So, the bloke who designed America�s debacle in Iraq and sent kids without training to Abu Ghraib goes to the scene of the crime to tell his troops that while the small fry will fry, �I�m a survivor�. (See A deepening rift at the Pentagon: Rumsfeld’s surprise visit to Iraq should help buoy troops, but DOD is still riven by the scandal.)
I don�t think so. Incredible stuff is going down in America as the nation comes to terms with the fact that its rulers have destroyed the myth Americans live by and are in the process of destroying American power as well. Many Americans will mourn the fact that they didn�t listen to the stream of whistleblowers before the war � the sacked generals and the diplomats who resigned. And maybe some will even read Chomsky as they try to work out how America came to this.
But the idealistic America is fighting back hard, and winning over distraught former believers in the sinister and stupid administration they unwittingly elected.
Tonight, some important and fascinating links to America�s struggle to work out its values in the 21st century.
To begin, prominent pro-war commentator Thomas Friedman of the New York Times writes an extraordinary mea culpa under the headline Dancing Alone:
Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home? “Hey, Friedman, why are you bringing politics into this all of a sudden? You’re the guy who always said that producing a decent outcome in Iraq was of such overriding importance to the country that it had to be kept above politics.”
Yes, that’s true. I still believe that. My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq � from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence � because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong. There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that’s getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so.
I admit, I’m a little slow. Because I tried to think about something as deadly serious as Iraq, and the post- 9/11 world, in a nonpartisan fashion � as Joe Biden, John McCain and Dick Lugar did � I assumed the Bush officials were doing the same. I was wrong. They were always so slow to change course because confronting their mistakes didn’t just involve confronting reality, but their own politics.
Yes, that’s true. I still believe that. My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq � from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence � because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong. There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that’s getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so.
…Why, in the face of the Abu Ghraib travesty, wouldn’t the administration make some uniquely American gesture? Because these folks have no clue how to export hope…
Why didn’t the administration ever use 9/11 as a spur to launch a Manhattan project for energy independence and conservation, so we could break out of our addiction to crude oil, slowly disengage from this region and speak truth to fundamentalist regimes, such as Saudi Arabia? (Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.) Because that might have required a gas tax or a confrontation with the administration’s oil moneymen….
… And, of course, why did the president praise Mr. Rumsfeld rather than fire him? Because Karl Rove says to hold the conservative base, you must always appear to be strong, decisive and loyal. It is more important that the president appear to be true to his team than that America appear to be true to its principles. (Here’s the new Rummy Defense: “I am accountable. But the little guys were responsible. I was just giving orders.”)
In George Bush: the crouching man is naked, I reported the torture view of the Bush admin�s favourite right-wing shock jock Rush �they were just letting off steam� Limbaugh, and that Bush wouldn�t repudiate his remarks. The new website monitoring the right wing media has launched aTV ad to let decent Americans know what they�re up against.
In Leaking self-doubt, spiked-online points out that the American (And our) media laid low on the torture for months, and that it was people inside the system who finally forced the truth out:
. Tracing how the photos became such hot public property reveals something striking, not only about the torture scandal, but about the coalition itself. This is a story, not of investigative journalism or antiwar activists exposing imperialist America to the world, but rather of America exposing its own uncertainty for all to see. The photos appear to have come from within US military or political circles; they were effectively volunteered for public consumption by elements within the military or higher up in the Pentagon, seemingly as part of a process of internal unravelling and deep disagreement over aspects of the war. In a sense, the publication of these photos to international outrage can be seen as the externalisation of America’s own self-doubt about Iraq, and about its own mission in the world…
‘The leakers are driving the story’, says Connie Coyne of the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. ‘I do not think the press would have moved on this story if the leakers had not provided photographs of what was going on.’ Coyne points out that reporters have known of allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib for months, but did little to investigate…
The failure of the media to expose the torture story earlier, even as Pentagon sources and soldiers’ families leaked information about the torture, reveals much about the balance in this story. It suggests that it came about less as a result of campaigning journalism and more as a result of pushiness on the part of aggrieved elements in the military or close to the military.
Tony Dutton recommends On thinking about war crimes.
And Ross Sharp writes:
I’ve just stumbled across the wackiest thing – apparently the abuses in Iraq are the fault of gay liberals. According, at least, to Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute in the US, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America.
“None of this happened by accident. It is directly due to cultural depravity advanced in the name of progress and amplified by a sensation-hungry media.”
“We were told homosexuality is harmless and normal, and the military should live with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that allows homosexuals to stay in the barracks. We were told that men “marrying” men and women “marrying” women is inevitable � not only for America, but for the world. Imagine how those images of men kissing men outside San Francisco City Hall after being “married” play in the Muslim world. We couldn’t offer the mullahs a more perfect picture of American decadence. This puts Americans at risk all over the world, especially Christian missionaries who are trying to bring the Gospel to people trapped in darkness for millennia.”
Right. That sorts that out then.
In Britain, the New Statesman in America’s gulag, reports on “a secret global network of prisons and planes that allows the US to hand over its enemies for interrogation, and sometimes torture, by the agents of its more unsavoury allies”.
British conservative MP and editor of the conservative Spectator magazine Boris Johnson wrote an incredible mea culpa called How could I have been such a mug?:
I was sitting in the Commons tea room last week, munching a mournful rock cake and studying the accounts of the American bombing of Fallujah. I looked at the charred Humvees, the mutilated corpses, the unnumbered dead, the wailing women and the expressions of immortal hate on the faces of the Iraqis; and perhaps unsurprisingly I found myself cast into a terrible gloom.
Just remind me, I said, turning to a colleague and friend, what is the case for this war in Iraq? You voted for it. I voted for it. We both spoke in favour of it. We both saw the merits of sticking with the Americans. We both believed that it was a good idea to get rid of Saddam.
But is there not a time when we have to admit, in all intellectual honesty, that our positions have been overwhelmed by countervailing data? How on Earth can we now defend what seems – admittedly at some distance – to be a total bloody shambles?
“Oh come off it, mate,” he said, because he is not only a hawk, but has a keen and impatient mind, “don’t be so wet. You want a single big argument for the war? The key point is that people are no longer being tortured in jails in Baghdad. That’s what we have achieved.”
It was as if the clouds had rolled back. I felt a sudden burst of optimism. “You’re right!” I said, and thought how silly I had been to ignore that gigantic fact, that we had introduced new values to Iraq, of civilisation and decency.
The following day I saw the pictures from the Abu Ghraib jail.
And in Australia? Tony Yegles writes: “Today I heard Howard the lapdog plagiarising best using Rummy’s words – again! Even Rummy’s style of asking the questions himself! Why do we need Howard as a mouthpiece when we have Bush and Rumsfeld doing the thinking and the talking – in other words the spinning?”
Prime Minister John Howard says the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by the US military is a “body blow” in the fight against terrorism, echoing the words of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Mr Rumsfeld, during a surprise visit to Iraq on Thursday in which he toured the Abu Ghraib prison, said: “It’s been a body blow for all of us”.
…”If you ask me ‘Do I like it?’, no I hate it, ‘Do I think it is a setback?’, yes it is, ‘Do I think it alters the overall moral case?’, no, but I certainly think it makes it a lot harder to argue and I think it’s certainly reduced a lot of the goodwill that did exist in Iraq.”
(In his latest evidence to the US Senate, Rumsfeld said of the planned tranfsfer of ‘sovereignty’ on June 30: “Will it happen right on time? I think so. I hope so. Will it be perfect? No. Is it possible it won’t work? Yes.”)
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READER COMPLAINT
Dave Kirkby
There was a time that I found your comments amusing, however recently you have degenerated into farce and hypocrisy. Your constant tirades against the governments spin doctors would be far more believable if you were not engaged in exactly the same practice.
Presenting information on your web site which emphasises certain “facts” and ignores or minimises other “facts” in order to inform your readers is text book spin doctoring. You choose to present only that information which supports your case whilst stridently condemning the government for the very same thing.
I have spent a large part of my time in third-world countries (including Iraq) and have many colleagues still working in Iraq. Your articles reveal a complete lack of understanding of the issues involved and an unwillingness to look beyond the tabloid journalism to find out.
You are entitled to your opinion but as a journalist you also have a duty to present the public with all the facts. While-ever journalists continue to pass off personal opinion as fact, they will continue to suffer the lack of creditability that your Webdiary suffers.
One other small thing. Common courtesy is a small thing that goes a long way. It takes very little effort to address the people you are writing about by their full names. “Howard” is actually John Howard, our Prime Minister, and whether you like him or not a little common courtesy goes a long way. The truly great debaters and wordsmiths never resort to cheap discourtesy as a way to make a point and their arguments were stronger for it.
Margo: I’d be happy to publish your views on Iraq.