CURRENT UPDATES: September 6, 2006

Dear Friends,

In this edition of the Arms Trade Resource Center's Email Update we try and get our heads around the "all terror, all the time" rhetoric coming out of Washington. Believe us, it was no fun.

We welcome comments, questions and reprints!

Best,
Frida Berrigan
Bill Hartung

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

I. AMERICA IS SAFER, TAKE IT FROM ME
A. Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself?
B. Wishful Thinking From the Leader of the Free World
C. War in Iraq
D. Optimism in the Face of Facts
E. Resources
II. A LIGHTER LOOK . . .
III. OTHER RESOURCES

I. AMERICA IS SAFER, TAKE IT FROM ME

"Five years after 9/11, are we safer?" asked President George W. Bush from an Atlanta podium on September 7, 2006. He assured the American people that, "The answer is, yes, America is safer. We are safer because we've taken action to protect the homeland." A few days later, addressing the American people in a prime time speech from the Oval Office, he elaborated: "Today, we are safer, but we are not yet safe."

Can we believe him? A quick look at the facts says no. Iraq is not safe. In fact, sectarian violence in Iraq has reached unprecedented levels, pushing the country to the brink of civil war and threatening regional stability. The promised reconstruction and democracy are far off or impossible to imagine. While mired in Iraq, the Bush Administration is ignoring or mishandling other serious global threats including nuclear proliferation, global warming and the burgeoning energy crisis.

The failed Iraq policy is creating more of the problem it purports to be solving--- there are more terrorists now, and they are more aggrieved and have more support throughout the world. The Senate Democratic Policy Committee asserts that the number of foreign fighters in Iraq has increased by 33% in the past year and now is fifteen times what it was in May of 2003. In March 2005 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, then-Director of the CIA Porter Goss stated that the "Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists."

Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself?
Before the Military Officers Association of America at the Capitol Hill Hilton on September 5, 2006, President Bush played the terrorism card yet again, in hopes of papering over his failed policy in Iraq and sowing fear in the run-up to the mid-term elections in November. "In five years since our nation was attacked, al Qaeda and terrorists it has inspired have continued to attack across the world. They've killed the innocent in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, in Central Asia and the Far East, and beyond. "

This is true. But it is also misleading. In his September/October Foreign Affairs article "Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?" John Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State, reminds us that the number of the "innocents" killed as Bush describes is "not much higher than the number of people who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year." He goes on to estimate that "the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about 1 in 80,000-about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteoroid." This is not a popular reminder, coming as it does on the heels of national mourning without a parallel national reckoning of the costs and consequences of the long war.

Starting on the last day of August, Bush has been hammering on a new version of the Iraq/terrorism connection.

August 31, Salt Lake City, American Legion: "If we give up the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities. The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq, so America will not leave until victory is achieved."

September 2, Radio Address: "We're staying on the offense against the terrorists, fighting them overseas so we do not have to face them here at home." September 7, Atlanta, Georgia Public Policy Foundation: "The Terrorists know that the outcome in the war on terror will depend on the outcome in Iraq -- and so to protect our own citizens, the free world must succeed in Iraq.

September 7, Atlanta, Georgia Public Policy Foundation: "If America pulls out of Iraq before the Iraqis can defend themselves, the terrorists will follow us here, home."

September 11, Washington, Oval Office: "The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad."

September 11, Washington, Oval Office: "If we do not defeat these enemies now, we will leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons."

Wishful Thinking from the Leader of the Free World
Ignoring all of the credible counters to his specious assertions, Bush trades in fantasy-a poor memorial to all those who died on September 11th and have been killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since. As Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) has pointed out the death toll from the two post-9/11 wars "is inexorably approaching the death toll of that Tuesday morning five years ago."

In his Hilton speech, before an audience made up largely of soldiers in uniform- including some who were wounded in Iraq- President Bush conjured up Osama bin Laden and gave him a larger bully-pulpit than he had ever had before... quoting directly from his speeches and correspondence. As for those who point out that Osama Bin Laden is not in a position to make good on his most extreme aspirations - like establishing a "caliphate" running from the Middle East to Indonesia, President Bush compares him to Lenin and Hitler:

"History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake. In the early 1900s, an exiled lawyer in Europe published a pamphlet called "What is to be Done?" --in which he laid out his plan to launch a communist revolution in Russia. The world did not heed Lenin's words, and paid a terrible price. The Soviet Empire he established killed tens of millions, and brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war.

"In the 1920s, a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews. The world ignored Hitler's words, and paid a terrible price. His Nazi regime killed millions in the gas chambers, and set the world aflame in war, before it was finally defeated at a terrible cost in lives."

"Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say? America and our coalition partners have made our choice. We're taking the words of the enemy seriously. We're on the offensive, and we will not rest, we will not retreat, and we will not withdraw from the fight, until this threat to civilization has been removed."

This is a the latest emphasis in the Administration's long line of scare tactics,- to invoke World War II and the Cold War imagery and figures. Rumsfeld is in on it too-- Speaking before the American Legion on August 29th, the Defense Secretary referenced the period leading up to World War II as a time "When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and Nazism... were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last."

It is an effective device for a nation ignorant of history and enthralled by the past, but it does not work. As Ted Galen Carpenter, the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, points out-50 million people died during World War II and that the Cold War pitted the United States against a huge economic and political superpower. The threat we face from "insurgents," "Al Qaeda," "Islamo-facists" (or whatever you want to call them) in the so-called Global War on Terrorism, is more analogous to "the violence perpetrated by anarchist forces during the last third of the nineteenth century," says Carpenter. "Anarchists committed numerous high-profile assassinations, including a Russian czar, an empress of Austria-Hungary, and President William McKinley. They also fomented numerous bomb plots and riots, including the notorious Haymarket riot in the United States."

In line with this, terrorists are a problem to be addressed, and a threat to be countered, but they are not a rival to American power-unless we allow them to be. And in their efforts to justify and support their policies, the Bush administration is overreacting in its warning of "a dire threat to western civilization."

War in Iraq
"We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost." Unnamed Army officer quoted in Thomas Ricks, "Situation Called Dire in West Iraq; Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says, Washington Post, September 11, 2006.

In a classified assessment leaked to the Washington Post on September 11, 2006, Col. Peter Devlin, a Senior Marine intelligence officer in Iraq, offered a bleak set of conclusions about the restive Anbar province. Without the deployment of an additional division of 16,000 troops, Devlin asserts "there is nothing [we] can do to influence the motivation of the Sunni to wage an insurgency." The report caused quite a controversy in Washington, and the Marines have sought to distance themselves from it, but the Defense Department's own August 2006 "Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq" supports Devlin's conclusions, noting "Sustained ethno-sectarian violence is the greatest threat to security and stability in Iraq. Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq." In recent months the numbers of Iraqi casualties-- both civilians and security forces-- has soared by 51% as the insurgency remains "potent and viable." The Pentagon report continues to say, "death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife." The report found that the number of weekly attacks in Iraq escalated to nearly 800, the highest level since the Pentagon began gathering the statistics in April 2004. The report cites the Baghdad Coroner's office reported receiving more than 3,400 bodies in June and July 2006 alone. Examiners concluded that ninety percent of those deaths were the result of executions.

Optimism in the Face of Facts
A new GAO report, Stability in Iraq counters the administration's continuing flow of optimistic rhetoric on the situation in Iraq: "150,000 Iraqis have been displaced, and 14,300 civilians have been killed between January and June of this year, the majority in Baghdad."

President Bush has claimed that "We're training Iraqi troops so they can defend their nation."

The GAO's Stabilizing Iraq points out the long road ahead for U.S. troops tasked with training, equipping and finally depending on Iraqi security forces: "From July 2005 to August 2006, the State Department reported that the number of trained and equipped Iraqi security forces had increased from about 174,000 to 294,000." But, the report continues, "these numbers do not provide a complete picture of the units' capabilities because they do not give detailed information on the status of their equipment, personnel, training, and leadership. They may also overstate the number of forces on duty.... [for example] Ministry of Interior data includes police who are absent without leave and Ministry of Defense data excludes absent military personnel...Information on the readiness levels for Iraqi security forces is classified." In that same vein, The Pentagon's May 2006 report to Congress admits: "It will take time before a substantial number of Iraqi units are assessed as fully independent and requiring no assistance. Only one provincial government (out of 18) has assumed responsibility for security operations."

RESOURCES:
STABILIZING IRAQ: An Assessment of the Security Situation, September 11, 2006 Government Accountability Office

Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq, August 2006 Department of Defense

The Failed Republican Strategy in Iraq Has Made Us Less Safe at Home, July 28, 2006 Democratic Policy Committee

The White House on National Security
9/11 Five Years Later: Successes and Challenges, September 2006

Bush on 9/11: Annotated, Stephen Zunes, September 13, 2006,

II. A LIGHTER LOOK . . .

The Onion, a weekly satire, offers is own "New Anti-Terrorism Strategy":

* Setting up decoy "pro-terrorism centers" around nation to capture terrorists
* Staging, foiling series of attacks * Ignoring terrorists so they get frustrated and go away
* Introducing new slogan: "If you see, hear, feel, smell, or taste something, say something"
* Holding all Americans until they feel safe again
* Increasing national wait times
* Allocating $1.2 trillion for development of terror-seeking missiles
* Stopping terrorism for real this time

III OTHER RESOURCES

FIGHTING THE "GOOD FIGHT": An Alternative to Current Democratic Proposals For a New National Security Strategy William D. Hartung, Director, Arms Trade Resource Center, World Policy Institute

IRAQ FOR SALE: The story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war. A new film by acclaimed director Robert Greenwald takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. To find screenings in your community, order a DVD, and learn more visit: http://iraqforsale.org/

STOP THE MERCHANTS OF DEATH, a conference for analysts and activists in Minneapolis, September 29-October 1, 2006. Drawing upon the spirit, the experience and success of the Honeywell campaign, the War Resisters League is joining many other groups to sponsor a national networking and strategy conference to build a cohesive local and national anti-corporate movement and develop strategies for stopping the corporate "Merchants of Death." For more information, and registration details, visit http://www.warresisters.org/smod/smod_hp.shtml