Since I have neither written nor posted anything for such a long time, I'm dusting off a dish I wrote back in early Frebruary during the runup to our splendid invasion of Iraq. I didn't post it at the time because I could see I had lost my usually cool head; and because I thought I was perhaps projecting my own feelings too much onto my fellow Americans; and because wars rip by in the blink of an eye and the national mood changes so fast that this testament was obviously going to be short-lived. But now, as the realization slowly unfolds that we were being outrageously lied to during that period to justify the impending war, I figure that this rant serves as a record of what that moment in time was actually like - at least to me.

A moment of dread
(from Feb. 7, 2003)

I do not know how long it has been since millions of ordinary Americans have felt the way we're feeling right now. I don't know if we’ve ever felt anything like this before.

I did not live through a world war, the Korean war, the McCarthy era, the Cuban missile crisis, or the assassinations of the 1960s. I didn't know much about the Vietnam war. So it makes me wonder. I did have a taste of the cold-war horror of nuclear armageddon. But that was always a picture of some moment in the indeterminate future.

But in recent days - I'd place it as since the Space Shuttle ripped apart - I've sensed a misapprehension, a disturbance, an uncertainty, a fear, an outright dread, that I have never witnessed in my friends, neighbors and family before.

How did we get to this point?

A quick and easy answer: September 11th brought on today's dread. But wait: are there any other factors?

Let's look at some of the things that have happened since 9/11, things that did not directly, automatically follow from that event. Things that could have turned differently. I ask you to consider, what is the common denominator of them all?

For starters, the dread-alert-system. The last two times the National Terrorism Alert system has gone to the hot color were right before the November elections and right now. Now, with the war on Iraq scheduled for maybe three weeks out, is a tempting times for terrorists, I suppose; but in moments such as these it would be awfully handy as well for the incumbents to use alerts to turn up our fear and outrage. All the better to rally support. Makes you think.

And it's a funny thing about Congress. They won't even discuss the coming war in Iraq. As a body, they have abdicated. They have given the president the throne. Is it just me? I thought a minimum standard of usefulness for a democracy is a legislative body that deliberates on the most important government decisions. For example, things that cost a quarter-trillion dollars. Things like toppling foreign governments by starting unprovoked wars. That kind of stuff. But Congress implemented its own irrelevance - putting itself on a par of voicelessness with wimpy doubting nations, the United Nations, and dissenting American citizens. They removed themselves just prior to the last elections, when, code orange, they voted to let the President do whatever he wants to Iraq whenever he wants, budget unlimited. That abject display occurred precisely while the President was actively deceiving the 638 (?) losers on the Hill, not telling them that North Korea had just laughingly announced to our diplomats that they were breaking their nuclear arms control agreements. Woulda been nice to know.

Those nutty North Koreans. They've now said that they're considering a pre-emptive war to protect themselves against an imminent threat to their self-defense - the threat of a belligerent nation which is moving a wave of new warplanes into place near its borders. Under the new international order, they're well justified by precedent to strike out and defend themselves. After all, the greatest nation on earth, God bless her, has endorsed the idea of pre-emption and implemented it. Really, it works great. It's shown me without a doubt that several centuries of development of the laws of war had clearly gotten off-track, and I'm glad we've now got it straight.

I just wish our blessed nation would set these new markers with a bit more decorum. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld recently openly insulted our German allies by saying that Germany, Libya and Cuba were the three countries that were going to be totally unhelpful when we carry this burden of war on our rugged shoulders. Ouch! Never in my life have I heard such a diss of a key ally from an American official. What's up with that?

The icy dread of my friends and loved ones is increased by the universally-held opinion that there will definitely be more terrorism here at home, and that taking out Iraq, for whatever good it will do, will not diminish that expectation even slightly. We're in this for the long haul. Anthrax. Smallpox. Chemical weapons. Suitcase bombs. Warheads. Nuclear. We all know that this will spin out for most of the rest of our lifetimes, right? Like the cold war lasted for half a century, right?

Never before in my lifetime have groups of ordinary women gone outside to take off all their clothes and lie down together to make peace signs with their bodies, or to spell out words, words like "Peace," "No War," "No Bush," in places like New York's Central Park, Texas, Illinois, South Africa, and of course all over California. I know some of the people who organized the first of these strip-offs, it's pretty funny. But has anything like this ever happened in our lifetimes? I ask you, have you ever seen the like? What the hell is going on?

Then there's these truly huge anti-war protests. I've been in two of them, each larger than anything on these streets since the height of the Vietnam War - the last one had an undisputed minimum of 120,000 people at it. And there's not even a war going on yet. What's happening, friends? This is wild stuff!

Well, no wonder. Things are different these days, and it's not just the September 11th effect anymore. Let's return to North Korea for a sec, if you don't mind. Say what you want about that crazy bastard Kim Jong Il and I won't stop you, but we all realize, don't we, that George W. Bush single-handedly created the North Korea crisis? As loathsome and generally annoying as the North Koreans are, they would not have started any of this if Bush had not first, without provocation, labeled them "evil" and spat in their faces at every turn. Was that bit of presidential diplomacy useful to me personally? I don't think so. Oh well. I still think it's really funny that the North Koreans were allowed to deliver ballistic missiles into the Persian Gulf under US Navy escort a couple months ago. Because the missiles were going to our friends the Yemeni dictators, and that's legitimate trade - WTO and all that. Really, it is reassuring that even with all this craziness going on, the arms trade is still a hot economic sector. Because our own economy really depends on it, so it's good to know that we'll always have that pillar to lean on.

And right now we could use an economic injection. Stock market down, what, half a trillion? Two trillion? I've lost count. Not only has the nest egg withered, but what about these deficits we're ringing up? I reckon I'll be paying for them til past the time I retire, 35 years from now. I will always be paying for those blessed deficits. Well, we do get a lot of bang for our borrowed buck, war and all that. Do my part.

But even though the steady arms trade is reassuring, even it can increase our dread in these curious times. Because these crises keep tumbling out so fast that it's really hard to focus on more than two of them at any given time. I mean, at any other time, we might have a moment to consider how we seem to be edging into the next Vietnam down there in Colombia. We're really in deep. They're right there behind Israel and Egypt in foreign aid, and it's all in the form of military goods and services. But we don't really have time to think about how every side in Colombia - the government, the rebels, the right-wing paramilitaries, the business sector, the civil society, everyone - is dealing us our cocaine and, in all likelihood, laundering all of the money through our top banks and blue-chip corporations. We don't have time to think about how we Americans are awash in way more cocaine than ever before. How the drug war is utterly lost and none of us can admit it. We just don't have time to focus on that right now. Let's move on.

I mean, there are things closer to home. Where I live, for example, the plan to protect the great forests of the Sierras is about to be overturned in favor a fairly intensive logging plan - you know, backwoods trees over 30 inches in diameter need to be removed because they’re a heckuva fire danger. Maybe there's something like that brewing in your neck of the woods, too.

But that stuff is nothing, hardly worth my attention. Lately I've been focusing like a laser on more important things. Like the very popular notion in conservative Christian circles that this world ain't worth a plug nickel until God's kingdom arrives - so let's bring it on. You get the concept - you can't get to the kingdom until after the Last Judgment happens, and we'll see the sign of the Last Judgement coming when this poisoned world slides into armageddon. So if the U.S. goes nuclear against its enemies, that's a good sign. I've been thinking about how people who think this way are very, very close to the President. And how we've opened the door wide open to the use of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons.

So I have to admit - it's not just the people around me. I'm feeling pretty uncharacteristically nervous these days myself. Let me give you an example. I'm getting married in June, and people have said to me, we have no idea what the world will look like by then. Well, that's a pretty thought. I wonder, is that what it was like living through World War II, that kind of uncertainty and resignation? Who has lived through such a level of worldwide anxiety and helplessness before?

I ask again, what's the common denominator driving our fear and dread at this moment? Is it not the mind of George W. Bush? I ask you: adding it all up, does his presence at the helm makes you more at ease - or more tight in the chest?

Friends, not all of this can be attributed to September 11th. September 11th is past. The world just keeps on going.

How the other side lost

Call me crazy...

Is it just me? Many commentators have been harping on about the ineptitude of the Iraqi military command in the conduct of their historic loss. But this analysis seems off-base. I don't know what was going on behind the scenes, and I wouldn't waste a breath defending these ringleaders and their Olympian brutality (Chemical Ali and all that). I don't know what their motives or constraints were in the fight. But let's look at what they did and didn't do in this case.

All but the most delusional fanatics among them had to know that defeat was unavoidable. We're talking about a country whose defenses had been bombed over and over ever since 1991. When the invaders swept in this March, the Iraqis had no hope of putting a single plane in the air. No position was safe. Everybody knew the US forces couldn't lose, wouldn't lose.

But the Iraqis didn't blow up their bridges. Inept? Maybe, realizing they were screwed either way, they didn't want to be remembered for utterly trashing their own lands. Maybe they wanted the Americans to be the ones responsible for the inevitable destruction of things.

They didn't torch their oil fields with gusto, as predicted. They were excoriated in advance of the war for being so despicable that naturally they would set the fields afire. Now they're inept for failing to do so? Maybe they recognized that their only hope for victory lay in a slim chance of success in the battle of world opinion versus U.S. aggressiveness. Best to leave the oil fields be.

They didn't use chemical weapons as predicted. The only "weapons of mass destruction" they used were a few of the tired and predictably ineffectual conventional missiles remaining in their inventory.

(Whereas the U.S. employed hundreds of times more weapons of mass destruction - thousands of far more highly explosive missiles and bombs. And we've now left the Tigris and Euphrates dusted in our own chemical/nuclear weapon of choice, the remains of our depleted-uranium armaments - you know, the kind of chemical weapon that's acceptable in polite company. Kind of like the steroids that are acceptable in baseball.)

The Iraqis' failure to go chemical, is that why they're inept? Right now, there remains no evidence that that had any such weapons. But even if they did, maybe they recognized that using those weapons would be a bungle.

Not to say the Iraqis were a model of polite, Geneva-convention-approved combat. I guess their treatment of our prisoners was unsurprisingly poor form - predictable for an impotent group fleeing under death from above, unable to get a grip on its invader in any sustained way. And no doubt their tactics using their own civilians as shields was unfair to us, though also expected in such an asymmetrical situation. I ain't here to defend them. But only an agenda-driven gasbag would waste air detailing the tactical incompetence of an army preordained to lose.

The real question is, what choices did they make knowing that every choice must lead to failure? Both sides in this combat chose which rules to break. Perhaps the defeated regime, for once in its unfortunate reign, this time chose its collection of transgressions more wisely than its opponent did.

Give us a boy and it'll all be over

I'm busy. So when I checked the news on the web at work for a couple of minutes this morning and saw this photograph, I had to take a second look, but I didn't linger long. This photograph - of the boy from Baghdad with both his arms blown off, unknown medical goop smeared all over his torso, a bandage on his head, and an astonishing expression of loss, terror, and incomprehension on his face. He was hit IN HIS SLEEP IN HIS BEDROOM IN HIS HOME by an American bomb which, he cried out, killed his parents and virtually all his brothers and sisters.

Wouldn't he be better off living for the next ten years under the despicable Saddam than that? What about you? Wouldn't you rather live under Saddam's rule than lose both your arms and your whole family? Maybe you'd rather be dead than that.

Not much time on my hands. So I didn't think much of anything when I saw that photograph - I just felt a twinge of shame and remorse, and got back to work. Forgot about it until just now.

That face. What have we done? If we were to take an American boy and do this to him as a sacrifice to our god, or a price for our victory, would it be worth it? Just one boy? For a glorious victory? For everything we hold most dear? What if we could make a deal: give the judge one American boy's arms and his family, and in return, no more terrorism against Americans ever again. Are we willing to make that deal? Just one boy?

Why are we doing this to hundreds, maybe thousands, of children? Are they worth a few of our tears? Are they worth our looking at them? Ten years from now, will you seek out this boy and explain to him why you think it was necessary?

We're all busy.

Oops, the UN is broken

In a sense, Bush is right: the United Nations is broken. And it's not just because he picked it up and dropped it. It's the Security Council. Five permanent members with veto power, left over from World War II, will not do. They will not get us out of this decade, forget about this century.

Here's what I propose: the Security Council should be composed of seven semi-permanent member states: one each from North America, South America, Europe, and Africa; two from Asia and the Pacific (a group that includes Russia, China, India, Japan and Australia); and one other nation voted on once every ten years by all the member states of the General Assembly collectively.

Arrangements for rotating non-permanent members could stay the same as they are today.

No single semi-permanent member nation would have veto power; rather, two semi-vetoes combined would be required to quash any resolution. That is, a resolution that passes 6 of the 7 semi-permanent members would be equivalent to a unanimous vote today.

Selection to semi-permanent status would depend on leading one's region in certain key measures of societal advancement and global leadership. Here's where we can be creative and, in the grand-historical sense, progressive in our choices. I would lobby for the highest scoring nations by some combination of national wealth and an index of social development (like the Human Development Index used by the UN, which de-emphasized standard measures of economic growth and national wealth and instead focuses on those factors that (quoting from the UN website) create “an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accord with their needs and interests… expanding the choices people have to lead lives that they value.” To continue with this kind of benchmark, “Fundamental to enlarging these choices is building human capabilities —the range of things that people can do or be in life. The most basic capabilities for human development are to lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living and to be able to participate in the life of the community.”

Realistically, military power would certainly also need to be a factor in the selection of semi-permanent members. Some would undoubtedly argue for other criteria such as degrees of democratization or freedom. The dreamer in me imagines throwing in such qualities as national creativity, wisdom, peacefulness and environmental stewardship, but I'm prepared to be pragmatic and abandon any such hope until the 22nd century. In any case, re-measurement and re-appointment of nations might occur, say, every 20 years. The measures chosen would, in the end, represent the global consensus of what is valued in a nation's character, and would come to act as a lowest-common denominator guide for the further development of all nations and peoples.

The United Nations is a wonderful institution with a brilliant history, the necessary product of wise minds, but it is flawed at its core, not sufficiently democratic for the 21st century. This flaw is understandable and we should treat it with sympathy, because the institution was scorched by the fires of war in its birth room.

Now one Security Council member has used its own unaccountable power to destroy the institution from within. But you know what? That may actually be okay if wise minds again take over briefly at some point in the crisis of the coming years, and purify this traumatized toddler for a new century. Soon this day will come: the time to reform the United Nations for the better, lest we all descend into ashes. The key will be the collective participation of all the world’s people, dragging our governments along by the nose.

"Let everyone be subject to his neighbor." - I Clement

Dear friend:

Please send the following message with all due haste. And pass it on!

The key to avoiding a war against Iraq is the united efforts of those nations with votes on the UN Security Council to push through a viable alternative to war.

Our own government is an unbending obstacle to this outcome, so those of us Americans who prefer peace must go directly to these other nations. If we American patriots for peace can help steel these leaders to do the right thing, we can change the course of history right now. As soon as these foreign leaders start making the right signals forcefully enough, more of our own Congresspeople will be able to come out from under cover to support the plan for peace.

Please copy the letter below and send it to the following addresses. These are the email addresses of the Ambassadors to the UN of those nations with current seats on the Security Council. Do it now!

france@un.int
rusun@un.int
chinamission_un@fmprc.gov.cn
uk@un.int
bulgaria@un.int
info@cameroonmission.org
guinea@un.int
mexico@un.int
ang-un@angolamissionun.org
chile@un.int
contact@germany-un.org
spain@spainun.org
pakistan@un.int


To the Ambassador:

I speak to you as a very concerned American citizen.

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to immediately unite with other nations to enact any responsible plan for the disarmament of Iraq that avoids war and enhances peace in the Middle East. For example, an increased weapons inspections team coupled with United Nations forces in Iraq could enforce the process of disarmament and avert an unnecessary war.

You must overcome the opposition of my own government. I hope that, as many of my fellow American citizens unite with me in sending you this same message, you will recognize the strength within the United States of the anti-war viewpoint that I believe you and we share in common.

Our shared democratic values allow me to speak to you with collegial directness. As long as my own government pursues a strategy of war not peace, I call upon you to act in concert with the will of the American people in partnership for peace. Let our nations together strengthen the rule of law over the twisted logic of war.

Signed,

Name:
Address:
United States of America

If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, 2002

Put a piece of your heart into each thing that you do.
And be ever ready to give each of your gains away.

I have a couple of thoughts following the 1/30/03 open letter by several European leaders in support of Bush’s planned Iraq war, as published in the Wall Street Journal. The big problem I have is with its thesis statement, coming at the end of the first paragraph: “Today [our shared values of democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law] are under greater threat than ever.”

I could be cheeky and ask, “Under threat from whom – Saddam Hussein or George W. Bush?” But I must take the authors’ intent at face value and accept that they actually do believe that Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, and by extension Saddam Hussein – whom some suspect either is supporting these terrorists or would like to – pose the greatest threat ever to our democratic values.

What I have to ask is, why do these leaders suffer such a profound crisis of confidence in the sturdiness of our fundamental values? I would probably be more assured if I thought that this was mere posturing, scare-mongering – but I’m going to take them at their word. Do they think that our militaries cannot stand up to the onslaught of Muslim hordes, that the streets of Europe and America will soon be overrun by actual invasion? Probably not. But do they think that a future of relentless fundamentalist terrorist strikes in the heart of Europe and America will chip away at our citizens’ resolve to defend and uphold the values of democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law? If that’s what they think, then I’m very disappointed in them.

Our societies are too strong and dominant to be overrun by force. And acts of terror alone do not destroy the will to democracy once it’s planted. There’s only one way for these values to erode, and that’s by decay from within: a willful, power-hungry, manipulative leadership combined with a weary, flabby, clueless, brainwashed populace.

In this sense, these commentators may be right: our values may be under threat. If so, then that danger is the measure of our own failures in the way that we respond to fundamentalist violence. Yes, we must be resolute, and we must protect each other. But as is always the case, we must defend our liberties from within as well as from without. The terrorists will succeed only to the extent that they warp us to give up our values out of fear and in the name of defense.

The good news is, religious fundamentalisms of all kinds are in their death throes. The bad news is, this process could go on for several more centuries yet. I have no fear that Islamic fundamentalism from outside can by itself threaten the triumph of our values. But I do fear that it can trigger us to respond foolishly to its provocation so as to cheapen our values, weaken ourselves from within, give the fundamentalist enemy one last injection of lifeblood, and extend this tug-of-war for many decades beyond its natural lifespan.

I’m afraid that such expressions of panic by our leadership are taking us in the wrong direction.

The other objection I have is to the leaders’ assertion that “the Security Council must maintain its credibility by ensuring full compliance with its resolutions.” On the face of it, that might seem like a difficult statement to refute. But the recent shuttle disaster reminds me that there are limits to the control we can exercise over the things of this world, and this is never more true than in the case of states and leaders. I look at post-WWII international relations under the aegis of the UN as a long, slow historical process of incremental improvement – very much analogous to the slow growth of our own celebrated democratic values over recent centuries. It takes time to build compliance through the slow growth of consensus values. That’s why I put greater stress on the long-term efficacy of multilateral institutions like the International Criminal Court and war crimes tribunals than on military interventions.

The imminent invasion of Iraq is the outcome of a massive failure of policy: beheading the monster whom we created and found that we could not control. But the sheer bluster of the operation allows us to forever avoid admitting this fact. I say, it’s better to take our lumps, admit our mistakes, and pull a long-term success out of the mucky hat by working through this crisis under the framework of the rule of law, thus strengthening our shared values of justice for future days.

(In this context, I have to laugh at the proposal of exile for Saddam. We would save face and avoid war, but at what cost to the credibility of the nascent International Criminal Court? I guess that’s just another reason for the administration to like the idea of exile: anything to pour dirt on the ICC. But really, long-term, Pinochet’s near-miss and Milisovic’s trial are better signals to be sending to bloody dictators than we-will-kill-you-in-your-bunker.)

What has actually happened is that by playing a high-stakes game of chicken while simultaneously denigrating the institutions of the UN and international justice at every turn, it is we who have brought the credibility of the Security Council under severe, possibly irreparable, strain. Whereas a reasonable tolerance for dissonance and bad-boy dictators’ games, combined with an implacable but steady and level-headed will to see justice win in the end, would build the credibility of the Security Council over the long term, we instead have willfully and unnecessarily thrown that precious credibility into great danger. We have made war the only viable solution to save the Council’s bacon. And even war might not do the trick, because, once we come out the other end of this mess, unless it’s a smashing success by all accounts, world opinion may still find the Security Council’s judgment wanting. Then a crisis of credibility of a very different sort will ensue.

"It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, 'Let justice roll down like mighty waters,' and quite another to work out the irrigation system. Clearly there is more certainty in the recognition of wrongs than there is in the prescription for their cure." -- William Sloane Coffin

"Beautiful beautiful beautiful truth
Don't leave because I can't see you"
- The Proclaimers

A TASTE FOR PEACE - LIBERAL BIAS?

Your question was something like this: reasonable people can disagree on the question of whether or not to go to war against Iraq, but why do "antis" like me often seem to have a bias or "torque" against our own government on these questions? That's a really important question at this moment, because dismissive treatments of views like mine are so commonplace in our pro-war-torqued media.

I'm going to tell you why suspicion of government is good in principle; why our own government's record makes a critical stance especially suitable; why Bush II in particular shouldn't be overly trusted; why the US move to unilateralism is dangerous and stupid; why the Iraq policy in particular is consistently self-defeating; why arguments for acting out of compassion for Saddam's victims are baloney; why containment can work; and finally what we should do. By now you must be regretting having asked! Too late!

In what follows, I'm not even going address the reasons why I think a war against Iraq is a bad idea and why the justifications for it are false; that's a whole other essay. Before I get started, though, I must say that with respect to the Iraq obsession, my whole argument against it can begin and end with the comparison with North Korea, another member of Bush's "axis of evil." North Korea is an order of magnitude beyond Iraq in deception, noncompliance and threat, so I ask you, where's the consistency? If pre-emption is your bag, you'll agree that we should be planning to bring the war to Pyongyang ASAP. This comparison shows beyond doubt that our administration is not acting out of principle, but out of other motives. We ought to question those motives until we get an answer that satisfies.

Suspicion of government is good in principle

People like me grumble. Are we just malcontents, misfits, misanthropes, and tellers of tall tales? Or are we people who really care, who really hope, and who are acting out of love-our-country patriotism as we see it?

It is our democratic duty to regard our leaders and their power with healthy suspicion. The framers wanted us to maintain such an attitude. It's we the people -- we own the government. We have a right to take an active interest in whether or not it does the right thing. If our judgment is that our government's has done or is doing the wrong thing, our patriotism demands that we speak out.

With respect to US foreign policy, I understand that these things are endlessly complex, and that in today's world even the most admirable leaders have to choose lesser evils. We cannot come out smelling like a rose every time.

But I am wary. My suspicion comes from a lifetime of observing choices and strategies and saying, "I wouldn't have done that. Why did they have to do that, in my name?" For our nation's highs are nearly matched by our lows. I am prepared to believe in the myth that we are the indispensable nation, the beacon of democracy, freedom and hope. I also know from the start that that myth must always be footnoted by two world-class genocides right here at home -- slavery and the destruction of the indigenous nations. Now we hold the indomitable global power - I think we have to keep asking ourselves, how much have we changed since those days? Obviously a lot, but have we as a nation ever examined our external relationships with the painful scrutiny of, say, the civil rights movement here at home? It's prudent to always look at the actions of our government both with great, hopeful optimism that we'll do better than any great power that preceded us, and with suspicion that we may not. If I'm going to believe in the myth, I have to hold us to a high standard, and I will experience genuine disappointment and even outrage when we fail.

Our own government's record makes a critical stance especially suitable

With respect to foreign policy, let's look at some historical precedent. Forgive me for ranging far afield and sounding like Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn, but I do believe that one can only understand the current propaganda for war in the larger context.

Before Pearl Harbor happened, President Roosevelt knew from intelligence that Japan was going to attack. But he did not issue any alert to his armed forces. He wanted the attack to happen.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the Vietnam War, was put forward in response to an alleged attack on a US warship by Vietnam. President Johnson knew the story was a lie. The alleged attack actually never occurred. But the lie paved the way for war.

It's not just our pretexts for going to war that can be troubling. If we are to understand the implications of our actions, especially as global opinion increasingly turns against us, we have to grasp the history that foreigners understand far more tangibly than we do. In particular, the way we manipulate other countries for "regime change" is disquieting. Consider:

Iran, 1950s: the head of state wanted to nationalize the oil industry, so the CIA overthrew him and installed the Shah, a maniacal creep. Motivation: our access to their oilfields. End result: Islamic revolution.

Guatemala, 1950s: democratically-elected leader Arbenz wanted to buy back land from the American firm that owned so much of the country, United Fruit Co. (Ironically, he wanted to buy back the land at the valuation that United Fruit put on it for tax purposes). So the CIA toppled him and installed a military dictatorship. Motivation: our access to their food. End results: 3 decades of war, hundreds of thousands of peasants dead.

Chile, 1970s: democratically-elected Allende wants to nationalize mining operations run by the American firm ITT, so Henry Kissinger and the CIA arrange to have Allende killed and replaced with the military dictator Pinochet. Motivation: our access to their mines. End result: cruel repressive dictatorship kills thousands of its own citizens. US opts out of International Criminal Court in 2001 to protect the architect of these crimes, Henry Kissinger.

This is just a sprinkling of the history of "regime change." Examples like this abound. Look at Venezuela right now. The US administration has made it very clear they want Chavez out. Over and over the media reports on efforts to depose Chavez, but no one can lay a charge against Chavez except vague references to his "dictatorial tendencies." Since when is it democratic to remove a twice-elected guy in mid-term without any actual charges of him doing anything illegal? A dirty game is in process. Venezuela, notably, is the US's third-largest oil supplier.

What is the likelihood that President Bush is now hiding some very big lie concerning war for regime change in Iraq? Given the history, will you grant me there's maybe a 25% chance? Shouldn't that give one pause?

Bush II in particular shouldn't be overly trusted

Let's begin with a laundry list of reasons why I am disappointed with the international leadership of George W. Bush. The pattern tells me to keep this guy at arm's length, and that figures into my decision whether or not to support him in his war plans.

- Backing out of the ABM treaty
- Ridiculing, demeaning, and hobbling the UN
- Rejection of the International Criminal Court
- Diplomacy bluntly backed by threats of violent force -- not a model for a better world
- Decision to shift US foreign policy to pre-emptive force
- Insane obsession with national missile defense
- Shift to first use of nuclear weapons and development of battlefield nuclear weapons ("bunker busters")
- Fanatically fueling a totally unsustainable consumption of hydrocarbons
- Backing out of the Kyoto global warming accords
- Wildly hypocritical (opportunistically anti-free-trade) massive agricultural subsidies which kill the livelihoods of poor farmers all over the globe
- Schizophrenically refusing to sacrifice sovereignty to institutions like the UN and International Criminal Court but more than happy to hand over sovereignty to the WTO - huh?
- Rejection of the land mines treaty - appalling
- Rejection of the biological weapons treaty!

My opinion: if we'd chosen the opposite tack in each of these cases, we'd live in something a little closer to earthly paradise today.

Now let's consider the 9/11 history. Congress and the new commission set up to investigate the 9/11 will undoubtedly find differently, but to me the evidence points beyond mere incompetence by intelligence agencies. There is reason to probe further the indications that the Bush administration failed to act -- or even impeded further action - on available intelligence. Don't even get me started on the question of how it is possible that air force jets could not have been scrambled to meet the second twin towers plane (oops! I'm trying to avoid sounding like a conspiracy theorist!) Anyway, fathom this:

When George W. Bush started his first oil venture in Texas, one of his key financial backers was Osama bin Laden's father.

The former president, George Bush Sr., has been involved in the management of bin Laden's father's investments for years at the company at which he currently serves on the board, the Carlisle Group.

The wedding of financial interests between the Bush and bin Laden families is among the most important business relationships the Bush family has, contributing to the Bushes' personal global reach in oil markets.

George W. Bush was briefed several weeks before the September 11th attacks that Osama bin Laden was imminently initiating hijackings of American airliners.

In the days following the September 11th attacks, there were no airplanes at all flying in American skies. Except for one: a private jet which picked up members of the bin Laden family scattered throughout the United States and flew them all home to Saudi Arabia, without questioning by the FBI or CIA.

So I wonder, when George W. Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," what is to distinguish him from an Arabian warlord of old, in a blood feud with his own first cousin? Frankly, it appears to me that throughout that entire affair, Bush conducted himself first as a private citizen with key personal and family financial interests to protect, and only second as an American President representing and guiding his nation.

Okay, time to take a deep breath. . . Now. On to a look at Bush and his team.

I don't know about you, but I took the Iran-contra conspiracy very seriously. In global-political terms, it was more important blot on the US government than Watergate. So does it help me to trust the present administration that it has now hired John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams, both of whom committed high crimes and had to be pardoned? Wow!

How about Henry Kissinger being appointed to head the commission to inquire into errors made by the US government in allowing September 11th to happen? It should be understood that this appointment is first and foremost a signal by Bush -- to markets, to Congress, to foreign diplomats and heads-of-state, and to those Americans who have the perception to get it -- that no important secrets regarding this affair will be revealed for another 25 years, and no one of any importance in the US government will be held accountable for anything. The signal works this way: there's good reason to believe that Henry Kissinger ought to be tried as a war criminal for his role in Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, and Indonesia. The US refused to join the International Criminal Court in large part to protect Kissinger and the US policies which he represents. To appoint him to head this commission is a statement that says our secrets will be protected, the truth will not matter in this case.

Bush's fondness for Kissinger's brand of secrecy is particularly galling in light of the remarkably soft-pedaled scandal of what Bush know and kept secret while Congress was voting to give him an unprecedented free hand to make war against Iraq. I am referring to Bush's knowledge that North Korea had recently been caught breaking its solemn pact not to continue developing its nuclear weapons program (which is far in advance of Iraq's). Bush held that knowledge back from the voting Congress and from all Americans, in order to advance a vote every bit as significant as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. I call that a lie. I think the only reason Congress doesn't is because they were duped so thoroughly on the eve of an election, and they didn't want to admit their own irrelevance.

The US move to unilateralism/"pre-emption" is dangerous and stupid

In World War II, 40 million (?) civilians were killed. In the wake of that catastrophe, an attempt was made to forge a system that would restrain the bloodthirstier passions of our human nature, at least insofar as governments indulge in them. Out of a series of conventions and agreements, the United Nations and a framework of international law were born.

Always unwieldly, far from perfect but subject to refinement over time, this system functioned reasonably well to promote peace for half a century. Bloody, even genocidal conflicts still arose repeatedly on almost every continent, it is true; and the powerful were still often able to get away with murder; but some limits on war existed for the first time.

Under this semi-stable international order, unprovoked aggression of one sovereign nation against another came to be considered generally unacceptable, and was likely to be reacted against by a unified international community. Crimes against humanity were in some cases prosecuted after the fact. Those who would commit war schemes at least had to weigh their actions against the possibility of such consequences. And no one power was so dominant that it could entirely ignore such consequences.

Then the Cold War ended, and our nation found itself in possession of unprecedented, unstoppable power. What to do with this power? Some dreamed of our becoming a nation such as the world had never seen: a nation which would use its predominance to promote disarmament across the globe, to begin to dismantle the machines of war, to actively build an ever-stronger framework of international law enforcement against war crimes, genocide and terror. In short, a nation which would use its power to forge a fruitful peace for a new millennium.

Others dreamed of a new kind of global dominance, in which America's word would be law; in which the United States would be subject to no constraint; in which foreigners would get in line or get out of the way; in which the affront to sovereignty known as "international law" would be either swept aside or used as a prop for further strategic aims, depending on circumstances.

For ten years, neither dream gained any ground, as U.S. leaders, unsure what to do, bumbled ahead, avoiding any bold moves.

And then, September 11th happened. The day which, we are fond to say, changed everything. The War on Terror was joined against an enemy whose actions could not be justified on any terms. But that nascent war, significant as it is, is not really what changed. What has changed is this: the moment of opportunity had arrived for those who had quietly nurtured the dream of unrestrained global dominance.

Thus we have Charles Krauthammer in Time Magazine:

"America is no mere international citizen; it is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to reshape norms, alter expectations, and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will."

And we have a historic shift in US foreign policy. From now on, and for the first time, the US deems it acceptable to attack other nations without being provoked - "pre-emption." It's hard to understate how breathtaking a change that is. Of course we have pursued that policy in covert and underhanded ways at least a dozen times in recent decades, but if you asked presidents from Washington down to Reagan if they thought it was a good idea to make pre-emption our official stated policy, they'd all say no! That's the policy of an empire, not the policy of the shining beacon of freedom and democracy.

And of course, we have the plan for war against Iraq. The mechanisms of fear are running full throttle. The voices of the many Americans, who want nothing to do with this war, have been consistently minimized by the media and ignored by our leaders. The voices of other nations have been ignored. Both parties in Congress have rushed to enact this new vision with as little debate as possible.

And so now we stand on the brink of a new world for the 21st century. From here forward, America's message to the world is this: Welcome the law of the jungle. Do not try to follow our lead. You will do what we tell you to do.

The Iraq policy in particular is consistently self-defeating

It is well known that we "made" Saddam, arming him in the 1980s, even helping him with chemical weapons capacity. Note that it was Donald Rumsfeld himself who went to Baghdad back then to buddy-buddy with his good friend Saddam. It is well known that we didn't make a peep when he gassed his own people, because he was our friend at that time. We were aware of it, and our silence indicated our acceptance that what he was doing was okay. It is not a viable piece of evidence in our arsenal of complaints against him today - it's more like a carton of old milk in our foreign-policy refrigerator, well past its due date.

And really, Saddam's using those weapons wasn't such an outrageous decision given that his patron the United States owns by far the world's most massive and advanced stocks of missile-deployable chemical weapons - and still, a decade and a half later, refuses to sign the treaty banning them (although we are slowly, privately disposing of them, or at least claiming to).

Anyway, let's move ahead to the US position on Iraq in recent years. The Clinton administration established a policy in 1998 that no matter what Iraq does, the sanctions will not be lifted until there is a regime change in Iraq. UN resolutions be damned. Add to that the incontrovertible fact that UNSCOM weapons inspectors were spying for the US and Israel. If you're a petty dictator, how do you respond to that? You tell yourself, they will never lift sanctions on me, and they've got spies in my most sensitive sites wearing the soiled symbol of the UN. Is it a surprise that he thumbs his nose at us when he gets the chance, ducks when he has to? Those aren't the actions of a madman; they're quite rational.

Then Bush comes in and rams through a titanic shift in US foreign policy, claiming the never-before-taken right to attack foreign nations without provocation. Incentive to cooperate?

Arguments for acting out of compassion for Saddam's victims are baloney

Moving on, what about all the very-bad-things the butcher of Baghdad has done to his poor people? Shouldn't we remove him for his sins? I'm totally unmoved by that argument. I gave up on being moved about our humanitarian mission to prevent dictators from causing human misery and death abroad after our taking a pass on interventions against Mobutu-Zaire, Milosovic-Yugoslavia, Suharto-Indonesia, Saddam-in-the-1980s, the apartheid government-South Africa, Pinochet-Chile, Pol Pot-Cambodia, the Hutus (or was that Tutsis?)-Rwanda...

I mean, really, why do ethnic cleansing, killing your own people, prosecuting wars against your neighbors, being a nasty tyrant, fiddling with weapons of mass destruction all of a sudden matter so much now? It's commonplace. And if I felt responsible for the fate of these poor helpless Iraqis, how can I not be losing sleep over starving, dying, barely human North Koreans? A moral lesson: you cannot be selective in your empathy to strangers. Either you've got empathy or you don't. Truly, that kind of inconsistency is driven by propaganda designed to whip up passions. It's not a consistent moral stance.

Madeline Albright was asked in 1998, if half a million children die because of the sanctions, is that worth it? She said, yes, I believe that would be worth it. I ask you this. Where was our compassionate heart for the Iraqi people then? If we are motivated to go to war to help these poor people, can we then accept that we might bear a fraction of responsibility for the way they have suffered and died, maintaining for all these years a stale killing regime that we know cannot work?

I know where I stand. I'm being facetious about my own lack of compassion. I've been concerned about the suffering of Iraqis for quite a long time. About three years ago, I attended a lunch presentation by an Iraqi exile who was advocating very strongly for the lifting of sanctions against Iraq, on the grounds they sanctions were causing unconscionable suffering and death among Iraqi citizens who bore no responsibility for their government's catastrophic choices. Now, this man despised Saddam. But he realized that the sanctions will never budge Saddam from his perch, any more than the blockade stopped Fidel. It strengthened him, just as the sanctions have shored up Saddam's power. As such, they were and are counterproductive and a disgrace. I have advocated to end the sanctions since that lunch, AND I fully understand how culpable and dangerous Saddam is. There are other ways of dealing with him.

Containment can work

Reading Kenneth Pollack's view that a war to bring about regime change is regrettably necessary within a couple of years, I'm reminded of my own history with this subject. In 1990, in my final semester in college, as we hurled toward Gulf War I (which started weeks after I graduated), I devised a 4-credit course for myself, no classes, just writing a research paper analyzing the blunders of Reagan/Bush in creating the monster called Saddam.

Reading Pollack's argumentation, what takes me back to those days is its heartlessness. I've been reading that kind of foreign affairs analysis for many years, because it's very richly informative, but that entire mode and milieu of discourse will never deliver us to the kind of world that I want to see. It's realpolitik, it's realist - but it's heartless. He says, one well-placed nuclear blast taking out the Saudi oil supplies would cause a global depression. Gee, I'm sorry to hear that. It's not that the things Pollack says are untrue. It's that if all our leaders are mired in that sort of mindscape and have no imagination to climb out of the realist box, we're all condemned to live out our miserable lives with them in that box. They do not deserve the inordinate power they wield. "Heart" is an odd criterion - I guess I picked it up studying theology. But there is no heart in the foreign policy establishment that sustains a Madeline Albright or a Henry Kissinger. Their thinking is the obstacle, not the solution. It's Babylon.

Basically, Pollack's big picture argument boils down to a rejection of a policy of containment, forcing a choice between a straw-man version of classic Cold-War-style deterrence and intervention in the form of war for regime change. I think he's wrong about possibilities of containment.

We can essentially contain Iraq as we did the Soviet Union while Stalin killed millions of his own people. Look at it; we're all sorry that so many innocent Russians had to die, but nobody says the blood is on our hands for that. That's the way of the world. And if you think I'm being callous, then, as I've already noted, we should have intervened in Rwanda and Yugoslavia and North Korea and much of sub-Saharan Africa. The fact is, a dead Iraqi five-year-old is not worth any more than any other dead five-year-old. Lift the sanctions and continue even cursory weapons inspections, backed by the constant threat of retaliation for violations.

What we should do

For too long, we have coddled antidemocratic dictators - we arm them, we encourage them to repress their people, we make them rich and powerful. Then, if they go off the rails from our strategic perspective, we decide that we must kill them. What I would prefer is that we:

a) not give so much support to undemocratic dictators
b) fully support the International Criminal Court, and when a dictator goes sour, charge him with crimes against humanity. In the short term, that may sound ineffective against very large risks, but in the long term its the only way to change the behavior of leaders before they get out of control, and the only way to counteract them without reinforcing the law of the jungle.
c) if the leader gets totally out of control, meaning he actually, tangibly starts killing people in a more outrageous manner than that which we tolerate elsewhere every day, then we intervene and take him out.

I am a campaigner against suffering. I absolutely believe that we should work to alleviate suffering in the world, but we should do so strategically and consistently. Thus, we tackle first that suffering over which we can exercise the most control and have the biggest impact - and where we can be shown to hold relatively more responsibility. That's why I campaign for debt cancellation for the poorest nations. How could anyone support a bloody, extremely volatile/high stakes and expensive war on humanitarian grounds and deny the very easy, cheap step of alleviating poverty-driven death in Africa? In both cases we're talking about people whose suffering is caused by the fact that they have zero control over the errors of their unaccountable governments.

We can intervene in a way that forces the transformation of these governments, if only we have the will and the heart to do it. In this way we begin to transform the world for the better, bit by bit, incrementally, though our demonstrated commitment to ending suffering. On a parallel track, we can contain and pester rogues like Saddam, let them know that the Criminal Court lies ahead for them, and in time there will be less of their kind. We can wait. We need patience and a long-term commitment if we are to lead the way to a better, safer world.

And that brings me to the question of "War is never the answer." I recently heard someone say, "An unprovoked war is a crime against humanity." That sounds like a fair standard in the case of Iraq invading Kuwait. Why not in the case of the US invading Iraq now? I respect people's belief that war is necessary in certain circumstances. I will never question the fact that without America's warriors from day one, we wouldn't be here today. I am proud of my father and uncle and grandfather for fighting in World War II. But I give equal respect to pacifists who see the power in Gandhi and King. I think that since the end of World War II (the second "war to end all wars"), pacifism by Americans has been an equally legitimate position. It does not imply, let the world go to hell; rather it says, let's take a risk for a better world. If enough of us believe, a better way of peace is possible.

I say lift the sanctions and maintain cursory weapons inspections of Iraq after the current round is finished. Bomb their facilities if things start to look too suspicious. And move on. Yes, it is a risk. Worst case scenario, Iraq's regime somehow secretly gets a single nuke, and against all realistic expectation actually uses it to blow up a city. The regime is itself then destroyed forthwith. Life would go on. We blew up two Japanese cities with nukes, and life still goes on. The world would learn a lesson. No, I don't want it to happen. The point is, I'm willing to take that risk because I think the odds of it happening are actually well below 100 to one, and we may need to take these risks while we universalize the principles and practice of peace, disarmament, and justice if we are to model a better world and lead the way to it. The only reason we are as far behind the 8-ball as we are now is because we have utterly failed to lead the world out of nuclear chaos. Even after India and Pakistan went nuclear, we don't take disarmament seriously. We can't seriously blame people like Saddam and Osama entirely for the fact that this is an increasingly nuclear-dangerous world. People follow the leader: proliferation was always inevitable as long as we dissed disarmament. Trying to bomb our way out of the problem will only intensify the risk.

In conclusion

Well, there you have it. I've been a student of this stuff for years, and I really believe that my torque is based on an even-handed analysis of our government's real behavior on the ground. That, and what I believe are fair standards for justice and right relationships. I thirst for the fulfillment of the myth of American leadership, and I'll hold our leaders' feet to the fire until I see it actualized.

Today's Rumi:

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

Go to the story of the source.
Go to the art of sublime origin.
Find the stone, the water, the sky,
the life-fuse.

(Italy, 9/98)

On free-market ideology, faith in technology, and other contemporary religions:

Religion is everywhere in this world. Economics, politics, and science are rife with religion.

No, I'm not talking about John Ashcroft's brand of Christian fundamentalism. "Religion" is simply any belief in something without the backing of stone solid scientific proof. Any such belief is an act of faith.

Mind you, I'm not dissing such faith. Life and love cannot exist without it. But an awareness of the ubiquity of religious faith sheds a different light on the workings of worldly affairs.

In particular, beliefs about the future are religion.

If you produce a predictive model based on relevant facts and hypotheses, and you trust that that model gives you a reasonable guide to future events, you are practicing science.

But whenever you really believe that the predicted events will occur, you are practicing religion. You are being guided by faith. Often, ideologies are built on a foundation of such faith.

Thus, when IMF bankers believe that a recipe of fiscal austerity, liberalized trade and capital markets, and privatization will improve the lot of developing countries, they are practicing their religion.

If you believe that advances in technology will save us from global warming and the draining of the earth's fossil fuels, you are practicing your religion.

None of this is to say you are right or wrong in your belief. It is just to say that you have found a rock of assurance in something that cannot be shown to actually exist.

Those who advocate, legislate, or issue orders guided by such beliefs are practicing religious ideology. A dark confirmation of the religious quality of such ideology is the way in which decision-maker-believers sometimes seek to hereticize those who do not share their belief.

The inner light that pours out of all things
the light of creation
you are a stream running outward
ever into the world
the glow that life is holy

I a lantern strive to be
a polished mirror reflecting thee
gushing forth a mighty stream
illuminating life the dream

The unity, light upon light
the rocks in the way, I
struggle, day upon day
while these morning-particle-moments show
life in the beam

A final thought on the recent election. California governor Gray Davis refused to debate Green candidate Peter Camejo, saying in effect that it was beneath his dignity to be in a debate with anyone who isn't in the Republican or Democratic parties -- e.g., a "serious" candidate. Yet the man Davis refused to be in the same room with got 6 percent of the vote -- without the exposure and legitimacy that a debate with the incumbent naturally provides. What percentage might Camejo have gotten if he had been allowed to debate the two other candidates in public? Isn't it ironic that Camejo's chance was disallowed by one man, the incumbent governor Gray Davis? Mightn't it be better if an election commission dictates such things (well, maybe a little better -- maybe?)?

It goes without saying that a person who is not allowed into the official debates never has won an election and hopefully never will, because such an outcome would indicate a genuine revolution against the standing power. Actually... not such a bad idea...

Like some kind of Roman tribune, this power to break a legitimate contender's chances is concentrated in the hands of one man -- the challenger's own opponent, yet -- and yet -- this is the breathtaking part -- look at how undemocratic a man Gray Davis is. Anyone who calls themselves a (small-d) democrat should be utterly disgusted with Davis. Because there's only one plausible reason for him to wallow in his worst instincts -- his fear of how good Camejo is.

I just saw Peter Camejo talking today at the Green Fest in San Francisco. He was actually giving investment advice less than a week after the election. That's his job, and he's darn good at it. In fact, it's obvious that his intelligence, fresh, great ideas, leadership and charisma would have posed a major threat to both Davis and the "businessman" Simon.

(One final note: Camejo the investment guy reminded us that Davis's purchase of long-term energy contracts during the energy crisis was, in dollar terms, the worst investment in the history of the world).