Daily Archives: May 6, 2008

CAMPAIGN 08 & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The flag attack

Pins and panders
By Richard Cohen, Washington Post, May 6, 2008

Sometimes I think the best thing about Barack Obama is that little empty space on his lapel. It is where other politicians wear the American flag pin, a kitschy piece of empty symbolism that tells you nothing about that particular person except that he or she thinks like everyone else. Obama’s flag, invisible to the naked eye, is the Jolly Roger of a politician thinking for himself. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The flag issue – relating to lapels or anywhere else – exposes the divisiveness that so often parades itself as patriotism.

When one American turns to another and says or insinuates, “I am more American than you are; I love my country more deeply than you do,” he is paradoxically expressing a revulsion for this nation. For he sees in it on the one side, greater Americans, and on the other side, lesser Americans. The Americanness to which he holds so fast, has embedded within it a contempt for those fellow Americans who do not see their own identity wrapped up in a flag. How can this square with the principle of equality upon which America was founded?

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Iran’s plausible denials

Doubting the evidence against Iran
By Mark Kukis and Abigail Hauslohner, Time, May 5, 2008

American circles in Baghdad and Washington are probably not pleased with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s plan for a special panel to investigate allegations of Iranian interference in Iraq. Many U.S. officials are already convinced of the worst and, for years, U.S. officials have now aired accusations against Iran, insisting that Tehran is stoking Iraq’s violence by keeping up a flow of money, weapons and trained fighters into the country. The Iraqi government, however, remains unconvinced — with good reason.

“We want to find really good evidence and not evidence made on speculations,” Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, told reporters in Baghdad on Sunday. Last week an Iraqi government delegation went to Tehran to discuss the allegations of Iranian involvement in the Iraqi militias, the government said. Details of the evidence presented in Tehran remains hazy, but at the same time American officials in Baghdad and Washington have never offered a convincing case publicly to support their allegations. [complete article]

Iraqi government caught in the middle as US directs new accusations at Iran
By Paul Woodward, The National, May 6, 2008

In line with the American accusations, the Iraqi government has confirmed that it has “concrete evidence” that Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq. Even so, Iraqi officials have been at pains to draw a distinction between saying that these weapons were produced in Iran without necessarily concluding that they were supplied by Iran.

In an interview with The Washington Post, the Iraqi government spokesman Ali al Dabbagh said: “The truth came out; there is evidence of Iranian weapons in Iraq. Now we need to document who sent them.”

The Christian Science Monitor noted that the Iraqi delegation’s visit to Tehran “coincided with the release of the annual US terrorism report, which declared Iran, as in years past, to be the ‘most significant’ state sponsor of terrorism.” The report added: “It also quietly raised the official number of US and Iraqi soldiers allegedly ‘killed’ by Iranian actions in Iraq from ‘hundreds’ to ‘thousands’ – a surprise to analysts sceptical even of the lower figure.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — If the Iranians are guilty as charged, there does seem to be something thoroughly American in their approach — the training and arming of a proxy force and studious application of the principle of “plausible deniability.” It has more than the aroma of Reagan-era support for the Contras. Shouldn’t Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, Oliver North et al feel flattered?

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NEWS & VIEWS ROUNDUP: May 6

Pentagon targeted Iran for regime change after 9/11
By Gareth Porter, IPS , May 5, 2008
Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith’s recently published account of the Iraq war decisions.

Feith’s account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country’s top military leaders.

The new immorality of Iraq war
By James Carroll, Boston Globe, May 5, 2008
Insanity is defined as repeating one mistaken action again and again, each time expecting a better result that never comes. Prime example: the United States in Iraq. Washington perceived a weapons of mass destruction threat from Saddam Hussein, but instead of responding with diplomacy – internationally coordinated weapons inspections – it went to war. When Saddam Hussein was toppled, the initiative should have passed from the Pentagon to a State Department-led program of stabilization and reconstruction, but instead a crudely violent military occupation was begun. Diplomacy was once again rejected.

Today, the United States, fearing a geo-political setback that will undercut the broader “war on terror,” is putting the diehard goal of military “victory” ahead of the diplomatic initiatives that alone can enable the reconstruction of Iraqi society. The needed spirit of cooperation among Iraqi factions, and from other nations, will never materialize as long as the United States pursues the fantasy that its armed might will at last prevail. Once again, diplomacy is being rejected in favor of war. This is insane.

The last war and the next one
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, May 4, 2008
The last war won’t end, but in the Pentagon they’re already arguing about the next one.

Let’s start with that “last war” and see if we can get things straight. Just over five years ago, American troops entered Baghdad in battle mode, felling the Sunni-dominated government of dictator Saddam Hussein and declaring Iraq “liberated.” In the wake of the city’s fall, after widespread looting, the new American administrators dismantled the remains of Saddam’s government in its hollowed out, trashed ministries; disassembled the Sunni-dominated Baathist Party which had ruled Iraq since the 1960s, sending its members home with news that there was no coming back; dismantled Saddam’s 400,000 man army; and began to denationalize the economy. Soon, an insurgency of outraged Sunnis was raging against the American occupation.

America’s newshounds have turned into a pack of poodles
By James Zogby, The National, May 4, 2008
The Arab media may not be free, in the sense that there is government ownership and, in varying degrees, interference and censorship. But Arab journalists are free thinkers, and quite serious about expanding their freedom to examine critical issues.

All this stands in interesting contrast to the US media that, while cherishing and boasting of its freedom, is increasingly constrained by factors that have resulted in limiting that freedom. The US press is technically free of government influence, but there are a combination of political, cultural and commercial considerations that have made the US media less free and less inquisitive. The controls are not overt, but subtle and at all times pervasive — and decisive.

There is, for example, the “corporatisation” of the media, which has resulted both in a dumbing down of content and the push to mimic, rather than compete in the ever-demanding need to increase ratings. There is the incestuous nature of the Washington scene: its revolving door of journalists going into government and vice versa; the self-serving need to protect access, and the shared social circle of too many government and media elites that results in self-imposed restraint.

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