Obama's Plan to Solve this Mess

Today in Salon.com's War Room, they posted an "excerpt from the Obama campaign", which laid out his differences with the current adminstration vis a vis foreign policy and our answer to whatever war it is we're in. Now, it's only a campaign pledge, it doesn't mean much this early out, but I have to say, I do agree with this theory. The details may vary in yummy goodness, but this at least shows some intelligent thinking...

"Just because the president misrepresents our enemies does not mean we do not have them. The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real ... To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.

"The president would have us believe that every bomb in Baghdad is part of al-Qaida's war against us, not an Iraqi civil war. He elevates al-Qaida in Iraq -- which didn't exist before our invasion -- and overlooks the people who hit us on 9/11, who are training new recruits in Pakistan. He lumps together groups with very different goals: al-Qaida and Iran, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents. He confuses our mission.

"By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

"When I am president, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland."

Obama hit two key points I agree with:

• the Pres has got us all confused. There are major differences in the different groups O mentioned. Al-Qaeda, for example, will NEVER be supported by Iran, because AQ is Sunni and Iran is Shi'a. They are not on the same side. These distinctions are not clear to the American public, and in this smoke and mirrors, the Pres can make anyone seem like an enemy.
• drying up support for extremists. The Pres once famously divided the world into those "with us" and "against us". The truth is, if you were inclined to divide the world in two, the split is over extremism v. moderation. Guess what, kids? We are extremists in this fight. The Islamic extremists, by Allah, want one world in their image, and the NeoConservatice extremists, by God, want another. We are caught between the two, and both seem intent on bloodshed. If, however, we had pressed for moderation, consideration, unity, and friendship with the nations of the world after 9/11 (and before), we could have helped to "dry up" extremism with moderation, much like a rash dries up with Caladryl.
  

Most people just want to live their lives in peace and freedom. Most people in the world are more concerned, truthfully, with their family budget, sick cat, carpools, their children's health, their parents' aging, and all the rest. They will only rise to arms when they feel like their well-being is threatened, either by their own society's or another's extremism. We excite these regular folks with our imperialistic "remaking" of the Muslim world. We are doing this, and it's time we realized it. We must remake ourselves into a voice for moderation, tolerance, freedom, and peace. I can't say this is what Obama was thinking, I can only go by the quote above, but I think his words represent a new way of thinking of our relationship with the world.

I am still not endorsing any candidate. It's too early. But I will report when they say something that rings true... or false.

Just when you thought it couldn't get more ridiculous: Enter the Post-Surge

Or, If You Liked The Surge, You're Going to Looooove This!

From CNN.com:

Six months after announcing an increase of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops that became known as the "surge," Bush is scheduled to appear at a town meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday where he's expected to push for a "post-surge" phase of the four-year war, senior officials told CNN.

However, senior administration officials said that the Bush administration does not plan to make any major changes in its war strategy despite increased calls from Republican lawmakers to begin a drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq.

...The report will show "some of the benchmarks have been made, some of them haven't" and will set off a debate that will result in "the beginning of a new way," White House spokesman Tony Snow told CNN's "American Morning" on Tuesday.

"What Congress will get this week is a snapshot of the beginning of the retooling of the mission in Iraq," Snow said. "Everyone says, 'We want to do it a different way.' We agree. It's just now started."

Oh, goodie. Because what we really need is

a snapshot (=generated image of a brief moment of the past which may or may not accurately represent the event)

of the beginning (=don't expect to see this yet)

of the retooling (=to redesign the machinery that will allow for improvements to happen in the future)

of the mission (=maintaining a holding pattern while the US crams an immoral oil law down the throats of Iraqis which will cost them billions in infrastructure while the four top oil companies will retain the lion's share of the revenue)

And worse, all that has "just now started"! Gasp!

I'm starting to think impeachment is too good for these people. Do they still do that thing with the ant hills and honey?

I met a wonderful young man who hopes (!) to be heading back oversees very soon. He's hoping because he's made the jump from grunt to Military Intelligence, and he's very excited about it, as any young man would be at his career taking a leap forward. When we talked, I asked him my two main questions (you're going to have to take my word for all this, now that he's in MI he really didn't want me revealing his name):

1. When you come back here and see us all being oblivious and shopping and watching American Idol, do you just think we're idiots? (I asked because I can only imagine coming back from a war zone and then listening to someone bitch about their iPhone must make you want to punch them.)
"No, because we all have our jobs, and that's how it should be. Mine is over there, yours is over here."

2. When you hear that there is discussion back here about the purpose of these wars and everything, does that hurt your morale?
"For me, no. But in general? Of course it does, yes. But everything hurts morale. Not having a shower in the morning hurts morale. So yes, hearing people (especially the ones who don't know what they're talking about) bitch about the war hurts morale. But everything does, so you just get used to that until it doesn't matter anymore."

My answer to this will be familiar to Constant Readers: Our big, shiny military is like a big, shiny gun. It's our job as civilians to take care of this gun, maintain it, treat it with care, and for God's sake be careful where you point that thing. We don't point it at ourselves (Posse Comitatus), we don't point it at our friends (treaties). As they say here in Texas, "Don't pull a gun unless you intend to use it, and don't use it unless you intend to kill with it." (A sentiment I don't quite follow, not being a gun person myself, but I'm sure folks around here would school me.)

I believe in the debate because I love our troops. If we don't debate, it's like shooting off the gun with a blindfold on. If we don't debate, and make sure we are doing the right thing, we are irresponsible. We are irresponsible to them, to that boy who is so excited to go back. We must take care of him, which not only means his equipment while he's there and his mind and body when he returns, but it means that we must be very, very careful where we send him and what mission we give him so that we do not waste our big shiny guns and our eye-candy boys (oops, sorry, I mean professional soldiers, but c'mon, he's dreamy!) on stupid conflicts handled poorly.

I can't confirm or deny that this exquisite specimen of Texan manhood is a member of the US Military.

Why we can't leave Iraq 2 (or should we?)

I wrote a post a year ago that explained why the lessons of Afghanistan teach us we can't leave Iraq to fend for herself. My point was that since we left Afghanistan in 1989 after fighting the Soviets, we left them alone; in that chaos grew Osama Bin Laden. I'm none to keen to see that happen twelve years from now.

Since then, my post been read by many people (I got a litte site tracker dealie) but what really shocks me is that lately, it's been read by a lot more people. People do Google searches on leaving Iraq, find my old piece, and read it. I thought it was time to update.

It's June of 2007 now and the death toll, just of our guys, is over 3500. I am not sure any more. I still believe in the ideas put forth here, but... You can talk about your various options for putting out a fire on the stove, but once the whole house is on fire, perhaps it's time to just shut up and get out.

What I really hate is that these are our two choices. The intractability of the President's "stay the course" plan has pre-determined its opposite: leave. He so stubbornly clung to his position that it caused everyone (now up to 75% I hear) to line up on the other side. (I don't know how that happens, some function of human nature, I suppose.) And once again, anyone who says anything between "stay" and "leave" comes off wishy-washy and unsure. Just because "stay" is wrong doesn't mean "leave" is the answer. We are so glad to have the 75% who don't want to be in Iraq on our side, that we forget that we needed them back in 2003 to keep us from going in. Their blind obedience to the point of view du jour isn't any more helpful now than it was then.

First, I have asked our candidates to stop telling me what they would do in Iraq if they are president in 2009.

Second, I have been reading about Richard I of England, known as the Lion-Hearted, who was a horrible king who started the Crusades after massacring Jews in England. I'm starting to understand why they might get sick of Western "help". It's the same thing as building the Bin Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia to "help" the Saudis defend their country; and that was on the top of the list for OBL's wrath. Building our base was insulting to the Saudis, who are capable of taking care of themselves (but we were gearing up for coming in and gettin' us some oil).

Third, I still believe the Iraqis will need some kind of help. Help by being left alone, or help from their neighbors, help in the form of money from us, or help from the Christmas Ghosts, I don't know. But I still believe that if the Iraqis don't get some kind of help, it will leave a gaping hole of instability that will surely spew forth demons as the Afghanistan did with Osama Bin Laden. And I believe in cleaning up messes you make. The Girl Scout motto is "Leave things better than you found them," and I take that very seriously.

Forth, I believe that the most important thing for the world is stability. I don't mean to imply that stability in the form of an iron-fisted dictator is preferable to the stability of small town America, but rather that worldwide stability is preferable to worldwide warmongering. Even the stability of the Cold War was better than the instability of erupting conflict we are now seeing in the Middle East. Worldwide stability gives us the platform to address pressing issues such as poverty, women's rights, child labor, dictators, free press, personal liberty, etc. When we are living in conflict, all we can address is ending conflict.

This is actually why many of us feel that we should not have opened instability in Iraq, even though she was being ruled by a terrible dictator. While we can use conflict to depose that dictator, we can't do anything else. While Saddam was still in power, we could have UN resolutions, weapons inspectors, negotiations. We had a framework within which to move closer to success. Oh, I'm glad he's gone too, but we can't get this new government to accomplish anything because of the instability in the country.

I have an ulterior motive, I don't want worldwide instability to have exploded in the next 16 years so that there is a draft when my son is of age.

Speaking of Little Mr. Patriot, he needs his lunch, so I must finish this later.

PS I found another post I'd done on this, found here, so this is actually the third one.

Should We Leave Iraq? a second look

I used to say we had to stay in Iraq or risk leaving a failed state like Afghanistan after the Soviet war, which bred Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. I stand by that assessment, but heard on a podcast last night that areas we've cleared have become more targeted by insurgents. Apparently it's not just Wack-A-Mole for us, it is for them too. Only what pops up for them are safer areas, controlled areas. So a place like Talafar, which was the Administration's flagship of success, fell back to chaos pretty quickly because it was the flagship of success. The attackers zoomed in on it and took it back down. And if that's the case, well, damn. I guess we can't stay to help rebuild the country we broke if they smash everything back up as soon as the glue sets. However, I still think that we need to keep a close eye on them, not forget about them like we did Afghanistan (the first time... oh, and then the second time... damn...), and not like we did with Lebanon, who got democracy and then we just left them to the wolves.

From the "I couldn't have said it better" dept

Tim Grieve on Salon.com's War Room:

If you assume that Americans troops will leave Iraq someday -- and, one way or another, everyone says that they will -- then all we're talking about here is a two-part question of timing: A) What can be accomplished in the meantime, and B) how many people will die in the process? The math is pretty simple: Unless you think the answer to A is "a lot," then the number you can accept for B has got to be close to zero.

The buck should stop in its own bill

Here's an idea: From now on, appropriations can only be attached to a bill that is in the same category of spending.

Want farm appropriations? Then you're going to have to attach them to (or put up a) farm bill, not the anti-Iraq-escalation bill.

The victims of Katrina/Rita still need help! Then attach it to or put up a bill for natural disasters and stick it on there.

Very often a good bill gets attached with far too many appropriations, lovingly referred to as "pork", unless it's for your state, and then it's called "good policy". Now, this is nothing new, and neither is the fact that supporters of a bill often have to turn away from it once it's covered with the Barnacles of the Committee Sea. (Someone, I can't think who, haha, said, "I voted for the $87B before I...", yeah, everybody sing.)

We also seem to have the problem of runaway spending. If you have a kid or were one, you know that if the kid keeps hitting the parents up for a dollar here and five dollars there, it's much harder to keep track than if the kid has an allowance. Allowances can be budgeted, tracked, and renegotiated; nickel-and-dime spending runs amok.

Nickel and dime, hah! How about $87B and $250M and, and, and...? This is how the spending since the Iraq war (and before it, since many so-called Afghanistan appropriations were really to prep for the Iraq war) has gone so completely haywire that people seem shocked to hear how it's added up. Just like the parent who suddenly realizes they've been handing their kid $500 a month instead of $50.

And not just in the war(s). Does anyone really know how much we spend on agriculture? Transportation? Education? Disasters? You'd have to do a lot of research I would think to compile every bit of appropriations from all the many bills to really add it up, and it seems like a lot of folks just don't bother. The war spending is something that attracts attention, and so people have been trying to research the facts and educate the public-- but what you see there is emblematic of the way spending is handled all over the federal government. And all of this has worked so well in favor of the politicians, who can stick spending here and there and hide it from us in a three-card monte game.

So, bills with Barnacles, spending run amok, and a shell game. One fix: limit spending to bills of the same category.

First, the bills that are for important issues like war won't get bogged down with the Bridge to Nowhere. (Well, and silly bills won't either, I guess.)

Second, we can finally track and responsibly allocate money to different arenas while keeping a good handle of what we've spent already and to what end. Want a bridge? I mean, in all fairness, the 50 people who live on that island don't think it's "nowhere". But let's weigh it with all of our other transporation spending, see if it's a priority, check to see if we can afford to spend more, then allocate funds or put them off for another try next year.

Third, (which is an extension of the last point) we can keep our eye on those who are trying to hide money from us by spreading it around through so many bills, because they just won't be allowed to do that any more.

I'm not advocating that we have one bill for each item to spend money on (you can't have a bill for each bridge that someone wants to build, it would be too many bills), but just that when appropriations are attached or grouped together, that they are grouped by spending category. Farm bills are farm bills.

This seems like such a simple fix. Either there is something wrong with it that I haven't thought of, in which case please tell me in the comments section, or politicians won't listen because... they're crooks? Can't think of why else they wouldn't support it.

Now it's on you. Tell me why I'm wrong, or go tell your elected representatives that you want to see spending limited to bills of its own category.

"I voted against the surge before I voted for it."

This is the only reason for the non-binding resolution: so that later on when everyone's running for office again they can say that they voted against the surge before they voted for spending the money on it.

The next thing that will happen, after the Pres ignores the Congress' resolution and goes on with his surge plan, is that he will ask Congress for the money to pay for it. These politians know that if they vote against the money (the infamous "power of the purse") they will be branded as "anti-military" and "not supporting the troops". The power of the purse may be what the Framers intended for Congress to wield, but it is political suicide when applied to military concerns.

So the only way out is to first pass the "We don't like the surge" bill and then pass the spending bill, and when asked on the campaign trail in a couple of years they can say,

(everybody sing along now)

"I voted against the surge before I voted for it."

Very good.

These are not the corruptions you are looking for...

Ever hear of Stuart W. Bowen, Jr.? He joined the Bush gubernatorial campaign in 1994 and followed Bush & Co. to the White House (after a 35-day stay in Florida watching over the recount).

Sensing a political lackey? Oh, it gets worse. Before his latest job, he spent 9 months working for a "Washington law firm with a client, URS Group, that sought and won Iraqi contracts." [Herman].

His latest job was heading the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction-- "lead investigator of the billions of dollars... spent rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure" [Herman].

Scared yet? Hillary and California Dem Henry Waxman were. Clinton voiced concern that Bowen would "lack the independence needed to fully monitor the way American taxpayer dollars are spent on Iraqi reconstruction," when it was first set up. Waxman for his part had a report published entitled The Politicization of Inspectors General, in which Bowen got his very own section*. "The report concluded that Bush has a habit of putting politically-connected people with little to no auditing experience in key spots as inspectors general." [Herman]

But here's the thing: once the administration had effectively cut off oversight by Congress, they had to do something. So they put in a lackey and went back to letting Halliburton and others rip off the country. (That's admittedly a simplification, I encourage you to use the net to fill in the blanks about how this all came about.)

OK, if you're a freedom-lover, you're probably already a little spooked about the fox getting a baby fox to guard the henhouse. Luckily, the baby fox didn't really get it, and he actually did guard the henhouse. Bowen released reports that--gasp!-- actually tracked down the free-flowing money being tossed about in Iraq and uncovered what the Australian news org The Age headlined as "Huge Fraud".

Was it enough? Did he actually track where the money went and find the crooks and prosecute them. Um, well, he might have. Even if you're horrified at another example of cronyism, today's news is worse:

the Republican-led Congress has moved quickly to address the problem: It's denying Bowen authority to monitor the $21 billion in reconstruction funds included in the latest Iraq funding bill.


Thanks to Ken Herman of the Cox News Service for his 2005 article"Former Bush aide oversees Iraq reconstruction spending" for the background info, and Tim Grieve's post at Salon.com's War Room for tipping me off to the latest news.

*"...because the slot he now holds is not under the Inspector General Act that created the other posts at federal agencies." [Herman]

(originally written in Nov 06, finally published today!)

The Terminal Patient

[I'll update this post with accurate quotes and links later.]

I was just listening to All Things Considered on NPR. They were talking about Rumsfeld leaving, along with members of his staff, and the job ahead for the next guy, whose name escapes me.

One interviewee said that "the next guy" dealing with Iraq is like a doctor, and Iraq is a patient. Iraq The Patient is in his 60s and has smoked and drank for many years, and now has lung cancer and heart cancer and says to the doctor, "Help me, do something," when in fact there isn't much any doctor could do in that case.

I'd previously blithely referred to Iraq as "spilled milk" (claiming that once the milk is spilled, who did it and why doesn't matter much and there aren't too many ways of cleaning it up, so differing views on Iraq couldn't actually be that different). I like this guy's assessment too, (the way he phrased it, anyway) and wanted to share it.

I just hope that this doctor can at least make the patient more comfortable while we search for a miracle cure.

Oh, the poor Iraqis... Can you imagine describing the USA as a terminal patient?

Outrage

I wonder, will the death toll of soldiers in Iraq get banner headlines (as it did when it reached 1,000 and 2,000) when it surpasses the death toll of 9/11?

I was surprised I hadn't heard anything when it went past 2,752, which I thought was the 9/11 count (and I did see that number on Wikipedia, but now I can't find it). I was looking for that link and instead came up with another page which lists the death toll at 2,997. Currently, the death toll of soldiers in Iraq is 2,813 according to the War Room. Perhaps that is why it wasn't splashed all over CNN. (It certainly wasn't because they suddenly developed taste.)

Here's the thing: milestones of any sort give us a chance to stop the day-to-day and reflect. I've complained again and again that reflection has been sorely lacking in this administration (and when the other side tries, they are accused of whining). I agree with many conservative pundits who said that touting the number 2,000 was sort of silly, since the 1999th soldier was just as important as the 2000th. But if we're not going to reflect on it from soldiers 1-1999, then by all means, let's stop and think a second at 2,000.

But kiddos, you'd better stand up and scream when the toll reaches 2,997 or whatever number you find more reliable. Not because he or she was more important than the 2996th, but because that will mean

THAT GEORGE W. BUSH AND DONALD RUMSFELD HAVE KILLED MORE U.S. CITIZENS THAN THE TERRORISTS DID ON 9/11.

And if that doesn't make you quake in your boots, then for goodness' sake, don't vote next Tuesday.

UPDATE: 02/2007 Well, we're well over 3000 soldiers dead now and no one that I know of ever mentioned this idea that we've surpassed 9/11. I don't know what to make of that, I was sure the media would talk about it.

For better or worse

There is an article on Salon.com by Nir Rosen called "Did the invasion make things worse in Iraq?" that I thought was worth quoting. He has been in Iraq since 2003 as a reporter and most of the article lists atrocities committed by the Hussein regime before the US invasion.

Was it all worth it? Was it better to leave Saddam in power? Are Iraqis better or worse off than they were before the American war?

I never know what to say when asked this question. How do you compare different kinds of terror?

Those spared Saddam's prisons and executioners may be better off, though they have not been spared the American prisons, or attacks, or the resistance's bombs, or the death squads of the civil war. The Kurds are certainly better off, on their way to independence, benefiting from their relative stability and improved economy. The rest of Iraq? In many ways, things are worse. Under Saddam the violence came from one source, the regime. Now it has been democratically distributed. Death can come from anywhere, at all times, no matter who you are. You can be killed for crossing the street, for going to the market, for driving your car, for having the wrong name, for being in your house, for being a Sunni, for being a Shia, for being a woman. The American military can kill you in an operation, you can be arrested by militias and disappear in Iraq's new secret prisons, now run by Shias, or you can be kidnapped by the resistance, or by criminal gangs.

Americans cannot simply observe the horror of Iraq and shake their heads in wonder, as if it were Rwanda and they had no role. America is responsible for the new chaos in Iraq, which began following the invasion and the botched and brutal occupation. Iraq's people continue to suffer under the American occupation and civil war, just as they did under the American-imposed sanctions and bombings before the war, and just as they did under the years of dictatorship. Once more they are mere victims of powers they cannot control. Saddam is out and the Americans are in, but Iraq is still a republic of fear.

Why we can't leave Iraq

We can't just take our toys and go home from Iraq. Why?

Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 ostensibly to bolster the Communist ideals in that country, but more likely was there for the same reason everyone goes there-- to secure the oil and trade routes. It was also a "last throes" effort to show military dominance in a crumbling empire. We went in to stop them, in our ongoing fight against Communism, but also because I think we knew they were in their last throes and wanted to hand their asses to them one last time. We backed the Mujahidin, who were not only tired of people invading their country but were religious Muslims who disliked the atheist Communists. After ten years of fighting, the Soviets gave up in 1989 and pulled out of Afghanistan.

The Soviet occupation resulted in a mass exodus of over 5 million Afghans who moved into refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. More than 3 million alone settled in Pakistan. Faced with mounting international pressure and the loss of approximately 15,000 Soviet soldiers as a result of Mujahideen opposition forces trained by the United States, Pakistan, and other foreign governments, the Soviets withdrew ten years later, in 1989.

Following the removal of the Soviet forces in 1989, the U.S. and its allies lost interest in Afghanistan and did little to help rebuild the war-ravaged country or influence events there. The USSR continued to support the regime of Dr. Najibullah (formerly the head of the secret service, Khad) until its downfall in 1992. However, the absence of the Soviet forces resulted in the downfall of the government as it steadily lost ground to the guerrilla forces.

As the vast majority of the elites and intellectuals had either been systematically eliminated by the Communists, or escaped to take refuge abroad, a dangerous leadership vacuum came into existence. Fighting continued among the various Mujahidin factions, eventually giving rise to a state of warlordism. The chaos and corruption that dominated post-Soviet Afghanistan in turn spawned the rise of the Taliban in response to the growing chaos. [Wikipedia]

We just left them there! We didn't act as a stabilizing force, we didn't try to help them rebuild their infrastructure, we didn't try to help them establish a democratic (or any other kind) of government, and as you saw in the Wikipedia quote, we even left the Soviets backing the Najibullah regime. We treated them like whores-- we got what we wanted, put our pants back on, and tossed a Benjamin on the bed where Afghanistan was left weeping and wondering what happened.

And you know what happened next-- the Taliban went crazy, stoned women, blew up statues thousands of years old, and coddled their favorite son, Osama Bin Laden, who to them was a heroic fighter who had dedicated his life to fighting the Soviets and protecting his newfound home. He of course went on to attack us on 9/11, and though I don't have the expertise to say that he was mad at us for leaving them there with a war-torn country, that's my understanding.

This is why we can't just abandon Iraq. We need to stay and be a humanitarian and rebuilding force. I know that Jack Murtha is correct when he says that Americans have become the target, and that our presence there has continued to irritate the situation. But that's exactly where our military strategy in Iraq is falling apart.

How does Hamas win so much support? Because they act like the Red Cross and the Shriners combined-- a social service organization, bringing aid to the little people. And in response, the little people love them. If we could stop raiding houses and start building them, and show the people the good side of America, we would not be as big of a target.

I confess I don't know how to do this, but for Pete's sake, I'm a Texas housewife with most of a degree in directing, I'm not a foreign policy expert. I just know what I see.

Ironically, Afghanistan is also the reason we should pull out of Iraq. We started a war there that became the red-headed stepchild of our foreign policy, and things there are disintegrating and fast. Poppy fields are once again the biggest cash crop, supplying heroin to the world. The tribal warlords are back, and the Taliban keeps trying to make an appearance. Because we are once again wiping our feet on that country, the people don't trust us. And why should they? This is the second time we've been there (if you don't lump us in with all the other Western peoples who have come and gone) and once again, we aren't doing a damn thing to really help these people in the long term.

(Oh, don't get at me for not supporting the troops. All I'm saying is that our men and women are hard at work giving the man the proverbial fish instead of teaching him how to fish himself. That's not to say they aren't trying, but they aren't helping in a lasting way.)

Why did we try to create Iraq into the modern democratic state and not Afghanistan? Why not just try to create our beacon of hope in the first place we "controlled"? Because Iraq was a modern, educated, secular country which, while being controlled by a madman and his sons, was in every other respect much like America. Afghanistan is more like the Wild West-- it's tribal, it's rural, it's uneducated (due to the combination of a lack of educational system and the killing and removal of the intellectual community during the Soviet occupation), and it's distrustful, tending to favor whomever is providing a tangible benefit right now, whether that is a warlord promising money and protection or a US soldier with a candy bar. So we "drained the swamp" (which we didn't really) and went on to invade another country which we thought we could better mold into the Western model of democracy.

We can't pull out of Iraq. Lord, I wish we could. I'm a peacenik, and I wish to hell we hadn't attacked Iraq in the first place. But to pull out now would be repeating our mistakes of the past. We left Afghanistan in 1989, and it took 12 years before that came back to bite us in the ass, but eventually it did. I don't want something similar to happen 12 years from now because we left Iraq before we had cleaned up our mess.

UPDATE: Note the date on this post, June 21, 2006. It's June of 2007 now and the death toll, just of our guys, is over 3500. I am not sure any more. I still believe in the ideas put forth here, but... You can talk about your various options for putting out a fire on the stove, but once the whole house is on fire, perhaps it's time to just shut up and get out. Go here for my latest post on this subject.

Weapons of Mass Deception

That's the title of an EXCELLENT documentary that aired just the other day on the Link TV network.

http://www.wmdthefilm.com/ film's site

http://www.linktv.org/ network's site

It was about all the Hollywood tricks used to dazzle the reporters from the "run-up to the war" until now. For example, embedding the reporters with the troops, which was genius. Put them in danger and ask them to report on the people that are keeping them alive--Stockhom Syndrome, anyone? And pumping them full of fear of chemical weapons and putting them through all kinds of quick-put-your-mask-on drills, which kept them too busy to ask any real questions about the war. It won Best Doc at the 2004 Austin Film Festival, the Durban International Festival, and the Starz Denver International Film Festival.

"Most of the anti-war movement focused on the crimes of the Bush Administration ignoring the mainstream media, its far more effective accomplice," says former network producer Danny Schechter (ABC, CNN). "The government orchestrated the war while the media marketed it. You couldn't have one without the other." [from the film's site]

Schechter has just written a new book as a follow-up to the film, called "When News Lies", which is a follow-up to his 2003 "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception" which is "an account of the TV coverage of the US invasion". "'When News Lies' includes the feature-length DVD of the prize-winning film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)" so there's a way to get your hands on the documentary. You can also order it on the web site.

I had long suspected that the answer to, "Why weren't you asking the tough questions?" was, "We were busy making pretty graphics." Knowing what the news is going to be is gold in that industry. They had something like 7 months to make graphics, coordinate sat phones and set up shop in Iraq, and create all the computer graphics of planes, bombs, etc. When you ask what they were doing, they were getting ready for the mother of all telecasts, not questioning whether this was good for the country and holding people accountable. If they had been working on that, and we went to war anyway, they would have missed their chance to make the coverage as pretty and dazzling as the next network. CNN in particular had its own shadow to contend with-- the first Iraq war put them on the map, with rudimentary technology, and this time they felt they had to outdo themselves or risk looking like yesterday's news network. Now their ads boast they've won awards for their coverage.

The TV networks in America considered their non-stop coverage their finest hour, pointing to the use of embedded journalists and new technologies that permitted viewers to see a war up close for the first time. But different countries saw different wars. Why? [also from the film's site]

The film discusses "five wars": one that was actually being fought, the one we saw on US news networks, the one the Arab nations saw, the one Europe saw, and the one Iraqis were seeing. In South Africa, for example, the media focused on the US cluster bombs, how they worked, and their effect of blowing limbs off of children. Our networks showed the POV of the plane gleaming in the desert sun, while theirs showed the POV of the ground where the bombs were falling.

Another section talks about the public being misled, as is shown in this graphic. I wish the Daily Show was listed in this poll. Note that PBS (and they said this included NPR also) viewers (/listeners) were the least deceived. No wonder the administration is trying to kill public broadcasting.



I urge everyone to see the documentary and get the book. You will be shocked and disgusted, or you won't be because now this is what you expect from these government hijackers but now you'll have talking points.

A Short Play: George Spills the Milk

A short play: George Spills the Milk.

George, age 6, and John, age 12, are in the kitchen. Colin, age 8, is there too, and Hillary, age 10, is in the living room. Mom is outside gardening.

George: I want some milk. Let me into the fridge.

John: OK, I mean, if you really need it, go ahead. Wait, [calls out] Hillary, what do you think?

Hillary [from the other room]: 'S fine...

George opens the fridge and lifts the glass bottle of milk, which starts to teeter in his hands.

John: George, don't spill it! I don't think this is a good idea anymore. Put it back.

Colin: If you spill it, you're going to have to clean it up.

George: I'm not going to spill it!

He manages to wrestle it out of the door shelf.

George: Mission Accomplished!

John: Watch it!

And George drops the milk. The glass shatters and the milk goes everywhere.

John: I knew it! You made a huge mess!

George: You told me I could get the milk. [as Colin opens his mouth] Shut up, Colin.

Colin: I'm not saying we're not friends anymore, but I'm going home.

Colin leaves.

John: I can't believe this mess!

George: I'm cleaning it, hold on.

He gets just one paper towel and starts to dab at the floor.

John: You're going to need more paper towels than that.

George: This one is just fine.

John: It's falling apart! It's not strong enough and rubbing it on the floor is tearing it up.

George: It will be fine...

He half-heartedly dabs at the floor, not really cleaning anything.

John: You needed more paper towels.

George: I know! I know! Ok, fine...

George gets more towels and continues mopping up the floor, not really getting anything clean. Hillary enters.

Hillary: What a mess!

George: I know, I know!

John: He needed more paper towels.

Hillary: Obviously. And steadier hands.

George: You said I could get the milk! You said!

Hillary: I didn't know you were going to make a huge mess, I thought you could handle it.

John: I didn't know you would spill it either. Besides, I told you you could before I told you not to. So just remember I said not to when you talk to Mom.

Mom enters.

Mom: Talk to Mom about what? Oh, my goodness! What a mess! Who is responsible for this?

George, Hillary, and John are all talking over each other.

George: You know how you said milk was important--

John: I told him not to--

Hillary: I was in the other room--

George: --they said I could!

John: I did not!

George: Did too! You said I could!

John: I said you could before I said you couldn't!!!

Mom: Enough! I need to go back out to the garden. The question is, who is going to be in charge now? It clearly shouldn't be George.

John: Me! I told him not to get out the milk AND I told him he needed more paper towels.

Hillary: Me! I mean, it's not really anyone's fault that the milk spilled, and I don't know exactly what to do about it, but George is a pooty-head.

John: Well, duh. We all know he's a pooty-head. The important thing is that I told him not to do it and I told him he needed more paper towels.

Mom: Yes, but what about the mess?

George: I cleaned it long enough. Now it's up to the next guy.

John: Well, it's a pretty big mess. I think paper towels are needed, more than George was ever going to use...

Hillary: Well, it is a big mess, and I mean, you never can tell where the milk is going to get to. I can't exactly say what I would do, I just know it needs to get cleaned up.

John: Obviously.

And here I bring down the curtain on my little play.

The point is, I'm getting really tired of this discussion. Yes, George is a pooty-head who spilled milk everywhere. Yes, it's going to be a mess cleaning it up, and no matter how much you are in opposition to him and his mess-making, whoever gets in there next is going to have to clean it up. And they will probably clean it up in basically the same way that George would, because there's not that many ways to do it.

So just because you are in opposition to George doesn't mean that "what you're going to do in Iraq" is going to be that much different than George would do if he stayed, or what any of your opponents would do: deal with the facts on the ground and try to get us out of there in one piece without leaving behind a hotbed of terrorism (the kind we left in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out).

The salient point to sway me then, to choose the next POTUS, is that from now on you are going to be careful. That you won't get us recklessly into another war. That you will be honest with us. That you will start to deal with international terror cells in a law-enforcement paradigm and stop bashing around the world with your bombs. That you will start treating them like the cockroachy criminals that they are and stop elevating their status to warriors that we have to send our warriors to fight in a big-scale war. That the next time a POTUS tells me that we have to go to war to defend ourselves, we actually do. That we will go back to the Powell Doctrine. That we won't have this big mess again.

As for the cleaning up, well, it's going to be messy and no one is really going to have a good answer as to how to magically make the mess go away. I think we should stop expecting that they will, and focus on whether they have the quality to keep us from future messes.


[Published by me as a letter to the War Room on Salon.com. Editor's Choice!]

Bad News in Iraq

I got an email from my cousin touting some good news from Iraq, a commendation for a civilian who has helped to add infrastructure to the country. She added that "we never hear good news" like this, and so she wanted to spread it around.

We hear a lot about this, that there is a bias toward bad news. Well, this is true of journalism: "If it bleeds, it leads." On my local news I rarely hear about a theatre company finding a new space or a church group feeding the homeless. It always seems to be one story after another about murders and car accidents, even though I live in a safe community. And we hear more about police officers shooting suspects than we do about them getting kittens out of trees, even though I believe on the whole they are honorable people.

And I don't think that we as a people have a grasp at how awful it is to live in Iraq. We in our cushy American lives can't conceive of the difficulty. It's hard enough to live under the threat of kidnappings and rapes and murders, armed militias and coalition forces barging into your homes day and night, and roadside IEDs-- but try doing it with electricity cutting on and off, schools and work opening and closing, no sewer, running water, or garbage pickup. If you really want to know-- and if you have the conscience God gave you YOU SHOULD-- check out the link to the wonderful Baghdad Burning, a blog written by an average person living in Iraq. (I put the link in the sidebar on the right.)

Humor can be an excellent lens-- to get an idea of what it's like to live in Iraq, check out some April Fool's Joke ideas from Baghdad Burning's author (handle: riverbend):

1. “Guess what?! There’s going to be electricity this summer!!!” (For better effect, it is suggested a candle be broken in half and thrown high into the air with a whoop.)

2. “Guess what?! The Americans have declared they will be gone by 2010 and they won’t leave permanent bases behind!!!” (This should be said with a straight face.)

3. “Guess what?! They didn’t actually find three corpses in the strip of trees two streets away!!!”

4. “Guess what?! The Puppets finally formed a government!!!”

5. “Guess what?! They didn’t actually detain [fill in with the name of a relative, friend- everyone knows someone in prison these days]!!!”

6. "Guess what?! Chalabi solved the gasoline crisis!!!"

7. "Guess what?! No more religious militias- they've been banned from the country!!!" (This should be said in a low voice - just in case)

8. "Great news!! The US is going to make public how the billions of dollars in Iraqi oil money AND donations were 'spent'!!!"

9. "Guess what?! They're going to actually begin reconstructing the country and they estimate it will take 5 years!!!"

10. "Guess what?! They caught Zarqawi!!!" (This will only work on Iraqis who actually think he exists.)

I don't think we can talk enough about how awful the living conditions are in Iraq, because even as much as we talk about it, I don't think we as Americans can grasp it without going there.

And then on CNN's On The Story* a correspondent was answering the question about why she doesn't report more good news. She said that part of the problem, beyond the difficulty of getting around and security issues, is that the Defense Department will often specifically ask them NOT to report good news. Got a power plant up and running? If you report it, the "bad guys" (of whatever ilk) will bomb it. Got a school open? If you talk about it, they'll shoot it up and kill the children.

ABC's overnight news coverage was doing a story about a sitcom being filmed for Iraqi TV-- which was of course about a hapless George Constanza-type who can't get the girl, because that is universal-- and while they were filming the story, the head of the entertainment division for the Iraqi network had been murdered. Even attempts at happy stories turn bloody in reporting this war. (The online version of this story is here.)

I was trying to track down the CNN quotes from above and instead found an article entitled, Baghdad: Where No One Is Safe.

"Who do you trust in your neighborhood?" [correspondent Cal Perry] asked a resident of Baghdad.

"No one," he said.

"Who secures your house, your family?" [Perry] asked.

"I do. My brother lives downstairs. We have weapons. We are always in touch on the phone; we have codes," he said.

He then added, "It will get worse -- everyone knows this."

Mr. Perry went on to say, "Bodies are found every day, all over Baghdad. Dozens. Sometimes scores. Some are bound, tortured and beheaded. Others are simply shot, execution-style. The spiral continues, and no one knows what the sunrise in Baghdad will bring tomorrow, next week or next month."

So don't blame a biased media for not reporting the happy news, there truly isn't very much, and what there is they're afraid to report on for fear it could be taken away. Do some exploration beyond the daily body count and understand what is really going on there. And then you too might be shouting from the rooftops, demanding to know how our great country let this happen, and what we are going to do to fix it.

*I can't find the transcript, I can't remember the date. This is the kind of sloppy research that bloggers get nailed with all the time, and I can only say, sorry, I wasn't actively blogging when I saw this, and I watch a LOT of CNN and it's easy to get it confused. And I really wish I could find the name of the correspondent in Baghdad, she's got long blond hair and as I recall a British accent. Now that I'm posting more often and more seriously, I'll try to get better about these things.

UPDATE: CNN has started a weekend show called "Iraq: This Week in War" (or something like that, it hasn't appeared on their web site yet as far as I can see) and part of their programming is checking in on the good news, including power plants, schools, etc. It's a sad little section, it almost seems like if you tell the good news it sounds so meager it emphasizes how bad things are. But at least they are trying to "balance" their coverage.