April 25, 2011

Preserving a Psychopathic Tradition?

By WALTER BRASCH

Take a pigeon.

Now put that pigeon, along with thousands of others, into small coops that don’t give the bird much freedom to move.  Don’t worry about food or water. It won’t matter.

Take some of the pigeons—who are already disoriented from hours, maybe days, of confinement—and place a couple of them each into spring-loaded box traps on a field. 

About 20 yards behind the traps have people with 12-gauge shotguns line up.
Release the pigeons and watch juveniles disguised in the bodies of adults shoot these non-threatening birds. Most of the birds will be shot five to ten feet from the traps; many, dazed and confused, are shot while standing on the ground or on the tops of cages. Each shooter will have the opportunity to shoot at 25 birds, five birds each in five separate rounds.

About a fourth of the birds will be killed outright. Most of the rest will be wounded. Teenagers will race onto the fields and grab most of the wounded birds. They will wring their necks or stuff them still alive into barrels to die from suffocation.

Some birds will be able to fly outside the killing field, only to die a slow and painful death in nearby yards, roofs, or rivers. A few will live.

Now, do it again. And again. And again. All day long. At the “state shoot” in Berks County, about 5,000 birds were launched from 27 boxes on three killing fields.

And, just to make sure that you’re a macho macho man, why not stuff a bird onto a plastic fork and parade around the grounds? How about wearing a T-shirt with language so nauseating that even Cable TV would have to blur the message.

By the way, make sure you collect your bets. Illegal gambling, along with excessive drinking, is also a part of this charade that poses as sport. The shooters don’t make much, but thousands of dollars will exchange hands.

These are the same psychopaths who probably twirled cats by their tails, and used birthday money to buy BB guns to pluck birds from fences and telephone wires. In their warped minds, they probably think they’re Rambo, their shotguns are M-16s, the cages are bunkers, and the cooing birds are agents of Kaos, Maxwell Smart’s long-time nemesis.

Thisis what the NRA is defending as Americans’ Second Amendment rights. And why the Pennsylvania legislature has been afraid to pass a bill prohibiting pigeon shoots.

For more than three decades, Pennsylvanians have tried to get this practice banned. For three decades, they have failed. And when it looked as if there was even a remote chance that a slim majority of legislators might support a bill banning pigeon shoots, the House and Senate leadership, most of them from rural Pennsylvania, figured out numerous ways to lock up the bills in committees or keep them from reaching the floor for a vote. In 1994, the House did vote, 99–93, to ban pigeon shoots. But 102 votes were needed.

But now a bill to ban this form of animal cruelty may be headed for a vote in the full legislature. SB626, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Browne (R-Allentown), forbids the “use of live animals or fowl for targets at trap shoots or block shoot” gatherings. It specifically allows fair-chase hunting and protects Second Amendment rights.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee finally got a spine, and voted 11–3 to send legislation to the full Senate to ban this practice. Six Republicans and five Democrats voted for the vote; all three negative votes were from Republicans, including the Senate’s president pro-tempore. Many of those voting for the ban are lifetime hunters; many are long-time NRA members. They all agree that this is not fair chase hunting but wanton animal cruelty.

But, the NRA, with its paranoid personality that believes banning animal cruelty would lead to banning guns, fired back. In a vicious letter to its members and the media, the NRA stated that national animal rights extremists, whom they have also called radicals, are trying to ban what they call a “longstanding traditional shooting sport.”

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) disagree. In 1900, the IOC banned pigeon shoots as cruelty to animals and ruled it was not a sport. The PGC says that pigeon shoots “are not what we would classify as fair-chase hunting.” Also opposed to pigeon shoots are dozens of apparently other radical extremists—like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association, and the Pennsylvania Bar Association. “Each pigeon shoot teaches children that violence and animal cruelty are acceptable practices,” says Heidi Prescott, senior vice-president for the HSUS.

The vote will be close in both chambers, mostly because of the financial power the NRA wields in the rural parts of Pennsylvania, and the NRA’s fingernails-on-the-blackboard screeches to its members. On his blog, Sen. Daylin Leach (D-King of Prussia), a member of the Judiciary committee, wrote that when he supported a ban on pigeon shoots in previous Legislative sessions, he “got more hate mail on this than any other issue I’ve been involved with.” He stated he “got e-mails from all over the state telling me that I obviously hated America and that God, who wanted the pigeons he created to be slaughtered as quickly as possible, was very disappointed in me.”

Failure to pass this bill into law will continue to make Pennsylvania, with a long-established hunting culture, the only state where pigeon shoots openly occur, and where animal cruelty is accepted.

Walter Brasch is an award-winning reporter who attended several pigeon shoots. His next book is Before the First Snow, a look at America’s counter-culture and the nation’s conflicts between oil-based and “clean” nuclear energy. He can be reached at: walterbrasch@gmail.com.

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Osama and Al Qaeda

By SHAUKAT QADIR | May 2, 2011

Editor’s Note: Like all things relating to the war on terror, we must take everything said about Al Qaeda with a lump of salt, and that applies to this take on the mysterious forces shaping our time. The article was filed by a retired Pakistani officer, with all the possible biases emanating from that quarter, including an inherent conservatism. On balance, nonetheless, we think the piece is  worthwhile and newsworthy.

Al Qaeda took birth in late 1982 (not 1988/89, as usually stated, because 1989 was when it actually acquired the militant traits it is now famous for) in Kuwait, the birthplace of Osama bin Laden’s (its founder; OBL) father, ostensibly as a charitable organization to assist Muslims suffering all over the world. Very quickly, however, OBL realized that the way to ‘help’ oppressed Muslims was to arm them to rebel against the oppressor(s). Since 1989 witnessed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and OBL was one source for funneling arms to Afghan freedom fighters, Al Qaeda suddenly began to receive massive funding from all over the Arab World. He also swiftly entered the arena of gun-running.

Many Americans have accused the CIA of training Osama. My view is that the accusation is not merited. However, there is little doubt that he received encouragement, support, funding and even arms for Afghan “freedom fighters” and that he was a CIA collaborator for some years.

OBL also actively collaborated by providing crucial intelligence obtained from Al Qaeda personnel in Kuwait, during ‘Desert Storm’. However, with continued American presence in Saudi Arabia, post Desert Storm, plus American arrogance demonstrated by their ignorance of, and lack of concern with, local customs and sensitivities were the beginning of the change in him. He began to find Americans offensive and the King (Abdullah) began to be viewed as an American lackey.

OBL began to gravitate towards the small group of dissidents who held the view that a King was un-Islamic and sought a return to the ancient Islamic democracy; the Khilafat. He became increasingly active with the passage of time and, when confronted with it, freely admitted to his activities. Due to his family connections, he was not imprisoned but his citizenship of Saudi Arabia revoked.

It was during his period in Sudan that he began focusing on the US as the object of his enmity. While his anti-US activities are on record, it is significant to note that there was considerable increase in contributions to Al Qaeda, including contributions by members of the royal family of Saud.

It was also in this period that OBL began to develop a strategic ‘world view’. He saw all governments of Muslim majority countries as American lackeys and referred to them as Kafirs (infidel). He began to think of himself as a man with a mission; he was going to bring revolutions in all Muslim countries to revert them into one united Caliphate and, simultaneously bring to its knees that giant of all Evil; the US.

It is important to point out that for any such strategic vision to work, it is essential to have undisputed control over a spatial territory; preferably a country. A nation state governed under strict and ‘true’ Islamic law, setting an example to the rest, a command, control, and communication infrastructure, where funds can flow in, where training can be provided for warriors to sally forth and instigate revolutions in other Muslim majority countries. He was going to be the Muslim Che Guevara. But how?

While he was considering his choice of country, fate took a hand and, without details irrelevant to this narrative, he found himself in Afghanistan for him; the Promised Land

How did Al Qaeda work?

In 1980, OBL offered to join the Afghan freedom struggle, but this was a stage when the Afghan struggle was still ‘pure’, unadulterated by non-Afghan fighters, except the Pashtun from Pakistan. Osama’s contributions in weapons and financial support were welcomed; he was not. Soon he began to realize that his person was too precious to waste. At some stage Abu Ayoub Al-Iraqi, joined Al Qaeda. He remained so far in the background that few know his name and few are aware of his contribution; but it was he who gave the practical shape to Al Qaeda’s role on Osama’s World Vision.

Al Qaeda’s function has been described as “centralized decision and decentralized execution”; I see it as a multi-national that has exported instability so as to create Caliphate(s) in Muslim majority countries through ‘outsourcing’. Al Qaeda has recruited Muslims from all parts of the world and sends out small bands of advisers; these could number from three to a dozen or so. While Osama retained the title of Amir, the leader, and was advised by a council, called Shoora, the real power has been wielded by the second tier leadership, responsible for planning and tasking. The second tier has traditionally been Arab, mostly Egyptians, with one known exception, the Pakistani, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, credited with the 9/11 attack; but could he have planned it alone?.

9/11 as an example

Many journalists have written about the complications involved in planning this attack. Let us refresh our memory a little. Nineteen individuals from various Arab countries entered the US in four different groups. None of these groups were aware of the others or their role, except the coordinator, who also led one of the groups, Muhammed Atta.

For the attack(s) to create the impact envisioned, without a timely reaction, it was necessary to hijack four aircrafts taking off from different airports. The planes selected, had to take off within a total time interval not exceeding forty five minutes, from the first to the last, to preempt a timely response. For them to cause the destruction to the WTC, Pentagon, and (maybe) the White House, they had to be carrying a certain minimal payload of fuel otherwise the explosion would have been insufficient.

Khalid, the one credited with the 9/11 attack, was a mechanical engineer with a masters from North Carolina. He could certainly have helped work out the fuel payload requirements for the planes that were to turn into aerial bombs, but their flight direction, how far each could deviate from its flight path and for how long, before it would arouse suspicion, the level of training required in flying that would suffice for the hijackers, the kind of weapons that would get through the airport search machines all point to more than one ‘expert’; each one with the requisite knowledge of airport security, of flight schedules, flight paths and patterns, the time taken to arouse suspicion, the delay in scrambling aircrafts to respond to this threat.

There were so many factors to be vectored in for this attack to succeed that it is impossible for it not to have been planned by a group of at least three individuals, perhaps more whose variety of expertise could create the (near) perfect plan.

It is not only a probability but a virtual certainty that they never came together, nor did they provide the information knowing what it was for. They were all probably paid cash to provide bits and pieces from their own area(s) of expertise. And yes, with their help, even Khalid Sheikh could have masterminded the plan, though my gut feeling is still that the mastermind had to be a specialist and a purchasable commodity. But Khalid is claiming sole credit and, therefore, we will never know the truth.

But this isn’t an example of outsourcing! For that, we need to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Examples could also be taken from other Muslim majority countries, but I will confine myself to the area I know.

Afghanistan

1996, when Osama landed in Afghanistan, Taliban was broke and also needed weapons. In early ‘90s, Eric Margolis reported that a kilo of paste fetched the Afghan farmer $ 1000. At Karachi it was worth $ 50,000, offshore New York, $ 250,000 and would be cut and recut to be sold in New York at a street value ranging from 3 to 5 million. Al Qaeda was already into gun running and moving into drug smuggling was no problem. Pakistan was, at that time, a staunch supporter and the CIA was also prepared to turn a blind eye, the US still had hopes of Taliban and UNOCAL with George H. W. Bush on its board was still investing in Taliban in hope of oil from Central Asia.

And so, Osama offered Taliban 50 per cent of the profits from drug smuggling and weapons at near cost price. Mullah Omer could not look a gift horse of this kind, in the mouth. In return, Osama got the country he had been craving for, an unchallenged base for Al Qaeda operations, and the country where stringent Islam would be practiced in letter and spirit, as a shining example for Muslim majority countries.

9/11 changed everything. Suddenly Pakistan became a US supporter, a US invasion was imminent and, when it came, Taliban, Osama, and Al Qaeda were on the run.

It might be of interest to draw the reader’s attention to some less well known facts. Post 9/11, the US demanded that Taliban hand over Osama, the Taliban reportedly refused, because when they asked the US to provide concrete evidence of Osama’s guilt, the US refused. The US refused, because there was no concrete evidence of his guilt. There never can be. Although Osama, in a video released to Al-Jazeera TV accepted responsibility for this attack, but that was in the future; and the video was never authenticated either, so no one is certain of his guilt.

Such operations are ordered through numerous cut-offs and conduits and if any of the hijackers had been captured alive, he certainly could not have gone beyond the curtain of Khalid Sheikh and Khalid has never pointed the finger at Osama. He claims sole responsibility. Most of the FBI and CIA knowledge of the functioning of Al Qaeda has come courtesy Jamal Al Fadl, a Sudanese who defected from Al Qaeda after embezzling $110,000, which he confessed before a court in the US. How much credence can be given to his testimony, is for the reader to judge

There were selective portions of al-Fadl’s testimony that I believe was false, to help support the picture that he helped the Americans join together. I think he lied in a number of specific testimony about a unified image of what this organization was. It made al-Qaeda the new Mafia or the new Communists. It made them identifiable as a group and therefore made it easier to prosecute any person associated with al-Qaeda for any acts or statements made by bin Laden.[26]

What has gone virtually unreported is the fact that on a suggestion by a Pakistani official, Taliban agreed to hand over Osama to Saudi Arabia, but the King refused to accept him. The Taliban might even have agreed to hand him over to the International Criminal Court, but when the ‘war-time’ vacuous US president Bush was informed of the option, he just ordered the charge.

For the initial years Musharaf continued to play both sides against the middle but the US was pressing hard and something had to give. Periodically, he would throw the US a bone to keep them off his back for a while. One such ‘bone’ for the US was the murder of Nek Muhammed in 2004, a member of the Wazir tribe, a veteran of the anti-Soviet war, who rose to prominence as a leader of his tribesmen amongst the Afghan Freedom Fighters, fighting once again to reclaim their country from another army of occupation, their erstwhile ally, the US. (Those readers interested in what happened in Pakistan can look up “Understanding the insurgency in FATA” under ‘selected articles’ on www,shaukatqadir.info.

This turned out to be disastrous and instigated the revolt in our tribal areas. However, it was not till Musharaf, bedeviled by another self-created judicial crisis by filing a reference against the Chief Justice, which was unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court, created another crisis to divert the attention of the international community; the ‘Lal Masjid’ (Red Mosque) episode in Islamabad in 2007, when Osama announced that, “Al Qaeda’s enemy number one was no longer the US; it was now Pakistan”.

By this time, Afghan Freedom Fighters had embraced the title of Taliban. Forgetting the oppression they had suffered in the last years of the Taliban, Taliban became the symbol of the Muslim David to the American Goliath; however, Taliban had divided into numerous factions; all loosely linked to Al Qaeda but not fully subservient to the so-called ‘mother’ organization.

Consequently, without going into details of the causes, only two Pakistani factions of the Taliban; Maulana Fazlullah’s in Swat and Baitullah Mahsud’s in South Waziristan responded to Osama’s call, while none of the Afghan Taliban did.

Since Swat shared no borders with Afghanistan, it was South Waziristan that became the base for Al Qaeda’s anti-Pakistan operations; though Fazlullah also received considerable support since, if the area under Al Qaeda could extend to the boundaries of Swat, they would be virtually within spitting distance of Islamabad.

This is where the example of ‘outsourcing’ begins!

Anticipating that Afghan Taliban might not be tied to his apron strings after witnessing how their Afghan brethren turned against them for obeying Osama’s Islamic injunctions, Osama was looking at a home in Pakistan, preparatory to taking it over; the only Muslim nuclear capable country in Osama’s lap, what a prize to aspire to!

Very carefully, under the skillful guidance of Ayman Al Zwahiri (in all likelihood, Ayoub Al-Iraqi remains the strategic brain of the organization, while Zwahiri has assumed operational control), roles were divided between the two Pakistani factions. To Fazlullah, closer to Islamabad fell the task of guerrilla warfare. To this end, a team of ten, under a Jordanian known only as Jabber was dispatched to Swat and over 1000 Tajik and Uzbek veterans followed as reinforcements.

Baitullah formed the base camp. This was the operating HQ, the command, communication, and control center, the safe haven through which monies, weapons, and explosives flowed, and the training area for acts of terrorism. Volunteers, usually young students of Madrassas (seminaries) were indoctrinated and brought here for training, many of them from as far as Southern Punjab. To Baitullah were dispatched twenty advisers, the leader’s name remains a mystery, though he is described as a tall, educated Arab, with a towering personality.

It was soon discovered that the Al Qaeda representation in Baitullah’s region was overkill. Baitullah was the astute leader but he was ably assisted by three very capable henchmen; Qari Raees, Hakeemullah (who later succeeded him), and Waheed. Very soon these three had divided responsibilities of different training camps, and administration, indoctrination as well as recruitment. The leader of the Al Qaeda advisers left after six months or so, and left behind three representatives for advice on tricky operations.

Baitullah was a wily individual who is reputed to always hedge his bets. Among the Mahsuds, his tribesmen, he was reputed to be a CIA agent. They offer the following facts as evidence: a) he had far more ready cash in dollars than any other, but this is inconclusive; b) that he had very sophisticated communication equipment—a question mark; c) that for many months the US drones would hit only those Mahsud militants who operated against the US in Afghanistan and opposed Baitullah’s decision to attack Pakistan; and that those hit by drones had invariable been visited by Baitullah on a pacifying mission (these stupid tribesmen aren’t that stupid, even they know about homing devices). Finally, the ISI had, on numerous occasions provided accurate actionable intelligence on Baitullah to the CIA requesting a hit, which never materialized. Until finally, he outlived his usefulness and was wiped out, long with his wife, by a drone.

When the Pakistan army recaptured Swat from Fazlullah they captured diaries of some Taliban leaders; among them was a diary of Muslim Khan, the spokesman for Fazlullah, the leader of the Taliban in Swat. I managed to lay my hands on some of them, including a diary of someone who styled himself as “Khalid bin al Walid” – an obvious pseudonym. While most of the diaries typically related the events of the day, a portion of each diary was dedicated as a training manual. And this is what made them so interesting. The diaries contain detailed instructions on how to conduct urban and rural guerrilla warfare. They included instructions on carrying out an ambush, how to evade one if possible and how to fight through one. They listed combatants under loose command structures for certain operations. The diaries included analyses of the successes and failures of operations, with notes on the casualties taken and inflicted. They record why a commander has been changed, occasionally for his inefficiency, but more frequently to find the most appropriate individual for each task.

Details of each operation and the instructions on how to reorganize after success or failure provide fascinating insight into their training and understanding of guerrilla operations. Occasional glimpses of Sun Tzu and Che Guevara’s teachings come through. But what the diaries resemble most are the “training manuals” captured from the rebel Contras that Nicaragua took before the International Court of Justice to present its case against the US.

While fascinating, the diaries might not be a cause for surprise; except to wonder how they received such detailed training. The remaining instructions contained in the diaries of leaders as well as “soldiers” is certainly cause for concern. These instructions are exquisite in their detail on how to make explosive devices; many with the most innocuous components like sugar, cooking oil, aluminium, Vaseline, coffee, charcoal, salt and even black seed. In each case, other explosive components are included and in each case all composites are spelt out in milligrams – frequently with diagrams. Instructions on the use of TNT, RDX, and plastique are also included with a ratio for each component.

Instructions also detail how improvised explosive devices (IEDs) can be triggered; methods range from conventional fuses to improvised ones from rope soaked in fuel, to those made from a hand-wound wrist watch, an alarm clock and even a mobile phone. Instructions also include which devices can be used for which type of IED. They include how charges can be shaped for maximizing effect in a given direction and even instructions on biological precautions if there is prolonged exposure to certain chemicals – when to drink a glass of milk or a quart of yogurt. Needless to say, instructions also include details on the sensitivity of each kind of IED, what might trigger each prematurely and its lifespan. Everything necessary has been covered in the minutest detail imaginable, many of which were unknown to me until I read the diaries.

While all this information is available on the internet, it requires a specialist to understand and synthesize it. Often the diaries necessitate knowledge of chemistry, physics and biology and a combination of that knowledge would be developed for a specific purposes: training people to operate behind enemy lines and make do with whatever is available. Such information could also be gathered by a scientist in the pay of an organization like al Qa’eda. But even a chemist would need to be pointed in the right direction to collect the relevant information on physics and biology. This information had to come from an intelligence agency.

Similar material was recovered from South Waziristan, though in far lesser quantity, since the Mahsuds managed to escape across the Durand Line in far greater numbers. All captured Taliban from both areas tell the same story: “These were brought by a handful of people from Afghanistan (Al Qaeda advisers), photocopied and distributed to us. Our day started with a recitation of the Holy Quran and was followed by a two hour training session in combat and weapons. The rest of the day we studied these books (training manuals) and practiced them as well.”

I am certain that CIA has been guilty of many dubious acts and I have frequently accused them of such acts. However, it is my considered opinion that the CIA would, under no circumstances release such documents to a terrorist organization. There are, however, numerous ex-CIA Black Ops personnel sitting unemployed who might be for sale. There are also ex-CIA Black Ops operatives employed by Private Security Agencies like Xe. And Xe is for sale to the highest bidder. Take your pick!

How relevant is Al Qaeda today and in the future?

It seems however, that events in the Arab countries have overtaken us. The fire is spreading and, while it can be suppressed by force but only for a breathing space. It seems that Arab peoples want their freedom and their own brand of representative government; which might not be the Anglo-Saxon democracy but one that suits their psyche.

With this storm rising, there appears to be a growing concern in the west and particularly in the US that this will give birth to Islamic extremism. After years of accusing Pakistan of harboring Al Qaeda (only months ago, Ms. Clinton made another damning accusation while in Islamabad), we now hear that it is back in force in Yemen, Bahrain, and Iraq! Only on Iraq, I must point out that, while Saddam was a Sunni despot, there was never any question of Al Qaeda taking root there during his rule. It is there indeed, but only post the US invasion.

Numerous other fears are being expressed in relation to the gathering storm among Arab nations: it could fuel a sectarian war; it could give birth to Islamic extremism, and most of all, where would our flow of oil come from?

All these apprehensions have some grains of possibility. It is entirely possible that Islamists could take over. It is also possible that Iran, watching all this with hungry eyes might grab an opportunity that could trigger  sectarian strife all over the Arab turbulent region. And any turbulence will hinder the flow of oil, though not for long. Oil is their sole source of income.

However, in my view, if there is a real fear of an Islamists takeover, it is confined to Saudi Arabia; which is why King Abdullah has ordered an immediate intervention in Bahrain and is pleading with Jordan to turn down demands for reform to a democratic kingdom. Saudi Arabia has hordes of OBLs still in hiding!

In this emerging scenario, how relevant is Al Qaeda? After all, its raison d’etre was based on two premises: that the present governments in all Muslim countries, beginning with Arabs are un-Islamic/oppressive and that they are pro-US. The revolution(s) sweeping across Arabia and Africa are based on the same reasons and, whichever form of government emerges in each country; Islamic or some form of representative democracy, it is certainly not going to be opening doors to Al Qaeda.

Our Taliban in Pakistan will make us sweat for some years yet and, if (rather when) reformation finally does sweep across the region, there might be a reformative revolution in Pakistan as well.

It seemed to me that even before Osama’s elimination, Al Qaeda has been in its dying throes; because of forces beyond its control. All the more reason then, for the US to pack up and quit Afghanistan. Their basic apprehension that a Taliban return in Afghanistan might herald the return of Al Qaeda seems to have disappeared. Other ghosts and specters now loom on the American horizon. Time to go chase them!

Shaukat Qadir is a retired brigadier and a former president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. He can be reached at shaukatq@gmail.com

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One of our chief political commentators remains unconvinced—

The timing and entire management of this event has all the earmarks of an elaborate  psyops directed chiefly at the American people. This is not a question of being a sucker for conspiracy theories, but of applying maximum disbelief to US government claims given its long record of falsifications.

By Stephen Lendman

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If it sounds familiar, it’s because the script never changes in American pseudopolitics, the only kind fitting a pseudodemocracy. Read and ponder. Maybe 2012 is also a year to sit the big election out.

By Adolph L. Reed Jr. | November 2007 Issue
Reposted

OK, HERE WE ARE AGAIN, a year out from a Presidential election, and we’re all supposed to be figuring out which of the Democrats has the best chance to win—determined mainly by the standard of raising the most money—and subordinating all our substantive political concerns to the objective of getting him or her elected. This time, I’m not going to acquiesce in the fiction that the Presidential charade has any credibility whatsoever. I’m not paying any attention to the horse race coverage—that mass-mediated positioning in the battle for superficial product differentiation.

The Democratic candidates who are anointed “serious” are like a car with a faulty front-end alignment: Their default setting pulls to the right. They are unshakably locked into a strategy that impels them to give priority to placating those who aren’t inclined to vote for them and then palliate those who are with bromides and doublespeak. When we complain, they smugly say, “Well, you have no choice but to vote for me because the other guy’s worse.” The party has essentially been nominating the same ticket with the same approach since Dukakis.

The last straw for me was the spectacle of all the “serious candidates” falling over one another to link Castro and Chávez with Ahmadinejad, bin Laden, and Kim, thus endorsing the Bush Administration’s view that any government that does anything that ours doesn’t like—including giving its own people’s needs higher priority than those of our corporations—qualifies it as a supporter of terrorism, a rogue state, part of the Axis of Evil, or whatever comic book slogan is operative this week. Then came the supposedly anti-war Obama buttressing his commitment to increase overall American troop strength with a pledge to invade Pakistan. Then came his and HRC’s tiff over the etiquette of publicly declaring a willingness to use nuclear weapons on a case-by-case basis, with both parties treating the issue as purely a matter of foreign policy gamesmanship. And this was during Hiroshima and Nagasaki week, no less!

Each serious candidate has boosters who will tell us that we should be more sophisticated than to take what their candidates say at face value, that their empty, inadequate, or objectionable proposals are the best, most realistic versions of whatever we think we want—from ending the war, to universal national health care and access to quality education, to public investment in rebuilding the Gulf Coast and the rest of the country’s physical and social infrastructure, to worker protection and fighting environmental degradation.

A friend of mine characterizes this as the “we’ll come back for you” politics, the claim that they can’t champion anything you want because they have to conciliate your enemies right now to get elected, but that, once they win, they’ll be able to attend to the progressive agenda they have to reject now in order to win. This worked out so well with the Clinton Presidency, didn’t it? Remember his argument that he had to sign the hideous 1996 welfare reform bill to be able to come back and “fix” it later? Or NAFTA? Or two repressive and racist crime bills that flooded the prisons? Or the privatizing of Sallie Mae, which set the stage for the student debt crisis? Or ending the federal government’s commitment to direct provision of housing for the poor?

This time, the nominal frontrunners have Rube Goldberg health care proposals that protect the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the chief sources of the health care crisis. They discuss the murderous adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan mainly in bloodless, managerial terms—as a “broken policy” or some other such technician’s euphemism. Not only do their references to the tragic loss of American lives seem pro forma and constructed by focus-group engineers; they also reinscribe the presumption that only American lives count. This is part of what undergirds the broader framework of a foreign policy hinged on cavalier use of military assault and invasion in the first place—what used to be clearly recognized as imperialism. Edwards, who seems somewhat better than the others on Iraq, apparently needs to make up for it—lest what seem like expressions of decency be grounds for accusations of weakness—by being even more bellicose than they regarding Iran. However, all of them have indicated a lusty willingness to attack Iran, Syria, or any other country that can be demonized either for not dancing to our government’s tune or even just because it’s convenient to do so as a prop for some other purpose.

At the end of the primary campaign, one of the “serious candidates” is going to get the nomination and form a ticket with another version of his or her triangulating self. (I still wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be Clinton-Obama, in an all-Oprah ticket, an exercise in massive short-term self-delusion and empty identity politics that will guarantee the White House to whichever combo the GOP puts up.) Maybe by Election Day I’ll be moved or guilted or frightened into voting for that ticket, whatever it is. But I’m just as likely to sit this one out.

And I’m prepared to blow off every liberal who starts whining and hectoring, in that self-important and breathless way they do, about our obligation to protect “choice” or to make sure we can get another Stephen Breyer or Sandra Day O’Connor onto the Supreme Court.

I know that some outraged readers are going to write in, fulminating about how nihilistically ultraleftist I am to criticize the Democrats in this way and how irresponsible The Progressive is to publish the criticism—especially now, when the stakes are so great and it’s so crucially important for the future of the country, the world, the galaxy, the cosmos, that some Democrat—anyone, no matter how worthless—wins the Presidency. (That they make the same cataclysmic claim about every election never seems to dull their self-righteous fervor.) They’ll explain that we have to understand that we can’t get everything we want all at once, that the Democrats can’t go any further than they go, and that a half-hearted promise of part of a stale loaf of bread in some unspecified future is better than no bread at all—especially for those who don’t really need the bread at the moment.

Well, in part, they’re right. The Democrats are what they are. We should all know that by now, after two decades of their failing to stand up to the rightwing juggernaut, of presenting themselves as more responsible and steady managers of the country’s slide to the right. By the time the national elections come around, there really are no options other than to vote for their predictably worthless nominee, make an existential statement (or engage in wish-fulfillment, if you think it’s more than that) by voting for a third party candidate, or just not bother. This bleak reality reflects the left’s failure to build any durable extra-electoral force between elections that can bring pressure to bear on the Democratic contenders and debate.

Elected officials are only as good or as bad as the forces they feel they must respond to. It’s a mistake to expect any more of them than to be vectors of the political pressures they feel working on them. This is a lesson that progressives have forgotten or failed to learn.

As an illustration, consider the recent contretemps between John Conyers and the pro-impeachment, anti-war activists who attacked him as a sellout for failing to push impeachment over Nancy Pelosi’s and the House Democratic leadership’s opposition. His critics accused him of betraying the spirit of Martin Luther King. But that charge only exposes their unrealistic expectations. Conyers isn’t a movement leader. He’s a Democratic official who wants to get reelected. He’s enmeshed in the same web of personal ties, partisan loyalties and obligations, and diverse interest-group commitments as other pols. It was the impeachment activists’ naive error, and I suspect one resting on a partly racial, wrongheaded shorthand, to have expected him to lead an insurgency. If the pro-impeachment forces had been able to organize a popular movement with militant local to national expressions on a wide scale, Conyers would have had the leverage necessary to press the movement’s case to Pelosi and Democratic leadership, or at least he and the others would have felt real pressure to act more boldly on this issue. Instead, an understandable sense of urgency led them to take a politically self-indulgent, doomed shortcut. The result is much wasted effort, unnecessary enmity, and another demoralizing defeat.

Unfortunately, like the Democrats, our side fails to learn from experience. Despite a mountain range of evidence to the contrary, we—the labor, anti-war, women’s, environmental, and racial justice movements—all continue to craft political strategy based on the assumption that the problem is that the Democrats simply don’t understand what we want and how important those things are to us. They know; they just have different priorities.

That’s why the endless cycle of unofficial hearings and tribunals and rallies and demonstrations and Internet petitions never has any effect on anything. They’re all directed to bearing witness before an officialdom that doesn’t care and feels no compulsion to take our demands into account. To that extent, this form of activism has become little more than a combination of theater—a pageantry of protest—and therapy for the activists.

Then at the apex of every election cycle, after having marched around in the same pointless circle, chanting the same slogans in the interim, we look feverishly to one of the Democrats or some Quixote to do our organizing work for us, magically, all at once.

We need to think about politics in a different way, one that doesn’t assume that the task is to lobby the Democrats or give them good ideas, and correct their misconceptions.

It’s a mistake to focus so much on the election cycle; we didn’t vote ourselves into this mess, and we’re not going to vote ourselves out of it. Electoral politics is an arena for consolidating majorities that have been created on the plane of social movement organizing. It’s not an alternative or a shortcut to building those movements, and building them takes time and concerted effort. Not only can that process not be compressed to fit the election cycle; it also doesn’t happen through mass actions. It happens through cultivating one-on-one relationships with people who have standing and influence in their neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, families, and organizations. It happens through struggling with people over time for things they’re concerned about and linking those concerns to a broader political vision and program. This is how the populist movement grew in the late nineteenth century, the CIO in the 1930s and 1940s, and the civil rights movement after World War II. It is how we’ve won all our victories. And it is also how the right came to power.

The anti-war movement isn’t coherent or popularly grounded enough to exert the pressure necessary to improve the electoral options; only the labor movement has the capacity to do so, but it doesn’t have the will. None of the other progressive tendencies has the capacity to do anything more than lobby or exhort. Effective lobbying requires being able to deliver or withhold crucial resources, and none but labor has that capacity. Exhortation works only with people who share your larger goals and objectives; other than that it’s useless except as catharsis.

We also need to think more carefully about what our demonstrations and protest marches can and can’t do. Here we could take a lesson from Martin Luther King. His 1962 Albany, Georgia, campaign failed because the local authorities figured out that the success of King’s mass marches depended on meeting brutal resistance from local officials. When they didn’t forcibly stop the marches, the movement fizzled.

Our approach to mass mobilization is like the Albany campaign. Our actions don’t raise public consciousness because they’re treated dismissively, if at all, in the mainstream media. They don’t even connect with the residents of the cities where we hold them because we agree to strict march routes and rally sites that make certain we don’t engage with anyone other than ourselves. And we agree not to disrupt routine daily life more than a homecoming parade would in exchange for having a designated place to gather and talk to ourselves. Even the civil disobedience is carefully choreographed and designed to be minimally disruptive.

Whether or not we admit it, these are features of a politics that is focused mainly inward, on shoring up the spirits of the participants in the actions themselves. They don’t send a message that those in power can’t simply ignore, and they don’t inform, excite, or win over anyone who’s not already on board with the movement’s agenda. It’s telling in this sense that our movement culture has evolved elaborately clever techniques for keeping participants entertained through the stale, all-too-predictable cavalcade of speeches and chants and puppets on stilts.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that people don’t need to engage in rallies and protests. It is self-defeating, however, to collapse the difference between the activities that make us feel good and the work that is necessary to build the movement. There are no shortcuts or magic bullets. And, if we don’t confront that fact and act accordingly, we’ll be back in this same position, but most likely with options a little worse than these, in 2012, and again and again.

Adolph L. Reed Jr. is professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.

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