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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Don't have much to show here, but enough to run. I wasn't able to find anything very useful on renewed hostilities in eastern Ukraine: I gather the central ("pro-western") government broke the cease fire, and now they're complaining about civilian deaths caused by Russian rockets. This is one of four major wars from 2014 -- Israel, Iraq, and Syria -- that have been allowed to fester and grow by the inability and/or unwillingness of the US to engage in diplomacy, especially with Russia. That failure is rooted in the kneejerk US belief that foreign affairs is always a test of will where only force matters. In particular, the US has been seduced by the idea that all problems can be solved by killing "bad guys" -- a notion that's rife in American culture, that is the basic idea behind the drone warfare program, that excuses all manner of secret operations. That American Sniper beat out Selma both in the box office and Oscar nominations is par for the week.

I skipped the "Israel Links" this week, not because I couldn't find them but because I didn't feel a need to bother. If you do feel the need, the first place to look is Mondoweiss.

• Murtaza Hussain: Saudi Arabia's Tyrant King Misremembered as Man of Peace: Point taken, although the late King Abdullah mostly continued policies of his predecessors, both in savagely repressing any hints of dissent in the Middle East's only real Islamic State and in promoting Salafist fundamentalism throughout the Islamic world, generously subsidizing interference in other nations' political affairs, always with cash and often with guns. On the other hand, maybe he should be remembered as "a man of peace": he was primarily responsible for signing the entire Arab League up behind UNSC Resolutions 235 and 338 as the basis for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Acceptance of that proposal would have been a major advance both for peace and for respect for international law as a means of resolving belligerent disputes. But Abdullah's proposal was simply ignored by US President GW Bush, who preferred giving Israel's Arik Sharon carte blanche to create "new facts on the ground." The episode was detailed in Ron Suskind's book, The One Percent Doctrine, describing an April 2002 meeting between Abdullah and Bush:

  Relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States were in tatters. The Saudis had been stewing for more than a year, in fact, ever since it became clear at the start of 2001 that this administration was to alter the long-standing U.S. role of honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to something less than that. The President, in fact, had said in the first NSC principals meeting of his administration that Clinton had overreached at the end of his second term, bending too much toward Yasser Arafat -- who then broke off productive Camp David negotiations at the final moment -- and that "We're going to tilt back ward Israel." Powell, a chair away in the Situation Room that day, said such a move would reverse thirty years of U.S. policy, and that it could unleash the new prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and the Israeli army in ways that could be dire for the Palestinians. Bush's response: "Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things."

  What Abdullah was proposing was exactly what US official policy had been since 1967, so Bush's response must have been shocking -- but Bush was himself half way between 9/11 and invading Iraq, so his faith in force was running at a fever pitch. In one of his notorious malaproprisms Bush later described Sharon as "a man of peace." (Sharon's own autobiography was titled Warrior.) Surely when Bush passes he at least won't be remembered as "a man of peace" -- but obviously such words are cheap to political figures who have so much to bury.

  Also see Glenn Greenwald: Compare and Contrast: Obama's Reaction to the Deaths of King Abdullah and Hugo Chávez:

  But when it comes to western political and media discourse, the only difference that matters is that Chávez was a U.S. adversary while Abdullah was a loyal U.S. ally -- which, by itself for purposes of the U.S. and British media, converts the former into an evil villainous monster and the latter into a beloved symbol of peace, reform and progress.

Also, a few links for further study:

• Adrian Bonenberger: There Are No War Heroes: A Veteran's Review of American Sniper: I haven't seen Clint Eastwood's movie, and it looks like the only way I might would be if I went alone -- my wife's reaction to every mention of the movie is so scabrous I doubt I could focus with her present. I don't follow many people on Twitter, but two I do -- Max Blumenthal and Matt Taibbi -- have been relentless in attacking the film (e.g., see Taibbi's American Sniper Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize; I'm finding many rebuttals to Blumenthal's line that "Chris Kyle was just a popular mass murderer" but not the original source). I did read Nicholas Schmiddle's June 2013 piece on sniper Chris Kyle (In the Crosshairs) so have some sense of the story line, notably how he cashed in on his war "service": his bestselling memoir, how he became a "patriotic icon" for the gun crusade, and how he was shot and killed by a PTSD-damaged soldier. A movie of his life would seem to have all sorts of possibilities, and Eastwood showed himself capable of seeing more than one side of a war in his two Iwo Jima films. But one of those possibilities was to invest whole hog in the jingoism (and racism and murderousness) that floated around Kyle -- that made him a "hero" to the powerful people who patronized him. As Bonenberger points out, the controversy predates the film:

  This reflects a truth that the movie itself seeks to avoid: War is political, and a movie about war is bound to make political pronouncements. When you sit down to enjoy American Sniper, you are committing a political act, and your evaluation of the movie, and Kyle as a person, reflects your political attitudes. But it's more complicated than the simple equation that progressives dislike it and conservatives enjoy it. Politics notwithstanding, those who've seen it tend to describe the experience in religious terms: awe-struck congregations of Americans seeing the Iraq War the way it happened, traveling down the path to PTSD together. Ask around: Be it Texas or Williamsburg, it's not uncommon to hear of packed theaters with the patrons filing out in reverent silence after the closing credits.

  The very notion that this movie is "non-partisan" or "apolitical" is the most insidious notion of all. It asserts that fundamentally we all agree on wars that many of us see as very foolish and self-destructive (not to mention criminal) acts. What I fear is that time is being used to cement a mythic memory of the "Terror Wars" -- myths that only pave the way for more war.

  Also see: Peter Maas: How Clint Eastwood Ignores History in American Sniper.

• Sebastian Budgen & Stathis Kouvelakis: Greece: Phase One: Useful background on the development of Greece's leftist Syriza party, which evidently won big in Greece's elections today. Also see Tariq Ali: Greece's Fight Against European Austerity.

• Mike Konczal: The 2003 Dividend Tax Cut Did Nothing to Help Real Economy: Supposedly, cuts in dividends would spur investment and (maybe) increase employee compensation but it did neither -- especially if you compare affected C-corporations with unaffected S-corporations. Did lead to more payouts to already rich owners.

• DR Tucker: Let Choice Ring!: Starts with a quote from Mitt Romney supporting woman's right to choose to abort a pregnancy, something he believed in when running for the Senate from Massachusetts in 1994 but has conveniently evolved his views on since the anti-choice stand has become Republican dogma. Tucker collects that and other links here, and take a strong stand in defense of abortion rights, something more pressing than it's been in many years precisely because it's being so threatened (see A Perilous Year for Abortion Rights, a NY Times editorial.) Unfortunately, Tucker sinks to exploiting various prejudices in support of his position. For instance, his link to the NY Times piece reads: "The radical anti-abortion movement in this country is out own Boko Haram, trying to kidnap women's rights in the name of an extremist and backward ideology." That anti-choice activists and Boko Haram may share a similar psychology about women doesn't justify exploiting anti-Islam prejudice against the former. Tucker goes on to argue that ending medical abortion would result in more "welfare queens" (indeed, a much larger welfare state), as if that might dissuade "your Republican friends." Appealing to bigots may seem like a cute idea, but one doubts doing so would ever do any good. There used to be a strong conservative case for abortion rights: parenthood is a great personal responsibility, and the social order depends on individual commitment to and fulfilling of that responsibility. Commitment derives from choice: a society where people choose to be parents is far stronger than one where it happens by haphazard chance. You don't hear arguments like that any more because Republicans have settled on building a coalition of bigots and haters, and there's still a sizable faction out to keep women in "their place" -- and that seems to trump freedom, responsibility, or any other ideal that fleetingly enters their minds.

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