Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
Recent
Stories
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
Hot Stories
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
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.
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August
21, 2003
Bush's Tinker-Toy
Ideology
Toward
Permanent War?
By VIRGINIA TILLEY
The terrible bombing of the UN offices in Baghdad
has capped an accelerating series of sabotage actions against
Iraqi water mains, oil pipelines, electricity grids--and US soldiers,
hapless agents of this mess, who are killed daily. But most sharply,
it highlights one fact: the end of "major combat operations"
in Iraq announced by President Bush on May 1 was not the culmination
of trouble but the beginning of an inevitable march into quagmire.
The Bush administration has waded into a military adventure of
breathtaking complexity brandishing a tonker-toy ideology of
"spreading democracy," on some Napoleonic agenda to
reconfigure the entire Middle East. Yet in the real world of
Iraqi society and politics, that naiveté has proved disastrous.
Over-stretched and poorly planned, the
US occupation daily inflicts yet more suffering on a war-weary
population. A still-crippled infrastructure, and brutal search
and arrest tactics by US soldiers, inspire arching resentment
and fury among Iraqi civilians. In this light, are massive explosions,
orchestrated by an invisible resistance force, really surprising?
To Saddam's left-over thugs, outraged Iraqi nationalists are
doubtless swelling the ranks of those willing to launch suicidal
actions against the foreign invader. And not only Iraqi militants
but any foresighted militant nationalists in the region might
logically seek to sabotage the US occupation, if only to deter
the US from trying the same venture elsewhere. How does any occupier
combat such diverse and furtive resistance, which may not even
be a true network? The outlook is very grim. As US officials
swear even greater commitment to making it all work, and as the
death count mounts, one can almost hear the old doomed Vietnam
mantra, "peace with honor."
Yet the explosion which wrecked the UN
offices in Baghdad (the "worst day in UN history" according
to some) signals something worse: that, at least for some well-armed
militants, the UN itself has become seen as an arm of US foreign
policy. Whether this impression is actually wrong is debatable--certainly
UN employees are committed to their mission--but it is hardly
foolish. Through the 1990s, the UN implemented the US-sponsored
sanctions regime which wrecked Iraqi society. The UN Security
Council recently endorsed the US-installed puppet government
and effectively recognized the occupation by opening a UN mission
office to help make it successful. In the meantime, the Bush
administration has rejected any meaningful participation by other
world powers (except its loyal retainer, Britain) in the rebuilding
of Iraq. Other countries have indeed retreated in disgust from
the White House's funneling--in blazon crony fashion--of the
country's reconstruction contracts to Vice President Cheney's
former (and future?) company, Halliburton. By arriving to improve
social conditions and foster "democracy" under such
an occupation, the UN effectively becomes an accessory to it.
For Iraqis outside the immediate pale of US and UN activities,
the difference between the two is reduced to the color of flags
and vehicles. In this context, a quisling UN has clearly manifested
to someone as a legitimate target.
Unprecedented and heartbreaking, this
attack on the UN has broader and even more frightening implications.
If the UN itself is seen in Iraq as a legitimate target, what
are the implications for UN efforts toward peace elsewhere? As
the anti-US networks share ideas and training, will all dedicated
UN volunteers be helplessly recast as local agents of US imperial
interests? The fragile ethic of world cooperation sustained by
the UN is fraying dangerously with its own reduction to a superpower
flunky, a transformation signaled by this bombing. And if that
damage continues? Instead of the hopeful march toward world peace
which the UN and its many agencies represented, we may instead
face an Orwellian state of permanent war: the "war on terrorism"
which, already sweeping a vast range of complex conflicts under
one label and ill-equipped doctrine, will drag us all into its
quagmire.
Virginia Tilley
is Associate Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William
Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. She can be reached at: TILLEY@hws.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
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