Shared Sacrifice Radio

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Shared_Sacrifice

Gary Barkley, who "began" his conscious political odyssey last summer giving an insider's view of Iraq to a group of college debaters at the University of Wyoming, has invited me to do a talk radio show with him via blog talk radio--a great forum that I've participated in before. We're serious about making this a worthwhile show, and have booked a truly great inaugural guest: Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, and contributer to the New York Times, New Republic, and Wall Street Journal, among other publications. We're already lining up guests for the weeks to come, and want to spread the word for people to call into the show.

The details are at the link above. The show is 12-2 PM MT this Saturday.

racism update again

This time, it's Republicans calling Obama "boy." (label this in the "areyoufrigginserious" category) Anyone who doesn't understand the context of this and why it's extremely offensive ought to do a bit of research...

Yep, that's right. Kentucky congressman Geoff Davis said the following:

“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Mr. Davis said. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.”...

Mr. Davis has sent a letter of apology to Mr. Obama, and described his comments as a “poor choice of words,” according to The Associated Press.

...and from the right...

Let's see how long it takes Human Events to remove this disgusting comment on an Obama article:

"Dan--Obama should never be allowed near the White House...except in the kitchen." (Otis, Mayberry, Apr 14, 2008 @ 11:18 AM)

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the all-too-common covert racist I speak of in more detail below. This is the person who is way too scared to say these things in any detectable or accountable way, but who feels insulated, made safe, by the presence of intolerant garbage publications like Human Events, where even Ann Coulter finds shelter.

Obama done?

Discuss.

I think he is. I think his comments were perfectly reasonable, in fact I agree strongly with them, and I even believe people should have interpreted his remarks charitably (eg, we use religion as a crutch when faced with long-term economic malaise, and it doesn't really solve anything, because it's a particularly reactionary kind of religious belief, spawned from bitterness, whatever).

But now all the people who don't want to admit (even to themselves) that they just aren't comfortable voting for a black person with a non-anglo name will find an overt reason not to do so. And others will be genuinely offended by his remarks, because they have been taught to be. A very few people will be offended by his remarks in good faith, and intelligently. Put the covert racists and scared white middle class together with those few intelligent people, and in a close election, well, it doesn't look good.

I'm admittedly an outside observer, but I "like" Obama well enough, and many people I care deeply about are not only supporting him; they are doing so with vigor and investing a lot of what's left of their faith in the system in this guy.

If it does cost him, then as much as I (or people like me) don't see a problem with what he said, I do have to ask: What the heck was he thinking? Or was his blood sugar low that day and did he let some of his (justified) bitterness about mainstream religion slip out at the wrong time? Not smart. Not smart at all. Then again, not fair, not fair at all, what's happened to him, what's gonna happen, etc.

If he loses because of this, I at least hope it will clarify for us the futility (even in the face of inevitability) of mainstream politics.

There is no anti-war movement; was there ever?

I have, as one voice among many others, posited the absence of an anti-war movement for some time now. While reliable pro-peace, labor and left groups still oppose the war from their position of consistency, there is no genuine anti-war movement per se. There are, instead, socialists opposed to the war, unitarians opposed to the war, nurses opposed to the war, feminists opposed to the war, and so on.

I mean, sure. There are networks of activists, there are activities, there is communication, there are declarations. But the rank-and-file anti-war demonstrators are smaller in number than ever, and what may even be more important in the current age, the anti-war side has zero influence on the media.

Not coincidentally in the least, the New York Times editorial page Editor Andrew Rosenthal posited an absence of a movement two years ago. The subtitle of his piece, incidentally, was "Where have all the protesters gone," which would have been a clever take on Peter, Paul and Mary, were it not for the fact that this is apparently the chosen title or subtitle of about a hundred other pieces asking similar questions (google it, seriously.)

Liberal newspaper editors are one thing, though, and serious anti-establishment intellectuals and writers like Tariq Ali are another. And the title of his recent piece is not some funny play on our familiarity with a hippie song. Instead, his scathing and pessimistic case for movement nothingness is subtitled "The Movement That Has Dissolved Itself." It's the most grim prognosis of politics I've read in a long time...

The fact is that it never was, in the true and proper sense of the word, a movement -- only a day of paroxysm, a spontaneous and desperate attempt of citizens of all political persuasions to stop the war. It was conceived, if you will, as a preventive blow against a war that people instinctively knew was based on a heap of lies. The day when the war really began, antiwar mobilizations began to die. Citizens, demoralized by their own failure, could no longer find the strength to take to the streets in great numbers. ...There is no solidarity with the Iraqis. They are Arabs, largely Muslims, and the wave of Islamophobia that has swept the West has brought with it the dehumanization of those who were murdered....the movements of workers and progressives in general in Western Europe, increasingly in crisis, are indifferent to their destiny -- just as they are indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians....a majority of the North American and European citizens are still in favor of the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq: however, their voices are not being heard by the political establishment. There is a growing crisis of political representation in the West. Democracy is becoming hollow. In the US electoral campaign, both the Democratic candidates publicly say they are in favor of a withdrawal from Iraq, but privately they reassure the military that they do not seriously intend to withdraw despite being forced to say so because people are discontent. In the end, the fact that there is no draft in the US means that most Americans are not directly affected by the war. Military families opposed to the war constitute the only important pressure group. As a substitute for the draft, the US has recruited mercenaries from all over the world: there are 50,000 Ugandans, thousands of Central Americans, South Africans, and others who are paid the market price to fight in Iraq. Who cares if they die? It's a risk that they assume, in exchange for wages and US citizenship. A grim picture, which should make Westerners think.

There's obviously a lot to digest here, but probably the scariest thing for those of us who see political activism as part of our being is the very real possibility that protest doesn't matter in the least: Those of us without massive financial influence already live in a virtually totalitarian society where debate is managed to the point of ineffectiveness, and our leaders' true power-sources are insulated to the point of inaccessibility. This was a possibility posited by Tom Engelhardt last October in a piece entitled, what else, "Where have all the protesters gone?"

However, over the years, unlike in the Vietnam era, the demonstrations shrank, and somehow the anxiety, the anger -- though it remained suspended somewhere in the American ether -- stopped manifesting itself so publicly, even as the war went on and on. Or put another way, perhaps the anger went deeper and turned inward, like a scouring agent. Perhaps it went all the
way into what was left of an American belief system, into despair about the unresponsiveness of the government -- with paralyzing effect. As another potentially more disastrous war with Iran edges into sight, the response has been limited largely to what might be called the professional demonstrators. The surge of hope, of visual creativity, of spontaneous interaction, of the urge to turn out, that arose in those prewar demonstrations now seemed so long gone, replaced by a far more powerful sense that nothing anyone could do mattered in the least.

This is the most damning indictment of all--both of the system, and the way we can approach resisting it. It indicts mass protest, but also indicts the poststructuralist concepts of culture-jamming or other media-engaged theories of subversive theatrics. It indicts politics for all but a wealthy few, who will never have to personally face the consequences of deploying large numbers of soldiers and weapons and bombs from one place to another for the sake of geostrategic and resource gain.

...That is, until the only remaining possible resistance and transcendence is complete, total, violent system collapse, which will rain down fire and death on the innocent and culpable alike.

HALL

(w. apologies to allen ginsberg)

i saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Theory
running naked through academia thinking they were on a battleground
talking critical deconstruction whiteness queer play
wearing their lyotards and hiring their butlers
talking like people who'd never had to struggle for a meal
--even though many of them did--
in which their addiction to poststructural bullshit make them feel even guiltier for being poor
(poorness being an unacceptable category of discussion;
as well as a barrier to buying drinks for their cynical professors)
abandoning all faith in humanity except as text
abandoning all hope for liberation except in the mind of the mind of the mind
fighting only the safest but sexiest sounding fights
then turning away from real battles because of ontological purity
afraid to get their fingernails dirty
afraid to explain and justify their lives to people living in trailers
afraid to face their own complacency
telling themselves their next conference paper would liberate humanity
telling themselves discourse was reality
embarassed that their dead miner railworker soldier grandparents
might rise from the grave and ask them what the hell they were doing with their lives

Buckley: Epidictic Obit Follow-Up

Two good pieces on William F. Buckley's life and death appear today: Patrick Martin's Marxist-oriented obit, which does an especially good job taking apart the bourgeois media's obsession with and gushing praise over Buckley, and David Michael Green's "tribute" to Buckley's spectacular historical wrongness. Both essays, coincidentally, share a common theme: Buckley not only missed history, but wanted to end history, to stop the clock, to preserve the inequality and privilege of his time, and even to return to a more hierarchical time. Green sums it up nicely:

So who do you think history will judge to have gotten this question right, eh? --Martin Luther King Jr. or Bill Buckley? One could say that Buckley's position was just about the most spectacular example ever recorded of the missing of a historical train. There was Ol' Bill (who actually didn't even have the excuse then of being old), standing on the (whites only) platform, watching the Morality Express go whooshing by.
But then, wasn't missing just such trains precisely the point of conservatism?

Dungeon Master Loses Hit Points

"In the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest I," Fry asks the Professor's What If machine what would have happened if he hadn't been frozen. The machine produces a scenario that shows Fry narrowly avoiding being frozen. But because that didn't happen, and chain of events that never happened cause a rift in the time-space continuum. Fry is then abducted by the Vice Presidential Action Rangers, Al Gore, Nichelle Nichols, Stephen Hawking and Gary Gygax. They decide that to protect the universe, they must kill Fry. But when that causes another rift, they decide to freeze him after all. Fry breaks the tube before he is frozen, causing the universe to collapse in on itself. Fry's scenario ends with the group playing Dungeons and Dragons for all eternity." (http://animatedtv.about.com/od/futurama/ig/Futurama-Pictures/Futurama---Al-Gore.--Wu.htm)

Here is Russell Fox's recollection of his adolescent Dungeons and Dragons experiences, in memory of the recent death of beloved D&D creator Gary Gygax.

In many ways, the political and ethical imagination instantiated by my participation in academic and public debate was conditioned by my experience with fantasy and science fiction comics, novels and roleplaying games. Moreover, those games were a lifeline to friendships and a social life for me. If there was a more awkward 13-15 year old on the planet besides myself, I never met them.

Gygax also, quite unintentionally, revived a somewhat dormant fantasy and science fiction craze.

Rest in peace, GG.

Buckley: Rich Racist Jerkoff, but So Articulate...

Epidictic rhetoric needn't only be praiseworthy. It's the rhetoric of "praise or blame," and in this case blame is precisely appropriate and cleansing to our collective soul. It is possible to "mourn" the dead by talking about what assholes they were. William F. Buckley made the world a considerably crappier place. We should celebrate his passage by acknowledging that.

Don't let the bowtie and cheeky humor fool you. Buckley was a hater, part of a long line of haters of his political (and class) orientation who delighted in covering the hate in humor. He made Ann Coulter possible. He called people "queers" and "fags" unironically. Guiding the editorial position of the National Review, he composed the following about segregation in 1957:

"The central question that emerges ... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes -- the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists."

Much has been said about Buckley's "reformation" because he had a bunch of rich white friends who weren't racist. But in fact he continued to deeply distrust blacks all his life, pathetically lamenting about their voting patterns, opining that it was obvious whites' opinion that OJ Simpson was guilty was based on truth, while it was equally obvious that blacks' opinion of Simpson's innocence was based on race. I am still looking to track down an editorial he wrote on Somalia in the early 1990s, citing its breakdown as evidence that white colonialism was a good idea. Buckley invented and refined, out of necessity, the chuckling "innuendo racism" that characterizes great minds from Coulter to Michael Savage today. He deployed that innuendo boyishly because he could afford to never grow up, and he deployed it in the service of socioeconomic forces that really do kill people of color, every day (and a whole lot of poor white people too).

As one blogger put it, "There’s your 'refined, perspicacious mind' for you." As another put it in a headline: "Another racist asshole dead." One too few, to be sure, but well-put.

more on obama, corporatism, and the long-term struggle

How is reliance on corporate support a liability for progressive politics? Well, David Sirota describes at least one area where it at least distorts what would be better viewed with clarity:

Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration's role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today's boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm "where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards," including Wal-Mart's. Obama hasn't touched any of this for two reasons. First, his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric. But while this pressure to keep quiet affects all politicians, it is especially intense against black leaders. "If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently," says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver's Center for African American Policy. That's because once Obama parroted Edwards' attacks on greed and inequality, he would "be stigmatized as a candidate mobilizing race," says Manning Marable, a Columbia University history professor. That is, the media would immediately portray him as another Jesse Jackson -- a figure whose progressivism has been (unfairly) depicted as racial politics anathema to white swing voters. Remember, this is always how power-challenging African-Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a black leader's race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views. An extreme example of this came from the FBI, which labeled Martin Luther King Jr. "the most dangerous man in America" for talking about poverty. More typical is the attitude exemplified by Joe Klein's 2006 Time magazine column. He called progressive Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., "an African American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped" and "one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics."

But at the same time, I even think Sirota is kind of minimizing Obama's own orientation in all this; it almost sounds like he's saying "Obama wants to be a real lefty, he really does, but he's gotta be all stealth about it!" How do I know, then, what he really wants? In Obama's defense (sort of) I have heard him say "even though I'm a progressive, I will reach across the aisles," which seems to suggest just that: he's a progressive willing to compromise with centrists and conservatives. That would be much more of a coherent statement, though, if he were not so materially reliant on corporations, and didn't have some very troubling folks advising him on economics (thanks for the citation, Renegade Eye!).

If the response is that reliance on corporate support is the ONLY way for a candidate to be viable, that sounds equal parts defensive and a symptom of the disease. In light of all the conversation around here lately about the long-term implications of reform versus revolutionary politics, and their permutability, what I am beginning to see is the necessity of constantly keeping this conversation alive at every stage of the political process. Keep reminding ourselves, reminding the public, that the reason--the actual cause--of our political ideals being dashed time and again, the reason we have to "settle for less," is the corporate colonization of politics. Those whose political priorities favor fighting against corporatism specifically needn't be in conflict with those whose priorities favor getting the most progressive candidates elected in any given election. But for those two forces to work together, the critique, the conversation, must be kept alive.

Remember, too, that within the current system, the ability to deliver on progressive promises like health care is always contingent on capitalism's continued growth and expansion. To sign onto a progressive health plan is to sign onto the ship sailing smooth waters. When waters get rough, the owners will take away those extras, and if and when the ship goes down, so will progressive politics, so will the educational system, so will academic debate and the ability to reason through these dilemmas, so will the network of current institutions dedicated to fairly distributing those scraps...at the very least, again, a reason to keep talking about the unpleasantries of capital. The economic overwhelms the political, and will until we decide not to let it anymore.

The Alice In Wonderland World of Declining Capitalism

Just a quick note to say that ex-CEOs are now calling for financial regulation...much like retired generals criticizing Bush's Iraq policy. This article is typical:

Ex-Salomon CEO Gutfreund Calls for More Financial Regulation
By Rhonda Schaffler and Alex Lange
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- John H. Gutfreund, chief executive officer of Salomon Brothers during the 1980s, called for greater regulation of the financial industry in the U.S. and abroad in the wake of a $7.2 billion loss a French bank blamed on a rogue trader. Gutfreund said writedowns at major banks because of poor risk management may be more frequent than most people think. He made the comments today in an interview with Bloomberg TV. Gutfreund resigned from Salomon in 1991 after regulators said traders at the firm had rigged U.S. Treasury bond auctions. Societe Generale SA last week reported a 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) loss it attributed to unauthorized bets on stock futures made by Jerome Kerviel.``I think the SocGen problem could be rather widespread,'' said Gutfreund, 78. ``I don't think that the management in the financial institutions understands all the other vehicles that are being created.'' The ex-banker, who is now president of Gutfreund & Co. Inc. and a senior adviser at Collins Stewart Co. in New York, bemoaned the rise of hedge funds. He called them ``the unregulated tip of the market,'' and said they could make for a ``treacherous and a horrible storm. ''Hedge funds globally lost an average 3 percent this month through Jan. 25, according to the HFRX Index, a daily estimate of fund performance voluntarily reported by managers and calculated by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. ``There are global institutions that should be paying attention and probably do,'' Gutfreund said. ``The U.S. influence has been for `no regulation, do whatever you can get away with.'''

Stupor Tuesday

One subscriber to the Left Business Observer listserve opines today:

C'mon everybody in the U.S. Go out and vote. For Obama, of course. Then keep doing whatever you're doing to advance socialism in the world.

But if Patrick Martin is right, voting for Obama is a step backward for a socialist movement; he describes the corporate-driven Obama campaign as a preemptive attack against such a movement. Even if Obama or his real supporters don't cast it that way, the long-term effects of the corporate support is tantamount to a buyout.

The Obama campaign is not the vehicle of a leftward movement in the United States—as proclaimed by liberal groups such as MoveOn.org and publications like
The Nation. It is a preemptive attack by the ruling class against such a movement. Its function is to delude the American people and divert their growing opposition to war, economic crisis and attacks on democratic rights back into the dead-end of the Democratic Party.

So how about it, my friends (like ECram) who consider themselves socialists but are voting for Obama?

--Is it because, in this instance, the symbolic overwhelms the materiality of politics?
--Is it because the struggle for welfare capitalism IS a progressive cause, and is part of the overall struggle for socialism?
--Is it because you are afraid of a McCain or Romney presidency?
--All of the above? Am I missing something more nuanced?

And in the meantime, everyone think counterfactually with me for a moment: Imagine under what conditions a 40 year-old black steelworker could be a major party candidate for President...

"Shared Sacrifice"-- a soldier's contribution to the Iraq debate and more...

I first met Gary Barkley last summer, a good friend of a good friend, whom I knew had been in correspondence with some people while still in Mosul. When Gary returned, like so many thousands of other soldiers, he enthusiastically began speaking out against the war, as well as the U.S.'s "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy of drumming open homosexuals from the military. Gary gave an informative and passionate presentation at the Wyoming Debate Cooperative (needless to say, both Iraq and activism are hotly debated topics), and through that lecture and a couple of nights at the bar, I got to know his intellect, energy, and sense of humor.

From his web site:

Former First Lieutenant Gary Barkley returned from a year-long tour in Iraq where he served as a Civil Affairs officer with the 403rd Civil Affairs Battalion. Even though Gary had resigned his commission in the US Army in 2001, when he was recalled to active duty in 2005 for service in Operation Iraqi Freedom, he answered his Nation’s call without hesitation. During his tour, Gary served as Operations Officer of the Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq.

Now Gary's book is out: Shared Sacrifice is an enthusiastic and very critical treatment of the Iraq war and what I read to be the phenomena and motiff of conservativist militarism in general: A theocratic, superstitious, and rich-white-guy militarism that excludes gays, privileges theological and ideological whiteness and heteronormativity, and has made an utter mess of the world, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even before I review this book (which I hope to do in the next few weeks), you should buy it and read it. Gary's political and military perspective is unique and may not be yours or mine. What I find most compelling is his concern for the military itself, a community he clearly loves, although he laments its colonization and consolodation by the religious right. I predict we will hear more from this type of activist and it's important to have discussions with them: Like Obama, Gary doesn't want to smash the state or capital. He wants liberalism (in the classical and contemporary senses) to live up to its promises. This is a question worth asking and a conversation to be had. We could do much worse than listen to an intelligent and articulate Iraq war vet begin that discussion. Plus, DADT is just wrong and stupid, and Gary argues that better than I do.

I also plan to publish some exerpts from my interview with Gary last year...all in good time...but read the book!

GOD - APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!

Over at Science Blogs, GrrlScientist has posted what she calls the "top fifty atheist t-shirt and bumper sticker aphorisms," but I don't think they are exclusively "atheist." I can say with confidence that Unitarians, Universalists, and other nonfundamentalists can laugh at them too, and I daresay even a few more religious types, if they can truly laugh at themselves. Some of my favorites:

Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers

Honk If Your Religious Beliefs Make You An Asshole

Intelligent Design Makes My Monkey Cry

There's A REASON Why Atheists Don't Fly Planes Into Buildings

"Worship Me or I Will Torture You Forever. Have a Nice Day."­ God.

People Who Don't Want Their Beliefs Laughed at Shouldn't Have Such Funny Beliefs

Threatening Children With Hell Is FUN!

GOD - APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!

God Doesn't Exist. So, I Guess That Means No One Loves You.

Science: It Works, Bitches.

I Gave Up Superstitious Mumbo Jumbo For Lent

My Flying Monkey Can Beat Up Your Guardian Angel

Every Time You Play With Yourself, God Kills a Kitten

Praying Is Politically Correct Schizophrenia

I Was An Atheist Until The Hindus Convinced Me That I Was God

The Spanish Inquisition: The Original Faith-based Initiative

If we were made in his image, when why aren't humans invisible too?

JESUS SAVES....You From Thinking For Yourself

Every Time You See a Rainbow, God is Having Gay Sex

I Went to Public School in Kansas and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt and a Poor Understanding of the Scientific Method.

The Family That Prays Together is Brainwashing the Children

No Gods. No Mullets.

got your surge right here

The news that the Worst President Ever just pulled another signing statement, this one concerning the permanence of U.S. bases in Iraq, coincides with widespread bursting of balloons in the "surge is working" mad tea party.

To continue the literary references: One needn’t wear a flag lapel to spot a naked emperor, nor does the Left’s resentment over years of dishonesty and narrow-mindedness on the part of the Bush administration render it somehow blind to obvious facts. For columnist Michael Shank, calling Iraq secure is not only inaccurate, but dishonest. He accuses the Pentagon and war apologists of manipulating numbers, for example the number of refugees returning to Iraq, without factoring in long-term trends, such as how those refugees will be absorbed. The entire “surge” rhetorical enterprise has emphasized largely meaningless numbers stripped of their context. Meanwhile, Bush's plan to negotiate a status of forces agreement before he leaves office, an agreement which will keep troops there permanently (or force his successor in the White House to break the agreement) has drawn protests and condemnations from across the Untied States.

There are several reasons to doubt the administration’s claims of increased stability in Iraq, and instead see a naked emperor, regardless of one’s political affiliation. First, the “stability” in question doesn’t even exist. The twin bombs that struck Baghdad at the end of the week (the worst attack in months) were not only symbols of order unrestored, but also of the chaotic hold on partisanship and division in Iraq: Their targets, the Ghazil pet market and the New Baghdad pet market, both on the east side of the Tigris River, were each popular with both Shiites and Sunnis.

So civilians continue to be targeted, and U.S. troops continue to die as well. The regularity of these deaths outpaces the small, localized improvements that war apologists continually and stubbornly cite as signs of improvement. Although the four-month drop in U.S. casualties may have seemed like an improvement, US casualties are up again, with 38 service members killed in January.

Moreover, whatever artificial “stability” the US can advertise is a desperately assembled house of cards and cash. That stability is partly --in a huge part, actually-- the result of the U.S. literally buying the loyalty of Sunni militias; the U.S. has paid out $120 million so far. However, "responsibility for paying these forces is supposed to pass to the Shia-dominated Iraqi regime this summer, and it is by no means certain that it will follow suit." As a result, Improvements in security are fragile at best. Recent rocket attacks in Basra--an area considered recently and relatively stable--prove that so-called improvements there are largely a matter of interpretation.

In order to pad claims of stability, Bush has authorized the drawdown (which he promptly delayed) of troops now that the “surge” is allegedly “working.” However, the Army and Marines say that there are no soldiers available to replace the ones who are withdrawing. Weapons flow is another fly in the ointment. Corruption and bribery, as well as outright theft, continues to put weapons meant for Iraq security in the hands of terrorists.

Third and finally, the long-term political situation has obviously not improved, not even a little. As Senator Bob Casey pointed out in a speech on the Senate floor the day after the President's State of the Union address, Bush promised the same things a year ago that he is promising now: "Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas." That hasn't happened.

The recent news of the alarming increase in military suicide rates associated with serving in Iraq suggests a slightly different interpretation of “stability,” and also that there might be a relationship between the futile effort to increase stability in Iraq at a cost of the personal stability of the Americans who are being asked to go there. Such human pain is always a sobering remedy for the illusions of naked emperors.