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Archive: POLITICS >please note: some links may no longer be active.
The Horse's Mouth The British journalist Johann Hari has written an absolutely vital article for The Independent, examining a growing movement of former hardened Islamic militants who are now devoted to teaching a more moderate and less fundamentalist Islam. Hari focuses on understanding what motivates some Muslims to turn to radicalism and terrorism in the first place, and how that process can be reversed. Though these ex-militants have very diverse backgrounds, they all stress two critical facts: (1) the more the foreign policy of the West is seen as aggressive, violent and oppressive to the Muslim world, the easier it is to convert Muslims to violent radicalism, and (2) the most potent weapon for undermining Islamic extremism is the efforts of Westerners to work against their own governments' belligerent policies: To my surprise, the ex-jihadis said their rage about Western foreign policy -- which was real, and burning -- emerged only after their identity crises, and as a result of it. They identified with the story of oppressed Muslims abroad because it seemed to mirror the oppressive disorientation they felt in their own minds. . . . But once they had made that leap to identify with the Umma – the global Muslim community -- they got angrier the more abusive our foreign policy came. Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11 -- from Guantanamo to Iraq -- made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. Hadiya Masieh, a tiny female former HT organiser, tells me: "You'd see Bush on the television building torture camps and bombing Muslims and you think -- anything is justified to stop this. What are we meant to do, just stand still and let him cut our throats?" But the converse was -- they stressed -- also true. When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?" asks Hadiya. One of the leaders of Britain's movement of ex-Islamists, Maajid Nawaz, recounts how his hardened militarism began when, as a youth, he read "leaflets saying Muslims were being massacred all over the world, from India to Bosnia to Southend." In 2000, he moved to Egypt and began recruiting students into radicalism. Listen to what he says about what helped and hindered his efforts: He started to recruit other students, as he had done so many times before. But it was harder. "Everyone hated the [unelected] government [of Hosni Mubarak], and the US for backing it," he says. But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 -- until the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs. "That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot faster." Nawaz was ultimately imprisoned in Egypt and was surrounded by Egyptian prisoners who were being brutally tortured by a government propped up by the U.S. (he was spared only because he was a British citizen). Consider what began to change Nawaz's views on the rightness of his Islamic extremism: Maajid's Islamist convictions were about to be challenged from two unexpected directions -- the men who murdered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Amnesty International. HT [the Islamic group which he had headed] abandoned Maajid as a "fallen soldier" and barely spoke of him or his case. But when his family were finally allowed to see him, they told him he had a new defender. Although they abhorred his political views, Amnesty International said he had a right to free speech and to peacefully express his views, and publicised his case. "I was just amazed," Maajid says. "We'd always seen Amnesty as the soft power tools of colonialism. So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them, adopted us, I felt -- maybe these democratic values aren't always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously ... it was the beginning of my serious doubts." In other words, the very policies the U.S. has been pursuing in the name of combating Terrorism -- invading, occupying, and bombing Muslim countries; locking them up without trials; torturing them; violating the values we've been preaching to the world -- have been the most potent instruments for fueling Islamic radicalism and terrorism. By contrast, those who have been continuously accused of being "soft on Terrorism" and even being allied with the Terrorists -- those who opposes our various wars, who demanded and provided basic human rights protections and equal liberties to Muslims, who objected to their own governments' oppressive and belligerent policies -- have done more to diffuse and impede Muslim radicalism than virtually anyone else in the world. read the rest of Glenn Greenwald's piece at Salon.com
An Honest Appraisal in the U.S. Media As an Afghan woman who was elected to Parliament, I am in the United States to ask President Barack Obama to immediately end the occupation of my country. Eight years ago, women's rights were used as one of the excuses to start this war. But today, Afghanistan is still facing a women's rights catastrophe. Life for most Afghan women resembles a type of hell that is never reflected in the Western mainstream media. In 2001, the U.S. helped return to power the worst misogynist criminals, such as the Northern Alliance warlords and druglords. These men ought to be considered a photocopy of the Taliban. The only difference is that the Northern Alliance warlords wear suits and ties and cover their faces with the mask of democracy while they occupy government positions. But they are responsible for much of the disaster today in Afghanistan, thanks to the U.S. support they enjoy. The U.S. and its allies are getting ready to offer power to the medieval Taliban by creating an imaginary category called the "moderate Taliban" and inviting them to join the government. A man who was near the top of the list of most-wanted terrorists eight years ago, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been invited to join the government. Over the past eight years the U.S. has helped turn my country into the drug capital of the world through its support of drug lords. Today, 93 percent of all opium in the world is produced in Afghanistan. Many members of Parliament and high ranking officials openly benefit from the drug trade. President Karzai's own brother is a well known drug trafficker. Afghanistan has received $36 billion of aid in the past eight years, and the U.S. alone spends $165 million a day on its war. Yet my country remains in the grip of terrorists and criminals. My people have no interest in the current drama of the presidential election since it will change nothing in Afghanistan. Both Karzai and Dr. Abdullah are hated by Afghans for being U.S. puppets. The worst casualty of this war is truth. Those who stand up and raise their voice against injustice, insecurity and occupation have their lives threatened and are forced to leave Afghanistan, or simply get killed. more from Malalai Joya in the San Jose Mercury News
The most patriotic way to honor future veterans of foreign wars is not to create any unnecessarily. – Juan Cole
More Troops? Where Will They Get Them? As the Obama administration debates whether to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, an already overstretched military is increasingly struggling to meet its deployment numbers. Surprisingly, one place it seems to be targeting is military personnel who go absent without leave (AWOL) and then are caught or turn themselves in. Hidden behind the gates of military bases across the U.S., troops facing AWOL and desertion charges regularly find themselves in the hands of a military that metes out informal, open-ended punishments by forcing them to wait months -- sometimes more than a year -- to face military justice. In the meantime, some of these soldiers are offered a free pass out of this legal limbo as long as they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq -- even if they have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In August 2008 at TomDispatch.com, we reported on the deplorable conditions at the 82nd Replacement Barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. There, more than 50 members of Echo Platoon of the 82nd Airborne Division's 82nd Replacement Detachment were being held while awaiting AWOL and desertion charges. Investigations launched since then -- in part in response to our article -- have revealed that the plight of members of Echo Platoon is not an isolated one. It is, in fact, disturbingly commonplace on other bases throughout the United States. And it is from these "holdover units," filled with disgruntled soldiers who have gone AWOL, many of whom are struggling with PTSD from previous deployments in war zones, that the military is hoping to help meet its manpower needs for Afghanistan. Nightmare in Echo Platoon On August 16th, determined to put an end to unbearable mental and psychological pain, Private Timothy Rich, while on 24-hour suicide watch, attempted to jump to his death from the roof of Echo Platoon's barracks (where he had been held since being arrested for going AWOL). Prior to his suicide attempt, Rich had been offered amnesty by the military in exchange for agreeing to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq. He had already been through a hellish year awaiting a discharge and treatment for mental health problems. "I want to leave here very bad," he explained. "For four months they have been telling me that I'll get out next week. I didn't see an end to it, so I figured I'd try and end it myself." He fell three stories, bouncing off a tree, before hitting the ground and cracking his spine. The military gave him a back brace, psychotropic drugs, and put him on a renewed, 24-hour suicide watch. While he has recently been discharged from the military, Rich was not atypical of the soldiers of Echo Platoon, some forced to wait a year or more in legal limbo -- in dilapidated buildings under the authority of abusive commanders -- for legal proceedings to begin, and many struggling with mental illness or PTSD from previous deployments. As Specialist Dustin Stevens told us last August: "[It's] horrible here. We are treated like animals. Some of us are going crazy, some are sick. There are people here who should be in mental hospitals. And the way I see it, I did nothing wrong." Shortly after our story was published, Stevens told us that at least half a dozen soldiers in the platoon, including him, were suddenly given trial dates. Although he was likely to be found guilty and face punishment, Stevens claimed to be "relieved" to have an end in sight. Soon after, according to Echo Platoon informants, their barracks were condemned as a result of a military investigation of the site and, on October 19th, the platoon itself was disbanded. Recently, due possibly to the attention his story drew to the mistreatment and indefinite detention soldiers were facing in Echo Platoon, Stevens was informed by the military he would be "chaptered out" -- in other words, given an administrative discharge from the Army -- and will not be forced to serve formal prison time. James Branum, Stevens' civilian lawyer, as well as the legal adviser to the G.I. Rights Hotline of Oklahoma and co-chair of the Military Law Task Force (MLTF), summed developments up this way: "After repeated complaints and congressional inquiry, Echo Platoon was shut down. The whole place was shut down. Everyone was scattered to other units. If your old unit still exists, they are sending you to your old unit. We know that at least one of the NCOs [non-commissioned officers] in charge of Echo Platoon was fired. I think this is a positive thing." more from Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare at Tom Dispatch
Do You Realize What the U.S. has Become? It's not often that an appellate court decision reflects so vividly what a country has become, but such is the case with yesterday's ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Arar v. Ashcroft (.pdf). Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent. A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old. In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured. He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured. Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing. I've appended to the end of this post the graphic description from a dissenting judge of what was done to Arar while in American custody and then in Syria. In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation. That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada." By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves "state secrets" and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved. What does that behavioral disparity between the two nations say about how "democratic," "accountable," and "open" the United States is? Yesterday, the Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 -- agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety. It held that even if the government violated Arar's Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him. Why? Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" (p. 39). In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them. more from the indespensible Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com and further analysis from Scott Horton in Harper's
Mideast Failure Looms for Obama The Obama Administration’s bid to relaunch an Israeli-Palestinian peace process is falling apart faster than you can say settlement freeze — in no small part because President Obama began his effort by saying “settlement freeze.” On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself struggling to persuade skeptical Arab foreign ministers to see the silver lining in Israel’s “no, but” answer to the U.S. demand that Israel halt all construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. At least Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was offering to restrain settlement activity, Clinton argued, but Arab leaders, whom Obama had hoped would make reciprocal gestures towards normalization of ties with Israel, were not buying. For Arab League secretary Amr Moussa, Clinton’s message offered a grim outlook for the Administration’s peace efforts: “I still wait until we have our meetings and decide what we are going to do,” Moussa reportedly said Monday in Morocco, where Clinton was meeting with Arab leaders. “But failure is in the atmosphere all over.” Asking the Arab states to accept Israel’s offer to simply slow down construction in the West Bank and its refusal to stop building and demolishing Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem — after President Obama publicly and repeatedly demanded it — has battered the Administration’s credibility in Arab capitals. And Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated on Monday his refusal to heed Washington’s call to begin negotiating with Netanyahu in the absence of a settlement freeze. Abbas has promised his public and his own Fatah movement, which is deeply skeptical of the prospects for dealing with Israel’s current hawkish government, that he won’t return to the table until Netanyahu has signaled his bona fides by halting all construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. read the rest of Tony Karon's piece at his Rootless Cosmopolitan blog
Schadenfreude, Anyone? Bernard Kerik became the first NYPD commissioner to land in jail Tuesday after a judge revoked his bail for trying to taint the jury pool in his upcoming corruption trial. Late last night Kerik was taken from White Plains Federal Court to the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla. His lawyers vowed a prompt appeal to try and get him out. A furious Judge Stephen Robinson threw Kerik in the clink after prosecutors said the former top cop and the head of his legal defense fund engaged in a subversive campaign to sway potential jurors. The judge blasted Kerik for ignoring his prior warnings to bar Anthony Modafferi, the head of the fund, from posting anti-prosecution rants on on the Internet. "Mr. Kerik has a toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance that leads him to believe that the ends justify the means, that rules that apply to all don't apply to him in the same way, that rulings of the court are an inconvenience," Robinson said. The one-time "hero" of 9/11 was led away by U.S. marshals after handing his red tie, religious medals and a ring to his lawyers, standard procedure for all prisoners.
Hillary Spews Nonsense Abdullah Abdullah announced Sunday morning that he has withdrawn from the second round of Afghanistan's presidential election on the grounds that the same local officials, appointed by his rival, incumbent Hamid Karzai, will supervise the runoff as winked at massive fraud in the first round. He said that the election cannot be transparent or honest. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implausibly maintained that Abdullah's withdrawal will not affect the legitimacy of the Afghanistan presidential election. Since President Obama had put off making a decision on his Afghanistan policy until he saw the results of the planned November 7 runoff, Abdullah's decision puts Washington in an awkward position. Abdullah is said to be seeking to postpone the runoff until spring, 2010, which would much extend the period of instability. In contrast, Clinton seems to be crowning Karzai the winner by virtue of Abdullah's withdrawal. But the Karzai presidency has been badly if not unalterably wounded by the ballot fraud practiced in August, and of which the retention of the same electoral commission would guarantee a repetition. And here is what I take away from all this. The debate in Washington has been over a counter-insurgency campaign versus a limited counter-terrorism campaign. Counter-insurgency implies a certain amount of state-building. Counter-terrorism implies that state-building is impossible or very, very difficult. Clinton backs counter-insurgency, while Vice President Joe Biden supports counter-terrorism. The reason Clinton is so eager to insist that Karzai's election is legitimate despite its obvious illegitimacy is that Abdullah's withdrawal puts paid to the idea that there is a plausible Afghan government partner for US counter-insurgency. There is not. Biden may or may not win the argument in Washington. But there is now no doubt that he should win that argument. Sending another 40,000 troops into Afghanistan to shore up a Karzai government that tried to steal the election and demonstrated so little accountability that the officials who winked at the fraud are still on the electoral commission-- that is an absurd proposition. more from Juan Cole
Greenwald on Brooks David Brooks today says he wanted to write a column about Obama's pending decision over Afghanistan, and in order to write this column, this is what he tells us he did: "For the past few days I have tried to do what journalists are supposed to do." Sounds intrepid. What, exactly, is it that "journalists are supposed to"? As he describes it, Brooks "called around to several of the smartest military experts [he] know[s] to get their views on these controversies." These are people "who follow the war for a living." He wrote down (at least some of) what they said. He then passed it on without quoting -- or even identifying -- a single one of these experts. That's his whole column. In a shocking coincidence, the views of these unnamed, handpicked, anonymous "experts" all happen to coincide perfectly with Brooks's own warrior views and, more generally, with clichéd neoconservative pablum: Obama must prove that he's just like Churchill and Lincoln -- that he possesses the toughness and determination that tough guy War Presidents exude: "tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion" -- which can only happen if he escalates the war in Afghanistan. If he doesn't do that, it will that prove Obama is weak and too "intellectually sophisticated" to be a real War President. "Their first concerns are about Obama the man," Brooks informs us about his invisible friends. The only thing missing from the trite Kristolian playbook is the accusation that Obama will be just like Neville Chamberlain if he doesn't send more troops to vanquish the Afghan Hitlers. So apparently, this is what "journalists are supposed to do." They call handpicked invisible people on the phone and then write columns summarizing what they claim they said without identifying or describing a single one of them. Did he talk to Max Boot or one of the decorated members of the elite war-cheering Kagan family or similar discredited war-lovers from the American Enterprise Institute and The Brookings Institution? Who knows. He doesn't say. He just faithfully serves as a mindless stenographer for hidden people whose credibility you're told to accept even as they do nothing but spout manipulative, vapid idiocies about Churchillian Resolve designed to promote endless war. In that regard, Brooks has certainly accomplished -- as he usually does -- the typical establishment journalist's conception of "what journalists are supposed to." Glenn Greenwald can (and should) be read regularly at Salon.com
Preventing the Next Financial Crisis The United States is headed toward a new financial crisis. History gives many examples of countries with high actual and expected money growth, unsustainable budget deficits, and a currency expected to depreciate. Unless these countries made massive policy changes, they ended in crisis. We will escape only if we act forcefully and soon. As long ago as the 1960s, then French President Charles de Gaulle complained that the U.S. had the "exorbitant privilege" of financing its budget deficit by issuing more dollars. Massive purchases of dollar debt by foreigners can of course delay the crisis, but today most countries have their own deficits to finance. It is unwise to expect them, mainly China, to continue financing up to half of ours for the next 10 or more years. Our current and projected deficits are too large relative to current and prospective world saving to rely on that outcome. Worse, banks' idle reserves that are available for lending reached $1 trillion last week. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said repeatedly in the past that excess reserves would run down when banks and other financial companies repaid their heavy short-term borrowing to the Fed. The borrowing has been repaid but idle reserves have increased. Once banks begin to expand loans or finance even more of the massive deficits, money growth will rise rapidly and the dollar will sink to new lows. Do we have to wait for a crisis before we replace promises with effective restraint? Many market participants reassure themselves that inflation won't come by noting the decline in yields on longer-term Treasury bonds and the spread between nominal Treasury yields and index-linked TIPS that protect against inflation. They measure expectations of higher inflation by the difference between these two rates, and imply long-term investors aren't demanding higher interest rates to protect themselves against it. But those traditional inflation-warning indicators are distorted because the Fed lends money at about a zero rate and the banks buy Treasury securities, reducing their yield and thus the size of the inflation premium. Further, the Fed is buying massive amounts of mortgages to depress and distort the mortgage rate. This way of subsidizing bank profits and increasing their capital bails out these institutions but avoids going to Congress for more money to do so. It follows the Fed's usual practice of protecting big banks instead of the public. The administration admits to about $1 trillion budget deficits per year, on average, for the next 10 years. That's clearly an underestimate, because it counts on the projected $200 billion to $300 billion of projected reductions in Medicare spending that will not be realized. And who can believe that the projected increase in state spending for Medicaid can be paid by the states, or that payments to doctors will be reduced by about 25%? While Chinese government purchases of our debt may delay a dollar and debt crisis, they also delay any effective program to reduce the size of that crisis. It is far better to begin containing the problem before we blow a hole in the dollar and start another downturn. more from Alan Meltzer in the WSJ
Exactly Correct We can't combat Terrorism by sending our military into Muslim countries. Doing that only exacerbates the problem, since it inevitably intensifies the anti-American sentiment that enables and fuels the terrorist threat in the first place. All of that is so basic. It's been empirically proven over and over during the last decade. It's not Noam Chomsky or Al Jazeera pointing out these basic truths, but instead, a 2004 Task Force handpicked by Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon to review and assess the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts, principally the wars they were waging in Afghanistan and Iraq. Undoubtedly, there is some small faction of "Islamic radicals" principally motivated by religious fervor which will likely hate the West regardless of what it does, but -- as the 2004 Pentagon-commissioned Report found -- their most potent weapons are American policies that inflame anti-American hatred in the Muslim world, beginning with ongoing wars waged by the U.S. military in Muslim countries. That's so self-evident it shouldn't require a report to document it, but since it seems to, here's a very credible report that does exactly that. more from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com
MSM Reporting as Propaganda I’m of two minds about taking up this theme, since stating what ought to be obvious but is nevertheless unpleasant and inconvenient is apt to get one branded as lunatic fringe. Access journalism has created what is in many respects a controlled press. And that matters because people are far more suggestible than most of us wants to admit to ourselves. Let us start with the cheerleading in the media over Wall Street, and in particular, Goldman earnings. Matt Taibbi, in “Good News on Wall Street Means… What Exactly?,” tells us why this is so distorted: It’s literally amazing to me that our press corps hasn’t yet managed to draw a distinction between good news on Wall Street for companies like Goldman, and good news in reality. I watched carefully the reporting of the Dow breaking 10,000 the other day and not anywhere did I see a major news organization include a paragraph of the “On the other hand, so fucking what?” sort, one that might point out that unemployment is still at a staggering high, foreclosures are racing along at a terrifying clip, and real people are struggling more than ever. In fact the dichotomy between the economic health of ordinary people and the traditional “market indicators” is not merely a non-story, it is a sort of taboo — unmentionable in major news coverage. The press has been on a downslope for at least a decade, as a result of strained budgets and vastly more effective government and business spin control (and it was already pretty good at that, see the BBC series, The Century of the Self, via Google video, for a real eye-opener). I met a reporter who had been overseas for six years, opening an important foreign office for the Wall Street Journal. He was stunned when he came back in 1999 to see how much reporting had changed in his absence. He said it was impossible to get to the bottom of most stories in a normal news cycle because companies had become very sophisticated in controlling their message and access. I couldn’t tell immediately, but one of my friends remarked in 2000 that the reporting was increasingly reminiscent of what she had grown up with in communist Poland. The state of the US media became evident to me when I lived in Australia during the run-up and the first two years of the Gulf War. I would regularly e-mail people in the States about stories I thought were important and I suspected might not be getting much play in the US. My correspondents were media junkies. 85% of the time, a story that had gotten widespread coverage in Australia appeared not to have been released in the US. And the other 15%, it didn’t get much attention (for instance, buried in the middle of the first section of the New York Times). And remember, Australia was an ally and sent troops to the Iraq. Why does this matter? Because influence via the adept packaging of information and images is very effective. The creator of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, was the nephew of Freud and set about to use the subconscious to shape public opinion. more from Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character give him power. – George Washington
Why Rufus Phillips Matters Rufus Phillips, raised in rural Virginia and educated at Yale, was a young C.I.A. officer in Saigon in the nineteen-fifties, a protege of the legendary Colonel Edward Lansdale. Over the next decade, Phillips became that rare thing in American foreign policy—an expert in the politics of another country. (Leslie Gelb, the former Times columnist and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, once told me, “American foreign-policy experts don’t know anything about countries. That is a fundamental and tragic problem in our policymaking process.”) Phillips got to know South Vietnamese politicians and military officers better than any other American. He ran the U.S. civilian counterinsurgency program in the early sixties and traveled all over rural South Vietnam (he was Richard Holbrooke’s first boss). When the Saigon government started to collapse, in 1963, Phillips returned to Washington and, though he was far down the bureaucratic pecking order, was asked to brief President Kennedy. Phillips was one of the few officials in a position to know how badly the war was going, and he and a blithely optimistic Marine general argued it out in front of Kennedy, in a scene that made Phillips’s reputation as a fearless straight-talker (David Halberstam recorded it in “The Best and the Brightest”). After 1963, Phillips ended his official work in Vietnam. But he was one of those young men who never got over it, never again found anything else as interesting and important. A couple of decades ago, Phillips started to write a memoir, but he put it aside when publishers told him that no one wanted to read another Vietnam book. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan caused him to take it up again, and last year, at the age of seventy-nine, Phillips published “Why Vietnam Matters.” It is, among other things, a wonderful read, full of detail and drama. It tells you what it felt like to live and work in Saigon before the Americans arrived by the hundreds of thousands—the Saigon of the French hangover and the American operatives who met their Vietnamese contacts at colonial hotels—where Ngo Dinh Diem seemed for awhile like the best hope of stopping Communism, and Americans had a sunny confidence in their own democratic faith. Phillips might have been the prototype for Graham Greene’s “quiet American,” except that through the lens of Greene’s Catholic-and-Communist loathing for liberalism, Phillips would have been caricatured, his idealism turned to dangerous arrogance, his kindness to naïvete. much more from George Packer in The New Yorker
Assertions Vs Facts Ever since Iran reported the existence of its Qom enrichment facility to the IAEA, one central assertion has been repeated as fact over and over by the American media to make the story as incriminating as possible: namely, that Iran only disclosed this because they discovered they had been "caught," i.e., they found out that the West knew of this facility and they thus had no choice but to disclose it. That assertion has been fundamental to the entire Iran drama. After all, if Iran voluntarily notified the IAEA of the Qom facility before it was even operational and thus agreed to have the facility inspected, it's impossible to maintain the melodramatic storyline that Iran was planning something deeply nefarious here and got "caught red-handed." The assertion that Iran was forced into disclosure is vital to the entire plot, and it's been constantly repeated as fact. But ever since this episode began, I've read countless accounts from numerous sources and never once saw a single piece of evidence to support this claim -- and I've been actively looking for it and asking if anyone has seen such evidence. Today in Time Magazine, Bobby Ghosh writes of an exclusive interview he conducted with CIA Director Leon Panetta about Qom, in which Panetta claims the CIA knew of the facility for three years. After describing Panetta's account of how the CIA discovered the site and how they learned it was designed for uranium enrichment, this paragraph appears: U.S. officials believe that it was only when Iran found out that its cover had been blown that it chose to own up to the plant's existence -- although how it might have learned of Washington's discovery remains unclear. On the eve of the U.N. General Assembly last month, the Iranians sent the IAEA a terse note, acknowledging the presence of the Qum facility. Does that sound like the CIA actually knows whether Iran ever even discovered "that its cover had been blown," let alone that this was the reason the Iranians disclosed the facility to the IAEA? Obviously not. Time can say only that U.S. officials (unnamed, of course) "believe" that this happened -- based on what? -- but cannot even say how Iran might have learned of the U.S. discovery (that's "unclear"). Plainly, at least according to this account and every other that I've seen, there are no known facts to support the claim that this is what motivated Iran's IAEA disclosure. It's just something that gets asserted without any challenge or questioning. Just this weekend, a New York Times Editorial flatly asserted: "Of course, Iran didn’t even acknowledge that it was building a plant near Qum until last week after it was caught red-handed." In fact, the Times has no idea whether Iran's disclosure to the IAEA had anything to do with that or whether Iran even knew that the West had learned of the Qom facility. more from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com
Crooks and Fools In all this noise and confusion the simple questions are being drowned out, the basic realities ignored. The aim of the war is stated to be the defeat of al-Qaeda. But which al-Qaeda? The one that did 9/11 is no more; all that is left of it is just a couple of old men hiding in caves in inaccessible mountains, occasionally issuing an exhortatory tape to show that they are still alive. However, the motivation that led to the (US-supported) jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, to the creation of al-Qaeda, and to 9/11 (to remove Western power and influence from the Muslim world) is still alive, and is espoused by many groups all over the Muslim world, some of whom also call themselves al-Qaeda. read FB Ali's full piece at Sic Semper Tyrannis
The NY Times Fails (Again) The surest sign that another neocon bill of goods is being hawked in respect of the Iran “nuclear peril” is the revival of Rumsfeld-esque “unknowable unknowns”, a la Iraq WMD panic circa late 2002. In the real world, of course, solid progress is being made towards a plausible diplomatic deal to strengthen safeguards against Iran weaponizing the nuclear material it is producing. But in the fevered world of the neocons, which the New York Time has, once again, bought into wholesale, the progress is illusory; Iran is playing games by only showing us the tip of the iceberg. Utterly shameless in its willingness to repeat the Judith Miller debacle, the Times tells us that Iran at Geneva agreed “to send most of its openly declared enriched uranium” to Russia for reprocessing into fuel rods for a medical research facility. Twice more in the story it uses the phrase “declared stockpile” — unmistakably signaling the reader that he or she ought to believe that Iran, of course, has other stocks of enriched uranium that are undeclared. This new neocon talking point is explicitly elaborated by Michael Crowley in the New Republic: “It’s definitely good news that Iran has agreed to ship a large quantity of its low-enriched uranium out of the country. Every pound of the stuff that leaves Iran is a pound less that they can use for a bomb. But an agreement isn’t a shipment. And if there are more Qom-like secret enrichment facilities–which is likely–then Iran may have more enriched uranium than we know, and has the luxury of making a public show of giving some away.” The New York Times may think it’s a serious newspaper, but not when it comes to Iran, where it is simply reprising the role of Fox News-for-the-arugula-crowd that it played in support of the Iraq invasion. Writing about Iran’s “declared” facilities implies that there are undeclared ones. This is what Defense Secretary Rumsfeld called an “unknowable unknown” in the buildup to war in Iraq. Nobody knows that Iran has such undeclared stocks, nor has any evidence to that effect been cited by the IAEA or by U.S. intelligence. It’s simply a guess. And a pretty stupid guess at that. If Iran was, indeed, secretly stockpiling enriched uranium, with all the risks that entailed, the only rationale for doing so would be to build a bomb. In which case, they wouldn’t confine themselves to the 4% enrichment of their “declared” stocks, which are suitable only for reactor fuel; they’d have enriched that material to the upward of 90% necessary to make weapons-grade materiel. Otherwise, why bother to keep it secret? But if Iran already has stockpiles of weapons grade uranium, then the whole process of engagement is a farce. Sanctions, too. Because it means Iran essentially already has the key component of a bomb. And, of course, the vaunted “military option” still on Obama’s “table” would be a joke — if nobody knows where the “undeclared” facilities are, they can’t be bombed. Having done its bit to create a climate for war against Iraq, the New York Times is once again carrying water for the neocons. Unwittingly, I’m sure, because I wouldn’t want to suggest that such a venerable institution had an “undeclared” agenda. Also, Juan Cole on the "nuclear latency" aspect of the Iran issue
A Bit Of Context
A Few Clarifications on Iran Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the US, other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint. But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky. Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders. Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace. Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates. Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map." Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel. Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to 'wipe Israel off the map?' Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all. more from Juan Cole
Ritter on Iran Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector who correctly predicted prior to the U.S. invasion that Iraq did not have WMDs, has this to say about the current Iran issue: It was very much a moment of high drama. Barack Obama, fresh from his history-making stint hosting the UN security council, took a break from his duties at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh to announce the existence of a secret, undeclared nuclear facility in Iran which was inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear programme, underscoring the president's conclusion that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow". Obama, backed by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, threatened tough sanctions against Iran if it did not fully comply with its obligations concerning the international monitoring of its nuclear programme, which at the present time is being defined by the US, Britain and France as requiring an immediate suspension of all nuclear-enrichment activity. The facility in question, said to be located on a secret Iranian military installation outside of the holy city of Qom and capable of housing up to 3,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium, had been monitored by the intelligence services of the US and other nations for some time. But it wasn't until Monday that the IAEA found out about its existence, based not on any intelligence "scoop" provided by the US, but rather Iran's own voluntary declaration. Iran's actions forced the hand of the US, leading to Obama's hurried press conference Friday morning. Beware politically motivated hype. While on the surface, Obama's dramatic intervention seemed sound, the devil is always in the details. The "rules" Iran is accused of breaking are not vague, but rather spelled out in clear terms. In accordance with Article 42 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, and Code 3.1 of the General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements (also known as the "additional protocol") to that agreement, Iran is obliged to inform the IAEA of any decision to construct a facility which would house operational centrifuges, and to provide preliminary design information about that facility, even if nuclear material had not been introduced. This would initiate a process of complementary access and design verification inspections by the IAEA. This agreement was signed by Iran in December 2004. However, since the "additional protocol" has not been ratified by the Iranian parliament, and as such is not legally binding, Iran had viewed its implementation as being voluntary, and as such agreed to comply with these new measures as a confidence building measure more so than a mandated obligation. In March 2007, Iran suspended the implementation of the modified text of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part concerning the early provisions of design information. As such, Iran was reverting back to its legally-binding requirements of the original safeguards agreement, which did not require early declaration of nuclear-capable facilities prior to the introduction of nuclear material. While this action is understandably vexing for the IAEA and those member states who are desirous of full transparency on the part of Iran, one cannot speak in absolute terms about Iran violating its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. So when Obama announced that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow", he is technically and legally wrong. Ritter is basically blackballed by the (bought and sold) mainstream U.S. media, but you can read his full piece in The Guardian (U.K.)
More Lies, More Deceptions The G-20 ministers declared their meeting in Pittsburgh a success, but as Rob Kall reports in OpEdNews.com, the meeting’s main success was to turn Pittsburgh into “a ghost-town, emptied of workers and the usual pedestrians, but filled to overflowing with over 12,000 swat cops from all over the US.” This is “freedom and democracy” at work. The leaders of the G-20 countries, which account for 85% of the world’s income, cannot meet in an American city without 12,000 cops outfitted like the emperor’s storm troopers in Star Wars. And the US government complains about Iran. The US government’s complaints about Iran have reached a new level of shrillness. On September 25 Obama declared: “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.” The heads of America’s British, French, and German puppet states added their two cents worth, giving the government of Iran three months to meet the “international community’s demands” to give up its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty to nuclear energy. In case you don’t know, the term “international community” is shorthand for the US, Israel, and Europe, a handful of arrogant and rich countries that oppress the rest of the world. Who is breaking the rules? Iran or the United States? Iran is insisting that the US government abide by the non-proliferation treaty that the US originated and pushed and that Iran signed. But the US government, which is currently engaged in three wars of aggression and has occupying troops in a number of other countries, insists that Iran, which is invading and occupying no country, cannot be trusted with nuclear energy capability, because the capability might in the future lead to nuclear weapon capability, like Israel’s, India’s, and Pakistan’s--all non-signatories to the nuclear proliferation treaty, countries that, unlike Iran, have never submitted to IAEA inspections. Indeed, at this very moment the Israeli government is screaming and yelling “anti-semite” to the suggestion that Israel submit to IAEA inspections. Iran has submitted to the IAEA inspections for years. In keeping with its obligations under the treaty, on September 21 Iran disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is constructing another nuclear facility. The British prime minister Gordon Brown confused Iran’s disclosure with “serial deception,” and declared, “We will not let this matter rest.” What matter? Why does Gordon Brown think that Iran’s disclosure to the IAEA is a deception. Does the moronic UK prime minister mean that Iran is claiming to be constructing a plant but is not, and thus by claiming one is deceiving the world? Not to be outdone in idiocy, out of Obama’s mouth jumped Orwellian doublespeak: “The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.” The incongruity blows the mind. Here is Obama, with troops engaged in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan demanding that a peaceful nation at war with no one demonstrate “its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.” more from Paul Craig Roberts at Counterpunch
Afghanistan: Where Empires Go to Die On September 7 the Swedish aid agency Swedish Committee for Afghanistan reported that the previous week US soldiers raided one of its hospitals. According to the director of the aid agency, Anders Fange, troops stormed through both the men's and women's wards, where they frantically searched for wounded Taliban fighters. Soldiers demanded that hospital administrators inform the military of any incoming patients who might be insurgents, after which the military would then decide if said patients would be admitted or not. Fange called the incident "not only a clear violation of globally recognized humanitarian principles about the sanctity of health facilities and staff in areas of conflict, but also a clear breach of the civil-military agreement" between nongovernmental organizations and international forces. Fange said that US troops broke down doors and tied up visitors and hospital staff. Impeding operations at medical facilities in Afghanistan directly violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which strictly forbids attacks on emergency vehicles and the obstruction of medical operations during wartime. Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, a public affairs officer for the US Navy, confirmed the raid, and told The Associated Press, "Complaints like this are rare." Despite Sidenstricker's claim that "complaints like this" are rare in Afghanistan, they are, in fact, common. Just as they are in Iraq, the other occupation. A desperate conventional military, when losing a guerilla war, tends to toss international law out the window. Yet even more so when the entire occupation itself is a violation of international law. Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild and also a Truthout contributor, is very clear about the overall illegality of the invasion and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan by the United States. "The UN Charter is a treaty ratified by the United States and thus part of US law," Cohn, who is also a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and recently co-authored the book "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent" said, "Under the charter, a country can use armed force against another country only in self-defense or when the Security Council approves. Neither of those conditions was met before the United States invaded Afghanistan. The Taliban did not attack us on 9/11. Nineteen men - 15 from Saudi Arabia - did, and there was no imminent threat that Afghanistan would attack the US or another UN member country. The council did not authorize the United States or any other country to use military force against Afghanistan. The US war in Afghanistan is illegal." Thus, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, along with the ongoing slaughter of Afghan civilians and raiding hospitals, are in violation of international law as well as the US Constitution. And of course the same applies for Iraq. read the rest of Dahr Jamail's analysis at Truthout
The Counterinsurgency Strategy Problem The centerpiece of the General Stanley McChrystal's "new" counterinsurgency strategy of "clear, hold, build" is the accelerated training and expansion of the Afghan Army and Police Forces (ANSF), in addition to a major increase in the size of our forces (according to some reports, by as much as 45,000 troops). The strategic goal is to establish an expanding zone of security for the Afghan people that would enable a steady build up of aid and development efforts to improve their well being with jobs, new infrastructure, new education systems, new agricultural techniques, etc., than thereby win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. McChrystal is asking the President of the United State to approve a pathway to almost certain disaster. Consider please the following: Of course, there is nothing new in General McChrystal's strategy, it is merely a rehash of the failed oil spot (tache d'huile) strategy, first tried by French colonialist General Louis-Hubert-Gonsalve Lyautey, and then tried again under various guises, again without lasting success, by the Americans in Vietnam. Indeed, many readers will recall that a necessary condition of our failed Vietnam strategy was the exactly same strategic determination that we could not win the hearts of minds of the indigenous population without providing the people with a competent army and a government that could protect them from the depredations of the insurgents. In Vietnam, this idea was at the center of our early involvement. Protecting the people was first tried on a small scale with some tactical success in the Combined Action Platoons (CAP) program in the Marine Corps, then on a much larger, strategically disastrous scale with the Strategic Hamlets Program, before Americanizing the war. Nevertheless, it rose again like a Phoenix when the idea mutated into into President Nixon's Vietnamization program, but in this case was really a cynical smokescreen for withdrawing without admitting defeat (a goal that Nixon called "Peace With Honor"). In the end, the US-trained Vietnamese army, like the US-installed Vietnamese government, was a corrupt Potemkin-like sham, and once it became clear that both had lost the supporting prop of American firepower, both collapsed and surrendered unconditionally in April 1975, only two months after North Vietnamese launched a final offensive, which the North Vietnamese planners had assumed it would take two years to achieve victory. Like his predecessors in Vietnam, Mr. Obama is now being told by the military to pin his hopes on an immediate US military escalation, coupled with a rapid build up of US-trained indigenous Afghan army and police forces, together with the development of competent national government, in what is yet another rerun of Lyautey's dream. While there has been much debate in the United States over whether or how much we should escalate our military efforts and how many additional troops are needed, the other equally essential military leg of our not-so-new strategy -- i.e., the training and expansion of the indigenous Afghan National Security Forces (the Army and Police forces) -- has generally been taken as a given, and has not been subject to a serious examination or public debate. This omission is very odd, particularly when viewed in the light our complete failure to build a non-corrupt professional national army in South Vietnam, not to mention our catastrophic failure to build a competent honest national government, together with our ultimate failure to secure the hearts and mind of the South Vietnamese people. And the omission of our previous Vietnam experiences in this regard is made doubly odd, given the growing mountain of reportage indicating the same kind of massive corruption now repeating itself in the US-installed Karzai government in Afghanistan. And to make matters even wierder, this intellectual black hole has been compounded by the stunning absence of a critical analysis and discussion of any shortcomings of the Afghan National Security Forces in General McChrystal's new strategy document. Yet the ANSF lays at the center of McChrystal's strategy. It is now clear that General McChrystal's staff and the Pentagon are trying to maneuver Mr. Obama onto the horns of a dilemma by leaking their demands for an immediate escalation of the war, or otherwise risking defeat. much more from Franklin “Chuck” Spinney at Counterpunch
About Those Recent "Terrorist" Arrests... It's always difficult to figure out what's going on from news reports regarding a criminal investigation, but this story raises a lot of questions. First, why isn't Zazi being charged under one of several very broadly-worded federal anti-terrorism statutes? If, as the FBI asserts, Zazi admitted attending courses "at an al-Qaeda training facility in the FATA (tribal) region of Pakistan" and that "he received instruction from al-Qaeda operatives on subjects such as weapons and explosives," those are very serious crimes -- far more serious than giving false statements to investigators. Second, the crime with which Zazi, his father, and the NYC informant have been charged with is essentially a form of obstruction of justice. But the federal statute that supposedly criminalizes this conduct is a textbook example of a law that's subject to abuse by overzealous prosecutors. Obstruction of justice at its core involves acts like witness tampering, intimidation, and the like. But a catch-all provision in the statute allows making false statements to an investigator to be treated as a free-standing crime. Note that when they agreed to submit to questioning none of these people were under oath, or had been charged with anything. The "crime" they have supposedly committed is that of giving inaccurate statements to investigators. Meanwhile the investigators are free to lie with impunity to the people they interview. Third, this kind of case appears to illustrate how easily civil libertarian and due process concerns can get tossed out the window when the magic word "terrorism" is invoked. From what's been reported there appears to be no solid evidence of an actual plot of any sort, or the existence of real weapons, or indeed anything beyond some suspicious movements and conversations. This probably explains why the suspects haven't been charged with any crime other than that of failing to cooperate appropriately with their interrogators. (Note too the absurdly transparent pretext that Zazi's rental car was stopped by the NYPD as part of a "random drug stop."). Now of course it's always possible that Zazi is part of an actual Al Qaeda cell of some sort, as opposed to say a clownish amateur who hasn't done enough to be charged with a real crime. But then he ought to be charged with one. written by Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money
Nassim Taleb: We Still Have The Same Credit Disease Margaret Wente: Happy days are here again. The central bankers say the recession is over. The markets are buoyant. Can we relax? Nassim Taleb: Not at all. Central bankers have no clue. In the first place, the financial crisis was not a black swan. It was perfectly predictable. They ignored the phenomenal buildup in leverage since 1980. They acted like airline pilots who'd never heard of hurricanes. After finishing The Black Swan, I realized there was a cancer. The cancer was a huge buildup of risk-taking based on the lack of understanding of reality. The second problem is the hidden risk with new financial products. And the third is the interdependence among financial institutions. MW: But aren't those the very problems we're supposed to be fixing? NT: They're all still here. Today we still have the same amount of debt, but it belongs to governments. Normally debt would get destroyed and turn to air. Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer. But the government is socializing all these losses by transforming them into liabilities for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What is the effect? The doctor has shown up and relieved the patient's symptoms – and transformed the tumour into a metastatic tumour. We still have the same disease. We still have too much debt, too many big banks, too much state sponsorship of risk-taking. And now we have six million more Americans who are unemployed – a lot more than that if you count hidden unemployment. MW: Are you saying the U.S. shouldn't have done all those bailouts? What was the alternative? NT: Blood , sweat and tears. A lot of the growth of the past few years was fake growth from debt. So swallow the losses, be dignified and move on. Suck it up. I gather you're not too impressed with the folks in Washington who are handling this crisis. Ben Bernanke saved nothing! He shouldn't be allowed in Washington. He's like a doctor who misses the metastatic tumour and says the patient is doing very well. The first thing I would tell Chinese officials is, how can you buy U.S. bonds as long as Larry Summers is there? He's a textbook case of overconfidence. Look what happened to Harvard's finances. They took a lot of risk they didn't understand, and it was a disaster. That's the Larry Summers mentality. read the full interview in the Toronto Globe and Mail
Health Care Deceit The current health care “debate” shows how far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, not the people who vote for them. The health care bill is not about health care. It is about protecting and increasing the profits of the insurance companies. The main feature of the health care bill is the “individual mandate,” which requires everyone in America to buy health insurance. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont), a recipient of millions in contributions over his career from the insurance industry, proposes to impose up to a $3,800 fine on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance. The determination of “our” elected representatives to serve the insurance industry is so compelling that Congress is incapable of recognizing the absurdity of these proposals. The reason there is a health care crisis in the US is that the cumulative loss of jobs and benefits has swollen the uninsured to approximately 50 million Americans. They cannot afford health insurance any more than employers can afford to provide it. It is absurd to mandate that people purchase what they cannot afford and to fine them for failing to do so. A person who cannot pay a health insurance premium cannot pay the fine. These proposals are like solving the homeless problem by requiring the homeless to purchase a house. more from Paul Craig Roberts at Counterpunch
Why Is Real Health Care Reform Needed? Here's one damn good reason: According to a press release for SEIU, 9 states allow insurance companies to consider domestic violence a pre-existing condition, and use that to deny insurance claims. Eight of the 16 major insurance companies have used this right to deny coverage to victims of domestic violence. Perversely, if you understand domestic violence, it’s easier for you to see why insurance companies would do this than it might be for someone who doesn’t realize that it’s about more than just hitting, but that it involves the abuser pulling his victim into a cycle of dependence and stalking in order to control her. Once a man has hit a woman, the odds of him doing it again are astronomical, and the odds are that he will escalate the level of violence as well, because part of being an abuser is testing your boundaries and seeing how much you can get away with before she leaves. For those of us in the humane world, the fact that a woman who has been slapped today is in grave danger of receiving a massive beatdown in the next few months or years is a tragedy that we should seek to prevent. From the insurance company’s perspective, however, a woman who is slapped today is likely someone who will incur a massive hospital bill in the future, and that’s all they need to know. more from Amanda Marcotte
So Sad; So True Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose. The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses. The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that's the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won't get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America. Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crises. What our government is good at is something else entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious legislative maneuvers. Over the course of this summer, those two failed systems have collided in a spectacular crossroads moment in American history. read Matt Taibbi's full piece in The Rolling Stone
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