American, do you realize,
That the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize
My every living day?
The bulldozers and the tanks,
The gases and the guns,
The bombs that fall outside my door,
All due to American funds.
Read the whole thing here: Subzero Blue
Here’s a good illustration for Charley Reese’s column, featured on AntiWar.com today:
United States aircraft dropped leaflets on the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah on Tuesday, warning residents they will lose $102-million (about R637-million) in rebuilding funds if they do not halt attacks and allow US troops to enter freely.
One mistake that seems to be a permanent feature of our foreign policy is mirror-imaging. So many American politicians, most of them poorly educated and ignorant of other people and their cultures, tend to think other people are just like us. A great many are not.
Lyndon Johnson failed in Vietnam because he thought he could treat the Vietnamese the same way he treated members of the U.S. House and Senate. Johnson always used a stick and a carrot. Vote with me, and you’ll get pork-barrel rewards; vote against me, and I’ll find a way to punish you. That worked with American politicians, most of whom are nothing more than officeholders with “for sale or rent” signs on their foreheads.
Johnson told the North Vietnamese, make peace, and I’ll give you billions of dollars in American aid; don’t make peace, and I’ll bomb you. Unfortunately for Johnson, the North Vietnamese, whatever their other faults, were not for sale, nor were they willing to succumb to threats. They wanted to unify their country, and they were willing to fight as long as necessary to achieve that. As it turned out, we were not willing to fight as long as necessary to prevent it. So, despite billions of dollars, despite 57,000 dead, despite a quarter of a million wounded, Vietnam is today a unified communist country.
President George W. Bush has offered a $25 million reward for Osama bin Laden. He thought, apparently, that like most Americans, the Afghans and Pakistanis were for sale. Despite Afghanistan being one of the poorest countries in the world, the American millions have not produced a single traitor willing to rat out bin Laden.
Let’s face it – we have become a secular and materialistic society. The two kinds of people we have real trouble believing actually exist are people of true religious faith and people to whom honor means more than money.
This shouldn’t be such a hard thing to understand.
"Counterterrorism Evolves" highlights the many faults with the US law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies prior to 9/11. One includes the structure of institutions such as the FBI:
Still, the FBI had plenty of power to thwart foreign terrorists:
Unfortunately, there was a definite lack of focus only a year before 9/11:
Overall, one gets a sense that the commission still believed that the FBI and others still didn’t have enough power. Continue reading “Notes on Chapter 3 of the 9/11 Report”
A Jordanian company has vowed to pull out of Iraq in response to the demands of kidnappers who hold two of it’s employees. A Saudi Arabian company did likewise a few weeks ago. I can’t help but wonder if these companies aren’t feeling a sense of relief to have a legitimate excuse to get out of Iraq. With operating costs so high due to the need for massive security, it is possible that the companies are making very little or losing money in Iraq, as well as placing all their personnel at extreme risk. Collier Lounsbury writes that even Halliburton might be losing money in Iraq.
In a demonstration of just how much territory they control, an Iraqi rebel group has announced that they will close the vital Jordan-Baghdad highway in 72 hours:
Militants bent on disrupting the supply chain to the U.S. military threatened Tuesday to cut the highway linking Iraq to Jordan in 72 hours and said it would hit at Jordanians as well as Americans.
The threat, from a group calling itself “The Group of Death,” was made in a video obtained by Associated Press Television News. The video showed seven men wearing black clothing and masks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and rifles.
The group’s warning comes amid a wave of kidnappings of foreigners, mainly truck drivers, entering Iraq from neighboring countries to deliver supplies and other cargo needed for this war-ravaged nation’s reconstruction effort.
A militant who read a statement on the tape criticized Jordan, Iraq’s western neighbor, for letting trucking firms enter Iraq to support the U.S.-led coalition.
“We consider all Jordanian interests, companies and businessmen and citizens as much a target as the Americans,” the speaker said.
You might remember that the insurgency successfully cut off US military supply routes before, to the point that Bremer and the rest of the Fortress Green Zone occupants were eating MREs. Clearly, the guerillas are slowly isolating the Americans by driving businesses out of Iraq, assassinations and attacks on collaborators, and relentless attacks on US military positions. Consider this bit from Knight Ridder’s Tom Lassiter:
“After more than a year of fighting, U.S. troops have stopped patrolling large swaths of Iraq’s restive Anbar province, according to the top American military intelligence officer in the area…. In the wreckage of the security situation, [Army Maj. Thomas] Neemeyer [the head American intelligence officer for the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, the main military force in the Ramadi area] said, U.S. officials have all but given up on plans to install a democratic government in the city [Ramadi], and are hoping instead that Islamic extremists and other insurgent groups don’t overrun the province in the same way that they’ve seized the region’s most infamous town, Fallujah…
“‘The only way to stomp out the insurgency of the mind,’ [Capt. Joe Jasper, a spokesman for the 1st Brigade] said, ‘would be to kill the entire population’… Pointing to a neighborhood outside the town of Habbaniyah, between Fallujah and Ramadi, he said, ‘We’ve lost a lot of Marines there and we don’t ever go in anymore. If they want it that bad, they can have it.’ And then to a spot on the western edge of Fallujah: ‘We find that if we don’t go there, they won’t shoot us.'”
“If they want it that bad, they can have it.” How long before this line is in a Bush or Kerry speech?
I’ll skip the standard analysis of the Dems’ first night – OK, Al Gore was kinda funny, Bill Clinton was kinda funny – and focus on a face in the crowd. At one point, Clinton said something ostensibly inspiring – I can’t remember what, which is probably comment enough – and the camera glommed on a middle-aged delegate who was beaming as if she had just regained the gift of sight. Her smile was bright, earnest, and unsettling. For behind that smile (and we’ll see more of them a month from now in New York) was the timeless hope that some Great Man holds the remedy. Make jobs! Heal the sick! End hate! Stop terror! Defeat evil!
And I would forgive these folks for insulting my intelligence if their fantasies didn’t entail stealing my money, shrinking my freedom, and encouraging foreigners to kill me. Which is not to say that I find all of the bright, earnest, smilers’ goals repugnant. As Christopher Preble and Justin Logan wrote regarding one do-gooder project in a Cato Institute op-ed Monday,
You say ya got a real solution? We’d all love to see the plan. But ya better take that gun from my temple. And you should really work on finding better Messiahs for yourselves.
The US Government has granted status as “protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention” to 3,800 persons who belong to a group, the Mujahideen-e Khalq or MEK, designated “terrorist” by Washington, according to the Czar of American Gulags-Iraq Branch, Major-General Geoffrey Miller (formerly of the Guantanamo Bay Branch.)
For a quick run-down on MEK, I’ll quote AntiWar’s own Justin Raimondo, writing somewhat prophetically last January:
MEK is a formerly Marxist group with odd, cultic overtones. Led by Maryam Rajavi, the self-proclaimed “President Elect” of Iran, and her husband, Massoud, head of the group’s military wing, they originally supported Khomeini when he overthrew the Shah, and carried out terroristic attacks on Americans, only to turn against the regime.
MEK took up residence in Iraq, where they were given sanctuary and armed by Saddam Hussein. They fought against their own country – on the Iraqi side – during the long Iran-Iraq war. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, MEK carried out military operations in defense of the Ba’athist regime, and its main base came under attack by U.S. forces. MEK agreed to capitulate, but there was some question about to what extent they disarmed. Even today their main force remains intact.
Their fate has become a political football, pitting the U.S. State Department against the neoconservatives in Washington who now have Iran fixed in their sights. The neocons are pushing the idea that we can use the MEK to overthrow the Iranian regime: this is the same group that tried to ingratiate itself with the Bush administration by sharing “intelligence” that supposedly pointed to Iran’s intention of developing a nuclear weapons program.
U.S. law enforcement conducted a series of raids that rounded up prominent MEK cadre, closed down their offices, and froze their assets, but, operating under the protection of Washington’s War Party, these terrorists are freely going about their business, and even gaining open support from prominent U.S. government officials, like Perle. What’s interesting is that their support cuts across ideological and party lines.
[..]
Does it matter that MEK is a Marxist cult with a violent history, and longstanding links to the regime of Saddam Hussein – and that the group helped put down the 1991 Shi’ite rebellion, in which many thousands were killed or forced to flee? Does it matter to Pipes and Clawson that support for the MEK nutballs only discredits the U.S.?Of course not. All that matters is the neoconservative goal of overthrowing the regime in Tehran.
Yes. Add this bit to the plethora of “Iran is next” speculation we’ve seen recently as well as the ridiculous “Iran helped Al Qaeda do 9/11” story currently making the rounds of neocon mouthpieces and listen carefully for the sound of neocon wardrums – they’re getting louder as they grow more and more desperate to get on with their next mideast invasion.
