ProgressOhio

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Yet again, the ACLU has performed the function which Congress and the media are intended to perform but do not. As the result of a FOIA lawsuit the ACLU filed and then prosecuted for several years, numerous documents relating to the Bush administration's torture regime that have long been baselessly kept secret were released yesterday, including an 81-page Memorandum issued in 2003 by then- Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo which asserted that the President's war powers entitle him to ignore multiple laws which criminalized the use of torture..

I recently POSTED about Iraqi mortality rates attributable to unjust war and occupation by the U.S. I cited the most robust and rigorously scientific studies to date- the Johns Hopkins cluster survey, as updated by additional studies and extrapolations.
The result is the ghastly figure of 1,200,000 Iraqi men, women and children dead, primarily by gunshot.

How does one explain the recurring fact that, among those who write in opposition to the war, are some for whom this grievous Iraqi toll is invisible?

An example: recent anti-war posts on ProgressOhio with titles such as: 

'How Much More Are Americans Willing To Pay For President Bush's War in Iraq?'
'The Bush Administration's Upside-Down Priorities, End The War And Invest In America's Future'
and the morally provocative '5th Anniversary of the Iraq War: Bleeding America Dry'

Iraqi losses are mentioned in none of them.

It's as if Iraqi blood, real blood not the U.S. dollars referred to above, a torrent of it, is of no consequence. That's the only conclusion I can draw from copy such as:

'We are sickened by the waste. The war is projected to cost $3 trillion, while 47 million Americans go without health care coverage.
We are outraged at the betrayal. After our brave soldiers have served in Iraq, they come home to slashes in funding for veterans programs, and a broken economy.
And our hearts break for the families and communities of the nearly 4,000 U.S. servicemen and women who have died, and the 60,000 wounded...'

All very true, but only a part of the equation. Americans aren't the only people in the world who matter. Wasn't thinking that gives more weight to the distress of people who happen to be 'American' than it does to those in the rest of the world used by the administration to provoke this war in the first place? Doesn't ignoring the centrality of 1,200,000 deaths in our discourse on the war reflect a defect in our moral compass?

But then, maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe they write-out the Iraqi toll, not due to a blind spot where Iraqis are concerned, but, purposefully, as a act of self-censorship. Perhaps they believe common people are primarily motivated by economic self-interest. If so, aren't they selling us short and discounting our sense of outrage at the suffering of others?

This war needs to end- but only a movement that refuses to marginalize Iraqi suffering is up to the task. Only by recognizing our common humanity- and the sense of solidarity that recognition engenders- can we sustain our activity to end this war for empire, and, possibly, prevent the next.

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With anti-war sentiment growing--if still passive--in the US, how will Democrats use their recapture of Congress? Mike Davis analyses likely outcomes on the questions--Iraq, corruption, economic insecurity--that confront a Party leadership hooked on corporate dollars, and myopically gazing towards 2008.

Excerpts:

Indeed the Democratic leadership--the Black Caucus and a few notable progressives aside--has exploited domestic resentment against Bush policies in Iraq to consolidate, not debunk, the underlying Washington consensus about the War on Terrorism.

The Democratic leadership likewise has deliberately avoided a debate on the constitutional implications of the Patriot Act; not a single prominent Democrat has proposed the straightforward rollback of the totalitarian powers claimed by the presidency since 9/11.

The next election cycle will be the most expensive in history, and Hillary Clinton is unlikely to relish congressional hearings into the crimes of the pharmaceutical, oil and military-construction industries that could unleash massive corporate retaliation against her in 2008. From a strategic perspective, it makes far more sense for the Democrats to concentrate congressional exposés on a handful of Administration villains, while quietly rebuilding parity of representation on K Street, where many of the winged monkeys are reputedly rejoicing at their recent liberation from DeLay, the wicked witch of Texas.

Read the entire article HERE

The first of a series of articles, from various perspectives, on the Democratic Party U.S.A. and the prospects for significant social change:

Excerpt:

Over the past seventy years, many working people and most unions have tended to regularly support the Democratic Party. That sometimes brought tangible results for working people, such as enactment of the various New Deal programs of the later 1930s. In recent years, Democrats holding office have survived by promising just slightly more to working people than the Republicans and working a skillful "if-the-Republican-wins-the-sky-will-fall" strategy. Combine it with the fact that both parties will go to great lengths to legalistically bar any third party candidate from challenging their de facto monopoly, and there you have it. This is the political straightjacket that working people wear. They don't call it the two-party trap for nothing.

Read the entire article HERE