August 18, 2005
Inconvenient Facts
Sometimes "critique" simply involves a little jogging of historical memory:
From dailykos.com:
Quotes from when Clinton committed troops to Bosnia:
"You can support the troops but not the president."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
--Joe Scarborough (R-FL)
"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
--Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99
"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
--Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)
"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
--Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush
"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
--Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)
Funny thing is, we won that war without a single killed in action.
Posted by jim at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2005
No child left unrecruited
You might not know it, being a hush-hush deal and all, but the No Child Left Behind Act contains a provision that requires public high schools to give private student information to military recruiters. Students commonly receive phone calls and emails from their friendly neighborhood Army recruiters. Even as a grad student at UT, I received an email telling me how much money I could get for school. (See a copy of the email that was sent to nearly all UT students. This particular exchange between a recruiter and a UT student circulated on a number of sites.)
But there may be some relief. Leave My Child Alone is an organization devoted to helping parents and students opt out of this provision (not an easy task, of course). If you've got kids, this is definitely a letter you'll want to send.
Posted by jenny at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2005
From the "War on Terror" to the "GSAVE"
In what seems to be a dramatic shift in rhetorical strategy, the Bush administration is officially dropping the label the "War on Terror" to describe the last few years of extreme unpleasantness to "the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism."
The latter is a really bad name, but I heard a recent podcast from the NPR show To the Point on why it's probably a really bad name for a good reason. (You can download the podcast from Apple's podcast music store, or you can go here.
What are other thoughts on this shift? In particular, does this shift indicate a shift in policy or is it less substantial?
Posted by Paul at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2005
Right-Wing Agitprop
Often the best way for me to get Daniel, my youngest son and VERY autistic, to settle down for a while is to turn on the country music videos tv station (and then I hide in the other room, blogging). I was astounded just now listening to Darryl Worley's song "Have You Forgotten." The lyrics:
I hear people saying we don't need this war
I say there's some things worth fighting for
What about our freedom and this piece of ground
We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down
Now they say we don't realize the mess we're getting in
Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend
Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
They took all the footage off my T.V.
Said it's too disturbing for you and me
It'll just breed anger that's what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it everyday
Some say this country's just out looking for a fight
Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right
Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
Now I've been there with the soldiers
Who've gone away to war
And you can bet that they remember
Just what they're fightin' for
Have you forgotten all the people killed?
Some went down like heros in that Pennsylvania field
Have you forgotten about our Pentagon?
And all the loved ones that we lost and those left to carry on
Don't you tell me not to worry about bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten?
--One of those heroes who went down in the Pennsylvania field was gay, of course. . . . Odd that there's not a single bit of decent agitprop that's come out from the Left in this war.
Posted by jim at 02:40 PM | Comments (4)
July 22, 2005
Raging Grannies
Others may have seen this, but I thought I'd point it out because it brought a smile to my face on a busy Friday afternoon. Check out the story "'Raging Grannies' want to enlist, go to Iraq" on CNN.
Posted by Paul at 02:58 PM | Comments (1)
July 20, 2005
And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
American Military Deaths in Iraq
Since war began: 1770(total) 1397 (in combat)
Since 5/1/2003: 1633 1289
Total wounded: 13438(official) 15000-42500 (estimated)
And from an article in the International Herald Tribune:
"A working draft of a chapter of the new Iraq constitution has language that gives a strong role to Islamic law and could be used to curb women's rights, particularly in personal matters like divorce and family inheritance.
The document's writers are also debating whether to drop a measure enshrined in the interim constitution, co-written last year by the Americans, that requires at least a quarter of the Parliament to be made up of women."
At least we're clear about what people have been fighting and dying for: the Iraqi version of John Roberts' Constitution.
Posted by jim at 07:42 PM | Comments (2)
June 28, 2005
Bush at Fort Bragg
For those interested, here is the text of the president's speech tonight at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Once again, Iraq is directly linked to 9/11. Here's a fun excerpt:
"Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Here are the words of Osama bin Laden: This third world war is raging in Iraq. The whole world is watching this war. He says it will end in victory and glory or misery and humiliation.
"The terrorists know that the outcome will leave them emboldened or defeated. So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to take. . . .
"The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September the 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden.
"For the sake of our nation's security, this will not happen on my watch."
I particularly like the "this will not happen on my watch" line. There's got to be a name for that rhetorical device. Any suggestions?
Posted by Paul at 09:08 PM | Comments (2)
June 14, 2005
War Crimes
This is the single most cogent thing I've read both on the topic of US war crimes and on our current numbness about the war.
Posted by jim at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2005
Nobody Expects Christina Aguilera
"A top al-Qa'ida suspect in Guantanamo Bay was stripped, forced to bark like a dog, and subjected to the music of Christina Aguilera."
More here.
Some day I'm going to wake up and the last five years will simply have been a very long Monty Python routine.
And, next, the Comfy Chair?
Posted by jim at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2005
Do You Have a Spy in Your Graduate Class?
An article on a new CIA program.
Posted by jim at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2005
The Freedom Agenda and Iran
Rumors have been flying around the Internets for several months that Bush has already signed the order to attack Iran in June (this month). Here's a possible pretext, beyond the Iran-has-WMD's argument: they're sheltering al-Qaeda. . . .I'm sure reports will now start spinning rapidly in favor of invasion. I hope I'm wrong.
Posted by jim at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2005
The Downing Street Memo
Why is this being ignored in the U.S.? For more, and to sign a petition, click here.
Posted by jim at 07:38 PM | Comments (1)
May 30, 2005
War Criminal?
I'm sure that if I explicitly called W. a "war criminal" here or elsewhere I'd eventually be a target for the Young Conservatives of Texas or worse. I don't need to. Here is Paul Craig Roberts, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and former assistant treasury secretary under Reagan, on the topic. It's Civil War time in Iraq, as the "freedom agenda" leaves more tortured and exploded bodies in its wake.
Posted by jim at 06:37 AM | Comments (1)
May 27, 2005
Got Jesus?
For more (and the curious disappearance of the above image from the Marines website), see Salon.
Posted by jim at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
How Many More Will It Take?
Today's headline on MSNBC.com:
8 American soldiers killed in Iraq attacks
3 deadly attacks on U.S. over 2 days; also Baghdad school rocked
And for the body count for the liberated citizens of Iraq, click here.
Posted by jim at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2005
Realism v. Neoconservatism
A very informative article on Hans Morgenthau's foreign policy realism, as contrasted to the Bushie neocons.
Odd how wildly "progressive" Morgenthau sounds now. . . .
Posted by jim at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2005
The White House v. Newsweek
As usual, the Bush regime won't admit it was wrong, but is demanding a retraction from Newsweek on claims of desecration of the Qu'ran at Gitmo. The story is more complicated, as usual. For testimony and links from an intelligence insider, click here.
I had an amusing real-life experience with the Beast today at lunch. I've been selected to give one of the Master Teacher lectures at A&M's summer program designed to recruit National Merit Scholars. The other professor selected is a former top CIA official, now ensconced in that right-wing playpen known as the Bush School for Government and Foreign Affairs. We met with a committee to discuss topics for the lectures, and a related theme for the program. He wanted to discuss ethical decisionmaking and draw on his years in the CIA as head of the Latin American desk. I proposed that my interest in civil liberties would make a good counterpart, since I recognize that there are circumstances where we must weigh the goods of liberty versus security. I offered to discuss the Patriot Act as an example. Despite the fact that everyone else on the committee thought my idea of having the both of us speak was terrific, he vetoed it. I always wonder what the Bushies are so afraid of that they want to insulate themselves from public debate.
Posted by jim at 06:48 PM | Comments (2)
May 05, 2005
Col. David Hackworth R.I.P.
Col. David Hackworth, uncommonly brave soldier and relentless critic of the defense establishment, has died. Here's a moving obituary from his estate. Any sensible left needs to come to terms with and welcome the sort of democratic military virtues Hackworth represented.
Col. David H. Hackworth, 1930-2005: Legendary U.S. Army Guerrilla Fighter, Champion of the Ordinary Soldier
Thursday May 5, 1:57 pm ET
NEW YORK, May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Col. David H. Hackworth, the United States Army's legendary, highly decorated guerrilla fighter and lifelong champion of the doughboy and dogface, groundpounder and grunt, died Wednesday in Mexico. He was 74 years old. The cause of death was a form of cancer now appearing with increasing frequency among Vietnam veterans exposed to the defoliants called Agents Orange and Blue.
Col. Hackworth spent more than half a century on the country's hottest battlefields, first as a soldier, then as a writer, war correspondent and sharp-eyed critic of the Military Industrial Complex and ticket-punching generals he dismissed as Perfumed Princes. He preferred the combat style of World War II and Korean War heroes like James Gavin and Matthew Ridgeway and, during Vietnam, of Hank "The Gunfighter" Emerson and Hal Moore. General Moore, the author of "We Were Soldiers Once and Young," called him "the Patton of Vietnam" and General Creighton Abrams, the last American commander in that disastrous war, described him as "the best battalion commander I ever saw in the United States Army."
Col. Hackworth's battlefield exploits put him on the line of American military heroes squarely next to Sgt. York and Audie Murphy. The novelist Ward Just, who knew him for forty years, described him as "the genuine article, a soldier's soldier, a connoisseur of combat." At 14, as World War II was sputtering out, he lied about his age to join the Merchant Marine, and at 15 he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Over the next 26 years he spent fully seven in combat. He was put in for the Medal of Honor three times; the last application is currently under review at the Pentagon. He was twice awarded the Army's second highest honor for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross, along with 10 Silver Stars and 8 Bronze Stars. When asked about his many awards, he always said he was proudest of his 8 Purple Hearts and his Combat Infantryman's Badge.
A reputation won on the battlefield made it impossible to dismiss him when he went on the attack later as a critic of careerism and incompetence in the military high command. In 1971, he appeared in the field on ABC's Issue and Answers to say Vietnam "is a bad war...it can't be won. We need to get out." He also predicted that Saigon would fall to the North Vietnamese within four years, a prediction that turned out to be far more accurate than anything the Joint Chiefs of Staff were telling President Nixon or that the President was telling the American people.
With almost five years in country, Col. Hackworth was the only senior officer to sound off about the Vietnam War. After the interview, he retired from the Army and moved to Australia.
"He was perhaps the finest soldier of his generation," observed the novelist and war correspondent Nicholas Proffit, who described Col. Hackworth's combat autobiography About Face, a national best-seller, as "a passionate cry from the heart of a man who never stopped loving the Army, even when it stopped loving him back."
Having risen from private by way of a battlefield commission in Korea, where he became the Army's youngest captain, to Vietnam, where he served as its youngest bird colonel, he never stood on rank.
From the beginning his life was a soldier's story. He was born on Armistice Day, now Veteran's Day, in 1930. His parents both died before he was a year old and the Army ultimately stood in for the family he never had. His grandmother, who rescued him from an orphanage, raised him on tales of the American Revolution and the Old West and the ethos of the Great Depression. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he got his first military training shining shoes at a base in Santa Monica, where the soldiers, adopting him as mascot, had a tailor cut him a pint-sized uniform. "At age 10 I knew my destiny," he said. "Nothing would be better than to be a soldier."
He always credited his success in battle to the training he received from the tough school of non-coms who won World War II, hard-bitten, hard-drinking, hard-fighting sergeants who drilled into him the basics of an infantryman's life: sweat in training cut down on blood shed in battle; there was nothing wrong with being out all night so long as you were present for roll call at 5:00 a.m., on your feet and in shape to run five miles before breakfast in combat boots.
In Korea, where he won his first Silver Star and Purple Heart before he was old enough to vote, he started his combat career in what he later called a "kill a commie for mommie" frame of mind. He was among the first volunteers for Korea and later for Vietnam, where he perfected his skill. "He understood the atmosphere of violence," Ward Just observed. "That meant he knew how to keep his head, to think in danger's midst. In battle the worst thing is paralysis. He mastered his own fear and learned how to kill. He led by example, and his men followed."
Just met him in the ruins of a base camp in the Central Highlands in 1966, where he was a major commanding a battalion of the 101st Airborne. "He was compact, with forearms the size of hams. His uniform was filthy and his use of obscenity was truly inventive." What struck the journalist most forcefully was "his enthusiasm, his magnetism, his exuberance, his invincible cheerfulness."
To young officers in Vietnam and long afterwards, he presented an unforgettable profile in courage. "Everyone called him Hack," recalled Dennis Foley, a military historian and novelist who first saw him in action with the 1st Battalion of the 327th Infantry in 1965. "He was referred to by his radio call sign of 'Steel Six.' He was tough, demanding and boyish all at the same time, stocky with a slightly leathered complexion. His light hair and deep tan made it hard for us to tell how old he was. He wore jungle fatigue trousers, shower shoes, a green T-shirt and a Rolex watch. In the corner of his mouth was a large and foul smelling cigar. As we entered the tent, he was bent over a field table looking at a map overlay and drinking a bottle of San Miguel beer."
With Gen. S.L.A. "Slam" Marshall, he surveyed the war's early mayhem and compiled the Army's experience into The Vietnam Primer, a bible on a style of unconventional counter-guerrilla tactics he called "out gee-ing the G." His finest moment came when he applied these tactics, taking the hopeless 4/39 Infantry Battalion in the Mekong Delta, turning it into the legendary Hardcore Battalion. The men of the demoralized outfit saw him at first as a crazy "lifer" out to get them killed. For a time they even put a price on his head and waited for the first grunt to frag him.
Within 10 weeks, the fiery young combat leader had so transformed the 4/39 that it was routing main force enemy units. He led from the front, at one point getting out on the strut of a helicopter, landing on top of an enemy position and hauling to safety the point elements of a company pinned down and facing certain death. Thirty years later, the grateful enlisted men and young officers of the 4/39, now grown old, are still urging the Pentagon to award him the Medal of Honor for this action. So far, the Army has refused.
On leaving the Army, Col. Hackworth retired to a farm on the Australian Gold Coast near Brisbane. He became a business entrepreneur, making a small fortune in real estate, then expanding a highly popular restaurant called Scaramouche. As a leading spokesman for Australia's anti-nuclear movement he was presented the United Nations Medal for Peace.
As About Face was becoming a best seller, he returned to the United States to marry Eilhys England, his one great love, who became his business and writing partner. He became a powerful voice for military reform. From 1990 to 1996, as Newsweek Magazine's Contributing editor for defense, he covered the first Gulf War as well as peacekeeping battles in Somalia, the Balkans, Korea and Haiti. He captured this experience in Hazardous Duty, a volume of war dispatches. Among his many awards as a journalist was the George Washington Honor Medal for excellence in communications. He also wrote a novel, Price of Honor, about the snares of Vietnam, Somalia and the Military Industrial Complex. His last book, Steel My Soldiers' Hearts, was a tribute to the men of the Hardcore Battalion.
He was a regular guest on national radio and TV shows and a regular contributor to magazines including People, Parade, Men's Journal, Self, Playboy, Maxim and Modern Maturity. His column, Defending America, has appeared weekly in newspapers across the country and on the website of Soldiers For The Truth (http://www.sftt.org), a rallying point for military reform. He and Ms. England have been the driving force behind the organization, which defends the interests of ordinary soldiers while upholding Hack's conviction that "nuke-the-pukes" solutions no longer work in an age of terror that demands "a streamlined, hard-hitting force for the twenty-first century."
"Hack never lost his focus," said Roger Charles, president of Soldiers for the Truth. "That focus was on the young kids that our country sends to bleed and die on our behalf. Everything he did in his retirement was to try to give them a better chance to win and to come home. That's one hell of a legacy."
Over the final years of Col. Hackworth's life, his wife Eilhys fought beside him during his gallant battle against bladder cancer, which now appears with sinister regularity among Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Blue. At one point he considered dropping their syndicated column, only to make an abrupt about face, saying, "Writing with you is the only thing that keeps me alive." The last words he said to his doctor were "If I die, tell Eilhys I was grateful for every moment she brought me, every extra moment I got to spend with her. Tell her my greatest achievement is the love the two of us shared."
Col. Hackworth is survived by Ms. England, one step-daughter and two step-grandchildren, and four children and four grandchildren from two earlier marriages. At a date to be announced, he will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
Soldiers For The Truth is now working on legal action to compel the Pentagon to recognize Agent Blue alongside the better known Agent Orange as a killer and to help veterans exposed to it during the Vietnam War. Memorial contributions can be sent to Soldiers For The Truth either by internet (http://www.sftt.org) or by mail to, PO Box 54365, Irving, California, 92619-4365.
Posted by jim at 09:01 PM | Comments (5)
March 19, 2005
More Chickens Coming Home to Roost
From Inside Higher Ed, an important article about congressional hearings on the impact of Homeland Security on international students. Here's part of the article, illustrating the principle that cultural decline and the destruction of civil liberties are strongly connected:
“For a long time U.S. graduate schools were the only game in town, and no matter how badly treated students were, they came here anyway,” said Mote. That’s no longer the case, he said, and foreign institutions are “using the security situation to convince foreign graduate students to go elsewhere.”
Perhaps sensitive to the fact that lawmakers tend to take a problem most seriously when it has economic implications, Mote said that America’s inability to get top-quality graduate students would undercut the country’s technological enterprise. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), sounded that alarm, too, noting that “those students are going to our economic competitors around the world.”
Posted by jim at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2005
The Medium is the Massage
Marshall McLuhan, 1967:
All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.
From the NYT this morning...and yes, we knew, of course we knew, but it was worse than we thought:
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
The rest of the story...
Posted by ddd at 09:33 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
February 04, 2005
Rhetoricians for What?
My thanks to rhosa polumetis for picking up the slack on the Blogora this last week. I have been indisposed, having some polyps removed (and I'll spare any more details under the TMI principle). In the meantime I see we have linked to Rhetoricians for Peace. I, like a number of people, have been opposed to the invasion of Iraq and have been a stern critic of the Regime's prevarications about our reasons for the invasion. On the other hand, I am simply astonished at the political analysis on the Rhetoricians for Peace site. An immediate end to the occupation? What does that mean? We destroyed the nation's infrastructure, pitted Sunnis against Shi'ites against Kurds, and now we are to leave? I have no trouble with academic rhetoricians criticizing the abuses of language and argument committed during this dreadful period of American history, but Rhetoricians for Peace clearly lacks anything resembling phronesis in suggesting that we should now just leave. The rhetoric of MLA's radical caucus is right out of sectarian Communism circa 1968: "We who sign this call are defectors from the "we" in that list of musts and cans--from the Bush clique and its corporate allies. What is our plan for ending the occupation? Plans abound. What stands in the way of withdrawal is not the lack of a plan, but the desperate tenacity of the Bush clique and the residual power of their lies and fantasies, in which both congressional parties have repeatedly acquiesced." The Bush clique? Running dogs of imperialism? Give me a break. Barbara Foley's idea of rational public discourse was shouting down speakers and throwing blood at them at Northwestern. Let us be careful about the company we keep.
Posted by jim at 04:05 PM | Comments (8)
January 20, 2005
The Best Case for Bush's Foreign Policy
In the February 2005 issue of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz (one of the godfathers of neoconservatism) makes the best case I've read for Bush's foreign policy. Seems worth reading and arguing about. The Blogora: "fair and balanced" since 2004.
Posted by jim at 11:20 AM | Comments (2)
December 21, 2004
Arguing about Definitions: "Torture" and "Abuse"
FBI records released late Monday by the ACLU pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request include complaints in 2004 about military impersonation of FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and allege that there was direct Presidential authority in the form of an Executive Order for the use of interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." Here is the ACLU press release. The email about Bush's Executive Order is here.
What is a citizen to do? If it is true that Bush signed the Executive Order, is he indictable for war crimes?
Posted by jim at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)
December 02, 2004
So much for "Expert Analysis"
I highly recommend that you take a few minutes to read The Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, which was commissioned by the pentagon and delivered in September. Though it was quietly slipped onto the pentagon’s website and noted by a few, it was utterly ignored by mainstream media. As Salon.com’s Sidney Blumenthal points out, this “scathing top-level report, intended for internal consumption, says that Bush's ‘war on terrorism’ is an unmitigated disaster. Of course, the administration is ignoring it.” What most interests me about this report is that it depicts the colossal failure of the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” as, in large part, the result of its inability to grasp the radical singularity of its own rhetorical situation.
Stubbornly imitating the tropological tactics of the Cold War, this administration, for example, addresses the Muslim “masses” as if they were simply analogous to the Soviet Union’s “huddled masses yearning to be free.” The report observes that “This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies —except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends” (36).
The report observes that “worldwide anger and discontent are directed at America’s tarnished credibility and ways the U.S. pursues its goals. There is consensus that America’s power to persuade is in a state of crisis.” And this document--intended, remember, for only internal scrutiny--makes no bones about it: we are in bigger trouble now than we were before: “U.S. policies and actions are increasingly seen by the overwhelming majority of Muslims as a threat to the survival of Islam itself. Three recent polls of Muslims show an overwhelming conviction that the U.S. seeks to ‘dominate’ and ‘weaken’ the Muslim World” (35). America’s communication efforts have backfired, to say the least; its credibility is shot, and its ethos is in the toilet. Thanks to this “war,” the “enemy” has not dwindled but grown by astonishing numbers. And according to this report, the problem in large part is due to this administration’s stunning level of rhetorical retarditity.
If there were a strategic communication corollary to the U.S. Military’s “intelligence preparation of the battle space” it would be: correctly analyze the combined impacts of audience, impact, message and means. We often speak of “the audience” we wish to influence as if there were only one. The reality is that in the global information environment in which we live and work there are numerous audiences that can be affected differently by the same message. Crafting an influence campaign means precisely identifying the key audience, but also other audiences as well.
What would we like our targeted audiences to see — and what impact do we wish to have? Do we want them to “like” us? Do we want them to question and doubt the information they get from their own governments, like we did with Radio Free Europe during the Cold War? Do we wish them similarly to cease supporting militant jihadists in their midst? Or are these traditional approaches to strategic communications even the right questions? Crafting an impact that we can see, measure, and realize is surely as important as accurately analyzing the audiences we wish to influence. But how to craft a message when our target audience is unwilling even to listen to us? What message can generate the desired impact on the targeted audience? We must begin by listening to that audience, because if we do not understand what resonates with them we have only a serendipitous chance of succeeding. Much of the current U.S. effort concentrates on delivering “the message” and omits the essential first step of listening to our targeted audiences. We can craft a message that actually gets through only by using language, symbols, and images that resonate with the targeted audience. (37-38)
Blumenthal says that one of the writers of the report (which was delivered almost 3 months ago) told him that it has received no response from the White House. "The report has been studiously, willfully ignored by those in the White House to whom its recommendations are directed." Blumenthal continues:
For the Bush administration, expert analysis as a rule is extraneous, as it is making clear to national security professionals in its partisan scapegoating of the CIA. Experts can only be expert in telling the White House what it wants to hear. Expertise is valued, not for the analysis or evidence it offers for correction, but for propaganda and validation. But no one -- not in the Bush White House, the Congress, or the dwindling "coalition of the willing" -- can claim that the ever-widening catastrophe has not been foretold by the best and most objective minds commissioned by the Pentagon -- perhaps for the last time.
Posted by ddd at 07:42 AM | Comments (2)
November 28, 2004
Marlboro Man Redux
Naomi Klein has a darkly humorous article about the flap over the "iconic" picture of the American Marine in Fallujah smoking a cigarette after 12 hours of deadly combat in Fallujah. Turns out the anti-smoking fanatics are criticizing the "message" that the photo sends about cigarettes being a good way to relax. . .
From the Guardian:
I'd put up the picture, but I just realized I don't know how to do that: here's the picture plus fawning commentary from Michelle Malkin's blog (she's most noted for her recent defense of interning Japanese-Americans during WWII).
Posted by jim at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)
November 25, 2004
The War
In my post-Thanksgiving dinner lethargy (or "loginess" as we called it in rural Minnesota), I turn back to Blogora. I continue to watch stories out of Iraq in a state beyond anger, a sort of stupefied numbness. I think, as I do often these days, of Mario Savio's speech at Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement:
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
--But then my own mood, after pleasantly overeating with family and friends, is instead to emulate Robert Frost's Drumlin Woodchuck:
My own strategic retreat
Is where two rocks almost meet,
And still more secure and snug,
A two-door burrow I dug.
With those in mind at my back
I can sit forth exposed to attack
As one who shrewdly pretends
That he and the world are friends.
All we who prefer to live
Have a little whistle we give,
And flash, at the least alram
We dive down under the farm.
We allow some time for guile
And don't come out for a while
Either to eat or drink.
We take occasion to think.
And if after the hunt goes past
And the double-barreled blast
(Like war and pestilence
And the loss of common sense),
If I can with confidence say
That still for another day,
Or even another year,
I will be there for you, my dear,
It will be because, though small
As measured against the All,
I have been so instinctively thorough
About my crevice and burrow.
But the ever-interesting Tom Hayden has a good article on alternet about strategies for antiwar protest. I'm going to try to teach The Port Huron Statement in my social movements class on Thursday (which Hayden helped write). I've often wanted to put together a panel at conference of multiple readings of that document. It represents what continues to inspire about the New Left.
Posted by jim at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2004
Won't Get Fooled Again?
From the conservative economist Paul Craig Roberts:
Won't Get Fooled Again?
by Paul Craig Roberts
It is not yet Bush's second term. All available U.S. troops are tied down in Iraq by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents. Go-it-alone Bush has isolated America from her allies. And the neocons want to spread their war to Iran.
The Bush administration is recycling the lies that it used to invade Iraq: Iran is acquiring nuclear weapons that will be given to terrorists. In a display of loyalty to a ruthless neocon administration calculated to win him appointments to corporate boards, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters that Iran was working on nuclear missiles.
The source for this effort to spread hysteria? One "walk-in" source with unverified documents. Most likely, the source is a member of an Iranian exile group given the assignment by neocons Richard Perle and John Bolton.
--for more, read the whole article at antiwar.com
Is it time for the first-ever Blogora betting pool? The person who guesses the right date for the first American attack on Iran wins the collected writings of ddd, rhosa, and jim.
(I know that's a great straight line for someone. .if Dean Antczak is listening from the dark side of administration. . .)
Posted by jim at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2004
Update on Fallujah
For one reader, a single photograph brought home the inconceivable horror that is Iraq
By J. Scott Smith, Salon.com
Nov. 18, 2004 | Perhaps, being a new father, I am overly sensitive to such things, but today the image I saw on my computer screen brought me to tears. The photograph, appearing on the BBC's Web site, was from some street or another in Fallujah, Iraq. The caption, although gruesome enough, was a comparatively bland statement that "Bodies have been left uncollected for days." Yet what the picture depicted was testimony to the unmitigated and unavoidable tragedy of war. In the picture we see the "uncollected" body of a man lying in the street, his arms still clutching yet another uncollected body, that of a child. The child's body was clasping the man's shoulders, holding on for what was dear life to the now headless corpse of, who knows, his (or her, you cannot tell) father, uncle, brother, someone he trusted to protect and shelter him. The picture can be seen here.
One can only imagine the sheer terror and unfathomable sadness of their last moments, gunfire and explosions ringing in their ears, trying to find safety in a war they did not ask for, a war they did not start. Perhaps the man was trying to carry the child to safety, or maybe the child saw him die and rushed to him only to be killed as well. All we know is that there they now lie, a man and his child, eternally locked in each other's arms, as soldiers from a foreign land amble past.
I cannot help but think of the argument many made, and I myself considered: that this war would ultimately be for the betterment of the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator after all. Yet these two lives were certainly not improved. To them the spreading of democracy brought only terror and death.
Many were led to believe that with the magic precision of modern weapons, civilian casualties -- "collateral damage" -- would be light or nonexistent. Of course, that is not true. It never has been.
The appointed prime minister of Iraq just yesterday tried to tell the world that there were no civilian casualties in Fallujah, when our very eyes tell us a different story. Our government tried to tell us that there were "hardly any" civilian casualties.
Yet ask yourself this: If the weapons are so accurate, then why were artillery operations ceased when U.S. personnel began operating in most of the city? The reason is simple. Artillery remains what it has been since the days of Napoleon: an "area weapon." That means it is used to rain destruction over an entire area, not just a particular house or bunker. For example, the Washington Post ran a story about the Marines responsible for operating the unmanned surveillance aircraft. The story described a small duel between the Marines' 155 mm howitzers and a single insurgent mortar tube, with the surveillance guys acting as spotters. It described the "bracketing rounds," one 100 yards left of the target, the next a few yards short, then the rounds fired "for effect." Of those, most landed right in and around the target, but two or three were off by as much as 100 yards. (Despite all that, they still missed the tube.)
What pray tell was under those rounds that missed? Who knows? But we do know there were as many as 50,000 civilians who were unable to leave the city, and of the thousands of shells that were poured into the city (almost Russian in its scope was the barrage) it stands to reason that more than "hardly any" innocents' lives were lost, their last hours spent enduring the thunder of exploding shells all around them and only to then have a house come crashing down upon them.
Then there are the phosphorous rounds. They explode 100 or so feet above the ground and rain burning phosphorous globules over as much as an entire city block. Just about everything underneath them, from metal-encased bunkers to the innocent family cowering in a wooden house, burns.
No, to quote that famous but still unknown soldier in Patton's Third Army, after leaving a French village they just captured, "We sure liberated the hell out of that place."
It is not just Fallujah; it is the entire war. According to one peer-reviewed analysis conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the number of civilian deaths that can be attributed to the war and its aftermath exceeds 100,000. Not ten thousand; one hundred thousand. That is far more than the number of deaths the mass murderer Saddam (and he clearly was) was blamed for over the entire past decade. Other more conservative estimates (based on what limited hospital records are available) place the toll in the tens of thousands. I do not blame our soldiers and Marines. They are not "baby killers." They were given a difficult job, and they are doing it in the only real way possible. I do not even fault the decision to attack Fallujah this time around. The decision to attack last April, against the advice of the commanders on the ground, left us with no viable alternative.
No, it is our dear leaders who must be held to account. They chose to fight a war of conquest -- a much more violent proposition than other types of war -- without good reason. They sold the war on false evidence and false assumptions about the effect on the civilian population. We will bring the shining light of democracy to the Iraqi people, they said. Americans were led to believe that only those who chose to fight would suffer. Never, ever should anyone try to sell a war by sugarcoating its realities, by implying that it will be an antiseptic video game of surgically precise weapons, that there will only be the most "minimal" loss of innocent life. That is the stuff of Tom Clancy novels, not real war.
I find it inconceivable that a man who professes to be "pro-life" could so blithely commit so many others to die. Tonight, George Bush will go to sleep happy, comfortable in his electoral victory and looking forward to spending that political capital he says he "earned." Meanwhile a man and his innocent child lie rotting on a dusty Fallujah street.
Posted by rhosa at 12:39 PM | Comments (2)
November 07, 2004
On to Fallujah
"The intensity of air raids on the central Iraq city of Fallujah continued to crescendo overnight as some 10,000 U.S. Marines prepared for what is expected to be a massive urban assault on the city that has been most resistant to foreign occupation." For more, see antiwar.com.
The ongoing justification for war in Iraq is a splendid example of how a rhetor shifts premises in the course of refutation by opponents. First, there were the WMD's. Then, the link to al-Qaeda. Then, the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, who was a mass murderer. (It all reminded me of Cicero in Pro Milone: Well, yes, Milo killed Clodius, but it was in self-defense, and if you don't believe that, Clodius was a bad guy anyway.)
Now, we have to ask: at what point do mounting civilian deaths in Iraq make us the moral equivalent of Saddam? Jude Wanniski, author of The Way the World Works, one of the major architects of Reaganomics, asks that question in a must-read article: "Fallujah and Those Mass Graves." The most recent estimates of the dead total 100,000 Iraqi civilians and 60,000 to 80,000 Iraqi military, plus the almost 1,200 Americans who have died during the course of the war. Even if we buy the argument that Hussein murdered 290,000 Iraqis (and the evidence for that claim is rapidly disappearing), we are now rapidly approaching parity with him.
To me, the most encouraging political sign in the last few years has been the number of libertarians and "paleoconservatives" who are attacking the new American imperialism.
But as we continue to lick our wounds over the election results, let's remember that there are very real, very bloody consequences of American policy. All of us are physically safe and relatively economically secure (for now). How many more Iraqi civilians, including children, will be dead by tomorrow?
Posted by jim at 06:08 PM | Comments (5)