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Monday, August 26, 2002
Quote of the day "Bush, himself the most intellectually backward American president of my political lifetime, is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their political, military and diplomatic illiteracy." -- Gerald Kaufman, MP and former foreign affairs spokesman of Britain's ruling Labour party
Atrocities in Afghanistan "But stories of a deeper horror came from the prisoners themselves. However awful their conditions, they were the lucky ones. They were alive. Many hundreds of their comrades, they said, had been killed on the journey to Sheberghan from Konduz by being stuffed into sealed cargo containers and left to asphyxiate. Local aid workers and Afghan officials quietly confirmed that they had heard the same stories. They confirmed, too, persistent reports about the disposal of many of the dead in mass graves at Dasht-e Leili." While kicking out the Taliban regime, we allied ourselves with people who are just as bad, and sometimes worse. Read the whole article here. [And let me know if the link eventually doesn't work.]
Trying to shut the door on a peaceful solution "The UN's chief weapons inspector yesterday slammed George Bush and Tony Blair for talking up the prospect of war with Iraq. Hans Blix made clear he was not willing to accept US and British claims over Saddam Hussein's terror arsenal until he had seen it for himself. And Mr Blix also attacked Mr Bush's threat of action, admitting it was wrecking the prospect of a breakthrough on weapons inspections." Basically, by threatening to invade Iraq, Bush has made it less likely that Iraq will accept renewed inspections. Which is, of course, exactly what Bush wants, because if those inspectors were to find no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, his main reason for us needing to invade would be gone. Read the story here.
America as the puppet, with Israel's right as the puppeteer "On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but 'total war,' as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, 'regime change' by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action." A long, and truly frightening, article about some of the people who are exerting a great deal of influence over current U.S. foreign policy goals and actions these days. If you thought the Cold War's anti-Communists were a bunch of scary lunatics, these guys will probably strike you about the same way. Read the article here.
The U.S. in decline "The United States in decline? Few people today would believe this assertion. The only ones who do are the U.S. hawks, who argue vociferously for policies to reverse the decline. This belief that the end of U.S. hegemony has already begun does not follow from the vulnerability that became apparent to all on September 11, 2001. In fact, the United States has been fading as a global power since the 1970s, and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks has merely accelerated this decline. To understand why the so-called Pax Americana is on the wane requires examining the geopolitics of the 20th century, particularly of the century's final three decades. This exercise uncovers a simple and inescapable conclusion: The economic, political, and military factors that contributed to U.S. hegemony are the same factors that will inexorably produce the coming U.S. decline." An interesting and thought provoking analysis of recent history, arguing for the idea that the U.S. is in a more or less inevitable decline as a global power, and that any military action taken to stop this decline will in fact only serve to "transform a gradual decline into a rapid and dangerous fall." A long read, but worthwhile if you want to understand some of the broader basis of the current state of U.S. foreign policy. Read the article here.
The war on France This week's This Modern World is especially good... both insightful and funny. Check it out.
Sunday, August 25, 2002
The continuing slide in support for another war against Iraq "President George Bush found himself dealing with an unaccustomed degree of dissent yesterday with the publication of a poll showing growing opposition to an invasion of Iraq and a near-riot outside the hotel in Oregon where he was speaking." While this story mentions the Portland protests against Bush [read more about those here], it's main focus is the new USA Today poll showing that support for invading Iraq has dropped from 74% last fall to 53% now. It's still a majority, but only barely, and the trend shows that the more Americans hear about what an attack on Iraq will actually involve, the less they like the idea. Not that I think that the Bush administration won't invade Iraq anyway, no matter what the American people's opinion. Read the full story here.
An excuse to cut down trees "President George Bush left his holiday ranch in Texas yesterday to head not to the Johannesburg earth summit to discuss saving the planet but in the opposite direction, both geographically and spiritually: to America's Pacific north-west to pick another fight with environmentalists. He flew to Oregon to announce a new plan to curb forest fires, which in this drought-stricken summer have reached epidemic proportions in the western states. His scheme, which sounds bland enough and has the support of many politicians of both main parties in the western US, is supposed to allow forests to be thinned and underbrush cleared to reduce the danger of catastrophic fires taking hold. But green activists say that it is a ruse to give the logging companies unfettered access to protected forests." Bush has decided that he's going to use the devastating wildfires in the western U.S. this year as an excuse to allow more logging in national forests. While he talks a lot about thinning the brush and undergrowth to cut down on fire danger, he fails to mention the fact that his proposal will actually allow the timber companies to harvest mature trees as well, or that his proposal would make it harder for enviromentalists to use the courts to try and block such logging. Ironically, as the Guardian UK story mentions, he chose to make this announcement just as the latest earth summit is getting underway in South Africa. Read the full story here.
Secret court rebukes Ashcroft "The secretive federal court that approves spying on terror suspects in the United States has refused to give the Justice Department broad new powers, saying the government had misused the law and misled the court dozens of times, according to an extraordinary legal ruling released yesterday. A May 17 opinion by the court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) alleges that Justice Department and FBI officials supplied erroneous information to the court in more than 75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps, including one signed by then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. Authorities also improperly shared intelligence information with agents and prosecutors handling criminal cases in New York on at least four occasions, the judges said." Basically, the decision was that it was not okay for the Justice Department to share information from intelligence investigations with criminal prosecutors on a routine basis, rather than having to go before the FISA court in each case. While this is an important decision, the most notable part of the story is that this was the first time in the FISA court's 23-year history that the secretive court, which is often accused of just being a rubber stamp for the Justice Department, had ever approved the public release of one of its opinions. They apparently decided that this time Ashcroft needed to be publically rebuked. Read the full story here, and a shorter BBC News piece on the same decision here.
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