home / subscribe / donate / about us / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

New Edition of CounterPunch

Ebb-Tide for the Occupation: a Journey to Najaf with the Mahdi Army by Patrick Cockburn; State Terror, Oregon Division: Killer Cops by Kristian Williams; Torture in America by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. In April, CounterPunch Online was read by 16.1 million viewers by far our biggest month ever. But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Now Available: Hot New CounterPunch T-Shirts!

Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840 3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!

Today's Stories

June 1, 2004

Kathy Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government

May 29 / 31, 2004

Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day

Janine Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day

Mike Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib

Alfred W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research

Douglas Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions

Chris White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto

Bruce Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu

David Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire

Saul Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?

Kurt Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA

Elaine Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders

Will Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"

Ben Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches

Dr. Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!

Kia Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh

Mickey Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!

Jon Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times

Patrick B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance

Stephen Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel

Tom Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New

Dave Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad

Gregory Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"

Erik Cummings
Jung Meets Bush

Poets' Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert

 

May 28, 2004

Rafael Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5

Greg Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib

Dave Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work

Norman Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times

Rep. Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba

Paul McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After

Alexander Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"

May 27, 2004

Amy Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times

Douglas Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs

John L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of

Stew Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist

Dave Dellinger
a 1993 Interview

Christopher Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids

Rampton / Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony

May 26, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours

Robert Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech

Zeynep Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation

Conn Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection

Tom Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes

Derek Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot

CounterPunch Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art

Andrew Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran

 

May 25, 2004

Joe Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas

Col. Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity

Gary Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home

Toni Solo
A Developing War in the Andes

Marc Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11

Stephen Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops"

Website of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy

May 24, 2004

Ron Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!

Kurt Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages

Sam Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time"

Mike Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb

Stan Goff
Open Season on MAMs

Image of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs

 

May 22 / 23, 2004

Paul de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary

Jeffrey St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer

Brian Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq

Saul Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People

Brandy Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry

Randall Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Rafah

Ben Tripp
Assume the Worst

Bruce Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business

Josh Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers

Peter Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib

Chloe Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy

Linda Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value

Adrien Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse

David Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy

Ron Jacobs
Turnaround

Poets' Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella

 


May 21, 2004

Ray Close
The Canards of the Apologists

Christopher Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"

Amira Hass
Darkness at Noon

Jack McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army?

Bill Kauffman
Nader v. Bush

Omar Barghouti
No More Tears for America

Ghali Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza

Christopher Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture

Website of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much

 

May 20, 2004

Andrew Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi

Kathy Kelly
A Visit from the FBI

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India

Tom Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.

Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy

Robert Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle

Billy Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year

Website of the Day
Rafah Today

May 19, 2004

Elizabeth W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing, Now

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The US Can't Win

Vijay Prashad
For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004

Ray Hanania
Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.?

Greg Moses
Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC

Michael Gillespie
Who is Kenneth deGraffenried?

Josh Frank
Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry?

Gary Corseri
Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave

Kevin Alexander Gray
If Malcolm Were Alive

 

May 18, 2004

Neve Gordon
The Gaza Debacle

Doug Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib Shouldn't Surprise Us

Bob Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib

Vanessa Jones
Man on a Leash

Thomas P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden

Zeynep Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

Kenneth Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush

Elaine Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later

Website of the Day
Truth Against Truth

 

May 17, 2004

Kurt Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain

Laura Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib

Mickey Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness

Frederick B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice

Shakirah Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera

Boris Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.

Alex Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation

Victor Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg

Ron Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game

 

 

May 15 / 16, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture

Douglas Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited

John Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel

Ben Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence

Brian Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot Act

Justin E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey

Brandy Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism

John Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape

Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad

John Holt
Fencing the Sky

Ron Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith

Brian J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?

Robin Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide

Eric Leser
The Carlyle Empire

Ray Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good War Crime

Jeff Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction

Joe Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center

John Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn

Michael Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video

Poets' Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert

 

 

 

May 14, 2004

Dr. Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn

Ron Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs

William Blum
God, Country and Torture

Michael Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India Shines

Stephen Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other Absurdities

 

 

 

May 13, 2004

Dave Lindorff
Where is Kerry?

Colm O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?

Saul Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting Practices

Ralph Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners

Willliam James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled

Marc Salomon
Reality TV Bites

Forrest Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet on the Southern Front?

 

May 12, 2004

Blanton / Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in 1992

Virginia Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?

Bruce Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator of Them All

Thomas P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks

Linda S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq

Norman Solomon
Spinning Torturegate

Lisa Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala

Jack Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March on DC

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve

CounterPunch Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence

Christopher Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA

William S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?

 


May 11, 2004

Mark Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture

Ray McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly

Kurt Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment

Mickey Z.
Less Than Hero

Christopher Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse

Dennis Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar

Bruce Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85

Mike Whitney
Killing al Sadr

Simon Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military

William A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation, Nakedly Displayed

 

 

May 10, 2004

Robert Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism and Torture as Entertainment

Wayne Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape, Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks

Col. Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib

Joe Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!

Ron Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave

Ben Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage

Ray Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse

Reza Fiyouzat
"
Mishandled" Invasions

Diane Christian
Images & Abstractions & Genitals

Website of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?

 

May 8 / 9, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie

Adam Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated and Shot at Kunduz?

Douglas Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press

Kurt Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib

Brian Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling

Lucia Dailey
Forbidden Games

Joanne Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui

Mickey Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)

John Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain

Doug Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs

Norm Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11

Sam Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah

Susan Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art

Dave Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing

Laura Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne

Dave Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base

Carolyn Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004

Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"

Dr. Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation

Poets' Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska

 

 

May 7, 2004

Human Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention Facilities in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So

Robert Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War

Ahmad Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien Phu

Alexander Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison) Bell?

Mike Whitney
The Price of Victory

Norman Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial

M. Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology

 

May 6, 2004

Jeffrey St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with Shit; Kicked to Death

Kathy Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor for the War Machine

Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas Casino Game

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy

Robert Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded Men Being Shot by US Helicopter

John Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?

Christopher Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!

Alan Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish

Sam Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning

James Brooks
Sullen Spring

William S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq

 

 

May 5, 2004

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?

Will Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian Zionist and the End of the World

Patrick B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label

Lawrence Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue

Greg Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing Truth

Lee Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity

Gilbert Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire

Website of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Subscribe Online

 

June 1, 2004

Instant Karma

Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him

By GARY LEUPP

What a difference a month makes. I spent most of May in Japan, observing from the land of the gods, via CNN, the Japanese media, and the internet the operations of the law of karma in Iraq, the U.S., and the world in general. In the Hindu-Buddhist conception, good actions produce good results (in this and later lives), for the doer and for the world. Evil actions produce the opposite. It is a simple notion, but unlike the simplistic, Good vs. Evil Manicheanism of the Bush administration, it has the ring of truth to it. The Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism prescribes good conduct. http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html Among its eight components is "right speech"---including the avoidance of language that lies, insults or hurts people, or shames and embarrasses the speaker.

Bush's biggest sin in this regard were his statements, early on in the misnamed "War on Terrorism," linking Iraq to 9-11. There has never been any evidence for this link, and much evidence to the contrary; specialists on the Middle East uniformly doubted it. But a majority of Americans until recently (including countless U.S. troops in Iraq who've thought they're "getting revenge" for 9-11) believed it. They also believed the dire warnings about Iraq's WMDs, including nukes that could produce "a mushroom cloud over New York City," as President Bush put it in April 2003. The cost to the world of such wrong speech has been incalculable.

The fall from grace of neocon soul-mate Ahmad Chalabi, announced by Bush who recently told King Abdullah of Jordan (where there is an outstanding warrant out for Chalabi's arrest for bank fraud) that "you can piss on Chalabi;" plus Colin Powell's admission that he was "misled by some of the intelligence;" plus the sudden mainstream journalistic attack on Chalabi emphasizing his close ties with Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith (see the May 31 Newsweek); and the humiliating attack on Chalabi's residence in Baghdad signal the administration's need to find scapegoats for the abject failure of the Iraq mission. Some top officials may need to be sacrificed for their wrongful speech. (And in a related development, the New York Times has been obliged to apologize for its wrong reportage of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. What are the karmic implications for Judith Miller?) http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp04222003.html

Bush might affect a stance of Reaganesque ignorance of nasty doings among his subordinates, http://www.angelfire.com/empire/hamsamolly/contra.html saying in effect that he had been duped. But that will sound lame and un-macho, and people might point out that a slough of tell-all books by former officials indicate that he himself asked for intelligence to justify a war with Iraq he'd wanted anyway--long before 9-11. (Bill Gallagher drew an analogy between these requests and the request Henry II put before his retainers: "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" The Pope held the king responsible for Thomas Becket's subsequent murder and he subsequently did penance, being scourged before the archbishop's tomb.)

Another problem for Bush involves another of the elements of the Noble Eightfold Path: "right mindfulness." The mind should always been focused, disciplined and aware. But Bush boasts about not reading newspapers; Rumsfeld also says he's stopped reading them. Bush appears to hear only what his advisors tell him, and these include the neocons hell-bent on transforming Southwest Asia through U.S. military power-disciples of Leo Strauss who advocated clever use of deception to receive the approval of the masses for "wise" policy decisions they would oppose if the real reasons were given, and to win the agreement of "gentlemen" who might be foolishly impressionable; the philosophers alone should lead the state, employing fear and war to wisely do so. http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-77-1542.jsp

In making public pronouncements Bush often looks confused. Even sympathetic commentators have noted his frequent "um" s and sixth grade vocabulary, garbled sentences and apparent attention lapses. His is not a cultivated mind interested in the complexities of the world (but it's a gentleman's mind, surely, from the Straussian point of view.) Another Eightfold Path component is "Right Action" (or "Right Conduct"). This includes not killing. This administration has amassed so heavy a load of bad karma that it will likely, as I suggested it would in April 2003, go the way of the Taira rulers in the samurai epic Heike Monogatari: "The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind." http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp04222003.html

Were they to correctly link cause and effect, Bush or his successor would honestly acknowledge that he miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance that an unjust occupation would produce; that the often trigger-happy soldiers have responded to sniper fire and roadside bombings with indiscriminate firing on civilians, sweeps that involve kicking down doors, handcuffing and humiliating members of entire neighborhoods, arbitrarily detaining civilians without charge, often humiliating and torturing them. Such treatment then swells the ranks of the variegated resistance movement including Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Baathists and other secularists-persons who are no more "terrorists" than the members of the French Résistance were under occupation. One should honestly acknowledge that the great majority of Iraqis want the U.S. forces to leave now, and that over half of the Iraqis express some degree of sympathy for Muqtada al-Sadr's movement. Bush's assertions that "our enemies" are all also enemies of the Iraqi people, and that a "fully sovereign" state will allow tens of thousands of "Coalition" forces to indefinitely battle those whom even U.S.-trained Iraqi forces decline to do, are more instances of muddled thinking.

Proper, good karma-producing thinking would require an apology for the wrong conduct, a plea for Iraqi forgiveness, and recognition of the fact that the troops' presence is unwanted. Good conduct would be the withdrawal Iraqis demand, and huge reparations.


* * *

Six weeks ago I was thinking that, despite big administration setbacks, it was planning for the next stage on the neocon agenda: a widening of the war to include Syria. The implementation of sanctions against Syria, the accusations of the Assad regime's complicity in the passage of "foreign fighters" into Iraq to abet the resistance, and the threats by Israel to attack Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus following the U.S.-backed Israeli missile attack on Syria last fall all suggested this. But now, this looks less likely as every aspect of the war comes under closer public scrutiny and as global outrage at U.S. behavior restrains the more reckless in the administration, some of whom may fall sooner than later due to various bad karma. This close to the election, his popularity at 47%, Bush is more likely to exercise restraint as the CIA and State Department gain at the expense of the Chalabi advocates, who indeed seem poised for a fall.

 

* * *

Before the disastrous war began, the neocons predicted an occupation of Iraq comparable to that of Japan after World War II. There the occupiers were generally well received, especially before the "Reverse Course" beginning in 1947, which targeted the popular left. But that occupation was one of an advanced industrial, imperialist power over another one following a long war triggered by the Pearl Harbor attack. The Japanese people came to regret the effort to dominate Asia as a blunder, and even those who felt it justified---as an effort to oppose western imperialism in the region---felt it was the nation's fate, its karma, to accept the results of the war. So there were no snipers or roadside bombs.

The Iraqis, on the other hand, did not provoke war with the U.S. But some felt that however unreasonable the pretexts for war, at least it had toppled a vicious regime. So they indeed welcomed it. But few do now, as the Abu Ghraib photos, a wedding bombing, damage to the Imam Ali Mosque and countless injustices generate inevitable consequences.

With apologies to the immortal John Lennon:

Instant karma gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
Betta get your act together Dubya
Soon you'll be politically dead
What in the world you thinking of
Smirking like a fratboy, former gov
What on Earth you trying to do?
Grab Iraq, or Iran and Syria too?
Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna smack you right on the face
Better get yourself together Dubya
And join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Smirking like a chimpanzee
Who in the world you think you are?
A superstar? On the stage of war?

Why in the world are we here?
Surely not to live in pain and fear.
Why on earth are you there
Enraging and scaring---
You're gonna get your share.

Well we'll all shine on
In the nuclear war that's to come
Yes we'll all shine on
If Dubya continues to bomb
But it won't be long
Before he and his gang are gone
No it won't be long
Their karma is just too wrong

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu


Weekend Edition Features for May 29 / 31, 2004

Mike Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib

Alfred W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research

Douglas Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions

Chris White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto

Bruce Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu

David Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire

Saul Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?

Kurt Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA

Elaine Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders

Will Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"

Ben Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches

Dr. Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!

Kia Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh

Mickey Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!

Jon Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times

Patrick B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance

Stephen Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel

Tom Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New

Dave Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad

Gregory Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"

Erik Cummings
Jung Meets Bush

Poets' Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert

Google
WWW http://www.counterpunch.org

 

Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!

home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /