents in the Middle East but eventually innocents at home. It was the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that spawned and empowered Hezbollah. It was the decades-long occupation and humiliation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by Israel that spawned and empowered Hamas, and it is the brutal American occupation that has bred the legions of extremists in Iraq. And when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah promises “open war” against Israel, as he did in an address shortly after his Beirut offices were bombed, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he won’t cease his attack until Israel is secure, it is time to run for cover, especially when George W. Bush is our best hope for peace.

Chris Hedges | TruthDig (read more. . .)

July 16th, 2006 || PermaLink

The Mideast death dance

Hezbollah and Hamas emerged in the past decade as the main Arab political forces that resist the Israeli occupations in Lebanon and Palestine. They enjoy substantial popular support in their respective countries, while at the same time eliciting criticisms for their militant policies that inevitably draw harsh Israeli responses. We see this in Lebanon today as the Lebanese people broadly direct their anger at Israel for its brutal attacks against Lebanese civilian installations and fault Palestinians, other Arabs, Syria and Iran for perpetually making Lebanon the battleground for other conflicts — but more softly question Hezbollah’s decision to trigger this latest calamity.

It is no coincidence that Israel is now simultaneously bombing and destroying the civilian infrastructure in Palestine and Lebanon, including airports, bridges, roads, power plants, and government offices. It claims to do this in order to stop terror attacks against Israelis, but in fact the past four decades have shown that its policies generate exactly the opposite effect: They have given birth, power, credibility and now political incumbency to the Hamas and Hezbollah groups whose raison d’être has been to fight the Israeli occupation of their lands. Israeli destruction of normal life for Palestinians and Lebanese also results in the destruction of the credibility, efficacy and, in some cases, the legitimacy of routine government systems, making the Lebanese and Palestinian governments key actors in current events — or non-actors in most cases.

The Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel’s persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services. With every new Israeli attack against the Hamas and Hezbollah leadership or the civilian populations, four important things happen, and will probably happen during this round of war: The Lebanese and Palestinian governments lose power and impact; Hamas and Hezbollah garner greater popular support, which enhances their effectiveness in guerrilla and resistance warfare; they expand their military technical capabilities (mainly longer-range missiles and better improvised explosive devices); and the anti-Israel, anti-U.S. resistance campaign led by Hamas and Hezbollah generates widespread political and popular support throughout the Middle East and much of the world.

Rami G. Khouri | Salon (read more. . .)

July 15th, 2006 || PermaLink

A Wave of Sexual Terrorism In Iraq

Like women everywhere, Iraqi women have always been vulnerable to rape. But since the American invasion of their country, the reported incidence of sexual terrorism has accelerated markedly — and this despite the fact that few Iraqi women are willing to report rapes either to Iraqi officials or to occupation forces, fearing to bring dishonor upon their families. In rural areas, female rape victims may also be vulnerable to “honor killings” in which male relatives murder them in order to restore the family’s honor. “For women in Iraq,” Amnesty International concluded in a 2005 report, “the stigma frequently attached to the victims instead of the perpetrators of sexual crimes makes reporting such abuses especially daunting.”

This specific rape of one Iraqi girl, however, is now becoming symbolic of the way the Bush administration has violated Iraq’s honor; Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has already launched an inquest into the crime. In an administration that normally doesn’t know the meaning of an apology, the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad and the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. both publicly apologized. In a fierce condemnation, the Muslim Scholars Association in Iraq denounced the crime: “This act, committed by the occupying soldiers, from raping the girl to mutilating her body and killing her family, should make all humanity feel ashamed.”

Shame, yes, but that is hardly sufficient. After all, rape is now considered a war crime by the International Criminal Court.

It wasn’t always that way. Soldiers have long viewed women as the spoils of war, even when civilian or military leaders condemned such behavior, but in the early 1990s, a new international consensus began to emerge on the act of rape. Prodded by an energized global women’s movement, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 1993. Subsequent statutes in the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, as well as the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court in July 2002, all defined rape as a crime against humanity or a war crime.

No one accuses American soldiers of running through the streets of Iraq, raping women as an instrument of war against the insurgents (though such acts are what caused three Bosnian soldiers, for the first time in history, to be indicted in 2001 for the war crime of rape).

Still, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has had the effect of humiliating, endangering, and repressing Iraqi women in ways that have not been widely publicized in the mainstream media: As detainees in prisons run by Americans, they have been sexually abused and raped; as civilians, they have been kidnapped, raped, and then sometimes sold for prostitution; and as women — and, in particular, as among the more liberated women in the Arab world — they have increasingly disappeared from public life, many becoming shut-ins in their own homes.

Ruth Rosen | Tomdispatch.com (read more. . .)

July 14th, 2006 || PermaLink

The Politics of Greed

It seems to me that we’ve seen enough evidence over the years that the capitalist system is not going to be destroyed by an outside challenger like communism—it will be destroyed by its own internal greed. Greed is the greatest danger as we develop an increasingly winner-take-all system. And voices like The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page encourage this mentality by insisting that any form of regulation is bad. But for whom?

It is so discouraging to watch this country become less and less fair—“justice for all” seems like an embarrassingly archaic tag. Republicans have rigged the “lottery of life” in this country in ways we don’t even know about yet. The new bankruptcy law is unfair, and the new college loan rules are worse. The system has been stacked so that large corporations have an inside track over small businesses in getting government contracts. We won’t see the full consequences of this mean and careless legislation for years, but it starting to affect us already.

Molly Ivins | TruthDig (read more. . .)

July 13th, 2006 || PermaLink

Sign Me Up for the Declaration of Peace!

The plan is simple. We continue to call for the immediate end of the war on Iraq, but presuming it does not end in the next few weeks, we urge every peace group in the nation to organize nonviolent civil disobedience at their local congressional representative’s office during the week of September 21-28, 2006, just days before Congress adjourns for the fall elections. We will hold our banners, demand that the troops come home, and sit in with steadfast nonviolence demanding an end to this mad war. And we will keep up the public pressure through the fall until a breakthrough for peace.

“The Declaration of Peace” Pledge reads in part as follows:

“I join with the majority of U.S. citizens, the people of Iraq, and people around the world in calling for a comprehensive end to the U.S. war in Iraq. I solemnly pledge to 1.) call on the Bush administration and Congress to immediately withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq, with no future redeployments; 2.) urge my congressional representatives to adopt a ‘bring the troops home now’ position, and to establish a concrete, comprehensive withdrawal plan no later than September 21, 2006, International Peace Day, just days before Congress adjourns; 3.) participate in marches, rallies, demonstrations and other peaceful strategies to establish this plan; and 4.) engage in nonviolent civil disobedience, as conscience leads me, if this plan for a comprehensive withdrawal is not established and activated no later than September 21, 2006.”

The plan calls for local and regional peace groups around the country to promote the Declaration of Peace Pledge. Out task is to recruit friends and activists and everyone we know to sign it, then to organize vigils and sit-ins at local Congressional representatives’ offices during the week of September 21-28, 2006.

A few of the national organizations which have already signed on to the Declaration include: United for Peace and Justice, Peace Action, Pax Christi USA, Call to Action, CodePink, War Resisters League, and the Network for Spiritual Progressives.

I think the time has come for just such a systematic, organized national campaign to demand peace with Iraq and employ the old movement weapon of civil disobedience. Every major movement for peace and justice in our history was able to turn a corner finally when its members nonviolently and illegally disrupted the big business of war and injustice.

John Dear | CommonDreams (read more. . .)

July 12th, 2006 || PermaLink

Fasting and Praying for Peace

Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India’s independence movement in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, once said that “fasting is the sincerest form of prayer.” I’ve been on 17 long fasts, from six days to 42 days, over the last 35 years, and based on my experiences, he is right.

3,000 people around the US and the world are fasting or have done so for at least one day this week as part of a national Troops Home Fast to end the Iraq war. I’m one of them. I’ve not eaten since the evening of July 3rd and won’t start up until the evening of July 10th, and I won’t be eating any Mondays for as long as this fast goes on.

Among the more well-known people who are participating are: Cindy Sheehan, Susan Sarandon, Daniel Ellsberg, Sean Penn, Medea Benjamin, Dick Gregory, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Alice Walker, Danny Glover, Ed Asner, Dolores Huerta, Lynn Woolsey, Cynthia McKinney, Rev. Bob Edgar, Rev. Al Sharpton, Howard Zinn, Kim Gandy and Patch Adams.

Why are we doing this? Diane Wilson, a shrimper from Texas and a founder of Code Pink, explained why she was doing it in this way:

A majority of Americans don’t want this war and want the troops to come home. Not because war is too tough or that some folks are lily-livered and want to cut and run, but because this war is based on lies and a lot of tangled agendas clearly having to do with oil. Because this war is against everything America should stand for: peace, security, loving one’s neighbor.
The question that remains is: Are we who want the killing to stop as committed to peace as those who are committed to war? The war machine will certainly commit the lives of our children and Iraqi children. But will we commit our own lives? Would we exchange our lives for those of the soldiers being shipped out? Would we risk our lives so Iraqi children could live?

That is why I am beginning this hunger strike on our national holiday: to stop an insane war and bring the troops home, and also to keep my country from going where we seem to be heading.

Ted Glick | t r u t h o u t  (read more. . .)

July 11th, 2006 || PermaLink