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MCCAIN's MIGRAINEIs His VP Choice a "Natural," Or An Eagleton/Quayle Combo?James S. Henry and Matthew Maly

By law the US is required to have a Vice President. Do we really want it to be this one?  

Many serious countries with Presidential systems -- like Finland, Germany, France, Ireland,  and South Korea -- have long since dispensed with the role of Vice President completely.

In the wake of the uproar -- indeed, shock and awe -- provoked by John McCain's  surprising selection of 44-year old Gov. Sara Palin of Wasilla, Alaska, on top of all the hoopla over Barack Obama's dissing of Hillary Clinton and our collective nightmare with "Darth" Cheney, some pundits have  suggested that it may be time for the US to follow the Finnish model and have no US Vice President at all.

With each day's new revelations about Gov. Palin's complex personal life and rather extreme views, some pundits have also suggested that she may quickly go the way of former Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton, who lasted just two weeks as George McGovern's VP pick in 1972 -- or perhaps worse yet for the Republicans, a reprise of the legendary Indiana lightweight, Dan Quayle.

They are wrong.

Ms. Palin's nomination is a perfect demonstration of the incredible entertainment value that only the VP role can provide.

At a time when our economy is in serious trouble, state and federal budget deficits are out of control,  energy costs are unaffordable, the US Constitution is under attack, tax evasion is at a record level, we're still tied down in two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tensions are mounting with Russia, social inequality is soaring, environmental calamities abound, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are about to fail, our education system is broken, the drug wars continue unabated, and millions of Americans lack jobs, decent housing and health care,  filling the VP slot with this more-or-less unknown quantity adds a nice soupçon of uncertainty to the entire situation.

It permits the whole nation to "double down" at once,  experiencing a kind of risk-taking that none of us would ever be able to achieve on our own.

This is precisely the kind of entertainment that government, at its best, is supposed to offer.

Indeed, Sara's selection is bound to make our peculiar "imperial electocracy"  the envy of the world -- once again!  

I. FINALLY A BABE!

Ms. Palin may not yet be a household name, but upon closer examination, her qualifications for the Vice Presidency --  just one bad biopsy away from the world's most powerful office -- are overwhelming.

First and foremost, just take a look -- this woman is a looker, a true MILF!

Carla Bruni, where is thy sting?  Angela Merkel, bite your knuckles!  

To paraphrase Joe Biden, Ms. Palin is an "articulate, bright, clean, good-looking" white woman.

And young! Why she was only 4 years old when 72-year old John McCain was bombing peasants from 30,000 feet, and 9 years old when he was released from the POW camp in 1973.

Indeed, Sara was first runner-up in the 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant, after being voted Wasilla Alaska's "Miss Congeniality."

True, back then,  Wasilla only had about 5000 residents. But so long as you were not a moose or an environmentalist,  Wasillans were the most congenial people on the planet. And Ms. Sara was the most "congenial" of them all.

Anyone who has ever attended public high school knows what that means - religion or no.

We think we can all trust "Bomber" McCain's judgment on this one.  John may have only met his VP choice two or three times,  but he is an expert on beauty queens.

His first wife Carol was a model  and  his second wife Cindy was Junior Rodeo Queen of Arizona in 1968. 

(Just in -- McCain has also  reportedly expressed interest in naming Sherri McNealley, the real winner of the 1984 Miss Alaska contest, as his future Secretary of State, but so far she's still MIA.

He's also expressed interest in appointing Wasilla's current mayor, Dianne M. Keller, to be his Attorney General, once she completes her law degree.)

In any case, unfortunately, this VP choice will probably not swing Hillary's disaffected female supporters to the McCain camp. Most of them are die-hard feminists who have serious issues with Palin's political views -- for example,  her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape or incest, and her unsympathetic description of Hillary Clinton as a "whiner."   (Where on earth would she get such an idea?)   

From a strictly male hormonal perspective, however, this may be the best VP selection in history -- precisely the kind of candidate we need to arouse our interest and get us up off the couch. After years of enduring so many talented but extraordinarily plain women in national politics (viz Senators Clinton, Hutchinson,  Mikulski, Boxer, and Feinstein, for example), -  finally the US Senate will be presided over by someone who still leaves something to the imagination.

II. SHE'S HYPER-PRODUCTIVE!

Sara Palin is a doer, not a talker.  Not only is she the Governor of Alaska, but she is a "hockey mom" with five children by birth (but no adopted ones, unlike the 72-year old McCain). These include an unmarried pregnant 17-year old, a son on the way to Iraq, and a 5-month old infant with Downs Syndrome. She hunts and fishes. She runs 5-10 miles a day.  She's under investigation by Alaska's State Ethics Commission for "using her public office to settle a private score." (Who could resist doing that?) 

When Sara was pregnant with her fifth child, her water broke while she was attending a Republican Governors' conference in Dallas, and she flew all the way back to a Wasilla Alaska hospital to have the child delivered at home.

That's precisely the kind of crazy, life-threatening behavior that we need much more of in the highest echelons of the US Government! Shock-Treatment Tom (Eagleton), we hardly knew ye!!!

Adding the burden of the US Vice Presidency to this full plate will no doubt give us a shining example of just how to precisely strike that delicate balance between family life, work life, and blind ambition -- as well as the many benefits of the "Just Say No" approach to birth control!

(c) Submerging Markets, 2008 

 

Saddam's Demise - Do You Really Feel Safer?"James S. Henry

(Note: the following essay first appeared on SubmergingMarkets on December 13, 2003.)

Printable PDF Version Cynics say it was always just a matter of time. Indeed, the real story is not about Saddam Hussein’s capture, but about how he managed to survive so long, given all the forces that were arrayed against him.

There is also the dismal possibility that, despite his capture, the Iraqi resistance will continue to escalate its attacks, especially on other Iraqis. (Indeed, at least in the first few days after Saddam's arrest, this is precisely what has happened. The arrest has, however, resulted in some short-term gains against the resistance. We can only hope that these prove to be longer-lasting than the impacts of the deaths of Saddam's sons last summer.)

Furthermore, the tactics that were applied to "get him" may be largely inapplicable to "real terrorists" like Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who have already targeted thousands of US civilians, yet remain free. From their standpoint, on the one hand, they never got very much (or perhaps any -- the evidence is very sketchy) support from Saddam, and as President Bush has admitted, there is no evidence that he was involved in 9/11. On the other hand, they are probably delighted to see the US tied down in this costly military venture in Iraq, rather than focusing on them. (The recent upgrade of the US terror alert status to "high" (orange) is not inconsistent with this interpretation. We hope that we are proved wrong.)

Finally, of course, the direct costs of this "arrest" have indeed been astronomical. As of this week, this most recent US-backed effort to invade Iraq and eliminate Saddam has, according to most recent estimates, cost the lives of more than 543 Coalition troops, 8-10,000 Iraqi civilians, another 8-10,000 Iraqi combatants during the first month of battle, and at least that number of combatant lives since then. The number of Coalition wounded is now at least 3100, while the number of Iraqi wounded may be conservatively estimated at 50,000 (about 2 times the minimum number of fatalities).

In addition, it now looks as if former Bush economic advisor Larry Lindsey was absolutely right: the cost of the Second Iraq War and the reconstruction to follow will easily reach $166-$200 billion by the end of 2004. By comparison, the USG's entire foreign aid budget in 2004 for all other countries is less than $20 billion.

Compared with all these costs, it is now clear that the best way to have avoided Saddam's menace would have been to have not assisted his rise to power in the first place in the 1960s and 1970s, or at least to have not armed him to the teeth in the 1980s, or at least to have not prevented UN coalition forces from removing him in 1991, after the Gulf War.

In short, while it would be perverse not to celebrate Saddam's capture, this development is surely no panacea, and the "opportunity costs" of abetting Saddam's rise and fall appear to have been very high. Let's hope that the US at least learns something from this very expensive tutorial about the long-run costs of coddling dictatorships.

***

REMEMBERING THE GENERALPart I: OverviewJames S. Henry

---

I was born a Chilean,  I am a Chilean,
I will die a Chilean.
They, the fascists, were born traitors,
live as traitors, and will be remembered forever as fascist traitors.

-- Orlando Letelier, 1932-76

---

Both Chile's General Augusto Pinochet and Saddam Hussein, two formerly US-backed dictators, have at last had to confront Higher Authorities that they were unable to intimidate, compromise, or evade.

However, unlike Saddam, who was hanged in the middle of a night on December 30, 2006, by a nervous Iraqi Government tribunal,  Pinochet managed to escape human justice for his crimes, and died of natural causes at the age of 91. 

How does the General deserve to be remembered? Did he not richly deserve the same fate as Saddam? And how did he manage to avoid it? 

Was he simply a ruthless, corrupt right-wing tyrant, the puppet of foreign interests and their handmaidens, like ITT,  Nixon, Kissinger, the CIA, George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, and Reagan?   

Or was he, as many of his defenders still maintain,  an essential bulwark against the Leftist Horde in Latin America?

If perhaps not exactly the world's staunchest defender of political liberalism, was he at least -- as Thatcher, some neoliberal  economists, The Wall Street Journal, and even supposedly "liberal" newspapers like The Washington Post now maintain --  a staunch defender of  "free markets" who deserves much of the credit for Chile's economic performance since the 1970s?

As we'll see,  most conventional portraits of General Pinochet are flat-out wrong, not only with respect to his alleged role in combating Soviet expansionism, but also with respect to his regime's alleged beneficial influence on Chile's economy.

First,  Pinochet was at best only a non-essential bit player in the anti-Soviet struggle. Allende's broad-based social democratic "revolution" was never taken seriously by Moscow or Havana. Nor was it strong enough to mount a Cuban-style revolution, or even to precipitate a civil war. Left to its own devices, Allende's "leftish" alliance would probably have burned itself out by the next election or plebiscite in 1974.

Furthermore, even if Chile's leftists had somehow managed to create a "Soviet Republic of Patagonia," tiny Chile was already completely surrounded by other countries that had much greater strategic importance to the West.

By 1973, they either already had their own right-wing dictatorships (Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia), or were well on the way (Argentina and Uruguay).

In short,  killing off Chile's long-standing democracy was gratuitous -- the political equivalent of exaggeratinging Iraq's "slam dunk" WMD threat.

All the repression was for nothing.

On the economic front, Pinochet's interregnum was also a costly, needless detour. 

Indeed, one key reason why Chile's so-called "economic miracle" has proved to be so successful in the long run -- with great help from human capital finally brought back home by many well-educated returning "Leftists" who were  driven out of country in 1973-90 -- was precisely because Pinochet's first decade of experiments with "Los Chicago economics" proved to be so disastrous. Giving Pinochet credit for the subsequent corrective reforms is like crediting Leonid Brezhnev with last decade's revival of economic growth in Eastern Europe.

(For more details, see Parts II and III...)

 

   

ISRAEL'S STRATEGIC BLUNDERS, ROUND TWOLessons (Re)-Learned?James S. Henry

LESSONS (RE)-LEARNED?

In hindsight, Israel and the US  should have just re-learned some very costly lessons about the risks of taking on a highly-motivated, well-trained and adequately-armed guerilla army on its own turf. They also have an opportunity to remember some important lessons about the limitations of purely-military solutions to such conflicts.    

> As in the case of  the US strategic bombing campaign in Vietnam, Nato's air war in Kosovo (1999), and, indeed, the Allied air war against the Nazis during World War II, Israel's month-long air war against Hezbollah has largely failed to accomplish its strategic objectives. In particular, Hezbollah's ability launch dozens of missiles into northern Israel went utterly unscathed, with the largest single number of missles launched on August 12, the day before the ceasefire.

>Given the elaborate ground defenses, arsenal, and trained force that Hezbollah was able to pre-position in South Lebanon, its ground forces also avoided the knock-out blow that Israel and Washington had hoped for.

>By far the most effective "weapons" on the ground were not Iranian-supplied long-range missiles, cruise missles, or even Katushyas, but a combination of hard-core tactical training, heavy investments in combat engineering, and anti-tank missiles, many of which appear to have been supplied by Russia, by way of Iran and Syria.

>At the same time, the widespread bombing campaign exacted a horrific price from Lebanon's civilian population, uniting most political factions within Lebanon against Israel rather than against Hezbollah, at least temporarily.

>It has also greatly boosted political support for Hezbollah on the "Arab street" throughout the Middle East, converting the initial anti-Hezbollah reactions by the Saudis, Egypt, and other conservative regimes into official expressions of support.

>Syria, which had been under strong political pressure to continue its detachment from Lebanon, has been "reaccredited" by Israel's excesses during the conflict -- able to assume the self-righteous role of Lebanon's protector against foreign aggression. On the other hand, the Baathist regime may also now be in a stronger negotiating position with respect to the West.

>Iran's hardcore anti-reformers have so far only been strengthened by Hezbollah's performance to date in this conflict, and by Israel's costly tactics. Nor were they discouraged from pursuing their nuclear development program.

>Most important, Hezbollah's ability to define victory as "not losing" against one of the world's most powerful armies has certainly not encouraged other radical groups around the planet to lay down their arms and pursue peaceful alternatives.

>For every Hezbollah fighter that was killed by the Israelis in the last month, the heavy bombing campaign probably generated several new recruits -- not only in Lebanon, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir, and the West Bank.

• In short, as a result of this strategic setback, Condi Rice's Panglossian "birth pangs of democracy" are likely to prove more prolonged and painful than ever.   

WAS THERE ANY ALTERNATIVE?

• At a tactical level, clearly Israel and the US both need to do much work to do regarding the failures of their intelligence operations with respect to Hezbollah's arsenal and military preparations. We can add this to the lengthy list of their  other intelligence failures in the last decade alone.
  

• The preference for high-altitude offensive bombing,  naval shelling, and open-field tank/ heavy vehicle warfare over hard-slog ground offensives also needs to be reexamined. To the extent that this reflects a preference for arms-length "hi-tech warfare," and a reluctance to sacrifice infantry for the sake of defeating dedicated militants like Hezbollah, this may indeed rise to the level of the same "morale/ will to die"  handicap that has crippled other many colonial armies,  in places like Vietnam, Algeria, China, and (long ago) the US itself.      

• At a strategic level, the notion that the "enemy" simply consists of a finite stock of "fanatical terrorists," motivated primarily by "Islamo-fascist" dogma, or -- as Benjamin Netanyahu put it last week -- "12th century religious doctrines," is simple-minded and unhelpful. Unless military planners come to appreciate the political implications of what they do, they may lose the war off the battlefield.

• True, it is now very late in the day, and the long-term failure of Israel and its enemies in the region to make any progress at the bargaining table may indeed mean that this overall story is headed for a terrible climax.

• From this angle, however, perhaps the one good thing about this strategic disaster is that it may remind Israel and the US that, whatever the final outcome of any attempt to solve the problems of the Middle East by military means,  it will not be cheap, easy, or devoid of surprises.

• (c) JSH, SubmergingMarkets, 2006     

ISRAEL'S STRATEGIC BLUNDERSSnatching Disaster From the Jaws of Victory?James S. Henry

"Retaliation is not the point in this case. This 3000-man raid with tanks and planes was out of all proportion to the provocation and was aimed at the wrong target." 

-- Walt Rostow, Advisor to Pres. Lyndon Johnson, Memo Re: Israel Raid on Jordan, November 1966

For those of us who have always defended Israel's "right to exist,"  its wild over-reaction -- or, more likely, its willful, calculated,  brutilitarian, and -- worst of all -- ineffective response to Hezbollah's July 12th provocation has certainly not made the job any easier.

Only the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, and our own hapless intelligence agencies were supposed to be capable of such counterproductive conduct in such a one-sided war. 

Now it emerges that, indeed, according to The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, Israel may have consulted closely with Vice President Cheney and other senior members of the  Bush Administration on its plans for a punishing air campaign against Hezbollah, well before the July 12th incident on the Lebanese border.

Evidently all these astute war planners expected widespread bombing not only to degrade Hezbollah quickly, but also to cause it to lose political support within Lebanon. According to Hersh, Cheney and Bush were especially enamored of this strategy because they hoped to achieve a similar miracle with an air campaign against Iran -- by some reports, supposed to begin in just a few months.

Now that Hezbollah has been able to stand up to Israel's onslaught for more than five weeks, and has only seen its political position strengthened, Israeli and Washington war planners should in principle reconsider the premises of their high-tech air war/ quick strike-based strategy.

UN-approved "ceasefires" not withstanding, Hezbollah has succeeded in pulling the IDF back into a ground war in Lebanon -- something it has been hankering for since 2000.

In just the last 24 hours of this war, it cost the Israelis the lives of at least 40-45 soldiers, nearly 10 percent of their losses in Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. 

While most Americans and Israelis have dismissed the Hezbollah fighters as "terrorists," throughout the Muslim world they are now being hailed as heroes -- thanks in large measure to this massive Cheney-approved bombing strategy.

As discussed below, while Hezbollah can justifiably be accused of having lit the match on July 12th, there had been plenty such provocations before, without leading to this conflagration.

Overall,  the so-called Middle East "peace process" -- and, indeed, "democratization," have become a casualties, not only of "Islamic extremism," but also of  Israel's prolonged dawdling over withdrawing from the Occupied Territories, and its preference for "military solutions," except in impossible outposts like Gaza, which all but a few Israeli extremists had long since agreed to forego.  

The only remaining "process" now is a war process, which has cost more than 20,000 Lebanese lives, 8,000 Palestinian lives, and more than 2,000 Israeli lives since 1982.

The most fundamental truth is that there are no "uncaused causes" in this conflict, nor are there are any "white hats" -- any more than there were in the case of the IRA and the Unionists in Northern Ireland.  As in all such quasi-colonial struggles,  one person's "terrorist" is indeed another's "resistance fighter." Anyone who doubts that just needs to examine the biographies of Begin, Weitzman, and Shamir, all of whom were pretty cool killers in their time. While Israel boasts about the fact that it has supposedly just killed "500 Hezbollah terrorists," its bombing campaign in Lebanon and its escalating "lock down"  against the residents of Gaza and the West Bank have almost certainly produced more than an ample supply of potential replacements.

All this explains the fact that a growing share of Americans finds it increasingly hard to justify taking sides in, much less subsidizing,  the seemingly endless, obsessive conflicts over this parched, inhospitable, water- and resource-bare, way-too theocratized territory one-tenth the size of California.

THE BUBBLE 

Ironically, as of early July 2006, just before the latest crisis erupted, Israel had achieved a very high level of international support, even among Muslim countries, and its strategic and economic position was stronger and more secure than ever.  

• The Tel-Aviv stock market was at an all-time high, Warren Buffet had just made a $4 billion investment in a northern Israel-based company, investments by other high-tech foreign investors like SanDisk and HP  were also setting records, economic growth was accelerating, and Jewish immigration -- the "Aliya" -- was at an all-time monthly high.   

• The economic situation was especially good news for the 18 wealthy families that now control over half of Israel's business GDP. It probably also encouraged Israel's "best and brightest" to engage in wishful thinking about the growing security risks in their own neighborhood,  and to swallow the fantasy that their country can continue to develop as an outpost of Western civilization, with stronger economic and diplomatic ties to the US, Europe, and Asia than to the Middle East.
  

• In 2005, Syria had been compelled to withdraw its Army from Lebanon for the first time since 1976 -- something that Israel had not been able to achieve in two decades of military occupation. 


• Since May 2000 and 2005 respectively, Israel had managed to withdraw from untenable occupations in both Lebanon and Gaza.

• While Hezbollah still had a large following in Lebanon,  popular support for its military activities had waned since Israel's withdrawal, while its relatively-weak position in a newly-elected coalition government was creating pressures to refocus on political activities -- along "IRA conversion" lines.

• Despite a surprising victory in the January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections on the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas had been effectively isolated by the US and Europe,  because of its refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist.

• While armed resistance continued from the West Bank and Gaza, the "Oslo process" toward a negotiated two-state solution was all but dead, and Israel appeared to face little practical pressure to abandon its "unilateral homeland" approach to the problem.

• Iran's loud-mouthed President had been widely condemned by the international community, and pressure was building for multilateral sanctions against Iran's home-grown nuclear research program.    

• Libya, which had recently been close to acquiring nuclear weapons, had given them up voluntarily, but was also cooperating with the US and Europe on fighting terrorism and welcoming trade and investment.
  

• Pakistan was seriously considering recognizing Israel,  as Jordan and Egypt had done in 1994 and 1979. Morocco was also about to renew diplomatic ties after a four-year hiatus. Israel also enjoyed close new ties with Turkey, a leading non-Arab Islamic country, and India, which actually has the world's largest Muslim population.
  

• While Iraq's insurgency was continuing, and a low-level civil war among Shiites and Sunni elements had begun,  Ira'q  newly-elected Shiite leaders had not yet adopted an overt anti-Israel/ pro-Hezbollah.

• Some observers have expressed concern about a resurgence of anti-Jewish feelings -- so-called "new anti-Semitism." But in fact, the trend of worldwide opinion has been precisely in the opposite direction for several decades.

THE BUBBLE BURSTS

Four weeks into the full-scale war that started on July 12, Israel's "stupid-bombing" campaign,  its ineffective ground war, and the unexpected resilience of Hezbollah's 3,000-man army, have combined to undermine most of these accomplishments. 

Around the world, many observers have been disturbed by the blatant war crimes that Israel has committed "in response to Hezbollah" during this most recent invasion of Lebanon  --  at least the fifth incursion into Lebanon since 1978.

Of course Hezbollah has also committed blatant war crimes "in response to Israel," including not only the thousands of missiles that it has fired into Israel "in response" to Israel's bombing campaign, but also the initial abduction of two Israeli soldiers that provided the excuse Israel may well have been looking for.

Indeed, as usual, both sides now insist that the other guys started it, that the other guys are "the real war criminals,"  the "invaders,"  the "terrorists," "the religious zealots," armed to the teeth with sophisticated weapons provided by foreign powers (Iran,Syria, the US) and willing to kill innocent civilians by the score. 

Such language provides useful rhetoric for propagandists. But the beginning of wisdom about this deep-seated conflict is to understand that both sides are essentially correct about each other -- there are no "good guys" in this war.

Back in the USA, however,  where sympathy for Israel is virtually inexhaustible, the news media and the vast majority of politicians have been rooting for (finally!) a quick victory over "terrorists" -- especially given the fact that our own wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become too painful to watch, and, accordingly, are tending to disappear  from the evening news.

With respect to Lebanon, therefore, while the US population as a whole distributes the blame for the continuing violence about equally between Israel and Hezbollah, the American elite appears to be disappointed mainly that Israel -- once considered the sine qua non of invincible military prowess -- has bogged down.
 
So what's gone wrong? How could this have happened to the world's fourth most powerful military, and its best intelligence service? Given the fact that there have been many similar Hezbollah provocations, why did Israel respond so differently to this one?  And what on earth will the parties to this conflict do for an encore?

"IRAQ'S MOMENTOUS ELECTION, ONE YEAR LATER"Iraq War Supporters Are Running For CoverJames S. Henry

For those who have not been paying attention in class, the so-called "Iraq War" has recently been setting new records for violence, brutality, and terror -- with at least 379 to 1300 iraqi fatalities in the last week alone, in the wake of the bombing of the 1,062-year old Al-Askariya shrine at Samarra.

Nor did the apprentice Iraqi Army -- with its 20,000-man force, trained by the US military at the phenomenal cost of $15 billion to date, or $750,000 per soldier -- prove to be much help in quelling the violence. This is not really surprising --  after all, this Army shares the same divided loyalties as the population at large.

While a few senior US military officers have issued  Westmoreland-like statements assuring us that "the crisis has passed," and that this is not -- I repeat --  not a "civil war," it is hard to know what else to call it.

A few journalists have speculated that, ironically enough,  all the increased violence and polarization may undermine the Pentagon's "hopes" to reduce the number of US troops in Iraq to 100,000 by year end.

Those "hopes," however,  are vague. One suspects that they have always been mainly for public consumption,  including the morale of US troops. We only began to hear about them last fall when opposition to the war really soared in the US.

The Pentagon's not-so-secret hope -- among senior planners, at least -- is different. This is to turn Iraq into a neutered or even pro-US -- better yet for cosmetic purposes,  "democratic" -- regime right in the heart of the Middle East, complete with permanent basing rights,  immunity for US personnel from war crimes prosecution by the International Criminal Court, and, naturally enough, the occasional juicy construction, security, arms, and oil contract for friendly US and UK enterprises  -- at least so long as they are not owned by Dubai. 

ALL AGAINST ALL?

It is this vision that is most threatened by the recent surge in Iraqi violence.  Clearly this is no longer just a "foreign terrorist/ dead-ender-led insurgency" against the US and its apprentice army.

Nor has the US-guided constitutional process, and continuous interventions by our heady Ambassadors in Baghdad -- safe behind the walls of the world's largest US embassy -- succeeded in stabilizing the country.

Rather, Iraq is now engaged in a complex, multi-sided bloodbath, fought along age-old religious, ethnic, and clan lines by well-armed groups. While American battle deaths continue, almost all the casualties are now Iraqis felled by Iraqis.

Furthermore, this inter-Iraqi violence goes well beyond the suicide bombings that still garner most of the media's attention. It escalated sharply in the last year, long before the Samarra bombing, and even as the vaunted constitutional process was unfolding.

For example, as reported by the Guardian this week, the former director of the Baghdad Morgue recently fled the country, fearing for his life after reporting that more than 7000 Iraqis had been tortured and murdered by "death squads."

According to the former head of the UN's human rights office in Iraq, most of these victims had been tortured by the Badr Brigade, the military wing of SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

As we reported over a year ago on this site, SCIRI is not just some fringe element. It is one of Iraq's two key Shiite-led political factions, and one of the principle victors in the December 2005 parliamentary elections. Unfortunately, our expectations have been fulfilled. Upon acquiring power, SCIRI has behaved exactly as anyone familiar with its history -- but apparently not the US military -- would have expected.

TOUGH LIBERALS?

Meanwhile, among America's befuddled liberal intelligentsia, hard-nosed realism has been sorely missing.  The December election and its January 2005 predecessor were events that most neoliberal observers --  for example,  the American Prospect  -- could not praise highly enough:

Iraqis have concluded one of the most successful constitutional processes in history. Rarely, if ever, before has an important country moved from tyranny to pluralism so quickly, with so little bloodshed, and with such a quality and degree of popular participation.

This assessment was spectacularly wrong. Iraq's constitutional process has not led to "pluralism," much less staunched the bloodshed. 

Rather -- no doubt with ample assistance from Iranian secret agents,  "foreign fighters," and other officious intermeddlers  --  the process has exacerbated social and religious  divisions --  divisions that Iraq was always noted for mitigating.

The continued US presence has also helped to legitimize the extremists, letting them fly the "national liberation" flag. We have reached the point where country's armed private militias are expanding faster than the US-trained police and army. 

In this perilous Somalia-like situation, with US troops viewed as part of the problem, and shot at by all sides, it is harder and harder to justify incremental American casualties.

Indeed, about the only thing that all Iraqi factions  -- apart from some Kurds and the country's dwindling minority of remaining secularists -- agree on now is the desire for the US military to leave.  We should respect their wishes.

TOO FEW TROOPS?

By now, even arch-conservative pundits like William F. Buckley have agreed that the Iraq War was a costly mistake, and that a US withdrawal is called for. 

Meanwhile, however, some die-hard US neoliberal defenders of the war -- including tough-guys like the New York Times' Tom Friedman and Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens -- are still denying the existence of Iraq's deep-seated, historically-specific obstacles to democratization and unified self-rule, as well as the overwhelming opposition in Iraq to the US presence.

Of course, admitting that local history actually matters might require one to study Middle Eastern history a little more closely, or perhaps even learn Arabic.

It might also interfere with certain pet theories, like the "inevitable triumph of technology and free markets over local markets, nations, peoples, customs and practices," or the "inevitable struggle to the death between Islamic extremism and Western democracy."

From the standpoint of these and other warhawks, our only mistake in Iraq was really quite simple -- the Bush Administration sent in too few troops.

On closer inspection, this claim spins itself into the ground faster than a Halliburton drill bit. 

• One key reason why more troops were not available was the fact that the war's supporters -- not only the Bush Administration, but also leading Democrats like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Lieberman,  and their pundit camp followers -- failed to persuade anyone other than Mad Tony Blair that a variety of cockamamie  theories about "democratizing the Middle East," the "connection" between Saddam and al-Qaeda,  and WMDs had any validity whatsoever.

• Second, while a handful of Pentagon skeptics did support larger troop commitments before the invasion, they were in the minority -- and not just because of Rumsfeld's desire to fight the war with a high-tech army. Most of the war planners and pro-war enthusiasts alike were swept away by Friedman-like naievete about the enthusiasm of ordinary Iraqis for US-backed "liberation." They systematically underestimated the Iraqis' nationalism and their resentment of occupation -- especially by  armies of "Christian" nationals from the US and the UK. In retrospect, it is easy to say that even more troops were needed to maintain order and suppress resistance. But the larger US presence would have provoked even more resistance. 

• As most US commanders agreed, the "more troops" answer is flawed from a technical perspective, given the nature of the insurgency. It would have provided more targets for suicide bombers, without delivering a remedy for their simple IED and sniper tactics.  While more troops might have provided better border interdiction, Iraq has a larger land mass than Vietnam, and twice as many neighbors. For the "more troops" claim to work with any certainty,  the number would have had to rival Vietnam proportions -- at least 500,000, probably for several years. The US military manpower system has already experienced great strains trying to sustain its 133,000 commitment to Iraq with a volunteer army -- to be effective, the "more troops" approach might well have required a military draft. 

Apart from New York's Congressman Rangle, who may have just been tweaking the establishment's chin for his black constituents, not even the most aggressive neoliberal warhawk has ever proposed that. 

Ever since WMDs failed to turn up and Saddam's connection to al-Qaeda turned out to be a canard,  the neoliberal warhawks have been running for cover -- worried, quite rightly, that history will not take kindly to their dissembling, and their collaboration with the Bush Administration's neoimperialists.  

For much of the last three years this cover story was provided by the expectation of "nation building," "democratization," and the "training of the Iraqi Army" --  achievements that always seemed to be, conveniently enough, just around the corner.   

As the last week's events have dramatized, these are all more mirages in the desert. We've run out of time and excuses.  

   (c)SubmergingMarkets, 2006.

 

 

BUSH HEADS SOUTHReceives Rousing Welcome In Argentina...Fox News Analysis

President Bush received an incredibly warm welcome at the 34-nation Summit of the Americas in Mar de la Plata, as thousands of ordinary people from all over the Continent turned out to hail his presence.

The effervescent US President was clearly buoyed by polls that showed that he still commands the support of an incredible 80 percent of Republicans -- otherwise known as his "base."

True, "non-base" support is reportedly a little less certain. Overall, in this week's latest polls, 59 percent expressed "disapproval," while 42 percent expressed "strong" disapproval." A quarter of the US population surveyed reported "violent morning sickness...."

However, knowledgeable insiders have called this a "temporary setback" that will be easily corrected if and when Presidential advisor Karl Rove, recently distracted by the Pflame investigation, starts covering the bases again.

The President, speaking through an interpreter, voiced optimism that "Free trade and liberal investment policies, plus a few billion dollars on defense, corn subsidiies, and our brand new military base in Paraguay" would completely change the lifestyles of the estimated 100 million Latin Americans who remain below the $1 per day world poverty line.

Said Bush, "These policies have only been tried for a decade or two. They need to be given a chance. Right here in Argentina, you've seen how well they've worked, right?"

Bush's sentiments were echoed by Vincente Fox, Mexico's amazingly popular lame-duck President, and Paul Martin, the astonishing Canadian PM, whose own popularity ratings have recently been taken to record levels by the Gomery Report, which documented the disappearance of $250 million of government funds, mainly by way of Mr. Martin's own party.

Said Martin: "We are quite pleased to have become a wholly-owned subsidiary of US multinationals. We didn't think we'd like the sensation, but it has become an experience that we really look forward to every night. You will also learn to enjoy it. Now if only the US would pay us that $3.5 billion...."

Said Fox: "Yes, it is true, millions of Mexican small farmers have been wiped out by free trade. But this criticism is baseless. Just look at all the remittances they are sending back home from the US !"

Meanwhile, the US President had an especially warm greeting from Diego Maradona, the famous Argentine soccer star, now in recovery. Maradona used a colloquial Argentine expression to describe just how delighted he is to finally have this particular American President visit his country.

Elsewhere, Cuba's Fidel Castro, who was not permitted to attend the summit, was reported to have decided to remove all restrictions on US trade and investment with Cuba, after having listened to President Bush's persuasive arguments.

Said the aging inveterate leftist leader, "I knew we were doing something wrong. Now I finally know what it was. We were way off base!"

After a prolonged negotiating session on Saturday, in which Summit delegates basically agreed to continue to debate the merits of free trade for a long time to come, Bush departed for a Sunday meeting in Brasiia with yet another embattled President, Luis Ignacio da Silva ("Lula.")

Brasilia is a pretty lonely, desolate, and distinctly un-Brazilian place on a Saturday night, because all the whores and politicians have flown back to Rio or Sao Paulo for the weekend, and one is just left with all these 1950s-vintage monuments to Brazil's cement industry. But perhaps President Bush will find a little solace taking a moonlit walk on the empty esplanades, wandering through the otherwise flat, lifeless landscape that Robert Campos once called "the revenge of a Communist architect against capitalist society."

(c)SubmergingMarkets, 2005

Confronting Venezuela Jeremy Bigwood and James S. Henry

                                                 Download venezuela_article.pdf

In recent months there have been mounting tensions between the Bush Administration and Venezuela’s popularly-elected, if left-leaning, President, Hugo Chavez. If this were the mid-20^th century, Latin America watchers might fear that they were witnessing the early stages of yet another US-backed coup, like those that ousted other popularly-elected, if left-leaning, governments in Guatemala (1954, 1963), Argentina (1962, 1976), Brazil (1964), the Dominican Republic (1965), Bolivia (1971), Chile (1973), and, indeed Venezuela itself (1948).

Today, more than 15 years into the “post-dictatorship” era, Latin America is still struggling to recover the disastrous long-term effects of these US-backed regime changes. These efforts may or may not have warded off socialist revolutions, but they undoubtedly produced a hit parade of corrupt, repressive dictatorships. They also persuaded a whole generation of progressive young Latin Americans that the only route to social justice was by way of violent revolution, and contributed mightily to the entire region’s excessive debts and economic regression -- and a surfeit of hostility  toward the US. 

Fortunately, those Cold War days are long gone – or are they?

 

”WHERE’S WARREN?” Bhopal’s 20th Anniversary

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the deadly December 3, 1984, chemical gas leak at an Indian pesticide plant in the very  center of Bhopal, a city of 90,000 – just a little larger than Danbury, Connecticut -- in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India.  At the time the plant was owned by Union Carbide India, Ltd. (UCIL), an Indian company whose majority (50.9%) shareholder was Danbury-based Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) which was acquired by Dow Chemical in 2001.

This anniversary provides us with an opportunity to reflect on “lessons learned” from this disaster – including the need to make sure that the globalization of trade and investment is also accompanied by the globalization of justice for the victims of transnational corporate misbehavior.

Download WhereIsWarren12032004.pdf

Democracy in America and Elsewhere:Part IIIB. Campaigns, Voting, and Representation

James S. Henry and Caleb Kleppner** Download PDF Version

As we began to explore in Part IIIA of this election-season series, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the United States of America actually has a great deal to learn from other countries – especially several young democracies -- about designing and operating electoral institutions that are truly democratic. This part of the series continues our comparison with one of those countries, Brazil.

There was perhaps a time when much of the rest of the world viewed the United States of America not just as a militaristic crusader, but as a role model for advocates of liberal democracy everywhere.

These days, however, as former President Carter’s recent caustic comments about the likelihood of continued rigged voting in Florida this year have underscored, the American beacon of liberty is flickering in the wind.

Increasingly the US is viewed by the rest of the world -- and by some of its most astute internal critics -- as an arrogant, hypocritical, sclerotic plutocracy, whose own electoral institutions, as former President Carter correctly observes, are at risk of no longer meeting even minimal international standards for democratic elections.

Meanwhile, the US has the temerity to lecture other countries (as it did, for example, just this week with respect to Hong Kong) about the meaning of “democracy,” and to selectively intervene in the affairs of other countries in the name of democracy, whenever it suits perceived US interests.

As shown in Table A, this concern with democratizing the world may be a preoccupation of US policy elites, or it may just be pure rhetoric.

A recent poll by the Chicago Center on Foreign Relations shows that for the American public at large, the goal of bringing democracy to other nations ranks last on a list of fourteen major US foreign policy goals, with only 14 percent believing it to be “very important.” This made it less than one fifth as as important as securing energy supplies, protecting US jobs, or fighting terrorism. Even among policy elites, “democratization” ranked 12th on the list.

Once again, our aim here is to help Americans understand why their own electoral system has become so anachronistic and dysfunctional. We also hope to encourage them to take more interest in the rest of the world, be a little more modest, and understand that they too live in a “developing country” – one whose own particular version of “democracy” is in dire need of rejuvenation.