FOUR 800 LB. GORILLAS IN THE CAMPAIGN ROOM

Column No. 32 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - September 30, 2004

I write this column not knowing the derivation of the term “800 lb. gorilla in the room.”  I take it to refer to an event or an issue that is of great importance in a given setting, to which no one in said setting is referring.  One or more participants may be aware of the creature’s existence, but others may be totally oblivious. But in any case, no one is talking about their nature, considering how they came to be in the room, or planning in any way how to deal with them, at least openly.  What the gorilla population thinks about having the name of their species used in this sense I have no idea, but if they take offense at it, I do apologize.  I didn’t make up the term myself.

There are (at least) four major issues that very seriously effect and are-having/will-have a major impact on the future of our country.  Three of the gorillas significantly concern themselves with both foreign and domestic policy. The Bush Campaign is not talking abut any of these gorillas and certainly wants to stay as far away from them as possible.  For its true position on any of them would definitely be a negative factor for the Georgites.  The gorillas I am talking about are: true Sharonist policy for Israel/Palestine, the Patriot Act and its assault on our Constitutional rights, the role of Big Oil in both domestic and foreign policy, and the Christian Right and its true agenda.

Even though it is the case that the Georgites simply want to these gorillas to stay in their corners, unnoticed, the Kerry Campaign isn’t referring to any of them either, for a variety of reasons.  One is that they might not know how to deal with one or more of them, in terms of policy, or politics, or both.  A second is that in one or more instances the Kerry position is not all that different from that of the Georgites.  A third is that the issue is extremely complex and therefore much groundwork in educating the public would have to have been laid before a reasonable position could be discussed in the electoral context.  Therefore, I am not raising these issues here with the thought or the claim that the Kerry Campaign should take them up now.  But were the Senator to become President, he is going to have to deal with at least two of them, and I think that he should at some time in the future deal with the other two as well.

The first of the “will have to deal with” issues is that, almost certainly,  the current Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, does not in any way, shape, or form desire peace with the Palestinian people – at least a peace that would envision a viable, independent, if demilitarized, state for them in the West Bank and Gaza.  What he wants, or at least appears by his actions to want, is to make conditions so uncomfortable for the Palestinians in the West Bank that they will leave, hopefully, in Sharon’s terms, for Jordan.  Since his days as a young Army officer, Sharon has referred to the territory now comprising the nation of Jordan as the only true Palestinian homeland, the 1947 UN decision on partition to the contrary notwithstanding.

Sharon, of course, does not currently say this out loud.   But several of his cabinet ministers do, as do numerous political and religious figures in Israel to Sharon’s right (if you can imagine anyone to the right of Sharon).  Furthermore, the “facts on the ground,” as the Sharonists like to refer to them, that is the ever expanding conglomeration of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, indicate that this is the ultimate goal.  There is nothing in the current Israeli policy of annexation, destruction, and ghettoization that indicates anything else.  The next US President will be forced at some time during his term to deal with this reality that no one happens to talk about.  Gorilla No. 1.

Next is the Patriot Act and its assault on the Constitution.  I have written about this issue in other columns and will revisit it only briefly here.  Under the Patriot Act the President can, on his own authority, search any home without obtaining a search warrant from a non-secret judge, label any person, citizen or non-citizen, a “terrorist”  or “terrorist threat;” then proceed to arrest and  imprison that person without making the fact of the arrest public, without informing the person about the offense with which they are being charged; and may hold the person indefinitely without access to a lawyer and without being brought to trial, not even to a grand jury proceeding.

Certain of these provisions have been held to be unconstitutional by a closely split Supreme Court, but the current regime has not backed down in wanting to have them in some form on the books.  If the Georgites win the election, and get the opportunity to replace even just Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, rest assured that the current anti-Administration decisions will be reversed.  And the Georgites want both to make the Patriot Act permanent and expand the powers under it.  Thus, at a stroke, the Patriot Act, without the benefit of going through the Amendment process, has repealed the Fourth Amendment’s protection against warrant-less searches without probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of the due process of law, and the Sixth Amendment’s guarantees of “speedy” jury trial with full knowledge of charges and the opportunity to confront witnesses in criminal cases.  Gorilla No. 2.

Gorilla No. 3 is the role of Big Oil in the determination of both foreign and domestic policy of the United States. In foreign policy, for example, if the Iraq invasion is not really about oil, hegemony in the Middle East, and the establishment of permanent bases there (the U.S. has 10 plus of them under construction), what is it about?  We know that it is not about WMD or al-Qaeda (except in the sense that a British diplomat, taking the 17th century English playwright’s George Fahrquahr’s name in vain, recently referred to US policy as a Recruiting Officer for them).  It is not about freedom or democracy either.  Bush’s record on those subjects for his own country (see Gorilla No. 2) shows that George Bush has no interest in either one.  But the Project for the New American Century of Perle, Wolfowitz, W. Kristol, etc., which began proposing an Iraq invasion back in the 1990s and are the foreign policy setters for the Georgite regime, gave us the real reasons for the attack, to which now the aims of Sharonist Israel can be added.

As far as domestic policy is concerned, I don’t have to go through all of the environmental stuff, that fact the Bush and Cheney both come from the oil industry, the power of the oil lobby, and etc. Just this note.  It is not the “insatiable addiction of the American people” to oil that make us use so much of it.  It is the oil industry’s insatiable addiction to the profits they derive from it.  Why do we have such an antiquated railway system compared with every other industrialized country, and one that runs mainly on diesel rather than electric power?  Why is energy conservation a dirty term in the US?  Do shopping mall parking lot lights really have to stay on all night, as do the lights in my own office complex, where there is no master switch to turn them off in the open spaces?  Why was one of the first acts of the Reagan Administration, the first in which the oil industry really had juice, to summarily end a major alternative/renewable energy research program that had started under Carter?  Why does not the industry itself realize that yes, no matter much oil they discover, EVENTUALLY it is going to run out, and then where will they be, to say nothing of us?

The US oil industry owns very little of the stuff in the ground now.  They make their money by selling the oil they import from the producing nations.  Therefore, to make as much profit as they can, now, they need to sell as much of the stuff as they can, now.  In this case, it is the future of mankind, not the devil that will take the hindmost.  That is why they were, and are, so eager to get their hands on the oil patch in Kurdish Iraq, which may contain the largest reserves outside of Saudi Arabia. Gorilla No. 3

Gorilla No. 4 is our homegrown Christian fundamentalist movement that has so much in common in its approach to civil government with the Muslim fundamentalists.  Just briefly here, in domestic policy these people want to enforce by the use of the criminal law their prescriptions for certain personal behaviors that, given the fundamental weakness of their arguments, they can not get people to abide by voluntarily.  They want to establish that the US is a “Christian Nation,” just as long as they, and only they, get to define just what is “Christian,” and in their vocabulary “love thy neighbor as thyself” is surely not part of it.  In foreign policy, the millenarianism of the Armageddonistas, of which George Bush himself may well be one, holds that the modern state of Israel must hold all the land that the Bible defines as “Israel” before the “Rapture” can occur.  And so their more-than-fervent support of Sharon and what he is really after.  (Oh-so-briefly) Gorilla No. 4.

Should Kerry win, in my view our task as progressive Democrats will be get these gorillas out of the corners and into the arena of policy discussion.  If Bush wins, our task will be to start immediately working on developing a platform for the Democratic Party that will firmly and strongly oppose the Republicans on all of these issues, propose resolutions for them, and set about finding the right candidate to be the Gorilla Tamer for 2008.

Fixing the Kerry Campaign

Column No. 31 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH-  September 15, 2004 I had said that I would not again get into this topic.  Many observers write on it, and a few, like our own Michael Carmichael, write on it very well.  But as of the time of this writing, the Kerry Campaign is in deep trouble, so I am putting in my two cents.  Not that anyone in the Campaign will pay any attention to what I say, or to similar thoughts expressed by others who are not part of the magic inner circle of (more often than not) losers.  But at least I will feel better.

In a reasonably rational country with some historical sense, with a reasonably rational media, and a party running against him with some reasonable devotion to telling the truth, Kerry would win easily.  Why?  The disasters of the Georgites (as I like to call them) are legion and only too well-known.

In foreign policy, Iraq, the substitution of unilateralism for multilateralism, the adoption of an open policy of preemptive war (in contravention of the UN Charter), unalloyed support for Sharonist expansionist policy in Israel/Palestine, the abject decline of the American position and prestige in the world, and so on and so forth.  In economic policy, massively cutting taxes for the rich, while massively expanding spending so that in a breathtakingly short period of time, we face the largest budget deficits and national debt in our history, all accompanied by a massive expansion of private domestic debt and increase in foreign commercial debt, so that many traditional fiscally-conservative Republicans, not to mention the rest of us, are terrified of the long-term consequences, and so and so forth.

In the matter that I personally am most concerned with, the preservation of traditional American Constitutional Democracy, the Georgites have gone after it with a vengeance (obviously not realizing the totally painful irony that they claim to be in Iraq to "establish democracy and freedom," while they are doing their damnedest to stamp it out here at home).  Consider: the “Patriot Act” (because of its length and complexity obviously written sometime before 9/11 --- it could not possibly have been written in the two weeks between the horror and the date on which it was introduced to the Congress), allows the President, entirely on his own authority, to deny US citizens: protection against unreasonable search and seizure (the 4th amendment gone), the right to the due process of law (the 5th amendment gone) and the right to a speedy jury trial in a criminal case (the 6th amendment gone).  The so-called “gay marriage” amendment would gut the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.  And this President is ignoring Congress by the use of Executive Orders on major matters, like the reorganization of our intelligence services, to a degree previously unheard of, even in a wartime actually declared by Congress, the only way war can be declared, under the Constitution, thus unilaterally and very significantly altering the system of checks and balances.  The deficiencies of the Georgites in the above three realms are matched in every other one, as readers of TPJ know only too well.

Given the record of the Georgites, how can Kerry win, electorally?  As I have been saying for months, Kerry can win, and win easily, if he can mobilize a significant number of people who ordinarily don’t vote, as I am fond of saying, “getting 20% of the 50%.”  He will also benefit from increasing the number of Republicans who for any number of reasons have determined to vote for “Anybody But Bush,” the so-called “ABBs” (which includes many well-educated Republicans who do vote regularly.) The mother lode for Kerry, Bob Shrum and colleagues to the contrary notwithstanding, is thus not the ever-shrinking number of “undecideds.”  To court folks who are still on the borders, you need to stay on the borders, exactly where you don’t want to be to get significant numbers of both usual non-voters and ABBs to the polls to vote for you.

What to do, then, strategically?  As I have also been saying for months, the single most important element is gaining and maintaining control of the political agenda.  Kerry had control of it, until mid-summer.  But since the middle of August, the Republicans very cleverly changed it.  They know what they are doing, and they know very well that if the agenda is George Bush and his horrible recording office, they will lose.  So get the focus off Bush, using, occasionally, truth, like the Senator’s voting record, irrelevant to the present time, but true, and, much more often, lies, both about Kerry (as with the Swift Boat Brownshirts) and about what is going on in the world, in Iraq, our economy, our environment, our education system, and so on and so forth. These people are masters of Goebbles' “Big Lie” technique: tell a big lie, but keep telling it over and over again, and people will come to believe it, as in Cheney and the fictitious al-Qaeda/Saddam link.

To get the agenda back onto Bush, it seems to me, and many other observers who actually get quoted in the newspapers, that the Campaign needs to adopt a single common theme designed to accomplish that task.  I suggest learning from Karl Rove, beyond Lee Atwater’s “always attack, never defend.”  Attack, alright, but make sure to focus your attack on your opponent's strength, not his weaknesses.  Of course, if you cannot do that truthfully, you use lies. But one has to admit, that using their privatized Ministry of Propaganda, otherwise known as Fox “News” Channel, the Washington Times, and most of political talk radio, which managed to make a pack of lies about John Kerry’s war record into a “controversy,” they have done this very well.  Well, let's learn from them, and let's make the single theme of the last 45 days Bush's core issue, "trust."

Thus I propose as the central theme, which the Campaign has indeed dipped in and out of, from time to time, but now to be the primary, unending focus: “You Cannot Trust George Bush.”  In the following list, the details of what George Bush has done and not done can be filled in by any reader of this column.  And so here is simply a list of topics for Kerry to hammer away on, but always being sure that the nail his hammer is hitting on is: “You Cannot Trust George Bush:”

*             As detailed in the Report of the 9/11 Commission, the Georgites did not prepare in any way for 9/11 despite everything from a very strong “heads-up” from Richard Clarke just after they took over to the Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001, to the request from the FBI for a vast increase in counter-terrorism funds that Ashcroft turned down on 9/10.

*              Bush lied about the reasons for invading Iraq.  “Bringing freedom and democracy” is a “Johnny-come-lately,” following the exposure of no WMD and no links to al-Qaeda as false reasons.  Does anyone think that if he had presented the former as the reason for invading, even this supine Congress would have given him the go-ahead?

*              Bush lied about how easy it would be to install a pro-Western democracy there, once the (initially easy) military battle was won.  “Mission Accomplished” and what it does not mean says it all.

*              Bush told us that he would create the conditions for democracy in Afghanistan.  Generally, outside of Kabul there is none, many of the old war-lords are back in place and in some parts of the country, the Taliban is making a comeback.

*            Bush promised “compassionate conservatism.”  Tell that to the rapidly increasing ranks of persons living below the poverty line, the growing ranks of the permanently unemployed, the swelling ranks of persons without health insurance, the expanding number of job-takers who find that their jobs do not happen to come with health-care benefits.

*            Why trust Bush when he doesn't trust the voters?  He was originally against having any kind of 9/11 commission, has put off the report of his own investigation of the intelligence agencies and their possible failures until after the elections, hides any information, even attendance lists, about meetings affecting everyone’s future, like that of the famous Cheney energy task force, provides for skyrocketing amounts of government classification, plummeting amounts of government data gathered that are actually released, a stone wall response to Freedom of Information Act requests, and so and so forth.

*            He promised straight talk, tax reductions for everyone, smaller government, environmental protection, disengagement from nation building abroad.  He trumpets as successes programs the funding of which he is cutting to the bone. And on and on.

You get the picture.  The data on the Bush record, beginning with what he promised in the 2000 campaign, is there for the taking.  The Kerry Campaign needs to take and use it.  The Kerry Campaign needs once again, as it was doing well in the Spring, to make Bush the agenda.  It is the only way to win, and if they can somehow manage to do it, they will win.  And so will we.

LESSONS FROM JAPAN, PART II: SUCCESSFUL OCCUPATIONS

Column No. 30 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - September 16, 2004

As I noted at the beginning of my recent column about “Lessons from Japan,” I recently was fortunate enough to spend a three-week vacation in that country.  Even more fortunately for me, it was my second visit.  My first was in 1971, in the company of my father who, among many other things, taught Asian history with a special interest in Japan.  While my Dad’s focus was more on the cultural history of the country, mine was always on the political, about which I have read on and off over the years.  For this trip, I renewed my acquaintance with Japanese history by reading Traveller’s History of Japan, 3rd edition, by Richard Tames, who among other things is the former head of External Services at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (New York: Interlink Books, 2002).

Bush’s War on Iraq, the reasons he gave for entering into it and the experience to date of the American occupation of that country brought to my mind some lessons of history that may be of interest and use.  They are found in a series of events that eventually lead to Japan’s involvement in World War II and then followed upon her defeat and subsequent occupation by the United Sates. These lessons might be called “When the Given Reasons for Going to War are Not the Real Ones” and “How to Run a Successful Occupation.” The previous column (9/2/04) dealt with the first; this one deals with the second.

As is well known, the War in the Pacific was brought to a sudden end in August 1945.  The “official” U.S. view of the suddenness with which it occurred is that the outcome was the result of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Many authorities disagree with this interpretation, however.  I happen to hold a contrary view, too. On my recent visit, much to my amazement I discovered, at the Nagasaki Peace Museum, that no less an authority on war than Dwight D. Eisenhower also took this position.

Why would one think that even without the atomic bombings the war would have ended very shortly?  The answers to that question can help us to understand why the U.S. occupation of Japan was successful (and that of Iraq is unlikely to be). In the summer of 1945, Japan had no more than six months of petroleum reserves on hand.  There was no way to import more.  As well, imports both of the raw materials necessary for the production of weapons and of food had virtually come to a halt.  For the American submarine campaign against Japanese surface shipping in the Western Pacific had been far more ferocious and far more successful than the best that the German U-boats had been able to throw at the British and American convoys in the Battle of the Atlantic. Getting through the U.S. naval blockade was only the occasional Japanese submarine.

The Okinawa campaign had ended in disaster for the Japanese defenders (to say nothing of the civilian population of Okinawa).  Most of Japan’s major cities had been flattened before the atomic bombings.  Curtis LeMay’s three-day firebomb raid of Tokyo in March, 1945, has been estimated to have killed more Japanese civilians than did the combined atomic bombings, and it virtually been burned to the ground a city in which most dwellings were constructed of wood and paper.  A peace faction was active in both in the Imperial Palace and in the Japanese government.  Negotiations were being sought with the U.S. to end the war, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration demanding unconditional surrender, with one exception asked for by the Japanese: that the institution of the Emperor be allowed to remain in existence and the person of the then-present Emperor be allowed to remain in place.

This column is not about whether the atomic bombings were justified or what Truman’s real reasons were for approving them.  The point is that, with or without them, Japan was already thoroughly defeated. On August 15, 1945, the Head of State, the Emperor, over the radio, announced that fact to the population (which had never before heard the voice of any Emperor), there was a formal surrender on the after deck of the battleship Missouri in the Tokyo Bay, on September 2, 1945, and the Japanese war government was immediately disbanded.  In its place was substituted the person of General Douglas MacArthur, who with his staff entered Tokyo entirely peacefully.

MacArthur’s principal political task, after making sure that the peace was secure, was not to institute a needed democracy in Japan for the first time; Japan had had something of a democratic tradition going back to the Constitution of 1889, which established a constitutional monarchy. MacArthur’s political task was, rather, to restore, strengthen and broaden democracy in Japan.  His principal economic task was to get the Japanese economy, already well industrialized before the war, back on its feet.  His principal diplomatic task was to make sure that Japan would be part, even if not militarily, of the Western alliance against the Soviet Union.  These were all clear, and achievable, tasks.

On all of these fronts, MacArthur had nothing but cooperation from the Japanese.  There was no armed resistance to the American occupation.  The formal surrender, the pronouncements of the Emperor, and the immediate arrests of the top military leaders made sure of that.  Japan had a well-developed government bureaucracy.  Many of its members were delighted that the military was out of the way and that they could get back to doing what they knew how to do: run a country that had undergone remarkable economic development following the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

As long as the office of the Emperor was secure, and the Americans announced that while the Emperor was no longer to be considered divine as he had been ever since the office had been established in the mists of time 2500 years before, both the office and his person were to remain intact and in place as at the end the Japanese side had requested, the Emperor was on MacArthur’s side.  In fact, on New Year’s Day, 1946, the Emperor issued a “rescript” denying his own divinity, denying that the Japanese were superior people fated to rule the world (which had been the mantra of militarists), and setting forth as the national goals the maintenance of peace, the further development of the rich cultural history of Japan, and the achievement of economic advancement.

There were three main elements of the “Japanese miracle” that followed.  First, was the new Constitution, written by the Americans and accepted by the Japanese, which, among other things, established a long list of personal rights, equal rights for women, a reasonably democratic electoral system, and a guarantee of no military establishment.  Second was the fact that, while the Japanese industrialists had had much of their productive capacity destroyed and had lost their cheap labor pools and access to raw materials in China and Southeast Asia, they still had ample capital and an ample supply of labor in Japan.

The mystery of where this capital came from has never been fully revealed.  There was no American Marshall Plan for Japan.  It has long been rumored that in the process of repatriating the 6,000,000 Japanese nationals then living in the Japanese colonial empire, large amounts of looted gold were brought with them.  But wherever it came from, the Japanese industrialists had it.  Third was the onset of the Korean War, for which Japan became the main staging area and main supplier of non-military goods and services, which gave an enormous boost to the recovering Japanese economy.  And the rest, as they say, is history: a most successful occupation, as least for the country that was occupied.

Now, compare and contrast that with the Iraqi Occupation. In Iraq, there was an apparent military victory, but there was no formal surrender by the formerly sitting government.  The former Head of State was not only not left in place with a moderate change of status, but was arrested as a war criminal, as were almost all of his top officials and associates.  His sons were killed.  Both the army and the civilian bureaucracy were disbanded. There was clearly no advance planning for how to set up a new civilian government, and there was certainly no model within the country of what the Americans wanted to see instituted.

While to this day Japan has one of the most homogeneous populations of any country on Earth, Iraq, an artificial creation of early 20th-century British colonial policy, has major religious and ethnic divides.  The four Main Islands Japan had been under a unified government since the beginning of the 17th century.  The only experience the territories that comprise Iraq have had with unified government was under the British, an imported king, and a brutal dictator.

In the case of Japan, defeat came first, democratization second, on a clear and open agenda.  There were no hidden American plans for Japan.  In the case of Iraq, of course, the reasons given for going to war in the first place, WMD and connections with al-Qaeda, were quickly shown to be entirely spurious.  The substitute reason, democratization, was from the beginning considered by many Iraqis, even anti-Husseinites, to be spurious.

From the beginning, the real American reasons were thought to be, by many both within and outside of Iraq, oil, power, permanent military bases, and the protection of the Right-Wing Sharonist government in Israel. On top of that, there was the Bremer Plan for the complete economic subjugation of Iraq.  Except for the establishment of military bases, which the demilitarized Japanese were perfectly happy to have on their soil, there were no parallels from this list in the case of Japan.  Like Japan’s was, the Iraqi infrastructure is a mess, but an abundant supply of domestic capital for its reconstruction or for building/rebuilding anything else is nonexistent.  Furthermore, there is constant sabotage aimed at what infrastructure reconstruction is going on, something never in the Japanese experience.  For these reasons and others, there has been an increasing level of armed resistance to the American occupation of Iraq since it began, not at all the case in Japan.

There are many other factors that one could discuss; none of them similarities.  The point here is that the American occupation of Japan worked, both for the U.S. and for Japan.  Although in historical terms we are much too close to the day of “Mission [Not] Accomplished” to be certain of ultimate failure in Iraq, when one looks at the contrasts with how the occupation of Japan was achieved and carried out and what is happening under the American occupation of Iraq, it is highly unlikely that the current American strategy has even the slightest hope for success, either for ourselves or for the Iraqi people.

Junkie:  Dr. Jonas’ article was authored on September 9, 2004 for publication today.  Yesterday, this article, Arab League condemns terrorism in Iraq, pledges to support Baghdad.

The Arab League makes a number of points that support Dr. Jonas’ conclusions:

The Arab League condemned terrorism in Iraq and called on member states to restore full diplomatic relations with the interim government in Baghdad and do all they can to support it, after warning that the "gates of hell" had been opened there. . . .

The ministers also censured the US-led multinational force in Iraq for carrying out operations that endanger innocent lives. . . .

They also "strongly condemned the inhuman and immoral crimes and practices committed by occupation soldiers against Iraqis, especially in prisons and detention centers," saying they represented "a flagrant violation of human rights and international charters and treaties."  . . .

It "reaffirmed the importance of Arab presence in Iraq, including restoring diplomatic relations with Iraq at its normal level in support of efforts being exerted by the interim Iraqi government in this field."  . . .

It urged "the Arab League, in cooperation and coordination with the United Nations, to provide all forms of assistance to Iraq in the different fields, especially in the political process and reconstruction in Iraq." – Yahoo (emphasis added).

Had only Bush read his history!

THOUGHTS ON THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF THE TRAGEDY OF 9/11/2001

Column No. 29 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - September 9, 2004

This column is another in the occasional series of thoughts from my friend A.L. (who wishes to remain anonymous). With apologies to Ring Lardner, Sr., in this space they go under the rubric of "You Know Me, Al." This writing consists of a set of memos that Al wrote to a friend of his, the first five on the day of the WTC bombing, the sixth two days later. In light of what we know now about the major lapses of intelligence and counter‑terrorism policy and programs under the Georgites (and according to some, e.g., Jim Marrs in Inside Job, Jeff Wells'  The Coincidence Theorists' Guide to 9/11, their possible passive or active complicity), there is a combination of naiveté and prescience that I find most engaging. I thought that you might, too.

1. Subj: Terrorism hits home, I Date: 9/11/01 1:05:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Hi. The CIA, the FBI, the NSA. Not one, apparently, had even a sniff of an incredibly complex, highly sophisticated attack on the US. If someone had made a movie with this plot, no one would have believed it. That we were caught flat‑footed, with more civilians killed in one day than Israelis have been killed in 10 months of the current Intifada, with apparently not the least awareness of the trouble coming, an attack that has to have been many months in the planning, considering the vaunted CIA/FBI/NSA intelligence security apparatus, this is absolutely incredible. Or is it?

I don't think that it is. These agencies have lived in a culture of "fighting communism" at home and abroad for 50 years. They were really good at overthrowing popular left‑wing governments and leaders on the one hand, and tracking Soviet subs with fancy listening devices on the other. They are simply not equipped or funded to deal with this kind of asymmetrical threat. Whoever did this, you can just imagine what kind of sophisticated communications system alone they must have used, not to have had transmissions picked up by the NSA, for example. But we do know where the Russian subs are!

Of course, with our resources we could easily have the most advanced communications control system in the world, but that doesn't really cost big, big bucks, and that won't win elections. So we have this tragedy. Well, perhaps all those people will not have died in vain. Perhaps this will wake up at least some political leaders with the nerve to get our intelligence and military communities finally out of the old "destroy communism or anything that even remotely resembles it wherever you can find it" mentality and into the 21st century.

Final note: And to think that any of those high jacked aircraft could have been carrying a suitcase sized nuclear weapon!

2. Subj: Re: NY‑eerie silence Date: 9/11/012:27:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Americans are now experiencing war on our shores for the first time since 1865, and have had foreign "troops" firing in anger on our shores for the first time since 1815 (the Mexican War having been fought on territory that was rightfully Mexico's or had been recently, at the time). What we should be looking at, of course, is both fighting terrorism effectively (like, duh, making the CIA into an intelligence agency instead of a covert‑actions‑to‑overthrow‑governments‑we‑don't‑like outfit) and, especially, how to deal with the root causes of terrorism. We might, just might, do the first. (But there are certainly no guarantees under this Administration; because the military‑industrial complex makes lots more money building Star Wars than it would building an effective anti‑terrorism function.) The second? Not in our lifetimes, under any conceivable American Administration, for sure

3. Subj: Re: Terrorism Date: 9/11/016:45:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time

My friend. What an excellent response to [a Right‑Winger]. He would like the disagreements over the causes of the tragedy and how to respond to it both to be "non‑political." It's fascinating how the Right‑Wingers, who politicize everything from the freedom of belief on when life begins to the supposed non‑sanctity of the system established in the last century to provide some modicum of financial security for the aged, suddenly use the "don't politicize it" argument when public policy on, for example, how best to respond to terrorism, is the subject of debate.

The reason, of course, is because they want everyone to fall behind whatever policy it is that the ultimate political animal called the current occupant of the Presidency of the United States decides that policy should be Oust as long as he is a reactionary of course. I doubt that the Right would have used the "don't politicize it" argument if Kennedy hadn't been killed and had withdrawn US troops from Vietnam after the '64 election.)

Since politics happens to be the means that human beings have devised to settle differences over social and economic policy short of the use of force, it also happens to be the correct tool to use to decide military/foreign‑policy issues like how to respond to terrorism. Yet it should not be used on basic moral/ethical issues like the right to maintain one's own beliefs about what life is, especially since such private decision‑making is protected by the Constitution. But if private belief on, say, the matter of when life begins, is to be a subject for political intervention, then surely the nation's foreign policy and to best conduct it should be. And indeed it is, and indeed your arguments about the scandal that is the state of our "intelligence and security" community are the correct issues to be dealt with through the political process.

4. Subj: Re: September 11 Terrorism Date: 9/11/016:54:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time

My friend, again, an excellent response to [a Right‑Winger]. Cannot a "sober response" be a quick one? Critics from the left of the US "intelligence" community, like me, have been saying for years that the FBI/CIA/NSA nexus was too stuck in the Era of the Anti‑Communist Crusade to be effective in a world where our enemies have changed radically. And there's that anti‑terrorism expert, surely no leftie, on TV nine months ago saying that Bin Laden had an intelligence/security system sophisticated to a level far beyond anything the US has. Does a "sober response" require waiting some time to say these things, perhaps until the attention of the public has gone elsewhere? Was the "sober response" after the Oklahoma City bombing completely to ignore the violent Radical Religious Right in the US, which is exactly what happened? I don't think so. The sooner the drumfire of criticism gets going, the better. That's the way truly to honor the victims: find out what went wrong, why this happened, and then change things to try to make it never happens again.

5. Subj: Two last points Date: 9/11/01 10:15:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Hi. Do we now have evidence that there is more than one God? If indeed it was Muslims behind the attacks, we know that with few exceptions they are "religious," and surely at this time are thanking and praising Allah for his help. (The "Marxist" Palestinian terrorist grouping, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, formerly headed by George Habash, whose acting leader, Abu Ali Mustafa, the Israelis assassinated last month, is one of those exceptions. By the way, have I shared with you the fact that the word "assassination" is derived from an Arabic word for "political murder?") Then there is the "God" whose blessing was sought by about 70 Senators when they spontaneously burst into song across the street from the evacuated Capitol today. Surely that God and Allah could not be one and the same (unless He, or She, is highly neurotic or truly schizophrenic, and neither of those psychological states would really do for a God).

So maybe there is more than "one true God." A Christian one, a Jewish one, an Islamic one, actually several for each denomination because they each have their inner schisms. Then there might be a bunch of Hindu Gods, a Buddhist deity (hard to find, the others might spend some of their free time looking for him or her), to say nothing of the Gods of the wide variety of the world's less popular religions. It would be sort of a polytheistic monotheism in which, for at least those religions that are monotheistic, there is one God, but each religion has that God to themselves, so there really are a bunch of Gods up there wherever (the) God(s) live(s). Then one has to ask such questions as, do they fight among themselves as their human devotees do? Is one more powerful than the rest, and if that is the case, what does that do to each human group's view that "God" is all‑powerful, to say nothing of all‑knowing. But if each is all ­powerful and all‑knowing, then "our" God would/should have known what the people who support that other Gods were up to, and would have done something to stop them. Wouldn't He (or She) acted? Ah, these questions are puzzling. Maybe you can help out with developing some answers ‑ starting tomorrow!

6. Subj: Re: Sidebar to discussion Date: 9/13/01 1:15:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time

We have seen a side of Rudy Giuliani that none of us knew existed. I was saying to myself last night that I have to admit that he is doing a great job. Then I saw Joyce Pumick's column in the NYT this morning (p. 6). It's a shame that he can bring this side of himself out only in response to this kind of crisis. As for Bush, you would think that he would at least have popped into NYC for a short visit by now. The guy is so in apparent, so weak, and his handlers must be so terrified of what he might say, unscripted, if they did let him out onto the scene of the disaster.

By the way, as you have probably already heard on the airwaves yourself, the Right is already mobilizing very quickly to take advantage of this situation, to propose limits on civil liberties here, which limits would apply to a lot of us, without limit. Bill Bennett last night was talking about "fighting political correctness" (whatever that is ‑‑‑ they never define it, and no newsperson ever asks them to) to protect ourselves. At the same time, they are telling us not to criticize the intelligence community and that the breakdowns are all the fault of rules that limit the kinds of person the CIA can deal with in lining up spies and other sources of infori‑nation. Of course, what is needed most is not passive defense at home, but active prevention by routing out the terrorists abroad (and at home too, but no‑one talks about Oklahoma City because that was both homegrown, no Arabs there, and Right‑Wing), And on this topic, that's it for today.

LESSONS FROM JAPAN, PART I: GIVING FALSE REASONS FOR GOING TO WAR

Column No. 28 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – September 2, 2004

I recently was fortunate enough to spend a three-week vacation in Japan.  Even more fortunately for me, it was my second visit to this fascinating country.  My first was in 1971, in the company of my father who, among many other things, was a teacher of Asian history with a special interest in Japan.  That interest began in 1930 when, as a graduate student at Columbia University living at the International House, my Dad made a number of friends among a group of Japanese graduate students who were also residing there.

My Dad has made his first visit to Japan in 1935 and was there numerous times again after the War, beginning in the 1960s.  From that first visit, Dad had brought back a number of pieces of Japanese art work which hung on the wall of our apartment in New York City.  Thus I grew up with something of a Japanese influence in the house.  While my Dad’s interest was more on the cultural history of the country, mine was always on the political history (not surprisingly), about which I have read on and off over the years.  For my latest trip, I renewed my acquaintance with Japanese political history by reading A Traveller’s History of Japan, 3rd edition (New York: Interlink Books, 2002), by Richard Tames, who among other things is the former head of External Services at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies

In the light of my trip, the reasons President Bush gave for his War on Iraq, and the experience to date of the American occupation of that country, some lessons of history that might be of interest and use were brought to my mind.  These lessons are from a series of events that first eventually lead to Japan’s involvement in World War II, and then followed upon her defeat and occupation by the United Sates. They might be called “When the Reasons Given for Going to War Are Not the Real Ones,” and “How to Run a Successful Occupation.” This column deals with the first of these two.  I will deal with the second in a subsequent column

When the Reasons Given for Going to War Are Not the Real Ones

Japan is unique among the world’s nations in that alone of the nations outside of Europe it was never colonized by one or more European powers.  When colonization first threatened in the late 16th century, over a 50-year period Japan responded by closing itself off from the outside world almost completely.  The door was firmly shut (with a tiny window left open for a Dutch trading post isolated on an island in Nagasaki Harbor) beginning in 1625, during a period called the Tokugawa Shogunate. When that isolation was eventually breached by the Western Powers beginning in the 1850s, Japan was able to protect itself again by very quickly importing the economic and military means to that end, during what is called the “Meiji Restoration.”

In fact, Japan became a modern military and economic power so quickly that within just over 40 years of the historic visit of Commodore Perry to Tokyo Harbor in 1853, Japan defeated the much larger China in a war. That war brought it, among things, the island of Taiwan, called by the Japanese Formosa. In a dispute over sphere of influence in northeast Asia, Japan went on to defeat Russia in 1905. One result of that event was the annexation of Korea in 1910.  During the same period, Japan also acquired permanent mining and associated railway interests in the Manchurian province of China.

Japan fought on the Allied side in World War I. Among other things, she acquired all of the former German possessions in the far-flung islands of the Western and Central Pacific.  Her imperialistic ambitions were now being really stoked, and to support them an increasingly authoritarian approach to government was fostered at home.  Among Japan’s military and her economic imperialists there was an increasing interest in acquiring a permanent, geographic presence on the Asian mainland, beyond Korea.  The economic pressures of the Great Depression stoked this interest.

And so, in 1931 an act of sabotage took place on the Japanese railway in Manchuria.   It came to be called “The Kwantung [Guandong] Incident” (after the name of the Japanese army guarding the railroad). In response to the “dastardly deed,” Japan quickly moved to military action that eventually led to the complete takeover of Manchuria by the Japanese.  They turned it into a separate “country” that they called Manchukuo, replete with a puppet Chinese ruler.  He just happened to be the last son of the Chinese Empress who had been overthrown in the democratic revolution of Sun Yat Sen in 1911.  (If you can ever get to see the marvelous movie about this man, Pu Yi, and his times called The Last Emperor, do it.) The Japanese position was, of course, that Chinese subversives had attacked them.  What were they supposed to do?  Stand idly by against this threat? Interestingly enough, it eventually turned out that anti-Japanese forces had not committed the “terrorist act.”  Rather, it had been fabricated by the Japanese military itself.

During the 1930s, aided by strategic assassinations of politicians committed to the Constitutional government, such as it was, that had been established during the Meiji Restoration in the latter part of the 19th century, the government was gradually taken over by nationalists and militarists, with the support of leading industrialists such as the Toyoda family.  (It is interesting to note that when they, a pioneer in the textile business in Japan, turned to making automobiles in the 1930s, the company’s registrar department made a mistake in transcribing the name for the new business.  And thus we have Toyotas when we really should have had Toyodas.)  When in 1933 the League of Nations condemned Japanese aggression in Manchuria, Japan simply quit the League.  In 1936, Japan joined Germany and Italy in the “Anti-Comintern Pact.” Among other things, this pact pledged mutual assistance in case of hostilities with the United States.  Japan was feeling its oats.

And so, in 1937, there occurred the “Marco Polo Bridge Incident” on the Chinese Manchukuokan border, which lead to the Japanese invasion of China proper.  It later turned out that this incident, like its predecessor in 1931, had also been entirely fabricated by the Japanese military.  Japan quickly took control of the major Chinese coastal cities, in the course of which their forces committed the infamous Nanking Massacre.

The Japanese next turned northward, without an “incident” to justify the moves, and engaged in a bloody, unsuccessful war with the Soviet Union along the Manchurian-Siberian border.  (It was the resolution of this war, ironically enough in light of the “Anti-Comintern Pact,” that enabled Stalin to rush fresh Siberian troops to the defense of Moscow in late 1941, to halt the German advance into the Soviet Union for the first time.)  When France and the Netherlands fell to the Nazis in 1940, Japan moved into Southeast Asia.  Those moves caused Roosevelt to declare an embargo on oil flowing from the Dutch East Indies to Japan, which in turn eventually led to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which eventually led to the American Occupation of Japan.

But for now, just consider these fascinating parallels with the onset of Japanese aggression.  In 1931, the Japanese Army faked an “incident,” which just happened to be local in nature, that it used as a totally false justification to take over a very large and very valuable piece of real estate that happened to have belonged to China.  In 1937, they faked another “local” incident that they used to justify, totally falsely, an invasion of the whole country of China.

The Georgite use of 9/11 for everything from getting passed highly repressive domestic legislation to invading Iraq certainly comes to mind, doesn’t it?

I am certainly not saying now that the Georgites were directly involved in the 9/11 tragedy.  (My column of May, linked below, does discuss some of the possible explanations for Georgite behavior around the events of 9/11.  It happens that there is an increasing amount of speculation that they somehow were directly involved.  See, for example, Inside Job: Unmasking the 9/11 Conspiracies, by Jim Marrs, San Rafael, CA: Origin Press, 2004.  But so far, there are only coincidence and speculation.)  But it does not require direct involvement to see parallels in the use by right-wing government of a “terrorist incident” to attempt to achieve ends that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.

Just recall Hitler’s use of the Reichstag Fire in 1933 to justify the repeal of the Weimar Constitution, to enable the institution of a fascist dictatorship in Germany (see the SJ Columns of June 3 and 24, 2004, linked below).  In that case, virtually all historians agree that the Nazis did not set the Fire. But with a propaganda apparatus that was indeed totally revolutionary for its time, the Nazis were within days able to get a significant number of the German people to believe a total falsehood: that the fire had been set by Communists who were on the verge of creating a violent revolution to take over the German government, an event to be defended against by any means available.

The point is that the comparison of using a “terrorist incident” of a violent nature in a totally dishonest way, to justify pre-planned aggressive action, foreign and domestic, does hold in the case of Japan as well as Germany.  No, history does not repeat itself, but similarities and analogous events abound.

Dealing with the Republican National Convention and Related Issues

Column No. 27 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – August 26, 2004

For the past couple of months I have been writing a series of columns around the general themes of the Democratic National Convention and thoughts about how the Kerry Campaign might move to action.  This column is the first in a series that will focus on the Republicans, this time dealing with their Convention (RNCon) and related issues, with some thoughts about how the Kerry Campaign might respond.

Preparing for Violence at the Republican National Convention

In my mind, the first and most important issue concerning the RNCon for us as opponents of the Georgites is pre-meditated violence. The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of anti-Georgite protesters gathered in New York City will want to have nothing to do with any violence, whether initiated by protesters or thrust upon them by outside forces (remember the Chicago Police Riot in 1968).  Nevertheless, I am certain that certain pro-Georgite operatives, official and/or unofficial, are going to make sure that violence occurs.  Given where they are and where they are going in this Campaign, it is vital for them that violence does occur.

As readers of TPJ know well, the Georgites have nothing positive going for them; neither a positive past Bush record nor a positive future Bush program to run on.  So far -- as I happened to have been advocating for months (but hardly because of me) --- the primary agenda item of the Campaign has been George Bush.  If the Kerry Campaign can manage to maintain that status quo, we will win.  Both campaigns know this.  So the Georgites will try anything to get the focus shifted away from Bush and onto Kerry.  So far, none of their efforts in this direction --- from trying to make “gay marriage” a primary issue to making an argument, that some veterans should be taking up with the Navy not John Kerry, about Kerry’s war decorations (which he hardly awarded to himself) --- have been successful.  At this time, then, what better way to do that than by having violence, on as large a scale as possible, occur at the RNCon, and then be able to put Kerry on the defensive about it.

And so, in my view it is highly likely that “they” will make sure there is violence, both through agents provocateurs placed in various anti-Georgite organizations and through direct action of their own people.  I hope that I am wrong.  But I myself saw a highly probable example of the latter happen at the close of the anti-War march that took place in New York City in February 2002.  At the end of a march that been extraordinarily peaceful, even with some fraternization between marchers and the police along the way, and literally at the physical point for dispersal in Washington Square, I saw a couple of vans pull up and disgorge a group of well-dressed young people.

I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen and I suggested to my group that we leave immediately, which we did.  It was later reported that just about the time these young folks arrived, some anti-police violence erupted in the Square.  It wasn’t a considerable amount, but it was enough to get mentioned in the news stories. Can I be sure that the youngsters who I saw pull up in those vans were the perpetrators?  No, for I didn’t see them directly.  But the timing was right.  Enough said.

In the current instance, even if some demonstrators on our side fail to realize how violence would play into the Georgites’ hands, we have to be ready for it to take place.  When it does, the Kerry Campaign will have to deal with its effects.  How?  First, the usual: condemnation of, disassociation from, and disapproval of any police tactics that could be considered provocative.  Second, condemnation of the “’tiny minority’ of anti-Bush demonstrators who abandoned the American Way of peaceful protest for something that obviously just plays into our opponents’ hands.”  Both would then be accompanied by a statement to the effect that it is “too bad the Bush Campaign has nothing else to talk about, certainly nothing positive about what is going on inside their Convention because there isn’t anything positive to talk about, given the record of this Presidency.” If violence, whether initiated by irresponsible anti-Georgites or provoked/created by pro-Bush forces, does occur, the Republicans will talk about little else.

Second, one could hope for something unusual: an intelligence operation, already planned, that has been able to penetrate the agent provocateurs’ organization and then, at the right time, thoroughly expose it.  Now wouldn’t that be something?  It may be too much to hope for, but one never knows. If provocateurs are “uncovered” with a “smoking gun” in their hands, then a statement of the “what is this country coming to” variety should be issued by the Kerry Campaign.  It should not ask for an accounting by the Bush team, because they won’t give one, and doing so simply gives them the opportunity to get into the distractive “yes you did, no we didn’t” game they love so well.  The statement should, on the other hand, demand a return to sanity and a focus on what is really important: the Bush record and what the Bush Administration has done to so damage our great nation, at home and abroad. In other words, the Kerry Campaign both takes the high road and maintains the agenda focus on Bush.  There would plenty of other folks, within and without the media, who would be going after the provocateurs and their connections and sponsors.

Running Against the Republican Platform

The Republican National Convention is bound to supply us with a very juicy bit of Campaign red meat: the Republican National Platform.  Especially since, apparently, the Convention is going to give little public exposure to the Republican Religious Right, they have to give something to the “Faithful” (of that certain, let’s-use-the-criminal-law-to-impose-OUR-version-of-faith-on-everyone-else type).  The “Faithful” will thus be given the platform, covering all of their favorite subjects.

Clinton never ran against the Republican National Platform because the DLC wouldn’t allow it.  After all, doing so would have clearly shown the ideological differences between the two parties, while the DLC’s position has always been “you know, we’re pretty much the same; we Democrats could just run things better.”  In his speeches so far, Senator Kerry is showing that he is made of sterner stuff.  He clearly recognizes that yes, Virginia, we Democrats really are different.  What better way to demonstrate the manifold differences than by holding up the Republican National Platform for everyone to see – a platform which, in recent elections, the Republicans as well as DLC Democrats have worked so hard to keep in the closet.  Once it is in plain sight, what a wonderful target is it likely to be to shoot at.

Dealing With Negative Campaigning

A colleague writes to a member of a pro-Kerry grouping, words to the effect of:

“In regard to your latest communication with our group, I too find the present situation very discouraging.  There is a very conservative talk show host in the Boston area, Jay Severin (who might be going national). He was a guest on Don Imus’ show last week and indicated that, as a professional political consultant as well as a talk show host, ‘he and the Bush team know that Bush is just about maxed out with the people who are presently likely to support him with their vote.’ Hence the only way Bush can win is to maximize Kerry negatives, to throw doubt in Kerry supporters' minds, to get enough of them to switch their vote to Bush. This was Severin’s response to Imus asking: ‘isn't the Republican mud-slinging starting too early?’ ”  Severin did say, this informant told us, that under normal circumstances that the Republicans would wait until a few weeks before the election to descend to the low road, but in this case they need now a strategy to win, and this is all they have left.

My response was to say that, in fact, this is good news.  Jay Severin is a card-carrying Far Right Media type.  He is a typical Georgite media mouthpiece.  If anyone knows the degree of the Georgites' growing desperation, he does.  The question is, how to respond to the increasingly negative attacks, attacks that will, for example, be the centerpiece of every speech at the RNCon. Of course, the Republican negativism will be of an entirely different kind than the strong anti-Bush focus of the DNCon.  That focus was on programs, policies, and the Georgites’ total approach to governing.  The Republicans’ focus will be as personal as they can get, and as off the issues as they can manage to be.

The question for Kerry is, of course, how to respond.  The last thing he wants to do is get into tit-for-tat.  In my view, the first thing he wants to do is deliver something like the following message:

"See this, folks?  This is what this President and his henchmen are all about.  No record of achievement to defend; no positive program for the next four years to put forward; no solutions to the problems we face at home with the economy, education, the environment, and health care, and abroad with Iraq and the world.  All they have is mud and distraction.  Is this what you want in the Oval Office for the next four years?  If so, vote for them.  If you want a positive program for change and achievement, designed to bring America back to greatness at home and abroad, a program I have been putting forward ever since I started this campaign, vote for me.  But I am not going to get into the gutter with these folks, however hard they may try to pull me there."