Attacking in the Wrong Direction

This is an article by Col David Hackworth about the current war in Iraq. He seems to be pretty much on target.

Is The NYPD Really Doing Its Job?

Jamie Chapman has written an interesting report on the police activity associated with the Republican National Convention in New York City. The report is published by the World Socialist Web Site.

The Police Department is certainly taking the event seriously. Given a potential for public disorder or even a terrorist strike at the Convention they are certainly justified to do so. However, the scale of police preparations seems nothing short of mind-blowing. According to Chapman,

In all, the NYPD expects to maintain 10,000 cops 24 hours a day in the Madison Square Garden area. The entire city police force of some 36,000 is being placed on shifts of 12 hours or more for the convention. Helmeted paramilitary police armed with assault rifles have already been deployed in nearby Pennsylvania Station and subways, along with National Guard troops, NYPD canine units and regular beat cops. Other police have mounted stepped-up street patrols.

Chapman also writes about NYPD's activities conducted outside of their jurisdiction; he calls those activities "unprecedented".

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has dispatched hundreds of cops around the country to put some 56 people under 24-hour surveillance in advance of the Republican National Convention (RNC). The convention, to be held at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, opens Monday, August 30.

According to a report issued by WABC News in New York City, the subjects of this spying operation have been identified as “primary anarchists” by the NYPD. They are each being watched by teams of five detectives plus one supervisor, according to the television news report.

The surveillance teams are being sent as far away as California, North Carolina, Washington DC and Boston. Their assignment is to tail the targeted protest organizers and follow them on their trips to New York.

....
This mounting of a nationwide surveillance operation by a city police department is virtually unprecedented. Even in the 1950s, when the infamous Red Squads were set up in every major metropolis to spy on socialists and communists, the reach of these agencies seldom extended beyond their own city limits.

Given the WSWS's left-wing focus, one should not be surprised that the report appears to focus on the left-wing subjects of increased police attention. I could imagine that right-wing activists perceived as a threat are followed just as vigorously (though, I must say, the authorities' treatment of the recent case of William Krar makes me doubt that). But that is not what I would like to focus on here.

What I am mainly interested in is whether or not the Convention is receiving the sort of police attention which makes the police fail in its primary responsibility,- ensuring order and fighting crime across the city. I don't doubt that while the Convention is ongoing you should expect very little street crime around the Madison Square garden. But that area is safe as it is, for the most part, and I am far more concerned with the crime in South Bronx or East New York,- the areas I suspect might suffer as a result of the NYPD being stretched thin and providing close to a third of its manpower to the security needs of the Convention.

I am not an expert on the law-and-order matters hence I am not going to render judgment here. However, I would like to know whether or not a study was ever conducted as to how such lopsided police deployment is going to affect the public safety of New York City. And if so, what did that study find.

Iraq Today: A "Green Zone" Insider's Account

Larry Diamond spent several months (January-April 2004) working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. The following is his account of various problems in Iraq today,- mostly, caused by the Bush administration's blunders before, during and after the invasion.

The Dreaded T-Word

US Army Major General George Fay has conducted an investigation into the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and, according to this report, acknowledged that US forces tortured the detainees. For most of us, it has been clear for quite some time that alleged actions of some of the soldiers,- some of the said actions depicted in the now-famous photographs and videos,- do indeed constitute torture. I am happy the military finally found it in themselves to acknowledge as much. Better late than never.

Ivan Eland's Take On Patriotism

We tend to think in stereotypes. This is only human as we try to categorize facts and events around us, form patterns in our knowledge base. Propagandists of all stripes readily prey on this tendency of ours, trying to feed us the stereotypes they see as helpful to their agenda. And that tendency of theirs is also nothing new.

In his commentary, The Independent Institute's Ivan Eland performs the much needed dismantling of the stereotype common in today's America,- namely, that opposition to war and lack of aggressiveness is a sign of the lack of patriotism, or of weakness. That stereotype appears to be well-entrenched; from newspapers columns to barrooms and webforums, one sees anti-war types labeled "sissies", "un-American" or worse. "Is there any ground to that?", one might ask. Not much, says Eland. In fact, at times those who rush to war are hardly the sort of people one would think of as warrior types.

The president dresses up in military garb and lands on an aircraft carrier, pretending to be a war hero to make people forget that he avoided the danger of conflict years earlier.

But the bulk of the discussion is not about who did what when,- it is more about the militarization of the way America thinks and acts as a society.

The profligate use of the war metaphor in unrelated matters demonstrates that the glorification of war runs deep in contemporary America. The word “war” is so effective in raising passions that it is used as a propaganda tool for the cause of the day. For example, there is a war on poverty, a war on drugs, and a war on terrorism. (Terrorist attacks are usually isolated in time and place and often can be better countered when thought of as crime). None of these “campaigns” have been very successful, and often the term “war” is used only as a marketing tool to garner support from an all-too-eager American public.

Mr Eland believes that even the threat of the Soviet Union which fueled massive military spending by the US during the Cold War was vastly overblown. I can't entirely agree with his assessment of the Soviet Union.

Some would argue that much of the post-World War II period was spent in the laudable fight against the forces of totalitarian communism. But that jousting against a second—rate enemy (the Soviets’ dysfunctional communist economic system made it an “Upper Volta with missiles”) masked a U.S. effort to remake the world in its own image. The United States established alliances and military bases around the world and regularly intervened in the affairs of other nations through coercion, covert action and the use of armed force. The best evidence that this U.S. overseas “empire” was not created mainly to fight communism was its retention—and even expansion—after the Soviet rival collapsed into the dustbin of history.

Based on many reputable military sources, the Soviet Union was militarily on the par with the US and its allies, and hardly a second-rate enemy. But the fact that the US military presence worldwide only increased following the collapse of the Soviet Union is certainly an argument supporting the idea that the US is no longer merely content with defending itself, but is indeed seeking world domination. In fact, The Project for the New American Century, the doctrine authored by many prominent members of the Bush administration, stipulates exactly that,- the need for the US to become the force that no one in the world can even come close to challenging.

Writes Eland,

After the demise of the rival superpower, however, the advantages of wanton U.S. global intervention have declined precipitously. And blowback from foreign meddling—for example, the September 11 terrorist attacks—has demonstrated that the dangers of such a policy have increased exponentially, especially if hostile terrorists could acquire a nuclear weapon.

It’s time to reconsider the founders’ original foreign policy of restraint overseas—made possible by America’s blessed geographical position oceans away from the world’s centers of conflict. Today, with the most powerful nuclear arsenal on the planet, the United States remains secure from the vast preponderance of threats, except that of catastrophic terrorism.

That is a very valid argument.

I believe America should not withdraw from the world completely, but it should not be a sole power either. The forces under the Pentagon's command should be used for defense only. It can help in other areas,- peacekeeping, for instance, but US soldiers, people who volunteered to defend the US, should not have to participate in such missions. Forming an American (or, better yet, multilateral) Peacekeeping Corps would be a noble idea. Using US military for wars whose value to the US security is questionable drains the American resources and corrupts the society. And the US forces should certainly never be used to further anybody's imperial ambissions.

"May God bless America's Veterans"

I have earlier commented on the treatment of the US soldiers wounded in the current war in Iraq. The following is, I think, a pretty good Flash presentation about this administration's attitude towards Americans in uniform, courtesy Eric Blumrich.

Ziad Jarrah's Strange Good-Bye

Ziad Jarrah, the terrorist alleged to have been the pilot at the controls of the United Flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 after the passengers overpowered the hijackers, had supposedly written to his girlfriend in Germany the day before the attacks to bid his farewell. According to the official version of the events, this was a pilot, thus we ought to assume that Jarrah knew that he was not to live to the end of the next day. (We are told that the hijackers who provided the "muscle" for crowd control onboard the hijacked aircraft were likely not told about the true nature of the mission and were possibly in the dark about their intended fate. I view that possibility as entirely realistic.)

The above-mentioned BBC report contains a number of curious details about the package Jarrah is alleged to have mailed to his girlfriend.

...Jarrah apparently made a mistake when he wrote the German address, and the package was returned to the US, where it was passed to the FBI, said Der Spiegel.

Well, one would think that the man knew where his girlfriend of five years lived. It also appears a little strange that assuming he knew what the right address was he did not check to make sure he wrote it correctly when mailing such an important piece of correspondence.

German prosecutors have confirmed that the package also contained documents relating to flight training which Jarrah had undergone.
...
"You should be very proud, because it is an honour, and in the end you will see that everyone will be happy," the letter is reported as saying.

And he tells his girlfriend: "Keep hold of what you have until we meet again."

I am not sure how to interpret that. I can easily believe that the document could have been mistranslated. However, if that is not the case, I am thoroughly baffled here. For one thing, what is the point of those flight-training related materials in the package. Did Mr Jarrah wish his girlfriend undertook flight training too? Possibly. But if he knew he was going to soon be dead, what is the point of instructing her to "keep hold of what you have until we meet again"? The only place where, under that scenario, they would ever meet again would be in the afterlife, and taking material possessions there is not an option under any of the major religions' interpretations of the afterlife.

It appears that I am not the only one who finds it hard to believe in the authenticity of this document.

Jarrah's relatives - who say he was a passenger, not a hijacker - have insisted that the letter is not genuine.

"The letter has been fabricated in an attempt to find evidence against Ziad Jarrah," his uncle, Jamal Jarrah told the US news agency Associated Press.

I remember hearing such rebuttals during the months immediately following the great tragedy of 9/11. At the time, I tended to view such rebuttals by the alleged hijackers' family members as an expression of denial, as a refusal to accept the awful truth. However, knowing what we know now, it would seem to me that Jamal Jarrah and others may well have a good case to make.

"There’s got to be a better way."

This is how Sheldon Richman concludes his excellent review on how centralization of government makes the society ineffective and vulnerable. And I can't agree more.

Mr Richman offers a libertarian perspective on what has been happening in the US over the last several decades. I would say that what he is saying likely applies not only to the US but to any other society as well. I am not a libertarian to quite the same degree as Sheldon Richman but I do find some of his arguments very persuasive. Of the anti-American ideology of our Jihadist enemies Mr Richman has this to say.

The insistence by the Bush administration and its supporters that U.S. policy has nothing to do with the terrorist threat is a little too fevered to be credible. Those who see in anti-Americanism a reaction to U.S. policy are maligned as excusing violence by trying to understand its perpetrators. But a moment’s thought discloses that excusing and understanding are vastly different activities. Moreover, proponents of the Bush interpretation can’t really be against trying to understand the terrorists, because these proponents themselves claim to understand them. So this is really a debate between competing interpretations. They are welcome to offer their theory of the terrorists’ true motivation, but a little evidence would be nice.

I can't agree 100% that radical Muslim groups do not resent the internal American attitudes or American customs and lifestyle, but I would think that would be a secondary issue whose significance can not possibly compete with that of the American policy in the Middle East.

Another excellent point of Mr Richman's is that by centralizing America the government makes its every mishap more significant as far as its potential negative consequences.

The more highly centralized the governing authority, the easier it is to disrupt the society by disabling that authority. There is simply no way for a bureaucracy to know all that the entire society knows. This is as true for security issues as it is for the production of steel or wheat. “Society” is smarter than any legislature or bureau.

I am in general a supporter of a strong power center. However, I am also a supporter of federalism. The functions of the federal center must be tightly regulated, as must the power of the local government.

Every chance they get the Bush administration is telling us that because of the terrorist threat we must give them ever more power at the expense of the local power base and our individual freedoms. But I think just the opposite is true,- and to that the deceptions and incompetence of the federal government is a testament.

Shame On Us All!

War is hell. Some die, others suffer injuries,- sometimes grievous physical wounds, sometimes invisible phychological damage, wounds invisible to the eye but nonetheless capable of destroying the soldier's future chances for success and happiness.

And while battlefield suffering is likely unavoidable once the guns have opened up we certainly do have control over what happens to battlefield casualties. For the dead there is little that can be done other than giving them a proper burial and giving their families as much comfort and support as is humanly possible. I don't believe we are doing such a good job of that, but I will save that subject for later. For the wounded, there is a lot more that needs to be done. They need medical care, psychological care, help with readjustment and rotating back into civilian life if they are no longer fit to serve. And it appears that the way we as a nation treat Iraq war wounded is nothing short of a national outrage.

According to this report by Frederick Sweet the wounded are far from being a priority on the military's list.

Mark Benjamin’s investigative report on Oct. 20, 2003 for UPI, revealed that many wounded veterans from Iraq had to wait "weeks and months at places such as the Fort Stewart military base in Georgia, for proper medical help." They had been kept in living conditions that are "unacceptable for sick and injured soldiers." One officer characterized conditions for the wounded by saying, "They're being treated like dogs."

And what are those unacceptable conditions?

At Fort Stewart in Georgia, they waited in hot concrete barracks with no air-conditioning or running water.

Advances in the body armor technology mean that a lot of people who would have died in previous wars now survive as their body is protected,- but the limbs take the brunt of the damage, and thus the percentage of limb loss is unusually high among the wounded. That fact is not being widely disclosed by the Pentagon. In general it appears that the defense establishment is going out of its way to conceal the scale of the issue.

As American casualties increased during the summer of 2003, US military officials suppressed discussion of the total number wounded. Only by July 10, 2003, nearly four months after the invasion of Iraq had been launched, did CNN report that for "the first time since the start of the war in Iraq, Pentagon officials have released the number of US troops wounded from the beginning of the war through Wednesday [July 9, 2003]."

However, Seth Porges wrote in Editor & Publisher (10/23/03) that coverage of injured and wounded U.S. soldiers gets very little media attention. "For months, the press has barely mentioned non-fatal casualties or the severity of their wounds," writes Porges. "Few newspapers routinely report injuries in Iraq, beyond references to specific incidents. Since the war began in March, 1,927 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, many quite severely."

But newspapers neglected to report or keep a tally on the wounded, as an informal survey of some top papers has shown. This comes on the heels of reports that attacks on American troops in Iraq had increased in recent weeks from an average of 15 to 20 attacks per day to about 20 to 25 attacks a day, with a peak at about 35 attacks in one day, according to the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

And the mainstream US media were hardly the watchdog one would hope they are trying to be,- they didn't seem to ask the hard questions and pressure the Pentagon to have them answered.

Overall, Dr Sweet's article is a great summary of how we treat our wounded. Whether or not you support the war in Iraq I believe it is your duty as a citizen to face those facts and assess them for what they are.

Oh, How I Wish Politicians Were That Honest!

Billionaires For Bush is a good site to visit and have a good laugh. Actually, it may not be quite that funny as the site likely presents exactly the reasons why George W Bush is so vigorously supported by the corporate powers, as well as the vision of the world those powers have. But I hope you will enjoy it,- a good laugh in hard times is never a bad idea!