Iraq: "waking up the morning after"

It can be headachey after a successful "liberation," "invasion," or "conquest" -- when modern armies distinguish themselves by efficient, quick victory.

For then may come a "second war."

When local resistance builds, sometimes with foreign meddling. A guerrilla resistance which sometimes uses what is today called terror, or "assymetrical warfare."

Roads harassed, bombs planted, officials assassinated. Occupying or liberating powers must walk a tricky line between winning hearts and minds and the temptation to show the mailed glove -- with summary execution, long imprisonment or torture.

Occupying powers may eventually consolidate their control, build new orders, consolidate new alliances. But sometimes they overextend themselves, fall into a trap, allow themselves to be bled into collapse.

And so three years after U.S. led forces "invaded" or "liberated" Iraq we have a patchwork headache graphically brought alive in With Each Mile the Divisions Deepen by Borzou Daragahi of The Los Angeles Times.

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Other "morning afters:"

When Britain encouraged Spanish guerrilla tactics against Napoleon's occupation of Spain circa 1809. (Goya's vision of Napoleon's occupation above)

When Americans liberated the Philippines from Spain in 1898, only to fight a vicious war against insurgents until 1902. A war which split Americans in deep debate over imperialism and war crimes.

When British troops defeated South Africa's Dutch descended Boers in classic conventional war from 1899 to 1900, then fought a bitter guerrilla war from 1900 to 1902. Atrocities on both sides.

When German invaders sometimes seemed to bog down against partisan guerrilla warfare in Italy and Eastern Europe in WWII. Savage fighting with "no quarter."

When Allied powers successfully occupied and reconstructed Germany and Japan after World War II. Total war had brought total victory and a determined Allied effort to remake the destroyed economies of the defeated.

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Today's "morning after" in Iraq is a special yet related headache.

"Foreign fighters" touted as El Quaeda kill and maim while anti-American local Sunnis fight to throw the Americans out.

The end of the totalitarian Saddam tyranny frees up sectarian rivalries, fears and jealousies so that a true patchwork of anarchic violence between Shiites and Sunnis can thrive.

In the wings are Turkey, Syria and Iran stirring things up for their own advantage or to protect themselves from instability which could threaten their interests.

Insurgency, mass sectarian murders, and the prospect of full blown civil war all bubble up to bleed and demoralize the world's greatest military power.

(See Project for Defense Alternatives listing of online studies on the insurgency.)

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Outcomes?

The US had basically defeated the Philippines insurgency by 1902, but fought a continuing war against Islamic Moro rebels in the south well up into 1912. Uncle Sam won colonial control of the Philippines until 1946.

In Cuba the US secured control and granted independence in 1902, then maintained a more indirect hegemony with periodic interventions until the victory of Fidel Castro in 1959.

The British hung in to defeat Boer insurgents in South Africa by 1902 -- only to find a resurgence of Boer domination in the form of Apartheid racial doctrine in 1948.

Reconstruction of post World War II Germany and Japan:

"Japan and Germany were akin to a firm whose building has burned down and that needed an infusion of capital to get started again. Iraq is like a firm that is putting a business together for the first time, and, as we know, 70 percent of all new businesses fail, " Prof. Eva Bellin of Hunter College noted at a 2004 Harvard University symposium on Iraq reconstruction.

Specific factors working against the success of Iraq's reconstruction, according to Bellin, are its religious and ethnic cleavages, which Saddam took every opportunity to deepen; its lack of effective, meritoriously organized bureaucratic systems; and the absence of any recent tradition of democratic government.

Ironically, she noted, the swiftness with which the United States toppled Saddam's regime and the avoidance of civilian casualties may actually work against the success of the reconstruction. In Germany and Japan the experience of total defeat and devastation broke down old conventions and opened the people to new ideas.

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As for Napoleon and Hitler -- they bit off more than they could chew -- "overextended" just a bit. The expanded empires they oversaw crashed to the ground.

Now we shall see if well intentioned Americans muddle their way through in Iraq -- or fall into the same trap.

A kind of screaming in the night

Much depends on what happens in Iraq.

For if the country splits more deeply over that, journalism will continue to be tugged, politicized, degraded.

Who will be believed? Who will "man" the gate? Who will be trusted? Perhaps with the death of credible anchors, believable authority, standards of journalistic quality control, the answer will simply be:

"Every man and woman for himself."

Flashes, soundbytes, politicization, talk shows, embeds, disinformation, screaming, blogging, arguing.

Has believability gone south?

The Iraq war brings back some of the deep divisions of the Vietnam period, in an age of different technology.

Technology which both informs, splinters, technology which facilitates both the partisan gatekeeper and the non -- mediated explosion of polemics and propaganda. Technology which expands access, reduces the filter of quality control and grants each emotional partisan a full range of enormously detailed biased information.

A kind of "screaming in the night."

Plus foreign reporting is now so tightly wired to the home office that it is dominated even more by political controversy in America. There is a tendency for overseas reporting to be but an extension of the new Civil War between competing American cultures.

Correspondents in the field are at the instant beck and call of stateside editors proding them for reportage dovetailed to feed current American obsessions. The ability of correspondents to independently rove and provide correctives to an American centered view of the world declines.

The more information, the less wisdom. Oodles of loud data feed fear and paranoia. Screened out are vital context, the cultural and historical perspectives which might help guide more confidently a nation obsessed with worst case scenarios of threats to its safety.

Papers like the one I worked for, The Christian Science Monitor, survive, but if the polarization builds, professional journalists will continue to lose stature.......

Again, much depends on what happens in Iraq.

If the war can be finessed, "muddled through," these problems may be less extreme. But if it continues to grow in cost, deaths and prolonged frustration?

American nationalism is strong, strengthened both by 9/11 and Iraq -- but also strengthened by the appearance that Reagan policies defeated the Soviet Union.

What happens if the soaring nationalism of invincibility meets the interminable frustration of defeat?

Does it turn outward against a threatening world?

Or does it turn inwardly cannibalistic -- to devour in disgrace the Administration which led American armies into Iraq? Or to devour the critics who question militant American military nationalism?

The pain of continuing war, coupled with the growth of partriotic nationalism could well further undermine traditional journalism, one possible victim in a new American cultural Civil War.

But this is the worst case scenario. Hells Bells, never underestimate the possibility that this country may somehow muddle through.

Remember, though, that if success comes, it will be at a cost.

There are no free lunches when one seeks security by enlarging one's footprint on a reshaped world.

Let us not be totally surprised if many more Americans die --- and if our standard and quality and security of living drop. If not now -- later in years to come.

Oh, did I mention? Others besides Americans die.

Truth in Yellow: little change except technology

A most fascinating thing today is the play of entertainment and news values, with media's highly competitive nature placing an accent on playing up the entertainment, the tabloid fear angle.

Very reminiscent of the Pulitzer/Hearst yellow period when shock, reality, violence were key parts of newspaper wars. (Check out the "yellow kid.")

And yet the very search for entertainment can be the vehicle for "serious" journalism when it leads to a scraping of the barrel for fresh stories and angles to rivet an audience. Still, fresh is sometimes hard to find when everyone chases the same story.

Journalism, of course, rarely strives for "perspective." It is a tool of its times, a creature of passions, a mobilizer of audiences for ratings, prestige, power, and profit.

It is a bully box for princes, charlatans, fools, for querulous complaining, a prime purveyor of popular populism, of triumphant nationalism. "On Team" and "Off Team."

A terrifier of the people, a mobilizer of the nation. Shaper and pawn of the times.....

Often smoothing those with power, yet digging up the dirt. Painting out the truth in lovely shades of yellow.

Lots of changes, lots of changes. Ah, the journalism of nationalism runs amok in an age of globalization.

At still other times -- just excruciatingly dull.

"Truth in Media:" very little change except the technology.

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun."

A small Mideast war yields big lessons

I am struck by the gutsy, brilliance of Israel's brinkmanship policy.

Using a decisive and ruthless military strike, as did Deng Hsiaoping in February 1979, the Israelis have engaged their American patron's protective umbrella to teach a punishing lesson that Israel is no "paper tiger," that it will not be triffled with. If you rouse the dragon, do not expect a "proportional" response.

This proxy war between Iran and the US via Hezbollah and Israel is reminiscent of another proxy war a quarter of a century ago: between America (China's patron) and the Soviets (Vietnam's patron.).

The Chinese invasion of Vietnam opened a new chapter of the entrenched American Soviet Cold War going back to 1948. Israel's assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon opened a new chapter in the bitter American Iranian feud going back to 1979.

In multiple levels of conflict the name of the proxy game is to teach a lesson, to shift and cap a new balance of power. It can be a ruthless, brutal game played with the lives of others.

Yes, we all see the present through the lens of our past. Afterall I covered the brilliantly conceived Chinese invasion to teach Vietnam and the Soviets a lesson.

As back then, the US conditionally backs its proxy, provides a protective umbrella, vows to prevent Israel's other enemies from joining in, grants Israel, as earlier China, a finite period to wreak its damage, to tear down Washington's opponents.

Washington arms and supports its Israeli proxy to tear down, limit, teach a lesson to an "out of control," emboldened Hezbollah and to the Iran which encourages, finances, arms it.

This is a more transparent, but so far much smaller war than China's invasion of Vietnam where more than 20,000 died in 29 days of fighting.

We had President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski then and President Bush's Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice now playing similar roles as power politics brinkmanship activists rather than peace seeking mediators. Each backed by a boss to be "shaped" a bit. Bush now, Carter then.

Ultimately Washington both protects its proxies and pressures them (once China, now Israel) to limit actions, to avoid getting in over their heads, to avoid provoking a wider war which would require even more direct American military involvement.

Just as Deng manipulated distant Washington to counter both the Soviet Union and Vietnam in his own neighborhood, Israel manipulates an eager Washington to be its "force magnifier" in the Middle East. Israel moves NOW while a sympathetic Bush is President.

Brezezinski (and Carter) hoped the Chinese invasion would make more costly the structure of Soviet expansion which armed and supplied a Vietnam proxy. Indeed President Reagan later took the cue to use proxies to counter Soviet influence in Indochina, Afghanistan, and Central America.

Brinkmanship, power politics.

"Remember 9/11" - when fear goes on the attack

"The Best Defense is a Strong Offense."

That catchy phrase is so often used as a foundation for America's defense against terrorism.

To clean out the stables where violent schemes are hatched, to send American soldiers and bases abroad, to remake into peace loving American style democracies the autocratic societies where terrorism sprouts.

To transform the world into a reflection of American values.

Or, in the words of Woodrow Wilson, "to make the world safe for democracy."

FEAR of attack requires increased security and that requires increased power. Yet this growing power vigorously projected abroad increasingly makes America the target.

As the basing of US forces in Saudi Arabia following the Gulf war enraged Arab militants such as bin Laden. As American occupation of Iraq stirs the militant hunger for still more revenge against the United States.

More American FEAR completes the circle.

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So a FEARFUL "war on terror" morphs into a struggle to build American supremacy in the Middle East.

Taking on fundamentalist Iran, the one potentially nuclear armed power that can present an overt challenge to a US trapped in an Iraq crater of its own making.

Shakily entrenched in Iraq to Iran's west and Afghanistan to the east, the Americans intensify their containment of Iran by building ties with Iran's northern neighbor, Azerbaijan, once a part of the Soviet Union.

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FEAR. Listen to Columbia University international politics professor Robert Jervis:

"Fear is an enormous driver in international politics. Again, I go back to Thucydides, the cause of the Peloponesian Wars, the growth of Athenian power and the fear it created in others, what we call the security dilemma which is the way in which one country increases its power and makes others less secure. I think this isn't the root cause but it's one of the two or three root causes of international politics, and living in New York especially, you saw fear and what it did and what it does...

"You saw the Bush administration feel it in their gut, partly because there were all the stories about nuclear weapons planted in Washington. None of us knew this but I've heard enough now -- I don't know the sources, but they really did believe it. So, they felt the fear in their gut, and then I think they did manipulate it for their own purposes. International politics is a great home of fear."

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FEAR merges with many traditions of American expansion.

The greatest period of American expansion followed the World War II defeat of Germany and Japan. "Remember Pearl Harbor" was a slogan which tranlated into into a "never again" vigilance against a possible Soviet attack. Massive armaments, global alliances and farflung bases transformed the U.S. into the world's number one power after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The political fault lines in debates on historic American expansionism go back to 1847 and 1898. The patterns are remarkably similar to today.

In the Mexican War of 1847 and the Spanish American War of 1898 American unilateralism challenged Europe's old order -- and asserted the right of American military power to shape important regions of the world.

Those two grand small wars pitted growing American power against yesterday's infidels, those seen to be barbaric remnants of Europe's Roman Catholicism.

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In those great national near religious debates New England was so frequently the cradle of the anti-war camp -- and the South, including Texas, the place where religious fundamentalism and
military tradition provide the great wellspring for military expansion.

Living in the South helps to understand how deeply rooted in America is the expansionist religious, military tradition. A truly sacred part of American life, a deep, deep color in American history.

Christian based American expansionism often takes on a barbaric dictator such as Saddam the "Butcher of Baghdad," or Weyler "the Butcher of Havana," or the great Mexican tyrant once supported by the Americans -- Santa Anna of Mexico.

Human rights and the spreading of democracy is often powerful rhetoric and belief, a gateway for expansionist war.

The Mexican American war, begun to help slavery survive, proved a democracy could fight an offensive battle deep into the heart of Mexico. It brought Texas, the Southwest and California into the United States, in a grand expression of "manifest destiny." It was democracy's first expansionist war, aside from campaigns to defeat Indians.

The Spanish American war, fought in part to liberate Cuba from Spanish atrocities, brought America empire into Cuba and the Philippines. Made the US a player in the Pacific. Opened the door to World War II by beginning a growing American rivalry with Japan.

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"Remember the Alamo," "Remember the Battleship Maine," "Remember Pearl Harbor," "Remember 9/11."

All were blood atrocities shrouded in murky dust, though their origins not always clear, which became the causa belli for the spreading of American power. When defense became a rationale for offense. The rallying cries for US military assaults on Mexico City, up San Juan Hill, through the streets of Baghdad.

War in Iraq: to weaken possible future sanctuaries for terrorists, strengthen an American military and oil presence in the Middle East -- and in its grandest expansionist dream to transform that area into the image of American Judeo-Christian democracy. And indirectly to strengthen the long arm of the American presence into the once forbidden underbelly of the former Soviet Union.

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The War Camp and the Peace Camp. When circumstances open the gate to war, these camps reemerge, always different, but with remarkable continuity.

Take the last presidential election: John Kerry, Brahmin New England elitist flies in sullied form the hi brow, poetic internationalist peace mongering flag of Margaret Fuller during the Mexican War. George Bush, rich diapered adopted son of the Texas frontier could be speaking the language of crushing Filipino insurrection after Americans took over that Spanish colony during the Spanish American War:

"We'll hunt em down ---- and civilize em with a Krag (rifle)"

Even the rhetoric shows remarkable parallels......

Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war.......

Spread the light of freedom to create a better world.

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Is this right or wrong?

Let's just say it's the flow of history, a familiar recurrent pattern as angry, fearful, awakened Judeo-Christian power clashes with a resurgent Islamic fundamentalism.

Different? Yes, but echoes all the same....Keep listening.

Shocking Iraq possibility: peace breaks out!

(Written in December 2002, during the run up to the March 2003 American led invasion of Iraq.)



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The preconditions for peace are fairly simple. Indeed it is a shocking possibility that peace could be the road ahead.

Both Bush and Saddam have an escape door from war, if they choose to open it.

For much of the wrangling so far has concerned mass destruction weapons the US says were never destroyed by Iraq - but which Iraq claims to have destroyed by the mid 1990's.

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Yet the really compelling long term issues concern not so much any existing weapons but the possibility Saddam has the means and intent and the technical and scientific talent pool to produce more.

Fascinating as the current inspections and voluminous Iraq reports are, if one goes back to consult the public intelligence conclusions (CIA, British, and International Institute of Strategic Studies) much of this may be irrelevant.

What is striking is that ALL these intelligence estimates focus NOT on existing stocks of weapons, but the potential CAPACITY of Iraq to quickly produce chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons in the future, if Saddam wishes to. They all assume Saddam wishes to.

All are very VAGUE on anything already in existence. A major issue here is the ability to mobilize dual use facilities for FUTURE weapons production.

If peace to be preserved, some way will need to be opened to shape Saddam's intent, to watchdog and ensure that Iraq's capacity to produce future weapons does not actually produce those weapons.

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If a peaceful way is sought, it will be less important to account for every remaining piece of weaponry (thus proving Saddam a liar to be ousted) and more important to develop extensive inspection techniques to bar, to prevent future production.

If the US seeks war, it can easily find or manufacture a "causus belli" based around weapons alleged to be hidden from the past.

If the US seeks to avoid war, it will need to engage Iraq in the kind of long term extensive inspections which will be needed to bar weapons production in the future.

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If both sides decide war is unacceptable, they will find ways to finesse the issue of weapons remaining from earlier disarmament while focusing on a regimen of tight controls for the future.

Both Bush and Saddam will need macho opportunities to claim victory, to pose as powerful warriors.

For Bush it will be the media driven image of playing Teddy Roosevelt, of intimidating, bending, humiliating the "Butcher of Baghdad." For Saddam it would be the ability to emerge as an Arab hero --- facing down, resisting, surviving the Yankee colonialist.

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But peace will only break out if BOTH Iraq and the United States come to understand that the alternative could be "disastrous" for both sides: for Saddam his death will be certain; for the US a costly war which may undermine its economy and deprive George Bush of re-election.

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Bush must come to think (and fear) that invading and occupying Iraq will escalate the threat of terrorism, isolate the US globally, and risk large US casualties, including possibly from chemical and biological weapons... If war appears easy, affordable, safe, Bush will choose the path of military violence.

Saddam must see...a continued and deadly deployment of US forces that can be sustained over time. That this American presence ....will destroy him if he embarks on any further course of producing FUTURE weapons of mass destruction....He must see a tough long term American policy that does not turn "to go home" when a different President comes to power.

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Hanging over this is a major question mark.

Is it technically possible to monitor, to watchdog future Iraq weapons production? And if Iraq moves to produce mass destruction weapons in the future, how hard would it be to attack then?

If the Administration decides this is impossible, or impractical, it may decide to skip the shocking possibility of peace and to go to war "now."

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And make as its excuse an argument over missing weapons from the past.

(And so it came to pass.)

A Jewish conspiracy? So far God isn't talking...

When it comes to Judas, everyone "spins" the story. Both then and now.

What really happened? So far God isn't talking.

But some people say they are "in the loop."

"I think I was chosen by Judas to rehabilitate him," Ms. Tchacos Nussberger, 65, is quoted as saying in one of the National Geographic Society's books, "The Lost Gospel," by Herbert Krosney. Mr. Krosney is also an independent television producer who brought the project to the Society.

Ms. Tchacos Nussberger, Jewish, was instrumental in making the Judas Gospel available for translation and publication by the National Geographic.

The freelance producer of the National Geographic special, is Herbert Krosney, Jewish, an experienced journalist who lives half the time in Jerusalem and half the time in New York.

The second century A.D. Church leader Irenaeus seems to have raised the blackening of Judas to the fore in the battle against Gnosticism, a mystical religious strain which sometimes raised disciple Judas as Christ's "chosen one."

The Gnostic Gospel of Judas was excluded from the Christian Church canon.

As centuries passed from the day of Irenaeus, an increasingly black portrayal of Judas, based on the four canonized gospels, had become a central symbolic representation of Anti-Semitism. Judas the Jew selling out Christ for 30 pieces of silver.

In European pograms and in the ghettoes of American cities Anti-Semitic gangs screamed "Judas, Jesus killers" at the Jews they chased, stoned, sometimes killed.

So is raising up a new Gnostic gospel text from the third or fourth century A.D. a Jewish conspiracy to alter Christian doctrine, to protect, and elevate Jews by elevating Judas?

Nothing so grandiose.

Still the agenda is hardly hidden: --- to make a "real splash" in undermining (or broadening, depending on your viewpoint!) traditional pillars of faith canonized in the Christian New Testament.

And by upgrading Judas create an alternate image that undermines one popular historic theological rationalization for Anti-Semitism. The Gospel of Judas maintains Jesus himself asked Judas to betray him -- as part of a broader plan for salvation.

Just the latest use of media to "altar" the way religion is used to view the world.

For mass media is now the secularly religious "altar" upon which doctrine and theology is placed for stimulation, curiosity, discussion, debate.

A battleground for competing faiths and doctrines -- as Jews join others who would reverse the early Church's exclusion of a mystical "heretical" doctrine from the accepted canons of Christian faith.

So the "new Judas" is now one of our latest media scoops. Recycling through dozens of media outlets with a breathless "now it can be told." In a ripple of publicity that has raised esoteric second century theological debates into a lucrative modern media extravaganza.

In our current mass media age theology clearly "rocks."

One other thing:

Almost two thousand years ago the nature of Judas was debated by the Church fathers --- and by all kinds of thoughtful folk in the the tents and caves of Palestine. Today it is argued in thousands of postings on the internet. Sample the discussion and debate in other internet blogs on this topic.

Which blog -- if any -- is God talking?

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There appears to be little new in the Geographic's resurrection of the Gospel of Judas, a text rediscovered a quarter of a century ago. View parts of the "lost gospel" translated and printed by the Geographic.

What is new is the way the issue is raised to prominence, and promoted for mass consumption in a world with a mass culture appetite already raised by the titillation of "heresy" --- ie. the massive popularity of the Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.

The National Geographic has a large campaign promoting the Gospel of Judas, featuring it in two new books, a television documentary, an exhibition and the May issue of the National Geographic magazine. Judas appears to be the favored disciple, given special disclosures from Jesus himself.

Two of the nine member Advisory Board are American academic specialists on Gnosticism, with a personal and professional interest in promoting awareness of this early competitor to the established Christian Church.

In this new old gospel the language is mystical, abstract, full of angelic symbols and visions of a heaven and an underworld. There is the familiar style of Jewish and early Christian Biblical apocalypse. Yet the abstract mystical linguistic flavor vastly differs from all four canonized gospels, each of which tells a different version of the birth, life, and death of Jesus.

And so Judas emerges as a favored disciple, with unique insights into the future, gained from special "access" to teacher Jesus. Saith this gospel:

"Jesus answered and said,
'You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations—and you will come to rule over them. In the last days they will curse your ascent to the holy generation.'”

Judas
Judas Gospel
Anti-Semitism
Irenaeus
National Geographic translation and publication
National Geographics Advisory Board
Christian Church canon
Parts of the Judas Gospel translated and printed by the National Geographic
Da Vinci Code
Thousands of internet blogs discussing and debating the Gospel of Judas

Bush helps boost the power of fundamentalist Iran

President George W. Bush has opened the door for Iran to make a fresh grab for power in the Middle East.

That is one result of the Bush decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and destroy his long-term hope to dominate the region.

The American led invasion has eliminated Saddam's "buffer" against neighboring Iran and opened a vacuum for growing Iranian power. An Iran pledged to eliminate Israel and seemingly on a path toward nuclear weapons.

The very same Iran which had tossed out the American-backed Shah, held US hostages in late 1979, and humbled the greatest power on earth.

Now that Iraq splinters into religious conflict and terrorism, the American occupation has taken over the task of holding together a "buffer" against Iran.

Of course the Bush Administration hopes to isolate, undermine, and overthrow Iranian fundamentalists with possible sanctions against development of Iranian nuclear power.

Only time will tell how much of a long term boost the Bush policy gives to the very same revived Shite militant fundamentalist Iran which President Reagan had built up Saddam to oppose -- way back during the Iran Iraq war of the 1980's. (See photo above)

Ironically some who pushed for the invasion of Iraq hoped the overthrow of Saddam would open the door for revived American power in the Middle East -- some 20 years after the Iranians threw the Americans out.

For background perspective on the drive for an American "comeback," see this writer's Human Rights Justifies a March Toward War.

It is anyone's guess what will happen if and when the Americans leave Iraq. Some like Barbara K. Bodine, coordinator for post-conflict reconstruction for Baghdad and the central region of Iraq in 2003, have argued American withdrawal might actually promote internal reconciliation in Iraq.

This writer explores the growing American bipartisan consensus for withdrawal in the blog Exploding the Iraq Illusion. For exhaustive collections of online texts, see Iraq Withdrawal and Exit Plans and Insurgent Iraq, both by the Project on Defense Alternatives.

For more immediate material on the rise of Iran, see the analysis in the Los Angeles Times, excerpts below:

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2/18/06 Los Angeles Times
NEWS ANALYSIS
Iran Was on Edge; Now It's on Top
The war in Iraq has bolstered the regime's influence in the region and made it bolder.

By Megan K. Stack and Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writers

BAGHDAD — The Islamic government in neighboring Iran watched with trepidation in March 2003 when U.S.-led troops stormed Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime and start remaking the political map of the Mideast.

In retrospect, the Islamic Republic could have celebrated: The war has left America's longtime nemesis with profound influence in the new Iraq and pushed it to the apex of power in the region.

Emboldened by its new status and shielded by deep oil reserves, Tehran is pressing ahead with its nuclear program, daring the international community to impose sanctions. Iran is a Shiite Muslim nation with an ethnic Persian majority, and the blossoming of its influence has fueled the ambitions of long-repressed Shiites throughout the Arab world.

At the same time, Tehran has tightened alliances with groups such as Hamas, which recently won Palestinian elections, and with governments in Damascus and Beijing.

In the 1980s, Iran spent eight years and thousands of lives waging a war to overthrow Hussein, whose regime buffered the Sunni Muslim-dominated Arab world from Iran. But in the end, it took the U.S.-led invasion to topple Iraq's dictator and allow Iranian influence to spread through a chaotic, battle-torn country.

Now Iraq's fledgling democracy has placed power in the hands of the nation's Shiite majority and its Kurdish allies, many of whom lived as exiles in Iran and maintain strong religious, cultural and linguistic ties to it.

I'm too much of a Coward: Go see for Yourselves

What a friend wrote to me......
"It's OK to burn the American Flag, to preach 'destroy Israel,' --- but not to publish cartoons offensive to Muslims. What am I missing? "

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Yes, what are we missing in discussing whether freedom of the press includes the freedom to run cartoons offensive to a religious or ethnic group?

And who decides what is offensive? Who decides when wisdom demands retraint rather than provocative polemic? Should we trim our sails when angry protestors get violent -- or reassert our freedoms to avoid intimidation?

We all sometimes thrive on double standards.

Some in the Middle East offended by cartoon satires on Islam have now proclaimed their right to intervene and censor the culture and media management of Europe and the United States. Perhaps that is only fair given the West's many interventions in the lives and cultures of the Mideast.

In the end our own excesses can be our greatest enemies.

"Insensitive" Danish cartoons satirizing the prophet Mohammed were a gift to radical Islamic agitators, who could use them to mobilize mobs, grab headlines, to intimidate corporations, media, educational institutions, and governments.

Burnings of American flags during the Vietnam war were sometimes a gift to patriotic extremists who could rally popular support by casting anti-war activists as traitors stabbing American soldiers in the back.

Like the cartoonist, we all can hand our "enemies" a weapon to club us with when we behave provocatively without wisdom or balance.

Then our enemies can go on to "shoot themselves in the foot" when they respond with foolish intimidation and violence which reinforces negative stereotypes of them. Which appears to confirm the negative image of Islam in the cartoons.

We can all benefit from the excesses of our enemies.

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This blogger himself had to make the decision: should he post the offending cartoons here? Should he omit them out of intimidation and/or a sense of wisdom or taste? And what would the host server of this blog do if this blogger posted the offending cartoons?

So let me be both wise and cowardly and simply steer you to a web address where you can see the offending cartoons for yourself.

Gentle Reader, you definitely need to see these cartoons to fully understand what has triggered the reaction. You must see them to understand the sensibilities of the offended. How nice that the web gives me the opportunity to cowardly censor my own copy -- yet give you the opportunity to "see for yourselves."

So visit this site and see for yourself.

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/sarticle.php?id=12146

Yes, every person can pose as a victim of some offense. We can all do battle to preserve or grow our turf -- and let our own sensitivities fuel our hunger to put down our real or imagined enemies.

In the end we all share something in common: our own excesses can be our greatest enemies.

"Red Diaper" goes "Red, White, and Blue"

Take the moral anguish over the use of force in Jewish filmaker Steven Spielberg's movie "Munich."

Contrast that with the muscularly military conservativism of the Jewish "neoconservative" intellectuals and policy makers who helped plan the invasion of Iraq.

This tension is not new.

This writer witnessed it as a graduate student during the "Free Speech Movement" at the University of California, Berkeley more than 40 years ago.

On the one side, along with many who were not Jewish, radical Jewish students and their sometimes youngish professors. On the other a handful of older conservative Jewish scholars, often left in their youth, who turned from diatribe against American culture and capitalism in the 1930's to diatribe against student radicals in the 1960's. One example: sociologist Lewis Feuer.

Back then the left (or "New Left") prevailed -- more critical of anti-communism than of communism, traumatized by the anti-Semitic overtones of McCarthyism. Denouncing American power as imperialism, spurred on by opposition to the Vietnam war and by an alliance with the Civil Rights movement.

In the liberal-radical tradition of Jewish Americana there sometimes seemed a defensive, reflexive "anti-Americanism" critical of gentile values, seeing patriotism as a disguise for anti-Semitism -- sometimes even mocking the American flag. A tendency to apologize for the Soviet Union while criticizing the United States.

It was a tradition which sometimes sought protection from gentile American culture by hiding in the cocoon of abstract European Jewish Marxist thought. A few even spied for the Soviet Union. Apologetics for Stalin in the battle against facism produced a generation of "red diaper babies."

Back then a keen awareness of barriers against Jews in MANY areas of American life. Yet a hungry quest for upward mobility, for respectability and wealth and power in America's law, medicine, cities, suburbs, schools, universities, government and corporations.

******

Forty years later a different form of conservative Jewish thought has emerged in the halls of the White House, in the Pentagon and in countless streams of media.

This includes the "neocons" who helped engineer the Iraq war, after first emerging into public prominence in the Reagan era.

Deeply committed to American cultural, and capitalist power. Seeing now dead Soviet power as anti-Semitic rather than as an ideological beacon for international progress.

This tradition repudiates the "anti anti-communism" of "its youth" and favors global American military dominance as a bulwark against anti-Semitic Arab theocratic totalitarianism, as protection for both American interests and for Israel. While the radical Jewish tradition decries American "imperialism," the "neocons" cry out for an American imperial role as a global saviour.

Like the old style left, Jewish conservatives often see the world as a Manichean struggle between good and evil.

But a difference -- for in this time there is keen awareness that Jews thrive in almost ALL fields of American life. Yet still a hungry quest for respectability, for upward mobility and wealth and power in America's law, medicine, cities, suburbs, schools, universities, government and corporations.

______
Peter Haas, The Future of Jewish Liberalism
Michael E. Staub, Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism
Irving Kristol, Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea
Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev The Haunted Wood
National Security Agency (NSA) The Venona Story

A moral price to pay? Leave anguish for a later day

Controversy over Steven Spielberg's film Munich?

Most Certainly!!!

For this is a film which dramatizes issues in today's war on terrorism -- as much as it reflects controversy over Israel's secret campaign of assassinations against terrorists held responsible for killing 11 of its athletes in Munich in 1972.

The purpose was not only revenge, to let the world know that there would be a price to be paid for the killing of Israelis -- but also to create a climate of "counter-terror." The aim: that any persons who dared plan terror against Israelis would think twice -- knowimg they might be marked for death. In short, both revenge and deterrence.

Pro Israel zealots such as Charles Krauthammer have sometimes eloquently denounced "Munich" as a film of moral equivalence which puts Israel's efforts at self defense in the same basket as ruthless Arab terrorists who systematically kill civilians to annihilate Israel.

The film clearly "humanizes" the targets of the Israeli assassins. But the charge of moral equivalence makes no sense. Spielberg tells the story from an Israeli point of view and focuses always on Israeli issues and values.

Spielberg gives to Israelis a higher sense of conscience, focusing frequently on how far Jewish assassins went to avoid harming "innocents." He also portrays several Israeli terrorists as plagued by concerns their revenge killing might compromise historic Jewish values. All this clearly puts Israeli fighters on higher moral ground than terrorists who deliberately target civilians.

Central, if subliminal to the movie, is the controversy over George Bush's willingness to adopt Israeli tactics.

At the heart of the Bush approach are both preemptive and retaliatory actions to hunt down suspected terrorists, to kill them with gunfire, bombs or rockets -- or secretly kidnap and imprison them, where they may face torture.

The Bush approach is in part a campaign of "counter-terror" aimed at deterrence. The message to be sent: anyone who picks up the terrorist cause against Americans may pay the ultimate price.

The US has not fully adopted Israeli tactics, but has gone a far way down that road. The President still is subject to congressional and court challenges over just how far he can go. And over whether his actions are compatible with the constitution or with American committments to international law.

******

So where does the movie "Munich" leave us?

Fighting back may be necessary -- but "counter-terror" can be costly not only to our enemies but to our moral sensibilities. That is IF we CHOOSE to be anguished when we inflict death and suffering.

There are no free lunches in wars where murder is a tool of state. Even when human beings we kill are not "innocent," they are still human beings.

As someone puts it in the movie: "for every civilization there is a time when it may have to compromise its own values."

There is, of course, little sign the Bush Administration shows anguish.

There is plenty of anguish in Spielberg's "Munich." Still, the challenge for every generation is to "get on with it," to do the killing as quickly and as efficiently as possible so that the values of peace can be restored.

Even when a cause seems righteous, there is a cost. In today's world, as in the past, a moral price must be paid.

Leave anguish for a later day.

*****************
See:
"The Munich Syndrome," Weekly Standard
"War on 'Munich,'" Spiegel
Charles Krauthammer, "Terrorists Win in 'Munich,'" Real Clear Politics
George Jonas, Vengeance (book on which the movie is based)
"An Action Film About the Need to Talk," The New York Times
Spielberg calls his film "a prayer for peace" (BBC)
Spielberg hires a key Sharon aide to promote his film (BBC)

A Nation Blogs Hugh Thompson, Jr. - Departed Hero

More than 3000 blog entries have been posted since the January 6 passing of Hugh Thompson, Jr., the military helicopter pilot who landed his bird in the midst of the March 1968 "My Lai Massacre." He is credited with helping to stop the killing.

The blogs are from Left, Right, Center. They show a national grassroots outpouring over the death of little known 62 year old Thompson. The new blog technology allows a national ceremony of grief and admiration for a man rarely honored in the mainstream media.

For a partial listing of these blogs see Hugh Thompson, Jr.: Blogging on a Hero. (Image above from Culture of Life Breaking News Blog).

The blogs celebrate in a new technology something philosophers and theologians, movies and novels have been honoring from ancient beginnings -- appreciation for those special individuals who answer the call of the moment to risk all -- to do what must be done -- whatever the cost.

Thompson ordered his gunners to shoot American soldiers if the killing of civilians continued. G.I.'s had ran "amuck" to kill more than 500 Vietnamese civilians in the hamlet known as "Pinkville" -- herding them into ditches, raping and shooting young women in what was later described as "a Nazi kind of thing."

Few, if any, shots had been fired that morning at American forces. But the destruction at My Lai was carried out by stressed, poorly led soldiers who had suffered numerous sniper and booby trap attacks -- and viewed civilians in the village as part of the communist war effort.

Here is a more detailed account of what happened.

A 1989 "Frontline" PBS documentary hosted by Judy Woodruff moved Thompson into the spotlight. A gripping on camera interview with the sometimes weeping ex soldier relived the moments when he moved into action. One result was lobbying to get official recognition for his deeds

Thompson's story touched many of us in different ways.

I taught a unit on media and My Lai at University of Rhode Island -- showing the "Frontline" documentary to a class of 300 as part of a case study of how a scandal seeps into the mainstream press after military whistle blowers force an internal investigation. Freelancer Hersh had seized upon the story to create a national scandal which helped force the United States out of Vietnam.

The "Frontline Documentary" helped inspire my research and writing for the website "American Human Rights Reporting as a Global Watchdog."

Thompson's life moved on in obscurity while the anti-establishment whistle blowing journalist Seymour Hersh moved on to fame. Only in the 1990's did the story get fuller play when Thompson finally received military honors.

American Apartheid: the "Blue State" Blues

There is an irony in this land.

The "Blue States" of America, whose voters often adhere to liberal "favor the underclass" values, all too often close their doors to all but the wealthy. They often segregate the underclass in black urban ghettos or distant white "bantustans" reachable only by long highway commute.

Indeed for those not wealthy, life is often preferable in the "Red States," dominated by traditional conservatism, with relatively little ideological lip service to the underdog. Jobs may not pay as much, there may be plenty of poverty, but the basics of life can be purchased by the less well heeled, even sometimes by the poor.

Take a most extreme "Blue State" case, that bastion of "economic apartheid:" the highly "liberal" San Francisco Bay area.

In northern California houses routinely sell for more than one million dollars, even in the distant regional environs miles from San Francisco. An additional bedroom or bath may add more than one hundred thousand to the price.

Minimum wage minorities may have public housing and subsidized public services in urban ghettos. Students and other youth may bundle up in shared rooms or houses.

Working class non minorities may commute in by car one hundred miles or more. Huge sections of northern California "bar" new immigrants -- unless they are wealthy. The one exception is illegal immigrants from Mexico who are actively recruited into menial jobs while living in crowded low cost rooming houses or apartments -- with no need to commute the vast highway distances which a low income American citizen might need to travel.

The danger is that in milder form the San Francisco phenomenon is spreading: that "economic apartheid" can spread as Blue Staters help establish in Red States the "economic apartheid" they left behind.

As Blue State retirees migrate to retire into Red States with their lower prices and sometimes milder climates, they drive up Red State prices by using the nest eggs they gain from from selling their Blue State houses to buy and drive up the prices of Red State houses.

And that raises the cost of living for Red State folks, "stuck" as they often are on lower Red State wages.

Of course "Economic Apartheid" is nothing new. The songwriter Woody Guthrie picked it up in the 1930's when he wrote of California:

Do Re Mi

You want to buy you a home or a farm, that can't deal nobody harm, Or take your vacation by the mountains or sea. Don't swap your old cow for a car, you better stay right where you are, Better take this little tip from me.

'Cause I look through the want ads every day But the headlines on the papers always say: If you ain't got the do re mi, boys, you ain't got the do re mi, Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.

California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.