Thursday, March 27, 2008

Fw: McCain an idiot and itaq in chaos

AMY GOODMAN: Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain might have attracted some ridicule last week when he falsely insisted Iran is training and supplying al-Qaeda in Iraq. McCain corrected himself after independent Senator Joseph Lieberman stepped in and whispered in his ear.

    SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, it's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That's well known. And it's unfortunate. So I believe that we are succeeding in Iraq. The situation is dramatically improved. But I also want to emphasize time and again al-Qaeda is on the run, but they are not defeated.

    SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: [whispering] You said that the Iranians were training al-Qaeda. I think you meant they're training in extremist terrorism.

    SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda, not al-Qaeda. I'm sorry.


AMY GOODMAN: Senator McCain made the comment in Jordan, while on a trip to the Middle East last week. While the media focused on the gaffe, there has been little serious analysis of McCain's foreign policy. In fact, when it comes to the Middle East and establishing US power in the world, McCain might even be more in line with neoconservative thinking than President Bush. That's the argument in investigative reporter Robert Dreyfuss's latest article in The Nation magazine. It's called "Hothead McCain." It outlines the Republican presidential candidate's foreign policy vision.

Robert Dreyfuss joins us now from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now!

ROBERT DREYFUSS: Thank you so much, Amy. It's really great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. You cite Brookings Institution analyst Ivo Daalder as saying, quote, "If you thought George Bush was bad when it comes to the use of military force, wait 'til you see John McCain." Can you explain?

ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, what I did in putting this piece together was look at McCain's own writing and speeches, his article in Foreign Affairs, and I spoke to a number of his advisers, including Randy Scheunemann, who is his chief foreign policy strategist. I spoke to John Bolton. I spoke to Jim Woolsey. I spoke to a number of people who are neoconservative in thought who have now clustered around the McCain campaign and see his effort to become president as a way for them—that is, for the neoconservatives—to return to the position of power they had in the first Bush administration from 2001 to 2005.

McCain has an instinctive preference for using military power to solve problems overseas. And when you couple that with a kind of hotheaded temperament, with a kind of arrogance and really a tendency to fly off the handle, I think we have a lot to fear, if he were ever to have his finger on the button, because he's a man who I think would try to solve a lot of the very delicate foreign policy problems that we have around the world by a show of force. And, of course, you start with Iran in that context, but I think you could include many other problems, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about—or John McCain talks about "rogue state rollback." Explain.

ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, this is a theory that he developed way back in the 1990s, and he began speaking about it probably around '96 or '97, but it crystallized in 1999 in a famous speech that he gave, where he talked about the need to look around the world and figure out these states, and you can make up the list as easily as I. At that time, it would have been Iraq, Iran, Syria, Cuba, various countries in Asia and Africa that were under various kinds of rebellion, whether it was Somalia or perhaps Burma, perhaps Zimbabwe. I mean, a lot of countries were being put in the category of rogue states. Some of them were on the State Department list of countries that supported terrorism.

McCain looked around the world, and he said, OK, our job is basically to force regime change in all of these countries. And he signed on early to the issue of going into Iraq and forcing a regime change there, long before anybody really had any kind of concerns about al-Qaeda, long before Iraq's connection to terrorism seemed important. It was simply a principle that any state that didn't conform to an American view of democracy was liable to be rolled over or rolled back, in McCain's view.

Many of his advisers, including Randy Scheunemann, who's now running his foreign policy task force, were engaged in that. Randy was then a chief staffer for Trent Lott. He wrote the Iraq Liberation Act that the neoconservatives and Ahmed Chalabi championed and pushed through Congress. He, Scheunemann, founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002 with White House support. He was also a founder of the Project for a New American Century, which was the sort of ad hoc think tank that the neocons put together. All of this is a sign of—and the fact that McCain would name him as his chief adviser—that McCain, in a way that Bush never did, is a true neocon.

He is someone who in his soul believes in the use of American military power, and as he said in his rollback speech, not just to deal with emergent threats to the United States, but even to enforce the prevalence of what he called American values—that's a codeword for democracy—so that countries whose internal functioning—let's say Russia today, under Putin and Medvedev—that countries like Russia that don't seem as democratic as we like would then become ostracized or sanctioned or subject to various kinds of hostile, both political and military, sanctions. So this is what I find extremely troubling about McCain.

And if you look at his broad policies that he's outlined, he has suggested point blank that we're in a long-term, almost unending struggle with al-Qaeda and various other forms of Islamism. And as a result, he wants to create a whole new set of institutions to deal with those. One of those institutions would be what he calls the League of Democracies, which is basically a way of short-circuiting the UN, where Russia and China, in particular, but also various non-aligned countries often stand up to the United States.

Also, he wants to create a new much more aggressive covert operations team. He says he wants to model it on the old Office of Strategic Services, the World War II era OSS, and to create this out of the CIA but include into it psychological warfare specialists, covert operations people, people who specialize in advertising and propaganda, and a whole bunch of other kind of—a wide range of these kind of covert operators, who would then form a new agency that would be designed to fight the war on terrorism overseas and to deal with rogue states and other troubling actors that we—or McCain decides he happens not to like at that moment.

AMY GOODMAN: And kick Russia out of the G8?

ROBERT DREYFUSS: Yeah. And that's a really important issue. I mean, his attitude toward Russia seems not to be based on any explicit Russian threat to the United States, but simply the fact that he doesn't like the way Russia operates internally. So he's said we're going to expand NATO to include a number of former states in the Russian space—that is, former Soviet republics, notably including Georgia—and he wants to include not only Georgia in NATO, but some of Georgia's rebellious provinces, which is a direct affront to Russia. He's a hardliner on Kosovo. He says he doesn't care what Putin thinks about us putting air defense system missiles in Eastern Europe. He wants to kick Russia out of the G8. And all of this would obviously create much more hostile relations between Washington and Moscow, and that makes it impossible to solve the biggest problem that we face: namely, how to deal with Iran's nuclear program.

If we're ever going to get a deal with Iran, if we're ever going to have some sort of diplomatic solution to Iran, which McCain says he wants, it's literally impossible if you don't get the Russians on board. If you can't get a deal with Russia to approach Iran and try to negotiate a peaceful resolution to their nuclear program, then the Russians will simply stand back and say, OK, it's your problem. And that would almost guarantee that McCain would face the choice of having to either attack Iran or to accept Iran having a nuclear bomb at some point in the period in his eight-year term as president. So the idea that you can isolate Russia in that way and take this aggressive anti-Moscow strategy means that you're not going to get Russian cooperation on key problems like Iran and like other problems in the Middle East and Afghanistan that we're going to need their help on.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter, contributing editor to The Nation magazine. His latest piece is called "Hothead McCain." I want to talk more about McCain's advisers in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter, contributing editor at The Nation magazine. His latest piece is called "Hothead McCain." McCain famously said that US forces might end up staying in Iraq for 100 years. What role did John McCain play in the surge and in shaping, if he did, any part of President Bush's policy in Iraq, the war?

ROBERT DREYFUSS: Oh, I would say that of all the politicians in the United States, McCain was number one in a crucial moment, when the President, President Bush, had to decide whether to accept the Baker-Hamilton report, which called for phasing out US combat forces over a period of sixteen months or alternatively escalating the war. And at that time, McCain was the number one voice in calling for an escalation. He had traveled to Iraq. He had said we need more troops. I believe he was calling for at least 50,000 troops. He worked closely along with Senator Lieberman, who's now his traveling companion. McCain and Lieberman spoke at the American Enterprise Institute and worked closely with Robert and Frederick Kagan, who—Frederick Kagan, in particular, who is at AEI and was the author of the report that led to the surge and was brought into the administration by Vice President Cheney, who went over to AEI and consulted with them. It was that team—Kagan, McCain, Lieberman and Cheney—who convinced the President to go with the escalation a year ago in January.

And McCain was not only advocating the surge, but really pushing, and is today pushing, for a long-term presence by the United States in Iraq, using Iraq as an aircraft carrier to support American power throughout the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and Central Asia. And his advisers told me so. When I spoke to Randy Scheunemann at length, he said, in fact, yes, we want to stay in Iraq for a long time, not just to stabilize Iraq, but because we may have to deal with many threats from the region. And of course you have to include Iran as among the possible threats that we'd have to deal with, according to McCain.

So I would say that McCain and the surge are almost identical, and it's McCain who we have to thank for the fact that two years ago we didn't start withdrawing from Iraq, but in fact escalated to the point where the next president will have probably 130,000 troops on the ground when he or she takes office.

AMY GOODMAN: And the others in the neocon circle, the advisers, like, for example, Bill Kristol, like Max Boot, tell us about their involvement.

ROBERT DREYFUSS: You know, it's very interesting, Amy. If you look at the list of people who say they're advising the McCain camp, you find a broad range of people. You find people like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Larry Eagleburger. These are the traditional kind of Nixon-era realists, many of whom certainly wouldn't be considered liberals, but who certainly are realists. But when you look at McCain's positions, his views on things, you don't find any of the influence of people like Eagleburger and Scowcroft.

What you see instead is that the rest of McCain's advisers, and you named several of them—James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has been traveling and campaigning with McCain and who I interviewed for this piece; Bill Kristol, who's very close to McCain for probably a decade and has been kind of an angel sitting on his shoulder and whispering in his ear all that time; people like Scheunemann; people like Max Boot; Ralph Peters; there's a long list of people who have joined the McCain advisory team—and it's these people whom McCain listens to when it comes to foreign policy. He certainly hasn't expressed anything in any foreign policy area that you would identify with the Republican realist camp. He's much closer to the neocons.

And he seems to be, as I said earlier, the true neocon himself, someone who, after early in his career in the '80s being kind of suspicious about some foreign interventions that happened at that time, at the end of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed, McCain seemed to have felt unburdened, like now American power can express itself. And that's when he attached himself to the neoconservative vision that America, as the sole superpower, could throw its weight around, could remake the world in its own image and that there would be no effective opposition to it.

When I look at McCain, though, I have to say, I go back to Vietnam. This is a man whose father and grandfather were extremely conservative, even rightwing admirals, who served in Vietnam until he was shot down and held as a POW, conducting air raid missions, dropping napalm on Hanoi and other cities in North Vietnam, who learned from that and became convinced that American military power, if it's constrained by politics, was unable to win that war. And so, he took out of Vietnam not the lesson that we shouldn't get into land wars in Asia or that fighting guerrilla counterinsurgency efforts might not be the task that America's military is most suited for; what he learned in Vietnam is that we need to take the gloves off, that the politicians need to get out of the way and let the military do its job.

And that's precisely the message that he's adopted in approaching Iraq. I think to this day, McCain thinks that the Vietnam War could have been won if we had just stayed another five or ten or fifteen years, and he seems exactly prepared to do that in Iraq, despite all evidence to the contrary that we can't do anything in Iraq other than sit on a very ugly stalemate that, you know, continues to blow up and flare into violence.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Dreyfuss, you got your title, "Hothead McCain," from a Republican senator. You're quoting Republican Senator Thad Cochran, who said, "The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me."

ROBERT DREYFUSS: Yes, I use that quote, and it says immediately after that that shortly after saying that, Thad Cochran endorsed McCain. So it's clear that the Republicans are gathering around their leader, despite the fact that many senators, not just Cochran, but many Republican senators view McCain with alarm and not because he's some sort of closet liberal—it's true that on some domestic issues he lined up with some Senate liberals—but on foreign policy, they're are scared of him. And on a personal level, McCain has had a tendency over the years—this is so well known on Capitol Hill—to erupt, to explode, to scream and yell at his colleagues in the Republican caucus, in closed-door meetings behind the scenes, and sometimes even in public. So he has scared a lot of his colleagues, who I'm sure are supporting him, like Cochran did, out of party loyalty, but who've said, as Cochran did, that they're extremely concerned about his temper and his apparent willingness to explode.

And I've met McCain up close. I rode around the bus with him nine years ago when he was campaigning in New Hampshire. I found him scary up close. I think when you see him two feet away, he looks like somebody whose head could explode. He's got a very barely controlled anger underneath his sort of calm demeanor that he seems to almost grit his teeth to keep inside. And I found him very scary personally. And I'm always shocked, I'm always stunned, when media who cover McCain don't bring that across. He's not a jolly fellow. He's not somebody who you want to sit down and have beers with, where I could see people think that about President Bush—he's kind of an amiable dunce, as someone said about an earlier president. McCain is not somebody I want to have a beer with. I think he's a really scary guy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we'll leave it there, Robert Dreyfuss, investigative reporter, contributing editor at The Nation magazine. His book is called Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.


 

Guest:

Patrick Cockburn, Iraq correspondent for the London Independent. His latest book is Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival and the Struggle for Iraq. He has covered the invasion and occupation from the ground in Iraq for the past five years. His previous book is The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq.

Rush Transcript

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JUAN GONZALEZ: "A new civil war is threatening to explode in Iraq as American-backed Iraqi government forces fight Shia militiamen for control of Basra and parts of Baghdad. Heavy fighting engulfed Iraq's two largest cities and spread to other towns yesterday [as] the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, gave fighters of the Mehdi Army, led by the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, 72 hours to surrender their weapons."

Those are the opening lines to a report in today's edition of the Independent of London written by Patrick Cockburn, the paper's Iraq correspondent.

The article goes on to state, "The gun battles between soldiers and militiamen, who are all Shia Muslims, show that Iraq's majority Shia community […] is splitting apart for the first time. Sadr's followers believe the government is trying to eliminate them before elections in southern Iraq later this year, which they are expected to win."

Patrick Cockburn has been covering Iraq since 1977. Seymour Hersh has described Cockburn as "quite simply, the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today." His book The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq was short-listed for a National Book Critics Circle Award last year. His new book comes out next week. It is titled Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival and the Struggle for Iraq. Patrick Cockburn joins us in London.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

PATRICK COCKBURN: Thank you.

JUAN GONZALEZ: The fighting that has erupted in the last few days, could you tell us your sense of what is at stake here?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, the Iraqi government has decided and has surprised everybody by deciding to send its troops into Basra. Ostensibly, they're saying it's to clean up criminal elements in Basra; in reality, it seems an attack on the Mahdi Army, and it's in alliance with militias that are friendly to the Iraqi government. The Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's demand that the fighters of the Mahdi Army give up their weapons in seventy-two hours, I think it's extremely unlikely that this will happen. Saddam couldn't disarm Iraq. It's not likely that Maliki will succeed in doing so.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now the—obviously, for more than a year now, we've heard of the ceasefire that Muqtada al-Sadr had declared. Why did he initially declare the ceasefire, and to what degree is your sense that this is the beginning of the end of that, if you think it is?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Yeah, the ceasefire is very important, and everybody, including US commanders, admit this was one of the reasons why there's been something of a fall in violence in Iraq, though not—maybe it's been exaggerated. I think he declared the ceasefire for two reasons: one, he wanted to clean up the Mahdi Army, which was seen as Sunni, as really a large death squad—it was an umbrella organization for criminals—so he wanted to regain control of it; secondly, he didn't want to fight a military, direct military confrontation with US forces. He thought he'd lose in those circumstances. So that's why he declared the ceasefire last August and renewed it in February.

He wanted also to get back political popularity. I mean, this is the most popular figure among the Shia masses, but he was beginning to lose it because of the—the Mahdi Army was running rackets and seen as becoming increasingly oppressive.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, you've reported that his call for civil disobedience across Iraq in protest of the government's latest moves, but in one of your articles you say a civil disobedience in Iraq is quite different than here in the United States we might be accustomed to.

PATRICK COCKBURN: Sure, yeah. I mean, the thing in Iraq is that pretty—about everybody has a gun. So you have civil disobedience being protest marches, but if anybody—but all the people who take part, although some they have guns, or if they don't have them with them they have immediate access to firearms—so it's much, much closer to real fighting than civil disobedience would be in America or in Britain.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, what's the level of British and US troop involvement in this latest offensive? And why should they be involved at all, if supposedly the south increasingly has come under direct Iraqi government and Iraqi military control?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Yeah, it's a very good question and, I think, goes to the heart of the matter. I mean, the answer is that not much happens in the Iraqi army that isn't directed by the United States. I mean, the Ministry of Defense is at least partially under American control in Baghdad, intelligence also. So I think when the US says, oh, we have nothing to do with it, I think that this really isn't true. First of all, militarily, there are helicopters, there are aircraft there. We've had reports this morning of an air strike in a city called Hilla, which is mostly Shia, southwest of Baghdad, in which sixty people have been killed and wounded, which is part of the present turmoil. There are helicopters and aircraft overhead in Basra. So there is involvement. And it certainly wouldn't have—this present offensive wouldn't have taken place unless the US military commanders had okayed it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And to what degree is the possibility now—obviously, for the first few years the discussion was: Was there a civil war in Iraq between Sunni and Shia? But now the issue can quite clearly become: Is there a civil war among the Shia themselves? To what degree do you think the United States is hoping to be able to stamp out Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army through this offensive?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, you know, they've always been very—the US has always been very hostile to Muqtada, and this came from the very beginning of 2003. And then, when Jerry Bremer was US viceroy in Iraq, there was an extraordinary degree of sort of venom and demonization of Muqtada, describing him as Hitler and so forth, and curiously, also an underestimation of him, because while at one time—moment they'd say that he was like Hitler, at another moment Bremer was just trying to arrest him and thinking there would be no reaction. So, there's always been extreme hostility on the part of the US, mainly, I think, because Muqtada is the most important leader on the Shia side who's consistently called for an end to the US occupation, for a US withdrawal, and also maybe because he's a cleric, he wears a black turban. So in many minds of many American politicians, maybe he looks alarmingly like a younger version of Ayatollah Khomeini. But I think the main thing they have against him is that he wants the US to withdraw.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, the southern part of Iraq obviously has the bulk of the production of oil. I think about 1.5 million barrels a day are coming out of the area around Basra. To what extent is this latest battle having an impact on the production of oil, or to what degree is it a battle over who's going to control that oil?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, it's already having a massive impact on the export of oil, because one of the main pipelines was blown up overnight. So, you know, this is—if there's a battle in Basra, then the Mahdi Army can in fact stop most of Iraq's oil production by simply blowing the pipeline and preventing anybody repairing it. They're also in a very strategic position, because the main US supply lines between Kuwait and Baghdad go just to the west of Basra , so they could start attacking the convoys there. So they're in a very strong position.

I mean, there's a slightly different question, which I think you're hinting at there, which is how much is it a fight over oil? Well, in Basra, yes, I mean, the money comes from various ways of diverting oil, of getting your hands on oil at cheap prices. You know, it's a pretty corrupt place. A friend of mine the other day, a business—Iraqi businessman, had a container come in at Umm Qasr port, which is just south of Basra. I remember he was telling me that transport—he's sending up to Kurdistan in the north, a city called Arbil. Transport to Arbil cost him $500, and he spent $3,000 in bribes. And that's kind of par for the course.

Of course, also you have oil diverted into tankers, and these are major sources of revenues for all the militias. But it's not just the Mahdi Army. It's in Baghdad, you have exactly the same. You know, where the regular army controls a gas station, they're always diverting supplies. Somehow it runs out of gas in a couple of hours, but everybody waiting in the long queues knows that the oil has been diverted into the black market.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Patrick Cockburn, the other aspect of Basra and the south obviously was that the British had supposedly successfully managed to pull out of the main population areas, but now we're having—there's one, at least one, retired US general, Jack Keane, has urged the British to reconsider their withdrawal from Basra. What does this suggest for the long-term Bush administration strategy of handing over to the Iraqi army the pacifying and the control of the country?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's—I mean, first of all, the British aren't going to do that, because they had a very rough time in Basra. And in some ways, the British position is worse in Basra than the Americans in—American army in Baghdad. I mean, a British military intelligence officer was saying to me, you know, the problem in Basra is we had no friends. Basically, nobody likes us there. Now, in Baghdad, the occupation is not popular, but I think it's fair to say at the moment, after all the slaughter we had—3,000 people killed every month in 2006—that Sunni and Shia in Baghdad hate and fear each other more than they hate and fear the USA Army—I mean, not that they particularly like them. But if you're, let's say, a Sunni in Baghdad and somebody kicks your door in at 3:00 in the morning, you'd probably prefer it to be an American soldier, in which case you might survive, rather than the Iraqi police commanders who are all Shia, in which case you're likely to have a very unpleasant death. So—but going back to Basra, the British don't want to move in. They had a rough time, and they also think the militias will unite against them if they try to do so.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And you've been to Iraq numerous times. Here in the United States, we're hearing more and more, obviously, especially in the presidential campaign—John McCain, repeatedly, the Republican candidate, repeatedly saying how the surge is working, the casualties are down, the United States is, quote, "winning" in Iraq. Your sense, from all of your visits and your reporting there, as to this analysis or this view of the surge or the escalation of the war?

PATRICK COCKBURN: You know, I have a sinking feeling in my stomach when I hear things like that. And I was in Baghdad when McCain was there. You know, people say to me, "Are things getting better in Iraq?" And, you know, in one sense, you could say they are, because a year ago we were having, as I said earlier, 3,000 civilians slaughtered, tortured to death every month. This month, we're probably going to have 1,500, 1,600 civilians killed. So, you know, in a sense, things have got better. We've gone from 3,000 to 1,600. But, you know, we've gone from 100 percent bloodbath to 50 percent bloodbath, but it's still a bloodbath, so I think it's really ludicrous for Vice President Cheney or Senator McCain to say, you know, we're on the verge of victory, things are good.

And then there are, you know, those television—there was famous television of McCain in Shorja market in Baghdad last year saying American people aren't being told the truth about Iraq. Now, very noticeably, he didn't go back to Shorja market when he visited a couple of weeks ago, and one of the reasons might be that his security advisers would say, "Don't go," because the market is controlled by the Mahdi Army. So, really, this is very deceptive. There's something of an improvement in security in Baghdad. A lot of this has to do with the fact there are no mixed areas left there, so Sunni and Shia don't really mix. We have a truce with the Madhi Army. But, you know, it's still a city which is the most dangerous in the world, and that's really what should get through to people outside Iraq.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask you—we have about a minute left—but the Pentagon and the White House have repeatedly claimed that Sadr and his followers are being supported by Iran and backed by Iran. Your sense of Iran's role in the battle now between the Shia-dominated government and the Muqtada forces?

PATRICK COCKBURN: It's always been exaggerated, as regards Muqtada, because the Sadrists and his family have always traditionally been anti-Iranian. Probably when the US started opposing them strongly, they thought, well, the enemy of our enemy is our friend, so they've been going to the Iranians, they get a certain amount of support from there. But, you know, I think that as soon as the US decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who was the great enemy of Iran, there was going to be an increase in Iranian influence in Iraq, and the Shia, who are 60 percent of the population, were going to take over from the Sunni. These things were going to happen and probably—and will still happen. So I think that imagining that one can stop them simply prolongs the violence there. And this idea that Muqtada and the Iraqi Shia are somehow all clones of Iran, I think is some of the most poisonous sentiments in the Middle East, because it sort of ratifies sectarian hatred. The Iraqi Shia have their own interests; sometimes they're backed by Iran, which is not too surprising, but they're not clones or pawns of Iran. But if they're treated as such, then they have to rely on Iranian support.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, we'll have to leave it there. Patrick Cockburn, we'll have to leave it there, but thank you very much for being with us. Patrick Cockburn, Iraq correspondent for the London Independent, latest book, Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival. He's covered the invasion and occupation from the government for the past five years.


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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Political Discourse

THE ABSURD TIMES




THE ABSURD TIMES
ILLUSTRATION: Pretty much sums up politics.
News: Dick Cheney intruduced a new way of looking at current situations. When told that we American citizens were against the war, he replied "So?"
This is probably the most profound remark I can see right now.
The people imprisoned in Gaza are launching rockets against Israel.
"So?"
The press did not make much of the fact that we reached 4,000 dead in Iraq.
"So?"
Um, 97% of those who died were killed after Bush said "Mission Accomplished"
"So?"
Well, people are being robbed of their homes and foreclosed on at a greater rate than since the recession.
"So?"
Our dirinking water is filled with not only pathogens, but pharmeceutical waste.
"So?"
We may destroy human life on this planet within 40 years!
"Yes, yes, yes!!!!"
That's all folks.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Stray Points

THE ABSURD TIMES






A few things haven't been noticed in the mainstream press recently, so I though I'd take the opportunity to point to them.
John McCain was in Iraq, confusing just about everybody. He thinks, or says, that Iran trains Al-Quaeda, despite several corrections for his benefit, he continues to state this. It seems quite obvious that if McCain is elected, he will begin where Reagen left off -- with Altzheimers.
There has been a lot of fuss about Michigan lately. Clinton wants the delegates to count, or even have a new election held because of her "base" that would give her an advantage. I have not heard many people point out that the primary in Michigan was an open one, meaning that Republicans and independents could vote in the Democratic primary. These are a source of Obama's strength, and the hope of the Democratic Party if it is to win the next election. However, since they held their elections against the party rules, accepted by both, a new primary would exclude those voters and give Hillary an advantage. Obama's name was nt even on the ballot, but 40% of the vote was "undecided." Imagine being so much against Hillary that you would even show up to vote against her?
Florida is different. They don't want any primary or anything else.
Here is an article by Herrmann:

Neither Popular Government Nor Popular Information

On reactionaries, missile shields, and military nuts

March, 01 2008



printer friendly version Herman's ZSpace page

One of my favorite quotations, from James Madison in 1822, is that "a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both" (this was used as the title of Nichols and McChesney's valuable book on the U.S. media, Tragedy and Farce). We are in the midst of both a farce and a tragedy in the United States today: the farce, a government of great incompetence and hostile to the interests of the general citizenry, a leadership headed by a wild jackass, an elite including the corporate media and Democratic leadership unable or unwilling to constrain the jackass, and corruption now competitive with that of the Gilded Age. A tragedy in the huge pro-wealthy tax cuts and overlapping military and corruption waste in the face of a distressed majority and deteriorating infrastructure at home, the killing, destruction, and foregone opportunities abroad, and the domestic and global problems unmet.

By "popular government" I think Madison meant an elected government and by "popular information" I think he meant information that would be useful to the citizenry and allow them to make intelligent choices consistent with their own interests and perception of the public interest. Of course, if you have an elected government without "popular information" there is a good chance that you may end up with a government that serves the special interests that control that flow of information. In that case "popular government" would be a misleading phrase, as the elected government would likely be a servant of those special interests, as is obviously the case today.

The word "popular" is a close relative of the word "populism." The latter is an invidious word, a word of derogation in the U.S. political economy today. The trouble with Ralph Nader in the 2000 election and Dennis Kucinich in 2008 is that they are "populists," which means that they have called for policies that may serve the general citizenry but which are disapproved by the corporate community. This means that such candidates will not get sufficient funding to be competitive and hence can be (and are) virtually ignored as well as sneered at in the mainstream media. Candidates are vetted by anti-populists and, in a system of "golden rule," populists are automatically disqualified, a disqualification which the mainstream media regularly implement (see Lawrence Shoup's "The Presidential Election 2008: Ruling class conducts its hidden primary," Z Magazine, February 2008).

But as these "populist" candidates are the only ones calling for a range of policies serving the interests of the majority—with the partial exception of Edwards whose populist positions and rhetoric have caused him to suffer dwindling attention and credibility—the media will ignore those policies and focus on the horse race among the funded candidates and occasionally some of the issues they raise, but carefully excluding discussion of the solutions proposed by the "populists" (e.g., single-payer health care reform, a rapid exit from Iraq, a massive cut in the "defense [i.e., offense]" budget, tax changes that reverse the Bush-era giveaways to the "haves"). In this way "popular information" can be kept at a minimum, the public's electoral choices will exclude a populist who might actually represent their interests and carry out major policy initiatives on their behalf, and the farce and tragedy can continue under the auspices of either party.

Conservatives Versus Liberals, or Reactionaries Versus A Mixed Bag?

It is commonplace language in this country to call George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rick Santorum, and, say, Bill O'Reilly "conservatives," contrasted with Nancy Pelosi, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and, say, Thomas Friedman and Richard Cohen, who are "liberals." But this usage is badly obsolete and fails to take into account the massive shift to the right of the entire political spectrum and the resultant rightward drift in the actual policies and positions of these individuals. A conservative should want to conserve, not overthrow major existing institutions and return society to conditions in 1890, or those in an authoritarian state where the head-of-state can act without legal limits on his power to imprison, wage war, and secretly invade the private lives of the citizenry.

Bush, Cheney, Santorum, and O'Reilly aren't trying to conserve anything. They are trying to increase elite economic, political, and social power, which entails further centralization of executive power, weakening any containing legislative and independent judicial powers, curbing individual rights, shrinking or eliminating the welfare state and any organized opposition to corporate power and freedom of action, and pressing onward with militarization and power projection (i.e., imperialist expansion) abroad. One real merit of perpetual war is that it strengthens undemocratic power at home as "national security" considerations tend to override any popular rights. The ends are reactionary and radical, surely not conservative, and tend toward a police state and some form of fascism, with the masses kept in line by force and the threat of force, as well as cultivated fear and terror-war propaganda. We should strongly object when these statist reactionaries are described as conservative.


Pelosi, the Clintons, Friedman, and Cohen fail one important classic liberal test—hostility to "the tyranny of armaments" and recognition that "the military spirit eats into free institutions and absorbs the public resources which might go to the advancement of civilization" (L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism). They have certainly not spoken out against the militarization of the United States and power projection under the guise of a "war on terror," have not put up a fight over the Iraq war, and have been pretty quiet about the anti-civil liberties thrusts of the PATRIOT and Military Commissions Acts. They haven't opposed very strongly if at all the growing racism and the prison-industrial complex, or neoliberalism and the growth in inequality. They are liberal on social issues and favor mild reformist actions on health care, jobs, and environmental matters. If we put up a political spectrum line, we would have the Bush-Cheney-O'Reilly reactionaries on the right; Pelosi, the Clintons, and a large part of the Democratic party and media establishment in the mixed-bag of a social liberal-economic conservative-militaristic and moderate-expansionist center; and the majority of the public and a minority of journalists on the left (anti-militarist, anti-war, anti- neoliberal, populist). The mixed baggers have adapted to the rightward shift, thereby helping consolidate it.

Bill Clinton was notorious for "feeling your pain" as he inflicted it on ordinary citizens, with NAFTA, the WTO, and the ending of federal welfare support, and his anti-crime and anti-terrorism legislation that helped fill the prisons and fed right into Bush II policies. The major contending Democrats now favor mild reformist actions on health care and other matters, but even on these, as with Clinton, their promises as candidates tend to fade when they take office and must face the establishment's pressures to cut spending, show their toughness in resisting their voting constituency's demands for relief, and demonstrate their "national security" credentials. They may talk about change, but cannot be relied on to bring it about.

Czech Missile Shield

Poland and Czechoslovakia are planned beneficiaries of a U.S. manufactured and funded "missile shield" to protect them and everybody in the civilized world from Iran's missiles that may some day be dispensing nuclear weapons. It is a bit frightening that the mainstream U.S. media can take this at face value and not see: (1) that this plan is a fraud in its pretense that it is a defensive weapon and "shield"; (2) that it is in fact an offensive weapon that must be taken as such by Russia; and (3) that producing it is one more boondoggle in a huge stream servicing the military-industrial complex and keeping the arms (boondoggle)-race flourishing.

Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, won't have one for years if ever, and has long been prepared to negotiate a firm commitment not to get one if the United States would guarantee abandonment of its long-standing "regime change" objective in dealing with Iran. The United States has never been willing to do this, so the "threat" is contrived and derivative of a U.S. plan of destabilization and aggression, in conflict with UN principles but still supported by the UN with its U.S.-organized threats to Iran rather than to the potential aggressor. But the "shield" plan is also insane in that an Iran with a few nuclear weapons would hardly use them to attack Czechoslavakia or Poland or the United States, for that matter. Any Iranian use of nuclear weapons on the United States or one of its allies would be suicidal. It might at some future date, if Iran did finally acquire nuclear weapons, try to use one on the United States if the United States first used nuclear weapons on Iran, but this would make them responsive to a U.S. first strike—it would not justify the shield as "defensive."

But the placement of this "shield" right next door to Russia is an obvious threat to that country, as it could be used in a first strike against Russia with little time elapsing for Russian defense, or it would be useful in the case of a U.S.-based first strike against Russia as a means of dealing with any Russian response. The Russians feel threatened by this insane action, as they should, but the "free press" follows the official party line in considering the negative Russian reaction a bit paranoid. Imagine, however, the U.S. media's reaction if the Russians planned on putting up such an anti-missile shield in Venezuela and Cuba, on the grounds that both countries, as well as Russia, were threatened by Israeli nuclear weapons (weapons which at least exist).

The new missile shield, and the establishment of bases all around the periphery of Russia, are very provocative. As Vladimir Putin recently pointed out, "Nobody feels secure any more because nobody can hide behind international law…. This is nourishing the arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons" (Imre Karacs, "Putin: America is fuelling worldwide nuclear arms race," Sunday Times, February 11, 2008). But this is a plus from the standpoint of the Pentagon and military contractors, as it will justify further arms expenditures with new "threats" and maybe some nice little wars. "Blowback" is profitable, and with the "populists" marginalized, who is to stop the process?

The Five Military Nuts

It was recently reported in the press that five leading Western military officers had put forward a manifesto calling for a new NATO and a "grand strategy" to deal with the "increasingly brutal world." The most notable feature of this new strategy is its claim that, "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction" (see Ian Traynor, "Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, NATO told," the Guardian, January 22, 2008). The reasons for the crisis, according to the five generals, are: (1) political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism; (2) the negative effect of globalization in stimulating terrorism, organized crime, and the spread of WMD; (3) climate change and the quest for energy security; and (4) the weakening of national state and international institutions like the UN and NATO.

The most notable features of this analysis and program are: first, the confusion of cause and effect and failure to see the root of the increasing brutalization in the West's own policies; second, the deep irresponsibility and illegality of the novel new proposal; and third, the Kafkaesque idea of preventing the use of WMD by using them. The confusion of cause and effect is important for the generals because a reversal toward reality would call for a change in Western policies that are themselves brutal and that induce responsive brutality. The Iraq invasion-occupation was and remains very brutal and has admittedly provoked a resistance and given a lift to al Qaeda. Logic tells us that it was this Western "preemptive" and preventive action that was the cause of the brutality, along with the weakening of the UN and its and NATO's excessive subservience to the United States. Logic also tells us that if the "preemptive nuclear strike" strategy had been in effect in 2002-2003, the United States and NATO might have unleashed nuclear weapons on Iraq based on a lie, thus greatly increasing the criminality of the actual "supreme international crime."

The generals fail to see that "political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism" pervade the United States and Israel, countries that over the past decade have engaged in serial aggressions and (in the case of Israel) ethnic cleansing based on a Biblical vision of a promised land for a chosen people (accepted also by an important segment of the Bush constituency and perhaps Bush himself). Giving the go ahead for first use of nuclear weapons to these groups is especially insane. Their actions, and corporate globalization, with its mass impoverishment effects, have greatly stimulated terrorism, and organized crime, and the spread of WMD. These are responses to the impact of Western policies. The weakening of the UN and turning it into an organization servicing Western policy and the wide acceptance of the right of the strong to intervene across borders has encouraged aggression by the strong and caused weaker countries to hasten to rearm and gain WMD in order to protect themselves. The proposal of the five generals will increase that rush to WMD.

The five generals' proposal ignores the fact that the projection of power by the Bush administration, its threat and implementation of preventive wars, and its opportunism and complete disregard of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty—except in its bearing on the nuclear policy of a U.S. regime-change target, Iran—has been a major stimulus to the global quest for WMD. A sane proposal for controlling nuclear arms would be to urge a return to and an even-handed enforcement of the NPT, which included a call and promise for a gradual reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons by the countries that possessed them, but the five generals are not interested in such ideas as they speak for the main abusers of the NPT and the countries that have engaged in serial violations of the UN Charter over the past decade.

The five generals' proposal is a new landmark in the increasing willingness of the Western powers to assert their military muscle and enforce their vision of a neoliberal world by force and violence. It is not surprising that their dramatic new proposal for enhanced violence should be a Kafkaesque contradiction—that the West should use nuclear weapons to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. It has become so commonplace in the nuthouse for Western terrorism to be something other than terror, and Western aggression not aggression, why not nuclear bombing not being the use of nuclear weapons? Why not normalize nuclear war?

Z

Edward S. Herman is an economist, social critic, and author of numerous books and articles.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

OBAMA ON RACE -- EXTRA

THE ABSURD TIMES
Just in case you missed it, below is Obama's declaration on race. I'm posting it just in case you are asked about it, you hear nonsense about it, bad papaphrases, etc. I have to apoligize in advance for the mess -- every ? should be replaced with an " and the paragraph markers slipped away. A link to the source is provided so you can get it without the mess.
His words:
The Wall Street Journal Home Page Text of Obama?s Speech: A More Perfect Union Posted By _Editor_ On March 18, 2008 @ 10:27 am In _Campaign 2008_ | _173 Comments_ /*Here, the full text of Sen. Barack Obama?s speech, ?A More Perfect Union,? as prepared for delivery.*/
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.? Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America?s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation?s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution ? a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part ? through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time. This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign ? to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together ? unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction ? towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story. I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton?s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I?ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world?s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners ? an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It?s a story that hasn?t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts ? that out of many, we are truly one. Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either ?too black? or ?not black enough.? We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn. On one end of the spectrum, we?ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it?s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we?ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike. I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely ? just as I?m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed. But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren?t simply controversial. They weren?t simply a religious leader?s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country ? a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. As such, Reverend Wright?s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems ? two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all. Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way But the truth is, that isn?t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God?s work here on Earth ? by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS. In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity: ?People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend?s voice up into the rafters?.And in that single note ? hope! ? I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion?s den, Ezekiel?s field of dry bones. Those stories ? of survival, and freedom, and hope ? became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn?t need to feel shame about?memories that all people might study and cherish ? and with which we could start to rebuild.? That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety ? the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity?s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions ? the good and the bad ? of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother ? a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love. Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America ? to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we?ve never really worked through ? a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, ?The past isn?t dead and buried. In fact, it isn?t even past.? We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven?t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today?s black and white students. Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments ? meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today?s urban and rural communities. A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one?s family, contributed to the erosion of black families ? a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods ? parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement ? all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What?s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn?t make it ? those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations ? those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright?s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician?s own failings. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright?s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races. In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don?t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience ? as far as they?re concerned, no one?s handed them anything, they?ve built it from scratch. They?ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they?re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren?t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism. Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze ? a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns ? this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. This is where we are right now. It?s a racial stalemate we?ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy ? particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own. But I have asserted a firm conviction ? a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people ? that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances ? for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans ? the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives ? by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny. Ironically, this quintessentially American ? and yes, conservative ? notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright?s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. The profound mistake of Reverend Wright?s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It?s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country ? a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old ? is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know ? what we have seen ? is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope ? the audacity to hope ? for what we can and must achieve tomorrow. In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds ? by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper. In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world?s great religions demand ? that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother?s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister?s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well. For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle ? as we did in the OJ trial ? or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright?s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she?s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we?ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, ?Not this time.? This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can?t learn; that those kids who don?t look like us are somebody else?s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don?t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together. This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn?t look like you might take your job; it?s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should?ve been authorized and never should?ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we?ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned. I would not be running for President if I didn?t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation ? the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election. There is one story in particularly that I?d like to leave you with today ? a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King?s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that?s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too. Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother?s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn?t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice. Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they?re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who?s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he?s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, ?I am here because of Ashley.? ?I?m here because of Ashley.? By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Article printed from Washington Wire - WSJ.com: *http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire* URL to article: *http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/03/18/text-of-obamas-speech-a-more-perfect-union/* Click here <#Print> to print.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Obama and religion

THE ABSURD TIMES
CREDO QUIA ABSRUDUM EST




Illustration: Two coins and their explaination, illustration donated by one of you. I have come to the conclusion that the motto: "In God We Trust" should be replaced with the motto, meaning essentially the same thing, "Credo quia absurdum est." This would certainly fit the situation more aptly.
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So let us say a few words about how religion has been a part of this political campaign. Back in 1958-59, Nixon was running against JFK and pointed out that he had nothing against Kennedy being a Catholic, but he was not so naive as to assume the nobody would. This time around, the pulpit pounders, the fundamentalists, the ignorant, and the stupid are being treated to a festival of religious absurdity that is overwhelming. The voting public is a group from which I am serious considering resigning. If I thought MENSA was shallow and thus resigned, I can hardly be consistent if this idiocy continues or if it makes any difference at all.
We will start with John McVain, now that Hucklebery Hound is out of the race. McVain has been endorsed by religious leaders who consider the Catholic Church an agent of the devil. McVain said "Thank you, sir, I'm honored." Another of McVain's religious supporters asserts that the United States was founded to oppose Islam. [The truth is that John Adams, our second President, explicitly stated otherwise.] McVain said "Thank you, I'm honored." There has been virtually no criticism of McVain about this.
Hillary Clinton, former Goldwater Girl, was asked about the "charge" [what is the penalty?] of Barak being a Moslem. She paused, and finally said "Not that I know of."
But the real absurdities surround Barak Obama. First, Farrakan says its nice to see an African American with a chance to be President. Obama was forced to "denounce" that. Hillary demanded that he "reject it." Well, ok, although it seems that "denounce" is more proactive than "reject," he added "reject." Got any more words for me?
Well, now it is clear that he is a "christian." So, they went after the ex-pastor of his church and I'm pretty certain you have seen them on the networks. Obama said he had never heard those words from he and he "rejects them too."
But what were those words? Well, "The chickens have come home to roost," was one point, a rather trite, homey one. The preacher then elaborated as his point can be paraphrased thus: the U.S. supported the Aparteid government in South Africa in defiance of every other country in the world, except Israel. Since South Africa finally changed somewhat, we have an aparteid situation in the West Back and Gaza in the Middle East. Jimmie Carter was castigated for even suggesting this. [Another ex-President.] The United States invaded Mexico, stole the country now called "Panama," from Columbia, set up dictators in Iran, and around the world. When we captured Norriega, a graduate of the School of the Americas and ex-cia employee, we also killed thousands of his countrymen, all civilians. We killed millions of Vietnamese, mainly civilians. We have killed Iraqis recently, mainly civilians. Osama bin Laden first fought in Afghanistan (on our side v. the Russians) and most of the 9/11 participants were Saudi or Egyptian. We blamed Saddam Hussein, one person bin Laden hated more than us, and attacked him for it. All this while, we were correct and serving God's mission. The preacher said that the 3,000 who died, did so because bin Laden was retaliating against us. Who is surprised that such a thing would happen?
If Obama pointed out that the remarks were correct, how would not have a chance to win. I should point out here that Obama, Clinton, McVain, and George Bush all know these facts, but are quick to deny them. That is why the espression "speak truth to power" is meaningless. Power already knows the truth, and it will continue. Why bother telling them what they already know?
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The article below is a rumincation on Race and Politics in the U.S.:
(And lest I be accused of being racist, the author is African American, so it's ok):

Barack Obama's Problem -- And Ours Along the Color Line
March 15, 2008 By *Manning Marable*
Source: BlackCommentator.com
<http://www.blackcommentator.com/267/267_along_the_color_line_obama.html>
Manning Marable's ZSpace Page </zspace/manningmarable>
Several years ago, I was walking home to my Manhattan apartment from
Columbia University, just having delivered a lecture on New York State's
notorious "Rockefeller Drug Laws." The state's mandatory-minimum
sentencing laws had thrown tens of thousands of nonviolent drug
offenders into state prisons with violent convicts. In my lecture I had
called for more generous prisoner reentry programs, the restoration of
felons' voting rights, increased educational programs inside prisons,
and a restoration of judges' sentencing authority.
A white administrator from another local university, a woman, who I had
always judged to be fairly conservative and probably a Republican, had
attended my lecture and was walking along with me to go to the subway.
She told me that my lecture about the "prison industrial complex" had
been a real "eye opener." The fact that two million Americans were
imprisoned, she expressed, was a "real scandal."
Then this college administrator blurted out, in a hurried manner, "You
know, my son is also in prison . a victim of the drug laws."
In a split second, I had to make a hard decision: whether to engage this
white conservative administrator in a serious conversation about
America's gulags and political economy of mass incarceration that had
collaterally ensnared her son, or to pretend that I had not heard her
last sentence, and to continue our conversation as if she had said
nothing at all. Perhaps this is a sign of generational weakness on my
part, but the overwhelming feeling I had at that precise moment was
that, one day, the white administrator would deeply regret revealing
such an intimate secret with a black person. I might tell the entire
world about it. Instead of proceeding on the basis of mutual trust and
common ground, transcending the boundaries of color, it would be better
to ignore what was said in haste.
All of this occurred to me in the span of one heartbeat. I decided to
say nothing. Two seconds later, I could visually detect the signs of
relief on the woman's face. African Americans have survived in the
United States for over four hundred years because, at least up to the
most recent generation of black people, we have made it our business to
study white Americans generally, and especially those who exercise
power. This explains why so many African Americans, at the very core of
their being, express fears that millions of white Americans will be
unable to cast ballots for Obama for president solely due to his racial
identity. Of course, the majority of them would deny this, even to
themselves.
Among the remaining Democratic presidential candidates, former Senator
John Edwards (albeit with a "suspended" campaign) has been consistently
the most progressive on most policy issues, in my view. On issues such
as health care and poverty, Edwards has been clearly to the left of both
Obama and Hillary Clinton. But since Edwards probably cannot win the
Democratic nomination the real choice is between Clinton and Obama.
We've all heard the arguments explaining why Obama's "not qualified" to
be president. Chief among them is that he "doesn't have enough
experience in government." As a historian, I think it may be instructive
to observe that three of the twentieth century's most influential
presidents had shorter careers in electoral politics than Obama.
Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, served as New York's governor for only
two years, and was William McKinley's Vice President for barely six
months. Woodrow Wilson served as New Jersey's governor for only two
years before being elected president. And Franklin D. Roosevelt, our
only four-term president, had served in Albany as New York's governor
for four years. None of these leaders was ever elected to Congress.
Obama's seven years in the Illinois State Senate, according to the New
York Times' Nicholas Kristof, show that "he scored significant
achievements there: a law to videotape police interrogations in capital
cases; an earned income tax credit to fight poverty; an expansion of
early childhood education." To be perfectly honest, there are some
public policy issues where I sharply disagree with Obama, such as health
care. Obama's approach is not to use "mandates" to force millions of
healthy twenty-somethings into the national health insurance pool. He
claims that you won't need mandates, just lower the price of private
health insurance and young adults will buy it on their own. Obama's
children are still small, so maybe he can be excused for such an
irrational argument. Obama's reluctance to embrace health mandates is
about his desire to appeal to "centrists" and moderate Republicans.
Not getting email from BC?
That brings us back to Barack's unspoken problem: white denial and voter
flight. It's instructive to remember what happened to David Dinkins, the
first (and still only) African American elected mayor of New York City.
According to Andrew Kohul, the current president of the Pew Research
Center, the Gallup organization's polling research on New York City's
voters in 1989 indicated that Dinkins would defeat his Republican
opponent, Rudolph Giuliani, by 15 percent. Instead, Dinkins only
narrowly won by 2 percent. Kohul, who worked as a Gallup pollster in
that election, concluded that "poorer, less well-educated [white] voters
were less likely to answer our questions;" so the poll didn't have the
opportunity to factor in their views. As Kohul admits, "Here's the
problem - these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more
unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews."
So I return to the white college administrator whose son is in prison on
drug charges. I made a mistake. People of color must break through the
mental racial barricades that divide America into parallel racial
universes. We need to mobilize and support the election of Barack Obama
not only because he is progressive and fully qualified to be president,
but also because only his campaign can force all Americans to overcome
the centuries-old silences about race that still create a deep chasm
across this nation's democratic life. In the end, we must force our
fellow citizens who happen to be white, to come to terms with their own
whiteness, their guilt and fears about America's terrible racial past.
If there is any hope for meaningful change inside U.S. electoral system
in the future, it lies with progressive leaders like Barack Obama. If we
can dare to dream politically, let us dream of the world as it should be.
/BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Manning Marable, PhD is
one of America's most influential and widely read scholars. Since 1993,
Dr. Marable has been Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science,
History and African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York
City. For ten years, Dr. Marable was founding director of the Institute
for Research in African- American Studies at Columbia University, from
1993 to 2003. Dr. Marable is an author or editor of over 20 books,
including Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American
Past Can Remake America's Racial Future (2006); The Autobiography of
Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life And Legacy Revealed Through His Writings,
Letters, And Speeches (2005); Freedom: A Photographic History of the
African American Struggle (2002); Black Leadership: Four Great American
Leaders and the Struggle for Civil Rights (1998); Beyond Black and
White: Transforming African-American Politics (1995); and How Capitalism
Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and
Society (South End Press Classics Series) (1983). His current project is
a major biography of Malcolm X, entitled Malcolm X: A Life of
Reinvention, to be published by Viking Press in 2009./
["Along The Color Line", written by Manning Marable, PhD and distributed
by.BlackCommentator.com, is a public educational and information service
dedicated to fostering political dialogue and discussion, inspired by
the great tradition for political event columns written by W. E. B. Du
Bois nearly a century ago. Re-prints are permitted by any Black-owned or
Black-oriented publications (print or electronic) without charge as long
as they are printed in their entirety including this paragraph and, for
electronic media, a link to http://www.BlackCommentator.com
<https://mail.zmag.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.BlackCommentator.com>.]