Dana Blankenhorn

My Burma Sorrow

I am sorry about the Burma hurricane. I am sad that its leaders are so paranoid as to refuse aid from the world. I am saddened that so little aid is getting into the affected region and that people are dieing needlessly.

But still...

When I read complaints from our government about the failure to allow aid it's like someone rubbing a balloon before popping it and laughing in my face.

Is it that way to you?

This morning on TV Cindy McCain was complaining bitterly of the Burmese peoples' plight. I have no doubt she felt sincere. But I kept switching back to that picture of her husband, the day Katrina hit New Orleans, standing with our leader, and a birthday cake.

Crocodile tears.

When I see Secretary of State Rice demanding that Burma allow aid in, all I can think of is what she was doing when Katrina hit New Orleans. Shopping for shoes.

When I read about U.S. diplomats bemoaning the destruction of Burmese rice fields, I think about how all they cared about after Katrina was getting the casinos back into operation, and how we're now benefiting from higher rice prices.

The Wright Reality

No matter how we feel about "phony" controversies they usually have an important point behind them.

They define the limits of acceptable speech.

Take the Jeremiah Wright mess, which Bill Moyers is still agonizing over. Why is Wright condemned for statements like "God Damn America" while preachers like John Hagee, who (along with Falwell and Robertson) said the exact same things (only with different reasons) go merrily on. Isn't that a double standard?

Well, yes and no.

It's a double standard in that one man's speech is seen as out of bounds and another man's speech is seen as within bounds. True. But the whole purpose of the exercise was to define the bounds of acceptable political speech. It was to make Wright, and everything he says, out of bounds while enabling extremists on the other side free rein. (Actually, free reign.)

In this, as in other phony controversies over the years, the Right has been masterful. Through this process of phony controversy the acceptable discourse within our society has been pushed ever-more to the right, so it's becoming impossible to even publicly utter obvious truths. I'd say that's an important result.

For instance, the following sentence is, politically, completely out of bounds within the American political discourse:

Don't Get Killed in the Semi-Finals

I was told this a lot in 1968, by conservatives I considered knowledgeable friends.

It summed up their attitude toward Vietnam at the time, and their feeling the Vietcong would be reluctant to risk death. (They were wrong, of course.) The real fight wasn't with us, but between them, they assumed. So don't get killed in the semi-finals.

The good news from Iraq is we seem to be past the semi-finals. The current Battle of Basra is really the Bush Administration's last stand.

If Nouri al-Maliki should win, we will have chosen Iraq's new Saddam. He'll be a Shiite Saddam, he'll be a Saddam allied with Iran, but we'll have put him there. The point is this may be "victory" enough for our troops to get the heckoutofthere.

Unfortunately, right now he doesn't look like a winner. He's already had to call on Uncle Sam to hold Baghdad and we're hearing the same-old same-old about bad planning further south.

Final Warning

After the shiny, happy people feeling you got from reading my last post, now I'm going to bring you down.

Over at Juan Cole's shop, former University of Chicago professor William Polk reads the tea leaves and pronounces the War With Iran to be at go time.

To last week's US News warning he adds the personal recollection that Dick Cheney also made a trip to Saudi Arabia in March 2002 -- ostensibly diplomatic but (we now know) his warning, and assurance, that Saddam Hussein was a dead man.

The article contains the tantalizing possibility that Israel's recent attack on Syria was just a test of its radar and anti-missile defenses, but Polk then adds news that there has been an unprecedented build-up of U.S. Navy assets in the Persian Gulf:

Of course, deploying forces along Iran’s frontier does not necessarily mean using them. At least that is what the Administration says. However, as a historian and former participant in government, I believe that having troops and weapons on the spot makes their use more likely than not.

Instead such forces create a "climate of war" like the one which set off The Guns of August and World War I, a climate which both Bush the Wiser and Bush the Dumber have given in to before. He adds that the rationale for war is contained in the 2005 National Defense Strategy, which asserted America's right to engage in first-strike warfare anytime, and anywhere, it chose.

What can halt the march to war? Just one thing.

People and their Government

My friend Tariq Mustafa wrote from Karachi this morning.

He was complaining about a New York Times editorial shedding crocodile tears over President Pervez Musharraf's open threats against a journalist.

Tariq's point was that the Times said nothing when Musharraf fired the nation's judges and attacked civil society last year. Instead, the Times (like the U.S. government) seemed more concerned with whether Pakistan would remain an ally in our own "War on Terror" than whether its society was allowed to function.

Today the ZDNet blog Threat Chaos is filled with similar condescension toward Pakistan. First, President Musharraf demanded that access to YouTube be shut, accusing it of blasphemy. Then, a local ISP trying to deal with the order cut itself off entirely from the Internet, taking the whole country with it.

Richard Steinnon concluded, with enormous condescension:

I could say: “be careful what you wish for” to those elements that object to free and open access to information and expression of ideas. But to put it in terms they might understand better: Do not anger the Internet gods or  you will suffer their wrath!

He's right, but....

Have You Heard The Good News About Pakistan?

Pakistan has recently taken on the role Americans once reserved for Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Iran, and (before that) the Soviet Union.

It's the unknowable, foreign, other, dangerous in the extreme. It frightens the children. It's meant to.

We're told, for instance, that Pakistan harbors Al Qaeda, its government is unstable and autocratic. It's the world's most dangerous place.

Maybe. But when you see Pakistan through Pakistani eyes, as it is my privilege to do, it's not so black-and-white.

My friend Tariq Mustafa IM'ed me from Karachi this morning with some of the good news:

• Every corporation in the Karachi area filed their tax returns electronically for 2007. I'll bet you money that's not true in Georgia. Many companies here haven't even started in on their returns.
• A job board launched by two Pakistani emigrants to Stanford now powers some of the biggest blogs in the valley. Silicon Valley, that is.
• oDesk is illustrating their outsourcing capabilities by showing off opportunities in Pakistan.

The Reckoning

We are past the time of the Good German.  We're even past asking who might be a Bad German.

The Reckoning has begun.

We forget how The Reckoning can begin before the war ends. In Germany The Reckoning began long before the Soviets entered Berlin. It was in full swing at the time of the 1944 plot against Hitler (a plot in which I recently learned a distant relative (right) participated).

So it has begun here, with George W. Bush still in office. The great hope of the Administration, the fact that will keep W's butt out of jail, is to show Democrats' complicity.

Democrats were complicit. Democrats on the Intelligence Committees, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were apparently briefed on torture and stood silent. The CIA's insistence it acted within the law, that it it was only following orders, Mein Herr, is more evidence that the search for conspirators is well under way.

Essentially our Congressional leaders are being blackmailed, in the full light of day, by the regime's leaders. Protect us and you won't be hurt, they say. And these leaders are knuckling under.

In 2006 the cry was for more Democrats. Today the cry must go out for better Democrats. Despite the risk which our major media (which is also fully complicit in torture, in war crimes, and in the theft of this nation's Constitution) will claim exists, Democrats need to wage war on their fellow Democrats, right now. Netroots Democrats must demand that those Democrats whowere complicit in these crimes be held to account, in order that those Republicans who engaged in criminal conduct be held to account.

What is at stake is our own complicity in these crimes. Your complicity. My complicity.

Belief in Evil

The nightmare I've been dealing with concerning our son reaches another climax tomorrow with an appearance at juvenile court.

After three months of this I have a pretty clear idea what happened. We're hoping for the best.

But regardless, what seems very clear is that the teacher who claims my son assaulted her believes firmly in good and evil. Especially evil.

Evil can be a noun, a verb, or a modifier. As a verb it refers to action everyone knows is wrong. As a noun it refers to the person behind that action, and may also be used to damn their character, to consign them to the netherworld of death or prison. As a modifier it's a political football as in the term evil-doer.

How many more innocents have died in Iraq these last 5 years, at our hands, wittingly or unwittingly, compared to the number who died on 9-11? Yet our leaders refer to those who planned 9-11 as evil-doers, and to our own good men and women as liberators.

It's nonsense. War is evil, no matter who does it, no matter their cause. It is all hell. It is violence, it is destruction.  It's a central lesson told by everyone who has come back from any war. The only way to justify such evil is to see the other side as more evil, so that the war becomes self-defense.

I shouldn't criticize. That's our defense as well.

It's Gonna Get Dark, It's Gonna Get Cold

The title is from Billy Joel's It's All About Soul, and while it has been dark and cold since Billy stopped cranking out the hits, that's not what we're talking about. (Achtung, baby)

The subject is next year, the real crisis of our time, the true gotterdammerung for the conservative movement, the year when the dam breaks and it all goes to hell.

Liberals of a certain age (like Newsweek's Jon Meachum) well recall their own gotterdammerung. Martin died. Bobby died. Chicago. Nixon. Body bags piling up at the airport, bad trips all around.

All this is coming for the Right now. You better start swimming or you will sink like a stone.

This mess in Pakistan is just the appetizer. Afghanistan is likely to be lost, just as Iraq was. Putey-poot won't let you bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran. The crisis of global climate change will become more than obvious. There will be no immunity, no statute of limitations.

And that's not the worst of it.

What George W. Bush Has Done

George W. Bush has made me ashamed to be an American, and caused me to become enraged against millions of my fellow citizens.

This is not unusual for a crisis President. When a political thesis, a set of myths and values meant to inform power, becomes obsolete, the government is bound to ignore the reality of its time. It goes on auto-pilot, and does grave damage.

This last happened 40 years ago under Lyndon B. Johnson. World War II vets and their wives came to hate LBJ. They also became enraged against their own children, and the elites which coddled or enabled them. The kids in turn became enraged at the parents. They have lived in shame and reaction ever since.

It also happened at the bottom of the Great Depression, with people hating Hoover and the forces he represented. It happened in the 1890s, with people hating Cleveland and the Money Power he supported. It happened in the 1850s, with people hating Buchanan and the South.

Note, too, that the hate was returned in kind, in all these cases. It's hard to remember now the passion with which rich people hated Franklin D. Roosevelt, the class traitor. Or William McKinley. The hate against Lincoln we know, for history won't forget the Civil War or his assassination.

The point is it happens, it always happens. A crisis breeds hate.

So I hate Bush and all his works. I'm ashamed that my country destroyed the Fertile Crescent, the Cradle of Civilization, and I'll feel like strangling the next joker who tells me how evil Saddam Hussein was. Same with the one who claims I "hate the troops." I love the troops, it's their commanders I hate. They should suffer, all of them, eternal damnation for what they have done.

A Daughter's Paper Finds an Inconvenient Truth

My daughter, who is now in college, has a paper due at the end of the month. (She's shy.)

The subject is foreign policy, specifically whether we should treat Iran and North Korea as we have Iraq.

In the course of her research she came up with quotes from three important Presidents -- James Monroe, Woodrow Wilson, and Ronald Reagan. Each was highly idealistic, each spoke of America's role in the world as being different from other nations. She was trying to match these quotes to the present situation, so I sat her down to tell her the inconvenient truth.

All these statements turned out to be lies. They were cover. The Monroe Doctrine. The 14 Points. The Reagan Doctrine. Even if the speakers were completely clean of heart, even if they meant every word, each of these statements unleashed great horrors upon the world, because those who followed and interpreted the words were not so pure:

1. Under the Monroe Doctrine, which warned Europe off the Western Hemisphere, we took half of Mexico in war, Southerners invaded Nicaragua, we made Puerto Rico part of our country, and we created Panama. You keep your hands off, because we're going to rape and pillage at will. That's the lesson Latin America got from the Monroe Doctrine. It's the lesson kids there are taught. It's why we're distrusted there now, and will always be distrusted.
2. Under the 14 Points, which sought to organize the world for freedom, we fought the Cold War, not just in Korea, but in Iran, in Guatamala, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Chile, in 10,000 places all around the world. The 'us vs. them' framing, the idea that the world should judge us by our intentions rather than our acts, has blinded us to evil done in our own name ever since. It still does.
3. The Reagan Doctrine, which was similar in intent to the 14 Points, is behind our current policy. We claim the right to do anything, to anyone, to corrupt all institutions, to torture and spy on our own citizens, to destroy any government, all in the name of what we call "freedom." And the world sings with the late Janis Joplin that it's "just another word for nothing left to lose." You can see the Reagan Doctrine in the Gulf War, fought to benefit kings, in the Iraq War, fought to secure oil, and in current Pakistani events. No one else gets anything unless we deign to allow it.

Thinking of Tariq and America

Current events in Pakistan have me thinking of Tariq Mustafa, a friend of this blog in Karachi, Pakistan.

Tariq has been visiting me, at my various blog homes, for nearly a decade now. He is not political. He is a businessperson, a technologist, an expert on Internet and wireless technologies.

He is also an optimist. When I have expressed concern to him about events in Pakistan, he has always said, in effect, stop worrying. Things are never as bad as they seem, he has said.

The most recent posts on his blog include a piece on Urdu support for a WYSIWYG editor, a piece on local tech reporting, and a piece on annoying spam phone calls, which tie up business phone traffic. No matter what government is in power, no matter what their beliefs, it is people like Tariq Mustafa who will be essential to its success. Without creative technologists and businesspeople, a society gets left behind.

The center of the current Pakistani crisis is the capital of Islamabad, which is hundreds of miles away from Karachi. But there have been upheavals in Karachi, too. The very idea of civil society seems to be under attack, and the people are being pulled in two directions, toward either a military dictatorship allied with the U.S., or an Islamic dictatorship which is opposed to the West.

Neither choice offers Pakistan much hope. A military dictatorship would have no economy, and would be an American client. An Islamic dictatorship would also have no economy, and would have to engage in nuclear blackmail and brinkmanship to survive. In neither case would the Pakistani people, or economy, exist.

Putin's Nobel

The man, sad to say, is right. What is happening now is a bit like the Cuban Missile Crisis, only seen through a fun house mirror.

But the point of crisis isn't Poland. This really has nothing to do with the planned missile shield.

This is about Iran.

For months George W. Bush has been raising the temperature on Iran, calling it terrorist, calling it a tyranny, slapping on sanctions, bullying Democrats into going along, generally threatening it. Adding funding for special "bunker busting" bombs for Stealth fighters to the budget was a signal, to the world, that the U.S. is serious, and feels it has the right to "take out" the military capabilities of those crazy Iranians.

But who's crazy?

The Road Team

One of the unique characteristics of American history is its multi-generation problems. That is, the solution to one problem turns out, generations later, to be the genesis of another, more intractable problem.

The first example of this is in the Constitution itself. Slavery. The Constitution was a festival of compromise, and the compromises made to accommodate slavery, like the "three-fifths" rule, eventually birthed Civil War. Southerners felt that an endorsement of slavery was literally written into the document, never mind that flowery Bill of Rights, and in fact it was. After the war three specific Constitutional Amendments were required to stamp it out.

The Civil War is the last time war has come to the United States, save for specific acts which precipitated war -- Pearl Harbor and 9-11. Since 1865 the U.S. military has been a road team.  The Spanish-American War gave us a taste for imperialism, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, which we have yet to lose. World War I was a horror, and in fact we seemed to learn the key lesson there that war is to be avoided, not embraced, especially foreign wars.

World War II, and the events leading up to it, overthrew this assumption utterly, much as the Civil War overthrew the assumption about slavery. Munich (above), and Pearl Harbor, turned around our attitude about foreign war, especially among Republicans, who had until then been such fervent isolationists.

And this era now comes back to haunt us, the way slavery came back to haunt the Civil War generation. Our task is equal and opposite to that generation's task. While they required a war to eliminate injustice, we now require an end to war for justice to stand a chance.

 

Our Better Angels

My rage from yesterday, and some of the response to it, brings up the question of how we get past dehumanization, about how we rehumanize one another. (Jodie Foster seeks the Oscar in The Brave One opening this week.)

It's easy to dehumanize. The terrorists responsible for 9-11 were animals, were evil, must be destroyed. The people who sent them, the same. The people who supported them, the same. The countries which harbor them, the same. The countries which support them, the same. All who speak up for them, the same. All who would humanize them, the same.

Hatred is a process that spreads in ever-widening circles, until you want whole populations dead, until you become the very thing you thought you were fighting against, all your enemy says you are.

People Are Smart

I want to return briefly to the paranoia, rage, and feelings of impotence throughout Left Blogistan this summer.

This is especially acute when it comes to their coverage of  the media. Liberal bloggers seem to feel that TV and newspaper pundits are succeeding in pulling the wool over Americans' eyes, especially regarding Iraq, and that Democratic Presidential candidates are falling for this nonsense, meaning we're in for 10 more years of war. They're even censoring the Internet.

The problem is, evidence continues to mount on these same blogs that the American people are having none of it. Anger at George W. Bush has spread to Republicans generally. Right Blogistan is stagnating.

But Air America is broke and Keith Olbermann is still the only liberal on the Teevee, the bloggers sniff. Right, and your side has won how many elections out of the last 4? (That's right, one.) Add the top-down demand for Republican obedience to the natural conservatism of the TV business and what you see happening is that the media is now suffering right along with the Republicans. Sure, these media giants can't make major moves until the Rethugs are gone from Washington, but I guarantee they will then, and not just because Democrats will have the power to make life very uncomfortable for those who don't make a switch in time.

What I think liberal bloggers should be doing, instead of whinging or playing the victim, is to attack. The time has come to demand accountability for all the crimes of this era. The market manipulation. The unsafe products and services. The corruption. Most of all, the mass murder.

I have written before there is no immunity for war crimes. To that I wish to add this corollary.

The 1859 Game: Who's Stephen A. Douglas Now?

I would really like to have pity for Sen. John McCain.

As an historian I really would. He has lost his chance at the Presidency. His top campaign aides have quit, or they were fired, or he just ran out of money to pay them. He has followed the Nixon Thesis of Conflict to his political end, just as Stephen A. Douglas (right) followed the Jackson Thesis of Regional Balance to his political end in 1859.

As you can tell from the last sentence, I am too tired, sick, and angry to play today. Because I can't have any pity for John McCain, despite the Greek Tragedy of his political career, even despite his terrible ordeal at the hands of the North Vietnamese.

Because there he was today, on the floor of the Senate, blaming "The Left" for the Cambodian genocide, when it was the Nixon invasion of 1970 which precipitated that genocide. There he was on the floor of the Senate today, trotting out the Domino Theory of the Vietnam era and again demanding fealty to the Cold War Doctrine where it has no place.

While people were dieing for his words. While brave Americans died for his lies.

Getting Away With It

George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin have a natural affinity.

Both figure they can get away with murder.

In Putin's case this is literally true. The Trotsky-style executions of Putin's political foes are (for now) cheered by the Soviet (excuse me, Russian) people, because the economy is coming back on a sea of oil. The Soviet Commissars lacked a viable business model, but Putin's has been tried-out in Saudi Arabia so no worries, Tovarisch.

Bush, too, believes he has gotten away with it. The "commutation" of Scooter Libby's sentence puts an end to the four-year Valarie Plame investigation. Dick Cheney's giant "f-u" to the Congress is also going forward -- it's considered too late to impeach him. Even the planned War On Iran seems to be going forward, right on schedule.

But are they getting away with it? I don't think so.

Popular attitudes are hardening, not just against Bush and Cheney specifically but against Republicans generally. Richard Nixon went down, and Republicans went down hard in 1974 and 1976. But their philosophy was not discredited. Their ideas came back.

That's not true today. Democrats will be able to dine-out on the Bush-Cheney legacy for even longer than Republicans dined-out on Jimmy Carter and George McGovern. We're talking Hooverville here, folks -- and that's assuming the economy stays upright another year-and-a-half.

I got a taste of this simmering resentment yesterday.

The Revolution Incline

I enjoy John Robb's Global Guerillas blog but there's one question he never asks, let alone answers:

How many people must violently dissent before a society becomes ungovernable?

I have long thought about a related question, how many people must dissent from a law before it becomes unenforceable. If 1% of us use hard drugs, we may still find a law can be enforced, albeit with considerable brutality and collateral damage. If 10% of us smoke pot, the law can only be enforced at the margins, yet we may still consider it enforced. If 30% of us are inclined to speed down the highway, the law can't really be enforced at all.

So how many people must be in violent dissent against the system for the system to become ungovernable?

I bring up this point, in part, because of press reports that Spain's Prime Minister is in trouble because the Basque separatist movement ETA has ended its ceasefire. Yet a Russian news service reports (with some pride) that ETA has "at least 100" heavily armed gunmen, and the infrastructure (money, popular support) to maintain them in the field.

Can 100 armed men really bring down a country the size of Spain? And if they can, what does that say about the viability of civilization as a whole?

Of course there are many other examples of armed groups either threatening stability, destroying stability, or destroying whole civilizations. Obviously the more armed men you have, and the more political support your cause has within the society, the greater your potential power for taking everyone into the Stone Age. And if it can happen to the Cradle of Civilization it can happen to anyone.

So let's puzzle this thing out.

Athens and Sparta

America has always been a mix of Athens and Sparta.

From the time of our founding, our leaders have been aware of these ancient city-states as representing the contending states of our nature. It's unfair to the reality of those places, yet it came down through history that Athens would represent civilized discourse and Sparta the arts of war.

Many of our greatest words have been penned, as Athenians, reluctantly drawn to the Sparta of war:

• When in the course of human events...
• Four score and seven years ago...
• Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy...

As time has gone by, and the benefits of war have made themselves manifest among us, our paranoia has increased. We have become far less-reluctant to go to war.

We have, in fact, been in a state of almost continuous war for 66 years now -- three score and six, if you're counting at home. World War II was followed almost immediately by the Cold War, and as soon as that conflict ended Dick Cheney and his Merry Men began planning the next chapter, the one which began on September 11, 2001.

America today has the greatest military in the world. Not only can we kick ass against any other nation, we can kick ass against any combination of nations. We sit astride the world like a colossus.

But there is one thing we cannot do, something no power can do. We cannot occupy another nation against its will, save through genocide. The weapons of resistance have gotten too cheap, and too good.