Levees Not War

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[ cross-posted at Daily Kos ]

Last September, Levees Not War raised the question whether Hurricane Katrina was a more significant catastrophe than 9/11, more emblematic in terms of chronic ills afflicting the United States. Now the question is raised whether the nation faces internal political and economic dangers more pernicious and destructive than Osama bin Laden, lethal as he was, ever posed.

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Well, this ought to change the subject from royal weddings and birth certificates for a few days.

It is a good thing that Osama bin Laden is dead, and good that it was U.S. forces that killed him. There is a certain (long-delayed) revenge satisfied in that, shared pretty much equally across the nation.* It is also good for this president—politically and for his standing within the military and foreign policy establishment—that his promise to bring bin Laden to justice—to death, that is—has been fulfilled. (Click here for public reaction photos; here for newspaper front pages; and here for bin Laden’s life in pictures—including a shot of him as a mujahedin wearing a very American-looking uniform in the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s.)

Much will be said and written by better-informed and deeper-thinking authorities, but on this important occasion we wanted in our own modest way to offer a few observations we think worth keeping in mind.

First, Americans must not gloat about the killing of this enemy. It’s done. It’s good that it’s done. Any loud grandstanding or other exploitation of this event for political or commercial self-promotion should be avoided. It should not be an occasion to further insult Arabs and Muslims. There was and is an enormous sense of injustice, impoverishment, and wounded pride among Muslims that bin Laden was able to exploit for his own purposes against the West, the U.S. in particular. No good will come from any further demonization of Arabs and Muslims. Instead we should hope that the independence movements in the Middle East will succeed, as peacefully as possible, in the Egyptian model. (The photo at right shows Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, cheering the death of bin Laden.)

Next, we hope that this “mission accomplished” will energize the anti-war movement (such as it is) and hasten the de-escalation of the wars in Afghanistan/Pakistan and in Iraq and Libya. Much of the justification—the figurehead or “poster child” of the terrorist enemy—is now removed. Can we get back to rebuilding the United States?

No, of course not. The war machine, we fear, will grind on. (Defense appropriations are higher than they ever were during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.) There will be calls from the likes of John McCain and other neocon “security” promoters to identify new threats that call for ever-expanding aggressions overseas. Verily, with only a few exceptions, we tend to see these forces as greater threats to peace and national security than anything outside our borders.

The personal attacks on this president and demonization of new enemies will go on. We expect that within days—on Fox News it’s probably already under way—fresh insults and unfounded accusations and outright foolishness will prevail. Sometimes it seems the United States—or the far right, so-called conservative dimension of the national psyche—cannot exist without an enemy, whether in the form of despised immigrants, anarchists, communists, socialists, minorities, etc.

Pardon our pessimism, but aside from the brave working people’s resistance movement in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Midwest where labor rights are under assault, there’s been little to inspire confidence in improvements. The long-awaited killing of bin Laden is not going to change agenda of Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, FreedomWorks, or Americans for Prosperity—nor will it infuse fresh adrenaline into the hearts of Democrats. The far-right corporatists of the Republican party will continue slashing away at the social safety net, insulting workers and the unemployed alike. And, very likely—unless the public forcefully demands that they stand up and fight—the timid centrist-corporatists known as congressional Democrats will continue to allow the savaging of Medicare, Social Security, and any semblance of health care reform and financial regulation. (We use the word “corporatist” because the radical extremists running amok in Washington and statehouses across the nation have nothing to do with conserving.)

(more…)

A State of Permanent War

“This image shows the exhaustion of a man—and the exhaustion of a nation.”
—Gary Knight, chairman of the World Press Photo jury

This picture of a U.S. soldier in the Korengal Valley in the Eastern province of Afghanistan shows the traumatized exhaustion felt most acutely by soldiers in the field in Afghanistan and Iraq after years of war—but also by the American public. This image by British photographer Tim Hetherington won the prestigious World Press Photo Contest (chosen best among 80,000 entries). Photo for Vanity Fair / Panos Pictures.

The image below shows American troops under fire at the Restropo bunker in Afghanistan. A sergeant and a medic drag a wounded comrade to safety. Click here to see more war photos by Tim Hetherington.