Category: US politics

Good investigative article on key H. Clinton advisor

Anne Kornblut had a good piece of reporting in today’s WaPo about a guy called Mark Penn, described as the “chief strategist” for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
If you were looking for a good reason to distrust Hillary, her close present relationship with this guy seems to provide a number of them.
Penn belongs to a growing breed of types in this country who try to make a very handsome living out of providing purely “technical” campaign-related advice to candidates. Of course, there is seldom such a thing as completely unslanted, purely data-driven advice, though people in that job frequently like to claim that there is. (What “data” do you collect, anyway? And crucially, in opinion polls, how do you frame the questions that get you the data you’re using?)
But here are two things Kornblut tells us about Mark Penn that I didn’t know before. Firstly, this:

    Penn gained his foreign policy expertise working on numerous campaigns overseas, especially in Israel. In 1981, he and business partner Doug Schoen helped reelect Menachem Begin, one of the most right-wing prime ministers in the country’s history, and emerged with a new outlook on the Middle East. “We got a chance to experience firsthand the perils and possibilities that the state of Israel presents,” Schoen said in an interview.
    In a pivotal moment, the pollsters watched as Begin launched airstrikes against a developing Iraqi nuclear facility, Osirak, in the middle of the campaign. “In the end, bombing the Osirak reactor became a metaphor for the type of man that Begin was and the steps he was willing to take to safeguard Israel’s security,” Schoen wrote in his autobiography, “The Power of the Vote.”
    Ever since, Penn has been a prominent advocate of conveying strength in foreign policy. As recently as the 2004 presidential contest, Penn argued that Democrats would lose if they failed to close the “security gap.” His client list includes prominent backers of the Iraq war, particularly Lieberman, whose presidential campaign Penn helped run in 2004, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose campaign he advised when Blair won a historic third term in 2005…

And then, there’s the fact that, in his role as Chief Executive of the big “public relations” (i.e., influence-peddling) firm of Burson-Marsteller, Penn is continuing– while also acting as Clinton’s chief campaign strategist– to lead BM’s work on the big contract it has for Microsoft.
Kornblut points out that the organizational ethics of this arrangement are even worse than those under which President Bush worked with his key political strategist, Karl Rove, during the 2000 campaign.
She notes that in 2000,

    then-Gov. George W. Bush forced his top strategist, Karl Rove, to sell his direct-mail business to eliminate the perception of any conflicts of interest and to guarantee that his full attention would be on the campaign. While other consultants also do lucrative corporate work, no one holds as senior a corporate position as Penn’s while effectively running a presidential campaign.

Kornblut writes about Penn:

    Although he is Clinton’s chief strategist, he is not technically on the campaign staff. Instead, the Clinton campaign employs his polling firm, Penn Schoen & Berland Associates, a 175-employee unit within Burson-Marsteller. Penn’s firm is on a retainer of $15,000 to $20,000 per month, with specific services, such as polls or direct mailings, available a la carte.
    According to recent Federal Election Commission filings, the Clinton campaign owes Penn Schoen & Berland $277,146.96 for consulting and polling in the first quarter of 2007. Penn’s wife’s firm, Nancy Jacobson Consulting Inc., was paid $10,000 in the first quarter and is owed an additional $19,354.84. Penn said that he receives no compensation directly from the Clinton campaign and that his salary from Burson-Marsteller, which he declined to reveal, is contingent upon his management performance for the corporation overall, rather on than specific fees from the campaign.
    Penn said that he has been cleared of all client responsibilities, except for Microsoft, for the duration of the campaign but that he still relies on a team of about 20 employees to do most of the day-to-day work. Though running a major company and a presidential campaign at the same time would seem to provide a number of possible conflicts, Penn insists there are none.

Well, Penn might claim there are no conflicts of interest. But what does Hillary Clinton’s continuing relationship with a guy in this position tell us about her priorities and values? That they are even sleazier than George W. Bush’s? That’s certainly what it looks like from this article.

Coming home: How the US feels

Bill and I got home Friday evening, after flying for what felt like a very long day from Amsterdam via Frankfurt to Virginia. Coming back home here to Charlottesville after three months away has enabled me to (1) Get a strong sense of just how rapidly and how far the opinions of the US political elite seem to have traveled in an anti-war direction in the period since we left, and (2) Start to try to bring together, reflect on, and figure out what to do with the many really amazing experiences I had on the trip.
In the former regard I have certainly noticed the degree to which, for example, the front pages of the WaPo seem to be completely dominated by news stories that are either highly critical of the Bush administration’s current and recent handling of the war in Iraq, or highly critical of earlier phases of the invasion/occupation project there, or highly embarrassing for the Bush administration on other grounds as well.
In that last category would fall stories about the ongoing revelations being made by “the Washington Madam”, a procurer of high-class call-girls whose notebooks and “business records” are currently being extensively data-mined by ABC News. (One early casualty: a guy called Randal “Randy” Tobias who was head of all US overseas-aid programs at the State Department– and therefore, we can note, in charge of running the policies that deny condoms to millions of HIV-vulnerable women around the world. He also supervised a policy that requires aid recipients to sign off on statements that they oppose prostitution in all its forms… He resigned over the revelation. As for Harlan Ullman– yes, Mr. “Shock and Awe” himself– he merely shrugged when reports surfaced that his name, too, was on the list… But in all, this looks like a great week of bubble-pricking news that’s about to come up…)
Also bad news for the Bushites: development in the ongoing Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz affairs; or pieces of investigative reporting like this one in today’s WaPo, which tells us that while after Hurricane Katrina foreign countries offered the US assistance totaling $854 million– but only $40 million of that has ever been used for victims or reconstruction…
The Bush administration seems, in many respects, to be falling apart at the seams. And the main reason for that is undoubtedly the continued leaching out of US blood, money, reputation, and self-respect that has been occurring because of the war in Iraq.
The fact that even at the WaPo– which in the whole four years that followed 9/11/2001 was just about as hawkishly pro-war and as mawkishly pro-Bush as it was possible to be– the editors have finally decided to return to something like the standards of independent, truth-seeking journalism seems to me a bellwether of the opinions in the country’s elite.
Thankfully, the anti-war vote of last November was not just a flash in the pan. The citizenry has held fast and true to a position of growing hatred for this war. Congress has been pushed by its base. Barack Obama, with his strong record of having opposed this war all along, has emerged as a completely plausible competitor to all those other Democratic presidential candidates who voted for the war-enabling resolution back in October 2002,
Heck, even a serving military officer, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, has come out in public with a devastating critique of the way the military leaders behaved in the lead-up to and the conduct of this war:

    For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq’s grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.
    These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America’s general officer corps. America’s generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America’s generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.

(Equally as notable as Yingling’s willingness to express his harsh criticisms in public was the identity of the medium that carried his piece. It was in the Armed Forces Journal, a very mainstream journal on professional military affairs.)
Anyway, Congress has now passed the legislation requiring the president to start withdrawing the troops from Iraq by a date certain. Bush has threatened to veto this legislation. The Friends Committee on National Legislation says, “We believe that the president is not in touch with reality.” I’ll say!
FCNL is also asking all US citizens to write urgently to Bush to urge him to reconsider his promised veto. Their website says:

    Give him a dose of reality today. He should know that the people of this country insist on a change in U.S. policy in Iraq and will mobilize popular opposition to this awful, failed war, until the last U.S. troops have left Iraq.
    Next Tuesday, May 1, is the fourth anniversary of the president’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. The weekly death toll in Iraq – for both Iraqis and U.S. soldiers – is growing. Not one more dollar, not one more drop of blood should be spent on this war. The U.S. should not send more soldiers off to Iraq to die.

Right. And nor, of course, should it send them off there to kill.

McCain v. Sa’di

I once admired Senator John McCain. We even appeared together 16 years ago on a national radio call-in show, just after I returned from my first trip to Iran. I complimented him then for his “independence” and for then having one of the better observers of the Arab world on his staff (Tony Cordesman). One of my best students then was a niece of the Senator. During the last decade, it was Senator McCain, despite his own harrowing ordeal as a POW in North Vietnam, who helped normalize ties with Vietnam, even without “regime change.”
Alas, I don’t recognize the McCain of late, especially this past month amid his “Straight Talk” campaign to be President. His “April Fool’s Day” Alice-in-Wonderland tour of Iraq was bad enough. His comments last week at a South Carolina VFW rally hit an even lower “note.” Challenged with an uber-hawk question about “when are we going to send an air message to Iran,” McCain started by singing the version of the famous Beach Boys tune, “Barbara Ann” with a few bars of “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb…” (Iran.)
The video-clip of McCain’s performance has been played far and wide, and is now enshrined at YouTube.
One wonders if McCain was familiar with last year’s sardonic anti-war video spoof by Adam Kontras, found, naturally, at letsbombiran.com.
More likely, McCain remembers, as I do, the 1980 “propaganda parody” version of “bomb Iran” by “Vince Vance and the Valiants” amid the diplomatic hostage crisis. I found an “mp3” version here. Note the pronunciation then of “I-ran.” Their record label, a sign of the times then was, “Towel Records,” as in “Towel-heads.”
Alas, McCain’s handlers may figure that most Americans are still hostage to those same black and white images of Iran from 1980. In the following clip McCain laughs off a question about the “insensitivity” of his bomb joke with the reply, “Insensitive to what, the Iranians?”
One suspects McCain has watched 300 too much. Or maybe he was trapped by a leading question, cracked a nervous poor-taste joke, and now can’t figure out how to take it back without offending his shrinking base. That would be a charitable interpretation.
Regarding McCain’s quip for critics to “get a life,” Ali Moayedian’s rejoinder will “strike a chord” (if you will) with many:

“Mr. McCain, I will get a life. I do have a life. But what do you have to tell to all the dead? How can you look into the eyes of mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and children and sing your happy bombing tune? Can you tell them to get a life? I wouldn’t be surprised if you can. I always wonder if people like you have a soul?”

And on the matter of being “insensitive” to Iranians, Moayedian, who writes from California (where hundreds of thousands of Iranian-Americans vote), poignantly asks what Iranians of all stripes will be wondering,

“Mr. McCain, I know it’s too much to expect you to be sensitive to Iranians. After all they must be less of a human. You don’t care about Americans. Why should you care about Iranians?”

Ironically, on the day McCain’s “bomb Iran” clip began circulating, Iranians around the world were commemorating Sa’di day, in honor of the great Persian poet.
Writing seven centuries before Nelson Mandela spoke of “we are humans together or nothing at all,” Sa’di may be best known in the west for his poetic lines on the oneness of humanity:
The sons of men are members in a body whole related.
For a single essence are they and all created.
When Fortune persecutes with pain one member solely, surely
The other members of the body cannot stand securely.
O you who from another’s trouble turn aside your view
It is not fitting they bestow the name of “Man” on you.
Not bad for a writer in the 13th Century – anywhere
Sa’di’s works have been translated into English since the 18th Century, and several recent works on Sa’di are available. I gather too that leading World Literature texts in American high schools now include passages of Sa’di wisdom and wit.
McCain too should be familiar with the “oneness of humankind” poem, as it has graced the walls of the United Nations since its founding. The UN recently put on display a priceless carpet, donated by Iran, with Sa’idi’s original words woven into it in Gold.
Even the current Iranian Mission to the UN features a modern, gender neutral rendering of the same passage on its web home page:
All human beings are limbs of each other
Having been created of one essence
When time afflicts a limb with pain
The other limbs cannot at rest remain.
Sounds more “human” to me than, “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”
A final irony here: The original “Barbara Ann” song was not written or first performed by the Beach Boys. Rather the song was a 1961 “doo-wop” hit by The Regents. Fred Fassert, who wrote the ditty in honor of his little sister, and Chuck Fassert who sang it, were of Iranian descent….

When all else fails, blame Iran (Part II)

Matters must be really deteriorating in Afghanistan. Why else would the Pentagon brass now be darkly suggesting that Iranian arms have been “captured,” supposedly on their way to the Taliban? It sounds suspiciously like the tired old formula; when matters go really bad somewhere in the Middle East, change the subject and blame Iran.
Michael R. Gordon today is competing yet again to be chief salesman for such ominous news. Media bloggers have taken to deeming him the resident “ghost of Judith Miller” at the New York Times, the journalist most willing to “take out Cheney’s trash.”
Lately, Gordon has been quite active in reviving support for getting tougher on Iran.
Last week, I commented here on the Pentagon’s odd claim that Iran was now not only supporting Iraqi Shia insurgents, but Sunni fighters as well. On February 10th, it was Michael R. Gordon who started the latest round of Iran-as-the-source-of-trouble-in-Iraq” with a front-page “scoop” that breathlessly cited un-named US sources contending that Iran was providing deadly munitions that were killing Americans. Gordon’s follow-up report generously allowed his sources to defend their claims amid the “controversy,” which even a NYTimes editorial criticized. (Amazingly, that editorial neglected to mention that it was their own reporter – Gordon – who catalyzed the controversy).
Like Judy Miller, Gordon has long specialized in providing red meat for neoconservative circles.
Last November, it was Michael R. Gordon reporting that “Iran-backed” Hizbullah was training Iraqi Shia fighters. And throughout the fall, Gordon filed multiple “reports” citing “experts” and “analysts” cautioning against quick withdrawal from Iraq, then condemning the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (particularly the idea to talk to Iraq’s neighbors), and then advocating a “surge” of more troops into Iraq.
Back in 2002, it was Michael R. Gordon who wrote regularly with Judith Miller about Iraqi WMD capabilities, most infamously about the aluminum tubes presumed for Iraq’s nuclear program. The obvious intent of such articles was to drum up support for invading Iraq sooner rather than later.
The New York Times flagellated itself last year for such bad reporting, and specifically cited the Miller-Gordon “tubes” story as one of the worst examples. Yet Michael R. Gordon remains the Times’ lead “military” correspondent.
In a contentious interview last year with Amy Goodman, Gordon claimed that he was merely a recorder of the best intelligence and analysis available (pre-Iraq invasion) and that later “dissenters” had not contacted him.
That’s a curious defense. Shouldn’t the reporters be the ones casting about for different views?
Gordon may have thought himself funny when he told Goodman: “I’m actually not Judy Miller.” !
Really?
Today, the NYTimes designates none other than Michael R. Gordon to tell us that Iran is supporting the Taliban (sic) in Afghanistan. That’s right, Iran is now accused of sending arms to the Taliban, Iran’s mortal arch-enemy.

Continue reading “When all else fails, blame Iran (Part II)”

66 percent of Americans now see the light on the Iraq war

I am so, so happy that two-thirds (66 percent) of our fellow US citizens now share the opinion that a small group of us within the country have held and expressed since before the US war on Iraq ever started: namely, that this war was not worth fighting.
That link there goes to the first report of a new ABC News/WaPo opinion poll, published on the ABC NEws website today. The poll found, in addition, that 51 percent of US citizens now think that the US will “lose” the war in Iraq. Not defined there, though, is what the respondents understand the word “lose” to mean, in practice…. a topic that is certainly worth probing more deeply…
Hat-tip to Juan Cole on signaling the existence of this polling report. I was a little dismayed, however, to see that he reported the news of the poll in these terms:

    For the first time in polling on the Iraq War, a majority of Americans (51%) say that they expect the United States to “lose” in Iraq. Worse, 66 percent say that the war was not worth it!

Did he mean “Worse from the Bush administration’s perspective“? If he’d meant that, surely he would have said it? Or did he just mean “worse”, in general?
We do, of course, need to keep in mind that back in March 2002 and for a considerable period of time after that, Juan supported the Bushites’ basic decision to launch the invasion of Iraq, though he criticized some aspects of the way it was launched. So the news that 66 percent of his compatriots now judge that the war he supported at that time “was not worth fighting” might well seem considerably “worse” to him than it does, for example, to me.
I think it is excellent news. At last the US people are starting to wake up!
Back to the ABC/WaPo poll. In addition to the above-linked short report published as a simple web-page, the ABC News site also has this PDF file with a fuller report on the poll, along with some fairly revealing time series. The following observations relate to the PDF version, with the page numbers from there.
… P.1 has an interesting little time series containing four ‘snapshots’ since December 2005 of responses to the expectations question, Will the US win or lose the war? (Note this is not an assessment of whether it currently is winning or losing it.) Basically, back in December ’06, a plurality of respondents said they thought the US would lose (46% lose and 34% win.) The figures shifted in a January ’07 poll to 40% lose and 43% win. Now, April ’07, lose has surged again– to 51%; and with win now at 35%.
Then, this:

    [A majority of respondents] now reject Bush’s argument that winning in Iraq is necessary to win the broader war against terrorism. Fifty-seven percent disagree with that contention, up from 47 percent in January. That echoes a change that appeared in January and continues today, in which most (56 percent) now favor eventual withdrawal even if civil order is not restored.
    (top of p.2) Yet, given pro and con arguments (avoiding further casualties vs. potentially encouraging Iraqi insurgents), a pullout deadline is not broadly popular. The public divides about evenly, 51-48 percent, on setting any deadline. It’s about the same specifically on the effort by congressional Democrats to force withdrawal by no later than August 2008.
    DEMOCRATS – Indeed the Democrats in Congress haven’t conclusively seized the reins on Iraq: Their approval for handling the war is low as well, 37 percent. Nonetheless, they do continue to lead Bush, now by 25 points, in trust to handle it. By a similar margin, 58 to 34 percent, most say the Democrats are taking the stronger role in Washington overall.

Again, that concept of “taking a stronger role in Washington” seems a little ambiguous, and has ambiguous political effects. If it means the Congressional Dems seen as being more effective in Washington than the Prez and the Congressional Republicans, that’s one thing. But if they’re seen as wielding more power than the Prez or the Congressional Republicans, that’s something else… Because then, it would also mean that the public holds them more responsible for governing the country well. But since they don’t have the presidency, it is quite impossible for them to deliver on such an expectation.
Then, the report has this (still p.2):

    With Bush into his third year without majority approval – a trough unseen since Harry Truman’s presidency – the Democrats are benefiting in other ways. Just over 100 days into their regime, 54 percent approve of the way the Democrats in Congress are doing their jobs; just 39 percent approve of the Republicans.

      Approval rating (Approve/Disapprove)
      Bush 35%/62%
      Republicans in Congress 39/59
      Democrats in Congress 54/44

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a 53 percent approval rating, 18 points better than Bush’s (and 12 points better than Speaker Newt Gingrich’s best after the Republicans took control in 1995). And a shift toward Democratic self-identification that began after the Iraq war has accelerated this year.

Yay, Nancy!!!
We learn later (p.4) that the poll “was conducted by telephone April 12-15, 2007, among a random national sample of 1,141 adults, including an oversample of African-Americans.” No explanation for that over-sampling… But still, very notable that the poll was conducted just a few days after all the Bushite fuming and media brouhaha about Pelosi visiting Syria.
On the Iraq war, the report says this (p.3):

    Bush’s “surge” of U.S. forces has not changed minds. The night he announced it, 61 percent opposed the idea. Today it’s 65 percent. And 53 percent say the United States “is losing” the war, as well as the 51 percent who think it “will lose.”

They then have a really stunning graph, at the end of p.3, charting responses to the question Was the war worth fighting?, as recorded fairly frequently since April 30, 2003. See that blue line for “yes” go zigzagging down across the page, and the pink line for “no” going correspondingly upward….right up to today’s 66% No, which they tell us there is indeed a record high.
On p.4, there is this:

    ABC/Post polls have asked three times if Americans were “hopeful” about the situation in Iraq. In March 2003, during the main fighting, it was 80 percent. In May 2004, 62 percent. Today hopefulness on Iraq is down to 51 percent.

This is another concept that it would be worth unpacking further. Down on p.18 I discovered that the question was asked this way:

    20. Do any of the following describe your own personal feelings about the
    situation in Iraq? The first is (READ ITEM). How about (NEXT ITEM)?
    4/15/07 – Summary Table (Yes/ No/ No opinion)
    a. Angry 54/ 45/ 1
    b. Hopeful 51/ 48/ 1
    Trend:
    a. Angry (Yes/ No/ No opinion)
    4/15/07 54/ 45/ 1
    5/23/04 57/ 43/ [Less than 1 percent]
    3/23/03* 30/ 68/ 1
    “About the war”
    b. Hopeful (Yes /No/ No opinion)
    4/15/07 51 48 1
    5/23/04 62 37 1
    3/23/03* 80 18 2
    “About the war”

Well, first of all, asking people’s feelings “About the war” is very different indeed from asking about their feelings “About the situation in Iraq”; and I think it was probably unwise for them even to attempt to aggregate the answers in the same table as they did there. I do rather like the latter question “…about the situation in Iraq” since it should, if understood holistically, refer to people’s feelings about the whole situation in Iraq– i.e., a situation that currently directly affects around 26 million Iraqis and just 150,000 or so US citizens. However, I suspect that many of the respondents may well have understood the question to refer to their feelings “about the US’s situation in Iraq”? Who knows?
But here’s what I find interesting. Just a bit earlier, respondents were asked (qun.18, p.17) about their expectations regarding whether the US would win or lose in Iraq… And, as noted previously, 51% said they thought the US would lose. But we also have 51% of respondents saying they feel “hopeful” about the situation in Iraq. That means that at least 2% of the respondents– and in reality, probably quite a lot more– must have said both that they think the US will lose the war, and that they feel hopeful about the situation there.
These actually correspond fairly roughly to my own combination of judgments and sentiments… I believe the US will “lose” in terms of being forced to leave the country on terms not of the Bushites’ own choosing (though I don’t necessarily consider that an all-round defeat for the US citizenry as a whole.) And I remain somewhat hopeful about the longterm prospects for Iraq and its people– particularly if everyone concerned can show the wisdom required to figure out a way for this US withdrawal from the country to be conducted in a way that is not chaotic for either the Americans or the Iraqis.
(Which I honestly believe still to be possible… Thoughit will require a huge amount of political vision and an equally huge commitment of political will by many different parties around the world.)
But whether those other US citizens who share my combination of expecting a US defeat and also being hopeful about the situation inside Iraq do so on exactly the same grounds as I do, or not, it is still really interesting to me that there are a noticeable number of other citizens– we don’t know how many; but they/we verifiedly do exist!– who can foresee a US “defeat” there and not be railroaded into thinking this is necessarily a disastrous outcome.
Linked to this, probably– given the widespread concern about the threat from global terrorism– is the degree of linkage Americans see between the outcome for the Bushites in Iraq and the level of the risk from global terrorism. So question 19 (p.17) is particularly interesting:

    19. Do you think (the United States must win the war in Iraq in order for the broader war on terrorism to be a success), or do you think (the war on terrorism can be a success without the United States winning the war in Iraq?)
    [The figures given are for: Agree with the first statement/ Agree with the second statement/ No opinion]
    4/15/07: 37/ 57/ 6
    1/10/07 45/ 47/ 8

This, too, is great news. It shows a noted erosion since January in support for the view that the US must win in Iraq if the “broader war on terrorism” is to succeed. The fearmongering arguments in this regard being loudly circulated by Bush, Cheney, and co seem to have done nothing to stem this erosion.
All this is great. I always had faith in the essential decency, good sense, and fairmindedness of the vast majority of my fellow-citizens there in the US. And finally that faith is being shown not to have been misplaced. We do have some national-level leaders (in both parties, but mainly at the moment in the Democratic Party) who are able to withstand the shrill fearmongering of the Bushites. And we have– as noted previously, here— at least a partial return by some organs of the big US media to the role they should be playing: that of relentless truth-seeking.
I’ll be returning to the US at the end of next week, and plan to be spending more time in Washington DC than hitherto. It strikes me it’ll be an interesting time to be there.

Paul Wolfowitz and ‘accountability’

How excited I was to read in the headlines that Paul Wolfowitz has finally “accepted responsibility”… But then I learned that this was only’for getting his Saudi-American girlfriend Shaha Aliriza an unjustifiably large promotion– and accompanying pay raise– at the World Bank, where he has been President since June 2005.
In that position, Wolfowitz gets his own huge salary. (Can anyone provide the exact figure for me? This page in the ‘jobs’ area of the Bank’s own website is titled ‘Compensation & Benefits’… But coyly enough it gives no details of the Bank President’s salary.)
Also, of course, the job as President of the World Bank carries a lot of power. Among his responsibilities there, Wolfie gets to lecture government officials in all kinds of impoverished countries about the dangers of graft, nepotism, etc.
What’s sauce for the goose seems not, in this case, to be sauce for the gander, too.
But here’s my question. Yes, it is fairly egregious that Shaha Aliriza– a fairly nice woman whom I once knew a little– has been getting a salary inflated to nearly $200,000 a year by virtue of her longstanding romantic relationship with Paul Wolfowitz.
But when is Wolfowitz– and the rest of the rogues who engineered the invasion and subsequent destruction of the state of Iraq– ever going to be held accountable for their leadership-level engagement in that much, much, much more harmful project?
A lot of US people– especially liberals– just love to sound off about the need for various tinpot dictators and other low-level miscreants around the world to be “held accountable” for their misdeeds.
But when will we start to demand that those of our own leaders who took our country into this quite baseless and avoidable war in Iraq and thereby set in motion the destruction of the state institutions in Iraq that then allowed the eruption of the hyper-lethal anarchy we have seen there for the past 3.5 years… while they are also responsible for the deaths of 3,250 US service members, the maiming of many thousands more, the draining of hundreds of billions of dollars from the US Treasury that could otherwise have been used to support much, much more constructive programs both at home and abroad… when will we start to hold those individuals accountable in any meaningful way for their criminally reckless and aggressive actions??
I think Paul Wolfowitz’s post-Pentagon elevation to World Bank Prez is the outcome that riles me most.
This was rewarding the man, not holding him accountable! (Small wonder if, seeing that he and the administration he served had “gotten away with” contravening the norms and rules of international law in such an egregious fashion, Wolfie thereafter thought he could contravene the norms and rules of the World Bank’s Staff Association and also get away with it…)
The fact that Georgetown University, a solidly Catholic institution, also gave a very cushy post-Pentagon job to Douglas Feith should also certainly be put under the microscope…
I suppose many Americans might say that the main thing we need to do is “punish” the Bushites at the ballot-box. I agree that needs to be done– and I’m delighted that last November we started to put that process into motion.
But I don’t think that’s enough. Those men (and the few women) who bear responsibility for taking the US into the terrible military misadventure in Iraq should be repudiated by civilized society everywhere until they are prepared to admit the error of their ways. And then, perhaps, we should encourage them to do something useful to make some amends to some of the numerous Iraqis (and US citizens) whom they have harmed. Working for ten years as an orderly in a rehabilitation hospital in one country or the other… that kind of thing…
But instead of that the Bushites, the US citizenry, and the rest of the world community were apparently quite content to see Paul Wolfowitz emerge from the Pentagon with that much blood on his hands and just saunter over to the World Bank and start working as President there??
That was the real outrage.

The Mother of all Sermons

(Note: this is Scott Harrop writing.)
Four years ago this past week, 23 March 2003 to be exact, I heard what for me then was the “mother of all sermons.” Yet until now, I have resisted writing about it:

*First, I am not inclined to be too autobiographical in the blogosphere.
*Second, when I finally forced myself to re-listen to the digital recording of “the sermon,” it dawned on me that I’ve heard far worse since. (See John Hagee section below)
*Third, I have long resisted returning to the subject of “Christian Zionism.” Where I was raised in Pennsylvania, Hal Lindsey and his 1970’s bestseller “The Late Great Planet Earth” was widely read at churches my family attended. A bit later at a “Christian University,” I once wrote a paper on “Peace and Prophecy” with the edgy subtitle, “Are they Compatible?” I had the “nerve” to think they were. Still do.
*Lastly, I am also not too inclined to ridicule ministers in public, even when well “earned.“

But then I saw a bumper sticker on the family van of one of my daughter’s friends that proclaimed, “No Jesus, No Peace.” It convinced me that I needed to go back and “unpack” four years of pent-up angst over what “the sermon” signifies for me, then and now.
Besides, I have analyzed the Friday political sermons of Shia clerics for over two decades, so I shouldn’t be so abstemious about assessing what presumed “Gospel” ministers have to say on Middle East matters. I also lamely take some courage from how George Fox challenged ministers of his day.
THE Sermon:
The context of “the sermon” was just days after the US “shock and awe” bombs began raining down on Saddam’s Iraq in 2003, as the first stages of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The setting was one of the larger “evangelical” churches here in Charlottesville, Virginia. We had been “visiting” this church, in part as the Pastor had assured us that his “new covenant” church didn’t preach “Christian Zionism.”
The sermon that day four years ago was delivered by a visiting older minister, long a mentor, an “Apostle” to the local pastor, and now involved primarily in outreach efforts to drug-infested communities. Jesse Owens was his name – not to be confused with the famous Olympian.
Much of “the Apostle’s” sermon tone was blistering high-volume, classic fire-and-brimstone, text-less, “holy spirit” fury. At early points, Owens was nearly apoplectic, as his face turned deep red and purple and his neck veins bulged.
But his subject that day wasn’t about heaven or hell, sin, eternal damnation, or any of that.

Continue reading “The Mother of all Sermons”

Molewatch: Cheney & Ahmadinejad?

On a lighter note, Nicholas Kristof recently suggested that Americans will learn more about Israel’s real problems by reading Israeli papers than in the self-censored pablum in the US mainstream media. He might have added that one can get great ideas for new columns there too.
Back on March 1st, Isreali columnist Guy Bechor revealed that Iranian President Ahmadinejad was in fact Our {Israel’s} Secret Agent in Iran.

“Could it be that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is working for us? He is after all doing an excellent job for Israel. This week, while Teheran is divided between pragmatic elements calling to suspend Iran’s nuclear program (or at least enter dialog with the US,) and militant elements who are not prepared to make any concessions – militant Ahmadinejad should definitely be supported.”

Bechor then satirically bullets Ahmadinejad’s “top achievements” in isolating Iran and making his own reputation as “as the world’s problem child.”
How else can we explain that one man brought such pressure down upon Iran and support for Israel? Obviously, he must be a deep cover Israeli mole. Oh but of course.
And now we have Nicholas Kristof, by coincidence no doubt, asking if our own Vice President Dick Cheney is “an Iranian mole?”

“Consider that the Bush administration’s first major military intervention was to overthrow Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, Iran’s bitter foe to the east. Then the administration toppled Iran’s even worse enemy to the west, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
You really think that’s just a coincidence? That of all 193 nations in the world, we just happen to topple the two neighboring regimes that Iran despises?

Moreover, consider how our invasion of Iraq went down. The U.S. dismantled Iraq’s army, broke the Baath Party and helped install a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad. If Iran’s ayatollahs had written the script, they couldn’t have done better — so maybe they did write the script
We fought Iraq, and Iran won. And that’s just another coincidence?

Oh, but of course! Cheney is Iran’s man in Washington. Didn’t he once criticize Clinton policy on Iran for hurting American oil companies? One of his implants must get transmissions from Tehran.

Continue reading “Molewatch: Cheney & Ahmadinejad?”

New Challenges to AIPAC

An interesting crop of articles examining AIPAC – the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee – has emerged in the wake of the latest AIPAC convention in Washington.
In his taboo breaking Sunday column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof bravely observes what has long been obvious here:

“There is no serious political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself.”

George Soros laments the same problem in the April 12 issue of the New York Review of Books:

“Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC’s influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it.”

An article in the current issue of Salon closes with a similar ironic challenge:

“We find ourselves in a very strange situation. America’s Mideast policies are in thrall to a powerful Washington lobby that is only able to hold power because it has not been challenged by the people it presumes to speak for. But if enough American Jews were to stand up and say “not in my name,” they could have a decisive impact on America’s disastrous Mideast policies.”

In his essay, Soros anticipated that, “Anybody who dares to dissent may be subjected to a campaign of personal vilification.” (Ask Mearsheimer & Walt, Carter & Hagel, etc.)
As noted by the new web site from Jewish Voices for Peace, “Muzzlewatch,” the New York Sun, as if on cue, shamelessly accused Soros, Kristof and others of being no different from the Nazis in pursuing a “new blood libel” against Israel.
And so it goes.

Continue reading “New Challenges to AIPAC”

Mayan Priests, Bush, Dobson, & St. Newt

Holy Chakotay! (irony alert)
Maybe it’s my native American side, but I rather think these Guatemalan Mayan Priests are on to something. According to the AP, they’ve announced plans to “purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week.”

“That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.”

The Mayans likely will not stop Bush’s visit to the Iximche archaeological site on Guatemala’s high western plateau. However, the

“spirit guides of the Mayan community decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of ‘bad spirits’ after Bush’s visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace…. [T]he rites — which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles – would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Imagine the visuals! I sure hope CNN or at least SciFi covers this ritual cleansing.
Speaking of surreal, how “faith-based” can this Bush tour of Latin America get? Oh sure, he’ll be there to promote trade, listen, and go fishing in Uruguay — while Baghdad burns.
He’s also in Brazil in pursuit of cheap ethanol – albeit with a 54% tariff on it to protect US sugar barons. Whatever happened to promoting free trade? And how much more of the Amazon rain forest must we clear to replace Middle Eastern oil?
We’re also told that he’s in Latin America, in part, to counter radicalism and support democracy.

Ah yes. And his next tour of Arab countries will include Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt — from whence to preach the good news of demcracy for Iran.

For now, the Bushistas are complaining that the Latin protest rallies against Bush are being orchestrated and funded by radicals like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And this from the Administration that until recently loved to put the President before military base crowds — all of them “volunteering” their enthusiasm too. If the President wants friendly crowds, why not a visit to Australia and get Murdoch media to manage the crowds. Snow-jobs melt there.
Back to our theme of “priests” with chutzpah, America’s favorite evangelical shrink, Dr. James Dobson, has been hosting fess-up sessions on national radio with Newt Gingrich. On Thursday, the broadcast focused on “Rediscovering America’s Spiritual Heritage.” (More on that in another post.)
On Friday’s program, Gingrich pontificates about the monstrous “gathering threat” of Islam as a preface (cover?) to addressing “tough questions” about his moral failings “of the past.”

Newt’s moral credentials include dumping his first wife amid her battle with cervical cancer and then cheating on his second wife at the very time he was orchestrating the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Dobson “appreciated” Gingrich for confessing his indiscretion, and seems to absolve him.
Besides, Gingrich is helping Christians focus on the real enemy – Islam. Lest you think I overstretch that point, I’ve often wondered why Christian social conservatives refuse to consider that they should have considerable common cause with their Muslim neighbors, precisely on family issues. Explanation – the eschatalogical focus within “Christian Likudism” on Israel trumps all.
In any case, Gingrich says he didn’t criticize Clinton for having an extramarital affair, but for perjuring himself before a grand jury. (never mind that Clinton was accused of lying about an affair) Now who is parsing his words?

So how low will Dobson go? Are Dobson & his “focused on the family” audience seriously contemplating support for Saint Newt, the family man, if he runs for President….? G*wd almighty indeed.
And speaking of, if you will, strange bedfellows, I learned yesterday that Pat Robertson’s Regent University will have Mitt Romney – the Mormon Governor – as its commencement speaker on May 7th. I suspect this will go down “hard” among the muzzled faculty and student body there. And this will be after Rudi Guliani – another maritally-challenged Presidential candidate, but staunch Israel defender – returns to Regent on April 17th.
Odd ball prediction: if these “leading lights” from the “Christian-Likudnik” right keep compromising their own principles in the service of an increasingly narrow agenda (Israel and sometimes “the family”), they may energize a backlash of political disbelief from their own followers.

They might even be inclined to take a page out of the Mayan playbook, and “sit out the next two years” while purifying the church’s moral core.

No, I don’t yet see another “great reversal” or “exile” back into the pews. Yet the building “sit-out” threat should be a warning both to the Republicans who have long taken them for granted – and to their own political bishops.
This whole subject has me pondering my Sunday School lessons from long ago on the separationist principles of Roger Williams, the Rhode Island Baptist pioneer and fellow seeker.
The 2008 faith and politics show is just beginning. Keep your “spirit guides” handy.