Fueling the war economy

By the time a gallon of gas--purchased wholesale from, say, ExxonMobil for 84 cents per gallon--gets to Afghanistan, the US Military has paid around $600 for each gallon. In Iraq, fuel is a bit cheaper, at $150/gallon. Consider: a single Abrams tank driving one mile per hour en route from the southern border of Iraq to Baghdad racks up gas costs of $60,000. To cut costs, a special army unit is teaming up with GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler to develop a line of military vehicles that are gas-electric or diesel-electric hybrids. Hopefully this technology will trickle back to the States where it can be used in the top-selling product rollout from the last Gulf War, the gas-guzzling Humvee.

Atwood to America: we've gotta talk

"Dear America: This is a difficult letter to write, because I'm no longer sure who you are," writes novelist Margaret Atwood. It's a beautiful letter, celebrating what America was, or can be. Here's where she ends up with it:

By the time you read this, Baghdad may or may not look like the craters of the Moon, and many more sheep entrails will have been examined. Let's talk, then, not about what you're doing to other people, but about what you're doing to yourselves.

You're gutting the Constitution. Already your home can be entered without your knowledge or permission, you can be snatched away and incarcerated without cause, your mail can be spied on, your private records searched. Why isn't this a recipe for widespread business theft, political intimidation, and fraud? I know you've been told all this is for your own safety and protection, but think about it for a minute. Anyway, when did you get so scared? You didn't used to be easily frightened.

You're running up a record level of debt. Keep spending at this rate and pretty soon you won't be able to afford any big military adventures. Either that or you'll go the way of the USSR: lots of tanks, but no air conditioning. That will make folks very cross. They'll be even crosser when they can't take a shower because your short-sighted bulldozing of environmental protections has dirtied most of the water and dried up the rest. Then things will get hot and dirty indeed.

You're torching the American economy. How soon before the answer to that will be, not to produce anything yourselves, but to grab stuff other people produce, at gunboat-diplomacy prices? Is the world going to consist of a few megarich King Midases, with the rest being serfs, both inside and outside your country? Will the biggest business sector in the United States be the prison system? Let's hope not.

If you proceed much further down the slippery slope, people around the world will stop admiring the good things about you. They'll decide that your city upon the hill is a slum and your democracy is a sham, and therefore you have no business trying to impose your sullied vision on them. They'll think you've abandoned the rule of law. They'll think you've fouled your own nest.

The British used to have a myth about King Arthur. He wasn't dead, but sleeping in a cave, it was said; in the country's hour of greatest peril, he would return. You, too, have great spirits of the past you may call upon: men and women of courage, of conscience, of prescience. Summon them now, to stand with you, to inspire you, to defend the best in you. You need them.

WARn out

• As the war in Iraq fizzles along (troops are under-supplied, and "shock and awe" clearly didn't), Pentagon insiders say it's Rumsfeld's fault, according to a new New Yorker article. As allegations surface that Rumsfeld and his cadre of civilian advisors have been over-ruling Tommy Franks and the traditionally held rules of engagement, dissent is mounting in the British forces too: three soldiers in the 16th Air Assault Brigade are being sent home for court martial because they "complained about the way the war is being fought and the growing danger to civilians."

• Here's how CNN's Aaron Brown began his interview with peace activist Daniel Ellsberg. Note the less-than-objective premise he starts out with, then read Ellsberg's right-on-the-money response: "The Iraqi political strategy is in large part to use the anti-war demonstrations around the world to create political pressure on the coalition governments to stand down, cease fire and stop the war. In that regard, are you playing into the hands of what I think you would even acknowledge is a very bad regime."

• American GIs in the Gulf are required to pray for the president every day (well, he doesneed it). The pamphlet "A Christian's Duty" includes verses like "Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding" and "Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics".

• A British soldier injured by a friendly fire attack from a US anti-tank aircraft that killed one, injured three and destroyed two armored vehicles: "Combat is what I’ve been trained for. I can command my vehicle. I can keep it from being attacked. What I have not been trained to do is look over my shoulder to see whether an American is shooting at me.” He described the American pilot as a cowboy with "no regard for human life."

• US Marines fire on civilians at the "Bridge of Death," killing 12 or more: "One man's body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes. His savings, perhaps."

• Read "When 'Precision' Bombing Isn't: Iraqi Civilians Learn the Lesson of Afghanistan," a study by Marc W. Herold, professor of Economics and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire.

[Expletive Repeated]

• The U.N. Children's Fund representative in Iraq says that more than 570,000 traumatized Iraqi children could need psychological counseling by the time the war ends.

• A physician in Baghdad, where at least 58 civilians were killed by Allied bombs, implores, "I ask Bush and Blair to imagine how they would feel if their child died in their arms," while Rasoul Hammed Najeed, whose 5-year old son was killed in the market bombing, sobs uncontrollably: "After this crime, I wish I could see [US President George Bush] in order to cut him to pieces with my teeth."

• It turns out the resignation of accused war profiteer Richard Perle from the Defense Policy Board is just the tip of the iceberg. The Center for Public Integrity reports that at least nine of the board's 30 members--entrusted with guiding the Pentagon's war policy in Iraq--are involved with companies that "have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors."

• US Marine Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, a sharpshooter working along Highway 1 into Baghdad, reported, "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people." Discussing the possibility that he may be shooting at civilians, he replied, "We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?" In an instance where an Iraqi soldier was in a group with 25 women and children, Schrumpt held his fire, but when a soldier was among two or three civilians, he let rip, killing the woman: "I'm sorry. But the chick was in the way."

• The architect of the "shock and awe" strategy, Harlan Ullman, says we'd better find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq--or else. "What they are doing is waging a guerrilla war in the south which is going to persist and a really tough defensive campaign around Baghdad, with the expectation that Iraq will be viewed as the victims and the British and Americans as the bullies." Makes me wonder: to what lengths will the U.S. go to uncover WMDs? Would we fabricate evidence (as Bush did unsuccessfully in explaining his pre-war rationale on Iraq?)? Or simply blame it on Syria or Iran?

• Protesting biased news coverage of the war, 500 activists staged a "die-in" in front of New York's Rockefeller Center, home of NBC, CNN, and Fox. Proving their media target is legitimate, Fox News ridiculed the protesters by running bottom-of-screen news tickers that read "War protester auditions here today ... thanks for coming!", "Who won your right to show up here today? Protesters or soldiers?", and "How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them."

• Apparently, it runs in the family. The president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, profited from Auschwitz slave labor and violated the Trading with the Enemy act for running front businesses for Hitler's Nazis throughout World War II. Former president George H.W. Bush, too, has close ties to tyranny--he allegedly kept business deals going with Osama's dad, Mohammed bin Laden, until two months after September 11. And Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore just got financing to make a film about the Bush-bin Laden link. The title: "Fahrenheit 911."

Bush no more

A 72-year old living in Jonquieres, France, was ashamed that he and the American president share a name that "will go down in history as that of a tyrant." The former Eric Bush is now known as Eric Buisson--the French word for bush. We've all got to do our part.

Co-opting God

The House and Senate have passed a resolution making March 17, the day the war began, a day of prayer and fasting. This is bad: it violates the separation of church and state, it messes up St. Patrick's Day for millions, and enlists God's name in a war opposed by the pope and nearly every other religious leader. The resolution, passed 346-49, says we should use the day of prayer "to seek guidance from God to achieve a greater understanding of our own failings and to learn how we can do better in our everyday activities, and to gain resolve in meeting the challenges that confront our nation." I'm all for humility and prayer, but may I suggest we initiate such a day BEFORE we nuke a mostly defenseless country to high heaven? One dissenter, Dennis Kucinich, said the resolution "may be seen by some as an attempt to inject religion into this war at a time when some of America's enemies abroad are asserting that this indeed is a war about religion."

Pawlenty: Protesters pay up

Minnesota's Republican governor Tim Pawlenty says he wants antiwar protesters who get arrested for civil disobedience to pay for costs associated with their arrest. Let me get this straight: We're engaged in a war that the international community and countless legal scholars have deemed illegal. My taxes pay for a war I vehemently oppose. Yet, if I protest the war and get arrested for civil disobedience the governor thinks I should pay? Should I pay a cop's salary once through taxes and again through a user's fee? Are thieves and rapists paying their tabs too?

The cost of arresting a million protesters probably doesn't amount to the pricetag for a day's worth of "smart" bombs dropped in this ugly war. The governor has no power to affect prosecution this way, but he promises to initiate legislation to force protesters to pay. It's clear what he really wants to do is shut us up.

Tell Pawlenty what you think of his plan. E-mail tim.pawlenty@state.mn.us.

Perle quits

Richard Perle--"architect of the war" in Iraq and author of "Clean Break," a 1996 report calling for a radical reshaping of the Middle East to secure US/Israeli interests, starting with the overthrow of Iraq--resigned amid allegations of what can only be described as war profiteering. Read The Guardian's report.

More to The Point

Blake Brunner of Official Media has been tracking Sinclair Broadcast Group and the commentary segment The Point, home of Mark Hyman's right-wing rants. In a thorough piece, Brunner writes that--aside from Hyman's views that celebrity protesters are "wackjobs," Jesse Jackson is "America's premier race hustler," and the "liberal media" is really the "Axis of Drivel"--what's truly scary is:

the prospect that Sinclair may soon increase its share of the nation’s media markets. Although its website boasts that Sinclair is currently the “largest commercial television broadcasting company not owned by a network,” the company is one of many currently lobbying the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to ease its ownership rules. Sinclair would not be the sole beneficiary of deregulation—fellow broadcasting giants like Hearst-Argyle and Scripps could expand their vast holdings—but in attaining a greater market share Sinclair increases its already great potential to damage public discourse. If these companies—and their ally, FCC Chairman Michael Powell—get their way, viewers should expect increasingly homogenous programming as well as an acceleration of the rightward shift in already-conservative televised discourse.

Rumi:

Beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

Dubya's Dubble?

"You may think the air of extreme witlessness impossible to mimic, but is the man on the podium the authentic Dubya, a trained stand-in or an animatronic lookalike?" The Guardian investigates.

[Expletive Deleted]

• More than 14 civilians are dead after Allied missiles hit a Baghdad market. Tony Blair's spokesman, from the security of London, asserts, "We have always accepted that there will be some very regrettable civilian casualties."

• The man Bush selected to govern occupied Iraq has ties to right-wing anti-Palestinian groups. In 2000 he signed a statement blaming Palestinians for Israeli-Palestinian violence. The statement, sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, includes signatures by JINSA advisory board member Richard Perle and past board member Dick Cheney.

• With a humanitarian crisis mounting in Basra, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon denies that American and British bombing had been aimed at the water supply. Oh, yes? In 1966, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, quoted in Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," discussed his strategy in North Vietnam: "Destruction of locks and dams, however--if handled right--might...offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction doesn't kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after a time to widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided--which we could offer to do 'at the conference table.'"

• On-the-ground reports conflict with the network's gushing praise of "surgical" and "precision" bombing raids by U.S. and British troops, writes the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. (While you're there, support FAIR and buy a "Don't Trust the Corporate Media" t-shirt or bumpersticker.)

• Rep. John Conyers demands an investigation into Bush war advisor Richard Perle's work as a paid consultant to Global Crossing and his guidance on investment opportunities resulting from the Iraq war. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton, from which he still receives up to $1 million a year, gets the contract to put out Iraq's oil fires, without a bidding process. (Anybody want to write a letter to The Ethicist?)

• Images the media won't show and no one--yet everyone--should see. WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC IMAGES.

• Peace activists doing a die-in at Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman's office don't miss the irony: it used to be Paul Wellstone's pad. At least 28 were arrested. Today, 67 more were arrested for civil disobedience at the Federal Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis.

• And, simply because my dad asked for it, please take a moment to read this. Thanks.

More secrecy from Bush

At 6:40 last night--too late for any experts to review the document--the Bush administration signed an order delaying until 2006 the release of millions of government documents that would've been declassified in April. It also gives the government new powers to reclassify documents. According to Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, the order "will slow the declassification process" and "signals a greater affinity for secrecy." He adds, in a sentiment more and more common during the Bush/Ashcroft reign, "It makes secrecy reflexive rather than intelligent." The records that would've been declassified in April date back 25 years--to George H.W. Bush's tenure as director of the CIA. A coincidence, I'm sure.

Loudmouth vs. Poet

You know you're monkeywrenching the conservative-talk-show machine when an interview--like this one between Fox's Bill O'Reilly and American poet Amiri Baraka--ends up like this:

O'REILLY: I guess we don't have too much common ground, other than we both don't like bigots.

BARAKA: We can talk about what--we don't understand what each other is saying.

O'REILLY: All right. I've got to tell you I appreciate you coming on in. I think you're a lunatic, and...

BARAKA: Yes. Well, I think you're a lunatic who's more dangerous because you're on television.

O'REILLY: All right. Mr. Baraka, thank you very much.  We appreciate it.

BARAKA: Thank you very much. That was short and sweet.

(Thanks, Meredith.)

Smearing mass transit

The campaign against mass transit continues: Vancouver IndyMedia catches General Motors smearing bus riders in a new full-page ad. An approaching bus flashes a destination ticker that reads "Creeps & Weirdos." But of course, there's an alternative: buy a Chevy Cavalier VL Sedan. (Via Boing Boing.)

At Bloggerheads

I've been having tons of problems with Blogger, my blogging software. So if you catch a glitch--like the question-mark that should conclude the last entry, the entire sentence that's missing, and my disappearing archives--it's a Blogger thing, and I can't fix it. My apologies.

Clear Channel, Jr.

After last night's news on the Madison, Wisconsin, Fox affiliate, Mark Hyman opined that he's "tired of lies":

Editorials in liberal papers such as the New York Times and Baltimore Sun--begging for more time for diplomacy--conveniently leave out the fact that diplomacy started in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. They don’t mention that Saddam has not honored the diplomatic efforts of 17 UN Security Council resolutions in the last dozen years.

They want you to believe that world solidarity starts with France, but don’t tell you that the cheese eating surrender monkeys have been profiting off legal and illegal Iraqi business dealings for decades.

What these bastions of the "hate America crowd" don’t realize is that we are all tired of the lies.

Turns out not only Madisonians were blessed with Hyman's wisdom; the program, "The Point," is piped out to stations in more than 62 markets, from Baltimore all the way to Sacramento (and including the Twin Cities WB affiliate, WB23). The program, a segment within a show called NewsCentral, is produced by Sinclair Broadscast Group, an ultraconservative network that, aside from owning and operating stations, provides 20-minute canned segments of "news" that can be supplemented with a few minutes of local reporting.

Mark Jeffries, of TVBarn, calls Sinclair the "Clear Channel of local news." He writes:

[T]he national style of "NewsCentral" seems to be taking on a fiercely right-wing approach that makes Fox News Channel look like a model of objectivity. Newsblues.com quotes national anchor Morris Jones making this statement on last night's newscast: "Apparently thinking the war had already begun, a small group of Iraqi soldiers crossed the border into Kuwait holding a white flag. It may also be the new flag of France."

Hyman, who, it turns out, is Sinclair's Vice President, came under fire in December 2001 for his inane criticism of media coverage of the military strikes in Afghanistan. Among the zingers in his commentary:

Some of the network television newscasts have apparently forgotten that this country is engaged in a war with a ruthless enemy, and they are now broadcasting thoughtful pieces, suggesting the Taliban are [sic] misunderstood… If you listen to public radio, you would think that the U.S. military is only targeting schools, hospitals, mosques, and Red Cross shelters… What he have witnessed in recent days is questionable reporting that gives aid and comfort to the enemy and-in some cases-provides a platform for enemy propaganda.

Hyman lashes out at Peter Jennings and the big networks for being too liberal. As the media conversation shifts ever rightward--with Sinclair and Fox News grabbing more and more viewers, and CNN trying regain market share with its increasingly hawkish war coverage--the definition of liberal, as it's defined by the conservative media, changes. If Peter Jennings is a liberal, what do you call Amy Goodman
(Thanks, Ben.)

The Bitterness of Sgt. Akbar

Is Sgt. Asan Akbar--the Louisiana soldier who allegedly lobbed grenades at and fired on members of the 101st Airborne, killing one and wounding 15--merely a man with an "attitude problem," as the Pentagon asserts? Much of the press describes Akbar as "disgruntled," "acting out of resentment," or—as the New York Post reports—a traitor, a loner, and a Muslim.

The truth is probably far more complex than that.

Most papers report the story like this: a bitter loner--probably an antiwar activist who can't bear to fire on fellow Muslims--rolled grenades into the tent of American soldiers. One publication straying from this story, the Financial Times of London, describes the events: after a series of explosions ripped through the camp, followed by a series of gunshots, fired--according to witnesses--at soldiers as they exited their tents. One soldier said he glimpsed a figure in the doorway of his tent. "I couldn't pick him out of a line-up," he said. "But he was clearly dressed in a US uniform." According to the soldier, the figure said, "We are under attack sir!" When things calmed down, soldiers held two Kuwaiti translators, who were later released, and also sought a civilian in a white t-shirt and khakis for questioning. They found Akbar hiding in a bunker with a shrapnel wound to the leg and a grenade in his gas mask case. Charges have not yet been leveled.

If Akbar is indeed, as it appears, the culprit, he's not such an isolated case. "Fraggers"--soldiers who attempt to kill officers by using grenades, or fragmentation devices--were quite active in the Vietnam War. But in Vietnam, it wasn't a common problem until several years into an ugly conflict that grew unpopular in the States and, through time and extended suffering by GIs, within the military. Last September in La Voz de Aztlan, writer Ernesto Cienfuegos chronicles the treatment of minority "grunts" in the US military: "Chicano and Black soldiers were being ordered by white officers to be the 'point men' during reconnaissance missions. Minority soldiers rebelled against these suicide missions and started retaliating against the whites officers who usually stayed behind the lines."

Historian Howard Zinn also traces the evolution of the antiwar movement inside the military in his book "A Peoples' History of the United States"--a movement that came in large part from ordinary enlisted men, many from lower income groups or ethnic minorities. He writes of one case with striking similarities to Akbar's:

A twenty-year-old New York City Chinese-American named Sam Choy enlisted at seventeen in the army, was sent to Vietnam, was made a cook, and found himself the target of abuse by fellow GIs, who called him "Chink" and "gook" (the term for the Vietnamese) and said he looked like the enemy. One day he took a rifle and fired warning shots at his tormentors. "By this time I was near the perimeter of the base and was thinking of joining the Viet Cong; at least they would trust me. " Choy was taken by military police, beaten, court-martialed, sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth. "They beat me up every day, like a time clock." He ended his interview with a New York Chinatown newspaper saying: "One thing: I want to tell all the Chinese kids that the army made me sick. They made me so sick that I can't stand it."

In Akbar's version, the crime may be looking--and praying--like the enemy. An African American, he was kept out of the first Gulf War because of his faith (he converted to Islam and changed his name as a boy). Akbar reportedly told his mother, "Mama, when I get over there I have the feeling they are going to arrest me just because of the name that I have carried."

One of his neighbors tried to come up with an explanation for the behavior of which Akbar is accused: "I know he didn't like his unit that much. He didn't get promoted. I had asked him how that had worked. A lot of people feel that (discrimination) is there at Fort Campbell."

Discrimination in the military goes back to pre-Vietnam conflicts where units were segregated, but came to a head during Vietnam, the first war where troops were integrated. The Guardian writes,

Black servicemen were frequently sentenced to longer terms than their white counterparts and, once inside a military prison, black Muslim inmates were refused copies of the Koran… But, most disturbingly, black Americans were dying at a disproportionate rate and this only inflamed their indignation, as one black private remonstrated: "You should see for yourself how the black man is being treated over here and the way we are dying. When it comes to rank, we are left out. When it comes to special privileges, we are left out. When it comes to patrols, operations and so forth, we are first."

In today's US military, there's no clear evidence that minorities are dying at higher rates than whites. Nonetheless, Rep. Charles Rangel in January called for reinstating the draft because minorities and the poor make up a disproportionate percentage of military personnel. Indeed, from 1995 to 2000, the number of minority enlisted rose from 28 percent to 38 percent (compared to 30 percent of the national population), and the officer corps grew from 11 percent to 19 percent. But while studies on minorities in the military have been somewhat plentiful, little has been written on Muslims--especially black Muslims--in the military, not to mention the even more rare examination of Muslims serving in conflicts in Islamic nations.

The evidence suggests that Akbar did kill and injure U.S. soldiers--a human tragedy within the larger horror of an unfathomably cruel war--but the prevailing message from the American media, a noncommittal shrug, seems to ignore the systemic problems in our armed forces: by and large, enlisted soldiers come from lower economic backgrounds and are increasingly from ethnic minorities. Clearly, those making the decision to go to war aren't dodging bullets on the front lines. As is often cited, only one of the 535 members of the Senate and House who authorized this war have children or grandchildren in service (the Progressive Populist, I'm told, puts the figure at five). Even the commander-in-chief George W. Bush, who bailed out of his military obligations with the Texas Air National Guard and was accused of using his father's influence to land such a plum Vietnam-era assignment, has never seen combat.

But whether Akbar is mentally ill or whether the stress of combat made him so--or whether he represents a lineage of intramilitary resistance to institutional racism and classism--we'll probably never know. It just seems too easy to simply dub Akbar a guy with a grudge and leave it at that, especially when historical precedent suggests there may be other factors. It's too easy to merely accept, as one report does, that "where [Akbar's] bitterness may have come from remains a mystery."

The irony of Rumsfeld's ire

Donald Rothwell, a law professor at the University of Sydney, writes about the irony of the US position on the humane treatment of political prisoners:

Early last year the US was embroiled in a controversy over the application of the Geneva Convention to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters captured during the Afghanistan conflict. The US has consistently argued against applying the convention to Afghan POWs, insisting that the fighters were "battlefield detainees" with no rights under international law other than respect for very basic principles of humanity.

Australia found itself part of this dispute following the capture of the Taliban fighter, David Hicks, from Adelaide.

While there can be little doubt that the Geneva Convention clearly applies in Iraq, the US ambivalence over the captured prisoners from Afghanistan now held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have rebounded upon it in this instance.

What is important for all parties to this war to remember is that if they expect their troops to be treated consistently with international law then this is a reciprocal obligation. The recent actions of the US in Afghanistan and now in Iraq to unilaterally interpret international law, including the UN Charter, unfortunately undermine respect for international law.

Iraq and the US have reaffirmed their respect for the provisions of the Geneva POW convention, but the US remains concerned over Iraq's media exposure of the POWs and President George Bush has pledged to prosecute any war criminals.

If any international prosecutions result from war crimes committed in Iraq, for the sake of international rule of law, criminals on all sides should be dealt with evenly.

Read the entire piece.

Another resignation

Mary Ann Wright, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Mongolia, resigned over Bush's policies in Iraq, North Korea, and Palestine/Israel, as well as domestic attempts to erode civil liberties. Read her lengthy and empassioned letter to Colin Powell. My growing fear is that all the good ones will resign, leaving just the Richard Perles and Dick Cheneys.