Simon v. Simon

In a piece published this week in The Washington Post, Council on Foreign Relations fellows Steve Simon -- a former member of the National Security Council under President Clinton -- and Ray Takeyh lay out what has been derided as a "'how-to-bomb Iran' manual," detailing a scenario where "diplomacy has run its course" and "reliable intelligence" (ha!) indicates that Tehran's alleged nuclear weapons program "is very close to reaching its goal."

"Facing such conditions, would Obama use force against Iran?" the authors write before, in typical establishment fashion, casually listing the factors the president should consider before launching another preemptive war over the purported threat of weapons of mass destruction (none of them having to do with dead Iranians, of course). "First, there is the United Nations to consider," Simon and Takeyh argue, suggesting the major European powers would likely balk at authorizing the conflict, preferring another round of sanctions to out-and-out war. "Domestic consensus would be critical as well," they add, as "[o]ne of the tragedies of American history is that presidents have too often entangled the country in conflicts without forthright conversation with the public." I would argue that too often presidents have entangled the country in conflicts that had absolutely no moral justification, but then I'm not employed by the Council on Foreign Relations.

"The views and reactions of the Arab world would also be relevant," they write -- how thoughtful! -- and as Obama "contemplated the use of force, the administration's decision-making would be further complicated by the need for a plan to unwind military hostilities and make sure a confrontation did not escalate out of control."

Though "the world imagined here may not constitute destiny," Simon and Takeyh conclude, "it will be hard to escape."

Now, there are several problems with the essay, despite the fact that it is not as outrageously blood-thirsty and ludicrous as, say, your typical Commentary magazine call for war. But as Inter Press Service's Ali Gharib notes, that might actually be one of the most troubling aspects of the piece, as it adds the appearance of a respectable, liberal veneer to the idea of attacking Iran over a nuclear weapons program even the U.S. intelligence community says doesn't exist. It suggests that reasonable, serious people consider preemptively attacking Iran to be a reasonable, serious policy option. But rather than engage in a long-winded debunking of the piece myself, I thought it might be useful to note an Op-Ed published in The New York Times, "Bombs That Would Backfire," that pretty much makes my case for me.

"We would like to believe that the administration is not intent on starting another war, because a conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been," the article begins. "A brief look at history shows why":

"Now, as in the mid-90's, any United States bombing campaign would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process. Iran could respond three ways. First, it could attack Persian Gulf oil facilities and tankers — as it did in the mid-1980's — which could cause oil prices to spike above $80 dollars a barrel.

Second and more likely, Iran could use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States. . . .  

Third, Iran is in a position to make our situation in Iraq far more difficult than it already is. The Badr Brigade and other Shiite militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign against . . . American troops. There is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready."

Further, "No matter how Iran responded, the question that would face American planners would be, 'What's our next move?' How do we achieve so-called escalation dominance, the condition in which the other side fears responding because they know that the next round of American attacks would be too lethal for the regime to survive?"

Finally, "how would bombing Iran serve American interests?" the authors ask. "In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer."

The authors? The Council on Foreign Relation's Steve Simon and Richard Clarke, the former top counter-terrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations, writing back in 2006 amid speculation the Bush administration was itching for another invasion. A year later, Simon echoed the same points in an interview with me that aired on Connecticut public radio station WSHU, criticizing as ludicrous the argument from Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) at the time that the U.S. needed to take "military action to stop the Iranians from carrying out a deadly proxy war against American troops in Iraq." I liked that Steve Simon. Perhaps he and Steve Simon should have a chat?

Lack of self-awareness watch

Emboldened by the fact that U.S. troops have gone a whole four months without being caught digging bullets out of the bodies of Afghan women they murdered, Admiral Michael Mullen, the top ranking U.S. military official, took to the airwaves Sunday to denounce Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for releasing more than 90,000 documents chronicling the failing war effort in Afghanistan:

"Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."

Worth noting: A little over a year after Mullen was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 2007, U.S. warplanes "bombed a wedding party, killing 37 people, including 23 children and 10 women," as USA Today recounts. Meanwhile, more than 740 U.S. troops have died in that time. So who is it again that has the blood of some young solider or Afghan family on their hands?

(h/t John Caruso)

Beware the 'progressive agenda'

Since taking office nearly 18 months ago, Barack Obama has failed to deliver on his promise to close Guantanamo Bay, has expanded the war in Afghanistan, has dropped cluster bombs on civilians in Yemen, has intensified a proxy war in Somalia and is currently seeking the authority to search every Americans e-mail and web history without so much as a warrant from a rubber-stamping intelligence court. In other words, he's been successfully advancing the progressive agenda, or so liberal magazine The American Prospect tells me in a piece that notes the bulk of the professional bloggers and Democratic activists who attended the recent "Netroots Nation" conference in Las Vegas likewise believe our smooth-talking murderer-in-chief is a Pretty Swell Guy.

Take it away, Jamelle Bouie:

The Netroots Nation straw poll, conducted during the conference by Revolution Messaging, shows President Obama with an approval rating of 84 percent among the attending activists, journalists, and bloggers. Given the mostly somber mood of the conference, this is higher than I expected, but on reflection, I'm not too surprised. Among conference attendees, there didn't seem to be much disagreement with the idea that Obama has been pretty successful in advancing a progressive agenda. While I'm sure there was plenty of disappointment over the lack of a public option in the Affordable Care Act, for example, I don't think anyone challenged the notion that passing health care is a defining achievement for the administration.

I particularly like the last line: while sure the president didn't actually deliver on his promise to enact a public option, much less the single-payer system desired by much of the liberal left, passing something and calling it "health care reform" was certainly an achievement, and shouldn't we all be proud of that? Absent from the piece, you'll of course notice, is any mention of all those dead foreigners that liberal cosmopolitans purportedly care about, which I guess might just indicate that they never really cared about them. A civilian killed by a Democratic president in an unjust landwar in Asia just doesn't inflame a liberal's passions as much as when it's a nasty 'ol Republican dropping the bombs.

Beyond just the sickening partisan morality of these activists, the Netroots poll also shows that the liberal lore that the Democratic rank-and-file are more willing to stand up to their politicians than their mouth-breathing Republican counterparts -- carbon-copies, I say -- is just that: Lore. Fiction. Bullshit. The Netroots liberals are just as impressed by the pomp and prestige of the presidency, are just as worshipful of authority and liable to join a creepy cult of personality, as any conservative.

What, too much? A bit unfair? Yeah, well: 84 percent.

Beltway liberalism in 24 words

"From a Keynesian standpoint, I believe that with the economy depressed it’s better to spend the money in Afghanistan than not to spend it."

-- Matt Yglesias, Center for American Progress

The above excerpt comes from a post noting the inconsistency of self-styled deficit hawks complaining about the relative pittance spent on social programs and its contribution to the national debt even as they vote in lockstep to drop another $37 billion on a failing nation-building exercise in Afghanistan. And as far as the point goes, it's a good one: there has long been a glaringly obvious inconsistency in conservatives railing against totalitarian "Big Government" while pledging undying allegiance to growing a military-industrial complex that sucks away more and more of their tax money while helping chisel away at the remainder of their civil liberties.

But there's something wrong -- something sick, really -- with Ygelsias' war-as-stimulus argument that strikes me as far more offensive than the fact that some fiscal conservatives are hypocrites when it comes to the National Security State. If you believe the war in Afghanistan is vital to protecting America, well, go ahead and make your case. Explain why pushing the couple dozen or so members of al-Qaeda allegedly still in the country over to Pakistan, while creating new enemies with each errant air strike, actually makes us safer.

What you shouldn't do in a debate over war, at least if you want to maintain your status as a Non-Despicable Person, is argue that bombing and occupying a foreign nation makes good economic sense. Even if it were true as an academic point, it's grotesquely out of place in a discussion of matters of life and death. War, if it can ever be justified -- and I have my doubts -- can only be so on the grounds that it is absolutely necessary to protecting human life: there is no other choice, it's a last resort. Yet Yglesias discusses the continuation of a major, bloody armed conflict as if it were just another jobs program; perhaps not the most effective one to his mind, but hey, it's better that the federal government spend money on a pointless war than do nothing at all (like actually save money by ending said pointless war). Read the line again: "I believe that with the economy depressed it’s better to spend the money in Afghanistan than not to spend it." Sorry, but someone truly familiar with all the horrors of war, someone who could actually empathize with an Afghan mother or father losing their child to an American smart bomb -- or a child watching their parents die in a botched night raid by U.S. marines -- could never write that.

On Twitter I brashly argued that Yglesias' statement demonstrated that he was in fact a "truly awful human being" -- an assertion I regret because I don't actually think Matt Yglesias is"awful" in the sense that he would, say, shoot an Afghan child in the head if he thought it'd boost U.S. Treasury bonds. As I've argued before, Yglesias and other war supporters likely wouldn't dare countenance violence in their personal lives, and are probably perfectly nice people who spend their weekends doing perfectly normal, nice people things. And these very people who wouldn't think of kicking a dog much less killing a person are capable of cooly endorsing monstrously awful actions overseas, the distance -- and their safety behind a MacBook screen in a DC think tank -- removing them from the ugly reality of the killing be carried out in their name. War to the Beltway wonk essentially becomes just another intellectual exercise, something to be endlessly debated, a game of dueling white papers and comment threads, and not so much a matter of life and death, of newlyweds killed and children's limbs blown off by some guy pulling a 9-to-5 in a Nevada control room. No, wars and the merits of launching new ones become something you debate on BloggingHeads.TV before getting drunk at the local hipster bar's trivia night.

Yet despite the self-evident horribleness of defending war spending on the basis that not spending the money on a military occupation would harm your 401k, Yglesias acted surprised anyone could be offended by his post when challenged on it. "Is Paul Krugman also awful for raising this point," he asked me, "or is economic illiteracy necessary for goodness?"

But of course the issue isn't who knows more about economics. The issue is the fact that economics is irrelevant to the question of whether the U.S. ought to be in Afghanistan, and that it is deeply disturbing to frame a war supplemental as if it were a less-than-ideal second stimulus package -- and to bolster your argument by pointing to the fact that the illegal Iraq war, too, was ultimately good for your bank account. Invading Norway might stimulate certain sectors of the economy and perhaps even bring the unemployment rate comfortably below double-digits for a time, but does anyone outside of a Weekly Standard editorial meeting think that's a morally defensible argument for dropping some bombs?

In a back-and-forth debate on Twitter, though, Yglesias stuck to his argument. "I think you don't understand how stimulus works. See the Krugman item," he told me, adding that he didn't see why "a factual dispute make[s] me 'immoral.'"

The Krugman item, as it happens, doesn't really help Yglesias' case as much he thinks. Yes the esteemed Nobel Laureate argues that "war is, in general, expansionary for the economy," but he's not so cynical as to argue that countries should therefore prolong military quagmires to promote such an expansion, which is Yglesias' implicit argument. And there is still a major flaw in Krugman's analysis: he doesn't even begin to consider the potential downsides to creating entrenched economic interests whose well-being depends on there being a perpetual state of war, nor the economic impact on the people in Iraq and elsewhere who are being bombed. We are all cosmopolitans now, right? So if we're going to weigh the economic impacts of war, one would think a good liberal would not be so parochial as to focus just on one party -- their party -- in a conflict.

It's also unclear to me how spending loads of money on missiles and Predator drones actually benefits society as a whole, rather than just a select few politically connected military contractors; sure, it might boost GDP temporarily, but only because the government is borrowing money from China -- itself an act of dubious morality given the Chinese government's human rights record -- to build a bunch of weapons that serve no purpose other than killing people. So I sound like Cindy Sheehan: it's true.

As for the confusion as to how taking one side in a "factual dispute" could make someone "immoral", well, again: I don't consider it so much a dispute over facts because my fundamental criticism is not that Yglesias is wrong that spending another $37 billion on the war in Afghanistan will benefit the U.S. economy, but that it doesn't matter, and that by acting as if it does he is displaying a rather unfortunate and ugly nationalistic bias. True or not, I don't see why anyone with a functioning conscience should care if the Afghan war boosts consumer demand for iPhones and DVD players at home, and it's frankly a bit disconcerting that he can't understand why some would consider his an immoral (amoral?) line of argument. All this doesn't make Yglesias an awful person, per se, but it does certainly demonstrate an awful callousness on his part toward those who will undoubtedly die as a result of his and George Bush's brand of economic stimulus.

(h/t toombzie)

UPDATE: IOZ weighs in.

The United States of British Petroleum

If you're anything like me, or if you've spent more than five minutes over the last decade glancing at the headlines, you're probably suffering from some form of outrage fatigue. Well, make room for one more thing to get mad about.

From Reuters:

Fishermen in Mississippi say they are angry that under the terms of BP's $20 billion oil spill fund, money they earn doing clean-up will be subtracted from their claim against the company.

The fishermen reacted after Kenneth Feinberg, the federal official in charge of administering the compensation fund, announced the decision at a town hall meeting in Biloxi on Friday.

Cast as a great victory against the heartless oil giant that caused the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico it turns out -- surprise! -- that the Obama administration was basically working to help limit BP's financial liability. No other excuse flies when the White House's own head of the fund, Ken Feinberg, is pronouncing that all those fishermen who have been busy cleaning up the same mess that destroyed their livelihood have been working for the very corporation that caused it have been doing so for free.

It doesn't help that Feinberg was a patronizing ass when he announced the dick move:

"[W]orkers can file a claim, but we will subtract the amount they are paid from BP from their claim. That is how it has to work . . . . Of course you can file a claim. You must file a claim, but you cannot get paid twice," Feinberg told the meeting.

Right -- the U.S. government reserves paying people twice for corporate agriculture.

Of course, when it comes to the Gulf we're not talking about paying people twice for the same thing, but rather reimbursing them for the ruin by corporate malfeasance and compensating them for their efforts to try and fix the damage -- two separate, distinct things, as far as BP's financial responsibility is concerned.

But not only is the administration's move unjust, it's simply counterproductive and destined to slow recovery efforts -- why risk your health cleaning up the Gulf when you can get paid the same amount sitting at home watching Terminator? And in light of the public mood towards BP, it's also likely to provoke a good deal of grandstanding from across the political spectrum. If there's a significant outcry, I wouldn't be surprised if the White House somehow found a way to reverse its decision, or explain away Feinberg's comments as an unfortunate mix-up, a miscommunication. And it's not hard to see why: the administration's current stance is akin to letting an arsonist burn a house down and then charge the victim for the cost of rebuilding it -- except you'll never really be able to rebuild the Gulf.

Put another way: it's f*cked. It's also a great example of the State swooping in to protect an influential, major corporation under the auspices of punishing it -- great theater, really -- in this instance crafting a compromise settlement that appears aimed at being just enough to quell popular calls for tarring-and-feathering those British, yacht-racing bastards, without actually forcing Tony Hayward to give up any of his private floating islands.

(Cross-posted at AlterNet)

Yeah, and we don't invade countries either

From a story claiming the U.S. "came out ahead" with respect to that Iranian nuclear scientist who alleges he was abducted by the CIA:

A U.S. official, who is not authorized to talk to the media about such issues, told CNN last month that it would be "ludicrous, absurd and even preposterous" to claim an individual was kidnapped by the United States and held against his will.

To which I respond: uh, then what the hell has the U.S. been doing at Guantanamo Bay all these years?

We believe in nothing!

It would be incorrect and unfair to say that Washingtonians are all horrible, amoral, principle-less little pricks who live only for the thrill they get when some no-name congressman from wherever-the-hell Middle America remembers their name. However.

Being the preeminent power of our day, it should come as no surprise that the imperial capital on a swamp would attract an unusually large number of groveling, almost pitiable worshippers of power and authority; not the kids who used to suck up to the teacher and remind them when they forgot to assign the homework, but the kids who now fetch those other kids' coffee, always remembering to tell them how good they look on a Big Day. While those that argue there's a dime's worth of difference between the major political parties and that voting ain't worth a nickel are often cast as the cynics (*ahem*cough*clearing throat*), the real nihilists, I would argue, are the anonymous flacks and hacks of Washington who day in and day out serve whoever it is they think can provide them with the most power, money and, laughably, prestige -- people like Deryck Spooner, the likes of whom literally believe in nothing.

Who, you ask? According to a story in Greenwire about the American Petroleum Institute's many new hires, Spooner -- "who ran the Nature Conservancy's push to spur legislative action on climate change" -- was "nabbed" in something of a coup earlier this year by the well-funded trade group for U.S. oil and gas companies. "Spooner now heads API's grass-roots activism arm."

Putting aside the faults of The Nature Conservancy and the merits of the climate legislation it seeks, Spooner's move is still pretty jarring, even by a-flack-in-DC standards. Not only is he now spinning for one of the leading opponents of capping or taxing carbon emissions, a basic feature of most proposals to address global warming, but he heads the very "grass-roots activism arm" of API -- when's the last time you met a "grassroots" oil activist? -- that last year organized "citizen" rallies against the sort of climate legislation that he spent months, years, working to enact. It ain't pretty, and it's certainly not proud, but that's sorta kinda Washington.

(Cross-posted at AlterNet)

'Ok, so Paulson, Geithner and Summers walk into a bar . . .'

As Matt Yglesias himself admits, the regulatory reform bill currently making its way through the Senate won't actually do anything to prevent another major financial crisis or fundamentally alter the way Wall Street works, nor will it stave off the need for taxpayers to ultimately foot the bill for the mistakes of some asshole investment banker. Instead, certain provisions of the legislation dear to the Washington wonk's heart, Yglesias argues -- in this case "resolution authority,"granting the president greater power to seize control of firms in the name of economic stability -- hold out the "possibility of coping with the aftermath of such failures in a politically and economically viable way" (emphasis original).

For those that don't speak Washington: the State would still intervene to prevent major disruptions to the economic status quo under Financial Reform, still move to prop up failing financial firms whose executives would have no compunction pushing old ladies into oncoming traffic if they could somehow turn the practice into a CDO, but its efforts on the behalf of the financial establishment -- the ruling elite, if you prefer -- would be somewhat more deft, perhaps a little less ostentatious.

The selling point of this "reform" (scare quotes justified), other than the presumed diminishing number of pitchforks at lawmakers' constituent meetings?

"[T]he three people whose practical experience has positioned them to know what kind of authority the Treasury Department needs to deal with a financial crash are [Henry] Paulson, Tim Geithner, and Larry Summers and they all think this will work. That’s something."

This is typical Yglesias. Rather than really argue for granting the president resolution authority on the merits, our progressive intellectual is more interested in impressing his readers will all the other Really Smart members of the political establishment who think just like him. That you wouldn't trust these people with the remote to the TV, much less the reins to the economy, is no matter -- they're powerful! And as Yglesias would say, "That's something."

And indeed, it is "something", isn't it? All of the "somethings" I can come up with, though, entail pointing out that all three -- Paulson, Geithner and Summers -- in their roles as top U.S. economic officials over the last two decades had a direct hand in fomenting the current, ongoing global financial catastrophe. That and a string of profanities.

(Cross-posted at AlterNet)

Obama's 'number one foreign policy priority'

What would you imagine Barack Obama has focused on most when it comes to foreign affairs since taking office: The war in Afghanistan -- you know, the one he committed another 50,000 troops to fight? Or how about Iraq, where U.S. troops are supposed to withdraw next year (ha!) despite the fact the country's political parties can't manage to actually form a government?

According to a White House transcript of an interview the president gave this week to Israeli television, the answer's none of the above. Said Obama:

"The single most important threat to Israel -- Iran, and its potential possession of a nuclear weapon -- has been my number one foreign policy priority over the course of the last 18 months."

Obama also declared it "unacceptable for Iran to possess a nuclear weapon," and that "we’re going to do everything we can to prevent that from happening":

"What I’ve also tried to do is build an international consensus so that Iran can’t somehow play a victim, can’t suggest somehow that they’re being singled out by the West."

Barack Obama, one should remember, is speaking in the above excerpt as the political leader of the only country in the world to have ever used nuclear weapons, and as the head of a nation providing nuclear material to known proliferator India and billions of dollars to Pakistan, which likewise covertly developed nukes while allied to the US. Obama is also speaking to a television station based in a country, Israel, known to possess hundreds of nuclear weapons -- some no doubt aimed at Tehran -- which refuses to allow its facilites to be inspected by the United Nations' nuclear agency.

Leave it to those crazy drama queens in Iran to argue they're being singled out.

The neocon method

(Benjanmin Kerstein: "You can tell I'm a bad-ass because I'm sneering.")

One time-honored method for obscure writers to gain notoriety is to viciously attack a much more popular writer or public figure in the hopes said person will respond in kind -- witness my constant attacks on Barack Obama, who I thought by now would at least answer me during a weekend radio address or something. Anyway, it’s not surprising that Benajamin Kerstein (who?), a writer for The New Ledger (the what?), would choose to blast the much more popular and accomplished Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald for being insufficiently “pro-Israel” given the latter’s blistering and effective attacks on the policies of the apartheid state. What is somewhat surprising, though -- besides the fact that Kerstein was able to compose an essay of nearly 3,000 words, a feat as stunningly impressive as a sea monkey learning sign language -- is the sheer tiredness of the article, which reads like poor imitation of a Michael Savage rant, relying as it does on hysterical psychological projection rather than anything approaching a well-considered, rational argument.

Take 2002-era lines like this one:

"Greenwald is such a quintessentially anti-American, pseudo-pacifist, pro-terrorist, self-hating Jewish liberal that that he essentially constitutes a living cliche."

It is remarkable, really, that in this day and age, two thousand and ten, writers like Kerstein can blithely accuse someone of being “self-hating” just because they happen to disagree with them on the policies of a modern nation-state called Israel. It's also remarkable that someone employing that cheap line of the attack should be so un-self-aware as to accuse someone else of being "a living cliche", just as it's stunning that a guy who himself left the United States to move to a foreign country he clearly much prefers -- "Bostonian by birth, Israeli by choice" -- should then imply he is somehow the more proud, real American.

We are then told Greenwald's arguments do not arise from genuine disagreements with the state of Israel, but from fear:

"He is terrified that if he defends Israel, or even fails to denounce it in the most hysterical terms possible, he will be seen by his fellow progressives not as one of them, but as a Jew. And, as a Jew, he will also be automatically seen as a heretic and a traitor. To give credit where credit is due, he is probably right."

Now say what you will about American progressives, and lord knows I've said it, but anti-semitic? Timid I can see. Naive and overly trusting of politicians with 'Ds' after their name? Absolutely. But the notion that Glenn Greenwald criticizes Israel because he fears getting lynched by Markos Moulitsas and his gang of online diarists -- are you fucking kidding me?

Predictably, though, the Kerstein piece and the tribalistic, medieval mode of thinking, so-called, it represents was immediately pronounced “Brilliant” by D-list neocon and noted illiterate Jamie Kirchick, a staff writer for the racist New Republic who found the article after it was approvingly passed on by pro-genocide Harvard scholar Martin Kramer. Their circulating of the piece is typical of the neoconservative approach to policy disputes: when confronted with an articulate, outspoken proponent of an alternate viewpoint, the reflexive response is to smear, smear, smear.

Take the case of Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council and a respected author who was targeted by the far right for the cardinal sin of advocating engagement with Iran, rather than calling for a crippling bombardment. Last November, Washington Times "journalist" Eli Lake -- specifically sought out by Parsi's detractors because of his willingness to publish anything that fits the anyone-who-opposes-war-is-treasonous narrative -- wrote a whole piece accusing Parsi of being a foreign agent working for the mullahs of Iran, which was then approvingly cited throughout the lunatic-right blogosphere, from David "moderate" Frum's self-aggrandizing "Frum Forum" to the long-ludicrous Commentary magazine. Of course, the claims were easily debunkable at the time, but that didn't matter: what was needed was the mere suggestion Parsi was in the pay of Tehran so as to discredit him in the eyes of respectable Washington.

That Parsi is a free man more than six months after the piece was published is all the evidence you need Lake's reporting was and is garbage. Facts, though, have nothing to do with the genre -- it's about silencing a voice, or at least sullying a reputation, in an effort to enforce the militaristic orthodoxy in Washington. That's what Greenwald's going through now, and it's what Parsi went through last year. Going out on a limb: I don't think it'll work.

(Cross-posted at AlterNet)

War by the numbers

I’m not a big math guy, having spent my college years interpreting 17th century sonnets and writing about radical left-wing, decentralist movements in Latin America -- you know, the kind of experience that has well prepared me for a career as a bookstore clerk and I can only hope, some (very hard) years down the line, street-corner preacher of conspiracy and prophesier of doom. When it comes to looking at U.S. foreign policy, though, numbers can be a very useful thing.

Consider the sheer enormity of the fact the the U.S. government this year "will spend more on Afghanistan than any other country in the world spends on defense, with the exception of China," according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Congress has already appropriated this year alone more than $100 billion for the war, a figure Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation notes is 10 times the size of Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP). If divided on a per capita basis, each Afghan could receive $3,708 in U.S. taxpayer largesse -- equivalent to more than four years their average wages, and a damn sure better way to win Afghan loyalty than the General Petraeus-embraced, parachuting-sociologist effort to win hearts and minds by killing 2.5 percent less innocent men, women and children than under a killing-as-usual scenario.

More numbers: according to CIA Director Leon Panetta, there is in the area of 50 to 100 members of al-Qaeda. In neighboring Pakistan, there may be "more than 300" members, according to Michael Leiter, director of the U.S. government's National Counterterrorism Center. Yet nearly 100,000 U.S. troops are deployed in the region, along with another 20,000 NATO troops -- meaning their's 240 or so Western soldiers for every one alleged member of al-Qaeda.

The most important figure, though, and the most morally significant to my mind, has to do with the number of those killed in the name of terrorism versus those killed by the self-styled war on terrorism.

In the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, just under 3,000 people were murdered by members of al-Qaeda. The response to those attacks? Using an extremely conservative estimate, 100,000 Iraqi civilians died as a direct result of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion, equivalent to nearly three dozen 9/11s. In Afghanistan, tens of thousands of civilians have died since 2002, many attributable to the Taliban/insurgency, yes, but all as a direct result of events set in motion by American intervention (from the late 1980s-onward), including more than 4,000 civilians killed -- that's another 9/11 -- from January 2009 to March 2010 alone.

It's understandable that one might have greater sentimental attachments to those one knows, or one's fellow countrymen; it's natural to mourn a close friend or family member who dies more than someone you didn't know who lived on the other side of the globe. But what about when it's your fellow countrymen -- your friends and family, perhaps -- killing those innocent but distant strangers? Even if the killing's ostensibly launched in response to a real evil -- the attacks on September 11, 2001 -- I'd suggest that when dozens of innocents must die for each precious life of an American you hope to safeguard, the moral righteousness of that response is fatally undermined. Forget nationality: none of us choose what country we are born in, so why should the conscientious, moral human being value one life more than another because of nothing more than the accident of birth? As I said, a sentimental attachment to one's countrymen is understandable, but that doesn't mean it's morally defensible.

The Obama administration, like its predecessors, does not value the life of an innocent foreigner to the extent they do that of a possible voting-and-donating U.S. citizen, not that it has much respect for the lives of the latter either. Indeed, if President Obama or his liberal cheerleaders in Washington actually cared a whit about the lives of those unfortunate enough to be born in not-America, if they really sought to "stop U.S.-caused civilian casualties" in Afghanistan, as liberal journalist Spencer Ackerman writes, then they would embrace that great peacenik refrain: "stop the war."

No need for any white papers or bipartisan, blue-ribbon commissions: just get the hell out.

But it can't be that simple, for what role would that leave for Serious Liberalism and all those catered roundtable discussions at Washington think tanks with panelists laying out high-minded plans for Saving Afghanistan From The Natives? Not much. Ackerman, who supports the Afghan war just as he did the invasion of Iraq, writes that if the goal is not to stop murdering people but to "erode the influence of al-Qaeda’s allies in Afghanistan while reducing civilian casualties to the 'absolute minimum'," quoting all-around awesome dude David Petraeus, then it's of the utmost importance not to immediately halt the evil that is bombing and shooting innocent people, but to get right "the balance between fighting insurgents and protecting civilians."

Now, most supporters of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in their personal lives, are probably no more violent than the most committed peace activist; they probably play with their dogs and go "aww" when they see cute little animals too. But when someone comes to think of war in the cost/benefit terms of the Pentagon bureaucracy, even the meekest among us can support great evil in the abstract, the killing taking place safely abroad and providing endless folly for quasi-intellectual debates about counter-insurgency strategies. Accepting the premise that the there can be an appropriate "balance" between killing civilians -- that is, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, newlyweds and schoolchildren -- and whoever it is we're defining as the "insurgents" these days, I'd argue reflects a pretty screwy moral philosophy, endorsing as it does the killing of poor foreigners now based on the possibility, the hypothetical, that some of those impoverished survivors, the families of the Afghans we kill, might some day seek vengeance and kill us; a dozen dead Afghan civilians now to stave off the possible death of one person with an American passport, not counting those foolish enough to oppose U.S. policy and board a peace flotilla.

Some would argue (ahem) that there can be no "balance" when it comes to protecting civilians; you don't kill them, and if you do, you should be considered a murderer and punished accordingly. It's an obvious crime only compounded by the fact the Afghan war is not in the least bit necessary to protect the national security of the United fucking States.

But then that's the difference between modern liberalism and radicalism: the former will rationalize murder if it's backed by the leading technocratic intellectuals of the day and carried out by the State under the auspices of some modern day White Man's Burden, while the latter, valuing human life equally regardless of nationality and not making moral distinctions based on a murderer's uniform, will condemn -- not condone -- violence whether it's perpetrated by governments or non-State actors. You can probably see why they're not part of the panel discussions.

(Cross-posted at AlterNet)

Gone fishing

Dear fans (the few of you), critics (the many of you) and Mom (I love you!): I'll be in Southern California over the next week in order to witness a couple I know make the greatest mistake of their young lives participate in a beautiful ceremony signifying their commitment to love each other until death do them part -- meaning I will be doing my best to take advantage of an open bar, not blogging about injustice in the world.

I may post inane observations about life and politics on Twitter, though, so feel free to follow me there. Alternatively, I recommend replaying the following music video continuously until I return, or at least until you have the dance moves down.

State Department warns Americans: Israel might kill you

Following weeks of conspicuous silence, the Obama administration is taking decisive action in response to the Israeli Defense Forces' killing of Furkan Dorgan, an unarmed U.S. citizen aboard one of the ships in the “Free Gaza” flotilla who was shot four times in the head by IDF commandos: it's telling Americans to stay the hell out of harm's way – that is, out of the range of the Israel's U.S. taxpayer-subsidized weaponry.

In a travel warning issued Sunday, the State Department “strongly urges that U.S. citizens” – including all those pesky “journalists and aid workers” who might be tempted to report on the Palestinians' plight – “refrain from all travel to the Gaza Strip”:

The security environment within Gaza and along its borders, including its border with Egypt and its seacoast, is dangerous and volatile. U.S. citizens are advised against traveling to Gaza by any means, including via sea. Previous attempts to enter Gaza by sea have been stopped by Israeli naval vessels and resulted in the injury, death, arrest, and deportation of U.S. citizens. 

In light of the warning, it's worth remembering what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared soon after news broke that an American was among the nine activists bringing aid to Gaza who were massacred by the IDF:

Protecting the welfare of American citizens is a fundamental responsibility of our government and one that we take very seriously. We are in constant contact with the Israeli Government, attempting to obtain more information about our citizens. We have made no decisions at this point on any additional specific actions that our government should take with respect to our own citizens.

Now we know what additional specific action the secretary of state had in mind, and it's essentially the same one the brave knights of Monty Python's "Holy Grail" came up with when confronted with a superficially friendly little bunny rabbit with a penchant for murder: Run Away!

BP and the federal government: 'unlikely partners'?

President Obama determinedly trying to remember what it feels like to care.

"I’m absolutely confident BP will be able to meet its obligations to the Gulf Coast and to the American people," President Obama proclaimed following his meeting with the oil giant's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg. "BP is a strong and viable company and it is in all our interests that it remains so."

Blah, blah, blah, boilerplate, talking point -- wait, hold on, what the hell did he just say? It's in "all our interests" that BP continue to prosper and thrive even after it just caused the worst environmental disaster in US history? Sorry, but I don't think the average American ought to much care about the future of a multinational corporation that declined to spend the 10 hours it would have taken to cement and stabilize the deepwater well that eventually exploded and killed 11 people, all because the potential loss in profit meant CEO Tony Hayward would have had to wait two more weeks to remodel his third kitchen (in his fourteenth house). Under the "free market" that we certainly do not have but to which Obama occasionally pledges his allegiance, companies that do Very Bad Things should -- and this is obviously just in theory -- have Very Bad Things happen to them in return. Bankruptcy, maybe, with the company's assets divided up amongst the victims of its malfeasance.

Obama apparently doesn't feel the need to elaborate, though, on why it's in "our" interest that BP continue to be BP; on why, like AIG, it also is "too big to fail." Like the rest of the Washington political establishment, he appears to take for granted that it's necessary and just. BP is a major corporation -- one of the 10 biggest in the world -- with quarterly earnings to die for (not funny), ergo it should always remain that way. Too many people with too much money need it to be that way. As the failure of Lehman Brothers showed, no company that was ever once profitable and influential should be allowed to fall by the wayside, lest by upsetting the status quo our golfing buddies be forced the indignity of sending their little Johnny to public school along with the rest of the dirty, nose-picking proles, or so the thinking probably goes; when elites justify policy decisions by pointing to the need for "stability," remember they're likely thinking in terms of them and their friends' social status.

A silly question, though: were you or I the subject of an ongoing investigation for possible criminal wrongdoing in the deaths of nearly a dozen people, countless wildlife and the livelihoods of many Gulf coast residents, ya think the president would be declaring how important it is for everyone that we, the accused, continue to be as "strong and viable" as we were before the alleged crime? To ask is to . . .

And that silly question brings me to the silliest headline/lede of the month, courtesy, as one might expect, The Washington Post. "It was a marriage of necessity, awkward from the start," the paper's Joel Achenbach says of the relationship between oil giant BP and the Obama administration in the wake of the worsening ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The headline? "Oil spill makes unlikely partners of BP and the federal government".

To say the partnership between BP and the federal government is "unlikely" is about as naive a thing as one could write; it's like remarking how "surprising" or "disappointing" it is that Obama hasn't rolled back the power of the presidency since becoming . . . president. The Defense Department, the single largest energy user in the US with a carbon footprint greater than many countries, purchases the majority of its oil and gas from BP. The deepwater rig that exploded and is now leaking as much as 60,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf per day was leased by BP from the federal government, which decided on the behalf of us -- thanks guys! -- that it was in the national interest that the company be able to drill in public waters for private gain. And let's not forget that in 1953 the Eisenhower administration actually helped overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran because the uppity bastards decided it maybe wasn't such a good idea to grant a company run by a foreign government -- BP, then known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company -- a monopoly over the country's oil resources (commies!).

The piece also undercuts its own premise: that the relationship between BP and the Obama administration has been shaky and Odd Couple-esque. As an anecdote noted in the article shows, the two appear in fact to be getting along like old friends, even coordinating their PR and taking a shot for the other when need be:

The company knows that the White House needs to score political points. For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, officials in Alabama wanted BP to pay for sand barriers to protect beaches. BP was willing go to do so but also saw the advantage in letting the White House appear to be ordering BP to do it against the company's will. Hayward was quoted as saying, "Let the White House have the victory of announcing it, but it's the right thing for us to do."

You almost get the sense that the verdict's already been decided -- BP's here to stay, folks, and there ain't nothing no criminal investigation can do about it -- and that, like with regulatory oversight of the oil industry, the response to the spill from the both the government and the corporation (an increasingly artificial distinction) has had a lot more to do with show, with theatrics, than anything else. Like it has more to do with preventing the masses from grabbing their pitchforks than holding corporate power accountable. Silly, I know.

Good!

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent writes:

As many commentators have noted, the Gulf oil spill may pose a serious threat to one of the most important aspects of Obama's presidency: his effort to restore public confidence in government as competent, as a trustworthy agent of genuine and lasting reform.

Being a liberal, Sargent clearly believes that the state is a trustworthy and competent "agent of genuine and lasting reform," and that anything that undermines public faith in that notion would be A Very Bad Thing. The BP oil spill, then, is accordingly cast primarily as a problem of public relations -- how, in the disaster's aftermath, will President Obama restore faith in government and his agenda? -- rather than as a damning repudiation of the state's claim to be an effective guardian against corporate power.

In light of the regulatory "failures" that led up to the Gulf disaster, though, including the decision by the Obama administration -- which we are told believes in using state power for progressive ends -- to exempt the BP rig that caused the spill from environmental review, the evidence suggests regulators, rather than failing to act, were acting exactly as they were expected: in such a way as to provide the guise of oversight absent the risk of impacting corporate profits. Indeed, the BP spill is a vivid, oil-stained testament to the fact that the state is neither trustworthy nor competent -- that it makes decisions with the interests of capital in mind, not the public -- something progressives seemed to grasp under George W. Bush but which many appear to be busily unlearning since he left office.

As Jonathan Schwarz observes, the earnest liberal faith in politicians and the government as effective agents of reform is based on a terribly misguided, naive conception of who it is the state really exists to serve (hint: unless you're part of the political and/or corporate elite, it's probably not you):

The first axiom of Nice Liberalism is that the U.S. government (and in fact all sectors of U.S. elites) are striving to do the very best thing for all Americans. With this as your starting point, you're forced to come up with all kinds of weird interpretations of reality in order to "understand" why the U.S. political system functions as it does.

But in fact, as the Iron Law of Institutions tells us, the people at the top of the U.S. political system are striving to expand their own power at the expense of everyone else, even if that does horrendous damage to everyone else and the U.S. as whole.

Power: it's a helluva drug. But do not despair: "Once you discard the mentality that the people in charge care whether we live or die," notes Schwarz, "you no longer have to twist yourself into bizarre conceptual knots in order to make sense of what they're up to."

America's Top Criminal: Barack Obama or Helen Thomas?

More than 40 Yemeni civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, were murdered in a cluster bomb attack last December personally ordered by President Barack Obama.

From Amnesty International:

The 17 December 2009 attack on the community of al-Ma'jalah in the Abyan area in the south of Yemen killed 55 people including 14 alleged members of al-Qa'ida.

“A military strike of this kind against alleged militants without an attempt to detain them is at the very least unlawful. The fact that so many of the victims were actually women and children indicates that the attack was in fact grossly irresponsible, particularly given the likely use of cluster munitions,” said Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme. 

The Yemeni government has said its forces alone carried out the attack on al-Ma'jalah, the site of an alleged al-Qa'ida training camp in al-Mahfad district, Abyan Governorate.

Shortly after the attack some US media reported alleged statements by unnamed US government sources who said that US cruise missiles launched on presidential orders had been fired at two alleged al-Qa'ida sites in Yemen.

“Based on the evidence provided by these photographs, the US government must disclose what role it played in the al-Ma'jalah attack, and all governments involved must show what steps they took to prevent unnecessary deaths and injuries,” said Philip Luther.

In addition to the threat cluster bombs pose to civilians when initially fired, it's worth noting the ordinance that does not immediately explode can continue to threaten innocent lives for decades to come, part of the reason why much of the civilized world -- the U.S., Israel and Russia excluded -- has sought to ban them.

Don't expect much in the way of moral outrage from the commentariat in imperial Washington, though, whose members only seem to find their capacity for self-righteous indignation when someone sufficiently powerless -- like Helen Thomas -- commits a "gaffe" by expressing an opinion one wouldn't find on The Washington Post editorial page (a cardinal sin). Sure, maybe a few progressive-leaning types will decry how “counterproductive” it is to drop cluster bombs on innocent men, women and children. Maybe a few will opine about how it makes the task of winning hearts and minds for the U.S. empire that much harder. But judging by Henry Kissinger's social calendar, no one in Official Washington believes complicity in the killing of innocents abroad is as risible an offense as questioning Zionism; it's certainly no reason to expel someone from polite society (much less bar them from the hors d'oeuvres), nor to be so uncouth as to call them a murderer.

But make no mistake: Barack Obama is a killer. A mass murderer. A war criminal who jokes about his crimes. He may weep over his victims' fate when alone at night confronted by his conscience -- perhaps, in spite of everything, he has retained that level of humanity. But while Joe Klein and David Gregory may never say it, the president's much-vaunted capacity for reflection does not lessen one iota his culpability in the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of innocent civilians since he took office. Not a guy I'd want at my dinner party.

And Rodney King's torso used disproportionate force against the LAPD

Link TV's Mosaic news program is useful not only because it lets you see and hear stories from the Middle East that would never make it to CNN, but because it provides a glimpse at the official line being sold domestic audiences about world events through state-controlled TV outlets from Syria to Israel.

Take a recent news program on the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, an official government organ, where a former Israeli ambassador by the name of Avi Posner was brought on to talk about the raid on the "Free Gaza" flotilla with a host who only showed signs of a pulse when discussing how "repugnant" the Turkish prime minister is. At first Posner appeared rather frank, projecting something of a realist image that stood in contrast to the boisterous Benjamin Netanyahu, as he openly accepted that, yes, "Diplomatic damage has been done to Israel, this is obvious."

At the same time, though, "damage has to be controlled," Posner continued, laying out an Israeli PR strategy centered around by now familiar talking point "that our soldiers acted in self-defense":

"This is very important. I understand that in many countries the films given out by IDF spokesmen showing the lynching of our soliders has not even been shown on television in Europe. I would make an all out effort to convince television stations to show the film, accompanied by good spokesmen explaining exactly what has happened, that we defended ourselves; we were in a position not of using disproportionate force -- on the contrary, the force was disproportionate against us; and saying that what we did we did in self-defense. And, of course, we regret any loss of life."

I'll say this: though it might have been more tactful to move the whole regretting the loss of life thing a bit higher up, I kinda like Posner's whatever-you-say-bounces-off-me-and-sticks-to-you approach to post-massacre spin, which is not unlike Karl Rove's approach to politics in its ballsy mendacity: your political opponent is a "war hero" (there are no heros in war, but that's another post) while your guy went AWOL from the National Guard? Then paint the deserter as the real, masculine warrior -- land on an aircraft carrier and declare "Mission Accomplished" while in a flight suit -- and cast the other guy as a feckless, effeminate, brie-eating pansy who just might be tempted to surrender to the terrorists if voters are foolish enough to put him in office.

Likewise, heavily armed Israeli commandos drop out of a fucking helicopter in the middle of the night, kill nine humanitarian activists -- shooting a teenager in the skull four times from close range (and once in the chest) -- wound more than 30 others and suffer not one fatality? Then, obviously, it must have been the trigger-happy IDF who suffered the disproportionate force at the hands of the activists and their ferocious fists. I mean, don't you understand how disproportionately traumatic it must be for those soldiers to live with themselves after taking the life of another (even when it's the life of an "other")?

I suspect Israeli officials are right now busy filling out the paperwork to indict Emily Henochowicz's left eye for assaulting an IDF tear gas canister. Oh, how the poor soldier who shot it must feel . . .


(The IBA segment begins around the 8:30 mark.)

Should 'secession' be a dirty word?

Tarnished by its association with slavery and jackasses who drive pickups with confederate flags on them, secession has gotten a bad name -- particularly on the left, and especially now that a Democrat's in power; I certainly don't hear liberals talking about breaking off from "Jesusland" as much as I used to. But should openly discussing the fact that the United States as a geopolitical entity is not set in stone, was not created by the Good Lord on the sixth day, and may not in fact represent the final, perfected stage of human development be verboten?

David Swanson, reviewing Bill Kauffman's new book, Bye Bye, Miss American Empire, doesn't think so:

Those advocating secession today do not seem easily divisible into left and right, a division that appears as artificial and superimposed a distraction as that between Sunni and Shia or north and south Vietnam. The motives behind secession center around resentment of foreign empire -- not just the imperial escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and the rest of the globe, but also the imperial idea of governing Alaska or Maine from Washington, D.C. In place of this distant, anti-communal, outside rule, the people of Vermont could keep their money and their self-respect, not to mention their militia (which is now called the National Guard and shipped overseas to plunder in the interests of Washington, D.C., not Vermont). If pieces of the United States grew tired of funding wars and Wall Street, BP and Massey Energy, if a group of us determined that we'd rather elect our elected officials than buy them, if we objected to the media outlets in our state being owned by outsiders, if we finally said we weren't going to stand for another Code Orange day at the airport and were going to keep our clothes on when we traveled but cease antagonizing half the world against us, well what harm would be done exactly by pulling out?

Of course it's not just the Civil War that makes us long for federal supremacy. It's Jim Crow. It's Arizona Apartheid. There are states that would move right if they detached and others that would move left. But it's not clear to me that the people of Arizona would have a harder time undoing racist laws if, instead of appealing to a broken federal government thousands of miles away, it were forced to appeal only to itself and to establish for itself international respect and recognition.

Read the rest.

Steny Hoyer: Move along folks, nothing to see here

In a statement issued today regarding Israel's attack on the “Free Gaza” flotilla, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) -- the second highest ranking Democrat in the House behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) -- begins by declaring that, “As we wait for all the facts to emerge about Monday’s events, several things are already clear." Chief among those things that are "already clear"? That there's no real need to wait for any further facts to emerge, since the Obama administration and Congress are already prepared to block any effort to condemn Israel's actions at the UN, the results of that "credible and transparent investigation" into the incident sought by the Security Council be damned:

"First, the loss of life was tragic. Second, Israel – rightfully so – invoked its right to self-defense on the Mavi Marmara. While the majority of ships in the flotilla – 5 out of 6 – reacted peacefully when approached by Israeli Defense Forces, activists on board the Mavi Marmara were clearly bent on a violent confrontation. They further chose this path despite two week’s worth of repeated warnings from Israel that the ship would not be allowed to come ashore, and despite Israel’s offer to instead receive the humanitarian goods at Ashdod, inspect them there for weapons, and ensure their distribution to Palestinians in Gaza (*). Finally, to the extent that this act was in protest of the Gaza blockade, let’s be clear: Hamas could end the blockade at any time by recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence, and releasing Gilad Shalit.

“The Administration and Congress are determined to prevent condemnation of Israel at the UN Security Council. In times of increased tension such as now, it is imperative that we not allow these events to distract from our main goals of achieving peace in the region and preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”

So according to Hoyer, achieving peace in the Middle East requires that we not be distracted by little things like Israeli actions that undermine efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East. And speaking of peace, why aren't we talking about bombing Iran?

-----
*Not true, which could actually be said about almost every line in the statement.

Better propaganda, please

In the lead up to its attack on the "Free Gaza" flotilla that left at least nine dead and dozens more wounded, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon claimed that the basic supplies being brought by the more than 600 pro-Palestinian activists -- medicine, wheelchairs, construction material -- were simply not needed, as "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza," a claim repeated ad nauseam by Israeli press officials. That proved, Ayalon claimed, that the mission was not a humanitarian one, but rather "a provocation intended to delegitimize Israel."

The statement ignored, as of course it must, the reality on the ground -- the reality that, according to a spokesman for the UN relief agency in occupied Palestine, “There is a severe humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip", which is something to be expected when 1.5 million people are held in a de facto prison, barred from traveling to and trading with the outside world, forbidden the privilege of a functioning economy and faced with having the shit bombed out of them whenever a car backfires in southern Israel.

But it's one thing for reality and evidence to contradict state propaganda, as more often than not ends up being the case and should always be assumed -- what about when it explicitly contradicts itself?

IDF spokesman Colonel Moshe Levi -- not one of Israel's better propagandists, though I'll concede he has a tough job -- in a statement issued to reporters on Tuesday proclaimed that Israeli soldiers had "been working non-stop for the last twenty-four hours examining the cargo holds of the three large cargo ships and I can say with great assurance, that none of the equipment on board is needed in Gaza."

"The equipment that we found is all equipment that we have regularly allowed into the strip over the past year," Levi continued. "This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the whole premise of the voyage was for propaganda and provocation and not for humanitarian purposes."

To debunk this claim, forget for a moment the reality-based assertions of the limp-wristed UN and those threatening, butter knife-wielding former diplomats and Nobel laureates on the "Free Gaza" boats themselves -- let's turn to IDF spokesman Colonel Moshe Levi and The Jerusalem Post:

"According to Levi, the soldiers also found construction equipment, including sacks of concrete and metal rods. He said that Israel did not allow those products to enter into the Gaza strip for fear that they would be used to construct fortifications for terrorists and for weapons manufacture."

So all the equipment the IDF found was equipment they regularly allow to enter Gaza, except for all the equipment they found which they regularly forbid from entering Gaza. I'd say Levi should lose his job for such a poor effort at propagandizing, but I have a sickening feeling he's got a better than 50/50 chance of being the next White House press secretary.