Some American Pie

Buzzing aroung the blogosphere today, I saw a number of posts despairing of the direction which the United States is going. I heard echoes of this song as I read what they were saying:

Oh, and there we were all in one place,
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again.
So come on: jack be nimble, jack be quick!
Jack flash sat on a candlestick
Cause fire is the devil’s only friend.
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage.
No angel born in hell
Could break that satan’s spell.
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite,
I saw satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
He was singing,
Bye-bye, Miss American Pie.
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
And singin’, this’ll be the day that I die.
This’ll be the day that I die.
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news,
But she just smiled and turned away.
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before,
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.
And in the streets: the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
The father, son, and the holy ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.
And they were singing,
Bye-bye, Miss American Pie.
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, this’ll be the day that I die.
This’ll be the day that I die.

Religiously correct

We rented Beyond the Sea tonight - what an absolutely terrific movie! [Warning about this link if you are at work -- the music plays automatically.] A labour of love by Kevin Spacey, who looked and sounded and acted and danced remarkably like Bobby Darin. Not only that, but the movie was done in such an original way for a biopic, while showing reverence for all of the movie-musical-biography traditions -- big song-and-dance numbers, the loving ethnic childhood, the excentric family, the troubled yet ultimately loving marriage, the virtually invisible children, the final breakthrough concert followed by the sad death scene. This movie had it all, plus some great music.
The one song I missed hearing was It Ain't Necessarily So. Then I started thinking about the lyrics, and realized that under the new "religious correctness" these days, there is no way a filmmaker would risk picketing by the Christian Right by having a lead character sing lyrics like this:
"It ain't necessarily so.
It ain't necessarily so.
The things that your liable
to read in the bible
ain't necessarily so . . .
Methus'lah lived nine hundred years,
Methus'lah lived nine hundred years,
But who calls that livin'
When no gal will give in
To no man that's nine hundred years? . . . "
Anyway, if you like Bobby Darin's music, rent this DVD.

Chasing the Niger Papers

Billmon says "I long ago accepted the fact that we're all living in a bad sequel to the Bourne Identity."
And when you read the ins and outs of his post on The Niger Papers, The Sting and The Italian Job, its easy to believe him.

You haff relatives in the old country ya?

Since it now appears that Karl Rove was the Plame leak source for at least six reporters in the White House press corps, Digby wonders why none of these journalists would write about it.
Well, I could think of ways that a government could prevent a reporter from writing anything for TWO YEARS -- and, in fact, why most of them still haven't written anything. Yes, I could speculate ....

1812 again

My favorite thing about the US Independence Day is watching the Boston Pops performance of the 1812 Overture -- BSO -- 2005 Fourth-of-July Extravaganza
I am always enthralled how well the huge audience knows this music -- the cheers when the Russian trumpets first sound always send chills down my spine.

50 lies

One of the surprising things about the Iraq War is that there sometimes appear to be two different wars underway here -- the one that the US is winning, according to the right wing press and bloggers, and the one they are losing, in reality.
While poking around the internet this morning, I saw this Kos diary (which credits an unlinked Digby post.) Anyway, it refers to an old story which may explain some of the dicotomy.
Eighteen months ago, in November 2003, this story reported on an investigation by a USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner which he called "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II". His report identified fifty news stories about the Iraq war that were faked up to sell the Iraq War. The texts of the Gardiner report are here in pdf files: Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6 -- each of these is about 10 pages long, so I don't really understand why the report wasn't posted in a single document.
Anway, here is a list of the stories which Gardiner says were faked to create and maintain support for the Iraq War:
• Iraq was connected to terrorism and 9/11
• Lt. Commander Speicher might still be alive
• Iraq had drones
• Mohammad Atta met with Iraqi
• Ansar al-Salm had a poison factory
• Chemical and biological weapons: Quantities, Location, Delivery readiness
• Iraq had Weapons labs
• Iraq had WMD cluster bombs
• Iraq's Scuds
• Saddam punished people by cutting off ears
• Cyber war capability
• The nuclear materials from Niger story
• The aluminum tubes story
• Iraq developing nuclear weapons
• Iraq developing dirty bombs
• Troops handing out food; humanitarian operations
• US did not attack the power grid
• Surrender of the 507th
• US troops approaching the 'Red Zone' where WMD would be used.
• US troops fighting the 51st Iraqi Mechanized Division & commander
• The 'uprising' in Basrah supporting the invasion
• 'Liberations' of Umm Qasr and Basrah
• Iraqi white flag incidents (pretending to surrender)
• US and UK uniforms to commit atrocities
• Iraqis were executing prisoners
• The 'Salman Pak' terrorist training facility
• Private Lynch story: language (eg, described as an "ambush")
• Iraq using children soldiers
• The 1000-vehicle attack from Baghdad
• How few civilian casualties
• Saddam hung a woman for waving at troops
• WMD locations: Moved to Syria, Hidden, Just-in-time program
• Changing descriptions of the post-conflict enemy
• The status of infrastructure repairs
• French stories (as punishment for not supporting the war): High precision switches, Smallpox strains, Signing long term oil contracts, Spare parts for aircraft, Roland missiles, Passport for Iraqi leaders
• Russian stories (also punishment): Signing long term oil contracts, Night-vision goggles, GPS Jamming equipment, Saddam in embassy
• British Parliamentarian punishment (Galloway)

Imagine how f*cked your brain would be if you still believed some or all of these stories? And, accepting these as true, imagine how amazed you would be that anyone would not be 100 per cent behind the Iraq War? Why, you would be in a parallel universe, the one where the US won the war in Iraq but the darned Main Stream Media and those crazy bloggers just wouldn't admit it.

Live 8

In Barrie:

Photos of war

Maybe all wars are basically the same, or at least the tragedies are the same. I got thinking the other day about comparable photos between Vietnam and Iraq. Here are some I found.
First, here is what is likely the most famous photo from the Vietnam War. The running Vietnamese girl forgave the pilot who napalmed her. I wonder whether the little Iraqi girl covered with the blood of her parents, shot at an American roadblock, will be able to forgive someday.


Here is another famous Vietnam photo of a spy being casually shot by a South Vietnamese chief of police, which started the American disenchantment with South Vietnam government.
And here is the Fallaugh contractor-burning photo which appalled America, and showed Americans that Iraq was still a war zone. Click here to see how Fallaujh looks today.


And finally, here are two photos unique to Iraq.
First, the Abu Ghraib photo which may well become the most famous photo from this war. And second, this sad, sad photo of a little boy whose brains were blown out during the bombing of Baghdad was shown all over Aljazeera TV during the first week of the war. Western networks refused to show it, even when the coverage of the boy's death itself became a news story. So it took a long time before Americans understood that people all over the Middle East were angry about the War in Iraq.

Salutin riffs

If I could, I would have just linked directly to today's Rick Salutin column in the Globe and Mail. But the columnists are behind their subscription wall and I refuse -- REFUSE! -- to pay twice, once for the paper version and again for the online paper.
Salutin often takes a contrary view, and his writing is so vivid and crisp that he often convinces me that he is right. Here are his three riffs from today:

Let us give thanks that our nation is not an imperial power. I am thinking mainly about the effects of empire not on the ruled but on the rulers like our southern neighbours . . . look at how hard it is for them to get clarity about the bog in Iraq. The issue gets framed as: When will Iraqi forces be ready to take over, so our troops can leave? But the nationality of forces fighting against the insurgency isn't what counts; the imperial power always tries to use the locals as its police (as the British did in India and Africa). What counts is who has power over policy and resources in Iraq, and there's no sign the United States plans to relinquish any. So the debate on when to "draw down" U.S. troops and leave is hollow. Some of it is diversionary propaganda from the Bushites; but much of it is sincere self-delusion, because many Americans just don't want to see themselves in their imperial reality.

Then Salutin goes on a tear about CEOs who decry higher government spending:

The boys seem especially peeved at Paul Martin for not staying as stingy and accommodating as he once was . . . Back in 1995, [Martin said] "some people seem to enjoy the bloodsport of cutting spending; they forget that a country is about people, and a government is about representing people." The guy has always been a cluster of contradictions -- not the worst thing for a person in politics to be.

Finally, he talks about the last parliament:

During the past hysterical months, I often found myself flipping to the parliamentary channel to see what was on, as I would to a sports or news channel. They'd be debating issues that mattered, with evident passion and involvement. MPs, even backbenchers, emerged as personalities; there was genuine back and forth and, above all, uncertainty of outcome, as in sports. They passed significant legislation and had meaningful debates . . . due to that disparaged, belittled, uncontrollable minority situation, a great Parliament.

Goodbye, O'Connor. Goodbye, Choice.

Right off the mark, this NARAL ad is running at the top of the NYT website: Take Action: Don't Let Anti-Choice Extremists Win the Fight for the Supreme Court.
But they will, by October.
Is there anyone in the world who thinks that Bush will not seize on this tremendous opportunity to put in place an anti-abortion judge? Is there anyone who thinks that this is not exactly why the Christian Right elected him and a Republican Senate in the first place?
Goodbye, Roe v Wade. Goodbye Women's Right to Choose.
Earlier this spring the Republicans in Senate would not overturn the fillibuster rule and destroy the Senate's advise and consent role, just for Bolton or for the other intellectual lightweights Bush wanted to appoint. But the Republicans will definitely overturn the fillibuster for this, if they need to, to make sure an anti-abortion judge replaces O'Connor.
And it would not matter if this tears the Senate and the country apart. It wouldn't matter if a million people marched in New York or Los Angeles or Boston or even Atlanta in support of women's right to choose. Bush and the boys simply DO NOT CARE WHAT WOMEN THINK.
As I have pointed out before, this is actually an end to choice, not to abortion. As a medical procedure which can save a woman's life, the abortion procedure will still be available. The difference is that the woman herseof will not be able to chose it. Instead, the choice will be made by a committee of doctors and/or of Christian Right hospital board members -- and you can bet that the grounds will be pretty narrow.
Rape? Incest? Extreme youth? Amniocentosis results showing disability? Nope, not good enough. Neither your body nor your choices matter anymore, woman -- get back into the kitchen and take off those shoes!
Anyone in the US who is now younger than 40 does not remember a time when women did not have the right to have a legal abortion if they wanted to.
They don't remember what a long, hard battle it was to establish the principle that women, and everyone else for that matter, should have the right to make their own moral and ethical decisions.
They're about to find out.
And when I think of the 2004 election and the horrendous impact it will have on America, I think of the Frost poem:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
. . . long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other . . .
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

UPDATE: Americablog points out that the impact will be broader than just abortion. All of Scalia's dissents will now be the majority opinions . . . And Americablog seems to think there may actually be a chance of winning this one in the Senate. Well, I hope so. Fight the good fight!

Only in the Globe

I was impressed by this: The Globe and Mail: Stephen Leacock's hidden treasure -- I think only the Globe would banner a story like this across the front page on Canada Day, because it considers itself Canada's newspaper (and rightfully so) and prides itself in showing this kind of leadership in a celebration of what is uniquely Canadian.

Superheros of 2005

This site is priceless -- Apropos of Something - Apropos Comics.
Here's an example:

I found this site by following a link on Oliver Willis.

Thanks, Bob Geldof

In honour of the Live 8 concerts this weekend, we watched History Television's Turning Point tonight, which was about the Ethiopian famine of 1984 and the Band Aid and Live Aid events which Bob Geldof invented. Though a depressing subject, it was ultimately a story of success and achievement.
It never made sense to me, as a child, to be told that I had to eat up because people somewhere else were starving -- my reaction was, OK, then please send them my corn soup because I hate it.
When I was a child, and on into adulthood through the 60s and 70s, the general attitude among just about everybody I knew was that conditions in Africa were simply not solveable. The only people who seemed to care about Africa were some aid agencies and church ministers. We watched the clumsy "teach a man to fish" public service spots on TV at midnight, but they didn't seem to relate to our lives. Basically, there didn't seem to be anything that we could do about it except give a few bucks to Oxfam every now and then. In the 60s, we thought we were all changing the world, but we weren't really having much effect.
Those attitudes changed when Geldof did his record and his concerts.
It was unheard of in 1984 that a rock musician should care so much about Africa, and that he should be able to organize such extraordinary events, and that he could singlehandedly raise so much money. Now, its almost unheard of that musicians and artists would not devote some of their time and talent to fundraising for various causes.
In the interviews for the TV show we watched tonight, Geldof displayed a broad and deep knowledge of what is necessary to help Africa and what the world needs to do about it. Not only has he raised hundreds of millions, but he also has made sure it is being spent properly, and directly on aid projects.
I am impressed, too, that the United States is also showing some leadership here -- Bush seeks to double aid to Africa . The attitude I grew up with -- that Africa is hopeless -- is no longer an acceptable approach for anyone in the west to take -- and that is remarkable progress.

What will happen next?

When I saw the silent, staring troops at last night's speech - and watched some half-hearted handshakes and unsmiling faces in several of the officers near the stage after the speech -- I wondered what they might be thinking of what they heard.
So I looked up North Carolina's main newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, to see if they had any comments. Here is what their editorial said in Bush's dodge

Rising insurgent violence, conflicting accounts of the facts and a steady stream of American deaths have sharply heightened anxiety. That's reflected in recent polls that found eroding support for the fighting in Iraq.
Even in North Carolina, home to four major military bases with more than 10,000 troops in Iraq, a new statewide poll conducted by The News & Observer and WRAL-TV found 42 percent of active voters think the war has been worth it, but 49 percent say it has not. That's a sharp dip from January 2004. Two points in particular demand specific responses from Mr. Bush.
- Last weekend, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Americans that insurgencies often persist for 10 or 12 years. Given that, what kind of U.S. involvement will be required over that long haul?
- Gen. John Abizaid, the top Middle East commander, has said he expects Iraqi security forces to be able to lead the fight against insurgents by next summer. Will the White House begin withdrawing troops at that time?
Fort Bragg, home to the 82nd Airborne and Special Forces, would have been the ideal place for straight talk. Of the 1,740 men and women who have died in Iraq, an estimated 174 -- one in 10 -- came from North Carolina military bases. Tar Heel families have been asked to carry a heavy burden to support the war in Iraq. They have responded with courage and sacrifice. Yet, understandably, the killing and dying have worn on their resolve. North Carolinians -- like all Americans -- need to know to what to expect. What a shame their president would not level with them when he had the chance.

There is one problem with demanding truthful answers from the Bush administration. They don't have any.
They cannot describe what Americans can expect, because they don't know.
In 1968, following the Tet offensive I am not sure whether anybody in the US could envisage what failure in Vietnam would look like. In actuality, it did NOT consist of the US military losing significant battles and retreating, like the Germans did in WW2. And it did not consist of a long military stalemate and a ceasefire, like Korea ended. Instead, there was escalating bombing and escalating death tolls without any progress on the ground, followed by gradual brutalization of the troops and dissolution of the US army as an effective or respected fighting force (fragging, drug addiction, draft dodging, anti-war marches), accompanied by increasing corruption and lack of credibility in South Vietnam's government leading to the general belief that this was not a government worth supporting, and finally, the gradual turning of the South Vietnamese peasants and villages toward support for the Viet Cong, whether willingly or unwillingly.
It was only after the US pulled most of its soldiers out in 1972 and 1973 that the South Vietnamese army began losing battles and territory, to the point that the North occupied the South in 1975 and the last Americans flew out on the helicoter from the embassy roof.
Billmon today writes a lengthy post Failure is an option, which discusses some of the aspects of failure in Iraq:

. . . Bush has managed to make himself right at last: Iraq indeed has become the central front in the war against Al Qaeda (although the eastern front in Afghanistan is heating up quickly, and there's always the risk of a breakthrough on the Southern front -- Saudia Arabia -- or the Western front -- the Maghrib and/or Europe.) But saying that Iraq is now the central front in the war on terrorism is neither an argument nor a strategy. At the moment, it's pretty clear the Cheney administration and its pet military commanders don't have a strategy, other than to pin their hopes on a political process that is going nowhere slowly, and that in any case is extremely unlikely to break the insurgency's base of support -- at least, not before it breaks the American volunteer army. It's not at all clear that sending more troops to Iraq would make the situation any better . . . the U.S. military has made itself enormously unpopular in Iraq -- even among those who reluctantly accept the need for its presence. It's hard to see how putting more jittery, haji-hating American soldiers on the streets of Iraq is going to help peel away the insurgency's "soft support" or induce more Sunnis to cooperate with a government led by Shi'a fundamentalists. However, without more troops, it seems inevitable that Iraq will continue to descend into chaos and (ultimately) something close to Hobbes's war of the all against the all . . . the mindless chants of "failure is not an option" are starting to sound like the desperate prayers of the terminally ill. Failure is always an option -- particularly for morons who launch a war of choice under the impression that they can't possibly lose it. Is the war hopelessly lost? I tend to think so, although I'm realistic enough to admit that I don't have all the facts, and couldn't interpret them all correctly even if I did. I know there are some military analysts whose opinions I respect who think the war is lost . . .

Billmon goes on to discuss several sane and effective options for the US to get the troops out while protecting its flanks, though of course he notes at the end of this discussion "A sane, effective strategic response is probably impossible as long as the current gang remains in power. But you already knew that."
So what is the scenario for failure in Iraq? Here is what I think might be how failure will happen in Iraq:
- There will be a loss of 'civilization' throughout Iraq as people are forced out of the cities and into refugee camps due both to the disentegration of municipal services (water, power, sewer), the decline in living standards as the economy disappears, and the Fallujification of more cities in retaliation for insurgent attacks.

- Though the facade of a central government in Baghdad may continue, the existing government is too corrupt to be effective. Most of Iraq will be governed by religious and tribal dictators and their local militias. At some point, these militias may start fighting each other for territory or resources.

- And I think there could be a US military 'mutiny' unless Cheney and Rumsfeld start listening to the US military leadership in Iraq, who are trying to negotiate with the insurgency, to calm things down long enough to start getting their US troops out. At some point, the UN or Europe or Iraq's neighbours may also have to step in to persuade the US to get out.

Things I noticed

Things I noticed in Bush's speech.
This strikes me as a terrible idea. " . . . we are embedding Coalition 'Transition Teams' inside Iraqi units. These teams are made up of Coalition officers and non-commissioned officers who live, work, and fight together with their Iraqi comrades. Under U.S. command, they are providing battlefield advice and assistance to Iraqi forces during combat operations. "
Considering that the Iraqi recruits are apparently riddled with insurgents who join to ferret out plans and steal equipment, who is going to protect these American lieutenants and sergeants from sharing the fate of the Iraqi recruits? An awful lot of Iraqi troops-in-training are getting blown up or shot in the head.
So are they ever leaving or what? One of the main points in Kerry's OpEd in the New York Times today was that Bush should declare that the US had no intention of staying in Iraq. So I watched the speech to see if Bush would make this promise. He said "a major part of our mission is to train them so they can do the fighting and our troops can come home" and "We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed - and not a day longer."
Iraq as the new Gettysburg? And note the next umpteenth rationale for war -- not WDM, not regime change, not democracy, nope, now its because the terrorists are there -- "we fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens - and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we will fight them there ... we will fight them across the world - and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won.' I'll bet that is news to Iraq 'But, but, but -- the terrorists weren't here until YOU were here, so if you'd leave, THEY would leave, and we could get on with building our country again and . . . oh well. . . '
The Lincolnesque tone was just a little over-the-top" . . . to those watching tonight who are considering a military career, there is no higher calling than service in our Armed Forces. We live in freedom because every generation has produced patriots willing to serve a cause greater than themselves. Those who serve today are taking their rightful place among the greatest generations that have worn our Nation's uniform. When the history of this period is written, the liberation of Afghanistan and the liberation of Iraq will be remembered as great turning points in the story of freedom." And so that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth.