FRONTBENCHER

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 00:28:46 GMT

Foreseeable Folly

Imperial Anglos had tea in the Palace and discussed Iraq in a rolling exclusion zone. (As they did in the 1920’s). The disconnect between the sectarian Anglo imperial mentality and hoi polloi was there for all willing to see.(As it was in the 1920’s).

Bush and Blair still don’t get it. In their neverland world of symptom over cause and ideology over common sense, they proceed with brazen neck and Mickey Mouse dogma.

The false premise upon which pre-emptive war was initiated is forgotten and will not be mentioned in an election year. Instead we’re about to be sold another bill-of-goods by the shill in the White House.

The gullible neocons as snake-oil pushers. What’s new!

Duped into war, the Bush battalion thinks they can dupe us into a faux peace.

Bombed into switching gear, the administration will hand over control in Baghdad to an unspecified authority next June and from then on American Forces will be in Iraq by invitation only. At their late summer Republican Convention in New York City, Iraq will no longer be occupied and yet we will not leave the pulverized country this side of democratic nirvana. The Bushies love non-sequeters.

In London, British Bobbies were surprised at the White House advance team request for a rolling exclusion zone to protect the President. Little did they know.

Bush grew up in and was educated in an exclusion zone. He campaigned for President and runs his Presidency in an exclusion zone. He makes all his speeches in an exclusion zone. He cancelled his speech to the British House of Commons because it could not be made into an exclusion zone. King with commoners! What were the Brits thinking!

In Afghanistan, President Karsai lives in the Kabul version of an exclusion zone while the warlords run amok high on poppy profits. In Iraq, Bremer the Debathifier lives in an exclusion zone while the insurgents run amok high on indignation.

Bin Laden and Hussein also live in exclusion zones high on notoriety and Prime Minister Sharon wants all of Israel to be a walled exclusion zone, high on anxiety.

Maybe the Bushies are onto something! Set up your zone and only grant a seat at the table to those willing to pay. Choose an adolescent lexicon like the Rangers($200,000), Pioneers($100,000) and the hapless Mavericks($50,000). Soon you have a war chest of $100 mil and another century to come. All for reels of Rovian whitewash.

With chads and chagrin in our near future, the cover-up is already in full swing. Karl Rove will not let his boy go to the country on the record we know. He can’t.

Rove will be Huston, Ford and Capra all rolled into one in the packaging of Bush as Hero: Fearless, righteous, patriotic and the right man in the right place at the right time.

The Rover loves a Faustian inversion.

Senator John McCain has publicly asked the President of the United States to “be more engaged on Iraq.” Or the Middle-East. Or Afghanistan. Or the economy. Or the environment. Or anything. Or just be more engaging! McCain knows well that the Bushman and the Rover are prepared to sacrifice all on the alter of re-election. That’s why he ran against him in 2000. McCain knows his man.

The bottom line is that the Bush family can’t live with two canned Presidents moping about the ranch. That would bespeak dysfunction, like a Democratic presidential hopeful who hasn’t smoked pot or a cable news channel in endless pursuit of Peter Pan.

Thu, 06 Nov 2003 02:54:04 GMT

Road to Perdition

There’s steel in the bones of aging Tom Kean, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and now President of Drew University. Unwilling to play patsy and with memories of commissions that never found answers, he has uttered the one acid-churning word this White House didn’t want to hear: subpoena.

As Chairman of the 9/11 Commission (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the US) he is charged with completing his report by May 27, 2004. If his Commission fails to meet this statutory deadline, only Congress can approve an extension. The President initially opposed the setting up of the Commission.

Every branch of government has been cooperating if on a slow and reluctant basis and access “has already been on a unique breadth and scale.”

Except for the Executive.

“We’re not going to be satisfied until we get every document we need,” Kean warned fulfilling his threat to go public if the White House did not respond within a few weeks of the issuance of his Second Interim Report on September 23.

Kean wants to see the classified documents relating to a Presidential Daily Briefing in August 2001 which allegedly warned of possible Al Quada plane hijackings. These are highly sensitive documents and only a handful of people would normally see them.

“Looking backward to look forward,” Kean intends to be one of them and Bush intends to stonewall. When it comes to revelation, the Bush crowd knows the score.

As does Valerie Plame.

Outed to intimidate her husband (Ambassador Wilson) and other skeptics of the intelligence used to justify pre-emptive war, Plame feels betrayed by her own government. The President faked outrage almost two months after Novak’s column revealed she was a CIA agent.

The leak investigation is ongoing and we may soon know just how many people were actually betrayed.

In her book Leo Strauss and the American Right, Shadia Drury offers a concise characterization of Conservatism and Liberalism. She describes Traditional (Classic) Conservatism (which lamented the passing of the Middle Ages) as distinguished by “moderation, caution, fear of change, hierarchy, harmony, virtue, reciprocity, shared values and mutual concern. Feudal society came closest to actualizing this ideal."

It was the “Liberal celebration of religious and economic freedom, competition, social mobility and individualism that replaced the Medieval Order” that gave birth to classic conservatism.

Liberalism represented Modernity. Conservatism represented nostalgia for the past.

Bush is a self-declared compassionate conservative, which represents zilch.

Like WMD.

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 05:24:36 GMT

Myth, Reality and Incestuous Amplification

When the C-5s and C-17s land at Dover Air Force Base there are no cameras or pressmen, only a mortician. But there is bunting of a kind. In a room off the mortuary, there are bags and boxes of ribbons, medals and uniforms to properly outfit the deceased before their frozen bodies are released to their loved ones. No elegies, but there will be epitaphs.

Embalmed and dressed to-the-nines, the young dead never really knew what they were doing.

Bush doesn’t know what he’s doing either but he knows enough not to stop-over at Dover Air Force Base. He prefers Honolulu to swoop up half-a-mil for his re-election campaign and then on to Crawford for another weekend away from Washington.

Wolf and Rice won’t be seen at Dover anytime soon either. Why puncture the myth!

“Decisions have consequences, and you can see the consequences here,” according to the head mortician at Dover, Karen Giles. (As reported by the Indian edition of Yahoo News.)

Neocons don’t like to hear about consequences.

In his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges differentiates between “mythic reality” and “sensory reality”, (borrowing from Lawrence LeShan in The Psychology of War). In sensory reality we see events for what they are. In mythic reality we imbue events with meanings they do not have.

Ted Koppel gets to worry about his job: Brit Hume gets to interview Bush. The myth must be sustained.

President Bush is no news junkie. He doesn’t listen to or watch news programs. (He never has and this was obvious during the 2000 Presidential campaign.) He relies solely on his close aides to keep him abreast of current affairs. (Mahiavelli must be pounding his coffin lid.) Spoon-feeders in residence include Rice, Cheney, Rove and Evans. This has not gone unnoticed in Moscow, Berlin, Paris and the caves of Tora Bora.

When world leaders talk to Bush they’re not sure whether the views he expresses are his own or an amalgam of the digests he gets from his staff. (It’s possible he has no strong views of his own.)

Fearful conversational dept will expose his ignorance, Bush hides behind clichés, gestures and simplistic Biblical references. He appears shallow and detached. Fertile ground for mythic reality.

Rumsfeld took a stab at sensory reality in his conveniently leaked memo undermining the sunny good-news image preferred by Bush. Chief positive spinner attacking the spin. “The harder we work, the behinder we get,” acknowledged the Secretary of Defense.

Rum and Cock have some talking to do!

Meanwhile, a few journalists in Iraq are reporting that it’s very hard to get information, to get into hospitals and, if they happen to witness an incident, their equipment will be confiscated. They need to keep reporting. We need some reality.

“The chief institutions that disseminate the myth are the press and the state. Mythic war reporting sells papers and boosts ratings,” writes Chris Hedges.

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:24:46 GMT

Platitudes, Precedent and Penis.

The news-entertainment complex has achieved another spectacular. From the glory days of Reagan, to the astonishing election of King George, the only logical outcome in the recall in California was a victory for Schwarzenegger. Madison avenue is purring. And so much fun to come.

Bush the Second was elected President on his own terms. He was allowed to choose the location and even the moderator of the few debates he had with Gore. He quickly learned that all he needed to do at an election rally was to mention Clinton and the crowd was energized. Details are for Democrats. And almost a majority of the electorate bought it.

In a stealth campaign, he bussed his way from Houston to Washington, unexamined. A loyal member of Yale’s arcane Skull and Bones Society (as is John Kerry), mystery still surrounds the President of the United States and that’s how he wants it. We do not know, for example, whether Bush ever read (or when he read) the Statement of Principles (1977) set out by the Project for a New American Century, (PNAC), and we will not know.

On first name terms with the world media, Schwarzenegger sashayed from celluloid to Sacramento, unexamined. He also chose when and where he would participate in live debates and won. Ideas, substance, experience: blah, blah!

Tom, Peter, Cruz et al were trapped in a remorseless media vortex. There was no competition and the Times of Los Angeles is demonized.

The gossamer candidates triumph amidst a fawning, cowering media and a docile electorate. The victorious covert campaigns give way to even more covert and obscurantist administrations.

What a shocker!

In a study funded by the US Government, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, the authors concluded (among other things) that political conservatism is significantly associated with "mental rigidity and closed-mindedness, including increased dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, decreased cognitive complexity and decreased openness to experience."

It is also associated (according to the report) with fear, anger, aggression, pessimism, disgust and contempt.

Phooey! There must be better ways to spend tax-dollars.

In admonishing President Bush to take charge of his White House, the mild but savvy Senator Lugar of Indiana stung like a wasp. All buckle and no balls, Bush was incandescent with rage that his macho Commander–in-Jump-Suit image should be so bluntly and publicly questioned by one of his own. Unable to disparage Lugar’s patriotism, Karl Rove is already working on juicy (but jinxed) photo-ops of Bush the Leader. Man among men.

After all, if you can’t control a few silly neocons, how are you going to control the world! Or the “international commons of space and cyberspace,” as recommended in the PNAC’s September 2000 report Rebuilding America’s Defenses.

We don’t know whether or not the President read this report. We know the Communist Chinese did.

Sat, 05 Jul 2003 16:29:53 GMT

Spurs, stirrups and superciliousness in Washington.

Mozart, insurgency and body bags in Iraq.

Bring-'em–on! (One-up for the Department of Defense.) It seems the Iraqis are eager to oblige. The frat-vet unilateralist, lost again for words or explanations, reverts to the oral stage and confirms once and for all: the President of the United States has something to prove. There’s a want in him.

While his overall job rating stands at 61%, those who think it was worth going to war in Iraq stands at 56%, from a high of 76%. (USA Today/CNN/Gallop poll.) Bush is scarred.

When Syme told Winston in Nineteen Eighty Four that he was working on the destruction of words, little did we know. Big Brother didn’t like the “vagueness and useless shades of meaning” of Oldspeak. Newspeak, with a much reduced vocabulary, would circumscribe the range of thought and eliminate thoughtcrime.

President Bush is no Syme but words terrify him. Malaprop, slang, contractions and name calling, the Commander-in-Chief gets a pass from the obsequious media. Infrequent and rigidly controlled, the Bush press conference is a Rovian delight.

One-on-one interviews are an aberration, mainly granted to foreign stations where English is a second language. Coherence is East Coast.

In Bushspeak Mobile labs = WMD. Mission accomplished = ongoing war. Local saboteurs = global terrorists. Tax cuts = service hikes. Climate change = global warming. Doublethink. Blackwhite. Who cares!

The Poles think WMD's have been located in Iraq because the President told them as much. Steadfast supporters of America throughout, the recently liberated and oil-hungry Poles are sending a few thousand troops to help the recently liberated and desperate Iraqis restore law and order and admit their liberation.

TV pictures of Iraqis zestfully battering the bombed out shell of a humvee (and, according to one reporter, hurling insults at injured soldiers) are being ignored.

The antigen sires the antibody. Who’d have guessed! The Southern American, blue collar, non-citizen army needs all the help it can get.

It’s a truism to say that a cessation of suicide bombings and pre-emptive targeted assassinations would transform the situation in the Middle East. You can’t have one without the other.

But Sharon and Abass are at cross purposes. Abbas wants a truce, Sharon wants extirpation.

If the Palestinian Authority doesn’t rout Hamas (and provoke civil war), Sharon is more than willing to try. Dismantlement of the infrastructure of terrorists and settlers must proceed hand in hand.

The Israelis figure the Palestinians will fail to curb the militants and the militants figure the Israelis will fail to curb the settlers.

Mutual bluff-calling. Nudge, Nudge. Wink, Wink. A nod and a wink. Bush the Herdsman needs some lasso practice.

The pugnacious Howard Dean has set the cat amongst the Democratic Presidential pigeons. After a bruising encounter with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, his online fund raising campaign performed a rocket launch.

Tapping into a groundswell of largely-hidden Democratic fury at the Bush White House, Dean is poised to seriously challenge Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards, and Gephardt in the initial stages. The inevitable shift to the center has already begun in the Dean rhetoric and this may cause some disillusionment but the sense remains that he is squarely not Bush-lite.

Karl Rove’ s candidate will be running as Bush-lite, in a cocoon of compassionate Bushspeak.

Sat, 28 Jun 2003 16:04:07 GMT

Bush has declared an open-ended war on trees. According to General Musharif of Pakistan, fighting terrorism is like fighting a tree. When you arrest a terrorist you’ve taken a leaf off the tree. If you defeat an organization, like Al Queda, you’ve broken a branch. Pruning will make it healthier.

The General questioned the wisdom of the Bush approach: “This is due to the perception that symptoms rather than root causes of terror and extremism are being addressed, and that unjust situations in which Muslim peoples are victims of state terror are being ignored.”

Music to the ears of the Department of Defense and Michael Ledeen.

It isn’t clear whether Musharaff made these points directly to Bush at the Camp David diversion. He mentioned that he didn’t get into much detail with the President.

The US has asked Pakistan to send troops to Iraq: not to the border zone with Afghanistan to hunt for bin Laden. India has also been asked to contribute troops. But the Indians have a problem. If they send soldiers to Iraq they are effectively aiding an occupying power operating without UN mandate. They become the occupying power.

Peacemakers, not Peacekeepers.

Visceral pre-emption is spawning tadpoles. Australia, threatened by lawlessness in the Solomon Islands, has stated that sovereignty is less important than acting for the benefit of mankind. Multilateralism (UN) is pandering to the lowest common denominator. A “coalition of the willing” is all you need. Might is right.

So simple. So do it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Italy is thinking about dispatching troops to Libya (a former colony) to help the locals patrol their borders and prevent desperate migrants from fleeing to the EU. (The Libyans deny all knowledge of this.) There are urgent calls from Liberia for US intervention. (Pentagon post-war planners should agree to outsourcing.)

Pariah UN. Taking the "coalition of the willing" as the embryo, the US should invite like-minded democracies to form the UDN (United Democratic Nations) to defend and spread Freedom, Democracy and Equality worldwide.

The UN performs many valuable functions which it would continue to do but Democracies can’t be bound by, or associated with, decisions taken in part by dictatorships, monarchies and theocracies.

Unintentionally, the UN gives political legitimacy to rogue regimes, demoralizing indigenous opponents and delaying change.

Kofi Annan is dizzy. Unilateral foreign intervention, for good or ill, is on the agenda. Even for minnows.

For the times they are a-changing. Legalized gay marriage in Canada. Legalized prostitution in New Zealand. Legalized homosexuality throughout America. A significant blow has been struck by the conservative-liberal Supreme Court for the rights of Americans to privacy.

In defeat, Justice Scalia, culture warmonger, couldn’t leave well enough alone. Some people thrive on wars. He issued a call to arms when he referred to the Law Profession culture which has signed on to the “homosexual agenda,” which is, “to eliminate the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

Scalia disparages the notion of “emerging awareness” saying it does not amount to a “fundamental right,” completely ignoring the fact that all fundamental rights had to emerge at some stage.

The morose Justice sees two Americas. Red and Blue. Two very different visions of America’s future. And he thinks the court has now taken sides in the culture war.

A legacy of the sixties, the culture war is the moral war. Legal renderings versus morality and vice versa. The Supreme Court took the view that the popular notion of morality can no longer be used to discriminate against a particular group. Might is wrong.

Ralph Reed must be wondering what planet he’s on.

In the end, liberty and equal protection under the law (Amendment 14) triumphed. So did common sense, Matthew Sheppard, Will & Grace and Ellen DeGeneres.

Sat, 21 Jun 2003 16:57:39 GMT

Would-be democratic Presidential candidates and Karl Rove are nervously eyeing Wesley Clark, who has voiced serious disagreements with the way the current Administration is handling domestic and foreign policy.

Within hours of the collapse of the Twin Towers, Clark received a phone call urging him to link Hussein with the horror when he spoke on CNN. He said he would be happy to do so if he heard the evidence. None was forthcoming. He didn’t say who made the phone call.

The former Supreme Commander of NATO wants to be Commander-in-Chief. So does the former First Lady: but not just yet.

The actual Commander-in-Chief is oblivious to all the machinations. Gallivanting in Kennebunkport with Dad and crew, Bush didn’t catch a salmon.

Another weekend on the road, the most rested President in recent memory loves to dis Washington and any excuse is a good one.

Catholic Bishops, Prime Ministers and Presidents wriggled through the week. Re-jigging the facts to fit a predetermined conclusion is par for the course when you know the truth, the light and the way. At least the American Petroleum Institute is happy.

Bush and Blair, the unlikely pas de deux, are puzzled with the troop levels required for occupation. In the fantasy world of in-out pre-emptive war, the Administration took great pleasure in giving-the-finger to the world. The Lone Ranger needs no one. Dissent is anathema. But the hallucination is wearing off.

To enforce Pax Americana Bush is having to reach out. The White House is scouring the world for soldiers to act as peacekeepers because peacekeeping is un-American and Venusian. (The Pentagon recently ordered the closure of the Peacekeeping Institute at the Army War College, effective September 30, 2003.)

Impoverished squaddies from Honduras and El Salvador may soon be patrolling the volatile streets of Iraq thereby releasing American GI’s for possible GW3.

Apart from the cruel irony, the ignobility will endure.

The Iranians are hearing the familiar war rhetoric emanating from the hawks and are scrambling to reassure all and sundry that their nuclear program is benign. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. UN inspectors should be allowed unfettered access to all nuclear sites and given time to report. Protesting students should be encouraged in their drive for a democratic society.

Newt Gingrich wants to spread American values abroad. A laudable endeavor. However, if he doesn’t succeed, the State Department (“a broken institution”) is to blame. In his second swipe at the Powell approach in as many months, Gingrich tells us the world doesn’t have to love us. Newt has enough love. Unrequited love will do. They just have to be able to predict us. And the State Department must ensure that they can do just that.

If the military victory in Iraq fails, Powell is culpable because he misrepresents Bush’s virile foreign policy. Newt should know. Flying kites is good sport. Even in the UK.

Unexpectedly, Blair announced his intention to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor and the tabloids were energized by tights, wigs, waffle and woolsack.

No one can predict who or what Newt will dis next or when. Certitude is a conceit. Much like chauvinism.

Sat, 14 Jun 2003 16:04:32 GMT

The Peace bridge at Aqaba was too narrow for the President, his buddy Abbas (Rum has Chalabi), Sharon and King Abdullah to cross shoulder to shoulder for the campaign clips and the world media.

So, on the instructions of the White House advance party, the bridge was rebuilt and all four were seen crossing together and the frame was complete. They might have been better employed building a catafalque.

Abdullah, who looked like he’d rather be swatting mosquitoes, will regale courtiers for years on how the loony advance team was more concerned with symbolic width than subject depth. Any wonder Rovian photo-ops have an unnerving knack of backfiring. A Hollywood landing on the repositioned Lincoln and dates on the Red Sea have been quickly followed by ambush, slaughter and defiance.

Bush the Honest Broker is challenged frontally to demonstrate his bona fides. In camera investigation of the alleged manipulation of information to justify pre-emptive war is pointless. Allowing Abbas, who has minimal support on the Street, to be further undercut is fatuous while Sharon has taken to pre-emption like an evangelical to a red heifer.

And all the while Arafat sits and waits, looking and sounding Presidential in a newly decked-out office. Two can play the image game.

Manor Farm redux. The animal world is cock-a-hoop. Madcow, Sars, HIV, West Nile, Monkeypox…..….aniterrorism! The Center for Disease Control has decided to release smallpox vaccine. Maybe animals are sentient after all. They know a rogue class when they see one.

So does patriot John Ashcroft 11. Afraid to admit some mistakes were made in the treatment of suspect terrorists, the AG is beginning to rattle the White House the way he rattled senators at his confirmation hearing. Terrorpox has to be confronted: astutely.

Newspox also has to be confronted. One hundred dead in Iraq in the last few days and that’s all we know.

No embeds. No questions. No insight. No follow-up. Poxnews.

Bush pre-emption has scared the living daylights out of Castro. Not particularly known for his sang-froid, the Cuban dictator is on the edge-of-his-seat.

Provocative American diplomats, converging values and interests, gave the green light to disaffected activists who were promptly rounded-up and jailed. Subversion and salsa don’t mix in the Caribbean Communist nirvana.

Then the old Europeans decided to strike another blow at the Western hemisphere. Teed off by the jailings and the speedy firing-squad execution of (US bound) hijackers, the EU has placed its relations with Havana on review.

Castro is beside himself and smells conspiracy. The Iranian Mullahs know how he feels.

If only the Syrians would get the message. They joined the Germans and French in abstaining on a successful (12-0) UN vote to extend US exemption from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Yokels!

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 14:07:24 GMT

As with all administration cluster bombs, you never really know when the bomblets are going to explode. It’s too early to close the door on finding WMD in a country the size of California, where thousands of liters of banned substances could be stored in a single oil tanker. Dual-use facilities don’t make things any easier.

The elusive Saddam, master of secretion, had plenty of time to hide the Ark before the war started. (Pity about the Billion dollars.)

The burden of proof was always on Iraq to show compliance with UN resolutions and this they failed to do. Iraq had left, “Many unanswered questions about its non-conventional weapons, but this did not mean such dangerous arms still existed”, according to Hans Blix in a BBC interview Thursday.

The real (or manufactured) fear that a rogue state in possession of chemical or biological weapons might exact revenge on the US by simply giving a small vial to a terrorist group dictated words and deeds at the time.

However, if unbridled ideologues tailored classified information to suit their pre-emption agenda, the electorate needs to know about it. Hyping stockmongers and hyping warmongers are cut from the same cloth, except with one you only lose your shirt. Circular means/ends arguments don’t wash if the public and Congress are misled.

A bipartisan inquiry into how the technology-shy intelligence services handled the gathering, collating and presenting of information is the way to go.

Rum and Wolf and Martha are in a pickle.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there were (was)*

25,000 liters of Anthrax

38,000 liters of Botulinum Toxin

29,984 prohibited munitions capable of delivering chemical agents

Material to produce 500 tons of Sarin, Mustard and VX Nerve agent

Several mobile biological warfare factories

Evidence from the British that Saddam sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa

Evidence that Saddam attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons production.

*President Bush, State of Union, January, 2003

“Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles -- far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations -- in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.”

President Bush, Cincinnati, October, 2002. (Under pressure from the White House, speech carried live on networks.)

Blair inspired evenhandedness when dealing with the Mid-East may be one sign of positive payback by Bush. Peace, security and independence for two long suffering peoples is the aim.

In the context of suicide bombings, targeted assassinations, bulldozer diplomacy, daily humiliations, settler provocations and dead stone-throwers, the logic of smashing Palestinian security forces and then asking an eviscerated Abbas to crack down on Hamas must be challenged.

The gelding Funny Cide is even money but Abbas is a long shot.

If Bush the Negotiator morphs into Bush the Honest Broker it will encourage Palestinian peaceniks, give heart to moderates sidelined for decades and go some way towards alleviating Arab alienation.

With Sharon finally recognizing the obvious, Israeli moderates will be emboldened to take on right-wing extremists. The bigoted self-righteous on either side need to be isolated and the pace of negotiations should not be set by violence. Abraham won’t demur.

Now that the President has decided to bat for peace, he had better be sure the bat is uncorked.

Sat, 31 May 2003 15:56:52 GMT

Thumbs-up and a wink-and-a-nod to Bush the Negotiator. Bon-voyage! Time-traveling from new Europe (Warsaw), to old and new Russia (St Petersburg), to old Europe (Evian) and on to the ancient world (Middle East), the President is on a quest for good news to counter growing unease about the Iraqi imbroglio and intelligence community chicanery. By overplaying Warsaw and underplaying Evian, Bush is blatantly enforcing the friend/foe mentality so beloved of the hip-Straussians.

Hazing the French is just fun for the former frat president. Yale be proud.

New era diplomacy is energized by stark contrasts. This suits the Bush temperament. Not for him wimpy Clintonian detail and engagement. More the paternal pat-on-the-back from a hyperpower holding all the aces. Invincibility makes negotiating easy, as does fear.

In Crawford, visiting dignitaries are encouraged to line dance and it helps break the ice. Nothing like a captive audience. It’s unlikely Bush and Chirac will be seen swinging to the southern charms of Cotton-Eyed-Joe anytime soon. Maybe Abbas and Sharon can be persuaded. Cotton-Eyed-Joe diplomacy is esoteric.

The Mullahs of Iran are reporting increased chatter on the wires and wondering how the Houdini-like Syrians escaped the crosshairs. The sudden cancellation of White House Iranian policy talks this week has left the Teheran hardliners, and Washington hawks, fidgety. Quasi-almighty neocons, bent on radical geopolitical change to drain the swamp, shift their gunpoint at will, simultaneously roiling, destabilizing and exciting the natives.

Iranian and Iraqi Shiites make a potent religious and political cocktail and could easily tip the scales against Bremer the Third. Alleged Iranian links with Al Queda and her nuclear intentions are legitimate concerns but so is credibility on the world stage. Clear and present danger is not open to interpretation. Imminence brooks no ambiguity.

Ill-based preemption is on a roll; beware the bully on the block. And sometimes the neighborhood needs a bully to scatter the miscreants, so long as the bully knows when to stop and the miscreants know where to go.

Meanwhile, the Defense Secretary is rummaging for WMD under his bed. Any wonder Jim Carey is almighty at the box office.

Current bete-noire of the effete NRA, Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC, is on the horns of a dilemma. Daddy-do, daddy-don’t. Taxpayer airways are up for grabs and Powell junior is an innocent abroad.

Proliferation of information sources appears to render FCC deliberations meaningless. Homogeneity already exists and it isn’t clear Monday’s meeting can inflict any more blandness. Secrecy surrounds the exact wording of the agenda, as if to underscore the point.

Fair reporting is instinctively recognizable and a few stations could do the job. But fair reporting and investigative journalism aren’t on Monday’s agenda.

Sat, 24 May 2003 15:57:48 GMT

The whole world is eavesdropping on malevolent chit-chat and the garrulous don’t seem to know we’re listening. Overdressed and underfunded, Tom Ridge ups the ante and prays nightly that gossip is non-fatal.

Hundreds of porous wharves cry out for effective x-ray equipment to scan millions of containers. At airports, passports ache to be stamped on every entry and exit and foreign governments should be encouraged to do likewise. Cargo in the hold of passenger aircraft should receive the same screening as carry-on luggage. (If we still need to screen the company that screens the screeners, someone needs to scream enough is enough.)

To tackle the multi-billion dollar money-washing racket, a dedicated unit should be established from within the ranks of the FBI and CIA, answerable directly to Homeland Security. All obvious, doable and undone.

The Library of Crawford needs to be restocked, but not in a rickety outhouse. The Great Delegator stands tentatively on the threshold of self-delegation.

In an attempt to emulate Blair’s Good Friday Agreement stoicism, the President is pondering belated commitment to hands-on supervision of the Israelis and Palestinians. With his own man as PM in Ramallah, and being the first President to speak in favor of a Palestinian state, Bush may well be feeling confident as only he can. Incuriousness has an upside.

As scabrous as the issues are, some things are self-evident. The Palestinians need a viable state of their own, sooner rather than later. Jews have nowhere else to call their own except a tiny strip of land on the shores of the Mediterranean and Arabs should not begrudge them this. No more erasing Israel from classroom maps and minds.

Apostates over evangelicals, deeds will persuade the Street.

UN ambiguity and French hauteur evaporated this week, not a hubbly-bubbly in sight. Bush and Blair, rulers de jure, with a little help from Bremer the Debaathifier. Exultant oil executives will now be able to sign gazillion dollar contracts, while fair-haired Bechtel is already on a hiring spree in Washington, London and Kuwait.

Pity about the insecurity, lack of electricity and clean water. To say nothing of Iraqi pride and ambivalence. And nobody will talk about the cost to the US taxpayer while the feuding between State Department diplomats and Defense Department realists continues unabated.

Sat, 17 May 2003 16:05:52 GMT

Polls dictate the slant the mass media broadcasts. Driven by advertising loot, newscasters bow to majority canvassed opinion. The pollster has become the kingmaker. News coverage will err on the side of a popular President rather than risk losing viewers to a rival. Administration briefings and Presidential sound bites are taken at face value, rebroadcast unexamined.

Media manipulation is childsplay for a Whitehouse slavering at the prospect of Ground Zero in September, having honed its skills in Philadelphia. Image over substance, subliminality reigns supreme. Irony or tragic irony, Oreo nation beguiled.

While slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia in 1962, the mentality of working employees to exhaustion rendering them more docile continues to this day. But not if you’re monied, American or European.

In the bald pecking order of a royal society, American expatriates are the top-guns. They provide vital services in return for tax-free salaries, rent free accommodation and many other regal benefits.

Every now and then, rumors that the Saudis might impose nominal taxation on expats because of domestic economic concerns, spread through vulnerable compounds like perfidity in a harem. The resulting howling and wailing so terrifies the Finance Ministry in Riyadh that denials are quickly issued.

The Saudis can move rapidly when they want to. They know more than most that the only reason foreigners endure the Kingdom’s torrid repression is the buckets of unlevied cash. Expat altruism is a non-starter. So the bombshell threat to eliminate the tax credit on income earned abroad will reverberate louder and longer than anything Al Queda and friends can muster.

Saudiization- the government policy to replace foreign workers with unemployed locals- was never meant to be achieved through foreign legislation or terror. The inscrutable House of Saud took two hits this week.

A second Iraqi regime change in as many months, Bush is on a roll. The Head Occupier must look and sound like an unindictable Wall Street executive for the MBA President. The Great Delegator will feel comfortable when he sees the punctual shirt-and-tie telling ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-informed natives how things are going to be.

Nuance is sissyish. Arabic is optional. Bush the Second is dumping Bremer the Third smack in the middle of a hornet’s nest, ready or not.

The skills of a political insider in Washington are not necessarily transferable. Human rights are. Even for military designated enemy combatants, Cubanized into oblivion.

Sat, 10 May 2003 20:49:27 GMT

New evidence is emerging from scientists in London that fish are capable of feeling pain. No evidence has yet surfaced in Washington that Bush is capable of feeling embarrassment.

The elusive candidate and President likes to run and rule sans questions in safe environments. The Commander-in-Chief can keep his distance. A known bibliophobe, he prefers verbal briefings rendering him incongruously dependent on his underlings. Shameless photo-ops, carrier sleepovers and scripted press conferences are only the tip of the derrick, but are necessary when you don’t want to explain your ideas and actions.

And now the crippling Congressional tradition of Payback Time is being flagrantly exported. All oiled by the play-along media.

Paul Wolfowitz decided this week to lash out at the Turks for exercising their democratic right not to participate in war. Democracies do make mistakes and the Turks will undoubtedly survive Defense Department petulance. But Wolfowitz didn’t stop there. He went on to criticize the Turkish Army for “lacking leadership at a critical foreign policy moment”.

Inotherwords, the Turkish army did not put pressure on the Turkish Parliament to do the Pentagon thing. There are a number of possibilities here. Wolfowitz either inadvertently overreached, the pressure is getting to him or he deliberately set out to threaten and destabilize a tenuous democracy, possibly with an eye to future military operations in the region.

Ironically, the Administration supported the Turkish application to join the EU but the Europeans demurred and one of their chief concerns was the dictatorial potential of the Turkish military.

Incomplete victories are all the rage. The Taliban are still active in Afghanistan and Al-Queda are reported to be reorganizing in Chechnya and Pakistan. Saddam et al are tongue-deep in dirt and dollars, Qusay kicking himself for not grabbing more euros.

Chalabi, of the Iraqi National Congress and Rum’s friend, claims that some of his supporters have seized 60 tons of documents from the Baath Party, Iraqi Secret Police and Intelligence Services. Ayatollah Hakim returns from exile in Iran.

Sporadic looting and firefights, intermittent electrical supply, parents afraid to send children to school, Shia inspired anti-Americanism, choleraic water and the US taxpayer footing the bill!

Where is the former Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed Al Sahaf, when you need him?

Sat, 03 May 2003 16:00:26 GMT

As the victorious US military overtly withdraws from Saudi Arabia, the spineless US media covertly withdraws from the petri dish that is liberated Iraq. Flagrantly contradictory versions of lethal events in Mosul and Fallujah add to a perception of foreboding, a sense of déjà vu.

War and apathy cheapen life and life over there is cheapest of all.

At the core of the imperial impulse is a psychotic sense of inherent superiority, a cavalier conviction that there is indeed a white man’s burden whereby the end can justify the means. Americans by nature and education are not imperial but indifference will be gleefully misinterpreted.

In the clear interest of the deceased, the bereaved and the accused, disputed killings must be thoroughly investigated whether in Chechnya, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Northern Ireland or wherever.

The alternative is more costly, time-consuming and dehumanizing. It leads to obfuscation, sanitized history, imperial apologists and asinine repetition. Empire Maker is a horse.

The US as a Leviathan on the world stage enables President Bush declare the convergence of American values and American interests. Speaking appropriately aboard the Lincoln, in sensational isolation, Bush rejected moral relativism opening up the possibility that American Exceptionalism will no longer be the exception.

A principled democratic Foreign Policy imbued with the notion that all people should be defined as “rights-carrying individuals” is at once worthy and quixotic. It is predicated on the maintenance of an almighty military machine brooking no rivals, inviting no suitors.

It's also predicated on the ability of the Bush administration to overcome its instinctive solipsism.

Statistics indicating a languid economy and the reflexive tax-cutting response come as no surprise. The impression that those who oppose more tax cuts are somehow responsible for economic torpor will play well in the build-up to 2004.

Greenspan is opposed to more tax cuts without reining in spending but Bush is undeterred. The President is clearly hoping the race for the White House will be as uncompetitive as the bidding process for lucrative military contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A motley group of Democratic Presidential candidates is increasingly invisible in the fog of war. From the hodge-podge one candidate will gain cachet by making a credible commitment to National Security combined with bold initiatives to stimulate the economy and improve health care.

Sat, 26 Apr 2003 16:00:57 GMT

The Caliphs are in fine voice in Karbala and Washington. The montage emerging in the wake of the asymmetric victory resembles more a broken Byzantine mosaic than an early American landscape.

Scores of self-flagellating, self-gratifying males will add to the tribulations of doctors desperate for clean water and anesthetic. Zealots are becoming the prime movers and about to become rebels in their own land.

Pandora’s box now opened will need all the skill and acumen of a united Pentagon and State Department devoted to managing the fallout. That this be done with fairness and justice is a moral imperative, even for the realists.

To forestall the emergence of the so called one vote/last vote Islamic extremist parties, a constitution should be drawn up and put to a vote sooner rather than later.

It would be better if John Ashcroft was excluded from these deliberations.

The burden on the minds and spirits of the Bush administration of the responsibility for the well-being of 24 million people, half of whom are under 16, should be enormous. They knew this going in, of course, and presumably accepted their fate.

Glossy busy-screened TV news is losing the credibility game with their print brethren. Willfully disinfected, endlessly banal and repetitive, it very rarely delivers what is needed: news. The triumph of the printed word could be one of the early winners in the new era.

Newt Gingrich is another early victor now that he has declared himself Mayor of Baghdad.

Sars (severe acute republican silliness) begets SARS and Santorum is but a recent mutation. The virus should not be allowed to turn faddish spanking of the French and others into a fetish. Pragmatism has its uses and National self-interest can be invoked to temper the vindictive, just as National security was invoked to temper the peaceniks.

A hallmark of this administration could be the monochrome simplicity it brings to bear on all subjects. On the compassionate Bush carousel if you’re evil, you’re out. If you’re out, you’re immoral. If you’re immoral, you’re a liberal. If you’re a liberal, you can’t be trusted. If you can’t be trusted, you can’t be judicious. If you can’t be judicious, you’re evil…..

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 01:41:29 GMT

Blatant, creepy complacency is gaining ground in official Washington. A Pollyannaish cockiness is hardly becoming for the one remaining superpower and may negate the good done. A long road stretches before us and only steadfast adherence to the Presidential promise to be actively engaged in reconstruction and democratization will suffice.

Sectarian and ethnic violence is a mere demagogue away with sapling soldiers caught in the middle. A feral tyrant has been forced to cut and run only to be replaced by an ongoing political vacuum ripe for escalating lawlessness.

The rise of no-go areas and armed vigilantes, continuing looting and arson, limited electricity and trash collection, inadequate water supply, hospitals in dire need and fundamentalism lurking in the wadis, paints a tenebrous picture.

The vulpine Hussein may be counting on a swift descent into the abyss to facilitate his own escape.

Menacing language directed at the Syrian regime is probably more related to the urgent need to forestall any willingness to provide sanctuary than to presage war. Early hopes that a young Western educated leader in Damascus would herald a new dawn for Syrians and her neighbors have long been dashed.

The emerging geopolitical reality on the block should help give Assad the upper hand in dealing with the more bovine of his acolytes.

He should seize the moment.

In wartime individualism is not in vogue. The maverick is sidelined, ambivalence is suspect and intuition is suppressed. We’re all expected to be team players. Soldiers, journalists, politicians, entertainers, sportsmen, churchmen, gadflies and barflies. No exceptions. Patriotism isn’t implied.

The overriding concern is for the welfare and safety of the troops who act honorably in the miasma of war. Strongly held views must be put in a lockbox and all our energies must be directed towards the speedy and successful conclusion of the war. We connive in the morphing of disinformation into information, spontaneously broadcast worldwide.

Pallid newscasters tread gingerly lest their patriotism be impugned while jingoistic news anchors have become faux patriotism incarnate.

We’re big enough to pay for war but not big enough for the gore.