BelowGoRising

 Here is a completely lucid and sane commentary on the sorry state of integrity in American politics today.  Thank you, Jacob Weisberg, for putting these truths in print.  I reprint them here without your permission. 

Quote  The four unspeakable truths about Iraq. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine

 the big idea - Slate Magazine
The Four Unspeakable Truths
What politicians won't admit about Iraq.
By Jacob Weisberg Posted Wednesday, March 7, 2007Posted Wednesday, March 7, 2007, at 3:33 PM ET

 Wednesday, March 7, 2007, at 3:33 PM E
When it comes to Iraq, there are two kinds of presidential candidates. The disciplined ones, like Hillary Clinton, carefully avoid acknowledging reality. The more candid, like John McCain and Barack Obama, sometimes blurt out the truth, but quickly apologize.

For many presidential aspirants, the first unspeakable truth is simply that the war was a mistake. This issue came to a head recently with Hillary Clinton's obstinate refusal to acknowledge that voting to give President Bush the authority to invade Iraq was the wrong thing to do. Though fellow Democrats John Edwards and Christopher Dodd have managed to say they erred in voting for the 2002 war resolution, Clinton is joined by Joe Biden and a full roster of Republicans in her inability to disgorge the M-word. Perhaps most absurdly, Chuck Hagel has called Bush's 21,500-troop "surge" the biggest blunder since Vietnam without ever saying that the war itself was the big blunder and that he favored it.

Reasons for refusing to admit that the war itself was a mistake are surprisingly similar across party lines. It is seldom easy to admit you were wrong—so let me repeat what I first acknowledged in Slate in January 2004, that I am sorry to have given even qualified support to the war. But what is awkward for columnists is nearly impossible for self-justifying politicians, who resist acknowledging error at a glandular level. Specific political calculations help to explain their individual decisions. Hillary, for instance, worries that confessing her failure will make it easier for hawks to savage her if she gets the nomination. But at bottom, the impulse is always the same. Politicians are stubborn, afraid of looking weak, and fearful that any admission of error will be cast as flip-flopping and inconsistency.

A second truth universally unacknowledged is that American soldiers being killed, grotesquely maimed, and then treated like whining freeloaders at Walter Reed Hospital are victims as much as "heroes." John Kerry was the first to violate this taboo when he was still a potential candidate last year. Kerry appeared to tell a group of California college students that it sucks to go and fight in Iraq. A variety of conservative goons instantly denounced Kerry for disrespecting the troops. An advanced sufferer of Senatorial Infallibility Syndrome, Kerry resisted retracting his comment for a while, but eventually regretted what he called a "botched joke" about President Bush.

Lost in the debate about whether Kerry meant what came out of his mouth was the fact that what he said was largely true. Americans who attend college and have good employment options after graduation are unlikely to sign up for free tours of the Sunni Triangle. People join the military for a variety of reasons, of course, but since the Iraq war turned ugly, the all-volunteer Army has been lowering educational standards, raising enlistment bonuses, and looking past criminal records. The lack of better choices is a larger and larger factor in the choice of military service. Our troops in Iraq may not see themselves as cannon fodder or victims of presidential misjudgments, but that doesn't mean they're not.

Reality No. 3, closely related to No. 2 and following directly from No. 1, is that the American lives lost in Iraq have been lives wasted. Barack Obama crossed this boundary on his first trip to Iowa as an announced candidate when he declared at a rally, "We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged and to which we have now spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted." With lightning speed, Obama said he had misspoken and apologized to military families.

John McCain used the same proscribed term when he announced his candidacy on Late Night With David Letterman last week. "We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives." This was a strange admission, given McCain's advocacy of a surge bigger than Bush's. In any case, McCain followed Obama by promptly regretting his choice of words. (The patriotically correct term for losing parts of your body in a pointless war in Mesopotamia is, of course, "sacrifice.") These episodes all followed Kinsley's law of gaffes. The mistake Kerry, Obama, and McCain made was telling the truth before retreating to the approved banality and euphemism

A fourth and final near-certainty, which is in some ways the hardest for politicians to admit, is that America is losing or has already lost the Iraq war. The United States is the strongest nation in the history of the world and does not think of itself as coming in second in two-way contests. When it does so, it is slow to accept that it has been beaten. American political and military leaders were reluctant to acknowledge or utter that they had miscalculated and wasted tens of thousands of lives in Vietnam, many of them after failure and withdrawal were assured. Even today, American politicians tend not to describe Vietnam as a straightforward defeat. Something similar is happening in Iraq, where the most that leaders typically say is that we "risk" losing and must not do so.

Democrats avoid the truth about the tragedy in Iraq for fear of being labeled unpatriotic or unsupportive of the troops. Republicans avoid it for fear of being blamed for the disaster or losing defense and patriotism as cards to play against Democrats. Politicians on both sides believe that acknowledging the unpleasant truth will weaken them and undermine those still attempting to persevere on our behalf. But nations and individuals do not grow weaker by confronting the truth. They grow weaker by avoiding it and coming to believe their own evasions.

Jacob Weisberg is editor of Slate and co-author, with Robert E. Rubin, of In an Uncertain World.

Quote Culture clash hinders Iraqi-U.S. operations - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com

I have enjoyed the recent DOONESBURY (Feb.6-March 3) comic strip satire of relations between US & Iraqi forces as they attempt to stage joint operations, but I had considered Garry Trudeau's portrayal of the difference in military cultures to be a little far-fetched. Today's not-so-funny, sadly-funny AP news story shows that it is not a bit far-fetched, after all. 

Associated Press 3/7/07 - BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. soldiers paced around their new outpost in Sadr City, checking their watches, drinking coffee and waiting for their Iraqi partners.  They finally rolled up more than two hours late.  It was supposed to be a seamless display of Iraqi and American cooperation in the urban fiefdom of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite militia. What it became, however, was a wrangle of competing commanders, bruised egos and conflicting priorities. 

The troubles in launching just one joint mission late Tuesday pointed to the larger — and long-term — challenges of trying to mesh battle-hardened U.S. forces with untested Iraqi recruits as Baghdad’s 3-week-old security crackdown tries to hold the ground it’s reclaimed.  “If we get out of here by midnight, I’ll call this a success,” whispered Capt. Josh Taylor, 28, of Florence, Ala., a company commander from the Army’s 1st Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment.

Hours before, U.S. soldiers arrived at a former police station being converted to an Iraqi-U.S. compound. U.S. forces first entered the capital’s sprawling Sadr City district on Sunday under a carefully scripted deal between military authorities and political allies of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.  The patrol was scheduled to get under way about 7 p.m. — with one of the first stops to see an informant promising to identify Mahdi Army members in hiding.

But there were no Iraqi forces around except for the handful of local policemen permanently stationed at the outpost.  The nearly 60 Americans went upstairs to wait. The Iraqis stayed in a makeshift lounge, nibbling on bread and cheese and watching the reality show “Pimp My Ride” on a satellite channel.  U.S. soldiers broke out some coffee. Some plugged in their iPods. Taylor and a few others reviewed plans for the mission.  Still no Iraqis. More coffee. More tunes. And more grumbling.  They began to show up about 9 p.m., but the full contingent of about 20 Iraqi troops was not ready until a half hour later. 

The Iraqis were not prepared to hit the streets just yet, however. There was negotiating ahead.  First up: Who would ride in Humvees and who would walk? Standing on opposite sides of the white plastic table, Iraqi and U.S. commanders hashed it out through interpreters. The agreement: Officers from both sides could ride and lower-ranking soldiers would walk.

Taylor assured the Iraqis the U.S. mission was to teach them how to keep their neighborhoods safe — not to play big brother — and that cooperating was the only way to stop the violence. The Iraqis rolled their eyes and sighed quietly.  A cell phone rang and the Iraqi lieutenant left the room to chat, cutting off Taylor in mid-sentence....

After hours of debate, midnight neared and the Iraqi commanders heard a translator explain the operation.  The Iraqis would take the lead. The Americans would follow to observe and help if problems erupted. But it was an Iraqi operation through and through, stressed Taylor.  “Insha’allah,” the Iraqi lieutenant said — or “God willing” in Arabic.  With a note pad, Taylor outlined how close someone could get before the Iraqis could use deadly force on their patrols. He diagrammed how they could best stop traffic — and even where to point their guns when the patrol was moving....

 Taylor instructed his men to watch for anything suspicious. He barred them from knocking on doors at the risk of angering anyone sleeping inside.  It’s part of the Pentagon’s soft-touch approach to Sadr City, which they fear could turn from grudgingly accommodating to downright hostile at the slightest provocation. 

Taylor and 1st Lt. Eroch Cordts walked to the company’s Humvees, which had been idling for hours.  Streets that just hours ago were buzzing with traffic and pedestrians had grown deserted. The night was quiet except for the hum of floodlights on the outpost.  Cordts, a 24-year-old platoon leader from Burlington, Iowa, pumped a fist into the air.  “Let’s go catch some bad guys,” he screamed.  Taylor sighed and smiled.  “Baby steps, now,” he cautioned both sides. “Baby steps.”

In the online edition of THE NATION magazine, John Nichols has posted the text of what he calls "the most vital political statement of 2006", an impassioned article written by Kevin Tillman, brother of the late Pat Tillman, Army Ranger & former NFL football player.  Here is the link, followed by an excerpt from the beginning of Nichols' article, & all of Kevin Tillman's article.  If you are reading this blog of mine, I urge you to vote on November 7 for national candidates who will work to right the wrongs perpetrated against the true, proud, and honorable "American Way" by the Bush administration & the current do-nothing-but-wrong Congress, & to restore American integrity & credibility in the eyes of the world. 

Quote http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=131218

...a short article titled "After Pat's Birthday," ...appeared Friday morning at the essential online magazine site Truthdig. Since then, the words of Kevin Tillman, the brother of perhaps the most famous casualty of the Bush administration's military adventuring, have ricocheted around the internet faster than the speed of light – a proper rate, as what veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts has to say is far more illuminating than anything on offer from the current crop of candidates.

After September 11, 2001, Pat and Kevin Tillman signed up for the U.S. Army. It was an especially dramatic sacrifice for Pat, a player with the Arizona Cardinals football team who turned down a $3.6 million contract to play the next three years with the Cardinals in order to join the Army Rangers in Iraq and then Afghanistan.

Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, and received war-hero honors at a memorial service where U.S. Senator John McCain spoke. Supporters of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, endeavors that by the time of Tillman's death were growing increasingly controversial, sought to spin the football star's sacrifice as evidence of the nobility of the Bush administration's military adventure....

The propaganda push eventually fell apart, however, when it was learned that the Pentagon had delayed revealing to Tillman's family the circumstances of his death -- he was shot three times in the head by so-called "friendly fire" and U.S. troops then burned his body armor and uniform in an apparent cover-up attempt -- until after the memorial service, with all its patriotic flourishes and media attention, was finished. Later still, it was revealed that Pat Tillman had during the course of his service become an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and was in the months before his death urging fellow soldiers not to vote for President Bush's reelection.

Kevin Tillman survived his deployments, and was discharged from the Army in 2005. Now, on the eve of the first national election after that discharge, with "After Pat's Birthday," he has made it clear that he shares his brother's disenchantment with the armchair warriors of the Bush administration and its amen corner in the media.

In so doing, Kevin Tillman has made the most vital political statement of 2006:

It is Pat Tillman's birthday November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice.... until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers who die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.

Here is an international news story that can truly give one hope for this crazy 21st century world. 

Quote Yunus wins Nobel Peace Prize - International Business - MSNBC.com

OSLO, Norway - Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their pioneering use of tiny, seemingly insignificant loans — microcredit — to lift millions out of poverty.  Through Yunus’s efforts and those of the bank he founded, poor people around the world, especially women, have been able to buy cows, a few chickens or the cell phone they desperately needed to get ahead.

The 65-year-old economist said he would use part of his share of the $1.4 million award money to create a company to make low-cost, high-nutrition food for the poor. The rest would go toward setting up an eye hospital for the poor in Bangladesh, he said.  Yunus is the first Nobel Prize winner from Bangladesh, a poverty-stricken nation of about 141 million people located on the Bay on Bengal.  

Grameen Bank was the first lender to hand out microcredit, giving very small loans to poor Bangladeshis who did not qualify for loans from conventional banks. No collateral is needed and repayment is based on an honor system.  Anyone can qualify for a loan — the average is about $200 — but recipients are put in groups of five. Once two members of the group have borrowed money, the other three must wait for the funds to be repaid before they get a loan.  Grameen, which means rural in the Bengali language, says the method encourages social responsibility. The results are hard to argue with — the bank says it has a 99 percent repayment rate.

Since Yunus gave out his first loans in 1974, microcredit schemes have spread throughout the developing world and are now considered a key to alleviating poverty and spurring development.  Yunus told The Associated Press in a 2004 interview that his “eureka moment” came while chatting to a shy woman weaving bamboo stools with calloused fingers.  Sufia Begum was a 21-year-old villager and a mother of three when the economics professor met her in 1974 and asked her how much she earned. She replied that she borrowed about five taka (nine cents) from a middleman for the bamboo for each stool.  All but two cents of that went back to the lender. 

“I thought to myself, my God, for five takas she has become a slave,” Yunus said in the interview.  “I couldn’t understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things,” he said.  The following day, he and his students did a survey in the woman’s village, Jobra, and discovered that 43 of the villagers owed a total of 856 taka (about $27).  "I couldn’t take it anymore. I put the $27 out there and told them they could liberate themselves,” he said, and pay him back whenever they could. The idea was to buy their own materials and cut out the middleman.  They all paid him back, day by day, over a year, and his spur-of-the-moment generosity grew into a full-fledged business concept that came to fruition with the founding of Grameen Bank in 1983.

In the years since, the bank says it has lent $5.72 billion to more than 6 million Bangladeshis.  “Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,” the Nobel citation said.  Today, the bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh. Its model of micro-financing has inspired similar efforts around the world.