PTSD OF THE PAST FEW DAYS

THE ABSURD TIMES

I feel I need to repeat the point: I did not make any of this up. All of these things happened.

Needless to say, this has been a time of cognitive dissonance where the thin line between the Absurd and the Ludicrous is suddenly erased.

We can start with some members of Congress who have outdone themselves in both ignorance and impudence. In fact, one hopes that they are only pretending to be so pitiful. We might expect such strange metphors as "Look them in the whites of their eyes" from a mentally challenged figure as Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, but the leader of her party was a genius of stupidity.

Boehner is his name. He does not look as if he needs to be committed for psychiatric evaluation, but some of these Republicans are deceptive. He stood in front of a pool of cameras and assorted refugees from Bedlam and pronounced that he was going to read from the "Preamble" to the Constitution. This was the first time in my all-too-long life that I had ever heard of that document. One reason for this fact is that there is not, nor has there ever been, a 'Preamble' to the Constitution. Perhaps he found a hitherto undiscovered document tucked away in the Library of Congress? Hardly. I believe he has more trouble in spelling library than I have in spelling his name.

However, he held up a pocket copy of the Constitution and spoke from memory: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are endowed . . . ." I remembered that as the Declaration of Independence. This man poses as a patriot. He is an embarrassment.

There was much talk by these Republican Representatives about the Bill being a "Holocaust." Given their sensitivity to anything described as such except their own, one wonders what has happened to the Jewish Lobby on this issue.

All of this was to prevent Healthcare reform, to slow it down. After all, we have only been considering that since Teddy Roosevelt. What's the hurry?



Christopher Hitchens wrote an excellently titled book: God is Not Great. Unfortunately, he took particular umbrage with Islam (for reasons that actually have more to do with his anger with the government of Saudi for expelling him during the First Gulf massacre under Bush 1). However, the title illustrates a major problem with all of the three monotheistic religions as they eventually wilt under analysis through their own internal contradictions. More to the point for our purposes is the incestuous sibling rivalry amongst them, with Islam being the only one of the three that accepts the other two as valid.

Just yesterday, in what should be called "occupied Texas" considering its desire for secession, an Army Psychiatrist started a shooting incident that left at least 13 dead and over 30 injured. The details are worth considering.

Major Nidal Hassan, the psychiatrist in question, specialized in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The symptoms are the subject of our illustration above. However, they give scant insight into what is and can be involved in treating these patients. All the events mentioned here are true and since the patients are now dead, no confidence is being violated.

I was doing an initial evaluation with one who was diagnosed with Alcohol Dependence. While I was asking the routine questions and making notes, someone entered the adjacent office and slammed the door shut, making a loud, sharp, noise. The patient dropped to the floor and scurried under my desk, shivering. I joined him there to continue the evaluation and he eventually composed himself. He was a veteran of Viet Nam and had suffered from this condition ever since, managing to cope with life by deadening the memories with alcohol. He said that any time he saw an "oriental," he became frightened and guilt-ridden.

Another patient had been captured in Cambodia as a "Contract Agent." He had been strapped to a table as his toenails were slowly pulled out of his toes with pliers and that was only one of the treatments he was subjected to. He was forbidden to talk about it to anyone and, so far as I know, me and his psychiatrist were the only ones who did know. I managed to keep him alive for another four years, but only through indulging his alcoholism and xanax abuse and asking him to please put down the gun he was holding to his temple. He was then institutionalized to the facility where I worked and assigned to another therapist. As soon as he returned home, he blew his brains out. It is impossible to treat these patients with any positive effect without being affected yourself, even if it is to become jaded and indulge in "gallows humor."

Major Nidal had been treating this kind of patient intensively for a number of years. He was born in Virginia and was NOT a concert to Islam -- he had always been a Moslem. He was in ROTC during high school and went to Virginia Tech. His medical training was done exclusively by the Army. He was an intern at Walter Reid and, supposedly, received a negative evaluation. He was scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan. He had repeatedly asked to be excused. He was also subject to extensive harrassment for being a Moslem.

There had been several attempts to categorize this incident. "Terrorism," although a popular word in contemporary discourse, does not apply as the killed were soldiers. He did not "snap," an interesting psychological category that is not listed in the DSM-IV. He actually had prepared by giving away his furniture and Koran prior to leaving for the base.

All I can say is that we might consider the possibility that he was simply practicing preventitive medicine. [That is, in case you were wondering, "gallows humor," and it is quite routine in the profession with anyone capable of doing even a merely competent job.]

Following is more information:

In Worst-Ever Shooting of Its Kind, 13 Dead, 30 Wounded at Ft. Hood Military Base; Suspect Had Reportedly Complained of Anti-Muslim Bias

In the worst mass killing at a military base in the nation’s history, thirteen people have been killed and another thirty wounded at Fort Hood, Texas. The suspect, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had reportedly complained of being harassed for being a Muslim and had tried to leave the military. It was the second such attack in the past six months, following the May shooting deaths of five US soldiers at Camp Liberty in Iraq. We speak to Qaseem Uqdah of American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council and independent journalist Aaron Glantz, author of The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans. [includes rush transcript]

Qaseem Uqdah, former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who heads the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council.

Aaron Glantz, editor at New America Media. His latest book is The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans.

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, More...

---

Related Links

• Aaron Glantz: "After Fort Hood: Count All the Dead"

JUAN GONZALEZ: The Pentagon, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have launched a major investigation into Thursday’s shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. Military officials have identified an Army psychiatrist named Major Nidal Malik Hasan as the suspected shooter. Hasan was originally reported to have been shot dead, but officials now say he is hospitalized in stable condition.

Thirteen people were killed at the base, and another thirty people were wounded. Military officials have acknowledged that some of the dead may have been killed by friendly fire during a shootout after the gunman opened fire.

Lieutenant General Bob Cone, the base commander at Fort Hood, spoke to reporters last night.

LT. GEN. ROBERT CONE: This has been a tragic incident, and our hearts and prayers go out to those who have been impacted here today. I’ve personally spoken with the President, and he has extended his condolences and offered his support to the Fort Hood and surrounding community.


The investigation is ongoing, but preliminary reports indicate there was a single shooter that was shot multiple times at the scene. However, he was not killed, as previously reported. He is currently in custody and in stable condition. I say again: the shooter is not dead, but in custody and in stable condition.

JUAN GONZALEZ: The shooting has been described as the worst soldier-on-soldier mass killing on a US military base in the nation’s history. But it is the second such attack on a base in the past six months. In May, five US soldiers were shot dead at a combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty in Iraq. The military arrested Sergeant John Russell in that shooting afterwards. A report released last month faulted the Army for its handling of Russell, who had a mental breakdown in the weeks before the shootings.

The shooting on Thursday at Fort Hood occurred at the Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening.

AMY GOODMAN: Some details have emerged about Major Nidal Hasan, the suspected shooter. He was born in Virginia, has been in the military since just after high school. For the past six years, Hasan has worked as a military psychiatrist, first at Walter Reed and then at Fort Hood. He went to Virginia Tech. He worked with soldiers who were returning from Iraq and Afghanistan dealing with the mental stress of combat. It’s been reported he was scheduled to soon deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

On Thursday, a relative, Nader Hasan, told news outlets his cousin had complained of being harassed for being a Muslim and had tried to leave the military.

We’re joined right now in Washington, DC by Qaseem Uqdah. two guests. He is the former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who heads the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the response to the shooting and your concerns, this catastrophe that took place at Fort Hood?

QASEEM UQDAH: Well, good morning. Thank you very much for having us on.

First of all, I would like to state that our hearts and our prayers go out to the family members and the victim, as well as the Fort Hood community, in this unfortunate tragic event that has occurred yesterday.

Some of our chief concerns are the potential backlash with respect to our soldiers, sailors and airmen that are within the armed forces, because this is an incident that was labeled as Muslim or Islam.

AMY GOODMAN: What kind of response have you gotten at your organization?

QASEEM UQDAH: Thus far, for the various bases that I’ve surveyed, there has not—there hasn’t been any incidents reported. In fact, down at Fort Bragg, for example, the command has reached out to the community, the Islamic community that’s stationed there. So it’s been a very favorable response. But that doesn’t negate what possibly could occur within the next several days and weeks and months.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, some of the press reports and interviews with the family members of Major Hasan, they have said that he had complained in the past about mistreatment or discrimination because he was a Muslim. Your sense of how Muslims who are in the United States military are faring these days?

QASEEM UQDAH: My sense is that, yes, there—this has been occurring. And what I really want to stress here is that it’s not just with Muslims. You could have incidents with gay soldiers or Christian soldiers, Jewish soldiers. These things do occur. And the military has resources and mechanism to address it.

With this incident, as far as him indicating that he had been harassed, my question would go out to what action did he take with respect to informing his command? The commanding officer, his commanding officer, was responsible for ensuring that that ceased. When we are involved with cases in which individuals have brought to our attention that they are being harassed, I would say overwhelmingly that the commanding officer would take immediate action to resolve it.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s quite stunning that this man is an Army psychiatrist, ironically, went to Virginia Tech, interestingly enough, was at Walter Reed dealing with—dealing with soldiers who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

We’re joined also on the telephone right now by Aaron Glantz, longtime Pacifica reporter who’s now a fellow, a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center. He is author of the book The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans.

Aaron, talk about the information we have so far, though it is sketchy and everything does seem to be changing as we speak right through from the beginning.

AARON GLANTZ: Well, you’re exactly right, Amy, that we have an Army psychiatrist who listened to many, many stories—[no audio]

AMY GOODMAN: Looks like we just lost him. Sorry, folks. We’ll try to get him right back on the phone.

Qaseem Uqdah, this man was a doctor treating these soldiers who were suffering himself. And I’m wondering, from your own experience—I mean, you’re a former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. Talk about your own experiences in the military.

QASEEM UQDAH: Well, if I may, before I mention my experience, I’d like to ensure that this incident is a—what has occurred here was a criminal act and to remove any correlation or connection between Islam. If this soldier was a Christian, we wouldn’t be saying that the Christian soldier or blaming Christianity.

Back to my experience within the Marine Corps, whenever I had a situation that I felt was a religious bias, I brought it to the immediate attention of my chaplain. When I served, there weren’t any Islamic chaplains on active duty. They were predominantly Jewish and Christian chaplains, and they were my advocates, as they are still our advocates today.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I want to play for you both an interview Major Hasan’s cousin, Nader Hasan, gave last night on Fox News. He was interviewed by Shepard Smith.

NADER HASAN: And I want to make sure everybody understands, he is a good American, and we are shocked. We just found out on the news that he was being deployed. He never even told us, because we’ve known for the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare. He deals with stories. He would tell us how he would hear things, horrific things.


But even before things from the war that was probably affecting him psychologically, he was dealing with some harassment in some of his—with some of his military colleagues and, you know, to the extent where he was—he hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay back the government to get out of the military, if that was it. But he was at the end of—you know, trying everything to try to make everybody fair and reasonable and him get out of the situation. So I’m really—you know, I’m shocked, and I’m baffled. And if anybody wants to try to suggest it has something else to do with being afraid of wanting to go to war, that’s—that’s it.


SHEPARD SMITH: And when was it that he became disenchanted with the idea of being in the military?


NADER HASAN: You know, I don’t think he was ever disenchanted with being in the military. I think he loved, and he was the one, like I said, who insisted on going into the military, even against his parents’ wishes. It was the harassment that I think was getting—was what got to him, was him being referenced from his Middle Eastern ethnicity, even though he was born and raised here and went to high school here in northern Virginia in Roanoke, Virginia, and went to Virginia Tech and, you know, never been in trouble. You know, just normal, played sports and, you know, never got in any trouble.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Nader Hasan, who is the cousin of the major who’s believed to have opened fire and killed a number of people at Fort Hood, injured many others.

Qaseem Uqdah, as you listen to that and hear his cousin, talk about harassment and how he was actually—according to his cousin, hired a lawyer to try to get out of the military.

QASEEM UQDAH: Yes, in hearing that he hired an attorney to separate himself from the military, that’s a separate issue. That would not give rise to what occurred. As I mentioned before, this was something—what he has done is a criminal act. He murdered people. He killed people. So that does not justify for his wanting to leave the service.

The harassment, in terms of that, that’s through command. When the investigation is concluded with respect to this, then that will come out. No matter what happens within the armed forces, there are mechanism and resources that are available for our service members to address any of their concerns, whether it’s religious harassment, gender harassment, whatever the case may be. And that’s something that we have to focus on here, as with removing any doubt on anyone’s mind that this is something that’s dealing with Islam. It’s not with Islam. This soldier committed a criminal act.

The harassment, yes, I have received numerous reports with respect to soldiers and various service members experiencing harassments at their commands. When I’ve gotten involved with this, the command works with me to resolve it. I have not experienced any situation. Most recent cases were in Great Lakes Naval Base, we had an incident. We had an incident with the Air Force, I want to say, in Georgia. But here, the command was extremely proactive with respect to resolving it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Aaron Glantz, we have you back on the phone now. What has been your experience in terms of those mechanisms functioning with soldiers within the military who have—who have problems in terms of their—the ability of their commands to address those?

AARON GLANTZ: Well, I think that there’s no question that the Army is incredibly stressed and at the breaking point, after six years of war in Iraq and eight years of war in Afghanistan. And one thing that we see again and again and that I think we’re going to see more and more of is distressing incidents, where people have served multiple tours in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, and then they turn to violence, more likely against themselves and then occasionally against others.

I wrote a story about a guy named Specialist John Fish, who was stationed at Fort Hood, who served a tour in Iraq and then was being deployed for a second tour to Afghanistan. And he complained after his first tour to Iraq that he was suicidal, that he was thinking of taking his own life, and his command didn’t believe him. And then when he was in training for the second tour, he walked out into the desert in New Mexico and shot himself in the head with a military-issued machine gun.

It’s difficult to put this incident that we see now in that type of box, though. It’s difficult because this major who committed the shooting spree at Fort Hood had not been deployed to the war. But I think that we can say that it’s yet another example of a violence that comes from the war that the Pentagon would rather not discuss openly, but will come to the surface as the war goes on and on.

AMY GOODMAN: Aaron, I wanted to ask you about a shooting the New York Times had reported October 21st, 2009. An American soldier accused of killing five other service members in a base in Iraq in May had been behaving erratically for weeks, even threatening to commit suicide, but a lack of adequate guidelines on how to handle his case allowed it to get out of control. US military investigators said this in a report. And the Times went on to say the shootings took place at Camp Liberty combat stress clinic, where the soldier, Sergeant John M. Russell, was being counseled. Can you talk about that shooting?

AARON GLANTZ: Well, I mean, you may remember that Sergeant Russell was on—I don’t remember exactly how many tours now, but he had been in Yugoslavia and was on not his first tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, when he walked into this combat stress clinic in Baghdad in May and shot it up and killed many people inside the combat stress clinic.

We also need to look at incidents that happen stateside, when people involve themselves in altercations with local law enforcement and crack under post-traumatic stress disorder. We call this “suicide by cop.” We had a case in 2005 in California, Andres Raya, who walked up to a liquor store and tried to rob the liquor store for no apparent reason and ended up dying in a hail of bullets with local police. We saw that in Maryland, where James Dean, after serving a tour in the war in Afghanistan, was being mobilized again for another deployment and didn’t want to go and barricaded himself in his father’s farmhouse out in the countryside. And then the police laid siege and ultimately killed him with a sniper’s bullet.

What’s different, though, again, about all of these cases are these are all people who had been deployed, and Major Hasan had not been deployed. But it is possible that having been at Walter Reed and having heard all these stories and been an Army psychiatrist and then knowing that he was going to deploy, that all of that caused him to snap.

AMY GOODMAN: Aaron Glantz, we want to thank you for being with us, Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center. His book is The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans. And we want to thank, as well, Qaseem Uqdah, the former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who heads the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, speaking to us from Washington, DC.

UN Reports and bye for now

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: From www.whatnowtoons.com, Keith Tucker sums up the entire argument.

If I remember correctly, we went to Afghanistan because the Taliban were not capturing Bin Laden for us. A secondary consideration was to eliminate Al-Qaeda. I do not claim to know where Bin Laden is, but I am certain he is not in Helmand Province. In fact, the consensus seems to be he is not anywhere in the country. I have also heard evidence to the fact that there are more Al-Qaeda in New York City than in all of Afghanistan. Frankly, I think it is time for Gulliani and Bloomberg to get their acts together and crack down on these terrorists in New York.

I'm not sure why Obama wants to have his own war. Maybe every President has to have a war (that may be the secret note that each President leaves for the next one to find just after inauguration).

Well, it's as good an explanation as you have heard so for, no?

Some have asked what has happened to the times, why hasn't it come out more frequently? Well, for one thing, Thoreau was right when he said "Once you know the pattern, what need is there of more examples?"

Another is that about the only things that Obama did that we can be thankful for is not to name a Legal Neanderthal to the Supreme Court. There will probably be other appointments to be made, but they will just hold the line, not make progress.

His Mid East policy, frankly, seems like a war on Islam. Just recently, Hillary told the Palestinians to "get a grip." Preposterous.

The United Nations Report on Israel's violations of International Law, written by a Zionist, is under attack despite how mild it is. The following gives you a stark example of the power of the Israel Lobby here and should serve as an example of what goes on in just about any other area as well.

His main virtue is that he is not Bush. Why bother?

House to Vote on Resolution to Reject Goldstone Report Findings and Recommendations

November 02, 2009 By Jeremy R. Hammond
Source: Foreign Policy Journal

Jeremy R. Hammond's ZSpace Page

Join ZSpace

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Tuesday on a resolution calling on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora."

Headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the U.N. report found that evidence indicates both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel's 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip, dubbed "Operation Cast Lead", which began on December 27, 2008.

The report recommended that allegations of war crimes by both parties be investigated.

The current text of the proposed Congressional resolution, H. Res. 867, contains numerous factual inaccuracies, beginning with the assertion that the U.N. inquiry had "pre-judged" its findings and was "one-sidedly" mandated to "investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by . . . Israel, against the Palestinian people . . . particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression".

The actual mandate adopted on April 3 was "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after."

The quoted text is not from the April 3 mandate, but from U.N. General Assembly resolution S-9/1 on January 12, 2009, which resulted in the later appointment of the mission by the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Also, omitted in the draft resolution's reproduction of the text are the words "occupying Power" before "Israel". Under international law, the occupying power is in fact obligated to investigate allegations of war crimes and violations of human rights.

The draft U.S. resolution states that the Goldstone report "makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel's defensive measures".

But this criticism itself ignores the fact that even if Israel's military operations were justifiable as "defensive measures", Israel would still be legally obligated to conduct its operations in accordance with international law, and to conduct investigations into alleged war crimes conducted by its own forces.

The draft resolution also makes no mention of the relentless siege of Gaza by Israel, or the fact that Hamas had been strictly observing a cease-fire agreed to in June, only firing rockets after Israel had first violated that truce with repeated attacks against Gazans, a continuation of the crippling siege, and an airstrike and invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces on November 4 that ultimately resulted in the complete breakdown of the truce.

It also makes no mention of the fact that the Goldstone report contains a section dedicated to examining the impact of rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants on southern Israel, or that mission's efforts to do so were impeded by Israel's refusal to cooperate.

The draft resolution states that the U.N. mission "included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel's actions ‘war crimes'".

That letter to the Sunday Times also stated, "We condemn the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings which are also contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes."

But criticism of the Goldstone report on the similar basis that one of its members had beforehand declared Hamas guilty of war crimes is lacking in the draft resolution.

It calls the Goldstone report's findings "that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead" "unsubstantiated". In fact, the 575 page report provides extensive documentation for its findings.

The draft resolution states that "the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself, admit that ‘we did not deal with the issues . . . regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers ‘ in the fog of war.'"

This is an outright fabrication. Those words do not in fact appear in the body of the actual report.

Those words actually come from an alleged e-mail from Richard Goldstone in which he explained why the U.N. report did not rely on a Colonel Kemp for its inquiry. The full text of the statement from that e-mail, replacing the part omitted in the draft resolution, reads "we did not deal with the issues he raised regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas..." (emphasis added).

The draft resolution states that Richard Goldstone had been quoted in the October 16 edition of the Jewish daily Forward as saying, "If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven".

But omitted is the further context of that remark in the same article, which added, "He recalled his work as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal in Yugoslavia in 1994. When he began working, Goldstone was presented with a report commissioned by the U.N. Security Council based on what he said was a fact-finding mission similar to his own in Gaza.

"'We couldn't use that report as evidence at all,' Goldstone said. ‘But it was a useful roadmap for our investigators, for me as chief prosecutor, to decide where we should investigate. And that's the purpose of this sort of report."

The draft resolution asserts that the Goldstone report "in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to self-defense", but offers no supporting evidence for this.

The Goldstone report found that "While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self-defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole."

The draft resolution states that "the report usually considered public statements made by Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently giving uncritical credence to statements taken from what it called the ‘Gaza authorities', i.e. the Gaza leadership of Hamas", but offers no examples from the report.

The report does, in fact, question the credibility of Israeli officials. It notes in one instance that "it considers the credibility of Israel's position damaged by the series of inconsistencies, contradictions and factual inaccuracies in the statements justifying the attack."

In another example illustrating Israel's lack of credibility, it "acknowledges that significant efforts [were] made by Israel to issue warnings", but that "The credibility of instructions to move to city centres for safety was also diminished by the fact that the city centres themselves had been the subject of intense attacks".

The Goldstone report also observed that "By refusing to cooperate with the Mission, the Government of Israel prevented it from meeting Israeli Government officials, but also from travelling to Israel to meet Israeli victims and to the West Bank to meet Palestinian Authority representatives and Palestinian victims."

The U.N. report also noted that "In establishing its findings, the Mission sought to rely primarily and whenever possible on information it gathered first-hand. Information produced by others, including reports, affidavits and media reports, was used primarily as corroboration."

The draft resolution asserts that "notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim".

The "great body of evidence" is an apparent reference to remarks from Israeli officials found to be demonstrably lacking in credibility, which were commonly simply repeated by U.S. officials and the mainstream media.

The U.N. mission did examine "whether and to what extent the Palestinian armed groups violated their obligation to exercise care and take all feasible precaution to protect the civilian population in Gaza" and found that "Palestinian armed groups were present in urban areas during the military operations and launched rockets from urban areas".

But it "found no evidence, however, to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or that they forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks."

While there is no evidence that Hamas deliberately used civilians as human shields, the Goldstone report "investigated four incidents in which the Israeli armed forces coerced Palestinian civilian men at gunpoint to take part in house searches during the military operations" and concluded "that this practice amounts to the Use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and is therefore prohibited by international humanitarian law."

The draft resolution, besides calling upon the White House and State Department to reject the Goldstone report and its recommendations, also "reaffirms its support for the democratic, Jewish State of Israel, for Israel's security and right to self-defense, and, specifically for Israel's right to defend its citizens from violent militant groups and their state sponsors."

It makes no similar mention of the right of Palestinians to security and self-defense from Israel and its U.S. sponsor.

Human rights groups, including the Israeli organization B'Tselem, have called upon the international community to implement its recommendation that suspected violations of international law be investigated.

---

Guest Author

THE ABSURD TIMES

The following article is written by a one-time editor of the Absurd Times. He manages to illustrate the previous article, much much more vividly:

ON WOMEN.

These few words of Jouy, _Sans les femmes le commencement de notre vie

seroit privé de secours, le milieu de plaisirs et la fin de

consolation_, more exactly express, in my opinion, the true praise of

woman than Schiller's poem, _Würde der Frauen_, which is the fruit of

much careful thought and impressive because of its antithesis and use of

contrast. The same thing is more pathetically expressed by Byron in

_Sardanapalus_, Act i, Sc. 2:--

"The very first

Of human life must spring from woman's breast,

Your first small words are taught you from her lips,

Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last sighs

Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,

When men have shrunk from the ignoble care

Of watching the last hour of him who led them."

Both passages show the right point of view for the appreciation of

women.

One need only look at a woman's shape to discover that she is not

intended for either too much mental or too much physical work. She pays

the debt of life not by what she does but by what she suffers--by the

pains of child-bearing, care for the child, and by subjection to man, to

whom she should be a patient and cheerful companion. The greatest

sorrows and joys or great exhibition of strength are not assigned to

her; her life should flow more quietly, more gently, and less

obtrusively than man's, without her being essentially happier or

unhappier.

* * * * *

Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our

early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are

childish, foolish, and short-sighted--in a word, are big children all

their lives, something intermediate between the child and the man, who

is a man in the strict sense of the word. Consider how a young girl will

toy day after day with a child, dance with it and sing to it; and then

consider what a man, with the very best intentions in the world, could

do in her place.

* * * * *

With girls, Nature has had in view what is called in a dramatic sense a

"striking effect," for she endows them for a few years with a richness

of beauty and a, fulness of charm at the expense of the rest of their

lives; so that they may during these years ensnare the fantasy of a man

to such a degree as to make him rush into taking the honourable care of

them, in some kind of form, for a lifetime--a step which would not

seem sufficiently justified if he only considered the matter.

Accordingly, Nature has furnished woman, as she has the rest of her

creatures, with the weapons and implements necessary for the protection

of her existence and for just the length of time that they will be of

service to her; so that Nature has proceeded here with her usual

economy. Just as the female ant after coition loses her wings, which

then become superfluous, nay, dangerous for breeding purposes, so for

the most part does a woman lose her beauty after giving birth to one or

two children; and probably for the same reasons.

Then again we find that young girls in their hearts regard their

domestic or other affairs as secondary things, if not as a mere jest.

Love, conquests, and all that these include, such as dressing, dancing,

and so on, they give their serious attention.

* * * * *

The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower is it in

reaching maturity. Man reaches the maturity of his reasoning and mental

faculties scarcely before he is eight-and-twenty; woman when she is

eighteen; but hers is reason of very narrow limitations. This is why

women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is

near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearance of a thing for

reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important. It is by

virtue of man's reasoning powers that he does not live in the present

only, like the brute, but observes and ponders over the past and future;

and from this spring discretion, care, and that anxiety which we so

frequently notice in people. The advantages, as well as the

disadvantages, that this entails, make woman, in consequence of her

weaker reasoning powers, less of a partaker in them. Moreover, she is

intellectually short-sighted, for although her intuitive understanding

quickly perceives what is near to her, on the other hand her circle of

vision is limited and does not embrace anything that is remote; hence

everything that is absent or past, or in the future, affects women in a

less degree than men. This is why they have greater inclination for

extravagance, which sometimes borders on madness. Women in their hearts

think that men are intended to earn money so that they may spend it, if

possible during their husband's lifetime, but at any rate after his

death.

As soon as he has given them his earnings on which to keep house they

are strengthened in this belief. Although all this entails many

disadvantages, yet it has this advantage--that a woman lives more in the

present than a man, and that she enjoys it more keenly if it is at all

bearable. This is the origin of that cheerfulness which is peculiar to

woman and makes her fit to divert man, and in case of need, to console

him when he is weighed down by cares. To consult women in matters of

difficulty, as the Germans used to do in old times, is by no means a

matter to be overlooked; for their way of grasping a thing is quite

different from ours, chiefly because they like the shortest way to the

point, and usually keep their attention fixed upon what lies nearest;

while we, as a rule, see beyond it, for the simple reason that it lies

under our nose; it then becomes necessary for us to be brought back to

the thing in order to obtain a near and simple view. This is why women

are more sober in their judgment than we, and why they see nothing more

in things than is really there; while we, if our passions are roused,

slightly exaggerate or add to our imagination.

It is because women's reasoning powers are weaker that they show more

sympathy for the unfortunate than men, and consequently take a kindlier

interest in them. On the other hand, women are inferior to men in

matters of justice, honesty, and conscientiousness. Again, because their

reasoning faculty is weak, things clearly visible and real, and

belonging to the present, exercise a power over them which is rarely

counteracted by abstract thoughts, fixed maxims, or firm resolutions, in

general, by regard for the past and future or by consideration for what

is absent and remote. Accordingly they have the first and principal

qualities of virtue, but they lack the secondary qualities which are

often a necessary instrument in developing it. Women may be compared in

this respect to an organism that has a liver but no gall-bladder.[9] So

that it will be found that the fundamental fault in the character of

women is that they have no "_sense of justice_." This arises from their

deficiency in the power of reasoning already referred to, and

reflection, but is also partly due to the fact that Nature has not

destined them, as the weaker sex, to be dependent on strength but on

cunning; this is why they are instinctively crafty, and have an

ineradicable tendency to lie. For as lions are furnished with claws and

teeth, elephants with tusks, boars with fangs, bulls with horns, and the

cuttlefish with its dark, inky fluid, so Nature has provided woman for

her protection and defence with the faculty of dissimulation, and all

the power which Nature has given to man in the form of bodily strength

and reason has been conferred on woman in this form. Hence,

dissimulation is innate in woman and almost as characteristic of the

very stupid as of the clever. Accordingly, it is as natural for women to

dissemble at every opportunity as it is for those animals to turn to

their weapons when they are attacked; and they feel in doing so that in

a certain measure they are only making use of their rights. Therefore a

woman who is perfectly truthful and does not dissemble is perhaps an

impossibility. This is why they see through dissimulation in others so

easily; therefore it is not advisable to attempt it with them. From the

fundamental defect that has been stated, and all that it involves,

spring falseness, faithlessness, treachery, ungratefulness, and so on.

In a court of justice women are more often found guilty of perjury than

men. It is indeed to be generally questioned whether they should be

allowed to take an oath at all. From time to time there are repeated

cases everywhere of ladies, who want for nothing, secretly pocketing and

taking away things from shop counters.

* * * * *

Nature has made it the calling of the young, strong, and handsome men to

look after the propagation of the human race; so that the species may

not degenerate. This is the firm will of Nature, and it finds its

expression in the passions of women. This law surpasses all others in

both age and power. Woe then to the man who sets up rights and interests

in such a way as to make them stand in the way of it; for whatever he

may do or say, they will, at the first significant onset, be

unmercifully annihilated. For the secret, unformulated, nay, unconscious

but innate moral of woman is: _We are justified in deceiving those who,

because they care a little for us_,--_that is to say for the

individual_,--_imagine they have obtained rights over the species. The

constitution, and consequently the welfare of the species, have been put

into our hands and entrusted to our care through the medium of the next

generation which proceeds from us; let us fulfil our duties

conscientiously_.

But women are by no means conscious of this leading principle _in

abstracto_, they are only conscious of it _in concreto_, and have no

other way of expressing it than in the manner in which they act when the

opportunity arrives. So that their conscience does not trouble them so

much as we imagine, for in the darkest depths of their hearts they are

conscious that in violating their duty towards the individual they have

all the better fulfilled it towards the species, whose claim upon them

is infinitely greater. (A fuller explanation of this matter may be found

in vol. ii., ch. 44, in my chief work, _Die Welt als Wille und

Vorstellung_.)

Because women in truth exist entirely for the propagation of the race,

and their destiny ends here, they live more for the species than for the

individual, and in their hearts take the affairs of the species more

seriously than those of the individual. This gives to their whole being

and character a certain frivolousness, and altogether a certain tendency

which is fundamentally different from that of man; and this it is which

develops that discord in married life which is so prevalent and almost

the normal state.

It is natural for a feeling of mere indifference to exist between men,

but between women it is actual enmity. This is due perhaps to the fact

that _odium figulinum_ in the case of men, is limited to their everyday

affairs, but with women embraces the whole sex; since they have only one

kind of business. Even when they meet in the street, they look at each

other like Guelphs and Ghibellines. And it is quite evident when two

women first make each other's acquaintance that they exhibit more

constraint and dissimulation than two men placed in similar

circumstances. This is why an exchange of compliments between two women

is much more ridiculous than between two men. Further, while a man will,

as a rule, address others, even those inferior to himself, with a

certain feeling of consideration and humanity, it is unbearable to see

how proudly and disdainfully a lady of rank will, for the most part,

behave towards one who is in a lower rank (not employed in her service)

when she speaks to her. This may be because differences of rank are much

more precarious with women than with us, and consequently more quickly

change their line of conduct and elevate them, or because while a

hundred things must be weighed in our case, there is only one to be

weighed in theirs, namely, with which man they have found favour; and

again, because of the one-sided nature of their vocation they stand in

closer relationship to each other than men do; and so it is they try to

render prominent the differences of rank.

* * * * *

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual instinct

that could give that stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and

short-legged race the name of _the fair sex_; for the entire beauty of

the sex is based on this instinct. One would be more justified in

calling them the _unaesthetic sex_ than the beautiful. Neither for

music, nor for poetry, nor for fine art have they any real or true sense

and susceptibility, and it is mere mockery on their part, in their

desire to please, if they affect any such thing.

This makes them incapable of taking a purely objective interest in

anything, and the reason for it is, I fancy, as follows. A man strives

to get _direct_ mastery over things either by understanding them or by

compulsion. But a woman is always and everywhere driven to _indirect_

mastery, namely through a man; all her _direct_ mastery being limited to

him alone. Therefore it lies in woman's nature to look upon everything

only as a means for winning man, and her interest in anything else is

always a simulated one, a mere roundabout way to gain her ends,

consisting of coquetry and pretence. Hence Rousseau said, _Les femmes,

en général, n'aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent à aucun et n'ont aucun

génie_ (Lettre à d'Alembert, note xx.). Every one who can see through a

sham must have found this to be the case. One need only watch the way

they behave at a concert, the opera, or the play; the childish

simplicity, for instance, with which they keep on chattering during the

finest passages in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the

Greeks forbade women to go to the play, they acted in a right way; for

they would at any rate be able to hear something. In our day it would be

more appropriate to substitute _taceat mulier in theatro_ for _taceat

mulier in ecclesia_; and this might perhaps be put up in big letters on

the curtain.

Nothing different can be expected of women if it is borne in mind that

the most eminent of the whole sex have never accomplished anything in

the fine arts that is really great, genuine, and original, or given to

the world any kind of work of permanent value. This is most striking in

regard to painting, the technique of which is as much within their reach

as within ours; this is why they pursue it so industriously. Still, they

have not a single great painting to show, for the simple reason that

they lack that objectivity of mind which is precisely what is so

directly necessary in painting. They always stick to what is subjective.

For this reason, ordinary women have no susceptibility for painting at

all: for _natura non facet saltum_. And Huarte, in his book which has

been famous for three hundred years, _Examen de ingenios para las

scienzias_, contends that women do not possess the higher capacities.

Individual and partial exceptions do not alter the matter; women are and

remain, taken altogether, the most thorough and incurable philistines;

and because of the extremely absurd arrangement which allows them to

share the position and title of their husbands they are a constant

stimulus to his _ignoble_ ambitions. And further, it is because they are

philistines that modern society, to which they give the tone and where

they have sway, has become corrupted. As regards their position, one

should be guided by Napoleon's maxim, _Les femmes n'ont pas de rang_;

and regarding them in other things, Chamfort says very truly: _Elles

sont faites pour commercer avec nos faiblesses avec notre folie, mais

non avec notre raison. Il existe entre elles et les hommes des

sympathies d'épiderme et très-peu de sympathies d'esprit d'âme et de

caractère_. They are the _sexus sequior_, the second sex in every

respect, therefore their weaknesses should be spared, but to treat women

with extreme reverence is ridiculous, and lowers us in their own eyes.

When nature divided the human race into two parts, she did not cut it

exactly through the middle! The difference between the positive and

negative poles, according to polarity, is not merely qualitative but

also quantitative. And it was in this light that the ancients and people

of the East regarded woman; they recognised her true position better

than we, with our old French ideas of gallantry and absurd veneration,

that highest product of Christian-Teutonic stupidity. These ideas have

only served to make them arrogant and imperious, to such an extent as to

remind one at times of the holy apes in Benares, who, in the

consciousness of their holiness and inviolability, think they can do

anything and everything they please.

In the West, the woman, that is to say the "lady," finds herself in a

_fausse position_; for woman, rightly named by the ancients _sexus

sequior_, is by no means fit to be the object of our honour and

veneration, or to hold her head higher than man and to have the same

rights as he. The consequences of this _fausse position_ are

sufficiently clear. Accordingly, it would be a very desirable thing if

this Number Two of the human race in Europe were assigned her natural

position, and the lady-grievance got rid of, which is not only ridiculed

by the whole of Asia, but would have been equally ridiculed by Greece

and Rome. The result of this would be that the condition of our social,

civil, and political affairs would be incalculably improved. The Salic

law would be unnecessary; it would be a superfluous truism. The European

lady, strictly speaking, is a creature who should not exist at all; but

there ought to be housekeepers, and young girls who hope to become such;

and they should be brought up not to be arrogant, but to be domesticated

and submissive. It is exactly because there are _ladies_ in Europe that

women of a lower standing, that is to say, the greater majority of the

sex, are much more unhappy than they are in the East. Even Lord Byron

says (_Letters and Papers_, by Thomas Moore, vol. ii. p. 399), _Thought

of the state of women under the ancient Greeks--convenient enough.

Present state, a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalric and feudal

ages--artificial and unnatural. They ought to mind home--and be well fed

and clothed--but not mixed in society. Well educated, too, in

religion--but to read neither poetry nor politics--nothing but books of

piety and cookery. Music--drawing--dancing--also a little gardening and

ploughing now and then. I have seen them mending the roads in Epirus

with good success. Why not, as well as hay-making and milking_?

* * * * *

In our part of the world, where monogamy is in force, to marry means to

halve one's rights and to double one's duties. When the laws granted

woman the same rights as man, they should also have given her a

masculine power of reason. On the contrary, just as the privileges and

honours which the laws decree to women surpass what Nature has meted out

to them, so is there a proportional decrease in the number of women who

really share these privileges; therefore the remainder are deprived of

their natural rights in so far as the others have been given more than

Nature accords.

For the unnatural position of privilege which the institution of

monogamy, and the laws of marriage which accompany it, assign to the

woman, whereby she is regarded throughout as a full equivalent of the

man, which she is not by any means, cause intelligent and prudent men to

reflect a great deal before they make so great a sacrifice and consent

to so unfair an arrangement. Therefore, whilst among polygamous nations

every woman finds maintenance, where monogamy exists the number of

married women is limited, and a countless number of women who are

without support remain over; those in the upper classes vegetate as

useless old maids, those in the lower are reduced to very hard work of a

distasteful nature, or become prostitutes, and lead a life which is as

joyless as it is void of honour. But under such circumstances they

become a necessity to the masculine sex; so that their position is

openly recognised as a special means for protecting from seduction those

other women favoured by fate either to have found husbands, or who hope

to find them. In London alone there are 80,000 prostitutes. Then what

are these women who have come too quickly to this most terrible end but

human sacrifices on the altar of monogamy? The women here referred to

and who are placed in this wretched position are the inevitable

counterbalance to the European lady, with her pretensions and arrogance.

Hence polygamy is a real benefit to the female sex, taking it _as a

whole_. And, on the other hand, there is no reason why a man whose wife

suffers from chronic illness, or remains barren, or has gradually become

too old for him, should not take a second. Many people become converts

to Mormonism for the precise reasons that they condemn the unnatural

institution of monogamy. The conferring of unnatural rights upon women

has imposed unnatural duties upon them, the violation of which, however,

makes them unhappy. For example, many a man thinks marriage unadvisable

as far as his social standing and monetary position are concerned,

unless he contracts a brilliant match. He will then wish to win a woman

of his own choice under different conditions, namely, under those which

will render safe her future and that of her children. Be the conditions

ever so just, reasonable, and adequate, and she consents by giving up

those undue privileges which marriage, as the basis of civil society,

alone can bestow, she must to a certain extent lose her honour and lead

a life of loneliness; since human nature makes us dependent on the

opinion of others in a way that is completely out of proportion to its

value. While, if the woman does not consent, she runs the risk of being

compelled to marry a man she dislikes, or of shrivelling up into an old

maid; for the time allotted to her to find a home is very short. In view

of this side of the institution of monogamy, Thomasius's profoundly

learned treatise, _de Concubinatu_, is well worth reading, for it shows

that, among all nations, and in all ages, down to the Lutheran

Reformation, concubinage was allowed, nay, that it was an institution,

in a certain measure even recognised by law and associated with no

dishonour. And it held this position until the Lutheran Reformation,

when it was recognised as another means for justifying the marriage of

the clergy; whereupon the Catholic party did not dare to remain

behindhand in the matter.

It is useless to argue about polygamy, it must be taken as a fact

existing everywhere, the _mere regulation_ of which is the problem to be

solved. Where are there, then, any real monogamists? We all live, at any

rate for a time, and the majority of us always, in polygamy.

Consequently, as each man needs many women, nothing is more just than to

let him, nay, make it incumbent upon him to provide for many women. By

this means woman will be brought back to her proper and natural place as

a subordinate being, and _the lady_, that monster of European

civilisation and Christian-Teutonic stupidity, with her ridiculous claim

to respect and veneration, will no longer exist; there will still be

_women_, but no _unhappy women_, of whom Europe is at present full. The

Mormons' standpoint is right.

* * * * *

In India no woman is ever independent, but each one stands under the

control of her father or her husband, or brother or son, in accordance

with the law of Manu.

It is certainly a revolting idea that widows should sacrifice themselves

on their husband's dead body; but it is also revolting that the money

which the husband has earned by working diligently for all his life, in

the hope that he was working for his children, should be wasted on her

paramours. _Medium tenuere beati_. The first love of a mother, as that

of animals and men, is purely _instinctive_, and consequently ceases

when the child is no longer physically helpless. After that, the first

love should be reinstated by a love based on habit and reason; but this

often does not appear, especially where the mother has not loved the

father. The love of a father for his children is of a different nature

and more sincere; it is founded on a recognition of his own inner self

in the child, and is therefore metaphysical in its origin.

In almost every nation, both of the new and old world, and even among

the Hottentots, property is inherited by the male descendants alone; it

is only in Europe that one has departed from this. That the property

which men have with difficulty acquired by long-continued struggling and

hard work should afterwards come into the hands of women, who, in their

want of reason, either squander it within a short time or otherwise

waste it, is an injustice as great as it is common, and it should be

prevented by limiting the right of women to inherit. It seems to me that

it would be a better arrangement if women, be they widows or daughters,

only inherited the money for life secured by mortgage, but not the

property itself or the capital, unless there lacked male descendants. It

is men who make the money, and not women; therefore women are neither

justified in having unconditional possession of it nor capable of

administrating it. Women should never have the free disposition of

wealth, strictly so-called, which they may inherit, such as capital,

houses, and estates. They need a guardian always; therefore they should

not have the guardianship of their children under any circumstances

whatever. The vanity of women, even if it should not be greater than

that of men, has this evil in it, that it is directed on material

things--that is to say, on their personal beauty and then on tinsel,

pomp, and show. This is why they are in their right element in society.

This it is which makes them inclined to be _extravagant_, especially

since they possess little reasoning power. Accordingly, an ancient

writer says, [Greek: Gunae to synolon esti dapanaeron physei].[10] Men's

vanity, on the other hand, is often directed on non-material advantages,

such as intellect, learning, courage, and the like. Aristotle explains

in the _Politics_[11] the great disadvantages which the Spartans brought

upon themselves by granting too much to their women, by allowing them

the right of inheritance and dowry, and a great amount of freedom; and

how this contributed greatly to the fall of Sparta. May it not be that

the influence of women in France, which has been increasing since Louis

XIII.'s time, was to blame for that gradual corruption of the court and

government which led to the first Revolution, of which all subsequent

disturbances have been the result? In any case, the false position of

the female sex, so conspicuously exposed by the existence of the "lady,"

is a fundamental defect in our social condition, and this defect,

proceeding from the very heart of it, must extend its harmful influence

in every direction. That woman is by nature intended to obey is shown by

the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of

absolute independence at once attaches herself to some kind of man, by

whom she is controlled and governed; this is because she requires a

master. If she, is young, the man is a lover; if she is old, a priest.

Women and the Senate

THE ABSURD TIMES

One of you sent this in. It is just one more defining issue on what it means to be a Republican. I will follow it (since we might as well do this right) with a famous essay "On Women" that at least shows no one has really evolved in the last 200 years or so. The links are worth following as well.

Here it is:

Back to Article

The gang rape and the Republicans

Behold, 30 U.S. senators who don't give a damn about battered women

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, October 16, 2009

The world's tallest domestic dog? Adorable. The world's biggest newborn baby? Sad and disturbing.

Waterless urinals in every new building in Los Angeles? A positive step. Canada's disgusting oilsands and Coal Country, a new documentary detailing the environmental atrocities in Appalachia? Heart wrenching and depressing.

Jimmy Page showing Jack White and the Edge how to play "When the Levee Breaks" in It Might Get Loud? All flavors of awesome. Garth Brooks coming out of retirement? Anesthetizing.

See, it's all a matter of perspective. It's all a matter of context and spin, into which bin we toss the delightful refuse of our culture to recycle and re-use it another day.

It is with this wonky filter in mind we turn our gaze to the gaping hellmouth that is the U.S. Senate, that drab cauldron of grumpy old men, defeminized women and tiny handful of rebellious dissenters, all of whom claim to have your best interests at heart but mostly only really give a damn about which lobbyist will help them best make their next boat payment.

Do I sound a little bitter? I cannot imagine why. Let us watch the senate and see if we can figure it out.

Look at them shuffle and sneer, hem and haw! Watch as they willingly eat their own souls with an ice pick and some turpentine, then step up to the media microphones and try to sound ennobled and magnanimous when in fact they only make everyone within earshot feel lost and fatalistic. So cute.

It's the same old spectacle, isn't it? There they go, tossing around the health care reform issue like it didn't affect millions of humans every single day, throwing in massive compromises and snags just so the GOP can fellate its pals in the insurance industry and a gaggle of aggrieved Democrats can get their egos fluffed and you still won't be able to get a decent dental plan for your family.

But now, just for fun, let's take it a step further. Or rather, darker. Let's go ahead and step right onto one of those large, rusty nails sticking up from the senate floor, so painful as to make your stomach turn, a bit of your lunch jump back into your throat.

It's a story from the dark political underbelly that makes you question the entire setup, rethink humanity, and lean out your window and scream: what the hell is wrong with these people? Who are they, really? Why do we give them power?

Here is freshman Minnesota senator Al Franken's first-ever legislative action, a relatively simple, almost laughably surefire bill requiring the Pentagon no longer do business with any contractor -- hi, Halliburton! -- that requires its employees to agree that she cannot sue said contractor if she is, oh let's just say, gang raped by its employees.

You read that right. It's a can't-sue-us-if-you're-raped clause. In a U.S. government contract. Aimed squarely at Halliburton. Thanks, Dick Cheney!

First, you are required to get over your initial disgust that such legislation is even necessary, that such clauses even exist and that the Pentagon is already doing business with such contractors (hi, Halliburton/KBR!), and that there has already been a truly horrible case validating it, wherein a 20-year-old female employee was allegedly gang-raped by contractors, locked in a shipping container, abused every way from Sunday, and found out later she was unable to sue.

Let us pause to imagine if, say, Wal-Mart had such a clause. Or maybe Toys 'R' Us. Starbucks. Let us imagine the appalled outcry. But Halliburton? Dick Cheney's vile little spitwad of shameless war profiteering? No problem. Hey, it's Republican-endorsed military contracting. No one said it was ethical.

But that's not most the repellant part. Ready?

The most repellant part is the 30 U.S. senators -- Republicans each and every one -- who just stepped forth to vote against the Franken amendment, essentially saying no, women should have no right to sue if they are sexually abused or gang raped, Halliburton and its ilk must be protected at all costs, and by the way we hereby welcome Satan into our rancid souls forevermore. God bless America.

Let us repeat, for clarity. Franken's amendment passed with a vote of 68-30. Meaning 30 U.S. senators voted against the elimination of the rape/sue clause. Meghan McCain, call your dad. He's one of them.

Here is where you try and do it. Here is where you bring in the filter mentioned above, try to figure out where to slot such wretched information, how to make even the slightest sense of it.

And then you discover a horrible truth: you can't. Turns out, when faced with such vileness, all filters fail. All balance is thrown off. You thought you had some sort of way to process and attain perspective? You are proven wrong.

So perhaps all we can do is ponder how pathetic and sad these various senator's lives must be, how these bitter old men will now go home at night and announce around the dinner table that, yes, today they worked very hard to help improve the welfare of the nation by essentially enabling rape and sexual abuse, tried their darndest to prevent women who've been viciously attacked from having much legal recourse. And lo, Satan will chuckle happily.

Then maybe these senators will try and hug their wives, or their daughters. And maybe, if there's any justice in the universe, their wives and daughters will slap them as hard as humanly possible, lock them in a shipping container, and never let them touch them again.

P.S.; Would you like a complete list of these 30 senators' names? Right here.

Why look, there's grandpa McCain. There's disgraced man-child John Ensign. Hooker-lovin' David Vitter. Saxby Chambliss. Inhofe. It's a veritable welfare-state who's who of Dick Cheney's sanctum of oily fluffers, and many more who would love to be. Shall we write a nice letter to them? Or maybe their wives and daughters?

---

Mark Morford's column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate. Contact him here. To get on the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list (appearances, books, blogs, yoga and more), click here and remove three more. His website is right here.

Mark's also on Facebook and Twitter because, well, why the hell not?

This column also has an RSS feed and a very handy archive page.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/10/16/notes101609.DTL

There goes the planet -- Oh Shit

THE ABSURD TIMES

Just recently it was made shockingly clear to me how much denial persists as to climate deterioration. As I write this in below freezing early October, fresh from seeing the Major League Baseball elimination series canceled due to snow and then played the next day in 29 degree weather, I just received a forwarded letter written by someone who once showed signs of literacy and common sense calling the whole ecology movement akin to the Nazi Party.

Personally, I don't give a damn, as I mentioned before, as I will die within a decade or so anyway, but deliberate idiocy has a way of irritating me. The fact that I don't give a damn just proves what Bernard Shaw said in his Back to Methuselah about the life span of the human race being too short as most leaders do not live long enough to face the consequences of their actions. It may be one reason that younger people usually favor more liberal causes, on the whole, than older ones.

At any rate, at the same time, this article from the Nation appeared in my mailbox. I thought I'd pass it on:

Climate Roulette

Comment

By Mark Hertsgaard

This article appeared in the October 26, 2009 edition of The Nation.

October 7, 2009

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Buzz up!
  • Buzzflash
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Mixx it!
  • Reddit

They say that everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an "Oh, shit" moment--an instant when the full scientific implications become clear and they suddenly realize what a horrifically dangerous situation humanity has created for itself. Listening to the speeches, groundbreaking in their way, that President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao delivered September 22 at the UN Summit on Climate Change, I was reminded of my most recent "Oh, shit" moment.

It came in July, courtesy of the chief climate adviser to the German government. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory council known by its German acronym, WBGU, is a physicist whose specialty, fittingly, is chaos theory. Speaking to an invitation-only conference at New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute, Schellnhuber divulged the findings of a study so new he had not yet briefed Chancellor Angela Merkel about it. The study has now been published. If its conclusions are correct--and Schellnhuber ranks among the world's half-dozen most eminent climate scientists--it has monumental implications for the pivotal meeting in December in Copenhagen, where world leaders will try to agree on reversing global warming.

Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose scientific reports are constrained because the world's governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020--i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by "buying" emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries' deadlines by a decade or so.

Needless to say, this timetable is light-years more demanding than what the world's major governments are talking about in the run-up to Copenhagen. The European Union has pledged 20 percent reductions by 2020, which it will increase to 30 percent if others--like the United States--do the same. Japan's new prime minister likewise has promised 25 percent reductions by 2020 if others do the same. Obama didn't mention a number, but the Waxman-Markey bill, which he supports, would deliver less than 5 percent reductions by 2020. Obama's silence--doubtless a function of the fact that Republicans are implacably opposed to serious emissions cuts--allowed Hu to claim the higher ground at the UN. Hu went further than any Chinese leader has before, pledging to curb greenhouse gas emissions growth by a "notable margin" by 2020. Obama dropped his own bombshell, however, urging that all G-20 governments phase out subsidies for fossil fuels. "The time we have to reverse this tide is running out," Obama declared. Alas, the WBGU study suggests that our time is in fact all but gone.

Obama, like other G-8 leaders, agreed in July to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level at which human civilization developed. Schellnhuber, addressing the Santa Fe conference, joked that the G-8 leaders had agreed to the 2C limit "probably because they don't know what it means." In fact, even the "brutal" timeline of the WBGU study, Schellnhuber cautioned, would not guarantee staying within the 2C target. It would merely give humanity a two-out-of-three chance of doing so--"worse odds than Russian roulette," he wryly noted. "But it is the best we can do." To have a three-out-of-four chance, countries would have to quit carbon even sooner. Likewise, we could decide to wait another decade or so to halt all greenhouse emissions, but this lowers the odds of hitting the 2C target to fifty-fifty. "And what kind of precautionary principle is that?" Schellnhuber asked.

There is a fundamental political assumption underlying the WBGU study: that the right to emit greenhouse gases is shared equally by all people on earth. Known in diplomatic circles as "the per capita principle," this approach has long been insisted upon by China and most other developing countries and thus is seen as essential to an agreement in Copenhagen, though among G-8 leaders only Merkel has endorsed it. The WBGU study applies the per capita principle to the world population of 7 billion people and arrives at an annual emissions quota of 2.7 tons of carbon dioxide per person. That's harsh news for Americans, who emit 20 tons per person annually, and it explains why the US deadline is the most imminent. But China won't welcome this news either. Its combination of high annual emissions and huge population gives it a deadline only a few years later than Europe's and Japan's.

"I myself was terrified when I saw these numbers," Schellnhuber said. He urges governments to agree in Copenhagen to launch "a Green Apollo Project." Like John Kennedy's pledge to land a man on the moon in ten years, a global Green Apollo Project would aim to put leading economies on a trajectory of zero carbon emissions within ten years. Combined with carbon trading with low-emissions countries, Schellnhuber says, such a "wartime mobilization" might still save us from the worst impacts of climate change. The alternative is more and more "Oh, shit" moments for all of us.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.

About Mark Hertsgaard

Mark Hertsgaard (markhertsgaard.com), a fellow of The Nation Institute and The Nation's environment correspondent, is the author of five books, which have been translated into sixteen languages. His next book, Living Through the Storm: How We Survive the Next 50 Years of Climate Change, is forthcoming from Houghton-Mifflin. more...

Advertisement

Nobel Peace Prize??!!

THE ABSURD TIMES

Photo: Edward Said (sigh eed) -- more about him below.

As soon as I heard the news that our President, Barak Obama, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, my first reaction was "Damn, there go my chances." I never do well with committees, anyway. People in Game Theory know that the best and the worst never have a change with a committee decision. Well, except perhaps this time.

In 1938, the committee was divided between Adolph Hitler and Ghandi for the prize. Instead, it was given to a group that helped refugees.

Meanwhile, there is other stuff going on. One is the UN report by a South African Jew. It is highly critical of Israel and thus he becomes a "self-hating Jew," and joins Noam Chomsky and Norm Finklestein in that category. I must confess that I have not read the report myself. I wanted to, but it is about 6 Megabytes of PDF to download, but here is the link for you:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf
You can decide for yourself. These things are never made available.

There was a discussion of it, however, on Democracy Now. Some of you may remember Edward Said, author of Orientalism, and Palestinian. He was a Professor at Columbia University and could play Beethoven's Sonatas on the concert pianist level (well, better than some). He was close friends with Daniel Barenboim, a musical genius, to further harmony and understanding between Palestinian and Israeli youth, especially. Edward Said, therefore, was attacked repeatedly by the likes of Derschowitz, but Columbia endowed a chair in his honor. The interview below is with his successor as Said (Sigh eed) died of cancer a few years ago.

One last note, Edward Said believed in a one state solution, as does Kaddafi. This, of course, would force a separation of church and state, an insalubrious notion smacking of democracy.

Oh yes, another photo of Said with some politician:

Purchase DVD/CD

LISTEN WATCH

Real Video Stream Real Audio Stream MP3 Download More…

Guest:

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East and The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood.

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, More...

JUAN GONZALEZ: The Security Council has rejected Libya’s request to hold an emergency session on South African Judge Richard Goldstone’s recently released report on Israel’s three-week war on Gaza last winter. Instead, the Council has agreed to advance a regular meeting to address the issues it raises.

The 575-page report by the United Nations fact-finding mission accuses Israel of war crimes and deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza. It also accuses Hamas of indiscriminate rocket fire. The report urges that the UN Security Council refer allegations to the International Criminal Court if either side fails to investigate and prosecute suspects. Some 1,400 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis were killed during the war on Gaza.

Meanwhile, outrage among Palestinians continues to rise over Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to withdraw support for further action in regard to the Goldstone investigation. Last week, Abbas backed the postponement of a vote by the Human Rights Council to send the report to the Security Council for possible action. The decision reportedly came after heavy American and Israeli pressure.

This is Gaza resident Najma Abbas.

NAJMA ABBAS: [translated] We have rights, and we demand to have them, despite those who disagree. The European countries agreed and were willing to sign on. How is it possible that our own flesh and blood refused?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Bill Van Esveld of Human Rights Watch criticized the Obama administration’s actions regarding the Goldstone report.

BILL VAN ESVELD: Due to American pressure, strong pressure from Washington, the Palestinians have withdrawn their request that the UN act on the Goldstone report. What the US has effectively done is sent a strong signal that Israel doesn’t need to investigate itself, because that was the recommendation of the Goldstone report.

JUAN GONZALEZ: After six days of protests, a senior Abbas adviser told the Voice of Palestine radio Wednesday that, quote, “What happened is a mistake, but (it) can be repaired.”

Well, for more on the report and the Palestinian Authority’s decision, I’m joined now here in the firehouse studio by Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of several books, including Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East and The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

RASHID KHALIDI: Thank you, Juan.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, the reaction over the past week in the Palestinian—in the Occupied Territories, as well as in the Middle East in general? Have you seen anything like this in the past in regard to the Palestinian Authority leadership?

RASHID KHALIDI: I actually haven’t. This is unprecedented. You have a wide range of calls, not only condemning what Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Mazen, did in instructing his representatives in Geneva to call for postponement of consideration of the Goldstone report, but we’re now hearing calls for the President’s resignation. These are not just coming from Hamas or the usual quarters. They seem to be coming from a very broad range of civil society groups, even members of the President’s own political party, Fatah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the prospects of that happening—I mean, obviously, in Gaza there have been posters up now—

RASHID KHALIDI: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —in the streets in recent days calling Mahmoud Abbas a traitor. But the prospects of any change in leadership, from your perspective?

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, I think he’s definitely been weakened by this. There’s no question that Israel and the United States twisted their pliable client, if you want to call him that, much more than they had any reason to, in terms of what the traffic would bear, what his popularity and his legitimacy, which were very, very limited to begin with, would sustain. And the backlash has really been quite ferocious. I can’t remember seeing anything like this. I think he’s wounded. I think he’s quite severely wounded.

Whether it will lead to a change or not, I don’t know. This comes at a time when there are efforts to bring about another reconciliation meeting between Fatah and Hamas, and it’s hard to say how this might play into it. There are a number of Arab countries that seem to be pushing hard in that direction. His being weakened in this circumstance may have an effect on that.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, the report itself was rejected by Israel and was criticized by US officials. But what specifically did it recommend?

RASHID KHALIDI: It simply recommended that both the Palestinian Authority and Israel investigate the allegations that the Goldstone committee looked at: allegations of war crimes, allegations, in some cases, of crimes against humanity, by Israel, primarily, but also by Hamas. So it simply called for these two sides to investigate and then for the Human Rights Council in Geneva to refer the results of that, if needed, to the Security Council.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now the Palestinian Authority—at least in the last day or so, a couple of spokespeople have said that “this was a mistake, we’re reconsidering it.” But what do you expect will happen at the Security Council now?

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, I don’t expect very much to happen in the Security Council, frankly. It’s now been postponed to a regular meeting of the Security Council, which was scheduled to discuss the Middle East and which has, I guess, been moved up ’til next week—to next week, so it will be brought before the council presumably next week. I don’t see the United States changing its position of 360-degree support for Israel.

The problem here is that they are losing their ally in Ramallah, and they’re acceding to having it even considered yesterday by the council. And considering moving up the meeting, I think, is a recognition of the fact that they’ve already done themselves some harm in Washington.

The interesting things are happening in Palestine now, I think. I think that the idea that a Palestinian leader would prevent an international body from even considering a report, which condemns both Hamas, but primarily Israel, is horrific to most Palestinians and most people in the Arab world. The satellite TV stations are focusing on this to a very high degree, and the outrage is really quite palpable, and from one end of the spectrum to the other.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, this all comes as the US envoy George Mitchell is preparing for—will be arriving in the Middle East again—

RASHID KHALIDI: Yet again.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —yet again—

RASHID KHALIDI: Yet again.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —to attempt another round of negotiations for a peace settlement. Your sense of how this will affect the ability of the Palestinian Authority to have any leverage in those discussions?

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, the Israelis have delivered yet another slap in the face to Senator Mitchell and to the Obama administration. This has been their habit for decades. Every time an American envoy comes, a new settlement is opened or some outrageous statement is made.

The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has basically said, “There’s not going to be a deal. There won’t be peace with the Palestinians. We just have to manage this conflict,” and something along those lines, in effect saying there’s no point.

So I think that you have an Israeli government that seems to be hardening its position, and in particular with the actions that the government is taking in Jerusalem, where there’s a very high level of tension over subterranean excavations by the Israeli Antiquities Authority, which is increasingly being infiltrated by extremist settler groups, where there have been home demolitions and expulsions of people from their homes and expansion of new settlements. The Israelis are, in effect, staking a very tough position out, ahead of any talks that Mitchell might be able to start.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And how do you expect Mitchell to function in light of the fact that the—at least Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have made it clear—

RASHID KHALIDI: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —precondition of real negotiations is a halt to the settlement expansions?

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, they’ve announced a number of measures involving new tenders for housing and settlements, new building in Jerusalem, which the Netanyahu government says is excluded from any ban even if there were to be one, such that the question now will be, who is going to back down? Will Mahmoud Abbas, who’s, as I think everybody agrees, been significantly weakened by his own mistakes in this Goldstone matter—is he going to be able to back down further on this issue and say, “Sure, we’ll talk with you about dividing the pie, while you continue to eat it up”? He’s in a much, much, much more difficult position. Will the Obama administration continue to back down in the face of Israeli intransigence? I don’t know.

JUAN GONZALEZ: There have also been some reports in the Arab press of some—pointing to a possible corruption situation with Mahmoud Abbas’s son and a cell phone company that—

RASHID KHALIDI: Yeah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you talk about that?

RASHID KHALIDI: Sure. One element of the blackmail, which reportedly has been exercised by the Israelis on the Palestinian Authority in order to persuade them not to go forward with consideration of the Goldstone report in Geneva, was a denial of the granting of a license to a second Palestinian cell phone company in the Occupied Territories.

The situation now is that there’s one Palestinian company, not allowed to build cell phone towers in over 60 percent of the West Bank, and a [inaudible], four or five, I think, or six Israeli companies, which build, all over the West Bank, cell phone towers. And so, you basically can’t get decent reception. What the Palestinian Authority had been asking for was to have the right to build in occupied Palestine another set of cell phone towers, so that, A, there could be competition, and B, there could be better coverage.

Now, the corruption angle has to do with the apparent fact that Mahmoud Abbas’s son is involved with that second company. The bigger issue, of course, is the Israelis denying this extension of cell bandwidth and denial of permission to build, and thereby strangling the Palestinian economy. Cell phones are really crucial, given the fragmentation of territory caused by the way the occupation functions in the West Bank.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Rashid Khalidi, professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, I want to thank you for being with us.

RASHID KHALIDI: Thanks, Juan.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And we’ll be continuing to cover this story in the future.

---

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

This just happened as I was about to write something on the subject. Perfect:

A War of Absurdity

TruthDig

By Robert Scheer

October 7, 2009

THE ABSURD TIMES

Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig, where this article originally appeared. His latest book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (Twelve).

Reuters Photos

US Marines walk inside their base before patrolling near town of Khan Neshin in Rig district of Helmand province

Every once in a while, a statistic just jumps out at you in a way that makes everything else you hear on a subject seem beside the point, if not downright absurd. That was my reaction to the recent statement of the president's national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, concerning the size of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan:

Share this article

• Slide Show: Afghanistan at a Crossroads

  Afghanistan War

  The following images and excerpts highlight The Nation's opposition to military escalation.

• Against Escalation

  Afghanistan War

  Obama faces a presidency-defining choice: will he escalate in Afghanistan, or plot a new course?

» More

• A War of Absurdity

  Afghanistan War

  Robert Scheer: There is no indication that any of the contending forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, are interested in bringing Al Qaeda back.

• Exorcising America's Diplomatic Demons

  China

  Robert Scheer: This week the Chinese Communists celebrate their sixtieth year in power, an event that the make-war-not-peace crowd might benefit from contemplating.

• Saving the Obama Revolution

  Barack Obama

  Robert Scheer: President Obama should follow the model of the incredibly successful Reagan revolution and heed the political base that made his presidency possible.

"The Al Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

Less than 100! And he is basing his conservative estimate on the best intelligence data available to our government. That means that Al Qaeda, for all practical purposes, does not exist in Afghanistan--so why are we having a big debate about sending even more troops to fight an enemy that has relocated elsewhere? Because of the blind belief, in the minds of those like John McCain, determined to "win" in Afghanistan, that if we don't escalate, Al Qaeda will inevitably come back.

Why? It's not like Al Qaeda is an evil weed indigenous to Afghanistan and dependent on its climate and soil for survival. Its members were foreign imports in the first place, recruited by our CIA to fight the Soviets because there were evidently not enough locals to do the job. After all, US officials first forged the alliance between the foreign fighters and the Afghan mujahedeen, who morphed into the Taliban, and we should not be surprised that that tenuous alliance ended. The Taliban and other insurgents are preoccupied with the future of Afghanistan, while the Arab fighters couldn't care less and have moved on to more hospitable climes.

There is no indication that any of the contending forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, are interested in bringing Al Qaeda back. On the contrary, all the available evidence indicates that the Arab fighters are unwelcome and that it is their isolation from their former patrons that has led to their demise.

As such, while one wishes that the Afghan people would put their houses in order, these are not, even after eight long years of occupation, our houses. Sure, there are all sorts of angry people in Afghanistan, eager to pick fights with each other and most of all any foreigners who seem to be threatening their way of life, but why should that any longer have anything to do with us?

Even in neighboring Pakistan, the remnants of Al Qaeda are barely hanging on. As the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, "Hunted by US drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, Al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and US officials..... For Arab youths who are al Qaeda's primary recruits, 'it's not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,' said a senior US official in South Asia."

It's time to declare victory and begin to get out rather than descend deeper into an intractable civil war that we neither comprehend nor in the end will care much about. Terrorists of various stripes will still exist as they have throughout history, but the ones we are most concerned about have proved mighty capable of relocating to less hostile environments, including sunny San Diego and southern Florida, where the 9/11 hijackers had no trouble fitting in.

There is a continued need for effective international police work to thwart the efforts of a widely dispersed Al Qaeda network, but putting resources into that effort does not satisfy the need of the military establishment for a conventional field of battle. That is the significance of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's leaked report calling for a massive counterinsurgency campaign to make everything right about life in Afghanistan, down to the governance of the most forlorn village. The general's report aims not at eliminating Al Qaeda, which he concedes is barely existent in the country, but rather at creating an Afghan society that is more to his own liking.

It is a prescription, as the Russians and others before them learned, for war without end. That might satisfy the marketing needs of the defense industry and the career hopes of select military and political aspirants, but it has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. In the end, it would seem that some of our leaders need the Afghanistan battleground more than the terrorists do.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.

About Robert Scheer

Robert Scheer, a contributing editor to The Nation, is editor of Truthdig.com and author of The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (Twelve) and Playing President (Akashic Books). He is author, with Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq (Akashic Books and Seven Stories Press.) His weekly column, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in the San Francisco Chronicle. more...

Advertisement

Advertisement

• Most Read
• Most Emailed
• Popular Topics

1. » Slide Show: Afghanistan at a Crossroads
2. » Dick Gephardt's Spectacular Sellout
3. » The First Counter-revolutionary
4. » Copenhagen: Obama Better Go Back
5. » Slide Show: The Far-Right Fringe
6. » An ACORN Amendment for Pfizer
7. » An Open Letter to President Obama
8. » The Student Sex Column Movement
9. » Slide Show: The Palin Saga
10. » Do They Take Us for Shmucks?
11. » The Bailout in Under Ten Minutes
12. » Olympics in Chicago: 'Obama's Folly'?
13. » Are You Happy?

1. » An ACORN Amendment for Pfizer
2. » Dick Gephardt's Spectacular Sellout
3. » The First Counter-revolutionary
4. » An Open Letter to President Obama
5. » Israel vs. Human Rights
6. » Do They Take Us for Shmucks?
7. » Are You Happy?
8. » Iran and the Pipelineistan Opera
9. » Meet the Hazzards
10. » The Coalfield Uprising
11. » Olympics in Chicago: 'Obama's Folly'?
12. » The Bailout in Under Ten Minutes
13. » A War of Absurdity
14. » America's Teacher

1. » Conservatives & The American Right
2. » Feminism & Women
3. » House
4. » Youth, Education, & Children
5. » Dick Gephardt
6. » Afghanistan War
7. » Journalists & Journalism
8. » Media Analysis
9. » Barack Obama
10. » Sarah Palin
11. » Non-Fiction
12. » Chicago
13. » Sports
14. » Philosophy
15. » Global Warming & Climate Change
16. » U.S. Economy
17. » Sex & Sexuality

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Name

Mailing Address

City

State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

ZIP Code

Email Address

TRY
4 ISSUES
FREE!

Advertisement

» Act Now!

End the War | Barbara Lee's alternative to a surge in Afghanistan is gaining traction fast.
Peter Rothberg
Posted at 2:10 PM ET

» The Beat

But How Does the GOP Win With 1 Percent of the Vote? | Michelle Bachmann wants the GOP to rebuild itself by focusing on the "critical mass" of Glenn Beck viewers.
John Nichols
35 Comments
Posted at 12:31 ET

» The Dreyfuss Report

Will Obama Cave to McChrystal? | A decision is expected in weeks, but it's starting to look like Obama isn't ready to slap down his COIN-crazy generals.
Robert Dreyfuss
23 Comments
Posted at 10:10 ET

» Editor's Cut

It's About the People | As we face the prospects of a jobless recovery, The Nation will continue to push proposals to promote a people's recovery.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
100 Comments

» The Notion

Greece Votes Socialist | Against the European grain, Greece's socialist PaSoK party has won a landslide victory.
Maria Margaronis
26 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Friday | Charles Pierce: Let me apologize to Congressman Alan Grayson on behalf of all decent journalists everywhere.
Eric Alterman

• Copyright © 2009 The Nation