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Tomgram: Chip Ward, Fire's Manifest DestinyPosted by Chip Ward at 9:04AM, June 16, 2011.
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Last-chance reminder: the offer of a personalized, signed copy of the single must-read history book of the summer, Adam Hochschild's bestselling To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, in return for a $100 contribution to this website will end early next week. It's been the most successful book-linked fund-drive we've launched and I thank everyone who has contributed! Book lovers who haven't done so yet and don't want to miss the chance should hustle to our donation page now by clicking here . Tom]
We've entered an era of environmental extremity. Former governor of Arizona and Clinton-era Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt made the point bluntly in a recent speech: "I believe that this Congress, in its assaults on our environment, has embarked on the most radical course in our history... a pattern of a broad, sustained assault on nearly all our environmental laws."
But the full-scale extremity of the dismantling urge of climate-change-denying (or -ignoring) House Republicans is nothing compared to the increasing extremity of nature itself. These days, you can't miss it if you turn on the TV news where storms, fires, and floods dominate, or simply look out your window more or less anywhere in this country right now (as I can attest having just returned from a visit to sweltering, early-June, 100-degree Washington, DC). If you live in western Kansas, for example, and open your shades, you're probably facing extreme drought conditions, while in the eastern part of the same state, you may be worrying about a deluge at possibly historic levels, thanks to the rampaging Missouri River.
If southeast Georgia is your habitat, then maybe you've noticed that, with drought conditions covering three-quarters of the state, the wildfire season that should have ended by now hasn't, and that 300 square miles of the Okefenokee Swamp are ablaze for the sixth straight week, as new fires are reported all the time. On the other hand, should you live anywhere downhill from the West's high country, you're probably worrying about whether, with summer coming on, that staggering snowpack will turn into a raging flood. If you happen to be in Texas, facing the worst drought since the first weather records were kept, maybe you're wondering where all the water went. (If you're in the Texas oil or natural gas business, reliant on large supplies of water to operate, you, too, may be wondering, and even the House Republicans can't help you.)
If you live in Arizona... but in a pall of smoke, let Chip Ward, westerner, environmental author, and TomDispatch regular who has long been writing about a West that's drying out, take up the story. (To catch Timothy MacBain's latest TomCast audio interview in which Ward discusses global "weirding," click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom
How the West Was Lost
The American West in Flames
By Chip WardAir tankers have been dropping fire retardant on what is being called the Wallow fire in Arizona and firefighting crews have been mobilized from across the West, but the fire remained "zero contained" for most of last week and only 18% so early in the new week, too big to touch with mere human tools like hoses, shovels, saws, and bulldozers. Walls of flame 100 feet high rolled over the land like a tsunami from Hades. The heat from such a fire is so intense and immense that it can create small tornadoes of red embers that cannot be knocked down and smothered by water or chemicals. These are not your grandfather's forest fires.
Tomgram: William Astore, American Militarism Is Not A Fairy TalePosted by William Astore at 10:46AM, June 14, 2011.Whatever the local politics involved, and the Petraeus appointment ensures that the potentially popular general will be on the political sidelines for campaign year 2012, these moves catch the zeitgeist of our Washington moment. Since the bin Laden assassination, in which U.S. military special operations forces "commanded" by Panetta took out the al-Qaeda leader, a new face of American war, "where sovereignty is irrelevant, armies tangential, and decisions are secret," has been emerging according to Foreign Policy in Focus analyst Conn Hallinan.
With the latest news ( revealed last week by the New York Times) that the U.S. has launched a significant "intensification" of its secret air campaign against Yemeni tribesmen believed to be connected with al-Qaeda, the U.S. is now involved in no less than six wars. Count "em, if you don't believe me: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and what used to be called the Global War on Terror.
In anyone's book, that certainly qualifies as a working definition of "endless" war, but that doesn't mean endlessly the same kind of war. Let's look at this, war by war:
Iraq: Now largely the dregs of a counterinsurgency operation, this war will not end in 2011. At his confirmation hearings, for instance, Panetta cited the existence of al-Qaeda in Iraq as a reason for U.S. troops to remain beyond an agreed-upon year-end withdrawal date. Should those troops actually leave, however, the war will still go on, even if in quite a different form. A gargantuan, increasingly militarized State Department "mission" in that country, complete with its own "army" and "air force" of perhaps 5,100 mercenaries, will evidently keep the faith.
Pakistan: A full-scale CIA-run drone war in the Pakistani borderlands is actually expanding. In the post-9http:http://www.opednews.com/populum//http://http://www.opednews.com/populum//www.opednews.comhttp://http://www.opednews.com/populum//populumhttp://http://www.opednews.com/populum//http://http://www.opednews.com/populum//11 era, this has been the first of Washington's "covert" or "shadow" wars (which no longer means "secret" -- it's all over the news almost daily -- but something closer to "off the books," as in beyond the reach of any form of significant popular or congressional oversight or accountability). Panetta is calling for more emphasis on such off-the-books wars in which U.S. military operatives might, as in the bin Laden operation, temporarily find themselves under the command of the CIA.
Libya: Officially a NATO air war, this one is nonetheless partially run by the Pentagon with targeting assistance from various U.S. intelligence agencies. It involves both direct U.S. air strikes and support for strikes by various NATO and Arab allies fronting the operation. It is also, for Americans, a "war" in name only since, except in the case of engine malfunction, there is essentially no way the Libyans can harm a U.S. pilot. It is also an example of another air war that, while destructive, has proven itself incapable of fulfilling its stated aims. Months later, Gaddafi remains alive and more or less in power, while NATO flags.
Yemen: Another of those "covert" air wars, being run, according to the Times, by the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command, closely coordinated with the CIA out of a secret office in the Yemeni capital.
The Global War on Terror: While the Obama administration officially discarded the Bush-era name, it expanded the war and the forces meant to fight it in places like Somalia. U.S. special operations forces now pursue war-on-terror tasks in at least 75 countries and who knows how many CIA and other intelligence agents are involved as well.
Think of all this as a kind of mix-and-match version of war that increasingly integrates civilian branches of the government like the State Department, an ever more warlike CIA (once known as "the president's private army"), the regular Army, Marines, and Air Force, ever-growing drone air power (split between an officially civilian intelligence agency and the military), and a secret combined military force of perhaps 20,000 special operatives.
With the face of American war changing in striking ways and at least six wars, none going particularly well, on or off the books, no one should be surprised if, as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and TomDispatch regular William Astore makes clear, Washington as a war capital increasingly looks like a new kind of town. Tom
Siamese Twins Sharing the Same Brain
How the Military and the Civilian Are Blurring in Washington
By William J. AstoreYes, you've guessed it: it's not a fairy tale, or at least not completely. It's the United States -- an older America that, despite a decidedly checkered and often imperial past, was nevertheless proud of its reluctance to fight, but steadfast in its commitment to win once it decided that battle was the course of action. Even then, this America remained resolute in its reluctance to embrace a military ethos or bow down before military gods, committed as it was to civilian primacy and the avoidance of a large standing army.
Tomgram: Lewis Lapham, Eating MoneyPosted by Lewis Lapham at 5:11PM, June 12, 2011.Representative of the second strand are the corporate food labs that dedicate themselves to producing edible products carefully calibrated to the Franco-American weaknesses in us all, "combinations of fat, sugar, and salt that are so tasty many people cannot stop eating them" even when full; that, in the phrase of former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler, take us to "the bliss point." ("The right combination of tastes triggers a greater number of neurons, getting them to fire more. The message to eat becomes stronger, motivating the eater to look for even more food.") You know that addictive feeling when you begin munching on that first whatever and just can't say no, when your body, once started, just doesn't know how to stop.
My bet is that you can get your fill of both strands in the summer "Food" issue of Lapham's Quarterly, which, four times a year, brilliantly unites some of the most provocative and original voices in history around a single topic. (You can subscribe to it by clicking here.) TomDispatch thanks the editors of that elegant journal for allowing us to preview Lapham's elegant little history of the American stomach. Tom
The Midas Touch
Stomachs Too Big to Fail?
By Lewis H. Lapham[A longer version of this essay appears in "Food," the Summer 2011 issue of Lapham's Quarterly and is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.]
-- The Gospel According to Matthew
It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.
Tomgram: Engelhardt, The 100% Doctrine in WashingtonPosted by Tom Engelhardt at 9:06AM, June 09, 2011.[Note to TomDispatch Readers: Consider today's post a stand-alone companion to my previous piece "Welcome to Post-Legal America ." And keep in mind that the offer of a signed, personalized copy of Adam Hochschild's bestselling new book, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, in return for a $100 contribution to this website remains open for perhaps another week. To check it out, click here or simply go to our donation page here . Many thanks, by the way, to the startling numbers of TD readers who took us up on this offer. Your contributions really do help keep this site chugging along! Tom]
100% Scared
How the National Security Complex Grows on Terrorism Fears
By Tom EngelhardtHere's a scenario to chill you to the bone:
The first part of this scenario is, of course, a "terrorist" version of the still ongoing E. coli outbreak in Germany -- the discovery of an all-new antibiotic-resistant "super toxic variant" of the bacteria that has caused death and panic in Europe. Although al-Qaeda and E. coli do sound a bit alike, German officials initially (and evidently incorrectly) accused Spanish cucumbers, not terrorists in Spain or German >bean sprouts, of causing the crisis. And the "disproportionate" Russian response was not to close its borders to the European Union, but to ban E.U. vegetables until the source of the outbreak is discovered.
Above all, the American over-reaction was pure fiction. In fact, scientists here have been urging calm and mid-level government officials have been issuing statements of reassurance on the safety of the country's food supply system. No one attacked the government for inaction; Cheney did not excoriate the president, nor did Napolitano raise the terror alert level, and Obama's statement, quoted above, was given on January 5, 2010, in the panicky wake of the "underwear bomber's" failed attempt to blow a hole in a Christmas day plane headed from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, How Not to Withdraw from IraqPosted by Peter Van Buren at 9:10AM, June 07, 2011.Iraq? Where's that? Most Americans no longer seem to know and evidently could care less, but don't tell that to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, various key military figures and Washington officials, or some of the neocons, warrior-pundits, and liberal war-fighters circling them. They continue to relentlessly promote Iraq as a mission-never-accomplished-but-never-to-be-ended experience. Somehow, two decades after our Iraq wars began, they still can't get enough of them. Learning curve? Don't even think about it. It's as if they're trapped in that old Thomas Wolfe novel, You Can't Go Home Again.
For more than a year now, a crew of lobbyists eager to abrogate the withdrawal agreement the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqis have been dropping the broadest of hints. Should the Iraqis ask, they say, the U.S. military must stay in that country (whatever war-ending pledges President Obama might once have made). General Martin Dempsey, the newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is typical. Only weeks before the president picked him, he reaffirmed his support for "keeping American troops in Iraq beyond December if requested by Iraqi leaders." And when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki nonetheless continued to insist on sticking to an end of 2011 withdrawal date for all U.S. troops (and assumedly for emptying those monster military bases the Pentagon sank billions of dollars into), top Washington officials began pleading, wheedling, and undoubtedly pressuring him in all sorts of ways to change his mind. Now, he's provisionally done so.
Many are the explanations offered in Washington for why it's our duty not to leave, each one feebler than the next. Iraq is not "stable" enough for us to go (as if our invasion and occupation weren't significantly responsible for that country's instability), or the Iraqis have no real air force and so can't yet defend their country from potential external foes. (Of course, Iraq once had a powerful air force, but the Bush administration consciously refused to rebuild it, taking it for granted that the country would have all the air power it needed in the form of the U.S. Air Force.) Or consider the latest explanation: on the eve of his final tour of the imperium -- he gets to withdraw, but Washington doesn't -- retiring Secretary of Defense Gates insisted that the U.S. military should stay to make the Iranians miserable.
Ah well, any port in a storm. As it happens, Iraqi politicians are well known for talking themselves silly and delaying action interminably, so whether the U.S. military actually leaves or not may come down to the wire, and a moving wire at that. Even then, if Maliki ends up saying no, there's one small problem: we still won't actually be leaving, a point vividly made by Peter Van Buren, author of the upcoming We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, who spent last year embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq while working for the State Department. (To catch Timothy MacBain's two-part TomCast audio interview in which Van Buren discusses Washington going through withdrawal over Iraq and the mercenaries it's leaving behind, click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom
Occupying Iraq, State Department-Style
A Frat House With Guns in Baghdad
By Peter Van BurenWay out on the edge of Forward Operating Base Hammer, where I lived for much of my year in Iraq as a Provincial Reconstruction Team leader for the U.S. Department of State, there were several small hills, lumps of raised dirt on the otherwise frying-pan-flat desert. These were "tells," ancient garbage dumps and fallen buildings.
From that ancient debris field, recall the almost forgotten run-up to the American invasion, the now-ridiculous threats about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of State Colin Powell lying away his own and America's prestige at the U.N., those "Mission-Accomplished" days when the Marines tore down Saddam's statue and conquered Baghdad, the darker times as civil society imploded and Iraq devolved into civil war, the endless rounds of purple fingers for stage-managed elections that meant little, the Surge and the ugly stalemate that followed, fading to gray as President George W. Bush negotiated a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011 and the seeming end of his dreams of a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.
Now, with less than seven months left until that withdrawal moment, Washington debates whether to honor the agreement, or -- if only we can get the Iraqi government to ask us to stay -- to leave a decent-sized contingent of soldiers occupying some of the massive bases the Pentagon built hoping for permanent occupancy.
See the Archive -AboutTomdispatch.com is for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our post-9http:http://www.opednews.com/populum//http://www.opednews.com/populum//www.opednews.comhttp://www.opednews.com/populum//populumhttp://www.opednews.com/populum//http://www.opednews.com/populum//11 world and a clear sense of how our imperial globe actually works. Read more about the site's founder and editor Tom Engelhardt and his guest authors. Click here to e-mail Tom.
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Tomgram: Chip Ward, Fire's Manifest Destiny
Posted at 9:04AM on June 16, 2011.Tomgram: William Astore, American Militarism Is Not A Fairy Tale
Posted at 10:46AM on June 14, 2011.Tomgram: Lewis Lapham, Eating Money
Posted at 5:11PM on June 12, 2011.Tomgram: Engelhardt, The 100% Doctrine in Washington
Posted at 9:06AM on June 09, 2011.Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, How Not to Withdraw from Iraq
Posted at 9:10AM on June 07, 2011.Tomgram: Michael Klare, How to Wreck a Planet 101
Posted at 4:04PM on June 05, 2011.Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Obama Strikes Out on Global Warming
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