Deepak Chopra: Iraq and the Problem of Evil

by Deepak Chopra
Fri Dec 22, 9:24 AM ET

It's not yet the last days in Iraq, but it might as well be. A recent poll shows that 71% of Americans oppose the way Pres. Bush is handling the war, and only 9% believe we will win. No such consensus was ever reached over Vietnam. Nixon was elected twice against opponents who would have ended the war sooner. A back-room agreement that could have been achieved with the North Vietnamese in 1969 was postponed for six bloody years while the Nixon administration finagled a way to save face.

They were permitted this delay because the public had been long persuaded that we were fighting the evil of Communism. The Iraq war has been painfully protracted already, since Pres. Bush has petulantly refused to admit that any course is right except his own, for the same reason. Terrorists represent absolute evil. This indisputable point, it seems, covers any wrong committed by the U.S. in terms of casualties and human rights violations.

If absolute evil looks so clear to us, why does the rest of the world disagree? Are we to assume that only America knows the truth? The reason we find ourselves so isolated and hated can be directly traced back to blinded moral certainty. The right wing promulgated the myth that Reagan brought down Communism by resisting "the evil empire" (no matter that the Soviet Union collapsed from its own internal corruption and decay), so now we get "the axis of evil," warring against enemy countries that can't be considered part of the civilized world.

The rest of the world isn't buying into this right-wing rationale, and it's time that the American public woke up from the trance induced by fear. The solution to North Korea is to unite it with South Korea, an end that both countries want. The solution to al-Qaida is to police it closely with the aid of the entire international community (we've already killed or driven into hiding over 80% of its leadership). The way to deal with Iraq is much harder, since such a catastrophe has been created over there. But Pres. Bush is almost certain to reject the unanimous recommendation of the Iraq Study Group that we talk directly to Syria and Iran. Why? Because they are too evil.

Thinking in absolutes almost never works. Even when fanaticism and extremism are involved, the only moral course is to weigh some difficult choices:

--Is it better to talk to your enemies or isolate them and make them more committed to their own ideology?
--Is it better to push slowly against Islamic fundamentalism or to destabilize entire societies by military means?
--Is it better to ignore religious beliefs that contradict your own or treat intolerance with equal intolerance?

It's pretty obvious which choices the Bush administration has made and thus far has coaxed the American public to go along with it. The dirty little secret behind the Iraq war is that Bush, the religious right, and neoconservative policy wonks despise the Iraqis. We are saving a barbaric, benighted, godless people so far as they are concerned. This is no surprise given that the administration hardly lifted a finger to prevent anarchy after the 2003 invasion. There was no follow-up plan because nobody cared enough in human terms. The Iraqi people were pieces on a chess board. Iraq itself was simply a means to an end, which was to wipe out Islamic evil. And since Iraqis are Islamic, they are tarred with the same brush.

This was a tainted rationale for "helping" a country we merely intended to use. As the mist clears from our eyes, more and more Americans will see how shamefully we have treated that country, and hopefully the entire doctrine of 'the axis of evil' will be forgotten so that the real work of winning the world back to our side can begin.

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This do-nothing Congress did all the wrong things

At 4:35 a.m. last Saturday, Sen. Bill Frist (news, bio, voting record) performed his last act as majority leader. To the handful of members still there, he announced the adjournment of the 109th Congress "sine die" - that is, forever - leaving behind the most unproductive session in recent history. Congress has been in session only 103 days this year, compared with 110 for President Truman's "do-nothing Congress."

It did not perform its most basic constitutional duty - to vote the appropriations necessary to run the government. Of 11 departmental appropriations, it had managed to pass only two - defense and homeland security. The rest of the government was left to limp along on a stopgap resolution that was constantly in danger of expiring - the next deadline is Feb. 15.

In its last throes, the 109th did manage to pass legislation establishing permanent trade relations with Vietnam and a nuclear trade pact with India. And, yes, it renewed a cluster of expiring tax breaks. The Democrats, flexing their pending muscle, secured a bill blocking an automatic pay raise for Congress until next year, until after a vote to increase the minimum wage.

What this Congress did not do is more striking than what this Congress did. It took no action on real immigration reform. It did not enact a budget. It produced no basic reform in Social Security or Medicare.

It did, however, have spirited debates on matters such as flag burning, gay marriage, and Terry Shiavo's feeding tube, an issue that seemed to absorb Senator Frist.

What Congress also left undone was any serious effort at ethics reform. What we got instead was retiring speaker Dennis Hastert's swan song, saying, "We promised to protect this nation from further attack and, by grace of God and with the leadership of President Bush, we have been successful."

This could also be called the Mark Foley Congress - a leadership that for years did nothing about a Congressman who made e-mail advances to adolescent pages. Mr. Foley resigned. The House ethics committee said members of Congress were negligent about protecting the pages. But it said no rules had been violated.

It may be that Congress has become, like the title of a recent book by scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, "The Broken Branch."

* Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio.
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Chris Kelly: Stalag 9/11

by Chris Kelly

George Bush has done some iffy things since seizing power, but the one that really hit me where I live was ruining Billy Wilder's Stalag 17.

If you're not into old movies, you should know that Stalag 17 is a cynical, fast-talking dark comedy set in a prisoner of war camp, kind of a cross between Grand Illusion and His Girl Friday. Of course, if you're not into old movies, knowing it's a cross between Grand Illusion and His Girl Friday probably didn't help much. Let me start again...

Stalag 17 was a play written by two guys, Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, who had been actual prisoners at an actual place called Stalag 17 in actual Austria during World War Two. (Think of Austria as kind of a cross between Switzerland and Triumph of the Will.) Billy Wilder made it into a movie in 1953 with William Holden and it's a really terrific piece of entertainment, full of interesting characters and snappy wised-up dialogue and cool plot twists and bravery and Nazis. And you don't have to take my word for it. Ask anyone else who's old.

Here's where
President Bush comes in. While Stalag 17's prisoners are planning their escapes, and the Germans are trying to stop them, both sides keep referring to this dopey sort of rulebook called "the Geneva Conventions."

These appear to be rules about the fair treatment of prisoners - I dunno, not torturing them, for instance - and even the Nazis obey them. Weird, huh?

A lot hinges on them, as a plot gimmick, but the characters seem to take them for granted. Even though it's a war, there are still things you don't do. Which, if only for story purposes, explains why the movie isn't two hours of Otto Preminger holding William Holden's head under water.

(Otto Preminger? Nothing? Okay, think of a cross between Erich von Stroheim and... no, this is getting us nowhere.)

This isn't supposed to take anything away from the Nazis as the villains of the piece --you can see it in the kommandant's beady little burgher eyes that he wishes he could get around the Conventions - but the rules are the rules.

Even if the rules are - how did the Attorney General put it? - "quaint."

But here's the thing. If you accept that the Geneva Conventions are just an annoying formality, like recycling - and I guess we do now - it ruins the whole movie. There's no drama in it. Because the Third Reich isn't even trying.

The prisoners get mail from home. They get visits from the Red Cross. They aren't even kept in cages. No one hoods them, or electrocutes them, or pretends to execute them, or places them in a "stress position" or walks them around on a leash. At one of the darkest points in the story, one of them is forced to stand for a few days without sleep. Like that even hurts.

Don't the guards want their country to win? These guys -- the prisoners -- are all members of an organization (The United States Army Air Force) that not only is thinking of using weapons of mass destruction, they actually are. Night after night. From planes.

They have information that could save German lives. But no one seems to have given their interrogators the tools they need to get it.

And now my stomach hurts. Because sometimes even sarcasm can only get you so far.

In real life, the Nazis did commit atrocities against American prisoners of war. At Malmedy. At Mauthausen. That's why we hate Nazis. Because they were bad.

In real life, bombing Germany killed a half million civilians, but interned American and British airmen were generally treated according to the Geneva Conventions. They weren't systematically tortured. They weren't deliberately humiliated. They weren't held in solitary cells. International organizations were given their names and their families were informed of their capture. Their mortality rate was less than 1%.

And they were being held by the worst government on earth.

It's almost like the hippies at MoveOn have it backwards. When it comes to protecting his country, Hitler isn't George Bush.
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Look who owns U.S. debt now

Other nations hold a record 52% of it, leaving U.S. economy vulnerable. For most of U.S. history, the national debt was something that America owed itself. What was borrowed by the government was lent by its people. The liabilities of one were the assets of the other.

OPPOSING VIEW: Thank foreign investors

But that has changed as the federal government has increasingly looked abroad to finance its prodigious borrowing. Foreigners now hold a record 52% of the government's $4 trillion in outside debt, up from a quarter in 1995. Later this month, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will go to China to ask the Chinese whether they could see their way clear to buy fewer IOUs and more iPods, Boeing jets and such.

There is nothing inherently wrong with foreigners owning American debt. In fact, these and other investments pouring into the USA help keep interest rates relatively low and the dollar relatively strong. To some degree, these investments reflect confidence in the American economy. But the very things that make this infusion of cash attractive also spell trouble.

The growing reliance on foreigners, in many cases foreign central banks, reflects a nation digging itself further into debt and denial.

Perhaps the best comparison is the many credit card offers that come in the mail each month. In the short run, by making borrowing so easy, they can prop up living standards. In the long run, the bills come due.

The foreign money is no different:

It postpones the day of reckoning, allowing U.S. policymakers to act like bankrupt shopaholics, running up debt to pay for tax cuts and new programs while leaving it to another generation to repay.

It props up the nation's other deficit - its chronic trade deficit. The purchase of treasury bills is part of a broader trend of foreigners recycling their dollars back to the United States to invest in everything from government debt to the home mortgages, instead of using them to buy more American goods and services.

It makes the U.S. economy hostage to the whims of foreign investors, including governments. Eventually, they could decide they have better places to invest than in U.S. debt securities. This might be a gradual decision. Or it might not be. If the latter, it would cause a surge in interest rates (because the Treasury would have to offer more enticing terms to attract buyers) and trigger a recession.

Many developing nations buy treasury bills not because they are deemed to be the best investment, but to support their own monetary polices. The Chinese, for instance, do so as part of a strategy to keep their currency artificially low against the dollar. This holds down the cost of Chinese goods, helping the Chinese economy but making U.S. goods less competitive.

The problem needs to be attacked from a number of fronts. The government needs to borrow less. And foreign holders of all of these IOUs need to realize that a gradual diversification of their portfolios would be in everyone's interest.

If that happened, maybe our products, rather than our debts, would be our leading exports. Wouldn't that be nice?

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