That was then, this is now

As someone who lived through the Vietnam War, it struck me as ironic to read Juan Cole's report that Vietnam has won a contract to supply rice to Iraq.
And in 2035, I guess, my children will be amused to see reports of Iraq having a US contract to supply gasoline to the US army fighting in China. . .

This makes me sick

I should have realized:

Canadian troops in Afghanistan have been told the Geneva Conventions and Canadian regulations regarding the rights of prisoners of war don't apply to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters captured on the battlefield. That decision strips detainees of key rights and protections under the rules of war, including the right to be released at the end of the conflict and not to be held criminally liable for lawful combat.

Ah, yes, what was it we are over there fighting for? Something about democracy, truth, justice and the American way? And we'll get right on that, I'm sure, just as soon as it is convenient, and doesn't impose any annoying regulations or ask us to consider any moral quandries or anything aggravating like that . . .

Facts about Afghanistan

Coming from an agricultural province, it sort of helps put Afghanistan into perspective to find out that it has 200,000 hectares devoted to poppy production -- on a Canadian scale, that's about a third of the land planted to crops in British Columbia -- and that almost 90 per cent of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan's fields -- and of course one can only speculate on the percentage of Canadian pot production which comes from BC!
Anyway, over at Informed Comment, Juan Cole posts about the Kabul riot today which killed 14 people. In his post, he also provides some facts about Afghanistan that should be more widely known than they are:

. . . The US military presence in Afghanistan has quietly been pumped up from 19,000 to 23,000 troops . . . Over 400 Afghans have been killed by US bombing and military actions in only the past two weeks. While most of these are Pushtun nativist guerrillas (coded by the US as "Taliban"), some have demonstrably been innocent civilians . . . the Pushtun guerrillas have been waging a very effective terror campaign in the countryside around Qandahar, and have launched a fierce series of spring offensives . . . While most anti-US actions in Afghanistan come from the Pushtun ethnic group, these Kabul protests, which paralyzed the capital and resulted in the imposition of a curfew, heavily involved Tajiks. Kabul is a largely Tajik city, and the Tajiks mostly hated the Taliban with a passion, and many high officials in the Karzai government have been Tajik. So they haven't been as upset with the US invasion and presence as have been many Pushtuns, especially those Pushtuns who either supported the Taliban or just can't abide foreign troops in their country . . . Significant numbers of Tajiks are clearly now turning against the US, and that is a very bad sign indeed . . . Pushtuns are 42 % of the population and Tajiks 27 %. Pushtuns have usually supplied the top rulers . . .
Despite Bush administration pledges to reconstruct the country, only six percent of Afghans have access to electricity. Less than 20 percent have access to clean water. Although the gross domestic product has grown by 80 percent since the nadir of 2001, and may be $7 billion next year, most of that increase comes from the drug trade or from foreign assistance . . . About half the economy of Afghanistan is generated by the poppy crop, which becomes opium and then heroin in Europe. Afghanistan produces 87 percent of the world's opium and heroin, and no other country comes close in its dedication of agricultural land to drug production (over 200,000 hectares).
The government lives on international welfare. Some 92 percent of Afghan government expenditures come from foreign assistance. The Afghan government is worse at collecting taxes than fourth world countries in subsaharan Africa. Unemployment remains at 35 percent. Unemployment is estimated to have been 25 percent in the US during the Great Depression.
The great danger is renewed Muslim radicalism and the reemergence of al-Qaeda, combined with a narco-terrorism that could make Colombia's FARC look like minor players.

Cole also notes that US media don't want to talk about how NATO troops are being killed and injured in Afghanistan, including of course Canadian troops but also troops from France -- and it is odd to me how France is still targeted by US commentators and comedians as a nation of cheese-eating surrender monkeys while their soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, as are ours.

They're here, they're there, they're everywhere, so beware!

So let me see if I have got this right:
CSIS says we have to be afraid, be very afraid, of any young brown Muslim-type people living next door because they might be 'Home-grown terrorists'.

. . . young Canadians from immigrant backgrounds are becoming radicalized through the internet and are looking for targets at home, not abroad. "They are virtually indistinguishable from other youth. They blend in very well to our society, they speak our language and they appear to be — to all intents and purposes — well-assimilated," [CSIS deputy director of operations Jack Hooper] said [to a Senate defense committee]. "[They] look to Canada to execute their targeting."

And your evidence for this is . . .?

The men responsible for the 2005 transit bombings in London were from immigrant families, said Hooper. "I can tell you that all of the circumstances that led to the London transit bombings, to take one example, are resident here now in Canada," he said. Training camps in Afghanistan produce terrorists, said Hooper, including a Canadian resident who played a key role in an earlier attack. "The individual who trained the bombers in the August 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was a former resident of Vancouver who fought in Afghanistan," he said.

Oooohhh, "the circumstances" are "resident" here, just like in London. Well, what can we do about this terrible situation? Build a case and arrest someone, maybe?

Hooper, who complained about cuts in funding, says it is difficult to properly screen immigrant applicants. Of the roughly 20,000 from the Pakistani-Afghanistan region, Hooper said CSIS could only vet about "one-tenth."

Oh. So, I guess the solution is that CSIS needs more money to screen immigration applications. Well, nice to have that problem solved, isn't it?

Doing the right thing

Funny what a difference an apology can make. I had liked Westjet a lot and was disappointed to realize that Air Canada was righteous in accusing them of spying. Now, finally, WestJet has admitted it and has apologized.

Great line of the day

A simple one, from AMERICAblog:

Pope asks why God let Holocaust happen.
Get a mirror.

Expertiness

First, there was truthiness, for when you feel something to be true even if the actual facts show you are wrong.
Now I think we have also identified "expertiness", for someone who feels himself to be an expert even if he doesn't actually know anything about the subject.
The Editors nails Slate writer Gregg Easterbrook for trumpeting his own "expertiness" on global warming when he is not a scientist himself nor apparently is he even capable of reporting accurately on the content of technical reports.
Expertiness personified.

Inquiring minds want to know

Forget global warming, forget energy policy, forget fighting AIDS in Africa.
The American national media certainly can't be expected to understand all this boring policy stuff.
And forget watching the Hayden confirmation hearings on Air Force One if we haven't seen the newest version of King Kong yet. The American media certainly shouldn't have to pay attention during their working day to all this boring news stuff.
And forget the failures in Iraq and the Marine war crimes and Guantanamo and ethnic cleansing of the Iraqi people. The American media certainly cannot construct a narrative out of all this stuff that keeps America looking good to itself.
So lets focus instead on the really important questions:
Did Al Gore spend a whole summer in France when he was 15 or was it just six weeks in the middle of a summer? Or was it when he was 16, really?
Doesn't Jimmy Carter deserve to be censured as the worst president ever?
Did Hillary have to adjust her hair tint to wear that lemon-yellow pantsuit?
And how often do Bill and Hillary get it on, anyway?
Howard Dean says to Chris Matthews:

I think gossip and silliness like that, in the long run, do not overcome the fact that somebody‘s got to do something about gas prices, that we‘ve sent a ton of jobs to China, that we have a budget that‘s so far out of balance that our kids are in debt—those are the issues that matter, not salacious gossip. And I don‘t care who writes it.

But what does he know anyway about the important stuff . . .

Four year terms?

Harper is now proposing fixed dates for elections.
Interesting idea, I think. Harper says:

"Fixed election dates prevent governments from calling snap elections for short-term political advantage. Fixed election dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar. They level the playing field for all parties. The rules are clear for everybody."

Yes, I can see the advantages, I think.
However, the disadvantages also occur to me, too when we look south of the border -- lame-duck, do-nothing administrations for the last 12 or more months of the four-year terms.
Perhaps being able to go to the polls earlier would resolve this -- though if going earlier is an option then I don't understand what difference is Harper actually proposing to the system we now have, where majority governments seldom go to the polls earlier than four years anyway.
So I will be looking foward to reading various opinions about this on both the progressive and conservative blogs.

"I'm sorry, the military has made a mistake"

One of the funnier scenes in Fawlty Towers is when Basil has to apologize to some guests about a ghastly error he made which was entirely his fault, and he walks toward their room saying to himself over and over "I'm sorry I made a mistake, I'm sorry I made a mistake" and then he flings open the guestroom door and says, "I'm sorry, my wife has made a mistake".
Now Stephen Harper is using it too -- "I'm sorry, the military has made a mistake!"
What a coward -- he couldn't simply apologize to Tim Goddard, saying "I'm sorry, my government's policy was wrong."
No, not Harper. It's always someone else's fault. As described in the Globe, Harper is now saying that the press could have been at Trenton after all when Nichola Goddard's body arrived:

“I had given fairly clear instructions that, when bodies were to come home, families were to be consulted, and if all families were agreed on making that particular ceremony public, that our government should have no difficulty with that. I'm not sure what happened in this case . . . I'll look into it and find out if the family's wishes were different to what was done and why that was the case and we'll correct it in the future."

Yeah, yeah, its all the military's fault -- they obviously took it upon themselves not to follow your "fairly clear" instuctions.
As the Globe article implicitly points out, his statement is a lie -- the actual military policy had been to consult the families, and it was Harper who changed this policy:

Long-standing Canadian military policy has been to consult with families to determine whether they want the media on the tarmac at CFB Trenton when coffins are removed from the planes bringing them home. The overwhelming majority have agreed.
That changed this winter after the Conservatives took office. Reporters were told they were no longer welcome and defence staff said the decision came from the government.

Harper is the guy who thinks he supports the troops -- but he doesn't hestitate to point his finger at them when it is actually his own government that was to blame for the policy.
The opposition has noticed:

“I'm actually struck by Mr. Harper's ability to manufacture facts,” Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said yesterday, shortly before the media ban was overturned. “He manufactured the consultation of the families in this case.” NDP defence critic Dawn Black also attacked the government on the contradiction. “You wonder who is telling the truth in this,” she said.

The military has likely noticed too, but they won't be able to say anything.

Great line of the day

Wolcott is back!
For a few days there, his blog wouldn't load for me -- just a blank screen -- but now I can read him again. So glad -- here's a recent one that's priceless.
In It's Only a Movie, Ingrid, Wolcott talks about the big ball of tangled wingnut string called The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Against Patriotism, Tradition, Religion and The American Way, which now apparently includess Tom Hanks and everyone else in Hollywood:

. . . Hanks' credits also include producing and directing Band of Brothers, an HBO series of unimpeachable heroism and patriotism;--hardly products of cultural subversion. Co-exec producer of Band of Brothers was Steven Spielberg, and just as his star-spangled work was heaved overboard by neocons and cultural conservatives after he offended their hawkish sensibilities with Munich, Hanks too is now being tarred as a cultural malefactor for his participation in The Da Vinci Code. Give it up, guys. You're never going to sour America on Tom Hanks; you're never, in short, going to be able to Swift Boat him.
If this is what Kurtz and his kind are like with The Da Vinci Code, I don't want to be around to hear the caterwauling that may occur should Oliver Stone's World Trade Center become a hit. It'll be like karoke night among the coyotes.

Emphasis mine.

Fort Apache, Baghdad

Americablog has a new commentator, AJ, who is a former DoD intelligence officer -- his first post is titled Iraq: Bush's plan for victory is really a plan for politics and it confirms what I had thought was happening with US troops in Iraq -- they're sounding retreat and pulling back to their super-"forts", leaving the Iraqi people to fight among themselves or starve or whatever.

Despite incessant rhetoric about the "Plan for Victory," and indefensible claims of improvement from his administration, Bush is quietly pursuing a "Plan for Politics" in Iraq by slowly but surely moving troops out of populated areas and into so-called superbases. These few huge bases, virtual mini-cities with tens of thousands of troops, are in isolated areas, meaning the troops have little ability (or responsibility) to affect daily life in Iraq.
This strategy clearly shows that the Administration has given up on true counter-insurgency tactics, which necessitate working with and among the people, and instead defaulted to focusing on preventing full-scale civil war and total governmental collapse. From the superbases, troops can deploy to stop major conflict, perform targeted strikes, and make large shows of force when necessary, but cannot regularly engage the population.
The mainstream media is not very good at explaining military strategy, and the shift to superbases was mostly covered as evidence that the U.S. isn't leaving anytime soon. While that is true, the shift is also a tacit admission from the Pentagon, if not Bush himself, that our objective has devolved from establishing a functional civil society to preventing large-scale sectarian battles in the streets. There are plenty of possible reasons for this -- the most likely, I think, being that the Pentagon realizes our nation-building efforts have failed and further needless casualties should be avoided, something the "shrill" among us have been saying for a while -- but the result will be more anarchy. Imagine, for example, if every police department in America decided they would only leave the station if there was a full-on gang war in the streets. Originally, American troops in Iraq were like the police, but now they’re more similar to our domestic National Guard units: primarily for emergency use. Nobody, however, is replacing the law enforcement mission.
This means that while civil society breaks down (crippled infrastructure, no electricity, oil production below pre-war levels, etc.), the overarching U.S. strategy is to avoid the kind of big eruptions that get media attention . . . in other words, trying to create an Iraq that American voters will ignore.
The shift may or may not be good strategy, but it would be nice if the Commander in Chief owned up to such a significant change so it could be recognized and evaluated. Assuming, of course, that he's even aware of it.

But they're not going to surrender, oh no, not at all. Sid Bluemthal updates us on where Bush is coming from these days:

Bush continues to declare as his goal . . . the victory that the U.S. military has given up on. And he continues to wave the banner of a military solution against "the enemy," although this "enemy" consists of a Sunni insurgency whose leadership must eventually be conciliated and brought into a federal Iraqi government and of which the criminal Abu Musab al-Zarqawi faction and foreign fighters are a small part.
Bush's belief in a military solution, moreover, renders moot progress on a political solution, which is the only potentially practical approach. His war on the Sunnis simply agitates the process of civil war. The entire burden of progress falls on the U.S. ambassador, whose inherent situation as representative of the occupying power inside the country limits his ability to engage in the international diplomacy that might make his efforts to bring factions together possible. Khalilzad's tentative outreach to Iran, in any case, was shut down by Washington. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for her part, finds herself in Bulgaria, instead of conducting shuttle diplomacy in Amman, Jordan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Ankara, Turkey; and Tehran. The diplomatic vacuum intensifies the power vacuum in Iraq, exciting Bush's flights of magical thinking about victory: I speak, therefore it is.
Bush doesn't know that he can't achieve victory. He doesn't know that seeking victory worsens his prospects. He doesn't know that the U.S. military has abandoned victory in the field, though it has been reporting that to him for years. But the president has no rhetoric beyond "victory."

And now I am wondering about the apparent disconnect between where the White House thinks this war is going, and where the Pentagon is actually taking it.
Does the same disconnect exist with Afghanistan? Does it put our Canadian troops at risk?

Sorry about that, chief!

The Galloping Beaver provides a post about the Bush-Blair press conference yesterday titled "Bush apology-NOT".
Very true -- it was one of those "I'm sorry you were offended...." pseudo-apologies -- in other words, the problem wasn't what I said but rather how poorly you all took it, its really the world's fault, not mine, they just don't understand straight Texas talk, blah, blah.
At times, watching the press conference, I wondered what war they were talking about -- the real one, killing thousands of innocent civilians and sending thousands more to refugee camps to escape sectarian violence, while shell-shocked soldiers flood into Baghdad ER. Or the mythical war of liberation which both Bush and Blair seem to think is going on, where metaphoric roses are being tossed at clean-limbed, resolute Tommys and Yanks as they stride manfully toward a magical hall of governance, carrying on their shoulders a purple-fingered batch of grateful Iraqi government ministers. . .
And most unreal was Bush's comment about how a reporter had "dissed" both him and Blair, apparently by asking questions in an insufficiently-deferential tone of voice.
Dave writes:

It was supposed to be a public act of penitence from two leaders who have grown wise with age and experience . . . What it was, in fact, was two long spent politicians trying to maintain an air of authority neither one can claim to possess beyond the official job description of their respective appointments. It was an attempt to provide a public mea culpa while veiling the fact that these two megalomaniacs are personally responsible for one of the worst imperial expeditionary clusterfucks since the 1838 British adventure in Afghanistan and the US war in Vietnam . . .
What Blair didn't say is that both he and Bush rejected any suggestion that the vision they had created for themselves was not realistic. They dismissed anyone who did not accede to their predetermined version of events. In the recesses of their brains, their egos led the decision-making process. Any advice that suggested an invasion of Iraq would be followed with a continuing storm of bombs and bullets was replaced by their own mystical image of Iraqis tossing flowers and candy.
These two so-called world leaders having reached the nadir of their political influence are reaching out with inane apologies for inane acts. There is no substance to it. They are still trying to hide from the truth and hide the truth.
Inasmuch as both of these individuals suggest that history will judge them, Bush will easily be remembered as one of the most incompetent leaders of his time, on the scale of Phokas. Blair will melt into obscurity; yet another British leader who, in an attempt to regain the prestige of empire, failed. . . . There was no act of contrition. It was disingenuous theater worth less than the value of the paper from which the scripted words were read.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars raises doubt about both the spontaneity and sincerity of the big apology scene. Right after the "me so sorry" moment at the press conference, Bush gave a big grin and wink to the reporters in the front row -- or maybe he was just smiling through his tears.

White equals right

Steve Gilliard highlighted this Daily Kos diary Getting on the wrong side of white privilege and I think white people in Canada should read it too.

. . . while racism between minorities is real and harmful, it's racism by white people that really counts. This is the racism that's actually enforced by the larger society-- the sentiment that can actually carry seriously negative consequences for you. But people don't see that. So allow me to provide an example.
This evening, my girlfriend and I enlisted two friends to help her move into a new place on the city's far north side [in Chicago]. The neighborhood she's moving into was historically very diverse, but has lately become something of a mecca for wealthy white gentrifiers attracted by the relatively low housing prices. My girlfriend and one of the friends involved are of Irish descent. My other friend is Mexican-American. We're moving using an old pickup truck loaned to her by her family, that happens to have a ton of Irish symbols and bumper-stickers on it.
So we've just begun to unload the truck when a white man in a luxury sedan comes into the alley. He immediately pulls up alongside my Mexican friend and I and begins accusing us of waking him up last night, making too much noise, yelling, etc... Needless to say, this isn't true. As we protest, he starts making up things about how he'd seen us, and "our" truck. Consider the racial frames in play here. Clearly the vehicle covered with pro-Irish paraphernalia couldn't belong to the pale-skinned redheads standing next to us. The people he "knew" were making noise and being "uncivilized" were the two minorities in the situation. So I'm rolling my eyes and trying to placate this idiot, but my friend is more willing to express his annoyance and says, "Sir, I don't like your tone." To which the man responds, "Ok, I'm calling the cops."
And there it is, the moment that's been played out millions of times in the history of this country. The few seconds in which a misunderstanding turns into something bigger, with potentially huge consequences for the people involved. Granted, in this case the worst that could happen was probably just annoyance for us, but think about this in a historical perspective. An Indian brave mouths off to a white soldier. A young black man makes a sarcastic comment around a white cop. A Mexican kid in a border state says something in Spanish in the wrong tone around an Anglo. It's a few seconds in which a frustrated white person stops trying to interact with individuals and lashes out against a race just because he can. How dare we, these mud people sitting in an alley, dare to question his authority? The police will know what to do with us. And, frankly, given the class and race of the accuser vs. the accused, it's likely that he would have gotten a result he liked -- a fine, poor treatment, etc. Like I said, something small, but a victory nonetheless . . . Luckily, cooler heads (meaning me) prevailed in this situation. I talked to the guy and got him to leave us alone, leaving him to roll his eyes and drive off to his oversized reserved parking space. But being able to talk the idiot down doesn't mean you don't feel that stab of anger. It doesn't mean you're automatically able to get over the fact that the man just reduced you to nothing but the few micrometers of skin cells covering your body. And after you feel that, it's hard not to react with some racial bias of your own. I for one will feel a lot less secure around the new wealthy white population of that neighborhood from now on.
I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately, so it's curious that such a crystallizing moment occurred. For South Asians (and Arabs) in this country, the reality of white privilege is something that's gone from hidden to open over the last few years. Every few months you hear about a person accused of terrorism or openly insulted because of some totally innocent cultural norm. He wears a turban, she wears a hijab, they're talking in Arabic, they're reading a "scary" book. I myself have been accused of seriously terrible things, solely as a function of purely physical or cultural things. I'm talking in a non-English language. I didn't shave b/c it's a Saturday and I don't have to. I'm reading a book about the Middle East. When someone's accusing you in a situation like that, it's hard to communicate just how much terror there is beneath it. There is virtually nothing I could do to my accuser, but in an era where American citizens are held indefinitely without charges, where having brown skin means you're not a "real American" and the Constitution doesn't apply, where people have been jailed and tortured just for looking like I do, there's a whole lot he could do to me.
Once again, the idiot in the alley today could muster a nuisance at best. But the underlying feeling-- that he holds all the cards and you hold none, simply because of who you are-- is a symptom of that larger issue. So for those who are curious, that's what white privilege feels like.

Canada's Touchy Turtle

It doesn't take very long in public life for a politician's "brand" to be established, however unfair it may be.
A few incidents and stories, and soon both reporters and the general public have created a shorthand description which gives us a quick way to frame the latest move.
Martin was a ditherer, Chretien was the little guy, Mulroney was a braggart, Joe Clark was well-meaning but clumsy, Trudeau was clever but mean, and so on back.
Harper is rapidly getting branded as a petulant paranoid -- Canada's Touchy Turtle.
Our story so far: on Tuesday, some press gallery reporters apparently exited a Harper news conference because he wasn't going to answer any of their questions.
Now Harper has had a further "L'Etat-C'est-Moi" Moment and decided that he just won't talk to national reporters anymore; instead he will talk to what the CP reporter writing the story described as "less hostile local media".
Does Harper really think that the people who work for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and CKOM Radio are just a bunch of ignorant rubes who couldn't possibly come up with any difficult or embarassing questions for the Prime Minister like "Do you have any idea what you are doing?"
The Toronto Star says that Harper's relationship with the media "began deteriorating just weeks after the prime minister took office" and now it is "so poor that his spokespeople have asked registered lobbyists to act as intermediaries in dealing with reporters."
This is pretty strange, isn't it?