Laundry list of failure, with no benchmark to measure it

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In the clip below, Robert Scheer compiles a laundry list of failure in Iraq. We are looking at a disaster that dwarfs Vietnam by a magnitude. The Vietnam war was a terrible thing for the USA and especially for South East Asia, but it went no farther than that. The possible knock on effects of the collapse into anarchy of the Middle East are impossible to calculate. I don't think there is any precedent of such a complete disaster in US history which would give people some perspective. If you say to a German or a Russian, even if they are young, "WWII"... They know what that means from Grandma's table talk. If you talk to an American about "civil war" it conjures up visions of blues and grays, Matthew Brady and "Gone with the Wind"... If you say "civil war" to a Spanish kid it means grandpa buried in a mass grave in a ditch outside the village. Americans just don't have any benchmark to realize how deep in the shit they are. The Baker Commission is said to be recommending a withdrawal, but Bush still talks about "finishing the job". Amazing days are ahead. We may yet see Nancy Pelosi as president... Cheney has a heart attack and Bush is led off drunk in a strait jacket. DS
Robert Scheer - Abstract: Having idiotically dug ourselves a terribly deep hole in Iraq -- remember when protesters against the war were mocked for using the word "quagmire"? -- Bush is now forced to beg Syria and Iran to throw us a rope. As the Bush-appointed and James Baker-led Iraq Study Group has telegraphed, the cooperation of these two pariah states is essential to an effective exit strategy. In reality, this is not so much a change in policy as it is an acknowledgement of a truth-on-the-ground that has been clear since the invasion 44 months ago: Our sworn enemies were the biggest beneficiaries of our overthrow of Iraq's secular dictatorship.(...) And don't expect Tehran's theocrats to be magnanimous in victory. The key message from Ayatollah Khamenei on Tuesday was, as the BBC headline put it, "U.S. troops must leave Iraq if security is to be restored."(...) So it is that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was so desperate in his pleas to the ayatollah, admitting that, "We are in dire need of Iran's help in establishing security and stability in Iraq." Of course he is, because six years of Bush's foreign policy has had the presumably unintended consequences of elevating radicals and theocrats into positions of dominance throughout the region, from Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and even, this past week, to the oil emirate Bahrain, where Shiite and Sunni radical Islamists split elections in an upset. "It looks like our parliament will be dominated by people who see themselves only as Sunnis or Shiites," said Fowad Shihab, a political science professor at Bahrain University. "These are the same Islamists that are gaining control across the Arab world." Simply put, the neoconservative geniuses who believed invading Iraq would bolster both U.S. and Israeli interests in fact have accomplished the exact opposite -- handing both military and public-relations victories to their sworn enemies. Similarly, the international movement to restrain the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been struck a possible death blow as a desperate United States may be forced to accommodate Iran's nuclear ambitions, just as it did those of Pakistan. READ IT ALL

Falling In Line On Israel - Stephen Zunes - Tom Paine

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Anyone who thought that the key to peace and stability in the Middle East and in the Islamic world (1.3b people) in general, meant Israel returning to its pre-1967 borders (without "adjustments") and the creation of a truly sovereign Palestinian state, one that controls its own borders and airspace and this hopeful soul had any idea that the newly triumphant Democratic Party of the USA was any sort of an instrument for achieving those goals is in for a brutal disappointment. They are even deeper in the Israeli's pocket then the Republicans. This fine article by Stephen Zunes in TomPaine, should set them straight. DS

The election of a Democratic majority in the House and Senate is unlikely to result in any serious challenge to the Bush administration’s support for Israeli attacks against the civilian populations of its Arab neighbors and the Israeli government’s ongoing violations of international humanitarian law.
The principal Democratic Party spokesmen on foreign policy will likely be Tom Lantos in the House of Representatives and Joe Biden in the Senate, both of whom have been longstanding and outspoken supporters of a series of right-wing Israeli governments and opponents of the Israeli peace movement. And, despite claims—even within the progressive press—that future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a “consistent supporter of human rights,” such humanitarian concerns have never applied to Arabs, since she is a staunch defender of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his predecessor Ariel Sharon.
For example, when President George W. Bush defended Israel’s assaults on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure this summer and defied the international community by initially blocking United Nations efforts to impose a cease-fire, the Democrats rushed to pass a resolution commending him for “fully supporting Israel.” The resolution, co-authored by Rep. Lantos, claimed that Israel’s actions were legitimate self-defense under the U.N. Charter and challenged the credibility of reputable human rights groups. Although groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch groups documented widespread attacks by Israeli forces against civilians in areas far from any Hezbollah military activity, the resolution praised “Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcom[ed] Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties.” All but 15 of the House’s 201 Democrats voted in support.
Similarly, the Democrats echoed President Bush’s support for Israel’s 2002 offensive in the West Bank in another resolution co-authored by Lantos. In response to Amnesty International’s observation that the massive assault appeared to be aimed at the Palestinian population as a whole, all but two dozen Democrats went on record supporting the devastating Israeli offensive and claiming that it was “aimed solely at the terrorist infrastructure.”
In March 2003, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders signed a letter to President Bush opposing the White House-endorsed Middle East “Road Map” for peace, which they perceived as being too lenient on the Palestinians. The authors insisted that the peace process must be based “above all” on the end of Palestinian violence and the establishment of a new Palestinian leadership, not an end to Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land seized in the 1967 war. Indeed, there was no mention of any of the reciprocal actions called for in the Road Map—not ending Israel’s sieges and military assaults on Palestinian population centers and not halting the construction of additional illegal settlements.. The letter also voiced opposition to the U. N. or any government other than the U.S. monitoring progress on the ground.
The Democrats have attacked the International Court of Justice for its landmark 2004 ruling calling for the enforcement of the Fourth Geneva Convention in Israeli-occupied territories. In a resolution that summer, the Democratic leadership and the overwhelming majority of Democrats in both houses also condemned the World Court’s near-unanimous advisory opinion that Israel’s separation barrier could not be built beyond Israel’s internationally-recognized border into the occupied West Bank in order to incorporate illegal settlements into Israel.
More recently, Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have condemned former President Jimmy Carter’s newly-released book criticizing Israeli violations of international humanitarian law in the West Bank. Carter’s use of the word “apartheid” in reference to Israeli policies of building Jewish-only settlements and highways on confiscated Palestinian land and allowing Palestinians to enter only as laborers with special passbooks proved particularly inflammatory to Pelosi and her colleagues. Meanwhile, they have refused to criticize this policy by any name and insist that the Israeli colonial outposts in the occupied territories—constructed in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions—are legitimate.
Ongoing talks between Fatah and Hamas for a coalition government have raised the hope that the Palestinian Authority will soon have a non-Hamas prime minister and a largely non-partisan, technocratic cabinet. However, the Democrats support Bush’s policy of refusing to resume normal relations with the PA unless the cabinet excludes members of Hamas or any party that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. By contrast, no prominent Democrat has raised any concerns over Olmert’s recent appointment of Avignor Lieberman, who has called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel and much of the West Bank, as a cabinet minister and his new deputy prime minister.
The Democrats have also pushed for increasing U.S. military aid to Israel and have rejected calls to condition the aid on an improvement in Israel’s human rights record. The Democrats have also pushed for an increase in economic assistance to Israel’s rightist government, already the recipient of nearly one-third of all U.S. foreign aid, despite the country’s relative affluence and the fact that Israelis represent only one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population.
The decision by Democratic members of Congress to take such hard-line positions against international law and human rights does not stem from the fear that it would jeopardize their re-election. Polls show that a sizable majority of Americans believe U.S. foreign policy should support these principles. More specifically, regarding Israel and Palestine, majorities support a more even-handed U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and oppose the blank check given by the United States to Israel.
Nor is it a matter of Democratic lawmakers somehow being forced against their will to back Bush’s policy by Jewish voters and campaign contributors. In reality, Jewish public opinion is divided over the wisdom and morality of many Israeli policies endorsed by the Democrats, recognizing that such policies actually harm Israel’s legitimate long-term security interests. Furthermore, the vast majority of Democrats who support Bush’s Middle East policies come from very safe districts where a reduction in campaign contributions would not have a negative impact on Democratic re-election. Contrary to the belief that it is political suicide to condemn the policies of the Israeli government, every single Democrat who opposed this summer’s resolution in support of the Israeli assault on Lebanon was re-elected by a larger margin than in 2004.
Perhaps more damaging than pressure from right-wing PACs has been the absence of pressure from progressive groups that oppose Israeli policies. Indeed, some of the most hard-line Democratic opponents of Israeli peace and human rights groups were endorsed by leading U.S. peace and human rights groups.
Until the progressive community seriously challenges Democratic hawks, there is little hope that the new Democratic majority can be expected to contribute anything to the cause of peace and justice in the Middle East.

Power struggles unravel Democrats' unity - Los Angeles Times

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In domestic disputes and "crimes of passion" the offended person often picks up the first object at hand and hits the offender over the head with it; however improbable that object might be. Frying pans, ashtrays, icepicks, chairs you name it. In this case the American people, enraged by Bush's infidelities in Iraq, have hit him "upside the head" with the only blunt object they could lay their hands on... the Democratic Party. The great question is: is the Democratic Party still "the right tool for the job"? After Clinton(s), does it still stand for anything? DS

Abstract: Democrats returned to Capitol Hill on Monday to prepare for a transfer of power in Congress, but their postelection emphasis on unity quickly dissolved into power struggles and jockeying over the spoils of victory. Much of the squabbling stemmed from the decision over the weekend by presumed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to endorse a longtime loyalist to be her second-in-command. In backing Iraq war critic Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania for the post, Pelosi, of San Francisco, turned her back on another Democrat who is in line for the job and is favored by many of her party's more moderate members. In her first high-profile move after the election, Pelosi signaled that she can be expected to prize personal loyalty as she oversees the fractious party.(...) As the crop of freshly elected Democrats — including many younger ones who campaigned to the right of the party line — came to Capitol Hill for orientation Monday, they encountered a leadership dominated by mostly liberal, old-school Democrats. Cardoza, a leader of the conservative coalition in the House known as the Blue Dogs, warned that Democratic cohesion would suffer if the liberals in line to head many of the chamber's key committees don't take party moderates into account. "We have to try to build a consensus, and it's not going to be an automatic, top-down way, or we'll have conflict on the floor," Cardoza said.(...) Emotions and tensions are running high in the battle between Hoyer and Murtha. As in most congressional leadership elections, the outcome hinges largely on personal relationships, not ideology. But divisions over the war in Iraq are playing a part. Murtha, known as a strong supporter of the military, emerged as a hero of the left when he became a leading critic of the conflict a year ago; Hoyer has been more hawkish. READ ALL