The American Conservative

Boot then writes that I am “particularly upset about the 14th Amendment (he claims it was never lawfully ratified) because it barred former Confederates from holding political office.” Read my Reconstruction chapter for yourself and consider the effort it must have taken Boot to misrepresent it this extent. My concern about the Fourteenth Amendment has nothing to do with its disqualification of former Confederates; I raise that issue in a single paragraph in order to show that a variety of reasons existed for Southern opposition to the amendment.

The book’s point about the Fourteenth Amendment is that it gave the federal government an opening through which it could trample on the states’ rights of self-government. The 1990s were filled with state ballot initiatives that were imperiously overturned by federal judges on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. As for my “claim” that it was unlawfully ratified, Forrest McDonald—you know, that big extremist—in the Georgia Journal of Southern Legal History (Spring/Summer 1991) most recently laid out the scholarly argument for this position, which is about as ironclad as you could ask for. Boot appears never to have heard of it.

Later in his review, Boot defends Harry Truman against my charge that in committing American troops to South Korea in 1950, he disregarded his constitutional duty to ask Congress for a declaration of war. That happens to have been the view of Sen. Robert A. Taft, who was known in his day as “Mr. Republican.” (We can only imagine Boot’s opinion of Taft.) I don’t seem to realize, according to Boot, that “previous presidents had sent U.S. troops into battle hundreds of times without any declaration of war.”

This is a classic example of neoconservative obfuscation. The examples Boot is speaking of do not involve the president deploying troops in offensive operations against foreign governments. The first time that happened was in 1900, when William McKinley sent 5,000 American troops to China to suppress the Boxer Rebellion, a revolt of Chinese nationalists connected to the Chinese government. (Historian Walter LaFeber notes that few people at the time appreciated the precedent that McKinley was setting in that relatively minor affair.) The book’s discussion of presidential war powers makes perfectly clear just how limited the Framers of the Constitution intended them to be. There is no room for debate here: I am right and Boot is spectacularly and outrageously wrong. ~Thomas Woods, The American Conservative

As further proof they point to January’s elections in Iraq. This was a vote that the Americans wanted to postpone, in which many people could not participate, that produced a victory for Islamists with close ties to Iran who want the US troops out as soon as possible. If all of this amounts to victory, I would hate to see what their idea of defeat looks like.

The truth is that you cannot even begin to make a justification for the war unless you take into account the lives of innocent Iraqis lost as a result of it. The simplest way to deal with that is to pretend that these deaths do not exist – the occupying powers simply do not count them. The only other defence is that their deaths are a price worth paying and that good things can come from bad acts – a claim every bit as offensive and wrong-headed as arguing that 9/11 was a price worth paying for waking America up to the consequences of its foreign policy.

But the Iraqis are not the only ones to have suffered these past two years. While the occupiers have been busy failing to export democracy abroad, they have been busy undermining it at home. All of them lied to their electorates about the reasons for going to war. With the exception of America, all of them went to war despite overwhelming opposition from the public. And through their anti-terrorist bills and patriot acts they have removed some of the most basic legal rights of their citizens and criminalised the most vulnerable.

The elections last year in Spain and recent events in Italy are encouraging. They show that while the anti-war movement failed to stop the war, it has maintained a sufficiently effective presence to make a crucial difference at key moments to disable and discredit it. ~Gary Younge, The Guardian

Mr. Younge’s observation about the antiwar movement is an interesting one, and it makes sense for European countries in which that movement has consistently enjoyed majority approval. As the sad, pitiful collapse of anything resembling an organised movement against the Iraq war in this country has given way to fits of spasmodic protest and general malaise, aided in no small part by the gutting of the antiwar position by its only logical political beneficiaries (the Democrats), we see a war on auto-pilot, blindly blundering ahead to no definite end and with no concrete objectives to achieve.

The moral horror of effectively massacring tens of thousands, perhaps up to one hundred thousand civilians alone (to say nothing of the thousands of soldiers killed), to achieve dubious goals only vaguely related (if at all) to legitimate national security does not seem to penetrate the confused consciousness of most Americans. The cavalier, pro-war justification of these deaths as being worthwhile is made easy by the fact that the price is largely being paid by someone else, largely by unseen and unheard foreigners. Then, once these bodies have grown cold, the very same men who blithely write off the dead from the war they endorsed and supported can pose this week as some moral champions of the sanctity of life.

Recent public opinion on Iraq suggests two basic findings: Most people are generally unhappy with President Bush’s handling of Iraq and they are resigned to the importance of seeing the commitment through.

Some other results from recent polls on Iraq:
Six in 10 think the president does not have a clear plan for bringing the Iraq situation to a successful conclusion.

Two-thirds say the level of casualties in Iraq has been unacceptable, when comparing the goals of the war to the costs.

A solid majority, about 55 percent, have said for months that U.S. troops must stay until the situation is stable.

People are closely divided on whether the war was a mistake, according to several polls.

A majority of people think Iraq aided al-Qaida before the war and had weapons of mass destruction – two opinions that have been widely debated.

People are closely divided on whether the war in Iraq helped or hurt in the war on terrorism. ~BostonChannel.com

Set aside for the moment that the majority that believes in the existence of Iraqi WMD and al-Qaeda links are simply wrong and ignorant. Consider what these figures imply: even though a majority continues to believe the falsehoods peddled by the administration about the “Iraqi threat,” a considerable number of the same people must also now be convinced that the war’s costs have exceeded the benefits. That means that some significant portion of people who really thought that Baghdad was supporting al-Qaeda do not believe the losses in the Iraq war to be worthwhile (presumably, most of those who believe these fictions are probably convinced of the worthiness of the cause). In short, even some who believe that Hussein was an ally of bin Laden believe too many Americans have died and been wounded in Iraq.

Yet somehow a dull, herd-like majority believes we must ‘stick it out’ until Washington decides to recognise what a majority of the public has already apparently perceived: in terms of costs and benefits, Iraq is a losing proposition for the United States. If the War Party cannot even rely on all the brainwashed citizens to support its wars, then the great cause of defeating Islamic terrorism will quickly run out of supporters.

Some anti-Syrian commentators say that the demonstrators were acting in conscious imitation of those who prosecuted the “orange revolution” in Ukraine.[1] The similarities are certainly legion, especially the lovely idea that “the people” would come out onto the streets in support of a billionaire, as they supposedly did when they held aloft pictures of Rafik Hariri or chanted the name of gas oligarch Yulia Timoshenko in Kiev. So does this mean that a “Cedar Revolution” being prepared in Lebanon, modelled on the one in Ukraine? The spiritual leader of Hizb Allah, Nasr Allah, thinks not. He told the demonstrators, “Lebanon is not Ukraine.” Reassuring words—except when you recall that the Ukrainian government told its people for a year that Ukraine was not Georgia.

It was striking that many of the pro-Syrian banners in the Hizb Allah march said “No to foreign interference”. In other words, they consider that main interference is American, not Syrian. How can this be? A key was inadvertently given by Radio Free Europe, the US propaganda and news outlet. In an article discussing the chances of an “orange revolution” in Moldova (the former Bessarabia, between Romania and Ukraine), columnist Ilian Cashu explained the specificities of the Ukrainian situation.[2] Intriguingly, he claimed that the outgoing President Kuchma had “lost control of the election process” and that he therefore had to resort to rigging the results. Leaving aside the question whether vote-rigging was proved, how can Cashu say Kuchma had lost control if he fiddled the results?

The answer to this question is key to understanding how US-backed televised revolutions operate. Stalin’s famous dictum— Stalin’s famous dictum— “It is not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes” —has been amended: it should now read, “It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who pulls the strings from behind the scenes.” As Cashu himself explains, “outside involvement in Ukraine was significant, with the West firmly siding with the opposition.” He then writes: “Prior to the second round of elections, Ukraine had already met the Leninist criteria for a successful revolution; i.e., the inability of the country’s rulers to govern and the unwillingness of the majority of the population to accept their rule.” (It is always reassuring to know that the analysts and cheerleaders of the New World Order know who their ideological lodestars are.) ~John Laughland

India on Wednesday expressed concern over sales of arms to Pakistan by the United States and said it could impact the ongoing peace process between the nuclear-armed rivals.
“India’s strong concern regarding repercussions of arms sales to Pakistan by the United States — including on the ongoing India-Pakistan dialogue — has been conveyed at high levels to the US government,” junior foreign minister Edappakath Ahamed told parliament, according to the Press Trust of India.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and came close to a fourth three years ago when gunmen attacked India’s parliament. New Delhi claimed they were sponsored by Islamabad.

The neighbours since January 2004 have been engaged in a slow and delicate peace dialogue to normalise relations. ~SpaceWar (from Agence France-Presse wire)

American interests have little to do with the continued armament of Pakistan. Indeed, ever since Nixon’s separation of China from the erstwhile Sino-Soviet bonds of communist solidarity, a thoughtless favouritism for Pakistani interests has pervaded American counsels, especially the Republican and thus typically more outspoken anticommunist figures in government. How are these sales remotely justifiable? Gen. Musharraf continues to use the excuse of the ‘legitimate’ rebellion in Kashmir for fomenting violence and terrorism inside India. Imagine how appalling it would be to us if India had, for some dubious geopolitical reasons, allied with a state sponsoring anti-American terrorists while proclaiming itself to be a friendly power. Yet it was Pakistan and our own goverment were once the sponsors of the Taliban, and Pakistani agents who continue to protect members of that old regime and al-Qaeda members as well. It is impossible to distinguish between a jihadi in Kashmir, one in the Northwest Provinces and one in Afghanistan: they are linked, and not only by shared ideology, but by a shared support system and a common set of enemies. Our government has been taken in by this arch-proliferator, terrorist-sponsoring regime so much that Pakistan has become an ally with the same status as our NATO allies–what has Pakistan ever actually done for us that it was not compelled to do out of its desire to make up for its own extraordinary guilt in encouraging and developing the Taliban as a fighting force and political power?
Read More…

Of the scores of good books published in the last year about American foreign policy, the young British scholar Anatol Lieven’s America Right or Wrong stands ahead and apart. An erudite analysis of the historical and cultural strands that have forged contemporary American nationalism, it is the antidote to a view now popular among Bush administration critics: there is little wrong with American foreign policy that reducing the influence of several dozen Beltway neoconservatives would not cure. While Lieven carries no water for the neocons, he will convince many readers that if William Kristol, Richard Perle, and company had not been around after 9/11 to push a unilateralist war plan, Americans would have somehow invented them. Lieven is one of the rare authors who can change minds on a subject where opinions are firmly entrenched.

He sets out to explain “why a country which after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had the chance to create a concert of all the world’s major states—including Muslim ones—against Islamist revolutionary terrorism chose instead to pursue policies which divided the West, further alienated the Muslim world and exposed America itself to greatly increased danger.” His answer is that the terror attacks roused from slumber a not-so-attractive American nationalism—a doctrine that incorporates in roughly equal measure both what is “best” in the American experience (respect for formal liberties and republican government) and what he most dislikes (religious, anti-elitist, racially tinged populism). The result is a kind of isolationist spirit with a global reach, which he likens at one point to a sort of national autism. Some will resist seeing their country through the eyes of a European intellectual, especially one not given to diplomatic euphemism. But they will miss something: the author knows the United States deeply, has lived here for a long time, and without question wishes us well. Yet this affection hardly mutes his criticism. ~Scott McConnell, The American Conservative

Very much like Prof. Lukacs’ new book, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, it would appear that Mr. Lieven’s book, which I have not read yet, is a similar diagnosis of the degraded populist-nationalist part of Prof. Lukacs’ thesis about contemporary democracy but focuses on the phenomenon in a different way. He does hit upon some of the same themes as Democracy and Populism, though, and one of these is fear, namely the fear of the self-styled democracy and guardian of democracy of any potentially ideologically hostile element in the world. From this fear is born, as Prof. Lukacs would have it, the hatred of the populist reaction, which has manifested itself in the blind, carte blanche approach of much of “conservative” America to the aggression and torture by the government and the militarisation of society going on around us.
Read More…

In fact, the links between Syria and Hezbollah are mostly a marriage of convenience, and Syria has restricted the number of seats — now at nine — that Hezbollah holds in Lebanon’s parliament, said Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

It also is wrong to say that Hezbollah opposes democracy in Lebanon, she said: “On the contrary, they are all for it, as they are the majority.”

Under Lebanon’s political system, the 1.2 million Shiite Muslims — the country’s largest single sect from which Hezbollah draws its support — form only a fraction of the half-Christian, half-Muslim parliament. So even if Hezbollah improves its standing, it will not be able to dominate the country under the current system. Shiites, Sunni Muslims and Druse, also Muslims, make up a majority of the country, however.

Nevertheless, Hezbollah retains the strongest armed militia in Lebanon — something the United Nations has called for disarming — and its strength comes in large part from its willingness to attack Israel.

Before he died, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, whose assassination touched off the anti-Syrian rallies, had said such attacks only hurt Lebanon. So far, the opposition has muted anti-Israeli views but also has tried to pull Hezbollah either into neutrality or into its fold altogether. Such complexities — and the sharply differing views on display in Beirut’s streets in recent days — have raised fears that Lebanon is headed not toward democracy, but chaos. “This won’t be Ukraine of 2004, but maybe Lebanon of 1975,” said As’ad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese political science professor at California State University. At that time, the country was wracked by constitutional crises and political disputes that eventually dragged it into a volatile 1975-90 civil war.

n Lebanon’s president reappointed pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami on Thursday, 10 days after he resigned amid a storm of anti-Syrian protests in Beirut, Reuters reported. President Emile Lahoud asked the Sunni Muslim politician to form a national unity government after parliament, where Syria’s allies have a majority, nominated him for the post on Wednesday. ~The Moscow Times

There will be an extensive review of John Lukacs’ Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred when I return from a short vacation, but some of the general observations of his book are immediately applicable to the sorry state of Lebanon.

I should say, however, that it was not within the scope of Prof. Lukacs’ book to address the question of democratisation or problems of democracy outside the Western, that is Euro-American, world. To the extent that democratisation is a global phenomenon, and to the extent that combinations of nationalism and socialism do prevail in the politics of every country (including, and perhaps especially, our own), as he argues, Prof. Lukacs’ observations are readily applicable to the problem of democracy and populism throughout the world. That is not, as Prof. Lukacs is fond of saying in this book, the aim of his book (which is, in short, to analyse important aspects of the history of Western democracy and recognise the ongoing degeneracy of democracy in its populist and nationalist forms together with the methods that have aided in the corrosive process). However, the applicability of Prof. Lukacs’ ideas to non-Western countries is one of the reasons why the book is so important and will be, I suspect, one of the most-read books and probably the most controversial book of the year (no prizes for predicting controversy about this one, of course). Because he admirably limits the scope of his analysis to the West, it can be all the more penetrating and reliable.
Read More…

Lebanese legislators ignored the popular anti-government protests and decided to re-install the pro-Syrian premier who was forced to step down last week, a move ensuring Damascus’ continued dominance but raising opposition denunciation.

Meanwhile, Syria’s soldiers evacuated Lebanese positions in the north and central mountains and in some cases, Lebanon’s army moved in to occupy the bases.

Outgoing Prime Minister Omar Karami was virtually assured nomination after 71 of 78 legislators put forward his name during consultations with President Emile Lahoud, according to announcements by the legislators as they left the presidential palace.

Under the constitution, the president is obliged to comply with the choice of the majority of legislators. ~Sydney Morning Herald

Even now major newspapers continue to use the same tired narrative: “the people” are against this restoration of a pro-Syrian government, the “popular anti-government protests” express this, etc. This is a very bizarre way to view the matter, all in all. If the Syrian occupation of another country were so awful in the eyes of the Western interventionists, then it should scarcely matter to them whether “the people” are pro- or anti-Syrian. If this were really a matter of enforcing some dead-letter resolution about a Syrian withdrawal or the requirements of state sovereignty (a rich idea coming from some of the hegemonists!), the opinions of Lebanese people would be quite irrelevant.

It is because the Syrian withdrawal itself is not the issue (the Syrians have, after all, been there for nearly 30 years without eliciting much comment from Washington), and neither is Lebanese “democracy” (which is a sad attempt to link a ludicrous Bush foreign policy goal to contingent circumstances), but the effective use of intimidation and coercion to dictate terms to a state hostile to Israel and therefore, in the delusions of the neocons, also hostile to the United States. Once again, as in reporting about the Ukraine, the narrative has been that of those who abide by their national constitution vs. those who invoke “the people.” On the terms of the democratists’ narrative, I should prefer the legalists, but the narrative also happens to be a pack of lies.

As historian John Lukacs has reportedly said in his new book, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, “The people do not speak, or they very seldom speak, but other people speak in the name of the people.” Again and again we are seeing a great many people styling themselves spokesmen for “the people.” Almost by definition, they are trying to deceive us, as they cannot really be speaking for the people and so must be speaking for their narrow interests. Even if they are well-intentioned, which I often very much doubt, we would be fools to believe them, much less glorify them.

TONY JONES: Well, joining me now is Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the Independent newspaper. For more than 25 years, Robert Fisk has lived in Lebanon, writing on war and politics across the region. And he was one of only a small group of Western journalists to remain in Lebanon throughout the civil war, which ended in 1991. He joins me now from Beirut. Recent developments in Lebanon have been greeted with great enthusiasm in Washington, but you’re much more cautious. In fact, recently you quoted one of your old friends as saying ‘There is fire under the ashes; we must all take care?’ What are you worried about?

ROBERT FISK: Well, I think all Lebanese live under the shadow of the ghosts of the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990 and took the live of 150,000 people. And I think that the real danger is that with the Syrian withdrawal, well, there are two dangers. With the Syrian withdrawal, there will be, within the Syrian intelligence community, possibly, an attempt to re-provoke those old ghosts of the civil war, with bombs, with violence. Much more dangerous is the possibility, which I’m already seeing here in Lebanon, of the various groups factionalising themselves in the aftermath of the murder of Rafik Hariri. I’ve noticed how, for example, the pro-Hariri demonstrators demanding the withdrawal of the Syrians in the evening are becoming more and more Christian Marinite and less and less Muslim. I couldn’t help but notice that in the huge Hezbollah demonstration in the last 24 hours, in which Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah spoke, virtually everybody in that demonstration was a Shiia Muslim. That demonstration was allegedly expressing its gratitude to Syria, although the Hezbollah are not that grateful to Syria in real life. We’re seeing that the various aftermath demonstrations and political events that followed from the murder of Hariri are taking on a sectarian character and that is very, very dangerous in Lebanon.

TONY JONES: Are things so delicately poised that we could see a return to sectarian violence even civil war?

ROBERT FISK: Well, I hope not, because I live here and I’ve been enjoying the last 11-14 years of peace, and primarily, of course, because of Rafik Hariri. He was Mr Lebanon and tragically he never groomed anyone to follow him. I think the hope for Lebanon is that during the war, many thousands, tens of thousands of Lebanese, sent their children abroad to be educated. They’ve come back as young men and young women who have been well educated in Geneva, London, New York, even Australia, without any time at all for the old sectarian politics. If one can put one’s hope in these people, then there will not be a return to civil war. But when I listen to the language of some of the speakers, including the ex-President, who started talking about some people who don’t deserve to be in Lebanon – that makes me very worried indeed. ~Australian Broadcasting Corp.

This possibility of renewed civil war ought to be the main concern of all parties intervening in the situation in Lebanon. Unfortunately, U.S. and French intervention have so far managed to bring things to the polarised state they are now in today. Those interested in the welfare of the Lebanese people will leave them to sort out their own affairs, including how best to achieve a Syrian withdrawal or how to keep the Syrians in the country, unless they wish to be responsible for provoking a needless conflict in a country that has already suffered enough in one generation.

Lebanon’s president, buoyed by a mass rally in support of his Syrian backers, holds talks with parliamentary deputies on Wednesday after which he is expected to name a pro-Syrian prime minister. ~Yahoo News

So the upshot of the ‘historic’ protests in Beirut in recent weeks is that…Lebanon will be governed by a pro-Syrian government again. Very inspiring. I guess all those “cynics” out there, including myself, will have to begin apologising to those who made yet another “reliable” neocon prediction.