The Middle Ease, Condi, and zero probability

Success Story

Illustration: Well, this is the last, I think, of the illustrations from our illustrator. He has decided that nothing having to do with politics or current events is worth paying attention to, and he has a point. Thoreau remarked that he never read the newspapers because, once you know the pattern, there is no need to clutter things up with more and more examples. So there will be unjust wars of colonization, politicians who are hypocrites, preachers who, in Chaucer's word are "shitten," and various other criminals and father-rapers.

Actually, there is no need for this blog either, but sometimes I just can't help myself. Illustrated here is the Sheik who spent most of his time in a penthouse in Jordan, but went to Iraq to meet Bush and say how he was leading the fight against Al-Qeada. Five days later, he was dead.

A short time ago, one of you asked about Rice's chances of success in solving the Israel-Palestine problem. They are zero. Not only is she incompetent and partial, but even if she had a chance and support, there is no way.

In fact, I wonder if there is any solution possible. There are some points that both sides must agree to before there is even a chance, and I will list them in no particular order.

First, the Palestinians must abandon the 'right of return' which is a non-starter for the Israeli side. Since 1948 through today, more and more Palestinians have been driven from there homes, deliberately, by the Zionists. These Palestinians still have their legal deeds to their homes and the original keys with them. The right is internationally supported and no one in any United States Government cares. The trouble is, the Jews do not want them. If they were to return, the theocratic rule would be outvoted and a secular government put in its place. The Palestinians would easily outnumber the Jews.

Second, the Israelis would have to remove all settlers entirely from beyond the internationally recognized border of 1967. They have agreed to do this, in principle, but not any more. They have created, in fact, a zone of occupation and will never abandon it. If all the settlers leave Palestinian land, there may be a chance.

Third, Israel continues to believe, or at least say, that the object is to drive them into the sea. Well, until they behave, many will feel that way, so Israel uses this as a rationale for recognition of a "right to exist". Actually, no government has a "right to exist" other than what is given to it. Israel must be willing to negotiate with Hamas as well as other Palestinian factions. In return, Hamas can at least recognize that Israel exists.

Actually, perhaps the only real solution would be a one state solution with every human being from the sea to the Jordanian border having the right to vote in free and democratic elections. This would be rejected by both sides, but especially Israel because of secularization.

I found three articles that you may find interesting. The first is by Chalmers Johnson. He has written an excellent trilogy on the Decline of America, and naturally has been ignored. It bears some similarity to Gibbon's work on the Roman Empire, but is much more accurate. He shows how greed has driven this country all along, but has a bit of a problem with the Decider who is just so bad that it is difficult to compare him with anyone or any pervious President.

The second is by Tarik Ali.

The last is one feminism and the celebration of Islamic-Fascism week. Really, no one should know about fascism more than U.S. Citizens as they live in and support it, but never use that name.

A few other things: Fema held a press conference. Well, actually, FEMA employees asked the questions and the deputy director answered them. No news reporters were allowed to ask a single question.

The Decider wants more money for the war.

More Americans died in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Decider's solution is to attack Iran.

Cheney fell asleep at a televised meeting with the Decider.

Steven Colbert ranked fifth in popularity for the presidency amongst Democratic voters.

Paris Hilton decided not to save Africa because she was told "it is dangerous there."

California is still burning, but half its national guard is in Iraq.

George Carlin considers Keith Olbermann's show the best news show on television. It is called "Countdown" and is on at 9 eastern on MSNBC.

I have always thought that sports-casters were better trained to be newsmen anyway because even if your side looses, you have to say so. If an outfielder drops a ball, you cannot say he caught it. [One notable exception was Bob Elson from Chicago who would say things like "He is safe, but the unpire called him out."] He is in the Hall of Fame. Bob Ueker, of Major League, does a good impression of a mixture of him and Harry Carey.

***

**

*NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN*

*01/17/07 "**Harpers Magazine*

" -- -- T*he United States

remains, for the moment, the most powerful nation in history, but it

faces a violent contradiction between its long republican tradition and

its more recent imperial ambitions.

The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is

unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to

keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain

democrat¬ic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not,

the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the

course of non-democratic empire.

Several factors, however, indicate that this course will be a brief one,

which most likely will end in economic and political collapse.

Military Keynesianism: The imperial project is expensive. The flow of

the nation's wealth ' from taxpayers and (increasingly) foreign lenders

through the government to military contractors and (decreasingly) back

to the taxpayers ' has created a form of 'military Keynesianism,' in

which the domestic economy re¬quires sustained military ambition in

order to avoid recession or collapse.

The Unitary Presidency: Sustained military ambition is inherently

anti-republican, in that it tends to concentrate power in the executive

branch. In the United States, President George W. Bush subscribes to an

esoteric interpretation of the Constitution called the theory of the

unitary ex¬ecutive, which holds, in effect, that the president has the

authority to ignore the separation of pow¬ers written into the

Constitution, creating a feed¬back loop in which permanent war and the

uni¬tary presidency are mutually reinforcing.

Failed Checks on Executive Ambition: The U.S. legislature and judiciary

appear to be in¬capable of restraining the president and there¬fore

restraining imperial ambition. Direct opposition from the people, in the

form of democratic action or violent uprising, is unlikely because the

television and print media have by and large found it unprofitable to

inform the public about the actions of the country's leaders. Nor is it

likely that the military will attempt to take over the executive branch

by way of a coup.

Bankruptcy and Collapse: Confronted by the limits of its own vast but

nonetheless finite financial resources and lacking the political check

on spending provided by a functioning democracy, the United States will

within a very short time face financial or even political collapse at

home and a significantly diminished ability to project force abroad.

*DISCUSSION *

*Military Keynesianism *

The ongoing U.S. militarization of its foreign affairs has spiked

precipitously in recent years, with increasingly expensive commitments

in Afghanistan and Iraq. These commitments grew from many specific

political factors, including the ideological predilections of the

current regime, the growing need for material access to the oil-rich

regions of the Middle East, and a long-term bipartisan emphasis on

hegemony as a basis for national security. The domestic economic basis

for these commitments, however, is consistently overlooked. Indeed,

America's hegemonic policy is in many ways most accurately understood as

the inevitable result of its decades-long policy of military Keynesianism.

During the Depression that preceded World War II, the English economist

John Maynard Keynes, a liberal capitalist, proposed a form of governance

that would mitigate the boom-and-bust cycles inherent in capitalist

economies. To prevent the economy from contracting, a development

typically accompanied by social unrest, Keynes thought the government

should take on debt in order to put people back to work. Some of these

deficit-financed government jobs might be socially useful, but Keynes

was not averse to creating make-work tasks if necessary. During periods

of prosperity, the government would cut spending and rebuild the

treasury. Such countercyclical planning was called 'pump-priming.'

Upon taking office in 1933, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, with the

assistance of Congress, put several Keynesian measures into effect,

including socialized retirement plans, minimum wages for all workers,

and government-financed jobs on massive projects, including the

Triborough Bridge in New York City, the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington,

and the Tennessee Valley Authority, a flood-control and

electric-power-¬generation complex covering seven states. Conservative

capitalists feared that this degree of government intervention would

delegitimate capitalism ' which they understood as an economic system of

quasi-natural laws ' and shift the balance of power from the capitalist

class to the working class and its unions. For these reasons,

establishment figures tried to hold back countercyclical spending.

The onset of World War II, however, made possible a significantly

modified form of state socialism. The exiled Polish economist Michal

Kalecki attributed Germany's success in overcoming the global Depression

to a phenomenon that has come to be known as 'military Keynesianism.'

Government spending on arms increased manufacturing and also had a

multiplier effect on general consumer spending by raising worker

incomes. Both of these points are in accordance with general Keynesian

doctrine. In addition, the enlargement of standing armies absorbed many

workers, often young males with few skills and less education. The

military thus becomes an employer of last resort, like Roosevelt's

Civilian Conservation Corps, but on a much larger scale.

Rather than make bridges and dams, however, workers would make bullets,

tanks, and fighter planes. This made all the difference. Although Adolf

Hitler did not undertake rearmament for purely economic reasons, the

fact that he advocated governmental support for arms production made him

acceptable not only to the German industrialists, who might otherwise

have opposed his destabilizing expansionist policies, but also to many

around the world who celebrated his achievement of a 'German economic

miracle.'

In the United States, Keynesian policies continued to benefit workers,

but, as in Germany, they also increasingly benefited wealthy

manu¬facturers and other capitalists. By the end of the war, the United

States had seen a massive shift. Dwight Eisenhower, who helped win that

war and later became president, described this shift in his 1961

presidential farewell address:

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by

any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of

World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no

armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and

as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency

improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a

permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three

and a half million men and women ate directly engaged in the defense

establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than

the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms

industry is new in the American experience. The total influence '

¬economic, political, even spiritual ' is felt in every city, every

statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the

imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend

its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all

involved; so is the very structure of our society.

Eisenhower went on to suggest that such an arrangement, which he called

the 'military¬-industrial complex,' could be perilous to American

ideals. The short-term economic benefits were clear, but the very nature

of those benefits ' which were all too carefully distributed among

workers and owners in 'every city, every statehouse, every office of the

federal government' ' tended to short-¬circuit Keynes's insistence that

government spending be cut back in good times. The prosperity of the

United States came in¬creasingly to depend upon the construction and

continual maintenance of a vast war machine, and so military supremacy

and economic security became increasingly intertwined in the minds of

voters. No one wanted to turn off the pump.

Between 1940 and 1996, for instance, the United States spent nearly $4.5

trillion on the development, testing, and construction of nuclear

weapons alone. By 1967, the peak year of its nuclear stockpile, the

United States possessed some 32,000 deliverable bombs. None of them was

ever used, which illustrates perfectly Keynes's observation that, in

order to create jobs, the government might as well decide to bury money

in old mines and 'leave them to private enterprise on the well-tried

principles of laissez faire to dig them up again.' Nuclear bombs were

not just America's secret weapon; they were also a secret economic weapon.

Such spending helped create economic growth that lasted until the 1973

oil crisis. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan once again brought the

tools of military Keynesianism to bear, with a policy of significant tax

cuts and massive deficit spending on military projects, allegedly to

combat a new threat from Communism. Reagan's military expenditures

accounted for 5.9 percent of the gross domestic product in 1984, which

in turn fueled a 7 percent growth rate for the economy as a whole and

helped reelect Reagan by a landslide.

During the Clinton years military spending fell to about 3 percent of

GDP, but the economy rallied strongly in Clinton's second term due to

the boom in information technologies, weakness in the previously

competitive Japanese economy, and¬ ' paradoxically ' serious efforts to

reduce the national debt.(3) With the coming to power of George W. Bush,

however, military Keynesianism returned once again. Indeed, after he

began his war with Iraq, the once-erratic relationship between defense

spending and economic growth became nearly parallel. A spike in defense

spending in one quarter would see a spike in GDP, and a drop in defense

spending would likewise see a drop in GDP.

To understand the real weight of military Keynesianism in the American

economy today, however, one must approach official defense statistics

with great care. The 'defense' budget of the United States ' that is,

the reported budget of the Department of Defense ' does not include: the

Department of Energy's spend¬ing on nuclear weapons ($16.4 billion

slated for fiscal 2006), the Department of Homeland Security's outlays

for the actual 'defense' of the United States ($41 billion), or the

Depart¬ment of Veterans Affairs' responsibilities for the lifetime care

of the seriously wounded ($68 billion). Nor does it include the billions

of dol¬lars the Department of State spends each year to finance foreign

arms sales and militarily re¬lated development or the Treasury

Depart¬ment's payments of pensions to military re¬tirees and widows and

their families (an amount not fully disclosed by official statistics).

Still to be added are interest payments by the Treasury to cover past

debt-financed defense outlays. The economist Robert Higgs estimates that

in 2002 such interest payments amounted to $138.7 billion.

Even when all these things are included, Enron-style accounting makes it

hard to obtain an accurate understanding of U.S. dependency on military

spending. In 2005, the Government Accountability Office reported to

Congress that 'neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the

war is costing' or 'details on how the appropriated funds are being

spent.' Indeed, the GAO found that, lacking a reliable method for

tracking military costs, the Army had taken to simply inserting into its

accounts figures that matched the available budget. Such actions seem

absurd in terms of military logic. But they are perfectly logical

responses to the require¬ments of military Keynesianism, which places

its emphasis not on the demand for defense but rather on the available

supply of money.

The Unitary Presidency

Military Keynesianism may be economic de¬velopment by other means, but

it does very often lead to real war, or, if not real war, then a

signif¬icantly warlike political environment. This creates a feedback

loop: American presidents know that military Keynesianism tends to

concentrate pow¬er in the executive branch, and so presidents who seek

greater power have a natural inducement to encourage further growth of

the military-industrial complex. As the phenomena feed on each other,

the usual outcome is a real war, based not on the needs of national

defense but rather on the do¬mestic political logic of military

Keynesianism. As U.S. Senator Robert La Follette Sr. observed, 'In times

of peace, the war party insists on mak¬ing preparation for war. As soon

as prepared for war, it insists on making war.'

George W. Bush has taken this natural polit¬ical phenomenon to an

extreme never before ex¬perienced by the American electorate. Every

president has sought greater authority, but Bush ' ¬whose father lost

his position as forty-first presi¬dent in a fair and open election '

appears to believe that increasing presidential authority is both a

birthright and a central component of his his¬torical legacy. He is

supported in this belief by his vice president and chief adviser, Dick

Cheney.

In pursuit of more power, Bush and Cheney have unilaterally authorized

preventive war against nations they designate as needing 'regime

change,' directed American soldiers to torture persons they have seized

and imprisoned in var¬ious countries, ordered the National Security

Agency to carry out illegal 'data mining' sur¬veillance of the American

people, and done everything they could to prevent Congress from

outlawing 'cruel, inhumane, or degrading' treat¬ment of people detained

by the United States. Each of these actions has been undertaken for

specific ideological, tactical, or practical rea¬sons, but also as part

of a general campaign of power concentration.

Cheney complained in 2002 that, since he had served as Gerald Ford's

chief of staff, he had seen a significant erosion in executive power as

post-Watergate presidents were forced to 'cough up and compromise on

important principles.' He was referring to such reforms as the War

Powers Act of 1973, which requires that the president obtain

congressional ap¬proval within ninety days of ordering troops in¬to

combat; the Budget and Impoundment Con¬trol Act of 1974, which was

designed to stop Nixon from impounding funds for programs he did not

like; the Freedom of Information Act of 1966, which Congress

strengthened in 1974; President Ford's Executive Order 11905 of 1976,

which outlawed political assassination; and the Intelligence Oversight

Act of 1980, which gave more power to the House and Sen¬ate select

committees on intelligence. Cheney said that these reforms were 'unwise'

because they 'weaken the presidency and the vice pres¬idency,' and added

that he and the president felt an obligation 'to pass on our offices in

bet¬ter shape than we found them.'

No president, however, has ever acknowledged the legitimacy of the War

Powers Act, and most of these so-called limitations on presidential

pow¬er had been gutted, ignored, or violated long be¬fore Cheney became

vice president. Republican Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire said,

'The vice president may be the only person I know of that believes the

executive has somehow lost power over the last thirty years.'

Bush and Cheney have made it a primary goal of their terms in office,

nonetheless, to carve executive power into the law, and the war has been

the primary vehicle for such ac¬tions. John Yoo, Bush's deputy assistant

attor¬ney general from 2001 to 2003, writes in his book War By Other

Means, 'We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts laws,

the President enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime,

the gravity shifts to the executive branch.' Bush has claimed that he is

'the commander' and 'the decider' and that therefore he does not 'owe

anybody an explanation' for anything.(4)

Similarly, in a September 2006 press confer¬ence, White House spokesman

Tony Snow en¬gaged in this dialogue:

Q: Isn't it the Supreme Court that's supposed to decide whether laws are

unconstitutional or not'

A: No, as a matter of fact the president has an obli¬gation to preserve,

protect, and defend the Consti¬tution of the United States. That is an

obligation that presidents have enacted through signing state¬ments

going back to Jefferson. So, while the Supreme Court can be an arbiter

of the Constitution, the fact is the president is the one, the only

person who, by the Constitution, is given the responsibil¬ity to

preserve, protect, and defend that document, so it is perfectly

consistent with presidential au¬thority under the Constitution itself.

Snow was referring to the president's habit of signing bills into law

accompanied by 'state¬ments' that, according to the American Bar

Association, 'assert President Bush's authority to disregard or decline

to enforce laws adopted by Congress.' All forty-two previous U.S.

presidents combined have signed statements exempting themselves from the

provisions of 568 new laws, whereas, Bush has, to date, exempted himself

from more than 1,000.

Failed Checks on Executive Ambition

The current administration's perspective on political power is far from

unique. Few, if any, presidents have refused the increased executive

authority that is the natural byproduct of military Keynesianism.

Moreover, the division of power between the president, the Congress, and

the ju¬diciary ' often described as the bedrock of Amer¬ican democracy '

has eroded significantly in re¬cent years. The people, the press, and

the military, too, seem anxious to cede power to a 'wartime' president,

leaving Bush, or those who follow him, almost entirely unobstructed in

pursuing the im¬perial project.

Congress: Corrupt and indifferent, Congress, which the Founders believed

would be the lead¬ing branch of government, has already entirely

forfeited the power to declare war. More recent¬ly, it gave the

president the legal right to detain anyone, even American citizens,

without warrant, and to detain non-citizens without recourse to habeas

corpus, as well as to use a variety of in¬terrogation methods that he

could define, at his sole discretion, to be or not be torture.

The Courts: The judicial branch is hardly more effective in restraining

presidential ambition. The Supreme Court was active in the installation

of the current president, and the lower courts increasingly are packed

with judges who believe they should defer to his wishes. In 2006, for

instance, U.S. District Judge David Trager dismissed a suit by a

thirty-five-year-old Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, who in 2002 was

seized by U.S. government agents at John F. Kennedy Airport and

delivered to Syr¬ia, where he was tortured for ten months before be¬ing

released. No charges were filed against Arar, and his torturers

eventually admitted he had no links to any crime. In explaining his

dismissal, Trager noted with approval an earlier Supreme Court finding

that such judgment would 'threat¬en 'our customary policy of deference

to the Pres¬ident in matters of foreign affairs.' '

The Military: It is possible that the U.S. military could take over the

government and declare a dictatorship.(5) That is how the Roman republic

ended. For the military voluntarily to move toward direct rule, however,

its leaders would have to ig¬nore their ties to civilian society, where

the sym¬bolic importance of constitutional legitimacy re¬mains potent.

Rebellious officers may well worry about how the American people would

react to such a move. Moreover, prosecutions of low ¬level military

torturers from Abu Ghraib prison and killers of civilians in Iraq have

demonstrat¬ed to enlisted ranks that obedience to illegal or¬ders can

result in their being punished, whereas officers go free. No one knows

whether ordinary American soldiers would obey clearly illegal or¬ders to

oust an elected government or whether the officer corps has sufficient

confidence to issue such orders. In addition, the present system

al¬ready offers the military high command so much ' in funds, prestige,

and future employ¬ment via the military-industrial revolving door¬ '

that a perilous transition to anything resembling direct military rule

would make little sense under reasonably normal conditions.

The People: Could the people themselves restore constitutional

government' A grass roots move¬ment to break the hold of the

military¬-industrial complex and establish public financing of elections

is conceivable. But, given the conglomerate control of the mass media

and the dif¬ficulties of mobilizing the United States' large and diffuse

population, it is unlikely. Moreover, the people themselves have enjoyed

the Keynes¬ian benefits of the U.S. imperial project and ' in all but a

few cases ' have not yet suffered any of its consequences.(6)

Bankruptcy and Collapse

The more likely check on presidential power, and on U.S. military

ambition, will be the eco¬nomic failure that is the inevitable

consequence of military Keynesianism. Traditional Keynes¬ianism is a

stable two-part system composed of deficit spending in bad times and

debt payment in good times. Military Keynesianism is an un¬stable

one-part system. With no political check, debt accrues until it reaches

a crisis point.

In the fiscal 2006 budget, the Congressional Research Service estimates

that Pentagon spend¬ing on Operation Enduring Freedom and Opera¬tion

Iraqi Freedom will be about $10 billion per month, or an extra $120.3

billion for the year. As of mid-2006, the overall cost of the wars in

Iraq and Afghanistan since their inception stood at more than $400

billion. Joseph Stiglitz, the No¬bel Prize-winning economist, and his

colleague, Linda Bilmes, have tried to put together an esti¬mate of the

real costs of the Iraq war. They cal¬culate that it will cost about $2

trillion by 2015. The conservative American Enterprise Institute

suggests a figure at the opposite end of the spec¬trum ' $1 trillion.

Both figures are an order of magnitude larger than what the Bush

Adminis¬tration publicly acknowledges.

At the same time, the U.S. trade deficit, the largest component of the

current account deficit, soared to an all-time high in 2005 of $782.7

bil¬lion, the fourth consecutive year that America's trade debts set

records. The trade deficit with China alone rose to $201.5 billion, the

highest im¬balance ever recorded with any country. Mean¬while, since

mid-2000, the country has lost near¬ly 3 million manufacturing jobs. To

try to cope with these imbalances, on March 16, 2006, Con¬gress raised

the national debt limit from $8.2 tril¬lion to $9 trillion. This was the

fourth time since George W. Bush took office that the limit had to be

raised. Had Congress not raised it, the U.S. government would not have

been able to borrow more money and would have had to default on its

massive debts.

Among the creditors that finance this un¬precedented sum, two of the

largest are the cen¬tral banks of China ($854 billion in reserves of

dollars and other foreign currencies) and Japan ($850 billion), both of

which are the managers of the huge trade surpluses these countries enjoy

with the United States. This helps explain why the United States' debt

burden has not yet trig¬gered what standard economic theory would

pre¬dict, which is a steep decline in the value of the U.S. dollar

followed by a severe contraction of the American economy ' the Chinese

and Japanese governments continue to be willing to be paid in dollars in

order to sustain American demand for their exports. For the sake of

domestic employment, both countries lend huge amounts to the American

treasury, but there is no guarantee how long they will want or be able

to do so.

CONFIDENCE IN KEY JUDGMENTS

It is difficult to predict the course of a democ¬racy, and perhaps even

more so when that democracy is as corrupt as that of the United States.

With a new opposition party in the ma¬jority in the House, the country

could begin a dif¬ficult withdrawal from military Keynesianism. Like the

British after World War II, the United States could choose to keep its

democracy by giving up its empire. The British did not do a

par¬ticularly brilliant job of liquidating their em¬pire, and there were

several clear cases in which British imperialists defied their nation's

commitment to democracy in order to keep their foreign privileges '

Kenya in the 1950s is a par¬ticularly savage example ' but the people of

the British Isles did choose democracy over imperi¬alism, and that

nation continues to thrive as a nation, if not as an empire.

It appears for the moment, however, that the people of the United States

prefer the Roman approach and so will abet their government in

maintaining a facade of constitutional democra¬cy until the nation

drifts into bankruptcy.

Of course, bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the United States

any more than it did for Germany in 1923, China in 1948, or Argentina in

2001. It might, in fact, open the way for an unexpected restoration of

the American system, or for military rule, revolu¬tion, or simply some

new development we cannot yet imagine. Certainly, such a bank¬ruptcy

would mean a drastic lowering of the current American standard of

living, a loss of control over international affairs, a process of

adjusting to the rise of other powers, including China and India, and a

further dis¬crediting df the notion that the United States is somehow

exceptional compared with other nations. The American people will be

forced to learn what it means to be a far poorer na¬tion and the

attitudes and manners that go with it.(7)

Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and,

most recently, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, which

will be published in February by Metropolitan Books. His last article

for Harper's Magazine, 'The War Business: Squeezing a Profit from the

Wreckage in Iraq,' appeared in the November 2003 issue.

'''

Notes

(1) The CIA's website defines a National Intelligence Estimate as 'the

most authoritative written judgment concerning a national security issue

prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence.' These forecasts of

'future developments' and 'their implications for the United States'

seldom are made public, but there are exceptions. One was the NIE of

September 2002, 'Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass

Destruction,' which became notorious because virtually word in it was

false. Another, an April 2006 NIE entitled 'Trends in Global Terrorism:

Implications for the United States,' was partly declassified by

President Bush because its main conclusion ' that 'activists identifying

themselves as jihadists' are 'increasing in both number and geographic

dispersion' ' had already been leaked to the press.

(2) The CIA is prohibited from writing an NIE on the United States, and

so I have here attempted to do so myself, using the standard format for

such estimates. I have some personal knowledge of NIEs because from 1967

to 1973 I served as an outside consultant to the CIA's Office of

National Estimates.

1 was one of about a dozen so-called experts invited to read draft NIEs

in order to provide quality control and prevent bureaucratic logrolling.

(3) Military Keynesianism, it turns out, is not the only way to boost an

economy.

(4) In a January 2006 debate, Yoo was asked if any law could stop the

president, if he 'deems that he's got to tor¬ture somebody,' from, say,

'crushing the testicles of the person's child.' Yoo's response: 'I think

it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that.'

(5) Though they undoubtedly would find a more user¬-friendly name for it.

(6) In 2003, when the Iraq war began, the citizens of the United States

could at least claim that it was the work of an administration that had

lost the popular vote. But in 2004, Bush won that vote by more than 3

million ballots, making his war ours.

(7) National Intelligence Estimates seldom contain startling new data.

To me they always read like magazine articles or well-researched and

footnoted graduate seminar papers. When my wife once asked me what was

so secret about them, I answered that perhaps it was the fact that this

was the best we could do.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

***

*ZNet | Afghanistan*

*Afghanistan today:

Six years of a war of terror*

*by Tariq Ali and Sherry Wolf; Socialist Worker; October 25, 2007*

THE U.S. launched its first assault in the "war on terror" in

Afghanistan six years ago. Today, the country remains one of the

poorest places on earth, ruled by a corrupt warlord elite. Here,

TARIQ ALI, a veteran of the antiwar struggle for four decades,

talks to SHERRY WOLF about the disastrous consequences of the

U.S. war--and what the future holds.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

*THIS IS the sixth anniversary of the U.S. war on Afghanistan,

which a lot of people see as the "good" battle in the "war on

terror," as opposed to Iraq. Is that true?*

I HAVE always argued that this was essentially a crude war of

revenge to hit back immediately after the September 11

attacks--for political leaders to show the American population

that "we are busy defending you." It had no other major purpose

to it other than being for revenge--an eye for an eye.

The second aim of this war, as Bush spelled it out, was to

capture Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Those were his exact

words, which we shouldn't forget. Apart from that, there were no

war aims.

There was never any question that they were going to capture the

country. For one, the Northern Alliance wasn't going to

resist--nor were the Iranians, who were very strong in Western

Afghanistan. Iranian leaders were hostile to the Taliban for

their own opportunistic reasons, so they clambered onto the

imperial bandwagon and said, "Fine, we can't get rid of these

guys, but if the Americans do, we'll see how the situation

develops."

Then there was the Pakistani military regime, without which the

Taliban would never have been in power, and which had been

backing up the Taliban logistically, militarily and in every

other way.

Given that the U.S. was going to use Pakistani military bases,

the regime asked for a few weeks to get their military personnel

out of Afghanistan before the U.S. went in. In those two crucial

weeks, of course, Osama bin laden and the al-Qaeda leadership

also left Afghanistan. They weren't going to wait around.

So the U.S. took Kabul with NATO help, but it wasn't difficult

because there was no resistance at all. Then the question arose:

What were they going to do with the country?

They couldn't find Osama, though there was a two-week period

media hysteria about "reaching the Tora Bora caves" and all this

kind of propaganda. They dropped all these bombs and what

happened? Nothing. They destroyed the caves, but the quarry had

escaped.

So what were they going to do now? It's obvious that bin Laden

left the country and went to the tribal zones between Pakistan

and Afghanistan, where the traditions of hospitality are very

strong, and he wasn't going to be handed over.

The U.S. then implanted a puppet regime in Afghanistan. Let's

remember that Zalmay Khalilzad was Bush's chief advisor on

Afghanistan at the time, and he brought in one of his cronies

who once worked for the Unocal oil company, Hamid Karzai, to be

president of Afghanistan. And, presto, we had a country.

The problem soon became very obvious to the West that its

arrangement didn't really extend beyond Kabul and Kandahar, the

two big cities in the South, during the daytime. Elsewhere, in

the west of the country, pro-Iranian forces were in control. And

in the North, the former Soviet republics, still heavily under

Moscow's influence, were in control.

So what were they going to do with this country? The answer is

nothing.

*DOES THE U.S. have any support within Afghanistan?*

I'VE ARGUED that there's no doubt quite a number of Afghans were

relieved to have the Taliban removed--quite a few thought, well,

at least now we'll have some peace and safety, and maybe some

food to eat. This was also the view of quite a few liberal

commentators inside Pakistan.

Some of us argued with them, saying that the Taliban might have

been removed, but what would happen now? We warned them that as

far as the social infrastructure was concerned, it wasn't going

to change for the majority of Afghans.

That's exactly what has happened in these six years. What people

underestimate is that imperial occupations under neoliberalism

reflect the priorities of the new capitalist order, where

they're privatizing everything in their own countries. So what

happened was that money did pour in--and this money was used by

Hamid Karzai and his cronies to construct an elite in Afghanistan.

In the heart of Kabul, on prime land that they took by

land-grabbing, the elite were and are building large villas

protected by NATO troops in front of the entire population of

the city and country.

It costs about $5,000 or $6,000 to build a cheap house for a

family of five or six, but they didn't do that. They spent

millions of dollars constructing large villas. God knows why,

since they need a permanent NATO guard to live in one of those

villas. And they'll be taken away from them once the Western

armies withdraw.

That created a big crisis, and coupled with it was the fact that

a trigger-happy U.S. military embarked on killing innocents.

Wherever the U.S. heard gunfire, they would drop bombs. Someone

should have told them that Afghanistan is a tribal society, a

culture where people fire guns to celebrate--whether it's

weddings or the birth of a child, they just run out and fire

guns in the air. You'd have thought Americans would have been

more sympathetic to this, given the gun culture in the U.S., but

somehow they didn't appreciate it in Afghanistan.

So the U.S. started bombing people. Reports came of a wedding

ceremony in the U.S. came and bombed the hell out of it.

Casualties: 90 or 100 killed, men, women and children. And this

multiplied.

*HOW HAS the Taliban been able to make a resurgence?*

THE TALIBAN began to regroup, rearm and fight, and it scored a

few successes. What also began to happen simultaneously is that

there were people who were happy to see them back--since no one

else was defending them.

So they began to treat the Taliban as an umbrella organization

and tell them what was going on. Lots of people supposedly

working with the U.S.-NATO occupying authorities would go tell

the Taliban where the troops were going. Classic guerrilla

warfare operations began, and the U.S. responded with more

bombing raids. So there's a vicious circle in operation.

If you look at the newspapers over the last year and do a survey

of all the reports where there were 60 Taliban were killed, 80

Taliban killed, 90 Taliban killed, you add it up and they've

already killed thousands of supposed "Taliban" militia

members--and the total force was supposed to be about 10,000.

In other words, if you believe these reports, then they've wiped

out three-quarters of the Taliban organization, which is far

from the truth. But because the U.S. is embarrassed at having

killed civilians, it has to say this.

You have a situation in the country where Hamid Karzai's

brother, Wali Ahmed Karzai, is well known as the largest heroin

and arms smuggler in the region. He's become that because his

brother runs the country.

Here's this guy who was happy running an Afghan restaurant in

Baltimore and selling high-priced food to the students at Johns

Hopkins--and he's now second-in-command in the country and

making a fortune--a "killing," let's say.

Symbolically, this has been a total disaster. So, far from being

a "good war," Afghanistan is turning out to be a nasty,

unpleasant war, and there's no way the U.S. or other Western

forces are going to be able to stay there for too long.

*WHAT ARE the regional powers hoping to get as an outcome in

Afghanistan?*

THE PAKISTANI military is hoping that the West will withdraw and

some sort of coalition government will be cobbled together

between Karzai and chunks of the Taliban.

This is worth stressing. Backed by the West, the Karzai regime,

even as we speak, is in serious negotiations with the Taliban.

So the Taliban, which was demonized as the worst force that ever

existed in the world, is now backed by the West--as long as they

do a deal with Karzai.

The Taliban's first response to Karzai's offers was to say, "We

won't even discuss this with you unless all foreign troops are

withdrawn from the country." To which Karzai said, "That's not

possible." He thinks it's not possible because without foreign

troops, he wouldn't last 48 hours.

But as far as the Pakistani military is concerned, they know

that they won't be able to pull off a deal between the Taliban

and Karzai as long as foreign troops are in the region. The

military imagines that once Western troops are out, it can grab

the country again, through the Taliban and Karzai.

But I think this possibility is excluded now, because NATO made

a mess of the occupation, and because in these last six years,

regional autonomy has set in as a major factor in the country.

Afghanistan was always a tribal confederation, but it's now even

more confederated in character.

And the Iranians and Russians are not going to permit a

U.S.-backed Taliban takeover of the country. So Pakistan's

military leaders can hope to rule in one part of Afghanistan,

but they won't be able to rule the whole country.

I've been arguing in Pakistan and elsewhere for the total and

immediate withdrawal of all major troops and, simultaneously,

the convocation of a peace conference by the regional powers

involved in Afghanistan--which means Pakistan, Iran, Russia and

India, which is the biggest power of all--to set up a national

government following Western troop withdrawal and provide a

breathing space for this country to rest and hold elections for

a constituent assembly in two or three years' time.

In the meantime, these regional powers will guarantee no

fighting and no civil war. People should be sympathetic to such

a notion, because Afghanistan has been at war virtually nonstop

since 1979. It's a horrible business taking place in that country.

It's unlikely that the Americans or Pakistanis would agree to

this, in which case the situation will go from bad to worse, in

my opinion.

So to sum up the situation in Afghanistan, it's a total mess.

The U.S. can never win that war, and the main reason they can

never win is that Afghans don't like being occupied. Afghans

kicked out the British in the 19th century, the Russians in the

20th century, and now they're fighting again against the U.S.

and its NATO allies.

***

*ZNet | U.S.*

*Happy Fascism Awareness Week!*

*by Barbara Ehrenreich; Huffington Post; October 23, 2007*

I've never been able to explain Halloween to the kids, with its

odd thematic confluence of pumpkins, candy, and death. But

Halloween is a piece of pumpkin cake compared to Islamo-Fascism

Awareness Week, which commences today. In this special week,

organized by conservative pundit David Horowitz, we have a

veritable witches' brew of Cheney-style anti-jihadism mixed in

with old-fashioned rightwing anti-feminism and a sour dash of

anti-Semitism.

A major purpose of this week is to wake up academic women to the

threat posed by militant jihadism. According to the Week's

website, feminists, and particularly the women's studies

professors among them, have developed a masochistic fondness for

Islamic fundamentalist. Hence, as anti-Islamo-Fascist speakers

fan out to the nation's campuses this week, students are urged

to stage "sit-ins in Women's Studies Departments and campus

Women's Centers to protest their silence about the oppression of

women in Islam."

Leaving aside the obvious quibbles about feminist pro-jihadism

and the term "Islamo-Fascism," which seems largely designed to

give jihadism a nice familiar World War II ring, the klaxons

didn't go off for me until I skimmed down the list of

Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week speakers and found, incredibly

enough, Ann Coulter, whom I last caught on TV pining for the

repeal of women's suffrage. "If we took away women's right to

vote," she said wistfully, "We'd never have to worry about

another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream; it's a

personal fantasy of mine."

Coulter is not the only speaker on the list who may have a

credibility problem when it comes to opposing oppression of

women in Islam or anywhere else. Another participant in the

week's events is former senator Rick Santorum, whose book It

Takes a Family blamed "radical feminism" for pushing women into

the workforce and thus destroying the American family. A 2005

column on that book in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, began

with: "Women of America, I hope you look good in a burqa. If

Senator Rick Santorum, R-PA, has his way, we will all be wearing

the burqas discarded by our recently liberated sisters in

Afghanistan..." (This was the before the Taliban re-emerged.)

Not quite in the burqa-promoting league, but close, is another

official speaker for the week, Christina Hoff Sommers, who has

made her name attacking feminism for exaggerating the problem of

domestic violence and eliminating opportunities for boys. These

are the people who are going to save us from purdah?

Another disagreeable feature of jihadism -- anti-Semitism -- is

also represented on the list of speakers for Islamo-Fascist

Awareness Week, again by the multi-faceted Coulter. Just last

week on CNBC, she referred to America as a "Christian nation."

Asked where this left the Jews (not to mention the Muslims,

Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans and atheists), she said they could be

"perfected" by converting to Christianity.

You might imagine that this view of Jews as "imperfect" would

bother Horowitz, who is famously alert to any hint of

anti-Semitism on the left. But no, he defends Coulter, writing

that "If you don't accompany this belief by burning Jews who

refuse to become perfected at the stake why would any Jew have a

problem?" Sure, David, and if that's the threshold for

intolerance, Osama bin Laden could probably win an award for

humanitarianism.

Maybe none of this should be surprising. When Mel Gibson, who is

not known to be a member of the Hollywood left, unleashed a

drunken anti-Semitic tirade on his arresting officers, Horowitz

also rose to his defense, arguing that ensuing outrage reflected

a "hatred" -- not of anti-Semites -- but of Christians.

As for the anti-feminism of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week: This

fits in neatly with the thesis of Susan Faludi's brilliant new

book, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America.

She shows that, in the wake of an attack by the ultra-misogynist

Al Qaeda, Americans perversely engaged in an anti-feminist

campaign of their own, calling for an immediate restoration of

traditional gender roles. Coulter was part of that backlash,

opining in 2002 that "feminists hate guns because guns remind

them of men."

Before you put on your costumes to celebrate Islamo-Fascist

Awareness Week, let me set the record straight. American

feminists do not condone, defend, or ignore jihadist misogyny.

In fact, we were warning about it well before Washington turned

against the Taliban and have been consistently appalled by the

gender dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

But if the facts don't fit in with Islamo-Fascist Awareness,

they have to go. For example, in a May '07 column in The Weekly

Standard Christina Hoff Sommers listed me as one of the

"feckless" feminists who refuse "to pass judgment on non-Western

cultures." What? If Sommers had even done 10 minutes of research

she would have noticed, among other things, a column I wrote in

the New York Times in '04 stating that Islamic fundamentalism

aims to push one-half of the Muslim world -- the female half --

"down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals."

Yes, feminists tend to hate war and sometimes even guns, and

this may be why Horowitz and company hate us. They should know,

though, that we especially hate a war that seems calculated to

inflame Islamic fundamentalism world wide. If many Muslim women

around the world willingly don head scarves today, it's in part

because our war in Iraq has, tragically, pushed them to value

religious solidarity above their feminist instincts.

Or maybe I'm missing the point of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week.

Maybe it's really an effort to show that our own American

anti-feminists (and anti-Semites) are just as nasty as the ones

on the other side. If so, good job, guys! No need to continue

with the trick-or-treating, you've already made your point.