Tomgram: Will Daddy's Boys Extend the War?

No Exit?

Things are always complicated. In the Washington Post, for instance, James Mann, author of Rise of the Vulcans recently suggested that it was far "too simplistic" to claim "the appointment of Robert M. Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld [represents] the triumph of Bush the Father's administration over Bush the Son's."

Still, I prefer the analysis of Washington Post reporter (and author of Fiasco) Thomas Ricks. When asked by the Post's media columnist Howard Kurtz whether a Newsweek headline, "Father knows best," was just "an easy, cheap Oedipal way for the press to characterize what's going on," Ricks replied: "Well, just because it's easy and cheap doesn't mean it's wrong."

At a moment when every version of the dramatic arrival of James A. Baker III and Robert Gates on the scene -- and the scuttling of Rumsfeld's Titanic -- is at least suspect, it's still worth considering the bare bones of what can be seen and known -- and then asking what we have.

Sooner or later, failure has a way of stripping most of us of our dreams and pretensions. So let's start with a tiny history of failure. George W. Bush's life trajectory of failing upward has had a rhythm to it -- and a rubric, "crony capitalism." Daddy's friends and contacts helped him into and -- after he failed -- out of the oil business, into and out of the baseball business, into and now, it seems, out of the failed game of global politics. His is, as the Boston Globe's Michael Kranish and John Aloysius Farrell put it back in 2002, "the story of a man who struck out numerous times before being bailed out by big hitters who often were family members, friends, or supporters of his father."

It's appropriate, then, that the man who bailed him out in Florida when he essentially lost the presidency in 2000, Bush family consigliere James A. Baker III, would reappear six years later, in the wake of another failed election, to bail him out again now that he's screwed up the oil heartlands of the planet. Daddy -- we're talking here about former President George H.W. Bush -- has three adopted boys: His former National Security Advisor (and alter ego) Brent Scowcroft, who went into opposition to the younger Bush's Iraq policy even before the invasion of 2003 and now lurks quietly in the wings; his former CIA Director Robert Gates; and Baker.

Like Daddy, Gates was deeply involved in, but never indicted for his dealings in the scurrilous Iran-Contra affair; was later involved in the tilt toward and arming of Saddam's Iraq against Khomeini's Iran, pioneered fertile territory in the late 1980s in terms of manipulating intelligence in the debate over the nature of Gorbachev's Soviet Union, had a hand in the first Gulf War, and most recently held the presidency of Texas A&M, where he was the keeper of the flame for Daddy's library. Could you ask for a better insider CV for taking over the Pentagon from one of Bush elder's rivals in the Gerald Ford era, Donald Rumsfeld.

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posted by Annamarie at 11:45 PM | 3 comment(s)

DN!: A Debate on Withdrawal//Iraq Reconstruction Corruption

posted by Annamarie at 10:16 PM | 0 comment(s)

Toronto: Six Nations Benefit Concert, Dec. 1st

posted by Annamarie at 11:54 PM | 2 comment(s)

Tomgram: Klare, Bush Goes Over to Imperial Defense

In September 2002, Arab League head Amr Mussa warned that an invasion of Iraq would "open the gates of Hell" in the Middle East. Four years later, with those gates -- at least in Iraq -- open wide enough to drive a tank through, the look of the Bush administration is suddenly in rapid flux. (The neocons, having ushered in Hell, are being ushered out the door; while the first President Bush's "realists" and their followers are heading in.) Given the nominee to replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Gates of Hell may soon have a new meaning. Right now, despite all the anticipation about future Iraq policy changes, the good news that accompanies the nomination of former CIA Director (and, as president of Texas A&M, keeper of the Bush family flame) Robert Gates has little to do with Iraq and lots to do with Iran.

In these early post-election days, the Iran rhetoric at the White House has, in fact, remained at the boiling point. As last week ended, White House spokesman Tony Snow labeled Iran and Hezbollah a "global nexus of terrorism." (Paul Woodward, editor of the War in Context website, commented: "The administration is no longer served by playing to the Christian Right, so its out with religious ‘evil' and in with a much more sophisticated, secular, and no doubt bi-partisan, "global nexus of terrorism.") Then, on Monday, the President himself, in a press briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, called for the global "isolation" of Iran and essentially rejected an opening of any sort to that country. ("[I]f the Iranians want to have a dialogue with us, we have shown them a way forward, and that is for them to verify -- verifiably suspend their enrichment activities.").

None of this sounds like good news; but, despite the rhetoric, the Gates appointment certainly lessens the possibility of an air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities early next year (as well as any campaign to "decapitate" the Iranian regime). This had clearly been one of the (mad) policy options that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were entertaining.

Like James A. Baker, co-head of the Iraq Study Group, Gates believes in negotiating with Iran. In the summer of 2004, with former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, he co-chaired a task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations that argued for opening a dialogue with Iran. Its report, "Iran: Time for a New Approach," contended that the lack of American engagement with Iran had harmed American interests and advocated direct talks with the Iranians. ("Just as the United States has a constructive relationship with China [and earlier did so with the Soviet Union] while strongly opposing certain aspects of its internal and international policies, Washington should approach Iran with a readiness to explore areas of common interests while continuing to contest objectionable policy.")

In addition, Gates -- like Baker one of Daddy Bush's boys -- has clearly been brought in to help clean up Sonny's Iraq mess. Being sane and hard-headed, he knows perfectly well that stirring up a hornet's nest in neighboring Iran is hardly a way to tackle the almost insurmountable Iraqi crisis.

Gates offers another advantage for those who prefer not to go to war again. The American high command (despite the fantasies of some administration critics) would never refuse a direct order from the commander-in-chief to bomb the gates of Hell out of Iran. However, a civilian Secretary of Defense (whose reputation is at stake) might. So the replacement of Rumsfeld is also significant in this way.

Throw in a new Democratic Congress that, as Juan Cole has written, is less likely to grant the necessary funds for such a war (though Time's Tony Karon at his Rootless Cosmopolitan website disagrees), and you have the potential for a genuine ebbing of tensions in the one area where the rash acts for which the Bush administration is by now well known could literally wreck the global economy in a matter of days. For this, a small sigh of relief is in order. Now, let Michael Klare, author of the ever more relevant book Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum, explain the larger picture. Tom

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posted by Annamarie at 11:48 PM | 0 comment(s)

Tomgram: Chernus on Apple Pie, Mom, and a Story for a Lost War

Here we are just days beyond the strange event that passes for an election in our country. Election Day now turns out to be just the almost-last step in a grueling season of serial elections called "opinion polls," whose fluctuations are meant to tell us ahead of time how we are likely to vote. That trip to your local polling booth is then followed by another kind of voting process called the "exit poll," a series of tea leaves that, when read right, will interpret our vote for us. In the meantime, who even notices that last Tuesday's actual election was attended -- and this was considered high indeed for a midterm event -- by only 40.4% of the voters. In other words, 59.6% of American voters settled up for the serial elections -- or for Lost and Desperate Housewives -- instead.

For all the writing about extreme gerrymandering, scurrilous campaign ads, voter suppression, and voter fraud (and, as far as we can tell, there was enough of all of the above to make you wonder what the real vote might have been), isn't that 59.6% the mega-voter-suppression story of our time. It's a different kind of suppression, of course; it's everything that politicians, their advisors, and a larger culture does to convince Americans who could vote that their vote, or the actual act of voting, simply doesn't matter -- or alternately that the result of even a vote that did matter, in terms of electing a specific politician, would have no effect whatsoever on their lives (or ours). It brings to mind the question: What if you had a democracy and nobody came?

As it happens, you can search your newspapers and the TV news almost in vain for the majority "exit polls," those that told us about the thinking of all the Americans who never entered a polling booth or who, long ago, headed for the exits. At least, thanks to the exit polls (and other studies), we'll know something about those 55% of Catholic voters who went Democratic this time, reversing the 2004 election; or about the lessening "God gap" the Democrats face among "weekly churchgoers." But we'll hear little or nothing about the Catholics or weekly churchgoers who stayed home, or why they did so, or what they think.

In the meantime, Ira Chernus turns to the election we did have and what to make of it, what stories we're telling about it, and what other stories could be told. Think of this, to appropriate the title of a classic children's tale, as the neverending story, one all of us, including that 59.6%, can still help to tell. A Tomdispatch regular and generally canny guy, Chernus knows the importance of a good yarn. In fact, he's just written a book, which I recommend, about the tales the neocons and the Bush administration fed us all on the endless road to war, Monsters to Destroy, The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. Tom

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

Tomgram: Doug Troutman, A Veteran's Day Memorial

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, an armistice was signed that ended World War I, the first great bloodletting of the twentieth century, "the war to end all wars" that proved but the prelude to World War II. Now, here we are at the 11th day of the 11th month of the sixth year of the twenty-first century and another great bloodletting is underway that, despite the recent electoral thumpin' of the Bush administration and the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, has no end in sight. In Iraq, 2,839 American troops have already died, tens of thousands have been wounded, and unknown hundreds of thousands of Iraqis -- military, insurgent, and civilian -- have been killed in every grim and bloody way possible.

The Iraqi killing fields are far from us here in the United States and, as yet, almost completely unmemorialized. Even to get a sense of the carnage is hard, but the website Antiwar.com now does a remarkable, if grim, daily job of collating at least what's reported. It puts out a running tally of the dead each day -- including of those nameless bodies found en masse, particularly in the Iraqi capital. ("In the greater Baghdad area, 29 bodies, probable victims of sectarian violence, were discovered late Tuesday into Wednesday…")

Each of these reports in its own quiet, understated way is heartrending. Wednesday's was headlined, "2 GI's, 199 Iraqis Killed or Reported Dead; 3 GIs, 137 wounded." And yet these tallies in words -- which can't account for all the dead who go eternally unreported -- are incapable of catching the anguish of those who cared for the dead or of tallying what the loss of valuable lives cut short means to two countries. How do you take in the American soldier killed Wednesday "in the same incident in Kirkuk Province," or the 8 Iraqis whose deaths in a vast Baghdad slum were relegated to this single sentence: "Mortars killed eight people and wounded 20 when they fell on a Sadr City district soccer game"; or the unnamed duo in this one: "A roadside bomb near a house in Iskandariya killed a man and his 13-year old son."

If only this Veteran's Day were another Armistice Day. Instead, there will be one of those terrible running tallies from Iraq at Antiwar.com this Saturday, too. Doug Troutman, a veteran of the Vietnam War (whose son is now a veteran of the Iraq War), worked in the postwar years for the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, and has visited many of the bloody fields of battle of our own history. This is his memorial for the dead this Veteran's Day. Tom

posted by Annamarie at 11:43 PM | 0 comment(s)

Tomgram: Plebiscite on an Outlaw Empire

Outlaw Empire Meets the Wave

The wave -- and make no mistake, it's a global one -- has just crashed on our shores, soaking our imperial masters. It's a sight for sore eyes.

It's been a long time since we've seen an election like midterm 2006. After all, it's a truism of our politics that Americans are almost never driven to the polls by foreign-policy issues, no less by a single one that dominates everything else, no less by a catastrophic war (and the presidential approval ratings that go with it). This strange phenomenon has been building since the moment, in May 2003, that George W. Bush stood under that White-House-prepared "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared "major combat operations have ended."

That "Top Gun" stunt -- when a cocky President helped pilot an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet onto a carrier deck and emerged into the golden glow of "magic hour light" (as his handlers then called it) -- was meant to give him the necessary victory photos to launch his 2004 presidential reelection campaign. As it turned out, that moment was but the first "milestone" on the path to Iraqi, and finally electoral, hell. Within mere months, those photos would prove useless for anyone but liberal bloggers. By now, they seem like artifacts from another age. On the way to the present "precipice" (or are we already over the edge?), there have been other memorable "milestones" -- from the President's July 2003 petulant "bring ‘em on" taunt to Iraq's then forming insurgency to the Vice President's June 2005 "last throes" gaffe. All such statements have, by now, turned to dust in American mouths.

In the context of the history of great imperial powers, how remarkably quickly this has happened. An American President, ruling the last superpower on this or any other planet, and his party have been driven willy-nilly into global and domestic retreat a mere three-plus years after launching the invasion of their dreams, the one that was meant to start them on the path to controlling the planet -- and by one of the more ragtag minority rebellions imaginable. I'm speaking here, of course, of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, of perhaps 15,000 relatively lightly armed rebels whose main weapons have been the roadside bomb and the sniper's bullet. What a grim, bizarre spectacle it's been.

The Fall of the New Rome

But let's back up a moment. After such an election, a bit of history, however quick and potted, is in order -- in this case of the post-Cold War era of U.S. supremacy, now seemingly winding down. In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, to be followed by the relatively violence-free collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a brief moment of conceptual paralysis among leadership elites in this country, none of whom had even imagined the loss of the "Evil Empire" (in President Ronald Reagan's famous Star Wars-ian phrase) until it suddenly, miraculously evaporated. In this forgotten moment, we even heard hopeful mutterings about a "peace dividend" that would take all the extra military money that obviously was no longer needed to defend against a missing superpower and use it to rebuild America.

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

The Blood on Canada's Corporate Doorstep: War Profiteer L-3 Wescam

posted by Annamarie at 11:17 PM | 0 comment(s)

UN special rapporteur about Saddam Hussein's trial and verdict