Emergency Picket in front of Consulate of Mexico in Toronto!!!

posted by Annamarie at 1:33 AM | 1 comment(s)

Tomgram: Ann Jones on Bush's Poppy Wars in Afghanistan

While the Iraqi catastrophe -- and whether we are about to be at a post-midterm election "tipping point" in that country -- preoccupies Americans, an older Bush administration Afghan "success" story has sprung enough holes to sink the Titanic and looks to be taking on water fast. The President has long claimed that Iraq is the "central front in the war against terrorism." Looking at Afghanistan, however, it's increasingly clear that Bush's Iraqi adventure is the literal motor for terrorism that the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate suggested it was. ("The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause célèbre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world, and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.")

Iraq is proving the central training ground and testing field for the renewed Afghan rebellion. The Taliban, this summer and fall, returned to the battle in Afghanistan in force (with plans to continue their offensive well into that country's bitter winter) -- and with some techniques clearly imported from Iraq. So, the use of sophisticated IED or roadside explosive devices and of suicide bombers, as well as targeted assassinations of government officials, have been on the rise -- all techniques pulled directly off the Iraqi battlegrounds; while foreign jihadis are now, according to Sebastian Rotella of the Los Angeles Times, choosing Afghanistan over Iraq as the prime place to make a stand (as it was during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s).

Meanwhile, NATO and U.S. forces in that country find themselves engaged in the kind of warfare that results, as in Iraq, in high body counts but also generates lots of enemies in the long run, fuelling the Taliban's war. (As one British officer put it, "For every Taliban you kill, you recruit three or four more.") From simple cultural ignorance to the slaughter of civilians from the air and even the desecration of the dead, not to mention the imprisonment of the living, western forces are acting in ways that can't help but bring events in Iraq to mind. NATO (and American) casualties have been on the rise; troops have been locked down and increasingly isolated in some Afghan cities for fear of suicide bombers; while unease, not to say disgruntlement, is growing among commanders who, as with Iraq, are starting to go public. Just this weekend, Prime Minister Tony Blair's most trusted military commander and confidant, General the Lord Guthrie "branded as 'cuckoo' the way Britain's overstretched army was sent into Afghanistan."

And then there are the drugs. Afghanistan is now the globe's prime narco-state. Ann Jones, whose vivid memoir, Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan, is riveting reading, plunges into the Alice-in-Wonderland world of drug-eradication efforts in that land and shows why our Afghan programs are headed for the nearest cliff. Tom

posted by Annamarie at 11:44 PM | 0 comment(s)

Tomgram: Truths of a Lost War

[Note to Tomdispatch readers: This is part 2 of a dispatch on the Bush administration and Iraq. Part 1 was Losing the Home Front. One of the sections below is devoted to Riverbend, the pseudonymous "girl blogger" of Baghdad. For it, I read the collection of her blog entries that the Feminist Press at CUNY published in 2005, Baghdad Burning, Girl Blog from Iraq, and then the newest volume, Baghdad Burning II, More Girl Blog from Iraq, just now being published. These represent an unparalleled record of the American war on, and occupation of, Iraq (and Riverbend writes like an angel). The two volumes are simply the best contemporary account we are likely to have any time soon of the hell into which we've plunged that country. I can't recommend them too highly. Tom]

Fiasco Then, Fiasco Now

Are we now officially out of our minds? On Tuesday, General George W. Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Zalmay Khalilzad, our ambassador to Iraq, gave a joint press conference in Baghdad that was all for home consumption. By home, I mean Washington DC. I mean Indiana. I mean Texas. Baghdad's Green Zone was essentially a stage set for a political defense of the Bush presidency.

If the news hadn't been quite so grim, this tandem's act might have qualified as an Abbott and Costello comedy routine, including the moment when the lights went out -- while "gunfire and bomb blasts echoed around the city" -- thanks to our inability to resuscitate Iraqi electricity production. In fact, the New York Times just reported that, on some projects, more than 50% of U.S. reconstruction dollars are being spent on "overhead" as, for months at a time, whole reconstruction teams sit idly with the meter going waiting to begin work.

Some Democratic critics had been calling on the Bush administration for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Well, a timetable they got (though Ambassador Khalilzad preferred to call it a "timeline"). The catch was: The hopeless, essentially powerless Iraqi "government" inside Baghdad's Green Zone was to deliver that timeline as a pre-election present to a disgruntled American public. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki himself would produce it with genuine "benchmarks" for upping oil production and splitting oil revenues, for disarming and dismantling Shiite militias and police death squads, and for negotiating with Sunni rebels.

Not only that, Maliki would have his "plan" in place (perhaps for the Iraqis to withdraw from their own country) "before the end of the year" -- and this was just one of a welter of mini-schedules offered by the ambassador and general that would shove Iraqi matters at least beyond November 7th, if not into the relatively distant future. The ambassador, for instance, assured Americans that all those benchmarks would be met and "significant progress" achieved "in the course of the next twelve months" -- the slight catch being: "assuming that the Iraqi leaders deliver on the commitments that they have made."

General Casey chimed in with his own timeline: "And it's going to take another 12 to 18 months or so until I believe the Iraqi security forces are completely capable of taking over responsibility for their own security." ("Still probably with some level of support from us.") Probably? These are the same forces some of whose battalions "demobilized" rather than accept transfer assignments to work with Americans in the dangerous streets of distant Baghdad. These are battalions that can have 30-50% of their troops either on leave, AWOL, or perhaps as ghost soldiers for whom commanders receive pay?

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

posted by Annamarie at 11:42 PM | 0 comment(s)

Tomgram: Playing the Numbers Game with Death in Iraq

[Note for Tomdispatch readers: In my recent post, George Bush's War of the Words, while highlighting the virtues of the new Tomdispatch book Mission Unaccomplished, Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters, I wrote about what the Bush administration had done to our language. Now, in this first of a two-parter on our Iraq disaster, I consider how imagery became part of the President's war to pacify the home front. Let me take this opportunity again to urge all readers who, in the winter evenings to come, would like a little splendid company and freewheeling conversation with eleven of our more provocative thinkers to pick up a copy of the new book and, if you're in the mood to give this site a special vote of confidence, perhaps an extra copy or two as prospective presents for the holiday season. Tom! ]

Losing the Home Front (Part 1)

Recently, speaking of his war in Iraq, George Bush put the Vietnam analogy back in the public eye. He was asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was on the mark in suggesting that what "we might be seeing now is the Iraqi equivalent of the Tet Offensive."

The President's reply: "Mm-hmm. He could be right. There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence. And we're heading into an election."

The nationwide Tet Offensive has, of course, long been seen as the turning point in the Vietnam War, the moment when the American political establishment lost both the media and the American public in its Vietnam venture. That's what the President is certainly alluding to, though the present chaos in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq hardly qualifies as a "Tet Offensive" and, as the polls indicate, the American public had already been lost to his war.

Nonetheless, for Bush, who (like the rest of his administration) had previously avoided Vietnam-analogy admissions like the plague, it was certainly a sign that he feared the loss of the war he had fought most fiercely since September 12, 2001 -- the war to pacify the American public and the media. No administration in memory has devoted more time to thinking out and polishing its language, its signature phrases and images, in the pursuit of that war; so, for instance, the announcement that the President is now "cutting and running" from his own signature phrase "stay the course" -- one-half of the linguistic duo (the other being, of course, "cut and run") on which he and Karl Rove had clearly planned drive the Democrats into retreat in the midterm election period -- is no small matter. (White House Press Spokesman Tony Snow: "[Stay the course] left the wrong impression about what was going on. And it allowed critics to say, well, here's an administration that's just embarked upon a policy and not looking at what the situation is, when, in fact, it's just the opposite.")

If this is, in any sense, a turning-point moment, then it's important to take another look at aspects of the war on the home front that this administration has fought so relentlessly these last years and is now losing -- the first being its image wars in regard to Iraq and the second, the numbers games it's played when it came to deaths in that country.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

posted by Annamarie at 11:40 PM | 0 comment(s)

Tomgram: Bill McKibben on Our Planetary Fate

The pronghorn antelope, "the prairie ghost," is capable of running at up to sixty miles an hour, twice as fast as any predator in its environment. That extra mileage might seem odd until you realize that, before the last great mammalian megafaunal die-out in North America, some 13,000 to 16,000 years ago, there were evidently creatures (perhaps lions or wolves) which could power along at something close to such speeds. So all those thousands of years, encompassing significant parts of our prehistory and the totality of recorded history from the first days of Ur to the latest disasters in Iraq, and the pronghorn still outraces its ghostly companion. So much time, in human terms, and it still hasn't "registered" its loss; so much time and that niche in our environment remains empty.

It's an evolutionary blink of the eye for the antelope (and its ghost partner). It's not even an evolutionary blink for planet Earth. For us, it's everything. If we wreck our planet, we can't wait another 13,000-16,000 years, no less the millions of years normally involved, to forge a new, well-stocked Earth. For us, when it comes to our environment now is forever.

So, it continually surprises me that this supposedly can-do country, transformed recently into a "homeland" focused on "security," can't lift a finger to do a thing about the environmental degradation going on all around us. The title of Bob Woodward's new bestseller, State of Denial, might have been far better applied to the Bush administration's reaction to our melting planet, or to their complete lack of interest in getting us ready for our "wild" weather ride to come. The odd thing is that, even for those not ready to take global warming or climate change (or whatever name you care to give it) for the staggering danger it is, betting on preparations for it should still be a no-brainer, if not the only sure-fire wager in town. The worst that happens, after all, is that you've put real money into energy conservation and the development of alternative energy sources -- and so into future ! energy independence, the very thing this energy-drunk country obviously needs and, if we are to believe the polls, most American want. Imagine where we'd be now, if we hadn't laughed Jimmy Carter out of the room in 1979 when he suggested investing in a big way in alternative energy R&D. Instead, as Bill McKibben notes below, we've largely ceded the development of wind power -- in fact, the lead in all sorts of alternate energy paths -- to other countries. Haven't we learned anything from the disastrous take-the-money-and-run SUV strategies of GM and Ford in recent years?

Bill McKibben has made something of a career of being ahead of the learning curve in this country on a variety of issues. He's energetic and he's a resource for us all. Thanks to the kindness of the editors of the New York Review of Books, you can check out his latest state-of-the-planet update below. (It will appear in the November 16th issue of the magazine.) Tom

posted by Annamarie at 11:39 PM | 1 comment(s)

Tomgram: Robert Dreyfuss, Heck of a Job, Maliki!

In some ways, amid the internecine bloodletting, torture, spiking American casualties, death-dealing confusion, and general mayhem, here's all you need to know about the Iraqi "government" of Nouri al-Maliki. When the Prime Minister wanted to check on whether he was going to hang onto his position, he didn't go to parliament or to the Iraqi people, he checked in with the President of the United States. What he needed, it turned out, was George Bush's vote of confidence.

Here's the exchange as White House Press spokesman Tony Snow described it:

posted by Annamarie at 11:37 PM | 0 comment(s)

Tomgram: Grandin, Democrats Snatching Defeat from Victory's Jaws

Presidential approval polling figures, so ripe and upward moving in September, are as off-a-cliff-steeply in the first half of October. The likes of the polling gap between Americans likely to cast a generic Democratic and a generic Republican vote in the upcoming midterm elections hasn't been seen since 1994 -- and then in reverse, of course. The intensity gap (think: throw-the-bums-out mood) between Democrats and Republicans, when it comes to this election has a similar look to it. The Republican Party is reportedly pulling money out of races previously considered winnable and throwing money into last-stand bulw! arks in Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia (where its Senate candidate is nonetheless surprisingly embattled), while the Democrats are calling up polls and considering dropping money into races nationwide that previously were imagined as unwinnable. Republican "sure bets" in states like Florida, Ohio, and Indiana are now no such thing. You are starting to see possibly over-optimistic online election-day maps of a Democratic Senate; the respectable Rasmussen polling organization is already suggesting nearly as much; and the respected National Journal has just enlarged its House compe! titive races, only a few months ago in the 25-30 range (out of! 435 sup posedly available seats), to 60 with this tagline: "At this point at least that many are in play and, frankly, we could have gone to 75."

Like those famed sugar plums, visions of a Democratic House, and even Senate, are dancing in the heads of Party activists; while, for so many other Americans, simple hopes are rising for what the power of Congressional "oversight," the power to investigate, the power of a subpoena, might do to Bush administration dreams of endless domination. But sometimes -- even assuming all this came true -- a little dash of cold history in the face is a salutary thing. So let Greg Grandin, Latin American expert and author of the superb Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, bring back to life the last time the Democrats found themselves in such a mood. Let him take you back to a previous, scandal-ridden era when another formidable President over-reached himself with off-the-books ventures of every sort. Tom

posted by Annamarie at 11:32 PM | 0 comment(s)

Tomgram: Schwartz, 9 Paradoxes of a Lost War

Here's how the President described the enemy in Iraq at his press conference last week. "The violence is being caused by a combination of terrorists, elements of former regime criminals, and sectarian militias." "Elements of former regime criminals," aka "bitter-enders," aka "Saddamists." The "sectarian militias" may have been a relatively recent add-on, but this is essentially the same list, the same sort of terminology the President has been using for years.

In the last two weeks, however, rumblings of discontent, the urge for a change of course (or at least a mid-course correction) in Iraq have been persistently bubbling to the surface of already roiling Washington. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner recently returned from Iraq to rattle the Bush administration by saying that policy there was "drifting sideways" and if it didn't improve, "all options" should be on the table not long after the mid-term elections.

Suggestions are rife for dumping the President's goal of "democracy" in Iraq and swallowing a little of the hard stuff. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, for instance, reported last week (as did Middle Eastern expert Robert Dreyfuss at Tompaine.com a week earlier) that in two desperate capitals, Washington and Baghdad, rumors about possible future Iraqi coups are spinning wildly. People of import are evidently talking about the possibility of a new five-man "ruling commission," a "government of national salvation" there that would "suspend parliament, declare martial law and call back some officers of the old Iraqi army." Even the na! me of that CIA warhorse (and anti-neocon candidate) Ayad Allawi, who couldn't get his party elected dogcatcher in the new Iraq, is coming up again in the context of the need for a "strongman."

This was, of course, the desire of the elder George Bush and his advisors back at the end of Gulf War I, when they hoped just such a Sunni strongman -- one who could work with them -- would topple a weakened Saddam Hussein. Dreams, it seems, die hard. And, as if on cue, who should appear but former Secretary of State and Bush family handler James A. Baker III, a Bush Elder kind of guy. While on the talk-show circuit for his new book, he also spent last week plugging (but not revealing) the future findings of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission he co-heads whose aim is to suggest to a reluctant President new policy possibilities in Iraq. They too are putting "all" options on the table (as long as those options involve "continuing the mission in Iraq"). The group, according to a leak to the New York Sun, has, however, ruled out t! he President's favorite option, "victory." One option it is considering, according the Sun, involves skipping "democracy," minimizing American casualties, and focusing "on stabilizing Baghdad, while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents."

A political accommodation with the insurgents? Curious how word gets around. Sometimes a small change in terminology speaks volumes for future mid-course corrections. The other day, Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, gave a press briefing with Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. As part of his prepared introductory remarks (not in answer to some random question), he offered this list of "groups that are working to affect [the situation in Iraq] negatively":

"The resistance"? "An honorable resistance against foreign occupation in Iraq"? Where did those bitter-enders, those Anti-Iraq Forces go? Take it as a small signal -- noticed, as far as I could tell, by not a single reporter or pundit -- of things to come.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

posted by Annamarie at 11:31 PM | 0 comment(s)