Fresh Loaf

What a difference eight weeks make.

On May 15, President Bush mocked Americans who want diplomatic dialogue with Iran — comparing them to appeasers who bargained with Hitler:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Last night the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper announced the U.S. plans to open a diplomatic mission in Iran.

Why the about-face? Yo no se.

Maybe those Iranian missiles last week made a bigger impression on the White House than I thought.

Maybe President Bush finally realized that, when oil is at $140 per barrel, oil-addicted nations should try to avoid threatening to start war that could reduce the world’s daily supply of oil by 40%.

Maybe Bush started reading my column.

Whatever happened, I can’t imagine the McCain campaign is pleased with Bush’s flip-flop.

McCainiacs can’t attack Obama for wanting to talk with Iran when President Bush is opening diplomatic missions there.

Bush can do McCain a favor though and denounce himself as an appeaser.

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Iran test-fired several ballistic missiles today. The event prompted the following headline from Reuters:

Iran tests missiles, heightening tension with West

When Israel rehearsed air strikes on Iran last month, this was the headline:

Israel appears to rehearse Iran attack: report

The U.S. has two carrier battle groups within striking range of Iran and is currently holding exercise of Iran’s southern coast. Here’s the Reuters headline for that:

U.S. holds navy exercise after Iran comments on Gulf

So, you see, when two nuclear powers, the U.S. and Israel, rehearse preemptive military strikes on Iran, tensions are not heightened.

When Iran test-fires nine missiles, tensions are heightened.

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From The Independent:

Saudi Arabia will raise oil production to record levels within weeks in an attempt to avert an escalation of social and political unrest around the world . . . the Saudis will be pumping an extra half-a-million barrels of oil a day compared to last month, bringing total Saudi production to 9.7 million barrels a day,”

Let’s see:

500,000 barrels per day
x $140 per barrel
x 365 days
= The Saudi royal family has just promised to boost its oil revenue at an annual rate of approximately $25.6 billion.

But they’re doing it to avert social and political unrest, not for the money.

Forgive me, Saudi royal family, if I neglect to mail you a thank you note.

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From Healing Iraq:

During the five years the United States has occupied Iraq, the Bush administration has created a new state with a number of notable features: A venal, dysfunctional government. A terrorist haven and training ground. A nation so violent and dangerous that 10 percent of the population has fled.

Add to that a new hallmark: Nearly the most corrupt nation on Earth. Only two states out of 180, Somalia and Burma, outrank Iraq in Transparency International’s latest worldwide corruption index.

Read more

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I don’t usually reprint e-mails I receive. Then again, I don’t usually get letters this funny:

From: “Faran Farani”
To: andisheh@creativeloafing.com
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 05:06:30 +0100
Subject: Wish Granted

In one of your recent craps, that you managed to scribble incoherently since you were undoubtedly ‘high’ with cocaine and marijuana at the time, you wrote ‘Pakistan has done everything to us except punching our moms and molesting our dogs’…..

Well, you chronic drug addict, your wish will be granted! Need anything else?

—

The recent crap to which Farani refers is here.

I’m tempted to scrap the column I’m working on and write another one this week about Pakistan.

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This week’s Don’t Panic explains why Cyclone Nargis has killed and will continue to kill so many Burmese.

I compare Nargis to Hurricane Katrina in the story, sticking to the geographic and meteorological similarities.

Yesterday New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Lolis Eric Elie noted the similarity between the Burmese junta’s reaction to Nargis and the Bush Administration’s reaction to Katrina:

A snippet:

Of course our federal government neither offered nor accepted much relief for victims of the federal levee failures.

As the journal “Foreign Policy” put it, “When France and dozens of other countries pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and supplies to the relief effort, their donations should have helped ease the crisis. Instead, one year after Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, none of the money given to the federal government has made its way to evacuees.”

Read the whole column if you have two minutes.

(photo illustration by me and NASA. mostly NASA)

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No one can say President Bush isn’t making personal sacrifices for U.S. troops.

From Politico:

Q Mr. President, you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Q Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life. And I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it anymore to do.

Here’s the video.

Is callowness an impeachable offense?

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From Saturday’s Washington Post. Emphasis mine:

“President Bush plans to call Chinese President Hu Jintao in coming days to seek his help pressing the Burmese government to accept more disaster assistance, U.S. officials said yesterday.”

No hurry. There are only 1.5 million lives at stake.

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A pointless, brutal war and serial violations of the Geneva Conventions are apparently not the only things staining the honor of U.S. military personnel.

According to Rep. Paul Broun, R-Georgia, government-assisted masturbation (in the form of pornographic magazine sales at military facilities) is “denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad.”

To protect America’s servicemen and women from rubbing one out on Uncle Sam, Broun has proposed something called the Military Honor and Decency Act.

Broun ’splains:

“As a Marine, I am deeply concerned for the welfare of our troops and their mission,” said Broun. “Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad. Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit. The ‘Military Honor and Decency Act’ will right a bureaucratic–and moral–wrong.”

Idiotic, yes, but it’s also kind of sweet. The poor Congressman thinks our troops still get their porn from magazines.

(Tip of the jimmy hat to Erick at Peach Pundit for bringing it to my attention and brownsox at Daily Kos for reminding me today that it was brought to my attention.)

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Yo, America.

American casualties in Iraq are up for the third straight month.

If you insist on focusing your attention on the idiotic ramblings of a narcissistic, ill-tempered religious figure, how about focusing it on one whose ramblings mean life-or-death for thousands of Americans and Iraqis.

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Someone asked me today if I was serious in my Don’t Panic column this week about Zimbabwe inaugurating its nationhood with a Bob Marley concert.

I was completely serious. As luck would have it, footage from the concert is on YouTube.

Here’s Bob Marley & The Wailers performing the song “Zimbabwe,” in Zimbabwe, minutes after it became Zimbabwe:

At the 33 second mark, you can see Prince Charles (in a military uniform) and Robert Mugabe at a podium together. Note as well the banner that refers to Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare, by it’s British colonial name, Salisbury.

It’s an amazing song — anthemic and hopeful, but also politically astute. The song’s final verse actually predicts Zimbabwe’s sad fate:

So soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionaries
And I don’t want my people to be tricked by mercenaries.

Zimbabwe was indeed tricked by mercenaries and phony revolutionaries.

Rebel leader Robert Mugabe and his cronies promised Zimbabwe’s people independence.

It gave them misery.

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I will be on the Rick Outzen show on News Radio 1620 in Pensacola, Florida today to discuss a recent Don’t Panic column I wrote about Colombia.

I’m going on at 1:35 p.m., Pensacola time (2:35 p.m., Atlanta time).

If you don’t live in Pensacola, but would like to hear how little I actually know about Colombia, the show is simulcast online.

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Last night, President Bush released excerpts of the speech he’s going to give today about Iraq on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.

As expected, it’s a collage of lies and spin:

“In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his terror network.”

Osama bin Laden doesn’t now, nor has he ever controlled Iraq. Bush is conflating the Iraq war with the man responsible for 9/11.

The only reason Iraqis have the had the opportunity to turn against al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq is because we created the chaos that allowed them to operate.

It’s true that many Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq have turned against extremists in Iraq like al Qaeda, but Bush is taking credit for Iraqis tackling a problem that his invasion created.

“The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around — it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror,”

That’s like chopping off a man’s arms and calling yourself a doctor because you brought him paper towels and Bactine.

The troop escalation, known as the surge, has been a skillful refinement of tactics. But even its architect, Gen. David Petraeus, acknowledges it’s a strategic failure so far because Iraqi leaders will not reconcile.

The declared purpose of the escalation was to slow violence enough to facilitate political progress in Iraq. No such progress has been made.

“The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable,”

Millions of Iraqis have fled since the invasion. Millions more were forced from their homes and live as refugees in their own country.

The lowest estimate of Iraqi war dead is 81,000. Iraq is 1/12 the size of the U.S. A similarly deadly war in this country would leave 1 million people dead.

Undeniable success.

(Illustration by Jeremy Fuerst)

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The man who said that war with Iran “will not happen on my watch” is apparently no longer watching.

Admiral William Fallon, the U.S. military’s top commander of military forces in the Middle East, resigned.

In retrospect, the last sentence of this column may have been wishful thinking.

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The surge is working so well, the president felt comfortable announcing ahead of time his visit to Iraq.

Unfortunately, it was this president.

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I need to start eating more cod liver oil or ginseng. My memory is deteriorating.

I heard two weeks ago that Steven Spielberg quit his gig as artistic muckety-muck for the 2008 Beijing Olympics to protest China’s support for the Sudanese government’s genocidal killings in Darfur.

But only ten minutes ago did I remember I wrote last year about how Spielberg didn’t seem to have any problem with China’s actions until actress Mia Farrow publicly shamed him.

Wrote Farrow in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

“Does Mr. Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games?”

Nearly one year since Farrow publicly asked the question, Spielberg has finally answered no.

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The U.S. and Iraqi governments claimed the Feb. 1 suicide bombing of a Baghdad pet market was carried out by two women with Down syndrome duped by al-Qaeda into carrying the bombs.

Subsequent reporting has uncovered that, other than the fact that the women didn’t have Down syndrome or any evident ties to al-Qaeda, the governments’ claims were spot-on.

Remember, these are the same people who keep telling you the surge is working.

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This week’s CL cover story is about Ahmad Ali, an Iraqi man now living as a refugee in metro Atlanta. Ali fled his crumbling nation’s violence in 2006. After living in Syria for 15 months, he was granted refugee status by the U.S. government. He and his family moved to Doraville in 2007.

A refugee is not a migrant. Migrants leave their country of origin voluntarily in search of economic opportunity, political freedom, education, adventure, or any combination of those reasons.

A refugee is someone fleeing mortal danger — war, persecution, natural disaster, etc. One hundred forty-seven nations are party to UN-sanctioned agreements about the treatment of refugees. During the last half century, the United Nations has helped 50 million refugees rebuild their lives.

Among the responsibilities that many nations have taken on is the promise to accept refugees each year as legal residents. The United States took in about 70,000 refugees in 2007. Refugees have social security numbers and are allowed to work.

Since the 1990s, metro Atlanta has become home to about 50,000 refugees from around the world. They come from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Burma and Iraq, to name just a few.

(more…)

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