A Splendiferous Crash Indeed

The reputation for gentility and "breeding" notwithstanding, an occasional dose of British reporting can be truly bracing and cleansing. However, much as I experienced when I took the dogs' out for their before-bed business into a gale of an icy wind the other night, you'd best be prepared for some after-shakes.

Timothy Garton Ash writing in the Guardian:

What an amazing bloody catastrophe. The Bush administration's policy towards the Middle East over the five years since 9/11 is culminating in a multiple train crash. Never in the field of human conflict was so little achieved by so great a country at such vast expense. In every vital area of the wider Middle East, American policy over the last five years has taken a bad situation and made it worse.

If the consequences were not so serious, one would have to laugh at a failure of such heroic proportions - rather in the spirit of Zorba the Greek who, contemplating the splintered ruins of his great project, memorably exclaimed: "Did you ever see a more splendiferous crash?" But the reckless incompetence of Zorba the Bush has resulted in the death, maiming, uprooting or impoverishment of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children - mainly Muslim Arabs but also Christian Lebanese, Israelis and American and British soldiers. By contributing to a broader alienation of Muslims it has also helped to make a world in which, as we walk the streets of London, Madrid, Jerusalem, New York or Sydney, we are all, each and every one of us, less safe. Laugh if you dare.

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So here's the scoresheet for Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt: worse, worse, worse, worse, worse, worse and worse. With James Baker, the United States may revert from the sins of the son to the sins of the father. After all, it was Baker and George Bush Sr who left those they had encouraged to rise up against Saddam to be killed in Iraq at the end of the first Gulf war - not to mention enthusiastically continuing Washington's long-running Faustian pact with petro-autocracies such as Saudi Arabia. I'm told that Condoleezza Rice, no less, has wryly observed that the word democracy hardly features in the Baker-Hamilton report.

Many a time, in these pages and elsewhere, I have warned against reflex Bush-bashing and kneejerk anti-Americanism. The United States is by no means the only culprit. Changing the Middle East for the better is one of the most difficult challenges in world politics. The people of the region bear much responsibility for their own plight. So do we Europeans, for past sins of commission and current sins of omission. But Bush must take the lion's share of the blame. There are few examples in recent history of such a comprehensive failure. Congratulations, Mr President; you have made one hell of a disaster.

Oh Those Heel-clicks!

In case you missed the late-Thursday/early-Friday version of the Daily Show this week, Jon had a terrific interview with Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of intriguing-sounding new book Imperial Life in the Emerald City. (No, it's not a day-to-day account of life in Seattle's exclusive Highlands neighborhood.)

This post at DownWithTyranny is almost as good as catching the show itself, at least if you have watched enough that you can conjure up images of Jon's highly expressive and impish face. I have reproduced most of the post here, but encourage you to check out the site:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, now an assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, spent 18 months in Iraq reporting for the paper. He has written what sounds like a real "nuts 'n' bolts" kind of book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, focusing on the civilian occupation effort.

He was the guest on last night's Daily Show. Announcing this at the top of the show, Jon Stewart explained:

He is the author of the new book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a blistering expose on The Wizard of Oz. No, actually it's about life in the Green Zone of Iraq, where our current exit strategy is also a fast clicking of our heels three times.

When interview time came, and Rajiv was brought out, Jon first held the book up.

JON STEWART: The book is called Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone.

The Americans had a plan when they toppled Saddam Hussein: to take over an area inside Baghdad, wall it off, and to operate the country from inside that bunker. How could that fail to work?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN [laughing]: It was a brilliant plan, right? A seven-square-mile enclave, they could go in there, refill Saddam's swimming pools, set up some bars, a disco, a couple of Chinese restaurants, a cafe, a gymnasium. They'd have Bible study classes, salsa dancing classes. To get around, Halliburton would bring in dozens of Suburbans so they could drive around. Perfect plan.

JON: It seemed like something from Dr. Strangelove, what you describe, this idea of . . . there was this sort of Little America, but not even Little America, sort of like this eccentric city that had no . . . it was like a floating crap game. How did they insulate themselves in that way? Why did they insulate themselves in that way?

RAJIV: They wanted all the comforts of home. You know, Iraq was the big bad world on the outside, and they felt that they were going to this strange place--in fact, half of the people who went to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, they had to apply for their first passport in order to go to Iraq. And so these guys hadn't been out and about in the world, and so they wanted a little bit of down-home cooking, down-home recreation.

JON: You write this incredible story of the guys who were going to rebuild some infrastructure. They brought three guys. The Germans had accomplished the same task in East Germany, and how many guys did they bring again?

RAJIV: 8000.

JON: Does that speak to the Germans' laziness?

RAJIV: Yes, you know the Germans aren't a very efficient people. They're bloated. We're efficient. We're lean, mean Americans. We're going to do a job that those Germans can do with 8000 with three guys.

JON: How could we be criminally wrong for that long? And it's out in book after book after book, documentation. Why is Halliburton allowed to continue there? Why was the Coalition Provisional Authority allowed to continue there? You write about, in job interviews people were asked who they voted for . . .

RAJIV: It was a real political litmus test. You would have thought, given the challenges of trying to get Iraq back up on its feet, we would have sent the best and the brightest. We sent the loyal and the willing, instead of getting people who were Arabic speakers, or people who had some experience in the Middle East, or in post-conflict reconstruction. Instead they wanted good, loyal Republicans.

So they scoured Republican offices on Capitol Hill, conservative think tanks, and just to make sure that they got them, in the interviews at the Pentagon before they went over, people were asked, "Did you vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 election?" "Are you a member of the Republican Party?" And some, as I detail in the book, were even asked for their views on things like Roe vs. Wade.

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RAJIV: I think this is a big reason it went wrong. You know, we know so well now the disastrous consequences of failing to send enough troops--to protect Iraq, to prevent the looting, to deal with the insurgency in those early months.

What I write in this book is that there was a whole other set of mistakes that were made that are just as responsible for getting us into the mess that we find ourselves in today. And those were the goofs, the mistakes made by the American civilians, who ensconced themselves inside this bubble in the Green Zone.

JON: Who were the adults that were there? Were there adults there? Was it Lord of the Flies? Not even Lord of the Flies . . .

RAJIV: We've gone from extremes. We had these 20-year-old kids in Baghdad, and now we have the octogenarians of the Iraq Study Group helping to lead us along. But you know, seriously, we sent a 24-year-old kid out there who had never worked in the financial industry in this country--out there to reopen the Stock Exchange. We sent a 21-year-old kid who hadn't even graduated from college to join the team rebuilding Iraq's Interior Ministry. I don't have to tell you how important that is. The guy boasted to an interviewer that his most meaningful job before going to Baghdad was as an ice cream truck driver. We took a guy . . .

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Soy-Beanie Babies!

I have not fully educated myself on this breaking issue of apparent claims by wingnuts of some sort that use of soy products leads to gay/lesbian offspring. Believe it! I can certainly imagine some folks who would subscribe to such a concept. It has just the signature qualities including lack of any evidence or data, high degree of irrationality, and total improbability to appeal to folks who knew an invasion of Iraq was far more important than actually fighting terrorism.

It's enough to get me thinking the unthinkable - a vegetarian/soy gumbo. In protest, you understand.

Actually I suspect I'm not alone in wondering what contemporary issue I have properly "educated" myself on. I subscribe to the idea that life and education ought to be an ongoing process. I can only wish that george had ever cottoned to the idea of curiosity or education.

Pachacutec's piece here at Firedoglake does an excellent job of running it down:

I can't tell you how many women I've heard from today relieved, so relieved, to learn there's something they can do to help ensure their children will be gay. I've heard from at least one pregnant woman stocking up on soy products.

I'm currently organizing a support group for disappointed parents of straight kids, to be called PFOTS (Parents and Friends of the Tragically Straight). In the meantime, here's some help identifying all the possible soy products potentially available to you parents hoping to bring into the world a beautiful lesbian woman or a young man who'll help clean up after Thanskgiving dinner without being asked.

For example, here's a nice list of foods made from soybeans. Here's a helpful list of soy recipes. Even if your kid turns out to be tragically straight, soy products will confer to him or her the following health benefits (according to the link above): thyroid health, energy and workout benefits, menstrual health, cardiovascular health, bone health, hair/skin/nail health, memory benefits, antioxidant benefits, prostate health, digestive tract health, kidney health, thyroid health and fertility benefits (which undercuts the whole gay thing, I guess).

Then, according to this site, soy can be found in body care products, candles, cleaners, composite materials, crayons, diesel additives, fabric conditioner, flooring, hair conditioners, hair styling aids (kind of explains the whole hair dresser thing, eh?), hand cleaners (nurses and chefs?), paint removers, pens, polish, shampoos ('nuff said), solvents and tables/furniture waxes.

Yes, indeed, it's a soy world after all. So clever of the right wing to recognize it's not about fluoridation after all.

If all that doesn't work, I can only share my mother's recipe: vintage Broadway soundtracks from the period encompassing the early 1960's or so, and later on, make your son an altar boy. I found myself oddly at home in a basic black frock. If that doesn't work for your daughter, or if you're not Catholic, get her into playing field hockey. Seemed to work well enough in my high school.

Good luck! Break a leg (or as we used to say in the Gay Men's Chorus, "Break a nail!").

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"I like Fidel Castro and his beard"

The Baked-Ham Bullshit-cloud

I must have linked to one or more of the great articles Matt Taibbi has written for Rolling Stone over the past six months or so. If not, me more than bad, as in derelict. Your political education will be better for perusing his great work. Please do it! It is in the tradition of the great HST and gonzo-journalism, but he is his own man (not that there could ever be another Gonzo!). The most recent, on the topic of the ISG, can be found here.

To save the sweat and pain of trying to excerpt, I will exploit the great job done by TRex, posting at Firedoglake, but note I am excerpting only the first part, and you by all rights should attend to TRex's full post also:

At this point, it's a little hard to distinguish who is further from the truth about Iraq, the Bush Administration or the Iraq Study Group.

Matt Taibbi gives us some much-needed perspective about the long-awaited ISG Report:

The Baker-Hamilton report is being praised for its cautious, sensible, bipartisan approach to the Iraq problem (Time magazine even called it "genius") but actually all it is a tacit recognition of this pass-the-buck dynamic in Washington. Because there is currently no way to even think about ending the actual problem without someone in Washington having to eat a very big bucket of shit, both sides have agreed, in the spirit of so-called bipartisan cooperation, to avoid thinking about ending the problem in the immediate future. Instead, the official policy in the meantime, bet on it, will end up being some version of a three-pronged strategy that involves 1) staying the course or even increasing the amount of troops temporarily 2) seeing what happens in '08, and 3) revisiting the issue after we see who wins the White House two years from now.

Baker-Hamilton wasn't about finding solutions to the Iraq problem. It was about finding viable political solutions to the Iraq problem. Since there are none, it punted the problem to the next administration. Maybe the war will be real to those folks and they'll actually do something. Don't hold your breath.

But even given the cautious, change-nothing, inoffensive tone of the report, the President Who Chews With His Mouth Open is already trying to dig a trench around its recommendations. Why? Cos he's smarter than all those folks with their fancy degrees and jobs and accomplishments. Andy Card says so:

Andrew H. Card Jr., the president’s chief of staff until last spring, said that whatever Mr. Bush did in Iraq would probably fall short of many of the commission’s recommendations, and that he was likely to continue making decisions that he believed were right even if unpopular. Referring to Mr. Bush’s secret intelligence briefings, Mr. Card said, “The president by definition knows more than any of those people who are serving on these panels.”

Um, what did you just say?

“The president by definition knows more than any of those people who are serving on these panels.”

Oh, well, I feel better about it already, don't you?

Dude, the president, "by definition", has a head so pointed he can't even read a goddamn menu. Now, what part of "The Iraq War is an unmitigated cock-up of global proportions" do you not understand? The president "by definition" didn't know enough to keep us from getting into this mess. What on god's green earth makes you think he knows more about how to get us the fuck out than, well, anybody?

Not that it would be hard to best the ISG panel on their Middle East acumen. Back to Taibbi:

And so, when faced with an unsolvable or seemingly unsolvable political conundrum, most politicians feel there's only one thing to do. You appear onstage with your rival party's leader, embrace him, announce that you're going to find a "bipartisan" solution together, and then nominate a panel of rotting political corpses who will spend 18 months, a few dozen million dollars, many thousands of taxpayer-funded air miles, and about 130,000 pages of impossibly verbose text finding a way for both parties to successfully take the fork in the road and blow off the entire issue, whatever it was.

"Rotting political corpses" indeed. But hey, that description sounds just like the 9/11 Report. And the Katrina Aftermath Report. And, and…

But really, the Baker-Hamilton circle-jerk does absolutely nothing to address the reality on the ground in Iraq, which has spiralled so wildly out of control that most of us can't even conceive of the chaos and brutality.

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