Hyperlink: David David Petraeus Petraeus

The blog PhuckPolitics.com makes an elegant observation: at present, General David Petraeus is serving a public relations function on behalf of the Obama Administration's Afghanistan strategy that bears an uncanny resemblance to the public relations function he once served on behalf of the Bush Administration's Iraq strategy.

Read Obama’s Afghanistan full court press.

Continuing the Iran discussion.

The following is a response that the Blogger had attempted to post in response to the most recent comment from "DMA" in an ongoing conversation on the Iran protests and its political ramifications domestically and internationally, and other matters about which neither party has expertise or insight.

Do you mean the first "I" in "situation"?

Anyway, let's take a step back from the goings-on in Iran and consider the political positioning that is going on domestically: the GOP is -- as is to be expected -- attempting to capitalize on our visceral reaction to the repugnance of the absurdly titled "Supreme Leader" and regime. Particularly before the SL's Friday speech, which threatened the protesters with violent government retribution, the line was: "Well, Obama needs to stand up more for the people," etc.

Now, this is a familiar dynamic: Obama's initial expressed reaction, as you and I discussed previously, was in fact pitch-perfect. Not because it somehow eschewed expressing solidarity with the protesters' cause, but because it honored their cause, in its independence, the fact that it is rooted within Iranian society and not imposed (or 'rigged') by external ideological forces and because a more robust reaction would have ham-fistedly undermined the expressed purpose and function of his massively successful Cairo speech. Which, by the way, almost certainly had a galvanizing effect on the Iranians' perceptions of their own capacity for self-assertion and self-governance from within.

The Republicans, by contrast, wanted to come across as "heroes" of freedom and democracy, replicating -- as is to be expected -- the tenor and rhetoric of the Cold War and applying it to a situation to which it is inapplicable. Specifically, the posture that McCain would advocate that the president adopt is to in essence underestimate and misconstrue the very autonomy that the protesters are expressing in their demand for political and social emancipation. McCain's and Company's is the old-fashioned, patting-ourselves-on-the-back version of international policy, in which we appropriate the courage and hard work of movements in other countries -- even educated ones like Iran -- and decide that it's suddenly all about the United States. That the United States should somehow be in the spotlight, in essence, playing the tough guy and speaking on behalf of those who know perfectly well how to speak for themselves. The GOP, as always, embodies the seediest combination of paternalism, braggadocio, myopia and ignorance of historicity.

Part of your post, DMA, reminds me of why the Republicans are so willing to display these traits, flaws and all:

I saw in the paper today the Supreme Allah-Prophet Douchebag Over-Religious Cocksucking Bearded Motherfucking Shi'ite Jizz-Guzzling Leader said something threatening a crackdown on the protests.

I'm not singling DMA out, because this formulation could as easily have been my own -- well, minus the weird anti-Islam slurs and probably without the knock against beards, which I find to be a perfectly acceptable and at times exceedingly tasteful fashion as regards facial hair...

Anyway, the point is that Americans are right to experience seething rage against something or someone on the international scene who is perpetrating injustice. However, when we are in John Wayne mode, we're not always doing our best thinking. And I don't mean this in the way it might seem: I'm not suggesting that it is problematic for us to feel pangs of moral indignation. Quite the opposite: I think that the kind of thinking that this reaction beclouds is precisely our moral thinking.

In what ways? For one thing, we'll often end up feeling moral outrage vicariously and as though on behalf of a foreign population. In other words, we'll start seething so much against the foreign despot that we forget entirely about the REAL cause for celebration, which is the courage of the protesters. In essence, we let our hatred for the despot occlude the actual stars of the show altogether. This is more than simply hazy moral thinking. This kind of myopia in American discourse lies at the root of the most appalling and immoral actions our government has perpetrated in its interactions with the international world.

For example: think about Iraq. We had to make Saddam Hussein into our enemy. That he was an enemy to his own people was pure afterthought (and anyway, implicates the USA for having installed him and armed him in the first place). Anybody who thinks otherwise should ask himself: how many Americans have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war? I bet you have a rough estimate in your head. For the record, it turns out that the current number is 4,316, each and every one a tragedy. Now, ask yourself: how many Iraqis have died in the war? Admit it: you have no idea. I sure don't. In contradistinction to its familiarity with the American death toll figure, even Google News is apparently stumped by the Iraqi death toll question. Still think the Iraq War is all about the Iraqi people? To point out that most Iraqis are better off now than under Saddam is a spineless and patronizing evasion of the question.

Now, having said all of this, I think that after Friday's demagogic speech on the part of the "SL," it's probably a brand new situation that is poised to get really ugly really quickly. If the logic of the punditocracy is sound (a big if), the whole idea of negotiating over the nuclear program is basically off the table now, one way or the other, and, according to this thinking, Obama is apparently already transitioning to his, as it were, liberation theology mode, wherein celebrating the cause of the protesters and exposing as much as possible the thug-like brutality of the authoritarian regime are the orders of the day. Could be interesting.

Dick Cheney is a charlatan, demagogue & crook:Who honestly doubts that our VP ordered the CIA to lie to us?

Remember the run-up to the Iraq War? Remember how it was -- much like today -- a depressing, infuriating time? Everywhere you turned, you found unwelcome reminders that a gang of sleazy assholes -- a.k.a., the Bush Administration -- were running the country, that they quite obviously were eager to invade Iraq, and that they would find a way to do so no matter what? We knew that they were lying to us: that was never in question. What is tantalizing, however, is the prospect that actual concrete evidence and testimony might pop up that would make the nature of these lies comprehensible to our credulous fellow citizens.

Journalist Ron Suskind wouldn't need to try very hard to convince me and most intelligent people I know that the White House -- and Dick Cheney, specifically -- ordered the CIA to forge a document in order to steer popular will in the direction of supporting the invasion of Iraq. Suskind's new book The Way of the World, trotted out a couple of days ago amidst a deftly-coordinated publicity blitz, claims precisely this.

Remember the infamous "top secret memo" -- this stuff is actually quite hilarious -- purportedly containing proof not only that 9/11-pilot, al-Qaeda terrorist Mohammed Atta was "trained by Saddam," but conveniently, in the same memo(!) that Saddam had purchased a uranium shipment from Niger -- or, as George W. Bush put it, in his greatest "I'm too dumb to be a liar!!!" moment -- "from Africa"?

Anyway, that memo was revealed to be a forgery within, like, two days of Bush's retarded speech. But the Administration and its neocon minions had garnered the necessary momentum to invade Iraq.

About this forged memo, Suskind reveals something totally believable to my ears, but also quite astonishing. Here's a reprint of a note he posted on the Web site The Huffington Post:

The Forged Iraqi Letter: What Just Happened?
Ron Suskind

What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way:

The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush -- a man still carrying a $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush's famous deck of wanted men -- has been America's secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, "resettled" Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.

In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD -- as Habbush had foretold -- the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization." *

The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists like Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of the CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting the CIA from conducting disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.

So, here we go again: the administration is in full attack mode, calling me names, George Tenet is claiming he doesn't remember any such thing -- just like he couldn't remember "slam dunk" -- and reporters are scratching their heads. Everything in my book is on the record, with many sources. And so, we watch and wait....

Hear Suskind explain further on NPR's Fresh Air. When two of Suskind's sources, former CIA director George Tenet, whom we know already to be a blowhard, and CIA official Robert Richer chickened out on their previous testimony, Suskind followed up by sharing some of the transcripts of his interviews, which...ahem...say precisely what Suskind had portrayed them as saying. Suskind's introduction reveals just how weird and suspicious Richer's retraction is:

Rob Richer received a copy of The Way of the World on Monday night, August 4, the day before publication. On Tuesday, he said he had read key portions of the book and was comfortable with what they contained. Later that day, though, he issued the following the statement:

"I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document from Habbash as outlined in Mr Suskind's book."

A quick excerpt of the partial transcript:

Ron: The intent--the basic raison d'etre of this product is to get, is to create, here's a letter with what's in it. Okay, here's what we want on the letter, we want it to be released as essentially a representation of something Habbush says. That's all it says, that's the one paragraph. And then you pass it to whomever to do it. To get it done.

Rob: It probably passed through five or six people. George probably showed it to me, but then passed it probably to Jim Pavitt, the DDO, who then passed it down to his chief of staff who passed it to me. Cause that's how--you know, so I saw the original. I got a copy of it. But it was, there probably was--

Ron: Right. You saw the original with the White House stationery, but you didn't--down the ranks, then it creates other paper.

Rob: Yeah, no, exactly. But I couldn't tell you--again: I remember it happening, I remember a terrible brief kinda joking dialogue about it, but that was it.

. . .

Ron: Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?

Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes. But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.

Ron: Yeah, right.

Rob: But he didn't say that specifically. I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.

Ron: Right, I'm with you, I'm with you. But there wasn't anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president.

Rob: Nope.

Ron: It just had the White House stationery.

Rob: Exactly right.

Ron: That's fine, White House stationery's fine. Everything's from there. You know, that's the center point. But not OVP's Office. It's just the White House. It comes from the White House. That's plain and simple.

Rob: And you know, if you've ever seen the vice president's stationery, it's on the White House letterhead. It may have said OVP. I don't remember that, so I don't want to mislead you. . . .

If you want to dig into this stuff even more deeply, I direct you to a fantastic article by Salon.com's Joe Conason. Conason does a remarkably thorough job of verifying some of Suskind's claims while simultaneously providing loads of background and connecting of existing dots.

Here's a link to the original piece that broke the news of the existence of the memo, a piece that hangs hysterically and credulously on every fucking word of what was soon thereafter revealed to be a sloppily executed forgery. It's written by neocon hired gun Con Coughlin in UK's The Telegraph. Awfully strange isn't it, as Conason observes, that it should first have fallen into the hands of a neocon like Conason, and so soon after it was "discovered."

I agree entirely with this piece in the UK's Guardian on The White House's implausible deniability.

I find it howlingly hilarious to imagine people being shocked, positively shocked!! by the revelation that the White House told the CIA to lie to the American people. Anybody who was paying attention knew that the months preceding the invasion of Iraq saw the American moo-cow masses (I include myself in that number, although the nature of such campaigns suggest that they are not aimed to in any way convince me of anything!!) subjected to an unrelenting, blitzkrieg of a disinformation campaign.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I find these kinds of exposé stories to be plodding and dull in the extreme. But the idea that Suskind's findings could wake up the mooingest of moo cows to what you and I have long known to be true....well, that's tantalizing. It's not often that I find myself wanting to see someone -- even a political figure -- "taken down," his legacy discredited, his name shamed, his lies exposed. Unless, of course, that political figure is a Republican.

I can't say honestly that I wouldn't enjoy seeing that fat, fraudulent lying crook Dick Cheney go down in a great big ball of flames. It's pretty hard not to hate the motherfucker, isn't it?


* Emphasis mine.

Ramblings about the near-future possibility of an American Left.

A thought that pops into my head from time to time: it seems to me that many attempts by journalists and scholars to identify why there's little to no real Left in American political life have approached the question historically, as when Eric Foner asked "Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?"; culturally, in the Frankfurt School's and other traditions; economically, as in Herbert Marcuse's discussions of the post-World War II "affluent society" and recent analyses of the character of global capital offered by David Harvey, etc. And I could continue, but I won't, because I'm just setting up my -- open-ended, exploratory and probably naive -- question.

Consider that in this moment, the moral imperative facing all Americans -- sincere people of all political persuasions -- is the condemnation of and counteraction against eight years of radical Right-wing activity. A radical movement that has brought the country (and her citizens) to its knees, and that has made the world a more dangerous place for everyone. Bizarrely, any ethical and responsible political counteraction must begin with a premise that is fundamentally conservative. Not ideologically conservative, but procedurally conservative. Scaling back an out-of-control militarism, restoring the rule of law and the separation of powers, putting responsible people in charge of the public infrastructure, rather than staffing agencies with hired goons who are opposed ideologically to the very policies that these agencies were set up to pursue.

In other words, how does the Left respond in a coherent and progressive way to a Republican regime of national and global politics that has been at once unquestionably Rightist and unquestionably radical? When the Left is faced with an ethical imperative to restore the rule of law, to rebuild the system to the extent that people can have at least some patchy faith that their government is not totally corrupt, how does the Left retain its Leftness through this process of rebuilding? How does it avoid the trap of venerating a nostalgia-induced conception of the way things were before the Bushies fucked everything up? How does the Left stay in touch with its longer term commitments to a more robust democratization, a greater transparency in government, the redress of systemic and structural causes of social injustice? I've never been quite able to figure out how to think about this issue, and by all appearances the commentariat is stumbling in much the same way.

We know that our government is pursuing immoral policies; that these policies threaten to screw over any possibility of a future in which human beings can be happy, free and treated with dignity. We know that the Geneva Conventions must be respected; that the Executive branch must not overstep its authority; that wiretapping without a warrant is and should be illegal and considered unconstitutional; that the FCC should be preventing media consolidation rather than mandating it, against the will of the American people; that torture is wrong, and the fact that the United States admittedly conducts it is hemorrhaging the last of the United States's credibility and moral authority; that governing by instilling fear into the population is to violate any chance of substantive individual rights.

But what can be the Left's response to all this, other than disgust and an impassioned call to action to restore human rights, dignity and due process, to clamor for the conditions of the year 2000? Surely its response must go beyond this? I don't mean just in terms of political platforms, but in the realm of ideas and dreams, of aspiring to replace the status quo with new strategies that will prevent reiterations of the Bush administration's conduct of the past eight years? Mustn't it go beyond the critique of particular personalities and policies?

Don't misunderstand: I believe that the Left is correct to be disgusted by particular personalities, their cynical policies, their lies. And I think that it is indispensable that the Left form coalitions on the basis of the nation's widespread disgust with Bush and with the Republicans. That's why I'm a fervent supporter of Barack Obama. Among his many talents is that of consensus-building. Obama's abilities as a rhetorician alone represent our chance to wipe the slate clean of phony, professional-wrestling-style politics upon which Karl Rove's strategy capitalizes, and which secured for Bush his second term in office.

Although an attractive and charismatic personality himself, Obama's gifts paradoxically pull us away from the politics of personalities. That's because his ability to speak a language that seems to rise above the fray is structurally suited to emphasize commonalities among ostensibly disparate groups of voters. This has the effect of (1) drawing attention to the common ground upon which compromises can best be forged, and (2) therefore also -- although perhaps secondarily -- focusing political discourse upon substantive matters relating to this common ground, rather than upon himself, or, for instance, the role that his relationship with God plays in determining his foreign policy.

But allowing for the importance of these short-term coalitions and compromises -- and the indispensable role that Barack Obama can and should play in creating them -- I hope that the Left is also thinking about the future, because without a vision of the future, the Left will be reduced to a "law and order" movement. In other words: preoccupied with correcting the excesses of radical Republican policies; a Left whose ideological calling cards have to do with administrative expertise. "Law and order" aren't dirty words, mind you. Especially in wake of the Bush administration, they are meaningful and even urgent. It's the John Ashcrofts of the world who -- in the tradition of Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, etc. -- have taken those words and applied them to erosion of human liberty and the sanctioning of hate, torture and fear.

As important as it is, administrative expertise will not provide an ideological basis upon which to build a long-term strategy for the Left. And as urgent as it is that the Left criticize the hypocrisy, excess, and moral bankruptcy of the Right, at some point the Left must begin articulating a coherent set of alternatives. In practice, initially these alternatives needn't and perhaps shouldn't be earth-shattering. There's so much rebuilding to be done in the wake of eight years of incompetence and destruction.

However, in order even to start small, coherence demands that Left begin to think big. We need to think about the kind of world that we aspire to create. So, alongside the important task of restoring the rule of law, maybe we need to start thinking about how best to articulate what it is about the Bush regime that we so oppose, and what is at stake? What is it that hinges upon rectifying matters? Not just identifying Bush's crimes, but describing their destructive effect upon our country, upon the world and upon the fight for human liberty and happiness.

During Bush's eight years in office, we haven't just witnessed the Rightist regime break the letter of innumerable Constitutional mandates, laws, codes, treaties, conventions, doctrines, etc. What's even worse is that the Bush regime has done violence to the spirit of these laws. This is even more elemental, and cognizance of Bush's and Cheney's disregard and disdain for the spirit of the law is every bit as strong a basis upon which to build broad-ranging and effective political coalitions. For example: the Left should really be explaining why disregarding the US Constitution is to, in effect, spit upon the values represented in life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. I'll wager that an ethic of human neighborliness, decency and honesty in some basic form is shared among human beings everywhere. (There's your political coalition....)

There's nothing new in the failure of United States policymakers to achieve these goals. Neither is there anything novel in the government cynically pursuing unsavory and immoral goals by cloaking its actions in the rhetoric of freedom and democracy. What's new is the rapidly escalating extent to which the Right, with overwhelming Executive branch power in its employ, does not even concern itself to pretend that its actions are consistent with American constitutional values or universal values of human freedom and dignity. What's novel -- and what's the most frightening of all -- is that the Bush administration at times welcomes actively the disdain, moral opprobrium and accusations of criminality of enormous sections of the citizenry of its own nation. The administration courts this opprobrium; it wears our outrage like a merit badge. For my money, this tendency, more than any other, has submerged the United States deeper and deeper into a creeping authoritarianism.

As radical as the Right's methods have been, what it's fighting for is still the same old shit: protecting the status quo for wealthy investors; providing an unregulated worldwide climate suited to the unchecked power of huge corporations; repression of autonomy, freedom of movement, thought, and expression; the use of bullying tactics to erode the freedom of the press; the de-funding of public education; the de-skilling of teachers; interference with the ability of public officials -- especially scientists -- to communicate the conclusions to which their expertise leads them; nationalism; militarism; theocracy; secrecy; opacity; the destruction of public infrastructure generally; an active disdain for the existence of public infrastructure; interference in the affairs of formally (if not substantively) sovereign nations; disrespect for anyone/anything it doesn't understand.....

Slavoj Žižek on authoritarian capitalism, other horrors.

In an interview, broadcast on Icelandic television (the date is unknown to me), Slavoj Žižek argues that the Left needs to take notice of the decoupling of capitalism and democracy, and--in the example of China, whose lead smaller states have begun to follow--the disturbing advance of authoritarian capitalism. Also discussed is biotechnology, the implications of which, he argues, traditional and current ethical discourses are ill-equipped to handle.