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Thomas de Zengotita: Hollywood Politics: Up in the Air

2009-12-20T21:30:20Z

I feel so ambivalent about the way Hollywood packages progressive messages -- messages I agree with, in substance. But the way they do it, it's a symptom of a basic problem.

The obvious cases are movies about the war in Iraq, from In the Valley of Elah to The Hurt Locker. Opposition to the war saturates the atmosphere of these films, but it's not explicit. The focus is on the personal price that's paid -- as if the war were a condition of nature, like earthquakes. The reason for this is obvious. Makers of those movies don't want to violate the number one lesson learned from the Vietnam war: support the troops this time around, no matter how stupid the war itself may be.

But other cases are subtler. Take Up in the Air, for example. Don't get me wrong; it's a really good movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But, well -- take the firing scenes. They are wonderfully effective and they don't chicken out. We are forced to witness the human damage being done these days to non-union workers in OfficeWorld who are distinguished from the proletariat of yore only by white collars -- meaningless tokens in an information economy where acres of cubicles have replaced factories. There is an atmosphere of opposition to corporate exploitation but, as with the Iraq war movies, it never gets explicit.

We don't see or hear anything structural, nothing about the system. "Bosses" are dissed but it's for not facing the workers they are firing, workers they've been welcoming into their corporate "family" at annual retreats for years. But these are personal failings -- no guts. So the cowardly bosses hire Jason Bateman's outfit and George Clooney flies around the country doing their dirty work for them. Day in and day out, week after week, month after month.

A very ugly way to make a living. But it's George Clooney, for god's sake. You can't hate him. You just can't. He's so self-deprecating, so self-aware -- so charming. Having made that choice, what's a movie to do? Well, weirdly, we are eventually expected to feel sorry for George and his rookie partner and, at the same time, somehow admire them for bearing up under the strain of their jobs! It's as if their ability to override their own humanity makes us wish for their redemption, while at the same time we get to admire their slick professionalism. Sort of the way we admire con men in a caper movie.

They get their come-uppance in the end, but once again it's personal -- they get hurt by their lovers, with whom they were vulnerable in spite of their career armor. Strictly personal. Unless you count the suicide of the lady the rookie partner fired? But even that -- it goes by so fast -- the movie makes it seem like it's really all about the rookie partner, who quits her job as a result. So now we know she's basically OK. And Clooney writes her a great letter of recommendation, so we know he's basically OK. Plus he goes back to his job having prevailed over those who want the gun-for-hire firings to take place on Skype. He goes back up in the air so he can drop down on his prey in person once again.

That's how it ends.

Uh, OK... meaning what, exactly?

Is irresolution at the end of a movie like this a mature acknowledgment of the grey zones in real life? Or is it a necessity forced upon movie makers by their need to have it both ways?

George McGovern: A Response to Joe Klein

2009-12-20T14:19:06Z

The able reporter Joe Klein deserves a response to his critique of my objection to President Obama's decision to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. With the 21,000 the President ordered there earlier, plus the 50,000 sent by President Bush, we now have over 100,000 troops assigned to Afghanistan and another 50,000 mercenaries.

I had stated that our growing Afghan involvement reminds me of the Vietnam tragedy. Mr. Klein contends "Afghanistan is different." I agree that there are differences between the two situations, but there are worrisome similarities.

In each case we have assumed that the complicated political, ideological, ethnic and nationalistic cross purposes can be straightened out by American troops. It has further been assumed in both Vietnam and Afghanistan that their problems are primarily the responsibility of the US with only token support from other countries.

The people of Afghanistan have occupied a strip of mountainous territory in Central Asia for many centuries. If they are unable to resolve their internal conflicts, how likely is it that even the best soldiers from our distant land can put things aright?

If our country, which we all love, is to become the world's policeman, where will we recruit enough troops? Some of our regular army and reservists have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly a decade -- longer than WWI and WWII combined. There is a limit to what even superb soldiers like ours can withstand. If we are to play the role of a global police force we should all be involved and that means we should restore the draft and pay higher taxes. We can't keep using the same soldiers war after war while borrowing money from the Chinese.

Mr. Klein expresses grave concern about tensions and dangers in Pakistan and India if we were to "abandon the region" by bringing our troops home from Afghanistan.

I am not advocating that we abandon any region of the world (indeed, I have long favored normalization of relations, including trade and travel, with Cuba, as I did with China long before that happened) We have competent, fully staffed embassies in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to help us keep informed of developments in these countries and to pursue our interests. We also maintain economic aid missions in these countries. We are not abandoning a country simply because we don't have our army there doing battle.

One final point: Even if Mr. Klein were right in calling for us to continue waging war in Afghanistan, we can't afford it. Thanks to the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we've built a national debt of 12 trillion dollars. We're also in the middle of a serious recession. Not a good time for another deepening war.

Afghan-Americans Express Sharply Different Views On The War

2009-12-18T15:03:47Z

President Obama's decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan is provoking strong and sometimes conflicting feelings among Afghan-Americans.

Moe Hashem, the owner of the Afghan Kabob restaurant in Springfield, VA, paints a rosy picture of post-U.S. occupation life in Afghanistan. "I support Mr. Obama 110%," Hashem said. "The [American] soldiers are my soldiers, my people. God bless them. They are helping the people. Under the Taliban, the women had no freedom, little girls were afraid to go to school. Now my sister's children go to school -- the girls and the boys. People see the beauty of life now because they are safer."

Hashem, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1990, said that he used to be afraid to go back to visit his family. "Before September 11, I was from Afghanistan, but I was not safe there. The Taliban would have killed me because I'm American. Now I visit my family every seven or eight months. If you are human, you appreciate the U.S. decisions."

Amena Chenzaie, a 34-year-old World Bank employee whose parents moved to the D.C. area from Afghanistan when she was six, is grateful to American troops for saving Afghan women from the Taliban. "From an Afghan-American woman's perspective, I support Obama sending more troops over there at this time... I can't even find a word to describe the condition of women living under the Taliban -- the curfews, the abuse. The women are prospering now."

But Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission in Pasadena, CA, says the war and the lawlessness in her native country are making life even worse for women than they were under the Taliban.

"It is a myth that women are better off under the new government than the Taliban," Kolhatkar said. "Overall, more women are being imprisoned for honor crimes, more women are being raped, women are killing themselves more, and maternal mortality rates have remained the same. There is an increasing lawlessness, so more women in general are being killed. What we're seeing today is similar to what we saw in the early 90s -- there is no accountability."

Kolhatkar said that unlike many Afghan-Americans who moved to the U.S. at a young age and have largely lost touch with their Afghan friends and relatives, she remains in close contact with women in all parts of Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan.

"The Afghan-American community is by definition a more conservative community," she added. "They are quick to support this war, but they don't have to live under the same conditions as the people. They might feel differently if they did."

As to the claim that girls now feel safe enough to go to school, she said, "Any claims about things like schools and hospitals are token claims, drops in the bucket. In the South and West, the Taliban is burning down women's schools and throwing acid in their faces. This is a new Taliban. The occupation makes them stronger, gives them legitimacy. They are able to say, 'We're protecting you from U.S. and NATO imperialism.'"

Heidar Nowrouz, who lives in Annandale, VA, but is currently working in Kabul for the Insurance Corporation of Afghanistan, said some Afghans are starting to wonder if they might prefer the Taliban to the current government. "At least there was more security under the Taliban in terms of justice. They shot women for committing adultery and chopped people's hands off for stealing; it was brutal, stupid and completely inhuman, but at least it was formal justice."

Nowrouz added, "Under the Bush Administration, everyone called the Afghan war 'the Good War.' It wasn't. The Bush Administration had no clue or didn't care about what was going on or what would be good for Afghanistan, and the people didn't see a whole lot of improvement in their lives. Afghans don't even like governments, but they will take whatever side is winning because they're destitute and helpless and need medical care."

All nine Afghan-Americans interviewed for this story agreed, however, that for American troops to pull out of Afghanistan too precipitously would be disastrous.

"This is a war that must end, the sooner the better. But people are afraid if the U.S. is not present there, there will be killing all over again, and the poor people will pay the price," said M. Akbar Nowrouz, who moved to the U.S. in 1979 for political asylum. "The institution called [the] 'Afghan government' will not last a day, and we will go back to the Stone Age."

Karl Eikenberry Assures Afghans That U.S. Will Stay Beyond 2011

2009-12-17T22:06:23Z

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry Thursday further signaled that a strong American military presence will remain in Afghanistan long after July 2011, when President Obama plans to end his troop surge.

Sam Isaac Edwards: Obama's Clinical Trial on Afghanistan

2009-12-16T16:01:27Z

KABUL- As one walks the streets of this ancient and haunting city, imbibing its culture and recalling its history, one can easily recognize why it has suffered all of it's life with a condition that can only be described as "perpetual dysfunction." But it is not a condition of its own making. It is a condition that has resulted from hundreds of years of being a geographical ping pong ball, slammed back and forth between the world powers of the moment. From the time of Alexander and Napoleon, in it's early history, up through the 19th and 20th centuries when Britain and Russia seemed to spend every other weekend invading some part of the territory, the same lesson has been repeatedly taught and repeatedly forgotten: No matter the investment in time and blood and money, Afghanistan is not only unconquerable, but she is also incurable.

Afghanistan is only well when she is least sick, and that is when she is left alone.

As an international disaster relief volunteer, I have traveled the world to aid countries that have suffered from the devastation of natures wrath. I came to Afghanistan to see what a "man made" disaster looks like and to judge the difference for myself. There is only one..."Man made" disasters are exponentially worse.

I am sure that none of this is lost on President Obama's advisors, those who have formulated his "new approach," to at least make an attempt to palliate some parts of this long suffering Central Asian patient. After eight years of Cheney and Rumsfeld, who dosed Afghanistan with placebos and sent the "universal panacea" to Iraq, the current administration has been left with few choices.

Battered from the right for spending too much time to make a decision on the Afghanistan issue, and from the left for spending any time on it at all, Obama finds himself in political no mans land. As the head physician, he must either endure the status quo, an unwise option when there are American and allied lives at stake, or he must cease tending to the patient. Both betray America's geopolitical Hippocratic oath, not to mention that without a foreign military presence, the resurgent Taliban is likely to return to power.

There is an important concept in medicine known as homeostasis, which is the ability of a system to reach a balance or equilibrium in order to survive. If a system does not succeed in reestablishing equilibrium, if it cannot fully use the freedoms available to it because of some internal or external law, relation, or control, adaptation is thwarted. This leads to further dysfunction or even total destruction of that system.

By the eminently applicable principle of homeostasis-- to which by history and culture the Afghans are uniquely suited -- the long-beleaguered Hindu Kush should be left to find its own equilibrium. That outsiders do not understand the relevance of that dynamic to Afghanistan is one more example of the ignorance and fear that have made Afghanistan a singular tragedy in modern history.

It should not come as any surprise; say those who know President Obama, that it required some weeks for him to arrive at this crossroad, the result of which could end up defining his first term in office. When his decision making process is measured by the standards of his predecessor some can find him overly ponderous. But given the choice between from-the-hip spontaneity or slow deliberation, when it comes to world events, the latter is not only the wisest, it is the smartest. What Obama finally revealed to the world with his December national address could best be described as a "clinical trial."

It's most important facet is that it does not administer the medicine, aka the money, orally through the now realized sieve known as "Karzai's Gullet." But rather this new and obviously more practical approach is to single out parts of the patient that are most apt to be ameliorated, like small provincial areas where success can be measured more deliberately and with more accuracy. And from an economic perspective, this allows the expenditures to be allotted in smaller, more easily accounted for increments. Then, according to this new approach, if the patient responds favorably, it will be given more medicine. Finally, something that actually makes sense! If this is what results from extended deliberation in Washington, please, let's have more of it.

I'm sure that President Karzai is less than elated now that this administration has opted to by-pass the head, and deal directly with the lower limbs of Afghanistan's wobbly central government (Karzai has yet to even appoint a cabinet). A clinical trial is supposed to contain dual conditions, so that one can be measured against the other. I would argue that the Bush years, Test A, if you will, showed only patient digression. We have to try test B, for there is no paradigm for a Test C.

Aubrey Sarvis: Mr. President: You've Earned Your Stripes, Now Let's End the Gay Ban in 2010

2009-12-16T13:22:53Z

One would be hard pressed to figure out how the White House could credibly avoid tackling the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in its second year. Just this past October President Obama said, "I will end 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'"

Both the White House and Congress will soon turn their attention to the crowded legislative agenda that will be facing them when they come back to Washington after the holidays. Two wars will be going on and no doubt both will take up much of the President's precious time, but now is the time for President Obama and his legislative team, huddling with House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid, to come up with the legislative list they want to push through Congress in 2010.

Because health care and the Afghanistan war have consumed far more time this year than expected, one assumes the '10 legislative agenda will be very focused, even scaled back a bit. There are the ambitious and big ticket items - jobs, jobs, and jobs - plus financial services reform and climate change.

But there are other urgent initiatives that need to get done too, and some will not be nearly as sweeping or as tough as some in the White House may fear. On this short list should be the repeal of DADT.

In the February-March timeframe, the President will most likely send up to Capitol Hill his defense budget. (DADT was written into the defense budget 16 years ago.) What better place for the President to make good on his words to end this law than in his very own defense budget?

While the President has consistently said the right words, whether it be on the campaign trail last year, at LGBT events, or at a black-tie Washington event, he has not spoken as clearly or as forcefully on repeal to Congress and to his own senior leadership team in the Defense department.

If Secretary Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen are going to be tasked by the White House to do something significant on repeal, those discussions must begin in earnest - soon - or the opportunity to get rid of the gay ban next year may slip away.

It seems to me that this President has been measured, agile, thoughtful, and extraordinarily respectful of his top officials in the Department of Defense. During this first year, the Commander in Chief more than earned his stripes, whether it was Dover and the photographing of our returning dead warriors, agreeing to the Afghanistan surge, or delivering more dollars for the Pentagon. The brass pretty much got what they asked for from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Now the time has come for the President to have that very candid DADT repeal discussion with Sec. Gates and Admiral Mullen - and for them (and those who report to Gates and Mullen) to salute. It need not be a come-to-the-woodshed or quid-pro-quo discussion. (We now know that is not the Obama style.) Gates and Mullen have both pointed out that they are well aware of the President's strategic intent and objective. I suspect they both also know that full repeal is the right and best thing to do for all of our troops and for our country, and they both appreciate all too well that the President needs their help here, as well as their remarkable leadership and credibility.

It's past time for Gates and Mullen and the White House to stop circling each other in their awkward tango around "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Let's be candid. No one really expects Gates and Mullen to go first, to actually get ahead of the President on overturning DADT. The reality is the President must initiate this candid discussion and, in doing so, he will establish that the three of them are in alignment on repeal, that the time has come.

No one wants a replay of the sorry and mean-spirited discussion that took place in 1993 on this subject. Our country, including the military, has moved on and is in a far different place. Today, 26 countries allow their gay and lesbian troops to serve without discrimination, and a vast majority of Americans, including churchgoers, think the U.S. should allow that too. When President Obama and Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen say to Congress the time has come for us to join those other 26 countries in allowing open service, and say it clearly in their defense bill going up to the Hill, Congress will follow their recommendation and embrace their bold leadership, and we can finally go about burying this embarrassing chapter.

Up To 56,000 More Contractors Could Be Sent To Afghanistan

2009-12-15T23:35:47Z

Private contractors will make up at least half of the total military workforce in Afghanistan going forward, according to Defense Department officials cited in a new congressional study.

Paul Gernert, Iraq War Veteran, Gets Help With Service Dog

2009-12-15T15:07:30Z

Iraq war veterans with PTSD can face a number of mental and emotional obstacles when attempting to resume a normal life on the home front.

One veteran, Paul Gernert of Colorado Springs, Colo. struggled with his job as a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal service. until he received some relief from a surprising source -- Bertha, a trained service dog.

NBC reported on Gernert's story, as well as the nonprofit, Puppies Behind Bars that trains inmates to raise puppies to become service dogs.

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Joseph A. Palermo: Obama's Nobel Lecture: Speaking Truth From Power?

2009-12-15T09:59:33Z

President Barack Obama's Nobel lecture last Thursday in Oslo shows he understands that "peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict." "Only a just peace based upon the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting," he said. Hearing a president say this is mind blowing and illustrates the side of Obama we should seek to nurture. But the president's statement about the expansive nature of peace raises the question: Couldn't this idea be applied also to the social conditions that gave rise to terrorism aimed at the United States in the first place?

"America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens," President Obama said. "No matter how callously defined, neither America's interests -- nor the world's -- are served by the denial of human aspirations." Unfortunately, while it might be true that the U.S. "has never fought a war against a democracy," the U.S. has overthrown democracies when their interests collided with American global objectives. It has also propped up governments (including the current one in Kabul) claiming they are democracies when they really aren't. History shows a long line of human rights violators the U.S. has supported over the years that specialized in "the denial of human aspirations."

The president continues:

"For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want. . . . security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within."

America's enemies have for years told us through communiques and videos about a whole set of grievances relating directly to the failures of U.S. policy in the Middle East; policies of supporting corrupt dictatorships while extracting oil wealth and creating an environment where social justice doesn't have a chance. Even Karl Rove recommended that Americans read Osama Bin Laden's writings to glean greater knowledge of what animates these murderers -- an ironic twist indeed since throughout the Bush-Cheney years the United States was incapable of acknowledging the underlying social and political causes of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations -- an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this Prize -- America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, and restrict the most dangerous weapons."

The President is correct in pointing out these vital multilateral institutions that the United States was instrumental in forming. They not only reconstructed the post-war world but also provided a foundation for a greatly improved intercourse among nations. Yet right after the war it was the United States that was the first to develop, test, stockpile, and deploy nuclear weapons. And it did so at a time when it held a monopoly on them. Any "realistic" view of history must recognize that it was the United States that pushed the world onto the path of nuclear proliferation, the terrible consequences of which we face today.

Also, a "realistic" assessment of the history of American foreign policy would have to accept that even a cursory look at the regions of the world where American power had the most influence, namely Latin America, Central America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines, far from ushering in a trajectory of "democracy" and "freedom" the United States brought these places CIA overthrows of democratic governments and support for dictators and military juntas. American corporate and financial prerogatives, neo-liberal economic policies, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) "structural adjustment" schemes (all designed to wipe away enlightened social policy) have brought forth the kind of crushing poverty in those countries that Obama understands is inconsistent with promoting peace.

President Obama's Nobel lecture might have showed us that the United States has reached a turning point: either the national security monster we've created is going to eat us alive by bankrupting the country or we're going to have to shift course. We must begin to spin off the 700 or so military bases and installations around the world and focus on building a better life for our own people here at home. As it goes today we don't even have the political will to raise taxes to share the sacrifice of fighting these foreign wars. It's getting to the point where the only time we hear politicians wax eloquent about how important it is to spend money on education and health care is when the goal is to try to win hearts and minds in some distant land.

I think the U.S. policy of occupying Afghanistan is foolish and fails to recognize the limits to American power. The Pashtuns don't like foreigners in their midst and they live in vast numbers on both sides of the Durand Line. I'm afraid the United States, like the former Soviet Union, will have nothing to show for its Afghanistan adventure except for an empty treasury and a depleted military.

During the Cold War about one-third of the planet's nations were hostile to us and we still survived it. Yet today we're told to quake in our boots because nineteen suicidal guys with box cutters hit us eight years ago? From 1955 to 1975, we were told that Saigon was vital to the continental security of the United States; today, we're being told the same thing about Kabul. Here's an idea: Why don't we close some of those U.S. military outposts all over the world and amass our soldiers along the Canadian and Mexican borders and really protect the "homeland?" As was the case in Vietnam, U.S. forces in Afghanistan already have been absorbed into the ancient political feuds of a country the U.S. is supposedly remaking in its own image.

American right-wingers screech at the thought of U.S. troops under the command of "Blue Helmeted" United Nations forces. They see it as an unacceptable infringement on U.S. "sovereignty." But they're perfectly happy to cede U.S. "sovereignty" to the whims of the corrupt, unpopular, and incompetent government of Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

We're told that training the Afghans to take over their own security is "vital" to American "success." Right now the only number worth watching in Afghanistan is the desertion rate of its military and security forces. When it spikes (as I expect it will) no amount of American training or arms is going to make much of a difference.

Carter Phipps: Peace Is Not Enough: Thoughts on Obama's Nobel Speech

2009-12-14T15:24:37Z

Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10th, and his acceptance speech, a forum in which legendary statements are often made, was a bit of a dud--at least that's the impression I got from the media. "War President Accepts Peace Prize" said the headlines...or "President Accepts Peace Prize, Defends War." Even the Huffington Post headline was mainly focused on the irony of the moment, less on the content of the speech. Lucky for me, I actually read the speech, and my first thought was....what the heck is wrong with the media!!? (At least that's the PG version.)

This was a powerful speech, full of serious thinking and nuance, philosophy, and theology. Obama was staking out a very important and carefully considered realism that doesn't lose sight of our best ideals, and an idealism that is grounded in the world as we know it. So enough with the snide, isn't-that-ironic characterizations of the intelligentsia. It's like they can't recognize a sophisticated argument, a political statement that doesn't neatly fit into pacifism or militarism. And the left seemed to be particularly confused. So many commentators were highly critical of the speech (though there does seem to be more appreciation over the last day or so), perhaps because many are upset with the President's recent decisions on Afghanistan. But whatever one thinks about the difficult problems we face in Afghanistan, and I have serious concerns about Obama's approach, let me state unequivocally that a great speech was completely missed here, and that I agree with the thrust of the President's argument. In 2009, Peace--as an ideal, a political position, a philosophy, an attitude, a worldview--is simply not enough.

This issue is close to my heart. And it is one where the Left, with its nonviolent and pacifistic tendencies, too often cedes the wrong kind of ground to the Right, whose enthusiastic embrace of military might too often shows little of the subtlety, nuance, and complexity needed in this age of political self-determination. I actually spent a significant amount of time doing research on peace, pacifism, and nonviolence for an article titled "Is God a Pacifist? War vs. Peace in a Post 9/11 World" for EnlightenNext magazine. And what I realized is that peace is a very problematic concept, spiritually and even politically. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the absence of war and conflict as much as the next guy and long for the day when such peace will be global and universal to human life. I also feel strongly that if our species is to have a chance for a brighter future then we must find a way to end the war and violence that are now threatening the very structure of our planetary society. And there is no question that the ongoing development of technology is making the attainment of peace and security in this world an absolutely fundamental part of any sane and survivable future. But how do we get there? Therein lies the rub.

You see, for all the failures of war, peace hasn't always been a good alternative. Krishna knew it 2500 years ago, and it is still true today. Witness the tragedy in the Balkans or Rwanda, or the slaughter in the Sudan, or World War II not that many decades ago. No one has yet convinced me that there is or was a nonviolent solution to those conflicts, as much as we would like there to be. In the long term, of course, anything is possible. But we can't allow our dreams of peace tomorrow to cause us to make fatal and disastrous mistakes today. Obama spoke directly to this in his speech. And moreover, I'm convinced that the very idea that peace should be the goal of our human endeavors--politically, socially, and even spiritually--represents an outdated context for our moral and philosophical life. And this is where I would take a step, philosophically and theologically, beyond what the President offered. So what is the alternative to peace? Well, that's a complicated question that would take a great deal of time to explain, which is why I wrote that original 20-page article. Don't worry, I won't spend 20 pages explaining it here, but I did want to submit this simple essay arguing that, at the beginning of the 21st century, peace is simply not enough.
* * *
We do hear a great deal about peace these days. In many respects, it is an extraordinary sign of evolution in the human character. In fact, peace movements, in the sense that they exist today, are a relatively recent addition to human culture, as are current forms of nonviolence which largely began with Gandhi in the early 20th century. Even the ideals of peace and pacifism have hardly been innate to human life. Most scholars agree that the earliest historical recorded peace movements date back to the first millennium BC. The great King Ashoka, who ruled most of South Asia from 273 BC to 232 BC, initiated perhaps the first large-scale experiment in peace and pacifism when he declared (around 250 BC) that the Buddhist ideal of nonviolence would be the moral law of his kingdom. He may very well have been the first such ruler for whom peace became not only a profound philosophical ideal but a practical way of structuring the life of his subjects. Of course, Ashoka had to subdue his many enemies and secure his kingdom before renouncing war, but nevertheless, the extraordinary policy of this peaceful Buddhist King stands out as one of the first times in history that an entire nation put down their weapons, not simply because there were no more enemies to fight, but because that was the spiritual and moral worldview of their culture.

Some scholars have also argued that this emerging concern for peace, all those centuries ago, was no accident of history. And it was not simply due to the extraordinary benevolence of an enlightened ruler. They suggest that it was influenced by the advent of the Iron Age and the increasing sophistication of weaponry that was introduced into human culture early in the first millennium BC. As kings, warlords, and would-be empires raged back and forth across Persia and the Middle East, from the River Nile to the River Ganges, armed with ever more deadly weapons, the brutality of life increased and so did the longing of those caught in the crossfire to find relief. It is interesting to note that it was also during the middle of the first millennium BC that many of the great religions were initially formed--promising that peace, freedom, and bliss can be found not in this world of suffering but in a transcendent realm beyond. From the otherworldly Nirvanic bliss of the Buddha to the messianic longing of the enslaved Jewish people, from the ideal realm of Platonic Philosophy to the heavenly perfection of Zoroaster, all across the ancient world there arose a sense that eternal rest and peace were ultimately attainable--even if in the here and now such notions proved elusive.

We've come a long way since the days when heaven seemed forever separate from earth and our spiritual ideals seemed hopelessly divorced from the reality of our political and social lives. While we may not exactly be living in a world empowered by love and harmony, peace, at least in a relative sense, is something we can now experience in our own lives and work toward as a practical universal goal. And personally, we enjoy lives of extraordinary peacefulness, ease, and rest compared to the ancients. Indeed, many today live in laps of luxury that once only kings and queens enjoyed, experiencing material and psychological comforts our ancestors could only dream about. And amidst this unprecedented explosion of freedom from strife and struggle, a new truth is beginning to emerge: Peace is not enough.

Even as we live lives remarkably free of violence and suffering, we have begun to recognize that peace is not the natural state of life. Change and flux is the natural state of life. And not just change as impermanence, or change for change's sake. In the last couple of centuries, we have begun to recognize that there is something else going on in this world besides the cyclical turning of the karmic wheel, or the unfolding progression of pre-ordained biblical or Koranic prophecy. We have begun to open our eyes to the fact that life is going forward. We, life, the universe, are all evolving--moving together in a grand forward march of matter and consciousness, hurtling toward an unknown and unexpected future. There is nothing peaceful about that forward march, but there may, in fact, be something spiritual about it. Indeed, this understanding that we are part of life and that life is evolving may just represent the greatest sea change in spiritual thought since our religious ancestors looked at the suffering around them and turned within to find a "peace that passeth all understanding." Today, we still live in a dangerous and disagreeable world, but looking within, we are discovering that the peace and freedom that we once thought were the goal of the spiritual path are actually the foundation for something much deeper. They are the context for the discovery of what spiritual leader Andrew Cohen calls the "ecstatic compulsion to evolve." This compulsion is a powerful desire to participate in what the late eco-theologian Thomas Berry called the "Great Work," which is the ongoing transformation and evolution of ourselves, our world, and ultimately our universe. This heartfelt desire to participate in the ongoing evolution of this vast universe may be joyful, difficult, overwhelming, thrilling, and even liberating. But one thing is for certain: it is not peaceful.

There was a time when, at the cutting edge of human development, the goal of our highest spiritual, philosophical, and moral endeavors was peace. This exerted a tremendous upward, positive pressure on a civilization still trying to escape the ravages of its more primitive urges. And it still does. It makes sense that in the human struggle for moral and ethical advancement, many of our first dreams of a better world would be dreams of peace. But as we understand more and more about the nature of life on this planet and in this universe, and as we discover more about the psychological and cultural development of individuals and human societies, slowly our attention is shifting. We are coming to understand that spiritually, socially, and even politically, the interests of our species are best served not just by the noble hope for an end to human conflict or by the understandable desire for a cessation to human suffering, but by participating in the upward surge, development, and evolution of human culture and consciousnesses at all levels. It is a new orientation to life, one that privileges the ongoing challenge of change and development over the psychological relief of inner peace and the political ideal of freedom from conflict.

How will this new orientation look and what will it mean in the practical realities of the day-to-day world? What will it mean for the individual, for the collective? How will it inform the organizations and structures of human society? We do not yet know. Living in such a world may not prove to be easy, and it may not even be peaceful or nonviolent, but whatever the case, a worldview genuinely oriented toward evolution and development, at an individual and societal level, will be unlike anything we have ever seen. I have no doubt that the ultimate results of such a worldview will be an extraordinary global society the likes of which we can scarcely imagine today, as different from our current culture as ours is different from the war-ravaged societies of Persia 2500 years ago. But to make it there, we are going to need a guiding vision that transcends the attainment of peace. As peace activist and nonviolent scholar Michael Nagler once told me, "If people try to put peace ahead of evolution, they won't get either. If they put evolution ahead of peace, they'll get both."

Ben Cohen: Tony Blair Must Be Charged With War Crimes

2009-12-14T12:35:52Z

Tony Blair's stunning admission to the BBC that he would have invaded Iraq regardless of whether there had been Weapons of Mass Destruction revealed the true nature of the U.S -U.K military adventure in the Middle East.

The ugly truth behind the political charade was that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein had been made behind closed doors before any evidence had been gathered.

Blair told Fern Britton that if he had known there were no WMDs he would have still favored military force:

"I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]" he said.

"I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."

And that is exactly what Blair did, only it was after the invasion. Once the illusion that Saddam presented a serious threat to our security had vanished, the goal post was moved and the war was justified on the basis that Saddam was a bad man and had 'gassed his own people'. (Bush and Blair of course neglected to mention the fact that we supported Saddam during his worst years, and sold him the weapons he used to kill members of his own population).

Regardless, we now know that the war was not based on an external threat, but on the whims of Blair's personal feelings towards Saddam. And that means not only was the war illegal, but Blair criminally culpable for subverting the legal process and taking Britain to war without due cause.

Article 51 of the U.N Charter states that countries may only use military force if they have been attacked ('the inherent right to self defense'), and Blair clearly violated that law when going to war with a nation that had not threatened the United Kingdom, or any of its neighbors for that matter.

It is unlikely that anything will happen to Blair. The Iraq War Inquiry (the ongoing investigation led by Sir John Chilcot) was set up to thoroughly investigate the events that led up to the war in Iraq, but is ultimately futile since there are no lawyers or judges on the panel to ascertain whether it was illegal or not.

If the investigation was done seriously, there is no doubt Blair would be found guilty of committing a war crime and sent to the Hague.

It is a sad lesson that the law can only be applied to the weak, while the powerful live happily above it.

Ben Cohen is the Editor of TheDailyBanter.com and founder of BanterMediaGroup.com

Martin Chulov: Are Crippling Droughts the Next Great Threat to Iraq?

2009-12-14T11:51:37Z

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

BAGHDAD -- From his mud brick home on the edge of the Garden of Eden, Awda Khasaf has twice seen his country’s lifeblood seep away. The waters that once spread from his doorstep across a 20% slab of Iraq known as the Marshlands first disappeared in 1991, when Saddam Hussein diverted them east to punish the rebellious Marsh Arabs. The wetlands have been crucial to Iraq since the earliest days of civilization -- sustaining the lives of up to half a million people who live in and around the area, while providing water for almost two million more.

The waters vanished after the First Gulf War due to a dictator’s wrath; over the next 16 years, they ebbed and flowed, but slowly started to return to their pre-Saddam levels. By 2007, with no more sabotage and average rains, almost 70% of the lost water had been recovered. Now it’s gone again. This time because of a crisis far more endemic: a devastating drought and the water policies of neighboring Turkey, Iran, and Syria. These three nations have effectively stopped most of the headwaters of the three rivers -- the Tigris, Euphrates, and Karoon -- that feed these marshes.

“Once in a generation was bad enough,” says Awda, a tribal head and local sheikh in the al-Akeryah Marshlands, who also advises the Nasiriyah governorate on water issues. “Twice could well be God’s vengeance.”

In a land where fundamental interpretations of monotheistic scripts often determine the tone of public discourse, particular attention is now being paid to the biblical Book of Revelation, in which the Euphrates River drying up was prophesized as a harbinger for the end of the world. It is not doomsday yet in Iraq, but the water shortage here has not been worse for at least the last two centuries -- and possibly for several millennia more. Government estimates suggest close to two million Iraqis face severe drinking water shortages and extremely limited hydropower-generated electricity in a part of the country where most households get by on no more than eight hours of supplied power per day, in the best of times.

The flow of the Euphrates that reaches Iraq is down, according to scientific estimates, by 50% to 70% and falling further by the week. From his frugal office in Baghdad’s National Center for Water Management, engineer Zuhair Hassan Ahmed has for the past decade plotted the water levels of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the latter of which bisects the Iraqi capital. The hand-etched ink graphs show a black line that marks an average “water year,” from October to May, superimposed over a green line, which shows the actual flow through the two rivers over the same time. The green line had been markedly lower than the benchmark for much of the past decade. But in 2007 -- the start of a serious drought -- it dipped sharply and has continued to fall.

In Baghdad, the lack of water has been an inconvenience, an eyesore, and a health hazard. Raw sewage and refuse pumped into the Tigris is not flushed downstream as rapidly as it once was. The Tigris is Baghdad’s main artery, but it is also still a working river, long traversed by small commuter ferries, industrial barges, and, in the city’s halcyon days, even pleasure boats. Giant mud islands now protrude from the once wide, blue expanse of the river, making it unnavigable for larger vessels. Further downstream, and especially along the Euphrates -- which runs roughly on a parallel track west though Iraq’s bread basket -- the effects of the shortage are far worse.

Between Two Rivers

Here, in the land between the two rivers that was once the heartland of ancient Mesopotamia, the water crisis has ravaged agriculture, an industry still struggling to regain its footing after three decades of deprivation and war. This was the second mooted site (the other was the Marshlands themselves) of the fabled Garden of Eden -- a land so rich in soil and water that it would quench the needs of its dwellers throughout eternity. It doesn’t look quite like that now. Crops of grain, barley, mint, and dates have failed almost en masse. Further west, in Anbar province, a prized rice variety that was once sold at a premium throughout Iraq and in the markets of neighboring countries has just been harvested. Like almost all other crops, this year’s yield is a disaster.

“We blame the Turks for this,” says Hatem al-Ansari, a local Anbar rice grower who claims to have lost half his family’s life savings since January 2009 due to a lack of water to irrigate his rice. “We have been digging wells nearby, and so has the government, but it is not enough. Not even close.” Shielding his face with a black scarf from a sandstorm blowing in on an acetylene desert wind, Hatem points in the direction of the Euphrates’ upper reaches. “If you go down to the bank, you will see where the water was last year and last week,” he says. “Our water pumps can no longer reach it. It’s true it hasn’t been raining, but it’s just as true that even 30% of normal rainfall does not cripple a mighty river like this.” He had to be taken on his word. The swirling sand and dust were starting to turn the sky an ochre-orange haze and was steadily closing like a shroud on us all, making an inspection of the river bank impossible.

Sandstorms have long been a fixture of Iraqi summers -- on average, there are about eight to ten each hot season. But this year they became a pandemic. Close to 40 sandstorms blew in during the five months from May to early October. Some lasted three days at a time, sheeting farms with suffocating silt, closing airports, and adding another layer of misery to a society that has been through hell.

Lack of water for irrigation, especially in Anbar, is a key problem. Iraq’s water minister, Dr. Abdul Rashid Latif, says that the government dug an extra 1,000 wells over the past two years, taking advantage of a relatively high groundwater table. But drawing on a diminishing resource during a time of drought has proved costly. “We now have only around 20% of our original reserves left,” he says. “And the thing about this water is that not much of it is being replenished.”

“The Scent of a Dying Ecosystem”

Iraq’s water numbers make for disturbing reading across the board. Government estimates put total reservoir storage at around 9% of nationwide capacity on the leading edge of a wet season that is not forecast to bring much relief. For the past two years, rainfall was some 70% lower than usual in most of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

The snow melt that usually feeds the Tigris system from the Zagros Mountains in the Kurdish north was equally deficient. There are now seven dams on the adjoining Euphrates system, most in Turkey and Syria, with plans for at least one more. And then there are the rampant inefficiencies built into Iraq’s antiquated 8,000 miles of canals and drains, which send countless millions of gallons gushing into parts of the country that have little use for the water, and no means to harness it even if they did.

Some have looked to the heavens to explain the lack of rain. Society here is deeply superstitious. Many Iraqis, from the Sunni Arabs of Anbar to the tribes of the Marshlands, believe the natural deficiencies are God-ordained -- and possibly a punishment for the sectarian ravages that have torn the country apart over the last three years.

“Droughts have happened before and will plague us again,” says Awda as he surveys the vast expanse of hard-baked and cracked brown mud in front of him that used to be the Marshlands. “But not even in ’91 was the water like this. Now there is nothing.” The only water left in the maze of feeder streams that empty into this giant basin are pools of lime-colored stagnant ooze. Nothing flows. Ducks and geese sit listlessly on creek banks that have not been exposed in decades -- if ever -- to direct sunlight. Infestations of flies circle like Saturn’s rings around giant, steel barrels of drinking water, imported from the nearby city of Nasiriyah, that line village roads. Reeds that were once the staple of the agrarian peoples who worked this waterway through the ages jut starkly from the banks, nearly all of them yellow and hardened, looking more like medieval weapons of war than crops.

Earlier this fall, the major tributaries of the Euphrates were flowing at around 30% of their normal levels. “Look at that mark on the bank,” says Awda, pointing to a stain on a corrugated iron beam at the base of the bridge. Not long ago, he notes, this had been a high-water mark. The waterline is now at least nine feet lower. The pungent murk of the riverbed lingers in the air. “Take a deep breath,” says Awda. “That smell is the scent of a dying ecosystem.”

Two fishermen, who had launched themselves into what remained of the waterway in a bid to net carp, return to the banks with their haul -- 12 fish, none bigger than 10 inches. The catch is not enough to feed their families, let alone take to market. Two years ago, the fish were fat and bountiful.

“Fishing is our staple here,” explains one local man, Sheikh Hameed from Abart village, further north of the Marshlands. “That, and hunting water birds. But they’ve all flown away. I had a stall here for many years,” he recalls, pointing to an abandoned roadside hut, where he used to sell his catch.

The white polystyrene crates that used to hold the fish on ice are now home to street cats and sand drifts. A giant water buffalo, which once spent the best part of the summer immersed in the water, is now making do with what remains. He stands motionless, buried to the midriff in a festering, black mud. The caked soil cast offers at least some respite from the heat, but with the temperature expected to hover between 118 and 124 degrees Fahrenheit for the following week, he doesn’t have long left to wallow.

“We are digging wells for our own survival,” says Sheikh Hameed. “And this in the most water-rich area of the country. This is not God’s wrath. This is the work of people.”

Tweaking the Tap

Over the past six chaotic years, new reservoirs have been built into the Euphrates system on both the Syrian and Turkish sides of the border. Iraq, as a downstream country, would have likely suffered from serious water depletion even if it had a government strong enough to assert its authority against two powerful neighbors. But with a political class struggling to win legitimacy amid a sectarian war that has torn the country apart along ancient societal fault lines, there has been little time to tend even to the bare basics of survival. Delivery of services has been close to non-existent, from the national government down to village mayors. Now, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claiming to run a credible sovereign state, work has begun in earnest on talking to the neighbors about many issues of Iraqi sovereignty, including border integrity, that have remained sidelined throughout the post-war turmoil.

“They should realize that we are an important neighbor and share many things in life,” says Dr. Rashid, who has three times led Iraqi delegations to Istanbul and Damascus to beg for more water. He has returned with promises, but little fruit for his labors. With no treaties or agreements signed with either state, however, he has little leverage. “Our neighboring countries need to get the message that it is our right to get our share of water from these two international rivers and that we should have a say in their operational procedures because we are downstream. In our discussions they have never connected the water issues with any other issues.”

There is trouble, too, from Iran, whose government earlier this year ordered the diversion back into Iranian territory of a key tributary of the Tigris -- the Karoon River, which enters Iraq just north of the southern city of Basra. Until early this year, the Karoon had sent regularly a vital flush of freshwater down the Tigris and into the Shatt al-Arab waterway at the northwestern end of the Persian Gulf. The freshwater pushed back the tidal effect and allowed tens of thousands of Iraqis from the southern Marshlands to make their livelihood through fishing and farming. “There were 13 billion cubic meters of freshwater [annually] feeding into the Shatt al-Arab,” says Dr. Rashid. “Now that has gone. We have asked them to sit down and talk but they won’t even answer our requests.”

In late October 2009, Iraqi technicians finally met with their Iranian counterparts. “They were told about the effect on the people in the south who are exclusively Shias -- their people,” says Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari. “They were very embarrassed by this and promised to look into it.” Today, the saltwater of the relentless tides around Basra is still winning the push-me, pull-you game and, like a rampaging army, has pushed farther north up the waterway than ever before. As a result, some 30,000 locals have left their land, some of which has now been heavily salinated, leaving it of marginal agricultural value at best.

Across Iraq, entire ecosystems are under threat. So far, redress from the Turks and the Syrians has consisted only of sympathetic words, followed by the occasional tweak of the tap. “We need 500 cubic meters per second,” Dr. Rashid said in August. “We have been getting 350 meters on some days, but 150 meters on average. They have promised us more, but we have yet to see it.” In the months that followed, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey three times announced a boost in the headwater flow from the Euphrates. But by late autumn, the downstream effect had been negligible.

The giant power station in the city of Nasiriyah was still using only two of its four turbines that are normally powered by the flow of the Euphrates. One had broken down, but could not have been used anyway because, along with a second turbine, there was not enough moving water to power it. Nasiriyah was getting by on about six to eight hours of power a day -- roughly the same as the rest of the country.

Throughout the summer and fall, engineers at the power station were desperately hoping the river would not fall another eight inches, to a level that would have left Iraq’s fourth-largest city without any electricity whatsoever. “We saw it rise a centimeter or two, roughly two days after every announcement from the Turks, but it would soon drop away,” says an engineer at the power station. “The figures we were being promised were not translating into tangibles.”

The Rains Cometh Not

Both Turkey and Syria have been suffering from the same rainfall deficiency as Iraq. The winter storm fronts that once formed regularly near Cyprus and swept east through Syria, Jordan, and Iraq have been rare over the past three years, as have the low-pressure systems that could usually be counted on to dip south into Turkey from the Balkans and the Russian steppe. Cloud seeding and the contentious science of rain-making have been considered in all four countries.

Jordanians, in particular, remember the 1991 winter season, when seeding was attempted near Cyprus. That year, six separate snow-bearing storm fronts swept through the country, leaving yard-deep snow drifts on the streets of the capital, Amman, for many weeks. Heavy snow also fell across the Iraqi desert plains and the Zagros Mountains. The snow melt that autumn saw the Tigris burst its banks in Baghdad. Upstream in Turkey, there is still enough reliable winter rainfall to keep the dams brimming and make cloud seeding unnecessary. Downstream in Iraq, where the water is needed most, there is neither money nor interest for such an experiment.

Even the ancient ways are starting to fail. From June to August of this year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conducted research into the status of ancient, natural subterranean aqueducts used both for human settlement and irrigation in the Kurdish north. The UNESCO results painted a bleak picture of water resources in northern Iraq, which had for centuries boasted relatively bountiful supplies, even during harsh times. The UNESCO study found that 70% of the aqueducts, known as karez, that were producing water in 2005 had since dried up and been abandoned. Of the 683 karez surveyed, most were not functioning, due largely to excessive use and ongoing drought -- only 116 still delivered water. The study claimed that 36,000 people were at risk of being displaced, while tens of thousands more had already left their lands.

Figures in Iraq are always open to a degree of conjecture, but one reality is now clear: the water crisis is leading to mass migrations of people and a renewed displacement at both ends of the country, just as some order was starting to replace the bedlam of the invasion and civil war. Iraqis have been returning to their homes in mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad, but now rural people, fleeing in droves from the increasingly arid provinces, are also showing up in urban centers.

The Marsh Arabs have left their lands in large numbers, according to Nasiriyah’s governor, Qusey al-Ebadi, who has yet to find ways to accommodate them. “They are nomadic people and move around during difficult times,” says al-Ebadi, “but I have never seen them coming into the cities with their animals like this.” The men of the Marshlands -- now far from their ancestral lands -- mill around in small groups on street corners in Nasiriyah, many searching for laboring work, looking incongruous and desperate.

The people from the Shatt al-Arab area of the southern Marshlands also need accommodating. Government estimates suggest as many as 30,000 have left their lands, all but abandoning their agrarian livelihoods. Thousands more have been pushed to the brink of survival. If the Tigris and the Karoon do not flow again toward the Shatt al-Arab, the ecosystem they have relied on is all but finished.

The water crisis could not have come at a worse time for Prime Minister al-Maliki, who has spent much of his time and energy as leader attempting to win enough authority to assert his will. His formula had been security first and stability second, followed by delivery of services. So far, he has achieved qualified approval on the first two, but abject failure on the third.

Iraq’s energy sector is in a desperate state of disrepair. In late October, a rare thunder and lightning storm that brought the first rains to Baghdad in seven months caused power to crash citywide for eight hours. Even without rain, or other disturbances such as dust or wind, most residents of the capital are getting by on no more than a half-day of regular electricity, the vast bulk supplied by coal-burning energy plants that generate power channeled by substations resembling museum pieces. What little electricity supply exists is frequently targeted by militias who boast of their intent to return the society (literally) to the dark ages. Sewer lines have only been dug in the most affluent areas and city roads are, at best, rudimentary.

With a national election looming in early March, al-Maliki knows that his current base of support across Iraq’s religious and ethnic divides is fragile. Failure to give Iraqis the essential services they have long craved -- especially electricity, water, and sewerage --will likely spell his doom. Twice this fall, he has traveled to the Shia bastion of Basra to assess the plight of the Shatt al-Arab and to persuade locals that all is not lost. It is a hard sell for the people of the south, who collectively still see themselves as being as deeply deprived today as they were under Saddam.

For the prime minister to blame his nation’s neighbors for water woes is unlikely to fly. Beyond the troubles over the water supply, al-Maliki has pointedly accused Syria of destabilizing Iraq by sheltering former Baathists, who, he claims, funded two bombing campaigns that targeted three government ministries and the Baghdad municipal government headquarters in August and October. All four buildings were annihilated, with almost 300 people killed and more than 1,000 maimed. While wagging his finger at Damascus, al-Maliki has also been constantly promising patronage to the southern tribes and an entrée to state coffers if they fall in behind him. Months before a definitive election and amid an unparalleled ecological crisis, the tribes are, at best, restless. And water is near the top of their worry list.

Enough Blame to Go Around

“The government didn’t do this directly, it’s true,” says tribesman Maher al-Zubaidi, as he surveys the shrinking Euphrates in Nasiriyah. “But they tell us they are strong now and yet they can’t stand up to the Turks. Wars have started in this region for a lot less. Also, Iraq constantly cries poor, yet we read about the trade minister taking a cut from every kilo of imported grain and see enormous revenues from oil. The time has long past for them to deliver.”

The Turks, though sympathetic to the plight of their downstream neighbors, lay much of the blame at the feet of Iraqi bureaucrats who have done next to nothing to protect an already precious natural resource from atrocious water management practices. It is not uncommon to see burst water-mains spouting geysers through Baghdad’s parched suburbs or across village roads, quickly mixing with refuse and oil, turning into giant molasses-like pools. Almost all public taps invariably leak, and environmental awareness is close to nonexistent.

Publicly, Turkey will say nothing on the subject of its water dispute with Iraq, other than that it is working with both Syria and Iran to remedy the situation and has agreed to share daily technical data with both sides on flows. After recent floods near Istanbul, a limited extra release was allowed into the Euphrates system. It was soon stopped. The saga was symptomatic of Iraq’s dilemma and its lack of means to do much about it. Again, Baghdad had to make do with what its neighbors could spare on a good day. Iraq is yet to press its case for water rights under international law and, with its hand weakened by so many ongoing woes, the government does not currently hold much sway in the region.

The torpor is of no comfort to Iraq’s downstream dwellers. Back in al-Akeryah Marshlands, Awda Khasaf kicks a splintering skiff that used to ply the lowland waterways. The last six months, he says, have changed everything. “If the Turks release all the water that used to come down the Euphrates, then the Marshes will fill up again within two months and we will recover. But that is not going to happen. They caught the government off guard while it was obsessed with the war and now they have a chokehold on us. This has had a revolutionary effect. The Turks have the upper-hand and until we are strong enough to stand up for ourselves, all we can do is pray for a flood. Look at them. They are not serious about helping us. They are trying to build another dam [the Ilus hydroelectric plant planned for southeastern Turkey, on the northern reaches of the Tigris]. Only when we can stand up can we address this. For now...” He leaves the last thought hanging, possibly conjuring up the same apocalyptic vision that started our conversation: only the good Lord can save us.

In the short term, it would appear that divine intervention is Iraq’s best hope. The means to address water management effectively seem decades away. Much of the country’s infrastructure belongs in scrap yards or exhibits of nineteenth-century industrial artifacts. Re-laying water pipes nationwide for urban water delivery would likely take the better part of a generation. Desalination has been considered during cabinet meetings and projects have been offered by investors from the cash-rich Gulf states, which rely heavily, if not exclusively, on desalinated water. But Iraqi officials have so far described the costs as prohibitive. “It might work out for a small state like Abu Dhabi that doesn’t need tens of thousands of kilometers of pipeline,” says one minister. “But for us, it is a non-starter for now.”

Globalization Woes

The crisis of 2009 has revealed some domestic inefficiencies that Iraq’s farmers will struggle to reverse. Wholesalers have been able to import and distribute fresh produce at market rates that compete successfully with what domestic consumers would have paid for locally grown produce. Hundreds of tons of bananas have been flown in from Somalia, watermelons from Iran, rice from the Far East, and bottled water from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

Water woes are playing a big part in turning Iraq into a net food importer. But so are the cost-efficient alternatives introduced to the Iraqi market by companies in both developing states and Western nations, all of which are clamoring to service some 20 million people who, for the most part, have always relied on homegrown produce.

Apart from small pockets that can still harness water from the Euphrates, much of Iraq’s politically and strategically critical Anbar province is now a dust bowl. So, too, is Diyala province, north of Baghdad, which boasts some of the most fertile alluvial soil in the land. Both areas were ground zero for the Sunni militancy -- Anbar the so-called triangle of death, Diyala the declared heartland of a new Islamic caliphate in 2006. The al-Maliki government had hoped to appease insurgents with the promise of prosperity. But as 2009 draws to a close, the notion seems fanciful. Family incomes are down substantially in many areas. The violence, successfully quelled throughout the past two years, is again on the rise, especially in Anbar.

Iraq’s provinces and some of its most dangerous towns have been the focus of work throughout the past five years by American reconstruction teams, especially the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which in October wound up its mission. The engineers left, claiming that 21.2 million Iraqis now had access to potable drinking water, up from just over 5 million people immediately after the invasion. Last year, in the giant Sadr City slum in Baghdad’s northeast, the Army Corps built a treatment plant which draws and purifies water from the Tigris. The net effect, the Army claims, has been an increase from 46 to 200 in the per capita liters of water per day for Sadr City residents. The bill for the project was $65 million.

In all, the engineers completed 25 large water distribution projects across the country as well as 800 smaller water sector projects that delivered potable water to many Iraqis who had no such luxury before Saddam fell. But now the engineers are gone. Gone with them is the bulk of America’s capacity to do more good works before the White House orders the last troops out late next year.

Water distribution at the micro level is undoubtedly better than it was. But in a macro sense, the efforts amount to a small splash in a large pond. Iraq has giant subterranean lakes of another precious resource -- oil -- under the soil at both ends of the country and appears to be betting its future on turning anticipated revenues into purchasing power and regional clout today.

Oil is Iraq’s meal ticket -- a buffer against both drought and geopolitical impotence. The cabinet has been absorbed over the past six months with finding a formula that offers foreign investors enough financial incentives to bring their expertise to the badlands, while at the same time retaining control of the oil sector and the billions of petro-dollars it is likely to produce. But while the promise of future riches and power may see the waters flow again one day, on the barren plains of Iraq’s south a simpler business plan is taking shape.

Alongside the highway between Baghdad and Basra -- a giant, Saddam-era, four-lane road built to move tanks and troops -- a rare agricultural success story is emerging. To travel this road in 2005-06 was to almost guarantee a run-in with a militia group, or an angry burst of bullets fired from a nearby sand berm. It remained a no-go zone to most non-Iraqis until the middle of 2008. By then, scorched wrecks of tankers lined the highway along with the charred chassis of the occasional American Hummer or private security company four-wheel-drive vehicle, conspicuous by its blackened, rusting bulk.

Even today, giant scabs of charred bitumen are missing along the entire stretch to Basra, legacies of improvised bombs and aerial strikes that turned Iraq’s main arterial highway into a Mad Max-like wasteland. But now, dozens of salt farms line both sides of the road. There had always been a small salt industry, especially in the center of Iraq, near the cities of Babylon and Najaf, but with rapid water depletion turning lakes into shallow, salinated pools, dozens of small enterprises have now sprung up. Salt, piled in pyramid-style heaps, pockmarks the horizon of a barren landscape once covered in year-round sheets of water. One farmer sold his flock of goats to concentrate on salt. “I have around 190 kilos here,” he says, pointing at his pile. “It’s much more [profit] than I will get this year from dates.”

The salt is then taken to market in Baghdad, where a small export industry is tipped to develop this year. Until the oil money kicks in or its neighbors turn on the taps again, success in the salt pans is likely to be a rare high-water mark for Iraq. In the short term, it would appear that divine intervention is Iraq’s best hope. The means to address water management effectively seems decades away.

Martin Chulov is the Baghdad correspondent for the Guardian of London.

Jon Soltz: Army Record Suicide Rate Continues, and Will Continue for Some Time

2009-12-14T11:36:36Z

In what is quickly becoming a year-end tradition, the Army reported that suicides are yet again at an all time high. Reports the Washington Post:

Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli on Tuesday called the Army's record suicide rate this year "horrible" and said the problem of soldiers taking their own lives is the toughest he has faced in his 37 years in service.

As of Nov. 16, 140 soldiers on active duty and 71 soldiers not on active duty were suspected to have committed suicide.

The suicide rate has broken its own record every year since 2006. Now, Chiarelli noted, and the Army must be credited with doing more to counsel soldiers to recognize when they need help, and seek help before it's too late. Indeed, the Post reports 40 percent of suicide victims this year did seek out mental counseling. Yet, it wasn't enough.

Additionally, Chiarelli told a real whopper at the press conference to announce the sobering news. "Chiarelli voiced frustration that the Army has not yet been able to identify any causal links among the suicide cases, except that soldiers are more likely to kill themselves when they are away from their stations, where help is available," the Post story states.

No causal links? Really? Then what about this, from coverage of the Army's own report back in 2007?

Failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and work stress were motivating factors, the report said. It also found a significant link between suicide attempts and the number of days deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops participate in the war effort.

Now, this isn't to say every soldier deployed frequently and for long periods will kill him or herself. But there's a "significant link" for many of those who do. There's also a significant link that by this time in late 2006, we had been engaged in two wars for three years, and many of our soldiers had involuntarily extended deployments (Stop Loss), saw longer deployments to begin with, and Dwell Time (the time between deployments) had been reduced.

That's why it is so disturbing that the military and Obama administration seems so blasé about not increasing Dwell Time for members of our Army. As my colleague Richard Smith reported last week at VetVoice.com, Admiral Mike Mullen, pressed by Congress on Dwell Time for our Army said:

"The Marine Corps next year will actually get out to a two-to-one [years] dwell time/deployment time ratio. The Army will not, still. The Army -- it'll take a couple more years to do that."

That's great for Marines, but not what our soldiers deserve as their suicide rate increases to record levels for the fourth year in a row. Not when the Army itself says there's a "significant link" between length of deployments and suicides. Even if the Obama administration doesn't use Stop Loss or increase deployments lengths to make their Afghanistan deployment schedule work, it's clear our soldiers need more of a break between time away.

The members of our military will go to war when called. That's their duty, and they take it seriously. No matter how much the Army counsels our soldiers, there will always stand the notion in the back of soldiers' minds that saying their heads can't take another deployment is a sign of weakness. Most of them won't admit when they need more time at home before they're fit to go back.

That's why it's up to the Pentagon and administration to give all of our troops -- especially our soldiers -- much needed rest. Unfortunately, as the administration's plans for Afghanistan stand right now, those soldiers won't get more time. Not for two years, at least, maybe more.

And that's why we're likely to continue this year-end tradition for 2010, 2011, and possibly beyond.

Afghanistan: The Soviet Experience (New York Review)

2009-12-14T11:15:21Z

Amy Hertz, The Huffington Post: With the surge in Afghanistan expected to begin this week, we thought it was time to take a look at the long view of Afghanistan, from the perspective of the books written about the struggle of two major powers in Central Asia. We'll bring you a round up of book reviews and reportage from The New York Review of Books in two parts: first we'll look back at the Soviet war, then to the current American action.

Here's our trip backwards through the archives of The New York Review of Books:

From the article "Afghanistan: The Imperial Dream", by Firuz Kazemzadeh, February 21, 1980 (two months after the Soviet invasion)

It is too early to attempt a full evaluation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Only the principal events have become known in the outside world. Causes, motives, methods, and intentions are still obscure. What is clear is that on December 27 Soviet troops suddenly appeared in Kabul. Hours later the radio announced that they had been invited to come by the Afghan government which sought Soviet protection against unidentified and sinister forces. Fighting broke out in the capital. Soon the president, Hafizullah Amin, who had presumably issued an invitation to the Russians, was captured and executed, his place being taken by another Marxist militant, Babrak Karmal, who was abroad and did not appear in Kabul for several days.

Soviet troops firmly established themselves around the capital and in the principal provincial cities: Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Ghazni. There was little or no resistance from the Afghan regular army which had been thoroughly demoralized by the long struggle to put down a powerful tribal rebellion inspired by the fundamentalist Moslem clergy. However, the same tribal forces that had fought the government of Hafizullah Amin were now resisting the Russians, and they continue to do so as I write.

Though the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan seemed to surprise Washington, it should have been expected. Moscow had every reason to prevent the collapse of a regime installed with its help and to defeat hostile tribal forces possibly supported by Russia's enemies. The downfall of the Shah in Iran had removed the threat of American or Iranian intervention and made it possible for the Soviets to occupy Afghanistan without running a serious risk. Moreover, the power vacuum that has recently emerged in the Middle East gave Russia an opportunity to achieve goals it had been pursuing for well over a century.

Before the eighteenth century the Moslem tribes called Afghan, some speaking Pashto, an Iranian language, others speaking Persian, had been dominated by Iran and by Mughal India and had not been firmly united under the rule of any native Afghan prince. A measure of unity was achieved only in the middle of the eighteenth century with the rise of Ahmad Khan Abdali of the Durrani tribe, a powerful warlord and a capable politician who laid the foundation of the Afghan kingdom. (Read the rest of the article.)

From "The Far Away War", by Edward Mortimer, December 22, 1983

Report from Afghanistan, by Gérard Chaliand, translated by Tamar Jacoby
In Afghanistan: An American Odyssey, by Jere Van Dyk
A Hitch or Two in Afghanistan: A Journey behind Russian Lines, by Nigel Ryan
Behind Russian Lines: An Afghan Journal, by Sandy Gall
Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, by Henry S. Bradsher
Red Flag over Afghanistan: The Communist Coup, the Soviet Invasion and Their Consequences, by Thomas T. Hammond

Four years have passed since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and we in the West still do not seem to know what to think about it, let alone what to do about it. For most of us it is still, as Czechoslovakia was for Chamberlain in 1938, "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing." In fact the Afghans are a great deal further away than the Czechs, both geographically and culturally; so our excuse for knowing nothing about them is somewhat better. But at least the Westerner who wants to know something about Afghanistan now has quite a lot to read. (Read the rest of the article.)

From "Afghanistan's Other War", by Jeri Laber, December 18, 1986

"The wounded I have treated here have a determination that I have never seen before," a Moslem doctor said, describing Afghan patients who have been wounded by Soviet bombs, mines, or artillery. "I have never met a wounded or amputated man who is defeated, sad, or sorry, I have never heard a woman cry, a woman shouting, a crowd of people mourning.... I come from a Moslem country that mourns its dead for forty days. I have never seen anything like this."

The doctor, an Egyptian orthopedic surgeon named Mahmoud Booz, runs a voluntary hospital for Afghan war-wounded in Peshawar, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan where several million Afghans have temporarily fled. He is not alone in his admiration of their spirit, which he considers more Afghan than Moslem. Like others who know the Afghans, he believes that the jihad, the holy war that they have been waging for seven years against the Soviets, is as much a struggle for Afghanistan's freedom and integrity as it is a fight for Islam. He is convinced that the Afghans will be victorious "despite the superior technology in the hands of the Russians." And he believes that the Soviets will also fail in the "other battle" that is being waged in Afghanistan--the battle to win over the Afghan children.

Amid the rubble of Afghanistan's devastated villages and cities in chaos, a new generation of Afghans, unlike any other, is coming of age. Both the Soviets and the Afghan resistance--known as mujahedin--seek to influence this generation. The Afghan children, already battered by war, are being treated as the prize in a contest of ideologies in which the Soviets may have met their match. (Read the rest of the article.)

From "Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?" by Thomas Powers

The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost, by the Russian General Staff, translated from the Russian and edited by Lester W. Grau and Michael A. Gress
The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan, translated from the Russian and edited by Lester W. Grau

What is remarkable about the situation in Afghanistan--even astonishing--is that the Americans, after watching 100,000 Russians fight Afghans at great expense with no success for nine years, have signed on for a dose of the same. Lester Grau, a retired Army colonel, has edited three books on the Russian war using Russian materials, ranging from a general staff history of the war to small-unit combat reports.

The implication of these books is not ambiguous. After their invasion in December 1979, the Russians walked into Kabul with ease, as invaders of Afghanistan invariably do, but after that it was mounting trouble all the way. The Russians paid a substantial price for thinking they could "win" if they stuck to it--a still-hidden number of dead soldiers, probably exceeding 20,000, and perhaps five times that number of seriously wounded; loss of nearly 500 aircraft including 350 helicopters; huge quantities of other equipment destroyed; hundreds of thousands of disaffected soldiers returned to civilian life back home, not to mention the opprobrium of the world.

The CIA officer Anthony Arnold, who was stationed in Kabul before the Russian invasion, thinks the penalty of failure went beyond immediate losses and humiliation to include the actual collapse of the Soviet state itself. They were weaker than they knew, Arnold thinks, but the Russians did not give in easily: they killed more than a million Afghans, bombed villages to rubble, machine-gunned herds of sheep from the air, and drove as many as a fifth of all Afghans out of the country, across the border into the safe haven of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Nothing worked and the war ended when the last Russian troops and trucks drove back across the Friendship Bridge into Uzbekistan in 1989. It is true that the mujahideen got plenty of material help from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, but it was the Afghans who fought the Russians to exhausted frustration, and have gone right on fighting among themselves ever since.

Shrugging off the lessons of history is the preface to disaster in Afghanistan. The Afghans seem so weak--an impoverished people living in mudbrick houses making a hardscrabble living; shepherds, farmers, and nomads answering to feudal lords ruling tiny villages connected by dirt tracks over rocky mountain passes. How tough can it be to defeat these skinny men in rags and occupy their country? (Read the rest of the article.)

Read more at the New York Review of Books.

Sharmine Narwani: US Swagger Equals Foreign Policy Disaster

2009-12-14T11:06:57Z

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Saturday announced Iran's willingness to begin swapping in increments its enriched uranium for the higher-grade uranium offered by six world powers. But the concession is unlikely to be accepted by the United States, in what has become an old pattern: "Do it our way or else."

US officials are already suggesting that Mottaki's proposal -- which would see Iran immediately part with one-third of the low-enriched uranium (LEU) requested by the five Security Council nations and Germany (P5+1) -- is a deal-breaker.

As we near President Obama's end of year deadline for Iran to accept a proposal to -- get this -- immediately surrender 75% of its LEU for a whole year without a reciprocal swap of higher-enriched uranium "guaranteed" by our side, one wonders why this intransigence on our part?

Surely a deal that begins an era of Iranian cooperation and concessions on the contentious nuclear issue is far more desirable than winning a staring match? And if this opportunity is lost, can we genuinely claim to know the range of consequences we may face down the line?

A small reminder of what can happen when our foreign policy officials start assuming the now familiar "American Swagger:"

The Bin Laden Deal:

A Washington Post article in 2001 revealed that in 20 meetings over three years, the US met with Taliban officials to broker a deal delivering Osama bin Laden to US courts for trial. The Taliban needed a "face-saving" way to do this deal, asking for evidence of bin Laden's crimes and insisting he be sent to a Muslim country for trial instead.

"We never heard what they were trying to say," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' "

Shortly after 9-11, the Taliban softened their demands significantly, dropping the requirement of evidence and agreeing to send bin Laden for trial to a third country.

But by then, President Bush's rhetoric was unstoppable. As US bombs rained on Afghanistan, the swagger went into full swing: "You're either with us or against us." We're going "to smoke them out of their caves." Entreaties by the Taliban were "non-negotiable." And the one that magically absolved Bush from ever publically explaining any connection between bin Laden and 9-11: "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty." The Taliban offer, it seems, was dismissed.

Gunning For Iraq:

A year later, Bush was gearing up for an invasion of Iraq, alleging that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein harbored Weapons of Mass Destruction (WDM) and had links to Al Qaeda - charges that have since been proven false.

"Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours," was the non-negotiable ultimatum laid on the table. "Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict," the US president said on March 18, 2003, one day before launching war on Iraq.

Just a month earlier, UN weapons inspector Hans Blix had told the UN Security Council: "Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections of more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly." Blix warned that inspections had resumed only a few months before, after a four-year break, and asked "is it the right time to close the door?"

During the lead up to the Iraq war, the US swagger threatened its relationships with longtime partners, supporters and strategic allies -- from the UN, IAEA and countless weapons, terrorism and legal experts to France and Germany -- refusing to heed any evidence that suggested Iraq did not have WMDs.

"The Iraqi side has consistently told us that every time they move on an issue, the goal post gets changed," a South African weapons expert said before the invasion.

Self-Made Disasters:

Eight years after our troops were first sent into Afghanistan and then Iraq, US casualties are double the number that perished in the attacks of 9-11, an ill-afforded $2 trillion will have been spent on military adventures in the region by the time US troops begin their promised 2011 withdrawal, and several hundred thousand innocent Afghani and Iraqi men, women and children have been killed in wars that have become increasingly difficult to justify to a skeptical American public.

Could we have dropped just enough bombs on Taliban strongholds to negotiate a deal over Bin Laden then withdraw our fighter jets? Shouldn't we have let weapons inspectors exhaust their mandate in Iraq before initiating military strikes?

Why has drawing an incendiary "line in the sand" become the one-size-fits-all solution to our foreign policy challenges?

Now, Iran:

If Mottaki's offer is a real one backed by the Iranian government, do we seriously have the right to dismiss it because it doesn't meet our "non-negotiable" conditions? Can we assure ourselves and the global community five or ten years down the line that this was the right thing to do?

Say for instance that diplomatic initiatives between the P5+1 and Iran break down irretrievably over this macho posturing, and all other diplomatic tracks are thereafter scuttled. Iran tries to save face domestically by announcing an additional ten enrichment facilities (done), Israel bombs Iran's main Natanz enrichment facility as they have been itching to do for years (promised), and the whole Middle East destabilizes overnight.

Guess who will have to send troops in to sort things out.

Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint. Thirty years of tensions will not be resolved in three months. Concessions must be made by all parties. And here's the kicker: strike a deal on the nuclear issue and suddenly Iran opens up to us as a useful player in the Middle East. We can work with them to diffuse situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine, for starters.

They have already done this for us in Iraq, by yanking the radical Iraqi cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr out of the picture in 2007, which dramatically reduced sectarian violence overnight. As a comic aside, we took full credit for that -- we called it "The Surge."

Iran opposed the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan well before we did, and its relationships with tribal chiefs and Shiite leaders in the war-torn country can be of immense use to us.

Iran and the Shiite communities it supports throughout the region have been on the receiving end of terror attacks by the same type of Salafi extremist groups that have targeted US interests for years. Behold, common ground.

Finally, many analysts believe that US-Iranian strategic cooperation can help trigger a liberalizing effect on the Islamic Republic's domestic situation. Two, three, four birds with one stone.

So what's it going to be? Strike an enlightened compromise behind the scenes and risk the temporary neocon-fueled media storm that will undoubtedly erupt over how America has been "weakened?" Or forge a deal with an increasingly influential Iran -- the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement supports Iran's nuclear enrichment program -- and change the face of the Middle East?

The "Swagger" alternative is a disaster, and we will be left with another "Coalition of the Willing" - Bush's name for the 48 countries that supported his 2003 invasion of Iraq - with nations like Tonga, Slovakia, Rwanda and Albania watching our backs.

Note: For an excellent article about why short-sighted tactics will not work on the Iranian nuclear issue, read this piece by Thomas Pickering, Jim Walsh and William Luers.

Tony Blair Iraq War WMD Admission Sparks Outrage, Calls For War Crimes Prosecution

2009-12-13T18:38:39Z

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent admission that he would have invaded Iraq even if he knew from the start that it did not have weapons of mass destruction has sparked public outrage and calls for his prosecution for war crimes in the ongoing war inquiry, the AFP reported.

Blair's administration originally used WMDs to justify going to war, leaving the public feeling that the former minister had entered Iraq under false pretenses, using the language that was most convenient at the time.

Blair maintains that Saddam Hussein's presence in the region would have been enough of a threat to justify the war.

"I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean, obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat," Blair told the BBC.

"It was the notion of him as a threat to the region, of which the development of WMD was obviously one, and because you'd had 12 years of United Nations to and fro on this subject, he used chemical weapons on his own people -- so this was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind," Blair continued.

Blair's admission has gotten a reaction from all corners-- even Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth told the BBC he was "a little bit" surprised by Blair's comments.

"I supported the war in Iraq based on the arguments that were put at the time and a big part of those arguments was - and I firmly believed that they existed - was the existence of WMD at that time," Ainsworth said.

Journalist Andrew Gilligan commented in the Sunday Telegraph that Blair's "game-changing admission" will give the war panel "license to be tougher and more prosecutorial."

Blair will provide evidence at the Iraq war hearings early next year.

Tony Blair: Even Without Evidence Of WMD, I Would Have Invaded Iraq

2009-12-12T18:15:27Z

Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.

Tony Blair: Would Have Invaded Iraq Without WMD

2009-12-11T20:41:02Z

Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.

The former prime minister made the confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Shell Wins Rights To Iraq's Giant Manjoon Oil Fields

2009-12-11T04:39:33Z

BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials cheered and clapped as the first oil field up for bid went to a major international consortium at the opening of the country's biggest postwar auction Friday. But from there, the chill set in.

Oil executives from around the world made deals on only two fields, both in Iraq's relatively stable south, while shunning six others in regions with sporadic violence – and where the risk outweighs the profits that the Iraqi government is offering.

McChrystal Interviewed By Al Jazeera

2009-12-11T02:34:29Z

The day after his first round of testimony to Congress, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was on a press tour. First stop was National Public Radio, with its internationally inflected American elite audience. Second stop was the obligatory sitdown with the dean of the world press corps, Christianne Amanpour at CNN. Interview number three took place in an ordinary-looking Nixon-era office building in downtown, D.C.

Huff TV: Arianna On The 'Supreme Irony' Of Obama's Nobel Speech (VIDEO)

2009-12-11T01:50:27Z

Arianna appeared on "The Joy Behar Show" Thursday evening with Behar and radio host Stephanie Miller, where she weighed in on President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, Glenn Beck's conflict of interest, the party-crashing Salahis and Tiger Woods's alleged affairs.

Arianna noted the "supreme irony" of President Obama's Peace Prize speech -- a little more than a week after authorizing 30,000 more U.S. troops for the war in Afghanistan, the president stood before the world and described himself as a product of "the moral force of Martin Luther King's non-violent response," she said.

The problem, Arianna argued, is that Obama has still not explained how the war in Afghanistan will make Americans more safe. "[Obama] said then that he is the head of state and therefore he needs to address threats to the American people. And this is really the problem, Joy. He has not defined those threats. There is no way that he has actually explained to the American people why escalating the war in Afghanistan is going to make us... safe. There's absolutely no explanation for that... the danger is in Pakistan and yet we're escalating in Afghanistan. It doesn't make sense. It's really illogical, and that's the fundamental problem."

WATCH:

Will Bunch: While Dying, Editor & Publisher Showed Journalism How To Live

2009-12-11T00:05:47Z

Editor & Publisher, the journalism magazine that was more recently a powerful force on the Web, died today at the ripe old age of 125.

Its passing was not completely unexpected; this was a publication that has largely flourished in the now comatose format of magazines, writing about the terminally ill business of newspapers, dependent on dollars from the morally wounded world of traditional advertising, including the nearly extinct paid classified ads. Like any old coot that lives into its 100s and had a hell of a good time doing it, it's kind of a miracle that the damn thing lasted this long.

For much of today, "Editor & Publisher" was a top trending topic on Twitter -- ironically, a symbol of both its impact and of the massive technological changes that conspired to kill it. While I greatly mourn E&P's passing, I want to call attention to the splendor of its final years, when it died like a supernova, with a great burst of energy.

It's complicated to write about Editor & Publisher because there were essentially two E&Ps. The first one is fondly remembered by those in the newspaper business who remember when job openings were as plentiful as prairie buffalo used to be, or at least that's how we remember things. Its classified ads were the place for young reporters seeking jobs in exotic, faraway locales, or at least daydreaming about them before the next school board meeting to cover. I remember this magazine from my early days in the business in the 1980s, well-done but a bit on the staid side, and more Publisher than Editor, especially when compared to the flashier mags aimed more at the Woodstein generation of young reporters, like Columbia Journalism Review.

Then in 2002, something happened that changed everything. The Internet age was reaching full flower, and the newspaper business was accelerating, Thelma-and-Louise-like, toward the abyss, just not yet staring over the very edge. That year, Editor & Publisher turned its new editor, the man who would become its last editor, Greg Mitchell, and the seeds of a revolution were quietly planted.

There was already talk of "journalism reform" in the air in the early 2000s, but most of it was just that -- talk, daydreams of pony-tailed venture capitalists riding to the rescue and funding sleek Web sites with lots of multimedia bells and whistles, even as the real-life world of newspapers plodded along trying to figure out who was left to make the cop calls that night. No one ever dreamed that salvation of the real passionate art of journalism would be a then-55-year veteran, the former legendary editor of the legendary (redundancy intended) 1970s rock magazine Crawdaddy, or that he would be aided by a tiny staff of like-minded pros like Joe Strupp and Jennifer Saba or that his main vehicle would be a creaky Web page which, to be honest, at times seems as far removed in user friendliness from a slick 21st Century Internet site as your kid's Xbox is removed from Atari's Pong.

The way that Greg Mitchell's Editor & Publisher lit their flashlight to show a path for journalism out of that abyss was stunning in its simplicity. They didn't spend hours at power lunches, fretting about making sure every piece was inoffensively 50-50 balanced or any other such distraction. They got up in the morning, went to their office in Manhattan, and they just...did...it.

With a small staff and with so many problems in the world of journalism, E&P had a remarkable knack for honing in on, and reporting the heck out of, the few things that were most important, which were not pageviews and clickthroughs, but old-fashioned journalism that was both highly ethical and highly skeptical. They practiced it that way themselves, and they often went after the mainstream media charlatans who did not.

Here's how Mitchell explained his philosophy on journalism in 2004, that the goal was that:

"all our coverage on all subjects--is not to be partisan or not to be left or right or anything like that. But we believe in the--what should be the main principle of journalism, besides being accurate and fair, is to be skeptical--to raise questions, to not take what officials say as the gospel truth--unless it's really proven--if there's documents."

That seems obvious enough, yet upon his 2002 arrival the world of journalism was turned upside down by the looming war in Iraq, by news orgs that put every presidential pronouncement on Page A1 but buried reality-based skeptics on Page A16 while ignoring both large-scale protests and the lethally wrong suggestion that Saddam Hussein somehow had something to do with 9/11. Almost alone at times, Mitchell and E&P reported critically on the rush to war and on U.S. journalism's helplessness under that stampede

On January 23, 2003, at the height of the media bandwagon, Mitchell wrote a column entitled "On the War Path." In it, an array of well-known voices, like the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, the Boston Globe's Mark Jurkowitz, Arianna Huffington and Richard Reeves voice a host of misgivings that were getting little play at the time: Why was there such little reporting both of the anti-war protests and the deep but quieter misgivings shared by millions of Americans, of why we were attacking Iraq but not North Korea or whether the president's anger at Saddam was personal? Much of Mitchell's critical and insightful writing can be found in his 2008 book on the war, called "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq."

When Colin Powell gave his infamous presentation to the United Nations that winter on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction -- hailed at the time, largely discredited now -- E&P wrote an article questioning both inconsistencies as well as the lack of media skepticism. Mitchell explained later.

Now little Editor and Publisher -- the next day and the days beyond that -- published stories on our website raising those very questions. It didn't take hindsight. It didn't take a huge staff. It just took a few journalists who were acting on the principles of journalism -- To be skeptical. And if we, little Editor and Publisher, could point out that the case had really not been made or needed to be proven, it made us wonder why some of the bigger outlets just sort of rolled over.

And Mitchell and his staff didn't let up, even -- especially, in fact -- after President Bush stood on an aircraft carrier with the sign, "Mission Accomplished." They focused intensively on suicides and other unexplained deaths in Iraq, highlighting articles from small-town papers that would have never received national attention if not for the E&P crew. When an Associated Press photographer captured on film the combat death of an American soldier in Afghanistan, it was E&P alone that asked editors uncomfortable questions about running the photo or not running it. That was what Editor & Publisher was all about in its final years, asking tough questions. Journalism dying? Not as long as Mitchell and his crew had access to nothing more than a notebook and a keyboard.

They just did it.

And while skeptical coverage of Iraq -- and of the coverage of Iraq -- was arguably E&P's mostly valuable contribution to the American dialogue, it was far from its only hallmark. The publication aggressively dealt with the ethical missteps of big media, the kind of things that many newsrooms would gladly sweep under a rug, and it routinely produced some of the best long take-out articles on real journalism reform, on what works and what doesn't, and why. The main Web site was always low-tech, but in the final months they launched an outstanding blog, the E&P Pub, and Mitchell even became one of the top Twitter users in the media world. And they kept it up until the bitter end; today, after the pending shutdown of the magazine and its related Web sites was announced, there was Joe Strupp with a new article, grilling the Washington Post op-ed editor on why the newspaper published a fact-challenged piece on climate change by Sarah Palin.

It's a sad day, but in a strange way the death of Editor & Publisher gives me hope for the future of journalism. Because they showed us a blueprint, that size or technology is overrated, that a half-dozen people can make a difference just by asking the right questions and by not backing down. And if Greg Mitchell and the others could accomplish this at a small, shrinking trade publication, then I know that it can happen again and will happen again, somewhere else and in some other format -- that no-holds-barred journalism is possible even on these weird little newfangled tablets or whatever.

Because in the remarkable way that they died, Editor & Publisher showed the rest of journalism how to live.

Hitchens, Greenwald Debate Afghan Surge: 'We're Being Played For Suckers By Pakistani Elite' (VIDEO)

2009-12-10T14:30:06Z

Christopher Hitchens, Glenn Greenwald and KT McFarland were on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting" to discuss President Obama's plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan with 30,000 more troops. Hitchens argued that the plan is based on a "keyhole view of the region" that involves us in a much wider conflict between Pakistan and India:

The problem is that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was originally imposed on that country by Pakistan as an attempt to take over Afghanistan as part of a proxie for its fight against India over Kashmir. We've now got drawn into this much wider picture, broader conflict with the regional superpower, which is India.

This puts us in opposition to India, Hitchens claimed, which is the opposite of where we want to be. He see McChrystal's plan as designed to keep India out of Pakistan, which "is 100 percent wrong. Our policy in the region should be based on being India's best friend. So we're being played for suckers by the Pakistani elite."

Greenwald is also critical of the planned surge, noting that one of the lessons of 9/11 is that propping up corrupt dictatorial regimes within the Islamic world alienates Muslims and can turn them against us. Yet we are doing this very thing in Afghanistan now, Greenwald added, by propping up the corrupt Karzai government and allowing too many civilians to die in our Predator drone attacks.

McFarland was alone in supporting the plan. She argued that the surge in Afghanistan is really about keeping the nuclear weapons in Pakistan out of the hands of Taliban extremists.

Interestingly, Hitchens said at the end of the debate that if you really wanted to affect serious change in the region, we would end the war on drugs. "We're burning [Afghanistan's] only crop. We're liberating them at the same time that we are destroying their economy. We should instead be buying up their poppy crop to make our painkilers as we help them transition to growing grapes

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The Nine Surges Of Obama's War

2009-12-10T10:29:23Z

In his Afghan "surge" speech at West Point last week, President Obama offered Americans some specifics to back up his new "way forward in Afghanistan." He spoke of the "additional 30,000 U.S. troops" he was sending into that country over the next six months. He brought up the "roughly $30 billion" it would cost us to get them there and support them for a year. And finally, he spoke of beginning to bring them home by July 2011. Those were striking enough numbers, even if larger and, in terms of time, longer than many in the Democratic Party would have cared for. Nonetheless, they don't faintly cover just how fully the president has committed us to an expanding war and just how wide it is likely to become.

Despite the seeming specificity of the speech, it gave little sense of just how big and how expensive this surge will be. In fact, what is being portrayed in the media as the surge of November 2009 is but a modest part of an ongoing expansion of the U.S. war effort in many areas. Looked at another way, the media's focus on the president's speech as the crucial moment of decision, and on those 30,000 new troops as the crucial piece of information, has distorted what's actually underway.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Speech Notes Irony Of Award During Wartime

2009-12-09T23:09:39Z

OSLO — Newly enshrined among the world's great peacemakers, President Barack Obama offered a striking defense of war. Eleven months into his presidency, a fresh Obama doctrine. Evil must be vigorously opposed, he declared as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday. At the same time, he made an impassioned case for building a "just and lasting peace."

"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," Obama told his audience in Oslo's soaring City Hall. "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world."