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April 24, 2002
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
April 20, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Drowning in a Sea of Apathy
Kristen
Schurr
Leaving
Nablus
Bernard Weiner
Israel and the Intifada
for Dummies
Jean-Guy
Allard
A
Coup Signed by Otto Reich
Chris Floyd
The "Grandeur" That Was Rome:
A Letter from the Front
April 19, 2002
Eric Flint
Free
the Books!
David Krieger
A Peace Proposal:
Bring in the Children
Jeff Paterson
Advice
to Recruits from
a Gulf War Vet
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
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Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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April 25, 2002
Time Out!
A
Pause for Longer-Range Thinking
By Bernard Weiner
As the daily political and military atrocities
magnetize our attention, it does us good now and then to take
a step back and try for some longer-range perspectives on the
world situation, and politics in the U.S. of A. So here, in short
takes, are some reflections on four areas that could use some
deeper examination: political despair, Bush's coming downfall,
the new face of warfare, and America's response to Islam.
1. Pendulum
Soldiers
Shadow forces have been let loose across
the globe. Every so often, it happens. The center, for a variety
of sociologic/spiritual/political reasons, doesn't hold and suddenly
wild, crazy, bad people take over key areas of the world, wreaking
havoc and destruction. For awhile, people of good will and humanistic
tendencies are frightened to death, not being all that familiar
with how to relate to extremist leaders. Invariably, the bad
guys, because they don't operate well within rational boundaries,
go too far with their arrogant, brutal behavior and ambitions,
and the pendulum swings back the other way. The bad guys are
gone, or at least are in the descendancy, and the center begins
to hold again. It's the old political/cultural see-saw.
In our time, it's not clear whether Bush
is a symbol or cause of this shadow ascendancy on the world scene.
Certainly, his administration's arrogant, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners,
us-vs.-them style, has encouraged other political leaders to
act reprehensibly as well around the globe, be it in Italy or
France or Africa or Arabia or Israel.
We're living in a political world that
threatens to increase our sense of despair, with more than our
fair share of horrible news each day. And so we gird our loins
for political battle, knowing we're going to get verbally pummeled,
called names, have our patriotism questioned, maybe even face
violence or official surveillance. But we also keep this long-term
knowlege in our hearts: that tides do change. Keeping the faith
during the bad times is so all-important, laying the foundations,
the momentum building, for that inevitable pendulum-swing later.
So, dear reader, think of yourself as a Pendulum Soldier, actively
working to bring peace and justice and proper balance to this
country, this planet, ourselves. We accomplished a lot with the
Civil Rights Movement, helping to stop the Vietnam War, setting
up environmental safeguards; we warned of the dangers of globalization,
we founded institutions to combat the worst of the hardright's
plans. We can do it again. Eyes on the prize. Don't let the bastards
drag you down; falldowngetup -- one word.
2. Cracks in
the Facade
For awhile, it looked like the Bush Administration
was invincible. In the wake of the horrific 9/11 crimes against
humanity, nobody seemed to have the courage to put up much of
a fight when Bush quickly responded in ways that never would
be accepted in normal circumstances. This band of mean-spirited,
greedy, determined power-seekers ran roughshod over the Constitution,
the institutions of democracy, over real and imagined "enemies"
abroad, etc. Instead of governing from the middle and seeking
consensus in this new struggle -- which would have been appropriate
anyway, given that Bush lost the presidential popular vote by
half-a million ballots and reached his office only through a
political maneuver on the Supreme Court -- Bush behaved as if
he had an enormous mandate and didn't need to consult anybody,
on anything. It was full speed ahead in enacting long-range tax
cuts for the wealthy, ignoring Congress, making secret anything
that might prove embarrassing or potentially criminal, freezing
out Democrats, retrenching on environmental progress, behaving
like a rampaging cowboy in foreign affairs, etc. etc.
The point here is not to examine the
details of Bush's program, but to indicate, as per #1 above,
that such arrogant behavior cannot, and will not, continue forever.
Every action carries within itself an opposite reaction. Bush&Co.
is behaving like a secret corporation, motivated by greed and
the desire for monopoly power, and is so outrageous in its open
assaults that even those normally in support find their mouths
hanging open in astonishment at times, both at the ignorance
of the man in charge and in some of the policies they're expected
to champion.
The cracks already are starting to show
in domestic policy, with moderate Republicans and most Democrats
joining forces more often these days to stop some of the more
reckless and dangerous policies propounded by Bush&Co. Even
the quiescent Democrats -- forced into silence lest they be considered
unpatriotic during "wartime" -- are starting to locate
their spines, and are beginning to offer more in the way of opposition.
In foreign policy, the veteran team surrounding
Bush thought itself unchallengeable as well, representing the
only superpower in the world. Until it started to falter again
and again, when running up against the many-layered complexities
of the real world, as opposed to Bush&Co.'s simplistic black-and-white-you're-with-us-or-with-the-terrorists
point of view. They've managed to alienate most of Europe, many
of their reluctant allies in the Muslim world (Cheney batting
zero on his recent trip is a good example), and now, as a result
of its unconscionable and sloppy meddling in the internal affairs
of Venezuela, a good share of Latin America as well.
In short, in areas domestic and foreign,
Bush&Co. are showing signs of inconsistency, incompetency
and behavior unbefitting the "leader of the free world."
And beginning to suffer some defeats, finally. Consider: No drilling
in the Arctic Refuge, federal and state courts slapping Ashcroft's
hands for over-reaching in his police-state desire to control
everything and everyone, large public rallies in the streets
against Bush policies, editorials from normally-Republican newspapers
are starting to get critical; Bush's approval ratings are slipping
fast. When the final unraveling comes, when critical mass occurs
and the whole deck of cards begins to collapse -- fed by the
discovery of all sorts of embarrassing and possibly criminal
secrets currently being hidden by the administration -- the end-slide
is going to be fast and vicious. Resignation or impeachment is
not out of the question. Keep the pressure steady and building.
3. The New
Face of War
America doesn't want to fight fullscale,
front-on, long-running wars anymore; too many body bags get shipped
back to the States and then there's all hell to pay politically.
So, as we've seen recently, the U.S. prefers a more high-tech
approach: smart bombs dropped from high altitudes, insertion
of special forces for quick missions, unmanned drone aircraft
for reconnaisance and firing of missiles, night-patrol goggles,
etc. etc.
So, on one hand, the wealthy, technologically
superior U.S. can, and wishes to, engage in what it laughingly
thinks of as a "clean" war, with minimal casualities
and "collateral damage." But the new enemies of the
U.S. and the developed world don't need all that highfalutin',
expensive technology. All they need is some plastique and nails,
suicide martyrs, computer skills, biological agents, chemical
compounds, "dirty" radiation bombs, and the like. We've
been given enough visions of the future -- airplanes used as
bombs, young warriors wearing TNT jackets, release of anthrax
spores in public, massive viral attacks delivered by email, missing
plutonium from labs, etc. -- but tend to see them as one-off
events. It may not be what many of my lib-rad comrades want to
hear but we'd better get used to the coming world of large terrorist
attacks, and smaller terror happenings -- largely at this point
from Islamic extremists -- and the panic and economic disasters
that will follow.
So we should know what's coming, but
the military expenditures tend still to go to fighting the last
war. Partly, it's ignorance and head-in-the-sandism. (Bush even
CUT funds for beefing up security of nuclear power plants!) Partly,
more money gets made by corporations building large pieces of
machinery -- planes, tanks, missiles (and, of course, missile-defense
boondoggles) -- and that's the green fuel for political campaigns.
It'll probably take another huge terrorist
attack, something on the scale of 9/11, or bigger, to serve as
our final wake-up call. Then maybe we'll cancel the "Star
Wars" missile-defense shield R&D, maybe we'll even cancel
Bush's huge tax-cut giveaway (mostly to the wealthy, of course)10
years into the future. If so, we'll be able to use those freed-up
monies so that we can pay for effective anti-terrorist programs
-- and a wide variety of human-need and infrastructure-repair
projects -- without robbing Social Security and Medicare trust
funds, as Bush is currently doing.
And, maybe, just maybe, we'll start thinking
about revising our foreign policies so that we can alter the
chemistry of the soil in which young potential terrorists grow.
Prevention is always cost-effective in the long run.
4. The Paucity
of Understanding:
Islam and the West
Imagine yourself a practitioner of Islam
in the Middle East. The mainly Christian West, especially in
Europe and America, demonstrates total ignorance about your faith,
and appears to be engaged in a crusade against your religion.
Partly, that "crusade" (a loaded term employed by Bush,
let us remember) is geopolitical in nature, tied mainly to access
to cheap oil&gas. But partly that crusade seems to grow out
of a hearty disdain for the religion itself, based on prejudice
and ignorance of Islam.
Western leaders are constantly getting
caught with their religious blinders on. Italy's premiere Burlusconi
blurting out that European civilization is far superior to any
other in the world; Bush's "crusade" remark; House
Republican Whip Tom DeLay's inflammatory statement that only
Christianity "offers a comprehensive worldview that covers
all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation. Only
Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities
that we find in this world -- only Christianity."
There's such a paucity of understanding
of Islam in the West, and perhaps much the same is true about
Christianity/Judaism in much of the Islamic world. I know this
lack of knowledge about Islam is true for me and many of my friends,
though we are quickly trying to catch up. When our elected leaders
make disparaging remarks about the religion, openly, you know
that anti-Islam bigotry and ignorance runs deep in our Western
societies. (At least, Nixon and Rev. Billy Graham tried to hide
their anti-Jewish bigotry.)
Now, having said that, it is also true,
as many Moslem commentators have pointed out, that contemporary
Islam is greatly divided and troubled, not quite deciding how
to incorporate its old, revered religious teachings into the
modern world of democracy and free-markets. Many Moslem societies
are in the process of making the transition -- such moderate
states as Egypt, Jordon, Indonesia, et al. -- but others are
still not sure how much, or in some cases even whether, to relate
to the non-Islamic world. And that division runs deep in individual
societies, Iran being one clear example, with its more worldly
younger population anxious for reform and more open access to
the outside world but the conservative mullahs constantly standing
in the way with prohibitive restrictions.
Given this conflicted point of view,
which reflects the chaos and confusion of modern life, it is
no wonder that Islamic fundamentalism has risen more and more
to the fore, bringing with it not only answers to the seeming
chaos of life but, concomitantly, an antagonism to the forces
regarded as bringing moral impurity into the healthy spiritual
body of Islam: Western values derived from non-Islamic cultures,
which threaten to confuse and tempt practitioners of Islam. Of
course, there will be Osama bin Ladens, and fatwas, and calls
to jihad in such a culture clash.
Not all Moslems, of course, are extremists.
Most are, or would be, content being allowed to practice their
faith, much as their forefathers did, while interacting with
the non-Islamic world in minor but pleasant-enough ways: buying
products from the West, enjoying Hollywood movies, listening
to hip-hop, etc. But the East/West conflicts, and the seemingly
intractable Israel/Palestine dispute, keep intruding -- as do
the inane comments about Islam from Western leaders like Bush
and Burlusconi and DeLay -- and thus the pot continues to boil.
(I haven't even mentioned how Arab-Americans consider themselves
put upon by the general U.S. population, but in particular by
the Bush Administration, which seems intent on targeting them
for "special consideration," which further isolates
them and puts them at risk.)
Also forcing Moslems into a united front
of suspicion against the U.S. is America's clear support of the
current Israeli government's terror campaign. Granted that there
are good and decent reasons why the U.S. might want to support
Israel's right to exist in a hostile Arab environment -- the
only democracy in the region, affinity and familiarity with the
main religion practiced there, Israel supports U.S. policies,
etc. -- but there is no excuse, especially after the recent horrors
associated with Israel's invasion of the West Bank, for Bush
referring to Ariel Sharon as "a man of peace." What
has Bush been smoking?
If the U.S. wants to maintain good relations
with the Arab Moslem countries, it must mobilize a global peace
coalition -- with the same dedication and passion with which
it has organized its "war on terrorism" coalition --
to work mightily to bring about a peace settlement between the
Israelis and Palestinians. If the U.S. isn't willing to do this,
and there is no evidence to date that Bush is even considering
it, all we can expect is a slide into more slaughter, more regional
instability, more terrorists fluorishing, more disasters. Israel
and the U.S. will have "won" the battle, but risk losing
the war. And the gap between the Christian/Jewish West and the
world of Islam will grow wider and wider, and ever more dangerous.
Bernard Weiner,
Ph.D. in government and international relations, has taught at
Western Washington University and San Diego State University.
He was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20 years,
and has published in The Nation, Village Voice, The Progressive
and CounterPunch.
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