"Bush's Martyrs"

Michael Lynd, New Statesman

Who is really fighting in Iraq? Southerners who, unlike the secularised Puritans of the American north-east and the Pacific coast, believe in dying for their country.

''Keep the soldiers happy," the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, on his deathbed, reportedly advised his successor. At the moment, this is a challenge that President George W Bush is struggling to meet. Most US military officers were opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a project concocted and supervised by civilian appointees such as the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and the staff of the vice-president, Dick Cheney. Prolonged deployments of National Guard units are making the families of America's "weekend warriors" angry and stressed, and morale is reportedly low among America's overstretched career soldiers. As American and coalition casualties climb day by day in Iraq, Bush's boasting on the flight deck of the USS Lincoln looks ever more like hubris. And the likelihood of Bush's Democratic opponent in the November presidential election being a Vietnam veteran who was decorated for bravery at a time when Bush avoided combat duty in Vietnam by serving in the National Guard in Texas and Alabama makes things even more difficult.

U.S. Senator Hilary Clinton, speaking at a Brookings Institute forum last Wednesday, called for more American troop commitments abroad, and floated the idea of returning to a military draft. Her remarks may be found here.

"The Resurrection of Total Information Awareness"

Kirt Nimmo

Remember when we were told that the TIA (Terrorism Information Awareness) program was terminated? The Senate supposedly cut funding for the program last September, according to the Congressional Record. This followed the ditching of retired Adm. John Poindexter, Iran-Contra criminal and mastermind behind TIA, due to his "terrorism futures" idea, or Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP). It was just too "unorthodox" for the folks in Congress.

Here's the bill supposedly eliminating TIA. Note the caveats. I recall thinking at the time: intelligence agencies simply don't get rid of ideas like TIA, especially after money and work has been poured into them. Instead, they transfer the research and money elsewhere and continue to develop the programs.

john stanton writes

"The End of Freedom"

John Stanton

“The compulsion of total terror on one side, which, with its iron band, presses masses of isolated [people] together and supports them in a world which has become a wilderness for them -- and the self-coercive force of logical deduction on the other which prepares each individual in [their] lonely isolation against all others -- corresponds to each other and needs each other in order to keep the terror-ruled movement in motion and keep it moving. Just as terror…ruins all relationships with men, so the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins all relationships with reality. The preparation has succeeded when [people] have lost contact with [other people] as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, [people] lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced [follower], but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (standards of thought) no longer exist.” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

The American nation-state led by the Bush Administration, and the transnational rebel group led by Bin Laden, has brought to life the artificially fabricated insanity that Hannah Arendt so dreaded. But the situation is far worse than she could have imagined. The insanity that permeates the psyche of the United States of America and the mysterious Al Qaeda is being carefully nurtured by Bush and Bin Laden, the products of wealthy families intertwined in business dealings for decades. Rather than trying to find a mid-point where some commonality and reduction of violence might be found, these two zealots and their minions have eliminated the possibility of any peaceful outcome and, instead, daily sow the seeds of destruction for the causes they claim to promote. In short, perpetual ideological conflict played out on the battlefields of the world.