Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 23,
2005
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
February 22,
2005
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
February 23, 2005
Return of the China Lobby
Cornering
the Dragon
By
CONN HALLINAN
When newly appointed CIA Director Porter
Goss recently warned that China's modernization of its military
posed a direct threat to the U.S., was it standard budget time
scare tactics? Or did it signal the growing influence of hard-liners
in the Bush administration who want to "contain" China
and re-institute the Cold War in Asia?
A day later, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld delivered a similar message to the Senate Armed
Services Committee. Rumsfeld claimed that within a decade the
Chinese navy could surpass the U.S. Navy, and that China was
"increasingly moving their navy further from shore."
The 2005 Quadrennial Defense
Review will reportedly take a similarly alarmist view of China's
military.
The CIA and Pentagon assessments
offer nothing particularly new in their military analysis of
China. However, both specifically excluded any mention of U.S.-China
cooperation around North Korea or last year's CIA analysis that
growing economic ties between China and the U.S. made military
conflict less likely.
"It is a little surprising,"
James Steinberg, former national security advisor in the Clinton
administration told the Financial Times, "that it
[the CIA assessment] didn't say anything about the enormous emphasis
China places on a stable international environment and constructive
relations with the U.S."
But not so surprising if the
long battle between those in the Republican Party who favor engagement
with China has begun to tip in favor of those who advocate confrontation
and encirclement.
As Nation defense correspondent
and Hampshire College Professor Michael Klare pointed out back
in 2001, this division in the GOP goes back to the earliest days
of the Cold War. For some two decades the hard-liners, with their
close ties to Chang Kai Sheck, dominated U.S.-China policy. But
lured by the potential of China's markets, and anxious to widen
the Sino-Soviet division, the engagement wing of the party seized
the initiative with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's trip
to China in 1971, establishing relations with Peking.
The old confrontationist "China
lobby" was hardly dead, however. Using the immense wealth
of the Scalife, Olin, and Carthage foundations under the umbrella
of the highly influential American Enterprise Institute (AEI),
the "lobby" recruited a group of well-placed, powerful
political figures.
AEI members include neoconservative
icons like Lynne Cheney, Charles Murry, Michael Novak, Irving
Kristol, Ben Wattenberg, Frank Gaffney, and Michael Ledeen.
The AEI is closely aligned
with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), the group
that successfully lobbied for "regime change" in Iraq
and argues that it is a strategic necessity for the U.S. to control
the world's oil supplies.
PNAC, the brainchild of AEI's
Kristol, includes among its members Vice President Dick Cheney,
Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former State Department
officials Richard Armitage and John Bolton, and other leading
administration figures like Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle, and
Zalmay Khalilzad, presently U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.
The confrontationist's goals
are much the same as they were in the opening years of the Cold
War: ring China with military bases, support Taiwanese independence,
and, in Kristol's words, "Work for the fall of the Communist
Party oligarchy in China."
In short: corner the dragon.
Recent events suggest that
the confrontationist wing is back in the driver's seat.
Containment
Redux?
Goss's and Rumsfeld's characterization
of China contradict last year's conclusions of the administration's
Independent Task Force on Chinese Military Power headed up by
former defense secretary Harold Brown and retired admiral Joseph
Prueher. The panel found that while China is modernizing its
military, it is 20 years behind the U.S., and that "the
balance between the United States and China, both globally and
in Asia, is likely to remain decisively in America's favor beyond
the next 20 years."
China's military budget is
less than one tenth that of the U.S. and it does not have a massive
arms industry, preferring to purchase submarines, destroyers,
aircraft, and high performance anti-aircraft missiles from Russia
and Israel. In spite of Rumsfeld's grim forecast, the Chinese
navy is designed for defending its territorial waters, not projecting
force elsewhere. While the U.S. has a dozen aircraft carriers,
China has one, and an old obsolete Soviet one at that.
While China has deployed large
numbers of intermediate range ballistic missiles facing Taiwan,
most observers see this more as an attempt to intimidate the
Taiwanese than as a prelude to invasion or a threat to U.S. forces
in the region. The missiles are far too inaccurate to pose a
military threat, on top of which Taiwan has become so central
to China's economy that any actual attack on the island would
be an act of economic suicide.
Jonathan Pollack, director
of the Strategic Research Department of the U.S. Naval War College,
told the New York Times that while China did have the
largest standing army in the world and was in the process of
modernizing, "I don't see these capabilities as the leading
edge of a more comprehensive, long-term plan to either supplement
U.S. military power in the Western Pacific or challenge U.S.
power on a global scale," adding, "Let's not make them
out to be 10 feet tall."
The Bush administration has
always had a somewhat schizophrenic approach to China, with one
faction preaching engagement, the other confrontation. Early
in his first term, Bush warned that the U.S. would do "whatever
it took" to defend Taiwan, changed the designation of China
from "strategic partner" to "strategic competitor,"
and initiated a campaign of aggressive military surveillance
which ultimately led to the downing of a Navy EP-3E spy plane
on Hainan Island.
On the other hand, the administration
has encouraged trade, welcomed China to the World Trade Organization,
and up to recently, muted its rhetoric on Taiwan. Late last year,
then Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Taiwan not to seek
independence and that U.S. policy favored its "peaceful
reunification" with China.
Trade and Powell notwithstanding,
however, any close examination of the administration's actions
vis-à-vis China suggests the engagement wing is in eclipse.
A central goal of the confrontations
has been to deploy an anti-ballistic missile shield (ABM) in
Asia, which the administration is now in the process of doing.
So far it has enlisted Japan and Australia in this effort, and
is wooing India as well. While the rationale for the ABM is alleged
to be North Korea, the real target is China's 20 Intercontinental
Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).
The strategy of ringing China
with U.S. military bases is also well underway. Besides its traditional
bases in Japan and South Korea, Guam has become, according to
Pacific Commander Admiral William Fargo, a "power projection
hub," that will play an increasing role in Asia, with "geo-strategic
importance." The island already hosts B-52s, fighter planes,
nuclear attack submarines, and the high altitude spy drone, the
Global Hawk. Since Guam is a U.S. colony acquired during the
Spanish American war, the military does not need permission for
the buildup, as it would in Japan or Korea.
The U.S. is also attempting
to build bases in Southeast and South Asia. While Indonesian
authorities deny the story, the Singapore Times reports
that the U.S. is presently negotiating to open a naval base on
Sulawesi Island. It is also strengthening military ties to Thailand,
Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, and Malaya.
The encirclement has also spread
to Central Asia, an important source of oil and gas for China.
The U.S. presently has bases in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and
Tajikistan, and military ties with Uzbekistan, according to Rumsfeld,
are "growing stronger by the month."
Several of these countries
border China.
The Chinese response has been
to increase their military budget, particularly in response to
the U.S. ABM system. "Once the United States believes it
has a strong spear and a strong shield," Sha Zukang, a leading
Chinese arms expert told the New York Times, "it
could lead them to conclude that no one can hurt the United States
and they can harm anyone they like anywhere in the world."
The Chinese currently have
20 CSS-4 ICBMs, but appear to be increasing that force to between
75 and 100 missiles, as well as upgrading the CSS-4's guidance
systems. It is also only a matter of time before China puts multiple
warheads (MIRVs) on their missiles, a deeply destabilizing move.
MIRVing is a cost-effective way to overwhelm an ABM system, but
one that can also tempt an adversary to launch a first-strike
attack.
China is also deploying missile-firing
submarines to offset the U.S. buildup in the Taiwan Straits.
The "containment"
policies of the hawks have not damaged the growing Chinese economy-now
the world's third largest-or shaken the grip of the Chinese Communist
Party. But they have accelerated an arms race in the region,
fueled growing nationalist movements in both China and Japan,
and raised the stakes of any potential clash over Taiwan.
The last time the "China
Lobby" tried to contain China, it was a country devastated
by World War II and its own civil war. Today it is a nuclear-armed
giant, whose economic growth has lifted economies from Tokyo
to Rio de Janeiro. Americans need to ask themselves: Is it really
a good idea to push that dragon into a corner?
Conn Hallinan is a policy analyst for Foreign
Policy In Focus and a lecturer in journalism at the University
of California, Santa Cruz.
|