Op-Ed

Next Monday the mail will stop, the banks will close, and schoolchildren will delight in an extra long weekend all in honor of Martin Luther King, a man whose legacy the lessons of which Americans seem slowly to be forgetting.

Network news programs will show footage of King "the slain civil rights leader" telling the world from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 of his dream of racial harmony. Viewers will be reminded of King the great and nonviolent warrior fighting Bible in one hand and Constitution in the other against desegregation and for voting rights in Jim Crow Alabama. And the obligatory sixty-second homage to this great man on his national day will conclude with the familiar images of King lying dead on a motel balcony in Memphis.

With Ariel Sharon out of the picture, Benjamin Netanyahu has a better chance to become prime minister of Israel.

He’s media savvy. He knows how to spin on American television. And he’s very dangerous.

Netanyahu spent a lot of his early years in the United States. Later, during the 1980s, he worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and then became Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. By the time he moved up to deputy foreign minister in 1988, he was a star on U.S. networks.

The guy is smooth -- fluent in American idioms, telegenic to many eyes -- and good at lying on camera. So, when Israeli police killed 17 Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque in October 1990, Netanyahu led a disinformation blitz asserting that the Palestinians were killed after they’d rioted and pelted Jewish worshipers from above the Wailing Wall with huge stones. At the time, his fable dominated much of the U.S. media. Later even the official Israeli inquiry debunked Netanyahu’s account and blamed police for starting the clash.

AUSTIN -- We live in a great nation. The police blotter of the Mill Valley Herald in California informs us that the constabulary there had to be called out on account of a citizen "dressed like a penguin" who was "standing on a street corner playing a ukulele." Makes me proud to be an American.

What does not make me proud to be an American is a specific twist in the Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay scandal -- in fact, this makes me want to urp despite the fact that I have a strong stomach when it comes to political corruption. Practice, practice, practice, that's what Texas provides when it comes to sleaze and stink. Who can forget such great explanations as "Well, I'll just make a little bit of money, I won't make a whole lot"? And "There was never a Bible in the room"?

The minority of Americans who support the war largely do so out of a sense of responsibility to Iraqis.  They favor reconstruction and restoration as well as ongoing occupation.  And most of the majority who favor ending the war support the financing of reconstruction, which – after all – costs less than war.  Reconstruction seems to be something we generally agree on.

Of course, very little reconstruction has been done or appears likely to be done, and recent reports are that the Bush Administration doesn't want any more money for it – having spent most of the money already allocated for reconstruction on other things.

So, I was disgusted to see a website called www.nationalreferendum.org promoting rebuilding New Orleans with payments from Iraqis.  We invaded their country, killed 100,000 people, left the place a wreck, and neglected our own cities – so they should pay us?

It gets worse.

I ache with fresh hope and foreboding at this time of year. The time is ripe for an overarching vision of a world without war - a tough, smart vision that can claim headlines and hold its own with the spin machines of government. Without it, we're doomed to . . . war with Iran?

"Of course, Bush has publicly stated for months that he would not take the possibility of a military strike (against Iran) off the table. What's new here, however, is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year."

This is from the German publication Der Spiegel, at the end of 2005. Even the cynic in me is shocked by the lack of subtlety in these calculations: "During his trip to Turkey," the article goes on, "CIA chief (Porter) Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program."

No one is in greater need of forthright new year’s resolutions than big media outlets. In a constructive spirit, therefore, here are some resolutions for them in 2006.

* Daily newspaper editors:
Just about every paper has a “Business” section, where the focus is on CEOs, company managers, profit reports and big-time investors. But a lot more readers are working people -- and a daily “Labor” section would be a welcome addition to the newsprint mix.

* Public radio executives:
As a counterpoint to the daily national program “Marketplace,” public radio can widen its news repertoire by developing a show called “Laborplace.”

* Editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial page:

Remember the "nuclear option" compromise? When the group of 14 Senators reached their agreement last May, they said they'd support a filibuster only under "extraordinary circumstances," presumably if Bush nominated Attila the Hun. I'd suggest these circumstances apply not only to Samuel Alito's track record but also to his nomination's entire political context.

AUSTIN, Texas -- My theory is that they don't tell him anything, that's why the president keeps sounding like he doesn't know what he's talking about.

There he was at Brooke Army Medical Center over the weekend, once again getting it wrong: "I can say that if somebody from al-Qaida's calling you, we'd like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people's civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program ... I repeat, limited. And it's limited to calls from outside the United States, to calls within the United States."

So then the White House had to go back and explain that, well, no, actually, the National Security Agency's domestic spying program is not limited to calls from outside the United States, or to calls from people known or even suspected of being with al-Qaida. Turns out thousands of Americans and resident foreigners have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA. It's more like information-mining, which is what, you may recall, the administration said it would not do. But now Bush has to investigate The New York Times because Bush has been breaking the law, you see?

Talk of censure and impeachment has begun swirling around President Bush.  Can Vice President Cheney come to the rescue?  He will do so if enough of Bush's opponents adopt the position of this Philadelphia Daily News op-ed writer http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/13513578.htm -- the position that impeaching Bush would be a mistake, since Cheney is worse than Bush.

That position is already fairly widespread on the left in the United States, and is typical of the left in the United States.  Why must we get five steps ahead of ourselves in order to fantasize about defeat, precisely at the moment when we should be on the attack? 

The Republicans impeached Clinton over his sex life without any hesitation.  They did not remove him from office, of course.  No one has ever (nonviolently) removed a president from office.  But the impeachment of Clinton destroyed most of what little was left of a Democratic Party. 

Can there be any doubt that if the White House finds out who leaked the story of its illegal spying, fierce retribution will follow? 

Another way of asking that question is: Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

Remember what happened to Ambassador Joseph Wilson?  The White House leaked to the media his wife's identity as an undercover agent for the CIA, putting her life and those of her colleagues in danger and ending her career.

And let us recall what became of General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, who dared to accurately predict how many troops would be needed to occupy Iraq.  Defense Department officials leaked the name of his replacement 14 months before his retirement, rendering him a lame duck commander and embarrassing and neutralizing the Army's top officer.