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CURRENT UPDATES: January 28, 2005
Dear Friends,
CommonDreams.Org once again proves its usefulness with three excellent articles on the Iraqi elections taking place this weekend. Read them as an antidote to Bush’s rhetoric of "we’re watching history being made, history that will change the world" and the one-sided picture being presented in the mainstream media. With an $80 billion "emergency" appropriation for Iraq coming soon to a Congressman near you, and a military budget of an estimated $438 billion or more about to be dropped on Capitol Hill on February 7th, these hardly seem like the best of times for advocates of shifting priorities on security spending. But as Bill Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca's piece in the February 14th issue of The Nation argues, economic and political realities may finally force a real debate on how best to spend the Pentagon's billions. Op-ed versions of this piece available upon request (with appropriate credit to The Nation of course, either "reprinted from," or "adapted from" depending upon how much editing is done). And another link below to an excellent new briefing report from our colleague Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives entitled: "The Iraqi Election 'bait and switch': Faulty Poll Will Not Bring Peace or U.S. Withdrawal." Peace and Hope,
In this update:
There has been much attention given in the run-up to this Sunday’s elections in Iraq regarding how the lack of security in much of the country, combined with the decision by major Sunni Arab parties to boycott in protest of recent U.S. attacks on several major urban areas, could thereby skew the results and compromise the resulting government’s credibility. Related concerns include the prospect of this election and the government which emerges exacerbating the divisions between Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. Perhaps an even bigger question is what kind of power this new government will actually have. While some Iraqis are cautiously optimistic that the election of a national assembly could bring about real improvements to their lives, they could find themselves very disappointed.....available at CommonDreams.org
By Houzan Mahmoud, Friday, January 28, 2005, Guardian/UK I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting Sunday's elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless? In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.........READ MORE ONLINE AT CommonDreams.org
III. IRAQ’S NON-ELECTION By Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood,January 28, 2005 Predictably, the U.S. news media are full of discussion and debate about this weekend’s election in Iraq. Unfortunately, virtually all the commentary misses a simple point: There will be no "election" on Jan. 30 in Iraq, if that term is meant to suggest an even remotely democratic process. Many Iraqis casting votes will be understandably grateful for the opportunity. But the conditions under which those votes will be cast -- as well as the larger context -- bear more similarity to a slowly unfolding hostage tragedy than an exercise in democracy. We refer not to the hostages taken by various armed factions in Iraq, but the way in which U.S. policymakers are holding the entire Iraqi population hostage to U.S. designs for domination of the region. This is an election that U.S. policymakers were forced to accept and now hope can entrench their power, not displace it. They seek not an election that will lead to a U.S. withdrawal, but one that will bolster their ability to make a case for staying indefinitely.............READ MORE ONLINE AT CommonDreams.org Additional Resources:
Dahr Jamail has been reporting from Iraq for the last eight months, and is one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches. His "What Iraqis Think of the Elections," is online at www.DahrJamailIraq.com
IV. BATTLING THE PENTAGON by Michelle Ciarrocca and William D. Hartung, The Nation, February 14, 2005 On issues of war and peace, progressives should take heart from the fact that no matter how aggressive the Bush Administration's intentions may be, its ability to carry them out is likely to be severely circumscribed in a second term. In the wake of the November elections, arms control and peace funding for research on new nuclear weapons, including $27.6 million for the macho-sounding Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. The leader in this effort was Republican Representative David Hobson. In another promising sign, the Pentagon took advantage of the slow news week between Christmas and New Year's to leak its plans to cut $30 billion from more than a dozen weapons programs in the next five years. The cuts amount to only a little over 1 percent of the $2.5 trillion planned for the Pentagon's total budget over the next five years, and some represent little more than a budget shell game; as Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress points out, the Pentagon plans to buy one Virginia-class attack submarine per year for the next five years instead of two, but it still plans to buy the same total number. And other proposed cuts may be stopped in their tracks by the arms lobby, once interested members of Congress from Texas, Georgia and beyond team up with contractors like Lockheed Martin to save home-state systems like the F-22 fighter and the C-130J transport plane. But even allowing for these limitations, the fact that the Pentagon felt compelled to offer any cuts at all provides an important opportunity to debate national security priorities. Budget deficits are running at $300 billion to $400 billion per year, even before accounting for the $2 trillion, ten-year cost of the plan for partial privatization of Social Security. And there is little possibility of postponing budget tradeoffs by throwing more billions onto our national credit card. As popular domestic programs come onto the budgetary chopping block, everything will be up for debate. An equally urgent task is rethinking how national security funds are spent. Much of what is needed to protect against terrorism can be achieved with relatively small, focused investments within the Pentagon budget. Other security priorities fit outside the Pentagon budget altogether. In a report last year, a task force organized by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Security Policy Working Group advocated a shift of approximately $50 billion per year from big-ticket weapons systems like the F-22 and the V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft to programs for securing "loose" nuclear weapons around the world, for nonmilitary foreign aid and for protecting ports, industrial plants and other domestic facilities against possible terrorist attacks. The report targeted many of the same systems involved in the Pentagon's current cuts, but instead of "shaving" them suggested canceling them. Another area where the Bush Administration may be vulnerable to pressure is in increasing funding to dismantle nuclear weapons and secure or destroy nuclear bomb-making materials in the former Soviet Union. Despite giving rhetorical support for these programs, the Administration's 2005 budget requested only $919 million for Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programs to carry out this important work, $72 million less than the year before. By contrast, the Administration is still lavishing $10 billion per year on a missile defense program that couldn't even get an interceptor missile out of its silo in a test in early December. The elephant in the room in any discussion of US military policy is Iraq. The Administration will soon put forward an $80 billion supplemental request for funds for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with another funding request later this year. This will be on top of the FY 2006 Pentagon budget, estimated at $418 billion, plus $20 billion for the military activities of the Energy Department (mostly nuclear weapons-related work). Political demands to drastically reduce the US presence or simply get out of Iraq will continue to mount as the costs and casualties do. But even large doses of political and budgetary reality in Iraq will be in competition with the continued taste for grandiosity in the Pentagon, as evidenced by Seymour Hersh's recent revelations of Donald Rumsfeld's covert planning for military strikes on Iranian nuclear/military installations. If Hersh's sources are accurate and these plans move forward, all bets will be off in the face of a reckless adventure whose consequences may take years to play out. All the more reason to speak out now against the notion of covert military action in Iran, and against the idea of empowering the Pentagon to undertake such adventures. To view this article you must have a subscription to the The Nation
V. "THE IRAQI ELECTION 'BAIT AND SWITCH': FAULTY POLL WILL NOT BRING PEACE OR U.S. WITHDRAWAL by Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives The short version of its findings is that violence, confusion, and structural inequities in the electoral process tilt dramatically in favor of pro-U.S. Iraqi exiles who already have served in the interim government. While there is likely to be more Shiite representation in the new government, it is not likely to be more independent of the U.S. As a result, Iraqis voting in hopes that a new government marks the beginning of the end of the U.S. occupation will soon be resentful, and the hoped for "stability" in the wake of the elections will not come to pass. There are many more rich details that are worth reading in this 24-page analysis. To take just one example, Conetta points out that the pre-election violence is not only an issue for turnout, but a factor favoring status quo candidates. Since existing Iraqi exile politicians who have served in the Allawi government have had far more visibility, organization, and money in the run-up to these elections, they are far more likely to be elected than the huge numbers of other candidates and parties who have been handicapped by their inability to carry out full-scale grassroots strategies in the climate of violence now prevailing. Add to this the continued presence of powerful U.S. advisors in key ministries post-election, the presence of 150,000 U.S. troops, the continued U.S. "power of the purse" over billions in reconstruction aid, the $30 million or more the U.S. has funneled to favored candidates, and the odds against an even marginally independent government that is viewed as legitimate by most Iraqis over even the medium term become clear. We're not doing the analysis justice. Read it yourself!
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