Two books I’ve read recently have led to my musings on the fallout from humanity’s favorite pastime—and I don’t mean the obvious stuff like thousands of deaths, more thousands with absent limbs or battered brains, and still more with PTSD and other anti-social maladies. I’m talking about the lovely by-products of war which shape our societies for years afterwards. Jaron Lanier in his recent book, You Are Not a Gadget, for example, points out that modern computers were developed to guide missiles and break secret military codes. He lumps chess and computers as having derived from violence and competition. Even more specific, however, is Sandra Steingraber’s Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (first published 1997; recently expanded and reissued). There she points out the often-direct relationship between war innovations and the chemicals that cause cancer. In commenting about the steep rise in lymphomas, for example, she writes that they seem to be correlated with exposure to synthetic chemicals, “especially a class of pesticides known as phenoxy herbicides.” And where did these originate? They were “born in 1942 as part of a never-implemented plan by the U.S. military to destroy rice fields in Japan” (52). Never implemented, of course, because we dropped two atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead. Nonetheless, the chemicals referred to are the now-infamous 2,4,5-T (2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4-D (2,4, dichlorophenoxyacetic acid). In combination, they are known as Agent Orange, which the military was finally able to use in Vietnam between 1962 and 1970, and which contributed to uncounted deaths among Vietnamese, and a still rising incidence of non-Hodgkins lymphomas and lesser ailments among American veterans of Vietnam. The combination was outlawed in 1970, but one of the pair, 2,4-D is still in use, having become one of our most popular domestic weed killers for lawns, gardens, golf courses and farm fields. Its use on lawns may be one of the reasons why so many of our dogs—rolling happily in our chemicalized lawns--have been contracting lymphomas.
More generally, war provides industry, including the chemical industry, with a wonderful testing ground for all kinds of products. And when the war is over, those products find a new home in our homes. Steingraber again points out that after 1940,
…synthetic organic chemical production [doubled] every seven to eight years. By the end of the 1980s, total production had exceeded 200 billion pounds per year. In other words, production of synthetic organic chemicals increased 100-fold between the time my mother was born and the year I finished graduate school. Two human generations (90.)
These “synthetic organics” are marvelous little concoctions, perfectly designed, because of their similarity to our natural body chemicals, to react with us, but different enough to be hard to excrete. And what they do? “Some interfere with our hormones, some cripple the immune system, and some overstimulate the activity of certain enzymes.” And they are associated with what the World Health Organization concluded are the “80% of all cancers attributable to environmental influences.” Yes, you read that correctly: 80%.
Why don’t we know this? Why isn’t someone investigating this stuff? That’s the job Steingraber assumed. And her conclusions are not encouraging. First of all, cancer is not some random misfortune; it is specific in that fully “one-half of all the world’s cancers occur among people living in industrialized countries…especially North America and Northern Europe. Breast cancer rates are 30 times higher in the U.S. than in parts of Africa.” The places, in other words, where the fallout from two world wars and countless smaller ones has been greatest. Among them are those chemicals we’ve been hearing about recently, the estrogen mimickers which, “at a low level inside the human body mimic the female hormone estrogen.” Regarding this estrogenic fallout of war, Steingraber then gives us this zinger:
Many of the hypermasculine weapons of conquest and progress are, biologically speaking, emasculating (109.)
Read that again. And then consider further facts: In 1939 (i.e., pre-WWII) there were a mere 32 pesticidal active ingredients registered with the federal government, while
At present, 860 active ingredients are so registered and are formulated into 20,000 different pesticidal products. Current U.S. annual use is estimated at 2.23 billion pounds….82% of U.S. households use pesticides of some kind….Between 45,000 and 100,000 chemicals are now in common commercial use…Of these only about 1.5 to 3% (1200 to 1500 chemicals) have been tested for carcinogenicity. (95 & 97).
You get the picture. We are being bathed in a chemical soup (much of our drinking water is also contaminated; worse, the effects of bathing and showering in such water may be as bad or worse than drinking it, so don’t count on bottled water) whose effects are unknown to us because governments pass laws that sound good, but lack implementation. For example, in Illinois, Steingraber’s home state, the legislature passed a Health and Hazardous Substances Registry Act but though the State Cancer Registry compiles cancer deaths, it does nothing to try to correlate these deaths with exposure to hazardous substances: the state funded the cancer registry, but not a hazardous substances registry. In fact, from the data that Steingraber compiles, it is clear that a concerted effort has been made to keep the environmental causes of cancer out of the public’s consciousness.
This is clear from Steingraber’s rundown of the information on cancer prevention. There’s the much-heralded “war on cancer.” There are marches on behalf of funding for breast cancer and other cancer research. But with regard to causes, the onus is placed on—your guessed it—the victims. DNA, we are told, will solve the cancer puzzle because cancer is hereditary (you got it from your parents.) Or it’s your lifestyle that’s at fault: eat less fats, eat vegetables, don’t smoke, get lots of exercise. After that, if you still get cancer, it’s your own fault. But what Steingraber points out (with some suppressed fury, for she herself got bladder cancer in her teens), is that hereditary cancers are rare: “Collectively, fewer than 10% of all malignancies are thought to involve inherited mutations.” That leaves 85 to 90% unaccounted for; and thus likely due to environmental influences. It also leaves 30% to 40% of Americans due to get cancer in their lifetimes.
What are those environmental influences? Consider the class of chemicals called “triazines.” These must be some of the most diabolic substances ever conceived. Why? Because some of these emissaries from hell actually “strike directly at the process by which plants use sunlight to transform water and carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen.” That is, they block the most fundamental process in life—photosynthesis—the process whereby earth produces plants not only to eat, but to be used as food by herbivores upon whom we depend for meat and dairy products as well. In short, the entire food chain. Imagine this! Aside from the question (which is all the pooh-bahs would like to consider) of whether such chemicals cause cancer, consider, as Steingraber puts it, “the wisdom of broadcasting over the landscape (atrazine is one of the top two most widely used pesticides in U.S. agriculture) chemicals that extinguish the miraculous fact of photosynthesis—which after all, furnishes us our sole supply of oxygen” (160). I mean, if this be not madness, what is? Soluble in water, traces of atrazine have now been found in ground water, 98% of surface waters in the Midwest, and in raindrops. Meanwhile, the EPA dithers and delays, no doubt influenced by mega-farmers and the chemical industry, to the point that 30 years from the time they were introduced, we still do not know the cancer risks of triazines coating our corn, our peaches, our plums, our apples, our cherries, peaches, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes and pears. Not to mention the long-term effects of interfering with photosynthesis (algae are also affected).
There’s more in this courageous, disturbing book, and I haven’t even looked at the updated edition. Read it if you dare. And the truth is, we all need to dare, or have our lives controlled by the conscienceless hucksters who now drive our agriculture, our household cleaning habits, our drinking water, our immune systems, our entire way of life. DuPont used to have a commercial slogan: “Better things, for better living…through chemistry.” We don’t hear that too much anymore. I wonder why.
Lawrence DiStasi
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Showing posts with label 100 year war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 100 year war. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2010
Monday, August 02, 2010
Oh What a Lovely War
As we all ponder the meaning and impact of the massive release of 70,000 or 90,000 secret documents on Wikileaks this week, I can’t help but focus on just a few elements: First, the activity of drone aircraft in seeking out and killing “targets”; and second, the mistakes inevitable in relying on massive airstrikes to simply kill whatever moves in an area selected by troops on the ground. Both of these expedients—the certain result of the impeccable military logic that annoints high-tech equipment as a god capable of removing casualties from war and making its soldiers invulnerable—combine to justify massive killing to prevent any threat to Americans, even American forces armed to the teeth and invading another country.
Before looking at a few samples of the wikileak trove, it’s important to recall a June 2, 2010 report by Agence France Presse conveying a UN special rapporteur’s report on the CIA’s use of drones. Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said that the CIA’s droning amounted to “a license to kill without accountability.” Alston worried that the U.S.’s claimed license of targeting individuals anywhere in the world runs the risk of “doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.” He especially complained about the fact that the criteria used by the CIA to justify its targeting of individuals was shrouded in official secrecy. In other words, not only were U.S. operatives assassinating individuals with impunity, but by offering no justification for their selections, they were judge, jury and executioner all in one: “In a situation in which there is no disclosure of who has been killed, for what reason, and whether innocent civilians have died, the legal principle of international accountability is, by definition, comprehensively violated.” To add that the human agents in the drone killings were youthful pilots sitting in dark rooms in faraway Nevada, tracking shadows on a computer screen, only makes the executions more macabre.
These drones, though, are the latest and apparently the most beloved of the military’s death toys. No human need enter a danger zone. The drones fly above battlefields or villages or wherever they choose, operated from afar, carrying lethal weapons that are precisely fired. They never complain, do not get tired (drones can stay aloft for 24 hours without a break), or bored, or distracted. They are the ultimate killing machine. Except, that is, when they get lost. This is what happened to one of the Air Force’s prized drones, a Reaper (don’t you just love the names the military comes up with? surely not to evoke thoughts of McCormick’s wheat reaper, but rather the euphemism for death as “the grim reaper”—though cutting down humans as the reaper cuts wheat is no doubt what animated the metaphor in the first place). As the NY Times explained the Wikileaks report:
“Equipped with advanced radar and sophisticated cameras, as well as Hellfire missiles and 500-pound bombs, the Reaper had lost its satellite link to its pilot [the one in Nevada]. No matter how he tried, the pilot couldn’t regain control [of his toy, only with a 66-foot wingspan], so his superiors ordered an F-15E fighter jet to shoot down the $13 million aircraft before it soared unguided into neighboring Tajikistan.” (NY Times, 7.25.10)
This grim comedy continued when the jet struck the drone with a Sidewinder missile, destroying the drone’s engine, just as the remote pilot regained satellite control. But it was too late. The comedy ended when the pilot steered it “into a remote mountainside for a final fiery landing.”
Imagine. Millions in equipment crashed into a mountain—because far worse than losing a measly $13 million would have been a landing that resulted in the Taliban recovering our secrets, our technology, our technological advantage.
Imagine, too, the terror of being on the ground pursued by one of these things. Death from the sky. No protestation of innocence. No begging for mercy. No warning even. Innocent or guilty, the Reaper seeks only to complete the death sentence ordered from half a world away. By some 20-something dweeb in a bunker in Nevada.
Or by some dweebs on the ground, those Special Forces killers until recently commanded by their killer-in-chief, General McChrystal. Another Wikileaks document, from June 17, 2007, details one of their missions gone awry. Of course, they were trying, via five rockets, to dispatch Abu Laith al-Libi, reportedly a top commander for Al Quaeda, said to be hiding in the targeted compound in Paktika province. But when helicopters dropped commandos from Task Force 373 to finish the job, they found no al-Libi. Instead, they found a “group of men suspected of being militants and their children. Seven of the children had been killed by the rocket attack.” When the men tried to flee, six of them were also killed by encircling helicopters. The rest were taken prisoner. But the good Americans did try to save a child still alive in the rubble, and performed CPR.
Unaccountably, news of the attack resulted in “a wave of anger over the region.” But not to worry, with a list of “talking points” drawn up by the Americans, the local governor explained the mistake: the Americans had been after an Al Quaeda leader and no one told them women and children would be in the compound. Indeed, the attack was really their own fault, caused by the “presence of hoodlums,” he said, and “could have been prevented had the people exposed the presence of insurgents in the area.”
Finally, a Sept. 3, 2009 report, from Kunduz province, described yet another mistaken airstrike, this time attributable to a slight mishap on the part of JATC, the Joint Terminal Attack Controller team responsible for ground communications and guidance for pilots and airstrikes. Responding to a police report saying that “2X FUEL TRUCKS WERE STOLEN BY UNK [unknown] NUMBER OF INS [insurgents]” who planned to cross the Kunduz River with their booty, the JTAC claimed to have seen not only the trucks, but “UP TO 70 INS” at “THE FORD ON THE RIVER.” [As to how JTAC “saw” this, the Times account speculates that the JTAC may have received live feed to their computer from infrared video cameras in some aircraft]. Then a German commander got involved, assured everyone that “NO CIVILIANS WERE IN THE VICINITY” and “AUTHORIZED AN AIRSTIKE.” An F-15 fighter plane then dropped two 500-pound guided bombs. Naturally, those killed were “56x INS KIA [insurgents killed in action],” 14 more fled northeast, and the two trucks were also destroyed. A good night’s work.
Only that the initial report was wrong. In fact, the trucks, apparently abandoned, were surrounded by civilians trying to remove fuel. This was learned only when the military reported that “International Media reported that US airstrikes had killed 60 civiians in Kunduz.” Those dastardly Taliban, having stolen the truck, had invited civilians in the area to help themselves with fuel. Seen from above, civilians were clearly INS [insurgents].
You get the picture. War is not lovely. In the best of conditions, it is messy, gruesome, murderous to those who have the misfortune of being in its vicinity. In this case, it is Afghan villagers who most often feed the grisly appetite of the war machine. And in Afghanistan, increasingly, the machines are in control. Trouble is, machines have no sense. They are inhuman by definition. When that inhumanity, as it inevitably must, reaches back and infects the humans ostensibly in control, they too become mechanical. That is what, overall, one discerns from reading the Wikileaks material. The United States, in attempting to maintain its tottering global empire, has become a killing machine. Far from protecting us as its champions claim, that transformation imperils us all.
Lawrence DiStasi
NB: For those of you too young to recall, the title of this piece comes from a 1963 musical composed by Joan Littlewood; it premiered on Broadway in 1964, and though it’s ostensibly about WWI, it applies to other wars rather nicely.
Before looking at a few samples of the wikileak trove, it’s important to recall a June 2, 2010 report by Agence France Presse conveying a UN special rapporteur’s report on the CIA’s use of drones. Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said that the CIA’s droning amounted to “a license to kill without accountability.” Alston worried that the U.S.’s claimed license of targeting individuals anywhere in the world runs the risk of “doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.” He especially complained about the fact that the criteria used by the CIA to justify its targeting of individuals was shrouded in official secrecy. In other words, not only were U.S. operatives assassinating individuals with impunity, but by offering no justification for their selections, they were judge, jury and executioner all in one: “In a situation in which there is no disclosure of who has been killed, for what reason, and whether innocent civilians have died, the legal principle of international accountability is, by definition, comprehensively violated.” To add that the human agents in the drone killings were youthful pilots sitting in dark rooms in faraway Nevada, tracking shadows on a computer screen, only makes the executions more macabre.
These drones, though, are the latest and apparently the most beloved of the military’s death toys. No human need enter a danger zone. The drones fly above battlefields or villages or wherever they choose, operated from afar, carrying lethal weapons that are precisely fired. They never complain, do not get tired (drones can stay aloft for 24 hours without a break), or bored, or distracted. They are the ultimate killing machine. Except, that is, when they get lost. This is what happened to one of the Air Force’s prized drones, a Reaper (don’t you just love the names the military comes up with? surely not to evoke thoughts of McCormick’s wheat reaper, but rather the euphemism for death as “the grim reaper”—though cutting down humans as the reaper cuts wheat is no doubt what animated the metaphor in the first place). As the NY Times explained the Wikileaks report:
“Equipped with advanced radar and sophisticated cameras, as well as Hellfire missiles and 500-pound bombs, the Reaper had lost its satellite link to its pilot [the one in Nevada]. No matter how he tried, the pilot couldn’t regain control [of his toy, only with a 66-foot wingspan], so his superiors ordered an F-15E fighter jet to shoot down the $13 million aircraft before it soared unguided into neighboring Tajikistan.” (NY Times, 7.25.10)
This grim comedy continued when the jet struck the drone with a Sidewinder missile, destroying the drone’s engine, just as the remote pilot regained satellite control. But it was too late. The comedy ended when the pilot steered it “into a remote mountainside for a final fiery landing.”
Imagine. Millions in equipment crashed into a mountain—because far worse than losing a measly $13 million would have been a landing that resulted in the Taliban recovering our secrets, our technology, our technological advantage.
Imagine, too, the terror of being on the ground pursued by one of these things. Death from the sky. No protestation of innocence. No begging for mercy. No warning even. Innocent or guilty, the Reaper seeks only to complete the death sentence ordered from half a world away. By some 20-something dweeb in a bunker in Nevada.
Or by some dweebs on the ground, those Special Forces killers until recently commanded by their killer-in-chief, General McChrystal. Another Wikileaks document, from June 17, 2007, details one of their missions gone awry. Of course, they were trying, via five rockets, to dispatch Abu Laith al-Libi, reportedly a top commander for Al Quaeda, said to be hiding in the targeted compound in Paktika province. But when helicopters dropped commandos from Task Force 373 to finish the job, they found no al-Libi. Instead, they found a “group of men suspected of being militants and their children. Seven of the children had been killed by the rocket attack.” When the men tried to flee, six of them were also killed by encircling helicopters. The rest were taken prisoner. But the good Americans did try to save a child still alive in the rubble, and performed CPR.
Unaccountably, news of the attack resulted in “a wave of anger over the region.” But not to worry, with a list of “talking points” drawn up by the Americans, the local governor explained the mistake: the Americans had been after an Al Quaeda leader and no one told them women and children would be in the compound. Indeed, the attack was really their own fault, caused by the “presence of hoodlums,” he said, and “could have been prevented had the people exposed the presence of insurgents in the area.”
Finally, a Sept. 3, 2009 report, from Kunduz province, described yet another mistaken airstrike, this time attributable to a slight mishap on the part of JATC, the Joint Terminal Attack Controller team responsible for ground communications and guidance for pilots and airstrikes. Responding to a police report saying that “2X FUEL TRUCKS WERE STOLEN BY UNK [unknown] NUMBER OF INS [insurgents]” who planned to cross the Kunduz River with their booty, the JTAC claimed to have seen not only the trucks, but “UP TO 70 INS” at “THE FORD ON THE RIVER.” [As to how JTAC “saw” this, the Times account speculates that the JTAC may have received live feed to their computer from infrared video cameras in some aircraft]. Then a German commander got involved, assured everyone that “NO CIVILIANS WERE IN THE VICINITY” and “AUTHORIZED AN AIRSTIKE.” An F-15 fighter plane then dropped two 500-pound guided bombs. Naturally, those killed were “56x INS KIA [insurgents killed in action],” 14 more fled northeast, and the two trucks were also destroyed. A good night’s work.
Only that the initial report was wrong. In fact, the trucks, apparently abandoned, were surrounded by civilians trying to remove fuel. This was learned only when the military reported that “International Media reported that US airstrikes had killed 60 civiians in Kunduz.” Those dastardly Taliban, having stolen the truck, had invited civilians in the area to help themselves with fuel. Seen from above, civilians were clearly INS [insurgents].
You get the picture. War is not lovely. In the best of conditions, it is messy, gruesome, murderous to those who have the misfortune of being in its vicinity. In this case, it is Afghan villagers who most often feed the grisly appetite of the war machine. And in Afghanistan, increasingly, the machines are in control. Trouble is, machines have no sense. They are inhuman by definition. When that inhumanity, as it inevitably must, reaches back and infects the humans ostensibly in control, they too become mechanical. That is what, overall, one discerns from reading the Wikileaks material. The United States, in attempting to maintain its tottering global empire, has become a killing machine. Far from protecting us as its champions claim, that transformation imperils us all.
Lawrence DiStasi
NB: For those of you too young to recall, the title of this piece comes from a 1963 musical composed by Joan Littlewood; it premiered on Broadway in 1964, and though it’s ostensibly about WWI, it applies to other wars rather nicely.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Fragile and Reversible
Life is certainly hectic
When it comes to the war metric
What you measure and when
Over and over again
Tells us all so much
About philosophy and such
Recall the count of bodies
Was called so very shoddy
But now there is no hope
Without a microscope
I would not want to defend the Bush Administration’s position on staying the course. For this, General Petraeus deserves credit. He is loyal and articulate. Unfortunately, the performance measurements are essentially microscopic and movement toward success is surely not available to the naked eye. Hence, with some sensitivity, he called the gains “fragile and reversible.” While that description is not a common yardstick of progress, it does provide cover in the event of a tragic collapse. Each year now since the invasion in March 2003, we have been entertained by an Administration dog and pony show citing progress. In between, we have been provided a variety pack of “significant measures” that were “turning points.” We captured Baghdad. We toppled a statue. We de-Baathified. We disbanded the Iraqi Army. We killed Saddam’s two sons, Uday and Qusay. We established a provisional government. We tried Saddam. We executed Saddam. We killed the second or third most important insurgent (several times). We had a new president. We had a charter. We had a constitution. We had purple fingers. We had a power-sharing plan. We stood up the Iraqi Army (so we could stand down). We re-Baathified (at the cost of $10 per Sunni per day). We pacified Basra and secured Umm Qasr and the Brits went home. We got an agreement for a truce with Muqtada al Sadr. We fought Muqtada al Sadr in the streets of Basra and al Amarah and secured Umm Qasr. All this seems to verify that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there…wherever “there” is.
Having quickly reviewed the Administration practice of using selected dramatic events as proof of progress, we are struck with the contrast of looking at other areas and practices of measurement. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), has been the centerpiece of domestic policy. The policy is dependent upon the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is a survey of student achievement that uses assessments in a variety of subject areas including reading, math, science, writing, history, geography and the arts. Without getting into the quagmire of unfunded federal mandates, the entire program is dependent upon measurement, measurement and more measurement. In fact, the major criticism has been that since Bush tied test scores to school performance, that teachers are teaching to tests and not teaching for learning. More important, schools have long been the nearly exclusive territory of local government and this top down measuring frenzy has reversed a couple hundred years of tradition. If you receive Title I funds, you must submit a plan to the US Department of Education that demonstrates that you have sufficient academic content and state wide standards that support the plan. Although the system is administered by a federal contractor, the numbers are salient yardsticks, even if compromised by fear of losing funds and teachers teaching to the test. Now, many of you may argue that NCLB has been a dismal failure perhaps because it focused too much on measurement of easily manipulated testing and I won’t defend the practice, but clearly, it provides a contrast to the evaluation of the war in Iraq. Or does it?
Do the real purposes of NCLB and the war in Iraq coincide? The answer that I submit to you is that both are intended to claim that Bush is a winner. He is a “winner” who took Baghdad, unlike his more tentative father and a “winner” who has upgraded American education with little or no money and with numbers to prove it. This evaluation of winners and losers is human nature and also a matter of perception. Bush is also sensitive to propaganda and has twice approved multi million dollar contracts for the Lincoln Group to promote the best side of the Iraqi war to Iraqis in Iraq. The whole purpose of the FOX-Bush connection appears to be promotion of Bush in exchange for Administration promotion of the network. Have you been to any military base and seen any public television set NOT tuned to FOX? Think of it as putting your best foot forward, not as either truth or prevarication.
As a military retiree who devoted over 30 years to supporting the government and the supremacy of the civilian to the military in policy decisions, I am troubled by current events where Petraeus has essentially provided a policy endorsed by the President instead of the other way around. The Secretary of Defense and Admiral Fallon (the nominal boss for Petraeus) have both been circumvented to promote the illusion that we are winning in Iraq. There is no metric that I know of that will prove him wrong, but we have heard that mantra of victory before and it has become hollow. Merely pretending that we could somehow “win” a civil war as an occupying force is bizarre, but pretending that there is no civil war is just as strange. Without metrics we can agree upon, we are left with the prospect of winning Iraq for the next hundred years, but remember that is fragile and reversible.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
11 April 2008
When it comes to the war metric
What you measure and when
Over and over again
Tells us all so much
About philosophy and such
Recall the count of bodies
Was called so very shoddy
But now there is no hope
Without a microscope
I would not want to defend the Bush Administration’s position on staying the course. For this, General Petraeus deserves credit. He is loyal and articulate. Unfortunately, the performance measurements are essentially microscopic and movement toward success is surely not available to the naked eye. Hence, with some sensitivity, he called the gains “fragile and reversible.” While that description is not a common yardstick of progress, it does provide cover in the event of a tragic collapse. Each year now since the invasion in March 2003, we have been entertained by an Administration dog and pony show citing progress. In between, we have been provided a variety pack of “significant measures” that were “turning points.” We captured Baghdad. We toppled a statue. We de-Baathified. We disbanded the Iraqi Army. We killed Saddam’s two sons, Uday and Qusay. We established a provisional government. We tried Saddam. We executed Saddam. We killed the second or third most important insurgent (several times). We had a new president. We had a charter. We had a constitution. We had purple fingers. We had a power-sharing plan. We stood up the Iraqi Army (so we could stand down). We re-Baathified (at the cost of $10 per Sunni per day). We pacified Basra and secured Umm Qasr and the Brits went home. We got an agreement for a truce with Muqtada al Sadr. We fought Muqtada al Sadr in the streets of Basra and al Amarah and secured Umm Qasr. All this seems to verify that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there…wherever “there” is.
Having quickly reviewed the Administration practice of using selected dramatic events as proof of progress, we are struck with the contrast of looking at other areas and practices of measurement. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), has been the centerpiece of domestic policy. The policy is dependent upon the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is a survey of student achievement that uses assessments in a variety of subject areas including reading, math, science, writing, history, geography and the arts. Without getting into the quagmire of unfunded federal mandates, the entire program is dependent upon measurement, measurement and more measurement. In fact, the major criticism has been that since Bush tied test scores to school performance, that teachers are teaching to tests and not teaching for learning. More important, schools have long been the nearly exclusive territory of local government and this top down measuring frenzy has reversed a couple hundred years of tradition. If you receive Title I funds, you must submit a plan to the US Department of Education that demonstrates that you have sufficient academic content and state wide standards that support the plan. Although the system is administered by a federal contractor, the numbers are salient yardsticks, even if compromised by fear of losing funds and teachers teaching to the test. Now, many of you may argue that NCLB has been a dismal failure perhaps because it focused too much on measurement of easily manipulated testing and I won’t defend the practice, but clearly, it provides a contrast to the evaluation of the war in Iraq. Or does it?
Do the real purposes of NCLB and the war in Iraq coincide? The answer that I submit to you is that both are intended to claim that Bush is a winner. He is a “winner” who took Baghdad, unlike his more tentative father and a “winner” who has upgraded American education with little or no money and with numbers to prove it. This evaluation of winners and losers is human nature and also a matter of perception. Bush is also sensitive to propaganda and has twice approved multi million dollar contracts for the Lincoln Group to promote the best side of the Iraqi war to Iraqis in Iraq. The whole purpose of the FOX-Bush connection appears to be promotion of Bush in exchange for Administration promotion of the network. Have you been to any military base and seen any public television set NOT tuned to FOX? Think of it as putting your best foot forward, not as either truth or prevarication.
As a military retiree who devoted over 30 years to supporting the government and the supremacy of the civilian to the military in policy decisions, I am troubled by current events where Petraeus has essentially provided a policy endorsed by the President instead of the other way around. The Secretary of Defense and Admiral Fallon (the nominal boss for Petraeus) have both been circumvented to promote the illusion that we are winning in Iraq. There is no metric that I know of that will prove him wrong, but we have heard that mantra of victory before and it has become hollow. Merely pretending that we could somehow “win” a civil war as an occupying force is bizarre, but pretending that there is no civil war is just as strange. Without metrics we can agree upon, we are left with the prospect of winning Iraq for the next hundred years, but remember that is fragile and reversible.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
11 April 2008
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