Deep Blade Journal

We believe what follows is unique in the blog world. It is a cooperative guest post on election 2004 around the theme “There is a Choice”. This effort was organized by our friend Bob Whitson, a Colorado environmental news blogger who performs an extraordinarily valuable service by tracking the Bush Administration’s assault on the environment in Howling At A Waning Moon.

Deep Blade Journal endorses Kerry.

Most of us favor John Kerry in this election. Read on for eloquent expressions of vital perspectives on this election you will find only in these blogs….

There is a Choice

Eleven bloggers from around the world agreed to write a short piece and post all the contributions on each of our blogs. You could call it a WWB (world wide blog.) I’m Bob Whitson from Howling At A Waning Moon.

My blog tracks the Bush administration and what it is doing to our environment. There has never been a time in my life when working together was more important. One quote you will read in this post says it all, “We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” — Mark Vonnegut.

For me the choice this November 2nd is as clear as the lakes in the Minnesota Boundary Waters; where 20 years ago my son and I did our coming of age trip. We still talk about that canoe trip as if it were last weekend. That’s what the wilderness can do; it can create a touchstone for your life.

I first learned about taking care of this earth from my dad. In the 1950’s, growing up in west Texas, my dad worked for the Texas Highway Department. He designed and built the highway system throughout that part of the world. To this day there is a long curve in an otherwise straight four lane lonesome highway that permits the highway to avoid a grove of rare trees and a small patch of wetland. There’s also a bridge in the curve that allows for the passage of wildlife. My dad did that, in 1950! Always having known about that curve in the highway [He was placing the environment first.] is enough for me–50 years later—to see the clear choice we have this November 2nd. I can tell you without a moment’s hesitation that President Bush is not taking care of our environment.

Now, if you will, let me introduce just a few of the ideas you will find in this cooperative post:

From England an American talks about how the “rest of the world is counting on you” this November 2nd.

One blogger is nervous and even talks about moving to “Mexico, land of fresh, hot tortillas; town squares and mariachis” but that in the end she “won’t do that; the country needs changing.”

Another Blogger quotes an American folk song:

You’ve got to prime the pump.

You must have faith and believe.

You’ve got to give of yourself ‘fore you’re worthy to receive.

Drink all the water you can hold. Wash your face, cool your feet.

But leave the bottle full for others. Thank you kindly, Desert Pete.

One frustrated Blogger talks about the need for Robert Redford and Paul Newman to hold a press conference standing in the middle of the Brazos River (in Texas) while wearing haz-mat suits. 

Another says with determination, “So for me, now is the time: Time to plumb our fundamental values; time to re-evaluate our lives, our time, our energies, and the money we spend doing the things we do; time to connect with others and to re-connect with those left by.”

From all the blogs there seems to be an underlying comment that “Our work does not end when Kerry is elected.”

There’s much much more in this post. Take your time and read it all and think of the others that will come after you—and leave the bottle full. Do what is in your heart this November 2nd.

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1. ::The Thought Offering:“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” — Mark Vonnegut

Maybe you’re not all that impressed with either candidate. Maybe you are disdainful of a process that gives so little choice, where you must vote for the lesser of two evils – where a candidate with your values doesn’t stand a chance. Yes, maybe so.

But… I am an American citizen living in England. Once in a while I e-mail my grandfather in Phoenix an article about the U.S. from The Guardian newspaper over here. The last time I did, he wrote back and said, ‘They sure do spend a lot of time writing about the U.S.!’ And I replied, ‘Grandpa, the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world and the decisions made there affect the lives of everyone all over the world. People are always watching.’ Yes, the whole world really is watching. It’s so cliché, just as it would be cliché for me to add that this cliché has never been more true than it is now. It’s not fair that the rest of the world doesn’t get to vote on who the next world leader will be. It’s not democratic at all, really. Which, I think, does place a large burden on the American people. There are an estimated 195 million eligible U.S. voters in the world – and over 6.3 billion people in the world. So when you place your vote in the ballot box, you are doing so on behalf of over 321 people. You are one of the lucky ones.

The rest of the world does see a difference between the two candidates and they do think Americans have the power to decide who becomes the next president. So a high voter turnout alone will send a strong message to the rest of the world – that we *do*care. We know what is at stake and we care. Hey: the rest of the world is counting on you.

http://www.thoughtoffering.org

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2. From: nervous…marked by strength of thought, feeling, or style

As November 2, 2004 approaches, I am beset with anxiety. What if? What if? I can’t even bring myself to speak my fear.

What would I do were the unthinkable to happen? I’m torn. As Mark Morford in: pointed out in a recent column, geologically speaking, this is a mere blip on the radar. I could do nothing and live in lala happyland (http://www.popcap.com) and try to never pick up another newspaper, turn on the television or heaven forbid, read blogs about anything besides knitting. Xanax is another option.

Or I could move to Mexico, land of fresh, hot tortillas; town squares and mariachis. Or perhaps I will put on my best suit and join the Republican Party. I could live out every Jane Bond fantasy that I’ve ever had.

I won’t do any of those things.

The country needs changing, folks, regardless of the outcome of this election. We have choices about how we will go about doing that. My hope for the future is that after the election, people don’t throw down their hats, and say “Th-th-that’s all folks.” Let’s keep on with our agitating and advocating, and perhaps, just maybe, something wonderful will happen.

http://nervous.typepad.com

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3. From: Will Kirkland at The Ruth Group

Why Am I Doing This?

A friend of mine asked me: Why are you doing this? — meaning blogging and all the hours spent, looking, writing and posting.  He asked me if I would share the answer with others. I will.

The election or non election of John Kerry would not have been enough for me to have given over a major part of my waking hours to do this work.  The motivator is much stronger.

When the bombs are falling it is too late to cry out No War!  The time to stop a war has long gone.  The time to stop Hitler was in 1932 when he was elected, or ‘33 or ‘34.  By August 1939 it was too late.

The time to stop the massacre of over 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in the summer of 1975 may have been during Tito’s time, but certainly began two years before the massacres when the city was declared a safe haven.

The time to stop the Rwandan massacres of 1994 was when hate radio began filling the air with their cries of “cockroach” and “vermin” about their Tutsi neighbors.

So it is now for us.  All the markers are in place; the future is predictable. Hate radio fills the air.  Our public forums have turned to public spectacles.  A small war in Iraq is preparing many, many for war, on many sides.  The gun and scimitar is reached for before a word is heard.  Fear is in the air and yes, the delicious thrill of sacrifice and killing. 

The Republican Party, the party of isolationism, of fiscal probity, of order enough to pursue accumulation of wealth, has been taken over by the party of intolerance, of rock-bottom beliefs, of moral certainty, of Our God and Our Empire.  [I didn’t make these phases up. You can hear them from appalled Republicans.] 

We have been told and we have been shown what lies ahead for foreigner and citizen alike.

The Republican Party defeated or not in the coming election, will continue its present course, like a terrible gathering river of mud, sweeping people into it, destroying those who oppose it.  If the GOP presidential candidate is defeated on November 2 it will be harder for it to pick up speed.   If he is victorious it will gather more force.

Now is the time for all of us who see these things.  Now is the time when our twigs in the stream can alter the flow of the gathering river of mud, more than a stream but less than it seems;  in four years, or eight,  it  may be a mighty flow, with disaster its end.

Now is the time.

Now is the time to block up, divide and divert this river of mud.   The election of John Kerry would be a good log, around which some will be able to gather.   That victory deserves all our attention. Now. But win or lose, the river of mud will continue its downward course.  So for me, now is the time:   Time to plumb our fundamental values; time to re-evaluate our lives, our time, our energies, and the money we spend doing the things we do; time to connect with others and to re-connect with those left by.  We cannot defeat disaster. We can only turn it aside by working with the tools, the intelligence, the passion that we have.  We can build a better way.

Will Kirkland

http://www.cpe-sf.com/ruthgroup/

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4. From: How to Save the World

There’s an old American folk song called Desert Pete, written by Billy Edd Wheeler and made famous by the Kingston Trio in the early 1960s. The song tells the story of a thirsty traveler in the desert who comes upon a water pump with a note from “Desert Pete”, and a jar of water. The note warns that if the finder drinks the water instead of using it to prime the pump, the pump won’t work and from then on everyone who comes upon the pump will be left thirsty. The Chorus goes like this:

You’ve got to prime the pump. You must have faith and believe.

You’ve got to give of yourself ‘fore you’re worthy to receive.

Drink all the water you can hold. Wash your face, cool your feet.

But leave the bottle full for others. Thank you kindly, Desert Pete.

This is the choice we face today, and how America votes on November 2nd will tell a lot about our character, and how we would have responded if we came upon Desert Pete’s note. George Bush is an advocate of privatizing, developing and commercializing our environment for all it’s worth, without care or consideration for the consequence or the legacy he is leaving for our children and grandchildren. As a result, we are running out of everything, including water: wilderness, biodiversity, old growth forests, wetlands, oil, stratospheric ozone, clean air and water and food, and thousands of species of animals and birds. George Bush’s answer is to drink from the bottle now. John Kerry has a strong record of environmental protection, and cares deeply about the natural legacy we will leave for future generations. John Kerry will leave the bottle full for others, for our children. When you vote, please think of your children, and remember Desert Pete’s note. You have a choice.

Dave Pollard

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/; dave.pollard@sympatico.ca

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5. From:MakesMeRalph

There is a choice and it is quite simple. It isn’t really about John Kerry. This election is a referendum on George Bush’s presidency.Economically, it is a disaster. From a foreign policy perspective, it is a disaster.From a civil liberties perspective, it is a disaster. Fewer jobs, more uninsured, higher tuition, more abortions, higher deficits, more dead children, less international respect, more maimed soldiers. The only measure by which this presidency can be judged a success is Halliburton’s stock value, which has more than doubled since September 11th. If you judge your vote on only one issue, let it be the success of this administration over the last four years.

http://makesmeralph.typepad.com/

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6. From: Coyote Gulch A weblog for the dazed and confused

I’m asking all registered voters to vote this election. You have the choice to do so or not.

Quoting Donna Redwing:

“I know that most or all of you would not dream of not voting.  However, I am sending this to you in the hopes that you might pass it along -particularly to young women who may not realize fully how difficult getting the right to vote was for our mothers and grandmothers.” I think we need the wisdom you can bring to the election. Please, if you’re registered and haven’t already voted, you can still vote early for a couple of days. After that get to your polling place on Tuesday. Email me if you need a ride.”

John Orr

http://radio.weblogs.com/0101170/

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7. From: two fish

Jake Gittes: “Why do you need it? You’ve got enough money.”

Noah Cross: “The future, Mr. Gittes. The future.” [Chinatown]

The root of democracy is demos which means “common people:” that’s us. We are each uncommon, unique individuals, with one thing in common: our democracy, which is based upon our active citizenship. Please vote this November, to influence our common will. I’ve been contemplating the costs of the Iraq war, considering whether it was just. There are now some 15,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and over 1000 dead and 7,000 injured American troops, of which 4,194 have been wounded so seriously they cannot return to active duty.

Kofi Annan has said that the Coalition’s war in Iraq “was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal.” The reputation of the United States for fairness and justice has been defamed by recent events in the eyes of the international community. And we’ve been losing our most precious democratic commodity: citizen’s rights, as Amnesty International recently reported.

As well, the issue of global warming is not being confronted by the current administration. As was reported recently, “The planet’s getting hotter, ecosystems are going haywire, government scientists know it – and still the president denies there’s a problem.”

I don’t know about you, but it feels good to act as a citizen—to make one’s will known, in public concert. Although my vote may be more of a “no” to the present administration than a “yes” to the next, the sense of fresh air is hard to miss.

http://iyume.com/blog/

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8. From: For the Record, Reality-based information, opinion, and activism concerning national and international affairs

Bush’s holding on to power for another term would seal the corporate takeover of the US. A long-established Republican goal is to destroy the federal government. The strategy is to destroy Social Security and Medicare. To most people, these programs exhaust the happy face of the government, and a government with all unhappy face would have no legitimacy, and therefore no power. Corporations would be the only powerful institutions remaining, and would run amok. Suskind’s Times Magazine article reported Bush’s declaration that “privatizing” (that is, destroying) Social Security would be the first move of the next term, and there’s no reason to suppose anything would block him. Checkmate. While electing Kerry won’t win the game, it will have the significant virtue of keeping the game going.

http://wilsonhellie.typepad.com/

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9. From: winding road in urban area “What you find hateful do not do to another. This is the whole of the Law. Everything else is commentary.”

Speaking from the gutter that is our political world, Tom DeLay said this week, “I’ve never had a campaign where the entire nation has tried to destroy my name. They are going after me in the most personal and vindictive way. It’s gutter politics.”

“I am effective and that’s why they are after me,” DeLay said. “I am passionate and aggressive about what I do.”

They can’t do it alone. Are you passionately, aggressively doing your part to destroy the political career of Tom DeLay & George W. Bush?

According to the Houston Chronicle, “In recent weeks, the House ethics committee admonished DeLay for offering a political favor to a fellow Republican lawmaker if he voted for a Medicare prescription drug bill; for perceived links of political donations to legislation; and for asking federal aviation officials to help search for Democratic Texas state representatives who fled Austin last year during the redistricting fight.

Three of his political associates were recently indicted on charges of illegal political fund raising. DeLay called those charges laughable.”

What is tragic is DeLay, like George W. Bush, considers much of the solid science on global warming and the use of pesticides like DDT laughable. He thinks that his degree from the University of Houston and his career as a pest control businessman puts him in a position to criticize Nobel Prize laureates.

Like Bush who deeply believes that if one is “resolute” in the face of reality, reality will yield, and science will not matter.

This thinking is best exemplified by the word “Truth” encased by the plastic silhouette of a fish eating the plastic silhouette of a fish encasing the word “Darwin” on the bumpers of thousands of Bush and DeLay constituents in Texas.

If John Kerry is able to out-macho George W. Bush and is elected in November, he will have to contend with a House of Representatives led by Tom DeLay. DeLay isn’t going down for his crimes. Not in Texas, not with any jury impaneled here. He must be seen as such a liability that his own party rejects him as their majority leader.

The only way to defeat DeLay is by a national effort to marginalize him. Running a well financed credible candidate who can capitalize off of DeLay’s own maniacal egomania without allowing the press to characterize his candidacy as some romantic lost cause would be nice, but isn’t going to happen in the world of Texas, Inc. Robert Redford and Paul Newman could do advertisements for DeLay’s opponent and it would not defeat DeLay unless Redford or Newman moved to Sugar Land, Texas, ran against DeLay, registered and drove to the polls every unregistered voter in the district and held press conferences wearing haz-mat suits standing in the middle of the Brazos River.  It is going to take more than politics. It is going to take passion about the environment and corporate greed. Until we take back our right to clean air, clean water, and the right to control what we ingest, the Tom DeLay’s and the George W. Bush’s are going to win. Until we demand media coverage of their environmental atrocities, we lose.

http://windingroad.typepad.com/columns/

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10. From: Deep Blade Journal

Kerry for President: More than a dime’s worth of difference

In both 1996 and 2000, I voted for Ralph Nader. I do not regret either of these votes one bit. They were true acts of conscience. This time it’s different…

Long ago, I was a Democratic Party activist, Chair of the largest City Democratic Committee in Maine, and a committed volunteer for progressive Democratic Congressman Tom Andrews who served in the US House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995.  Under Bill Clinton, however, I became severely disaffected from the Democratic administration. A myriad of environmental and human rights insults disguised in a mix of genuine and disingenuous positive actions marked this period. Perhaps the worst are the neo-liberal economic policies, including NAFTA, where worker and environmental protection have been trumped by the needs of wealthy investors.

But this time I do not support Nader. I am back in the Democratic fold. There will be more than a dime’s worth of difference between an election result awarding George Bush another four-year term versus one turning the U.S. presidency over to John Kerry. Foremost is the incredible harm Bush will do with a perceived mandate. Ratification of the last four years of lies, war, and terror-inspiring atrocities committed against detainees will usher in unimaginable horrors on multiple fronts. The Bush regime will rule with monarchical zeal and false religion previously unknown in US history. To see what’s ahead on the environmental front, one need only look as far as the brazen Bush cancellation of Clinton-era rules for cleaning up highly toxic mercury emissions from aging power plants — along with his audacity to tell the total lie that the air and water are cleaner now than four years ago. That is but one example among thousands. The only way to deny him ratification is to vote for John Kerry.

Is this an "anybody-but-Bush" (ABB) position? Sort of. Unlike Ralph Nader and some other Kerry critics, I feel that ABB is totally justified.

Furthermore, I am not nearly as pessimistic about Kerry as are some of these critics. I hold some reasons to hope that a Kerry Administration will be humane and progressive in a way unseen in America for a long time. Kerry/Edwards wants to preserve and strengthen international law, re-enter the Kyoto negotiation process, regulate greenhouse gas emissions, enact big changes in the Patriot Act, protect American jobs, promote a higher minimum wage, reduce corporate welfare, halt media consolidation, and a put a true emphasis on energy conservation, energy efficiency, and alternative energy. I am still very, very concerned about how Kerry would conduct the Terror War — I have written frequently that he has promised to kill, and kill, and kill. But my hope is that once he gets past the reactionary politics Bush has inspired, his Terror War positions will moderate. Maybe I dream, but along with this I see in him a desire to back the United States out of Iraq.

Kerry promises never again to commit US troops in a Mideast war over oil. Of all he says, this position I like most. There are reasons to question whether he will stay true to this position. But for now I take him at his word. Deep Blade Journal will work hard to hold him to this promise. Our work does not end when Kerry is elected.

My friend Jonathan has produced another entry for the cowboy letters. This one’s a tour de force. It’s too long for the commenting system, so I will post it below. Everyone in America with the slightest inclination to search our souls about who we are and what we’re doing ought to read this.

And I want to refer to a couple of related items I’ve read in the last few days that seem to be related to what Jonathan says, especially so since in a post to come, Deep Blade Journal will be endorsing the “imperfect” messenger of peace, John Kerry, for president.

The first is Alexander Cockburn’s excoriation of “Kerrycrats” deluded into thinking electing Kerry would be a move toward world peace. Cockburn writes,

voting for John Kerry now is like voting for LBJ in 1964 with full precognition of what he was going to do in Vietnam for the next four years. By all means vote for the guy if you think your ballot will really count in keeping Ralph Nader out of the White House, but don’t do so with the notion that all along John Kerry has been holding a secret withdrawal plan close to his chest and that his first three months in office will see the US Marines haul down the colors from the US embassy in Baghdad, scoop Ambassador Negroponte off the roof and head for home.

That’s not what Democrats do when they get into office. When they settle down in the White House and put up the portraits of Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman in the Oval Office, they settle down to fight the usual good fight of all Democratic presidents, which is battling the slur that they are wimps, and less than real men.

The other is an item from The Angry Arab highlighting an endorsement of John Kerry by the National Jewish Democratic Council. Please read through the endorsement and tell me you don’t think Jonathan has some really good points about treatment of Arabs as something less than human — as violent insects worthy of summary squashing. (”FACT: John Kerry has clearly supported Israel’s right to target Hamas leadership for assassination.”) Might as well call them “cockroaches”, as the truculent, extreme-right AM-radio host Michael Savage regularly does.

Along with that, we who endorse Kerry as the only way to prevent ratification of the horrors of Bush — which is the main reason Deep Blade endorses Kerry — must heed what Cockburn says and afford no honeymoon for Kerry by assuming a new administration will immediately begin working for peace, or ever begin so, without strong pressure. Jonathan implies that this kind of pressure is weak in our society, and that most middle Americans actually react with quite the opposite impulse. Yes. Can’t argue with that for now. But we don’t stop trying.

Despite what Jonathan says, we should hope that some moderation becomes possible if we can enter a Kerry era. We have to have that hope at this moment, don’t we? Most Americans, for all their reactive jingoism, deep down have decent hearts that usually are reachable with the right communication. The media fog makes this very, very difficult. That’s why people with a peace orientation need to continue expanding the excellent alternative media that we already have right now! Look at the left pane of this blog. All is not hopeless!

We know moderation never will be possible with Bush in office. This is where Cockburn fails. “Bush” does not appear anywhere in his piece, and he writes as if Kerry offers nothing redeeming, no peace perspective, and no progressive values. This clearly is false, as Rodger Payne well articulates.

So, we know what we are doing with Kerry. As Jonathan writes, we know the picture is not pretty. Relations and conditions on this planet hang by fine threads that may or may not into the future continue supporting civilization itself. Maybe people do not understand just how tenuous these threads are, how solutions other than violent ones are possible, or even the true results and backlashes of the violent solutions now being pursued.

Thomas Friedman recently wrote about the perceptions of “JIA” in the Arab/Muslim world:

Our communications in Iraq have been so inept since we arrived, many Iraqis still don’t know who America is or why it came. But such talk is also indicative of a trend in the Arab media, after a century of Arab-Jewish strife, where if you want to brand someone as illegitimate, just call him a “Jew.” Indeed, this trend has widened since 9/11. Now you find a steadily rising perception across the Arab-Muslim world that the great enemy of Islam is JIA - “Jews, Israel and America,” all lumped together in a single threat.

This wider trend has been fanned by Arab satellite TV stations, which deliberately show split-screen images of Israelis bashing Palestinians and U.S. forces bashing the Iraqi insurgents.

While Friedman reduces this to a communication problem, Jonathan tells us that something much deeper is happening. Americans have images of aircraft striking buildings in our minds, while Muslims see JIA crushing their children with bullets and aerial-launched 500-lb bombs. Everybody’s perception of what it means to be human is under assault, and vengeance becomes the dominant motive behind all action.

These are tough issues. Surprises are in store for us, as escalation is sure to occur in the context of increased competition for global resources, especially oil. Jonathan’s letter follows…

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 14:55 -0500 From: Jonathan Subject: Re: Cowboys continued

Hi Jeff and Eric,

Thanks for your long, thoughtful reply. As I re-read my original comments to you, I realized that they too were written in a Sox-induced haze. I don’t know that I have the time to totally re-write them — I too have papers to grade, and also a presentation to prepare, and Game 4 is tonight. But I would like to clarify a few things.

I didn’t mean to go as far as you seem to have thought I did in implying a takeover by fundamentalists in the Islamic world - although it is interesting listening to Ben talk about what his Islamic Studies prof has to say about the internal dynamics of discussion right now in the Islamic world, even the intellectual community. US actions appear to make it very difficult for moderates to have any credibility. But let’s keep going there. Exactly the same dynamic is at play in the US — “terrorists” or freedom fighters or radical islamists or whatever you care to call them (and we can’t call them all the same thing) undermine US “moderates” by their actions. I call for understanding them as people and then they behead someone and, for most Americans, all discussion is off.

Or, more properly understood, our response to their actions undermines the discussion of moderates. First, it needs to be recognized that the American public’s response to what is happening is first and foremost an emotional one, not a policy response, a logical response, whatever. It is anger, which is a mask for fear and confusion. Even Kerry, if his publicists are to be believed, first reacted with anger to 9/11. And for the most part we have stayed in that state ever since. (There is a fascinating song by John Farrell, who was biking across New England on 9/11 and the aftermath, who says that at first people reacted with profound sadness and a joining together in grief, and it was the politicians who surfaced, and then channeled the anger. But wherever it came from, it’s what we’ve got now.) This anger has been the defining characteristic of the public response ever since and has framed the debate and frames our policy choices.

But we must go a step further. The anger led to a very particular conclusion — that the people who did these acts (and who continue to do acts that leave most Americans horrified, confused, and fearful) are “evil,” that they live to kill, that they have, in essence, no human soul. Now, this is interesting considering Bush’s theology - hate the sin, love the sinner doesn’t seem to apply here. But the consequence is that the “enemy” is less than human. Non-human. Perhaps even anti-human. Listen to Bush talk about the “terrorists.” Listen to the words he uses to describe them, and how often he does so. Now, we can argue about lots of elements of Iraq policy, but his portrayal of them as being unhuman is not on the table as negotiable - it is widely accepted by all sides, not directly, but implicitly. Some additional evidence. Remember back to post-9/11 and the cartoon portrayals of Al Qaeda and the Taliban as vermin? Around here anyway, the going political cartoon image was that of a rat in a cave. What do we do with rats? Or remember Susan Sontag’s attempt to think about why this might have happened in the pages of the New Yorker? Never have I seen any essay so roundly, so violently, condemned. These are not people whose motives we need to think about. These are vermin, anti-life, what is it Bush says, “they love death.”

Now I don’t know a lot about the Islamic world so I’m not going to say much about that side of things. But my limited information suggests that our actions are becoming widely seen there as being as despicable as we see whoever the hell the opposition is in Iraq. And at least among Al Qaeda, we are as much caricatures of human beings as we make of them.

So what are the consequences of this? Here is where I turn to the Israel-Palestinian example. In both lands the possibility of peacemaking seems to have been destroyed, for various reasons perhaps. But they are locked into place by a belief that the other is some sort of vermin. I don’t know if they use that imagery. However, each action by the other both re-confirms that anti-human portrayal of the opposition and justifies the next atrocity by their own side, which of course confirms for the other side how they’re nonhuman and justifies their atrocity. A never-ending spiral of violence and, and, a never-ending spiral of confirmations of their own rightness and the other’s implacable evil. In this perception of the situation, the only ways out would appear to be to kill all the others, or perhaps to build a really, really big wall.

Note also that both sides in the “global war on terror” or the “jihad” or whatever identify very strongly with their counterpart in that struggle - many Americans say we should be like the Israelis, and many in the Middle East appear to be coming to see themselves as “we are all Palestinians.”

This is the “death dance” of which I wrote. It’s not just about Iraq, it’s the whole dynamic of the actors and the persuadables in each region. Is that a “clash of civilizations?” I don’t know about that - although I would say that Lewis and Hitchens and Huntington’s portrayals of the dynamics of that clash are laughably racist. But it is two societies, each very complex, but each being driven by an intertwining and self-perpetuating dynamic towards greater and greater caricaturization of the other , and thereby greater and greater willingness to use the most horrific ends towards each other. Look at what the Israelis and Palestinians are able to do to each other now. And look what we’re able to do to “terrorists/vermin.” The scariest thing about Abu Ghraib is not that it happened, it is the acceptance of it. Why was it so possible to accept it? Partly because we are living in fear, and people will do damn near anything to keep themselves alive. But partly because the other side has been dehumanized.

It is classic conflict escalation. Go to Civil Disobedience Training 101 and learn about how conflict escalates. That’s exactly where we are.

So here I place [this] quote from Aaron Miller about the current state of degradation between Israelis and Palestinians: “He who is wet is not afraid of the rain.” Both sides are ready to dish out and subsequently absorb as much pain and suffering as need be because that is that state in which they are already living.

Are we headed there?

And until somehow this living out of anger and dehumanization is either soothed or challenged, the policy options will be few. Notice that Kerry can’t even say that we need to improve relations with the Islamic world. Sucking up to terrorists? You pointed this out too Jeff.

Jeff, by the way, I have absolutely no disagreement with your argument in support of Kerry. I’ll vote for him, I’m working for him, we’re … out canvassing the streets of St Cloud.

But let’s go back to what Kerry can and can’t say. This is not just an electoral politics problem. This same dynamic will constrain his choices if/when he gets elected. His actions will be constrained by this world of perceptions. He must know that there’s no resolution to any of this as long as we are blind adherents to the Israeli Likkud line. But he also knows that he can’t sustain any other policy politically, and not just because of the Jewish lobby in the US. ALso because Americans have come to identify themselves with the Israelis, that the Israelis wear the white hats and those dirty Palestinians wear the black hats. How can you not be on the good guys’ side? THere are real policy consequences to this stunted, deformed intellectual terrain.

And one other thing — if I gave the impression that we need to stay the course in Iraq, I didn’t mean to. Frankly, I don’t know what the hell to do, and here’s why: Morally, no question in my mind that we have a responsibility to the people of Iraq to clean up our mess. Geostrategically, an Iraq in the kind of chaos we’re seeing now is actually much worse than stability under Saddam. So on some level yes, it makes sense to stay.

However, that assumes that by staying we can achieve a better outcome than we can achieve by leaving. I don’t know if that’s true. The dynamic in Iraq appears to be that we are the major trigger of the violence. Geez, I heard an Iraqi feminist a couple of weeks ago on the radio who was appalled by terrorism but insisted on calling the “insurgents” “freedom fighters.” That suggests that as long as we stay, the violence will get worse. Militarily, the only answer to this is actually to escalate, to, say, triple the number of troops. Now I don’t think that’s even militarily possible given the current force structure. But even if it were, I think it’s an open question as to whether we can kill and imprison our way to stability in Iraq. I think the dynamic may be that each of our “successes” breeds at least as many new opponents as we killed. Let’s not even discuss the morality of that option. 40 years ago we tried to destroy villages in order to save them. It doesn’t sit very well.

So in reality the choices are to leave or to see what happens if we escalate. I expect whoever gets elected to escalate — we’ve just seen the start of the killing — because the costs of leaving are clearly incredibly large so “failure is not an option” We might as well try escalating because we don’t know for sure that we’ll lose if we go that route. But I don’t really expect escalating to succeed.

My analysis, for what it’s worth, is that the choice is merely how we want to lose, not whether we lose or not. I have not heard anyone suggest a strategy that actually leads to winning, except that somehow elections in January will be a silver bullet. We’re hoping that if we hang on long enough, stability will come. Where is the sign that this is happening? Will elections in January actually transform things? Will the new government have credibility and power? We’ll kill like hell from Nov. 3 to the Iraqi elections and hope that they transform the landscape. If the elections don’t, we’re sunk. Nobody has any other viable strategy.

So I think it’s entirely possible that we’ll end up leaving just because nothing we do works. Hope I’m wrong, for the sake of the people of Iraq. Will that be a disaster for the people of Iraq, for the Middle East, for America geostrategically? Yes, perhaps even the greatest foreign policy disaster ever to befall this country. But will it be less of a disaster to stay in Iraq until the last Iraqi who isn’t on the CIA payroll is slaughtered?