Thursday, May 31, 2012

HUMANITARIAN WAR: AN OXYMORON

”HUMANITARIAN” INTERVENTION IN SYRIA

Some of our politicians and pundits--many on the right--would have us intervene militarily in Syria. On May 28, 2012, General Martin Dempsey himself, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stepped out of his role as military advisor and into the role of policy maker, by stating that ”there is a military solution to the Syria problem.” or words to that effect. His statement could have been easily interpreted as lobbying for military intervention. His is not a proper role for a man in uniform. He should have kept his ”opinions" to himself.

The motive for military intervention in Syria is often described as "humanitarian". However, the most compelling reason for NOT intervening is humanitarian. Yes the Syrian people are suffering. The regime is brutal, some nine thousand people have died so far in demonstrations and fighting over the last year. Some of it no doubt stirred up by Israel and its supporters who would like to see Assad out of there. Has the USA’s CIA been involved? I suspect so but there is no proof.

But military intervention for ”humanitarian” purposes is simply unsupportable. The phrase ”humanitarian war” is an oxymoron. Think of our recent debacle in Iraq where our war efforts to unseat another dictator caused somewhere between 200,000 to 600,000 civilians to lose their lives either directly or indirectly from our military action, in addition it created four million refugees. Would that satisfy the ”humanitarians” in our midsts? That is analogous to having a surgeon amputate a man’s leg to cure his foot fungus.

Aside from the inconsistency and stupidity of a ”humanitarian” intervention, there is another even more basic reason--our economy.

Agreed Syria’s dictator Assad is a bad man. His support is questionable. He and his regime have been putting down a violent rebellion with what appears, from this perspective, as excessive force.

But this is a new time and we are faced with a new economic reality. The USA is no longer in the financial position to throw its weight around just to alter the internal affairs of other nations. Particularly when the out-come of such intervention is so cloudy and uncertain. Even General Demsey agrees to that.

But let’s look more closely at the new economic reality.

Who would pay for a military--"boots on the ground"--type intervention? For that is the only ”solution” possible.

In our nation which annually takes in about $3 trillion dollars but spends nearly $4 trillion dollars (2012), then wrings its collective Congressional hands about borrowing the one trillion dollars it needs to make up its deficit gap. That amount, each year is added to the growing national debt. (That debt is now at $15 trillion dollars which is just a bit over 100% of our GDP, or about the level of some economically shaky nations in Europe.) Furthermore, our Congress votes consistently against any tax increases for the well-heeled, and plans to cut spending by $1.1 trillion over the next ten budget years. This means that any further expenditures for military adventures can not be borrowed (from the Chinese) as they have in the past, but must come from austerity measures ----under our present system that means it is be taken out of the hide of the already beat-upon middle class.

Today, instead of phony "humanitarian wars" in distant foreign lands, we need true humanitarian relief here in the US, where hundreds of thousands of teachers, firemen, policemen and other municipal workers remain out of work. They are among the 13 million or more unemployed. Here at home, health care, social services, and education are in tatters, are underfunded, or are planned to be cut. The nation's general infrastructure, its roads, bridges, electrical grid, it energy supply, broadband access, etc., etc. are either antiquated or in need of updating to meet requirements of a modern nation. All of these needs go unattended as the nation struggles to rise out of the mire of two unnecessary wars, and the 2007 Great Recession, a tragedy resulting from lax government oversight, unwarrented deregulation of the banking industry, and Wall Street greed.

So, with all these problems where will the money come from to pay for any new military adventures in Syria proposed by the Republicans?

Perhaps those Republicans who beat the drums of war and who insist on talking austerity out of one side of their mouth (when it involves domestic and social spending), and press for low taxes for the wealthy out of the other side , would reach out to their well-heeled clients to fund their ”humanitarian" wars. Let us see how much the "one percenters" are willing to part with for a Syria intervention.

Humanitarian projects should begin at home.

Get the picture?

rjk

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

TRUTH, TORTURE AND THE MILLSTONES OF JUSTICE

The information below will not be found published in our government and corporate controlled media, but this story is out there. It is what the rest of the world knows.

Former President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal team and others (including Gonzales, Bybee, Yoo, Addington, and Haynes) were tried in absentia for war crimes and were all found guilty. The formal trial took place on Friday, May 11, 2012 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in a Nuremburg-style juridical event under the auspices of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission. The defendants where formally charged with torture and cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners and detainees during and after the Iraq war. The investigation results, oral testimony, (and harrowing) witness accounts of torture, and final conclusions of the judges will now be sent to the United Nations, the Security Council, and the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. And as well, the names of the convicted war criminals will each be registered in the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, "Register of War Criminals" for the public record. The trial and it's findings will make it more difficult for George Bush and his co-conspirators to avoid the long hand of the law when they leave the USA and enter foreign lands which are signatories of the Geneva Accords.

Prior to this prosecutors and jurists in other nations, including Spain, Germany, and Canada, as signatories of the Geneva Conventions, made attempts at intercepting Bush and pursuing legal action as he entered their territories. However, these attempts were aborted under strong pressure from the present US (Obama) government (as documented by leaked secret cables obtained and published by Wikileaks). And the fact that Bush's crimes were mere allegations at that time. That is until just last year---in Switzerland.

In February of last year, the NY Times reported that former President Bush was forced to cancel a speaking engagement in Geneva, Switzerland for the United Israel Appeal when threats of large scale protests forced the organizer to cancel. ( See J. Risen, NYT, 2-5-11) Unfortunately for Bush,the event was scheduled just after the publication of the former President's book, "Decision Points" in which, in an attempt to rewrite history and defend his actions, he purposely or inadvertently laid out for the world his complicity in war crimes. In addition, during candid interviews he gave to boost book sales, Bush publicly and proudly stated that he had "personally authorized the use of torture" on several detainees. As a result, of his self-incriminating statements, Amnesty International petitioned the Swiss to open an investigation of Bush while he was in the country, since he could be prosecuted or these crimes in that nation--where the Geneva Accords on torture and war crimes were actually drafted. Though that petition was received and presumably evaluated by the Swiss government, the Swiss made no clear plans to prosecute Bush on his visit. (Think of the US possibility for retribution, and how difficult it might get for Victorinox to sell all those pocket knives.) However, when it became clear that protests would likely be violent, the United Israel Appeal cancelled the Geneva event. So Bush stayed home and was denied a hefty speaking fee. However, these events and self incriminating revelations set the stage for the subsequent War Crimes trail in Maylasia.

A similar scenario played out in Vancouver, Canada in October 2011, where a Bush speech again generated a wave of protests. But there, Bush picked up his fee, but he might not have felt so sanguine about the protests and controversy generated in "friendly", neighboring Canada as well as attempts at legal intervention to arrest him there.

Another revelation which put a dent in Bush's plans to exploit the talk circuit in coming months for quick dough, occurred on the BBC in England later that year on February 15, 2011. In an investigative report, the BBC interviewed Iraqi defector Rafid al Janabi, codenamed "Curveball" and sometimes credited as the source of the false evidence which led to the Iraqi War. According to al Janabi's own testimony, he lied when he claimed that he had witnessed the construction of "mobile" bacteriological weapon platforms which he claimed were to be put on truck beds and moved from place to place so they could not be detected by inspectors.. "I lied about it and I am not sorry for it" stated al Janabi. This author, only a moderatley well informed private citizen, recalled hearing the story about a mobile lab and, knowing something of bacteriology, knew that a sophisticated laboratory for weapons-grade bacteriological work could never be made to function on a truck bed. The idea was so incredible no one with any understanding of basic biology, physics and laboratory procedures could have believed it. None did. But Janabi happened to have defected to Germany (in 1999) when information on Iraq was of critically high value. The Germans could use the information (and disinformation) to ingratiate themselves with the Americans. So though he should have been sent back to Iraq, the Germans held on to al Janabi as a potential informant, even though no one in Germany took him seriously. For their own purposes they were planning to "sell" him to the US. When his story became more widely known, no one in the US intelligence and information service believed his story either. Some Americans actually worked diligently to persuade their seniors that al Janabi's information was incredulous. In fact that disbelief is what won al Janabi the epithet, "Curveball". What does it mean? A curveball looks like it is going wide but comes in for a strike. Its a "fooler" and that's what al Janabi was. But his stay in Germany and the stipend he might get for living expenses while he was there, depended on generating a story, and al Janabi supplied an imaginative one. His lies and perfidy would have had little impact on the world and we would never have heard the name "Curveball" had not a US President, George Bush, and an eager group of American neo-cons including Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld been casting around for some "evidence", any evidence, valid or not, that would serve their purpose as a casus belli for their already formulated plan to attack Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Curveball, (al Janabi) made the perfect keystone to fit the structured plan to invade Iraq. Al Janabi lied and George Bush and Dick Cheney (ignoring the CIA and intellignece services) in effect swore it was true.

Bur Bush was not finished until he coerced his Secretary of State, Colin Powell to swear to these "facts" at the infamous UN assembly. Al Janabi's lies and those of Bush's 'trustworthy' Secretary of State, at the UN, helped make the shaky case for a horribly destructive war for both Iraq and the US. [A war which caused the deaths of a minimum of a hundred thousand innocent Iraqis (but most statistically-valid independent analyses estimate Iraqi deaths at between 300,000 to 600,000), and nearly five thousand American troops killed, thirty-three thousand wounded, and millions of Iraqis turned into refugees, as well as that nation's once substantial infrastructure revengefully "bombed back into the Stone Age" as Bush ordered. This is to ignore economic impact at home and the massive debt incurred in the US (the three trillion dollars this war would cost) and the subsequent economic depression which it helped initiate.] Powell, playing his role as a weak, but loyal underling, without the strength, wisdom or courage to oppose his way-ward President, used up his previous sterling reputation for honesty with the American people to convince the UN and USA of the necessity to go to war. Powell lied. Incredibly, this formerly honorable man even got his White House staff to work up "more believable" diagrams of al Janabi's imaginary mobile WMD labs for his UN presentation, and to top it off, used as a phony prop a vial of innocuous white powder to further frighten his UN audience into agreement. When he appears in public somewhere, someone should throw a shoe at him too.

Al-Janabi was revealed by the BBC as a deceitful, purveyor of lies, scheming only for his own benefit and acting as a tool of the Bush-Cheney crowd to be used to further their war plans.

But today, twelve years after these troubling events, the inevitable millstones of justice, of which it is said, "grind very slowly but exceedingly fine" are doing their inevitable 'pulveriser' best. Today, in America we are faced with the embarrassment of harboring a former President who is convicted as a torturer and war criminal--(but yet we have no stomach to confront him, and our government at peril to its reputation as a nation of laws continues to ignore his crimes). Today, we also know that "Curveball", the perfidious, unprincipled, schemer, upon which Bush knowingly hung his plans for an illegal, immoral war, has himself confessed to his lies.

Thus, still not able to achieve justice for those we tortured at least we now know 'how' we were deceived. After these events we may garner some satisfaction that Bush's reputation is permanently scarred. His travels are confined (less as a result of his fear of potential arrest and trial as a war criminal, due to the protection he still gets from the US,) but more as a result of the disdain and hatred he arouses in foreign populations as a torturer and war criminal. Perhaps more significantly for him, Bush's ability to earn speaking fees on the anticipated, lucrative, post-presidential speaking circuit are now restricted and will not meet his expectations. At least that is some satisfaction to those Americans who opposed Bush and his illegal policies and suffered under his administration.

Perhaps other heads of state, even here in the US, (such as Mr Obama,whose extra-juridical assassination policies by unmanned drones in Afghanistan and elsewhere are under scrutiny now as war crimes) and those leaders in less powerful nations (with fewer levers to pull to protect their criminal element than the USA), will remember Bush who lied his nation into a disastrous three-trillion dollar war, maimed and caused the deaths untold innocents, and sanctioned torture, and war crimes. The pain on Bush's face as demonstrators throw their shoes at his head wherever it pops up, may give other potential war criminals and torturers pause!

Let us hope that America, which has such a poor collective memory, has finally learned something from its recent history...enough perhaps to avoid revisiting mistakes of way-ward leadershiip and in disastrous foreign entanglements made over and over again. My late good friend Dr. Jim Sosnowski, aged 26 years old, died in Vietnam in a forward MASH unit in another senseless war only 46 years ago. How can we forget his sacrifice and those of so many many others so quickly?


Get the picture?

rjk

Friday, May 18, 2012

DEFENSE SPENDING PROPAGANDA

Propaganda: The deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate thought and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist. (See Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell).


The press in a vibrant and functioning democracy serves to inform the electorate. It is one of the three legs of the democratic national "stool". Perhaps these "legs” may be listed as:free elections, a responsive elected body and judiciary, and a free press. Our nation has fought several horrific wars for those ideals. Democracy cannot function without a free, inquiring press to help keep the electorate, for which the government works, informed. To be a journalist in a democracy or a nation which aspires to democracy is a high calling and even an heroic act in some circumstances.


Unfortunately, in some parts of America, these concepts are as alien as they might be in a few modern third-world countries, parts of the Middle East or in China. What has happened to our ideals? Besides some of our living greats (and some retired) such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Seymour Hersh, and others, who courageously speak out and inform..where are the other true journalists, such as: the Herseys, Murrows, Tarbells, Reeds, the Stones, Menckens, Shirers, etc. of the past?


Today we have too many who call themselves "journalists" but are simply propagandists. An exasperatingly common example of this trend is found in the Murdoch empire of media and newspapers.


Rupert Murdoch an Australian supermarket tabloid publisher (the Star) who emigrated to America where in 1976 he purchased the old New York Post (at that point it had been a daily for 175 years, being established in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton and others). Murdoch converted that venerable broad sheet into a right-wing tabloid which today unabashedly parrots Murdoch's personal political and social-conservative line. Today it specializes in fine examples of---propaganda.


I am not a reader of the modern Post, though as a boy, living in Brooklyn, NY, when the Post was owned by Dorothy Schiff (and under the editorship of James Wechsler) it was a fine tabloid which served the City well. It was widely available in my neighborhood and I read it often.


Recently, on a flight from New York to Miami, with my wifi turned off and nothing much to read, I happened upon a copy of the Post, on an empty adjoining seat. I recalled the paper from my boyhood, so with a bit of nostalgia, for the old header which stayed the same, I began to turn the pages. The style was different, from those editions of my youth, too much crime and gore, and all presented in a sensational manner, and with too little substance. I found not much of significance in the ”news” section. So I turned to the editorial pages.


There on May 16,2012, I encountered the following story which would not have appeared as written today, in the old Post.



In an Op-Ed piece, written by Peter Brookes (who is a Heritage Foundation Fellow and former deputy assistant secretary of defense under George Bush) and entitled: "Disarming US, As Wolves Lie in Wait”, Brookes, a staunch lobbyist for the defense industry and fear monger extraordinaire writes with the all too obvious intention of stoking up the support for additional military spending in a bloated Pentagon budget. There are few facts in Brookes’ piece, most of his fearful pronouncements are simply that--personal statements of ’man-on-the street’ opinion. Brooke's sees the world rife with trouble for the USA from Korea, the Middle East, North Africa, to Afghanistan, and even in cyberspace. He concludes by urging his readership: ”This is no time to give short shrift to American security." Each of the author's statements is maximized to shape the reader's perceptions and manipulate thought toward fear that any cuts in the Pentagon's budget would weaken the US and subject our citizenry to frightful consequences. To this end, Brookes minimizes or eliminates any factual statements, uses omission to avoid any facts that are not consistent with his message, and adds half-truths where necessary to bolster his propaganda.


No where does Brookes mention the size of the ($700 billion dollar 2012) military budget, or the fact that the figure does NOT include expenses for the Iraq and Afghan wars, or that our actual total defense-related spending is more like 1.4 trillion dollars or about two times the current budget. Nor does he mention that the modest "cuts" to the budget ( he uses the figure of about $500 billion--the only number he puts in this piece) would take place over a decade. Thus next year instead of the largess of the $700 billion the military is getting this year, it would have to be sated with a mere $650 billion.


It is noteworthy that the most powerful army in the world spends $181billion a year on personnel, $107 billion for salaries and allowances, $50 billion for health care, and $24 billion for retirement pay. I suspect that there must be someplace in that bloated series of numbers where the Pentagon could find a mere $50 billion to cut. (See NYT "Defense Budget Cuts" Bumiller and Shanker, 1-26-12)


Brookes makes no mention that the present level of defense spending is at an all time high. Our present defense budget at @ $700 billion represents nearly 5% of our current GDP. Except for several Gulf oil monarchies (like Saudi Arabia) our defense budget is the greatest bite out of GDP than almost every other nation. The world average is only 2% of GDP for most modern western nations and much less for some such as Japan (1%).


Current figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicate that per capita costs for military spending (in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars) reveals that each man woman and child in the US, in 2012, pays out approximately $4,000.00 each for their government’s military expenditures around the world. From 1962 (when per capita expenses = $2,700 during the Vietnam War) to 1990 (when per capita expense = @ $3,500) to the present time ($4,000) such spending has risen steadily, but at an accelerated pace since 2001.


No where does Brookes mention the level of our military expenditures relative to those of our potential enemies. For example, China who some consider as our most formidable potential enemy, spends a mere two-tenths of our direct military expenses on defense, or about $140 billion dollars annually--versus our $700 billion. Russia, spends less than one-tenth of our costs on defense (@$60 billion). Iran budgets just about one-one hundredth of what we spend, or $7 billion) a tiny fraction, as is that of North Korea. In fact, up until just recently, it is well known that the USA spent more for defense than all the combined expenditures of all other nations in the world! At present, our total stated defense budget is equal to about 50% of what all other nations combined spend. But our ”total defense spending” including homeland security, veterans affairs, care of wounded, interest on debt from previous wars, etc. etc. of about $1.4 trillion is very close to total world combined expenditures of 1.5 trillion.


Thus by leaving out these facts about our military budget, by failing to mention that the reductions would be phased in over ten years, by failing to inform his readership that the present military expenditures are at the highest they have ever been, by ignoring the massive overwhelming military power we have versus the rest of the world, Brookes descends from simply biased reporting to jingoistic propaganda.


We're he to have added another favorite ploy used by the ”defense expansion lobby”, that is that old saw: ”defense spending provides jobs” he would have had to have added the following interesting facts to be other than a propagandist.


Indeed our defense industry does provide jobs--many good, high paying jobs. But that is not the whole story. Studies by the War Costs Project indicate that one billion US dollars in military spending nets about 12,000 US jobs, while a similar expenditure in the green economy would provide 17,000 jobs, in health care it produces 20,000 jobs, and in education it generates about 29,000 jobs. (See War Costs Project, Univ. Mass., Prof Greenwald and Crowe, 2011)


So by shifting our spending away from military spending into either one of these alternatives we would actually improve employment prospects, while increasing military spending would tend to decrease those prospects. A similar study by Globabl Insight arrived at much the same conculsions.


Thus though it is true that defense spending supports jobs, we're we to expend the same amount of money on non-defense programs (support for education for example or health care) we would be creating even more jobs. In fact our emphasis on defense spending in lieu of support for the green economy, education or healthcare actually costs us jobs.


That is the difference between propaganda and informative journalism.


Get the picture?





rjk









Thursday, May 3, 2012

THE ORIGIN OF "CALIFORNIA" A DIVERSION FROM BORING POLITICS

These days, after months and months of Republican debates, and now mercifully we find ourselves in the last throes of the campaign--we all have become so bored with political speeches and the predictable, repetitive arguments that my mind immediately begins to wander when listening to some candidate or supporter speak. It happened to me yesterday.

I was watching Senator Barbara Boxer, on TV as she presented a cogent, well-thought out argument on why she agreed with President Obama. What the argumet was I do not know. (That is the problem, I clocked out due to boredom.) As she spoke, my mind slipped out of gear, like a truck going up a very steep hill. Synapses in my frontal lobes stuttered and misfired as my brain tissues shut down and my thoughts slunk from focusing on the speakers face to stupidly examining the stolid wooden podium beneath the chattering Senator. Slowly and dumbly I read the name "Boxer" and I dimly thought of its origin. Her forebears (or her husband's), were they "boxers"? I thought. Did they construct boxes? Or were they pugilists? My mental gears clanked and ground to a halt. Thinking slowed to a stop. Then the gears locked as I hit a dead end, with that last "thoughtoid". My mind, functioning like a snail's slow progress across a warm surface meandered around to finally focus on the gilded words engraved on a glittering plaque glued to the podium. I dumbly mouthed the words, as I read slowly and methodically: "Senator Boxer, (D.) California", as the Senator chatted on in a sprightly manner about the unfair reporting of Fox News and bias in some journalist’s writing..But by now my brain was far, far away accros the continent on our nation’s west coast.

This is what happens to a political junkie during a long, long political campaign.

Ummm.., I thought, "California", the name of that state was always a puzzle to me. Perhaps it was simply that I needed some change from politics and a mental puzzle to work on. A small portion of my brain seemed to come alive. That little part, wondered if the name "California"could possibly have been derived from the Greek. I know that the prefix "καλλι" means "beautiful" or "good". Here, my numbed brain seemed to have started to function again. Gears began to whirr. This was something interesting and different, than politics. There were actual true statements as well as unknowns to ponder and different refreshing concepts to toy with. I had hit on a subject that was at least not brain-numbing campaign drivel. My mental engine began to sputter to life again, as if the climbing truck had reached the crest of the hill and now began to coast over the top. Then in response to gravity, it sped up.

The last part of the word, "California" could be from the latin "fornix", I thought. It is from the Latin for ”fold” or ”chasm”. I tried to put that together with the "Cali" prefix and toyed with an possible meaning such as "beautiful folded" ---er... "folded mountains". That was rejected and I tried several other possibilities. But by, now my better-functioning critical thinking zones concluded that these had very little possibility of being valid. I turned the TV with the still chattering Senator off and reached for my classical Greek dictionary. I found no good possibilities there. Then I searched the Latin dictionary--not much there either.

But the web pages on the history sites helped. A search of Wikipedia revealed that the name "California" predated the discovery of the place itself by more than a quarter century. The term first appeared in a 1510 Spanish novel by the author, Garcia Rodriquez de Montalvo,(1450-1504) entitled:”Las sergas de Esplandian”, or the Exploits of Esplandian. This novel was the fourth in a series of chivalric romances concerning the character, Amadis of Gaul. Montalvo had reprinted and edited three earlier works, by another author, writing the fourth book in the series himself. Montalvo's novel tells of the life and wanderings of Amadis' eldest son, who sails to a mythical island, of "California". This island was described by Montalvo as located "on the right hand" (west?) of the Indies. Montalvo's island was described as inhabited by a tribe of black women, "without any men living among them" who live "in the manner of Amazons". Furthermore, something that was sure to pique the interest of 16th Century Spanish explorers, the island was supposed to be rich in gold. Montalvo writes: "There being no other metal there" the women, who are led by a female chieftain known as a ”califa” use gold for their jewelry, dress, and even weapons.

The term "califa" used by Montalvo is almost unquestionably derived from the Arabic word "caliph" the head of state of a Muslim caliphate, or a chieftain. The term would be well known to the Spanish of this period. Consider that this novel was written in a nation which had been invaded by Moslem Arabs in 711AD. The Arabs settled in and co-existed profitably and peacefully with the Spanish Christians and Jews for more than seven hundred years. They brought with them many texts translated directly from the ancient Romans and Greeks..which became a treasure trove of informataion. Only a few years before the period when Montalvo wrote, in 1499, the Arabs had been expelled as Muslim infidels from Spain. The word "California” would have been easily understood to Spanish readers of this time as the "land of the Amazon califa".

Thus for the most basic reasons which drive mankind, sex and riches, the Spanish explorers, not withstanding that it was fiction, sought out the "island of California" somewhere off the west coast of Mexico. The presumed presence of gold, (always a great attraction), and the presence of black women forced into a state of sexual abstemiousness --who, as the Spanish sailors and explorers must have turned over in their minds many times, were for long periods of time devoid of male company, and in their minds, the women would thus be particularly eager for their "membrum virile" (ο φαλλος). For most, the novelist's Island of California must have been accepted as myth, as an invention of an imaginative author. But to the explorers of the 16th Century, the "Island of California" seems to have been still eagerly sought after by the Spanish conquistadors as they cruised along the west coast of North America. Human nature drives us to posit ideas which have strong elemental attraction such as gold and sex when they fit so well into what we would like to think.

The man who was to eventually find and name this island of California, of glittering gold and sex with eager black women was one Hernan Cortes. Cortes (1485-1547), was born in what is now western Spain in Extremadura, a harsh but beautiful land land which reminds one of our own southwest. At the age of sixteen, young Cortes, who was to become the famous conquistador, spent two years as a student at the premiere Spanish center of learning in Salamanca. But by 1503, the stories of Columbus’ discoveries in the New World must have been an irresistible lure for the young, ambitious man, while the lectures on Spanish law his father sent him to Univerisity to study were probably very boring. At his first opportunity, Cortes, still a youth, emigrated to the New World to find his fortune. He tarried a while in Spanish Hispaniola and then moved on to Cuba where the Spanish King's governor had his main offices and where through family connections young Cortes was appointed to the post of alcalde or magistrate. Not long afterward, Governor Velasquez assigned him the task of exploring the interior of the adjacent North American mainland, present day Mexico. But Cortes turned the exploration force into an invasion. By 1519 Cortes has assembled a large fleet and military force for this purpose. In that same year he invaded the mainland and defeated the powerful and wealthy Aztecs in a brutal campaign. Using deceit, and subterfuge he overcame Montezuma’s forces and conquered all of central Mexico for Spain. Though offered many emoluments and titles by the King, these did not satisfy Cortes' ambitions. After many other campaigns, Cortes (with his subordinate Francisco de Ulloa) set out to explore the Pacific coast of Mexico and North America. Off the southern coast of Mexico they sailed into a placid sea they named the Sea of Cortes, and crossing this body of water they came to the southern tip of the modern-day peninsula of Baja California which they thought was an island. Both men were sure to have been familiar with Montalvo’s novel and the mythical island off the coast of Mexico called "California". They named the new lands after the mythical island of the Amazonian queen Califa, ”California” or ”Las Californias” a term which included the "island" of Baja California (a peninsula) and the mainland portion-now the US state of California.

Oh, what a wealth of history there lies in a name!

And interestingly our modern State of California remains an attraction for seekers of gold and sex to this day.

And thus ended my mental diversion from boring politics! At least my brain was engaged and I have added a bit to my store of knowledge. Not so with politics today, which it seems has entered a period of same old, same old Groundhog Days.


Get the picture?


rjk

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

DRONE WARFARE IS NOT JUSTIFIED IN OUR WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

WEAKNESS IN OUR LEADERS AND MILITARY OVER-REACH

I heard on the TV news today (April 30, 2012) that for the first time President Obama has attempted to rationalize, through his spokesperson, counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan, his frequent use of aerial drones in the war in Afghanistan as well as elsewhere in places that are not war zones. Perhaps this is a result of the ramp up of attacks by the Romney camp who claim that Mr. Obama is "spiking the football*" in regard to his so called military successes. But for whatever reason, they claim, Brennan and Obama are dead wrong. They both should revisit the idea of what is a morally justified war and proportional response.

(By the way, John Brennan is the US official who claimed that the US has a "clean record" on the use of unmanned drones and a "year-long string of perfect assassinations with zero collateral deaths." Even hardened professionals who heard that statement winced at it's impossibility. So we must take what this man states--who is a charter member of the anti-terrorist mini industry--with a large grain of sand.)

The use of drones in a war of defense against a legitimate foe who is actually capable and poised to launch attacks on our homeland is of course justified--as a form of self defense. That is not the case in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and Yemen..one of our latest undeclared "war" zones. In Afghanistan, the Taliban (frequent targets of drones) are a home grown, local force defending their native land and way of life from invasion by a foreign occupying force. I do not agree with their policies, politics or their treatment of their womenfolk, or their support of Bin Laden prior to the 9-11 attack, but I can not legitimately claim that they are today a "threat" to our homeland. They just want us out of there.

In regard to the few al Qaida remaining in Afghanistan, (which the US government publications estimate recently to be in the range of 100 or so individuals. The President himself stated that to date we have "neutralized 20 out of 30 of their top leadership.") the Obama Administration would like to have their cake and eat it too. They would have us believe that after all the hundreds of drone air strikes (now, under Obama about one every four days) that they have decimated al Qaida, and they would like to take credit for the elimination of the "terrorist threat". But they do not want to have this handy and useful "threat" disappear completely. So somehow, miraculously, according to them, there are still more al Qaida cropping up everywhere, more al Qaida "associated", al-Qaida "related" more al Qaida "franchise" groups and more "threats to our homeland". In regard to Yemen, one must completely disengage our senses from our intellect to believe that the impoverished, desertified, sand-blown, politically fractured, wasteland called Yemen could ever stitch together a legitimate threat against the USA. If you believe that, there is a bridge in Brooklyn....that I think you might be interested in purchasing. Thus the ghoulish counting of al Qaida "takedowns," "kills", "neutralisation" continues and reminds me of the old-style military "body count" game which was used by our military (for a while) so effectively in Vietnam War days. Now with modern unmanned drone attacks the "kills" are even more secretive and unverifiable, and thus so much more effective (temporarily) to maintain unwarranted support for questionable military action.

The war in Afghanistan, it is essentially over. And tonight, May 1, 2012 the President, speaking from Kabul stated just that. The Taliban have won. But the President has signed an agreement which would keep us there for more than another decade. His so called "strategy" is to beat the Taliban up a bit with drone attacks so that when their survivors reach the negotiating table, they would be more amenable to our demands for permanent Afghan bases, and lucrative
inside deals for our corporate elites to exploit Afghan natural resources after our main forces leave. Or perhaps, the reason is so that our troops and allies will not have to fight each other as they climb into the open doorway of a whirring helicopter hovering above the rooftop of the US embassy in Kabul when we depart as we did in Vietnam, or sneak off surreptitiously in the dark of night as we did in neighboring Iraq. Furthermore, President Obama has already established his politically-motivated 2014 departure date--now extended to 2024. But be forewarned all details of course are still on the table.

But we stay on and probably will continue to use drones to kill innocents for the next decade. No one, least of all a President of the USA in a tight reelection race would want to pull up stakes and leave a war zone....and let the Republicans blame him for "losing", even losing an already "lost war". No, that is political suicide. Thus, we remain at "war" in Afghanistan, and will remain apparently until 2024, as our troops urinate on dead Taliban, burn Quarans in open fires, go on enraged killing sprees like Sargent Robert Bales who gunned down sixteen innocent women and children as they cowered in their homes, and in turn, our boys (and girls) get shot at, wounded, and killed, as the increasingly bold Taliban fight on, even now after ten years of our efforts and billions of dollars expended, as they surge back into the streets of Kabul from which we extirpated them ten years ago.

But is such a war a justified war with proportional response and taken up in the defense of our homeland? Hardly. The Taliban are no threat to us or our interests. Can they attack our homeland? No. Do they want to? No. Is our response to the threat proportional. No. Or is this just a political "situation" which the President must pace out to extend a phony war to more effectively "end" it when domestic political condition permit him to finally wrap-up and leave at an opportune time? And now he states it will not end until 2024--if ever.

Thus the war in Afghanistan, and its metastasized sub-wars in other nations, is NOT justified. It wears on not for our nation's defense, but for Mr. Obama's political survival and for that reason does not approach the minimum standard for a just war. Thus for that same reason the use of Predator drones which kill more innocent bystanders than it does our 'political' enemies is not justified either.

Of course the killing of our own citizens abroad by Presidential fiat such as the cold-blooded assassination of Arizona-born-and-bred, Anwar al Awlaki who may have had alien and objectionable ideas and perhaps sympathies with the enemy---but as a US citizen, the Constitution should have protected him from summary execution, and a death at the hands of his own countrymen without judicial review or input. Assassination of a US citizen at the hands of President Obama is a threat to us all and makes Awlaki's culpability or possible innocence unknowable. The death of his sixteen-year-old-Denver, USA-born son, Abdulrahman al Awlaki, is another case all together. He was an innocent US civilian who was certainly too young to have had fully formulated political ideas that would have been a threat to us. He was killed after his father in a subsequent Obama-ordered drone strike. That act is certainly a verifiable "Murder 2" charge (recall the Trayvon Martin case of a youngster of similar age) in any international court. This will remain a black mark on this President's Nobel Peace Prize reputation (and rightly so) for the rest of his life.

In summary, President Obama is using drone attacks as a form of high-tech political assassination to decapitate political groups he and his advisors presently see as "their" enemy, not necessarily the enemy of our state. The use of drones so freely by Obama also provides a form of political insurance for the President against a charge of military weakness. Rash unnecessary use of this form of warfare permits him to claim that he is "strong on defense".

A measure of just how much the President's use of drone warfare is a form of simple political insurance (and with little military value) can be gauged by the difference in use of this form of killing by the two Presidents who used it. George Bush, a leader not likely to be charged with "military wimpishness" used drone attacks more judiciously, about one in every forty-three days on average. Obama on the other hand, in very similar geopolitical and domestic circumstances, has used them ten time more frequently or about one in every four days. That difference in use of the two men in similar military circumstances is a clear measure of just how useful the drone kills have been as a "domestic political tool" to control and deflect internal political attacks by Republicans and not an element necessarily used to satisfy a justifiable military objective.

Finally, there lies the question of the efficacy of this new, drone-war technology. The idea of their use is to kill and weaken the enemy, frighten them into submission and decapitate the leadership cadre by assassinations. To a large degree, over time, such policies only inflame and exacerbate the conditions and political situations they are employed to control. They incite the populace against the foreign invader/colonial power. Furthermore, the process eliminates leaders who have the experience and authority to lead the insurgency and these are the very persons needed to eventually negotiate with the colonial (or neo-colonial) power. Eliminating these leaders interrupts, abrogates or delays the possibility of a negotiated settlement. Israel's experience with targeted assassinations ended up eliminating the moderate Palestinian leadership in the insurgency with the very same strategy and unfortunate results which continue to haunt that troubled state to this day. Killing off the leadership also tends to speed up the radicalization of the insurrection.

Thus, I'm sorry Mr. Obama, there is no justification for your continued war in Afghanistan, and therefore none for the use of unmanned drones there and elsewhere. Your politically motivated and unfortunate recent decisions have made you as much a war criminal as Mr. George Bush.

MORE POLITICAL MUSINGS

As a nation, we seem to be stuck on the horns of a national election dilemma. After a questionable election, and a national tragedy, the nation went off half-cocked, led by a "cowboy" tough-guy president like George Bush, who misrepresented his way into two foreign wars which have become an international disaster, and helped to usher in the second Great Depression. Then we elected what we all seemed to see as a George Bush mirror image--an intellectual, a thoughtful, and cool, cautious black President. But once in office he morphed into a "black" Bush. The electorate soon learned that in this nation, in the 21 st Century the President's race was a weakness which had to be dealt with, and all of his intellect and ability could not overcome. Had Obama been a white Protestant no one could have slugged him with that particular cudgel. Perhaps he would have smacked Netanyahu in the nose, and said NO to the troop surge, pulled out of Afghanistan now, and fought for the single payer option, etc. etc. We learned that he could not make those tough decisions, but was forced to compromise and give in to a tough opponent. To insulate himself from attacks he had to compromise and over-react and over-reach and make sometimes even more foolhardy acts than "the White Bush." Many of his foreign policy actions were designed just so he could insulate himself from charges of "wimpishness". But the lack of respect this nation gave him and the intolerance which simmered just below the surface weakened this leader.

So from this perspective we've had a long stretch of bad leadership. Without going back before most readers memory, we can start with Clinton. We elected this self-centered, sex-obsessed, white, scoundrel, who presented himself as a progressive but who governed from the right of center. He signed far-right banking legislation which helped to ushered in the Geat Depression of 2007-2008. He sullied the reputation of the White House and the Oval Office with his Huck Finn behavior. His actions aroused the far right. His failure to leave office gracefully and hand over the reins to Al Gore a strong leader, when he was impeached led to a a confused election in which the Supreme Court intervened to usher in a conservative, dullard cowboy, who was led through his eight years by a Rasputin-like reactionary VP, who conspired to involve the nation in two disastrous wars that ended in economic upheaval. The nation reacted again to elect a black, centrist, of intellect and talent. We dumped him into the most challenging foreign policy, economic and political circumstances probably ever faced by any President. His race and over conciliatory temperament prevented him from effectively facing down the forces of the right which mercilessly pummeled him throughout his term. We have had a long series of bad and weak or ineffective leadership.

Is there something wrong here? Is this some kind of Groundhog Day process going on? Perhaps our political system has some inherent weakness that drives us like a pendulum from right to left but never out of the same blasted-out fox hole, whomever we elect.

Woe for us if we elect a woman next time. What will she have to do to establish her military bona-fides? Start WW III?

One must think, at this juncture, after seeing President Obama's inability to change the nation's course away from a format established by George Bush and watch as he falters and falls into the same behavior patterns as Bush---that perhaps we do NEED a man of business, a non-ideologue, a nuts and bolts man, like a Romney who perhaps CAN somehow change our course. But is a Romney capable of thinking of what is best for the nation? Can he make the necessary changes?Would he hang on to and tame the crazy, whip lashing helm of this nation's wild ship of state.

Or will a reelected Obama, reborn by winning a second term somehow develop a calcification in his supple back which will permit him to face up to the challenges of a divided confused and suffering nation. I always had great optimism for this man. Give a smart man a chance, let him stew a bit and learn, and since he can learn he can change and soon he will see the light of day and make the necessary changes. Can he do it?

There is a bad dream I have now and again. It is that we have had a "White Bush" and a "Black Bush", and there seems a good chance that we can expect from the next election...a "Mormon Bush"! I care not about the Mormon part...but it is the Bush part that scares me. Will there be another "Bush style Presidency" and will still be in Afghanistan in 2024?

Get the picture?

rjk


*Spiking the Football. A term derived from late 20th Century American football. In American football, when a player makes a run that results in the player carrying the ball over the goal line of the opposing team, the ecstatic and overly demonstrative (victory dance) player throws the ball with force down into the ground, so that it bounces up into the air in an act of defiance and threat to the opposing team. It is looked on as poor sportsmanship.