BEING PRO-WAR MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY ‘SORRY’

Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president, US Deputy Defense Secretary and Iraq war architect, has been appointed to head a high-level advisory panel to the State Department on arms control and disarmament.

Is this some sort of bad joke?

I have blogged before on how out of touch with reality the Bush administration is but to task the man who helped launch a fraudulent war against Iraq to disarm it of non-existent weapons of mass destruction with the job of giving ‘high-level’ advice on how to now disarm the rest of the world’s weapons of mass destruction is a new and improved form of madness and illogic. (To quote arms-control specialist Joseph Cirincione: “The advice given by Paul Wolfowitz over the past six years ranks among the worst provided by any defense official in history. I have no idea why anyone would want more.”

It also reminds us of how the chief architects and supporters of the Iraq war, on both sides of the Atlantic, have basically carried on with their lives and their careers, continuing to prosper and polemicize while refusing to offer even the mildest or gentlest of apologies.

Wolfowitz left the Pentagon in 2005 under the cloud of Iraq, yet managed to land the prestigious post of World Bank President. He then left the World Bank in 2007 under another cloud (this time related to his authorisation of a large compensation package for his girlfriend) and yet now he is invited to offer official advice on defence policy to the very same US administration he left behind in ignominy.

Has he since apologized for all the grandiose (and inaccurate) claims he made in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? Not in the slightest. Yet he is the man who argued, before the war, “Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction, and he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them or provide them to a terror network.” He is the man who testified, before the war, “We're dealing with a country [Iraq] that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” He is the man who said, before the war “Some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark.” He is the man who predicted, before the war, that it was “reasonably certain that they [the Iraqis] will greet us as liberators.” Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Then there is Wolfowitz’s close pal and neoconservative ally, William Kristol, the editor of the Murdoch-owned, Bush-supporting Weekly Standard. Kristol penned this prophesy (!) on the eve of the war, in 2003:

“…the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth about Saddam's regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite sensitivity, other people's pain. History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.”

Is it even possible to be more wrong? Every word is fraudulent, inaccurate and diametrically opposed to the truth.

Was Kristol sacked from his post as editor of the Weekly Standard, in the wake of Iraq? Of course not. Has Fox News sacked him as one of their leading on-air political pundits? Nope. On the contrary, the supposedly liberal and left-of-centre New York Times recently hired him as a new ‘star’ columnist. So much for accountability. So much for an apology.

On this side of the Atlantic, all of the overpaid, overrated columnists and correspondents in the press who hyped the threat from Iraq and pushed us towards war in 2003 are still in their jobs, still pontificating on the Middle East and on issues of war and peace. None – bar the Independent’s Johann Hari and the Observer’s David Rose – has offered an apology for their role in propelling us into an illegal, bloody and disastrous invasion and occupation.

And then there’s our former Prime Minister. Like Bush in 2004, Blair too was maddeningly re-elected in 2005 despite the carnage in Iraq and the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction. He left office without being defeated in an election or deposed by his party, and now blissfully and arrogantly wanders the killing fields he helped create in the Middle East as an alleged 'peace envoy'. Oh, and don’t forget: while Iraq burns and its children grow increasingly malnourished, Mr Blair gives $500,000 speeches and accepts $1 million-a-year consultancies from international banks.

As I said, being pro-war means never having to say ‘sorry’. It means never having to worry about your job, your career, or your self-respect. There is no accountability. There are no consequences. And these people, basically, have no shame.

DEATH OF ‘OUR’ DICTATOR

I had planned to blog today on the death of the former Indonesian president, General Suharto, one of the twentieth century’s most brutal and bloodthirsty dictators.

He also happened to be a close friend of the West, supported and sustained by the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom, as he presided over the violent deaths of up to a million Indonesians, the invasion, occupation and rape of East Timor, and the embezzlement of up to $30 billion of government funds.

But in an article in today’s Guardian, aptly entitled 'Our Model Dictator', the veteran war correspondent (and East Timor specialist) John Pilger sums up the bloodthirsty nature of the late tyrant’s reign, and his ‘special’ relationship with the West, far better than I could:

“To understand the significance of Suharto is to look beneath the surface of the current world order: the so-called global economy and the ruthless cynicism of those who run it. Suharto was our model mass murderer - "our" is used here advisedly. "One of our very best and most valuable friends," Thatcher called him. For three decades the south-east Asian department of the Foreign Office worked tirelessly to minimise the crimes of Suharto's gestapo, known as Kopassus, who gunned down people with British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns from British-supplied Tactica "riot control" vehicles.”

Go read the full piece here.

Incidentally, note how ‘soft’ much of the coverage of Suharto’s death has been – compared to, say, the death of another brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, a little over a year ago. Can you imagine Saddam’s rule simply being described, rather casually, as “tough”? That’s how an Associated Press article described Suharto’s tyranny in this morning’s Washington Post. I guess, as they say:

"He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard!"

NUCLEAR HYPOCRISY – AND IMMORALITY!

The Guardian reported this week on a “radical manifesto for a new NATO” authored by the former armed forces chiefs from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands, in which these wizened and greying generals insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" for the Atlantic Alliance since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

There has been instant criticism of the report, and its "first use fallacy", with experts in this field pointing out the obvious practical flaws in the generals’ thesis. For example, Professor Robert Hinde, chair of the British Pugwashe Group, draws attention to the inherent contradictions in the strategic recommendations contained in the report:

“The five retired military commanders suggest that a Nato policy involving readiness to make pre-emptive strikes is necessary to counter political fanatics and international terrorism, because of the mass migrations that could be triggered by climate change, and because of the weakening of nation states and the UN. But a nuclear strike is unlikely to deter a political fanatic and would be ineffective against terrorists. No one could possibly think of deterring refugees with a nuclear weapon, and such a policy could only weaken the UN further. We must choose between a world ruled by threat, or one ruled by law and mutual understanding. Most of us would prefer the latter. The first step towards it must be to take all nuclear weapons off alert and a commitment to no first use.”

Dr Ian Davis, from the British American Security Information Council, reminds readers why the heavyweight credentials of the authors (each is a former chief of the armed forces in his respective country of origin) should not necessarily overwhelm or distract us:

“Their view that "nuclear weapons - and with them the option of first use - are indispensable, since there is simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world" is certainly not shared by four veteran US cold warriors - former secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former secretary of defence William Perry, and former Senate armed services committee chairman Sam Nunn - who are leading the call for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. All three Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed this vision as well as the progressive steps needed to realise it.”

(To his list I would also add former US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, of Vietnam-era infamy.)

Yet I have yet to hear or read, in all the comment and analysis and opinion in the mainstream media about these nuclear proposals, anyone point out how undeniably counter-productive and hypocritical the chief recommendation of this new report is. After all, the generals write:

“The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

What? You mean to tell me that five experienced, educated, intelligent, sane soldiers are suggesting that the only way to ‘prevent’ the use of a weapon of mass destruction is the ‘first use’ of another weapon of mass destruction (i.e. a nuclear weapon)? How on earth can anyone justify such a statement, such a proposal? On grounds of morality or logic? To prevent using WMDs, we should use WMDs (!) It’s like saying: “To prevent a murder taking place, we must first murder someone.” It is a ridiculous and offensive view, and an insult to logic and common sense.

Yet it is a view that goes to the heart of our foreign and defence policies here in the West. ‘We’, the enlightened, advanced, mature democracies of the West are allowed to kill, maim, loot, plunder, invade and occupy all in the name of preventing others (at some indeterminate point in the near or perhaps distant future) from killing, maiming, looting, plundering, invading and occupying. Thus actions by nations are not defined as moral or immoral, right or wrong, in and of themselves – they are judged on the basis of who is doing them. Thus, the use of WMDs is BAD but then becomes GOOD if we are the ones stockpiling, deploying and (ultimately) using those WMDs, be they nukes (in Hiroshima/Nagasaki or even chemical weapons (in Vietnam and, more recently, Fallujah).

So, ‘our’ nukes, our WMDs, good. ‘Their’ nukes, their WMDs, bad. And our nukes should be used to stop them from using their nukes. Brilliant. Great. What a way to run the world….

SIDEBAR: Guess who one of the co-writers of this war-mongering, nuke-endorsing NATO report is? The rather obnoxious and spotty neocon pundit Douglas Murray, whose nasty and belligerent views I wrote about in a recent post and whose qualifications to write on international defence policy and nuclear deterrence theory are rather unclear (and perhaps non-existent).

935 LIES ABOUT IRAQ

Despite being picked up on by the New York Times and USA Today, this study from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity in Washington D.C. has so far been ignored by the mainstream media on this side of the Atlantic. Its findings are, however, shocking.

As the Associated Press report points out:

“The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

“…Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.”

There is now an ‘Iraq/WMD fatigue’ in the British press, encouraged by supporters of the war who want us all to forget about the lies, half-truths, distortions and exaggerations that they peddled in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion. Its now time to ‘move on’, they claim.

Of course, moving on is a means of saving their reputations and their massively inflated salaries. Remember David Aaronovitch of the Times? He proudly proclaimed in the immediate aftermath of the illegal invasion,

"If nothing is eventually found, I - as a supporter of the war - will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere. They probably are."

Remember those words, David? Have you had a chance to look back on the 935 lies you believed and then gullibly passed on to your readers?

EXPOSING THE RIGHT-WING 'THINKTANKS'

In their book, 'Banana Republicans', US authors (and public relations experts) Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber outline, among other things, the systematic and successful way in which right-wing, corporate-funded thinktanks - claiming to be neutral and nonpartisan - have hijacked the US political, media and intellectual agendas in recent years.

It is a book crying out for a UK equivalent - given the growing proliferation of similar 'nonpartisan' (but glaringly and undeniably right-wing and conservative) thinktanks on this side of the pond.

The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Policy Exchange, Civitas, Reform and the Adam Smith Institute publish right-wing screeds and propaganda, in the guise of 'academic' papers and pamphlets, on a weekly basis. A gullible 24-hour news media here in the United Kingdom invites their spokespersons to offer regular comment on the issues of the day, without revealing their right-wing, free-market, anti-immigration links to their viewers.

None of these thinktanks offer any specialist expertise on a subject - say, the Middle East - in as rigorous, neutral and peer-reviewed manner as a university department or professional academic might. Yet they are easier to get hold of and far more media-savvy than your average professor or lecturer and so they are taken seriously and given acres of media coverage, despite the fraudulent and politicized nature of much of their 'research'. One only has to watch the BBC's flagship programme Newsnight tear apart Policy Exchange's widely-reported and widely-acclaimed report on extremism within Britains mosques (my own posting on the subject is here).

Yet the supposedly liberal and left-wing BBC Newsnight last week chose to carry a typically sensationalist, over-the-top and over-hyped report from reporter Richard Watson - on alleged government funding of 'radical' Muslim organisations - which relied on an investigation by the Centre for Social Cohesion. It left viewers with no proper information as to what this rather Orwellian-sounding institution stands for, or who its staff are.

The Centre for Social Cohesion was founded last year by the right-wing thinktank Civitas. Its website claims it is trying to "help bring Britain's ethnic and religious communities closer together while strengthening British traditions of openness, tolerance and democracy."

However, the political views and agendas of its staff and advisory council suggest it will have the exact opposite effect - fanning, instead, political intolerance, racial and religious hatred and right-wing authoritarianism.

Its director is the twenty-something Douglas Murray, self-proclaimed British neocon and author of "Neoconservatism: Why We Need It. Murray appears frequently on programmes like the BBC's Question Time to mock and ridicule British Muslim organizations - all of which, he seems to believe, are filled with closet Islamists and jihadists. In an article in the Sunday Times, he described himself as a writer "most critical of Islam's current manifestation in the West".

And one only has to take a look at the members of the Centre's Advisory Council to realise how toxic and deep-seated its blatantly anti-Islam, anti-immigration agenda is. There's the former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey who has defended both the Pope's comments linking Islam and violence and Samuel Huntington's controversial 'Clash of Civilisations' thesis. There's the editor of Prospect magazine, David Goodhart, who was effectively described as a racist by the then head of the Commision for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, after arguing for the left to get to grips with immigration by abandoning multiculturalism. There's the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, whose recent claims about there being so-called 'no-go areas' in Britain for non-Muslims, and whose history of inflammatory remarks via vis Islam, I have already blogged about here. And then there's Dr Denis MacEoin, the now infamous author of the "fabricated" Policy Exchange report on British mosque bookshops, and a man who says,

"I do not hold a brief for Islam. On the contrary, I have very negative feelings about it…"

Judging from its director and its advisory council, it is no wonder then that the Centre for Social Cohesion is replete with so much anti-Muslim, anti-Islam material - reports, debates, pamphlets, articles - as well as attacks on multiculturalism and immigration.

Does the BBC's flagship news-and-current-affairs programme really want to rely on such a partisan and polemical thinktank for its key stories on British Islam and the terror threat? And if so, shouldn't reporter Richard Watson have explained to his viewers where the CSC bods are coming from, before interviewing them so uncritically? Whatever happened to Reithian impartiality?

As the Guardian's Seumas Milne wisely comments,

"The constant regurgitation by the media of Muslim-baiting "research" by hard right think tanks…not only misleads the public about one of the most sensitive issues of our time - it is also clearly driven by a neoconservative political agenda, which seeks to convince people that jihadist terror attacks in Britain and elsewhere are driven not by outrage at western violence in the Muslim world but by opposition to western freedom."

ISRAELI PROPAGANDA

The arch-Zionist and Israel apologist, Melanie Phillips – known affectionately as ‘Mad Mel’ to her critics – devoted two or her blogs this week to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Both were filled with a farrago of distortions, misrepresentations and racial stereotypes.

For example, in defending Israel’s illegal and bloody raid into the Gaza Strip this week, Mad Mel claims: “Today it [Israel] killed at least 18 people in Gaza, almost all of them Hamas terrorists.”

“Almost all”? Note the use of her weasel words. “Almost all” simply and bluntly means not all. It means some of those who were killed were not terrorists. They were innocents. And for them, Melanie Phillips has no words, no sympathy, no care, no compassion. They are, to quote historian Mark Curtis, “unpeople”.

It pains me to say this, and not simply about Zionist propagandists like Phillips but about pretty much most of my fellow citizens here in the West, but there does seem to be an unconscious racism which perhaps subconsciously masks our entire approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israelis – blond, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, often Western-educated if not Western-born – look like us, talk like us, live in towns like ours, shop in stores like ours, and so we readily and understandably identify with their pain and suffering. But the Palestinians? What would endear to us a people who combine dark skins, headscarves, tribal backgrounds and the Islamic faith? Why should we care about their lives, their futures, their children?

Why? Because they feel pain like we do. They are human beings like us. They deserve to live their lives in safety and security, as we do.

Take Asad Taafish, a retired, 65-year-old businessman, who was killed this week by a bullet from an Israeli sniper as he walked through the family's farmland close to the boundary with the Jewish state.

Take Abd Salam, an 18-year-old student who was killed this week by Israeli fire as he was leaving his school after taking one of his final-year exams.

Do their deaths not feature on the Melanie Phillips moral radar? Will she shed any tears for them? Of course not. For her, all that matters is that “almost all” of the dead are “Hamas terrorists."

Phillips is part of a group of ultra-right-wing, pro-Israeli, Zionist hawks who believe the Jewish state can do no wrong and the only deaths that matter are Jewish deaths.

She writes, perhaps ironically, in one of her postings that "the aggressor is still continuing to murder its victims and to incite others to do so.” I could not pen a better description for the Israelis if I tried.

Oh, and for those of you want to see with your own eyes the blatant and callous violence that the Israeli occupying forces choose to inflict on all those who stand up to them, including pro-Palestinian Jewish protesters and fellow Israeli citizens, check out this video:

IRAQ, DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

The New York Times, on Sunday, carried a front-page story that has since provoked a statistical row both in the pro-war blogosphere and in the various right-wing outlets of the Murdoch media empire (Fox News, the New York Post). Entitled ‘Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles’, the Times reported on a deadly and disturbing new angle to the fallout from the disastrous Iraq conflict: Americans who fall victim to returning soldiers who commit violent acts apparently linked to the lingering effects of war.

From the report:

“The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

“Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

“About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.”

Should we really be surprised? That soldiers who return from killing fields abroad should find it so easy to kill again, even upon returning home? To quote columnist Robert Jamieson from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “when you ask people to go to war, you can fully expect that a fraction will be incapable of turning off the killing switch”.

The controversy over the New York Times investigation centres on its numbers. Right-wing bloggers have taken their lead from (retired) Colonel Ralph Peters in the New York Post who claims the Times is “smearing soldiers” and argues that, compared to the non-military civilian population, returning US troops are “five times less likely to commit a murder” than their peers. Peters may be right, in a strictly numerical sense, but he misses the wider point. The New York Times claims nowhere in the article that returning or retired US combat troops are more likely to commit murder or manslaughter than their non-military counterparts in the wider population – it simply highlights the increasing numbers of US military personnel who are engaging in such violent and criminal acts.

In fact...

“…The Times used the same methods to research homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years before and after the present wartime period began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This showed an 89 percent increase during the present wartime period, to 349 cases from 184, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The increase occurred even though there have been fewer troops stationed in the United States in the last six years and the American homicide rate has been, on average, lower."

Do the New York Post and its right-wing allies really believe that an almost 90% increase in the number of homicides carried out by military veterans is not worthy of being front-page news? Or should not be the subject of a legitimate journalistic investigation?

The fundamental fact remains that the New York Times piece drew much-needed (and belated) attention to the post-traumatic stress suffered by young, impressionable and often ill-educated and gung-ho American GIs who have been sent out to fight a foreign war of conquest on a false prospectus by those in Washington D.C. (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) who hypocritically spent their entire lives avoiding military service and who often found novel and intriguing excuses for opting out of their own generation’s war, in Vietnam (Dick Cheney: “I had other priorities in the 60s than military service”).

Also overlooked by the rest of the media is how many of these psychic scars, which continue to blight the hundreds of thousands of US military personnel who have returned home from tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, are the result of being wracked by guilt for having killed innocent Iraqis or innocent Afghans. The Times tells the tragic and shocking story of one such individual, 27-year old soldier Seth Strasburg:

"In 2004, Sergeant Strasburg’s section was engaged in a mission to counter a proliferation of improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, on the road west of Mosul. One night, posted in an old junked bus, he watched the road for hours until an Iraqi man, armed and out after curfew, appeared and circled a field, kicking the dirt as if he were searching for something. Finally, the man bent down, straining to pick up a large white flour sack, which he then dragged toward the road.

“In my mind at the time, he had this I.E.D. hidden out there during the day and he was going to set it in place,” Mr. Strasburg said. “We radioed it in. They said, ‘Whatever, use your discretion.’ So I popped him.”

With others on his reconnaissance team, Mr. Strasburg helped zip the man into a body bag, taking a few minutes to study the face that he now cannot forget. When they went to search the flour sack, they found nothing but gravel.

“I reported the kill to the battalion,” Mr. Strasburg said. “They said, you know: ‘Good shot. It’s legal. Whatever. Don’t worry about it.’ After that, it was never mentioned. But, you know, I had some issues with it later.”

“Some” issues? Strasburg returned home from Iraq in 2005, irritable and prickly, with the death on his conscience, and ended up shooting and killing 21-year student Thomas Varney after a minor altercation outside a party in his hometown of Arnold, Nebraska. He is currently serving a prison term of 22 to 36 years for his crime. But, in the simplistic and amoral (immoral?) eyes of his superiors back in Iraq: “Whatever. Don’t worry about it”.

Personally, I would like the United States Department of Defense to issue questionnaires to every soldier returning from Iraq, with the very first question being: “Did you kill an innocent Iraqi? Someone who turned out not to be an insurgent or a terrorist or a Baathist or a criminal or an Iraqi soldier?” Then I would like the DoD to release the results of that questionnaire. I dare them.

SIDEBAR: At least soldiers on the ground can see the innocents they accidentally (or even intentionally) shoot and kill – at checkpoints, in drive-bys, during home raids, etc. But what about US pilots in Iraq? Do they have any clue how many casualties they are causing? It’s much easier to inflict death and destruction from far up in the skies, far from the scene of the crime. In fact, a week ago, the Pentagon admitted to having unleashed one of the biggest air strikes of the war so far, dropping an astonishing 40,000 pounds (!) of bombs on buildings and roads on the southern outskirts of Baghdad in the space of just ten minutes. A military spokesman claimed the bombs “flattened…safe havens for Al Qaida in Iraq”. And how many civilian casualties? We simply don’t know and perhaps may never know. But, rest assured, our pilots and our troops are not the same as terrorists. In the words of author William Blum, “A terrorist is someone who has a bomb, but doesn't have an air force”.

PENTAGON PROPAGANDA

So, we now know that Iranian boats were not threatening to attack the United States Navy in the Straits of Hormuz on January 6th and even the Pentagon’s propagandists have acknowledged that “the threat could have come from anyone on shore with a radio”. Perhaps, hilariously, the radio threat came from the so-called 'Filipino Monkey', who (I kid you not!) has a 25-year history of shouting anonymous threats and obscenities, over the airwaves, at US sailors.

Regardless, the most important and perhaps underreported aspect of this rather disturbing story is the role played by Bush administration officials in Washington D.C., in deliberately hyping the ‘Iranian threat’ and making (unfounded) accusations against Tehran. Gareth Porter, of IPS, concludes his detailed analysis of the Pentagon’s propaganda in recent days, with this insight:

“The decision to treat the Jan. 6 incident as evidence of an Iranian threat reveals a chasm between the interests of political officials in Washington and Navy officials in the Gulf. Asked whether the Navy's reporting of the episode was distorted by Pentagon officials, Cmdr. Robertson of 5th Fleet Public Affairs would not comment directly. But she said, "There is a different perspective over there."

As the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins points out today, in a typically cogent and well-argued column, the current US propaganda campaign against Iran serves only one purpose – to (counter-productively) strengthen the hand of America’s Persian ‘bogeyman’, President Ahmadinejad. Jenkins writes:

“Only one man can rescue the embattled Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from his growing domestic unpopularity. That man is George Bush. Ahmadinejad faces elections in March and an increasingly disaffected clergy, but he feeds on Bush's antagonism. This week Bush has duly oliged. He has raced round the Middle East drumming up support for his Iranian foe.

“Bush has denounced Ahmadinejad at every turn. He has offered to sanction him, embargo him, isolate him, even bomb him. He has portrayed him as a monster of evil and "leading sponsor of terror". He has showered the Saudis and the Gulf states with $20bn of weapons to confront him "before it is too late". When Ahmadinejad thanked "divine intervention" for making him president in 2005, he should also have thanked God for having first selected Bush. To have Washington as your enemy in these parts is to have every man your friend.”

KEEP WATCHING IRAN IN 2008

Michael Hirsch of Newsweek writes on the magazine’s website that George W. Bush, America’s great ‘thinker-president’ (to quote Tariq Ali), has now fully rejected his own intelligence community’s National Intelligence Estimate on nuclear-weapon-free Iran while on a visit to, of all places, nuclear-weapon-armed Israel. Dubya now sees his own ‘intelligence’ as greater and deeper than the collected and considered ‘high-confidence’ judgements of the (hundreds of) spies, scientists, analysts and researchers who make up the multi-billion-dollar U.S. intelligence community.

As the Newsweek piece reveals:

“In public, President Bush has been careful to reassure Israel and other allies that he still sees Iran, as a threat, while not disavowing his administration's recent National Intelligence Estimate. That NIE, made public Dec. 3, embarrassed the administration by concluding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003, which seemed to undermine years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush and other senior officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

“Bush's behind-the-scenes assurances may help to quiet a rising chorus of voices inside Israel's defense community that are calling for unilateral military action against Iran. Olmert, asked by NEWSWEEK after Bush's departure on Friday whether he felt reassured, replied: "I am very happy." A source close to the Israeli leader said Bush first briefed Olmert about the intelligence estimate a week before it was published, during talks in Washington that preceded the Annapolis peace conference in November. According to the source, who also refused to be named discussing the issue, Bush told Olmert he was uncomfortable with the findings and seemed almost apologetic.”

The NIE’s conclusions “don’t reflect his own views” because Bush’s views are always based on fantasy and prejudice, rather than on facts and figures. I mean, when was the last time Bush read a book on Iran? Or a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (from cover to cover)? Or even a newspaper report on Iran’s nuclear activities? Why should we take seriously the “views” of a leader who pays so little attention to facts, figures, numbers, details, policies, reports, etc, and who prefers to go with his gut over his (miniscule) brain?

As the veteran Bush-watcher Jacob Weisberg writes in his excellent and perhaps definitive article – "How Bush Chose Stupidity?" – the current president takes great pride in his anti-intellectualism:

“A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research (because it destroys embryos).”

So, Bush “believes” Iran is a threat, no matter what the evidence (or lack of) suggests. Just as he ‘believed’ Iraq had WMDs, and he ‘believed’ Saddam had a relationship with al Qaeda.

(On a side note, am I the only one who finds the media’s silence, as well as President Bush’s silence, on Israel’s real nukes versus Iran’s phantom nukes truly disgusting, dishonest and depressing?)

Keep watching Iran in 2008 (this blog will be). Dubya still has a year left in office and a year is a long time in international relations.

THE MAYOR AND THE MUSLIMS

Having spent the last post discussing the US presidential elections, let me turn my attention closer to home for a brief moment. Although Gordon Brown’s political cowardice has meant that the British public won’t get to vote in a general election for another year or two, Londoners will have the opportunity this May to elect a new mayor for the capital city. The current (Labour) incumbent is the former maverick-turned-moderate Ken Livingstone – or 'Red Ken' as his right-wing opponents dubbed him in the 1980s – who faces perhaps his toughest challenge yet from the present Tory mayoral candidate, Boris Johnson, who curiously happens to be one of the most popular MPs and journalists in Britain, despite his various gaffes, misstatements and general buffoonery.

Livingstone, however, seems to continue to enjoy the unwavering support of the majority of London’s large-ish Muslim community. The Guardian last week published a statement on its blog site, Comment is Free, signed by a raft of Muslim leaders, writers, academics and activists and headlined: "Give Ken A Third Term. Describing Livingstone as an “outstanding mayor”, the signatories – who include the likes Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain and Anas al Tikriti of the Muslim Association of Britain – draw attention to the Mayor’s progressive positions on foreign (and specifically Middle East) affairs:

“His stands and policies have constantly championed justice in the Middle East and around the world, freedom for the Palestinians and withdrawal of occupying troops from Iraq; a rare trait of modern-day public figures.”

There is no doubt that this statement is both true and accurate, and a tribute to Ken’s anti-war, pro-peace, political progressivism – and much-needed Islamophilia.

But I can’t help but sympathize with those commenters on the Guardian blog who wonder what on earth Ken’s Middle East views have to do with a municipal election and why London’s Muslims are so concerned by them. A blogger called McLefty, for example, asks:

“What this has to do with Londoners I do not know, but it shows that British Muslims are pre-occupied with events that have nothing to do whatsoever with most of their daily lives (the vast majority of Muslims in this country not Palestinian, Iraqi or from the Middle East).”

Be honest: does it – or should it – really matter to you what the Mayor of London thinks about Iraq or Palestine or any other foreign conflict or controversy? Isn’t it more important that the buses run on time? Or that our taxes are spent properly? Or London’s homeless have a place to sleep at night? Or, for example, that the city’s police force is not Islamophobic or racist or - dare I say it – trigger-happy?

Let’s not forget, after all, that the Metropolitan Police has, in recent years, shot and killed an ethnic-minority man on the Tube and then subsequently claimed (falsely) that he was a terrorist and then shot and wounded an ethnic-minority man inside his own home and then subsequently claimed (again, falsely) that he was a terrorist. (In the former – de Menezes – case, a court even found the Met guilty of violating health and safety laws and endangering the lives of Londoners.)

Yet, interestingly, I notice that the ‘great and the good’ of the British Muslim community who (presumably) queued up to sign this encomium to Red Ken conveniently failed to take note of the fact that Ken Livingstone supported the Metropolitan Police in every instance and has been one of the few public figures to vocally and vociferously lend his backing to the hapless, incompetent and dishonest Met police chief, Sir Ian Blair. What do the Muslim letter-writers have to say about this? An issue that touches all of their – and our – everyday lives, as Londoners (and as Muslims)? Nothing. Not a word.

Shame.

OBAMA v CLINTON, ROUND 2

He lost.

The robot won.

Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in the second round of the Democratic primaries, winning New Hampshire by a narrow three percent of the vote.

I am depressed. Disheartened. Above all, surprised – nay, shocked! The momentum seemed to be with Obama, the pundits seemed to be with Obama, the polls showed a massive lead for Obama – but still Obama lost.

So, should we all avoid making political predictions from now on? The FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman writes on his blog this morning:

“To be fair to the pundits and the pollsters, it wasn’t just journalists who were confidently predicting an Obama victory. Even people in the Hillary camp were talking about trying to keep margin of their defeat in New Hampshire down to below double digits.”

So what helped Hillary to her surprise victory? I would point to two obvious incidents earlier in the week.

In the first, her husband and (popular) former president took a (rhetorical) hammer and tongs to Obama’s (antiwar) record on Iraq, pointing out the latter’s inconsistent voting and seemingly hawkish comments since arriving in the Senate in 2004. Speaking at a campaign event at Dartmouth College, an indignant, finger-pointing Bill Clinton said in response to a pro-Obama question from a student:

"That is the central argument for his campaign. 'It doesn't matter that I started running for president less a year after I got to the Senate from the Illinois State Senate. I am a great speaker and a charismatic figure and I'm the only one who had the judgment to oppose this war from the beginning. Always, always, always.' "

"…it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, numerating the years, and never got asked one time, not once, 'Well, how could you say, that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your website in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since?' Give me a break.

"This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen...Just because of the sanitizing coverage that's in the media, doesn't mean the facts aren't out there.”

Despite my soft spot for Barack, I cannot help but sympathize with Bubba’s rant. Obama’s campaign has been given a certain ‘fairytale’ hue by a rather uncritical press corps (and his position on Iraq has certainty not been as fervently or consistently antiwar and anti-occupation as, perhaps, that of Dennis Kucinich or, on the Republican side, Ron Paul. But is the ‘fairy tale’ now over, or do voters simply respond badly to anyone (be it Clinton or Obama) that the media tends to put up on a pedestal and then crown king (or queen)? As one reader of Andrew Sullivan’s excellent blog puts it:

“I think Obama won Iowa because voters resented Hillary's coronation.

“I think Hillary won New Hampshire because voters resented Obama's coronation.”

The other incident that cannot be overlooked is Hillary’s emotional moment. She was asked by a woman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, "How do you do it?" The woman wanted to know how Hillary, despite all her stress, remains "so wonderful"?

Hillary answered, fighting back tears, "I couldn't do it if I just didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do." The New York Times noted that her eyes were "visibly wet." Later Hillary told the Times she became all choked up because "it was just so touching when this woman said: well, what about you. I just don't think about that. I just think about what I can do for other people. I have spent a lifetime trying to help others. I’m very other-directed."

Despite being mocked by right-wingers (and some Obama supporters) for her unexpected show of emotion, the fact is that Hillary’s ‘crying’ (or ‘choking’, or ‘wet eyes’, or semi-crying, or whatever you want to call it) humanized her. The political automaton for, a moment, became a real human person; a woman with whom other women could empathize, sympathize and identify. (Consequently, and retrospectively, it is therefore unsurprising that a "surge" of women voters in New Hampshire, turning out in record numbers, helped propel Hillary to victory there).

However, the Clintons’ antics aside, is there a third, perhaps darker, factor at work in this campaign? I am referring here to the notoriously infamous 'Bradley effect'. The Guardian explains it here:

“The phenomenon was named after Tom Bradley, the long time mayor of Los Angeles, and describes the difference between what members of the public will say in relation to a black candidate when asked by pollsters and the change in their behaviour when they actually vote.

“Bradley, who is black, ran as the Democratic candidate for governor in 1982, but, after polls showed he was consistently in the lead, he was a surprise loser.

“It was suggested that voters may have told pollsters they supported the black candidate, because they were embarrassed to admit they were racist, but that when it came to voting in private they supported his white opponent, precisely because he was not black.”

Having won Iowa (95% white), and having led in the polls since Iowa, sadly, tragically, depressingly, the black Senator from Ilinois failed to win New Hampshire (96% white). But let’s see what happens on the January 26th in South Carolina (50% black). Here’s hoping…

Incidentally, the (Bill) Clinton ‘rant’ video is here:


The (Hillary) Clinton 'crying' video is here

IS IRAN STILL GOING TO GET BOMBED? – update

I hate to say 'I told you so', especially about an occurrence that I continue to pray will not happen, but the possibility of a war between the United States and Iran in 2008 remains perilously high.

In only my second posting on this blog, in December, I wrote: “So the military option is still on the table, says Bush, and – forget the nukes! - it will be used in response to provocations by the Iranians, say his neocon supporters.”

And what’s been reported today? From CNN:

“The U.S. military reported Monday on a "significant" confrontation involving five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats that "harassed and provoked" three U.S. naval ships in international waters over the weekend.

“U.S. military officials said the incident occurred early Sunday morning in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel leading in and out of the Persian Gulf.

“The five Iranian ships made "threatening" moves -- in one case coming within 200 yards of a U.S. ship, the U.S. officials said.

“In one radio transmission, the Iranians told the U.S. Navy: "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes," the U.S. military officials told CNN.

“When the U.S. ships heard that radio transmission, they took up their gun positions and officers were "in the process" of giving the order to fire when the Iranians abruptly turned away, the U.S. officials said.”

Phew! A close call. But how many more close calls can the region survive? As I said in the earlier post, God help us all if World War III breaks out between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

BRITS NOW ‘RICHER’ THAN AMERICANS

Despite all the doom and gloom about falling British house prices, the global credit crunch and a looming UK recession, a new report from a bunch of pointy-headed economists at Oxford claims we are now – for the first time in over a hundred years! – better off than our American cousins.

From the Daily Telegraph:

“Analysts at the respected Oxford Economics consultancy say that increasing incomes, free healthcare and longer holidays make the average Briton better-off than his or her US counterpart.

“They predict that gross domestic product (GDP) per head in the UK, an indicator of average incomes, will be £23,500 in 2008, compared with £23,250 in America, reflecting the strength of the pound against the dollar and the steady growth of the British economy.

“Adrian Cooper, managing director of Oxford Economics, said: "The past 15 years have seen a dramatic change in the UK's economic performance and its position in the world economy.

"No longer are we the 'sick man of Europe'. Indeed, our calculations suggest that UK living standards are now a match for those of the US.

"The UK has been catching up steadily with living standards in the US since 2001, so it is a well-established trend rather than simply the result of currency fluctuations."

As the Observer so aptly put it: “…at least we’ve got one up on the Yanks”.

CHRISTIAN ISLAMOPHOBIA

So, Islamic extremists have created "no-go" areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter . That's according to the 'Right Reverend' Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester and the Church of England's only Asian bishop.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph - the paper which once gave column inches to a writer who described Muslims as "dogs" with "black hearts" - Nazir-Ali claims:

"…there has been a worldwide resurgence of the ideology of Islamic extremism. One of the results of this has been to further alienate the young from the nation in which they were growing up and also to turn already
separate communities into "no-go" areas where adherence to this ideology has become a mark of acceptability.

"Those of a different faith or race may find it difficult to live or work there because of hostility to them. In many ways, this is but the other side of the coin to far-Right intimidation. Attempts have been made to impose an "Islamic" character on certain areas, for example, by insisting on artificial amplification for the Adhan, the call to prayer."

The bishop here chooses not to explore the (political) causes behind the rise of "Islamic extremism", and its associated "ideology", but instead prefers to make extravagant and sensationalist claims without any substance or source. For example, can he name a single city, town, suburb or neighbourhood in England where Muslims have physically prevented non-Muslims from entering, living or working (especially on the grounds of faith)? If so, he conveniently chooses not to mention a single real-life example in his article.

He then outrageously makes a comparison between the criminals, thugs and racists who make up the British National Party and Muslims who want to have the Adhan played on loudspeakers from their mosques on Fridays. How on earth can he justify such a ridiculous analogy? It honestly makes me wonder whether he is a closet supporter of British fascism - otherwise I find it difficult to understand how such an educated man can downplay the far-Right's 'intimidation' (which consists of actual violence, beatings, arson attacks, etc) and equate it with the (admittedly) segregationist yet non-violent tendences of some (note: some, not all!) segments of the British Muslim community.

As for his focus on the Adhan, and its "amplification", I find it deeply hypocritical for a Christian bishop, of all people, to make such a criticism. As an undergraduate at Oxford University, I spent three years being woken up every Sunday morning by the sound of cathedral bells ringing away, one after another, week after week. Why on earth should Christians get this 'right' and not Muslims? In a multi-faith nation, where freedom of speech is a right protected for one and all, either both communities have the right to make religious 'noises' in public (and ruin my sleep!), or they both should be denied it - in fact, this is precisely the point made by the arch-secularist Lib Dem MP for Oxford, Dr Evan Davis, in an interview on Sky News this evening.

What depresses me more than the obvious double standards, however, is the Bishop's woeful ignorance and prejudice. For someone who is of Islamic descent himself (his father having converted from Islam to Christianity), and who was born in a Muslim country (the 'Islamic Republic of Pakistan'), Nazir-Ali shows little understanding of the nuances and complexities of the Islamic faith or the varied views of ordinary Muslims, especially British Muslims. According to his Wikipedia entry, the learned bishop is the author of not one but three books on Islam (two of them unsurprisingly published since 9-11 and the start of the so-called 'War on Terror'), and yet these books - and articles like today's rant in the Sunday Telegraph - suggest someone who is not interested in writing about Islam in some objective, dispassionate and scholarly sense, nor interested in Islam as a prelude to inter-faith dialogue, but someone who has a transparently one-sided, critical and negative agenda; perhaps the result of a traumatic Christian childhood in Pakistan or an ex-Muslim father with a chip on his shoulder. Who knows?

And, despite the attention given to the piece by the various rolling-news channels and all the Sunday papers, none of this vitriol and bombast from the bishop is anything new or novel. Michael Nazir-Ali has a long history of attacks on Islam, Muslims and multiculturalism. In November 2007, he accused Muslims of having a "victim mentality". In August 2006, he accused Muslims of having been "perverted" by multiculturalism. In March 2006, he accused Muslims of not having respect for Christians or Christianity.

He even wandered, purposely and uninvited, into the row over the face veil, denouncing British Muslim women who freely choose to wear a niqab or a burqa. His boss, on the other hand - the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams - showed commendable senstivitiy and balance at the time, and warned the secularists and atheists to lay off both the cross and veil. (Full disclosure: I personally am not a supporter of the veil but I am a supporter of the right of Muslim women, if they so choose, to wear the veil for whatever reason).

For me, then, the Bishop of Rochester thus fits into the category of 'right-wing Christian Islamophobe' - a category inhabited by millions of US evangelical Christians who believe Islam is the religion of Devil, the Prophet of Islam is a paedophile and that the War on Terror is - or should be - a war on Muslims.

It saddens me that in an era of declining religiosity in the West - especially in Britan - some Christians should see fellow monotheists (i.e. Muslims) as a threat, or as enemies, rather than as natural allies and co-believers. So I can only hope and pray that Nazir-Ali's less evangelical, less belligerent and more moderate co-religionists on this side of the Atlantic (led by the wise and humane Archbishop of Canterbury) will disown the Bishop of Rochester's constant Muslim-bashing and naked Islamophobia and instead encourage an alliance of Christians and Muslims against their real and common enemy - the "aggressive secularists and illiberal atheists" (to quote the Right Reverend John Sentamu, Archbishop of York).

HUSSEIN FOR PRESIDENT!

So Barack Hussein Obama has won the Iowa caucus – the first step on a journey that could, potentially, possibly, tantalisingly, take this half-Kenyan, half-Kansan, black, forty-something, junior Democratic senator from Illinois, of Hawaiian birth, Muslim descent and Indonesian upbringing, with only three years experience in Congress, right through the front door of the White House come November.

Obama won – and won by a clear margin (of 8%), leaving the former front-runner and favourite (and pro-war political automaton) Hillary Rodham Clinton struggling in third place. (Incidentally, the only thing that delighted me more than Obama’s victory and Hillary’s poor showing was the fact that, on the Republican side in Iowa, the nasty former New York mayor – and, also, his party’s former front-runner – Rudy Giuliani came an embarrassing sixth (!) with a miniscule 3.5% of the vote, having been outpolled 2-1 by the only anti-war Republican in the field, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas).

Despite my normally cynical and pessimistic view of US domestic politics and politicians, and despite Obama’s shameful U-turn on Israel in recent years (he used to be a vocal critic but now the wannabe president, coincidentally, happens to have become a strong supporter of Israeli belligerence and intransigence), I cannot help but like him. He seems truly genuine, palpably decent and refreshingly normal and down-to-earth. Above all, after seven years of divisions and splits in American politics (and culture), with Red State vs Blue State, liberals versus conservatives, the secular versus the religious, he seems to be the only candidate capable of uniting the United States and rising above the partisan fray. (Preliminary indications from Iowa suggest Obama’s victory was heavily dependent on independents and Republican switchers, and his continuing electoral success will depend on them too).

As liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias acknowledges:

“I think the manner of Barack Obama's win is pretty impressive. I can't be the only one who was a bit inclined toward a cynical roll of the eyes at the idea of winning on the back of unprecedented turnout, mobilizing new voters, brining in young people, etc. That sounds like the kind of thing that people say they're going to do but never deliver on. But he did deliver. That's impressive.”

Yglesias also points readers in the direction of a December 1995 profile of Obama in the Chicago Reader newspaper which suggests the candidate’s social conscience has not at all been exaggerated or faked in recent months but in fact has deep roots in Obama’s political and personal past.

Fundamentally, however, the key reason why all sane, reasonable, decent, antiwar progressives should support Obama as a realistic, though not perfect, presidential candidate is his unstinting opposition to the Iraq war. Unlike his two chief rivals, Senator Clinton and former Senator John Edwards, Senator Obama opposed the Iraq misadventure from the very beginning. Here is Barack speaking in October 2002, five months before Bush and his cronies launched their illegal and unilateral invasion:

“I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war … I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

There is also – let’s not beat around the bush - the issue of his skin colour. Obama is not simply a black man who is so comfortable with his colour that – unlike, say, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton – he has not chosen to run on a ‘black’ or ‘race’ platform but has instead managed to seemingly transcend racial politics and win over more white Republican voters than Clinton or Edwards; he also happens to be a man whose skin colour, ethnic origins, foreign upbringing, Muslim ties and religious moderation make him the perfect person to lead the United States in the era of the so-called ‘War on Terror’.

Why? As right-wing conservative blogger (and Sunday Times columnist) Andrew Sullivan, an unexpected yet fervent Obama supporter, perceptively and eloquently argues:

“What does he [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

“Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”

Winning Iowa does not, however, mean that Obama now has the Democratic presidential nomination (let alone the presidency itself) all sewn up. Far from it. Thankfully, the 330,000-odd Iowan crowd of largely ethanol farmers, pensioners and grassroots political activists who turned out to caucus in that tiny Midwestern state do not necessarily always determine the fate of the US presidential elections as some pundits and journalists might wrongly have us believe. In 1988 [15], for example, Congressman Richard Gephardt won in Iowa but failed to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for president - instead, third-placed candidate Michael Dukakis went on to win the rest of the Democratic primaries (before sadly succumbing in the general election to George Bush Snr).

As the BBC points out:

“Very often it is not so much about winning in Iowa but doing better or at least as well as expected. Democrat Howard Dean was leading his party's polls in 2004 but after his third place in Iowa his campaign stuttered and never recovered. But an Iowa victory, while important, is no guarantee of national success. The 1992 winner for the Democrats was Tom Harkin. Trailing way behind him was Bill Clinton, who went on to capture the presidency.”

Mrs Clinton will presumably be hoping this morning that she can repeat her husband’s comeback in the coming days and weeks, beginning in New Hampshire on Tuesday. I personally hope she won’t and doubt she will. My money is on Obama and, if I had a vote, it’d be for Obama.

Who do you want?

HAPPY 2008?

Happy New Year. 2008 has begun. This blog is now officially in its second month – and, technically, second year (!)

Since I first posted on the 5th of December, 2007, this blog has had (at the time of writing) 841 ‘hits’ (see the hit counter at the bottom of this blog), or visitors to the blog, which works out to around 32 hits a day, or around one person visiting the blog every single hour of every single day. There are now fourteen postings - giving this blog an average of a new posting (by yours truly, ‘The Radical’) every 44 hours. I will try and keep the frequency up, but I do need you all to keep stopping by, to read, to comment, to engage, etc, and to spread the word to your friends, relatives, colleagues, etc. (You can also subscribe to RSS feeds, updating you on new postings published on this blog, via the link at the top of the page).

Why did I start writing this blog, and why do I continue? I do so in order to try and break out from the narrow and stultifying parameters of debate imposed by our elected politicians and the mainstream media on the issues that dominate our lives – be they political, economic, social or moral – and in order to try and provoke debate and discussion with radical and different opinions on those key issues.

The global transition from 2007 to 2008 has been pretty bleak. The killing of innocent Palestinian civilians by the IDF continues; so too does the violence and chaos in Iraq; rising levels of malnutrition plague Darfur in Sudan; Kenya seems to be descending into civil war; and violence has returned to the former Yugoslav province of Kosovo.

Thus, 2008 seems set to continue in a similar bloody vein to 2007. Progressives will continue to be depressed. This blog is therefore an attempt to make a (tiny) difference, by expanding our understanding of this horribly unjust, unequal, war-torn, dying planet and, hopefully, encouraging us all to take action to (perhaps naively) try and make this world a better place.

Happy New Year (!)