Reading Between the Lines

Thomas Walkom, writing in today’s Toronto Star, castigates the Senate defence committee for issuing a report that fails to say what it screams when read between the lines: that Canada’s “mission” to Afghanistan isn’t going to succeed.

The problem isn’t with the Canadian soldiers over there. They’ve proven themselves courageous and dedicated. It’s that there aren’t nearly enough of them over there, especially not enough over there from other NATO members.

It’s that Afghanistan is a medieval society that has no interest in transforming itself into a Western-style democracy.

It’s that the government of Hamid Karzai, the one we’re propping up, the one our soldiers are fighting and dying for, “routinely shakes down its own citizens. Its army and police are, in the words of committee chair Colin Kenny, ‘corrupt and corrupter.'”

The report asks whether Canadians are, “…willing to commit themselves to decades of involvement in Afghanistan, which could cost hundreds of Canadians lives and billions of dollars, with no guarantee of ending up with anything like the kind of society that makes sense to us? If we aren’t willing to hang in for the long haul, what will have been the point of five years of Canadian lives and Canadian money disappearing?”

“To ask these questions is to answer them. Most Canadians will not agree to a war that takes decades to prosecute yet produces no results. And if, as the senators conclude, this is the prognosis, then the last five years of Canadian involvement – and Canadian deaths – have been pointless.”

So where does this leave us? In my view, we have done our post 9/11 bit for the United States. The reason we’re still in Afghanistan is because the US stupidly drained off its fighting force to wage a war of whim in Iraq. Every day our soldiers go into battle, they’re paying for George Bush’s duplicity.

We have done our job as babysitters in Kandahar while the Americans went out for their night on the town in Baghdad. Time for them to come home and take care of their own kids just like any responsible parents. This babysitter, Canada, needs to go home too.

 

Crying "Wolf"

The credibility of the Bush White House has all but tanked. After its Iraq scam, details of which are continuing to emerge almost five years later, the Bush administration isn’t getting the benefit of the doubt on its intelligence claims about Iran.

The problem is that, having lied so outrageously to so many in the run up to the conquest of Iraq, the Bushies are now relying on circumstantial evidence to support assumptions that allow it to allege that senior Iranian officials are providing weapons to groups in Iraq to use against American soldiers. It’s like saying, “here’s a grenade, it was made in Iran, so we want you to assume that it was sent to Iraq by the president Ahmadinejad in order that it could be tossed at American soldiers.”

If they have nothing else going for them, Bush/Cheney have a completely shameless audacity. On Iraq they produced intelligence – twisted, stretched, manipulated, sometimes even fabricated, but intelligence – while for Iran they’re not even claiming they’ve got intelligence, they just want people to rely on thin assumptions instead. Even their top general won’t back them up on this one.

The worrisome part is that this chicanery suggests that Bush is intent on attacking Iran no matter what. He has to come up with some justification but he can’t so he’s willing to manufacture some. This is what we get as the “Leader of the Free World?”

 

Baiting the Trap – Cheney Style

The White House is spoiling for a fight, this time with Iran. They’re making all the noises that preceded the illegal conquest of Iraq. Iran, we’re told, is a threat to the world. It was, after all, pronounced a full member of the Axis of Evil by George W. Bush hisself – case closed.

Now there’s the business about Iran arming Iraqi Shiite militias. A real threat if there ever was one. But wait, they’re the bunch that go after the Sunni insurgents, the other bunch, the group that actually does target American soldiers, the guys who get their support from Saudi Arabia. Why isn’t Bush bombing the living hell out of Riyadh? I guess that’s because the House of Saud and the House of Bush are bosom buddies, eh?

To stir things up, Mr. Bush has now ordered a third, carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf. Three fleet carriers is pretty much unprecedented and observers have noted that on every occassion US carriers have deployed to the Gulf, save one, there’s been combat. So, judging by past experience and the deployment of three carrier battle groups, the odds are better than even that the Bush/Cheney regime has already made its mind up to attack.

Hillary Mann, the former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf affairs warns of what’s coming, “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something (the United States) would be forced to retaliate for.”

Paul Krugman, writing in today’s New York Times, says the White House has already got its intelligence cooker turned up high. He points out that Abram Shulsky, the guy who headed Rumsfeld’s intelligence warper on Iraq, is now back in business heading the Pentagon’s Iran directorate. Let’s see – the guy put in charge of gaming the Iraq intelligence, instead of being fired in disgrace, is now assembling the Iran intelligence. What does that sound like?

Krugman also sees a reason for keying so much attention to Iranian ordinance found in Iraq and tying it to the deaths of US soldiers. Bush isn’t about to get Congressional authorization to launch a war against Iran, simply ain’t going to happen. But, if he can “earmark” the attacks as just part of the already authorized Iraq war then he can claim he doesn’t need the approval of Congress.

Is attacking Iran stupid? No more stupid than invading Iraq.

 

American Fascists

I managed to catch the last few minutes of an interview on CBC yesterday with war correspondent/author Chris Hedges. He was flogging his latest book, American Fascists.

The gist of this book, as I understand it, is that fascism has become a powerful force in today’s America. At its core Hedges sees the Christian right, the fundamentalists.

He argues that the Christian fundamentalists have preyed on America’s dispossessed in areas hardest hit by globalization, people who once had well-paid manufacturing jobs and now can’t find work, people living in the “have not” regions that have spread throughout the United States. Hedges mentioned that there are areas of his country that now resemble the Third World more than the vision of America. It is these people, he claims, who are most vulnerable to the Christian fundamentalist message. They embrace the Christian right’s message of intolerance and resentment (a polite word for “hatred”) toward specified groups such as gays, the pro-choice movement, Muslims and liberals.

Hedges is clearly concerned at the very real, very powerful political influence gained this way by the Christian right. He fears it continues to expand its power base and it seems he’s right.

If you need proof of this just take a look at John McCain’s transformation, his embrace of the Christian fundamentalists. In 2000 he called them “evil” and “intolerant” but now he appears as keynote speaker at Jerry Falwell’s school and he mouths all the right words, the message the converted expect to hear. McCain realizes that no Republican can win the party’s nomination without the support of the Christian right. It’s obvious that he’s holding his nose but he is definitely talking the talk.

Harper and a lot of the Reform conservatives cleave to this same movement. Canada is not the US and the fundamentalists are less powerful, less influential here so, while our democracy isn’t as vulnerable, we do have to realize that the movement here is just as voracious as its big brother in America.

Here are a couple of passages from “War is a force that gives us meaning.” I heartily recommend it:

We were humbled in Vietnam, purged, for a while, of a dangerous hubris, offered in our understanding and reflection about the war, a moment of grace. We became a better country.

We often become as deaf and dumb as those we condemn. We too have our terrorists. The Contras in Nicaragua carried out, with funding from Washington, some of the most egregious human rights violations in Central America, yet were hailed as “freedom fighters.” Jonas Savimbi, the rebel leader the United States back in Angola’s civil war, murdered and tortured with a barbarity that outstripped the Taliban. …President Ronald Reagan called Savimbi the Abraham Lincoln of Angola although he littered the country with land mines, once bombed a Red Cross-run factory making artificial limbs for the victims of those mines, and pummeled a rival’s wife and children to death.

The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, used to tell us that we would end our careers fighting an ascendant fundamentalist movement, or, as he liked to say, “the Christian fascists.”

If you haven’t read Hedge’s “War” and if the fundamentalist threat interests you or if you’re just interested in how war engages modern society, see if you can get your hands on a copy. Once I’ve digested “American Fascists” I’ll do another post.