Flexible Reality
Friday, February 13, 2004
Submitted by Colleen S. Mathews
From an Email MessageRobin Williams for President 2004.
Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan... what we need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message. Robin Williams' plan...(Hard to argue with this logic!)
Note: Hehehehe....
I kinda agree with some of this, until it gets to the "over the top" jingoism riff...but the creator of it is not THE Robin Williams of humor and film fame. The writer should just let it be known that it's his/her work, and not THE Robin Williams.
riff: n, pl: A clever or inventive commentary or remark: “Those little riffs that had seemed to have such sparkle over drinks... look all too embarrassing in cold print” (John Richardson).
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I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for peace. So, here's one plan:
1. The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Noriega, Milosovich and the rest of those 'good ole boys.' We will never "interfere" again.
2. We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany, South Korea and the Philippines. They don't want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No one sneaking through holes in the fence.
3. All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave. We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of who or where they are. France would welcome them.
4. All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit. No one from a terrorist nation would be allowed in. If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum would never be available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11 cashiers.
5. No "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home baby.
6. The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. This will include developing non-polluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.
7. Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don't like it, we go some place else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)
8. If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides most of what we give them is stolen or given to the army. The people who need it most get very little, if anything.
9. Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island some place. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.
10. All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer.
There now, ain't that a winner of a plan.
"The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?'"
If you agree with the above forward it to friends. the Language we speak Is ENGLISH.....learn it...or LEAVE!
Religious battle over The Passion
By David Willis
BBC correspondent in Los Angeles
The Passion of the Christ, written and directed by Mel Gibson, has aroused strong debate among religious groups ahead of its release in the US on 25 February. It is a harrowing film which spares few details in its depiction of the suffering of Christ. Hailed by some as an epic, to others it is one of the most offensive films ever made.
Jewish human rights advocates like the Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, say it leaves no-one in doubt as to who was responsible for Jesus' death. "It wasn't the Romans, they were too timid - they were even compassionate about it," he said. "It was only the Jews. That portrayal will have a negative impact, even if it doesn't cause instant anti-Semitism." Mel Gibson, who co-wrote, directed and financed the film, denies the charges of anti-Semitism.
Described as a conservative Catholic, he says the script for the film was the New Testament and his inspiration was the Holy Spirit. Gibson is criss-crossing America promoting the film to church groups and Christian colleges where the film is seen as a recruitment tool - a means of spreading the word among the unconverted.
One thing this controversy guarantees is ticket sales. Experts predict Mel Gibson will recoup the $30m (�16m) he spent making this film in the first weekend of its release. In Hollywood, the film's star Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus, came to its defence. There were "certainly" going to be people who disagreed with the film, he said. "But this does not play the blame game. It does not condemn an entire race for the death of Christ." The film was a faithful representation of the gospels, and did not set out to be controversial, he said. "It was supposed to tell the truth. Not much has changed in 2,000 years - Jesus was [controversial] and they killed him. We all killed him, and he died for it."
Jewish groups are urging Mel Gibson to add a postscript, pointing out that Christ died for all mankind. Currently, no such changes are planned. The Passion of the Christ is released in the US on 25 February, and will reach cinemas around the world in March and April.
Friday, February 13, 2004 Last updated 7:22 a.m. PT
Bush pushes abstinence-only education
Seattle Post Dispatch
By MARK SHERMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is proposing to double spending on sexual abstinence programs that bar any discussion of birth control or condoms to prevent pregnancy or AIDS despite a lack of evidence that such programs work.
A study by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on declining birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers concludes that prevention programs should emphasize abstinence and contraception. "Both are important," said Dr. John Santelli, the lead author of the study, which has not been published.
In Minnesota, a study found that sexual activity doubled among junior high school students taking part in an abstinence-only program. The independent study, commissioned by the state's health department, recommended broadening the program to include more information about contraception.
Independent researchers who are studying abstinence-only programs for the federal government said in their first report two years ago that no reliable evidence exists whether the programs work. They are expected to issue an update soon.
In his State of the Union address, President Bush said, "We will double federal funding for abstinence programs, so schools can teach this fact of life: Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases." Bush would spend $270 million on abstinence-only education, compared with $100 million annually when he took office.
The president also would move the programs into the same agency within the Health and Human Services Department that oversees religious-based programs and the president's proposal to promote marriage. Advocates of comprehensive sex education said the shift, coupled with the additional money, is part of Bush's election-year appeal to conservatives.
They said the administration's proposal flies in the face of research that credits both abstinence and contraception with reducing the teenage birth rate by 30 percent in the past decade to historic lows. "This is money, hundreds of millions of dollars that we could better spend on children and people who need the help," Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., told HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson at a hearing on the president's budget proposal.
James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a group that promotes education about birth control and condom use, said abstinence-only programs deprive teenagers of information about the effectiveness of condoms in stopping the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. "These programs have really evolved into anti-condom programs," Wagoner said.
Yet supporters of the abstinence programs said teens should be hearing more about refraining from sex. "Kids in society are saturated with information about contraception and messages about encouraging casual, permissive sex," said Robert Rector, who helped write the administration's abstinence education program. Rector discounted the Minnesota study as unscientific and said the CDC research does not give enough credit to abstinence.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Greenspan warns of soaring budget deficit
Salon
Feb. 11th, 2004
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Wednesday the U.S. economy has made "impressive gains" since last summer and predicted that even the lagging jobs market should perk up in coming months. But he also cited the soaring federal deficit as a risks factor, saying this problem must be addressed soon to avoid the threat of "serious longer-term fiscal difficulties."
"Overall, the economy has made impressive gains in output and real incomes; however progress in creating jobs has been limited," Greenspan told the committee. But even in the jobs area, Greenspan held out hopes for an improvement in coming months as continued strong GDP growth makes businesses more confident about hiring back laid-off workers. "As managers become more confident in the durability of the expansion, firms will surely once again add to their payrolls," Greenspan said.
But he said the optimism could turn out to be misplaced if any of a number of risks derail the economy's prospects. Among the risks he listed were a sharp increase in oil and natural gas prices and the possibility that investors will become spooked by the soaring budget deficit. Last week, the administration projected that this year's deficit will hit an all-time high in dollar terms of $521 billion.
"Should investors become significantly more doubtful that the Congress will take the necessary fiscal measures, an appreciable backup in long-term interest rates is possible," said Greenspan. That view is at odds with the Bush administration, which has argued that the deficits pose no immediate threat of pushing interest rates higher.
Greenspan devoted a considerable part of his testimony to urging Congress to get control of the soaring deficits, which the administration is pledging to cut in half over the next five years.
Greenspan said the need to start taking action is critical in light of the country's soaring current account trade deficit, which hit $550 billion last year, requiring the United States to borrow that amount from foreigners during a period when the dollar is weakening in value. "Given the already substantial accumulation of dollar-denominated debt, foreign investors, both private and official, may become less willing to absorb ever-growing claims on U.S. residents," Greenspan said.
Many private economists are concerned that if foreigners suddenly become spooked and start dumping their U.S. holdings, stock prices could plunge and interest rates soar. Greenspan's testimony was accompanied by a new Fed forecast for 2004 that was moderately more optimistic about the economy than the July forecast had been.
The new forecast predicted the GDP will grow by between 4.5 percent and 5 percent in 2004, up from a July forecast that had pegged 2004 growth at between 3.75 percent and 4.75 percent.
The Fed predicted that the unemployment rate, which dropped in January to 5.6 percent, would show a slight improvement this year, edging down to be 5.25 percent and 5.5 percent by the fourth quarter. The Fed projected that inflation will remain under control with an inflation gauge tied to the GDP rising by just 1 percent to 1.25 percent this year, around the level that the Fed considers as representing price stability.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Justice Dept. Seeks Hospitals' Records of Some Abortions
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NY Times
Published: February 12, 2004
WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 — The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.
Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what opponents call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, enacted last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions.
The department wants to examine the medical histories for what could amount to dozens of the doctors' patients in the last three years to determine, in part, whether the procedure, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, was in fact medically necessary, government lawyers said.
But hospital administrators are balking because they say the highly unusual demand would violate the privacy rights of their patients, and the standoff has resulted in clashing interpretations from federal judges in recent days about whether the Justice Department has a right to see the files.
A federal judge in Manhattan last week allowed the subpoenas to go forward and threatened to impose penalties, and perhaps even lift a temporary ban he had imposed on the government's new abortion restrictions, if the records were not turned over.
But, also last week, the chief federal judge in Chicago threw out the subpoena against the Northwestern University Medical Center because he said it was a "significant intrusion" on the patients' privacy.
A woman's relationship with her doctor and her decision on whether to get an abortion "are issues indisputably of the most sensitive stripe," and they should remain confidential "without the fear of public disclosure," the judge, Charles P. Kocoras, wrote in a decision first reported by Crain's business journal in Chicago. The Justice Department is considering an appeal.
The department's demands for the records are still pending against Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, Weill Cornell Medical Center and St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, all in New York City; the University of Michigan medical center in Ann Arbor; and Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. At least one undisclosed hospital also appears to have been served with a subpoena, officials said.
Judge Richard Conway Casey of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who issued an order in December enforcing the government subpoenas, said at a hearing last week that the department had good reason to want the records, and he threatened to sanction the opposing lawyers in the case unless the hospitals turned them over.
"I will not let the doctors hide behind the shield of the hospital," Judge Casey said, according to a transcript of the hearing. "Is that clear? I am fed up with stalls and delays."
Judge Casey issued a temporary injunction in November preventing the government from enforcing the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He said last week that he was prepared to lift that injunction and possibly clear the way for the government to enforce the law if the records were not produced.
Sheila M. Gowan, a Justice Department lawyer, told Judge Casey that the demand for the records was intended in part to find out whether the doctors now suing the government had actually performed procedures prohibited under the new law, and whether the procedures were medically necessary "or if it was just the doctor's preference to perform the procedure."
The department said in its unsuccessful effort to enforce the Northwestern subpoena that the demand for records did not "intrude on any significant privacy interest of the hospital's patients" because the names and other identifiable information would be deleted.
Citing federal case law, the department said in a brief that "there is no federal common law" protecting physician-patient privilege. In light of "modern medical practice" and the growth of third-party insurers, it said, "individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential."
It is still unclear exactly how many patients would be affected by the subpoenas — if they are enforced — because the affected hospitals are still reviewing their case files. Officials said several dozen women who have obtained abortions could be affected.
A lawyer for the National Abortion Federation, a plaintiff in the lawsuit before Judge Casey, told him that, over all, "many hundreds" of medical documents would be covered. The federation is a trade organization that represents abortion providers.
The University of Michigan, which initially refused to turn over the subpoenaed records because of privacy concerns, said it was discussing ways of deleting enough identifying information to comply with the subpoena. Other hospitals said they remained concerned.
Under the department's subpoena, "there still is enough identifiable information in these records to identify these people," said Kelly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Northwestern.
Advocates for abortion rights said they were particularly troubled by the subpoenas because of Attorney General John Ashcroft's history as an outspoken opponent of abortion in his days in the Senate.
"This notion of John Ashcroft poring over medical records in a fairly unprecedented type of fishing expedition is exactly the type of privacy invasion that worries people," said David Seldin, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights organization. "The government just shouldn't be involving itself in private medical decisions and second-guessing doctors' ability to advise their patients properly."
Krugman's Book Review On the Phillips and Suskind Book About The Bush Family Dynasty
ReviewThe Wars of the Texas Succession
By Paul Krugman
American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
by Kevin Phillips
Viking, 397 pp., $25.95
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill
by Ron Suskind
Simon and Schuster, 348 pp., $26.00
Here's a true story that came too late to make it into Kevin Phillips's American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, but it fits perfectly with its thesis. As all the world knows, Halliburton, the company that made Dick Cheney rich, has been given multibillion-dollar contracts, without competitive bidding, in occupied Iraq. Suspicions of profiteering are widespread; critics think they have found a smoking gun in the case of gasoline imports. For Halliburton has been charging the US authorities in Iraq remarkably high prices for fuel—far above local spot prices.
The company denies wrongdoing, saying that its prices in Baghdad reflect the prices it has to pay its Kuwaiti supplier. That's not quite true; Halliburton's reported expenses for transporting gasoline are, for some reason, much higher than anyone else's. But the real question is why Halliburton chose that particular supplier—a company with little experience in the oil business, mysteriously selected as the sole source of gasoline after what appears to have been a highly improper bidding procedure. Why did it get the job? We don't know. But it's interesting to note that the company appears to be closely connected with the al-Sabahs, Kuwait's royal family. And the al-Sabahs, in turn, have in the past had close business ties with the Bush family, in particular the President's brother Marvin.
In any previous administration—at least any administration of the past seventy years—this sort of incestuous relationship among foreign governments, private businesses, and the personal fortunes of people in or close to the US government would have been considered unusual and prima facie scandalous. What we learn from Kevin Phillips's new book, however, is that this kind of intertwining of public policy and personal self-interest has been standard operating procedure not just for George W. Bush, but for his entire family.
American Dynasty and Ron Suskind's new book, The Price of Loyalty, can be seen as a second wave of Bush critiques. The first wave, exemplified by Molly Ivins's Bushwhacked, Joe Conason's Big Lies, and David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush, described what Bush has been doing these past three years. But they offered only scant explanations of how and why the Bush administration does what it does. (I made a brief stab at an explanation in the introduction to my own The Great Unraveling, but it was no more than a sketch.)
The new books go deeper into the agonizing question of what is happening to our country. Ron Suskind—an investigative reporter with a knack for getting insiders to tell what they know —offers a detailed, deeply disturbing look at how the Bush administration makes policy. Kevin Phillips—a former Republican strategist who feels that his party has betrayed the principles he supported—investigates the history of the Bush clan, and argues that this family history provides the key to understanding George W.'s motives and even his technique of governing.
Phillips is well aware that some will dismiss his work as "conspiracy theory." But as he says, such taunts shouldn't prevent us from looking at the family history of the people who now rule us:
Worries about conspiracy thinking should not inhibit inquiries in a way that blocks sober examination, which often more properly identifies some kind of elite behavior familiar to sociologists and political scientists alike.
To that end, Phillips offers an unusual and unflattering portrait of a great family (great in power, not morality) that has built a base over the course of the twentieth century in the back corridors of the new military-industrial complex and in close association with the growing intelligence and national security establishments.
And George W. Bush, as the scion of this dynasty, is the first president to, in effect, inherit the office. For four generations the Bush family has thrived by exploiting its political connections, especially in the secret world of intelligence, to get ahead in business, as well as exploiting its business connections, especially in finance and oil, to get ahead in politics. And whatever the public and the pundits may have thought about the 2000 election, for the Bushes it was a royal restoration.
The family history of the Bushes helps us to understand one of the great tragedies of American political history. After the disputed election of 2000, the nation badly needed a president who would seek reconciliation. Instead it got a deeply divisive leader, who made a mockery of his campaign promise to be a "uniter, not a divider." It's all in the family, Phillips tells us:
When Bush took office in 2001, a parallel to Stuart and Bourbon arrogance quickly emerged in the new regime's insistence on ideological conservatism despite the lack of any such national mandate. Restoration drinks from its own special psychological well. So what kind of family has, in its own eyes, regained its rightful inheritance? It's a family that has become accustomed to privilege:
By the mid-twentieth century, connections and crony capitalism had become the family economic staple, with emphasis on the rewards of finance, and instinctive policymaking fealty to the investment business. The Bushes have produced no college presidents or stonemasons, no scientists or plumbing contractors—generally speaking, their progeny have become almost exclusively financial entrepreneurs.
As this quote suggests, the Bush dynasty differs from other American families that have mixed wealth with political prominence. While the Kennedys and the Rockefellers may have a sense of entitlement, they also display a sense of noblesse oblige—what one might call an urge to repay, with charitable contributions and public service, their good fortune. The Bushes don't have that problem; there are no philanthropists or reformers in the clan. They seek public office but, if anything, they seem to feel that the public is there to serve them.
Let's put W. to one side for a moment, and look at how his brothers used their political connections to enrich themselves. Here are a few highlights:
� Before he was elected governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, in partnership with a Cuban refugee whom Phillips suggests had CIA connections, bought an office building with $4.6 million borrowed from a savings and loan. When the S&L went bankrupt, the loan was taken over by the federal Resolution Trust Corporation, which for some reason allowed the partners to settle their debt for only $500,000. In another deal, Jeb was paid handsomely by a company selling pumps to Nigeria that somehow received large-scale financing from the US Export-Import Bank.
� Neil Bush sat on the board of another S&L, Silverado, which made $200 million in loans—subsequently defaulted—to an oil company that in turn gave Neil large loans with no obligation to repay. In recent divorce proceedings it has emerged that a firm backed by Chinese businessmen, including the son of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, paid Neil large sums in return for vaguely defined services.
� After the first Gulf War Marvin Bush, who went to Kuwait seeking business in 1993, served on the boards of several companies controlled by the Kuwait-American Company. A member of Kuwait's royal family is one of Kuwait-American's major shareholders, and it seems reasonable to say that in effect Marvin works for the al-Sabahs.
And then there's the story of how George W. himself became rich. Many people now know the tale—the failed companies that somehow got bought out at premium prices, the insider stock sale that somehow was never properly investigated, the government generosity that made the Texas Rangers such a good deal for the businessmen who picked W. to be their public face. Several of these deals, like those of brother Marvin, had Middle East connections. Bush's first venture, Arbusto, may have involved bin Laden family money. The story of George W.'s stake in Harken Energy—which he sold two months before it announced large losses—involved a puzzling surprise deal with the government of Bahrain.
Here's how Phillips summarizes the picture:
All in all, if presidential family connections were theme parks, Bush World would be a sight to behold. Mideast banks tied to the CIA would crowd alongside Florida S&Ls that once laundered money for the Nicaraguan contras. Dozens of oil wells would run eternally without finding oil, thanks to periodic cash deposits by old men wearing Reagan-Bush buttons and smoking twenty-dollar cigars. Visitors to "Prescott Bush's Tokyo" could try to make an investment deal without falling into the clutches of the yakuza....
But aside from casting some light on the President's character, why does this shady family history matter? Phillips makes a convincing case that Bush family crony capitalism is closely intertwined with Bush administration policy. In part, it's a matter of values, W.'s "instinctive policy fealty" to the activities that made his family rich. Although he ran in 2000 as a moderate, his policies, from the tax cuts to the scrapping of the Kyoto Protocol, have been relentlessly in favor of both the rich and the energy industry. And according to Suskind's The Price of Loyalty, W. appears to have a visceral dislike for corporate reform.
More ominous, perhaps, is Phillips's contention that family history has shaped Bush foreign policy. It's a great irony that George W. Bush, beloved by red-blooded, red-state Americans for his down-home manner, comes from a family with deep political and business connections to the Middle East. As someone once pointed out, it's a lot easier to document links between the bin Laden family and the Bushes than it is to document links between the bin Ladens and Saddam Hussein.
I've already mentioned some of the business links. There are others, like George H.W. Bush's post-presidential employment by the Carlyle Group, the private global investment firm whose Saudi investors included members of the bin Laden family.
But perhaps more important is the policy connection. One way to look at the younger Bush's confrontational policies in Iraq is that they are a rejection of a traditional US strategy of making alliances of convenience with some of the area's regimes. And who was responsible for that earlier strategy? Few were more involved than George H.W. Bush, as CIA director, vice-president, and finally—until Saddam overstepped the line—as president. Phillips puckishly describes the two Gulf Wars as "the wars of the Texas succession."
Along the way, Phillips reminds us of a series of actual or potential scandals surrounding US Middle Eastern policy, all of which involved the Bush family in some way. Phillips suggests that there may be some substance to old rumors that Republican operatives with CIA connections negotiated with Iran's mullahs to delay the release of the hostages in 1980—dooming Jimmy Carter's reelection chances. He also places the elder George Bush squarely at the center of the Iran–contra affair, citing the 1992 indictment of then Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, which claimed that Bush participated in the arms-for-hostages swap.
For me, however, the most striking story was his recounting of "Iraqgate." In this largely buried scandal, officials of the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration not only supplied Saddam Hussein with arms and turned a blind eye to his use of chemical weapons, but later signaled fairly clearly that it would be okay with them if he occupied part of Kuwait—a signal that Saddam apparently misunderstood as a license to swallow the whole thing. This history sheds an ironic light on the efforts of some of those same officials, notably Donald Rumsfeld, to retroactively justify last year's invasion of Iraq by a concern for human rights and democracy.
Still, the fundamental question isn't what motivates the Bush family and its retainers. It's how such a self-interested clan, with little by way of a redeeming record of public service, could have come to such a position of power. And here Phillips offers only a partial explanation, though it's a good start.
There are three strands to Phillips's thesis. First is the effect of surging economic inequality, which has led to a broad-based "dynastization of America." To put the matter simply, the economic elite has become far more elite than it was a generation ago. Since the late 1970s, the top 1 percent of the population has more than doubled its share of national income, and the top 0.01 percent has increased its share by a factor of six. Today there is, to an extent not seen since the 1920s, a substantial class of people wealthy enough to form their own dynasties. And in a variety of ways, from political contributions to more subtle shaping of culture, for example by promoting aristocratic values, this class has created an environment favorable for dynastic ambitions.
Second is the, um, unholy alliance between the dynastic class and the religious right. I found Phillips's explanation of how Bush uses religiously charged language to signal his alliance with fundamentalists revelatory:
Bush's day-to-day language was a veritable biblical message center. Besides the ever-present references to "evil" and "evil ones," chief White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, a onetime college theology major, filled George W. Bush's delivery system with phrases that, while inoffensive to secular voters, directed more specific religious messages to the faithful....
Biblical scholar Bruce Lincoln's line-by-line analysis of Bush's October 7, 2001, address to the nation announcing the US attack on Afghanistan identified a half dozen veiled borrowings from the Book of Revelation, Isaiah, Job, Matthew, and Jeremiah. He concluded that for those with ears to hear a biblical subtext, "by the [speech's] end America's adversaries have been redefined as enemies of God and current events have been constituted as confirmation of scripture."
What Phillips doesn't explain, or at least not to my satisfaction, is why crony capitalists have been able to make an effective alliance with the religious right, while other groups—say, Democrats tied to the labor movement —have not. After all, fundamentalists in America are, on average, relatively poor, and tend to be hurt by right-wing economic policies. It's true that, as Phillips points out, modern fundamentalist doctrine encourages a belief in self-reliance, with a corresponding benign attitude toward wealth and hostility to policies that redistribute income. But the Bush family does not, to say the least, consist of self-made men, and its policies actually do involve redistribution—from the have-nots to the haves. What makes religious leaders see an elite dynasty as their friend?
Phillips stresses the personal side— George W. Bush's ability to convince many on the religious right that in spite of his silver-spoon background he really is one of them, for example in his born-again belief in the "power of prayer." I suspect there must be more to it than that. Phillips also writes, "Could 75 to 80 percent of the believers in Armageddon have voted for Bush? So it appeared." But in any case, for now the fact of the alliance with the religious right is, as Phillips says, a crucial part of the political story.
But what about the rest of the population? The third strand in Phillips's explanation of the Bush dynasty's success is its virtuosity in misrepresenting what it's up to:
If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, compassionate conservatism is the policy hypocrisy uses to disguise economic vice. While it has been three generations in the making, its rhetorical embrace by the Bushes has come to display less and less genteel upper-class pretense...and instead to manifest a higher and higher ratio of outright deception: saying one thing and meaning another.
In describing this deception, Phillips invokes the term "Mayberry Machiavellis"—referring to Mayberry, North Carolina, the fictional small-town setting of The Andy Griffith Show. This label for Bush officials was originally used by John DiIulio, the former head of the White House's "Faith-Based and Community Initiatives," in a revealing interview with the freelance journalist Ron Suskind about the political opportunism of the White House. And Suskind has done it again. His new book, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, is based partly on discussions with Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary, partly on 19,000 documents supplied by O'Neill, and partly on other, unnamed, insider sources. And it provides a devastating portrait of Bush policymaking that dovetails perfectly with Phillips's analysis of Bush's motives.
It was unfortunate, in a way, that so much of the initial press coverage of Suskind's book focused on O'Neill's revelation that the administration was obsessed with the idea of invading Iraq from day one, long before September 11. Not that his point has been refuted —in fact, other sources have come forward to confirm it. But the main virtue of The Price of Loyalty is what it tells us about the administration's values and mode of operation.
Let's start at the end—a discussion of economic policy in November 2002, shortly before O'Neill was fired. Remember that 2002 was the year of corporate scandals; for a brief period the revelations of chicanery at Enron, WorldCom, and other pillars of the economy seemed likely to dominate the midterm election. Instead, the administration—after making a few gestures toward corporate reform and grudgingly agreeing to a small increase in the SEC's budget—beat the drums of war, and drowned the issue out.
Still, officials remained concerned about a sluggish economy. But what was the cause of that sluggishness? The President, according to his secretary of the Treasury, had a simple answer: "SEC overreach." That is, those nasty regulators, in their attempt to crack down on corporate malfeasance, were making executives and investors nervous, depressing the economy. Here's how Suskind describes the moment:
O'Neill couldn't quite believe what he was hearing—SEC overreach? No wonder the White House had backed off from the toughest medicine for crooked executives and eventually ceded the corporate governance debate to Congress. How, though, could the President believe that the largely overwhelmed SEC had any significant effect on the vast US economy?
Kevin Phillips could, of course, have told him: Bush—whose own business career had involved some remarkably Enron-like moments—was revealing his instinctive, indeed inbred sympathy for corporate insiders, and his antipathy toward anyone who might try to enforce accountability.
Aside from the report of Bush's amazing outburst, what we learn from Suskind's description of that meeting is that, in private, top administration officials conceded the very points that they vehemently denied when responding to outside critics. They knew that they were being fiscally irresponsible. "The budget hole is getting deeper," warned budget director Mitch Daniels. "We are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." (And this was before the 2003 tax cut.)
They also knew that their policies heavily favored rich people—indeed, in an uncharacteristic moment Bush himself seemed uneasy over the tilt, asking, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" And when Bush asked, "What are we doing on compassion?," no one answered.
But what they said in public was the exact opposite. In private Bush might worry that his tax plan was too friendly to the rich; in public he insisted that "the vast majority of my tax cut goes to the bottom of the economic spectrum." In private Dick Cheney told O'Neill that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." In public he described himself as a "deficit hawk."
So Phillips is right: the Bush administration is deeply hypocritical with regard to its core policies; what it says is at odds not only with what it does, but with what it really thinks. But then what does drive its policy decisions?
Let's flash back to what John DiIulio told Suskind in late 2002:
There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. Everything—and I mean everything—is being run by the Mayberry Machiavellis.
O'Neill confirms DiIulio's picture, with a vengeance. Consider, for example, what may in the long run be considered the administration's most fateful decision: to abandon the Kyoto Protocol and, in effect, abandon any attempt to face up to global warming. O'Neill's account makes it clear that nobody even tried to ask what the facts were, what the tradeoffs might involve. Instead, "energy concerns and the thinly supported jeremiad by industry lobbyists had eclipsed considerations about action on global warming. Period." Or as O'Neill summarized this approach to policymaking, "The base [i.e., Bush's Republican political base] likes this and who the hell knows anyway."
Or take the steel tariff. The decision to impose a tariff on steel imports was a terrible one in every way one can think of. It was bad for the economy; it was obviously illegal under international law. It squandered US credibility on trade issues; it was a clear betrayal of the administration's own rhetorical commitment to free trade and free markets. But throwing steel-producing regions a bone might—just might—yield some small political gains.
The Clinton administration refused to impose a steel tariff even during the 2000 campaign; had it betrayed its principles, West Virginia might have gone to Al Gore, who would now be in the White House. When the issue arose again in early 2002, Bush was still immensely popular. "If you can't do the right thing when you're at 85 percent approval, when can you do the right thing?" asked one official. But politics prevailed, and the tariff went through. (The tariff was later rescinded, after the World Trade Organization—predictably—ruled that it violated international law. But the damage was done: US credibility on trade issues had been damaged severely. Partly because of this loss of credibility, international trade negotiations—supposedly an administration priority —have stalled.)
What emerges from Suskind's book is a picture of an entirely cynical administration—much more cynical than Nixon's, in which the corruption was localized, and large parts of the policy process continued to be run by serious, even idealistic people. (Old hands at the Environmental Protection Agency describe the Nixon administration as a golden age.) Under Bush, it seems, political rhetoric bears no relation to reality—what officials say has nothing in common with what they do, or what they think. And policy decisions are driven almost entirely by politics, by what the political arm thinks will play well with "the base."
But in that case, what's it all about? If everything Bush and his officials do is political, what is that they want to do with their power?
Old-line Republicans that I know cling to the belief that the Machiavellianism is only temporary, that it's embraced in service to a higher goal. Once the 2004 election is over, they say Bush will show his true colors as an idealist, someone who genuinely believes in small government and free markets.
But if Phillips is right—and I think he is—there is no higher goal. Bush's motivations are dynastic—to secure his family's rightful place. While he may have some policy biases—like that "instinctive policy fealty" to the investment business—policy is basically there to serve the acquisition of power, and not the other way around.
According to people who observed him in Texas, Karl Rove is a devotee of Machiavelli, and particularly of The Prince. And as Phillips points out, "Twenty-first-century American readers of The Prince may feel that they have stumbled on a thinly disguised Bush White House political memo." For Machiavelli's book was all about how to gain and hold power, not about what to do with it.
So what is the state of the union? Let Phillips have the last word:
The advent of a Machiavelli-inclined dynasty in what may be a Machiavellian Moment for the American Republic is not a happy coincidence.... National governance has, at least temporarily, moved away from the proven tradition of a leader chosen democratically, by a majority or plurality of the electorate, to the succession of a dynastic heir whose unfortunate inheritance is privileged, covert, and globally embroiling.
Conservative U.S. anchor now skeptical about Bush
REUTERS
5:50 a.m. February 10, 2004
WASHINGTON – Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The anchor of his own show on Fox News said he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war. "I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America."
"What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?" asked O'Reilly, who had promised rival ABC last year he would publicly apologize if weapons were not found. O'Reilly said he was "much more skeptical about the Bush administration now" since former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction.
While critical of President Bush, O'Reilly said he did not think the president intentionally lied. Rather, O'Reilly blamed CIA Director George Tenet, who was appointed by former President Clinton. "I don't know why Tenet still has his job." He added: "I think every American should be very concerned for themselves that our intelligence is not as good as it should be."
O'Reilly anticipated the presidential election would be a close race, adding he thought Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts would be a formidable opponent against Bush. "It will be a very close race. The nation is divided," he said.
Kicking the Middle Class When It's Down
by Elizabeth Warren
February 11, 2004
With consumer debt higher than ever, many thousands of middle class families face financial disaster. Home mortgage foreclosures, car repossessions, and credit card defaults are all at record levels. Last year alone, 9 million families entered credit counseling in an effort to straighten out their finances, and 1.6 million just gave up and filed for bankruptcy. Congress’s response? The House of Representatives decided it was time to try once more to push a bankruptcy bill that credit industry lobbyists have been peddling since 1997, a bill designed to boost profits for consumer lenders by making it tougher for troubled families to get any relief in bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy bill is more than 400 pages of virtually impenetrable text, with literally hundreds of changes to an already-complex statute. A well-financed lobbying effort has reduced it to a tasty sound bite: People should repay their debts if they can. The problem, of course, is that the sound bite deliberately obscures the reality. The biggest problem is not people who can repay, it is people who are desperately trying to repay and who can’t make it — families filing bankruptcy to try to make up mortgage payments and past-due car payments but who don’t have steady enough incomes to make even a minimal repayment plan and keep groceries on the table. But the proposed bankruptcy bill would impose more than a hundred new constraints on all families — whether they are trying to repay or not — increasing costs, decreasing protection, and leaving creditors with more leverage than ever to squeeze a few dollars more out of all these families.
If this bill passed, who would pay the price? First, families with children. Today, people with children at home are nearly three times more likely to file for bankruptcy. Married couples are in trouble, and those trying to raise a child alone are in even more trouble. A single woman raising a child is nearly four times more likely to file for bankruptcy than a single woman alone. Divorced dads are having a hard time too, heading into bankruptcy at much higher rates than their single friends without children.
Among older Americans, the most likely filers are those who cannot pay for prescription drugs or meet other medical costs. Older Americans are also more likely to have been the victims of fraud and unscrupulous lenders who are trying to trick them out of their homes. For a growing number of seniors, bankruptcy is their last hope.
If American families were simply on a spending spree, perhaps the fact that millions are in trouble with debt should be treated as little more than their just desserts. But the data are irrefutable: families are in financial trouble for the most basic reasons. Among those who have filed for bankruptcy, two-thirds have suffered a job loss — that means last year alone 1.1 million families walked into the bankruptcy courts after mom or dad (or both) was laid off, downsized, or otherwise put out of work.
Lack of health insurance is also taking its toll. About 800,000 of the families in bankruptcy have had serious medical problems — a husband who had a heart attack, a wife with breast cancer, an elderly parent who needs long-term care, or a child with leukemia. About 160,000 people filed for bankruptcy after the family broke apart, a condition that fell disproportionately on women trying to raise their children. Altogether, more than 90 percent of the families fell into one or more of these three categories — job loss, medical problems or family break up. The remaining families were beset by a variety of other problems and circumstances — including crime, natural disaster, and a call up to military service. In short, families are heading to bankruptcy when their incomes and debts get badly out of balance following a serious economic disruption.
Real abuses, however, escape attention in this legislation. Despite all the provisions to make personal bankruptcy more difficult, the amendments were carefully tailored to preserve loopholes for corporate executives because they have "business debts" instead of "consumer debts." Similarly, provisions to protect multimillion dollar homes in Texas, Florida, and other states remain virtually intact. Special exemptions for the rich remain because they rarely owe credit card debt, while the bill zeroes in on ordinary, wage-earning families.
This bill treats bankruptcy as something debtors alone create; creditors are treated as innocent victims. Last year, the credit industry mailed five billion credit card solicitations, but the bill imposes not a single new constraint on the credit industry. Instead, the House has embraced a bill that is widely described as “a creditor’s wish list” to help companies increase the odds of collecting from even the most financially troubled families.
What gives this bill renewed momentum at a time when tens of millions of families are out of work and have no health insurance? The financial services industry has pressed a well-funded lobbying effort, giving more money in Washington than almost any other interest group. The Washington Post reports that credit issuers even offered a sweetheart loan deal for an influential Congressman. And the money has paid off. Princeton researchers concluded that voting "strongly reflects campaign contributions" by the coalition of creditors supporting the bill. Executives from credit card giant MBNA were the single largest contributors to George Bush’s presidential campaign, and he too has announced his unwavering support for the bill.
In a brazen abuse of the language, the bill has been named a "reform" act. Its supporters claim that it will help women, support families, and cut abuse. In fact, this bill is designed to do just one thing: Squeeze middle class families a little harder to increase the profits for already-profitable consumer lenders.
Elizabeth Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She specializes in commercial law and bankruptcy and is the author of several books, studies and articles on the subject. Warren is currently vice president of the American Law Institute.
Israel: The Threat from Within
By Henry Siegman
Henry Siegman is a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations. (February 2004)
A recent front-page New York Times article on Condoleezza Rice's role in shaping US foreign policy reported that in the spring of 2002, when violence was escalating between Israel and the Palestinians, President Bush asked the following of Dr. Rice: Beyond the question of whether the US is "pushing this party hard enough or that party hard enough," what is the "fundamental problem" that has defeated all previous peace initiatives and continues to stand in the way of a political agreement?[1]
Dr. Rice's answer was that the fundamental problem is Yasser Arafat— his refusal to act to stop terrorism and the absence of democracy and accountability in Palestinian political institutions. She concluded, therefore, that sidelining Yasser Arafat, democratizing Palestinian institutions, and bringing to the fore a new Palestinian leadership would improve the prospects of an Israeli–Palestinian peace agreement. This insight, according to Dr. Rice, countered the "prevailing wisdom" that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was "just about land."
Of course, the conflict has never been just about land, but what has defeated every previous peace initiative —from the Oslo Accords to the Mitchell proposals to the Tenet guidelines to the current roadmap—is the struggle over land. And what has made land the central issue is Israel's unilateral expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, an expansion that continues relentlessly even as Prime Minister Sharon speaks of disengagement, withdrawal, painful concessions, and the dismantling of settlements.
Israel's expansion into the West Bank threatens to preclude a two-state solution, the only outcome that would resolve the conflict without the disastrous result of ending either Jewish or Palestinian national existence. The settler movement, which has enjoyed the patronage of Sharon from its inception in 1967, has made no secret that it is precisely the prevention of a Palestinian state in the West Bank that is its central goal.
While the physical space taken up by the inhabited areas of the Jewish settlements is not more than 3 percent of the West Bank, the municipal borders of these settlements and the infrastructure that supports them take up about 50 percent of the West Bank. It is land that under the terms of the Oslo Accords was designated Area C, considered "government land" when Jordan occupied the West Bank. Un-der the terms of the Oslo Accords, this area—except for military bases in which the Israeli Defense Force would remain for varying periods of time to deal with residual security concerns—was to have been returned to the Palestinians.
The 1947 UN partition plan that divided Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine allotted roughly 50 percent to each side. Because of the wars that followed Arab rejection of the UN resolution, Israel enlarged its share to 78 percent of pre-1948 Palestine, annexing over 50 percent more territory than allotted by the UN partition plan. Following the 1967 war, when the remaining 22 percent of Arab Palestine came under Israeli occupation, the UN adopted resolutions 242 and 338, which affirmed the obligation of Arab countries to recog-nize Israel's legitimacy and its right to live in security, but also insisted on the inadmissibility of Israel's acquisition of territory in the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the 1967 war. While these resolutions do not foreclose the possibility of adjustments to the pre-1967 border to accommodate Israeli security concerns, nothing in these resolutions suggests that such changes could be made unilaterally by Israel.
The answer to President Bush's question to Dr. Rice therefore is that the "fundamental problem" that has undermined every previous peace initiative is the notion entertained by Prime Minister Sharon's government, and to a greater or lesser degree supported by all previous Israeli governments, that the 22 percent of the pre-1948 Palestine Mandate which now constitutes the West Bank and Gaza remains subject to further surgery by Israel.
The political damage done by the settlements to the peace process has been ratcheted up several orders of magnitude by the separation fence. For Palestinians, the fence confirms Israel's intention to leave most of its settlements in place and to confine the Palestinian population within less than half of the West Bank (i.e., about 10 percent of pre-1948 Palestine). No amount of verbal acrobatics by Prime Minister Sharon will persuade any Palestinian that the purpose of this fence, in which Israel, despite its parlous economic situation, is investing billions of Israeli shekels, is anything other than the creation of South African– style bantustans to contain an emerging Arab majority.
According to current plans, the route followed by the separation fence veers deeply into the West Bank along its western border. Sharon has approved the continuation of the fence to enclose Palestinians along the eastern (Jordanian) border as well. The effect of the fence, once it is completed, will be to enlarge Israel's share of pre-1948 Palestine from 50 to 90 percent. The remaining 10 percent (about half of today's West Bank) conforms to Sharon's definition of a "viable Palestinian state." Palestinians see no point in engaging in internal debates about compromises they need to make to achieve a peace agreement with Israel if such an agreement will yield nothing more than a collection of tiny fenced-in enclaves under Israeli control.
Of course, Israel's government has not only the right but the obligation to protect its citizens against the murderous suicide bombings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian terrorist groups; a government that fails to protect its citizens loses its right to govern. As even Yasser Arafat declared recently,[2] Palestinians have no objection to a separation fence if it is built on Israeli territory. But no one I know of in Israel's government, including the IDF and the security services, would deny that a fence whose purpose is the protection of Israel's citizens would be far more effective if it were constructed along Israel's pre-1967 border rather than snaking its way around Israeli settlements deep inside Palestinian territory. The argument that the fence's intrusions into Palestinian territory are necessary to protect the settlements establishes a new standard for chutzpah. In effect, Palestinians are being told that Israel must steal more Palestinian land to protect Israelis living on previously stolen Palestinian land.
President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have often objected to the current path of the separation fence and to the continued expansion of settlements. They have also said that the borders of the new Palestinian state must assure its viability. But other than their rhetorical exhortations, they have done nothing that might lead Sharon to believe that his indifference to their demands will have the slightest adverse consequences for Israel. And they have resisted every attempt to get them to define their use of the term "viable Palestinian state" so that it is understood to require a return to the pre-1967 border, subject only to changes in that border agreed to by the parties.
In view of the American refusal to take a clear position on the illegality of Israel's unilateral confiscations of Palestinian land and on the emerging cantonization of the West Bank resulting from the path followed by the separation fence, the implication for Palestinians of Dr. Rice's comment about the need for reform that will lead to new Palestinian leadership is that the US expects this new leadership to be more accepting of Sharon's dismemberment of Palestinian territory. Ironically, this has enabled Arafat to discredit Palestinians who have opposed his corruption and authoritarianism by accusing them of collaboration with those who seek to defeat the Palestinian national enterprise. This has devastated the Palestinian reform movement as thoroughly as the post–Camp David intifada devastated the Israeli peace camp.
Unfortunately, Secretary of State Powell's treatment of the Middle East peace process in his article in the January–February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs can only serve to reinforce Palestinians' fears. The central point of his article is a rejection of the criticism that President Bush's foreign policy is "unilateralist by design" and biased toward preemptive action. Powell cites the Quartet—the US, Russia, the EU, and the UN—as well as the Middle East roadmap as evidence of President Bush's commitment to "partnership" with America's friends.[3] They are in fact poor examples of the Bush administration's respect for the views and expectations of its allies. The deep sense of frustration and anger felt by America's Quartet partners over President Bush's unwillingness to enforce the roadmap's provisions evenhandedly is an open secret.
But it is Secretary of State Powell's rendering of the failure of the "hopeful premiership" of Mahmoud Abbas that is particularly revealing. Powell attributes this failure solely to the obstructionism of Yasser Arafat. Arafat's obstructionism was indeed a major reason for Mahmoud Abbas's downfall. However, it was clear to everyone from the outset that hopes for Abbas's success were not based on the expectation that Arafat would cease playing an obstructionist role; there would have been no need to replace Arafat if he no longer obstructed progress toward peace. Instead, the expectation was that improvements in the Palestinian situation that would result from changes in Israeli policy—changes made possible by Abbas's rejection of violence and his commitment to reform—would give the new Palestinian prime minister the credibility he would need in order to prevail over Arafat. But these changes, advocated even by the IDF and Israel's intelligence services, were blocked by Sharon.
There is no hint in Secretary Powell's article of Sharon's role in the failure of Mahmoud Abbas's government. There is no reference to Sharon's continued expansion of settlements, or to the charade of removing outposts (which serve as embryonic settlements) while their number actually increased. Nor is there any hint in Powell's ar-ticle of America's own contribution to Abbas's fall because of President Bush's failure to "ride herd" on both parties to secure compliance with the terms of the roadmap, as he had promised at the launching of this initiative at Aqaba in June 2003.
It is hard to believe that Secretary Powell's one-sided account represents his view of what actually happened. Admittedly, it takes some courage to tell the truth in an election year. But US officials have always exhorted both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to muster the courage to tell their respective publics the truth about the price a peace agreement entails. When it comes to the Middle East peace process, Washington has hardly set an example of either courage or truthtelling.
The most dramatic evidence that territory remains the fundamental issue in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the recent statement—in Ha'aretz and other Israeli papers on January 9—by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and repeated by Hamas's Abdel Aziz Rantisi and the Islamic Jihad's Nafiz Azzam, that their organizations are ready to postpone indefinitely their "military" operations in return for an Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders. This change in policy, which relegates the recovery of all of Palestine to an indefinite future, was not linked by these organizations to the return of refugees, to claims to Jerusalem, or to other issues concerning a permanent status agreement between Israel and Palestine; it was linked only to the territorial issue.
Yassin's statement will be seen by many as meaningless, since it leaves Hamas free to revert to its previous position at any time. But this reaction ignores not only the unique religious context within which Hamas operates but the essential nature of all religious cultures that claim divine sanction for their beliefs. For Hamas to abandon what it has maintained is a divinely ordained obligation to recover all of Palestine is to bring into question its very identity, which it defines as its obedience to God's immutable will. It must therefore resort to theological fictions, i.e., relegating this obligation to future history, in order to be able to claim it has not compromised its orthodoxy.
This way of reconciling contradictions that often exist between the requirements of orthodox religious doctrine believed to be divinely ordained, and therefore unchangeable, and the exigencies of contemporary life is entirely familiar to practically all religious systems based on fidelity to a divinely revealed scripture, literally understood. For example, Orthodox Judaism affirms that the sacrificial rites (the slaughtering of animals and the ritual sprinkling of their blood) performed by the ancient Israelites in the Jerusalem temple are divinely ordained. In order to deal with the conflict aroused between a return to such a mode of religious worship, for which Orthodox Jews pray daily, and changing cultural sensibilities, Orthodox Judaism, not unlike the Islamic Hamas, has postponed a return to the rite of animal sacrifices to future history and messianic times. (An opinion by the great twelfth-century scholar and philosopher Maimonides that sacrifices would be abolished in messianic times, because prayer is a higher form of worship than animal sacrifice, nearly led to his excommunication, and was therefore retracted.)
In any event, Palestinian recognition of Israel's legitimacy is an issue for the Palestinian Authority, the body officially representing the Palestinian people, not Hamas. The government of Israel would similarly reject out of hand a Palestinian demand that the settler movement renounce its claims to the West Bank and Gaza as a condition for a peace agreement with Israel. Israel would insist that the settler movement's ideology is irrelevant as long as Israel's government accepts the legitimacy of Palestinian national sovereignty within mutually agreed borders. There is no reason why the same criteria should not apply to the Palestinian Authority.
Whatever one's conclusions about the significance of Hamas's and Islamic Jihad's willingness to suspend indefinitely their terrorist operations in return for a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, this change in rhetoric underscores the importance of territory for all Palestinians. Therefore, if the US is to persuade Palestinians to take the difficult measures required to end terrorism and to reform their political institutions, Washington will have to be far clearer than it has been about its commitment to a Palestinian state whose territory will diverge from the pre-1967 lines only by agreement between the parties. A peace initiative that falls short of this kind of precision by the US about where it stands on the territorial issue has no chance of breaking the current impasse.
Many in Israel and in the West may believe Palestinian fears of their eventual confinement in a collection of bantustans to be irrational, or simply a ruse to discredit Sharon's government. But the plausibility of those fears could not have been confirmed more dramatically, or more shockingly, than by what Benny Morris, a leading Israeli historian of Israel's War of Independence, recently said in an astonishing interview in Ha'aretz on January 9, 2004.
According to Benny Morris, recently declassified documents in the archives of the IDF reveal that in 1947, Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders concluded that a Jewish state could not come into being in the territory assigned to Jews by the UN without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians.... In the months of April–May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. This resulted in "far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought," including "many cases of rape [that] ended in murder" and executions of Palestinians who were lined up against a wall and shot (in Operation Hiram).
The dismantling of Palestinian society, the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages, and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians were not unavoidable consequences of the war declared on the emerging Jewish state by Arab countries. Rather, as Morris repeatedly confirms, it was a deliberate and planned operation intended to "cleanse" (the term used in the declassified documents) those parts of Palestine assigned to the Jews as a necessary pre-condition for the emergence of a Jewish state.
The incredulous interviewer asks Morris, "Ben-Gurion was a 'transferist'?" Morris replies, "Of course." He adds, "Ben-Gurion was right. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." Indeed, Morris faults Ben-Gurion for limiting the "cleansing" to the 1948 armistice line. "Even though [Ben-Gurion] understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered." Morris believes that it is only a question of time before Israel will have to complete the job begun in 1947 by "cleansing" the entire West Bank as well.
The interviewer asked Morris whether he was not justifying war crimes. Morris replied that the necessity and nobility of the Jewish people's return to their patrimony justified what the Jewish forces did. "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.... The need to establish this [Jewish] state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them."
Morris and those in Israel who agree with him presumably reject what President Bush said in a speech before the UN on November 10, 2001, outlining his war on terror, that "no national aspiration, no remembered wrong, can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent." But the question they must answer then is why the necessity and nobility of the Palestinians' return to their patrimony do not justify the suicide bombings of Hamas. Is it a crime for Palestinians to believe that their national cause is no less noble or less compelling than the Jewish one?
If Morris's account of the declassified IDF documents is confirmed, then the Palestinian narrative of their 1948 nakba (disaster) is true, and Israel's counternarrative is not. It should hardly come as a surprise that even Palestinians who accept the impossibility of a return of Palestinian refugees to Israel insist that a peace agreement with Israel must at least include an Israeli acknowledgment of responsibility for the Palestinian tragedy. Anyone reading the Morris interview would find it difficult to disagree.
The early history of the State of Israel is not unique. Other countries have chapters in their history of which they should be deeply ashamed. And it must also be stated that Morris's shocking revelations of death and destruction deliberately inflicted on the Arabs of Palestine do not justify Palestinian terrorism against Israel's civilian population. But Morris's account points to the sorry fact that there is not much that distinguishes how Jews behaved in 1948 in their struggle to achieve statehood from Palestinian behavior today. At the very least, this sobering truth should lead to a shedding of the moral smugness of too many Israelis and to a reexamination of their demonization of the Palestinian national cause.
The implication of the above for the territorial issue is that it would be irrational for Palestinians not to believe that the goal of Sharon's fence is anything other than their confinement in a series of bantustans, if not a prelude to a second "transfer," which Morris insists in this interview is inevitable.
It is extremely unlikely that the US will reengage seriously in the peace process and press for the implementation of the roadmap, or finally take a clear position on the territorial issue prior to the forthcoming presidential election, or anytime soon thereafter. It is therefore hard to imagine what will prevent a descent into chaos in the occupied territories, where the writ of the Palestinian Authority is giving way to the anarchy of criminal gangs and of local warlords. The complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority, which may be imminent, would very probably rule out the two-state option, for there would be no central authority capable of delivering a Palestinian commitment to—much less the implementation of—the terms of any Israeli–Palestinian peace accord. Unless Israelis are willing to preserve their majority status by imposing a South African–style apartheid regime, or to complete the transfer begun in 1948, as Morris believes they will— policies one hopes a majority of Israelis will never accept—it is only a matter of time before the emerging majority of Arabs in Greater Israel will reshape the country's national identity. That would be a tragedy of historic proportions for the Zionist enterprise and for the Jewish people.
What will make the tragedy doubly painful is that it will be happening at a time when changes in the Arab world and beyond (i.e. the Saudi initiative of 2002, the removal of Saddam Hussein, Syrian isolation, Libya's amazing opening to Israel and removal of its WMD program, and the opening of Iran's nuclear facilities to international inspection) are removing virtually every strategic security threat that for so long endangered Israel's existence. That existence is now threatened by the greed of the settlers and the political blindness of Israel's leaders.
Monday, February 09, 2004
Remembering Jan 15th, 2004. President Bush comes to Atlanta, and spends fifteen minutes paying tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and two hours at the World Congress Center for his campaign's Fund Raiser. Bush had not previously or formally been invited to Dr. King's remembrance ceremony, nor to stage a wreath-laying photo-op.
Bush was ably assisted in the fund raiser by the presense of Sonny Perdue, Republican Governor of Georgia, who from 1980 to 1998 was a tenured Democratic Party State Senator. Purdue was joined by another nominal Democratic Party stalward: U.S. Senator Zell Miller who volunteered to campaign for Bush in 2004.
Note: The Christian Right has a phrase: RHINO, which can easily be applied, in reverse, to these two Georgia Politicians. It might be instructive, and highly offensive, to research the number of former Democratic Party officeholders who switched over to the Republican Party, and how many got re-elected.
Turncoats, Gay Bashers, Evolution Denouncers, CSA Flag Wavers, Fundamentalist Baptists, and the USA's Worst Educational Achievement System all find a home in this beautiful State. Makes me yearn for a Nationwide citizenship testing program, where only those who pass can stay. The others have to find some other place to live, even if I end up being one who has to leave.
The Home Team
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NY Time Op/Ed
Published: February 8, 2004
I was actually at the Super Bowl. Yup. And I too was upset about the halftime show — but not just because of Janet Jackson's antics. After the show ended, I said to my wife: How can we present something to America and the world that is this frivolous and gross when we have 115,000 U.S. soldiers at war in Iraq, dying at one per day? I realize this is irrational — there's no rule that says the Super Bowl show must honor America's soldiers at war. But that halftime show has become a kind of national moment and the grotesque way it came out really captured what has bothered me most about how this war is being conducted: The whole burden is being borne by a small cadre of Americans — the soldiers, their families and reservists — and the rest of us are just sailing along, as if it has nothing to do with us.
And what bothers me even more is that this dichotomy is exactly what the Bush team wants. From the outset, it has adopted the view that this war will be handled by the Pentagon alone. We don't need the State Department and its ideas about nation building. We don't need the U.N. We don't need our traditional allies. And most of all, we don't need the public. The message from the White House has been: "You all just go about your business of being Americans, pursuing happiness, spending your tax cuts, enjoying the Super Bowl halftime show, buying a new Hummer, and leave this war to our volunteer Army. No sacrifices required, no new taxes to pay for this long-term endeavor, and no need to reduce our gasoline consumption, even though doing so would help take money away from the forces of Islamist intolerance that are killing our soldiers. No, we are so rich and so strong and so right, we can win this war without anyone other than the armed forces paying any price or bearing any burden."
This outlook is morally and strategically bankrupt. It is morally bankrupt because 1 percent of America is carrying the whole burden of this war. After the Super Bowl, I went to Tampa to visit Centcom headquarters and Gen. John Abizaid and his staff. They run the war in Iraq. I met many soldiers there, from the women serving as analysts in the intelligence center to the strategic planners just back from Baghdad, who had been separated for months from their families or knew comrades killed or wounded in Iraq.
Yet their morale, their professionalism and their belief in this mission are still amazingly high. If you want the antidote to all the creeps in that Super Bowl show, spend a day at Centcom. I promise you, you will walk away with one overriding feeling: We do not deserve these people. They are so much better than the country and the administration they are fighting for. We owe them so much more respect, so much more sacrifice of our own and so much better leadership from a Bush team whose real sin is not hyping Saddam's threat, but sending Americans to remove him without a plan for the morning after.
All I have to do is see what happened to the Kurds the other day — this proud mountain people who have built a nice little democracy and free market in northern Iraq, only to have it suicide-bombed by Islamists — to be reminded that this is a just war. It is a war of the forces of tolerance, pluralism and decency against the forces of intolerance, bigotry and religious fascism.
"But the great mistake of the neocons and this administration," notes my friend George Packer, the New Yorker writer who has done great reporting from Iraq, "was to think that America could fight this war alone. We could not win the cold war without our democratic allies abroad, and without real sacrifice at home, and we cannot win this one without both either. This is a huge, long-term war of ideas that needs our public's participation and that of our allies. But this administration has never summoned that."
We can defeat Saddam alone. But we can't build a decent political center in Iraq alone. We don't have enough legitimacy or staying power. We need to enlist all our allies — including France, Germany and the U.N. Security Council — in this titanic struggle. The Bush team has eaten crow on W.M.D. The Europeans have eaten crow on Saddam. It's time now to put the alliance that won the cold war back together.
The antiwar left is wrong: however mangled was the Bush road to war, it is a war for the values of our civilization. But the Bush conservatives are also wrong. It can't be won with an "idealism" that is selfish, greedy, arrogant, incapable of self-criticism and believing that all that matters is our will and power and nothing else.
Wonderfully informative blogger in Bagdad
Very articulate and observant blogger writes: Bagdad Burning. Check it out here.HEALTH CARE
American Progress
Feb. 2004
Dr. Frist Is Not In
According to the latest data from the Census Bureau, in the first two years of the Bush Administration, the number of uninsured Americans increased by more than 9%, to 43.6 million. Now, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has decided to throw in the towel. Frist told a group of journalists that "it is impossible" for the U.S. health care system "to get everyone covered." Of course, Frist is not objective in the debate: the profits of the private health care industry that a universal system would jeopardize has made him and his family multi-millionaires, and has bankrolled Frist's political campaigns.
The Frist family founded the giant for-profit hospital chain Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). The AP reported on 06/13/03 that, upon entering the Senate, Frist transferred his holdings in HCA and other assets into a trust that is now valued at up to $31 million– and earns more than $5 million a year. Frist's wife and three sons also have trusts that are worth more than $1 million. It was HCA which was forced to pay $745 million "to settle allegations of billing fraud" for overcharging Medicare. Nevertheless, Frist claimed that his home state of Tennessee was "going bankrupt," not from excessive corporate profiteering, but from "trying to achieve universal insurance coverage."
FRIST STATEMENT FOLLOWS OTHER TOP HEALTH OFFICIALS: Frist's comment comes on the heels of another Bush Administration official who nonchalantly told Americans that health care for all was impossible. In the same month President Bush proposed $1 trillion in new tax cuts primarily for the wealthy and a multi-billion dollar Mars proposal, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said it is "not realistic" to provide health insurance for every American by 2010.
FRIST ABANDONS THE MISSION OF GROUP HE CHAIRS: Frist's rejection of the pursuit of universal health coverage is particularly puzzling in light of his role in the Alliance for Health Care Reform. The mission statement of the non-profit group, where Frist serves as vice-chairman, states "the Alliance believes that all in the U.S. should have health coverage at a reasonable cost." Question: has Frist resigned from the group?
DOLE THINKS WE CAN DO IT: Frist's stance also represents a departure from the position of former Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS). On January 14, 2004, Dole spoke at an event celebrating the release of an Institute of Medicine report that called for universal health coverage by 2010. In his remarks Dole, referring to the goal of universal health care, said "the bottom line is, I think we have what it takes to get it done."
FUNDS SLATED FOR HEALTH CARE GO TO TV ADVERTISEMENTS: Apparently, while there are insufficient resources for universal coverage there is plenty in the kitty for government propaganda. The Administration has launched a $9.5 million television advertising campaign touting the new Medicare law and plans to spend another $10 million on brochures. The ads were "developed by a media company that has done work for President Bush's reelection campaign and for groups aligned with the pharmaceutical industry." Now, the General Accounting Office is investigating whether the millions in ads and direct mail constitutes the misuse of federal funds for political purposes. Several members of the House are also calling for a similar investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general. Kevin Keane, assistant secretary of public affairs for HHS, called the investigations an attempt "to undermine efforts to educate seniors." American Progress has examined the White House plans that do exist.
FRIST'S POSITION HURTS AMERICAN BUISNESS, DRIVES DOWN WAGES: Another potential victim of Frist's refusal to have the government work towards providing universal coverage: American businesses. The NYT reports that, because employers shoulder such a large part of the burden of providing health care, the costs of benefits have become a "competitive disadvantage for American manufacturers." In all developed countries, "paying for health care means a combination of public and private money." In the U.S. "businesses pay a larger chunk than do their European and Asian counterparts." Some companies are attempting to compensate for high health care costs "partly by holding down growth in wages." In Canada and the European Union, "higher taxes on citizens pay for comprehensive coverage. This is a trade-off that big business seems increasingly to favor."
Annan Warns U.S. Will Face Doubts
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 7, 2004; Page A18
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 6 -- The U.S. failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has heightened international skepticism over the quality of American intelligence and may complicate efforts to use it in the future to build a case for action against outlaw regimes, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Friday.
"The bar has been raised," Annan said during a break in a U.N. conference on financing the reconstruction of Liberia. "People are going to be very suspicious when one talks to them about intelligence. And they are going to be very suspicious when we try to use intelligence to justify certain actions."
The U.N. chief's statement underscored the potential damage the questionable intelligence the Bush administration used to justify the war in Iraq is having on U.S. credibility at the United Nations.
The Center for American Progress has a point by point rebuttal to Pres. Bush's claims on TV last night.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Congress Abandoned Its Duty on War
by Rep. Ron Paul
There is plenty of blame to go around for the mistakes made by going to war in Iraq, especially now that it is common knowledge Saddam Hussein told the truth about having no weapons of mass destruction, and that Al Qaida and 9/11 were in no way related to the Iraqi government. Our intelligence agencies failed for whatever reason this time, but their frequent failures should raise the question of whether or not secretly spending forty billion taxpayer dollars annually gathering bad information is a good investment. The administration certainly failed us by making the decision to sacrifice so much in life and limb, by plunging us into this Persian Gulf quagmire that surely will last for years to come.
But before Congress gets too carried away with condemning the administration or the intelligence gathering agencies, it ought to look to itself. A proper investigation and debate by this Congress – as we’re now scrambling to accomplish – clearly was warranted prior to any decision to go to war. An open and detailed debate on a proper declaration of war certainly would have revealed that U.S. national security was not threatened – and the whole war could have been avoided. Because Congress did not do that, it deserves the greatest criticism for its dereliction of duty.
There was a precise reason why the most serious decision made by a country – the decision to go to war – was assigned in our Constitution to the body closest to the people. If we followed this charge I’m certain fewer wars would be fought, wide support would be achieved for just defensive wars, there would be less political finger-pointing if events went badly, and blame could not be placed on one individual or agency. This process would more likely achieve victory, which has eluded us in recent decades.
The president reluctantly has agreed to support an independent commission to review our intelligence gathering failures, and that is good. Cynics said nothing much would be achieved by studying pre-9/11 intelligence failures, but it looks like some objective criticisms will emerge from that inquiry. We can hope for the best from this newly appointed commission.
But already we hear the inquiry will be deliberately delayed, limited to investigating only the failures of the intelligence agencies themselves, and may divert its focus to studying intelligence gathering related to North Korea and elsewhere. If the commission avoids the central controversy – whether or not there was selective use of information or undue pressure put on the CIA to support a foregone conclusion to go to war by the administration – the commission will appear a sham.
Regardless of the results, the process of the inquiry is missing the most important point – the failure of Congress to meet its responsibility on the decision to go, or not go, to war. The current mess was predictable from the beginning. Unfortunately, Congress voluntarily gave up its prerogative over war and illegally transferred this power to the president in October of 2002. The debate we are having now should have occurred here in the halls of Congress then. We should have debated a declaration of war resolution. Instead, Congress chose to transfer this decision-making power to the president to avoid the responsibility of making the hard choice of sending our young people into harms way, against a weak, third world country.
This the president did on his own, with congressional acquiescence. The blame game has emerged only now that we are in the political season. Sadly, the call for and the appointment of the commission is all part of this political process. It is disturbing to see many who abdicated their congressional responsibility to declare or reject war, who timidly voted to give the president the power he wanted, now posturing as his harshest critics.
From Steve Wade:
A stranger was seated next to Little Tommy on the plane when the
stranger turned to the boy and said, "Let's talk. I've heard that
flights will go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your
fellow passenger."
Little Tommy, who had just opened his book, closed it slowly, and
said to the stranger, "What would you like to discuss?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the stranger. "How about nuclear power?"
"OK," said Little Tommy. "That could be an interesting topic. But
let me ask you a question first. "A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat
grass. The same stuff. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow
turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do
you suppose that is?"
"Jeez," said the stranger. "I have no idea."
"Well, then," said Little Tommy, "How is it that you feel qualified
to discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?"
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