Basra residents reported overnight that they saw British military trucks accompanied by armored vehicles and helicopters leaving the base, Basra Palace, beside the Shatt al Arab waterway, heading for their airport headquarters miles outside the city, the oil-industry hub of southern Iraq.
While the British exit from Basra had been widely anticipated, the British government has given no timetable for the eventual withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.
The above is from Stephen Farrell's "British Troops Begin Withdrawal From Basra" in this morning's New York Times. We'll use that to note the long announced Basra withdrawal. There were other things that members noted on that which I had hoped to include in "And the war drags on" but that went on way too long.
Now pay close attention to this:
Statistics that McClatchy Newspapers collected in Baghdad don’t show any drop in violence. Civilian deaths in the capital were about the same in July as in December, before the American troop increase began. U.S. officials in Baghdad declined to provide data to back up their claims of lower violence.
That's from Renee Schoof's "Back from vacation, Congress to renew debate on Iraq" (McClatchy Newspapers) and, unlike the New York Times, McClatchy gathers their own statistics, unlike the New York Times, McClatchy publishes a daily roundup of violence in Iraq.
Non-Iraq related, but Gareth asked that we provide a link to Naomi Klein and Avi Lewi's "Occupy, resist, produce" in the New Statesman.
This week, as Australia's election draws near, Bully Boy visits that country. Olive notes The Age's "PM ramps up attack on Labor over Iraq:"
Prime Minister John Howard has stepped up his attack on Labor over its Iraq policy ahead of United States President George W Bush's arrival in Australia on Tuesday.
Mr Howard on Monday sought to draw a sharp distinction between his government's attitude to the war and Labor's plan to begin withdrawing troops if it wins the next federal election.
Mr Bush, who touches down in Sydney on Tuesday night, will discuss the war with both Mr Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd when he meets them this week ahead of the APEC summit.
Donald Rumsfled may have fled but he is not forgotten. Lloyd highlights this from Mary Jordan's "British Generals Criticize Rumsfeld on Iraq" (Washington Post):
The general who headed the British army during the 2003 Iraq invasion said that former U.S. defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's handling of postwar Iraq was "intellectually bankrupt" and pointed to Rumsfeld as "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq."
Mike Jackson, the British former chief of general staff who retired last year, strongly criticized Rumsfeld and the U.S. postwar effort in Iraq in his new book, "Soldier." The Daily Telegraph is to begin serializing the book Monday, after publishing some excerpts and an interview Saturday.
And Martha wonders if anyone else is noticing that Nouri al-Maliki, puppet of the occupation, is stealing from Bully Boy's speeches? From Megan Greenwell's "Maliki Orders Probe Into Festival Violence" (Washington Post):
In less than two weeks, the White House is scheduled to receive a report about conditions in Iraq seven months into a stepped-up security plan that sent 30,000 additional troops to Baghdad. Last month, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.) said that Maliki should be replaced because of his inability to unify rival political factions. Nearly half of Maliki's cabinet is boycotting meetings, and the government has made little visible progress on a series of political benchmarks considered key by the Bush administration.
Maliki said that criticism of his government from U.S. lawmakers sends "signals to terrorists luring them into thinking that the security situation in the country is not good."
So what's on the agenda for today? There's the Labor Day article that will go up at all sites. Dona and Jim have grabbed the typing on that. It will go up this afternoon. Kat and Ruth were talking about their pieces. Ruth may hold off on her report due to the Labor Day article. She'd forgotten that was going up. Kat would hold off on her latest review but it was announced yesterday at Third. So that will go up today. (It's already written and edited.) She's trying to figure out what would be the best time to post it. (Actually, right now, she's probably sleeping. But on the plane ride back yesterday and after she spoke to Ruth, she was trying to figure out the best time to post it.)
Susan e-mails to say there are now two reasons for people to buy Mavis Staples' We'll Never Turn Back, "Kat's Korner: Mavis Staples doesn't turn back" and Nicole Colson's "Making a change, starting tonight" (US Socialist Worker). From Colson's review:
Staples, perhaps best known to younger audiences for classic soul hits like "I'll Take You There" and "Respect Yourself," returns to her gospel and protest music roots on We'll Never Turn Back--an album of freedom songs designed to inspire a new generation in struggle. After a listen, it should become apparent why Rolling Stone once declared Staples "the most underrated diva of the century."
We'll Never Turn Back is planted firmly in the tradition of Mavis' family group, the great Staple Singers, which became a voice of the civil rights movement in the 1960s with recordings of traditional gospel spirituals as well as more explicit songs of social protest.
The 67-year-old Staples is in tremendous voice, here produced and backed on guitar by the always-interesting Ry Cooder, with additional vocals from Ladysmith Black Mambazo and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Singers. Cooder’s guitar work complements Staple's voice particularly well, showcasing and lifting her smoky alto, without ever overshadowing it.
Traditional songs of the civil rights movement like "This Little Light," "Eyes on the Prize" and "We Shall Not Be Moved" are re-imagined with an emphasis on blues, soul and funk. "Eyes on the Prize," for example, is shaped by Cooder’s funk-oriented slide guitar, which plays off Staples’ voice to great effect. The song is made immediate, relevant and ominous--a warning about the consequences of the failure to fight against injustice.
"This Little Light," meanwhile, is turned into a saxophone-infused, swamp-rock stand against the war. "On the battlefield, I'm going to let it shine," Staples sings, "See now, I ain't going to fight in no rich man’s war/That ain't what God wants to use me for." If my Sunday school teacher had sung "This Little Light" with one-tenth Staples' passion, I might have actually paid more attention in church.
Use the link to continue reading Colson's review. And it is one of the year's best albums so if you haven't already checked it out, Mavis Staples' We'll Never Turn Back is amazing. There is no way this album will not be Grammy nominated and Staples, Cooder, et al should be up at the podium during next year's ceremonies giving acceptance speeches. Many hope that they will produce a masterpiece in their later years but many do not. Mavis Staples has produced the finest album she's ever recorded and one of the finest of the year. You're cheating yourself if you haven't listened to it yet.
Finally, Pru notes Jerry Lembcke's "Vietnam vet on George Bush’s false history lesson" (Great Britain's Socialist Worker):
In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention last week, president George Bush urged Americans to "resist the allure of retreat".
He warned that premature withdrawal of US forces from Iraq will put that country at risk of the same kind of murder and mayhem that beset Vietnam when the US left there in 1975.
Although historians and commentators have responded to Bush’s twisting of the historical record to support his case, they have generally missed the point of his speech and who it was aimed at.
Bush contended that the US could have won the war had it stayed the course in Vietnam, and implied the war was lost on the home front where liberal politicians had handcuffed military tactics and the anti-war left sapped the morale of US troops.
The point of the speech was in its subtext -- locating the real enemy in the halls of Congress and streets of the US.
The target audience for the message was not the electorate in general, much less the scholars and pundits who would challenge the president’s grasp of history. Rather it was the Republican conservative base that the Bush wing of the party needs to rally for the elections in 2008.
Critics of the speech were right, of course, that the historical record contradicts Bush’s claim that the US could have won the war.
But by limiting their critique to the empirical details of history, they leave the core element of the speech's ideological content unchallenged.
The people most vulnerable to scapegoating for the loss of the war are the anti-war veterans themselves.
At last week's protest march to Bush’s family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, the invective aimed at Iraq Veterans Against the War by counter-demonstrators included accusations that their members were not really veterans.
Parallels
Much of the commentary on Bush's Vietnam speech misses parallels to the present that could bring politics back into focus.
The spectre of Communists sweeping down from the north and creating a bloodbath in the wake of the US withdrawal helped extend the war in Vietnam.
While many in the US remember the spectre, few remember that there was never a bloodbath. That allows the Bush administration to construct the false analogy that, like in Vietnam, there will be a bloodbath if we leave Iraq too soon.
Bush also invoked the "killing field" of Cambodia -- an analogy more usefully deployed against continuation of the war in Iraq.
It was the bombing of Cambodia by the US that ran up the death toll and created the social and political space for the rise of the Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge added to the carnage but when the Vietnamese Communists stepped in to stop the bloodletting, the US lent covert assistance to the Khmer Rouge regime.
Bush would like us to forget that now, like then, it is the brutalisation of another country by the US that opened the door for political violence.
The large number of Vietnamese "boat people" who followed the US military out of the country were not, as Bush would have it, evidence of widespread Communist repression following the US abandonment of its allies in South Vietnam.
Reprisals did follow the fall of Saigon in May of 1975, but the boat people are also a testament to the kind of desperation created by carpet bombing and the defoliation of agricultural areas.
The story of emigration from Vietnam also points to class issues that are at play again in Iraq.
As war raged in Vietnam, the US-allied rich and educated fled in a mass exodus that left the poor to fight (on both sides).
This depleted the country of economic and social capital that it desperately needed at the end of the war.
Now, like then, it is the comprador class with Ivy League degrees and ties to Western corporate power that is getting out and watching the war from London and New York.
Syndrome
Following victory over Iraq in the first Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, then-president George Bush senior said the "Vietnam syndrome" had been kicked. Never again would the nation have to look over its shoulder with an eye on that inglorious chapter of history.
I was sceptical, and when research, including my own, revealed what a strong grip the betrayal narrative for the loss of the war in Vietnam had on Americans, I knew it would be a factor in political culture for a long time.
In 2004 I wrote that the upcoming presidential election was "all about Vietnam". The campaign season had begun, after all, with John Kerry being likened to "Hanoi Jane" Fonda.
Maybe that election did turn on Vietnam -- and maybe the next one will too.
Jerry Lembcke is associate professor of sociology at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is a veteran of the war in Vietnam and the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam and CNN's Tailwind Tale: Inside Vietnam’s Last Great Myth. He can be reached at jlembcke@holycross.edu
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Quickly, to answer a question in the public account, why "Great Britain's Socialist Worker"? That's to note it's not the US and that's the term British members want used. We could call it UK or England or anything else. British members decided on that billing. The same way that three friends in Veterans for Peace are the reason we say "conference" about the yearly event and not "convention". They are adamentally opposed to it being called a "convention" (as one says, it's makes it sound like they're selling Amway). I don't live in England, I don't belong to Veterans for Peace.
In addition to the books noted, Jerry Lembcke also appears in the amazing documentary Sir! No Sir!
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
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mcclatchy newspapers
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the washington post
mary jordan
megan greenwell
jerry lembcke
sir! no sir!
nicole colsonmavis staples
kats korner
ruths report
