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Today's
Stories
October
3 / 5, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
All Armi
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
Recent
Stories
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
October 3 / 5, 2003
Clark is Not Cincinnatus
Hope
Against Hope
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
I don't know how many times I've seen articles
about Wesley Clark making a formidable opponent for George Bush.
And I agree, he likely would, but so what?
I too am sick of the sound of Bush's
voice. My radio dial is turned five words into any sound clip
from this dangerous half-wit with a speech impediment, but what
can be gained by replacing him with Clark?
For people in high positions, criticizing
Bush now on Iraq is cheap talk. The idiotic, destructive war
is done. Americans must live with its consequences and responsibilities
no matter who is President. A decent alternative to Bush demands
more than a few cheap words of criticism.
You might think the people writing these
pieces see Clark as the embodiment of America's silly myths about
citizen-soldiers, a kind of television-age Cincinnatus, who could
defeat one of the most lamentable, wrong-headed President in
American history.
Clark is not a citizen soldier. He is
a professional, a lifetime paid killer. And he has done a good
deal of killing. His record just in the very brief and relatively
small conflict in Serbia is filled with dead non-combatants,
from busloads of cremated civilians to people blown apart at
a downtown television station. I understand his thinking in doing
these things. I just totally disagree with it.
His record there is marked also with
unbelievably poor judgment. The attack he ordered against a large
Russian force was deranged. Thank God, a tough old British general
dared to disobey the order. Even the bombing of the Chinese embassy
was never satisfactorily explained. His documented fraternization
with a vicious war criminal appalled many Europeans.
Generals of any kind rarely make good
democratic leaders. They have lived their entire adult lives
barking orders at folks trained to respond to barking, basic
military training having great similarities to obedience school
for dogs. The entire purpose of much of this training is to efface
individual will and initiative.
That's why generals come from places
like West Point. They are imbued with an ideology not intended
for enlisted men, an ideology of officers' class, privilege,
and authority.
Any military organization functions a
great deal like a Soviet-style government. Direction comes from
above, the Pentagon representing the quintessence of a centrally-planned
economy. Waste and inefficiency come on a colossal scale. The
waste goes largely unquestioned, because patriotism covers a
many evils or, at any rate, intimidates a multitude of critics.
Civilian government simply does not work
that way. There is more than a tinge of wishful thinking that
people who bark orders can "make the trains run on time."
It rarely turns out that way.
General-President Eisenhower, one of
the better of a bad lot in American history, despite his personal
charm and common-sense words, displayed many dangerous qualities.
He worked with the appalling Dulles brothers, gentlemen whose
thinking perhaps more closely resembled their Soviet counterparts
than any democratic officials. The Bay of Pigs invasion was planned
and organized under Eisenhower's stewardship. He took many risks
with the Soviet Union, including the disastrous flight of a U-2,
shot down just before an important summit. A number of democratically-elected
governments were toppled by Eisenhower's government. Men like
the Shah of Iran, torturer of countless thousands, were put into
power over democratically elected officials. He kept the eerie,
pathological Richard Nixon on the ticket when there was a sound
excuse to drop him.
What most Americans recall about Eisenhower
was that the nation grew in the postwar period, that he was affable,
and that he had a cute nickname. Some recall his powerful words
on the military-industrial complex, a fair warning that has been
utterly ignored.
What do we know about Clark? He discovered
what party he belonged to in a kind of epiphany at about sixty
years of age. This suggests either retardation or lying, and
I'm pretty sure he is a bright fellow. What a silly nonsense
to believe this. Has he never voted in elections or contributed
to a party? Of course, what has really happened is that only
the Democrats offer Clark the opportunity to rise to Commander-in-Chief.
Clark senses Bush is increasingly vulnerable,
and I believe he is right. Bush's vulnerability will increase
as the staggering costs of invading and occupying Iraq become
apparent and as months of melodramatic reports of ambushed Americans
continue.
What will America get for its treasure
and blood? A more stable Middle East? Look at the disastrous
situation of the Palestinians today and say that with a straight
face. Sharon has been supported through a relentless campaign
of state-terror in the name of fighting terror. The very economy
of Israel is at risk owing to its trying to behave like a world
power on the pocket book of a moderate-size American state. And
peace remains further away than at any time in recent memory,
a new poll showing Israelis voicing despair, something the Palestinians
have lived with for decades.
Consider the festering resentments of
tens of thousands of Iraqis bitterly suffering for years under
the impact of Bush's delusions. Crime and murder have risen to
unprecedented levels in Iraq, increased by thousands of percent
over what they were before Bush smashed public order. Many discontents,
uncertainties, and internal rivalries have been released, and
new enemies are in the making.
In Afghanistan, a costly mess remains.
The figurehead president of the country, who has little reason
to cause Bush grief, himself admits it will take years to gain
stability. The production of opium poppies has exploded since
the Taliban were pushed aside. Perhaps, American soldiers will
come home as they did from Vietnam, addicted to drugs. That was,
after all, one of the hidden costs of America's insane Vietnam
crusade: farm boys from every corner of America returned home
using drugs they never had heard of before.
On top of all this, the American economy
is sour, and I don't mean just current GDP growth. Longer-term
matters are at stake. Clinton's surpluses have been squandered,
deficits in trade and expenditure have reached intimidating levels,
and the economy is under the shadow of unknowably-vast obligations
abroad, including everything from billions in bribes for foreign
support in Iraq to open-ended contracts for associates of Bush
and Cheney.
Bush officials are shown daily to be
remarkably petty and corrupt. Imagine a neocon outing a CIA agent?
It's the kind of act for which they would have nailed Clinton
to a cross. But these nasty people's lust for vengeance and getting
even drives them to do about anything.
The national-security apparatus they
have put into place is horrible and dangerous and can only increasingly
be seen to be so as it operates.
Yes, Bush will be vulnerable. So why
waste the opportunity on Clark? There have to be better people.
Unfortunately, American national politics
are about as agile as the Pentagon's bloated bulk. An American
presidential campaign takes forever, often coming to resemble
in cost and duration preparations for the landing at Normandy.
The actual conditions at the time of the election can only be
guessed at in such a lengthy process. It is one of the more foolish
and costly parts of American politics, but it is the reality
people must work under. So, a handsome general with no political
baggage who criticizes the President about Iraq a little bit
looks like a good bet.
And that is how America is run, and those
who dream of something else only hope against hope.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
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