Arguing With Bush

Yet one question has surely been settled - that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.

George W. Bush, State of the Union, 2007

By launching an unprovoked and illegal war of aggression on a major Arab Muslim country, Bush hasn’t “carried the fight to the enemy” but has rather dishonored the 9/11 dead by using their killings as a pretext to carry out his own preconceived and Ahab-like plans to “take out” Saddam Hussein. Nothing could be better calculated to increase the threat of terrorism against the United States than an attempt militarily to occupy Iraq, with all the repression and torture it has entailed.

Juan Cole | Informed Comment

January 24th, 2007 || PermaLink

The Trials, and Blessings, of Peacework

I think we’ve well entered into Orwell’s nightmare of a post-modern, post-Christian era of permanent war. We have a war president, a Congress that writes blank checks for war, an enthralled media that trumpets war, a sheepish citizenry that lets itself get fleeced for war, churches that confer their blessings on war, and courts that legalize weapons and imprison those who say no to war. Our war isn’t only permanent, but universal–we make war on the poor, on children, on the earth, on humanity, on God.
But complaining does no good, and it’s not an authentic Christian response anyway. The Christian response to a “surge of war” is a counter surge of peace, a swell of peacemakers and nonviolent resisters. All of us need to stand up, join some public action, get involved with our local peace group, speak out, and on occasion sit in. With every act of peace, unanimity comes apart and hope resurges. And we show ourselves disciples of the nonviolent Jesus.

John Dear | CommonDreams.org

January 24th, 2007 || PermaLink

Sigh for America

Bush’s latest rationale for this war is to act in support of “the Iraqi military,” but does any such entity exist? Does defending the openly tribal government of Nouri al-Maliki mean that US soldiers are now an adjunct to Shi’ite death squads, even while being their target? If Maliki and Bush are allies, why do they talk past each other? Why should the Sunni leaders of “moderate” Arab states not be alarmed by the tightening US-Shi’a embrace? And when insanity rules, does the fact that an air attack on Iran’s nuclear facility would be insane any longer mean it will not happen?

In other words, the “surge” in Iraq that matters is the movement from disaster to catastrophe. A question: How can otherwise rational policy makers and military leaders continue to cooperate in this madness?

That, obviously, is a question that goes to the US Constitution: What happens when a president’s dogged determination begins to show itself as an obsessive irrationality? In numerous television appearances last week, interviewers successfully drew Bush out, showing him to be a man in the grip of an idée fixe: He is saving America. From what, now that all explanations for the war have been debunked, he cannot say. But the president’s transcendent project of national redemption justifies his isolated inflexibility. That his decisions so palpably undermine US security and lead to unnecessary deaths means little to him because his decisions are deemed correct not by outcomes, but by being his. He is the decider.

James Carroll | Boston Globe

January 23rd, 2007 || PermaLink

The Big Push

There is a final resemblance between the present bloodshed there and the First World War. Both conflicts were fought for a curiously shifting set of noble-sounding goals. With Iraq, the Bush administration has tried on for size finding weapons of mass destruction, liberating the Iraqis, combating Islamist terrorism, and installing democracy in the Arab world. In the First World War, the Allies initially talked of coming to the defense of innocent, invaded little Belgium, then of defeating German militarism and defending the British and French way of life. Once Woodrow Wilson brought the United States into the conflict, he spoke of “the war to end all wars.”

It didn’t. The humiliation of the losers and the catastrophic loss of life on both sides did nothing to end all wars and much to light the fuses of later ones — especially the Russian Civil War and the Second World War. The longer the war in Iraq goes on, and the more American troops are planted by Big Pushes in a highly combustible part of the world, the more we will continue to stoke a widespread humiliation and anger whose consequences are already guaranteed to haunt us for decades to come.

Adam Hochschild | Tom Dispatch.com

January 22nd, 2007 || PermaLink

An Impartial Interrogation of George W. Bush

Mr. President, Sir, when reporter Bob Woodward asked you if you had consulted with your father before ordering our army into Iraq you said, “No, he’s not the father you call on a decision like this. I talked to my heavenly Father above.” My question, Mr. President: If God asked you to bombard, invade and occupy Iraq for four years, why did he send an opposite message to the Pope? Did you not know that your father, George Bush, Sr., his Secretary of State James Baker and his National Security Advisor General Scowcroft were all opposed to your invasion? Wouldn’t you, our troops, the American people and the Iraqis all be much better off if you had listened to your more experienced elders including your earthly father? Instead of blaming God for the awful catastrophe you have unleashed in Iraq, wouldn’t it have been less self-righteous if you had fallen back on the oft-quoted explanation of wrongdoing, “The devil made me do it?”

George McGovern | The Nation

January 19th, 2007 || PermaLink

A New Cold War Can Be Averted

If America’s leaders have the foresight and the courage to look at the world as it really is, they would choose dialogue and cooperation rather than force. What is needed is not a worldwide web of military presence and intervention, but a restraint and a willingness to solve problems by political means.

Mikhail Gorbachev | Guardian / UK

January 19th, 2007 || PermaLink

The Healthcare Crisis for the Rest of Us

The solution is obvious: nationalize the healthcare system. Doctors and nurses should be federal employees. Hospitals should be healing centers, not for-profit corporations beholden to shareholders. If socialized medicine is too radical, however, there’s always the single-payer system. The key, in that case, is to put the insurance companies–which are squeezing doctors and patients alike–out of business.

The unbridled greed of corporatized healthcare is breathtaking. United HealthGroup, currently listed as #37 on the Fortune 500, earned $3.3 billion in net profits in 2006–up 28 percent from the year before. Wellpoint made a whopping $2.5 billion, a 157 percent increase. When is the last time you got a 28 percent raise? 157 percent? It’s blood money, pure and simple. How much profit is generated by the death of an uninsured or undertreated American?

Ted Rall | TedRall.com

January 18th, 2007 || PermaLink

Arguing With Bush

Yet one question has surely been settled - that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.

George W. Bush, State of the Union, 2007

By launching an unprovoked and illegal war of aggression on a major Arab Muslim country, Bush hasn’t “carried the fight to the enemy” but has rather dishonored the 9/11 dead by using their killings as a pretext to carry out his own preconceived and Ahab-like plans to “take out” Saddam Hussein. Nothing could be better calculated to increase the threat of terrorism against the United States than an attempt militarily to occupy Iraq, with all the repression and torture it has entailed.

Juan Cole | Informed Comment

January 24th, 2007 || PermaLink

The Trials, and Blessings, of Peacework

I think we’ve well entered into Orwell’s nightmare of a post-modern, post-Christian era of permanent war. We have a war president, a Congress that writes blank checks for war, an enthralled media that trumpets war, a sheepish citizenry that lets itself get fleeced for war, churches that confer their blessings on war, and courts that legalize weapons and imprison those who say no to war. Our war isn’t only permanent, but universal–we make war on the poor, on children, on the earth, on humanity, on God.
But complaining does no good, and it’s not an authentic Christian response anyway. The Christian response to a “surge of war” is a counter surge of peace, a swell of peacemakers and nonviolent resisters. All of us need to stand up, join some public action, get involved with our local peace group, speak out, and on occasion sit in. With every act of peace, unanimity comes apart and hope resurges. And we show ourselves disciples of the nonviolent Jesus.

John Dear | CommonDreams.org

January 24th, 2007 || PermaLink

Sigh for America

Bush’s latest rationale for this war is to act in support of “the Iraqi military,” but does any such entity exist? Does defending the openly tribal government of Nouri al-Maliki mean that US soldiers are now an adjunct to Shi’ite death squads, even while being their target? If Maliki and Bush are allies, why do they talk past each other? Why should the Sunni leaders of “moderate” Arab states not be alarmed by the tightening US-Shi’a embrace? And when insanity rules, does the fact that an air attack on Iran’s nuclear facility would be insane any longer mean it will not happen?

In other words, the “surge” in Iraq that matters is the movement from disaster to catastrophe. A question: How can otherwise rational policy makers and military leaders continue to cooperate in this madness?

That, obviously, is a question that goes to the US Constitution: What happens when a president’s dogged determination begins to show itself as an obsessive irrationality? In numerous television appearances last week, interviewers successfully drew Bush out, showing him to be a man in the grip of an idée fixe: He is saving America. From what, now that all explanations for the war have been debunked, he cannot say. But the president’s transcendent project of national redemption justifies his isolated inflexibility. That his decisions so palpably undermine US security and lead to unnecessary deaths means little to him because his decisions are deemed correct not by outcomes, but by being his. He is the decider.

James Carroll | Boston Globe

January 23rd, 2007 || PermaLink

The Big Push

There is a final resemblance between the present bloodshed there and the First World War. Both conflicts were fought for a curiously shifting set of noble-sounding goals. With Iraq, the Bush administration has tried on for size finding weapons of mass destruction, liberating the Iraqis, combating Islamist terrorism, and installing democracy in the Arab world. In the First World War, the Allies initially talked of coming to the defense of innocent, invaded little Belgium, then of defeating German militarism and defending the British and French way of life. Once Woodrow Wilson brought the United States into the conflict, he spoke of “the war to end all wars.”

It didn’t. The humiliation of the losers and the catastrophic loss of life on both sides did nothing to end all wars and much to light the fuses of later ones — especially the Russian Civil War and the Second World War. The longer the war in Iraq goes on, and the more American troops are planted by Big Pushes in a highly combustible part of the world, the more we will continue to stoke a widespread humiliation and anger whose consequences are already guaranteed to haunt us for decades to come.

Adam Hochschild | Tom Dispatch.com

January 22nd, 2007 || PermaLink

An Impartial Interrogation of George W. Bush

Mr. President, Sir, when reporter Bob Woodward asked you if you had consulted with your father before ordering our army into Iraq you said, “No, he’s not the father you call on a decision like this. I talked to my heavenly Father above.” My question, Mr. President: If God asked you to bombard, invade and occupy Iraq for four years, why did he send an opposite message to the Pope? Did you not know that your father, George Bush, Sr., his Secretary of State James Baker and his National Security Advisor General Scowcroft were all opposed to your invasion? Wouldn’t you, our troops, the American people and the Iraqis all be much better off if you had listened to your more experienced elders including your earthly father? Instead of blaming God for the awful catastrophe you have unleashed in Iraq, wouldn’t it have been less self-righteous if you had fallen back on the oft-quoted explanation of wrongdoing, “The devil made me do it?”

George McGovern | The Nation

January 19th, 2007 || PermaLink

A New Cold War Can Be Averted

If America’s leaders have the foresight and the courage to look at the world as it really is, they would choose dialogue and cooperation rather than force. What is needed is not a worldwide web of military presence and intervention, but a restraint and a willingness to solve problems by political means.

Mikhail Gorbachev | Guardian / UK

January 19th, 2007 || PermaLink

The Healthcare Crisis for the Rest of Us

The solution is obvious: nationalize the healthcare system. Doctors and nurses should be federal employees. Hospitals should be healing centers, not for-profit corporations beholden to shareholders. If socialized medicine is too radical, however, there’s always the single-payer system. The key, in that case, is to put the insurance companies–which are squeezing doctors and patients alike–out of business.

The unbridled greed of corporatized healthcare is breathtaking. United HealthGroup, currently listed as #37 on the Fortune 500, earned $3.3 billion in net profits in 2006–up 28 percent from the year before. Wellpoint made a whopping $2.5 billion, a 157 percent increase. When is the last time you got a 28 percent raise? 157 percent? It’s blood money, pure and simple. How much profit is generated by the death of an uninsured or undertreated American?

Ted Rall | TedRall.com

January 18th, 2007 || PermaLink