Monthly Archives: April 2003

The New Warriors

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In a series of links that began in the comment here, I wind up here, reading the letter from Eve Ensler (Activist/Playwright/Founder, V-Day) to President Bush, which includes the following (and much more worth reading).
You cannot help people through force or violence. You help people by serving them, by asking questions, through humility, by being engaged in a process of discovery, admitting that you do not have answers and seeking answers together. You help people by providing safety and resources so they can do their best thinking. You help people by trusting they have the capacity to help themselves.
Mr. President, there is a new paradigm. I have seen it manifest itself everywhere, from Manhattan to Manila, Sarajevo to Johannesburg. Women and men who have suffered enormous violence are not buying AK-47s or machetes or weapons of mass destruction. They are not plotting retaliation or revenge. I have seen how in the Rift Valley of Africa the women who were mutilated are now opening safe houses to protect young girls from Female Genital Mutilation. In Houston, Denver, New York, Los Angeles, and Kauai, women are telling their stories of rape and domestic battery, risking
shame and embarrassment so other women will be free. In Juarez, Mexico, women activists are risking assassination as they speak out against the murder and disappearances of hundreds of poor women. In the refugee camps of Peshawar, Afghan women who lost every right under the Taliban are bringing up girls and boys to be equal. In the community centers of Mostar, women who were raped during the Bosnian war are working with soldiers to heal their trauma. In Islamabad, women are risking Fatwa to save other women from acid burnings and honor killings. In the streets of Paris, women are risking everything to hide women from their pimps and save their daughters from sex slavery. These are the new warriors

Make Thursday Dark Blog Day.

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I like this “proposal to honor those in pain”, posted by Cowboy Kahill:
I’d like to propose something else to bloggers who respect life, I don’t care what your political persuasion. For the innocent of Iraq, for the journalists who’ve died, for all the dead soldiers, I propose that we make Thursday a day of silence in the blogosphere. No posts. No comments. Perhaps a memorial message to whoever you wish, posted as a final post the night before.
There are thousands hurting, thousands mourning and thousands still at risk. Can’t we demonstrate something else important to the world about us besides our capacity to war well?
Spread the word. Let’s post a memorial on Wednesday night and go “dark” on Thursday.

We’re our own “collateral damage.”

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“This is just a scene from hell here. All the vehicles on fire. There are bodies burning around me, there are bodies lying around, there are bits of bodies on the ground. This is a really bad own goal by the Americans.
“We don’t really know how many Americans are dead. There is ammunition exploding in fact from some of these cars. A very senior member of the Kurdish Republic’s government who also may have been injured.”
So goes the satellite report from BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson, who was accompanying a convoy of US special forces and Kurdish fighters when it came under attack from an American warplane. Read here for the whole story.
You can hear and listen to the actual satellite report here.

McGovern’s Eloquent Anti-Bush Stand

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I’m grateful to The Nation, as I was to Harper’s, for giving me opportunities to write about these matters. Major newspapers, especially the Washington Post, haven’t been nearly as receptive, says George McGovern in his Nation-published scathing analysis of Bush’s bad leadership.
He begins with
Thanks to the most crudely partisan decision in the history of the Supreme Court, the nation has been given a President of painfully limited wisdom and compassion and lacking any sense of the nation’s true greatness. Appearing to enjoy his role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces above all other functions of his office, and unchecked by a seemingly timid Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, a largely subservient press and a corrupt corporate plutocracy, George W. Bush has set the nation on a course for one-man rule.
And he goes on to explain in detail. Don’t miss it.
(Being notoriously irreligious, I love this particular statement of his:
The President frequently confides to individuals and friendly audiences that he is guided by God’s hand. But if God guided him into an invasion of Iraq, He sent a different message to the Pope, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the mainline Protestant National Council of Churches and many distinguished rabbis–all of whom believe the invasion and bombardment of Iraq is against God’s will. In all due respect, I suspect that Karl Rove, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice–and other sideline warriors–are the gods (or goddesses) reaching the ear of our President.)

Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka

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“People say this doesn’t happen in this country,” McGeady said, “but one of my neighbors has been disappeared. It’s not what he might have done that matters to me — they disappeared him. They need to question him and let him go, or charge him. It’s like Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka.”
From Wired News via Blog Sister Lauren, who posts and links relevantly about her disillusionment with America and ends her post with this:
Perhaps singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco said it best: “And if I hear one more time about a fool’s right to his tools of rage, I’m gonna take all my friends, and I’m going to move to Canada, and we’re going to die of old age.”
Meanwhile, as the Wired article reports, friends of the disappeared Portland Intel programmer and American citizen Mike Hawash (who has not been charged with any crime) have set up a web site to support his release. B!X, who lives in Portland, was at the rally today for Hawash and will be posting something about it.
During the Viet Nam War we used to joke about gathering all of our like-minded friends at our hill-top home and seceding our 1 1/2 acres from the Union. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

America’s Grand Delusion

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An insightful piece by Marina Ottaway (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace/ Democracy and Rule of Law Project) begins with:
The war in Iraq will undoubtedly result in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his regime.
But the ensuing political reconstruction will probably not result in the transformation of Iraq into a democratic country, nor will it lead to a wave of democratic change sweeping the entire Middle East.
The reason is simple.
The United States cannot shock and awe Iraqis into accepting a new political system, nor can it impose one with force once the occupation ends. The ultimate outcome of political reconstruction depends on the Iraqis: If the different ethnic, religious, tribal and political factions can reach enough agreement on the outline of a new political system, the country may eventually develop into a democracy. If they cannot, the country will sink into chaos or turn to another strongman for stability after the occupation.
And it ends with:
The example of Bahrain is a case in point. Under a new constitution that does not in any way limit the power of the king, Bahrain a few months ago held elections for half the members of a rather powerless parliament; the remaining members are appointed by the king. Despite the obvious limitations of the exercise, the United States chose to praise Bahrain warmly for its progress toward democracy.
The United States enjoys immense military superiority, but it does not have a comparable advantage in the political arena. The political future of Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries will be determined more by their domestic politics than by U.S. policy.
In between are cogent comparisons of the politics of post-WW II Germany and Japan and post-war Middle East countries, pointing out the reasons why democratization is not likely to work in Iraq.
We will have gotten rid of the Hussein regime, which is good. But that