New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Errol Louis: Blacks need a culture warBlacks need a culture war
The 2006 edition of "The State of Black America," published every year by the National Urban League, arrived this week to little fanfare, and has been duly ignored by most mainstream press outlets. The actual news contained in the 250-page parade of charts, tables, essays and factoids amounts to the six words that most people already knew would capture the state of Black America this year: Not so great, could be better.
The Urban League chief Marc Morial and other reporters on the "State of Black America" - including Prof. Ronald Mincy of Columbia University and Tavis Smiley, whose "Covenant With Black America" recently hit The New York Times best-seller list - should consider an alternative to the annual recital of statistics and essays on inequality and other social ills afflicting black folk.
What we need is a culture war.
Specifically, we need aggressive, concerted action by members and institutions of the respectable black middle class to do open combat against the rise of an ancient enemy: a bold, seductive street culture that exalts lawlessness, addiction and anti-family behavior like pimping, sexual promiscuity, ignorance and personal selfishness.
Smiley and civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson tend to gloss over a split that has run through black culture for more than a century: the need to choose between the narcissistic pursuit of short-term pleasure and the plodding but rewarding business of building strong families and communities, where learning is sacred and the needs of the next generation trump the cravings of the moment.
In other words, black Americans need to talk more about culture. We need to fight over it.
My former professor, Orlando Patterson of Harvard, recently weighed in on the topic in The New York Times, scolding black leaders for "the rejection of any explanation that invokes a group's cultural attributes - its distinctive attitudes, values and predispositions, and the resulting behavior of its members - and the relentless preference for relying on structural factors like low incomes, joblessness, poor schools and bad housing."
Patterson, citing the fieldwork of one of his students, found structural inequality aggravated by an implicit acceptance within black communities of a lot of the joblessness, criminality and other negatives that lie behind the statistics.
"What sociologists call the 'cool-pose culture' of young black men was simply too gratifying to give up," Patterson wrote. "For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture."
That mirage of street life tempts countless kids to discard the virtues of education, hard work and personal decency.
More teachers, preachers, politicians, journalists and other black Americans with a pulpit need to enlist in the battle against the self-defeating lure of street culture. That means putting off the usual run of statistics and studies that analyze social inequality in minute detail, and doing upfront combat against The Big Lie pumped out hour after hour by Hollywood, Madison Avenue, radio stations, the recording industry and other purveyors of vulgarity and irresponsibility.
A few leaders, like the Rev. Eugene Rivers in Boston and my colleague Stanley Crouch, have already taken up the fight in earnest. But they can't do it alone.
All we are saying is give war a chance.
Originally published on March 31, 200
Friday, March 31, 2006
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Africa"s leading lady
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Africa"s leading ladyAfrica’s leading lady
When Charles Taylor, the ex-Liberian thug president, was arrested in Nigeria trying to escape the clutches of international law, he was in a car with 110-pound bags of embezzled money. Well, he was not traveling light.
Taylor had risen to power after seven years of civil war, had won an election with 75% of the vote and had casually reduced his country to a pauper state. He is accused of starting conflicts in four other African states and encouraging the chopping off of hands, feet, lips and noses in Sierra Leone so that the terrified population would not hinder the sale of stolen diamonds.
Taylor is one of those African butchers who could have modeled himself on King Leopold II, the 19th-century Belgian king. Leopold's colonial policies in the Congo resulted in countless slaughters and many mutilations in the interest of producing a profitable rubber crop.
Leopold became a pariah among European courts, but naturally black-faced variations in Africa have wielded iron-fisted power without compunction, worrying only about being overthrown by some ambitious fellow monster in the military. If given the time, these monsters have fled to another African country, or to the Arab states, or even to the French Riviera, where they have been able to cool out and impress everyone with their pilfered riches.
As the Taylor case has proven, that trend in African politics may be coming to a screeching halt. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first elected female president in all of Africa, had requested that Nigeria hand over Taylor to the authorities in Sierra Leone, where he would have to face charges of individual butchery, mutilation and crimes against humanity.
African women are coming to the fore, trying to right all of the wrongs put and held in place by a succession of brutal and corrupt African men. African justice has been as porous as Swiss cheese for more than 40 years and the African people have suffered enormously while black Americans in or out of elected office, in or out of the civil rights establishment, have either ignored the horrors wrought upon the people or have figured out ways to blame it all on others.
The women of Africa are more interested in dealing with the facts than maintaining a cosmetic front of innocence. In a number of places across Africa, we see women rooting out corruption and conceiving laws that will bring them closer to a standard of human equality.
Interestingly, Oprah Winfrey, who keeps turning up, has been a model. Winfrey has inspired African women to rebel against rape and kidnap, to defy misogynistic laws and to face up to the ravages of AIDS.
It is both sobering and exciting to realize that American women, having been taught much by the civil rights movement, can inspire African women by example, and that elected or appointed African officials can lead the way through the ingrained ignorance, poverty and disease that block human fulfillment. Such human force explains the mystery of African optimism.
Originally published on March 29, 2006
When Charles Taylor, the ex-Liberian thug president, was arrested in Nigeria trying to escape the clutches of international law, he was in a car with 110-pound bags of embezzled money. Well, he was not traveling light.
Taylor had risen to power after seven years of civil war, had won an election with 75% of the vote and had casually reduced his country to a pauper state. He is accused of starting conflicts in four other African states and encouraging the chopping off of hands, feet, lips and noses in Sierra Leone so that the terrified population would not hinder the sale of stolen diamonds.
Taylor is one of those African butchers who could have modeled himself on King Leopold II, the 19th-century Belgian king. Leopold's colonial policies in the Congo resulted in countless slaughters and many mutilations in the interest of producing a profitable rubber crop.
Leopold became a pariah among European courts, but naturally black-faced variations in Africa have wielded iron-fisted power without compunction, worrying only about being overthrown by some ambitious fellow monster in the military. If given the time, these monsters have fled to another African country, or to the Arab states, or even to the French Riviera, where they have been able to cool out and impress everyone with their pilfered riches.
As the Taylor case has proven, that trend in African politics may be coming to a screeching halt. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first elected female president in all of Africa, had requested that Nigeria hand over Taylor to the authorities in Sierra Leone, where he would have to face charges of individual butchery, mutilation and crimes against humanity.
African women are coming to the fore, trying to right all of the wrongs put and held in place by a succession of brutal and corrupt African men. African justice has been as porous as Swiss cheese for more than 40 years and the African people have suffered enormously while black Americans in or out of elected office, in or out of the civil rights establishment, have either ignored the horrors wrought upon the people or have figured out ways to blame it all on others.
The women of Africa are more interested in dealing with the facts than maintaining a cosmetic front of innocence. In a number of places across Africa, we see women rooting out corruption and conceiving laws that will bring them closer to a standard of human equality.
Interestingly, Oprah Winfrey, who keeps turning up, has been a model. Winfrey has inspired African women to rebel against rape and kidnap, to defy misogynistic laws and to face up to the ravages of AIDS.
It is both sobering and exciting to realize that American women, having been taught much by the civil rights movement, can inspire African women by example, and that elected or appointed African officials can lead the way through the ingrained ignorance, poverty and disease that block human fulfillment. Such human force explains the mystery of African optimism.
Originally published on March 29, 2006
Friday, March 24, 2006
Why We Fight: Documentary Sends Warning to Congress
Why We Fight: Documentary Sends Warning to CongressPublished on Thursday, March 23, 2006 by the Miami Herald
Documentary Sends Warning to Congress
by Walter Cronkite
When young Anh Duong fled war-torn Saigon in 1973, she never imagined she'd grow up one day to make bombs for the U.S. military. She was just a child whose passage to safety in the United States she credits to ''a thirst for freedom'' and ``the sacrifice of other people.''
In the important new documentary film Why We Fight, Duong's remarkable saga is told alongside the stories of a number of everyday people working for America's defense. From a wide-eyed young recruit to the pilots who launched the opening strike of Operation Iraqi Freedom to a New York policeman who lost his son on 9/11, the film is a scrapbook of the American family at a time of war, trapped in a tragedy of history repeating.
Today, Duong is an explosives expert employed at the Naval Surface Warfare Station at Indian Head, Md. Credited with the development of a powerful bunker-buster used in Afghanistan and Iraq, she proudly recounts her rise from refugee to ``defense technician.''
''I do remember the desperation,'' Duong recalls, the obvious sunshine in her nature battling the anguish of memories.
``A lot of South Vietnamese felt that the Americans had left them to fend for themselves. That in the end, America deliberately withdrew all the support.''
Though the pain of betrayal is not lost on her, there is an irony in her path from war victim to war professional. Though Duong's tale is a stirring immigrant success story, watching the movie's scenes of Saigon's fall at a time when we are facing the withdrawal question in Iraq gave me a profound sense of déj vu.
Not unlike the Vietnam quagmire on which I reported in 1968, we are today presented with the Iraq quagmire. The threat of world communism has been replaced by international terror as a pretext for another misbegotten and mismanaged war, but the falsehoods, broken promises and withering national faith are too familiar.
Now, as then, with each further escalation, we come closer to the brink of cosmic disaster. A recent poll revealed that three-fourths of U.S. troops serving in Iraq want full withdrawal, one-fourth immediately. Despite the executive's stubborn optimism, two-thirds of the public now favor withdrawal.
Yet in Congress, such voices are the minority.
In my February 1968 broadcast, I called the position of Vietnam a stalemate.
I'm not sure ''stalemate'' fits the U.S. military's loose footing in the sands of Iraq, but the need to cut losses does. In the wake of the Golden Mosque bombing in Samarra, Shiites and Sunnis now clash across the region. Our men and women in uniform face the task of trying to stave off a civil war when their very presence as an occupying force more often than not fuels the violence and represents an obstacle to Shiite and Sunni reconciliation.
As I stated in relation to Vietnam, the only rational way out is to proceed not as victors but as an honorable people who tried to defend democracy the best they could. Recently, I suggested that in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there was an opportunity to withdraw from Iraq and still maintain our sense of honor. We had an urgent need to redirect our resources to the aid of our communities and people stricken by the devastation of the great storm. Almost no one on Capitol Hill was listening.
Why We Fight should be required viewing for Americans but even more for those on Capitol Hill. The film sends a chilling warning that should not be ignored by Congress and our executive branch.
Walter Cronkite is a former anchorman for CBS News.
Documentary Sends Warning to Congress
by Walter Cronkite
When young Anh Duong fled war-torn Saigon in 1973, she never imagined she'd grow up one day to make bombs for the U.S. military. She was just a child whose passage to safety in the United States she credits to ''a thirst for freedom'' and ``the sacrifice of other people.''
In the important new documentary film Why We Fight, Duong's remarkable saga is told alongside the stories of a number of everyday people working for America's defense. From a wide-eyed young recruit to the pilots who launched the opening strike of Operation Iraqi Freedom to a New York policeman who lost his son on 9/11, the film is a scrapbook of the American family at a time of war, trapped in a tragedy of history repeating.
Today, Duong is an explosives expert employed at the Naval Surface Warfare Station at Indian Head, Md. Credited with the development of a powerful bunker-buster used in Afghanistan and Iraq, she proudly recounts her rise from refugee to ``defense technician.''
''I do remember the desperation,'' Duong recalls, the obvious sunshine in her nature battling the anguish of memories.
``A lot of South Vietnamese felt that the Americans had left them to fend for themselves. That in the end, America deliberately withdrew all the support.''
Though the pain of betrayal is not lost on her, there is an irony in her path from war victim to war professional. Though Duong's tale is a stirring immigrant success story, watching the movie's scenes of Saigon's fall at a time when we are facing the withdrawal question in Iraq gave me a profound sense of déj vu.
Not unlike the Vietnam quagmire on which I reported in 1968, we are today presented with the Iraq quagmire. The threat of world communism has been replaced by international terror as a pretext for another misbegotten and mismanaged war, but the falsehoods, broken promises and withering national faith are too familiar.
Now, as then, with each further escalation, we come closer to the brink of cosmic disaster. A recent poll revealed that three-fourths of U.S. troops serving in Iraq want full withdrawal, one-fourth immediately. Despite the executive's stubborn optimism, two-thirds of the public now favor withdrawal.
Yet in Congress, such voices are the minority.
In my February 1968 broadcast, I called the position of Vietnam a stalemate.
I'm not sure ''stalemate'' fits the U.S. military's loose footing in the sands of Iraq, but the need to cut losses does. In the wake of the Golden Mosque bombing in Samarra, Shiites and Sunnis now clash across the region. Our men and women in uniform face the task of trying to stave off a civil war when their very presence as an occupying force more often than not fuels the violence and represents an obstacle to Shiite and Sunni reconciliation.
As I stated in relation to Vietnam, the only rational way out is to proceed not as victors but as an honorable people who tried to defend democracy the best they could. Recently, I suggested that in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there was an opportunity to withdraw from Iraq and still maintain our sense of honor. We had an urgent need to redirect our resources to the aid of our communities and people stricken by the devastation of the great storm. Almost no one on Capitol Hill was listening.
Why We Fight should be required viewing for Americans but even more for those on Capitol Hill. The film sends a chilling warning that should not be ignored by Congress and our executive branch.
Walter Cronkite is a former anchorman for CBS News.
New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Stanley Crouch: Separate & unequal
New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Stanley Crouch: Separate & unequalSeparate & unequal
It seems that some of us are committing intellectual suicide. It is undeclared and unrecognized by its victims, men of the black lower class. By contrast, both black women and the black middle class seem to be doing fine, better and better, in fact.
Recognition of this phenomenon is widespread. All this week I received telephone calls and spoke with people from across the country who were disturbed by recent studies showing that lower-class black men are falling further and further behind everyone in society, including Hispanics. Three-quarters of black high school dropouts are suffering from unemployment and a lack of job skills. The unemployment figures are much higher than for their white and Hispanic counterparts.
One person said to me that there is no need to be embarrassed or especially upset because what is going on can easily be explained - or at least understood. The black lower class is not only separated from America as a whole, it is also separated from those principles that have helped the black middle class do the most that it could for itself.
Once upon a time, black lower class did not mean welfare dependents, teenage mothers and young men who had served time before they were in their mid-20s. It once meant blue-collar workers, almost all of whom agreed that knowledge would result in freedom, while ignorance would result in slavery.
At that time, those who were in the black middle class usually lived in the black community, meaning that children had flesh-and-blood models of success. Desegregation, however, meant that black middle-class people moved to the suburbs and other places.
So, as one black man who works for Princeton University says, "You cannot be surprised if a population of young men who live on media images fail to believe in books if most of what they see and can relate to comes from hip-hop fantasies and professional athletes."
What it amounts to is that certain principles that were in place at least since the end of slavery have eroded.
Originally, perhaps because there was once such resistance to black education, achieving an education became a high cultural goal. Taking care of one's family and staying out of jail were also high achievements.
But with the fall of shame and the emergence of a cultural relativity that would seem to accept almost any kind of behavior, things have gone badly for black males. Once the pimp or the hustler was no longer thought of as slime and started to be seen as just another guy working his way through capitalism, black lower-class values had reached the bottom.
Now that we are there, it is important to understand that the job ahead for our society is not introducing something new but reasserting a set of survival principles based on excellence, which once had a strong position and can have one again.
Originally published on March 23, 2006
It seems that some of us are committing intellectual suicide. It is undeclared and unrecognized by its victims, men of the black lower class. By contrast, both black women and the black middle class seem to be doing fine, better and better, in fact.
Recognition of this phenomenon is widespread. All this week I received telephone calls and spoke with people from across the country who were disturbed by recent studies showing that lower-class black men are falling further and further behind everyone in society, including Hispanics. Three-quarters of black high school dropouts are suffering from unemployment and a lack of job skills. The unemployment figures are much higher than for their white and Hispanic counterparts.
One person said to me that there is no need to be embarrassed or especially upset because what is going on can easily be explained - or at least understood. The black lower class is not only separated from America as a whole, it is also separated from those principles that have helped the black middle class do the most that it could for itself.
Once upon a time, black lower class did not mean welfare dependents, teenage mothers and young men who had served time before they were in their mid-20s. It once meant blue-collar workers, almost all of whom agreed that knowledge would result in freedom, while ignorance would result in slavery.
At that time, those who were in the black middle class usually lived in the black community, meaning that children had flesh-and-blood models of success. Desegregation, however, meant that black middle-class people moved to the suburbs and other places.
So, as one black man who works for Princeton University says, "You cannot be surprised if a population of young men who live on media images fail to believe in books if most of what they see and can relate to comes from hip-hop fantasies and professional athletes."
What it amounts to is that certain principles that were in place at least since the end of slavery have eroded.
Originally, perhaps because there was once such resistance to black education, achieving an education became a high cultural goal. Taking care of one's family and staying out of jail were also high achievements.
But with the fall of shame and the emergence of a cultural relativity that would seem to accept almost any kind of behavior, things have gone badly for black males. Once the pimp or the hustler was no longer thought of as slime and started to be seen as just another guy working his way through capitalism, black lower-class values had reached the bottom.
Now that we are there, it is important to understand that the job ahead for our society is not introducing something new but reasserting a set of survival principles based on excellence, which once had a strong position and can have one again.
Originally published on March 23, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Film warns of military-industrial complex
United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Film warns of military-industrial complexFilm warns of military-industrial complex
By BURGESS EVERETT
WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- In his new documentary, "Why We Fight," director Eugene Jarecki examines the growth of the United States' military-industrial complex from after World War II up to today's controversial war in Iraq.
"Back then, the reasons (for war) were clear -- fascism, genocide, oppression," Jarecki, who also directed 2002's "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," says on the movie's Web site. "Today, if you ask people why we are fighting in Iraq, I think the reasons are far less clear."
The movie, the Grand Jury Prize winner at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, focuses on the topics of preemption, the industry of war and global economic colonialism by the United States. The documentary uses no real narrator; instead telling a story through interviews with bomber pilots, government employees, politicians and average American citizens in 30 states as it unveils a war-dependent U.S. culture.
The film opens with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell speech, in which he predicted the problems a permanently militarized United States would have.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," Eisenhower said in the speech, often championed by Jarecki throughout the film. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
From there, Jarecki interviews the pilots who dropped the first bombs on Iraq in 2003, a Vietnamese war survivor turned tactical weapons expert and recounts the tale of Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York City policeman who lost his son in the Sept. 11, 2001 mega-terror attacks. After the attacks, Sekzer contacted the armed forces, and eventually got his son's name on a bomb that later fell on Iraq.
After President George W. Bush confirmed that Iraq had played no part in the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, Sekzer felt exploited for his patriotism.
"Am I sorry I asked for my son's name to be put on the bomb?" Sekzer muses. "No, because I acted under the conditions at the time. Was it wrong? Yeah, it was wrong, but I didn't know that."
Rather than using the heavy-handed approach that another documentary film-maker Michael Moore took in "Fahrenheit 9/11," Jarecki stays behind-the-scenes throughout the movie, allowing his interviewees to do the talking. Though Jarecki maintains he interviewed a conservative majority, it would be a lie to say "Why We Fight" doesn't take a liberal slant. Despite the biased angle, conservative voices receive an opportunity to comment on the film's issues, most notably military preemption.
"What's the big fuss about preemption?" says former Defense Department official and neo-conservative Richard Perle. "You'd shoot first if someone was planning to shoot you right?"
The movie separates itself from simple anti-Bush critiques by offering a broader cultural study, both historically and geographically. An especially powerful segment of the film shows a world map that is then chronologically peppered with U.S. military conflicts from World War II until the present.
The United States' support of and then subsequent hostility towards foreign nations is also a talking point, punctuated by the image of current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983.
In contrast to the critiques against preemption and the United States' economic war machine is the story of George Solomon, a 23-year-old who signs up to be an army pilot after his mother dies. Solomon represents the thousands of people who turn to the military as the answer for their life's complications.
"These three problems: my mother's death, my financial hardship and my inability to complete my education," Solomon says. "All of these problems are gonna be solved by my enlistment in the military."
If Eisenhower is the hero in "Why We Fight," the villain must be Vice President Dick Cheney, who is identified as a former weapons contractor and personifies the idea of war as a business. Cheney's economic impact on the military is thoroughly criticized by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is interrupted while panning Cheney on-camera by a phone call from the vice president himself.
While at times the movie seems to only raise more questions rather than answers, one strong message is for the United States to remember its political and military history. Scattering the film's 98 minutes are quotes from Presidents George Washington and Eisenhower that warn of the dangers of a U.S. permanent military presence. Using techniques like this, Jarecki sends a clear message the United States must avoid becoming what author Gore Vidal calls the "United States of Amnesia."
By BURGESS EVERETT
WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- In his new documentary, "Why We Fight," director Eugene Jarecki examines the growth of the United States' military-industrial complex from after World War II up to today's controversial war in Iraq.
"Back then, the reasons (for war) were clear -- fascism, genocide, oppression," Jarecki, who also directed 2002's "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," says on the movie's Web site. "Today, if you ask people why we are fighting in Iraq, I think the reasons are far less clear."
The movie, the Grand Jury Prize winner at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, focuses on the topics of preemption, the industry of war and global economic colonialism by the United States. The documentary uses no real narrator; instead telling a story through interviews with bomber pilots, government employees, politicians and average American citizens in 30 states as it unveils a war-dependent U.S. culture.
The film opens with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell speech, in which he predicted the problems a permanently militarized United States would have.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," Eisenhower said in the speech, often championed by Jarecki throughout the film. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
From there, Jarecki interviews the pilots who dropped the first bombs on Iraq in 2003, a Vietnamese war survivor turned tactical weapons expert and recounts the tale of Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York City policeman who lost his son in the Sept. 11, 2001 mega-terror attacks. After the attacks, Sekzer contacted the armed forces, and eventually got his son's name on a bomb that later fell on Iraq.
After President George W. Bush confirmed that Iraq had played no part in the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, Sekzer felt exploited for his patriotism.
"Am I sorry I asked for my son's name to be put on the bomb?" Sekzer muses. "No, because I acted under the conditions at the time. Was it wrong? Yeah, it was wrong, but I didn't know that."
Rather than using the heavy-handed approach that another documentary film-maker Michael Moore took in "Fahrenheit 9/11," Jarecki stays behind-the-scenes throughout the movie, allowing his interviewees to do the talking. Though Jarecki maintains he interviewed a conservative majority, it would be a lie to say "Why We Fight" doesn't take a liberal slant. Despite the biased angle, conservative voices receive an opportunity to comment on the film's issues, most notably military preemption.
"What's the big fuss about preemption?" says former Defense Department official and neo-conservative Richard Perle. "You'd shoot first if someone was planning to shoot you right?"
The movie separates itself from simple anti-Bush critiques by offering a broader cultural study, both historically and geographically. An especially powerful segment of the film shows a world map that is then chronologically peppered with U.S. military conflicts from World War II until the present.
The United States' support of and then subsequent hostility towards foreign nations is also a talking point, punctuated by the image of current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983.
In contrast to the critiques against preemption and the United States' economic war machine is the story of George Solomon, a 23-year-old who signs up to be an army pilot after his mother dies. Solomon represents the thousands of people who turn to the military as the answer for their life's complications.
"These three problems: my mother's death, my financial hardship and my inability to complete my education," Solomon says. "All of these problems are gonna be solved by my enlistment in the military."
If Eisenhower is the hero in "Why We Fight," the villain must be Vice President Dick Cheney, who is identified as a former weapons contractor and personifies the idea of war as a business. Cheney's economic impact on the military is thoroughly criticized by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is interrupted while panning Cheney on-camera by a phone call from the vice president himself.
While at times the movie seems to only raise more questions rather than answers, one strong message is for the United States to remember its political and military history. Scattering the film's 98 minutes are quotes from Presidents George Washington and Eisenhower that warn of the dangers of a U.S. permanent military presence. Using techniques like this, Jarecki sends a clear message the United States must avoid becoming what author Gore Vidal calls the "United States of Amnesia."
Sunday, March 19, 2006
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: A must-see view into New York's painful history
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: A must-see view into New York's painful historyA must-see view into New York's painful history
While many were undoubtedly surprised last October by an entire exhibit at the New-York Historical Society devoted to slavery in this state, they shouldn't have been. After all, a mile-long common grave was unearthed downtown in 1991 and became known as "the African Burial Ground." Historians believe as many as 15,000 slaves were buried there. Those thousands of anonymous downtown cadavers formed a temple of bones, enshrined evidence of New York's involvement in what has become known as "the peculiar institution."
Yes, there was slavery up here in the wonderful North just like there was in the terrible South. The "Slavery in New York" exhibit - already viewed by more than 60,000 students from more than 1,000 schools and now extended until March 26 - should not be missed. Understanding American slavery is essential to understanding American history and American issues.
It all comes down to a single fact: Black people were sold as work animals here from the early 1600s until 1827. They were chattel slaves for more than 150 years before the formation of the United States. At the time of the Revolutionary War there were more slaves in New York than anywhere other than a selling hub in South Carolina.
Slaves were a contradiction to the country's system of values. Opposed by determined Christians, who believed that all of mankind began in Eden, slavery became an ever hotter issue until Abraham Lincoln became President, the Civil War broke out and the plantation system was deservedly brought down in blood, dust and flame.
The New-York Historical Society tells the story of slavery in New York across 200 years, including such objects as a daguerreotype of a slave named Caesar who outlived three masters and a listing of the first 11 Africans brought to New York as slaves.
"Slavery in New York" has its positive moments, including the depiction of the American abolition movement, as full of honor and bravery as any other great American story. There is plenty to be learned here about those people, whether black or white, who stood up against the bloody constraints of a system that failed to acknowledge the humanity of the enslaved.
This struggle clarifies the importance of self-criticism to Western civilization and shows how the American people can shift - sometimes after a long struggle - from superstitions such as racism to enlightened policies.
The society's director of communications, Laura Washington, says that before this exhibit, "There was no formal teaching of the history of slavery in New York. That is now changing, and the enrichment of public education is one of the great goals of any museum."
The exhibit is sobering in its tragic dimensions and inspiring in its focus on those New York men and women who called for the liberation of the slave population. Those abolitionists foreshadowed what became the internationally recognized spirit of New York: a force focused as much on freedom as anything else.
The New-York Historical Society, at Central Park West and 77th St., can be contacted at (212) 873-3400.
Originally published on March 13, 2006
While many were undoubtedly surprised last October by an entire exhibit at the New-York Historical Society devoted to slavery in this state, they shouldn't have been. After all, a mile-long common grave was unearthed downtown in 1991 and became known as "the African Burial Ground." Historians believe as many as 15,000 slaves were buried there. Those thousands of anonymous downtown cadavers formed a temple of bones, enshrined evidence of New York's involvement in what has become known as "the peculiar institution."
Yes, there was slavery up here in the wonderful North just like there was in the terrible South. The "Slavery in New York" exhibit - already viewed by more than 60,000 students from more than 1,000 schools and now extended until March 26 - should not be missed. Understanding American slavery is essential to understanding American history and American issues.
It all comes down to a single fact: Black people were sold as work animals here from the early 1600s until 1827. They were chattel slaves for more than 150 years before the formation of the United States. At the time of the Revolutionary War there were more slaves in New York than anywhere other than a selling hub in South Carolina.
Slaves were a contradiction to the country's system of values. Opposed by determined Christians, who believed that all of mankind began in Eden, slavery became an ever hotter issue until Abraham Lincoln became President, the Civil War broke out and the plantation system was deservedly brought down in blood, dust and flame.
The New-York Historical Society tells the story of slavery in New York across 200 years, including such objects as a daguerreotype of a slave named Caesar who outlived three masters and a listing of the first 11 Africans brought to New York as slaves.
"Slavery in New York" has its positive moments, including the depiction of the American abolition movement, as full of honor and bravery as any other great American story. There is plenty to be learned here about those people, whether black or white, who stood up against the bloody constraints of a system that failed to acknowledge the humanity of the enslaved.
This struggle clarifies the importance of self-criticism to Western civilization and shows how the American people can shift - sometimes after a long struggle - from superstitions such as racism to enlightened policies.
The society's director of communications, Laura Washington, says that before this exhibit, "There was no formal teaching of the history of slavery in New York. That is now changing, and the enrichment of public education is one of the great goals of any museum."
The exhibit is sobering in its tragic dimensions and inspiring in its focus on those New York men and women who called for the liberation of the slave population. Those abolitionists foreshadowed what became the internationally recognized spirit of New York: a force focused as much on freedom as anything else.
The New-York Historical Society, at Central Park West and 77th St., can be contacted at (212) 873-3400.
Originally published on March 13, 2006
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: A must-see view into New York's painful history
New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: A must-see view into New York's painful historyA must-see view into New York's painful history
While many were undoubtedly surprised last October by an entire exhibit at the New-York Historical Society devoted to slavery in this state, they shouldn't have been. After all, a mile-long common grave was unearthed downtown in 1991 and became known as "the African Burial Ground." Historians believe as many as 15,000 slaves were buried there. Those thousands of anonymous downtown cadavers formed a temple of bones, enshrined evidence of New York's involvement in what has become known as "the peculiar institution."
Yes, there was slavery up here in the wonderful North just like there was in the terrible South. The "Slavery in New York" exhibit - already viewed by more than 60,000 students from more than 1,000 schools and now extended until March 26 - should not be missed. Understanding American slavery is essential to understanding American history and American issues.
It all comes down to a single fact: Black people were sold as work animals here from the early 1600s until 1827. They were chattel slaves for more than 150 years before the formation of the United States. At the time of the Revolutionary War there were more slaves in New York than anywhere other than a selling hub in South Carolina.
Slaves were a contradiction to the country's system of values. Opposed by determined Christians, who believed that all of mankind began in Eden, slavery became an ever hotter issue until Abraham Lincoln became President, the Civil War broke out and the plantation system was deservedly brought down in blood, dust and flame.
The New-York Historical Society tells the story of slavery in New York across 200 years, including such objects as a daguerreotype of a slave named Caesar who outlived three masters and a listing of the first 11 Africans brought to New York as slaves.
"Slavery in New York" has its positive moments, including the depiction of the American abolition movement, as full of honor and bravery as any other great American story. There is plenty to be learned here about those people, whether black or white, who stood up against the bloody constraints of a system that failed to acknowledge the humanity of the enslaved.
This struggle clarifies the importance of self-criticism to Western civilization and shows how the American people can shift - sometimes after a long struggle - from superstitions such as racism to enlightened policies.
The society's director of communications, Laura Washington, says that before this exhibit, "There was no formal teaching of the history of slavery in New York. That is now changing, and the enrichment of public education is one of the great goals of any museum."
The exhibit is sobering in its tragic dimensions and inspiring in its focus on those New York men and women who called for the liberation of the slave population. Those abolitionists foreshadowed what became the internationally recognized spirit of New York: a force focused as much on freedom as anything else.
The New-York Historical Society, at Central Park West and 77th St., can be contacted at (212) 873-3400.
Originally published on March 13, 2006
While many were undoubtedly surprised last October by an entire exhibit at the New-York Historical Society devoted to slavery in this state, they shouldn't have been. After all, a mile-long common grave was unearthed downtown in 1991 and became known as "the African Burial Ground." Historians believe as many as 15,000 slaves were buried there. Those thousands of anonymous downtown cadavers formed a temple of bones, enshrined evidence of New York's involvement in what has become known as "the peculiar institution."
Yes, there was slavery up here in the wonderful North just like there was in the terrible South. The "Slavery in New York" exhibit - already viewed by more than 60,000 students from more than 1,000 schools and now extended until March 26 - should not be missed. Understanding American slavery is essential to understanding American history and American issues.
It all comes down to a single fact: Black people were sold as work animals here from the early 1600s until 1827. They were chattel slaves for more than 150 years before the formation of the United States. At the time of the Revolutionary War there were more slaves in New York than anywhere other than a selling hub in South Carolina.
Slaves were a contradiction to the country's system of values. Opposed by determined Christians, who believed that all of mankind began in Eden, slavery became an ever hotter issue until Abraham Lincoln became President, the Civil War broke out and the plantation system was deservedly brought down in blood, dust and flame.
The New-York Historical Society tells the story of slavery in New York across 200 years, including such objects as a daguerreotype of a slave named Caesar who outlived three masters and a listing of the first 11 Africans brought to New York as slaves.
"Slavery in New York" has its positive moments, including the depiction of the American abolition movement, as full of honor and bravery as any other great American story. There is plenty to be learned here about those people, whether black or white, who stood up against the bloody constraints of a system that failed to acknowledge the humanity of the enslaved.
This struggle clarifies the importance of self-criticism to Western civilization and shows how the American people can shift - sometimes after a long struggle - from superstitions such as racism to enlightened policies.
The society's director of communications, Laura Washington, says that before this exhibit, "There was no formal teaching of the history of slavery in New York. That is now changing, and the enrichment of public education is one of the great goals of any museum."
The exhibit is sobering in its tragic dimensions and inspiring in its focus on those New York men and women who called for the liberation of the slave population. Those abolitionists foreshadowed what became the internationally recognized spirit of New York: a force focused as much on freedom as anything else.
The New-York Historical Society, at Central Park West and 77th St., can be contacted at (212) 873-3400.
Originally published on March 13, 2006
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Simmering GOP revolt stoked by ports flap
Simmering GOP revolt stoked by ports flapSimmering GOP revolt stoked by ports flap
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Washington -- The Republican rebellion that President Bush smacked into with the Dubai ports deal was the tip of an iceberg of Republican discontent that is much deeper and more dangerous to the White House than a talk radio tempest over Arabs running U.S. ports.
A Republican pushback on Capitol Hill and smoldering conservative dissatisfaction have already killed not just the ports deal but key elements of Bush's domestic agenda, and threaten GOP control of Congress if unhappy conservatives sit out the November midterm elections.
The apostasy in some quarters runs to heretofore unthinkable depths.
"If I had a choice and Bush were running today against (Democratic President) Bill Clinton, I'd vote for Bill Clinton," said Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan administration Treasury Department official whose book, "Impostor: How George Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," is making the rounds of conservative think tanks and talk shows. "He was clearly a much better president in a great many ways that matter to me."
Bartlett may lie at the extreme, but his critique taps into a strong undertow -- reflected in a sharp drop in Bush's support among his typically solid Republican base, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday.
"Bush's compassionate conservatism has morphed into big government conservatism, and that isn't what the base is looking for," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "The White House and the congressional leadership have got to reinvigorate the Republican base. In off-year elections ... if your base isn't energized, particularly in a relatively evenly divided electorate, you've got more problems than you think you have."
Any significant drop in GOP turnout in the November midterms -- when the party in power is historically weak -- could prove disastrous for Republicans.
A Democratic takeover of either the House or the Senate would expose Republicans to a nightmare scenario: loss of control over policymaking and relentless congressional investigations of the White House that would consume the rest of Bush's presidency and damage Republican presidential prospects in 2008.
"Republicans are in a deep funk," said Marshall Wittman, a former aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., now at the centrist Democratic Progressive Policy Institute. "They're going to have to send out doses of Prozac in the (Republican National Committee) direct-mail pieces."
Whither the base?
The entire House and a third of the Senate are up for grabs in just seven months. Democrats need a gain of six seats to win back control of the Senate and 15 seats to retake the House. Bush's election strategies have always hinged on a motivated conservative base.
"At the end of the day, the bulk of us are with the president and with the leadership, but that's because we don't have any other place to go," said Manuel Miranda, head of the conservative Third Branch Conference who helped kill Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. "We suppose they're doing the best they can, but we're all very unhappy."
Although the Iraq war is hurting Bush with all voters, the deeper conservative discontent is with the spectacular growth of spending during the last five years that rivals that of a famously free-spending Democrat, President Lyndon Johnson.
Frustration over spending now threatens to overshadow Bush's accomplishments that conservatives love: his first-term tax cuts and his nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
"I think it's the biggest reason our base is so disenchanted with Republicans right now," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. "The president has been great on tax cuts, and been great on a few issues, economic growth, pretty good on trade -- little hiccup on some steel tariffs there -- but I think most of us recognize that these tax cuts are increasingly difficult to defend politically because of the increase in spending."
Moving to stanch the damage, Bush called last week for Congress to grant him a line-item veto to prevent members from redirecting money in spending bills to their pet projects, a practice known as earmarking that has achieved notoriety under the GOP. The Congressional Research Service counted 15,877 earmarks in 2005, almost four times as many as in 1994, when Democrats last held a House majority.
What Bush didn't say is that he already has the power to eliminate 95 percent of these earmarks.
A Congressional Research Service report requested by Flake and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., found that most earmarks are slipped into committee reports but are not part of the legislation and not legally binding.
'We wish he'd use it'
"The president could instruct the federal agencies tomorrow not to fund any of them," Flake said. "The president has a lot more authority and control than he's willing to admit right now, and we wish he'd use it. That's something he could do right now, and it would engender just a ton of support among Republicans everywhere, and frankly Democrats.
"The indoor rain forest in Iowa -- there are things that are just as ugly as the bridge to nowhere," Flake said, referring to a pair of highly criticized earmarks. "He could simply instruct the agency, 'Don't fund that.' Believe me, I've had discussions. We've recommended it. We just can't get him to do it."
Many conservatives remain furious over the new prescription drug benefit in Medicare passed in 2003, the biggest entitlement expansion since Johnson created Medicare in 1965. It took effect at the start of this year.
"The one big strategic error -- which was a political error and an economic error of grand proportions -- was the prescription drug bill," Keene said.
Bush and the GOP leaders who rammed it through Congress hoped the drug benefit would neutralize health care as a political issue for Republicans. Instead it is proving an enormous liability. Its cost -- more than a trillion dollars over 10 years and more than the entire unfunded liability in Social Security -- angered conservatives, and it has backfired politically among seniors who typically turn out heavily in off-year elections. Even though seniors got an expensive new benefit, many complain that it is too confusing and offers too many choices, an idea Democrats have encouraged.
The drug benefit was the last straw for Bartlett. "That's not what conservatives and that's not what Republicans are supposed to do," he said. "They're not supposed to create massive new entitlement programs, and they did."
Conservatives contend Bush has never resisted spending, starting with the gigantic farm bill in 2001 and continuing with his failure to veto a single bill. Bush is the longest-serving president to do so since John Quincy Adams in 1829.
"There's a sense that Republicans are not the party of reforming government and ending big spending," Miranda said. "Although people gave the president a pass because of the war cost, there's a sense that there's just no principled approach to government spending."
Bartlett argues that government's growth under Bush will eventually force his tax cuts to be rolled back and leave conservatives with the worst of both worlds.
Last week, Senate Republicans unceremoniously ditched Bush's call to trim $65 billion in entitlement spending. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa also questioned the need for more health care tax breaks -- including the health savings account expansion that Bush highlighted in his State of the Union address.
Question of competence
White House handling of the Dubai ports deal also crystallized growing doubt among Republicans about what had been one of Bush's strong suits: competence. The ports deal added to the growing list of what many see as White House failures in planning for the Iraq occupation, pushing Social Security reform and responding to Hurricane Katrina.
"I've been astounded by Bush in his relationship with Republicans in Congress," Keene said. "In my lifetime, there has been no Republican president who has spent as much effort and as much time electing people of his own party to the Congress, or less time talking to them after they got there."
The Republicans in Congress also are reading the polls. The AP-Ipsos poll, for example, found Bush's job approval in March was at 37 percent, tied for his lowest rating. The president's approval among Republicans dropped from 83 percent last month to 74 percent in March.
While Republicans are starting to run away from Bush for the midterms, what may be more telling for the future of the party is the stance of Republican presidential contenders in 2008.
"In 1988, all Republicans ran as heirs to (President Ronald) Reagan," Wittman said. "It's becoming increasingly unlikely that candidates in 2008 will be running as heirs to Bush."
- Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Washington -- The Republican rebellion that President Bush smacked into with the Dubai ports deal was the tip of an iceberg of Republican discontent that is much deeper and more dangerous to the White House than a talk radio tempest over Arabs running U.S. ports.
A Republican pushback on Capitol Hill and smoldering conservative dissatisfaction have already killed not just the ports deal but key elements of Bush's domestic agenda, and threaten GOP control of Congress if unhappy conservatives sit out the November midterm elections.
The apostasy in some quarters runs to heretofore unthinkable depths.
"If I had a choice and Bush were running today against (Democratic President) Bill Clinton, I'd vote for Bill Clinton," said Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan administration Treasury Department official whose book, "Impostor: How George Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," is making the rounds of conservative think tanks and talk shows. "He was clearly a much better president in a great many ways that matter to me."
Bartlett may lie at the extreme, but his critique taps into a strong undertow -- reflected in a sharp drop in Bush's support among his typically solid Republican base, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday.
"Bush's compassionate conservatism has morphed into big government conservatism, and that isn't what the base is looking for," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "The White House and the congressional leadership have got to reinvigorate the Republican base. In off-year elections ... if your base isn't energized, particularly in a relatively evenly divided electorate, you've got more problems than you think you have."
Any significant drop in GOP turnout in the November midterms -- when the party in power is historically weak -- could prove disastrous for Republicans.
A Democratic takeover of either the House or the Senate would expose Republicans to a nightmare scenario: loss of control over policymaking and relentless congressional investigations of the White House that would consume the rest of Bush's presidency and damage Republican presidential prospects in 2008.
"Republicans are in a deep funk," said Marshall Wittman, a former aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., now at the centrist Democratic Progressive Policy Institute. "They're going to have to send out doses of Prozac in the (Republican National Committee) direct-mail pieces."
Whither the base?
The entire House and a third of the Senate are up for grabs in just seven months. Democrats need a gain of six seats to win back control of the Senate and 15 seats to retake the House. Bush's election strategies have always hinged on a motivated conservative base.
"At the end of the day, the bulk of us are with the president and with the leadership, but that's because we don't have any other place to go," said Manuel Miranda, head of the conservative Third Branch Conference who helped kill Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. "We suppose they're doing the best they can, but we're all very unhappy."
Although the Iraq war is hurting Bush with all voters, the deeper conservative discontent is with the spectacular growth of spending during the last five years that rivals that of a famously free-spending Democrat, President Lyndon Johnson.
Frustration over spending now threatens to overshadow Bush's accomplishments that conservatives love: his first-term tax cuts and his nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
"I think it's the biggest reason our base is so disenchanted with Republicans right now," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. "The president has been great on tax cuts, and been great on a few issues, economic growth, pretty good on trade -- little hiccup on some steel tariffs there -- but I think most of us recognize that these tax cuts are increasingly difficult to defend politically because of the increase in spending."
Moving to stanch the damage, Bush called last week for Congress to grant him a line-item veto to prevent members from redirecting money in spending bills to their pet projects, a practice known as earmarking that has achieved notoriety under the GOP. The Congressional Research Service counted 15,877 earmarks in 2005, almost four times as many as in 1994, when Democrats last held a House majority.
What Bush didn't say is that he already has the power to eliminate 95 percent of these earmarks.
A Congressional Research Service report requested by Flake and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., found that most earmarks are slipped into committee reports but are not part of the legislation and not legally binding.
'We wish he'd use it'
"The president could instruct the federal agencies tomorrow not to fund any of them," Flake said. "The president has a lot more authority and control than he's willing to admit right now, and we wish he'd use it. That's something he could do right now, and it would engender just a ton of support among Republicans everywhere, and frankly Democrats.
"The indoor rain forest in Iowa -- there are things that are just as ugly as the bridge to nowhere," Flake said, referring to a pair of highly criticized earmarks. "He could simply instruct the agency, 'Don't fund that.' Believe me, I've had discussions. We've recommended it. We just can't get him to do it."
Many conservatives remain furious over the new prescription drug benefit in Medicare passed in 2003, the biggest entitlement expansion since Johnson created Medicare in 1965. It took effect at the start of this year.
"The one big strategic error -- which was a political error and an economic error of grand proportions -- was the prescription drug bill," Keene said.
Bush and the GOP leaders who rammed it through Congress hoped the drug benefit would neutralize health care as a political issue for Republicans. Instead it is proving an enormous liability. Its cost -- more than a trillion dollars over 10 years and more than the entire unfunded liability in Social Security -- angered conservatives, and it has backfired politically among seniors who typically turn out heavily in off-year elections. Even though seniors got an expensive new benefit, many complain that it is too confusing and offers too many choices, an idea Democrats have encouraged.
The drug benefit was the last straw for Bartlett. "That's not what conservatives and that's not what Republicans are supposed to do," he said. "They're not supposed to create massive new entitlement programs, and they did."
Conservatives contend Bush has never resisted spending, starting with the gigantic farm bill in 2001 and continuing with his failure to veto a single bill. Bush is the longest-serving president to do so since John Quincy Adams in 1829.
"There's a sense that Republicans are not the party of reforming government and ending big spending," Miranda said. "Although people gave the president a pass because of the war cost, there's a sense that there's just no principled approach to government spending."
Bartlett argues that government's growth under Bush will eventually force his tax cuts to be rolled back and leave conservatives with the worst of both worlds.
Last week, Senate Republicans unceremoniously ditched Bush's call to trim $65 billion in entitlement spending. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa also questioned the need for more health care tax breaks -- including the health savings account expansion that Bush highlighted in his State of the Union address.
Question of competence
White House handling of the Dubai ports deal also crystallized growing doubt among Republicans about what had been one of Bush's strong suits: competence. The ports deal added to the growing list of what many see as White House failures in planning for the Iraq occupation, pushing Social Security reform and responding to Hurricane Katrina.
"I've been astounded by Bush in his relationship with Republicans in Congress," Keene said. "In my lifetime, there has been no Republican president who has spent as much effort and as much time electing people of his own party to the Congress, or less time talking to them after they got there."
The Republicans in Congress also are reading the polls. The AP-Ipsos poll, for example, found Bush's job approval in March was at 37 percent, tied for his lowest rating. The president's approval among Republicans dropped from 83 percent last month to 74 percent in March.
While Republicans are starting to run away from Bush for the midterms, what may be more telling for the future of the party is the stance of Republican presidential contenders in 2008.
"In 1988, all Republicans ran as heirs to (President Ronald) Reagan," Wittman said. "It's becoming increasingly unlikely that candidates in 2008 will be running as heirs to Bush."
Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat - New York Times
Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat - New York TimesMarch 12, 2006
Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
and BERNARD E. TRAINOR
As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the American advance.
But Saddam Hussein and his small circle of aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war. Convinced that the main danger to his government came from within, Mr. Hussein had sought to keep Iraq's bridges intact so he could rush troops south if the Shiites got out of line.
General Hamdani got little in the way of additional soldiers, and the grudging permission to blow up the bridge came too late. The Iraqis damaged only one of the two spans, and American soldiers soon began to stream across.
The episode was just one of many incidents, described in a classified United States military report, other documents and in interviews, that demonstrate how Mr. Hussein was so preoccupied about the threat from within his country that he crippled his military in fighting the threat from without.
Only one of his defenses — the Saddam Fedayeen — proved potent against the invaders. They later joined the insurgency still roiling Iraq, but that was largely by default, not design.
Ever vigilant about coups and fearful of revolt, Mr. Hussein was deeply distrustful of his own commanders and soldiers, the documents show.
He made crucial decisions himself, relied on his sons for military counsel and imposed security measures that had the effect of hobbling his forces. He did that in several ways:
¶The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense.
¶He put a general widely viewed as an incompetent drunkard in charge of the Special Republican Guard, entrusted to protect the capital, primarily because he was considered loyal.
¶Mr. Hussein micromanaged the war, not allowing commanders to move troops without permission from Baghdad and blocking communications among military leaders.
The Fedayeen's operations were not shared with leaders of conventional forces. Republican Guard divisions were not allowed to communicate with sister units. Commanders could not even get precise maps of terrain near the Baghdad airport because that would identify locations of the Iraqi leader's palaces.
Much of this material is included in a secret history prepared by the American military of how Mr. Hussein and his commanders fought their war. Posing as military historians, American analysts interrogated more than 110 Iraqi officials and military officers, treating some to lavish dinners to pry loose their secrets and questioning others in a detention center at the Baghdad airport or the Abu Ghraib prison. United States military officials view the accounts as credible because many were similar. In addition, more than 600 captured Iraqi documents were reviewed.
Overseen by the Joint Forces Command, an unclassified version of the study is to be made public soon. A classified version was prepared in April 2005. Titled "Iraqi Perspectives on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Major Combat Operations," the study shows that Mr. Hussein discounted the possibility of a full-scale American invasion.
"A few weeks before the attacks Saddam still thought the U.S. would not use ground forces," Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told American interrogators. "He thought they would not fight a ground war because it would be too costly to the Americans."
Despite the lopsided defeat his forces suffered during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Mr. Hussein did not see the United States as his primary adversary. His greater fear was a Shiite uprising, like the one that shook his government after the 1991 war.
His concern for the threats from within interfered with efforts to defend against an external enemy, as was evident during a previously unknown review of military planning in 1995. Taking a page out of the Russian playbook, Iraqi officers suggested a new strategy to defend the homeland. Just as Russia yielded territory to defeat Napoleon and later Hitler's invading army, Iraq would resist an invading army by conducting a fighting retreat. Well-armed Iraqi tribes would be like the Russian partisans. Armored formations, including the Republican Guard, would assume a more modest role.
Mr. Hussein rejected the recommendation. Arming local tribes was too risky for a government that lived in fear of a popular uprising.
While conventional military planning languished, Mr. Hussein's focus on internal threats led to an important innovation: creation of the Fedayeen paramilitary forces. Equipped with AK-47's, rocket propelled grenades and small-caliber weapons, one of their primary roles was to protect Baath Party headquarters and keep the Shiites at bay in the event of a rebellion until more heavily equipped Iraqi troops could crush them.
Controlled by Uday Hussein, a son of the Iraqi leader, the Fedayeen and other paramilitary forces were so vital to the survival of the government that they "drained manpower" that would otherwise have been used by Iraq's army, the classified report says.
Mr. Hussein was also worried about his neighbor to the east. Like the Bush administration, Mr. Hussein suspected Iran of developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Each year the Iraqi military conducted an exercise code-named Golden Falcon that focused on defense of the Iraq-Iran border.
The United States was seen as a lesser threat, mostly because Mr. Hussein believed that Washington could not accept significant casualties. In the 1991 war, the United States had no intention of taking Baghdad. President George H. W. Bush justified the restraint as prudent to avoid the pitfalls of occupying Iraq, but Mr. Hussein concluded that the United States was fearful of the military cost.
Mr. Hussein's main concern about a possible American military strike was that it might prompt the Shiites to take up arms against the government. "Saddam was concerned about internal unrest amongst the tribes before, during or after an attack by the U.S. on Baghdad," Mr. Aziz told his interrogators. Other members of Mr. Hussein's inner circle thought that if the Americans attacked, they would do no more than conduct an intense bombing campaign and seize the southern oil fields.
Steps to Avoid War
Mr. Hussein did take some steps to avoid provoking war, though. While diplomatic efforts by France, Germany and Russia were under way to avert war, he rejected proposals to mine the Persian Gulf, fearing that the Bush administration would use such an action as an excuse to strike, the Joint Forces Command study noted.
In December 2002, he told his top commanders that Iraq did not possess unconventional arms, like nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, according to the Iraq Survey Group, a task force established by the C.I.A. to investigate what happened to Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Hussein wanted his officers to know they could not rely on poison gas or germ weapons if war broke out. The disclosure that the cupboard was bare, Mr. Aziz said, sent morale plummeting.
To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.
Mr. Hussein's compliance was not complete, though. Iraq's declarations to the United Nations covering what stocks of illicit weapons it had possessed and how it had disposed of them were old and had gaps. And Mr. Hussein would not allow his weapons scientists to leave the country, where United Nations officials could interview them outside the government's control.
Seeking to deter Iran and even enemies at home, the Iraqi dictator's goal was to cooperate with the inspectors while preserving some ambiguity about its unconventional weapons — a strategy General Hamdani, the Republican Guard commander, later dubbed in a television interview "deterrence by doubt."
That strategy led to mutual misperception. When Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed the Security Council in February 2003, he offered evidence from photographs and intercepted communications that the Iraqis were rushing to sanitize suspected weapons sites. Mr. Hussein's efforts to remove any residue from old unconventional weapons programs were viewed by the Americans as efforts to hide the weapons. The very steps the Iraqi government was taking to reduce the prospect of war were used against it, increasing the odds of a military confrontation.
Even some Iraqi officials were impressed by Mr. Powell's presentation. Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaish, who oversaw Iraq's military industry, thought he knew all the government's secrets. But Bush administration officials were so insistent that he began to question whether Iraq might have prohibited weapons after all. "I knew a lot, but wondered why Bush believed we had these weapons," he told interrogators after the war, according to the Iraq Survey Group report.
Guarding Against Revolt
As the war approached, Mr. Hussein took steps to suppress an uprising. Fedayeen paramilitary units were dispersed throughout the south, as were huge stashes of small-caliber weapons. Mr. Hussein divided Iraq into four sectors, each led by a member of his inner circle. The move was intended to help the government fend off challenges to its rule, including an uprising or rioting.
Reflecting Mr. Hussein's distrust of his own military, regular army troops were deployed near Kurdistan or close to the Iranian border, far from the capital. Of the Iraqi Army, only the Special Republican Guard was permitted inside Baghdad. And an array of restraints were imposed that made it hard for Iraq's military to exercise command.
Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, Mr. Hussein's defense minister who had distinguished himself during the Iran-Iraq war, held an important title, for example. But he had little influence. "I effectively became an assistant to Qusay, only collecting and passing information," he told interrogators, referring to a son of Mr. Hussein.
To protect Baghdad, Mr. Hussein selected Brig. Gen. Barzan abd al-Ghafur Solaiman Majid al-Tikriti, a close cousin, to head the Special Republican Guard even though he had no field experience, had failed military staff college and was a known drunkard. Asked about his military skills, General Tai laughed out loud. Even so, the Special Republican Guard commander was closely monitored by Mr. Hussein's agents and later told American interrogators that he had held the most dangerous job in Iraq. "They watched you go to the bathroom," he said. "They listened to everything you said and bugged everything."
Once the war began, field commanders faced numerous restrictions, including bans on communications, to minimize chances of a coup.
"We had to use our own reconnaissance elements to know where the other Iraqi units were located on our flanks," the commander of the First Republican Guard Corps told interrogators. "We were not allowed to communicate with our sister units."
Even as the Americans were rapidly moving north, Mr. Hussein did not appreciate the seriousness of the threat. While the Fedayeen had surprised the allied forces with their fierce resistance and sneak attacks, Iraqi conventional forces were overpowered.
At an April 2 meeting, General Hamdani, the commander of the Second Republic Guard Corps, correctly predicted that the American Army planned to drive through the Karbala Gap on the way to Baghdad. General Tai, the Iraqi defense minister, was not persuaded. He argued that the attack in the south was a trick and that the main American offensive would come from the west, perhaps abetted by the Israelis. That day, Mr. Hussein ordered the military to prepare for an American attack from Jordan.
As a sop, General Hamdani received a company of Special Operations forces as reinforcements and was finally granted permission to destroy the Euphrates River bridge southwest of Baghdad. But it was too little, too late.
By April 6, the day after the first United States Army attack on Baghdad, the so-called thunder run, Mr. Hussein's desperate predicament began to sink in. At a safe house in the Mansour district of Baghdad, he met with his inner circle and asked Mr. Aziz to read an eight-page letter.
Mr. Hussein showed no emotion as the letter was read. But Mr. Aziz later told interrogators that the Iraqi leader seemed to be a defeated man, and the letter appeared to be his farewell. His rule was coming to an end.
"We didn't believe it would go all the way to Baghdad," a senior Republican Guard staff officer later told his interrogators. "We thought the coalition would go to Basra, maybe to Amara, and then the war would end."
Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
and BERNARD E. TRAINOR
As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the American advance.
But Saddam Hussein and his small circle of aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war. Convinced that the main danger to his government came from within, Mr. Hussein had sought to keep Iraq's bridges intact so he could rush troops south if the Shiites got out of line.
General Hamdani got little in the way of additional soldiers, and the grudging permission to blow up the bridge came too late. The Iraqis damaged only one of the two spans, and American soldiers soon began to stream across.
The episode was just one of many incidents, described in a classified United States military report, other documents and in interviews, that demonstrate how Mr. Hussein was so preoccupied about the threat from within his country that he crippled his military in fighting the threat from without.
Only one of his defenses — the Saddam Fedayeen — proved potent against the invaders. They later joined the insurgency still roiling Iraq, but that was largely by default, not design.
Ever vigilant about coups and fearful of revolt, Mr. Hussein was deeply distrustful of his own commanders and soldiers, the documents show.
He made crucial decisions himself, relied on his sons for military counsel and imposed security measures that had the effect of hobbling his forces. He did that in several ways:
¶The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense.
¶He put a general widely viewed as an incompetent drunkard in charge of the Special Republican Guard, entrusted to protect the capital, primarily because he was considered loyal.
¶Mr. Hussein micromanaged the war, not allowing commanders to move troops without permission from Baghdad and blocking communications among military leaders.
The Fedayeen's operations were not shared with leaders of conventional forces. Republican Guard divisions were not allowed to communicate with sister units. Commanders could not even get precise maps of terrain near the Baghdad airport because that would identify locations of the Iraqi leader's palaces.
Much of this material is included in a secret history prepared by the American military of how Mr. Hussein and his commanders fought their war. Posing as military historians, American analysts interrogated more than 110 Iraqi officials and military officers, treating some to lavish dinners to pry loose their secrets and questioning others in a detention center at the Baghdad airport or the Abu Ghraib prison. United States military officials view the accounts as credible because many were similar. In addition, more than 600 captured Iraqi documents were reviewed.
Overseen by the Joint Forces Command, an unclassified version of the study is to be made public soon. A classified version was prepared in April 2005. Titled "Iraqi Perspectives on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Major Combat Operations," the study shows that Mr. Hussein discounted the possibility of a full-scale American invasion.
"A few weeks before the attacks Saddam still thought the U.S. would not use ground forces," Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told American interrogators. "He thought they would not fight a ground war because it would be too costly to the Americans."
Despite the lopsided defeat his forces suffered during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Mr. Hussein did not see the United States as his primary adversary. His greater fear was a Shiite uprising, like the one that shook his government after the 1991 war.
His concern for the threats from within interfered with efforts to defend against an external enemy, as was evident during a previously unknown review of military planning in 1995. Taking a page out of the Russian playbook, Iraqi officers suggested a new strategy to defend the homeland. Just as Russia yielded territory to defeat Napoleon and later Hitler's invading army, Iraq would resist an invading army by conducting a fighting retreat. Well-armed Iraqi tribes would be like the Russian partisans. Armored formations, including the Republican Guard, would assume a more modest role.
Mr. Hussein rejected the recommendation. Arming local tribes was too risky for a government that lived in fear of a popular uprising.
While conventional military planning languished, Mr. Hussein's focus on internal threats led to an important innovation: creation of the Fedayeen paramilitary forces. Equipped with AK-47's, rocket propelled grenades and small-caliber weapons, one of their primary roles was to protect Baath Party headquarters and keep the Shiites at bay in the event of a rebellion until more heavily equipped Iraqi troops could crush them.
Controlled by Uday Hussein, a son of the Iraqi leader, the Fedayeen and other paramilitary forces were so vital to the survival of the government that they "drained manpower" that would otherwise have been used by Iraq's army, the classified report says.
Mr. Hussein was also worried about his neighbor to the east. Like the Bush administration, Mr. Hussein suspected Iran of developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Each year the Iraqi military conducted an exercise code-named Golden Falcon that focused on defense of the Iraq-Iran border.
The United States was seen as a lesser threat, mostly because Mr. Hussein believed that Washington could not accept significant casualties. In the 1991 war, the United States had no intention of taking Baghdad. President George H. W. Bush justified the restraint as prudent to avoid the pitfalls of occupying Iraq, but Mr. Hussein concluded that the United States was fearful of the military cost.
Mr. Hussein's main concern about a possible American military strike was that it might prompt the Shiites to take up arms against the government. "Saddam was concerned about internal unrest amongst the tribes before, during or after an attack by the U.S. on Baghdad," Mr. Aziz told his interrogators. Other members of Mr. Hussein's inner circle thought that if the Americans attacked, they would do no more than conduct an intense bombing campaign and seize the southern oil fields.
Steps to Avoid War
Mr. Hussein did take some steps to avoid provoking war, though. While diplomatic efforts by France, Germany and Russia were under way to avert war, he rejected proposals to mine the Persian Gulf, fearing that the Bush administration would use such an action as an excuse to strike, the Joint Forces Command study noted.
In December 2002, he told his top commanders that Iraq did not possess unconventional arms, like nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, according to the Iraq Survey Group, a task force established by the C.I.A. to investigate what happened to Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Hussein wanted his officers to know they could not rely on poison gas or germ weapons if war broke out. The disclosure that the cupboard was bare, Mr. Aziz said, sent morale plummeting.
To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.
Mr. Hussein's compliance was not complete, though. Iraq's declarations to the United Nations covering what stocks of illicit weapons it had possessed and how it had disposed of them were old and had gaps. And Mr. Hussein would not allow his weapons scientists to leave the country, where United Nations officials could interview them outside the government's control.
Seeking to deter Iran and even enemies at home, the Iraqi dictator's goal was to cooperate with the inspectors while preserving some ambiguity about its unconventional weapons — a strategy General Hamdani, the Republican Guard commander, later dubbed in a television interview "deterrence by doubt."
That strategy led to mutual misperception. When Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed the Security Council in February 2003, he offered evidence from photographs and intercepted communications that the Iraqis were rushing to sanitize suspected weapons sites. Mr. Hussein's efforts to remove any residue from old unconventional weapons programs were viewed by the Americans as efforts to hide the weapons. The very steps the Iraqi government was taking to reduce the prospect of war were used against it, increasing the odds of a military confrontation.
Even some Iraqi officials were impressed by Mr. Powell's presentation. Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaish, who oversaw Iraq's military industry, thought he knew all the government's secrets. But Bush administration officials were so insistent that he began to question whether Iraq might have prohibited weapons after all. "I knew a lot, but wondered why Bush believed we had these weapons," he told interrogators after the war, according to the Iraq Survey Group report.
Guarding Against Revolt
As the war approached, Mr. Hussein took steps to suppress an uprising. Fedayeen paramilitary units were dispersed throughout the south, as were huge stashes of small-caliber weapons. Mr. Hussein divided Iraq into four sectors, each led by a member of his inner circle. The move was intended to help the government fend off challenges to its rule, including an uprising or rioting.
Reflecting Mr. Hussein's distrust of his own military, regular army troops were deployed near Kurdistan or close to the Iranian border, far from the capital. Of the Iraqi Army, only the Special Republican Guard was permitted inside Baghdad. And an array of restraints were imposed that made it hard for Iraq's military to exercise command.
Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, Mr. Hussein's defense minister who had distinguished himself during the Iran-Iraq war, held an important title, for example. But he had little influence. "I effectively became an assistant to Qusay, only collecting and passing information," he told interrogators, referring to a son of Mr. Hussein.
To protect Baghdad, Mr. Hussein selected Brig. Gen. Barzan abd al-Ghafur Solaiman Majid al-Tikriti, a close cousin, to head the Special Republican Guard even though he had no field experience, had failed military staff college and was a known drunkard. Asked about his military skills, General Tai laughed out loud. Even so, the Special Republican Guard commander was closely monitored by Mr. Hussein's agents and later told American interrogators that he had held the most dangerous job in Iraq. "They watched you go to the bathroom," he said. "They listened to everything you said and bugged everything."
Once the war began, field commanders faced numerous restrictions, including bans on communications, to minimize chances of a coup.
"We had to use our own reconnaissance elements to know where the other Iraqi units were located on our flanks," the commander of the First Republican Guard Corps told interrogators. "We were not allowed to communicate with our sister units."
Even as the Americans were rapidly moving north, Mr. Hussein did not appreciate the seriousness of the threat. While the Fedayeen had surprised the allied forces with their fierce resistance and sneak attacks, Iraqi conventional forces were overpowered.
At an April 2 meeting, General Hamdani, the commander of the Second Republic Guard Corps, correctly predicted that the American Army planned to drive through the Karbala Gap on the way to Baghdad. General Tai, the Iraqi defense minister, was not persuaded. He argued that the attack in the south was a trick and that the main American offensive would come from the west, perhaps abetted by the Israelis. That day, Mr. Hussein ordered the military to prepare for an American attack from Jordan.
As a sop, General Hamdani received a company of Special Operations forces as reinforcements and was finally granted permission to destroy the Euphrates River bridge southwest of Baghdad. But it was too little, too late.
By April 6, the day after the first United States Army attack on Baghdad, the so-called thunder run, Mr. Hussein's desperate predicament began to sink in. At a safe house in the Mansour district of Baghdad, he met with his inner circle and asked Mr. Aziz to read an eight-page letter.
Mr. Hussein showed no emotion as the letter was read. But Mr. Aziz later told interrogators that the Iraqi leader seemed to be a defeated man, and the letter appeared to be his farewell. His rule was coming to an end.
"We didn't believe it would go all the way to Baghdad," a senior Republican Guard staff officer later told his interrogators. "We thought the coalition would go to Basra, maybe to Amara, and then the war would end."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)