We're in good, strong hands -- giving it out just the way freedom-loving people want it...

Bush has restored the "Imperial Presidency," a term Arthur Schlesinger Jr. used to describe Richard M. Nixon's administration in 1973.

"The power President Bush is wielding today is truly breathtaking," said Tim Lynch, director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the libertarian Cato Institute. "A single individual is going to decide whether the war is expanded to Iraq. A single individual is going to decide how much privacy American citizens are going to retain."

. . . The public -- and Congress -- seem content for Bush to assume as much power as he desires. He had 90 percent approval ratings in polls even before last week's dramatic progress in the Afghanistan campaign, and congressional leaders have mustered little resistance to the administration's bid to increase power in the interests of national security.

. . . This pattern of consolidating presidential authority has extended to other areas of governance. Bush issued an executive order allowing a sitting president to block release of a predecessor's records, undermining a law Congress passed about such papers. When an open-meeting law prevented Bush's Social Security commission from meeting privately, the group split into two so the law would not apply. In foreign affairs, the administration has shown a distaste for international treaties that require congressional ratification, recently rejecting amendments to the Biological Weapons Convention in favor of actions that wouldn't require legislative approval.

Thank you sir, may I have another?

::Dana Milbank, Washington Post via Common Dreams: 'In War, It's Power to the President'

Now that they have demonstrated their omnipotent power via, ahem, roguish proxy warriors in Afghanistan, a world watches and wonders in breathless anticipation: where oh where will the Americans go to eradicate evil next?

The Guardian quotes smilin' Dick Cheney speculating just how many countries could benefit from a little tough love in the months ahead.

Mr Cheney, in a rare public foray, said in an interview for the BBC's Pashtu service yesterday morning: "There are a great many places round the world where there are cells of the al-Qaida organisation. Maybe as many as 40 or 50.

"We're working with the services of other countries and other governments to try to wrap those organisations up."

This threat of military action serves a useful purpose for Washington, making governments more amenable to action against terrorism, either inside or outside their own boundaries.

That's a whole lotta potential enemies to account for. Thankfully Dack has provided a nifty visual aid to forecast likely targets for western military action.

::Jane Perlez, New York Times: 'The Corrupt and Brutal Reclaim Afghan Thrones, Evoking Chaos of Somalia'
::Nusrat Javeed, The News International, Pakistan: 'US confused where to go next'
::Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian: 'Other countries could face US military action'
::PBS Frontline: Gunning for Saddam
::Dack Ragus, The Dumb War: Predicting America's Next Attack on Terrorism

Yet another Kesey posting, a final word by Douglas Brinkley:

90% of the American people--including me--thought President George W. Bush delivered a superb address to the joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, Kesey, watching from his living room in Pleasant Hill, Ore., shook his head in weary-eyed disgust. "Bush has just finished his big talk to Congress and the men in suits are telling us what the men in uniforms are going to do to the men in turbans if they don't turn over the men in hiding," he lamented. "The talk was planned to prepare us for war. It's going to get messy, everybody ruefully concedes. Nothing will ever be the same, everybody eventually declares. Then why does it all sound so familiar? So cozy and comfortable? Was it the row after row of dark blue suits, broken only by grim clusters of high-ranking uniforms all drizzling ribbons and medals? If everything has changed (as we all knew that it had on that first day) why does it all wear the same old outfits and say the same old words?"

. . . For Kesey--the iconoclastic artist--lived by a simple motto he clung to with the tenacity of a pit bull. The job of the writer, he said, is to kiss up to no one, "no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful."

::Douglas Brinkley, LA Times: 'A Final Word From the Last Merry Prankster' via wood s lot

Gee, everything has changed...

Environmentalists are angered that in some cases the administration, in the name of national security, is taking steps that they say promote the interests of timber, mining, oil, gas and pipeline companies, at the expense of the environment.

"They've used the smoke screen of the last two months to make key decisions out of public view," said Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. "The most difficult situation we face is that the attention of the media is almost exclusively on Afghanistan and anthrax."

::Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times: 'Bush Team Is Reversing Environmental Policies'

An assessment of our newly minted freedom fighters by Al-Ahram Weekly:

In a statement earlier this month, the New York- based Human Rights Watch (HRW) singled out numerous groups and high-profile commanders in the Northern Alliance as party to gross human rights infractions, not only against Taliban fighters but against civilians and suspected Taliban sympathisers. Warning the US and its allies that a record of human rights abuses should not be rewarded with blind support, HRW noted that atrocities committed by some United Front factions were well documented. It added that some of the most harrowing incidents occurred in places controlled by the United Front as recently as a few years ago.

. . . The more the US confers with NA leaders, the more legitimacy the alliance garners, and, consequently, the harder it becomes for Americans and other allied nations not to put their desperate faith in this collection of hardened fighters. Those unfamiliar with the history of Afghanistan and the tribal warfare that has ravaged the country hear terms like anti- Taliban and "Northern Alliance" and think of a tightly organised, finely honed fighting machine, just waiting for its chance to do what is right. Even the use of the sweeping, generic term "Northern Alliance fighters", now so common in news reports, is misleading, as the groups that make up the NA are disparate and far-flung, both in Afghanistan and beyond.

::Nyier Abdou, Al Ahram Weekly: 'My enemy's enemy'

Spent one week away from the internet, subject to the mercy of television and the domestic press. Come back jet-lagged and otherwise brutalized by the airline, and log on to check out the Brits. It doesn't seem they are enjoying the same triumphant war that's the consensus reality on this side of the pond.

The Northern Alliance watched the American bombers clear the road to Kabul. They were grateful. Then they drove into Kabul and now they are asking the British to leave. Poor old Jack Straw had trouble contacting the Afghan foreign minister to sort things out. The Afghan satellite phone was not switched on. You bet it wasn't.

The mystery is why we ever expected these people to obey us. Afghan rules don't work that way. Ethnic groups and tribes and villagers don't take orders from foreigners. They do deals. The West wanted to use the Northern Alliance as its foot-soldiers in Afghanistan. The Alliance wanted to use the American bombers to help it occupy the capital.

Not only are they suffering all the angst, apparently they're the brains behind the whole operation. The Guardian publishes a breathless, Anglo-valorizing account suggesting their own military strategists were really behind behind the advances of the Northern Alliance campaign:

London had become aware that America was actually operating in a vacuum. It had little intelligence on the Taliban or the Northern Alliance, the two warring factions in Afghanistan. 'To tell you the truth, for the first two weeks we were not sure what the best way forward was,' one British official said. 'They [the Americans] were asking us for answers. We had to go away and find them.'

::Robert Fisk, The Independent: 'Our friends in the North are just as treacherous and murderous'

::The Guardian, 'The rout of the Taliban':Part One, Part Two

I'm going to be occupied most of this week. If you don't know of these resources already, check them out for consistently intelligent and fresh perspective:

Cursor: An awe-inspiring daily digest.

Booknotes: A literate take on events, with groovy music added to the mix.

wood s lot: Erudite and eclectic.

Dack.com: A devastaing anti-war weblog that eschews 'op-ed pieces or articles from those damn commie pinko rags like The Progressive, ZNet, or Commondreams', believing that 'the folly of this war can be demonstrated by wire feeds and mainstream news organizations, including FOX.'

There are many other weblogs doing excellent work lately, their omission here is my own laziness...

::

Ken Kesey. A very big man, and an inspiration. I'd feel braver knowing he could be with us through whatever is coming. I linked to his piece posted a few days back, but it's worth doing again:

...we are talking not just about war, this time, but about the war above the war: the Real War. This war has already been been waged, and it's not between the US and the Taliban, or between the Moslems and the Isralies or any of the familiar forces, but between the ancient gutwrenching bonebreaking fleshslashing way things have always been and the timerous and fragile way things might begin to be. Could begin to be. Must begin to be, if our lives and our children's lives are ever, someday, in the upheaving future, to know honest peace.

True, the warriors on our side of this Real War seem few and flimsey, but we have a secret advantage: we don't fight our battle out of Hate. Anger, yes, if we have to, but anger is enough. Hate is the flag the other side battles beneath. It is the ancient flag of fire and blood and agony, and it waves over the graves of millions and millions.


Our side's flag is a thin, airlight blue, drifting almost unseen against the sky. Our military march is a meadowlark's song among the dandolions. And our Real War rally isn't given any space at the United States Congress. Where can you hear it? Lots of places, if you listen. Across Dairy Queen counters. In the careful post office talk. The e-mail is where I've been hearing it, for days now, and the entries are getting clearer and more numerous. At first only ten or fifteen. Then fifty or sixty. And this morning more than three hundred!

When I originally read this, I meant to send Kesey a short email to add to the flow -- but hesitated, not wanting to be a pest. I suspect I'll regret my reticence for a long while... He urged us to be bold.

Drug-financed terrorists are called Narco-terrorists for a reason. As criminals engaged in drug trade, arms-trafficking and money-laundering, this network of criminals are partners with terrorists. Together they murder men, women, and children, and undermine our freedoms as directly as the fanatics who turn hijacked airliners into flying bombs.

::D.A.R.E. 'Terrorism Must Also Be Fought on the Battlefield of Drug Abuse' via Unknown News

a) In July 2000 the Taliban prohibited the cultivation of opium poppy. An assessment mission in May 2000 reported that opium poppy cultivation had been effectively eliminated in those Taliban controlled areas where it had traditionally been grown. Production of opium in Northern Alliance areas of Afghanistan continues.

b) Last year, the only place where opium production increased, according to the United Nations, was an area held by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Badakhshan province.

:: a) U.K. Foreign & Commonwealth Office, 'Tackling the Major Drug Threats'
:: b) Washington Post, (October 23, 2001): 'Drug Trade Resurgent in Afghanistan' via Media Awareness Project

A shepherd stumbled across some 50 unexploded US cluster bombs in a mountainous region of Pakistan, local police officials said on Thursday.

. . . The site is 100 km south of the Afghan border and is in the vicinity of two Pakistani airbases that have been made available to the United States for their assault on Afghanistan -- Dalbandin and Shamsi.

A rural police official said the shepherd, identified as Eshar, found the bombs on Tuesday as he herded his sheep. He hit one and it exploded, injuring him in the legs, hands and torso.

::The Times of India: '50 US cluster bombs found in Pak' via Cursor

The Infinite Jest rides to the rescue with a set of educational trading cards.
via Booknotes, kill your tv.

Shoulder to shoulder:

Mr Bush said on Wednesday that the bombing of Afghanistan was just the start of the war on terrorism.

One British minister said that bombing Iraq would be catastrophic because women and children would be killed and the consequences for the US and Britain in the Arab world would be unimaginably dangerous.

He warned that US and British embassies in the Arab world would have to close and British civilians would have to be advised to leave the area. He feared that moderate Arab regimes would be swept away.

The sense of frustration also applies to defence and military circles. British defence officials recognise that Washington is calling the shots. But there is growing impatience about US delays in deploying and giving tasks to ground troops, including some 100 SAS troops believed to be in Afghanistan or nearby.

One senior minister even spoke disparagingly about General Tommy Franks, the US commander of Operation Enduring Freedom, describing him as an "artillery man" reluctant to commit infantry.

British military planners made it clear they are extremely concerned about the failed raid by US rangers on targets near Kandahar on October 20 and the decision to release a video of it for propaganda reasons.

::Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian: 'Splits open in UK-US alliance'
::Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor, Julian Borger and Ian Black [et al?], The Guardian: 'Clouds hang over special relationship'

Proxy war: precise, supple, sexy...

Frustration was compounded by uncertainty about another tribal leader, Hamid Karzai, who entered southern Afghanistan three weeks ago on a similar mission to rally Pashtun opposition.

Yesterday he told the BBC via satellite phone that he was still in Uruzgan province and "doing absolutely good" and enlisting support after escaping Taliban pursuers.

In a bizarre twist, he denied a claim by the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that he had been extracted from the country by an American helicopter last weekend, suggesting one of them will have a credibility problem when the truth is known.

... and a steady hand on the wheel at home.

Bush spoke at an elementary school, where he urged students to make pen pals with their counterparts in Arab countries. (Remarkably, Bush's one new initiative in the midst of the anthrax mailings will assure that the country is flooded with letters from the Middle East addressed in children's handwriting.)

::Rory Carroll, The Guardian: 'Opposition leaders ready to quit battle against Taliban'
::Ryan Lizza, The New Republic: 'Missing Person' via Cursor