Bill Ayers

The direction of events and outcomes is tragically predictable, and the comparisons of May 2003 and May 2007 tell a story:

US troops in Iraq: 150,000 / 150,000.

Other “Coalition” troops: 23,000 / 12,000 (Albania is hanging in there!)

US troop deaths: 37 / 123 ( “troops” does not include the massive mercenary army called “contractors”)

Iraqi civilian deaths (est) : 500 / 2,750

New Iraqi civilians displaced by violence: 10,000 / 80,000

Iraqis who say the country is moving in the right direction: 70% / 36%

So much for all the empty rhetoric and rationalization— the despised “foreign fighters” in  Iraq R Us.

Xenophobic Raillery

JON CARROLL

Friday, June 1, 2007

One way to get clarity on foreign policy issues is to turn the dynamic around. Pretend you are a citizen of the other country; what would you think and what would you do?

Then why craft a bill at all? Because companies large and small need the workers. Because companies large and small need a fig leaf to cover their practices, which will go on no matter what happens in Washington. Are people who hire illegal aliens in favor of “amnesty?” Not the right question, because it’s a political question. People who hire guest workers are in favor of profits. They’re in favor of low wages. Once again, it’s the wonders of a market-based economy. All questions are economic questions.

So here we have an unworkable scheme that almost everyone will ignore anyway. In one way, that’s a good thing, because we need the workers. Agribusiness needs the workers, so there’s the guest worker program. Silicon Valley needs the workers, so there’s the points program. I have heard various estimates about how many jobs illegal immigrants take away from American citizens; I’m not sure anyone knows for sure what the real data are. I do know that not many citizens are willing to become migrant laborers or busboys or stone masons or janitors or nannies or maids, at least not for the wages that are being paid.

So complaints about immigrants are essentially xenophobic raillery. Are the illegal immigrants a burden on our welfare system? Yup. But, passing a law that makes you feel good, or makes someone feel good, is dangerous fun. We have lots and lots of laws against illegal drugs, and what have they gotten us? A gigantic prison system that stresses the public budget far more than illegal immigrants do, plus — we still have drugs!

Immigrants are not drugs; they are human beings. They offer services and they spend money. They raise families and create communities. Heck, if the Native Americans had had border guards, we’d all be illegal immigrants. We’re all in this together; maybe we should start acting like it.

wealthy, successful, gifted, and strong.  He sees himself as an exceptionally good person, uniquely virtuous, his actions always guided by the highest purposes. It’s true that he has robbed and murdered several of his neighbors, burned down their homes, appropriated their land and pillaged their resources. But remember, he’s a man of unique virtue and high purpose, an exceptionally good person, at least in his own mind. What should we do with such a man?

Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri said that it was a bad idea for the Senate to investigate the prewar predictions by so-called and self-styled US intelligence agencies.  He called for the nation to stop rehashing past controversies and to focus on”the myriad of threats we face today.”Exactly!” as Stephen Colbert would say. It’s hard enough to keep things straight today, and if you add in yesterday and the day before, let alone last year, things just get too confusing.  Moving on.

Whenever the powerful announce that we’re in a crisis and that we don’t have time for discussion or consideration, that can be easily interpreted: don’t ask any questions; don’t think about it; shut up and get in line.

The US military is reported to be viewing “The Battle of Algiers,” the brilliant anti-imperialist film dramatizing the French occupation of Algeria, searching for lessons about how to be successful in an “counterinsurgency.”  The big lesson is of course beside the point: don’t invade another country; as soon as you put your first boot into foreign soil, you own every problem; your miserable humiliating defeat is inevitable, the only open question, at what cost?

The cowardly Democratic Party, one of the two major pro-imperialist parties in the US,  collapsed in the face of executive opposition to its wimpy time-table-for-withdrawal. The Democrats woofed noisily about the responsibility of the so-called Iraqi government, insisting that it step up and play its puppet  role more perfectly, and then settled back into their comfortable and customary scold-and-whine position. All the bluster might provide  (they hope) a little needed cover for the betrayal.

Billions more down the drain of war and conquest, murder, rape, torture, and theft. Bush wins, and the predictable result: no justice and no peace—unpopular power trumps popular will.

Let’s keep working for the day he’ll be held to answer as a war criminal. A day of both justice and peace.

said an army officer incredulously as he led the search in Iraq for 3 missing GI’s. He couldn’t believe the lack of cooperation from local people in helping locate his comrades.

Most Iraquis have concluded that the US wants to take over their country. Aside from empty platitudes about democracy and freedom, what exactly is the evidence to the contrary?

Paul Wolfowitz resigned from the World Bank after careful negotiations in which the bank’s board noted that his mistakes were in “good faith.” How nice.

His “ethical mis-step” involved getting his girlfriend a nice job and good pay. Period. He engineered the unfolding nightmare in Iraq, led the decimation of worker’s rights and the deepening emisseration of the poor around the world in the name of “restructuring,” oversaw huge transfers of wealth from the Third World to the imperial headquarters, and this was the best the board could do? Well, of course, on those deeper and more fundamental ethical issues the board is in full agreement with Wolfowitz. It’s a through-the looking-glass world, and any hope for ethical clarity from those gangsters is a fool’s errand.

Let’s look forward to the day Wolfowitz will be tried as a war criminal. Let’s work for peace, and let’s never forget.

The prewarUS goal (!!) of three million barrels of Iraqui oil production a day has never come close, and now a new government report estimates that between $5 and $15 million dollars a day of declared oil production has gone missing over the four years of occupation. Billions in theft and graft. Like we don’t know.

I heard an interview with an American in Iraq who claimed that the Marines deplored all “needless killing.” Well, of course. But how to seperate the needless from the other kind— the killing most needful? If you buy the Big Lie that got the US to Iraq in the first place the distinction may seem reasonable if bizarre, otherwise it’s the rantings of a madman, a down-the-rabbit-hole picture of the world, his brain on drugs. It’s all needless, all the blood and destruction on the hands of Bush and Cheney to start.

The American went on to express sympathy for the troops, noting that he knew “the pressure they’re under.” Hmmmm? Pressure  from Bush? From Big Oil? And by the way, any sympathy for the pressure experienced by the people living under the boot of occupation?

He answered that— cliche alert— “this is a new kind of war” because it’s a “counter-insurgency” (see, e.g., Viet Nam, Algeria, India, Afghanistan, Mozambique…).  He elaborated by way of a Marine slogan he’d learned: “Be kind and courteous, and plan to kill anyone you meet.”

Americans abroad.