The Daily Grasshopper

When my siblings and I were kids, one of our favorite things to listen to was a Bill Cosby record that our dad owned called "Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow. Right!" There was a routine on there called "Toss of the Coin," which I haven't been able to get out of my head these past few days. Here's how it went (I found this on the 'Net, though there was a time when I could recite many of Cosby's routines, including this one, by heart, which provided hours of wholesome entertainment on long car trips to Florida - but that's another story):

"General Cornwallis of the British, this is General Washington of the Continental Army. General Washington of the Continental Army, this is General Cornwallis of the British. If you'd shake hands, gentlemen. O.K., British call the toss. British called heads, it is tails. General Washington, what are you gonna do? General Washington says his troops will dress however they wish, in any color, in buckskins and coonskin caps, and hide behind the rocks and trees and shoot out at random. British, you will all wear bright red, all shoot at the same time, and march forward in a straight line."

You see where I'm going with this, don't you? The point was made in an article in today's New York Times: "Iraqis do not play by the rules of West Point and Sandhurst" (NYT, "Iraqis Learn The Lessons Of How U.S. Fights Wars," 3/27/03, p. B7). At one time in our history, when we were the brave revolutionaries resisting the Empire on our way to independence, guerrilla warfare wasn't just a necessity, it was downright heroic. Now that WE'RE the Empire, and a totally outgunned Third World army is using the very same tactics against us, well... suddenly, it's an outrage. Mind you, I'm not condoning the Iraqi military's decision to adopt irregular tactics. It's probably going to get a lot of Iraqi civilians killed. But what do we expect them to do, when confronting the greatest military power the world has ever known? Stand out in the middle of the desert and wait for the U.S./U.K. tanks to run them over?

The Times article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27ASSE.html

I'm not the only one who thinks the Bush administration badly miscalculated the level of anti-American sentiment in Iraq. There was, of course, the Syrian Information Minister that I quoted in yesterday's installment of the "Daily Grasshopper." But there's also an American group of retired intelligence officials, called "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPS), who have been issuing statements about this administration's misguided plans in Iraq for a while now. Here's their latest:

http://www.counterpunch.org/vips03152003.html

Here's what they wrote, in an open letter to Bush, on February 7, 2003:

"We are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond violations of Resolution 1441, and beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."

The entire letter is archived at the Common Dreams site:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0207-04.htm

While we're on the subject of unintended consequences, there's this little teaser on the front page of today's "A Nation at War" section in the Times:

"Deciding on the Air War
As the war enters its second week, planners face a decision: keep an emphasis on limited, precise airstrikes or turn to more indiscriminate heavy bombing in an effort to hasten victory. PAGE B7"

When you turn to page B7, you read this headline: "American Planners Stick With the Scalpel Instead of the Bludgeon." The article, by Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, quotes the ubiquitous Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, who claims "We decided we would restrain the use of air power for reasons of humanity and world image." Tell that to the dozen and a half Iraqi civilians who died in Baghdad yesterday. The caption under the photo of the destruction on the front page of today's Times says "the cause of the explosions is in dispute." Well, this whole war is in dispute, as far as I can tell, so what's an unexplained explosion or two? Naturally, the war's planners deny responsibility: "At the Pentagon, officials said they had not directed any bombs or missiles at the neighborhood" (NYT, "Blasts in Baghdad" 3/27/03, p. A1).

The article about the explosion is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27BAGH.html

The media have been quick to adopt the notion of the "scalpel" approach, though. I have been wondering what my friends at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) were up to, since I hadn't heard anything from them since the war started. Needless to say, I shouldn't have worried. They issued this action alert yesterday:

http://www.fair.org/activism/nbc-bombs.html

Here's the important part:

"The Pentagon can be expected to claim that its bombing campaign against Iraq is accurate. But without independent verification, reporters should be skeptical about these claims about "precision" bombing.

Recent reports on NBC News illustrate the opposite tendency. Correspondent Bob Faw (3/20/03) described a Florida town as 'a community which very much endorses that surgical strike against Saddam Hussein.' Anchor Katie Couric (3/21/03) also referred to 'a series of surgical strikes focusing on Iraq's key leadership' during the first two nights of bombing. Anchor Matt Lauer (3/21/03) agreed: 'The people in that city have endured two nights of surgical air strikes and they've no idea what could come tonight.'...

Yet it is plain that some bombs are going off course. Syrian civilians in a bus in northern Iraq were killed in one attack, two cruise missiles have landed in Turkey (Dateline NBC, 3/23/03) and several missiles have reportedly hit southwestern Iran (Washington Post, 3/24/03).

Some reporters in Baghdad have been able to document some of the civilian effects of the bombing; John Daniszewski reported in the Los Angeles Times (3/25/03) that 'the deaths and injuries from misdirected or errant bombs, or from shrapnel and fragments that spray into nearby homes even when the munitions find their intended target, are making more and more people believe that the United States is heedless of the Iraqi public.' Such information gives some needed perspective about claims of 'precision' or 'surgical' bombardment."

The U.S. government's contempt for the rule of international law extends beyond the illegal war being waged in the deserts of the Middle East - which threatens to escalate dramatically if the "scalpel" is laid down in favor of the "bludgeon." On the front of the "Business Day" section of the Times today, you can read this headline: "W.T.O. Rules Against U.S. On Steel Tariff." Those who have been reading these essays all along will recall that I've pointed to the Bush administration's decision to impose tariffs on imported steel as just one in a long list of cases where the U.S. government expects other countries to do as we say, and not as we do. Though the World Trade Organization ruled against the Bush policy, "the administration said it would appeal the decision," according to the article. The principles of "free trade," as understood by the world's most powerful government - Republicans and Democrats alike - are quite clearly laid out in the piece:

"When administration officials imposed the steel tariffs they said they were legal under provisions in the world trading rules allowing a response to a surge of steel imports.

The tariffs were meant to help the American steel industry find its footing in the global market. American trade officials said today that the strategy worked.

'The domestic steel industry has undergone an unprecedented level of consolidation and restructuring over the last year that have made it more competitive,' said one American trade official, who insisted on not being identified.

Democratic lawmakers criticized the trade decision, citing a United States International Trade Commission study done before the tariffs were imposed that showed imports were seriously injuring important parts of the American steel industry. They said the W.T.O. had exceeded its authority."

The whole article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/business/27STEE.html

You'll note that when Mexico experiences a "surge" of corn imports from U.S. agribusiness corporations (heavily subsidized by the government, another violation of the sacred "free trade" principles), the result is that Mexican farmers go out of business. More often than not, they wind up leaving their land and heading to the cities or working in a factory near the U.S. border for slave wages and in terrible conditions - in the notorious "maquiladoras."

That's "free trade" at work in the developing world.

But when it's U.S. industry that's threatened, up go the tariffs, and when the W.T.O. tries to discipline the U.S., leaders of both parties insist that "the W.T.O. exceeded its authority." It might seem confusing at first. But then you remember the rule, as explained quite clearly by the Wall Street Journal the other day: "International law has always been an accommodation between countries rather than a binding code; it essentially has meant whatever powerful countries say it does." Once you recognize this basic truth, everything else starts to make perfect sense. Rules are for other people. We do whatever we want. How long we'll get away with it is another question entirely. Empires don't last forever.

I'm always amazed at how indignant American officials get when others don't play by the rules, though. Like the Iraqis, who have been parading P.O.W.s on Al-Jazeera, or waging guerrilla warfare in the desert. Don't these guys know that only the powerful can break the rules and get away with it? Where's their sense of decency?

PK
http://www.dailygrasshopper.com