Excess of Evil
The North Korean test of a nuclear device may have been in keeping with their role as one of the infamous axis of evil, but at the present time to the Administration it is more likely to be viewed as an excess of evil
Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States - washingtonpost.com. In addition to rearranging the Asian security equation
North Korea rocks Asia's status quo | csmonitor.com. North Korea now is capable of being a direct threat to countries it doesn't share a direct border with. Japan in particular now finds itself at risk of being drawn into Kim Jong-il's game of "give me money or I'll blow us all up". As well North Korea's ways and means committee will initiate a rearranging of Global War on Terror as the regime comes under suspicion of selling the knowledge, tools or even complete nuclear weapons to whoever has the cash to pay. The United States' capacity for eliminating trouble by direct (i.e. military) means is falling short of leaderships claims, But then the two regional wars the military envisioned being able to wage were always conceived as defensive in nature. Looming large behind this immediate problem is the object lesson Iran will choose to take away from this
Will Iran follow N. Korea's lead? | csmonitor.com". They are already aware it is not likely the US cannot halt a potential run at nuclear weapon development by military means
Bush Says No Plans to Attack North Korea - New York Times, this is the modern world; though, and no country that hasn't spent sixty years on the project can live as isolated as the North Korean regime does. If they see the US able to piece together a package of sanctions
U.S. Urges Sanctions on North Korea - washingtonpost.com and material blockades that touch North Korea
Bush Sees No Need to Change N. Korea Policy - New York Times that might give Iran pause. The goal would be for the precariously balanced North Korean regime to feel itself tipping at such angle as to remind them that they play the brinksmanship game
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | North Korea warns of sanctions reprisals with disaster so closely that the flapping of every butterfly's wings in every tropical rain-forest in the four corners of this earth must be accounted for to keep from being blown over the edge
China Shows Willingness to Punish North Korea for Test - New York Times. This is still very difficult for the unilateralist crowd of the administration who are still laboring discognitively under the misapprehension that the unwashed masses of the world will fall to their knees trembling at the mere sound of Don Rumsfelds giant brass balls clanging together as he strides the earth
NPR : President and Secretary of Defense Stay On-Message. There was an article in the paper recently on the Presidents increasing use of the phrase "unacceptable" "Unacceptable period" and other such bright line markers
Bush Confounded by the 'Unacceptable' - washingtonpost.com, or maybe commas
'Just a Comma' Becomes Part of Iraq Debate - washingtonpost.com. There is a certain King Canute quality to this rhetoric, it either marks a growing subconscious awareness of the limitations of the imperium, or of a lingering belief that the power exists, it is the will to use it that is lacking. More likely what is occurring is more descriptive than prescriptive - an inarticulate reflection of the danger and dramatic side of nuclear proliferation. Even Canute was offering a deliberate practical demonstration to his staff - a man has got to know his limitations. Even as the Administration tries to set the focus to the nebulous level of the war on terror, there are daily reminders that staying the duplicitous course of their war on Iraq is what currently constrains the U S most. The merry-go-round of rationales for the war must keep turning through, WMD, engaging the middle east in Democracies experiment (note apparently democracy cannot be 'imposed' through invasion and occupation), through to oil, and around again. Recently the administration seems to be of the mind that if they can deny a civil war is occurring, then whatever is occurring is under control. Months ago I read a description of criteria for a civil war. There were two main factors: sustained movement and homogenization of ethic populations by neighborhood, if not city and region, and increasing conflict between militias. Keeping with the eternal course of war as a thing done by the armed to the unarmed, militia activity proceeds largely by raids, checkpoints, and round-ups, each culminating in episodes of mass murder. There is too much lowing hanging blood-fruit for militias to need to fight one another yet.
For the US, occupied as a target of the crossfire it is what the military minded call a small war. I had a thought a month or so ago to look into what the US War college (the military's graduate schools) journals (Parameter/Norton review) had to say about Gil Merom and Ivan Arreguin-Toft's book's. They had reviewed them and I pulled down those reviews intending to read and comment on them at some point. What surprised me is how long these books were published before they did review them. Others were paying more attention earlier. A spate of internal military reviews and a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq point towards spiraling instability, failure of the present government, failure of the US mission and the eventual necessity of withdrawal
On every level, the Iraq war is hurting America | csmonitor.com. Yet this is not likely to happen there are permanent bases in Iraq essentially garrisoning the oil fields. These are tied to the wars true purpose and will not be withdrawn from. There will either be a central Government that allows this, or divided governance that encourages this. These bases are the vestige of the administrations former imperial hubris. A often reproduced quote related by Ron Suskind conveys this attitude in perfect form ...had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
The New York Times > Magazine > "Without a Doubt": Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush also in
The New York Review of Books: The Secret Way to War and referenced in
The Cheney Supremacy.
The Frontline that ran this week
FRONTLINE: the lost year in iraq | PBS offered a distillation of the much of the current commentary on what went wrong in Iraq. Some directly others such as Ricks' -
Fiasco : the American military adventure in Iraq, Gordon-
Cobra II : the inside story of the invasion and occupation of Iraq,Woodward
State of denial, others indirectly, Packer-
The Assassin's Gate : America in Iraq, Stewart-
The prince of the marshes : and other occupational hazards of a year in Iraq, Fukayama-
America at the crossroads : democracy, power, and the neoconservative legacy, and Chandrasekaran-
Imperial life in the emerald city : inside Iraq's green zone. Others seemed implicitly contained: Naomi Klein's
Baghdad Year Zero (Harpers.org) particularly. An interview with Andrew Natsios this spring who was issuing funds from the USAID
Hirsh: Natsios Criticizes Iraq Contracts - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com reinforces Ms Klein's view of the CPA as a disciplineless, blinkered, out-of-touch whirlpool drain of effort. I was surprised by the level of confusion and lack of coordination the administration demonstrated. Much of this I attribute to the dual and unstated nature of the objectives. Since it became clear the Bush administration intended to invade and occupy Iraq there have been few moments when the press or a government report assembled enough information together at one time to gain a feeling of what was going on - what we wanted to have happen and what we didn't. Frontline's report strongly suggests that there was no single point or voice from where this could have been communicated. There is no view of our enterprise in the middle east except through a glass darkly.
With no particular success at hand. The question becomes what was the plan anyway? I hold with the notion that while many rationales were in play what ultimately drove choices were the views of the administrations enterprising realists, Cheney and Rumsfeld, fronting for a wealth controlling elite which fights to keep the US destiny tied to their particular mode of wealth. What this country does, is get a very high return for its consumption of, its processing of energy. Primary wealth will lie along this path. This alternet article
AlterNet: War on Iraq: Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and
AlterNet: War on Iraq: Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil (Part Two) discusses this touching on documents that were extracted from the Vice Presidents energy task force (by Judicial watch) that appear to show that the Iraqi oil fields were objects of intense interest well before the invasion. An interest which now has as its focus getting some Iraqi entity to sign in an internationally recognized manner Production Service Agreements (PSA) which would organize and control Iraq's oil assets. I recall the Vice President making a comment, when asked whether his task force would recommend alternate energy or energy saving programs. He didn't think that was the right course for America. Our course was to continue with the process we have. Dig and drill we must. I suppose from the point of view of this administration, getting elected entitled them to this. But did everyone in the electorate understand the bargain. I also hold that heading up the cascade of miscalculations was the stubbornly held notion that Chalabi was going to be man we were going to do business with and the thing was essentially an assisted coup, a natural law reconstruction and didn't require large degrees of postwar planning. It was the Iraqi Coup that never happened; never more than an ignorant fantasy. As much as one is tempted to admire Secretary Rumsfeld's attempts to force the U S military into the 21st century and move it off force-structures and systems designed for the cold war. The other side of that coin was the interest the people associated with this, with the Program for the New American Century, had in a military posture freed from a defensive intent and enabled as an easy instrument of politics, policy, and power. This could never prove less than unwise or immoral. On a two way radio there is a knob called gain that you turn to set signal above noise. The policies the republicans have to campaign on have demonstrable histories, they must present failure as a virtue in Iraq, they stay - because they can't see a way out, because they have not yet fed their appetite, they try not to mention it at all
Comment is free: Don't mention the war. The migrations of peoples and existence of radical islam are genuine issues, the first not wholly negative, the second not rightfully equatible to a world war and crisis driven abandonment of freedoms. to speak constantly of these issues in terms of terror, dhimmization, latin reconquesta, xenophobia! For political gain. That is noise.
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