Why American is both loved and hated

"Immediately after the 9/11 attacks against the United States, President George W. Bush and many other perplexed, angry and often ignorant Americans asked a question: "Why do they hate us?" Then they made a statement: "You're either with us or against us." This week, those Americans who are actually interested in answering the question and exploring the validity of the statement have a very good opportunity to grasp precisely why most people around the world admire the US but also detest many aspects of its foreign policy."

The “Fix”

by Cindy Sheehan - Oct 17, 2007

There is quite a lot of interesting, but wild, speculation running around the blog-o-sphere, progressive circles and just plain dinner conversation these days about whether BushCo will allow a peaceful and constitutional transfer of Executive power in the ’08 elections.

Unless or until George Bush appears on our TV boxes one night, wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie with his hands sweatily clasped in a desperate death grip on top of his desk in the Oval Office, telling us that some catastrophic event, whether man-made or natural, has just occurred somewhere, and he must, for the good of the Homeland, declare martial law and “temporarily” suspend elections, the fears of many people are truly speculative. In my nightmare scenario, after George drops this fascist bomb and kills the rest of our Republic, he will tell us not to worry and to go about our holiday shopping, traveling and celebrating: it’s the American way, after all. God Bless America.

The order of events in the conversations I have heard or read go something like this: BushCo and Congress, Inc are ramping up the rhetoric for an attack on Iran (true). In their little minds and black hearts they still assume that most of us are still stupid and we will believe anything they ever say again (true). Yet, they have told us that Iran and Ahmadinejad have done just about everything except try to assassinate George’s Pop (still true). So, if you believes that 9-11 was a “false flag” op, then you say that BushCo will engineer ANOTHER false flag op, blame Iran, declare martial law, (George can do that unilaterally now because of Presidential Directive 51) and attack Iran, possibly using “strategic” nuclear strikes on “military” targets. Then of course, when our Homeland is in such a terrible state of emergency, it would be an awful idea to “change horses in the middle of the stream,” you know, so we must suspend elections: Thereby, staging yet BushCo’s third coup in a row: the first two being the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004.

If, God forbid, any of this does happen, my guess is most of us will go shopping and have our holidays as usual, however, I am not so certain that martial law or even suspending elections will be necessary. Whoever becomes our president in 2008 will likely be more than happy to continue the neo-con agenda of global, imperial and military, American hegemony.

The likely nominee for the Democratic Party will be Hillary Clinton, a Fem-Bush who has been virtually endorsed by George and accepts money from Rupert Murdoch, he of Fox “News” infamy and who will soon own every newspaper and cable news network in the Homeland. Hillary guarantees and assures us that if she is elected she could nuke Iran and maybe, just maybe have most of our troops home from Iraq by the end of her first term. One would have to step down onto the 2nd tier of Democratic hopefuls to find a candidate who would guarantee us a swift end to the occupation of Iraq but they are no match to the money or machine behind the Clinton mojo.

I don’t want to even discuss who is likely to be the Republican nominee, because besides having little foreign policy difference between any of them and Hillary, anyone of them would be a complete disaster on matters of war and peace, with the possible exception of Ron Paul (Tx). Even though many of them, (except Rudy Giuliani who had the “honor” of standing on a pile of rubble at Ground Zero with George after 9-11 and sharing a bull-horn with him), distance themselves from the miserable failure of the Bush regime, they will all joyfully allow themselves to be used by the military industrial complex, after all, every president since FDR has. There is no reason to think any Repug or Dem will break with this deadly pattern.

The “fix” is in, folks.

The “fix” stopped Al Gore, who really won the 2000 election, from fighting for our country and our constitution by supporting those Congressional members who begged him, through tears, to sign on to continue the recount in Florida. The “fix” stopped millions of Americans from pouring into the streets to protest the fact that the Supreme Court treasonously and treacherously appointed the less than mediocre governor of Texas as next president of the USA, (which wasn't the Homeland, yet).

The “fix” is why Kerry cave into George faster then anyone could even say "recount" in 2004, breaking so many hearts and crushing so many hopes.

The “fix” is the elite establishment status quo of the way things have “always been.” We have always had just a Democratic and Republican Party, right? Wrong!

The “fix” is in the mainstream media, which rarely discusses any substantive issues and has in the past intentionally misled the Homeland in its partnership with BushCo to glorify war while hiding, or glossing over, its awful costs and consequences.

The "fix" is in compromised voting machines whose programs are written by the elite establishment and the "fix" is in the disenfranchisement, literally and spiritually, of hordes of voters who have seen their votes go uncounted for years and who see their "elected" representatives ignore the will of their constituents, in any case.

The "fix" is in We the People who believe that we some how owe any kind of allegiance or support to the elite establishment who have impoverished, imprisoned, oppressed and killed our children for generations while we furiously, but inexplicably cling to a status quo that clearly only benefits a very chosen few. It is acceptable to protest obvious infractions like the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq...but don't scratch the surface too deeply because we are not sure of what may ooze out. What emerges may be something that is very hard to acknowledge, let alone face and overcome.

George Bush simply does not want to be President any longer. You can see it in every twitch (when I think he is really trying to smirk), every gray hair and every line on his face. He desperately wants to go back to Texas and go on permanent vacation to give high paid lectures (?) to pad his bank account so he can jog, ride bikes, clear brush, and live the rest of his life with the moral certitude of a simpleton. He looks like he is barely being held together by baling-wire, spit and some judiciously placed wads of bubble gum. Stick a fork in him: he’s done. I do not even think that Dastardly Dick could force him to remain President after January, ’09. I hope I am right, but there is still the “I can not put anything past the Bush Crime Cabal” factor.

Barring an electoral revolution of American citizens wanting to fix the “fix” by voting with our humanity, consciences and integrity, instead of out of fear that the greater criminal will win. We will be faced with two choices, depending on ones perspective: Evil or Less Evil.

I will break my voting hand before I vote for Mr./Ms Lesser of Two Evils, ever again.

Wisdom amid a world tired of the US megaphone

by David Ignatius - Oct 15, 2007

"We talk about democracy and human rights. Iraqis talk about justice and honor." That comment from Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, made at a seminar last month on counterinsurgency, is the beginning of wisdom for an America that is trying to repair the damage of recent years. It applies not simply to Iraq but the range of problems in a world tired of listening to an American megaphone.

Dignity is the issue that vexes billions of people around the world, not democracy. Indeed, when people hear President George W. Bush preaching about democratic values, it often comes across as a veiled assertion of America power. The implicit message is that other countries should be more like us - replacing their institutions, values and traditions with ours. We mean well, but people feel disrespected. The bromides and exhortations are a further assault on their dignity.

That's the difficulty when the US House of Representatives pressures Turkey to admit that it committed genocide against the Armenians 92 years ago. It's not that this demand is wrong. I'm an Armenian-American, and some of my own relatives perished in that genocidal slaughter. I agree with the congressional resolution, but I know that this is a problem that Turks must resolve. They are imprisoned in a past they have not yet been able to accept. Our hectoring makes it easier for them to retreat deeper into denial.

The most articulate champion of what the administration likes to call the "democracy agenda" has been Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. When she talks about the universality of American values, she carries the special resonance of an African-American girl from Birmingham, Alabama, who witnessed the struggle for democracy in a segregated America. But she also conveys an American arrogance, a message that when it comes to good governance, it's "our way or the highway."

That's why it's encouraging to hear that Rice is taking policy advice from Kilcullen, a brilliant Australian military officer who helped reshape US strategy in Iraq toward the bottom-up precepts of counterinsurgency. Sources tell me Kilcullen will soon be joining the State Department as a part-time consultant. For a taste of his thinking, check out his September 26 presentation to a Marine Corps seminar (available at www.wargaming.quantico.usmc.mil.)

As we think about a "dignity agenda," there are some other useful readings. A starting point is Zbigniew Brzezinski's new book, "Second Chance," which argues that America's best hope is to align itself with what he calls a "global political awakening." The former national security adviser explains: "In today's restless world, America needs to identify with the quest for universal human dignity, a dignity that embodies both freedom and democracy but also implies respect for cultural diversity."

After I mentioned Brzezinski's ideas about dignity in a previous column, a reader sent me a 1961 essay by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, which made essentially the same point. A deeply skeptical man who resisted the "isms" of partisan thought, Berlin was trying to understand the surge of nationalism despite two world wars. "Nationalism springs, as often as not, from a wounded or outraged sense of human dignity, the desire for recognition," he wrote.

"The craving for recognition has grown to be more powerful than any other force abroad today," Berlin continued. "It is no longer economic insecurity or political impotence that oppresses the imaginations of many young people in the West today, but a sense of the ambivalence of their social status - doubts about where they belong, and where they wish or deserve to belong."

A final item on my dignity reading list is "Violent Politics," a new book by the iconoclastic historian William R. Polk. He examines 10 insurgencies through history - from the American Revolution to the Irish struggle for independence to the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation - to make a stunningly simple point, which we managed to forget in Iraq: People don't like to be told what to do by outsiders. "The very presence of foreigners, indeed, stimulates the sense first of apartness and ultimately of group cohesion." Foreign intervention offends people's dignity, Polk reminds us. That's why insurgencies are so hard to defeat.

People will fight to protect their honor even - and perhaps, especially - when they have nothing else left. That has been a painful lesson for the Israelis, who hoped for the past 30 years they could squeeze the Palestinians into a rational peace deal. It's excruciating now for Armenian-Americans like me, when we see Turkey refusing to make a rational accounting of its history. But if foreign governments try to make people do the right thing, it won't work. They have to do it for themselves.

Privatizing Terror, Outsourcing Diplomacy

by Wajahat Ali - Oct 13, 2007

The international outcry over the recent Blackwater shootings forced the world to closely examine and appreciate the complex reality of the United States government's overdependence on private military contractors operating in Iraq. The foremost expert and most cited authority on the subject is Peter Warren Singer, a senior fellow at the prestigious Brookings Institute, co-founder of "The U.S. Policy towards the Islamic World" Program, and author of the seminal work on private military contractors, "Corporate Warriors." This interview, his most recent, examines the most current repercussions caused by the Blackwater scandal and private military firms within an overall context of The Iraq War, U.S. Foreign policy in the Middle East, and America's public relations with the Muslim world.

WAJAHAT ALI: Ok, the first question is an easy one. A fastball right down the middle regarding Blackwater (An American Private Military firm contracted by the U.S. government to provide security in Iraq). On September 16, Blackwater was involved in a catastrophic shooting incident in Iraq's Nisoor Square leaving nearly 20 Iraqi civilians dead. Are you at all shocked or surprised by this revelation?

P.W. SINGER: No. Short answer, no. Long answer is that--look, I've been researching and writing on private military firms for over a decade now. My book, Corporate Warriors, dealt with this issue even before the Iraq War. Since the war started the outsourcing of military functions has been put on steroids not only in terms of the growth of it, but also in terms of the negative aspects coming out of that growth. The incident in question regarding Blackwater needs to be put in a proper context. It's just one company out of 181 other private military companies operating in that space in Iraq. The incidents involving abuses of private military contractors go back to the starting of the war. This includes the incidents at Abu Ghraib (Torture Scandal) and the private contractor Aegis Trophy's infamous video of 2005 (Aegis employees posted a video online showing them shooting at Iraqi civilians.) You also had the Triple Canopy shootings lawsuit in '06. Blackwater is just one of the companies in the game.

Within Blackwater itself there have been multiple incidents well before this most recent one. An example is The Christmas Eve shooting where a Blackwater contractor allegedly got drunk, got into an argument inside the Green Zone with one of the Iraqi Vice President's security guards, and then shot him and killed him. It's been over 10 months since that happened. Weeks before the Nisoor Square September shooting, there were multiple incidents involving the Iraqi Interior Ministry. There was one such incident where an Interior Ministry employee was killed, one where there was an armed standoff between Blackwater contractors and the Iraqi police in which the U.S. military actually had to intervene. One of the U.S. government officials, embedded in the Iraqi Interior Ministry, described this as a "powder keg of anger." That powder keg exploded several weeks later (The September Nisoor Square shooting in Iraq). To answer your question, no, I wasn't surprised. Absolutely not.

The Iraqi government had some harsh words recently for Blackwater, publicly saying, "Blackwater uses employees who disrespect the rights of Iraqi citizens even though they are guests in the country." Could this statement also describe the conduct of the U.S. forces and other American private firms operating in Iraq?

The Iraqi government understands that Blackwater is only one player within a much larger industry--the Iraqis understand that also. They (Blackwater) have become some sort of a symbol. If you ask most contractors, I am dubious that they would see themselves as "guests of the Iraqi government." Most see themselves carrying out a contract, and the client in that contract is not the Iraqi government. It usually is the United States government or United States subcontractors. They view Iraqi governments with a great deal of suspicion. Remember, we are talking about an Iraqi Interior Ministry that just couple of weeks ago an investigation board found to be completely corrupt. The Ministry acted basically as a cover for a number of sectarian militias operating in Iraq, and the recommendation of the investigation board was that the best thing one can do for Iraq was to shut the Ministry down and start over again. So there are a lot of fingers that can be pointed in lot of directions.

At the end of the day, Iraq is starting to act like sovereign state. Sovereign states want to control the forces within their borders--that's what makes them sovereign. That holds equally true for sectarian militia as it does for private military firms operating out there. They are outside the control of the government, or at least what should be the control of government. The point is if Iraq is to be a sovereign state, it needs to be resting control over this, and to be honest, this is how you get the U.S. out of there--you let Iraq have institutions that are able to carry out their jobs as a government.

Has the global microscope on the Blackwater scandal caused an overall strain between the Iraqi and US governments? If so, what are the repercussions in the "Muslim world" and also on the ground when dealing with the Iraqi insurgency?

The United States government aspect of it is - that the unfortunate truth is while contractors are carrying out a number of critical and important missions, the overall effect of their use has actually been undermining rather than assisting U.S. operations and goals. It extends all the way to tactical levels on the field to the grand strategic world.

To the question of the relationship between the Iraqi and U.S. government, it's very interesting remember you need to put this into context. One week before the shootings in Nisoor square (September '07), General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker (U.S. envoy to Iraq) testified to Congress about the "surge strategy." Now, there was huge debate whether the military aspects of the surge strategy were being met or not. They really went back and forth on that. Now, one thing they did talk about was the 43 Iraqi citizens who were shot in Baghdad alone by private contractors that same week. When we talk about what President Bush refers to as a "Return to normalcy" in Iraq--this doesn't feel all that normal, does it? There was no debate at all about the political aspects. Everyone (in Congress) on both sides of the aisle universally agreed that in the year ahead we would have to press the Iraqi government to finally take some action on the political benchmarks. The key to the "surge strategy" success was dependant on this.

Now, let's move forward just one week--within the span of that 20 minute Blackwater gun fight (September '07 Nisoor Square shooting) --that whole strategy falls by the wayside. A couple hours later, Secretary Condoleeza Rice calls up Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, which is extraordinary because she normally doesn't call him. When she calls to speak with him personally, she doesn't press him on the really important issues, such as, "We need you to pass the oil law," or "We need you to deal with the amnesty issues"--both critical political benchmarks.

Instead, she calls to express her sympathies and to apologize for this Blackwater incident. Over the next week, she and Ambassador Crocker have to keep going back to the Iraqis, and they are almost actually begging them to let Blackwater get back into business (Resuming their routine operations in Iraq), because if Blackwater can't operate, then the United States embassy is effectively shut down. This is the complete vulnerability that the United States has created for our operations there in Iraq by depending on private contractors.

One week later, Bush meets with Prime Minister Maliki face to face. They were already scheduled to have this meeting, but now the whole point of the meeting changes. Top of the agenda is no longer, "Prime Minister Maliki, we really need you to get serious about these sectarian killings, because if they don't end, we don't end this war, and I don't get my troops home." Instead, top of the agenda is Blackwater. So, basically this a manner in which private contractor action completely skews the relationship between two governments and undermines the overall strategy.

Now, the second question asks what does this do to the broader, as some people like to say "War of ideas," or however you want to phrase it, regarding the broader Muslim world. And here, too, this is a complete hammer to our image; a hammer to our public diplomacy. Some U.S. military officers on the scene described this as "bad as Abu Ghraib." I personally disagree with that, but it points to the level of negativity. While private contractors are seen as convenient, temporary manpower shift, it's a way of dis-involving your public (American citizens), and it doesn't play that way "outside" (Iraq). When incidents happen, the Iraqis don't just focus on the private companies, instead they blame the U.S. government.

The Blackwater "Nisoor Square" shooting incident resonated negatively not only inside Iraq but throughout the Muslim world. A variety of major media out there in the Middle East like Al Jazeera reported on the Blackwater contractors as "an army that seeks fame, fortune and thrills away from all considerations and ethics of military honor. The employees are known for their roughness, they are known for shooting indiscriminately at vehicles or pedestrians." Even the Daily Star, the regional English language newspaper which is probably one of the most moderate voices in the region, compared the uses of the company to the Mahdi army (Militant Shiite insurgency in Iraq) and put the Mahdi army in a positive light saying "at least they (The Mahdi army) can plausibly claim to be defending their community. No foreign mercenary can plead similar motivations. So, all of them should go." These are all really major quotes, but the timing of it happens at the very same moment that Secretary Rice is in the region trying to save her historic legacy by jump starting the Arab-Israel peace process. Most people would agree the Arab-Israel situation is the real key in sucking the poison out of Muslim-U.S. relations. And instead of her efforts being positive for any kind of U.S. public diplomacy, every commentator (in Iraq) called the conference she was attending "The BlackWater- Black Heart Conference." It is just a hammer blow to our public diplomacy.

The second thing which is fascinating to me is the reaction by Blackwater. While the Arab press is roiling, and it's being covered in other parts of the Muslim world like Indonesia and Pakistan negatively, how did the company react?

That's a great lead in to a question I have regarding Erick Prince, the chairman and owner of Blackwater, who recently testified on Capitol Hill and predictably defended his company's actions.

I was there for all 5 hours of it.

Were you just steaming in the back, fuming the whole time?

Yes (Laughs). To be completely honest.

If you were on the panel, what questions would you have asked? Some key questions you thought were on point and went unasked by the panel?

Well the event played out two ways. One side was craven and the other side was clueless. One side kept going, "Mr. Prince tell us how great you are, tell us how wonderful you are, tell us how special you are." The other side asked questions that were scatterbrained, all over the place, and didn't deal with the issue at hand. So, I have here a couple of questions that would have been interesting if answered.

I would have asked him bout the series of incidents involving his company that date back to 2004. They range from sending out men on a mission to Fallujah without proper equipment, vehicles, training, or even good directions that led to their death, as well helping the Iraqi insurgency.

A simple yes or no question would have been, "Has your firm, based on these patterns of incidents, faced any legal or disciplinary actions from the U.S. government? Have they (the guilty contractors) ever been prosecuted, or lost a contract, or been fined for anything based on this?" Because it seems, as far as the record shows, that the only people to take action, to create consequences when there has been negative effect, has not been the folks (The U.S. Government) paying these contractors. It's been three groups only:

1) The four mothers of the Blackwater employees killed in Fallujah.

2) The parents of the men who were killed in the Blackwater plane crash that resulted from their firm's actions in Afghanistan.

3) And now, The Iraqi government that just got fed up waiting for our government to do something.

Here's another question I would've asked: "We understand that you fired the person that got into a drunken argument on Christmas Eve and killed the Iraqi Vice President's security guard. Our question is who flew him out of the country? Which entity made the decision to get that individual out of the country 36 hours after they potentially committed a murder, which in effect assured prosecution would be difficult and impede the investigation? Was Blackwater operating under its own discretion? Or, were they ordered to do so by its clients and the State Department? Who was it?"

Another one is "Why do your helicopters in Iraq not carry any identifying insignia, such as the numbers painted on U.S. Army vehicles? Is there something that sets the company aside from standard U.S. tactics?

It would have been very interesting to ask him, "Isn't it interesting that the same government individual, who has been reported by one investigative committee to have made the initial decision for Blackwater to get its first contract, is the brother of the current State Department Inspector General, who was found, by the same committee, to have intervened in preventing an investigation into Blackwater's illegal activity?"

These are some examples of the actual questions we could've asked. Instead, one side wanted to talk about everything from Moveon.org to diabetes medication. And the other side oddly kept asking Eric Prince why he didn't prosecute his employees, but conceded ultimately that he couldn't because he was just a C.E.O. of a company.

However, what's good is that no one can claim they don't know about this anymore. Now, when there are negative consequences, they (The U.S.) have to deal with them. But they couldn't claim that before. For example, in 2006 in a public setting right across the street from me, President Bush was asked about the legal status and accountability of private military contractors in Iraq. One student questioned him, and Bush answered with a giggle, you can see this on the web, just Google it. Bush ultimately said, "I'm gonna ask Rumsfeld about it when I get back." If that question had been answered a year ago, we wouldn't be in this problem today but, it wasn't.

Your research has borne many egregious example of private contractors' reckless conduct in Iraq--including the Blackwater shootings, CACI and Titan firms responsible for the notorious Abu Ghraib interrogations, and Aegis Company's "trophy video" in which they posted a video of them shooting at civilians to an Elvis song on the net. What I and others want to know is what legal repercussions do they face, if any, under international law and U.S. law?

What could happen, or what will happen? I mean there are multiple laws that could be applied. Iraqis are claiming that since Blackwater didn't have a license to operate in Iraq, they didn't fall under the immunity laws protecting other private military contractors (Initiated under Paul Bremer in 2003 as head of the CPA).

They also say they want Blackwater to pay over $100 million dollars to the families of the shooting victims. So, instead of sounding like they were trying to ensure rule of law, it actually sounded like an extortion attempt. They undermined their stance.

Now, there's also application of U.S. civilian law. There is a law in the books called Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA). Basically, it says if you are working for the U.S. government abroad in a military setting, and you commit a felony, then we can potentially prosecute you back home. It has only been utilized twice in Iraq. One time when a contractor came back and was found with child porn on his computer, and another time when there was an attempted rape of a U.S. reservist by a contractor. The challenge of this law is that it gets difficult when you add a non-U.S. victim and a "battlefield environment" like we have in Iraq. So, it'll be hard to ask a civilian jury sitting in the U.S. that we want you, the jury, to not only decide whether a law was broken, but whether the "rules of engagement" in a "battlefield environment" were broken as well. It is very difficult.

Another method is the Uniform Code of Military Justice - the court martial system. In October 2006, the law was changed to allow private contractors to fall under it, and it is probably the most apt one in finding these Blackwater contractors involved in the Nisoor square shooting liable. They were involved in a combat zone, an operational setting, and the question is did they violate the rules of engagement or not? The problem of that is that the law was passed in October, but the Pentagon never issued a procedure to its JAG officers on how to actually use it.

So, is there some semblance of hope that there could be legal accountability?

Could be, but again, it's political will that matters most. With Blackwater, it's like one of those things when projecting the stock market, do you look at past behavior and past facts? Or, do you try and project forward? Using past facts, you shouldn't expect anything to happen. Projecting forward? There's enough attention around this now that you might seem some action along the side - but not major action.

We've woken up to the fact that the emperor has no clothes, but right now all we're willing to do is to ask him to please put a scarf on.

In your article "America, Islam, and the 9-11 War" you state, "The erosion of American credibility in Muslim world not only reinforces recruiting efforts of its foes, but denies Americans ideas and policies a fair hearing." How does this play out in Iraq?

The U.S. was in a strong position during the Cold War with being internationally viewed as a "beacon on the hill." It both had power, but also more importantly, popularity and respect. It wasn't that we had the Atom bomb, but it was also that we had McDonalds and Coca Cola. We had universities people wanted to come to. We had blue jeans. Now, we have power, but now it's not as easy to apply it in the current conflict. Instead of being seen as that "beacon", America, "the land of blue jeans", has become internationally viewed as the "land of armed jumped suits." And that is not a positive when you're dealing with the problem at hand.

It is not that the U.S. is locked in some battle with the broader Muslim World. That is simply false. But you do have a really weird international change, where for the first time a state and a religion are looking at each other through a different lens--a lens of misperceptions. It is a lens of ignorance, but also a lens of anger. And it's getting worse, and we have to recognize that. It's actually fulfilling Bin Laden's wishes, he wanted this kind of conflict, and it is creating it. It's both on how we conduct ourselves, but also how we speak to the world.

Peter, you're the co-founding Director of the Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World at the Saban Center at Brookings. In your experience and opinion, how do we convince the Muslim world that our actions, whether they are rooted in "regime change", or "humanitarian" or "reform" efforts, are not mere tools of American imperialism?

Basically there was an era where the U.S. had it right, and Louis Armstrong sang about it during his jazz tours when he went around the world on behalf of the United States. Louis Armstrong wasn't a stooge, but he spoke the truth and that compared very positively to what they, the people, were seeing from the Soviet Union. But the line that encapsulates what we need to do today is to "Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative."

There are clearly things that are dragging us down and are not all that useful. Accentuate the positive. There are lot of things that the U.S. does like help local NGOs on the ground, and investment in education. We have an amazing spirit as a nation, in terms of not just with the government does, but what the broad base of American society does. We do that but we can do a lot more.

For our generation, this is the equivalent of our cold war. This is our calling: to bridge this growing divide between the U.S. and the Muslim world. It's incumbent on us whether we are in government or outside government. Whether we are a corporation or an NGO. Whether it's faith based or not, it's incumbent on us to bridge this divide.

The same thing goes for the clear negatives that are dragging us down. Those are easy to pick off, you know, most people universally recognize that while the Arab-Israeli peace will not be easy in any shape, way, or form, at least showing action on it is something we can do, instead of ignoring the problem. Same thing goes for GITMO (Guantanamo Bay). We painted ourselves in a corner with that, and we need to find a way out.

Iraq. It's very clear that not only now is it a half trillion dollar investment gone bad, but in terms of U.S. funds, that money could have been spent on lot more effective things. Like I've said, it has been hammer to our public diplomacy.

And finally, the problem with our relationship via authoritarian leaders in the Middle East region. It is clear we have struck a deal with the devils and we are not getting much out of that deal - and that is true. We can pick off the regimes where that is happening and not only does that not help our battles with the extremist groups, but it also undermines our broader effort to speak on behalf of democracy every time we cozy up to a dictator. Clearly, we have to start to disentangle ourselves and start to pressure them on some of the things they can do. An example, I'd say to a current ally, "Buddy, we love what you're doing in giving us intelligence, although it's sorta funny you only give us intelligence a day before one of our senior official visits. But, we don't really like what you did to crack down on free media or that you jailed democracy activists. We are not going to turn aside from that anymore."

We have a record of doing that--that type of dialogue - and it worked in the transformation within South Korea during the Cold War, the transformation that happened within Philippines is another example. We can have a similar attitude towards our very ostensible authoritarian allies.

What of "Islamofascism": An accurate assessment of our enemy or a politically convenient and sexy, new term of choice by certain ideological pundits?

It's not new, and no one likes it. It was a stupid, stupid phrase to use in the first place. It was completely politicized, and they very quickly realized that. Now, the flip side is there are certain people running with it these days to make it appear that the broader U.S. really does believe this term.

Can there honestly be a lasting peace between the United States and the "Muslim world" in our lifetime, or this just whimsical naiveté?

I think there can be, but it's not going to come in a matter of years. It's going to be generational and maybe even multigenerational if we are going to be honest about it. But the fact is there are all sorts of amazing transformation and changes that are going on in the world. This is only one part of it. In part, it's because the world is changing so fast, but I think there are things that can happen. The problem for us on the U.S. side is that we've really wasted the first couple of years of this (Post 9-11). We could've done things more positively, and we did a lot negatively that we are going to be dealing with the consequences for at least a generation. But that doesn't meant all is lost.

Look at the French and the Germans. They spent literally almost a millennium fighting each other. If you would've said in 1945, "The French and German would later be part of this grand consortium. They would have a fairly closely aligned foreign policy and domestic policy. They would be sharing laws, sharing economics, basically they are not going to be considering each other as enemies, but considering themselves as friends they can't live without." If you would've said that in 1945, someone would've sent you to the Loony Bin. So, we can take hope from those examples. There we are today.

Democracy is not always the answer

There are other forms of government that work

by TOM PLATE - Oct 12, 2007

With barely more than 4 million citizens, the tiny state of Singapore in Southeast Asia would hardly qualify as a template or role model for anything or anybody. Even clockwork-like Switzerland seems a relative superpower at 7.5 million in populace. Why would anyone care one way or the other what Singapore's first prime minister thinks or says or criticizes?

But people, curiously, do. Perhaps this is because, in a world of conflicting values, global warming, failing states and thoughtless leaders, a clear-headed and usable sense of certainty is in frighteningly short supply. And so when someone can provide it with reason and assurance, people's ears perk up, minds open up and a star can be born.

By many estimates, Lee Kuan Yew -- the founder of modern Singapore, but now a backstage eminence in the government -- is a giant of our time, despite achieving nothing more than masterful management of a country a fourth the size of Shanghai, which is but one city in China.

In 1965, the historical port of Singapore was not much to brag about. Five decades later, it's a glittering gem of a modern state, with a high-end economy, low levels of crime and a state ideology of show-me pragmatism and kindergarten-to-grave personal discipline that sets it wildly apart from its neighbors in the region. But Lee is controversial precisely because he has been so overtly strong-willed, seemingly self-assured and -- worst of all to critics -- so annoyingly successful.

His legacy to future generations of Singaporeans seems fairly clear. What's less clear is whether this 84-year-old man has left anything of an intellectual estate to the world outside of his beloved little country. If he has, it's a profoundly provocative legacy. It suggests that the results of government are far more important than the style or form of government.

It enshrines pragmatism over ideology, results over intentions, and priorities over process.

The implications for fundamentalist evangelists of democracy are gravely unsettling. For what does it gain the citizen to have a vote if she or he cannot feed, clothe and house the family -- and if it's a system wherein vested lobbying interests subvert the people's votes for private gain? What is the value of democracy if its result is poverty and hopelessness? Do citizens feel better about their future if they can honor the sainted memory of Thomas Jefferson but cannot climb out of abysmal debt and despair?

For extremely critical Westerners, imbued with individualistic ideology, Singapore is a state of "patrol, control and condemn." People who chew gum (the law was recently amended) faced the horrific punishment of bodily caning (a punishment inherited from the colonial British). Such simplistic snapshots have been, perhaps until recently, the country's entire image in the United States.

But as societies flounder and flail, people wonder if there is a better way to cope in this roiling age of globalization. Sure, no one wants to endorse materialistic Mussolini authoritarianism, for obvious reasons; but a glance at so-called Asian democracies such as the Philippines triggers doubts as to whether American-style democracy is the best medicine for seriously ailing states.

But are authoritarian figures like Lee really an answer? Certainly the great Thomas Hobbes, 17th-century philosopher, was in no doubt: Many societies without someone like a wise Lee hovering over things would never rise above unmitigated disaster and at their worst, would remain or degenerate into something like this: "No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Plato himself greatly preferred to be ruled by educated and wise philosopher-kings rather than demagogic, craven and pretentious proconsuls of the people.

The hitch, though, is in the details: Is the philosopher-king under discussion a dummy, a demagogue or a truly wise man?

Those who argue that Lee Kuan Yew is a special historic figure say he is the latter. That his decades of stewardship of Singapore have been justified by the amazing results achieved for the people that he has served and ruled.

Again, Singapore templates for no other place on earth, perhaps. But as the world wonders whether good governance is truly possible in societies that ignore the general interest because they are hostage to the special interests, the Singapore way stands out as another way at looking at political life through a clear lens.

Tom Plate is a professor of communications and public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles. He recently interviewed Lee Kuan Yew.

Loaded Language and Loaded Guns

The Meaning of Opposites

By Charles Sullivan - Oct 3, 2007

One can no longer understand US governmental policy on the basis of conventional language or traditional wisdom. Language itself and its long-established meanings were long ago twisted and distorted in order to deceive the people. Now war is peace and terror and occupation is liberation. In order to make sense of what is happening, it is important to understand everything within the context of a specific economic philosophy, and the distorted capitalist system that spawned it.

That ideology was crafted by a diminutive economist named Milton Friedman, at the University of Chicago some five decades ago. The holy trinity of Friedman’s version of capitalism—privatization of the public domain, corporate deregulation, and deep cuts in social spending—has resulted in enormous societal inequity and socio-economic classes. It has given us the haves and the have-nots, the haves and the have-mores.

Friedman and his disciples, collectively known as ‘The Chicago School’ do not believe in a minimum wage—much less a living wage, unions, worker rights, environmental protections, worker safety, or any other kind of restraint imposed upon corporations. In Friedman’s view, the market should rule and profitability should be the guiding principle, the end results always justifying the means.

The implementation of Friedman’s version of unfettered capitalism relies upon munificent corporate welfare, tax cuts to the wealthy, exploitation of workers, and the outright theft of other sovereign nation’s natural wealth through military force—including oil and minerals, water supplies and other societal infrastructure; cheap labor, and a procession of consumers of goods and services without limits—an impossibility in a closed ecological system.

Convincing the public to support policies that are, in fact, detrimental to them, requires enormous marketing skill, as well as a corporate owned and operated propaganda apparatus that is second to none. This is accomplished by cloaking harmful policies in patriotic language, and other forms of seduction.

In order to achieve this objective, which is really nothing less than unqualified global corporate dominance, the public domain must be privatized and run not for use, but for profit; and the unparalleled might of the US military brought to bear against any nation or people who stand in the way.

It is this thinking—the dominant economic paradigm that shapes all US policy—that has brought us an endless succession of wars and other human tragedies; exacerbated global warming, and unprecedented rapacious planetary destruction, including the mass extinction of much of the world’s flora and fauna — all for corporate profit.

Decades ago, in order to field test the economic theories that were formulated by the right wing think tanks at The Chicago School, Friedman and his disciples descended like locusts upon Latin America. The results were devastating: Democratically elected governments were systematically overthrown and brutal dictators friendly to US business interests were installed in their place—all of which were subsidized by US tax dollars with the complicity of the CIA.

As a result, US-trained death squads roamed the countryside torturing, murdering, and disappearing dissidents, union organizers, and indigenous land holders—a process that continues to this day. The corporate media, itself, an essential cog in Friedman’s capitalist machine, referred to these death squads as freedom fighters, and canonized the likes Ronald Reagan as champions of liberty.

But the recipients of US policy in Latin America—those who survived them—know better. Now the same policies are being implemented in the Middle East, and with the same disastrous results. Elements of Friedman’s policies have been in play here in the US for decades, and the intent is to do to the US what was done in Latin America and Iraq.

Language is a tool that can be used to either conceal or reveal truth; it can be used to inform or to distort. Given the track record of private enterprise, it is not surprising that everything associated with Milton Friedman’s capitalism has been hopelessly perverted, and language is no exception.

Understanding the role played by Friedman and his disciples in shaping US policy—a doctrine adopted and praised by Republicans and Democrats alike, is critical in order to bring the big picture of world events, including our own domestic policies, into clear focus.

The disciples of Friedman’s economic theorem have skillfully manipulated the language to deceive the subjects of those policies. Stripped of the garments of seductive language, the hidden kernel of truth is clearly seen: unregulated corporate power that masquerades as free market trade. The nations that have undergone Friedman’s economic shock therapy: Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Indonesia, and many others, were opened up to privatization and corporate plunder that soon left them impoverished and wasted.

The once sustainable and vibrant local economies, most of them characterized by broad public ownership, were thoroughly globalized, as capitalism was forced upon those who had rejected it at the ballot box or through armed revolution. Local manufactures were no longer protected from multi-nationals: prices soared, wages fell, workers lost their jobs, unemployment rose astronomically, and the infrastructure that once provided inexpensive or free public services—among them, potable water and inexpensive food—were privatized and rendered unaffordable to the multitudes.

Shared prosperity quickly gave way to abject poverty and misery; while predatory US corporations bled nation after nation of their natural wealth, and kept the profits to themselves.

Here in the US, the people of New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina experienced the same economic shock and awe as Latin America. The poor were relocated and resorts for the rich quickly supplanted affordable public housing. The public school system was virtually dismantled and privatized. Contractors such as Halliburton and Blackwater reaped enormous profits on the misery and suffering of the Gulf Region’s working poor. Corporate profits mattered more than the lives of the people. New Orleans will never be the same.

All of this was accomplished by stripping language of its traditional connotations and perverting it into its opposite meaning. Thus lies became truth and predatory capitalism morphed into beneficent public service. The new definitions are designed to conceal the real intent of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, and are employed as marketing tools to make blatant theft and exploitation appear palatable to the multitudes, and to the helpless victims of unfettered capitalism.

Had the hidden agenda of our elected officials been widely known to the public, the people would likely find these policies not only objectionable, but morally reprehensible and offensive. Now Orwellian doublespeak is the norm, resulting in the enforcement arm of capitalism—the police state and an emerging Gestapo society, perpetrated in the name of a democracy that does not even exist.

The dictum of freedom, as understood by rational and conscientious human beings everywhere, has traditionally been applied to people and refers to their treatment by one another and their respective governments. However, when free market capitalists speak of freedom and democracy, as we are witnessing in the catastrophic situation they have created in the Middle East, they are not referring to human freedoms at all—but to unfettered capitalism, absolute corporate rule, and human servitude to wealth garnered at public expense—essentially a global terrorist slave state. That is what is meant by so called free markets as it pertains to the human condition.

Thus democracy, rather than meaning self-government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is perverted into support for deregulated corporations that are accountable to no one, the ultimate arbiter of all forms of power—the market as a Holy Grail; the decisive triumph of private ownership over people and the public welfare by the global elite.

And that, in a nutshell, is what we are fighting for not only in the Middle East, but in 135 nations around the world. These are the American interests the military is protecting; these are the freedoms they are defending from democracy.

In the idiom of free market capitalism, all things—whether soil, mineral, plant or animal, including human beings (wage slaves), are diminished and commodified, and valued only in proportion as they can be privatized and exploited by the champions of Laissez-Faire capitalism.

Furthermore, let it be understood that the president and his cabinet, as well as every member of Congress (with one exception), are disciples of Friedman’s economic paradigm. Not only are they doing everything in their power to implement Friedman’s policies, they have been doing so for a very long time.

This perception certainly demystifies the remarkable homogeneity of US policy that has sent countless young men and women dressed in military uniforms to their deaths, and disappeared millions of leftist dissidents around the world. And it will continue unabated unless we the people put a stop to it.

Americans Stuck In Political Stupor

By Joel S. Hirschhorn -- Contributing Writer - July 31, 2007

The latest bipartisan George Washington University Battleground Poll rightfully received media attention because of its depressing data. There is historic political pessimism and cynicism. But something is more troubling than the data on the dire views of Americans about their elected representatives and government. It is that 72 percent of voters still believe that “voting gives people like me some say about how the government runs things.” Unbelievable! Such confidence in a system that has failed them.

Despite untrustworthy elected officials and a dysfunctional government that takes care of the Upper Class more than everyone else, Americans retain still believe in their democracy. This logical absurdity – or delusional state – is best explained by avoidance of the pain of cognitive dissonance. Americans resist the reality that they are living in a sham representative democracy where the rule of law is a growing fiction.

It should be noted (but was not in the media coverage) that 75 percent of the likely voters were 45 or older, with a third retired. That makes the results even more unsettling. They should know better than to keep believing they can vote the nation into a better condition. Self-identified Republicans were 41 percent, Democrats 42 percent, and Independents 15 percent.

Consider these reasons for giving up on voting and elections under the grip of the two major parties: Some 53 percent have an unfavorable view of politicians, with 55 percent believing that most elected officials are untrustworthy. A majority of 52 percent disapproves of the performance of the Democrats in Congress and 61 percent disapprove of Republicans there. An incredible 93 percent feels that lawmakers in Washington put partisan politics first compared with citizens. But the biggest shift in voter opinion is that 71 percent think their own Member of Congress puts partisan politics first compared with them, with 63 percent feeling strongly that way.

For the big picture: Seventy-percent are now convinced that the country is off on the wrong track – and 58 percent feel strongly that way. This is the worst score recorded in the history of the Battleground survey. Democrats are universally agreed about this point, but so are 71 percent of Independents and 49 percent of Republicans.

A plurality of 38 percent believes their children will be worse off in the future and only a third said they "think their own children will be better off than they are right now -- a drop of 7 points since January." Pessimism is worst among white Americans: Only 29 percent believe that their children will be better off; 38 percent believe their children will be worse off.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post summed up: “the American people have entered this campaign with a wholly cynical view of the political process.”

One trick of the political status quo establishment to keep many Americans (but still less than about half of all eligible voters) believing in voting is advertising. Consider the current crowded presidential primary season. The mass media constantly work to play up the races among Democratic and Republican contenders. Why not? They make a ton of money from all the money spent on campaign advertising. Televised debates and endless state and national poll data are entertainment that fuel fake competition. It is sheer manipulation of the electorate – to keep them interested in the election and, worse, to keep them believing that it really matters who wins in each party.

In the end, greedy and arrogant power elites will ensure that only a “safe” candidate will be chosen so that the two-party duopoly loses no power and no presidency rocks the political boat or harms corporate America. Having so many contenders in the primary season is a farce. The eventual Democratic ticket will be Clinton and Obama. Period. End of story. It is the lowest risk, smartest political strategy. On the Republican side there is more uncertainty, but the likely ticket will be Giuliani and Thompson.

The true wildcard is whether Michael Bloomberg enters the race as a third party candidate. I am rooting for this. Objective statistical analysis of the American electorate shows that the level of public discontent with Democrats and Republicans is so high that a lavishly funded campaign by Bloomberg can make history. Take independents, turned-off Democrats and Republicans, and the huge numbers of eligible voters that do not usually vote. Bang! You have more than enough votes to make Bloomberg president. By choosing a well known but political maverick that the public trusts as a running mate, he can win. It is exactly the kind of shake-up our political system desperately needs.

Americans must awake from their political stupor and stop letting themselves be victimized and manipulated by the media/political/financial elites running and ruining our nation.

America has no surplus democracy to export

by Ahmed Amr - JULY 18, 2007

If we can’t impeach Bush for his WMD lies and the horrific results, then we will be left with solid proof that America has no surplus democracy to export. We can either impeach Bush and Cheney or suffer irreparable damage to our political heritage of being a nation of laws, says Ahmed Amr.

George Bush just gave another vulgar performance in the remodeled James S. Brady Press Room. As usual, he stayed on message - like a vacuum cleaner salesman who touts his machines as the only weapons capable of winning the "eternal war on dust."

With a straight face, Bush blamed General Tommy Franks for the disastrous post-invasion plan. Apparently, Franks was awarded the Medal of Freedom for giving us bum advice on troop requirements for stabilizing Iraq. Without missing a beat, Bush went on to declare that he would resist making decisions based on public opinion polls or even the advice of GOP senators. Rather, he would leave future decisions to his new general - David Petraeus.

I can’t remember the last time the president bothered to visit Iraq. And yet he speaks with such authority about what our Mesopotamian oil colony looks like four years after his unilateral war of aggression.

If we take Bush at his word, the entire quagmire is nothing more than a rumble between the marines and Al Qaeda; a battle that will determine the survival of Western Civilization. Bush made over 30 references to al-Qaeda during the press conference. Can it be that the decider can’t differentiate between Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Bin Laden’s cells in Afghanistan? Is it possible that he actually subscribes to the infantile notion faithfully propagated by a complicit press corps that we are fighting the same enemy responsible for the carnage of 9/11?

Who renewed the president’s license to spin the same batch of manufactured intelligence he used to market the invasion to gullible and traumatized Americans? And where in the constitution does it say that Rupert Murdoch has that authority?

Bush keeps pulling the same canard out of the same neo-con hat even though his own intelligence services have consistently determined that the Mesopotamian insurgency is predominantly made up of Iraqis that choose to resist the American occupation. He should know that the members of 'Al Qaeda in Iraq’ constitute but a small fraction of the insurgents. And there is no debating the fact that Iraqi insurgents have limited their activities to Iraq. Among the tens of thousands of Iraqi detainees only an insignificant minority are non-Iraqi Arab 'foreigners.’

As usual, Bush painted his imperial enterprise as a noble effort to spread the blessings of democracy. Now that Iraqis can vote, two thousand Iraqis vote with their feet every day and choose wretched exile in Syria, Jordan, Egypt or any other place that will give them sanctuary. Two million have already made the journey to an uncertain future away from the familiar surroundings of their native land. Another two million are internally displaced by the ethnic cleansing that was ignited by the invasion.

If Bush would bother to ask them why they fled, they would inform him that they are fleeing Maliki’s death squads and the militia infested security forces being trained and armed by the American military.

Bush rarely mentions the plight of these refugees and their agony doesn’t register on American radar screens. It takes the unique talent of the mass media murdochrats to make a non-issue out of a massive exodus that dwarfs the epic flight of Vietnamese boat people after the collapse of the Saigon government. In a magnanimous act of generosity, the United States has taken in two hundred Iraqis. That works out to one Green Card for every thousand refugees.

In a country of twenty five million, hundreds of thousands have been killed and maimed. The official policy of the United States is not to count them. Unfortunately for Bush, It’s a little more difficult to hide the 3600 American soldiers that have perished in a war we never had to fight.

Today’s Iraq is a contender for the number one spot on the 'failed states’ list. Virtually every Iraqi has lost family members, friends and neighbors in the killing fields of Mesopotamia. Every morning, mutilated bodies are dumped in the streets of Baghdad. Suicide bombers are a daily occurrence. Tens of thousands of detainees are in the custody of the merciless sectarian security forces.

Nothing works. Reconstruction efforts have been abandoned. Parents don’t send their kids to school. Infant mortality claims one of every five children under the age of five. Unemployment is at 70%. Electricity is a memory. Oil production is below pre-war levels and the price of a barrel of oil has tripled since the invasion.

In a country that floats on oil, drivers line up for hours to fill their tanks. Sectarian gangs and common criminals stalk the population and fear is a permanent state of mind. And to think it only costs ten billion dollars a month to create so much suffering, chaos and despair.

Five years into the occupation, the Pentagon is boasting about controlling half of Baghdad even as the Green Zone comes under regular mortar attacks. And the Iraqi parliamentarians who aren’t already living in London, Syria or Jordan are getting ready for their month long summer vacation.

In the north, the Turks are threatening to attack the Kurds. In the south, the British have withdrawn their forces to the Basra airport. Brown is just waiting for the perfect moment to sneak out the back door. Behind, the British will leave a virtual theocracy dominated by the militias of Moqtada el Sadr and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - a group that was recruited, financed, trained and given sanctuary by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

According to recent polls, eighty percent of Iraqis want the American occupation to end and seventy percent of Americans would be happy to oblige them.

None of this matters to the president. When it comes to owning up to the consequences of his criminal war, George’s psychopathic indifference is off the mental health charts. The man is determined to walk away with a 'victory’ that will allow him to posture as the reincarnation of Winston Churchill.

What possible outcome could justify the harm inflicted on the Iraqi people? How can one even imagine a final chapter in this quagmire that would compensate for the loss of American and Iraqi blood and treasure? What exactly is left to win?

The most remarkable thing about this man is that he appears to be genuinely satisfied with his dismal record. George is still infatuated with George. In the course of his pathetic performance during the news conference, he couldn’t resist the temptation to act like a clown and crack a few jokes. It’s no sweat off of his back how much blood flows out of other people’s veins.

It isn’t likely that George will ever admit losing this debacle of choice. So, it will be left to others to lose the war for the president. To paraphrase Georges Clemenceau, ending this war is too important to leave to the generals or George Bush.

The bottom line is that we can either wait for the next president to do him the honors or stop funding his illegal war. Dealing with the messy consequences will be left for the Iraqis to sort out. Perhaps massive American reparations can help heal the wounds and restore a fraction of what we have destroyed.

Even if Congress doesn’t act, Maliki and his sectarian parliamentary thugs might invite Bush to pack up and leave at the end of the year by simply refusing to renew his United Nations mandate. Maybe that’s why Bush continues to portray Maliki as a young democrat. It will make it that much easier to spin the inevitable withdrawal as compliance with the wishes of a 'democratic and sovereign state.’

Any way you cut it, this vicious American imperial venture in the Gulf is about to end. And if we can’t impeach Bush for his WMD lies and the horrific results, then we will be left with solid proof that America has no surplus democracy to export. We can either impeach Bush and Cheney or suffer irreparable damage to our political heritage of being a nation of laws.

Impeach Now! Or, Face the End of Constitutional Democracy

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - July 16, 2007

Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.

Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.

Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered.

William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is "praying for a terrorist strike" to save the party from electoral wipeout in 2008. Chertoff, Cheney, the neocon nazis, and Mossad would have no qualms about saving the bacon for the Republicans, who have enabled Bush to start two unjustified wars, with Iran waiting in the wings to be attacked in a third war.

The Bush administration has tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the terrorist fear factor by infiltrating some blowhard groups and encouraging them to talk about staging "terrorist" events. The talk, encouraged by federal agents, resulted in "terrorist" arrests hyped by the media, but even the captive media was unable to scare people with such transparent sting operations.

If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive" at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush's declaration of "national emergency" and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.

A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media as a vindication of the neoconsevatives' Islamophobic policy, the intention of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose is to eliminate any resistance to Israel's complete absorption of Palestine into Greater Israel.

Think about it. If another 9/11-type "security failure" were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist threats and that he has "a gut feeling" that America will soon be hit hard?

Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that "between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public's (sic) going to have a very different view of this war."

Throughout its existence the US government has staged incidents that the government then used in behalf of purposes that it could not otherwise have pursued. According to a number of writers, false flag operations have been routinely used by the Israeli state. During the Czarist era in Russia, the secret police would set off bombs in order to arrest those the secret police regarded as troublesome. Hitler was a dramatic orchestrator of false flag operations. False flag operations are a commonplace tool of governments.

Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging "terrorist" attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?

Only a diehard minority believes in the honesty and integrity of the Bush-Cheney administration and in the truthfulness of the corporate media.

Hitler, who never achieved majority support in a German election, used the Reichstag fire to fan hysteria and push through the Enabling Act, which made him dictator. Determined tyrants never require majority support in order to overthrow constitutional orders.

The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown. Are coming "terrorist" events of which Chertoff warns and Santorum promises the means for overthrowing our constitutional democracy?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

Save America

by Harvery Edwards - Huffington Post

How fitting that this is printed on July 4th week. In 1776 we celebrated our independence from England. Now in 2007 we need to strike out again against the tyranny and oppression of our own government under the Cheney-Bush presidency. Read the Declaration of Independence. We need to SAVE AMERICA! We need to let Bush know that he is responsible and accountable to all the citizens of America. This is an administration of cronyism, favoritism, partisanship and arrogance.

The flag is bleeding because George W. Bush is killing what our flag represents. He is killing our democracy. He is becoming America's first dictator. He is massacring our constitution. He has done away with Habeas Corpus. He is wiretapping, without warrants, his fellow Americans. He has changed the justice department by politicizing it. His "open" town meetings are filled with only the people who have pledged their loyalty to their leader. The two elections that "voted" him in were fraught with so many irregularities and voter fraud. Bush didn't win the 2000 election, he was appointed by his court. What does that say about our democracy? He invaded Iraq, a sovereign country. He lied to his government, to his citizens, to the world to get what he wanted. He doesn't like what you say about him, then you must be "un-American" or "unpatriotic" . His administration knowingly leaked the name of a covert agent. This used to be called treason. He may, as president, have the right to pardon someone but he doesn't have the right to change the rule of law and decree the sentence as excessive and then change it. We can no longer turn the other cheek. Nancy Pelosi said that impeachment is off the table because there are more important issues that need tending. What is more important then saving America? Every time we keep quiet and let Cheney and Bush act like dictators we are giving them permission to do so. They show contempt for the rule of law, they show contempt for the American people and they show contempt for it's greatest symbol, our American flag.

George Orwell put it very succinctly when he wrote, "What can you do against the lunatic, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?"

President Cheney ... oops, President Bush is destroying America. Together, they are bleeding America dry. I believe that Cheney and Bush with their over-blown Iraq budget are bankrupting America . In order to fund their war they are proposing to further cut benefits from the veterans. You heard me, our returning soldiers will be facing more hardships right here at home. There will be cuts in food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid. $3.6 billion will be cut from special education programs in public schools. The Supplemental Food Program that provides food for 450,000 low income seniors will be completely eliminated.

There has been $8 to 9 billion in tax payer dollars unaccounted for in Iraq, Halliburton has received $1.5 billion in funds that were supposed to be used by the Iraqi government. The budget for Iraq leaves this country with a massive deficit. We are shorthanded in case of an emergency in this country because so many National Guard troops are in Iraq. The funding for their war is costing us dearly in terms of health care for Americans, food and housing for the poor, rebuilding New Orleans and care for the returning wounded soldiers. There have been cuts across the board.

Do you know that Halliburton charged the US government for 42,000 meals for soldiers when in fact they were only serving 14,000 meals a day? Did you know that Bush gave a company called Custer Battles $100 million in contracts. This was for a "security company" that felt that the "fear and disorder in Iraq offered real promise" to them. In the first 13 months of the war the Bush administration lavished over $100 million in contracts on Buster Battles. In a matter of weeks, Custer Battles received two government contracts. One was to provide security inspection for civilian flights at Baghdad International Airport. Of course, there were no civilian flights at Baghdad International Airport. The Bush administration paid Custer Battles anyway. While at the airport, Custer Battles found some abandoned Iraqi Airways forklifts. They painted these over to hide the Iraqi Airways markings and then billed them to the government as materials under a different contract. There are 40 pages of abuses listed in the transcript from the hearing on fraud and waste in Iraq from 2005 and it's still going on. SAVE AMERICA.

The United States courts gave Libby a sentence and yet Bush commuted his sentence because he felt it was too harsh. Bush can not and should not be allowed to adjust the court's decision just because he believes that he is "the decider". Even Paris Hilton went to jail. Where is the justice? What does this say to our youth and to the world.? That it's okay to lie if you have wealth and power? That it's okay to invade sovereign countries based on lies? That it's okay to change laws? That it's okay to release classified documents if it will get you what you want? That it's okay to change the constitution? No man is above the law. I hate to quote from my past blogs, but Bush said:

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." George Bush Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2000 to Dick Gephardt & Tom Daschle CNN

I believe, he thinks it is.

The most frightening thing of all is that Bush and Cheney do not care. They are not up for re-election nor is anyone in their administration so they have nothing to lose. They know what their ratings are.they do not care. They know that Bush is a lame duck Presidency so they do not care. They know that Pelosi took impeachment off the table.so they do not care. They can do whatever they want. The court ordered papers, documents, emails.all they do is shrug their shoulders and say no. No one is coming after them, no one is seizing the computers and looking in the hard drive, no one is challenging their authority.

Let's seize the moment and let the world know that we're not going to let Cheney and Bush hurt us anymore. And we're not going to allow them to use us as a shield for their own selfish and greedy war. It's time to regain our self respect, our honor and our dignity. I believe in democracy. I love my country. I love my flag. I am a patriot.

Theodore Roosevelt once said,

"It is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else. That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the American public."

The "SAVE AMERICA" poster should be our rallying cry, from billboards, to posters plastered everywhere, to petitions flooding D.C. Impeach Cheney and Bush and SAVE AMERICA! Help me to help America ... anyone, any company that has an empty billboard let's use that for this image, who has a printing press that wants to print these posters? Let's get the word out!

Impeaching Cheney and Bush will show to the world that we as Americans care not only what Cheney and Bush are doing to us but what they are doing to the world. He invaded Iraq to bring them democracy yet he is taking those freedoms away from us. Do we need to write another Declaration of Independence? "SAVE AMERICA" means save the American people, save our country, save what our flag stands for, save the world from this evil! Impeach Cheney and Bush now!

Subverting Democracy

by Joseph Massad, Electronic Intifada/Al-Ahram Weekly - July 5, 2007

As the enemies of the Palestinian people have been attacking them on every front -- Israel with its inquisition against Azmi Bishara and with him Palestinian resistance to the racist basis of the Jewish state inside the green line, or Hariri Inc. and its 14 March allies intent on proving the might of the Lebanese army at the expense of Palestinian civilian lives in Nahr al-Bared, and the continued siege by the Israeli military occupation and its US sponsor of the occupied territories -- the latest attack came from Palestinian collaborators with the enemy: the Fatah leadership abetted by the United States. Indeed the subversion of Middle East democracy has been the mainstay of US policy in the region since the CIA supported the 1949 Hosni al-Zaim coup that overthrew democracy in Syria.

The list after that is long, US support for the shah of Iran's coup in 1953 against the Mossadegh government, destroying the Jordanian liberal parliamentary experience by organising a Palace coup in 1957, supporting the Baathist coup in Iraq in 1963 against the popular Abdul-Karim Qassim, and so forth. American policy has not been limited to the overthrow of liberal and democratic governments in the region but of actively supporting if not planning and abetting dictatorial rule in its place and training and supplying those rulers who have instituted regimes of extreme repression and tyranny. Its current role in subverting Palestinian democracy and imposing a corrupt collaborator class on the Palestinian people is therefore anything but novel.

In the midst of all this, Orientalist fantasies of the so-called exceptionalism of the Palestinian situation are being offered by Western pundits and their Palestinian and Arab "secular," read pro-American, counterparts. These experts seem to have forgotten the history of collaboration among the oppressed amidst tragedy and oppression, from the Judenrats and the Kapos, to Vietnam's Thieu, Angola's UNITA, South Africa's Buthelezi, Mozambique's RENAMO, Nicaragua's Contras, and Lebanon's South Lebanese Army under Saad Haddad and Antoine Lahd. The Palestinian situation is indeed the rule and not the exception. The only exception that the Middle East offers to world politics is the disproportionate imperial interest that its oil has attracted, and the unprecedented international support given to its Jewish settler colony, the two being intrinsically connected. It is not the Arab world that is exceptional but American strategy in the region and the anachronistic nature of its Jewish settler-colony. The resistance of Western pundits and their Arab servants to learn this is their resistance to any analysis that aims at resisting imperial rule.

In the case of Palestine, the US support of the Palestinian Pinochet, in the tradition of US propaganda, is presented as support for democracy, while the Palestinian democratic government's defense of itself against this subversion and thuggery as a coup against democracy. Sigmund Freud explains the process he called "projection" as that by which one's unconscious attributes all one's feelings (and actions) about the other to the other about oneself. For Freud, this is an unconscious process. In the case of the Palestinian putschists (or Lahdists, as they are now known in the Arab world) and their US sponsor, however, their projection of all their crimes onto Hamas is a conscious strategy that is part and parcel of their overall strategy to destroy Palestinian democracy.

Let us start with some historical precedents to the situation of today. The first time a legitimate Palestinian government was established in Gaza and prevented from extending its authority over other parts of Palestine was in September 1948. It was King Abdullah I of Jordan who at the time opposed the All-Palestine Government (APG) (Hukumat 'Umum Filastin), which interfered with his plan to annex Central Palestine to his kingdom. Indeed, the APG was recognised by the Arab League (who was less shamelessly subservient to imperial agendas at the time than it is today) as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the legitimate heir to the Arab Higher Committee. Repressive measures were undertaken by Jordan's king to purge the West Bank of all supporters of the APG and many inducements were offered to those willing to support his bid for annexation, dubbed "unification." Once Abdullah annexed the territory "legally and administratively," the "international community," i.e. the United Kingdom and Israel, recognized his expanded kingdom (minus East Jerusalem) while the Arab League continued to oppose it, at the prodding of the APG. The APG would soon disappear from legal and popular memory, with Gaza subjected to complete and total Egyptian administration. Central Palestine was renamed the West Bank and declared as part of Jordan as a step on the way to Arab unity and in support of the Palestinians. Opposition to the annexation was portrayed by the king as opposition to Arab unity and Palestinian liberation. This is precisely what the Fatah putschists and their president are hoping to achieve in the West Bank today, except that the unity they are seeking is an ideological one between the Fatah putschists and their American and Israeli and Arab sponsors.

The recent Fatah-executed putsch has been sometime in the making. Abbas, the Palestinian Pinochet, has been groomed for his new role for at least a year and a half -- longer, if you add the period when the US imposed him as a prime minister against Yasser Arafat, whose cooperation with US and Israeli plans was deemed insufficient. Ever since the democratic elections that dislodged the Fatah putschists out of power and brought in Hamas by popular majority vote, the plan to declare a state of emergency was set in motion at the strong recommendation of the Americans, whose opposition to democracy in the Arab world defines the bloody history and present they visited (and visit) upon the region. The problem was that the opportunity did not present itself for the plan to be executed. Not that Abbas and his putschist lieutenants did not try to create it. That they did with outright and open collaboration with the Israeli occupiers and their US sponsor. These included the economic siege and strangulation imposed by the US and the EU on the Palestinian people; Israeli re-invasion of the West Bank and Gaza and the kidnapping of scores of Hamas parliamentarians and ministers, and the burning of the prime minister's offices by Fatah thugs, who also attacked individual ministers and actively sabotaged the work of the ministries; and the active help of the Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence services who are the major consultants and advisors to Abbas at the behest of the Americans, and sometimes, the Israelis.

On the ideological front, this effort was aided by the pronouncements of collaborationist Palestinian intellectuals dubbed "secular" for their support of Oslo or the post-Oslo NGO income Oslo generated for them. Their efforts have been supplemented by pro-Hariri Lebanese right-wing intellectuals who stage themselves as "leftist pro-Palestinian activists" because in the 1970s and 1980s they had joined the ranks of the Gulf-financed Fatah. In recent months, the collaboration of the Fatah putschists could not be contained. Open preparation for the putsch was in full swing with the soliciting of US military aid and training (which was received), Israeli help in facilitating these efforts (also generously offered), and the provision of an Arab diplomatic cover (always readily available). The plan, whose details I discussed in an article last November (see "Pinochet in Palestine") is now finally being executed with all the fanfare fit for Augusto Pinochet himself.

The Fatah putschists, in the tradition of all unelected Arab regimes who have also staged their own coups against democratic forces in their societies over the last six decades, have declared their democratically elected enemies as the "putschists" who are the ones leading the Palestinian people into a "dark" abyss! Pinochet was not kinder to Allende and saw himself and his fascist US-planned coup as nothing short of a corrective to set the Chilean nation back on the right path to serving and collaborating with empire. The Palestinian putschists understand that they will only remain in power and continue to accrue financial rewards if they continue to serve the Israeli occupation and its US sponsor. Indeed, the Palestinian putschists have outdone Israel and the United States in their fabricated accusations against Hamas. Descriptions such as "forces of darkness," and "emirate of darkness," are not references to the Jewish racist state that has oppressed Palestinians by appealing to Jewish theology, racial supremacy, and massive indiscriminate bombings of civilians and theft of their property for the last six decades, but to the democratically elected Hamas who defended itself against the last stage of the coup that the major putschist Mohammad Dahlan was staging on behalf of Fatah and its Israeli and American sponsors in Gaza. Abbas's rhetoric, no doubt dictated to him by Condi Rice and Ehud Olmert, is matched by the rhetoric of Palestinian "intellectuals" on the payroll of Oslo and their Lebanese supporters (who are in turn on the payroll of Hariri Inc, and Al-Nahar newspaper). The major sin Hamas committed was its victory over the putschists after they pushed it into a corner in the hope of slaughtering all its leadership in Gaza. Hamas, which has been more than patient despite months of thuggish provocations (which include assassinations of its leaders, imprisonment and torture of its rank and file, to name the most salient acts) on the part of the putschists, could not but defend itself against their final onslaught.

As punishment, the Palestinian people who elected Hamas will continue to be subjected to the horrors visited upon them by the Americans, the Israelis, and the EU. The anti-democracy Americans and Europeans are already sending financial and diplomatic rewards to the coup leaders in the West Bank, as are the Israelis, although the latter are more cautious. Israel's major help to the putschists in the last few days consisted mainly in the bombardment of Gaza and arranging for "peace" talks with the coup leader in Sharm al-Sheikh as a reward. Indeed Israel, the United States, and Europe are reversing all the measures they had taken to punish Palestinian democracy since the election of Hamas in order to reward the anti-democratic coup. In this regard, Israel has begun returning the tax money it had been stealing from the Palestinian people for the last year and a half (about one billion US dollars). As for the illegal coup government convened by Abbas with the technocratic Salam Fayyad as prime minister, it, like its Chilean predecessor, will receive all kinds of aid, economic, military, diplomatic, and ideological. Let us not forget that the "Chicago school" technocratic economists, disciples of Milton Friedman, were the ones given charge of the Chilean economy under Pinochet and almost brought it to a halt. It is the Chilean example which popularised the term "technocrats" in government, which would become commonplace after the 1980s and which the Palestinian people are promised now as their salvation.

Since he led the coup against democracy, Abbas has suspended articles in the Palestinian basic law that require parliamentary approval of decisions he makes. He has also ordered the dissolution of all NGOs, which must now reapply for licences that will not be granted to Hamas-affiliated organisations, thus making them illegal. Whereas Hamas brought looting and disorder by some of its members under control within days, widespread destruction of Hamas-affiliated property, including social service centers, schools, and offices continues throughout the West Bank at the hands of Fatah thugs. In the meantime, Hamas members, including elected officials, have had to go into hiding in fear for their lives with hundreds being rounded up by Israel and Fatah. Reports of disappearances are rife. And all this is fully endorsed by the "international community" in the name of supporting "democracy." Indeed the very rhetoric used by Abbas and his Fatah junta is borrowed from US rhetoric in the "war on terror," especially the linking of Hamas to Iran.

In the meantime, acts that Fatah thugs organized, including throwing a Fatah activist (mistaken as a Hamas activist) from a tall building, and the like, are being blamed on Hamas by the secular chorus of Palestinian intellectuals (and the Saudi-owned satellite media) who are supporting the Fatah coup. Perhaps Mahmoud Darwish's recent poem in support of the coup published on the front page of the Saudi newspaper Al-Hayat, can be explained by the monthly checks he receives from the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority; and he is not alone. His condemnation of those secular intellectuals who support Palestinian democracy is a further attempt to polarize Palestinian society not along the lines of those who support or oppose Palestinian democracy, but along the lines of secularists versus Islamists. That the "secularists" are the ones collaborating with theocratic Israel to destroy democracy coded as "Islamism" is represented as a force of Western modernity and enlightenment. What is lost on Darwish and his ilk is that it is those "dark forces" of Islamism in Palestine that are the ones defending democracy.

The pro-coup position adopted by many of the Oslo secular intellectuals towards Palestinian democracy is indeed transforming Palestinian secularists into the "darkest force" in Palestinian history in decades. What we are witnessing is nothing less than the overall collapse of Palestinian secular example of resistance to the Israeli occupation. The only antidote to these forces of true darkness is to continue to support and mobilise for Palestinian democracy and to expose the anti-democracy coup leaders and their apologist intellectuals for what they are: collaborators with the enemy.

The writer is an associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. His recent books include The Persistence of the Palestinian Question and Desiring Arabs. This article was originally published by Al-Ahram Weekly.