Opinions are like…

As I watch more and more coverage from media outlets of interviews with “average Americans” giving “their opinions” I become less believing of the common political and media mantra of the intelligence of the average American. While there are many Americans who are politically, financially, and socially savvy, there is also a large number who are not. My question is, “Are all opinions of equal value?”

An example would be a major medical operation, is my opinion as layman of the same value as that of say a neurosurgeon? Is an uninformed, illogical opinion of equal worth as someone who has spent years studying, reading, and researching an issue? I believe there are three categories of thought in this country and most of us fit into some combination of the three.

• There is the category of critical thinkers who research and study a broad range of issues. This group not only seeks information that reinforces currently held beliefs but also information that challenges these beliefs. This group is not led by a personality but by the pursuit of information wherever it may lead them.

• The next category is the group that is ignorant (they don’t know something) and blissfully so. They don’t hold any concrete ideological views. This group is content to be ignorant but entertained. They will seek information only when it is relevant to something going on in their lives at that moment. This group is not led by any personality per se, but by the media or entertainers. They gain much of “their opinions” from television dramas, sit-coms, and shows like Oprah, Entertainment Tonight, etc.

• The final category is the group who is also ignorant (they don’t know things) and are opposed to learning them. They chant with pride we don’t know anything and we don’t want to know anything. This group is anti-information that does not reinforce their currently held positions. This group is led by personalities like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck.

One of our greatest strengths as a nation is our defense of the individual. One of our greatest weaknesses as a nation is the elevation of the individual over the group. I don’t believe people around the world are smarter than we are, but are raised in a different culture. Many of them are raised in a culture that understands the need that sometimes the group’s survival trumps the individual. They appear to have a better understanding of their place in the world. There are many in this country that still believe in a certain manifest destiny that we have somehow been selected by some supreme being to rule the world and if anyone disagrees with our world vision then damn them. It is this attitude that has made nations that were once allies, now foes. It is this belief that allowed George W. to declare that God had chosen him to be President and so many people never batted an eye.

As our new President accepts the Nobel Peace Prize I hope we all remember that he does not have the accomplishments of some past recipients, but he is still our President. We should all feel a sense of national pride that the rest of the world thinks enough of him to give him such a great honor. If I am at a game and as an American I am cheering for a team and I look to my right and see Hamas wearing the same jersey I am and I look to my left and see al Qaeda wearing the same jersey I am wearing you would think maybe I would begin to wonder if I am cheering for the wrong team. But that’s just my opinion and we all know that opinions are like buttholes, everybody has one and most of them stink!

"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." - Elbert Hubbard

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Gitmo or Else?

With President Obama’s announcement that he plans to close Guantanamo within a year there has been an increasingly vocal segment of the population sounding the terrorist alarm. The biggest concern being echoed is what to do with these 250 avowed and unrepentant terrorists who surely if they were released would go back and continue their destructive ways. I found it interesting that following his announcement it was released that a one-time detainee who was released from Guantanamo is now the deputy leader of the Al Qaeda branch in Yemen as if to further undermine closing the base by the military community.

The problem I have with the release of the report is that it is sensationalism and simplistic. There is no discussion or debate of the fact that just like with Iraq we may have created terrorists by our response to the terrorist threat. In the haste to locate and prosecute terrorists it is now being confirmed that there were many innocent people who were held and tortured. Rather than acknowledge that our reaction to the threat may have in turn increased the threat we ignore it and continue our reactionary policies. Who knows how many otherwise neutral observers we have turned into terrorist through our prosecution of terrorist? The chicken hawks would have us believe that this is irrelevant, but in fact it is relevant in how we proceed in prosecuting this so-called war. If we continue creating terrorists where none existed before our efforts will be unfruitful and counter-productive.

So the question has now become what to do with these terrorist suspects now being held at Guantanamo and any future suspects we may capture during this ongoing war against terror? Are we to continue to prosecute them by military tribunal, our federal court system, or some hybrid of the two? And once found guilty where will these convicted terrorists be housed for the remainder of their incarceration? While these questions seem new and vitality important the truth is they are not new. 9/11 was not the first terrorist attack on American soil or the first terrorist plot to attack the US mainland.

There have been 3 terrorist attacks on US soil and I think it is important to review how the first 2 were treated and prosecuted to our discussion of current policy. The first was the original al Qaeda plot to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 and the second was the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. In both cases we were able to prosecute and sentence the defendants using our current justice system with some modifications. I don’t understand why in order to prosecute these defendants currently held in Guantanamo we need to create a separate justice system? The problem with using a separate military justice system is you give a form of legitimacy to the notion that these are war crimes when in fact they are not. Terrorism is a criminal act perpetrated by criminals. It is not a legitimate and recognizable form of war and it never has been. These people need to be treated like the criminals they are. We should not have to sacrifice our principles of democracy to bring these criminals to justice. Without the rule of law we open ourselves up to the real possibility that we are extracting revenge and not justice.

If these people are in fact enemy combatants then they need to be treated like prisoners of war. We must accept the possibility that not every enemy combatant is a terrorist. If they are prisoners of war then they are the responsibility of the military in accordance with the Geneva Convention. The problem with the Bush administration is that they wanted the best of both worlds. They wanted to hold the prisoners in both terrorist and prisoner of war status. Declaring their status only as it suited their aims not necessarily based on the facts at hand. This arbitrary justice created the atmosphere that allowed torture and imprisonment of innocents. As long as we keep these people in an undeclared status we open ourselves up to the calls of hypocrisy and undermine our own democratic principles.

Despite the hyperbole and demagoguery of the Republicans speaking as if our only two choices are Gitmo or allowing the terrorists to walk American streets, we have many other options. Despite their recent defeats at the polls and in public opinion polls the Republicans are still clinging to their number one and what seems to be their only tactic left; fear. If we close Gitmo we will have terrorists living in our communities. What these fear mongers fail to disclose is that we have already had terrorists “living” in our communities. They have been living in prisons and for many years these prisons have managed to protect us from all sorts of nefarious characters. However, in order to advance their agenda the Republicans would have us believe that these terrorists somehow possess super-human traits that make it impossible to house them anywhere but Guantanamo. These people are just ordinary humans. I guess if you give them super-natural powers it justifies your inability to capture or defeat them.

As far as housing these convicted terrorists I find it hard to believe that a country with over 2 million people incarcerated cannot find a way to house these criminals in a humane and secure manor. Let’s face it we lead the world in incarceration rates so what’s another 250 or so more? We must no longer continue to allow the perceived threat to override the principals we stand for. If we do that those principles will have little meaning not only to the rest of the world but to us as well. We have to begin to bring some transparency to these proceedings or they will always be viewed by the rest of the world as tainted by Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram.

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Napalm In The Morning

It’s time for another round of “a funny thing happened on the way to al Qaeda” starring the latest in a long line of political military men General David H. Petraeus. It seems surprising that in the midst of a hotly contested election the General received little fanfare this trip. There were no full page ads, no massive protests, or no political lynching. Can I say the word lynching when talking about a white man or would that be construed as racist since I am black? Oh well, let the rhubarb begin. How long will we continue to accept no answer as an answer? The last General that provided fewer details about a war effort, it’s eventual conclusion and was able to keep his job was also a Republican military hack by the name of George McClellan.

WASHINGTON — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, recommended on Tuesday halting any additional withdrawals of American troops after July for at least 45 days and possibly more, telling Congress that progress there was “fragile and reversible.”

General Petraeus said that security progress has been “significant but uneven.” Under questioning, he declined to estimate American troop levels beyond the withdrawal by July of five additional combat brigades sent to Iraq last year. And he acknowledged that the government’s recent offensive in Basra was not sufficiently well-planned.[1]

I don’t know if ever a man was brought so far to say so little. We know absolutely no more today than we did 15 months ago when this General who “wrote” the book on terrorist and counter-insurgent warfare began his crusade to liberate the Iraqis. The refrain from these guys is always the same, we just need more time. I don’t get it we defeated two enemies in two different theaters in the past with a lot less sophisticated weapons and systems than we have today and in less time. It appears that Bush’s war of attrition is working, the problem is it isn’t working on the insurgents in Iraq it is working on the American public. It is difficult for many Americans to deal with the tanking economy, the housing crisis, and general uneasiness of our job markets to have much time left over for an unpopular war over there.

I am surprised by the reactions of many to the news that the General has to offer, we must remember that he is the commander of troops who are in a deadly conflict and regardless of the situation he must remain positive. Do we really think he will come to Washington and say that we are in a situation that we can not win? It isn’t going to happen. What we must do as a nation is to listen to what he is saying and put it into context of what we know to be true. The problem with the politicians and the military leaders involved in this conflict is that they have allowed the Bushies to define the nature of the conflict, irrespective of the true facts on the ground. By not understanding or discussing the true nature of the conflict we can never define victory or defeat.

Our political and military leaders would like us to believe that the war is about al Qaeda, that this is just an extension of the “war on terror”, the truth is that it isn’t. The biggest obstacles to Iraqi unity and reconstruction is not al Qaeda or Iran, it is the tribal divisions of the Iraqis themselves. We do not and cannot control the events in Iraq and anyone who believes that we can is either ignorant of the precarious position of occupations or worse they are deliberately being disingenuous for political goals. We do not nor can we ever have enough “boots on the ground” to control the events in Iraq, no more than we control the events in Korea, Japan, or Western Europe. Would anyone claim that we control the events in any of these regions? Of course they wouldn’t.

We need to move beyond the unrealistic goals being discussed in our political and military circles. We need to move from trying to control the events in Iraq and to influencing the events. Currently, we do not influence the events in Iraq because we have leveraged ourselves with the war on terror rhetoric and the Iranian demagoguery. Instead of continuing the imperialist strategy of empire building, we need to adopt a more reserved role similar to the Europeans. Our greatest efforts on the world stage have come not from controlling events, but from influencing events. We cannot offset the Iranian regional expansion through control, every time we have tried to control events in the Middle-East, we have failed miserably.

Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton reserved their real fire for each other. Shortly after the hearing began, Mr. McCain was out of the gate with an opening statement that called on Americans to reject the calls for a “reckless and irresponsible withdrawal of our forces at the moment when they are succeeding” and that promising such a withdrawal, “regardless of the consequences,” was a “a failure of political and moral leadership.”[2]

What is a failure of political leadership is to use our troops for political gain by relying on the fabrication of the al Qaeda in Iraq and the Iranian training grounds myth. We cannot begin to exert influence in Iraq and the region until we disengage from this crusade mentality and instead of becoming of a dictator we become a partner. Until we do this, no surge or temporary decrease in violence will be worth it’s weight in salt.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/world/middleeast/08cnd-petraeus.html?hp
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/washington/08cnd-scene.html?hp

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A Country of Laws

Despite the passage of three new laws by the Iraqi Parliament, Iraq still remains a very divided place and now that our brilliant strategy of arming both parties in the civil conflict is about to explode in our faces, it is about to become a very dangerous place again. As our national history and the recorded history of many other countries can attest, nations are more than just laws. Nations are people, people with feelings and memories. These feelings and memories are not always subject to the ways of legal justice and have a way of causing people to implement laws in some unexpected ways. The Iraqi people are many years from national reconciliation and we are not even sure that they want it, the more we ride herd over the process and inject our own sensibilities into the process the more we prolong the day of reckoning.

Several legislators emphasized after the voting on Wednesday that achieving true sectarian reconciliation was far more complex than simply passing a law.

“Reconciliation will hang on more than a law, it needs political will,” said Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni legislator. “I believe there is no political will to achieve reconciliation. The law of amnesty is good, but not enough.”[1]

The Iraqi government has no incentive to reconcile so long as we continue to play powerbroker not only in Iraq but in the region as a whole. As long as we continue to provide political coverage and cannon fodder the deeply held sectarian rifts will continue to acerbate under the surface. You cannot force people to like one another or to respect one another, that has to come from a common desire and goal for a people. I do not see that commonness of purpose for the Iraqis at this time.

While the laws put in place can lay the groundwork for change or reconciliation, they still require the trust of the people that they will be enforced in an equitable manner. There has to be an underlying trust within the people to submit to the laws on the books. Can we say that the Iraqis have this underlying trust in each other? I doubt it, we can’t even say with confidence that we have it in each other. Laws are merely the framework, the skeleton that holds the society together. If the people do not have a faith in those executing the laws, there can be no peace or any justice.

An example of this would be the Amnesty Law recently passed as part of the three new laws from the Iraqi Parliament, there are tens of thousands, mostly Sunnis that are being held without charges. The Amnesty Law was suppose to help ease the over-crowding and the appearance of revenge by the Shias, the problem of course is in the details. While the central government may have one definition of who the law would affect, you still have local and provincial officials who may have a different interpretation. Because of the central governments lack of any real power of enforcement the locals will still have the last word. How many of those tens of thousands of prisoners are there due to some local vendetta? The sheer numbers make it next to impossible to fully investigate each individual case, thus leaving many to rot in the jails and prisons of Iraq.

Thanks to our “surge” strategy we have increased the numbers of imprisoned to well past the breaking point. It seems we have not only exported democracy, but also our penchant for locking people up. It is also a documented fact that many of the Sunni detainees have been tortured and killed by their Shia guards. The Amnesty Law will do nothing to correct these injustices and only serves to reinforce in the mind of the minorities in Iraq their need to continue to fight the majority’s dominance.

While the passage of these laws will provide political cover for the Republicans and war mongers in America they will actually produce little in the way of reconciliation in Iraq. The current administration and the Bush-lite nominee waiting in the wings will state that this is a good sign that the Iraqi’s are making progress on the “benchmarks”, the true test is not in the laws we are forcing them to enact to meet our own political agendas, but in the trust created and developed by the opposing parties. This trust cannot be legislated or thrust upon them, but must be developed over time. If Iraq remains a sovereign nation in its current form, it will be up to the Iraqis to make this happen. It will not be at the behest of an occupying army, the history of the colonial powers should make this fact abundantly clear. The nations that they fashioned for their political expediency decades ago are still suffering from the tribal and secular fragmentation of trying to create nations from groups who do not share a national identity.

The war in Iraq will continue to define not Iraq’s but our national identity for years to come. Make no mistake about it the war in Iraq was not and is not about al Qaeda or terrorists, it is about one nation imposing its will over another nation. We can decorate that fact with the bouquet of spreading democracy and freedom, but the stench of imperialism will not be easily covered. How can a nation that violated international law now claim a moral superiority to bring law to the lawless? One must first remove the log that is in one’s own eye before trying to remove the splinter in another’s eye. Are there times when compassion and the acts of blood thirsty tyrants require action? Of course there are, we are confronted with them daily in Darfur, in Bosnia, and Rwanda. Iraq however was not one of them.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html?pagewanted=2

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Democracy – Pakistani Style

It has always amazed me how the media, politicians, and pundits will elevate someone in death to a place they wouldn’t give them in life. I am often reminded of the eulogy given by Ted Kennedy (probably his greatest moment in public life) for his brother Robert where he said, “My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life.” The recent tragic death of Benazir Bhutto and its subsequent media frenzy reminds me of those words. Many of those who are idealizing her today were aware of the lit fuse that followed her arrival in Pakistan and refused to respond to it. They were aware of the constant threat of death that all of the opposition candidates in Pakistan were under and yet this government continued to fund Mr. Musharraf and play the terrorist card while he created the atmosphere for political assassination and crushed the seeds of democracy.

Ms. Bhutto will be chalked up as another casualty of extremists or al Qaeda, another casualty of the war on terror. The truth of course is anything but, Ms. Bhutto was a casualty of democracy in Pakistan. You see democracy in Pakistan has its own rules and procedures for campaigning. There are no candidate debates, instead there is candidate assassinations and attempted assassinations. There are no Party platforms to discuss, there is intimidation and suicide bombings. To those who are advocating the war on terror, democracy is part of the collateral damage. They create these copious photo-ops espousing the need for democracy, while continuing to funnel money to the tyrants and dictators. Ms Bhutto was no more a casualty of the war on terror as she was a casualty to business as usual, the US does not want democracy, they want stability.

The truth of the matter was that Ms. Bhutto was sacrificed by the US, her return to Pakistan was orchestrated by the US. Despite the MSM, she was brought to Pakistan not to win, but to lose. Her presence was to give legitimacy to a corrupt system that we didn’t want fixed, we just wanted it legitimized. The goal of the State Department was to parade her and the other opposition candidates around before the elections to give the appearance of free and fair elections, when in truth they were never going to be allowed to assume power. The problem was that Mr. Musharraf became nervous, he knew his stock in the US was falling and he was not willing to take the US at its word. Maybe he remembered Saddam or the Shah who knows, but one thing is certain he wanted to ensure that there would be no Election Day coup. There was not going to be any Orange Revolution in Pakistan.

"The U.S. came to understand that Bhutto was not a threat to stability, but was instead the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact," said Mark Siegel, who lobbied for Bhutto in Washington and witnessed much of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy.

But the diplomacy that ended abruptly with Bhutto's assassination yesterday was always an enormous gamble, according to current and former U.S. policymakers, intelligence officials and outside analysts. By entering into the legendary "Great Game" of South Asia, the United States also made its goals and allies more vulnerable -- in a country in which more than 70 percent of the population already looked unfavorably upon Washington.[1]

For those who need convincing consider this, if al Qaeda killed Bhutto why is the only one with something to gain from it is Musharraf? If Musharraf is so hated by al Qaeda and the Taliban why would they do something to benefit him just two weeks before an election? Also, consider how the Bush administration is not calling for postponement of the election, they are calling for it to continue. The country is in a state turmoil with violence breaking out in every major city. Both opposition party leaders were targeted for assassination and their Parties are in disarray. I wonder who is going to prevail in this election. The real trick will be how fast the Neo-cons spin this into a mandate to continue the heavy-handed policies of Musharraf. This thing was a powder keg and all of our years of support for this man, the military, and his tactics came to fruition in the death of Ms. Bhutto.

Do I believe the US was complicit in the death of Ms. Bhutto? No, but do I believe they set the ball in motion that created an atmosphere for her to be murdered? Yes, I do. I believe they underestimated Musharraf and his desire to cling to power by any means necessary. I believe they thought they could play both sides against each other and the plan backfired horribly. The problem is when you are dealing with dictators and megalomaniacs it is kind of hard to know what they are capable of. Once again the arrogance of the Neo-con intelligence prevented them from seeing the very real possibility of this assassination taking place. There was a deep hatred between the two and to not foresee this is inexcusable. Especially after the “state of emergency” recently enacted and only through international pressure finally removed by Musharraf.

The turning point to get Musharraf on board was a September trip by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte to Islamabad. "He basically delivered a message to Musharraf that we would stand by him, but he needed a democratic facade on the government, and we thought Benazir was the right choice for that face," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and National Security Council staff member now at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

"Musharraf still detested her, and he came around reluctantly as he began to recognize this fall that his position was untenable," Riedel said. The Pakistani leader had two choices: Bhutto or former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf had overthrown in a 1999 military coup. "Musharraf took what he thought was the lesser of two evils," Riedel said.[2]

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/27/AR2007122701481.html?hpid=topnews
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/27/AR2007122701481.html?hpid=topnews

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Robert M. Gates; Al Qaeda Terrorist?

On the surface this may seem completely insane and unworthy of any critical thought, but on his recent visits to Afghanistan and Iraq there were suicide bombers following him everywhere he went; coincidence? Maybe or maybe he is one of those Al Qaeda plants that we have heard so much about. The rise in the level of bombings on demand should give the “surge is working” crowd pause, the surge is working because those who are opposed to our presence there are allowing it to work. No one knows what their overall schemes are, but make no mistake the lull in violence is not under the control of our military or the Iraqi government. The opposition has for some reason decided it is in their best interest to quell the violence.

BAGHDAD, Dec. 5 — Car bombs in Baghdad and three northern Iraqi cities killed at least 23 people and wounded more than 40 others today as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived for an unannounced visit with senior Iraqi officials.

Indeed, the four car bombs — the first of which detonated in the northern city of Mosul shortly before Mr. Gates’s plane arrived there early today, seemed timed to coincide with his visit. None of the bombings, however, occurred anywhere close to the defense secretary or his entourage.

In Baghdad, Mr. Gates was to meet also with President Jalal Talabani as well as with American commanders. Mr. Gates flew to Iraq from Afghanistan, where on Tuesday he heard appeals from senior Afghan leaders for more money and weapons to combat the recent rise in insurgent activity there. There were two suicide bombings in Kabul during his visit. The first, on Tuesday morning, wounded 22 Afghan civilians; the second, early Wednesday, killed 7 Afghan soldiers and 6 civilians, and wounded 17 others.[1]

Anyone who believes that we are driving the level of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan is suffering from a serious case of delusion. The level of violence in Iraq is dependent on the Iraqis and their willingness to buy into the current government and its ability to solve their daily problems, so far that government has been either unable or unwilling to provide solutions. This lull in violence will only be temporary, if the government of Prime Minister al-Maliki does not begin to resolve the issues that are currently dividing the Iraqis. If this government fails to act, I believe that not only will there be a return to pre-surge levels of violence but also an increase in the number of people taking part in the new violence.

As the frustration level of the Iraqi people grows, the violence will begin to target more of the Iraqi government and less American targets. This decrease in violence is a honeymoon period, but if the delivery of needed public services and infrastructure development do not improve this honeymoon will come to an explosive end. Right now the people are just happy for a respite in the violence, but this will not last. There will be growing protests against the occupation and the impotent government.

The fact that the US security company massacres are passing with little or no response from the Iraqis should be reason alone to raise concerns. I hate to burst some bubbles but we are not that good nor are we in Iraq in sufficient numbers to maintain a continued peace. Many believe that it will be the Sunnis who will restart the cycle of violence, I believe it will actually be the Shias and will not be an orchestrated uprising. In my opinion it will be due to the continued frustration of the Iraqi people to the lack of improvements in their daily lives. Contentment with no violence will only last so long, then what? We should not let these lulls in violence convince us that everything in Iraq is honky-dory, because it is not. And despite the Neo-Con pundits and war supporters the surge is not a success. In their desperation for some semblance of good foreign policy news, they have duped a war weary public into believing that their bankrupt policies are working.

We have heard nothing about the internal refugee problems or the lack of basic services. If the best you can come up with after almost 5 years of occupation is a drop in violence, you know the redevelopment efforts are in trouble. The bottom line in Iraq continues to be the daily improvement in the lives of everyday Iraqis, until there is progress made in that area any peace will be transitory and elusive. The surge has worked to the point of exposing why we should have never entered into this quagmire in the first place. It has exposed that even with the most technological military in the history of the world, it will never bring peace or democracy. The best you can hope for by its usage is stability in the face of a bad situation. The surge has exposed that without diplomacy there can be no lasting peace. Of course for many of us it is a lesson we already knew, something about being a student of history.

Is Robert Gates an al Qaeda terrorist? Probably not, but I sure don’t want him coming to my town. The guy appears to be a suicide bomber magnet and I have no desire to be part of the collateral damage which also seems to follow.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/world/middleeast/06gates.html?hp

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Even A Caveman…

The list of Osama bin Laden’s greatest video hits continues this week with a new release. The invisible one appears to be able to get access to the latest news and current events and latest Muslim fashions. It is no longer shocking that he is able to film and release these tapes, what is shocking is that he is able to release these tapes on cue. You ever notice that whenever we are at a point when the Neo-Con agenda is being questioned or a report is due, that we are graced with the presence of the bearded one.

His last appearance was right before the 2004 election, giving Mr. Bush and company the final push in a close election. There are those who believe that these are more than coincidences and that possibly these tapes are the products of some nefarious secret body of government designed to silence any dissension in the “war on terror”. While I am not in a position to gauge the validity of this theory there are some troublesome signs in the latest offering as pointed out by the Independent.


In a banner ad for the video, the al-Qai'da leader, now aged 50, looked fit, with a full beard of dark black hair, rather than his usual grey-streaked beard. Instead of the customary combat jacket, he was wearing Arabic robes.

"It does look oddly as if he is wearing a false beard," Richard Clarke, a former White House counter-terrorism official, said. "If we go back to the tape three years ago, he had a very white beard. This looks like a phoney beard that has been passed on."

The al-Qai'da leader has not appeared in a video message in almost three years and has not put out a new audio message for more than a year. His last video broadcast was days before the 2004 presidential vote.[1]

So not only does bin Laden seem to be suddenly interested in liberal causes in America, he is also getting younger and dressing better. Living in caves does seem to have its advantages, which is strange since he is suppose to be the most hunted man on the planet. The sad truth about the theory is that we will never know; the same people who may have created the video are the ones who are authenticating the video. Isn’t it sad that there has been so much disillusionment with the government that these theories even seem plausible?

I wonder what will be next for bin Laden hyping the Super Bowl or maybe doing a halftime video with Paris Hilton. The sad truth is that the majority of people in America have allowed their fears and prejudices to be played upon by a highly organized group of people who want to keep us in war mode for the foreseeable future. As long as we are in war mode nothing the government does is too extreme, they are after all protecting you from the terrorists. What these people have learned is that if you can create a war without end (the war on drugs) suspension of liberties and habeas corpus rights will not be challenged.

Bush has so much as said that he has unlimited power under the War Powers Act. Not only does the war mentality stifle internal debate, it also allows for war profiteering to go unchallenged as well. I found it interesting that bin Laden was associated with every cause that the Neo-Cons have railed against for years. What they have done with this video is linked the head of terrorism with anyone who would espouse the ideas of freedom, global warming, and corporate criminal behavior. So basically anyone who is progressive is now also a minion of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. Talk about silencing the opposition, who in their right mind would want to be connected to terrorism?

Where is the skeptical media? Where are the questions of why with the 9/11 anniversary coming up this video mysteriously arrives? As usual there is silence from the MSM and they wonder why their public standing is so low. I would be curious to know why no one has questioned the authenticity of the video when the intelligence community got it before the Al Qaeda website could even post it. This seems strange to me, coupled with the fact of bin Laden’s appearance being markedly different one could wonder about its origin.

One thing is for sure though; even a man supposedly living in a cave in the middle of nowhere can recognize that the state of America is deteriorating.

The al-Qaeda leader's first video message for three years featured a bizarre rant against America, with references to global warming, "insane taxes", the US mortgage market meltdown and rising interest rates.[2]

[1] http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2941864.ece
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/09/wladen109.xml

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Send Us Your Tired…

Will we ever get the truth about Iraq?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 — The number of detainees held by the American-led military coalition in Iraq has swelled by 50 percent under the troop increase ordered by President Bush, with the inmate population growing from 16,000 in February to 24,500 today, according to American military officers in Iraq.

Nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody are Sunni Arabs, the minority faction in Iraq that ruled the country under the government of Saddam Hussein, with the other detainees being Shiite Muslims, the officers say.

Of the Sunni detainees, about 1,800 claim allegiance to a group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, military officers said. Another 6,000 identify themselves as takfiris, meaning Muslims who believe some other Muslims are not true believers. Such extremists view Shiite Muslims as heretics.[1]

It looks like our solution to the insurgency is to lock everybody up, as the number of detainees’ increase I think that the warm welcome we have received so far from the Iraqi people will dissipate rather quickly with this news. I find it hard to believe that the only people fighting our troops are the Sunnis, yet they are the majority of the detainee population.

If I didn’t know any better I would make the assumption that we are being the pawns of the Shia majority in rounding up those Sunni troublemakers. While I have no doubt that many of those incarcerated are who they are reported to be, it has been my experience that there are many who are not. Whenever you have military personnel doing policing maneuvers there is always the potential of innocents being included in the roundups. The reason this is important is that there is no true civil court system in place in Iraq and I believe many of those rounded up are turned over to the Iraqi police, who we have documented are rife with sectarianism. This will inevitably lead to torture and abuse for a lot of innocent Sunnis, which in turn will fuel more sectarian violence. It is easy to see how this civil war will continue to feed itself regardless of if we are in the middle or not.

There’s one other thing this administration has neglected to disclose. The majority of detainees’ are not al Qaeda foreign fighters, but in fact Iraqis.

“Interestingly, we’ve found that the vast majority are not inspired by jihad or hate for the coalition or Iraqi government — the vast majority are inspired by money,” said Capt. John Fleming of the Navy, who is spokesman for coalition detainee operations in Iraq.

“The primary motivator is economic — they’re angry men because they don’t have jobs,” he said. “The detainee population is overwhelmingly illiterate and unemployed. Extremists have been very successful at spreading their ideology to economically strapped Iraqis with little to no formal education.”[2]

Not only are they Iraqis, but they are resisting the occupation not on philosophical grounds, nationalist principles, or killing the infidels although I am sure these things play a role. The main reason is money. The majority of insurgents are just poor Iraqis trying to make a buck and their best option, to try and kill Americans. This free the Iraqis from oppression gets better by the day, you couldn’t make this stuff up. We have created the conditions where the best source of some quick cash is planting roadside devices targeted at US troops, is capitalism great or what?

How can we expect our military to combat this? We have placed them in an untenable position that we cannot get them out of, I guess no one in this administration has ever heard of the Powell Doctrine. The more people we detain, the more insurgents we create, the more insurgents we create, the more people we have to detain. This can go on to infinity. No matter how you process this war, it does not end well. There will be no clean break; there will be no victory parades. We just keep digging a bigger and bigger hole. And the best rationale we have for continuing is we don’t want another Vietnam?

The foreign policy wonks still don’t understand how much economics fuel the wars we are prosecuting. Whether it is the poor farmers in Afghanistan harvesting opium or in Columbia harvesting coca in our drug war or the poor Iraqi insurgents trying to survive in our war on terrorism, economics is a driving force. Of course to acknowledge such a fact would remove the smoke screen used to continue these unpopular and ineffective policies. It’s a war of cultures sells better than, it’s a war of the haves versus the have nots.

So send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free and we will imprison them and label them terrorists. Once they’ve been labeled, then we can do what we want to them; they’re terrorists stupid.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-detain.html?hp
[2] Ibid.

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They Call This Success?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 — On the eve of his Camp David meeting with President Bush, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan painted a bleak picture of life in his country, saying that security had worsened and that the United States and its allies were no closer to catching Osama bin Laden than they were a few years ago.

“The security situation in Afghanistan over the past two years has definitely deteriorated,” Mr. Karzai said on the CNN program “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” in an interview that was taped Saturday in Kabul. It was broadcast Sunday while Mr. Karzai was en route to Camp David for a two-day meeting with President Bush.

“The Afghan people have suffered,” Mr. Karzai said. “Terrorists have killed our schoolchildren. They have burned our schools. They have killed international helpers.”[1]

Since 9/11 this administration and its apologists have held up Afghanistan as a success in the “war on terror.” While I and others have considered there definition of success dubious at best, it seems that even the President of Afghanistan can no longer continue the charade. Afghanistan has not been a success. It may have had the potential to be successfully prosecuted, but as we all know there were bigger fish to fry.

You see while Afghanistan was the base of operations for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, it really didn’t provide any strategic value. The country is rural and mountainous and other than bumper opium crops really has no industry to speak of. The majority of people are poor, uneducated and have been in the throes of war since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Their white market economy is crap and so the rural farmers harvest opium to make money on the black market.

The President of Afghanistan is actually just the mayor of Kabul, this is about how far his influence extends. The countryside is still being ruled by chieftains and war lords as it has been since the days of Genghis Khan, who have an uneasy relationship with the central government. In what has become the norm for this administration the reconstruction efforts have been underfunded and misdirected. The central government does not have the means to expand poverty services to help the average Afghani; as a result the government of Mr. Karzai is having a difficult time engaging the people in building the nation. Mr. Karzai has made numerous trips to Washington to beg for more support for the rebuilding process and each time he has been given a pat on the head and placated with photo ops.

Add to this, the continual buildup of civilian casualties not by the Taliban, but by the US military and the situation in Afghanistan can hardly be termed a success. The Taliban and Bin Laden continue to play cat and mouse on the Afghan/Pakistani border with each side claiming that he is not on their side.

If this is how the neo-cons do nation building, what hope do we have for Iraq? It is time we either concentrate on the original job at hand or expect a resurgence of the people this whole war was suppose to be about. Despite their thinking to the contrary this administration must realize that the people of the world who are struggling have little use for rhetoric and photo-ops, they need and expect real solutions to the problems they are confronting. I believe that if this administration had completed the mission in Afghanistan not only would the Taliban be just a memory, but also Al Qaeda as we knew it at the time.

Once again, Mr. Karzai is forced to come to Washington with hat in hand to beg for more support for his war ravaged people and again he will be presented with little more than lip service and a chance for the President to get more photo-ops for his “war on terror” portfolio. As with all of their misadventures the architects of neo-conservatism have failed to know or understand the history of Afghanistan and how that history plays out today. The Afghani people are fiercely independent and do not have a history of a centralized form of government. They have been a confederation of tribal leaders and war lords who through the use of the loya jirgah[2]pledged loyalty to one ruler in an amalgamation of semi-autonomous kingdoms. Their loyalty to the central government is loose at best and is dependent on that leader being able to deliver what he promises; Mr. Karzai has been long on promises and short on delivery. This lose amalgamation could unravel at anytime, leaving Afghanistan once again open to the Taliban or some other group of similar ilk.

If this is success, what does failure look like? Do we really want to know?

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/world/asia/06karzai.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loya_jirga

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Defending the Indefensible

Here is an excerpt from one of the confessions of an “enemy combatant” that claimed to be tortured by US interrogators. Read it and then please consider how it makes you feel as an American, not a Republican or a Democrat, but just as an American.

“PRESIDENT (of the tribunal): Please describe the methods that were used.

DETAINEE: (CENSORED) What else do I want to say? (CENSORED) There were doing so many things. What else did they did? (CENSORED) After that another method of torture began. (CENSORED) They used to ask me questions and the investigator after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer that I knew. And if I didn’t replay what I heard, he used to (CENSORED).”[1]

Officials defended this censorship by arguing that interrogation methods are so secret that they cannot be discussed, even by the prisoner. But they also said that Al Qaeda members are trained to claim torture and that Mr. Nashiri lied. If so, why censor the transcript? His answers can’t help Al Qaeda. Tragically, the most likely answer is to spare United States intelligence agents and their bosses, who could face charges if the Military Commissions Act is ever repealed or rewritten. The law gives a retroactive carte blanche to American interrogators for any abuse they may have committed.[2]

How can any person who respects the freedom and rights of humans defend this type of behavior? Have we become so afraid after 9/11 that we are willing to condone any type of behavior in the name of fighting terrorism? If we continue to follow this path; what will separate us from them? It is a slippery slope that we are on folks and I believe that once we start down this slope it will be difficult if not impossible to turn back.

While the loss of 2,973 Americans[3] is tragic and unjustified under any conditions, can we now justify holding 6.6 billion people hostage as a result? We have declared war not only on the terrorists but on the whole world as well. When we start using the language of “either you are with us or against us” we force the world and ourselves to either accept everything we do or “embolden the terrorists”. Life despite what some in this administration would like us to believe is never that black and white. By defining the struggle in those terms we declare war on ourselves and our democracy. No one said having a democracy would be easy, no one said defending a democracy would be easy either. Living in a democracy we put our beliefs to the test every day. Those beliefs include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We believe that these are unalienable rights granted by a beneficent Creator.

I do not believe that the way you defeat evil is with evil. I do not believe that the way you save a democracy is with a dictatorship. We have to kill the democracy to save it? I am not following that logic. As a democracy we have to maintain the high ground even when that high ground is difficult. I submit that it is when democracy is the toughest to defend, is when it must be defended the more. There are those who want to take shortcuts and easy outs to defeat this invisible enemy, but there are none. It is frustrating fighting a war without borders or an enemy with no state, but we will not defeat this enemy by might. We can only win this war by our ideals and our leadership, not by torture and injustice. This administration has lost the high ground in this war. By condoning torture and turning this into a war of cultures they have lowered our standing not just with our enemies, but with our allies as well. In the long run how we choose to defend our democracy will determine if we save our democracy. You will never know love, until the unlovable shows up. Anyone can love the cute kitten, but it is the wolf that truly tests our doctrine of love. Some people believe that democracy cannot survive terrorism; I believe that terrorism cannot survive a true democracy. One thing that the fall of communism should have taught us is that everyone wants to live in freedom. That freedom is defined in different ways by different people, but isn’t that what freedom is. We cannot expect everyone’s freedom to look like ours nor compel them to make it so. All that we can do is to promote an atmosphere where freedom in any form can flourish. That process though must begin at home with us, we must say no to those who want to lead us astray from democracy in the name of war. Torture can never be condoned under any circumstances in a democracy. By resorting to torture we are demonstrating to our enemies and our friends that democracy does not work or that our belief in it is not real. They can then tell their potential converts, “See we told you it was not genuine or that it will not work.” Our country has been the greatest experiment in human history. Can people from so many different backgrounds come together for a common cause and live in peace?

There is a principle in our system of justice that states it is better to let nine guilty men go free, than to punish one innocent man. We do not always live up to that ideal, but it is that goal that separates us from those who choose to attack us. The system of secret prisons, torture, and state sponsored kidnappings must end. Our continued use of places like Guantanamo and imprisonment without any redress undermines our democracy not only in the world, but at home as well. Our domestic policies that place everyone under the umbrella of suspicion are not the answer to terrorism. I say that it is these policies, not the questioning of them, which in fact are emboldening the terrorist. The more they can change our democracy into a fascist system the more they win. We must stop defending the indefensible.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/opinion/06fri1.html

[2] Ibid

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11,_2001_attacks

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