Every day in every way, Iraq is getting grimmer and grimmer and grimmer. Gone are the upbeat appraisals and the assurances that we are making steady progress. Now, the most Bush can now say is, “If you think it’s bad now, imagine what Iraq would look like if the United States leaves before this government can defend itself.” This perceptive article notes the change in language and tone that signal a marked change in the way BushCo is framing our misadventure in Iraq.

Of all the words that President Bush used at his news conference this week to defend his policies in Iraq, the one that did not pass his lips was “progress.”

For three years, the president tried to reassure Americans that more progress was being made in Iraq than they realized. But with Iraq either in civil war or on the brink of it, Bush dropped the unseen-progress argument in favor of the contention that things could be even worse.

The shifting rhetoric reflected a broader pessimism that has reached into even some of the most optimistic corners of the administration — a sense that the Iraq venture has taken a dark turn and will not be resolved anytime soon. Bush advisers once believed that if they met certain benchmarks, such as building a constitutional democracy and training a new Iraqi army, the war would be won. Now they believe they have more or less met those goals, yet the war rages on.

And then the article gets really depressing. Our mission is no longer to create a beacon of democracy or to save us from non-existent WMDs – it’s to keep Iraq from descending into an out-and-out bloodbath. If we can just do that, maybe we can exit with at least a bit of face. That’s the most our “victory” will consist of.

How our goals have shifted, and how painful a disappointment this war is on every conceivable level. We will be lamenting it for generations, always referring to it with some confusion, some shame, some bewilderment, uncertain as to why we were ever there, and why we remained so long after it was clear we could not win. Kind of like that other war…

A very interesting post.

It’s affected six children in Hunan province. Let’s hope it’s quickly contained. China + virus = memories.

Human Rights Watch rightfully condemns one of the government’s most repellent strategies for maintaining its police state.

Chinese lawyers who defend human rights and expose the absence of an independent judiciary are under increasing attack from state authorities, Human Rights Watch said today. The central government must respond to the recent spate of harassment, detentions, and physical attacks on human rights lawyers. Human Rights Watch also urged the central government, which has so far failed to intervene on the lawyers’ behalf, to state publicly that attacks against lawyers will not be tolerated, and to take immediate steps to ensure the effective protection of lawyers.

“It’s unclear whether China’s central authorities have ordered, condoned or ignored the recent attacks on lawyers,” said Sophie Richardson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. “But it’s crystal clear that the government should uphold the law and stop this blatantly illegal persecution of lawyers.”

Two of China’s most prominent lawyers are currently facing prosecutions that seem to be politically motivated. Beijing lawyer Gao Zhisheng, an outspoken advocate of the rights of victims of government violations and abuse of power, was detained on August 15 on charges of alleged involvement in criminal activities. In 2005, authorities stripped Gao of his right to practice law.

On August 18, the trial of another legal activist, Chen Guangcheng, turned into a mockery of justice when his lawyers were physically assaulted and then forcibly detained by Public Security to prevent them from attending. The court, in Yinan county, Shandong province, has charged Chen with intent to damage public property and inciting others to join him to disrupt traffic intent to damage public property and inciting others to join him to disrupt traffic….

“The Chinese authorities can no longer have it both ways,” said Richardson. “Beijing should either uphold the rule of law and tolerate legal challenges or drop this facade of commitment to legal reform. The actions against Chen, Gao and others make it difficult to believe that everyone in China is equal before the law.”

Don’t hold your breath, Ms. Richardson. The government professes in public to encourage myriad reforms – a more open press, peasant’s land rights, tax reform, etc., etc., etc. – that are then summarily forgotten whenver they feel the least bit threatened. The way we are seeing these attorneys treated is completely consistent with the government’s one sincere and fiercely adhered-to vision: that the party remain in power, unchallenged and unaccountable, forever.

She’s long been one of my favorite commentators on human rights issues, and she’s making an interesting claim here: that as the 2008 Olympics approach, China is becoming increasingly worried that simmering discontent in Tibet mght mar the spectacle of a jubilant and harmonious China they are trying so hard to promote. Thus the recent attempts to reach out to the Dalai Lama to reach some sort of reconciliation. As always, Isabel tells her story with haunting power.

When the first cracks appeared in the concrete base and bridges of the Qinghai Tibet railway, just weeks after the carefully staged, triumphal opening on July 1 (the 85th birthday of the Chinese Communist party), they were not the only sign that all is not well with China’s policies in Tibet. The cracks seem to be the result of the unstable geology of the Tibetan plateau. Equally worrying to Beijing, shifts in Tibetan political geology have caused cracks in the official Chinese narrative of unity and harmony between Tibet and China.

There had been sporadic unrest for several months: in November last year the monks of Drepung monastery in central Tibet staged a sit-down demonstration against “patriotic education” – the government’s enforced propaganda campaign. The demonstration was echoed in other important monasteries in the region.

Then last January, in a religious address delivered in India, the exiled Dalai Lama called on Tibetans to stop wearing wildlife skins to save animals from extinction. The results were dramatic: from Lhasa to Gansu, Tibetans gathered for public fur burnings. Confronted with this evidence of his continuing influence, the government accused the Dalai Lama of promoting “social disorder” and responded, bizarrely, with a pro-fur campaign in which TV presenters were ordered to wear fur on air.

Read the rest to see why, even though he’s thousands of miles away, the Dalai Lama remains a force for China to reckon with.

(Note: I am no great advocate of the Free Tibet movement or the Dalai Lama. I just want to make that clear in advance.)

Heh.

Eat your heart out, Jeremy!

For the record, I don’t think the blogger’s descriptor of this site is quite accurate: “the bastion of ultra-liberal US thought and ultra-conservative anti-China ranting that is Peking Duck.” I rant against anyone I see as a bully, whether it’s Bush’s administration or Hu’s.

Whenever the Bushes get into a tight bind, they call in their leathery old troubleshooter, James Baker, the man who architected the strategy that led to Bush winningstealing Florida in 2000. That they have called him in again, this time to help the Codpiece in Chief disentangle America from the Iraq catastrophe he created, speaks volumes. According to this intelligent article, it could actually mean an abrupt change in strategy, just in time to save the Grand Old Party from annihilation in the November elections.

Since March, Baker, backed by a team of experienced national-security hands, has been busily at work trying to devise a fresh set of policies to help the president chart a new course in–or, perhaps, to get the hell out of–Iraq. But as with all things involving James Baker, there’s a deeper political agenda at work as well. “Baker is primarily motivated by his desire to avoid a war at home–that things will fall apart not on the battlefield but at home. So he wants a ceasefire in American politics,” a member of one of the commission’s working groups told me. Specifically, he said, if the Democrats win back one or both houses of Congress in November, they would unleash a series of investigative hearings on Iraq, the war on terrorism, and civil liberties that could fatally weaken the administration and remove the last props of political support for the war, setting the stage for a potential Republican electoral disaster in 2008. “I guess there are people in the [Republican] party, on the Hill and in the White House, who see a political train wreck coming, and they’ve called in Baker to try to reroute the train.”

The article charts Baker’s history of influencing the Bush family, and concludes if anyone at all can sway Bush from his God-ordained course, it’s he. With less than 80 days to the election, I can’t imagine Baker coming up with any solution that would change the nation’s mind about our misadventure in Iraq. But never sell Baker short: he’s ruthless and he’s smart. The piece concludes:

But with each passing day, the country is closer to the train wreck that Baker and others are said to fear. In the end, avoiding it might ride on the ability of Jim Baker to persuade the president that it’s time to declare victory and exit.

“The object of our policy has to be to get our little white asses out of there as soon as possible,” another working-group participant told me. To do that, he said, Baker must confront the president “like the way a family confronts an alcoholic. You bring everyone in, and you say, ‘Look, my friend, it’s time to change.'”

I always said this would be the way the war would end: Declare victory and leave with as much face as possible, knowing, as we did in Vietnam, that the “victory” would be short-lived. But it’s the best we can do. At least we can say we gave the Iraqis the tools for democracy and we left them to do with it as they will. That’s what Baker will try to convince Bush to see and accept. What they sneer at today as cutting and running will be touted tomorrow as winning and gracefully exiting.

G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In the Conservatives.

By THOMAS FRANK
Published: August 22, 2006

In the lexicon of American business, ‘cynicism’ means doubt about the benevolence of market forces, and it is a vice of special destructiveness. Those who live or work in Washington, however, know another variant of cynicism, a fruitful one, a munificent one, a cynicism that is, in fact, the health of the conservative state. The object of this form of cynicism is ‘government,’ whose helpful or liberating possibilities are to be derided whenever the opportunity presents.

(more…)

With their arteries popping, eyes bulging and limbs trembling, the antique paranoiacs who head SARFT (the useless and obsolete government body that’s trying, in effect, to banish youtube and all other forms of unapproved video from China’s Internet) are making a last-ditch effort to prove they deserve to exist. This blogger (who is finally back to serious blogging after a long hiatus) almost makes you feel sorry for the scoundrels.

I feel genuinely bad for SARFT: I used to think of them as joyless grey cogs of the type that inhabit Chinese government bureaus and American university administration, but now I see them more as a bunch of sad, frightened old men who control next to nothing, and guard it jealously. On quiet days, they sit around talking about how much better things were before all of that dad-blasted “iinter-web” hoo-ha that they keep hearing about, back in the good old days when the Red Guards – the original viral marketers – were as cool as Li Yuchun is today and when the only movies they had were from Albania, Russia, and North Korea. They’re scared, frail old men, and when they hear from their grandkids that there’s now technology allowing people to disseminate video content without restrictions, they get chest pains.

(There’s more, so check it out, and his other posts, too. ) This would be really funny if SARFT wasn’t serious about accomplishing their mission. The censors have shown that with the flip of a switch they can black out huge swathes of blogs and news portals, so why not “vlogs” as well? Personally, I think it would be an obscenely wasteful and stupid thing to do, considering how online videos have so rapidly caught on with China’s youth, who will be fittingly pissed if SARFT tries to pull the plug on their fun. As Brendan notes, most of the content is utterly harmless, and they’re only going apeshit because they can’t control it. If they pull this off, it’s another big step back for the reforming PRC.

A funny-sad essay on a phenomenon most of us are familar with. Just a small sample:

There was another beggar working the same strip of sidewalk as the kid. A middle-aged woman in the standard beggar’s outfit: blue cotton coat, white towel wrapped around her head, shoulder bag, stick and white enamel cup. She had perfected the beggar’s misery-ridden shuffle but once, as she crossed the street, an approaching taxi forced her to break character and she hustled energetically out of the way. The begging woman didn’t compete with the kid. She was a practitioner of the “persistence” approach, shadowing a mark for fifty or a hundred meters tugging at the sleeve and shaking the few coins in the enamel cup. She would return to the space of sidewalk between the restaurant and store for a minute, but often follow marks to the end of the block or cross the street to work people in front of the hotel. The kid would stay put and focus on his small patch.

Which reminds me… I remember once in Kunming I made the mistake of giving a few coins to this sweet-faced young girl who’d been pulling at my arm as i walked down the sidewalk. Within half a second, I was literally surrounded by a swarm of children, all pulling at me, holding their hands out for their own piece of the pie. Any attempt to wave them away was futile. It got so bad, I had to dart into some retail shop and wait until the crowd dissipated.