Journalist Betrayed, Soldiers Betrayed

But first a lighter fare: Schlock-talker Michael Savage lays into Islam, in a seriously scary way, and doesn't get the Imus routine as a result. Why? Because he laid into Islam, and America right now is afraid of Islam, even if most Muslim-Americans are law-abiding moderates (as are most [insert major group]-Americans).

I hope other minorities are helping Muslim-Americans fight back. Michael Savage was already a grade-A jerk, but his bizarrely fever-pitched screed against Muslim-Americans set a new standard for quasi-mainstream Islamophobia.

Just ask yourself, seriously: Would any on-air personality be allowed to say the same things (that we should deport all of them, that they should shove their religion up their behinds) of Jews, Christians, Buddhists, or atheists? He wasn't talking about jihadis - he was talking about all Muslims, a pretty big group.

Anyway, Culture Project's upcoming play Betrayed by New Yorker writer George Packer looks at how the U.S. military and the Bush people essentially betrayed many of the Iraqi interpreters and other aides they hired.

The play's fantastic (we've had a few readings) and Packer's nonfiction accounts of his time in Iraq - ranging from The Assassin's Gate to the article that inspired the play - is definitely worth reading.

But it saddens me to read, in today's New York Times, just how venerable our history of abandoning our allies really is. Short version: To fight communism in Laos and Vietnam, the CIA hired thousands of Hmong warriors (from Laos), then abandoned them when the communists won. The U.S. troops came home, in various states of disrepair. The Hmong were already home, and their socialist government couldn't have been more pissed at them.

Cut to thirty years later. The former fighters are aging; their families now guilty by relation. They move around every few weeks, hiding, and endure irregular skirmishes with the Laotian army. The government of Laos denies that ex-CIA Hmong exist in the jungles, blaming such rumors on "bandits." The Times's pictures prove otherwise.

Also not fun: Iraqi Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein was held by U.S. forces for twenty months without being charged with a crime, then released into the care of an Iraqi magistrate. The magistrate will determine whether or not Hussein is an insurgent. He has still not been charged.

Hussein's lawyers "were not given a copy of the materials that were presented and which they need to prepare a defense." The AP has fought vigorously for Hussein, with little luck. The military says Hussein helped insurgents. But Hussein hasn't been charged with that crime or with any other.

The Last Impeachment Panel

A panel on stage, Allan Buchman chatting up its members.

Amy Goodman moderates. She opens by noting that the media is the most powerful tool for awareness, a sort of kitchen table that stretches across the country and globe. And is not covering impeachment.

On the panel, Marjorie Cohn, John Nichols, and Naomi Wolf.

To Nichols, Goodman asks why the Dems want to wait for another pres. election to get rid of Bush. Nichols points out that elections are easy. Impeachment is important on its own. We can't just wait for an election; we have to send a message to all future presidents about what how is not okay to govern.

To Cohn, Goodman asks about the reasons for going to Iraq and potentially Iran. The real reason, Cohn says, Bush went to Iraq became clear just recently when we made agreements with Iraq to have troops there indefinitely - to stay in Iraq and move on to Iran. Notwithstanding the new evidence that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, Bush says he has not taken military action against Iran off the table.

Cohn notes that Congress does not have legal authority to start a "war of aggression," one that breaks a treaty, a war whose causes are falsified or blown out of proportion.

Cohn breaks down how impeachment works: The House votes to impeach the president; the Senate acts a court, presiding over the impeachment itself.

Nichols explains that Congress can impeach Cheney and Bush at once (I wrote "Nixon" instead of Cheney first, took a second to see it - Freud at work). But Nichols says to start with Cheney, then move up, exposing the dual criminality of the Dick and the Bush.

Naomi Wolf describes the step by which would-be dictators do their thing: They create vague internal and external threats; they create secret prisons; they create military not answerable to the people; they spy on their own citizens; they harass citizen's groups; they arbitrarily detain and release individuals (TSA for travelers, environmentalists, progressives); they target individuals (Bill Maher, Dixie Chicks, CEOs getting fire); they--oh--here it is--

I think this is so important I'm going to paste in the Wikipedia version, to reiterate:

The Ten Steps to Dictatorship

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Declare all dissent to be treason.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

Wolf points out that there was still a parliament in Italy when Mussolini took over. He talked to parliament, then he stopped talking. Then at some point later, there was no point even pretending. Bush could declare an emergency tomorrow and boot out Congress. The state is legalizing torture. We could lose democracy, de jure, at any moment. We already have, de facto (the stolen election, torture, crazy war).

Goodman reads from Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, which begins with an anecdote of a government worker blogging (!) against torture and being fired for her morals.

Cohn says Mukase won't stop waterboarding because to do so would be to admit that Bush had broken the law. Waterboarding is so obviously torture, there'd be little point admitting it had anything to do with Bush or that torture shouldn't be legal. The only option Mukase et cronies have is to stay the course.

Cohn describes how lawyers are fighting back, protesting, making some headway against the Justice Department by not backing down on Gitmo cases.

Nichols suggests the Democratic candidates should have to debate Naomi Wolf on each point - not Wolf Blitzer and Tim Russert and those who ignore the issue of impeachment.

Wolf points out that Bush terrifies so many - libertarians, anarchists, Green Party people. "On paper," Wolf says, "it's over, it's already over. The coup is over." A bill just passed criminalizing anything against Bush as terrorism. You don't need the Long Knives, says Wolf, just these scary laws. This impeachment theater could be criminal. Her book could be criminal.

Nichols is asking Congresspeople to read his book and Wolf's, to just read the articles of impeachment.

Cohn talks about the new bill again - I'm going to look this one up in a sec - and how it criminalizes thought that "advocates force," not only violence, but, say, a protest.

Wolf compares Bush & co. to the Nazis and Stalin, but conservatively, at evidence, at facts. "No one who's read my book," she says, criticizes her comparisons. She tells Cohn, who brought up the Unamerican Activities Committee in the Fifties, that Bush's plan is much more akin to Stalin's than to McCarthy's.

Goodman asks, in closing, what we can do now.

Nichols reiterates that Wexler and others have called for impeachment hearings; write and call and go visit your Congresspeople to ask them to impeach Bush and Cheney. And write and call your local media. We have to get the media involved on a much bigger level. Forget the election for one second. Impeachment is dramatically more important. The presidency had become a pack of lies.

Cohn calls for ending the war, in addition to constantly calling on our leaders to impeach Bush and Dick.

Wolf calls for impeaching and prosecuting B&C. "The only way to save this country." Word up.

Goodman talks about the FCC ending regulations that restrain a few big companies from owning all the major media. Upside, DemocracyNow! has grown quite a bit. And the internet. Don't forget the internet. Please post and repost our videos and articles; comment; send us new leads. Contact your Congresspeople. Show them the videos.

Oh, we're not done. Buchman comes on to remind us that we're going to pursue this issue all year. I think Jackon Browne is going to sing...

David Lindorff

...from earlier today, sings with his daughter about Iraq. "It's one, two, three - what are we fighting for? ... Five, six, seven - open up the pearly gates..." A charming ditty, I suppose.

[I'm told the song is a version of a Country Joe McDonald song with the refrain, "Don't give a damn, / next stop is Vietnam."

And then a short intermission. The technical director appears on the live-feed, moving mic stands around. The house is almost too packed to move through.

Torture Short Play

Before the panel, a short reading with four actors. I can't quite make out the un-microphoned voices. Here's what I'm getting: A tank drove over a car, making an Iraqi man late. The man was jailed under Saddam for not reporting another man who disparaged the leader. His brother (Khalil, like Gibran) went to England to study poetry. Another voice questions the man about his allegiances. More American voices, threatening the man ("people like you") with prison time for not passing a polygraph. Confusion among the Americans about the existence of a database with information on suspects. The information can't be proven accurate - the U.S. is paying informers who'll sell out anyone, who run to Syria. Informers send people to jail, then blackmail the families into paying for help getting those innocents out of jail. Marine grenade-fire outside. Lots of talk of Wonderland and rabbit holes... (If only Carroll was writing the war - we'd be fighting bitchy cards instead of a combination of various extremists ranging from Sunni to Republican.)

Tara McKelvey

McKelvey, a writer for The American Prospect, takes the stage to talk about her investigations of torture. Dogs used to chase and bite young boys, etc.

So many people she's interviewed - many Iraqis - were tortured, including children. The U.S. hadn't been screening for T.B.; a child died of it; McKelvey points out that this, too, is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

She talks about the people who committed the crimes made famous by photos from Abu Ghraib; she implicates the highest orders of government as well as the lowliest orders of human sadist.

What Cheney Was Saying Decades Ago - A MUST-SEE

Wow...

New York Times Op-Ed Worth Reading:

August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors
The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY

Baghdad

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

Viva Peace

Apparently the war in Iraq is going well--from the tone of the article, one might think "splendidly" instead of just "well."

Also, check out a long story on Obama's rise to prominence. Interesting info. And since the war's going so well and has made us so much safer, I guess it doesn't matter who's president in 08. Guess I'll vote Romney and hope he selects Jesus Christ as his VP.

I'm just glad Rage Against the Machine got back together and immediately started beef with Ann Coulter, and that this somehow relates to Rosie.

Perhaps, if John Edwards wins the Democratic nomination and everybody else bombs badly enough, he can select Rage frontman Zack De la Rocha as his VP. Then we're just one John vs. Mitt / Zack vs. Christ arm-wrestling competition away from restoring morality to the pale house.

Viva Rage.

Contagious Stupidity

From today's NYTimes:

Americans’ support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq.

WTF?

Isn't it 5th-grade wisdom - perhaps rather 2nd or 1st - that an invasion with no justifiable purpose that has only gone from worse to worst is not and was never worth supporting? Why does America now so value its presence in Iraq? (Did no one else read Theater of War?)

The article doesn't help a ton, and neither does Mark Schmitt's snarky attempt at boo-hooing Democratic pres. candidates' ability to make detailed plans.

It's not comforting to e-open the paper and see that 1) Americans are increasingly, not decreasingly comfortable with the idea that America invaded Iraq, way back when (Gawd, that was, like, four American Idols ago!) and 2) New America Foundation members are not fans of good policy papers.

They want more blather. Empty, Republicrackerish blather, good for nothing, to be held to nothing, to be sprinkled like the chaff of millet on the strong winds of a next CBS fall lineup, or the next celebrity murder-suicide.

"The candidates disappear behind a screen of white paper," Schmitt writes. Paper = reading = the intellectual = reason. And we can't have that. We're a country of Faith, a good, honest, Sarkozy-ian realm...

Ba-humfuckery.

I suppose comfort isn't to be wanted or even warranted these days. I'll keep my policy papers and my anti-war stance, thankyouver'much. How much longer before this America now starts to resemble the Britain of Children of Men? Not much longer, perhaps. But by then I'll have my alligator ranch, so the New American "centrist" faux-radicals won't be able to sneer at me without (reptilian, masticatory) repercussions.

Lugar Leaves Dark Side; Dark Side Completely Surprised, Consoles Itself With Cherry Garcia While Crying Into Phone To Friend

Great news for those of us who want some sort of withdrawal from Iraq, now:

Republican senator and warmaker Richard Lugar now disagrees with Generalissimo Bush and the current administration's all-war all-the-time no-withdrawal plans, which Lugar had previously backed, on every vote, in every way.

So this is not a wishy-washy person. Lugar supported a policy. He saw that policy steadily go wrong. In his words, "The costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved... We’re talking $620 billion. We’re talking over 3,500 people killed. I have a picture of one of our marines that’s on my desk so I don’t forget, O.K.?"

And now he wants to change that policy. (The policy being America's state religion, Constant Warfare, or more recently Constant Antithetical Counterinsurgency [Generating Endlessly Reinvigorated Insurgents].)

Says Lugar:

"The administration and Congress must suspend what has become almost knee-jerk political combat over Iraq. Those who offer constructive criticism of the surge strategy are not defeatists, any more than those who warn against a precipitous withdrawal are militarists."

Also in the news today, a poll (though we are suspicious of polls) indicating that America's youth are increasingly progressive-minded, and that Obama and Hillary are the only candidates that register in their immediate consciousnesses.

This surprises no young person I know: I grew up in an predominantly black area, and I was raised to believe that women and men deserve the same rights. I would much rather vote for - or are at least am much more intrigued by the thought of being a citizen during the presidency of - a black or woman president than another white man. Seems about time.

Of course, the psychology behind voter-volition - who we vote for and why - is more complex than race, gender, party, or individual charm, though it is certainly influenced by all of these factors. I would never recommend voting on someone purely because that someone is black or a woman. I simply note that the succession of white men who mired America in small-to-medium wars with real, really impoverished people during the latter half of the twentieth century have left something of a bad taste in the mouths of many.

The psychology behind torture - much discussed today in a New York Times article about the CIA, now-and-then (meaning of course 'Nam and 'Raq), as well as in an older call-to-arms for the mental health community on Alternet - is not so complex. Torture is wrong; the use of torture indicates, as William James would say, a "sick soul."

The Times' CIA article includes a graphic comparing tactics used in the seventies to tactics used today; the side-by-side, tale-of-the-tape effect is chilling: While it is true that there is no evidence of the government monitoring peace groups the way it did during Vietnam, tactics still in use against anyone Bush considers a terrorist or possible terrorist include eavesdropping, "waterboarding, heat, cold, and sleep deprivation."

Meaning that there are still three classes of Enemy, in the minds of the priests of Constant War. There are national criminals, who are arrested and tried in an Enlightened manner. There are extranational soldiers, who, if captured, are treated as honorable combatants to be held accountable for their non-American government's actions according to international law. And then there are the Really Bad People, the ones who can be disappeared (under Pinochet in Chile), or spied upon or poisoned (see the CIA vs. Dr. Rev. M.L.K., Jr., or Castro), or tortured (Gitmo).

These last can be tortured indefinitely in good conscience because they are not fellow capitalists on a mission from a power whose thoughts on market regulations differ from those of the GOP's; these enemies are Satans who must be Crusaded against, kept from view, and finally expunged from the record of gentlemanly combat.

And the war can never end against these Enemies, who are as Protean as they are numerous: For every defeated insurgency, for every toppled Soviet Union, there comes a Bin Laden, an Al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia.

Roses to Lugar; thorns to the military psychologists who should know better than to condone - much less operate - torture operations at Gitmo. And thorns finally to CIA agents who, in the course of defending freedom or whathaveyou, cross a stark line and become the very icons of those who least embody freedom, least embody nobility, peace, or justice.

Another extraordinary New Yorker piece

Sy Hersh has a disturbing article in this week's New Yorker about Abu Ghraib. Though we all know what happened, and have suspected people much higher up knew what was going on and either encouraged it or looked the other way, this piece is eye-opening nonetheless.

Merkel Reversal; Gay Arab Speakers

(Say "Merkel reversal" three times fast. Never mind.)

O happy day - Bush compromised, on something, anything! Even though the US never ratified the Kyoto Protocols, we might sort of agree to demonstrably cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

From the NYTimes, June 8, 2007, "U.S. Compromise on Global Warming Plan Averts Impasse at Group of 8 Meeting," By MARK LANDLER and JUDY DEMPSEY

HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 7 — The United States agreed Thursday to “consider seriously” a European plan to combat global warming by cutting in half worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, averting a trans-Atlantic deadlock at a meeting here of the world’s richest industrial nations.

The compromise, worked out in tough negotiations between the United States and Germany, also endorses President Bush’s recent proposal to bring together the world’s largest emitting countries, including China and India, to set their own national goals for reducing emissions.

The agreement reached Thursday does not include a mandatory 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050, a key provision sought by Chancellor Angela Merkel, nor does it commit the United States or Russia to specific reductions.

Bad news: We kick loyal, Arabic-speaking soldiers out of the army. For being gay. Not for doing anything wrong - we don't tell them it's "wrong" to be gay - just don't say you're gay, at least not while you're in the army. (?) Doesn't make sense to me, might not make sense to you, but it makes sense to my grandfather and probably your grandfather. Why even John McCain thinks it works well for now. Mitt Romney's not happy about it, of course, but he's a perennial Grumpy Gus.

(Probably he and Fred Thompson are only confused because the Teletubbies were honorably discharged from the National Guard before they confessed to being celibate gay Jupiterians, complicating the whole "homo" rights issue.)

From the NYTimes, June 8, 2007, Op-Ed Contributor, "Don’t Ask, Don’t Translate," By STEPHEN BENJAMIN

The lack of qualified translators has been a pressing issue for some time — the Army had filled only half its authorized positions for Arabic translators in 2001. Cables went untranslated on Sept. 10 that might have prevented the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Today, the American Embassy in Baghdad has nearly 1,000 personnel, but only a handful of fluent Arabic speakers.

I was an Arabic translator. After joining the Navy in 2003, I attended the Defense Language Institute, graduated in the top 10 percent of my class and then spent two years giving our troops the critical translation services they desperately needed. I was ready to serve in Iraq.

But I never got to. In March, I was ousted from the Navy under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which mandates dismissal if a service member is found to be gay.

...

I could have written a statement denying that I was homosexual, but lying did not seem like the right thing to do...

The result was the termination of our careers, and the loss to the military of two more Arabic translators. The 68 other — heterosexual — service members remained on active duty, despite many having committed violations far more egregious than ours; the Pentagon apparently doesn’t consider hate speech, derogatory comments about women or sexual misconduct grounds for dismissal.

...

Consider: more than 58 Arabic linguists have been kicked out since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was instituted. How much valuable intelligence could those men and women be providing today to troops in harm’s way?

In addition to those translators, 11,000 other service members have been ousted since the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was passed by Congress in 1993. Many held critical jobs in intelligence, medicine and counterterrorism.Stephen Benjamin is a former petty officer second class in the Navy.

The Failure Of The Democrats To Live Up To Their Mandate, Plain And Simple

As Julianne notes, there are few great pundits left in the world of televised news. (And perhaps, I add, there weren't that many to begin with.) But, in the spirit of Murrow and the fictional but all too realistically mad-as-hell newsman from Network, this Keith fellow has his heart and tongue in exactly the right spot. You should watch the video or, if not, read the transcript. Many of us at Culture Project strongly agree with Keith's view that the Democrats had no task other than to extract America from Iraq, and by extension from all the corruption of Bushismology, and that any compromise on this point is a sort of betrayal. We await the day true power--the power to make change--in politics returns to those on the side of the irenic, the rational, the anti-imperial.

let's all stop throwing rocks! (literally and figuratively)

Joss Whedon is a feminist man, writing about the "honor killing" of seventeen year old Dua Khalil in Kurdistan and the deeply disturbing resemblance it bears to the trailer for a new film in the US, “Captivity” (or vice versa).

Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.

A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear.

The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up.

Interesting Story Concerning Theater and Conflict

May 7, 2007, NYTimes, "In Iraq, the Play Was the Thing," by HUSSAIN ABDUL-HUSSAIN:

IN 1982, our second-grade teacher at Baghdad’s Mansour school made the following announcement: “The year-end play is about our war with the Persian enemy. The top 20 students in class will play Iraqis; the bottom 20 will play Persians.”

This was at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, and during our first rehearsal the students assigned to play Persians — that is, Iranians — broke out in tears. Although many of the children were, like me, from Shiite families, they insisted that they were Iraqis first, that they loved their Sunni-led country and did not want to play the role of the enemy.

After some negotiations, the girls were spared and only the boys from the lower half were selected to play the roles of the “soldiers of Khomeini the hypocrite.” Their script was scrapped, and instead they were told simply to run across stage as the rest of us, playing the role of the Iraqi Army, mowed them down in battle.

But the play did not end when the curtain fell. Those of us from the Iraqi cast took to bragging and, in the tradition of schoolchildren everywhere, bullying the “Persians.” With tears in their eyes, they repeatedly had to beg the teacher to make us stop.

Now, a quarter of a century later, I called one of my classmates, Ayad, a Shiite who still lives in Iraq. I reminded him of the play, and of how he and I, the top two students in the class, got to play the roles of the Iraqi generals who would win the war against the Iranians. “It was the good old days,” he told me.

Ayad owns a hotel in the southern city of Karbala, home to two of Shiism’s most important shrines. His wife and two daughters wear veils. He believes that the violence in Iraq is a Sunni and American conspiracy against Shiites, and he argues that Iran is the best ally of Iraqi Shiites.

Ayad has two elder brothers. One was conscripted during the Iran-Iraq war and received medals for his courageous performance in battle. The other ran away when he was drafted and ended up living as a refugee in Iran. However, he was treated poorly there, living in poverty and under permanent suspicion, so after some years he fled to Beirut. After the Americans ousted Saddam Hussein, he returned to Iraq, and now works at Ayad’s hotel.

“We think America did a great thing by toppling Saddam,” Ayad told me, speaking for himself and his family. “But now they should hand us the country and leave.”

I asked him whether he fears that an American withdrawal might allow the Sunni insurgents to strike harder in Shiite areas. “We outnumber them,” he said. “And with the support of our Iranian brothers, we can take the Sunnis.”

“And then what?” I replied.

“Then the Shiites will rule Iraq.”

Ayad believes that there is no problem in establishing an Islamic government in Baghdad styled after that of the Iranian Republic. The Sunnis, he said, have “oppressed us since the days of the Prophet, and now it is our chance to hit back and rule.”

According to Ayad, a Shiite takeover in Iraq would set a good model for the Shiites of Lebanon, where they number about a third of the population, and Bahrain, where they are a majority.

“Perhaps the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia will act too, rid themselves of the Sunni oppression against them, and rule or at least separate themselves from Riyadh and create their own state,” my friend argued.

It is exactly this possibility that has made the Sunni Arab regimes fear a Shiite regional revolt and moved some to support the Sunni insurgency in Iraq or at least to voice their resentment of the Iraqi Shiite government, which is seen as being biased against Iraqi Sunnis. “But we are Iraqis,” I told Ayad. “We are Arabs. We have our cultural differences with the Persians. We don’t even speak the same language.”

Ayad insisted otherwise: “When we fought the Persians during the 1980s, we were wrong. We’re Shiites before being Iraqis. Sunnis invented national identity to rule us.”

At this point, I understood that it was pointless to argue further. When the Baathist regime collapsed, I initially felt that there was a good chance for national unity, that Sunnis and Shiites would band together in the absence of the dictator who had played them against each other. Talking to Ayad, I realized how wrong I had been.

To change the subject, I asked Ayad about his business. He told me he had just erected flags on top of the entrance to his hotel. He chose the flags of Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Bahrain. When I asked why he chose the flags of these four nations, he said: “These are the countries where Shiites come from to do their pilgrimage in Karbala,” he said. “It is good for business.”

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a media analyst, is a former reporter for The Daily Star of Lebanon.

National Priorities...

Just found this sobering site. It charts the real-time cost of the Iraq War and then calculates the cost to each community in various categories. Check out the link about setting up an LED display in your town. The first one went up in Northampton, Mass (a great old college town).

Two Cities, Same Story

This is not a picture of New Orleans. Or a city anywhere near the Mississippi. In fact this is Baghdad. And the United States government has not only destroyed that city with bombs and insufficient security, we have botched even the most basic construction jobs.

Two stories hit the papers today and they cannot be unrelated, nor should they be taken lightly. The first story in today's Washington Post declares that the United States squandered or never collected nearly one billion dollars in foreign aid. Here is just a taste of the not surprising but outrageous story:

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

In addition, valuable supplies and services -- such as cellphone systems, medicine and cruise ships -- were delayed or declined because the government could not handle them. In some cases, supplies were wasted.

The struggle to apply foreign aid in the aftermath of the hurricane, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 billion so far, is another reminder of the federal government's difficulty leading the recovery. Reports of government waste and delays or denials of assistance have surfaced repeatedly since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

The second story from today's New York Times concerns Iraq reconstruction. If you can call it that. A group of inspectors conducting federal oversight (shocking) found that 7 of 8 projects they assessed, projects our government had declared "successes", were no longer functioning for a variety of reasons. The first paragraph tells the story:

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

Heckuva job, fellas.

the sanctity of human life

The front page of the NY Times said it all this morning.
President Bush commended the Supreme Court's

protecting human dignity and upholding the sanctity of life

as nearly 200 more people died in Iraq.

america at a crossroads

If you haven't yet seen any of PBS's documentary series America At A Crossroads this week, do find the time to watch it or record it.

Last night's interviews with soldiers on different levels of the chain of command, followed by dramatizations of the troops' own writing, was the most down-to-earth, heartbreaking representation of the realities of this war that I've seen yet.

Simply through the words and experiences of U.S. soldiers, without putting on interpretations or using editing to tell a story, the agony of their experience - and the absolute horrors of the Iraqi experience - is palpable.

Tonight Richard Perle is allocated the first hour to jam his foot down his throat. Not to be missed.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT WINS PULITZER

Our primary homeslice Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower just won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

We congratulate him with all our hearts.

The man is a double paragon of journalistic thoroughness and good prose style. He is also one of the easiest-to-work-with people you could ever meet. And a snappy dresser.

(For those of you who missed Wright's My Trip To Al-Qaeda, stay tuned for a very short remounting of the show some time in June.)