Pat Tillman is Still Dead

The Army is yet again investigating the death of Pat Tillman, who is perhaps the highest profile casualty in the BushCheney’s wars. You may recall that this National Football League star gave up his pro contract to serve his country in the wake of the 9-11 attacks and died as the result of “friendly fire” during a 2004 firefight in Afghanistan.

The story of his death has changed dramatically, from brave hero leading his men into hostile fire to unfortunate accident of war. Tillman’s family has been outraged by the cynical use of their dead son as an icon by BushCheney. The new investigation focuses on criminal negligence by Tillman’s fellow soldiers involving their failure to properly identify their target before opening fire.

I’m always uneasy about this kind of investigation. The chaos of combat forces soldiers to make split-second, often lethal decisions. It’s a difficult environment, to be sure, but that’s what soldiers are trained for. They are always supposed to identify targets before shooting at them. Otherwise, they are putting people at risk unnecessarily. Perhaps this investigation will be better than the last few. Maybe the Tillman family will get some straight answers this time.

Even if the investigation does determine whether anyone is criminally liable for Tillman’s death, it won’t answer all the questions about his death and the distortions that were issued in its wake. ReddHedd at Firedoglake is asking questions that the new investigation is unlikely to address:

“...Of course there needs to be a thorough investigation into Pat Tillman's death. We owe that to his family, and if gross negligence was involved, those responsible need to be held to account. That goes without saying.

But those responsible for spinning out the lies to a grieving family -- lies that they also fed to the public and the press in a close campaign season -- need some exploration as well. Who gave the orders to silence the Rangers on the ground? Who gave the orders to burn Tillman's gear? Who gave the orders to falsify information contained on Tillman's Silver Star citation -- because it now appears that some of the information in the chain of events does not match up with later stories? Who fed Tori Clark the information she spewed from the press podium at the DoD? Who fed it to Donald Rumsfeld? Did Rumsfeld order this to be propgandized -- or did that come from the President's campaign staff, including from Karl Rove?

Who gave the orders to start all of this ass covering -- up the line to the President of the United States?

And who made the decision for the President to use Pat Tillman as a campaign prop in Arizona -- when the taped message the President gave was a lie? And did the President know at the time that his lovely public words about a fallen American hero were nothing but lies -- and gave the taped message anyway? If not, has anyone been held to account for feeding the President false information that he publicly stated about the Tillman matter -- and if so, who has been held to account and by what means?...”

Tillman’s death is one of the many tragedies of BushCheney’s wars. The lies and distortions compound the loss.

From the Great White North

I'm reading Paul William Roberts' A War Against Truth, his account of the US invasion of Iraq. Roberts is a Canadian journalist with long experience in Iraq, including interviews with Saddam Hussein, so he knows the country. His account is raw, brutal and intimate. Not the "All is Well, Stay the Course" presentation so prevalent in the the US media. I'm about half way through so far.

After a confrontation with a pistol-wielding Iraqi angry at the American invasion, Williams writes:

"...[O]ddly enough, you don't care you don't care much why someone is going to kill you--and no cause having your death among its goals seems like a good one. It did occur to me, however, that being killed because because you were mistaken for an American would be the worst of all possible deaths. To steady my nerves, I handed out maple-leaf pins to everyone. I had over twenty of them.

'Maybe you all want one of these to wear...Eh?'

American journalists would seek me out to beg for these little lifesavers. The world is not a safe place for Americans any more, and they know why. A sense of shame pervades the language of decent Americans, the ones who know that the War on Terror will be no more successful than other wars waged against abstract nouns--hunger, drugs, sutpidity. A Canadian, on the other hand, now walks tall and safe through the alleys of hell, acknowldged gratefully by all as Friend to the Friendless, Refuge of the Refugee, Resort of Last Resort. Such was the genius of Jean Chretien that no one knew where Canada really stood on the issue of thei war, yet everyone thought we were on his side. This, I often told myeslf, is diplomacy!

Canada's actual role in the world, however, is what it always has been since the Korean War: to act as the conscience of America. It's a full-time job, a dirty job--but someone who speaks English has to do it. It is much like having a violent drunk for an older brother: you are ultimately the only one who can talk him down from his latest bender and the crunchy beating he is about to adminster for no reason he will remember tomorrow."

(emphasis in original)

Border Crossings

Listening to all the politicians and groups barking about illegal immigration, I can’t help but think that the entire debate is based on a the false premise of the nation-state, a premise that has become increasingly irrelevant in a globalized world. We like to think that a nation can seal itself off from the rest of the world and limit access to “our” territory and resources. Just as the nation-state became a reality in the 16th and 17th Centuries, I think that globalism and the technologies supporting globalism are now superceding the nation-state as the basis for organized society.

In many respects the waves of immigration from the Third to the First Worlds are the result of the latter’s aggressive expansion and colonialism in the past few centuries. By occupying and exploiting much of the world, Europe and the United States destroyed indigenous cultures that were self supporting and self-limiting. In the 21st Century the world is now faced with large populations unable to feed or support themselves in their traditional homelands. These economic refugees do what human beings have done for millennia: they move on, seeking places where they can support themselves. In the era of the nation-state, these migrations are restricted by political boundaries.

Or we like to think that. Any resident of southern Arizona can tell you that this migration is a well established fact. Like water running downhill, economic refugees move toward opportunity. The tide of humanity now flowing north from Mexico reflects a simple fact of life. Mexico cannot support its population, so Mexicans move to the United States where there is ample need for neo-slaves to serve businesses unwilling to pay US citizens a wage they will accept. Europe faces a similar migration as excess populations move toward opportunity. It’s as simple as Economics 101.

So I don’t see any hope for the United States or any nation stopping this migration. Our attempts so far have been pretty ineffective, even with the growth of the police state at the border with all of its attendant militarization. In the name of protecting our borders, we are destroying fragile ecosystems in Organ Pipe National Monument and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge with ATV’s and vehicles. Illegal immigrants are trashing our national forests to escape the dragnet. Border communities suffer from crime and property destruction in the lawless environment that prevails there. It’s a pretty ugly scene.

Contrast this migration with the ease of moving capital. Money moves pretty much at will, to wherever it finds the best return. Conservatives like to call this the free market, a market that doesn’t apply to labor. It never has. This capital flow has the effect of immiserating workers left behind as their opportunities for making a living decline. Which brings me to Karl Marx, who predicted that workers would revolt as capital became more and more concentrated and their prospects became ever worse. His predictions weren’t exactly accurate but he wasn’t wholly wrong, either. Capitalism proved to be far more supple and his workers’ paradise never really happened. But the trend is still there: increasing polarization of wealth and resources reduces economic opportunity. Sooner or later, those of us who are hogging all the resources will have to contend with the masses who have less and less and ultimately decide they have nothing to lose. The world saw a small example of the consequences on September 11, 2001.

That’s why I no longer believe in nation-states and closed borders. They are an artificial construct that allows the rich to exploit others. The major powers of the past three centuries (read: us) used their (our) technological, military and economic advantage to exploit the rest of the world to create the vast wealth we now enjoy. The idea that we have no obligation to the descendants of those whom we pillaged and enslaved, that they have no claim to “our” resources is laughable, especially in light of the neo-colonialism that replaced overt colonialism after World War II.

Open borders would allow labor to move toward opportunity. More important, it offers opportunity to manage the flow of immigrants. Instead of illegal immigrants, who have no rights and protection, we would have legal workers with some leverage in their dealings with employers. Instead of coming into the United States under the radar, immigrants would enter through border crossings where officials could screen out the criminals and potential terrorists. (Yeah, I know, they would still try to sneak in but there would be far fewer of them.)

The wave of immigration sweeping over America’s (and other First World nations’) borders is as old as human existence even as it characterizes the modern world. We can either deal with it honestly and humanely or try to wall ourselves off from it. The latter approach has a certain nationalistic appeal but in the long run, only the former offers anything like a realistic solution.

Vietnam Evolving

Interesting development in Vietnam as citizens debate the role and effectiveness of their government. As in China, the internet provides a medium for communication and information. My long-time interest in Vietnam will keep me following the debate to see where it leads.

I greatly admire Vietnamese dilligence, endurance and energy. They have maintained a distinct culture and identity for centuries, often against their great neighbor, China. For this reason I have often thought that the architects of a truly nationalist movement could also forge a truly popular regime. So far they have not and perhaps they never will. But circumstances may create opportuniies for change in that direction. The current debate is a small spark that can ignite broader discussion and change. I hope so.

Read the last sentence and remember how Vietnam defeated the United States. (Hint: it involved patience and long-range thinking.)

Dismantling America

Knight-Ridder reports yet another BushCheney attack on competence in government. This time the target is the arms control and international security bureaus.

"State Department officials appointed by President Bush have sidelined key career weapons experts and replaced them with less experienced political operatives who share the White House and Pentagon's distrust of international negotiations and treaties.

The reorganization of the department's arms control and international security bureaus was intended to help it better deal with 21st-century threats. Instead, it's thrown the agency into turmoil and produced an exodus of experts with decades of experience in nuclear arms, chemical weapons and related matters, according to 11 current and former officials and documents obtained by Knight Ridder...."

For the administration, the loss of expertise and knowledge may not matter much since it has little interest in cooperating with the world in nuclear weapons matters. But for the rest of us, the loss means less ability to cope with the real weapons of mass distruction that threaten the world.

Thanks to Karen Kwiatkoski for the link. She is posting again at MilitaryWeek.com.

Post Traumatic Stress Blog

Came across a new blog, PTSD Combat, that focuses on post-traumatic stress among combat veterans, many now returning from Iraq. The site’s purpose is to provide resources for recognizing, understanding and dealing with combat PTSD. In addition, the site is compiling a record of PTSD related incidents, the timeline, with the intent of documenting this long ignored cost of war.

PTSD Combat also presents the results of the Zogby poll of active duty military in Iraq. The results show that the overwhelming majority of troops want out of Iraq within the year. As many soldiers the US to withdraw immediately as support BushCheney’s “as long as it takes” strategy. Almost 60 percent say their mission is clear yet 77 to 85 percent believe the war’s purpose is to retaliate against Saddam for 9-11 and prevent him from further aiding al-Qaeda.

Check it out.

Depths of Disaster

Knight Ridder reports on an intelligence estimate prepared in October 2003 showing that the Iraqi insurgency was indigenous, likely to strengthen and could lead to civil war. The intelligence estimate contradicts BushCheney’s assertion that the resistance was merely “dead-enders and Saddamists”, soon to be swept into the dustbin of history.

History’s dustbin may be filled these days with detritus from Iraq but the insurgency is not among the scraps. The dustbin is filled, rather, with BushCheney’s many, many lies, errors and omissions in Iraq. Unfortunately, that trash still plagues America and Iraq in the form of deadly violence and destruction.

From the article:

In Congress on Tuesday, Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified that the insurgency "remains strong, and resilient." Maples said that while Iraqi terrorists and foreign fighters conduct some of the most spectacular attacks, disaffected Iraqi Sunnis make up the insurgency's core. "So long as Sunni Arabs are denied access to resources and lack a meaningful presence in government, they will continue to resort to violence," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Looking back to October2003, BushCheney’s failure to see reality in Iraq ignored the necessary tasks at had. Robert Hutchings, who chaired the committee that prepared the analysis, said that top political and military officials focused on ways of dealing with foreign jihadists and disaffected Saddam loyalists, rather than with other pressing problems, such as growing Iraqi anger at the U.S.-led occupation and the deteriorating economic and security situation.

The rest is history, the dismal reality of America’s bolloxed Iraq adventure in all of its grim and bloody glory.

Nothing here is surprising. America already knows the quality of BushCheney’s intelligence and interpretation from his insistence on weapons of mass destruction. More recently, the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia wrote about administration “cherry picking” intelligence information to support their march to war. What amazes me is that this administration has ANY credibility at all or that there is any doubt that Republicans will go down in flames because of BushCheney’s wongheaded, disastrous policy in Iraq.

Remember, he’s been wrong before. America can count on him to be wrong again.