Category Archives: Iraq

Update II: POT. KETTLE. BLACK.

Easily one of the most mind-boggling spectacles in the Georgia/Russia conflict is that of Bush accusing Russia of “bullying and intimidation”; of Bush admonishing Russia about its unacceptable “way of conducting foreign policy in the 21st Century”; of Bush expressing “grave concern” about Russia’s “disproportionate response”; and of Bush condemning the violation of the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation.

Bush may be describing Russia but he is also describing what he did to Iraq. Another of Bush’s Freudian projections and hypocrisies all rolled into one is to charge Russia with pursuing “a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation.”

Since the war in Georgia is one neocons and neoliberals can get behind, both factions–and most mindless media–have chosen to ignore this Bush burlesque.

Update I (August 16): More “pot-kettle-black” Bushisms, delivered to Russia:

“The days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us.”

What’s Iraq? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Some of the reasons given by American policy wonks for the U.S.’s lingering in these blighted spots are the fear of other players getting the upper hand in these regions.

What is that if not “sphere-of-influence” plotting and planning?

Perhaps I just don’t have the necessary partisan gene, or blind sport, required to ignore these pious, specious homilies.

Update II (August 20): Americans fall for these easy storylines politicians and pundits spin, rather than look at how we conduct ourselves in the world and the repercussions this has.
Why is it that the US can increase its spheres of influence with attendant invasions and military presence in countries across the word, yet when another super power acts comparably, our “analysts” apply different yardsticks to its conduct?

In the context of the Georgia/Russia conflict, who among big-time pundits is able to consider America’s national interests? Who is able to offer a perspective that doesn’t, atavistically, galvanize American opinion around imagined enemies, but rather, looks at the crisis from a bilateral perspective?

None other than Pat Buchanan. This from Buchanan’s latest, “Who Started Cold War II?”:

“Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow’s superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.
If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.
Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.
And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship?”

Read the entire column.

***

(August 15): “Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them,” writes Pat Buchanan in a sharp analysis of the conflict in Georgia, among which are some pesky facts mass media has concealed:

“Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia’s invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser’s blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili’s blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili’s army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.”

A War He Can Call His Own

Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Foreign Policy, Iraq, War

Here’s an excerpt from my new WND column, “A War He Can Call His Own”:

“Obama wants to maintain a meaty presence in Afghanistan. He may even be conjuring up new monsters and new missions. This is because Obama needs a “good” war. Electability in fin de siècle America hinges on projecting strength around the world—an American leader has to aspire to protect borders and people not his own. In other words, Obama needs a war he can call his own.

In Afghanistan, Obama has found such a war.”

Comments are welcome.

Updated: Honest Abe’s Anguish

History, Iraq, Just War, Literature

“[W]hile small-time functionaries like Scott McClellan can be big enough to express remorse, self-reproach is rare in the leaders they serve. A breast-beating Bush: now that would provide a truly teachable moment.

Although never belabored, it is believed that Abraham Lincoln may have suffered misgivings for his role in ‘the butchering business’—J. R. Pole’s turn-of-phrase. Pole is Rhodes Professor Emeritus of American History and Institutions at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford.

Before Pole, a number of prominent historians had floated the idea that Lincoln might have wrestled with remorse for shedding the blood of brothers in great quantities. …”

Read more about the literary “clues to Lincoln’s possible contrition” in “Honest Abe’s Anguish,” my new WorldNetDaily.com column.

Update (June 22): TIME magazine reports that “Scott McClellan … said President Bush has lost the public’s trust by failing to open up about his Administration’s mistakes and backtracking on a promise be up front about the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.”

The man does have a knack for stating the obvious.

Or as I wrote in this column, McClellan has “hindsight rather than insight on his side; what he [is] imparting [is] neither new nor even newsworthy.”

But in America the simple are celebrated.

Updated: Beam Scotty (McClellan) Up

Iraq, Media, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, War

You mean there still is no consensus about the unconstitutional, unjust war an American government waged? That’s right; the “nation” is still litigating the invasion of Iraq. What’s more, the stakeholders are circling the wagons.

Here is something of the smorgasbord of McClellan coverage; it’s some of what you should take away from the publication of a stale, tell-all by a former low-level Bush administration functionary. Admonitions are in order for most members of the media who were right by Scotty’s side, whooping it up for war crimes. For or against Scott, send in some of the reviews you like (but take your pro-war crimes comments elsewhere):

• “Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?”—Richard A. Clarke

• “It would have been nice if he had told us some of this at the time, back when it was his job to keep the public informed.”—Karen Tumulty, Time magazine [Not so fast Ms. Tumulty; it was YOUR job too to apprise the public.]

• “The memoir strikes me as the standard stuff: ‘I was an insider to a corrupt group but the head of the group and I weren’t corrupt; we were misled.’”—liberal blog called American Street

• “Bush displayed a ‘lack of inquisitiveness’; the administration operated in a ‘permanent campaign mode’; the Iraq war ‘was not necessary’–other than that McClellan’s chosen to reveal them. But is that even really that surprising?” And: “the book displays a calculating mind that was never much in evidence in the White House press room.”—Jason Zengerle, The New Republic

Update (June 3): After watching Scott McClellan handle the raging bull, Bill O’Reilly, I’ve changed my opinion. This young man was strong, courageous and filled with a certain conviction. He did well against the man who acted as an accomplice to the administration, and who sold the war to those who’d have to go out and fight it. This was Bush’s war, Blair’s war, Podhoretz’s war, and Billo’s war. Billo showed his discomfort by flaring his nostrils and pursing his lips. McClellan, who was calm and comfortable, got to the man.

McClellan’s ability to admit over and over again that he had been completely wrong in his judgment and ethics served as a good contrast to Billo, who was prepared to concede nothing of the kind.

Granted, McClellan is not opposing the war on the most solid of grounds: Implicit in the case he makes is that if Iraq had WMD—irrespective of it not threatening the US or having any ties to al-Qaida—the US would have had a case for war. McClellan implies that we had a right to enforce UN resolutions, be a global governor. (Suddenly the US is an arm of the UN). We don’t.

Still, I will buy McClellan’s role as a bellwether of sorts—another insider sounding a warning—when the evidence against this corrupt administration results in impeachments, disgrace, and loss of face. There are no signs of that so far.