Downgrade “Body Politics” this Election, Unless It's About U.S. Military and Iraqi Civilian Bodies.

In past Presidential elections, body politics has been a defining factor for many Americans when choosing among candidates. The body politics of gay marriage and the withholding of that right, and the body politics of women’s right to choose versus the right of the unborn have prevailed in so many previous elections.

Is it possible for those of us with a personal stake in these issues to downgrade them from: “MUST HAVE IT NOW, OR ELSE!!” to “IT CAN WAIT”?

If we could focus our first efforts on nominating the candidate who will best secure Iraq, and keep safe the bodies of US Military and Iraqi civilians, and then* focus on our own body politics agenda, it would show that we care about those who, since 2003, have paid the highest price for this war.

Gail Vida Hamburg, author, The Edge of the World, Mirare Press.

The little that we can do, we should do, especially when it is painless. Help U.S. Military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan keep in touch with their families. Send your old cellphones to www.cellphonesforsoldiers.com for recycling, and the proceeds will be used to purchase prepaid calling cards for those military who need it.

With Barack Obama’s dazzling crossover popularity around the country, I thought, we’d heard the last from the hyper-patriotic, “we’ll put a boot up your ass,” American hee-haw, whose collective aggression and monumental stupidity put us in Iraq in an unwinnable war.

One hoped that Obama's surge was a barometer of something important--a damning indictment of President Bush's policies and divisive tactics. One hoped that those who worship at the altar of jingoism, and measure patriotism by the size of their flags, recognized that the reason we're in Iraq today is because their Flagbearer-in-Chief exploited their feelings of extreme patriotism, playing it like a violin with tunes about mushroom clouds and WMDs, after 9/11.

If they now prefer to console themselves that history will prove him right, hey, go for it. Those of us who questioned the war from the beginning, understand the need for opiates to alleviate embarrassment, feel less stupid, or feel less guilty for attacking those who did not attack us, and causing pain to those who did not hurt us.


We understand the need to spin a yarn to forget that you supported a war without cause that wrecked the foundations of a country that did nothing to us, caused the deaths of 3968 US military, caused the deaths of more than 88,000 Iraqis (600,000 in a cluster survey by Johns Hopkins), displaced more than 2 million Iraqis from their country, and is costing America $338 million each day to fight it, $343 million of it borrowed each day from China, with no end in sight.

But along with that, it would have been nice to see the demise of hyper-patriotism, the tumor that metastasized into imperial hubris and the attack on Iraq. But no. Instead of putting the extreme patriotism card away and reflecting on how it failed America, here they come again with cheap thoughts about what it means to be a patriotic American. According to Associated Press, Feb 24, 08: Sen. Barack Obama's refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin along with a photo of him not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem led conservatives on Internet and in the media to question his patriotism. … Obama's wife, Michelle, has drawn their ire, too, for saying recently that she's really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life.

One conservative consultant, according to the article, calls Obama, “the poster child for the anti-war movement.” This may be how Republican pols and conservative bloviators in Punditland see things. But on Main Street USA, it is already a fact that any American with a brain and the ability to see reality, Democrat and Republican alike, is worried about the economy, their job, food prices, houses that don't sell, decline in local government services, higher property taxes, and the cost of the Iraq War. We are worried about our future and who will best solve the problems of our country. We are all poster children for the anti-war movement. Listen to us now, and hear us later in the voting booth: We are not worried about Barack Obama's flag lapel pin or his hand placement during the National Anthem.

Read my book, The Edge of the World, Gail Vida Hamburg, Mirare Press.

This is supposed to be the election of reckoning, the election for thinking people. Voters need a media that reports the process. deconstructs the candidates and their positions, and gauges their competence, with all the seriousness, consideration, critical thinking, and skepticism it can muster.

For the media, this is the opportunity to redeem themselves after unconscionable dereliction of duty— failing to report abuse of power, and the egregious violation of the Constitution and international law by a sitting American President and his Administration.

But no. Instead, Hillary’s tears and Romney’s hair, Obama’s voice and Huckabee’s ease, and all the sentimentality and drivel one can swallow, issue from the Fourth Estate.

Gail Vida Hamburg is the author of The Edge of the World, a novel about the impact of American foreign policy on individual lives.

Most American women demand serial monogamy from their partners, unlike their more pragmatic European and Asian counterparts who accept flawed relationships more easily.

Our dating rituals are built around the fundamental idea that a romantic relationship is a high-risk, all or nothing experiment that two people undertake in freedom, and ultimately either commit to, or walk away from. We employ George Bush thinking about relationships:“Either you are with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”

The smart, empowered, enlightened American woman leaves her partner when he cheats on her or publicly humiliates her, unless she has very small children. She doesn’t know what to make of a smart, empowered, enlightened woman running for President who appears to have forgiven her cheating husband. And she will never ever reward a cheater’s bad behavior.

It’s all quite simple. She’s not going to allow Bill back into the White House, therefore she will not elect our first female president.

Gail Vida Hamburg is the author of The Edge of the World.

Elizabeth Bumiller’s Dec 30, 07 article in the New York Times documents the rise and fall and rise and fall of Benazir Bhutto, newly declared patron saint of Democracy. According to Bumiller, Bhutto was ushered to power because she actively courted and cultivated her Harvard and Oxford connections at the White House, in Congress, and in the foreign policy establishment.

Viewed during the Reagan years as a socialist and anti-American radical, Bhutto, was quickly transformed into a voice for Democracy. Like Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady, she was tutored in the art of winning over Washington’s elite by her own Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering—Peter W. Galbraith and Mark Siegal.

Bumiller writes, “In meetings with key members of Congress at the time — among them Senator Charles H. Percy, the Illinois Republican who was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Representative Stephen J. Solarz of Brooklyn, who was a senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — Ms. Bhutto, under Mr. Galbraith’s tutelage, expressed her support for democracy and the mujahedeen “freedom fighters” who were battling the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.” “She was this completely charming, beautiful woman who could flatter the senators, and who could read their political concerns, who could persuade them that she would much better serve American interests in Afghanistan than Zia,” Mr. Galbraith said.

Apparently, democracy is like a fur coat--you just slip into it and twirl. It is also a trigger that induces Pavlovian frenzy in American politicians.

Gail Vida Hamburg is author of The Edge of the World.

After nearly eight years of hayseed provincialism and Wild West gunslinging, President Bush has resolved to spend his remaining year in office trying to restore America’s image abroad. The man who singlehandedly took a sledgehammer to the pedestal most of the world placed this country on, plans to “rebuild the U.S’s international standing and create a foreign policy legacy beyond Iraq.”

This is small consolation for the havoc he wreaked since 2003. From the invasion of Iraq in violation of international law, to the conduct of his installed occupation, to Abu Ghraib, to Hadeetha, to renditions, to waterboarding, to torture, to Guantanamo Bay, America has lost legions of admirers who supported its superpower status and believed in its moral superiority. Untutored in foreign affairs, manipulated by the neo-cons, motivated by simplistic ideas, and ignorant about America’s special meaning to those outside it, Mr. Bush blew it when it came to reiterating America’s honorable place as first among nations, and made it an international pariah.

It will take a new American president to undo the damage he wrought.

Gail Vida Hamburg is the author of The Edge of the World

To the list of recently extinct animals (Yangtze River Dolphin, extinction date: December 2006; Western Black Rhinoceros, extinction date: June 2006; and the Po'o-uli Melamprosops phaeosoma, extinction date: 28 November 2004), let’s add Fiscal Conservative, extinction date: May 2003.

While the main causes of extinction of the first three have been human interference, invasion by alien species, loss of habitat, and over-exploitation, the Fiscal Conservative began its demise during the start of the Iraq War primed by the paranoia, stupidity, incompetence, corruption, nepotism, and greed of its cousin, the Neo-Conservative.

The Fiscal Conservative in pre-historic times, prior to September 11, 2001, believed that the government had no right to squander the national treasure recklessly or otherwise, or run up large debts like crack-ingesting Cadillac -driving welfare queens, that would burden its benefactors, the taxpayers.

This quaint notion died with the usurpation of the Fiscal Conservative habitat by the Neo-Conservative, a species ugly beyond redemption, its aggression matched only by its stupidity. The Neo-Conservative’s utter disregard for fiscal responsibility and contempt for its paymasters has placed its benefactors and their progeny in treacherous straits for many generations to come.

Gail Vida Hamburg is the author of The Edge of the World

If there was ever a time for individual idealism and partisan political ideology to be set aside for the greater national good, it would be now—when the roadmap for democracy in Iraq and peace in the Middle East is in the glove compartment of a bombed out Humvee lying in a ditch in Iraq.

Republicans who have the good sense to be embarrassed about their wrong-on-nearly everything-but-still-confabulating President and his grandiose ambitions for Iraq, might do well to acknowledge that the war being fought over there “so we don’t have to fight it over here,” (that old neo-con pap) is in fact causing problems not only for Iraqis over there, but for us over here, and most importantly around the world.

The rise of anti-Americanism around the globe should be a cause for concern and self-reflection. According to the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, “Favorable ratings of America are lower in 26 of 33 countries for which trends are available. The U.S. image remains abysmal in most Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, and continues to decline among the publics of many of America's oldest allies." (See my previous entry for full findings and visit Pew at:
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=256 )

In the face of this catastrophe, it is astounding that the media has been promoting for President, ‘not yet housebroken in foreign policy’ candidates such as Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards.

If one examines the public records, media coverage, available biographies, and autobiographies of all the aspirants to the Presidency, the only one with expansive foreign policy experience at the highest reaches of international government--who has professional and personal relationships with foreign leaders, who has been a player in some of the most critical international and foreign policy issues of our time, who has worked in the spirit of bi-partisanship in the Senate, who has evolved over three and a half decades from a cocky rube into a ferociously intelligent international statesman--and the only candidate presenting a comprehensive well formulated plan for solving the debacle in Iraq and repairing our standing in the world is Joe Biden. http://www.joebiden.com

This is an excerpt of longer previous entry.

If there was ever a time for individual idealism and partisan political ideology to be set aside for the greater national good, it would be now—when the roadmap for democracy in Iraq and peace in the Middle East is in the glove compartment of a bombed out Humvee lying in a ditch in Iraq.

Republicans who have the good sense to be embarrassed about their wrong-on-nearly everything-but-still-confabulating President and his grandiose ambitions for Iraq, might do well to acknowledge that the war being fought over there “so we don’t have to fight it over here,” (that old neo-con pap) is in fact causing problems not only for Iraqis over there, but for us over here, and most importantly around the world.

The rise of anti-Americanism around the world should be a cause for concern and self-reflection. According to the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, “Favorable ratings of America are lower in 26 of 33 countries for which trends are available. The U.S. image remains abysmal in most Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, and continues to decline among the publics of many of America's oldest allies. Favorable views of the U.S. are in single digits in Turkey (9%) and have declined to 15% in Pakistan. Currently, just 30% of Germans have a positive view of the U.S. – down from 42% as recently as two years ago – and favorable ratings inch ever lower in Great Britain and Canada."

Of particular note, though respondents in previous years made distinctions between the US government and the American people, giving the American people higher ratings than they did the US government, positive views of the American people have declined since 2003. “Opinions of the American people have declined over the past five years in 23 of 33 countries where trends are available. In Indonesia and Turkey, where favorable views of the U.S. have declined markedly over the past five years, opinions of Americans have fallen sharply as well. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, positive opinions of Americans have fallen from 65% in 2002 to 42%; in Turkey, favorable opinions have declined 19 points."

Worse, among key US allies Europe, perception of American foreign policy is alarming. “Among key U.S. allies in Western Europe, the view that the U.S. acts unilaterally is an opinion that has tracked closely with America's overall image over the past five years. Ironically, the belief that the United States does not take into account the interests of other countries in formulating its foreign policy is extensive among the publics of several close U.S. allies. No fewer than 89% of the French, 83% of Canadians and 74% of the British express this opinion."

According to the study, “Critiques of the U.S. are not confined to its policies, however. In much of the world there is broad and deepening dislike of American values and a global backlash against the spread of American ideas and customs. Majorities or pluralities in most countries surveyed say they dislike American ideas about democracy – and this sentiment has increased in most regions since 2002.” “Public rejection of American democracy in most countries may in part reflect opinions about the way in which the United States has implemented its pro-democracy agenda, as well as America's democratic values. Majorities in 43 of 47 countries surveyed – including 63% in the United States – say that the U.S. promotes democracy mostly where it serves its interests, rather than promoting it wherever it can.”

In the face of this foreign policy catastrophe, it is astounding that the media has been promoting for President, ‘not yet housebroken in foreign policy’ candidates such as Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards.

If one examines the public records, media coverage, available biographies, and autobiographies of all the aspirants to the Presidency, the only one with expansive foreign policy experience at the highest reaches of international government--who has professional and personal relationships with foreign leaders, who has been a player in some of the most critical international and foreign policy issues of our time, who has worked in the spirit of bi-partisanship in the Senate, who has evolved over three and a half decades from a cocky rube into a ferociously intelligent international statesman--and the only candidate presenting a comprehensive well formulated plan for solving the debacle in Iraq and repairing our standing in the world is Joe Biden. Joe Biden

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President Bush who had long been written off as a callow man, incapable of critical thinking, defenseless against the maneuverings of his Machiavellian circle of armchair warriors (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pearl, Ledeen, Feith), and constitutionally unable to admit mistakes is making remarkable progress in his psychological development. He can now tell half the truth.

During a Q & A with supporters at a black-tie dinner in Virginia, Mr. Bush, though conveniently ignoring the NIE assessment of Iran’s non-existent nuclear program, corrected one of the remaining few Americans who still believes that Iraq had WMD. “Not Iraq,” the President corrected the man.


Watch the video

And the audience of fine Americans did what comes naturally, when hearing their President admit the big lie that set Iraq in flames, is costing America $275 million each day, $4,100 per household, has so far killed nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers and 700,000 Iraqis, and resulted in 60,000 wounded American soldiers and 4 million Iraqi refugees. Patriots all, they laughed.

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The thing that got a cross section of America all aroused about Obama was his ability to seemingly transcend race. Here was a politician, who, Samantha Bee of The Daily Show said a year ago, “is already what all of us wish we were … half black, half white, half Camanche, half Viking.” America responded to Obama’s racelessness, due to something a New York Times reporter accurately described as, “the multitudes that he contains — Kenya, Kansas, Hawaii, Indonesia, Harvard, Illinois.” But now, deeply invested in the run for the Presidency, he has become more political, more local, more race conscious, more aware of his need to attract this or that racial group. His fundamentally post-modern American-ness and internationality, his urbanity and ease, seem to have disappeared, since his campaign began the work of shrinking him to size for television—just like Oprah. As BB King said, when the thrill is gone, it’s gone.

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Fleeing for the hills is the multinational coalition President Bush put together to invade Iraq to,

(please choose only one just cause for invading a sovereign nation which has done nothing to us, per day):

(a) avenge 911 (because hey, Saddam begins with “S” just like Saudi, the nationality of the 9/11 terrorists);
(b) prevent a mushroom cloud (that evidently could travel like a uber-twister over several continents and oceans and hit us in the heart of America);
(c) halt WMD (all evidence and intelligence presented during ceremonial waving of perfume bottle by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN);
(d) depose Saddam Hussein (suspected of ties to fundamentalist Al Queda despite decidedly unfundamentalist vanities such as dyeing moustache black, lining eyes with kohl to increase physical comeliness, and wearing bikini trunks accentuating personal life);
(e) initiate Operation Iraqi Freedom (which is the natural military strategy to halt WMD proliferation);
(f) endow Iraq with democracy (because we Americans live in a John Lennon-esque country where there’s brotherhood of man, no hunger, or greed, you hoo, ooh ooh);
(g) promote democracy in the region (a state of being that quickly blooms like cactus flowers in the desert, when Presidential manure is piled high and deep with the help of mainstream media).


Some members of the Coalition hightailed it out of Iraq as early as 2004: Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, and Tonga.

Spain withdrew all 1300 of its deployed troops by April 2004.

Several coalition members, including Hungary, Portugal, Singapore, Norway, Ukraine, and the Netherlands withdrew their troops after Iraqis flipped their purple fingers at their first free elections in 2005.

Slovakia’s fighting force followed in January 2006.

Japan’s 600 troops were withdrawn by July 2006.

Italy’s entire force of 3,200 troops were withdrawn by November 2006.

South Korea which had 3600 troops at the beginning and 1600 now, will pull out by end of 2007.

Denmark withdrew its 460 troops in early 2007 and replaced it with a small helicopter unit.

Latvia’s force of 136 were withdrawn in June 2007.

Britain’s deployment, 40,000 troops now scaled back to 5000, will draw down to 2500 shortly.

Poland plans to withdraw the last 900 of its 2500 troops by the end of 2007.

Australia plans to pull out its last 550 troops before the end of 2007.

The whole world is wrong, and the President is right, of course. When everything built on lies goes wrong,
get on the Presidential bike, get a good workout, call our troops during Thanksgiving to tell them how "proud" you are of them, and insist that anyone questioning the war is ignorant. Those endorphins can keep you in a state of delusion and denial everytime.

During the run up to the war with Iraq, when we were all being played with fears about mushroom clouds and WMD, Saddam Hussein, who was putting the finishing touches to his fourth novel, Begone Demons, asked for a televised debate with President Bush to discuss the matters at hand. The idea was dismissed as absurd. But is it anymore absurd than
committing the egregious foreign policy blunder of invading a sovereign country with intelligence that turned out to be false? Let he President of Iran speak. We may learn something, before we go running off to the Middle East to start another war without just cause.

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What should a President do when his poll numbers are hovering just slightly above OJ Simpson’s IQ, and he doesn’t have a clue how to get his country out of a foreign policy blunder that has taken 3792 American lives, cost the American taxpayer 450 billion over four years, and is eating up $4 billion of our taxes each month? Why, divert attention by picking on the feisty, anti-war moveon.org of course!

President Bush, who has proudly declared that he doesn’t read newspapers, made an exception to read moveon.org’s passionate but poorly executed plea to stop the war in a New York Times advertisement. At a White House news conference, the President, who apparently had time to spare after a strenuous day of biking and wallowing in denial about the Iraq War, told reporters that the ad which questioned whether General Petraeus would “Betray Us” (get it?) was “disgusting.” Apparently, the President believes in free speech in democratic Iraq well enough, but finds it incompatible with democracy here. He went on to say that “most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like moveon.org.”

Newsflash for the President and his crisis PR team: In order to alienate Americans from each other through diversionary tactics and bashing of war opponents, the majority of Americans have to support the war. According to news polls, 60 percent of Americans are opposed to the war and share moveon.org’s position. The halcyon days when Republicans could tear apart anyone who opposed the war as terrorism-loving, America-hating, left-leaning, lily-livered Liberals are over. When the President attacks moveon.org’s position, he isn't only attacking “left-wing groups,” but the 60 percent of Americans who no longer support this senseless war.

A country that did nothing to us is in flames because our government launched a war against it. Nearly 4000 American servicemen and women have died since the war began. More than 70,000 Iraqis have died since we launched the war in 2003, according to UK based Iraq Body Count, or as many as 600,000, according to a cluster survey by a team of Iraqi physicians, overseen by Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. More than a million Iraqis have fled the country for Syria and Jordan and other neighboring countries. The cost of war is quickly approaching $500 billion dollars. As I write this, the figure is $449,544,056,550. As I write this it is $449,544,331,712. http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

But the President is full of swagger and hot air about the reality on the ground--the outcome of the grand vision sprung from his head. According to the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, when Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile asked our President about his trip to Iraq, our Commander in Chief replied, “We’re kicking ass.” Reports that the Founding Fathers were rolling in their graves have been confirmed.

Thoughtful Americans, who have an ultra-sensitive and highly refined bull detector, are not accepting the President’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” pile of manure. They would like the President to be honest, if not with them, at the very least with himself, so that he can begin to solve the catastrophe he wrought. In comments to the story on CNN, the responses hovered somewhere between disbelief and outrage.

“”I’m glad to hear that the President is so down to earth and can tell it like it is,” a reader wrote.

“Whose ass? The American peoples?” asked one reader.

“Someone should kick Bush's ass. If given the opportunity, I would be first in line,” said another.

The President may have lost our faith, but we can still have faith in the sophisticated bull detector of the American people.


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