The folly of America’s administration and its apologists, among them the New York Times, the Washington Post, and now the “opposition” party, the Democrats, knows few bounds.

Consider Robert Fisk’s Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in denial:

More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia – and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself – as he apparently did in Amman yesterday – that the United States will stay in Iraq “until the job is complete”?

[…]

About the only truthful statement uttered in Amman yesterday was Bush’s remark that “there’s a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there’s going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq [but] this business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all.” Indeed, it has not. There can be no graceful exit from Iraq, only a terrifying, bloody collapse of military power.

Now consider, on the other hand, the Times’ Idea of Rapid Withdrawal From Iraq Seems to Fade:

In the cacophony of competing plans about how to deal with Iraq, one reality now appears clear: despite the Democrats’ victory this month in an election viewed as a referendum on the war, the idea of a rapid American troop withdrawal is fast receding as a viable option.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are signaling that too rapid an American pullout would open the way to all-out civil war. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group has shied away from recommending explicit timelines in favor of a vaguely timed pullback. The report that the panel will deliver to President Bush next week would, at a minimum, leave a force of 70,000 or more troops in the country for a long time to come, to train the Iraqis and to insure against collapse of a desperately weak central government.

[…]

Standing next to Mr. Maliki on Thursday in Amman, Jordan, Mr. Bush declared that Iraqis need not fear that he is looking for “some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq.” But a graceful exit – or even an awkward one – appears to be just what the Iraq Study Group, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, tried to design in the compromise reached by Republicans and Democrats on the panel on Wednesday.

Ah, the Democrats, erstwhile friends of the anti-war movement. They stood with the majority of Americans against the war just a few weeks ago, now, they support the Bush plan for Iraq with merely a few vague adjustments.

A democracy requires opposing points of view. A democracy requires an active press that speaks truth to power. A democracy requires active public debate, not “consensus” handed down from on high.

No country should quibble and mutter and praise its own good intentions while the country it occupies burns. No opposition party should stand by and watch this happen, let alone participate in it.

Shame on you, Democrats, for turning your back on Americans, Iraqis and the rest of the world so soon after promising so much.

[tags]Democrats, Iraq[/tags]

The daily stories out of Iraq are so gruesome and brutally violent that I have, horribly, become accustomed to them. Car bombings, kidnappings, the discovery of dozens of tortured bodies dumped in a Baghdad suburb: I haven’t linked to stories like these on this blog for months now.

But last Friday a headline caught my eye: Hundreds killed, injured in Baghdad blasts, it read. “Hundreds!” I thought. In fact, it was the worst bombing in Baghdad since the American invasion of that country, with a final death toll of 215 people in a mainly Shi’ite neighbourhood.

The next day was time for revenge. Shi’ite militiamen captured six Sunni Muslims as they left Friday prayers, doused them in kerosene and burned them alive. More attacks that day killed another 19 Sunnis.

Nearby Iraqi soldiers did nothing. These are the soldiers the United States has trained, the ones that need to “stand up” before the United States “stands down”. Mostly Shi’ites themselves, they likely felt that the Sunnis got what they deserved that day.

Life in Iraq, the most dangerous country on earth, is now defined by fear. Civilians are being killed at a rate of well more than 100 per day.

Meanwhile, the American establishment frets and mutters and weighs options, slowly. “American fortunes,” moans the New York Times, “are ever more dependent on feuding Iraqis who seem, at times, almost heedless to American appeals”.

Once mighty, America is now reduced to making appeals which no one listens to. American foreign policy journals and newspaper op-ed pages are filled with new plans and proposals – the latest is to divide Iraq into three separate regions in a loose federation – but none seems to recognize that a plan without potency is no plan at all.

Reality continues to defy these thinkers and policy-makers. They don’t realize the war in Iraq is already lost. They pour ink onto paper in America while blood pours on the streets of Iraq.

The ultimate truth, that America has no right to make plans for Iraq, never occurs to them.

The pretense that America must stay in Iraq to protect the Iraqis from themselves must be dropped. Iraq’s fate is no longer in American hands. The sooner that is recognized the better off everyone will be.

[tags]Iraq, foreign policy, America[/tags]

According to the CBC, the House of Commons has passed the controversial Harper motion declaring that “the Quebecois form a nation within a united Canada”.

The word nation is typically used to describe a country: the first definition in the American Heritage Dictionary says a nation is “A relatively large group of people organized under a single, usually independent government; a country.”

Harper claims that he actually means nation in the “cultural-sociological” sense, thus claiming the third definition of nation in the American Heritage Dictionary: “A people who share common customs, origins, history, and frequently language; a nationality.”

I propose yet another definition: “A can of worms; a cat no longer confined to a bag; a wrench typically used by monkeys”.

I could be wrong about that, which is where you come in. Thoughts?

[tags]politics, quebec, canada[/tags]

This trip to Europe is thoroughly enjoyable, but I feel an uneasy guilt as the mountainous terrain near Florence flashes by the windows of the train.

We arrived in Europe by plane, of course, a form of transportation that is bad for the environment, particularly in its production of greenhouse gases. Now we’re getting around by train, which is less harmful but still not great.

The source of my unease is the papers I have with me, The Guardian and The International Herald Tribune, both with stories emphasizing my personal contribution to the planetary problem of global warming.

The Herald Tribune carries a story about environmental criticism of airlines (as it turns out, I can’t find the paper, I must have thrown it out). Air travel is by far the worst form of transportation because of its massive fuel consumption, and now an environmental group has started a campaign on the issue.

In The Guardian, Madeline Bunting writes a wistful piece set on November 6, 2046, looking back 40 years and attempting an explanation to an imaginary grandson for the folly of our times:

The problem was that we were intoxicated with an idea of individual freedom. With hindsight, that understanding of freedom was so impoverished that it amounted to nothing more than a greedy egotism of doing whatever you wanted whenever. We understood freedom largely in terms of shopping and mobility (we were restless, and liked travel of all kinds).

Harsh words, and like many of the people who’ve read them, I’m sure, I sit here trying to think of why they don’t apply to me.

Truthfully, I don’t understand freedom as shopping or mobility, nor do I agree with Bunting when she goes on to say that the “most precious freedom of all” is “freedom from fear”. The most precious freedom is freedom to be as one is, and to grow; it’s true fear is a potent inhibitor of this freedom, but one can be lulled or seduced into its loss too, unafraid.

Travel, for me, is not this seduction of thoughtless pleasure, it’s an unfolding of new experience that I hope will change my perceptions in some way. If it weren’t for the environmental issues I am only now becoming aware of, I would recommend that everyone travel abroad to experience other ways of life.

Paradoxically, these ways of life often teach environmentalism by example. I’m thinking of the superb waste management of The Netherlands (they have no landfills), the dense, functional and vibrant city centres all across Europe, and the excellent transportation systems in cities like Paris.

The water conservation techniques of arid countries in the Middle East also come to mind, although I’ve never seen these first-hand. This is a good lesson, because none of the things other countries do better than Canada require travel to understand. For the average person who doesn’t read about urban planning or recycling facilities in their spare time, however, travel powerfully illustrates the possible.

In the end, for me these are nothing more than rationalizations. I enjoy non-fiction. For now, I’m left committing myself to buying fluorescent light bulbs and maybe some more insulation. And I wonder how many trees it would take to absorb the carbon I’ve burned this trip.

Maybe I’ll switch to one-ply?

The Globe and Mail is reporting today that “[a]t least 60 civilians were killed during NATO operations in a volatile southern area of Afghanistan this week”:

NATO spokesman Major Luke Knittig said troops used “precision strikes” against militants who targeted aid deliveries and reconstruction projects in the area.

“Very sadly, civilians continue to get caught up in these engagements with tragic results,” Maj. Knittig said.

Mr. Afghanmal said Taliban fighters ran into civilian homes, which were then targeted by NATO forces.

NATO says these deaths were the Taliban’s fault because they entered civilian homes, which were then bombed. This justification is standard for the military, even though it is equivalent to the police flattening your home with your family inside because a fleeing felon sought refuge there.

In the comments after the article, ‘Midtown Bob’ asks “How many of the 60 dead civilians were closet [T]aliban?”

His remark is significant because it reveals the kind of thinking that is standard in the so-called ‘War on Terror’: a ‘closet Taliban’ is someone who is not outright Taliban but still supports the Taliban, and thus they are our enemy.

Their children, although they are not Taliban, are the children of those who support the Taliban, and will grow up to be Taliban or Taliban-supporters: thus they are our enemies.

All of whom ought to be killed. Or, at least, not mourned if that is their fate.

It’s easy to forget, however, that the Taliban are Afghans too, and there are enough of them that they represent a significant portion of the population.

No solution to the situation in Afghanistan can be found without their involvement.

This is anathema to all those who have adopted the Taliban as enemy #1 – for now. The same logic led to the removal of Ba’ath Party members in Iraq from their positions by Paul Bremer in the aftermath of the US invasion. They were seen as the enemy, and it was impossible to deal with that enemy.

Now, the US recognizes its mistake and seeks to reinstate them, to bring them back into the political process, but it is too late. The US has lost in Iraq and everyone knows it.

The Taliban are the enemy today, but they may not be the enemy tomorrow – after all, they were not the enemy yesterday, when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. Then, they were our friends, just like the war lords in Afghanistan are our “friends” today.

Canada should realize that a purely military solution is not possible and announce support for a United Nations summit involving all parties to the conflict, in the hope of achieving a negotiated, compromise peace.

[tags]Afghanistan, Canada, NATO, war on terror, politics[/tags]