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The American Constitution at the very beginning of the Republic sought
above all to guard the country against reckless, ill-considered recourse
to war. It required a declaration of war by the legislative branch, and
gave Congress the power over appropriations even during wartime. Such
caution existed before the great effort of the twentieth century to
erect stronger barriers to war by way of international law and public
morality, and to make this resistance to war the central feature of the
United Nations charter. Consistent with this undertaking, German and
Japanese leaders who engaged in aggressive war were punished after World
War II as war criminals. The most prominent Americans at the time
declared their support for such a framework of restraint as applicable
in the future to all states, not just to the losers in a war. We all
realize that the effort to avoid war has been far from successful, but
it remains a goal widely shared by the peoples of the world and still
endorsed by every government on the planet.

And yet, here we are, poised on the slippery precipice of a pre-emptive
war, without even the benefit of meaningful public debate. The
constitutional crisis is so deep that it is not even noticed. The
unilateralism of the Bush White House is an affront to the rest of the
world, which is unanimously opposed to such an action. The Democratic
Party, even in its role as loyal opposition, should be doing its utmost
to raise the difficult questions. Instead, the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, under the chairmanship of Democratic Senator Biden, organized
two days of hearings, notable for the absence of critical voices. Such
hearings are worse than nothing, creating a forum for advocates of war,
fostering the illusion that no sensible dissent exists and thus serving
mainly to raise the war fever a degree or two. How different might the
impact of such hearings be if respected and informed critics of a
pre-emptive war, such as Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, both
former UN coordinators of humanitarian assistance to Iraq who resigned
in protest a few years back, were given the opportunity to appear before
the senators. The media, too, have failed miserably in presenting to the
American people the downside of war with Iraq. And the citizenry has
been content to follow the White House on the warpath without demanding
to know why the lives of young Americans should be put at risk, much
less why the United States should go to war against a distant foreign
country that has never attacked us and whose people have endured the
most punishing sanctions in all of history for more than a decade.

This is not just a procedural demand that we respect the Constitution as
we decide upon recourse to war--the most serious decision any society
can make, not only for itself but for its adversary. It is also, in this
instance, a substantive matter of the greatest weight. The United States
is without doubt the world leader at this point, and its behavior with
respect to war and law is likely to cast a long shadow across the
future. To go legitimately to war in the world that currently exists can
be based on three types of considerations: international law
(self-defense as set forth in Article 51 backed by a UN mandate, as in
the Gulf War), international morality (humanitarian intervention to
prevent genocide or ethnic cleansing) and necessity (the survival and
fundamental interests of a state are genuinely threatened and not really
covered by international law, as arguably was the case in the war in

With respect to Iraq, there is no pretense that international law
supports such a war and little claim that the brutality of the Iraqi
regime creates a foundation for humanitarian intervention. The
Administration's argument for war rests on the necessity argument, the
alleged risk posed by Iraqi acquisition of weapons of mass destruction,
and the prospect that such weapons would be made available to Al Qaeda
for future use against the United States. Such a risk, to the scant
extent that it exists, can be addressed much more successfully by
relying on deterrence and containment (which worked against the far more
menacing Soviet Union for decades) than by aggressive warmaking. All the
evidence going back to the Iran/Iraq War and the Gulf War shows that
Saddam Hussein responds to pressure and threat and is not inclined to
risk self-destruction. Indeed, if America attacks and if Iraq truly
possesses weapons of mass destruction, the feared risks are likely to
materialize as Iraq and Saddam confront defeat and humiliation, and have
little left to lose.

A real public debate is needed not only to revitalize representative
democracy but to head off an unnecessary war likely to bring widespread
death and destruction as well as heighten regional dangers of economic
and political instability, encourage future anti-American terrorism and
give rise to a US isolationism that this time is not of its own

We must ask why the open American system is so closed in this instance.
How can we explain this unsavory rush to judgment, when so many lives
are at stake? What is now wrong with our system, with the vigilance of
our citizenry, that such a course of action can be embarked upon without
even evoking criticism in high places, much less mass opposition in the

I don't know if it's some childhood image left over from Victory at
or from a book of pictures my uncle brought back from the
carriers. It's not the iconic image of violent battle that usually represents the war, but my imagination seems to be
telling me that the iconic images aren't the whole story, that serenity
and beauty coexisted alongside the bloodshed and were a large part of
the day-to-day reality of the war.

It's for similar reasons that I think the nitty-gritty details of life
near Ground Zero as presented in one of the first theatrical responses
to 9/11, comic monologist Reno's Rebel Without a Pause, appeal to
me so. They provide relief from the media's iconic packaging, which has
(rarely mentioned) Pentagon attack.

relates what it was like in lower Manhattan "that gorgeous day." She
exhibits dismay at the total absence of Conelrad and the Emergency
Defense System. ("Maybe this wasn't enough of an emergency.") She
refusing to open its doors so customers could get their money.

But mostly it's the human reactions to catastrophe that are so
up with machetes in a macrobiotic restaurant on Prince Street; people
rushing home to have their televisions validate what they'd just seen
with their own eyes; and what Reno calls the "hierarchical bragging
rights of pain and knowledge"--New Yorkers one-upping each other over
what they knew and what they'd suffered.

Reno's warnings about changes in constitutional protections make for a
very disturbing second half of her monologue, though she herself doesn't
contemplates Henry Kissinger being arrested for war crimes. Reno even
suggests that Florida be allowed to float down to Uruguay, "where all
the other fascists are."

son kindly because even they knew "he was a hapless kid."

paranoia (although as I learned the last time--when Watergate lanced the
Nixonian pustule--paranoia can be a very accurate predictor of reality).
context of Christian fundamentalist influence on this Administration. At
342 pages, the USA Patriot Act, she suggests, wasn't written in the days
innocent until proven guilty. She builds a picture of how really
taken the country. So far, in fact, that Colin Powell is the "Communist
of this Administration."

her criticisms and an urgency to her concerns about the current
then over financial wheeler-dealering and privilege, not civil liberties
and constitutional guarantees.

You will walk away from Reno with a clear sense that the changes aren't
minor, and they won't fall only on bad guys and enemies. It's a real
turning point: Democracy is up for grabs.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe's free summer show, Mr. Smith Goes to
firefighter Jeff Smith (the always wonderful Michael Gene Sullivan) to
Glick) throws his hat into the ring, arguing that "people should vote
their hearts, not their fears." (Of course, had one or two percent of
Florida's Nader voters forsworn that advice, the Mime Troupe wouldn't
have a Bush Administration to satirize.)

(Or would they?)

however, disillusioned when it becomes clear that there is oil in
Obscuristan and that the Administration's real interest is that
Regurgitov win, since he will insure the atmosphere necessary for US
investment. Smith then sets out to prove that the ordinary American
doesn't want to screw Obscuristan over, and by the end of the day
shake for Obscuristan.

particularly funny compared with Rebel Without a Pause. It's
doubly strange given that the Mime Troupe brought in the usually very
funny monologist, independent filmmaker and former Nation intern
Josh Kornbluth (Red Diaper Baby and Haiku Tunnel) to help
write the script.

The difference is, I think, that Reno articulates things you hadn't
ways that create the old shock of recognition. As when she says, "The
people of Missouri were so worried about Ashcroft making decisions, they
voted for the dead guy."

right up against her tough capitalist intelligence. This is a Barbara
Bush who says, "Never send a member of the working class to do an
aristocrat's job." But such moments are rare. For the most part, the
Mime Troupe's most incisive statements, such as "Only an American would
confuse a fixed election with a real one" or "Welcome to democratic
nations like Saudi Arabia who protect human rights," simply restate our
was sniggering.

Given that the source of the satire is Capra's populist classic, Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington
, I think the Mime Troupe missed a real
American is decent and fair, and in every respect there's a lot of
up and change things.

That conveniently ignores the fact that ordinary Americans are of many
then, you have to ask whether we feel we can't do anything about it or
whether we don't want to. How much is the ordinary American willing to

And what is the usefulness of a mythos of unquestioned fairness and
who regains her soul and of a decisive victory over the people's
enemies? It's positive, but does it send us out of the park feeling
witnessed was too simple and fantastic?

of us were slaughtered. "The [US] government," she says, "created the
mujahedeen that came to my town and killed us." That seems a much
stronger motive for action.

Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan will be performed through Labor Day
in various Northern California locales (415-285-1717 or
Rebel Without a Pause played a week at the Brava Theater Center
Theater on 42nd Street in New York City.

With the drumbeat for war on Iraq growing louder in Washington by the
day, the latest United States-backed Iraqi opposition group--the Iraqi
Military Alliance--was established with great fanfare in London in
mid-July by some eighty former Iraqi officers. If this was an attempt at
priming the Iraqi opposition pump as a prelude to overthrowing the
regime of Saddam Hussein, holding a much-hyped press conference seemed
an odd way to proceed.

An incisive comment came from an independent-minded Iraqi lawyer. "The
American policy-makers believe that if you scare Saddam and threaten
him, he will yield," he said. "They think this high profile meeting in
London will ruffle his feathers. Also, it gives a military dimension to
the predominantly civilian Iraqi National Congress." But Saddam does not
scare so easily. In his televised address to the nation on July 17, he
asserted that "evil tyrants and oppressors" would not be able to
overthrow him and his regime. "You will never defeat me this time," he

Behind this bravado lies Iraq's well-tailored policy of reconciliation
with its neighbors, which its foreign minister, Naji Sabri, has been
following doggedly for the past several months. A Christian and former
professor of English literature at Baghdad University, the smooth and
sophisticated Sabri started the year with a groundbreaking trip to
Teheran to resolve the prisoners-of-war exchange issue with Iran. The
following month he flew to Ankara, where he expressed flexibility on
renewed UN inspections. At the Arab summit in Beirut in March, Iraq
recognized Kuwait's border and promised to discuss the issue of Kuwaiti
POWs. "We have instructed our media to avoid any references which may
annoy the State of Kuwait," said Sabri after the summit. Since then he
has sought the assistance of his Qatari and Omani counterparts to
improve Baghdad's relations with Kuwait.

The strategy seems to be paying off. Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al Sabah, the
Kuwaiti defense minister, said in late July that his country would
approve a US attack on Iraq only if it is done under the auspices of the
United Nations. "Kuwait does not support threats to strike or launch an
attack against Iraq." Baghdad's relations with Saudi Arabia have
improved, too. Riyadh has reopened its border with Iraq at Arar, and
Saudi companies are doing business in Iraq within the framework of the
UN oil-for-food scheme. The desert kingdom has refused to allow the
Pentagon use of the Prince Sultan air base at Al Kharj in case of war
against Iraq.

Hence the US pressure on Jordan to allow its air bases to be used
instead--a prospect that sent a tearful King Abdullah rushing to a
European leader to complain about the US plan to attack Iraq from his
kingdom at a time when Arab frustration with the stalemate on the
Israeli-Palestinian front is rising by the day. (That was before
Israel's widely condemned dropping of a one-ton bomb in Gaza, killing
fifteen and injuring 160.)

King Abdullah's European interlocutor was certainly sympathetic to the
monarch's plight. All the European countries except Britain are urging
Washington to construct a coalition for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking,
not for warmaking in Iraq. In this effort they have the backing of
Turkey, a neighbor of Iraq and a NATO member that allows the use of its
Incirlik air base by US and British warplanes monitoring the northern
Iraqi no-fly zone.

In his July 21 interview on state television, Turkish Prime Minister
Bulent Ecevit said the United States should consider alternatives to
military action against Baghdad. "There are other measures to deter the
Iraqi regime from being a threat to the region," he said. "Iraq
developed technologically and economically despite the embargo that it
cannot be compared to Afghanistan or Vietnam." What is more, Ecevit
warned that it would not be possible for America to "get out easily"
from Iraq. Such a prospect was outlined by Sir Peter de la Billiere, who
commanded the British troops in the 1991 Gulf War. Discussing the
prospect of US, British and French troops capturing Baghdad, he wrote in
his Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War, "Saddam
Hussein...would have slipped away into the desert and organized a
guerrilla movement.... We would then have found ourselves with the task
of trying to run a country shattered by war, which at the best of times
is deeply split into factions.... Either we would have to set up a
puppet government or withdraw ignominiously without a proper regime in

Little wonder that among the questions European and Turkish leaders are
asking the Bush Administration now is: Is America willing to stay in
Iraq for ten years to safeguard the post-Saddam regime from
subversion--and possibly an attack--by an alliance of Iran and Syria,
which have been strategic allies since 1980?

On July 23 Iran's President, Muhammad Khatami, declared that Washington
did not have the right to choose the leadership for the Iraqi people.
Noting that war against Iraq was being promoted in Washington on an
unprecedented scale, he warned that military action against Iraq by the
Pentagon could seriously threaten regional stability. Iranian leaders
reckon that once the Bush Administration has overthrown Saddam, it will
target Iran for regime change--fears fueled by its late-July
announcement that it is officially ending its policy of "playing
factions" in Iran in favor of direct appeals to the Iranian people.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress called for a
resolution in favor of regime change in Iran. Mainstream Iranian
politicians would rather forge an alliance with Baghdad now than wait
for the ax to fall on them in the post-Saddam period.

US war plans clearly pose numerous dangers to the region. But whether
that will deter the hawks in Washington from pressing home their
strategy of ousting Saddam by force remains to be seen.


Refugee camp invasions. Suicide bombers. House demolitions. Suicide
bombers. Arrests of children, curfews, roadblocks, collective
punishments, dropping one-ton bombs on densely populated streets.
Suicide bombers.

Only two years ago, a Syrian-American friend laid out for me a vision
for the Middle East. Both Israelis and Palestinians, she said, were
modern, entrepreneurial people who valued education and technology. She
foresaw a kind of Middle Eastern co-prosperity sphere that would
gradually draw the two closer as their economies meshed and bygones
became bygones. That would have been a happy ending, but what are its
chances now?

The Sharon government seems bent on beating, bombing, demolishing,
humiliating and starving the West Bank and Gaza into submission, while
appropriating more and more land for settlers (forty-five new
settlements have gone up in the year and a half since Sharon's
election). Unemployment in the occupied territories stands at 75
percent. According to a report about to be released by USAID,
malnutrition among Palestinian children under 6 has risen from 7 percent
to 30 percent over the past two years. In the current issue of
Tikkun, Jessica Montell, executive director of B'Tselem, the
Israeli human rights organization, details the damage wrought by the
Israel Defense Forces in their siege of Jenin and other West Bank areas
this past spring: the flattening of whole streets and the trashing and
looting of homes, civic centers, Palestinian Authority offices and those
of numerous human rights organizations; gross violations of human
rights, including the use of civilians as human shields; and denial of
access to food, water and medical care, resulting in the deaths of three
children and an elderly woman.

Is this what "defending Israel" necessarily involves? So you might think
from the hefty numbers who turn out for pro-Sharon rallies in this
country, like the 100,000 who gathered on the Washington Mall in April.
Not everyone agrees: Opposition to Sharon's policies was a major theme
of the 75,000-strong antiwar demonstration on April 20; petitions and
open letters opposing Sharon are flying around the Internet, and new
groups are forming by the minute--Not in My Name, Jewish Voices Against
the Occupation, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace. But the big,
well-organized and well-connected Jewish American numbers are still on
the side of using military force to crush the Palestinians. I signed the
open letter organized by Alan Sokal and Bruce Robbins calling for the
evacuation of settlements and Palestinian self-determination and felt I
knew half the people on it. Nonetheless, there is enough criticism, from
enough quarters, to puncture the old accusations (in which there was
sometimes a grain of truth) that US critics of Israeli policies are
anti-Semites, "self-hating Jews" or Third World-infatuated
America-hating leftists. None of those terms could conceivably describe
the neoliberal (and Jewish) historian Tony Judt, whose trenchant and
bitter critique of recent developments in The New York Review of
("The Road to Nowhere," April 11) did not stop short of
describing Israel as a thoroughly militarized colonial power. Nor is it
easy to see recent New York Times coverage in this
light--although the paper is currently being bombarded with mail and
protests for its imaginary pro-Palestinian tilt, and the Zionist women's
group Hadassah has even called for a boycott of the paper (just for
three months, though, because you can't ask too much of people).

What we need in the United States is the broadest, most open discussion
of what's going on, in search of some kind of realistic solution to a
crisis that's becoming less soluble by the day. Every American is
implicated in Israeli politics, because without the $3 billion in aid we
send each year, Israel could not exist in anything like its present
form. Perhaps Americans really do want to subsidize Caterpillar
bulldozers, Apache attack helicopters, F-16 jets--but perhaps they would
prefer that some of that money go to relocate Jewish settlers, to
integrate Israeli social institutions, to rebuild the infrastructure of
Palestinian civil society and government, to strengthen the groups on
both sides who are most interested in bringing about the happy end my
friend saw just around the corner.

Unfortunately, people will have to do this work themselves. Politicians
are too frightened, and no wonder: In June, five-term Democratic
Congressman Earl Hilliard of Alabama lost his primary race at least in
part because the fiercely pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) supported his opponent. On August 20 five-term Georgia
Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney faces a tough primary, mostly
due to organized opposition to her criticism of Israel (she also
suggested that George W. Bush knew in advance about September 11, and
after Mayor Giuliani rejected a $10 million gift for New York City from
Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal because he called for a re-examination
of US Middle East policy, she tactlessly suggested that he give the
money to black charities instead).

The problem is not so much that American Jews exercise the proverbial
"too much influence"; every ethnic group in America organizes to affect
US policy in the old country (think of Cuban-, Irish- or, for that
matter, African-Americans). Nor is it wrong to inject national issues
into a contest that locals would prefer to be about other things. The
problem is that the other side--anti-Sharon, pro-peace, call it what you
will--is weak and unorganized. It doesn't have to be that way. One can
be overwhelmed with horror at suicide bombers, think Arafat is a corrupt
and preening tinpot dictator, believe that the real agenda of the
Islamists is to be the Taliban of the Middle East--all just and
appropriate sentiments--and still realize that the current path of the
Israeli government is a disaster in the making, if not already made.

* * *

McKinney may have foot-in-mouth disease, but she has the support of NOW,
NARAL and her state AFL-CIO. She deserves yours too. Cynthia McKinney
for Congress, Box 371125, Decatur, GA 30037; (404) 243-5574;

It seems a long time ago that I stocked my pantry (pantry is a concept in
Manhattan, not a reality) with two weeks' worth of emergency food
(including powdered milk, an oddly comforting substance when faced with
the potential collapse of infrastructure) and other items like duct tape
and three five-gallon bottles of water. Now I discover that a good
friend and an expert on terrorist threats has three 125-gallon drums of
bleach-processed water in his children's bedroom, as well as
military-grade surgical masks, potassium iodide (against radiation
poisoning) and Cipro--the anthrax antibiotic--as well as rolls of
plastic sheeting to cover the windows.

What does one make of all this? My personal response has been to flee to
a place in the country, and hope that the attack comes on the weekend.

My kids' room doesn't have space for both them and the water drums.
Maybe if I could do something about clutter, as the shelter magazines
call life's detritus, I could find a floor area for adequate emergency
supplies; but I just can't bring myself to buy Real Simple, nice
as it is.

So instead, I've secured a copy of the upcoming Summer 2002 issue of
World Policy Journal, published by the World Policy Institute at
The New School, and may I say that after reading it, I am seriously
thinking of running back out to get Real Simple and, with a few
easy organizational steps, squeezing the three 125-gallon water barrels
into a corner of our living room.

The most sobering article--in a very sober, well-written, intelligently
conceived publication--is called "The Threats America Faces." In it,
John Newhouse, a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information in
Washington, enumerates the many kinds of attack to which we are
incapable of responding. The most shocking for its cruelty, its
understanding of human vulnerability and its supertechno cartoonishness,
is the potential for terrorist infiltration (they've already done it!)
of computers that control major operating systems, like electricity, air
traffic control, banking or communications. (My friend with the water
drums says Al Qaeda wants to interrupt communications at the precise
time of a physical attack; mayhem as well as massacre.) Newhouse points
out that before September 11, the defense community was obsessed with
the possible threat from long-range missiles by rogue states, as a 2001
State Department guidance memorandum stated it. He and other experts,
though not necessarily Rumsfeld's Defense Department, are now more
concerned about missiles that could be launched from an offshore
location by a third party against, say, Moscow, triggering an all-out
nuclear attack on America--or vice versa. Newhouse also raises the
specter of the inadequately secured former Soviet nuclear arsenal, and
notes that the only way to deal with such phenomena is through bi- and
multinational agreements of the kind the Bush Administration has to be
dragged to by its short hairs.

It's all about blowback, but Newhouse believes that concerted
multilateral diplomacy, agreements and shared intelligence can, with a
little luck, forestall an act of terror that would provoke what he calls
a "hidden-hand war," a war against an unknown adversary. It's a hope, if
Bush and his boys and girl can be pushed in that direction.

World Policy Journal's issue is almost all of a piece, very
artfully structured around a common theme that is, modestly stated, the
future of the world. Martin Walker contributed to the discussion with
his piece on "America's Virtual Empire," in which he compares the United
States to, among others, Britain under Victoria, and comments on how
much weaker Victoria's armies were than ours is today, and yet how much
more willing she was to deploy her nation's military. Walker has a nice
aside on the meetings that take place at Ditchley, a country house in
Oxfordshire celebrated to its initiates as the spiritual home of the
Anglo-Saxon alliance since Churchill's day. The way Walker describes
Ditchley, it's like Hogwarts for NATO leaders: They don black tie for a
splendid dinner in a stately hall on Saturday nights before gathering
around the piano in song. (One does wonder what exactly they sing.)

Also do not miss David Unger's fair-minded essay on the Middle East
crisis, "Maps of War, Maps of Peace," which provides a real idea of the
labyrinthine impasse, and hope that there is some way out.

With all this in mind, I decided to escape to that house in the country,
and I lugged some shelter magazines along (it's much easier to read
about nuclear holocaust when you are at least an hour and a half from
Targettown). Oddly, nothing in Metropolitan Life looked like our
house. Hmmm. This Old House was more like it, but the people in
This Old House actually know how to deal with things. Like
floors. Or mice and mildew.

Yet the magazines, including Design NJ and House &
Garden--with their empty stylish, upscale interiors--do give you an
idea of what it is the average person thinks we are upholding and
defending from what Newhouse tells us has been called a low-probability,
high-consequence attack. Shelter magazines, with their largely fantastic
scenarios, superbly condense the American dream. In House &
, led by the edgy middle-American-design thinker Dominique
Browning, there is a piece about designers making children's playspaces
(there's an interior climbing wall for your 10-year-old); one about
filling rooms with (how shall I say?) things based on Roy
Lichtenstein's interiors; and yet another on an impossibly perfect house
and garden on a Nantucket shore, which almost no one can afford. What
all this says (and it is repeated in dozens of other similar magazines,
reaching its bizarre zenith of impossibility in Architectural
Digest) is that there is always a better mousetrap (I wish), that
your future and your family's future holds promise and rewards, and that
one day, you too may have a beach. Given the vision of collapsing real
estate with which we were presented on September 11, the shelter
magazines seem more dreamlike and escapist than ever. In a way, this
makes them even more pleasurable, like a guilty fantasy you shouldn't be
indulging. Like porn.

"Tell me about the hash bars."
"OK, what do you want to know?"
"It's legal there, right?"
"It's legal, but it ain't 100 percent legal."

Roane Carey has edited two collections of writings on the Middle East: The New Intifada (Verso, 2001) and The Other Israel (The New Press, 2002).

The National Endowment for Democracy has been busy--and far from

Now that a freedom of information bill has been passed, Mexico faces its real battle: convincing the public to use it.


It’s the 100th anniversary of the Christmas Truce of WWI.

December 23, 2014


December 23, 2014


December 23, 2014


December 22, 2014


December 18, 2014


December 17, 2014

The two countries have resumed a dialogue after fifty years.

December 17, 2014


December 17, 2014

Dick Cheney clarifies what he means by American Exceptionalism.

December 17, 2014


December 12, 2014