Historical Image of the Day

A classic. 

Donald Rumsfeld and Saddan Hussein shaking hands, 1983

Climate Change Dries Up Fertile Crescent

This isn't good:

Now, after four consecutive years of drought, this heartland of the Fertile Crescent — including much of neighboring Iraq — appears to be turning barren, climate scientists say. Ancient irrigation systems have collapsed, underground water sources have run dry and hundreds of villages have been abandoned as farmlands turn to cracked desert and grazing animals die off. Sandstorms have become far more common, and vast tent cities of dispossessed farmers and their families have risen up around the larger towns and cities of Syria and Iraq.

“I had 400 acres of wheat, and now it’s all desert,” said Ahmed Abdullah, 48, a farmer who is living in a ragged burlap and plastic tent here with his wife and 12 children alongside many other migrants. “We were forced to flee. Now we are at less than zero — no money, no job, no hope.”

Of course, climate change isn't all of it. High modernist governmental plans have contributed as well. But climate change makes human mistakes (not that we can really separate climate change from human mistakes) all the worse.


But hey, in nations as stable as Syria and Iraq, what bad could possibly come from millions of displaced peoples!

Historical Image of the Day

Supposed terrorist in Abu Ghraib Prison, 2000s.

Some Thoughts on Obama's Nobel Prize

No, really, I'm not kidding, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I questioned the prize committee's definition of the word "peace" when Al Gore won it for environmental activism, which seemed a wee bit of a stretch for me. This time around, the committee at least seems to be thinking in the general direction of "peace":

The committee praised Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" during his nine months in office and singled out for special recognition Obama's call for a world free of nuclear weapons, which he first made in an April speech in Prague.

Heralding Obama as a transformative figure in U.S. and international diplomacy, the committee said: "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

So. This will, no doubt, make conservatives flip the fuck out. Maybe it'll move his poll numbers among the rest of the population. (Maybe the Nobel committee just wants us to get some decent health care?) But what reaction do I, an American progressive/hippie pinko commie type have to the bestowing of the Peace Prize on the president whom I spent the better part of a year volunteering to get elected?

The snark is flowing fast on Twitter. Melissa Harris-Lacewell: Because he appointed all his electoral adversaries to the cabinet. #ReasonsBHOwonNPP and Because he invited a white policeman over for a beer! #ReasonsBHOwonNPP #BlackMenDontDoThat.

But really, it does seem a little...early? I mean, the man's been president for nine months. The extraordinary goodwill that he's generated around the world? Mostly a result of him so very obviously NOT being George W. Bush. I mean, yes, he's done some things that are impressive. He's given speeches in Muslim countries calling for understanding, he's called for a world without nuclear weapons, he's not behind the coup in Honduras and has actually taken some steps to return the rightful president, etc. He wants to get out of Iraq, though it appears to be going far slower than we'd have hoped.

Let's be clear: we didn't elect Dennis Kucinich. Shit, we KNEW we weren't electing Dennis Kucinich. But I think a lot of us were hoping for more than we've gotten. Pushing for the Patriot Act renewal and more funding for war in Afghanistan harder than he seems to be pushing for a public option on health care is only the latest set of disappointments.

I wonder what's left to give him if he DOES accomplish something major? If he manages to broker peace between Israel and Palestine? Hell, if he actually ends the two wars he inherited? Our own Matt Duss joked: Obama will receive prize on Dec 10. Has until then to end Isr-Pal conflict, get Iran to abandon nukes, end Iraq/Afgh wars. No pressure. (I guess they could always give a prize to Hillary Clinton for all that, and once and for all cause Bill's head to explode: Carter, Gore, Obama and HIS WIFE?)

Others pointed out the massive peaceful protests in Iran this year and how that deserves more of a peace prize than Obama. Mousavi's history with prior Iranian regimes probably discounted him (fairly, I think) but what about acknowledging the people who crowded the streets protesting for change? What about the people in Honduras calling for the return of their president under repressive conditions?

The Nobel Prize and other things like it celebrate individual achievement, but working for peace isn't an individual thing. It requires collective action. It requires solidarity, communication, interaction. It's not like writing a great book (or a great oeuvre). In a way, giving the peace prize to a sitting president while peace protesters are arrested in this country demeans the massive, not-officially-sanctioned peace movement that marched against wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet a lot of those people worked to put Obama in office as the best way to stop American warmongering, so perhaps blogger Cyn3matic was right when she said: Nobel Peace Prize=GIANT repudiation of W and the misbegotten Bush-Cheney years. This is the world saying, '08 voters, we AGREE. She noted that she felt vindicated in her anti-war marching years ago by this vote, and so perhaps in some way this is an acknowledgment of all the American people.

Spencer Ackerman thinks so:

But turning it down would be a slap in the face to an international community that is showing, in the most generous way possible, that it wants the U.S. back as a leading component of the global order. The issue is not Barack Obama. It’s what the president represents internationally: a symbol of an America that is willing, once again, to drive the international system forward, together, toward the humane positive-sum goals of peace and disarmament. The fact that Obama hasn’t gotten the planet there misses the point entirely. It’s that he’s beginning, slowly, to take the world again down the path.

So while I see what Obama's done so far as a step in the right direction on some issues, perhaps, but mostly just shifting us back to where we were under Clinton (a place that I was not at all happy to be, so we're clear), I guess the rest of the world thinks something bigger is changing here.

Water and Future Wars

Patrick Wrigley has an excellent article on how water suppliers are straining relations between Turkey and Iraq. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers both start in Turkey. With growing strains on water resources, Turkey can put Iraq behind the 8-ball should they choose to do so. Turkey needs the water. Iraq needs the water. But Turkey has it first. It's likely we can expect this to be a leading issue of contention between these two nations in coming years. Syria also has rights to some of this water and will also play an important role in these conflicts.

Turkey needs the water for both crops and dams. The more water used and impounded in Turkey, the worse the situation for Iraq and Syria.

With 40% of Turkey's water potential coming from trans-boundary waters, the country's future water security and its relations with its southern neighbors rests on this very policy. The government continues to argue that this is an opportunity for international cooperation rather than conflict. However, according to Erkin Erdogan, project coordinator for ecological issues at the Heinrich Boll Foundation in Istanbul, "As far as I can see, it [negotiation] is not working. Conflict with the Kurdish government [of northern Iraq] is ongoing. They say they have good relations but it is not the case. Several times Iraq has made quite harsh press announcements. The possibility of solving the problem is not that great. Turkey wants to use all its advantages."

This issue is certainly not new. In 1990, president Saddam Hussein demanded that Turkey increase the water flow through to Iraq to 700 cubic meters per second. The Turkish president, Yildirim Aktuna, declined the request, which led to the suspension of a security protocol between the countries. However, the issue has now taken on added urgency. Iraq has been afflicted by a crippling drought at a time when water flows from Turkey are diminishing.

Many analysts believe that the development of a series of dams on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers would severely undermine Syria and Iraq's access to water. According to Erdogan, "One of the main issues with the Ilisu dam is the issue of hegemony. It will let the Turkish government control the Tigris River and will have a bad affect on the other countries. This is a mechanism to control the water in the region."

The Turkish government argues that it is constantly seeking solutions to trans-boundary water issues. However, for Ankara, the Euphrates-Tigris basin is seen as the key to the country's future energy needs and to the socio-economic development of the southeast of the country. Meanwhile, for Iraq, the land between the two rivers, a symbol of the country's abundant natural heritage is slowly turning into a badge of want.

But it's not just in Turkey and Iraq that we may see these problems. Mexico and the United States have long-standing issues over the Colorado and Rio Grande. The Nile runs through several countries before getting to Egypt. The Danube and other European rivers have cross many borders as well. Particularly in a place like Iraq, water shortages could combine with other instabilities to lead to war, terrorism, totalitarian government, and other very bad outcomes. Water issues should be a top U.N. priority in coming years because the 21st century could easily see water become a major reason for warfare.

Bill Cahir

Back before the Pennsylvania primaries, I interviewed Bill Cahir, then running in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania's 5th District Congressional seat. He was a thoughtful, eloquent candidate, sharing his positions on media consolidation and making a case for single-payer health care as well as elaborating on the best way for the US to get out of Iraq.

Bill Cahir was killed in Afghanistan on Thursday, according to the Washington Post.

Cahir had to get an age deferment to join up with the Marines after September 11, 2001, but he felt that it was the right thing to do. When we spoke, he was still trying to do the best thing for America, and he died still serving his country. He would have made an excellent congressman, and I truly had hoped that he would run for office again.

Before signing up with the Marines, Cahir was a journalist, and he returned to reporting after his tour of duty in Iraq, before deciding to run for Congress. I stumbled across the news story by accident today while fact-checking a piece for the Nation and it brought me up short: I have several friends who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no one (thank whatever you believe in) has yet been killed. I only spoke to Cahir once, but it brought the war back home to me.

Every death in Afghanistan and Iraq is tragic and unnecessary, and Cahir's is sadly not out of the ordinary. My interview with him is here, if you're interested.

Iraq

So today is the June 30 deadline for U.S. involvement in major combat operations to end in Iraq. A remarkable day, made even more so by the fact that the coverage of the event is limited, particularly when compared to Michael Jackson.

Obviously this had to happen. The open glee of Iraqis again demonstrates this, if anyone still needed convincing. I do think that the next months are going to be very interesting. There´s been a rise in violent attacks on civilians. If this continues, what will happen? What will Obama do? Is there anything he can do? Will we continue our withdrawal as planned, regardless of what happens? What will the American political response be to a rise in violence?

I suspect the answer is that little will change for American involvement regardless of Iraqi violence. They don´t want us there, we don´t want to be there. At best, it becomes like Vietnam after 1975, when the predicted bloodbath after the South Vietnamese finally folded didn´t really come true (or at least to the extent that most critics of US withdrawal claimed). At worst, it looks like 2006. Either way though, this incredibly foolish and disastrous war is coming to an end for the Americans and we are beginning to engage in Afghanistan like we should have 7 years ago. At least we might be able to still do some good there.

Did We Actually Believe This Shit?

Via Ali Frick, GQ has published some of the greatest documents of the Bush Administration: top-secret intelligence reports on Iraq titled with Bible versus. GQ seems to have something that doesn't allow one to copy and paste the images, but please check them out. As a sample, the best one has a tank in Iraq entering a city. The intel report says, "“Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter," Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Did the Bush Administration actually believe that the US was the righteous nation? Of course the answer is yes.

With such a rejection of Bush's policies in 2006 and 2008, these attitudes seem like ancient history. How could Americans (because it certainly wasn't just the Bushies who believed this) actually think this way? But then again, 60% of evangelicals are pro-torture according to a recent poll. What a hypocritical version of Christanity these people lead. And with such disastrous results for the nation and the world.

It'd be great to get to a point when no people thought they were "the righteous nation." The U.S. has always had these messianic tendencies; every few decades it seems they percolate to the top. I don't know what to do about it except be aware and fight these myths before they gain enough popularity to again elect horrible people to power and again damage the world.

Photos Don't Lead to Anti-American Sentiment; Torture Leads to Anti-American Sentiment

Some new photos from Abu Ghraib have come out, and, well....no need to mince words: they're fucked up. We all know we torture(d) under the Bush regime, and it's not like we didn't know about Abu Ghraib. Still, seeing men covered in shit, cuffed into contorted positions, and left to die is no less outrageous. And Obama wants to hold off publishing more images because they "could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops"?

You know what else endangers U.S. troops and stokes anti-American sentiment? Going to wars we have no business being in, and treating prisoners the way we treated Iraqis in Abu Ghraib and detainees in Guantanamo (and who knows where else). So fuck Bush for getting us into this mess, and if American military leaders aren't ready for the international backlash, well....you should have not followed orders from Rumsfeld and put an end to this crap before it got this far, and not only when documentary evidence and photos became public. No amount of justice or indignity can address what these people have done, but still, it must be said.

Shame on all of them, from Bush down to the lowliest soldier involved in this ordeal.

The best monument in the world

A giant shoe built by Iraqi orphans to commemorate the journalist who threw his shoe at Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki. If they let this journalist out of jail, maybe he can run for office?

Dispatches from Georgia

h/t Natalia Antonova.

Reasons: Pipeline (in case that’s intercepted the alternative is Russian pipeline), NATO (’our former in our very soft South underbelly can’t be part of NATO’), and personal dislike of our President Saakashvili by Russian Prime Minister Putin.

Then there is Kosovo - “if they should get independence, why shouldn’t the Ossetians?” - the thinking goes.

Then there is Iraq - “if US can hang whomever they dislike, why can’t we?”

Go read it all. Now.

Dear John McCain...

You ain't president yet. And after seeing your incredibly shortsighted response to the crisis in Georgia, I hope more than ever that you never will be.

Read This. (h/t LGM)

I must confess that McCain has crept into an elite group of assholes who cause me to turn the radio volume down when they are on NPR. Most of this campaign season, I've had no problem with listening, but after the third replay of his asinine declaration that "I know I speak for all Americans, when I say we are all Georgians now" or something of that ilk (I know both clauses there came out of his mouth, but I'm not sure which order, so don't kill me), I can't take it anymore.

Anyone who supported or supports now the Iraq war has precisely zero moral high ground to discuss the territorial integrity of sovereign nations. Absolutely none. And the fact that McCain's attempt to look tough (and against Russia, too, to add to his salivating dream of becoming the Second Coming of Reagan) appears, as noted in the linked post, to actually be affecting Bush's policy...well, let's hope that Condi has more sense than her bosses, shall we?

Because I mean really, if we're bound and determined that the "international community" should be doing something to "punish" Russia, well, what should the international community do to us?

And I think I'd rather, if I'm going to be unilaterally assumed by a presidential candidate to be in solidarity with another nation I've never been to and that most people couldn't find on a map, that it be Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Or Sudan. Y'know, places we might actually be able to help.

But, well, they're WHITE people in Georgia, right? And not Muslims? (Please excuse my sarcasm. It's early and I have a vicious head cold.)

But can you imagine how McCain would react if Obama perhaps declared his solidarity with Iraqis, or Sudanese?

Natalia has more.

And hilzoy has video.

(cross-posted. and I'm going to try to be more on top of politics, I promise.)

One of the Greatest Generals in History?

Am I the only one who finds John McCain's constant referring to David Petraeus as "one of the greatest generals in history" absurd? By what standard? He seems pretty competent, certainly more so than the military officers leading the troops during the beginning of the war. But how precisely is he even one of the greatest generals in American history? Greater than Washington? Then Grant? Then Eisenhower or Sherman or Lee?


I'm certainly no expert on military history. But I don't think I am missing anything here. McCain's desperately trying to show that the Surge has worked and is giving Petraeus all the credit. This despite the fact that Iraqis seem to believe the Surge is irrelevant and that the violence has dropped because Iraqis themselves were sick of the killing and started to work through their sectarian problems to rebuild their society.


Anyway, the idea that Petraeus is one of the greatest generals in history might be the single most laughable theme of this presidential election, rivaling perhaps only Fred Thompson's entire candidacy.

It's Always All About America

President Bush is upset that Asian and Latin American nations are subsidizing gas prices, thus protecting their citizens from the price spikes that have hurt Americans this year. These nations are doing so for a good reason--rising gas prices threatens their power. But more fundamentally, it's hard to feel bad for Americans. Although these subsidies are unsustainable at their current levels and ultimately are bad for the environment since they spur continued growth in oil consumption, they are also choices made by governments to support their poor and new middle class in their attempt to have a better standard of living.

But then Americans don't really care about that. We only care about maintaining our own outrageous use of resources at cheap prices. When this is threatened, it's someone else's fault, not ours. Our lack of consideration for other nations doesn't stop at gas prices though. Dave Noon quotes Kay Kagan's insistence that the only nation which counts in the Iraq war is the United States.

At the end of the day, the United States is not in Iraq for the benefit of the
Iraqis. American forces are not fighting to allow Iraqi leaders to make hard
choices. The U.S. is engaged in Iraq in pursuit of its own interests in fighting
terrorism and resisting Iranian destabilization and hegemony. Reconciliation
agreements within the Iraqi parliament are part of what is required to secure
those interests over the long term, but they are not now and never have been the
reason for the presence of American combat forces in Iraq.

This is how most Americans think about. Iraqis were never real people, either for the war supporters at home or for the government. Dave is outraged by Kagan's statements (as I am, for they are truly disturbing). But she's really only expressing how many Americans have always felt about this war. The fact that Iraqis may have thoughts of their own and are acting upon those feelings by pressing the U.S. to get the hell out of their country is very difficult for Kagan, the administration, and the Neocons to deal with. After all, weren't the Iraqis supposed to welcome us with open arms?

More broadly, this insular way of thinking typlifies Americans interactions with the world. The world exists to serve U.S. interests, feed us resources, and accept our power without questioning. When those nations do something really outrageous to defy the United States, we want to bomb them. But when they do small things, like subsidize their drivers or ask the U.S. to create a timetable for withdrawing from their nation, we are confused, not knowing how to respond and whining like babies without a bottle.

Historical Image of the Day

US invasion of Iraq.

An eerie start

I am in Norfolk, Virginia this month for rehearsals and a performance of part of my new opera at the Virginia Arts Festival. The work, Heroes, Monsters, Humans, deals with the Iraq War from the perspectives of, by turns, a young Iraqi girl, an American soldier, and his wife back home in the States. The work is, as my stage works tend to be lately, political in nature (last year, the Arts Festival performed scenes from my comic opera, The Most Fortunate Son, which is a satirical critique of class privilege in America, as told through the ascendancy of George W. Bush).

In any event, this trip has been framed by two very different and very poignant experiences. While flying from Atlanta to Norfolk (which is a large Navy town), I sat by a 22 year old returning from Iraq for fifteen days of leave. We talked for the whole hour of the trip; he had been flown from Iraq to Germany to Ireland to Atlanta to Norfolk, a trip that had taken him almost three days. He is stationed in Southern Iraq, where things are calmer. His perspective was interesting; he had volunteered for duty in Iraq because of the money (he is paid more over there for hazard pay), and made a point to say that he wasn’t “tied up” in all of the “other stuff”—meaning the politics. I imagine it would be a great benefit for one to have that kind of disengagement, which he extended to the dangers of his work there as well. He told me that driving around those roads, he just thinks of them like normal highways, not letting his mind think about the risks.

As we got off the plane, I asked him what he was planning on doing on leave. He said he was going to drink beer and go camping. Camping would be the last damn thing I’d want to do after living in tent in Iraq for the last seven months, and I think he picked up on my amazement. He said, “I want to be near some trees”.

Talk about taking things in my life for granted.

Three fun things I learned from him:

(1) There is no alcohol in Iraq

(2) Everything there smells like shit and diesel

(3) It takes the Navy over three days to get you from Iraq to the States; it takes them 18 hours to get you from the States to Iraq

After arriving and checking into the hotel here, I stepped outside to try to find a place to eat lunch. As I was looking around, a young man standing outside the hotel looked at me and just started talking. The first thing he said was “What the fuck are you looking at?”, which left me rather stunned. As we began to talk, his hostility left as quickly as it had come.

His name was Kevin, 23 years old, also in the Navy. There was something haltingly wrong with him—drugs, alcohol, PTSD, I have no idea—but something was very wrong. He would begin to talk about his inability to say things, vague language about hiding things, and various other secretive and veritably strange phrases. He started crying at one point, and then immediately smiled and told me the bag I was carrying made me look like a “fag”. It was the strangest conversation I have ever had in my entire life. It was like an emotional rampage—up, down, angry, sad, defeated, aggressive—all in the span of about half an hour. Even stranger was that his language was so vague. He said very little that was not abstracted, and several times offered me cryptic advice about secrecy (?!) I cannot capture the nature of this conversation very well, but suffice is to say it was very odd, frightening, and in a way, moving.

These experiences would have been very poignant in their own right, but having them as the first experiences of this trip, which is centered on my Iraq War opera, is a very strange feeling. It somehow seems fitting.

Bush's Incompetence on Film

By chance this week, I watched When the Levees Broke in my Hurricane Katrina in Historical Perspective class and then No End in Sight at home. These two films are great documents to show the historical incompetence of the Bush administration. Plenty of people have talked about both films so I won't go into much detail here. But I think watching them back to back is extremely powerful.

When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is possibly the best documentary I have ever seen. That's a strong statement I know. But that film has unbelievable power. It's actually not that great for discussion I think, or at least it wasn't with me leading it, because it is just too overwhelming. After each of the 4 episodes, one just feels completely devastated. Michael Eric Dyson, in his book about Katrina, Come Hell or High Water, explores Kanye West's assertion that George Bush doesn't care about black people. Essentially, Dyson says, that regardless of Bush's actual feelings toward African-Americans, he doesn't care about them as a political group. That disinterest dominated hurricane relief efforts. As we all know, relief was slow and inadequate and hundreds if not thousands of people died as a direct result. In the aftermath, Bush was conducting fundraisers and talking about Iraq, Cheney was hanging out on his ranch in Wyoming, and Condi was shopping. None of them cared. Today, Hurricane Katrina relief funds are running out with most of the city not yet rebuilt and much not even cleaned up. Nothing more is coming either. Disgusting.

Watching No End in Sight only reinforced When the Levees Broke. Again viewing the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the multiple ways the Bush administration sabotaged their own war through ideology, contempt for the Iraqis, inexperience, incompetence, disinterest, malfeasance, and idiocy. While I still believe that it is a very hard case to make that this administration is the worst in American history, it sure is awfully close and I pray the worst in my lifetime. Because I don't want to live through something worse.

I was thinking about Fahrenheit 9/11 after watching these films. The problem with that movie is the conspiracy theory aspect to it. Why focus on conspiracy theories when this administration has done so many horrible things that are easily documented and clear to the public? Accusing it of conspiracies almost serves its interest because it draws attention from their actual evil.

Violence Against Women in Iraq

Sure glad to see the Surge is working. I'm even more glad we invaded Iraq in the first place. It sure is a better place now.

Shorter Romney: How Dare You Accuse Me of Taking a Sensible Position. I Demand an Immediate Apology!!!!

Mitt Romney is demanding an apology from John McCain. Why? McCain accused Romney of having once supported a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

This shows how utterly out of touch the Republican candidates are with the American people. A majority of the nation wants out of Iraq, either now or very soon. Yet Republicans are fighting to see whose position is closest to a president with an approval rating south of 30%.

Does McCain or Romney really expect to argue in front of the entire electorate that we should stay in Iraq for the long haul? Are they really looking to be the next Barry Goldwater?

The Immorality of American Wars: Vietnam

I cannot recommend highly enough the fantastic Nick Turse article about Vietnamese amputees at Asia Times Online. Turse allows these two amputees, Nguyen Van Tu and Pham Van Chap, to tell their stories of life as amputees. Both had a leg torn off by the Americans or South Vietnamese in the war.

Pham Van Chap asks a basic question of American readers: "Americans caused many losses and much suffering for the Vietnamese during the war, do Americans now feel remorse?"

Turse writes:

I wish I could answer "yes". Instead, I tell him that most Americans are totally ignorant of the pain of the Vietnamese people, and then I think to myself, as I glance at the ample pile of tiny, local potatoes on his floor, about widespread American indifference to civilians killed, maimed, or suffering in other ways in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Precisely. Americans don't care. I don't think they ever did. Just like we don't care today about what happens to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the fundamental immorality of modern American war. It is one thing to not care about the wounded of your enemies. No one expected us to worry about the wounded of Nazi Germany. They were our enemy. Of course, geopolitical concerns led us to care an awful lot about reconstructing Germany, but that's an issue for another day.

Beginning in the Cold War though, we supposedly fought wars around the world to help the people we were fighting for. Central America, Vietnam, Korea, endless CIA operations around the world. In name at least, these were about protecting the people from some sort of oppression. Yet, not only did we promote oppressive dictatorships on our own, but we showed no interest at all in how our wars affected average people.

One might argue that is not the job of a nation at war. OK, perhaps. But what about when that war is over? Don't we have some kind of obligation to the people we were fighting for? Shouldn't we at least provide them prosthetic legs or arms? Help them eat?

But no, we don't care. Most war supporters sit at home and see the wars through the eyes of America kicking ass. The people on the ground aren't people, they are video game people. The U.S. government is playing a giant video game for them and they love watching it. They don't care any more about an Iraqi, Vietnamese, or Salvadoran than they do about the nameless characters they blew away on their video games.

Nothing is going to change in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if we win these wars, if we can win such conflicts, does anyone really think there will be the slightest interest in reconstruction? The tiniest amount of money to putting people's lives back together again?

I sure don't believe we will. And that cuts to the fundamental immorality of American wars since 1945.

Let me close by quoting Turse again:

I wish I could tell Nguyen Van Tu that most Americans know something of his country's torture and torment during the war. I wish I could tell him that most Americans care. I wish I could tell him that Americans feel true remorse for the terror visited upon the Vietnamese in their name, or that an apology is forthcoming and reparations on their way. But then I'd be lying.