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Tomgram: Over the Cliff with George and Dick?
Thelma and Louise Imperialism
Over the Cliff with George and Dick?By Tom Engelhardt
Let me make an argument about Bush administration Iran policy -- about the possibility that a regime-change-style, shock-and-awe air assault might someday be launched on Iranian nuclear facilities and associated targets -- based on no insider knowledge, just the logic of George-and-Dick's Thelma-and-Louise-style imperialism.
Of course, we all know at least half the story by now. Is there anybody in official Washington -- other than our President, Vice President, the Vice President's secretive imperial staff, assorted backs-against-the-wall neocon supporters lodged in the federal bureaucracy, and associated right-wing think tanks -- who isn't sweating blood, popping pills, and wondering what in the world to do about our delusional leaders?
You only have to pick up the morning paper to find the most mainstream of official types in an over-the-top mode that, bare months ago, would have been confined to the distant peripheries of political argument. There's Senator Joe Biden, the very definition of a mainstream man, grilling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about whether she believes the administration already has the authority to attack Iran and swearing, if she does, that it "will generate a constitutional confrontation in the Senate, I predict to you." (You can add the exclamation point to that comment or to similar ones from the likes of Senators James Webb and Chuck Hagel among others.) Or how about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on presidential pronouncements in January?
"Much has been made about President Bush's recent saber rattling toward Iran. This morning, I'd like to be clear: The President does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking Congressional authorization -- the current use of force resolution for Iraq does not give him such authorization."
Former officials are now crawling out of the Washington woodwork to denounce Bush/Cheney policy in Iraq and Iran with the fervor (however masked by official Washington language) of an exorcism. There, for instance, is former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in front of Congress, more or less predicting the end of the Roman… sorry, the American empire:
"The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability… If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large… A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated…"
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Tomgram: Nick Turse, America's Secret Air War in Iraq
Just last week, in a typical air strike of the Iraq War, two missiles were fired at targets somewhere in the city of Ramadi, capital of al-Anbar province in the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, in the course of a battle with American forces stationed there. According to newspaper accounts, "18 insurgents" were killed.
Air power has, since World War II, been the American way of war. The invasion of Iraq began, after all, with a dominating show of air power that was meant to "shock and awe" -– that is, cow -- not just Saddam Hussein's regime, but the whole "axis of evil" and other countries the Bush administration had in its mental gun sights. Among the largest of America's "permanent" megabases in Iraq is Balad Air Base with the sorts of daily air-traffic pile-ups that you would normally see over Chicago's O'Hare Airport. And yet, as Tomdispatch.com has written numerous times over these last years, reporters in Iraq almost determinedly refuse to look up or report on the regular, if intermittent, application of American air power especially to heavily populated neighborhoods in Iraq's cities.
Now, the Bush "surge" is officially beginning. Little about it is strikingly new or untried -- except possibly the unspoken urge to ratchet up the use of air power in Iraq, the only thing a Pentagon with desperately overstretched ground forces really has to throw into the escalation breach (as in recent months it has drastically escalated the use of air power in Afghanistan). Pepe Escobar, the superb globe-trotting correspondent for Asia Times, has recently warned that the new Bush administration "plan" signals "the dire prospect... of a devastating air war over Baghdad" in which "Iraqification-cum-surge" will prove "a disaster mostly for every Baghdadi caught in the crossfire."
Just last week, Julian E. Barnes of the Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. Air Force has the Iraqi itch and is getting ready to scratch it. Air Force commanders are preparing for a "heightened role in the volatile region." They are, he reported, already "gearing up for just such a role in Iraq as part of Bush's planned troop increase" -- an expansion of air power that "could include aggressive new tactics designed to deter Iranian assistance to Iraqi militants… [and] more forceful patrols by Air Force and Navy fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of bomb supplies from Iran."
Until now, U.S. air power in Iraq has been a non-story -- if you weren't an Iraqi. In the coming months, however, it may force its way onto the front pages of our papers and onto the nightly TV news -- but not if the Pentagon has anything to say about it. Doing some journalistic sleuthing, Nick Turse has discovered just how secretive the Pentagon has been about offering any significant information on the size, scope, and damage involved in its air operations over Iraq. The story of this secret American air war is now told for the first time -- and at this website. Tom
Bombs over Baghdad
The Pentagon's Secret Air War in IraqBy Nick Turse
A secret air war is being waged in Iraq -- often in and around that country's population centers -- about which we can find out little. The U.S. military keeps information on the munitions expended in its air efforts under tight wraps, refusing to offer details on the scale of use and so minimizing the importance of air power in Iraq. But expert opinion holds that the forms of aerial assault being employed in that country, though hardly covered in our media, may account for most of the U.S. and coalition-attributed Iraqi civilian deaths there since the 2003 invasion.
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Tomgram: Ann Jones on the Nightmare of Afghan Women
Afghanistan remains the forgotten war and yet, in an eerie lockstep with Iraq, it seems to be following a distinctly Bush administration-style path toward "the gates of hell." While almost all attention in Washington and the U.S. media has been focused on the President's new "surge" plan in Iraq -- is it for 21,000 or 50,000 American troops? Just how astronomical will the bills be? Just how strong will Congressional opposition prove? Just how bad, according to American intelligence, is the situation? -- Afghanistan is experiencing its own quiet surge plan: more U.S. (and NATO) troops, more military aid, more reconstruction funds, more fighting, more casualties, heavier weaponry, more air power, more bad news, and predictions of worse to come.
The repetitive and dismal headlines, often tucked away in back pages, tell the tale:
On the fighting:
"Airstrike kills up to Seven in Afghanistan"
"12 militants killed in West Afghanistan"
"Nato offensive 'kills 30 Taleban'"
"Group: Over 1,000 Afghan civilians killed" ("More than 1,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2006, most of them as a result of attacks by the Taliban and other anti-government forces in the country's unstable south, a rights group said Tuesday…")
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Tomgram: Swanson and Schwarz, The New Investigation Season
At the moment, the spectacle of the I. Lewis Libby trial, of the den of thieves falling out, of the unraveling of old administration war stories, and of the possibility that, in the near future, the Vice President might appear in the witness stand for a grilling all occupy Washington's center stage along with a restless Congress, filled with unnerved representatives of the President's own Party, increasing numbers of whom are, by now, painfully aware that they are dealing with the delusional over the disastrous -- and have little idea what, exactly, to do about it.
In just the last week, Vice President Cheney has termed administration policy in Iraq a shining light in the firmament of war and peace-making ("Bottom line is that we've had enormous successes, and we will continue to have enormous successes…"); the President has praised some of the best units in Iraqi Army for "beginning to show me something" -- as it turns out, how to muff a military operation; various members of the administration and top military figures have been issuing threats of increasing intensity against Iran while the situation in the Middle East goes from! worse to worse yet; and, on the bright side, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, one of our commanders in Afghanistan, managed to hail the new year of 2007 in that embattled land this way: "I'd also like to say that this year's going to be a great year, as last year was, for detention operations in [sic] the United States."
And just imagine, the Congressional investigatory season hasn't even begun to gear up yet. It's in this spirit that I asked David Swanson, the ever energetic fellow who presides over Afterdowningstreet.org, among a small empire of oppositional organizations, and writes regularly for Tomdispatch.com, and Jonathan Schwarz to take a look ahead at what's in store for the American people in the coming months from their newly elected (or reelected) representatives -- what's likely to be investigated, what's not; what matters and why. Tom
Beyond Oral Sex
The Bush InvestigationsBy David Swanson and Jonathan Schwarz
The last time Congress was controlled by the party in opposition to the White House, we all learned more than we cared to know about the uses of cigars. This time the need for investigations is much more serious. The Democrats are talking fast and furious about doing them, but they're not talking about doing the right ones -- and a month into their tenure, they've barely discovered where the bathrooms are.
As humorist Bob Harris enjoys saying about the Bush administration, "It's like a new Watergate every day with these people." Congress could probably spend three decades profitably examining the last six years of the Bush administration. Unfortunately, they'll have to do severe triage to select the areas of malfeasance where investigations will most benefit the country.
A recent ABC/Washington Post poll showed that the public (despite very little help from ABC News or the Washington Post) has it right. A majority picked the "should" option in response to both of these questions:
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Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis on the Imperial Premises
The dream of the Bush administration -– eternal global domination abroad with no other superpower or bloc of powers on the military horizon and a Republican Party dominant at home for at least a generation -- long ago evaporated in Iraq. A midterm election and subsequent devastating polling figures tell the tale. The days when neocons, their supporters, and attending pundits talked about the U.S. as the "new Rome" of planet Earth now seem to exist on the other side of some Startrekkian wormhole.
And yet the imperial damage remains everywhere around us. Give the Bush administration credit. They moved the goalposts. They created the sort of dystopian imperial reality (as well as a mess of future-busting proportions) that a generation of relative sanity might not be able to fully reverse. The facts on the ground -- the vastness of the Pentagon, the power of the military-industrial complex, the inept but already bloated Homeland Security Department (and the vast security interests coalescing around it), the staggering alphabet (or acronym) soup of the "Intelligence Community" -- all of this mitigates against real change, which is why we need Chalmers Johnson.
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the final volume of his Blowback Trilogy, is about to storm your local bookstore (and can be pre-ordered at Amazon now). It is a reminder of just how far we've moved from the sort of democratic America that the President is always holding up as a model to the rest of the world. As with Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire before it, Nemesis, Johnson's grand, if grim, conclusion to our American tragedy, is simply a must-read. While you're waiting for the book to arrive in your hands, you can get a little preview of its themes below. Tom
Empire v. Democracy
Why Nemesis Is at Our DoorBy Chalmers Johnson
History tells us that one of the most unstable political combinations is a country -- like the United States today -- that tries to be a domestic democracy and a foreign imperialist. Why this is so can be a very abstract subject. Perhaps the best way to offer my thoughts on this is to say a few words about my new book, Nemesis, and explain why I gave it the subtitle, "The Last Days of the American Republic." Nemesis is the third book to have grown out of my research over the past eight years. I never set out to write a trilogy on our increasingly endangered democracy, but as I kept stumbling on ever more evidence of the legacy of the imperialist pressures we put on many other countries as well as the nature and size of our military empire, one book led to another.
Professionally, I am a specialist in the history and politics of East Asia. In 2000, I published Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, because my research on China, Japan, and the two Koreas persuaded me that our policies there would have serious future consequences. The book was noticed at the time, but only after 9/11 did the CIA term I adapted for the title -- "blowback" -- become a household word and my volume a bestseller.
I had set out to explain how exactly our government came to be so hated around the world. As a CIA term of tradecraft, "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to, and in, foreign countries. It refers specifically to retaliation for illegal operations carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. These operations have included the clandestine overthrow of governments various administrations did not like, the training of foreign militaries in the techniques of state terrorism, the rigging of elections in foreign countries, interference with the economic viability of countries that seemed to threaten the interests of influential American corporations, as well as the torture or assassination of selected foreigners. The fact that these actions were, at least originally, secret meant that when retaliation does come -- as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 -- the American public is incapable of putt! ing the events in context. Not surprisingly, then, Americans tend to support speedy acts of revenge intended to punish the actual, or alleged, perpetrators. These moments of lashing out, of course, only prepare the ground for yet another cycle of blowback.
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Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte Observes the Holy (Football) Day
In the coming week, whole forests will be pulped to explicate the most obscure aspects of what Tomdispatch Jock Culture Scribe (and former New York Times sports columnist) Robert Lipsyte assures us is this country's ultimate Holy Day, Super Bowl Sunday. This website aims to ease your burden in life. With that in mind, the piece that follows may not save your soul, but it will certainly save you untold hours of pre-game watching and reading. The ultimate piece about the ultimate day of our entertainment year, it absolves you of all need to check out anything else. You can now be completely productive until next Sunday.
Lipsyte, appearing at Tomdispatch (like a dream) every second month to make sense and nonsense of Jock Culture, has just seen his latest Young Adult novel, Raider's Night, published. It's a genuine shocker about the over-the-top pressures, familial and peer, of high-school football. Now, settle back and take a good dose of that old time religion, straight. Tom
Celebrating the Judeo-Lombardi Era
Bears, Colts, and LambsBy Robert Lipsyte
1. In the Beginning…
"Sports are the real thing. Work is the opiate -- work and revolution and politics." -- Michael Novak in The Joy of Sports
Given the chance, I'd watch the Super Bowl with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who knows about Baal and ball. Twenty years ago, in Lynchburg, Virginia, at a Liberty University Flames game, Dr. Falwell told me: "Jesus was no sissy. He was tough, he was a he-man. If he played football, you'd be slow getting up after he tackled you."
He had me at "sissy." The rest was revelation. The muscularity of Dr. Falwell's evangelical Christianity was a perfect fit with football, another win-or-lose game. For Americans, war hasn't produced a real winner for more than 60 years. That's why we need football. But let's get back to Dr. Falwell.
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Tomgram: Where Do the American Dead Come From?
[Note for Tomdispatch Readers: Tomdispatch has just switched servers, so Comcast and WebTV users who, for the last months, could not get TD e-notices of posts should now be able to receive them again. We've put your e-addresses back in the system, if we had them. If you have not received a notice of this post or the last one, sign on again yourself using the "sign up" box at the upper right of the main screen.
Please note as well that I'm switching coasts for a month. I hope to keep Tomdispatch going at its usual pace, but if there are larger than normal gaps in posts, or I don't respond to site e-mail quickly, please do understand.
Finally, the other day I did a piece, "Surging from Kenai, Bush's Sacrificial Americans," on the American rural and small town dead of the Iraq War. It lacked hard figures. Subsequently, I discovered that they existed, which is why I return to this important and undercovered subject again today. Tom]
The Forgotten American Dead
Rural America Pays the President's Price in IraqBy Tom Engelhardt
When we hear about the American dead in Iraq, we normally learn about the circumstances in which they died. Last Saturday, for instance, was, for American troops, the third bloodiest day since the Bush administration launched its invasion in March 2003 -- 27 of them died. Twelve went down in a Blackhawk helicopter over Diyala Province, probably hit by a shoulder-fired missile. Five died under somewhat surprising and mysterious circumstances. They were attacked in a supposedly secure facility in the Shiite city of Karbala by gunmen who, despite their telltale beards, were dressed to imitate American soldiers and managed to drive through city checkpoints in exceedingly official-looking armored SUVs. They could, of! course, have been members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, but were probably Sunni insurgents from a neighboring province. The rest of the Americans in that total died as a result of roadside bombs (IEDs) around Baghdad or fighting with Sunni insurgents, mainly in al-Anbar Province. The Pentagon announcements on which such news is based are usually terse in the extreme. The totals, 29 dead for the weekend (as well as hundreds of Iraqis), did, however, become major TV and front-page news around the country.
These deaths are presented another way in the little, black-edged boxes you see in many newspapers. (My hometown ledger, the New York Times, has one of these almost every day, placed wherever the humdrum bad news from Iraq happens to fall inside the paper and labeled, "Names of the Dead.") These, too, are taken from the Pentagon death announcements, which offer the barest of bare bones about those who just died. But they do tell you something that should be better noted in this country.
Take the Pentagon announcements for Iraq "casualties" from January 11th through January 23 -- 21 dead in all, 17 from the Army, 2 from the Marines, and 2 from the Navy (one in a "non-combat related incident" in Iraq, the other in Bahrain).
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