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POPSWhy America Will Survive George W. Bush Otto von Bismarck saw how American blunders led to American power and allegedly said that God has a special providence for drunks, fools, and the United States of America. Walter Russell Mead (of the Council on Foreign Relations) puts Bush's 8-year stint in the White House into proper perspective. America's foreign policy has been short-sighted and often self-defeating from the get-go, alternately collaborative, passive, and interventionist. And, yet, miraculously, we always come out ahead. With the unstoppable rise of a global capitalist economy, Mead makes the case that America, for all its past and current faults, will continue to be the inevitable leader of this new international buoyancy. Not even our latest mistakes (unprecedented though they may be) can derail such a powerful incentive that is the modern American world trade system. Which means, more than ever, we're literally all in this together.
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POPSThe Growing Hunger for Political Shallowness Author Robert Harris has some biting words about the political situation we find ourselves in today. Robert Harris' new novel features a once-popular former British prime minister who becomes fiercely criticized for collaborating with the United States in the war on terror. The character's name is Adam Lang, not Tony Blair, but otherwise the similarities are unmistakable. Full interview here .
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POPSThe Biggest Threat to the West Lies Within Itself, Not with Islam Simon Jenkins on threats to peace and democracy. This defeatism led the American Congress to allow its president to authorise torture and detention without trial in what Senator Robert Byrd called “the slow unravelling of the people’s liberties”. It enabled a British Home Office to curb free speech and habeas corpus. It arms police, fortifies buildings and impedes the free movement of citizens. It makes every Christian suspicious of every Muslim.
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POPSThe Terror Presidency Excerpts from the much-talked-about book by Jack Goldsmith, recounting his days of advising the White House on the legal boundaries of American executive power. Goldsmith explains how he was made to sign off on the unprecedented orders of presidential authority we know and love today. He famously was present at the dramatic hospital-room showdown on national surveillance between Gonzales, Card and a frail Ashcroft, calling it "the most amazing scene I'd ever witnessed." Goldsmith resigned 10 months in. They believed cooperation and compromise signaled weakness and emboldened the enemies of America and the executive branch. When it came to terrorism, they viewed every encounter outside the innermost core of most trusted advisers as a zero-sum game that if they didn't win they would necessarily lose.
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POPSA Tragic Legacy And the president who vowed to lead the war for freedom and democracy has made torture, rendition, abductions, lawless detentions of even our own citizens, secret "black site" prisons, Abu Ghraib dog leashes, and orange Guantánamo jumpsuits the strange, new symbols of America around the world. New essay by Glenn Greenwald on the future legacy of America's reaction to 9/11.
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POPSHow Did Soviet-Style Torture Become ‘Interrogation’? A Senate investigation is underway, but many of the details are surfacing already. His question is only underscored by a 1956 article, “Communist Interrogation,” in The Annals of Neurology and Psychiatry, recently turned up by the Intelligence Science Board, which advises the spy agencies.... he article shows that methods embraced after 2001 were once considered torture that would produce false information.
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POPSMark Twain's "The War Prayer" In 1904, disgusted by the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine-American War, Mark Twain wrote a short anti-war prose poem called "The War Prayer." His family begged him not to publish it, his friends advised him to bury it, and his publisher rejected it, thinking it too inflammatory for the times. Twain agreed, but instructed that it be published after his death, saying famously: None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth. "The War Prayer" was eventually published after World War I, when its message was more in tune with the times. Now, Washington Monthly's publisher, Markos Kounalakis, who was affected by Twain's words when he covered the war in Yugoslavia in the early 90s, has made "The War Prayer" into a short video for release this Memorial Day weekend. It features stunning illustrations by Akis Dimitrakopoulos and is narrated by Peter Coyote, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Erik Bauersfeld. *
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POPSSenate Report: Intelligence Predicted Iraq Problems in 2003 It's amazing what we're finding out now. The investigation reviewed assessments from a number of agencies but focused on two January 2003 papers from the National Intelligence Council: "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq" and "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq." Those papers drew from expertise within a number spy agencies and were distributed to scores of White House, national security, diplomatic and congressional officials - most of whom were listed in 81 pages of the Senate report. The full report (PDF) .
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POPSWolfowitz Resigns From World Bank The Guardian on the committee report that ended the tenure of Wolfowitz (considered the top intellectual architect of the Iraq War): Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: "If they f*** with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to f*** them too." The remarks were published in a report detailing the controversy that erupted last month after the size of Ms Riza's pay rises was revealed. The report slates Mr Wolfowitz for his "questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest", saying: "Mr Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply."
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POPSJFK, 1963, on peace JFK's commencement address at American University in 1963, after the Cuban missile crisis. In it he remarks on Soviet propaganda claims that the U.S. is planning a "preventative war" -- which he describes as outlandish -- and declares, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war."
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POPSPetraeus Setting a Good Example for His Soldiers Kudos to General Petraeus for making sure his soldiers fully understand the ramifications of torture and abuse. It is refreshing to have a general taking the high ground rather than attempting to make excuses or cover up problems with prisoner detention facilities.
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POPSRe-Thinking The War Here's looking forward to a time when clips on America's reputation are more fitting for the nation we aspire to be. When the next major terrorist attack comes, the question will simply be how much liberty Americans have left. That is a victory al Qaeda could not have achieved by force of arms. It is something they have achieved with our witting and conscious help.
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POPSLeaked White House Memo Questions Maliki's Competency “We returned from Iraq convinced we need to determine if Prime Minister Maliki is both willing and able to rise above the sectarian agendas being promoted by others,” the memo says. “Do we and Prime Minister Maliki share the same vision for Iraq? If so, is he able to curb those who seek Shia hegemony or the reassertion of Sunni power? The answers to these questions are key in determining whether we have the right strategy in Iraq.”
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POPSIs a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more? Must-read, in-depth article from Seymour Hersh on the lengthy lead-up to Rumsfeld's ouster (he was kept in the dark until the end!), what the new leadership of Secretary of Defense Gates might signal, the dwindling options Rumsfeld's war has left us in Iraq, and the renewed neoconservative clamor to invade Iran to make up for the loss in Iraq. (Double down on Tehran.) The Pentagon consultant said that he and many of his colleagues in the military believe that Iran is intent on developing nuclear-weapons capability. But he added that the Bush Administration’s options for dealing with that threat are diminished, because of a lack of good intelligence and also because "we’ve cried wolf" before.
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POPSProminent conservative surveys the wreckage of contemporary conservatism The entire article is highly reccommended for those that want to trace the GOP's post-9/11 "stumble into neoconservatism" from an insider's perspective. Bramwell's honesty and way with words are refreshing. Until recently, it has been almost impossible for me to speak candidly about the conservative movement, for it was my strange fate to serve as director and later trustee of the movement’s flagship journal, National Review. Earlier this year, at William F. Buckley’s request, I resigned both positions. I can therefore now declare what perhaps has oft been thought but never, at least not often enough, expressed. Notwithstanding conservatives’ belief that they, in contrast to their partisan opponents, have thought deeply about the challenges facing the United States, it is they who have become unserious.
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POPSU.N. Ambassador Bolton to be Let Go Newsmax confirms : "This nomination is dead and we have known it for several days," a source close to the U.S. mission to the U.N. tells NewsMax. "We just don't know what the White House wants to do next," the source added.
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POPSRemember: Saddam Was Our Man NY Times OpEd from March 14, 2003. The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad -- for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq. This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.
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POPSArmy Times: "Time for Rumsfeld to go" Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.
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POPSLeaked Military Chart Shows Iraq Bordering on "Chaos" The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.
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POPSPrisoners Tortured, Killed in Afghanistan by US Army Part 1 of an exclusive by the LA Times on self-admitted detainee abuse and deaths at the hands of US Special Forces. The subsequent military cover-ups could go as far back as 2002. Most of the bases singled out by the agency were under the control of National Guardsmen with the Alabama-based 20th Special Forces Group. The compound at Gardez, then occupied by ODA 2021, was portrayed as one of the worst. Detainees there alleged they were beaten, kicked, doused with cold water and deprived of sleep for days at a time. ... "You have so much freedom and authority over there," one member of ODA 2021 said. "It kind of makes you feel like God when you're out there in cowboy and Indian country."
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POPSUN: Torture in Iraq 'worse' now than it was under Saddam Also: Nowak, and the four other UN human rights experts who work with him, rejected denials by the US that people were tortured at Guantánamo in the past. The interrogation methods of prisoners authorized by US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld constituted torture and the US administration was wrong to say there were no cases of torture committed at Guantánamo, told reporters. Asked about US allegations over the report's credibility since it was based on second-hand information, Mr. Nowak said this was not the case and the information gathered was based on first-hand information. Though they did not visit the centre, the rapporteurs interviewed former detainees, lawyers acting on behalf of detainees and US Government officials as well as consulting public records.
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POPSUS Justice Dept. Amends Remark on Torture Case “The facts speak for themselves, you know,” Mr. Arar said. “The report clearly concluded that I was tortured. And for him to say that he does not know about the case or does not know I was tortured is really outrageous.”
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POPSThe Islamic Way of War - Andrew J. Bacevich (The American Conservative) the sun has set on the age of unquestioned Western military dominance. Bluntly, the East has solved the riddle of the Western Way of War. In Baghdad and in Anbar Province as at various points on Israel’s troubled perimeter, the message is clear: methods that once could be counted on to deliver swift decision no longer work.
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POPSNot So Clean Break - Taki (American Conservative) The Bush doctrine of creating democracy in the Middle East with bombs will go down in history as the cruelest and craziest ever. A war on terror, as Bush calls everything he doesn’t agree with, cannot be won by a democratically elected government acting like a terrorist organization. Killing civilians, especially children, is wrong.
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POPS"Psychological motives of belligerent, chest-beating warmongers" Digby , clipped from Glenn Greenwald's blog, with some insightful points, I think. Neoconservative author Francis Fukuyama felt that with the fall of our last great opponent at the end of the Cold War (see Pax Americana ), American men were doomed to fail to live up to the Western-Frontier-era ideal of masculinity. In other words, peace is for wussies. This idea worried him so much that he wrote an entire book on the subject — The End of History and the Last Man — which was held by an important few warmongers in Washington to be the perfect moral prescription to find new enemies with which to wage continuous war.
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POPS War! What is it good for? (Less and less these days) Steve Sailer concludes: Still, there will be plenty of men who will get very excited over every twist and turn in the Game of Nations, and bay for war to prevent any loss of the slightest advantage. As former war correspondent Fred Reed notes, after decades of following the sounds of guns it occurred to him that war, important as it seems at the time, is just something males do.
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POPS"God's Country?" - Walter Russell Mead Summary: Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, but the recent surge in the number and the power of evangelicals is recasting the country's political scene -- with dramatic implications for foreign policy. This should not be cause for panic: evangelicals are passionately devoted to justice and improving the world, and eager to reach out across sectarian lines. From Foreign Affairs , September/October 2006.
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POPSFEAR FACTOR: Crying wolf about the British airline terrorist plot Still waiting to be proved wrong that citizens were in danger of anything on August 10 besides a massive dose of manufactured hysteria. There are, of course, other details that came out, but these are the main ones; and, over the last three weeks, doubts have been raised about each one of them. If the initial story offered by Chertoff and Townsend--and their British and Pakistani counterparts--represents a house, then that house is now tottering on its foundations and ready to collapse in ruins.
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POPS Spurned by the West, Turkey looks eastward I know Invictus said Turkey would never fall to Muslim extremism, but surely Turkey's relations with the West have become a bit frayed lately? Of course, it wouldn't be the only crucial former ally our administration has managed to spurn. Feel safer? Formally, Turkey remains in the Western camp, but it is increasingly the odd man out. In contrast, Turkey's relations with Russia have developed exponentially. Relations with Iran are also improving. Tehran provides assistance to Ankara's efforts to fight the PKK and is a significant gas supplier.
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POPSThe Central Truth (Thomas Friedman - NY Times) And then, the conundrum on everyone's mind: It truly, truly baffles me why a president who bet so much of his legacy on this project never gave it his best shot and tolerated so much incompetence. He summoned us to D-Day and gave us the moral equivalent of the invasion of Panama. ( Published Sept. 8, 2006.)
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POPSIsrael gives up on disarming Hizbullah Michael Totten adds: Those inside and outside Israel who believed disarming Hezbollah by force was possible in a short time frame were supremely delusional. It’s not 1967 anymore, when Israel could defeat three Arab armies in six days. Hezbollah is a guerilla army, as well as a terrorist army, and assymetrical warfare is hard. Look at how much longer it is taking the US to put down a Baathist insurgency in Iraq compared with the Baathist army in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power.
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POPS"Big Talk, Little Will" - Thomas Friedman (NY Times) August 16, 2006. Friedman asking the right questions again. Here we are in the biggest struggle of our lives and we are funding both sides — the U.S. military with our tax dollars and the radical Islamists and the governments and charities that support them with our gasoline purchases
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