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Recent
Stories
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
Fooling
Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
May
10 / 11, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Rosenthal Faces the Music in Key
Med Marijuana Case
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Labor in the Dawn of Empire
Annie
C. Higgins
The Last Time I Saw Mus'ab
Ron Jacobs
The Devil in New England
William
Mandel
One on One with Sen. Joe McCarthy
Jason Leopold
Halliburton Still Flouts the Law as It Profits from Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Iraqi Quagmire
Larry Magnuson
William Bennett: Next Viceroy
of Iraq?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The Good Terrorists?
Anthony
Gancarski
Chalabi: Drowning in Ba'ath-water?
Steven
Sherman
A Letter to My European Friends
Khaled
El-Bizri
Mr. Bush Comes to Santa Clara
Bruce
Jackson
How Fear Curdles the Soul
Adam Engel
Flag in the Rain
Poets
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/10
Website
of the Weekend
Killing Again
May
9, 2003
Rahul
Mahajan
Don't Lift the Sanctions Yet
Wayne
Madsen
When Lying Pays Off: Neo-Con Fabricators
Chris
Floyd
The Karamazov Question
Don Monkerud
The Great Christian Schism: War or Peace?
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Drunk on Power: Bush, Power and the
Pathology of the Dry Drunk
Hammond
Guthrie
Bombastic Promise Keeping
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/09
May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
with Gretta Duisenberg
Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
Are Many; They are Few"
Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
Their Pockets
Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kienthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"
April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
of the Iraq War
Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
Gancarski
Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
Wallace
Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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May
14, 2003
Giggling into Chaos
Rose-Colored
Pilot's Goggles
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
Everyone, not attached by threadbare ideology
or plain old war profiteering to President Bush's War on Terror,
knows that even on its own terms, it can only fail miserably
in a great waste of lives and substance. You cannot fight a war
against religious faith and opposition to injustice unless you
are prepared to be as utterly ruthless as Stalin, and even then,
when you lie pickled in your tomb, the roots you missed destroying
will grow hardy new plants, as they have in contemporary Russia.
But I would never have expected stark evidence for failure to
come so quickly.
Massive explosions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
just before the arrival of Colin Powell for talks, have left
a smoking mass of blood and charred bodies.
Before this, only hours after talks in
Israel about easing restrictions on the Palestinians, Mr. Powell
was rewarded by Mr. Sharon's sealing Gaza. Already Sharon had
dismissed the new peace plan, and already he has publicly broadcast
that Israel will continue to build new settlements.
Seeking stability for America's Middle
East policies was the central purpose of the Iraq invasion. One
might think Sharon would show some gratitude for the monstrously-costly
invasion of Iraq, but instead something like "Well, you
can't take back the invasion now, so it's not going to change
what I do" seems to be his response.
These signs follow others. The American
Proconsul for Baghdad has been sacked for incompetence as chaos
still characterizes life for a city of five million souls. Reports
by independent journalists--that is, those not tied to America's
propaganda consortium of major networks and newspapers--indicate
a growing fierce resentment towards the liberators. My, such
ingratitude.
And in a move strikingly reminiscent
of Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 triumphant return to Iran from exile
in France, last Saturday (May 10), Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim,
a noted Shia cleric and fierce opponent of Saddam Hussein, returned
after twenty-three years of exile. He was greeted in Basra with
far more enthusiasm than anything seen by America's kevlar-clad
warriors for peace, justice, and the American way--especially
the American way. The cleric has made statements both about a
widely-based elected government and an Islamic state--goals that
are not entirely inconsistent since Iraq is about sixty-percent
Shia.
How that will be reconciled with Iraq's
more modern elements is not clear--many Americans being unaware
that Hussein was a rather secular ruler and women, for example,
in Baghdad lived a more modern life than those in most other
Arab capitals. Of course, there's still the angry demands of
the Kurds in northern Iraq for autonomy, a people previously
betrayed by American foreign policy. Who knows what they'll be
up to if betrayed again?
The Kurds' demands are accompanied by
a background roar from Turkey against any such thing happening,
but then Turkey is in the dog house for failing to permit a second
front against Iraq from its territory, even after being offered
billions in bribes. Still, Turkey is a key ally and is trying
to join the modern world as quickly as possible, so it can't
be treated as badly as Bush is determined to treat France and
Germany.
Such are the rewards of rudely elbowing
your way into the intimate affairs of others. If only America's
great power were ever actually used against the world's great
injustices or to protect the weak, but all evidence since the
end of World War II points the other way. It is used only to
defend narrowly-defined interests, fight superstitious fears
such as those it feels around communism or now Islam, and lay
low anyone who seriously gets in its way. Any end to an injustice
along the way is strictly coincidental.
Of course, one can only be glad the murder
in Iraq is largely over, despite receiving notice of the fact
from an odd man in an Armani suit and pilot's goggles on the
deck of an aircraft carrier. The likelihood of Bush understanding
what he has actually achieved in Afghanistan and Iraq is not
high. So too the likelihood for success of his limp effort to
control Israel's bloody excesses.
And what of the longer-term results of
Mr. Bush's mismanagement? Additional attacks against American
interests will bring further suppression of American rights and
freedoms, and I believe this may be supported by the almost childish
fears and lack of understanding of many Americans. "Heavens,
there was a terror alert while we were buying ice-cream cones
at Disney World!" Of course, there will be more violent,
hatred-inducing incursions abroad.
At the same time that Mr. Bush increases
repressive and intrusive measures at home and destruction abroad,
he insists on massive, economically-obtuse tax cuts as voter
bait. This is a formula for re-creating the economic chaos of
Israel, only there is no one out there able to bail the United
States.
The combined effects of massive American
security restrictions, secrecy, retaliation against otherwise-friendly
states opposed to its destructive acts, national deficits, trade
deficits, war and the resentments it generates may well depress
the growth of international trade seen in recent decades, imposing
still a further cost on the world.
The first part of the twenty-first century
looks promising indeed. Let's hear it for Commander Bush, giggling
in goggles, while he launches us all into darkness.
John Chuckman
lives in Canada. He can be reached at: chuckman@counterpunch.org
Today's
Features
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
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