Like most humans, I think visually. Then, I translate those globs of visual information into words that I can try to speak aloud, or even more arduously write in a blog entry. The image above is my understanding of the situation in Iraq in simple visual terms.
The media reaction
Oftentimes, the news media and consequently, the people, have a kitchen table debate about specific details without remembering the context in which that debate is really formed. The media details seem to focus on "how many troops" and the partisan political fight over the details of Bush's much-anticipated "New Way Forward" speech.
Since Noam Cholmsky has clearly taught us about the media food chain, I will only examine the Associated Press and Reuters news wire services which create the first voices in the echo chamber -- reprinted in hundreds of newspapers across the country -- which every-town Americans actually read.
"Democrats, who came to power in midterm elections two months ago in large part because of growing public opposition to the war, must walk a fine line between criticizing Bush's plans and appearing to be obstructionists or undermining the military.
And they presently rule Congress with insufficient numbers to block Bush's plan.
For Bush, the decision to send more troops to Iraq — rather than begin a withdrawal of combat forces as recommended last month by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group — is a huge gamble."
"President George W. Bush told skeptical Americans on Wednesday he was dispatching about 21,500 extra U.S. troops to Iraq, and in a rare admission, said he made a mistake by not deploying more forces sooner.
"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to me," Bush said in a televised White House address. "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."
The same way forward
President Bush's speech can be found on the White House website. You can watch the video and read the transcript. With some welcomed minor changes, as detailed and perhaps confusing as Bush's plan might be, it simply repackages the 2005 National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. I created the visual image of that plan above. You can also download the PDF file.
It's not nakedly a bad plan. It has validity. The problem is the Bush/Cheney implementation of that plan from day one. Iraq suffers from the incompetence of the Bush administration in the form of the Katrina syndrome, in my opinion. Driving that incompetence are the ideological neocons, like VP Cheney, who "won't talk to evil" when it comes to Iran or Syria.
A well-crafted speech
Bush mentioned Iran about a half-dozen times in his "new way forward" speech about Iraq. This clearly defines the Cheney neocon cabal in the administration as adding Iran to the list of "our enemies" -- joining al-Qaeda, the Bathists dead-ender insurgents, the Sadrists, etc.
Clearly, Cheney travelling to Saudi Arabia in November solidified the security alliance with the Sunni Arab states who also have regional concerns about Iran. Ideologically, Saudi Wahabbi Sunni Muslims think of Shia in Iran and Iraq as heretics.
Whoever wrote Bush's speech last night was very good. No swaggering. No cowboy ultimatums. It was delivered from the venue of the White House library. Bush was toned down to a thoughtful, contrite, and pragmatic leader -- despite simply repackaging the same plan.
There was no mention of the clash of civilizations, or crusader talk of the past. However, despite no "God Bless America" at the end, one still has to note the continued use of the phrase "calling of our time" and the capitalization of the term "Author of Liberty" in the conclusion of Bush's speech.
Bush's speech would be better labelled as "We messed up and we're trying to fix it," rather than a "New Way Forward," but I certainly also hope for the best in Iraq.
My good friend came over last night and told me about his weekend visiting with relatives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He and his wife met up with visiting relatives there because two of their kids were competing in a regional cheerleading competition. They won first place!
Fort Lauderdale is an especially beautiful Atlantic Ocean beach town in Florida. It holds gigabytes of special memories for me personally, many times, over many years.
My formative experience with FTL happened when I was only 19. I met up with my high school sweetheart in FTL for a week's leave between my Army basic training and my Advanced Individual Training (AIT), perfectly timed with her high school Spring Break (she is a year younger than me). I actually had a washboard and ripped stomach back then. Heh. After being away from each other because of Army Boot Camp for two months, we barely left the motel room very much.
Some years later, my Imajica BBS bud, Dryv Error, and I headed down there and partied for a week one year during a Christmas holiday break. Besides imparting the importance of the Detroit Red Wings to the hotel bartender constantly, I have one specific memory of that trip. On Christmas Day, I filled out post cards to my friends in the snowy North while soaking up some sun on the beach and listening to a Reggae band play their versions of Christmas carol music.
That last time I was in FTL was when a business I worked with gave me a free 3-day Bahamas Cruise on the Carnival Cruise Ship line. Because of some delay between departures between Airlines and Cruise Ship, we had a dead 12 hours. My business partner Joel and I rented a Jeep and scoped out the bikinis on the beach in Fort Lauderdale that day. I thought Joel's head might explode from all the tan lines he ogled that day. If Joel were to have an appropriate Native American name for himself that day, it would have been Snapping Neck or Bulging Eyes. It's not his fault -- there is endless eye candy on the beach. Yummy!
The reason I thought of these FTL memories came from seeing the beach in the town of Ras Kamboni, in Somalia. From this view, it looks like a great place with the wondrous Indian Ocean's waves lapping at its shores.
Instead, the news sources say that U.S. Forces have been attacking Al-Qaeda Islamists here, with the permission of the recognized Somali government. If you zoom in on the image above, via Wikimapia, this is an area with many people. I can only hope that the innocent civilians found a way to avoid the battle here over the last few days.
MSNBC has a good start to this beach town story with background links. I'm not going to bother spelling out the chess game in Somalia, but it might deserve your attention.
The only use of nuclear weapons in war time during the millenia of warfare among human civilizations was used by the United States in the dog days of Summer in 1945. Consequently, every child in school on our little spinning ball of mud knows the name of two obscure places in Japan: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Listen carefully, my friends:
"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. We won the race of discovery against the Germans. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroyed Japan's power to make war."
If you don't think that using nuclear weapons on Iran to stop their own nuclear fuel enrichment cycle is off the table, you haven't been paying attention. No one in the Pentagon wants to go to war with Iran because we are stretched thin. Isn't that the same motivation Truman used to nuke Japan, to "shock and awe" the Japanese into submission? If either side corners the other, there will be fall-out.
Even before the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were knowledgeable Peace Activists. Dr. Pauling was a Nobel Prize winning professor and activist, along with his learned wife. This film footage is almost 50 years old now.
If you don't think that the U.S. or Iranian leaders would use nuclears weapons against each other's interests in 2007 or 2008, you haven't been paying attention. Military historians have continually been commenting about the Japanese pre-WWII "death before dishonor" Bushido culture and the similiarities with suicidal Jihadists in the Arab street.
So. the question is this: Do you nuke your enemy and then befriend it (like Japan), or do you try to befriend it so you don't have to nuke it?
Meet your Orwellian "never-ending war" team of 2007 and beyond. These prominent U.S. Republican politicians and their entourages embarked on a ten-day "codel" of the Middle East during the holiday break last month. Shown above: U.S. Senators schmoozing with Israel's Shimon Peres.
"I recently journeyed to Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain. It was a trip of cargo planes and helicopters, flak jackets and helmets – difficult but very informative." Senator Susan Collins, Press Release, December 29th, 2006
Bush World "New Way Forward"
While some Democratic Party cheerleaders might still be hung-over from celebrating Nancy Pelosi's House take-over, I will bet you all three of my own gonads that the U.S. Senate will go along with the Bush "new way forward" PR plan for Iraq next week. Don't forget, a dozen Senate Democrats voted for the heinous "Military Commissions Act of 2006."
While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) may have sent a strongly-worded memo to the White House expressing the new majority's campaign trail promises about Iraq, BushCo has never had respect for the "cut and run" Democrats. He's not likely to embrace them now, no matter what the election of 2006 might have indicated about the attitudes of the general populations in the United States.
Remember, Bush threw Donald Rumsfeld off the "Stay the Course" Halliburton Cruise Liner. BushCo certainly did this to appease the political world. But more importantly and pragmatically, the firing of Donald Rumsfeld was in part to appease the uniformed military leadership at the Pentagon. That's all the Democratic Congressional operatives should expect as a freebie from the White House. The rest of 2007 and 2008 will have to be earned by the Democratic Party from hard-knuckled politics -- like they play in the rest of the world -- not this U.S. media bubble bullshit * perpetrated on all of us for the last few decades.
The New Way is the Old Way
The 2005 Bushworld plan for Victory in Iraq has been simply repackaged for another year by the White House Public Affairs / Psyops / Propanganda / Press Corps Media. The Iraq Study Group was an exercise of pure political masturbation, just like the 9/11 Commission Report, The Katrina Report, and the soon to be published children's coloring book called, "My Dog Barney Supports Democracy in the Middle East."
That Barney book is sure to be a big hit in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. You know ... because they are such democratic nations. They don't sponsor or hide terrorists financiers. They are our so-called moderate Sunni Arab allies to "win the peace." Maybe Condelleeza RIce or John Negroponte can read "The Pet Goat" to both us and them this year while we bury another 3000 military personnel who had to die to find a most final way out of Iraq.
* U.S. Media Bubble bullshit
The McMedia in the U.S. is breath-taking. These politicians participating in the codel / fact-finding mission / political junket barely mention anything beyond the patriotic meet-and-greet photo-ops, or about meeting with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert or other top level Israeli government officials for two days, or touring Israel, except Representative Mark Kirk (shown below). Official press releases on the Senators' web sites are basic McPolitics boiled down to yellow ribbon car sticker: "We support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The media in Israel is more informative than the corporate media echo chamber in the United States. Read foreign media, like the Jerusalem Post once in a while. At one time, the U.S. State Department used to have an overt intelligence gathering operation that would cull popular opinion from media around the world and issue reports. However, just like the annual terrorism incident report was discontinued under the Bush/Cheney In-Denial Team, so have these media reports. Bush and his crazies are like little kids holding their hands against their ears, shouting "la la la la la la la la ... I can't hear you!" No bad new reports from the government. Victory for the Global War on Terror, despite reality.
The corporate U.S. media establishment echos "Here's what George said today" as gospel with no significant challenge for finding facts or analysis of motivations and strategy. Despite the constant whining of right-wing nutjobs about the liberal bias in the U.S. media, the media is corporate, not biased. They've decided we only have an attention span of 7-seconds before we click away and miss their advertising, so you get soundbytes -- and politicians sell you bumper sticker slogans like "cut and run," "stay the course," "stand-up stand-down," "new way forward," and "victory in Iraq."
When I first started researching the holiday junket for these powerful politicians, one of the first things I wondered after I saw the group photograph was "What does Kirk from Illinois have in common with the others?" The Senators serve on the Armed Services committee, but who is Kirk?
Now, let me be perfectly clear about a few things. My main point for blogging about this today is informational. McCain even likes campaign finance reform. Israel, like any other country in the world, has the opportunity to lobby and influence legislators in our U.S. government. I have some issues concerning the U.S. media, some of these Congress-critters spewing soundbytes, and frankly the fact that we have set up a perpetual, multi-billion dollar, money laundering circle with regard to Israel.
We give (not loan) Israel about $3 billion a year. We have been giving Israel cash for security and humanitarian aid for decades. That's not news. Recently however, the Bush administration is simply giving billions to Israel for military purposes. Who sits on the House appropriations committee? Kirk. Who sits on the Senate Armed Forces committee? The rest of these vacationing fact-finders.
So, the legislators and appropriators authorize billions of your tax dollars to go to Israel. Then, the "Pro-Israel" political lobby spends a few million on the key U.S. politicians to keep them in office and on those powerful Congressional committees. Like any lobby, they just rinse and repeat -- every two, four, or six years.
Bottom Line
I don't know if the Bush World, or the McCain-doctrine, "new way forward" in Iraq may stabilize the security leg of the three-legged stool that the National Security Council put out belatedly in 2005, as the "Victory in Iraq" security-economic-political stool. I've been hopeful for Iraq and highlighted the Kurdistan way forward. McCain is making that argument and making some sense, frankly. The 2005 BushWorld "Victory in Iraq" plan was just a plagiarized War College monogram on counter-insurgency operations. The BushCo new way forward in Iraq is just lessons learned from the Clinton-era Balkans / Kosovo occupation and operations.
At the same time, the McCain-Lieberman support for the "surge" plan that Bush will likely unveil this next week has several significant arguments against it.
First, Vietnam veterans are screaming about repeating the mistakes of another Texas president sending fresh meat to die for political ego.
Second, the "surge" plan is a modified overwhelming force rationale, like the Powell doctrine, except too much time has passed to use it. No do-overs are allowed, nor work in the history of things.
Third, extremely educated and experienced military commanders continue to say that "success in Iraq" has no military solution, but it's political (or social / civil ).
Fourth, the "surge" plan completely ignores the motivations driving the insurgency -- that being that the occupation and the presence of foreign forces on their land and in their cities naturally makes troops a target as the cause for all their troubles.
If Senator Lieberman and Rep Kirk significantly owe their careers to the pro-Israel lobby, perhaps they should recuse themselves from the decision-making process in their branch of government, as judges do in the judicial branch. Perhaps they should at least have the media caveat toward full disclosure: "I work for so-and-so." In addition to their Congressional oaths of office, they serve other masters, too -- just like all other politicians. "We have to win in Iraq to have some push-back against Iran in the region, clash-of-civilizations, and nuclear-Iran means Israel is vulnerable." That is the message you'll hear in 2007.
So, when these esteemed and loyal Americans give learned speeches from think-tanks like AEI or JINSA, and then write articles and op-eds that garner national attention, and the their talking points get boiled down to a headline or bumper sticker slogans for the benefit of Fox News illiterate serfs -- all I can do is walk the dog backwards (tm) to reverse-engineer some truth and motivations.
