US Diary: the Middle East and a helpless Bush (maybe not helpless - hey, he's fiddling)

1. Stop Laughing, It's US Policy That's the Joke -- by Mike Carlton (from the Sydney Morning Herald)

St. Petersburg, Tuesday. The President of the United States, unplugged.
GWB: Hey Blair, howya doin'? Like your tie. You British do stripes real good.

TB: Thank you so much.

GWB: Not a problem. Now gimme your take on this Middle East shit.

TB: Well, you see, you've got Hezbollah …

GWB: Remind me, Blair. Them the Jewish guys or the Islamic guys?

TB: They're the bad guys.

GWB: Got it. Who's the chick over there with the hot boobies?

TB: Do you mean the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel?

GWB: Kraut, huh? Now here's what we do with the Middle East thing: the Israelis get two weeks to kick ass, let the UN screw up, then Condi fixes a ceasefire. Sound good to you, Blair?

TB: Just what I was thinking myself, actually.

GWB: Done deal. But, hey, gotta get back to Washington. Some serious stuff goin' down with Cheney and Rummy tonight.

TB: Iraq?

GWB: Nope. New York Yankees playin' the Boston Red Sox. Got $100 on the Sox with Dick.

TB: I hope that microphone is not turned on, George.

Poor bloody Lebanon. Three thousand years ago the great cities of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre were at the civilized center of the known universe, their Phoenician traders commanding the Mediterranean to Spain and beyond, venturing as far north as the tin mines of Cornwall.

In the centuries since, what we know as modern Lebanon has been raped and pillaged by the predators of history: Persians, Greeks, Romans, Armenians, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the French, the Syrians. Now, not long recovered from a hideous civil war, a fragile Lebanese democracy reels beneath the hammer blows of the Israelis.

George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and, for that matter, John Howard, can bleat forever about Israel's right to defend itself, but we are witnessing an obscenity. On all sides. The targeted Israeli air strike which murders children in a Beirut suburb is as much a crime against humanity as an indiscriminate Hezbollah rocket crashing into downtown Haifa. There are no gradations of immorality. It is total.

Bush's buffoonery in St. Petersburg - manhandling Merkel, dropping the "shit" word - were funny or offensive, depending on your take on these things. But there is no humor in the fact that American policy in the Middle East now lies in ruins. The neo-conservative fantasy of a swift war in Iraq magically spreading peace and democracy throughout the region has brought nothing but catastrophe.

Sooner or later, when Hezbollah has killed enough Israeli civilians, and the Israelis have killed enough Lebanese, some sort of ceasefire will happen. But new hatreds will pile upon the old. The seeds are sown. Next, the whirlwind.

(Email to: smhcarlton@hotmail.com)


2. The Ballad of Dumb George -- by William Rivers Pitt

“I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid.” -- "The Ultimate Flame," author unknown

George W. Bush is a good man, word has it. He's plain-spoken, they say. A regular fella. A good guy to have a beer with, except he supposedly doesn't drink anymore.

I wish, more than anything, that he were drinking. I wish he were drinking all the time. I wish, oh how I wish, that he were stand-up-fall-down-ralphing-down-his-shirt loaded every minute of every day. It would be a comfort, simply because it would explain a great many things. Having a drunk for a president is, after all, a fixable situation. Put him to bed at Camp David for a few weeks and surround him with Secret Service agents. Let his body clean itself out. Problem solved, and really, would anyone actually notice his absence?

I don't believe Bush has gotten off the sauce, if truth be told. I know more than a few boozers who, like George, periodically show up with odd wounds on their faces they got from falling over or running into walls. The injuries that appear on George's mien from time to time can perhaps be explained away - maybe Dick Cheney is stalking the halls with a shotgun loaded with rock salt and blasting anyone, even the boss, who gets in his way - but if "George still drinks" were up on the big board at the MGM Grand sports book, I'd take the bet no matter what the oddsmakers had to say.

Having a drunk for a president is manageable. Having a stone bozo for a president, on the other hand, is a calamity of global proportions.

Let's take a walk through the last few days. George winged off to Russia for trade talks at the G-8 summit, and managed in the course of 100 hours to embarrass himself and our entire country. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is smarter than Bush by several orders of magnitude, insulted George in front of the international press corps with a tight quip about "democracy" in Iraq. No trade deal got done. The whole thing was a humiliating waste of time, captured best by all the photos of Bush and Putin together. In each and every one of them, Putin is looking at George with an expression that somehow conveyed disgust, disdain and awe simultaneously.

Putin's disgust and disdain are easily understood - the poor guy was trapped in a room with our knucklehead president for hours, after all - but the awe requires notice. What, Putin must have thought, is this fool doing running a country?

After that came the much-noted open-mike gaffe, during which George dropped an s-bomb while discussing the Middle East crisis with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The cussing doesn't trouble me - those who know say that John F. Kennedy swore like a sailor whenever he talked shop - but the rest of the scene was like something out of a high school cafeteria. Bush sat there, talking with what looked like seventeen doughnuts stuffed into his gob, while poor Tony tried to discuss matters of life and death.

You have to listen to the audio to get a full grasp of what transpired. It wasn't just the dialogue. It was the tone in Blair's voice. He sounded for all the world like a teacher attempting to explain something to an exceptionally dull student. His tone suggested infinite patience and a touch of true sadness, as if he could not quite believe he was speaking this way to an American president.

"It takes him eight hours to fly home," said George at one point during the open-mike massacre. "Eight hours. Russia's big and so is China." He was, presumably, speaking to someone about Chinese President Hu Jintao's travel requirements, but really now. Huffington Post writer Cenk Uygur captured the unbelievable vapidity of the discourse.

"Russia's big and so is China?" exclaimed Uygur. "This guys sounds like a third grader. Do you know anyone who would have a conversation like this with their neighbor, let alone a business associate, let alone a world leader? Who's proud to know that Russia is big and so is China? If someone is this ignorant, they're usually embarrassed and try not to talk much. But this guy is so dumb he has no idea how dumb he is. This sounds like a conversation you might have with a child, a mentally challenged child. Johnny, do you know how big Russia is? How about China? This would all be unfortunate if George were your dentist, or worse yet, your accountant. But he is the leader of the free world. This man makes life or death decisions every day. If you say you're not scared about that, you're lying."

Then came the pig-roast thing. Newsday described it best: "As Israeli warplanes were preparing an attack on Lebanon Thursday afternoon, and a Lebanese militia was aiming a rocket at the ancient Israeli city of Safed, President George W. Bush was bantering with reporters in Germany about a pig. Bush kept bringing up the roast wild boar he was about to dine on at a banquet that night, even when asked about the swelling crisis in the Middle East, where pig meat is forbidden to religious Jews and Muslims. 'Does it concern you that the Beirut airport has been bombed?' a reporter asked. 'And do you see a risk of triggering a wider war?' 'I thought you were going to ask me about the pig,' Bush replied blithely. Then he brought the pig up again - for the fifth time - before giving a long answer that ended with his saying Israel needed to protect itself."

After this came the moment when George tried to give German Chancellor Angela Merkel a back massage while she was speaking to someone at the summit table. He sidled up behind her and just started rubbing. Merkel's reaction was instantaneous and dramatic: she flinched, flailed her arms up and basically waved the president of the United States away from her. Her reaction would have been no different if Bush had dropped a live catfish down the back of her shirt.

What's next? Will George go to the United Nations, sit on Kofi Annan's head, and fart like some bratty brother tormenting a sibling? Will the cameras catch him playing penny hockey during Middle East peace negotiations? You can't say it'll never happen. It reminds me of the scene from "Caddyshack" where the golfers are hiding in the bushes and betting on whether the Smails kid picks his nose. It is not too farfetched a concept to believe that the other G-8 leaders were doing something very similar while watching Bush.

There were, by my count, no less than twenty different moments in the last few days where George brought shame and disgrace upon this country. He did not do this by being too tough, or too soft, or too strident. He did this simply by being himself. His head is an echo chamber where very stupid bats roost. He has the intellect of a bag of rocks. Maybe it's impolite to say this, but it has to be said.

And yeah, Mr. Uygur, it is really, really scary. I wish the man were a drunk. I'd sleep better, and so would the world.

(William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.)


3. Bush's Burned Bridges
The Middle East cataclysm is the last gasp of America's wasted post-9/11 opportunity.
By Rosa Brooks

Things fell apart so quickly.

At the beginning of this millennium, the Cold War was over, the prosperous United States was the sole remaining superpower and global opinion was largely sympathetic to U.S. aims. In the wake of brutal ethnic wars in Central Europe and Africa, the international community had forged a new determination to prevent conflict and atrocities. The volatile Middle East was quiet, and the world seemed headed toward stability rather than chaos.

Only six years later, things couldn't be more different. The Bush administration's tunnel-vision approach to foreign policy has pushed the U.S. and the world into a devastating tailspin of conflict without end.

In Afghanistan, this year is shaping up to be the deadliest yet for U.S. troops. In Iraq, which President Bush promised would be "a source of true stability in the region," the carnage has been mind-boggling, and by late September, the fighting will have dragged on for 3 1/2 years — the same length of time it took us to defeat Germany in World War II.

The total implosion of the Middle East highlights the continuing decline of U.S. prestige and influence. As Israeli planes — built with our money — pummel Lebanon, our world is becoming ever more perilous and American preeminence ever more fragile.

The violent Hezbollah incursion into Israel was a deliberate provocation, to be sure, but Israel's response has dizzyingly upped the ante. Hundreds of Lebanese civilians — a disproportionate number — already have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. More than a dozen Israeli civilians have died in retaliatory Hezbollah rocket attacks.

And that's just the beginning.

If Syria or Iran gets drawn into the conflict to bail out their Hezbollah client, Israel will retaliate against them as well. Spooked by Iran's burgeoning nuclear capabilities, Israel may be looking for just such an excuse to launch a punishing strike against Iran.

Even if the conflict doesn't spread, it is already hardening the battle lines between the U.S. and our allies and the Muslim world. The conflict will breed a new generation of martyrs, a new generation of hungry children growing up amid the rubble and a new generation of mistrustful, bitter fighters — some of whom will be willing to blow themselves up for the chance of taking Israelis or Americans down with them.

The cataclysm in the Middle East represents the final and total failure of the Bush administration's foreign policy. After 9/11, the world was on our side, and we had a unique opportunity to turn tragedy into triumph, to strengthen the alliances and global institutions that have long sustained American preeminence.

We wasted that opportunity. We promised to make the world safer, but we've turned it into a tinderbox. We promised to unite our allies, but we've sown rage and division. We promised to promote democracy, but we did so through violent and poorly thought-through "regime change" rather than through diplomacy, friendship and foreign aid.

Now Israel, our closest Middle Eastern ally, appears hell-bent on destroying Lebanon — the second most democratic state in the region, which has been struggling successfully to cast off the Syrian yoke.

A year ago, the administration was pledging to support Lebanon's fragile and hard-gained democracy. Today, "the country has been torn to shreds," as Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora bitterly told diplomats. "Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions?"

And as the conflagration worsens, Washington is indecisive and impotent. We might use our leverage with Israel to push for an immediate cease-fire and a long-term political solution, but we lack the courage to criticize Israel. The administration's insistence on the right to unilateral self-defense (no matter how disproportionate) would make any U.S. criticism of Israel hypocritical anyway.

We could use our leverage with Syria to get Syria to make Hezbollah back off, but we have no leverage with Syria. We refuse to have direct discussions with Syria anyway.

We could use our leverage with Iran to get Iran to make Hezbollah back off, but we have no leverage with Iran. And we refuse to have direct discussions with Iran anyway, unless Iran agrees to all our nuclear demands in advance.

And Israel, Syria and Iran all know that they can do as they wish at the moment without fear of a meaningful U.S. response. They understand (as does North Korea's Kim Jong Il) that we're bogged down in Iraq, too overextended to spend time, money or troops to stop the latest catastrophe.

We've burned up every ounce of goodwill we ever had, we've burned every diplomatic bridge we ever had, and now we can do nothing but sit on our hands as the ashes rain down all around us.

Engraved on a wall at the British Imperial War Museum is a phrase attributed to Plato: "Only the dead have seen the end of war." It was meant as a warning about the perils of arrogance and empire — and the Bush administration seems determined to prove the aphorism's truth.


4. Leading to Low Ground -- by Bob Herbert

"We are different from our enemy and we must remain so." - Elisa Massimino

The United States had complete command of the moral and ethical high ground in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the world was with us.

For some reason, the Bush administration deliberately abandoned those heights to pursue policies that were not just morally questionable, but reprehensible. Administration officials have fought like tigers to retain the right to torture. They have imprisoned people willy-nilly, without regard to whether they had actually committed offenses against the United States. They set up a system of kangaroo courts at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that was such an affront to the idea of justice that it should have sent shudders of shame down the spines of decent Americans.

In fact, most Americans never bothered to notice.

The administration's descent into barbarism hit a speed bump last month when the Supreme Court ruled that the kangaroo courts, otherwise known as military commissions, were an unmitigated outrage. They were patently illegal. They had not been authorized by Congress. They violated the Geneva Conventions. They stomped all over the rights of the defendant.

The inquisitors of the Middle Ages would have smiled knowingly at Guantanamo.

Elisa Massimino is the Washington director of Human Rights First. She testified yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has held hearings as part of the effort by Congress and the White House to come up with a system for trying prisoners at Guantanamo that would replace the outlawed commissions.

"Part of the problem," she told me in an interview, "is that we've got these detainees in custody, and the rhetoric about them for four years now has been so elevated that people want to create a system that will guarantee their conviction. But that's not worthy of this country. That's not how justice is done. That may be how other countries do it, but that's never been how we've done it."

In her testimony, Ms. Massimino discussed some of the requirements of the Supreme Court ruling. Among other things, she said, "We cannot have rules permitting one person or branch of government to be the judge, jury and prosecutor." She said, "Defendants must have the right to be present at trial." She said, "A defendant must have the right to know the evidence being used against him, to respond to it, and to challenge its credibility or authenticity."

Americans are used to taking these sorts of things for granted. How is it possible that the president of the United States could set up a system in which these kinds of fundamental rights were held in complete contempt?

But there's more. The administration was not satisfied with rigging the system against the defendant. As she continued discussing the requirements of the Supreme Court ruling, Ms. Massimino said: "Testimony cannot be compelled. ... This means not only that a person cannot be forced to testify, but also that information or witness statements obtained through torture, cruelty or other coercion cannot be used as evidence."

That rumbling you hear is the sound of the founding fathers spinning in their graves. Incredibly, under the trials originally authorized by President Bush, prosecutors would have been allowed to introduce evidence obtained through torture and other forms of coercion. The Bush administration didn't just leave the moral and ethical high ground. It sped away with great enthusiasm.

What is interesting is the common ground on this issue that is being found by human rights groups and the highest-ranking lawyers of America's armed forces. Testifying last week before the same committee that Ms. Massimino addressed yesterday, top lawyers from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines all endorsed proceedings that would give more rights and protections to detainees than the administration had been willing to give.

In her testimony, Ms. Massimino urged the committee to use the existing Uniform Code of Military Justice as the basic system for trying detainees. In his appearance before the committee last week, Brig. Gen. Kevin Sandkuhler, the top lawyer for the Marines, described that code as "the gold standard."

After a while you get the sense that real progress could be made, if only the Bush administration would get out of the way.


5. Bringing on "World War III" -- by Bill Berkowitz

If you thought that a global conflagration on the order of a World War was more the stuff of Biblical prophecy, science fiction and apocalyptic end-times novels, think again.

For years, U.S. neoconservatives have been ratcheting up the rhetoric -- mostly in small gatherings and on partisan web sites -- claiming that terrorist activities around the world constituted the initial stages of a new world war.

But during the past week or so, with the Israeli/Hezbollah crisis in full swing, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the United States House of Representatives, is using any platform available to him to convince the public that the U.S. is engaged in World War III.

Gingrich made national headlines when he claimed -- while discussing the situation in the Middle East during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Jul. 16 -- that the U.S. should be "helping the Lebanese government have the strength to eliminate Hezbollah as a military force."

A day earlier, the Seattle Times reported that during a fundraising trip to the state of Washington, Gingrich mixed a little partisan politics -- acknowledging his concern about the Republican Party's prospects in the fall elections -- while once again using the term World War III.

"This is World War III," Gingrich said. "Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts."

Gingrich also maintained that the use of the term "World War III" could re-energise the base of the Republican Party. He pointed out that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "okay, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"

On Monday, Gingrich appeared on the Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" programme, and restated his World War III contention.

While Gingrich's media tour definitely thrust him back into the national political spotlight, it may have also given the public a sneak peek into the Republican Party's political/marketing strategy for the November congressional elections: If the war on terrorism doesn't create a fearful enough climate amongst voters, why not ratchet it up by mentioning the spectre of a World War III?

Gingrich, who has also been testing the waters for a 2008 run at the presidency, was not the first conservative to use the phrase World War III. Media Matters for America, a website devoted to "monitoring, analysing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," recently documented a number of World War III references by a gaggle of cable television's conservative talking heads.

On the Jul. 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly said "World War III ... I think we're in it."

On the same day's edition of MSNBC's Tucker, a graphic read: "On the verge of World War III?"

"CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck began his programme on Jul. 12 with a discussion with former CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) officer Robert Baer by saying 'We've got World War III to fight,' while also warning of 'the impending apocalypse,'" Media Matters for America noted.

"Beck and Baer had a similar discussion on Jul. 13, in which Beck said: 'I absolutely know that we need to prepare ourselves for World War III. It is here.'"

Back in May, even President George W. Bush made mention of World War III. Bush told the CNBC cable television network that the action taken by the passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on Sep. 11, 2001 was the "first counter-attack to World War III."

Bush said that he agreed with the description by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, in an April Wall Street Journal commentary that the act was "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war -- World War III."

Hyping World War III isn't new to conservatives. Some have even argued that the real World War III was the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and that now the U.S. is engaged in World War IV.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank that in the late 1990s advocated regime change in Iraq and consistently promoted a muscular U.S. foreign policy, was one of the groups that used the term World War III to describe the Cold War.

In April 2003, at a teach-in at the University of California, Los Angeles sponsored by Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, R. James Woolsey, a former CIA director and founding member of PNAC, told the audience that "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us; hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."

Woolsey pointed out that the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and terrorist groups like al Qaeda were the main targets of the new war.

But PNAC and Woolsey's labeling of the Cold War as World War III and the current war against terrorism World War IV may have been more a case of premature elocution than a precise reading of the times. That construct "might sell well inside the Beltway, but out in the countryside where the younger generation can't recall the Cold War it doesn't do much," John Stauber, the founder and executive director of the Centre for Media and Democracy and the author of the forthcoming book, " The Best War Ever ," told IPS in an email.

"The Cold War was the best thing that ever happened to American capitalism, and the collapse of the Soviet Union was a disaster for the Eisenhower-named military-industrial complex," Stauber pointed out.

"The strategists among the pro-war right jumped all over 9/11; an endless, secret, war against a foreign enemy bent on terrorism and acquiring weapons of mass destruction is an even better scenario for American militarists than the Cold War."

"Calling it World War III is sound packaging," he said. "You've got to call it something and five years after 9/11 with Osama [bin Laden] still roaming free and Iraq an American quagmire, and the Republican Party in danger of losing control of Congress, this ploy makes marketing sense."

If the Republican Party brain-trust -- read, Karl Rove -- determines that labeling the Democrats "cut and runners," "weak on terrorism," or that they are incapable of understanding the reality of the dangerous world we live in, does not appear to be resonating with voters, look out for World War III to be put in play.

(Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column " Conservative Watch " documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.)