Losing our religion

There was a time not long ago when the United States would have had something to say about the dreadful goings on in Myanmar, formerly Burma. Unfortunately, there is only silence from the White House about the military junta's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in the main city of Yangon and across the country. After tolerating a couple of days of protests, authorities sent troops to fire on demonstrators to stop the protests, killing perhaps scores or hundreds of unarmed civilians, including highly respected Buddhist monks. Sounds like Tianenman Square all over again. Tianenman Square was where Chinese troops opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in 1989, killing hundreds if not thousands. China is one of the United States' largest trading partners and just happens to be the biggest backer of the military junta in Myanmar. There is a cost to the United States' loss of moral authority in the world under the Bush administration.

Orwellian turns

Well, I guess we learned our lesson. Just days after permitting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak to students at Columbia University during a trip to speak to the United Nations — Iran's parliament voted to declare the CIA and the U.S. Army as terrorist organizations. Ouch. That hurts. A totalitarian regime with a leader whose verbosity is matched only by his lack of knowledge is criticizing us? Of course, Iran was responding to a U.S. Senate resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group and subjecting it to asset seizure and other economic sanctions. But while a lot of Iran's long list of complaints against the U.S. were ludicrous, some were not. The Bush administration's approval of torture for imprisoned terror suspects (the so-called unlawful enemy combatants) violates the Geneva Conventions to which we were a proud supporter is a stain on the United States' long history of respect for the rule of law. But that doesn't make our governmental agencies terrorist organizations any more than it makes Ahmadinejad a reasonable person.

Face to face with totalitarian

Wasn't that just a bit scary? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sounded so reasonable, it was easy to see how that country's leadership could have gone for him. This is the face of dictatorship, and it doesn't look a bit like George W. Bush. Of course, I'm talking about Ahmadinejad's speech to Columbia University students, in which the Iranian president defended his seemingly unbelievable positions on Iraq, Israel, nuclear weapons and homosexuality. Ahmadinejad was in New York to speak to the United Nations, and it shows how enlightened we still are that both forums were available to him. The Iranian leader got a very rude welcome from Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, which Ahmadinejad quite correctly said was rude, but proceeded to defend his country's policies, which have caused no small amount of distress in Washington.

War is heck

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the Washington Post reported today about a Defense Department program of using Army snipers to kill Iraqis who pick up fake bomb-making material and weapons planted by our forces. The program came to light during court-martial proceedings involving three Army Rangers soldiers who killed Iraqi civilians in such operations and planted incriminating evidence on the bodies to help justify the slayings. The tactic raises ethical questions about U.S. conduct in Iraq, since our country has long recognized that it's improper to kill innocent civilians in war. That's why the soldiers are being court-martialed. Of course, if the material is picked up by insurgents, the military has the legal right to kill them. The problem is being sure of who's who. But it occurs to me -- when was the last time we heard about armed government employees shooting people and planting weapons on them to justify the killings? Yes, it sounds an awful lot like the police, doesn't it?

Trouble in paradise

So, it turns out that Blackwater USA, the U.S. government-contracted security company involved in the shooting deaths of unarmed civilians in Baghdad last week, has been involved in several violent episodes this year in which civilians were killed. Plus, the Washington Post reported today, Iraqi government officials have complained about incidents involving Blackwater several times, but were ignored by U.S. officials. Well, isn't this getting juicy. We have hired mercenaries to protect diplomats in Iraq and they have been committing atrocities against Iraqi civilians. We have to stop it. The Iraqi government is powerless to do anything because of laws passed by the old U.S.-dominated provisional government giving security contractors immunity from liability. I suppose that might have been understandable when Iraq had no governmental authorities in place, but that is not the situation now, and the Iraqis are justifiably unhappy about the situation. I wonder if President Bush is willing to take time from his Web site review duties to get to the bottom of this.

Stuff to do

Is that the problem? Is that why President Bush misled the public and got us into a ruinous war -- he didn't have enough to do and was bored? How else to explain why the president has the time to criticize a newspaper advertisement from an anti-war Web site? If you don't already know, our commander-in-chief used time at his recent press conference to attack the "Betray Us" ad from MoveOn.org as "disgusting." Disgusting? Irreverant, perhaps; controversial, perhaps; but disgusting? He refuses to explain why the Israelis bombed some target in Syria, apparently at our suggestion or urging, but he can discuss a newspaper ad? That's disgusting. What's next -- does the White House plan to brief reporters on its position on department store advertising or the Victoria's Secret catalogue?

On the outsource

So, let's review. Armed private security guards operating in Iraq under contract to the U.S. government kill as many as 20 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. Iraqi government is outraged, claims contractor's personnel were not reacting to a car bomb but instead shot indiscriminately at civilians. Iraqi government revokes contractor's authorization to operate in the country. U.S. diplomats in Iraq are barred from traveling outside the green zone, because BlackwaterUSA is the contractor who protects them. Today, the New York Times reports, Iraq begins to back away from its revoc ation claim and agrees to develop new rules to hold such contractors accountable. So, what happened? It looks to me that what happened is precisely the kind of thing that is sure to happen in the kind of armed chaos that is post-invasion Iraq. Hopefully, a promised investigation will be able to determine exactly what happened. But that's kind of doubtful. What will hopefully happen now is the U.S. will start to reconsider the whole private contractor thing in a war zone. How could it have come to this anyway? Private security companies guarding our diplomats? Don't we have 160,000 soldiers in Iraq? How many more do we need? When the president withdraws the 30,000 surge troops this year, will he authorize 30,000 more private soldiers to take their places? What's going on?