Political Book Junkies Rejoice

The New Republic has launched a feature on their site titled "The First Word." They are reviewing a political book practically every day. Check it out because it is worth it.

Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith and the Medal of Honor

Sgt. Smith was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his action during combat. The citation reads:

Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy near Baghdad International Airport, Baghdad, Iraq on 4 April 2003. On that day, Sergeant First Class Smith was engaged in the construction of a prisoner of war holding area when his Task Force was violently attacked by a company-sized enemy force. Realizing the vulnerability of over 100 fellow soldiers, Sergeant First Class Smith quickly organized a hasty defense consisting of two platoons of soldiers, one Bradley Fighting Vehicle and three armored personnel carriers. As the fight developed, Sergeant First Class Smith braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand grenades and anti-tank weapons, and organized the evacuation of three wounded soldiers from an armored personnel carrier struck by a rocket propelled grenade and a 60mm mortar round. Fearing the enemy would overrun their defenses, Sergeant First Class Smith moved under withering enemy fire to man a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a damaged armored personnel carrier. In total disregard for his own life, he maintained his exposed position in order to engage the attacking enemy force. During this action, he was mortally wounded. His courageous actions helped defeat the enemy attack, and resulted in as many as 50 enemy soldiers killed, while allowing the safe withdrawal of numerous wounded soldiers. Sergeant First Class Smith’s extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the Third Infantry Division “Rock of the Marne,” and the United States Army.

The army has set up a site in his honor. It includes a battlescape, that I can't bear to view, which trace his actions on that day. The Christian Science Monitor has the best profile of Sgt. Smith and includes a blow by blow of the firefight that cost the soldier his life.

Specialist Medrano was among the soldiers trying to get the wounded soldiers out of the damaged personnel carrier and down the road to the aid station. During his three years in the Army, he had spent all but a few months under Smith, subject to his meticulous weapons checks but also a witness to another side of the hardened soldier - a side that sometimes cracked jokes, a side that stayed up nights in Kosovo talking with Medrano about family, a side of a sergeant that embraced a lowly specialist.

"All the training I did, and all the things I learned were from him," he says. "He was always trying to take care of you."

At that moment, as Medrano was lifting one of the wounded to safety, he glanced up at Smith, who was now manning the gun atop the personnel carrier. "We made eye contact, and he just waved me off," says Medrano. "He was telling me to take care of these people."

With the help of several other soldiers, Smith backed the vehicle into the courtyard so that he could cover both the tower and the gate. For perhaps 10 minutes, he fired morethan 300 rounds to prevent the Iraqi forces from spilling through the bulldozer-made hole in the wall and on to the command center.

"Not all soldiers would jump on top of a vehicle that has already gotten hit while bloody people are being taken out of it," says Medrano. "He did it because he knew if he didn't, we would get slaughtered."

Led by another sergeant, Medrano and two other soldiers used Smith's covering fire to move cautiously to the base of the tower, where they took out the Iraqi soldiers. But by that time, Smith's gun, too, had fallen silent. He had been shot in the head, the only US fatality in the firefight.

Around the World in 30 Seconds (Still the JP II Free Zone)

The Iraqis selected a president and two v.p.s a couple of hours earlier than anticipated. Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, is pres and he'll have shiite and sunni vps. Now they have to pick a PM to actually run everything. At the local level things are pretty messy too. W. nominated a new ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalizad. The post has been vacant since Negroponte left. Prince Rainier is dead. I hate to sound cruel, but does this really merit that much attention? The UN General Assembly begins debate on Kofi's reforms. Recent UN activity suggests that there may be a thaw between the US and the EUnuchs. In "Palestine" the good news is that Hamas will participate in the elections the bad news is that Hamas probably do well. In Mexico the PAN is still going hard after AMLO. The Attorney General has suggested that not only would AMLO be barred from running for pres, but he'd also resign as Mexico City's mayor (en espanol). AMLO will be defending himself, what are the chances of him saying that history will absolve him?

Around the World in 30 Seconds (JP II Free Zone)

Iraq finally has a speaker for its National Assembly, Kyrgyz does not have a government and the Chinese are worried about Japan getting a seat in the Security Council (surprise!). In elections Moldova is the latest former SSR to continue to assert it's independence from Moscow, the opposition in Zimbawe wants new ones (fat chance) and Daniel Ortega is alive (unfortunately) and staging his latest comeback.

Tricky Tony Blair

When you have a big news story sucking all the oxygen from the media babblesphere it is usually a good time for a skilled politico to do his (or her) thing. Exhibit A is Tony Blair who has called for elections in four weeks time. With the Papal funeral slated for Friday and the Charles/Camilla thing going on Saturday it is unlikely anyone will even notice that there is an election until Monday, which gives us basically a three week race. Labour has a slight lead over the Conservatives. The Economist is curious about the potential affect the ascendant Liberal Democrats could have.

4GW in Iraq

There was a well coordinated attack against Abu Gharib prison. This either good news or bad news. I say it could be good news because the insurgents may have decided that going after Iraqis is counterproductive. This would give the new government some breathing room while we contend with the insurgents. On the bad news front there is of course the focus on US forces and the almost conventional nature of this attack. The attack either means that the insurgents are desperate or are comfortable enough to engage in the next level of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). I would love to get into this but my boss wants me to review a memo. You can read more about 4GW here and here. D-N-I.net has a PowerPoint presentation on how to win a 4GW in Iraq, you need to save it to look at it. A book I am currently reading, The Sling and the Stone, delves into the history of 4GW and how it pertains to Iraq.

The Pope - Another Perspective

There are at least two sides to every story and so it should come as no surprise that not everyone loved JP II. Let's start with Hitch (we should always start with the brilliant Mr. Hitchens). He's at his best at the start:

The papacy is not, in theory, a man-made office at all. Its holder is chosen for life, by God himself, to hold the keys of Peter and to be the vicar of Christ on earth. This is yet another of the self-imposed tortures that faith inflicts upon itself. It means that you have to believe that the pope before last, who held on to the job for a matter of weeks before dying (or, according to some, before being murdered) was either unchosen by God in some fit of celestial pique, or left unprotected by heaven against his assassins. And it means that you have to believe that the public agony and humiliation endured by the pontiff was also part of some divine design. In the case of a presidency, or even a monarchy, provision can be made for abdication and succession when physical and mental deliquescence occur. But there could obviously not have been any graceful retirement in the case of John Paul II. The next vicar of Christ could hardly be expected to perform his sacred duties knowing that there was a still-living vicar of Christ, however decrepit, on the scene. Thus, and as with the Schiavo case, every last morsel of misery has been compulsorily extracted from the business of death. For the people who credit the idea, apparently, heaven can wait. Odd.

I leave it to the faith-based to wrestle with all this. Or rather, I would be happy to do so if they would stay out of my life. But there is one detail that sticks with me. A few years ago, it seemed quite probable that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston would have to face trial for his appalling collusion in the child-rape racket that his diocese had been running. The man had knowingly reassigned dangerous and sadistic criminals to positions where they would be able to exploit the defenseless. He had withheld evidence and made himself an accomplice, before and after the fact, in the one offense that people of all faiths and of none have most united in condemning. (Since I have more than once criticized Maureen Dowd in this space, I should say now that I think she put it best of all. A church that has allowed no latitude in its teachings on masturbation, premarital sex, birth control, and divorce suddenly asks for understanding and "wiggle room" for the most revolting crime on the books.)

His closing is equally compelling:

No obituary about John Paul II, for example, will omit to mention that he exerted enormous force to change the politics of Poland. Well, good for him, I would say. (He behaved much better on that occasion than he did when welcoming Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's most blood-spattered henchmen, to an audience at the Vatican and then for a private visit to Assisi.) But let nobody confuse the undermining of a Stalinist bureaucracy in a majority Catholic nation with the insidious attempt to thwart or bend the law in a secular democracy. And let nobody say that this is no problem.

At the New Republic a dissenter or two can also be found. Lee Siegel goes after the media and the late Pontiff:

For beyond the Pope's integrity, and dignity, and humanity, was the simple fact that his intransigence about abortion, and science's role in modern life, and gay marriage, and contraception, had alienated vast numbers of Catholics who wanted to carry their faith with them into their modern lives. His stubbornness about contraception ensured that vast numbers of the Catholic poor, forbidden birth control, would stay poor. And John Paul's appointment of key cardinals who shared his intransigence guaranteed that the Church would remain in crisis, like the poor, for generations. You could argue that nothing except good things should be said of the recently deceased. But the talking heads are not exactly primed to reexamine Catholicism in a critical way after the event of the Pope's death has given way to the next late-breaking story. And John Paul's death was not the death of an ordinary man.

Since Siegel's column is supposed to be about the media he trains back on them:

After performing as evangelicals in the Ashley Smith story, and after miming sympathy for the fundamentalist cause in the Schiavo case, only to turn that sorrowful tale into a version of the most gruesome reality television, the talking heads took up their rosaries for their reports on the Pope. Anderson Cooper declared that the Pope was dead, "his soul departed, his body at peace, serene." How this journalist was able to ascertain that the Pope had a soul, and that this soul had now left the Pontiff's body, let alone that said body was "at peace" and "serene," he didn't say. Soon they'll be doing exorcisms on C-Span. And they forced Dan Rather to retire because of a few faked memos!

Confessions of an Economic Hitman - On the Web

God I hope this post is brief, because I'm a little sleepy. I would have put this up yesterday but the stinking blogger was not working. So here we go. Confessions of an Economic Hitman, our book of the month, has a website all its own and it can be found here. The site helpfully posts those that have praised the book. Finding other stuff on the web was more difficult . I Googled to my heart's content but the MSM (mainstream media) has chosen to ignore this book so I had to go to alternative sources. One thing that kept popping up was this interview with the ironically named Democracy Now! Since it is just a book promo interview there isn't much there that isn't in the book. The one nugget is a throwaway comment:

The Japanese wanted to finance and construct a sea-level canal in Panama. Torrijos talked to them about this which very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was thrown out (and that’s an interesting story–how that actually happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came from Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at Torrijos -- tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not to talk to the Japanese. [emph. added]

What's so interesting about being the most ineffectual president since Herbert Hoover? I suppose the EHM had something to do with the takeover of the embassy in Tehran? How about the invasion of Afghanistan did the EHM plot that too? Jude Wanniski the self-styled guru of supply-side economics and the only person I know of that can call both Jack Kemp and Louis Farrakhan friends thinks that he'll like Confessions when he gets around to reading it.

What we have in this book from Mr. Perkins is an account of a foot soldier in these operations of the Evil Empire. I’ll get his book and check it out, but from what I can gather about it on the internet he is well within the ballpark of what has been going on. Are bankers evil by nature? Of course not. But as bankers they follow the money, not giving a second thought to the conditions in which they leave their debtors. The first priority of any institution is self-preservation, and for the big banks, that means getting paid back on their loans. Is this any way to run the world? No. It is a dreadful way to operate, and it would end if our government returned to a dollar/gold system and abided by it. If not, I’m afraid nothing Mr. Perkins writes or that I write will change a thing. The folks who control the money control our government and that’s that. It is interesting that Perkins does identify the Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton as agents in this quiet conspiracy to make sure the good old USA flourishes, even though it means the relentless impoverishment of the poorest countries of the world.

Another big Confessions fan is Lyndon Larouche the perennial Democratic presidential candidate. The December 3, 2004 of Larouche's Executive Intelligence Review breathlessly proclaimed:

The publication and initial widespread circulation of a book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, has prompted Lyndon LaRouche to launch a major new international flanking attack against George Shultz's fascist "Vulcan" apparatus, an attack which could catapult the Perkins book to the top of the international best-seller lists, and drive the would-be controllers of the Bush-Cheney "Halliburton Regime" into new, greater-than-ever fits of wild-eyed rage.

Despite praising the Larouchies did not some faults:

The international financier circles described by Perkins as an "American global empire" are, in fact, part of an apparatus centered, not in the U.S.A., but in Western Europe, particularly in the City of London. This apparatus, an extension of the Venetian rentier-financier oligarchy, later morphed into what is today called the "Anglo-Dutch liberal system" of private central banking, characterized by a Physiocratic obsession with vise-grip private cartel control over strategic raw materials, and a deep commitment to a Malthusian nightmare of radical world population reduction.

That Anglo-Dutch system was fully consolidated by the 1763 close of the Seven Years' War, and was, for the next century, dominated by the British East India Company of Lord Shelburne, Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Mill. It was this same apparatus, later under Lord Palmerston, that orchestrated the Southern secession and the U.S.A. Civil War. In the 20th century, through its Bank for International Settlements (BIS), it installed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in power in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, Francisco Franco in Spain, and other subservient fascist regimes in other parts of Eurasia.

Today this apparatus is behind the Bush-Cheney Administration, as most clearly shown by Shultz's role in installing Condi Rice at the President's side, to "Vulcanize" George W. Bush's brain.

The December 10, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review was practically dedicated to the book. The first article says that the book should reopen the murder cases of Enrico Mattei, Aldo Moro, Jürgen Ponto, and Alfred Herrhausen and Detlev Karsten Rohwedder. I have no idea who these guys are, but if you care you can read the piece here. You have to get about half-way through to find some praise for Confessions:

Thus Perkins' book is so explosive, because it is written by a high-ranking insider, who finally blames himself through this self-exposure. But it simply corresponds to the most specific experience of our movement over the past 30 years. A veteran team of experts of the LaRouche movement in the United States and Europe is now occupied in comparing the facts enumerated by Perkins, with conditions and affairs already known to us, and in researching further background material. And this much can already be said: There are, above all in the developing nations, a very large number ofcontemporary witnesses who can confirm what he confesses.

The next article is a not-so-nice profile of former Secretary of State George Schultz. Finally we get to a glowing review of Confessions of an Economic Hitman:

Perkins' autobiographical account of how he was spotted, profiled, recruited, and trained to be an "economic hit man"—and how he found the personal courage to escape from a very lucrative, seductive, but murderous life—is a gripping tale. It is told with a flair for the details, great and small, which make it a very convincing story. The archives of EIR, and the saga of Lyndon LaRouche's lifetime quest for global economic justice, confirm that every basic feature of Perkins' account is true to life. Perkins speaks, in personal terms, about his own dealings with Panama's leader Omar Torrijos and Ecuador's President Jaime Roldos. Both men resisted the bribes and threats of the "economic hit men," and instead fought for programs that would benefit all of their people. They were both killed in 1981, and Perkins' accounts leave no doubt that they were assassinated by the jackals because they dared to resist.

As if enough had not been said George Schultz the reviewer has to throw in his own two cents:

As EIR has reported over the past 30 years, and as we detail elsewhere in this Feature, George Shultz is truly one of the most nefarious figures in political life in our time. It was Shultz who took personal responsibility for the final destruction of Franklin Roosevelt's Bretton Woods System of fixed echange rates, first in his infamous diktat to Nixon's Treasury Secretary John Connally, whom he soon replaced; next, at the Azores international monetary conference; and finally at the 1975 Rambouillet conference, where European nations attempted, unsuccessfully, to reconstitute a stable monetary system to also include the integration of the Soviet bloc. Shultz later orchestrated the Plaza Accords of 1985, between the United States and Japan, which, in effect, ended Japan's efforts, over the prior decade, to play the role of sponsor and creditor of a series of great economic development projects. He later would, in effect, "create" the present George W. Bush Administration, through his sponsorship of the "Vulcan" team of top policy aides, who became key Cabinet officials.

But Shultz in other respects merely personifies the system of economic hit men exposed by the Perkins book. Shultz is not a "Lord of the Rings." He is, ultimately, an underling, who has taken the Faustian deal, and cares nothing about the fact that his policies have directly led to the deaths of millions, and will kill countless more millions in the future if not stopped.

The Perkins special issue closes with an in depth interview with the hitman himself. Of course we get more George Schultz!

Perkins: Yes—you've covered a lot of territory there, from George Shultz to the jackals! do want to say—George Shultz, I do talk about, who was, of course, president of Bechtel Corp., and then Secretary of State under Reagan, and very much, deeply involved in attacking Panama in 1989. And that's described in detail in the book, how that all ties in with the whole Bechtel philosophy.

But, I want to emphasize, that this is not a partisan issue. These things happened under both the Democratic and Republican regimes. And George Shultz is a great example under the Republican, as are Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, and the Bush family themselves. But, let's not forget that the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations had Robert McNamara, who'd been president of Ford and then was Secretary of Defense under Johnson and Kennedy, and then became president of the World Bank. And there were people like Brzezinski in the Carter Administration. And these things occurred also under Clinton. This is not a partisan issue.

Here's more:

Perkins: Right—and let me start by saying, I'm all for foreign aid, real foreign aid. Billions of people are destitute in this world: 24,000 people die every day of starvation; 30,000 children die every single day of curable diseases. On Sept. 11, we lost 3,000 people in a very tragic event, terrible event. But, on that same day, over 50,000 people died of starvation and curable diseases, needlessly. We need to correct that, and we can.

And the book, ultimately, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is a very hopeful one, that presents alternatives; that shows how we can be the first empire in the history of the world, not to collapse, not to fall, as all empires eventually do, but to turn around and offer the world a truly different system, something that's never been done before. And so, this is where we stand today, I think, poised at the verge of doing that. . . .

Finally -

Perkins: Yes. Our roots, definitely, defeat this enemy. We have become what we fought against in the American Revolution. We have become that, to much of the world. And a lot of people living in England in the 1770s probably would talk very much like we are, or a majority of our people are today—they weren't aware of what the British Empire was doing overseas. They were simply aware that they were living relatively comfortably, compared to most other people in the world at that time. And so, they carried out their jobs.

We're doing the thing. We're blind. It took people who were willing to stick their necks in the noose: the George Washingtons, the Thomas Paines and Thomas Jeffersons, John Hancocks, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence, to show the world what the British Empire really was like, and what imperialism and colonialism truly was about. Now, these people who we now look at—George Washington, you know we see pictures of him all over the place, and he looks quite stately, and he looks like he's living a comfortable life and all (which he was, after the Revolution). But we have to remember that those men who signed the Declaration of Independence were terrorists! They were traitors! They were performing treason. They would have been hanged, had they lost the Revolution, because they were defying their government. And now, we've basically turned our own country into something not unlike the British Empire, but a lot subtler—and, perhaps, in that respect, maybe even more dangerous, because it isn't our armies that have created this empire, for the most part. It's this very subtle form—it's our taxes, it's our economic hit men.

And we need to reverse that process. My book is ultimately an extremely positive book. It tells the shadow side of foreign policy, but it leads up to the current time, when I truly feel that this prophesy that I mentioned before, of the indigenous people: We are in this time now, of tremendous opportunity for change. And, all empires collapse. This one will collapse, too, if we continue on this path.

OK, I'm done. Since I am going to miss tonight's discussion I will be posting my thoughts later...when I wake up.

A Catholic W?

Uh...what about JFK? From the Opinion Journal:

Along with being the first president to attend a papal funeral, Bush has embraced the "culture of life," much in the news of late, which owes a great deal to Catholic theology. Perhaps just as Bill Clinton has been called the "first black president," George W. Bush will one day earn the honorary title of "first Catholic president."

Hey, wasn't Warren G. Harding our first black president?

More on the Pontiff

It is impossible to post on the pope without bringing up George Weigel. Weigel is a leading theologian in the Church and the late pontiff's unofficial - official biographer. No one outside the Vatican knew JPII better so Weigel's take is bound to be interesting. Here is his piece in today's Wall Street Journal. Here is some of what he had to say:

Some will dismiss him as hopelessly "conservative" in matters of doctrine and morals, although it is not clear how religious and moral truth can be parsed in liberal/conservative terms. The shadows cast upon his papacy by clerical scandal and the misgovernance of some bishops will focus others' attention. John Paul II was the most visible human being in history, having been seen live by more men and women than any other man who ever lived; the remarkable thing is that millions of those people, who saw him only at a great distance, will think they have lost a friend. Those who knew him more intimately experience today a profound sense of personal loss at the death of a man who was so wonderfully, thoroughly, engagingly human--a man of intelligence and wit and courage whose humanity breathed integrity and sanctity.

He closes with:

Many were puzzled that this Pope, so vigorous in defending the truths of Catholic faith, could become, over a quarter-century, the world's premier icon of religious freedom and inter-religious civility. But here, too, John Paul II was teaching a crucial lesson about the future of freedom: Universal empathy comes through, not around, particular convictions. There is no Rawlsian veil of ignorance behind which the world can withdraw, to subsequently emerge with decency in its pocket.

There is only history. But that history, the Pope believed, is the story of God's quest for man, and man then taking the same path as God. "History" is His-story. Believing that, Karol Józef Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, changed history. The power of his belief empowered millions of others to do the same.

There is also a (too) brief interview with Weigel at the National Review Online.

JP II the Great

Yes I've been a little lazy this weekend, but I also felt a little overwhelmed with all of the Pope coverage. I'm pretty bad at weeding out material to post for big stories such as this. There is so much out on the net that I can't help but suffer from sensory overload. So here is what I've enjoyed today. The Washington Post reports that at the Requiem held for the late pontiff he was referred to as "the Great". This kind of takes the oomph out of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus' piece suggesting that the JP II could be referred to as "the Great." He also declares that:

If any phrase encapsulates the message that John Paul declared to the world, it is probably "prophetic humanism." There is nothing more humanistic than the Catholic Christianity that he proclaimed and lived. The message centers in the astounding truth that God became a human being in Jesus Christ. You cannot get more humanistic than that.

Neuhas goes on to tick off JP's accomplishments and the tasks that he had not completed (advancing the culture of life). Note to the Vatican and Fr. Neuhaus - Peggy Noonan was first. She called him "the Great" almost three years ago. Back at the WaPost Charles Krauthammer confesses to not being much a believer

...but I find it hard not to suspect some providential hand at play when the white smoke went up at the Vatican 27 years ago and the Polish cardinal was chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Precisely at the moment that the West most desperately needed it, we were sent a champion.

Krauthammer like Neuhaus quotes Stalin's famous taunt questioning how many divisions the Pope had under his command. Krauthammer opines that JP II had proven to history that he had more than Stalin and more than Stalin could have imagined. Krauthammer closes by saying:

Under the benign and deeply humane vision of this pope, the power of faith led to the liberation of half a continent. Under the barbaric and nihilistic vision of Islam's jihadists, the power of faith has produced terror and chaos. That contrast alone, which has dawned upon us unmistakably ever since Sept. 11, should be reason enough to be grateful for John Paul II. But we mourn him for more than that. We mourn him for restoring strength to the Western idea of the free human spirit at a moment of deepest doubt and despair. And for seeing us through to today's great moment of possibility for both faith and freedom.