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Today's Stories October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

October 30, 2007 The Pakistan Question Will History Repeat Itself? By M. SHAHID ALAM In January 2002, when President Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the first targets in his 'global war against terror'--the putative 'axis of evil'--few noticed a curious omission. Pakistan was not on the list. The targeted countries--we were told--sought weapons of mass destruction. In truth, Iraq and Iran were targeted because they stood in the way of Israeli ambitions--and they had oil. Although Pakistan has been unlucky in oil, it could make stronger claims as a target for American and Israeli ire. It is the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons, a nuclear proliferator, the Taliban's chief patron, and a sponsor of jihadis in Kashmir. Why, then, did the US not target Pakistan? Six years later, this question is not less pertinent: and for two reasons. After being stalled by the Iraqi resistance, US plans for war against Iran are again gathering steam. If Iran is such a tempting target, why not take a few potshots at Pakistan also? In addition, since their rout in Afghanistan, bands of Muslim 'ex-tremists' have found safe havens in Pakistan's northern districts, as well as Quetta and Karachi. More ominously, last July, the Taliban challenged the authority of the state in Pakistan's capital. Yet, there has been little talk in Washington or Tel Aviv about adding Pakistan to the 'axis of evil.' This is the Pakistani paradox. This paradox has a simple explanation. In Pakistan, the US had effected regime change without a change of regime. Almost overnight, following the attacks of 9-11, the US had drafted the Pakistani military to wage war against Muslim extremists. The US had gained an army: and Pakistan's military dictators had gained longevity. Yet, could the Pakistani military deliver on its promise to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaida? At first, it appeared that it was succeeding. General Musharraf boasted that Pakistan had collected $50 million in exchange for extremists handed over to the US. These losses, however, did not deter the extremists from regrouping; and before long they were attacking NATO forces in Afghanistan from bases inside Pakistan. As NATO casualties rose, the US ratcheted its pressure on Pakistan. And by August 2004, the Pakistan had deployed 100,000 troops to guard its frontier with Afghanistan. The extremists now began targeting Pakistani troops. In September 2006, in the face of rising losses, Pakistan pulled out its troops from Waziristan in return for a Taliban promise not to mount attacks from bases in Pakistan. It was an improbable truce. In reality, the Taliban had 'liberated' Waziristan. The US was unhappy about the truce. And with good reason: Taliban attacks in Afghanistan began to rise after the truce. Since then, US has been ratcheting its pressures on Pakistan to hunt down the extremists operating out of bases along its northern frontier. According to the Newsweek of Oct. 8, the Pentagon is now demanding that General Musharraf "turn much of Pakistan's military into a counterinsurgency force, trained and equipped to combat Al-Qaeda and its extremist supporters along the Afghan border." This Latin American approach to counter-insurgency is not likely to work in Pakistan. Their military juntas were firmly rooted in the elites and middle classes, set apart from the leftist insurgents--mostly Amerindians or Mestizos--by both class and race. The boundary between the adversaries in Latin America was firmly drawn. In Pakistan, the insurgents are Muslim nationalists. They are drawn mainly from Pashtun peasants, but they enjoy broad support among the peasants as well as the middle classes all over Pakistan. On the other side, about a fourth of Pakistan army consists of Pashtuns; and mid- and low-ranking officers are middle-class in their origin and orientation. Only the top military brass identify firmly with the elites. In Pakistan, the boundary between the opposite camps is not as firmly drawn as in Latin America. As a result, as Pakistan army escalates the war against its own people, this boundary has been shifting, shrinking the support base of the military elite. If this is the irreversible dynamic behind the US-inspired counterinsurgency, it is unlikely that Pakistani elites can long sustain their decision to fight America's war against Muslim nationalists. Recent events support this prognosis. As the military has escalated its offensive, its reputation has plummeted. Hundreds of soldiers have surrendered or, more likely, defected. General Musharraf has rescinded corruption cases against Benazir Bhutto to court her party; but this has eroded the standing of her party. How is this 'civil war' likely to end? In one scenario, at some point, an alliance of Muslim nationalists--the fighters and their allies in the army and civil society--will enforce their own regime change, and create an Islamist Pakistan. This will end the civil war, but not Pakistan's troubles. Instantly, US and Israel will clamor for a regime change of the hard variety: through covert operations, air strikes, invasions, and civil wars. As these events unfold, the US may well decide to start a war against Iran. This can only advance the timetable for an Islamist take-over in Pakistan. When that happens, the US and Israel will be engaged in a major war along an Islamic arc stretching from Lebanon to Pakistan ­and perhaps beyond, to the north and the east. Is this the 'clash of civilizations' that the Neocons had advocated--and have worked so hard to advance? Over the past century, the nations that initiated the two major wars eventually came to regret them. Is it likely that this history may repeat itself? Once begun, the course of wars cannot always be foretold. Germany, Japan and Italy learned this lesson the hard way. With some wisdom, the US and Israel could learn this lesson the easy way--from the mistakes of belligerent nations before. Even now, it may not be too late to take this lesson to heart, and avoid a major war that promises to be catastrophic for all sides. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University, and author of Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on America's 'War Against Islam' (IPI Publications: 2007). He may be reached at alqalam02760@yahoo.com. © M. Shahid Alam Your Ad Here

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