As you
probably already know, they executed Dale Leo Bishop in Mississippi
last night. I had urged readers to write to Governor Haley Barbour and
respectfully request that he commute Bishop's death sentence to life
imprisonment, since he did not actually murder anyone, although he did
take part in a terrible crime. Barbour refused -- even though he had
just released a man who had murdered his wife in the street: blew her
head off with a shotgun. But that actual murderer had been a servant in
Barbour's mansion; wiping the dribble off Barbour's jowls is obviously
a qualification for clemency. So the wife-murderer is free, while the
non-murderer Bishop is dead.
The execution took place at the dinner hour, 6 p.m. Perhaps Barbour was
just sitting down to a nice juicy steak as his minions were putting a
syringe full of poison into Bishop's bloodstream. We can only hope the
dead flesh Barbour devoured during the course of the execution will
clot the bowels of the bloodthirsty, graft-bloated son of a bitch. (And
we mean that in the most respectful sense, of course.)
Well, the deed is done. The world moves on. It's just too bad for Dale
Leo Bishop that he was only involved in a single murder; if he had
slaughtered a million people, like Barbour's good buddy, George W.
Bush, no doubt he'd be a free man today.
Dale Leo Bishop is scheduled to be killed tomorrow by the state of Mississippi -- despite the fact that he did not kill anyone, although he assisted an attack that turned into a murder. The actual murderer, oddly enough, was sentenced to life in prison; but Bishop, who is mentally ill, was sentenced to die. [For more, see previous post on this subject.]
All of his judicial appeals have been exhausted now. Outside a highly unlikely intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, the only hope Bishop has is a commutation of his death sentence to life in prison by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.
As the Jackson Clarion-Ledger points out in an excellent editorial on the case, just last week Barbour pardoned a man convicted of a heinous murder. Michael Graham walked up to his ex-wife's car at a streetlight in Pascagoula and shot her in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun, blowing her head off in front of her own father, who was standing across the street at the time. Graham had served 19 years of a life sentence for the killing when Barbour pardoned him. The reason? Graham had been a trusty, a prisoner working as a servant, in the governor's mansion.
From the Clarion-Ledger:
Trial testimony - undisputed trial testimony - indicates that Bishop was not the man swinging the hammer that delivered the fatal blows to victim's head....
If Bishop, who suffers from mental illness, receives a lethal injection on Wednesday, he would be only the eighth person put to death - and the first since 1996 - who did not directly kill the victim (not including contract killings) in the more than 1,100 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
There is ample evidence that Bishop's mental illness led to his waiving rights that might have spared his life at trial. There are also allegations that his post-conviction counsel representation suppressed evidence of Bishop's mental illness....
If there is mercy in Barbour's heart for a killer like Graham who was definitely guilty of a cold-blooded, gruesome murder, then the governor shouldn't blink an eye in granting clemency to Bishop - who took part in a killing but didn't deliver the fatal blows.
Bishop didn't get a chance to serve as a domestic servant at the Governor's Mansion. Graham did. That's the apparent difference.
Bishop should at most share a jail cell for life with Jessie Johnson, the man who is serving life without parole for Gentry's murder. But he should not pay the ultimate price if he did not commit the ultimate crime.
As we noted here earlier, Barbour is a rank political hack, a lobbyist, bagman and fixer from way back. His good buddy George W. Bush has steered millions of dollars in federal money earmarked for Hurricane Katrina relief to Barbour and his corporate cronies. His pardon of Graham is all of a piece with the plutocrat's code: "Everything for me and mine, diddly-squat for everybody else."
It is not very likely than an appeal to a conscience that Barbour has shown little sign of possessing will move him to spare Dale Leo Bishop from the poison needle. However, our high and mighty officials do like to appear to be figures of great moral depth, and so occasionally they can be moved to some gesture of clemency, some show of humanity, as long as there is no significant downside to their bottom line.
Therefore, we urge you once again to send a very respectful message to Haley Barbour, asking him politely to give his profound and prayerful consideration to Dale Bishop's plea for commutation. The address is below:
I think it is time for all those who have opposed the American invasion of Iraq to stand up for Barack Obama and acquit him of the ludicrous charge hurled at him by so many on the so-called "left": namely, that he has somehow "sold out" the anti-war movement with his recent statements about "refining" his long-held plans for a carefully calibrated end to the war.
Of course, the candidate himself has spoken most eloquently on this issue, pointing out that the idea of refining the details of the pullout according to the facts of the ground in Iraq has always been a key element of his plan all along. Sen. Obama is entirely correct: his views regarding American involvement in Iraq have been clear and consistent throughout his campaign for the presidency.
Although in a perfect world, Obama would need no defense on this matter, its truth being so self-evident, the distortions of the corporate media -- always looking for a trivial "gotcha" issue to goose the day's horse-race coverage -- compels the "reality-based community" to step forward and set the record straight.
And Sami Ramadani -- an Iraqi writer and academic who was persecuted by Saddam Hussein and driven from his native land -- has done just that in a column in Monday's Guardian. He brings a perspective almost entirely absent from the Washington's navel-gazing debate over Iraq: the Iraqi perspective. He makes a brilliant case for Obama's rock-solid consistency on the Iraq war, and explores some of the far-reaching implications of the candidate's plan.
From the Guardian: As November's American presidential elections approach, Barack Obama's message on Iraq is being widely interpreted as "flip-flopping" and a "retreat" from a previously unequivocal stance of fully withdrawing the US occupation forces. This is to misunderstand Obama, who is not someone who shoots from the hip. There is much more to his words than cursory reading could unravel...
Obama himself has reacted angrily to claims of a policy U-turn: "For me to say I'm going to refine my policies is I don't think in any way inconsistent with prior statements and doesn't change my strategic view that this war has to end and that I'm going to end it as president." Earlier this month he resorted to an op-ed article in the New York Times to emphatically state: "On my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war."
As always in examining the words of politicians, let alone Obama (who now has 300 foreign policy advisers), the devil is in the details. Here, Obama's "ending the war" declarations begin to look far from reassuring, even before he "refines" his line after meeting the US commander, General Petraeus, in Iraq.
Obama sees Iraq as part of a wider theatre of war and potential wars engulfing the entire Middle East, where US strategic goals and interests are at stake. So his obvious shift on the "surge" operations in Iraq (underlined by deleting criticisms of it from his website last week) is strengthening his call for "redeployment" from Iraq to Afghanistan. His current strategy could be summed up as: de-escalate the war in Iraq, escalate it in Afghanistan, and talk to Iran. On Iran, his offer of talks was coupled with an alarming, Bush-style threat. "I'll do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything," Obama told a gathering of the pro-Israel lobby group, Aipac, in April. He is echoing the sentiments of his famous anti-Iraq war speech in 2002, in which he repeatedly stressed that he was not opposed to all US wars.
It is worth noting that the term withdrawal, let alone a full unconditional withdrawal that will satisfy most of the Iraqi people, has never been part of Obama's vocabulary. His first carefully considered statement on Iraq was made in January last year, when he introduced the Iraq war de-escalation act to Congress. It was then that he envisaged stationing troops in Iraq on a longer-term basis: "A residual US presence may remain in Iraq for force protection, training of Iraqi security forces and pursuit of international terrorists." Using similar phrases, this is what he outlined in the New York Times last week.
....But it doesn't require rocket science to know that keeping "residual" forces requires heavily fortified areas, installations and a state of readiness to go to war. Unless Obama has discovered something new, such areas are known as military bases.....
Obama has even pre-empted a possible line of attack from hawks by chillingly suggesting he would possibly invade Iraq again if necessary. His website states: "He would reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq." The word potential is worth pausing over; it is salutary to remember Bush and Blair occupied Iraq and caused the death of perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent people for "humanitarian" reasons.
Neither is Obama opposed to signing a military treaty with Iraq. He has two conditions to make Bush's current attempts to impose a pact acceptable: the pact should get Congressional approval, and renounce "permanent" military bases. However, leaked drafts of this colonialist-style pact do not mention the word "permanent" at all. And his "benchmarks" for continued support for the corrupt Iraqi politicians protected by US forces in Baghdad's Green Zone are strikingly similar to those of the Bush administration.
Tactical differences and issues of style aside, Obama's message on occupied Iraq is deeply troubling - not because it has U-turned but because it has been consistent. His 300 foreign policy advisers are making sure that he will not stray from protecting US imperialist interests, even if it does mean launching new wars and bolstering puppet regimes and corrupt dictatorships throughout the "greater Middle East".
A bit under the weather, so apologies for the light posting. Hope to be back in gear soon, so keep checking in.
Meanwhile, here is some abiding wisdom on the inevitable ramifications of macro-economic cycles in an unrestricted "free" market system (also known as "One law for the rich, another law for the poor"). This learned disquisition originally appeared in 1854, and was updated in 1993 by one of our most eminent men of letters (doctorates from Princeton and St Andrews University). Perpend:
Next week, the State of Mississippi is going to strap Dale Leo Bishop to a prison guerney and shoot him full of deadly chemicals. He's going to die for murder although he killed no one. He's going to die even though his case was grossly mishandled by a lawyer who refused to present mitigating evidence of the horrible abuse Bishop suffered as a child and his life-long struggle with mental illness. He's going to die even though the man whom prosecutors admit is the one who committed the murder has been spared, while Bishop has been condemned to execution by lethal injection.
The United States Supreme Court has refused to hear his appeal last month. The Mississippi Supreme Court then scheduled his killing for July 23.
It's a complicated case. It's an ugly case. Bishop took part in the brutal murder of Marcus Gentry ten years ago. Gentry was set upon by Bishop and Jessie Johnson, who believed that Gentry had ratted out Johnson's younger brother, Cory, to the police on grand larceny and burglary charges. In the course of a beating in which Bishop landed a couple of blows with his hands and held Bishop at one point, Jessie Johnson repeatedly struck Gentry with a claw hammer belonging to Bishop and finally killed him. Bishop was 24 at the time of the attack; Gentry was 19 years old.
At the trial in 2000, Bishop admitted taking part in the beating but said he didn't know Johnson was going to kill Gentry. After his conviction, Bishop, crushed, refused to make any mitigating statement, but instead declared that he was bound for Hell and asked the court to do what Gentry's family wanted to do: kill him. The judge said, "Mr. Bishop, I'm going to grant your wish."
After the trial, Bishop changed his mind and appealed the verdict. His case was handled by the state's Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, set up in 2000 to help indigent death row prisoners. Here the case took a curious turn. As the Jackson Free Press reports:
Bishop’s lawyers accuse Robert Ryan, former director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel...with “extreme dereliction of duty” in Ryan’s failure to present mitigating evidence in Bishop’s appeal. The brief includes affidavits supporting the defense’s allegations that Ryan deliberately suppressed his own staff’s investigation, which revealed Bishop’s life-long mental illness, and summarily dismissed the volunteers working on the case.
“The director simply discarded this proof and substituted his own unsubstantiated and frivolous allegations (with the appeal). All the while, Bishop himself had no idea his lead lawyer was sabotaging his main chance to escape execution,“ the lawyers wrote.
“I don’t really know if Ryan was overworked or in over his head,” [James] Craig said... "but whatever the reason is for his lack of performance, it’s just another situation where the quality of justice you get is dependent on whether you have any money. That’s been such a theme for Dale Bishop, because his mother tried to have him taken for (psychiatric evaluation and treatment). They quoted her a price and she couldn’t possibly afford it. This was a situation that probably could have been avoided if somebody would have intervened in (Bishop’s) life.”
The attorneys contend that Bishop's illness prevented him from making a rational decision during the original sentencing. Back to the Free Press:
The brief goes on to say that Ryan failed to have Bishop evaluated although he knew Bishop was taking Lithium after doctors at Parchman diagnosed his illness. Lithium is prescribed almost exclusively to people suffering from bipolar disorder, the brief states. Instead, Ryan made the claim in his appeal that Bishop was mentally retarded, while attaching evidence indicating clearly that he was not.
“I think it’s close to criminal fraud to take the state’s money and handle a case like this,” Craig said.
Ryan's successor in the post, Glenn Swartzfager, is working with Bishop's lawyers in their appeal. In court papers, Swartzfeger called Ryan's work on the case "a sham," the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports. Ryan also buried evidence of abuse suffered by Bishop as a child and youth, as the human rights organization Reprieve notes:
Reprieve volunteers assisting on the case gathered documents and witness statements which proved that Bishop suffered from a chronic mental illness (bipolar depressive disorder, formerly known as “manic depression”) and had undergone horrific trauma when he was young, which clearly affected his capacity to make rational decisions at trial. Bishop’s family noticed problems with his behavior and thinking when he was four years old. His elementary school records from Texas have many references to these problems and to evaluations that showed that Dale Bishop needed serious help. When he was in middle school, his school counselor recommended a psychiatric consultation. The psychiatric hospital Dale’s mother took him to advised immediate inpatient hospitalization, but Mrs. Bishop could not afford the high price of this care. He was only diagnosed and treated for his mental illness when he got to death row.
Also, Dale Bishop’s father was an abusive alcoholic who beat his wife and children – including Dale Bishop – on a weekly basis. The family was incredibly poor. When Dale was an infant, the family had no running water, no indoor bathroom, and no money.
This is evidence that almost surely would have required a new trial, where Dale Bishop could present his case for a life sentence, giving a jury the background about his youth and illness, and letting them weigh up these facts alongside the fact that Dale Bishop was not the killer of Marcus Gentry.
The last-minute appeal also stresses the lack of evidence that the killing was premeditated, which is "one of the components required to impose the death penalty in Mississippi when a defendant is not the actual killer. Bishop’s co-defendant, Johnson, stated in an affidavit that the murder took place after a two-week drug binge and that they had been smoking marijuana, and injecting crystal meth and cocaine prior to the crime," as the Free Press reports. Johnson, who admitted killing Gentry, was given a life sentence at his trial, which was held after Bishop's conviction.
And so this is how "justice" is going to work in Mississippi next week. Dale Leo Bishop, a man riddled with genuine, even suicidal remorse over his part in a drug-addled murder, will be killed by the state next week. Meanwhile, the man who actually committed the murder will live out the rest of his natural life as a ward of that same state.
Reprieve notes:
Dale Bishop never had a real chance in life. If the death penalty is going to be anything more than just a lottery, it’s not fair for some prisoners to lose appeals just because their State-paid lawyer discarded valuable, relevant evidence. We are shocked and sickened by what has happened in this case, and we hope others who look at the facts will feel the same. Dale Bishop’s lawyers are preparing a Petition for Executive Clemency, to present to Governor Haley Barbour if the courts deny the new appeal. We ask all those who are concerned about the justice system to write to the Governor...to ask that he seriously consider, in this case, commuting Dale Bishop’s sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Or, at least, we ask the Governor to grant a temporary reprieve and ask the Parole Board to study the case and make a recommendation for or against a commutation to life imprisonment without parole.
The chance that Barbour, a long-time right-wing political hack and backroom fixer, will actually commute Bishop's sentence or even delay his killing are slim. For one thing, Bishop is white -- or "white trash" as he'd be called amongst Barbour's neo-plantation set -- and his death could help redress the statistical imbalance between the executions of black and white prisoners: an imbalance that always threatens to bring in some busybody judge to interfere with the politically popular operation of the death chamber. But a slim chance is better than none.
“The death penalty feeds a mentality of revenge and vindication and further reduces the dignity and worth of human life,” said Fr. Jeremy Tobin of St. Moses the Black Priory in Raymond. “Executions teach us that killing people is OK, and in fact, should be celebrated,” he added. “Killing is immoral, it is not justified, it is anti-Christian. … Only non-violence can end the self-destruction of a blood-soaked world.”
Below are contact details for Haley Barbour:
Haley Barbour Governor of Mississippi P.O. Box 139 Jackson, MS 39205 Fax: + 1 601-359-3741 E-mail: governor@governor.state.ms.us
Reprieve also provides text for the letter that you can send or adapt here.
Last Chance to Stop Execution of Dale Leo Bishop Chris - very good post, and a travesty of justice.
[i]What is, is that there is no "state of Mississippi" that will strap this man down and shoot poison into his veins. There are the the men who do it, the men who order it, and then men who support...
Death for Dinner: Haley Barbour Kills Dale Leo Bishop Everybody (Dennis Prager, the Supreme Court and the people who appropriate funds for public defender budgets aside) is opposed to the death penalty for provably innocent people. Being against capital punishment for them takes no courage. Being oppose...
Solid Rock: Acquitting Obama of the 'Flip-Flop' Charge [quote]No candidate for President would get any media attention if they did not kiss the various rings of the oligarchs. Obama has been consistent because he is the proverbial slick lawyer who understands the angles and the lay of the land. Having sa...
Solid Rock: Acquitting Obama of the 'Flip-Flop' Charge obama is just a smoother rapist,
one who will convince more people
to enjoy it
kahoneez above has it right -
a more elegant occupation of iraq
is a lead-in to the next war
we're 'merkins and we need more
victories - we can never have enough
Last Chance to Stop Execution of Dale Leo Bishop clemency for one who becomes known to the prince
cold steel for the other who is not
many think we live under a state of fascism
we don't
royalism
News That Stays News Despite being a Dylan fan from 1964 on, personally, I rather prefer this....
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/grand.htm
"Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? "...mediocre translation, but still....
hope you're feeling better, please kee...
Solid Rock: Acquitting Obama of the 'Flip-Flop' Charge 1 . Obama On 60 mins. " we must keep troops in Iraq , to protect out interest " , aka permanent military bases , to project U.S. power .
2 . Wants to " bring combat troops home " , we'll I figured it out right away and that's COMBAT troops are about...
Last Chance to Stop Execution of Dale Leo Bishop THe US lost it's national conscience, IMHO, at Hiroshima & Nagasaki, not that there was much of a conscience to lose. Barbour, on the other hand, never had one, but an appeal to his vanity and political self-interest might reach something in that sh...
Empire and Burlesque: Permanent Bases Rise While Public Gawks at Geeks
Saturday, 23 February 2008
Thirty years ago, I was in Nashville for a Bob Dylan concert. It was during Dylan's "Vegas" tour: full entourage of back-up singers, horn players, "big band" arrangements, glitzy Elvis-style suits for the star, all of it slickly packaged by Hollywood impresario Jerry Weintraub, who handled Frank Sinatra and Neil Diamond, among others. It was, to put it mildly, a real hoot. Especially intriguing was the persona that Dylan had adopted for the tour: a chatty Vegas lounge singer, full of patter and stories for the crowd between numbers. (The very next year I saw him in much more ascetic guise, in a black leather jacket with a stripped-down band doing nothing but Christian songs to a half-empty house during a snowstorm in Knoxville. Now there's a man who really knows something about "change.")
But on that Nashville night, Dylan – loquacious, and probably libated – was doing a lot of his old tunes, including the surreal send-up of conventional wisdom, "Ballad of a Thin Man." In that song, the hapless, clueless "hero" – the now iconic Mister Jones – is shown at one point handing in his ticket "to go see the geek." Even back in 1978, I was old enough to know what a geek really was, but Dylan obviously thought that most of the audience wouldn't get the reference; the word was fast losing its specificity, and was by then mostly used as a vague synonym for "nerd" or some other socially awkward person. So before playing the song, Dylan launched into a long, rambling story about "the carnivals we used to have in the Fifties," and how they all had a "geek" – someone who would bite the head off a live chicken, then proceed to eat the rest of the dead, bleeding, flapping carcass in front of the paying customers. It used to cost just a quarter to see the geek in the old days, Dylan said, "although it probably costs five dollars now."
Today of course, in our glittering 21st century of ubiquitous, 24-hour, multi-platform media access, we can watch geeks for free: all we have to do is turn to the latest reports on the presidential campaign. There we can see the revolting but fascinating spectacle of freakish characters willing to do just about anything – gnaw off a chicken head, lie like a dog, pander like a door pimp, crawl on their bellies to tongue a corporate boot, turn themselves inside out and shake their innards at the camera – to grab our attention and please the carnival's owners. We are also subjected to endless exegesis of every aspect of the geeks' performance: "Wasn't it wonderful how Obama nipped that chicken neck so expertly? Did Hillary do enough to win back the crowd when she slurped down the heart and the liver the same time? Should she have tried to get the gizzard in too? And what about McCain's trouble getting that right wing down his throat? Let's see what our expert analysts have to say. Over to you, Bill Kristol and James Carville…."
But while the feathers fly and the fan dancers trot across the electoral stage, the deadly, democracy-killing business of empire-building grinds on behind the gaudy scenes. And not a single one of the top troika are taking a stand against it; indeed, all of them have made their commitment to American military dominance of the planet – and their proud refusal to take any option "off the table" in world affairs – crystal clear. What we are seeing now – and what we will see when the race narrows down to just a pair of geeks chomping at the chicken – is simply a debate over the best way to keep the empire in fighting trim while gussying up some of the ham-handed excesses of the past few years.
A few days ago came the news – ignored or buried by almost every venue of that non-stop multi-platform media echo chamber – that the United States has made a very significant, and very permanent, addition its empire of bases: one that American officials freely admit will allow them to project "full spectrum" military dominance over 27 sovereign nations. And of course, what is most noteworthy about the development, reported in full in the Pentagon's own Stars and Stripes newspaper, is that this astonishing declaration of imperial aggression and hubris is regarded as something completely normal – indeed laudatory.
Stars and Stripes – an often excellent paper, reporting genuine news that the geek-gawking non-entities in the corporate media ignore – lays it all out, plain and simple:
CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait — U.S. Army Central is establishing a permanent platform for “full spectrum operations” in 27 countries around southwest Asia and the Middle East, its commander says.
Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace said the Army has diverse capabilities here now but plans to reach a complete level of operational effectiveness by July. The restructuring, which offers more flexibility for offensive, defensive and stability operations, is a major piece of transformation worldwide, said Lovelace.
“It’s the first Army command to do this,” said Lovelace, who also heads the Coalition Forces Land Component. “Now, we’re not only operational but the Army has committed other assets…They regionally focus on this area. That was not always the case,” said Lovelace, who took command in mid-December. “These commands now have a permanent responsibility to this theater. They’ll have a permanent presence here. The personnel will change; the commands will remain."
Yes, the personnel will change – even in the White House. But the commands will remain. And this permanent, force-projecting base is of course just the icing on the imperial cake in the region; the U.S. military already has its boots in the ground all over the area, as the newspaper notes:
Col. Michael A. Carroll, USARCENT’s chief of staff, said the command has a footprint in 22 of the area’s 27 countries, where it conducts theater security engagements, peacekeeping and exercises with other militaries. [Not to mention a couple of good ole shootin' wars.]
…Lovelace said the war on terror and a need to be more operationally focused compelled the Army to alter its approach. “You don’t have the element of time on your side anymore, like we did in the Cold War. We’ve got to be ready tonight," he said. "That’s why now you have that broader commitment."
Strange how the "element of time" has narrowed so drastically; I remember being told back in those Cold War days that we were always, forever just six minutes away from nuclear annihilation: that's how long it would take a Soviet first strike to reach the heartland of the Homeland. But of course, as we all know, the few thousand actual Islamic terrorists out there – most of them in the pay of our allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, when they're not actually drawing checks from the CIA and the Pentagon – pose a far greater threat to the existence of the nation than the vast, globe-spanning nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union ever did. Thus the need for planting new gargantuan, permanent military bases in the world's most volatile regions is more urgent and important than ever.
And that's why the new "full spectrum" Army base in Kuwait is just one of the force-projecting fortresses going up all over the world. As William Arkin reports in the Washington Post (not in the actual paper, mind you, but on the Post's blog):
The Air Force and Navy, meanwhile, have set up additional permanent bases in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman. By permanent I mean large and continuing American headquarters and presences, most of which are maintained through a combination of coalition activities, long-standing bilateral agreements and official secrecy. Tens of billions have been plowed into the American infrastructure. Admiral William J. Fallon, the overall commander of the region, was just in Oman this week after a trip to Iraq to secure continuing American military bases in that country.
This new base-building, Arkin says, astutely, has a two-fold purpose. First, it is part of the necessary infrastructure for continuing the war in Iraq on a permanent basis. Second, it is creating "facts on the ground" – like Ariel Sharon's illegal settlements all over Palestinian land – that any future president will find hard to undo…assuming that anyone who was not already committed heart-and-soul to imperial expansion would ever be allowed to get near the White House in the first place. As Arkin puts it:
When a war with Iran loomed and World War III seemed to be gaining traction in the Bush administration, this entire base structure was seen as the "build-up" for the next war. The build-up of course began decades ago, but since 9/11, the focus has been almost exclusively "supporting" U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran is there, but to interpret the planting of the American flags and the moving of chess pieces as being focused on Tehran is to miss what is really going on.
Regardless of who is elected, in the coming year U.S. combat forces in Iraq will undoubtedly continue to contract to a fewer number of combat brigades and special operations forces focused on counter-terrorism and the mission of continuing to train and mentor the Iraqi Army and police forces. Much of the "war" that is already being fought is being supported from Kuwait and other locations, and the ongoing shifts seem to point to an intent to increasingly pull additional functions and people out of harm's way.
Of course they will not be out of harm's way at all, because a permanent American military presence in the region brings with it its own dangers and provocations. But most important what it brings for the next president is a fait accompli: a pause that facilitates a drawdown that begins to look a lot like a continuation of the same military and strategic policy, even at a time when there is broad questioning as to whether this is the most effective way to fight "terrorism."
Arkin is of course being over-polite in his conclusion: it has long been clear that the Bush Administration's policies – repeatedly ratified by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment – have nothing to do with fighting "terrorism," effectively or otherwise. It is a demonstrable fact – attested to by the Administration's own intelligence services – that these policies are actually exacerbating, empowering and emboldening terrorism all over the world. It is also obvious – albeit far less openly acknowledged – that these policies are themselves a form of terrorism: state terrorism, on a massive scale, which has already killed at least a million people in Iraq alone.
But Arkin is right on the money in noting that these developments – which have drawn not a peep of protest or the slightest questioning from the great "progressives" seeking the Democratic nomination (much less the bilious bagman cruising to the GOP nod) – are indeed "a continuation of the same military and strategic policy" that is driving the imperial war-state on to more "full spectrum operations" all over the world, for decades to come. And much as I might wish it to be otherwise, I have seen nothing to make me believe that any of the chicken-chompers bound for the White House will make any actual, substantial changes in this policy, much less begin the task of rolling back the empire.
But hey, did you see how Hillary waggled those feathers in her mouth when Obama spit that beak out at her? Then Hillary's campaign manager said… and then the polls showed… and then McCain told a reporter that… and then the Oscars… March Madness, baby!
Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is -- do you, Mister Jones?
The rage seems to be right. The madness of the geeks has won the mob. How in the world did we find ourselves in a place which gives so little value to life and the feelings of all our family?
A post back or two you called Barack Obama "eloquent," which might have been the case in 1953, or 1911, but he is selling snake oil, pre-wrapped, with no history, no awareness of complication, another Jimmy Carter, as Alex Cockburn has opined. The empire's military, as you state, is enormous, metastasizing, but we don't even know the basics about it. How much money is it devouring? Is there the slightest regulation over it? Who even speaks publicly about it? What could ever even slow down its growth, let start to roll it back? Where is there one tarmac given back to the native people for use as a large roller blading park? How did the supersystem become impermeable, and we such fantasists? I would suggest that everybody look back at Michael Mukaysey's "unhh...unhh" testimony about torture, wherein one religious old man's blithering stupidity (oh, I forgot, Scott Horton's great friend of the "rule of law") in the face of his state violence speaks for the level of our "eloquence."
"Facts on the ground" indeed, Mr Floyd. The parallels in this essay are so perfectly apt.
POTUS candidates = carnival geeks
US Military base expansion = illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine
Media circus re POTUS candidates = Dylan "handled" by a coarse, garish impresario whose produced entertainment is even more hackneyed and trite than his own personal vulgar tastes.
I do believe you are the only political essayist writing today who combines literary skill with political insight. For this alone you should be commended. That your insight is accurate and prescient merely amplifies the extant quality and value.
...Welcome to Hell. Bread & Circuses are free, and the interrogation rooms down the hall on the left. The nations allowing the proliferation of our military bases have embraced the suicidal extinction drive of the race. And yeah, born in 1951, living through practically all of the Cold War, I'm puzzled that we need all this to fight literally a "few thousand" terrorists now, when we managed quite well against the "Russian Might", another con job BTW, with so much less, back then, especially with the horrific arsenal we now have, which didn't exist then.
But hey, don't worry, be happy, munch the bread and enjoy the circus clowns. As Chris, so truly points out, "I have seen nothing to make me believe that any of the chicken-chompers bound for the White House will make any actual, substantial changes in this policy, much less begin the task of rolling back the empire."
It must play itself out to the end. Nothing can stop it.
these policies are actually exacerbating, empowering and emboldening terrorism all over the world.
Exactly! Instability is the goal, the better to employ the US military in the expansion of US power and profits.
Bush, speaking last November: "And now we're at the start of a new century, and the same debate is once again unfolding -- this time regarding my policy in the Middle East. Once again, voices in Washington are arguing that the watchword of the policy should be 'stability.' And once again they're wrong." http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071101-4.html
And as Chris points out none of this has been countered by the midgets running for president. In fact they are all calling for an expansion of the military and increased military spending!
If nothing else, the Empire will maintain the legions on the borders. A modern state may compel it's subjects to struggle to the edge of extermination. Boys in Imperial Germany in 1918 looked forward to going to the trenches, where they might recieve a meal. Germany and Japan were laid waste until there was little power to resist, and the people were dragooned to serve till death. Falling from the middle class is not the same as fighting over the remnants at the bottom of a garbage can.
Laer, Did Chris use the word "imperialism"? I missed it. In any case the US goal of “full spectrum operations” in all ME countries seems to fit the definition, and in fact you seem to think US control is necessary in the ME because "none of the existing Gulf countries are anywhere near our model of what a nation should be" -- true imperialist thinking.
Suggesting that Iran, with elections coming up, is less of "what a nation should be" than countries the US supports like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and UAE is amusing. In Abu Dhabi last month Bush said: "I'm proud to stand in a nation where the people have an opportunity to build a better future for themselves and their families. . .In my country, we speak of these developments as the advance of freedom." Flipping over to the CIA Factbook for the United Arab Emirates we see: "Suffrage: none". Nobody votes in the UAE. Some advance of freedom. Again, Iran is a democracy.
But we already knew that Bush moving his lips is automatic evidence of lying.
By the way, Russia, not the US, is by far the largest country in the world and it's arguable that the US is the most powerful country in the world, given the sad state of its finances, the economic strength of China and the demonstrated US incompetence in foreign and military affairs. Five years to pacify a liberated capital? Nothing to brag about, I'd say.
I see the logical extension of this limited mode of living played out again and again by promoters of empire, and those who choose not to negotiate Reality on any social plane, including their own minds or the souls of their brothers and sisters..
I am not a man who believes that Being is inherently Moral. The study of Nature has been my guide to the discernable aspects of Being.
How funny, then, that I find myself concerned for the greater good of Humanity, my neighbors, and, indeed, strangers in the street - while the clever, cutting, superior intellects of the Right revel in their own odd lesson from Nature: POWER IS HOLY.
So deeply misguided.
Do you, my adolescent friend, ever consider the obvious question that should arise from your self-defining confrontation with the 'left wing' which you so disdain - hmmm; something like: "Why do they view Humanity from such a disdainful remove and yet Trumpet the Importance of Human Values - while I sit upon a Mountain Top of Civilized Honours and tolerate all manner of Barbarous Horrors in obeisance to my God?"
If you think Iran is a democracy, I've got this wonderful, almost antique bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you for next to nothing.
Read Iran's written Constitution (which I have) and then tell me if you think it's a democracy.
{Hint: The "elected" president of Iran has about as much constitutional power as does our Vice President, except our VP doesn't have to take orders from the ruling Council of Mullahs.]
For its average citizens, the entire ME is hell on earth.
Frederick, I say Iran is a democracy, you say it isn't. Actually I don't care. It's none of my business, nor yours. Iran is in fact having elections, which are unknown in the sultanates. Is the US a democracy, given the situations with nominations and elections, and corporate influence?
You say the transfer of wealth to ME sultans makes the case for US hegemony in the ME? What makes you think that the US is in a position to control these people? They own us. Do you really entertain the dream that US Christians will be the new masters of Mecca?
For its average citizens, the entire ME is hell on earth.
Horsepucky. You don't know what you're talking about. Evidence? Is it really worse to live in Dubai than in Detroit or Kansas City?
Our hegemonic desire will not be forsworn. As you point out, none of the surviving candidates denies this fundamental quest; they wrestle among themselves over the means, that's all.
To the extent the topic arises at all in the campaigns. For the most part, the march of Empire is off the table, not to be discussed. Other things are FAR more important to the Masses, and those things shall have their airings. Is a flag pin enough patriotism? What about a magnetic ribbon? Should candidates be forced to provide detailed proposals about domestic issues in every speech or only some of them? Has the Swiftboating already begun, or will we have to wait till August?
And did you hear? Barack isn't just a Muslim who wears a turban, he's a Communist, too. And a Fascist. So is his mouthy wife.
These are the matters that concern the Public. Not Empire or its march.
those who choose not to negotiate Reality on any social plane, including their own minds or the souls of their brothers and sisters..
Why navigate reality, when you can recast reality in a fantasy that lays all blame at the feet of "leftists"? Especially when those one accuses of "left" thought are not wandering around with banners of socialism or communism unfurled and proudly flying, but instead simply are pointing out the serious flaws in pretending that only a small set of Americans know what is best for the whole world.
Doubtless "laer" thinks him/herself one of that small set who knows what's best. I mean, look at his/her post. It's all right there in sadly deluded and utterly misinformed prose.
In a response to the initial post, Mr. Bernanke stated that the "desolate region of the planet with one asset invaluable to sustaining the economic and material progress of the rest of the world: OIL."
We are killing our planet by not only the drive to obtain this resource but by not seriously seeking to find alternative methods of energy that are sustainable and less harmful to our shrinking planet.
It is a dearth of the imagination of those on the Right, those who see the world in a Manichean fight between good and evil and they, of course, always seeing themselves as being on the side of good and those who disagree as evil. A simplistic, but comfortable view to be sure.
The need is to think outside of the box of a run wild capitalism fuelled by unquenchable greed, the model that the whole military-industrial-corporate model operates upon. Unless we wholesale change the model, our "empire" will go the way of others.
Already the signs of unsustainability are shredding the social fabric of America (after decades of shredding the social fabric of third world countries across the globe) in its pursuit of satisfying the insatiable.
Your model is bankrupt. Time for you and your buddy Laer to clap yourself around your head and come up with a new thinking, one forward looking and grounded in reality, one not bound to strangling other nations of the world to get what you want.
Thirty years ago, I was in Nashville for a Bob Dylan concert. It was during Dylan's "Vegas" tour: full entourage of back-up singers, horn players, "big band" arrangements, glitzy Elvis-style suits for the star, all of it slickly packaged by Hollywood impresario Jerry Weintraub, who handled Frank Sinatra and Neil Diamond, among others. It was, to put it mildly, a real hoot. Especially intriguing was the persona that Dylan had adopted for the tour: a chatty Vegas lounge singer, full of patter and stories for the crowd between numbers. (The very next year I saw him in much more ascetic guise, in a black leather jacket with a stripped-down band doing nothing but Christian songs to a half-empty house during a snowstorm in Knoxville. Now there's a man who 
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