Levees Not War

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“We are united. We are strong. That’s why they call them unions.”

President Obama was in full campaign mode as he rallied a lively Labor Day crowd of some 5,000 supporters at Milwaukee’s LaborFest on Monday, Sept. 6. First he talked about what the administration and Democrats in Congress have achieved, then proposed “a new plan for rebuilding and modernizing America’s roads and rails and runways for the long term.” We’ll have more to say in the next day or so about his impressive pitch for a National Infrastructure Bank. Meanwhile, here’s what he had to say about the Republicans who think they deserve another turn at the wheel. (The quoted passage begins at about 45:30 in the video.)

“They drove our economy into a ditch. And we got in there and put on our boots and we pushed and we shoved. And we were sweating and these guys were standing, watching us and sipping on a Slurpee. [Laughter.] And they were pointing at us saying, how come you’re not pushing harder, how come you’re not pushing faster? And then when we finally got the car up—and it’s got a few dings and a few dents, it’s got some mud on it, we’re going to have to do some work on it—they point to everybody and say, look what these guys did to your car. [Laughter.] After we got it out of the ditch! And then they got the nerve to ask for the keys back! I don’t want to give them the keys back. They don’t know how to drive.”

And there’s more, much more.

You go, Barack. This is the kind of punch in the face of the Party of No we’ve been starving for for a year and a half.

Winner of the 2010 Ashley Morris Award: Clifton Harris of Cliff’s Crib

New Orleans blogger Clifton Harris, right, receives the Ashley Morris Memorial Award from emcee George “Loki” Williams, center, and Mark “Oyster” Moseley. Photo courtesy of M. Styborski. Cliff Harris’s writing also appears in the new book A Howling in the Wires: An Anthology of Writing from Postdiluvian New Orleans (Gallatin & Toulouse, 2010). The motto of Cliff’s Crib is “Embrace Your Potential and Be Productive. Long Live the Lower Ninth Ward.” Warm congratulations to Clifton Harris. Read his blog and buy the book. We have. [The coveted Ashley Award, named in honor of the legendary, larger-than-life Ashley Morris, is presented each year to a blogger who has made outstanding contributions to writing about post-Katrina New Orleans. Ashley Morris, Ph.D., who died in 2008, was one of the founders of the Rising Tide conference and an inspiration for the Treme character Creighton Bernette, played by John Goodman.]

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Liveblogging follows, with earliest panels at bottom. (“Treme” panel not included, sorry. For good coverage of that, see Machelle Allman’s Watching Treme.)

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Why Can’t We Get Some Dam Safety in New Orleans? | Presentation by Tim Ruppert

3:40 Denial of killing potential of failed levees results in low standards of expectations for levee strength. Levees are considered to only protect property, not human life. The 100-year flood model is an inadequate standard of measurement that leaves N.O. and other human settlements exposed to unacceptable risk of flooding and death. ASCE advocates a risk-based assessment of levees—in other words, let’s calculate how many people would die if this levee fails (the same way dams’ failure is measured and risk-assessed). “When levees fail, people die.” We’re going to have to push Congress to act as though failed levees are every bit as threatening to human safety as failed dams are. 3:30 About 43 percent of Americans live in areas protected by levees. What it means to public safety when dams and levees are perceived as being different from each other. Begins with Johnstown Flood of 1889. Is there really any difference between a dam failure and a levee failure? National Dam Inspection Act passed in 1972, and WRDA (Water Resource Development Act) both distinguished between dams and levees. Dams are considered a life safety system—they usually hold higher levels of water than levees do. Levees are not considered life safety systems; it is assumed or expected that all people living within a levee-protected area are able to evacuate, though we know this is not actually true. 3:20 Why Can’t We Get Some Dam Safety in New Orleans? Presentation by Tim Ruppert, engineer and N.O. blogger (Tim’s Nameless Blog)

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Politics Panel: Peter Athas, Jason Berry, Clancy Dubos, Jeff Crouere, Stephanie Grace, Jacques Morial

3:05 What will Jindal do? He is looking beyond the governor’s mansion. Run against Mary Landrieu? Crouere and Dubos agree that Jindal won’t finish out his term. That is why the next lieutenant governor’s race will in effect be the next governor’s race. Dubos says he will cut the budget to the bone and then go around the country to Iowa or Florida and talk about how he cut the budget. He doesn’t care about the people of Louisiana; he cares about how his actions look on his resume. Jindal refuses to sign any revenue increase, so cuts will get worse. Stephanie Grace says that what happens to the state’s universities in the next couple of years will send a message to the rest of the nation of what Jindal stands for. 3:00 Jason Berry says a progressive media is needed to help build Democratic, progressive party, candidates, through spreading progressive ideas. As it is, we’re breeding Republicans. Even here in the most progressive urban city in the state there’s really only one progressive paper [Gambit].

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“The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves—and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans—if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan. . . . We would betray our values—and play into our enemies’ hands—if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists—and we should not stand for that. . . . there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God’s love and mercy.” —Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Aug. 3, 2010

“We desire therefore in this case not to judge least we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand and fall to his own Master. Wee are bounde by the Law to doe good unto all men, especially to those of the household of faith.” —Remonstrance of the Inhabitants of the Towne of Flushing to Governor Peter Stuyvesant, December 27, 1657 (alluded to by Mayor Bloomberg)

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” —First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, 1791

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Ordinarily this blog would have no reason to comment on the building of an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan—the subject doesn’t naturally pertain to our core mission of infrastructure, environment, and peace (especially for New Orleans and environs). But these are not ordinary times, and this is no longer an ordinary religious-freedom issue.

The uproar over Park51, commonly known as the “Ground Zero Mosque,” has reached national security–threatening levels of madness. What we find most troubling about the furor is that the hate speech against Islam generally—blaming all Muslims, including the 5 to 7 million Muslim Americans, for the crimes of al Qaeda on 9/11—is making it easier to justify war on the Islamic world, to continue fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond. (Recall the WWII internments of Japanese-Americans and the atomic bombings made politically and morally more palatable by persistent demonization of “the Jap” as subhuman.) Most insane and threatening of all is that the broad-brush insults of Muslims validate Osama bin Laden’s claims that America hates Islam and that therefore all Muslims should fight against “the Crusaders.” Do Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin really want to do bin Laden’s recruiting work for him?

[The manufacture of the controversy cannot be understood without seeing Atlas Shrugs, the blog of author and activist Pamela Geller, executive director of a group called Stop Islamization of America (“a human rights organization dedicated to freedom of speech, religious liberty”) and coauthor of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America (foreword by John Bolton). Salon’s Justin Elliott explains how Geller pushed Park51 from being unremarkable when announced to being suddenly seen as a dire threat to America.]

The site in question is occupied by a former Burlington Coat factory that was damaged on 9/11. The building dates back to the 1850s. The owners of the property, Feisal Abdul Rauf, a graduate of Columbia University, and his wife Daisy Khan, plan to build a Sufi Islamic cultural center—not a mosque—modeled on the (Jewish) 92nd Street Y, a prominent cultural and fitness center in New York City. (Sufis are well known as the most peaceful and “cosmic” of the varieties of Islam—they are like the opposite of extremist or violent. Think of the Persian poet Rumi.) The Park51 board includes Christians and Jews along with Muslims. The plans call for classrooms, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, a memorial to the victims of September 11 (some of whom were Muslim, as were some of the first responders), a prayer room but not a mosque, and so on. Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam of a mosque in TriBeCa for nearly 30 years, vice-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York and the author of “What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America,” has conducted “sensitivity training” for the FBI. He is famous as a peaceful moderate. His wife, Daisy Khan, runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which she co-founded with Rauf. (When she appeared on Fox News in December 2009 to talk about the center, Laura Ingraham said, “I like what you’re doing.”) Rauf and Khan are precisely the kind of Muslims America should welcome and encourage. Harassing them and demonizing their project, telling them and others of their faith that they don’t belong here sends a very bad signal to the Muslim world and reinforces their suspicion that America is at war with Islam.

Where Is George W. Bush When You Need Him?

This is precisely why President Bush was careful to clarify publicly, repeatedly, that the U.S. is fighting al Qaeda, not Islam. “Islam is peace,” he said. Where is he now? Maureen Dowd writes (almost pleadingly), “W. needs to get his bullhorn back out.” At the time Bush said these things, we were not confident his heart was really in it, but he was right to reinforce the message, and it would do a lot of good for America as a United States if he would resurface to try to cool the hostility. (See Joshua Holland’s disturbing report at AlterNet about an epidemic of anti-Islamic hate spreading across the U.S., nearly 10 years after September 11.)

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Out of Iraq, on to Afghanistan

The last combat troops have left Iraq, as a convoy of the 4th Stryker Brigade rumbled in the wee hours of August 19, 2010, from Iraq toward U.S. bases in Kuwait. At the end of August, Operation Iraqi Freedom will end and 50,000 advisory and security troops will remain in Iraq until the end of 2011 for a new phase to be known as Operation New Dawn. (May we have a new dawn in the United States, please?—or is it not “morning in America” anymore?)

Michael Gordon of the New York Times reports here on how the U.S. State Department, with about 2,400 civilian employees protected by up to 7,000 private security guards, will continue the training of Iraqi police and assist with political stabilization and other functions—including counterterrorism—in an effort to help Iraq rebuild without the presence of U.S. combat troops. The 2,400 civilian State Department employees will work at the Baghdad embassy and regional outposts in Mosul, Kirkuk, and at consulates in Erbil and Basra. Gordon writes:

The startup cost of building and sustaining two embassy branch offices—one in Kirkuk and the other in Mosul—and of hiring security contractors, buying new equipment and setting up two consulates in Basra and Erbil is about $1 billion. It will cost another $500 million or so to make the two consulates permanent. And getting the police training program under way will cost about $800 million.

So, the combat forces are withdrawing, returning to the Homeland. Some soldiers will get to rejoin their families after a long time away—we wish them well—and others will have to redeploy in maybe six months to Afghanistan, where Obama’s surge continues.

Where’s That “Mission Accomplished” Feeling?

It is surely a good thing that the combat forces are withdrawing from Iraq, but why don’t we feel any pleasure or pride? What has been accomplished, aside from doubling the price of a gallon of gas and making Iran the main power in the region? The soldiers themselves surely feel some pride and relief, and after all their hard work they deserve more than a good cigar. But what have we gained? Where is the security? The United States is immeasurably poorer, more weak and divided than when this war began—economically, socially, politically. As of this writing, 4,415 American soldiers are dead; tens of thousands are wounded, many critically, missing limbs, and some with unimaginable brain and neurological injuries, and alarming numbers have committed suicide: 27 in July alone, 32 in June. (In addition to all the Iraqi dead—estimates are around 100,000—there have been 179 British dead and 139 from other Coalition nations.) And then there’s the psychological, soul damage the soldiers suffer, and the broken marriages, the frayed family relationships, the children who have grown from infants to eight- and ten-year-olds hardly even knowing their fathers or mothers who have been away on multiple deployments and come home virtually strangers with scant job prospects here in the Homeland. But Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, so maybe it’s all worthwhile.

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Last week we reviewed the excellent new documentary Countdown to Zero, released in late July, just in time for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki anniversaries (Aug. 6 and 9). While we praised Countdown and hope everyone will see it, we had some questions about the film’s stand on the safety or acceptability of nuclear power (see below). We contacted the production company and some of the experts who appear in the film, and two experts, Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund and Dr. Bruce Blair, president of the World Security Institute and founder of Global Zero, replied in generous detail. We wanted to share their thoughts, and to express here our gratitude for their taking the time to clarify some important concerns about how nuclear power and nonproliferation can coexist.

Some of this gets a little technical—but it’s a technical matter, after all—so you can skim the excerpts if you like. The main point is that the experts took the questions seriously and took time to answer, and their replies show they’ve been thinking quite extensively about these issues.

We wrote last week:

Countdown to Zero is excellent but not perfect. We had questions about some important practical issues that were raised but not dealt with. The film advocates bringing all world nuclear stockpiles down to zero. (Agreed.) But the film also explains that nuclear power plants produce fissile material (as in the case of Iran). So, does the film also advocate elimination of nuclear power? How is the danger posed by production of fissile materials through ordinary operation of nuclear power plants to be managed? Unless we missed something, the film said nothing about what should be done about nuclear power plants. Presumably terrorists or their would-be suppliers could also get their hands on fissile material—or is that somehow not possible? There is still the question of what to do about Iran, or what threat may be posed by Iran or other possibly hostile or unstable nations possessing nuclear power plants, or the fissile material produced by them. Would France, for example, have to shut down its nuclear power plants, the source of most of its electricity?

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We’re Levees Not War, and We Approve This Message:

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The text of the commercial, running in various media markets in Louisiana, goes like this:

We know how David Vitter handled his “serious sin.” And when David Vitter’s staffer violently abused his girlfriend, Senator Vitter let him keep his job—working on women’s issues. David Vitter on women: he voted against equal pay for equal work; against coverage for mammograms; even against protections for women raped on the job. David Vitter: for women, his “serious sin” isn’t even his worst.

See Charlie Melancon’s “Serious Sins” web site. Click here for Talking Points Memo’s article about the ad, and Vitter’s commercial that prompted Melancon to bring out the big guns (linking Melancon with “millionaires and illegals”). TPM comments, “No Wallflowers in This Race.”

Charlie Melancon, a Democratic congressman for Louisiana’s 3rd congressional district, is running for United States Senate. Levees Not War strongly endorses his candidacy and will be pushing for him between now and the November elections.

Today, August 6, is the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Nagasaki was nuked on Aug. 9. The bombs killed some 90,000 to 160,000 in Hiroshima and some 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki, with half the deaths occurring in the first day, even the first millisecond, of the blast. Over the following months and years, thousands died from burns and radiation sickness.

Read Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe’s compelling op-ed in today’s New York Times, “Hiroshima and the Art of Outrage.” A friend of Oe’s mother was an eyewitness to the blast; she only survived because she was protected behind a large brick wall:

Moments before the atomic bomb was dropped, my mother’s friend happened to seek shelter from the bright summer sunlight in the shadow of a sturdy brick wall, and she watched from there as two children who had been playing out in the open were vaporized in the blink of an eye.

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Last night we went to see Countdown to Zero, a powerful new documentary written and directed by Lucy Walker and produced by the folks who brought us An Inconvenient Truth. Despite the film’s serious subject, it’s not a downer: it’s actually positive, affirmative, and you walk out feeling more hopeful. (You may have read about Countdown to Zero a few weeks ago in our tribute to Greenpeace co-founder and anti–nuke-testing activist Jim Bohlen.) Click here for a photo gallery of the film.

Enlivened by the commentary of such experts and officials as Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert McNamara, Valerie Plame Wilson, Joseph Cirincione, and others, including a U.S. army officer who literally worked down in a nuclear silo with his finger on the button, the film gives a concise overview of the history of the atomic bomb and the reasons why it’s outlived its usefulness and should be eliminated from all arsenals.

The narrative shows how the bomb was developed in ultra top secret Manhattan Project in the early 1940s (even Vice President Harry Truman didn’t know about it until he became president upon the death of FDR in April 1945), and following the detonations over Japan, the bomb prompted misgivings and remorse, evoked most eloquently by nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who recalled the Trinity test in New Mexico (pictured above) in July 1945, just weeks before Hiroshima:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

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“In releasing the Pentagon Papers I acted in hope I still hold: that truths that changed me could help Americans free themselves and other victims from our longest war.” —Daniel Ellsberg, Papers on the War (1972)

There’s a kind of appropriate, ironic justice that the Internet, which was originally developed by the Defense Department (as ARPANET)—with taxpayer dollars, naturally—now serves as the delivery system for spilling to the world a trove of secret U.S. military reports on the war in Afghanistan (also funded by the American public): a “Pentagon Papers” for our time. WikiLeaks.org, which in April released a U.S. military video of an Apache helicopter gunship killing civilians and Reuters journalists in Baghdad, has posted on the Internet about 92,000 SIGACTS (significant activity reports) from the Afghan war written between 2004 and 2009. Before posting the secret field reports, WikiLeaks provided to the New York Times, the Guardian (U.K.), and the German magazine Der Spiegel an advance peek. (Click here for a video of a press conference with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, shown above.)

(We meant to write about this earlier, but we’ve been so busy reading all 92,000 documents. Hey, the New York Times had a two-week jump-start! And this leak comes just a week after we bought a first edition of Daniel Ellsberg’s Papers on the War (1972)—in Woodstock, no less. Coincidence? You decide.)

WikiLeaks’s Afghan War Diary was unloaded within days of Newsweek’s publication of a “Rethinking Afghanistan” cover story bluntly titled “We’re Not Winning. It’s Not Worth It” by national security veteran Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (not a hotbed of radicalism), and just weeks after the Rolling Stone profile of “The Runaway General” Stanley McChrystal IED’d the war effort and cast doubt on the troops’ support of the whole counterinsurgency strategy that Washington hoped would turn the war around. (As the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson points out, Gen. McChrystal himself leaked a report last September when it suited him, an early instance of the insubordination that got him fired.)

“What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth About a War?”

Although much of the WikiLeaks material is dismissed as routine—the White House predictably says there’s “nothing new here”—the documents reveal facts that will be news to the general public, further depressing an already war-weary, crisis-strained nation. Among the reports’ key revelations or substantiations:

• The double-dealing of our “partner” Pakistan, whose intelligence service, ISI, has colluded with the Taliban to fight against U.S. and Afghan and coalition forces
• New documentation of close working relationship, including financial support, between Pakistan’s military elite and the Afghanistan Taliban
• Pakistani ISI agents have coordinated with the Taliban to kill American soldiers and have plotted to assassinate Afghan leaders
• The U.S. has covered up evidence that Taliban insurgents are using surface-to-air missiles to bring down U.S. helicopters
• Civilian deaths from drone attacks and other operations are far higher than admitted by the U.S.
• The Taliban have massively escalated their roadside bombings, killing more than 2,000 civilians
• A secret U.S. Special Forces unit hunts down and kills Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial
• To destroy Taliban targets, the Coalition is using Reaper drones remote-controlled from a base in Nevada

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