Blog from the USA. Part I: Befuddled in Afflulandia

I began my five-week sojourn to the U.S. the way I always do – navigating my way through immigration and customs in the Miami Airport, then heading to the bagel store in the airport food court. Old habits die hard.

I've done this ritual so many times over the years that the Jamaican guy behind the counter almost remembers my order (tuna salad on a seedy, heavy on the red peppers). He insists that I look like John Kerry and always points me out to his co-workers. "Look mahn, eets John Kerry." Among the other unfortunate results of George Bush's 2004 reelection is that I lost the opportunity to get free food and drink by passing myself off as the President's younger brother.

I am happy to report, however, that it is still possible to bring bagels through airport security, provided that you are willing to submit the bagel to an x-ray and potential strip search. When bagels join bottled water and tweezers on the banned list, then we will know that Al Qaeda has beaten us. But for now liberty reigns.

Where the Vehicles are Huge, the Dogs are Tiny, and the Gardeners are from Chiapas

A full week in the Southern California suburban barbeque belt – I haven't done this since I moved away from here thirty years ago. People here are friendly, cheerful, generous, and family seems to be a big center of life. There are however, some points that left me confused.

First, let's talk cars, trucks and vehicles. Just how much bigger can they get?

These are definitely not the Ford Pintos, Chevy Impalas, or even pick-up truck camper vans of my suburban youth. The pick-ups have tires almost as tall as the Opel two-door I drove here my senior year in high school. Their massive hoods tower to eye level. Almost every driveway I passed on my morning walks seemed to have one or two of these behemoths parked in it.

But these are by no means the biggest vehicles in the hood. The award for 'truly, incredibly, stupendously large' goes to the new species of RVs that populate the region. We have vehicles this size in Bolivia. We call them 'flotas' and they are used to cart 50 people back and forth between Cochabamba and La Paz, and other cities, while entertained with badly dubbed Jackie Chan movies on a poorly functioning TV screen behind the driver's seat. These monster RVs, which make the campers of yesteryear look like mere toys, allow their occupants to enjoy all the comforts of home for the small price of five miles to the gallon. Some houses have huge second homes built just to shelter these immensities from the sun and rain.

In the middle are the new military vehicles disguised as family cars. There is the Hummer of course (16 miles per gallon) and a host of somewhat smaller knockoffs from Honda and others. One bore a bumper sticker that I assumed was a message to people following behind who might have concerns about world climate change: Stop Global Whining.

This inspired me with an idea that I know is a sure money maker, a line of bumper strips for those eager to flaunt their gasoline consumption with pride: Melting the glaciers and loving it! or In the time it takes you to read this I will have burned a gallon of unleaded. Maybe I'll donate the profits to Greenpeace.

In inverse relation to the size of the vehicles, oddly, seemed to be the size of the dogs. People driving vehicles big enough to transport a small platoon, have dogs that almost fit in the glove compartment. These are the kind of dogs that might sit on your lap while toodling about for groceries. I found this puzzling and still don't have a theory on it.

Each morning on my visit I walked the neighborhood (an oddity in itself) tugged along by a borrowed small dog. The only other people out on the street to talk with were the gardeners, Mexican immigrants one and all.

"De donde es usted?" "Chiapas."

I wondered if any of the homeowners inside the houses with the well-trimmed lawns and sculpted bushes had been among the forces calling in anti-immigrant sentiments to radio talk shows, even as the burly men from southern Mexico were gathering up clippings. Perhaps not.

To be sure, affluence here buys many advantages. The refrigerators, amazing things, are vast in size and equipped with little devices in the door that drop ice (crunchy or cubed) into your glass in a few seconds. Even my mother has one of these. Our refrigerator in Cochabamba makes ice too, but the kind that builds up like an arctic cave on the inside until it finally blocks the door from shutting. Removing this ice is called 'defrosting" and you should never do it with a sharp object. I learned this one morning to the sound of escaping freon. In Southern California defrosting means removing the icing from cake.

Starbucks also abounds in the land of large vehicles and small dogs. A relative of mine calls it 'Four Bucks', which I quite like. That is what it cost me to go there for a large cappuccino with an extra shot. My niece thinks I am a hypocrite for going to Starbucks. I mainly think I was overcharged by $2.

Making Sense of it All

I continue to be befuddled by the land of affluence. Really, I am trying not to be judgmental. I did, after all, go to Starbucks. Near the end of my visit I met a fellow, a keen observer of Southern California suburban life, who was able to help me make sense of it all. He was sitting in front of a McDonalds on a wooden bench, decked out in resplendent yellow and red. We also shared the same shoe size.

Jim: Ronald, all this confuses me. The affluence, does it really make people happier?

Ronald: Well they have bigger cars.

Jim: Yes, but is a bigger car happiness or just a bigger car?

Ronald: Well, it's sort of a Zen question isn't it? Some would say that the bigger cars are a sign of self-expression, of power. Others would argue that it is a matter of safety. If you are going to be in a high-speed collision between a Corolla and a Hummer, better to be in the Hummer. But I think it is really about something else.

Jim: What's that Ronald?

Ronald: I think it is about the end of drive-through pick up. I mean, have you ever seen a Hummer try to make it through the drive-through. Someone takes out our drive-through microphone here once a week or so. We are talking about a potential extinction of a whole drive-through culture.

Jim: Unless you make the drive-throughs bigger.

Ronald: Bigger drive-throughs! You are a genius! Here, have a Happy Meal. It comes with a plastic Spiderman this month.

I left Southern California the way all good Northern Californians do -- headed up Highway 5 driving ten miles above the speed limit, with a keen eye cast on the rearview for the Highway Patrol, and listening 37 times to the soundtrack to Beauty and the Beast. We pulled off midway in that magic point where south meets north, Kettlemen City, a place where the food selections are vast: from McDonalds to In and Out. After careful negotiation, my family agreed on Taco Bell.

On my way out I stumbled across something new in the small arid town where cows give the air a special smell – a familiar mermaid with long flowing hair enshrined in a circle of green. Starbucks Drive-through the sign read. The bored young man in the mini-mart next door told me he thought the grand opening was only about two weeks away.

Even this ritual, the long schlep up Highway 5 will soon enter a new era. Mocha Frappachinos at mid-way, and with a modern drive-through lane wide enough almost for the flota from Cochabamba to La Paz.

Next Stop: A visit with the Let's Impeach George Bush Pet Masseuse Coalition of Marin Country

Water in Cochabamba After the Water Revolt: A Legend with Mixed Results

In the opening months of the year 2000, the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia took to the streets by the thousands, to protest the takeover of their city water system by a subsidiary of the U.S. corporate giant, Bechtel. On three separate occasions the people of Cochabamba and their rural neighbors shut down the city with general strikes and road blockades, facing down a wave of government repression that left a 17-year-old boy killed and more than a hundred people wounded. On April 10, 2000, Bechtel officials finally fled the city and the water system was returned to public control.

But what happened in Cochabamba afterwards? What did the Water Revolt mean for the people and their thirst for clean, affordable water.

Today The Democracy Center releases an important new paper on the aftermath of the Water Revolt, an unvarnished look at the track record since April 2000. The paper is an excerpt from a chapter on the Water Revolt, in the Center's forthcoming book: Dignity and Defiance – Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization (University of California Press, 2008).

We invite readers to read the paper here.

A Peaceful Monument Falls

Last week we published a post about a monument raised on the six-month anniversary of that violent afternoon in January when Cochabamba turned a bloodstained red in the political conflicts over autonomy and the Constituent Assembly. I wrote in that Blog that passers by had threatened the new statue of an Andean cross, dedicated to all of those who died in that conflict. I wrote, "Now both sides [have a physical symbol of their mourning] – until some of Cochabamba's protectors of democracy decide to tear it to pieces in the dark of night."

That night was last night. This morning the monument lies destroyed on its side, the brown cross inscribed with the twin faces of the sun and the moon was robbed altogether.

While there are no eyewitnesses to the vandalism, it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to sort out who deemed the simple statue a threat. Last week Podemos Senator Tito Hoz de Vila procialmed he would demand that Congress take the statue down. When the monument went up on Wednesday a small crowd of well-dressed youth took in the ceremony from a distance, snapping photos of the people in attendance with their cell phones. One yelled to the crowd, "This piece of shit will fly tonight!"

In contrast, the monument erected in January, to the young man from the city's north who died that day, has stood in peace in all the days since. I hope it continues to do so.

The irony of course, is that by destroying the statue on downtown's edge, the vandals who feel so threatened by plaster, paint, and words, have only drawn more attention to it and to its message. They aren’t the first such fools to believe that ideas are silenced with violence, nor will they be the last. Here is the message they found so frightening:

In memory of the fallen of January 11, 2007 and to the 514 years of resistence by the native people's of Abya Yala [the indiginous cutures of the Americas].

Neville Chamberlain in Reverse

History is filled with figures that are remembered for just one thing, one moment, one utterance. One such figure in 20th century history is Neville Chamberlain, who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940. He will be remembered centuries hence for one moment, his return from negotiations with Adolph Hitler in September 1938 upon which he famously proclaimed:

My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.

A year later Hitler added Poland to his European conquests and the U.K. declared war, finding itself on the ropes and in national peril. Since then every politician from the U.K., U.S. and otherwise who wants to remind people of the dangers of naivate in foreign relations, uses the dapper and moustached Prime Minister who appeased Hitler as their warning symbol. Winston Churchill, the man who rallied wartime Great Britain, became his successor.

Now history has another example to complete the set, George W. Bush. Where Chamberlain symbolizes what can go wrong when a leader naively understates the nation’s risk from a foreign adversary, Bush has shown us how bad a government can botch things when it naively overstates the threat of a foreign adversary.

1938: I believe it is peace for our time.

2003: Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to posses and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

As it turns out, naivete can be equally at home among both pacifists and war-makers. The way to protect the nation is not just about being strong but being smart. As the Bush adventure in Iraq shows, being strong and stupid doesn’t work out so good for anyone.

The New York Times reported yesterday than in his news conference this week on Iraq President Buish referred to Al Qaeda 30 times. Once the war was justified on the presence of weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Then it was justfied on the liberation of a people who look less liberated every day. Now it is justified on the fact that Iraq has become an Al Qaeda safe haven. Before the U.S. invasion Al Qaeda didn’t exisit in Iraq. If it has a major presence there today, we can thank Mr. Bush, who has become the terrorist network’s recruiter-in-chief.

Mr. Bush’s ‘surge’ of new U.S. troops to Iraq is the war-making version of a gambler insisting on the wisdom of putting down more chips to chase the stacks he has already lost. This week, in the face of a new report from the military and State Department that shows things still stuck in ‘bad and getting worse’, Mr. Bush declared that he will accept no timeline on troop withdrawal even if things continue to get worse. Translation: I am going to bet, and bet, and bet and I don’t really care how many more people lose their lives. Now even such foreign policy radicals as Republican Senator Richard Lugar have abandoned the sinking Bush ship.

Some of his harsher critics have accused Mr. Bush of harboring fantasies of being Jesus. Whether that is true I can’t say, but it does seem clear he fancies himself as the modern day Churchill, standing strong in the face of harsh challenges.

History, I think, will actually record him instead as Prime Minister Chamberlain’s sad flipside – a 21st century emblem for what happens when you take the nation to war on wishful thinking and refuse, in the face of all evidence, to come to grips with reality.

Cochabamba's Day of Bloody Conflict, Six Months On

Yesterday, Cochabamba marked six months since that bloody Thursday in January when a standoff of rival political positions turned into a violent melee between rival mobs, leaving two men dead (and later a third) and more than 100 other people injured. As with the conflicts, the city marked its sad anniversary divided.

At a church in the city's wealthiest neighborhood, Recoleta, a crowd gathered to mourn Cristian Urresti, the 17-year-old killed that day as he joined with backers of the local governor, Manfred Reyes Villa. A mile away, a group of about 100 people joined with the widow of the coca farmer slain that day, Juan Ticacolque, at La Plaza de las Banderas, where a simple monument was erected for those killed and wounded in January (the photo above).

Both sides continue to demand justice for the brutalities committed by the other. Loyalists to the slain youth from the city's affluent north still demand punishment for whoever wielded the machete with which he was killed. None make mention of the footage showing crowds of youth from the city's north breaking through police lines to initiate the beatings that turned the standoff into violence.

At the erection of the monument, a 14-year-old youth spoke; a boy who had four bullets pierce his leg that day.

The rich want to keep earning more and we work for them. Manfred Reyes Villa doesn't have a conscience about anything. Before he wanted to sell the water and then he wanted to kill us. The people who have power don’t have a conscience. Look how they kill people who are humble.

Here none make mention of the blockades and the burning of the state building that provoked the conflicts.

While Cochabamba appears relatively quiet and peaceful on the surface, the memories of January remain raw in many quarters and reconciliation and middle ground are hard to find.

Local politicians, who on both sides did a good deal to provoke the violence and nothing to stop it, seem still intent to fan the flames. Reyes Villa quickly denounced that no one had permission to erect the monument on public space – it sits on a small patch of lawn on an island in the middle of the street. Passing city youth yesterday pledged to tear down the Andean Cross. Neither seemed to voice similar objections to the monument erected six months ago to Urresti on a downtown street corner. That monument has never been the target of any objection or vandalism to my knowledge. Nor should it.

Podemos Senator Tito Hoz de Vila took the spirit of reconciliation a step farther, vowing to wage a battle in the Bolivian Congress to take down the new monument. As if the nation's Congress has nothing better to do than debate the artistic merits of a ten-foot tall plaster cross.

Stepping back, January 11th represents that place where Bolivia could go in this hard moment of political transformation, a place where the political process can no longer contain the conflicts and those spill onto the street and into bloodshed. Since January 11 the political conflicts at hand have gone back into the world of negotiation and public rhetoric and that is a good thing for the nation.

Honoring the right of both sides to mourn and remember the costs paid that day may also help remind all sides of the cost if they don't find a way to negotiate political change in Bolivia.

In a Bolivia where unity is hard to come by, politicians who seem intent to fan the flames of division over the trivial, regardless of party or side, clearly have something else at heart than the nation's interests. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that both sides have a right to mourn and to have a physical symbol of that mourning.

Now both sides do – until some of Cochabamba's protectors of democracy decide to tear it to pieces in the dark of night.

Does Being the U.S. Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry?

This is another one of those posts that will set some people off ranting about me being anti-U.S., as if we haven't moved past, America, Love it or Leave It. But here goes.

Soon-to-be GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson laid out the philosophy in good red meat form for a group of Republican youth on Saturday. "I'm getting tired of having to apologize for the United States of America around the world. I'm tired of other people's perceptions that we need to apologize."

Mr. Thompson, we should note, got his start in U.S. politics serving as the Republican counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, where his mission was to defend Richard Nixon in the face of abuses of power so extreme that they warranted the first presidential resignation in the nation’s history. So, perhaps it is just his nature to defend lame behavior by the U.S. government.

In any event, it does seem to be intrinsic these days among some to declare – We're the U.S. and we don’t (expletive deleted) apologize to anyone. Now, is that because the current U.S. government hasn’t done anything wrong or just because we are the U.S. and we don’t have to apologize even if we are wrong? It’s a reasonable question.

Okay, it’s a fantasy. But wouldn’t it be something to see President Bush fly back onto that aircraft carrier deck off San Diego, with a nice apology banner at his back, and delivering something along these lines:

“To the more than 3,500 U.S. troops killed in Iraq and their families, I apologize for sending our soldiers in harm's way based on botched intelligence and without any kind of plan for what they would do after the invasion [Note: Of the 3,500 killed, more than 3,300 of those deaths took place after ‘Mission Accomplished’]”

“To the more than 75,000 Iraqis killed and the million others forced to flee their country as refugees, I am sorry. I just didn’t think this whole thing through very well beforehand. You know, sometimes you just get an idea in your head about being a hero and get carried away.”

Okay, not gonna happen.

You have the same sort of unfortuante “We don’t apologize to anyone” attitude on display here in Bolivia from the U.S. Embassy in ‘ammogate.’ Now I presume that U.S. Ambassador Phillip S. Goldberg is a very smart fellow. When he got word one Thursday morning two weeks ago that a young woman from the U.S. had been detained at the airport bringing in ammunition for a Colonel in his Embassy, I suspect that he figured out right away that he had on his hands what they call in the diplomacy trade, ‘the makings of an international incident.’ And dealing with ‘international incidents’ is, presumably, one of the things that U.S. Ambassadors are trained to do.

Now, a wiser diplomat might have called Colonel Campbell into his office that morning and said something along the lines of the following:

“Colonel Campbell, you are a helluva guy, a patriot and a good public servant, but having this young woman bring in 500 rounds of ammo for your shooting practice was just stupid. Even if it was legal, you know how bad it could look to Bolivians who are suspicious enough of us already. So here’s the deal. You have two choices. Choice One: We can announce this morning that you suffered a lapse in judgment and are being reassigned to the U.S. Choice Two: We can call some Bolivian reporters in here this morning and you can apologize publicly in time for the midday news. I think the second option is the better choice. Take thirty minutes and decide.”

Imagine if that U.S. Colonel had gone on Bolivian TV and declared:

“Hey folks, I screwed up. The fact is I have been a target shooter since I was a kid and I have this gun I have always used and I asked this friend of our family to bring me in some ammunition. Even though it was legal, I should have thought about how people here might feel about that and should have let the customs people know in advance what I was doing. No conspiracy, just one guy’s screw up. But I love Bolivia, I love Pique lo Macho and I think you should all be able to play soccer right here in La Paz against all comers. Really, I’m sorry.”

I think that the whole thing would have been diffused and the U.S. would have come out in even better public shape than before. But what did Ambassador Goldberg do? He kept the Colonel under wraps, made a private apology to the Vice President, had his press people utter some public words about “There was an ignorance of the provisions of Bolivian customs,” and hoped it would all go away. Then Evo made great hay out of it a few days later, warning of U.S. conspiracies. By then you could well imagine the conversations within the fortress-like Embassy walls. “We can’t apologize now, it will seem like we are responding to Evo.”

Note to Embassy: Rule #1 of media relations is never make a bad story an ongoing story. Deal with it fully all at once up front. That lesson seemed oddly lost on the U.S. Embassy here, probably because, once again, the U.S. government makes no mistakes and hence, never needs to apologize.

Now, to be sure, the Morales government made a way bigger stink out of this than it warranted. Come on, a conspiracy directed by the White House? Let's please be real. But before we criticize the Bolivian government too much on this, let’s just turn it around a minute. Imagine this headline:

Bolivian Ambassador’s Daughter Detained with Ammunition at Miami Airport

The 20-year-old daughter of Bolivia’s ambassador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman, was detained on entry to the Miami airport, carrying a suitcase filled with 500 rounds of 45-caliber ammunition. When reached for comment, a Bolivian Embassy spokeswoman said, “There was an ignorance of the provisions of U.S. customs.” An Embassy source also explained that the munitions were for the Ambassador's personal hobby of shooting firearms.

Now, do we really think that a U.S. government that denied visas to a Bolivian senator and its vice-minister of water to attend meetings in the U.S. would actually have let that one slip by with a gentle wink and a nod? Again, please, let's get real.

All of which comes back to the point that as human beings, we make mistakes. When human beings run governments those mistakes can become huge. The U.S. does little to make more friends and fewer enemies in the world when it makes “We don’t apologize” a national mantra.

I mean, think how much easier Bill Clinton's life would have been if he had just copped up front and apologized for the fact that, well, he did "have sex with that woman."

Pass the Oxygen Tank and Start the Games

In the face of highway blockades (by miners), political rumbles over development of a new national constitution, and diplomatic squabbles over a U.S. Army Colonel importing ammo in a co-ed’s suitcase (a.k.a. ‘ammogate’), a good portion of Bolivia’s daily headlines in recent weeks have focused on another story – the move by the world soccer organization (FIFA) to ban international soccer matches in La Paz because of its high altitude. [Yes, I believe that may have been the longest lead sentence in Blog history, but I also think it is grammatically accurate.]

Well folks, pass the oxygen tanks and start the games – FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced Saturday that he was reversing the decision to ban La Paz and said he was acting in direct response to the request by President Evo Morales that FIFA do so. If you have set foot in Bolivia in the last few weeks, or read anything about it in the news, you know that Morales has led an aggressive international campaign against the ban. The high point of that effort (pardon the pun) was when the President staged a game on top of an Andean peak to prove that no one would die in the process. On this issue, ideologues of all stripes dropped their stripes across the country to join with Morales in that demand.

For those unfamiliar with the highs and lows of Bolivia, the airport in La Paz is just 1,000 feet shy of the summit of Mt. Whitney and visitors are treated to free hits from a roaming oxygen tank. The city’s stadium is only a couple of thousand feet below that. Rival teams from low altitudes have complained for years that one team being able to breathe and the other team not is an unfair advantage. The Bolivian response has been, in effect, “Hey, if you don’t like the terrain take it up with the Andes, we didn’t put those mountains there.”

Blatter noted in his announcement that Bolivia’s South American neighbors would also have to approve play in La Paz. I doubt that will be a problem. Several, including Peru and Ecuador have been similarly affected by altitude limits and have backed Bolivia’s demand. Lowlanders such as Argentina and Brazil might find some interesting linkage to other, more urgent issues, if they balk. I can hear the telephone call now.

Lula: Hey Evo, my futbol guys are giving me real hat over this altitude thing. I don’t think we can back you.

Evo: Tell them if they want Bolivian gas they need to suck it up buddy.

Lula: Did you tell Kirshner that too?

Evo: Not yet, he’s on hold on the other line. You know you’re still my favorite.

Bolivia Writes a New Constitution: What do you Want to Know?

The news this week in Bolivia is dominated by two stories – the striking Huanuni miners, who have blockaded the road between La Paz and Cochabamba, and Bolivia’s disappointing tie yesterday in a vastly watched futbol match against Peru, which knocked Bolivia out of competition for the Copa America championships. In Cochabamba, both those stories seem overshadowed by local complaints about the cold weather. Cochabambinos declare that they are living in Antarctica every time the thermometer drops far enough to require a sweater.

However, the long-term story, one of them, remains the fractious Constituent Assembly underway in Sucre, where delegates from left to right are trying to reach consensus on a new national constitution. The task is not easy in a nation as regionally, culturally, ideologically and politically fractured as Bolivia is at the moment. But to be sure, sorting out the nation’s vision in harsh words in Sucre is a good deal better than sorting it out with tossed dynamite and violent conflict – the likely alternative.

The new constitution was supposed to be wrapped up by August 6, Bolivia’s Independence Day, but delegates formally admitted this week that the chances of that were about as likely as Evo Morales becoming one of “Las Magnificas” (Santa Cruz’s famed supermodels). So in the first real consensus so far, they agreed to give themselves another four months.

There has been ample foreign attention aimed at the constitutional rumble in Sucre, most of it from analysts who haven’t actually been there. We here at The Democracy Center haven’t written much about the Assembly, given its importance in Bolivian politics at the moment. But that is mainly because we haven’t been there either.

This month we will remedy that by sending a team (both Bolivian and U.S.) to Sucre, with instructions to camp out there until they have talked to a solid number of people from all sides and perspectives. What are the main issues being debated? What are the differences that divide the parties? Who are all those people serving as delegates and what do they actually do all day? Come the next deadline, what is likely to happen?

Those are some of our questions, but we’d like to know yours. If you have things you’d like us to look into in Sucre, post those ideas here as comments. We can’t guarantee getting to every curiosity our readers have, but we’ll do our best. We hope to have our report ready by the end of this month.

This July 4th in the U.S., Pick up a Book

Unless things have changed a good deal since I moved from the U.S. in 1998, the nation's birthday on July 4th will be marked by a splash of fireworks, backyard barbeques, an odd day off in the middle of the week, and some sporadic mentions of 'patriotism' in certain corners.

I would like to suggest that Americans add something else to their Independence Day plans this week – a book. With the nation at war and the number of war dead past the 3,500 mark for U.S. soldiers and a minimum estimate of 70,000 Iraqis, it seems to me that patriotism this July 4 involves deepening our understanding of that quagmire and how we got into it. This year, amidst the sparklers and apple pie, I strongly encourage our readers to pick up a copy of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks and start reading.

Ricks is the chief Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post and before that covered military issues for the Wall Street Journal. Fiasco is an account of the U.S. war in Iraq from the military's point of view, drawn from extensive interviews with officers and soldiers, access to military communications, and first hand accounts from Iraq. As the title suggests, the book's conclusions aren’t happy ones. These three broad points, not news to anyone paying attention, are essential for all of us to understand.

1. A War Based Knowingly on Misinformation

We should never forget the way in which this war was waged based on a lethal mix of fantasy peddled by the Bush administration and the ease with which members of Congress in both parties bought it.

In March 2003 President Bush declared, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to posses and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." In fact, not only was the President’s declaration false, it was known to be false when he declared it.

A September 2002 National Intelligence Estimate offered ample evidence that the 'weapons of mass destruction' claim was always more muddy than clear. Nevertheless, according to Ricks, neither President Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice, nor most members of the Congress could be bothered to read the 91-page report before taking the nation to war. A recent New York Times Magazine article reported that the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, who had read the full report, implored his colleagues to do so but they declined, relying instead on a short five-page executive summary that had filtered out the doubts. Among those who couldn’t be bothered to read the full report, says the Times, was Senator Hillary Clinton, a leading Democratic hawk on the war at the time.

2. An Invasion Without Planning for Afterwards

In February 2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, famously assured Americans, "You're going to find Iraqis out cheering American troops," and added, "I think the ethnic differences in Iraq are there, but they're exaggerated." When an administration official told the Washington Post that the War and its aftermath could cost as much as $95 billion, Wolfowitz announced, "I don't think he or she knows what he is talking about." To date, the total financial cost of the War in Iraq is $440 billion, enough to pay for more than 21 million four-year U.S. college scholarships. President Bush later rewarded Mr. Wolfowitz by making him the head of the World Bank. That move didn't turn out too well either.

Ricks writes that military leaders told the White House, over and over again, that bringing security and stability to Iraq in the aftermath of the war would require even more troops than the invasion itself. Nevertheless, an administration full of people who managed to avoid service in Vietnam was sure it knew better. A four-star general recounts that the military's strong concerns about the post-invasion were “blown off” by a cocky and arrogant White House. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld memorably dismissed post-invasion looting as a byproduct of Iraqis’ new freedom.

When the fiasco on the ground in Iraq became obvious, Wolfowitz blamed the media for misreporting. “Frankly, part of our problem is [that] a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors.” Three important journalists who have served time in Iraq, for the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Nation, have visited with us here in Bolivia afterwards, and their stories have common features – reporting under fire and hassles from the U.S. government whenever they reported anything critical about the administration's execution of the war.

3. A Terrific Knack for Creating an Anti-U.S. Insurgency

Most interesting and less reported is the scathing case Fiasco makes about the Bush Administration’s amazing knack for creating an anti-U.S. insurgency where one did not exist before. Ricks lays out the recipe of errors:

a. Make the bulk of the Iraqi population viciously resentful toward the U.S. by invading their homes at night, humiliating their men in front of their families, shooting innocents, taking family members as hostages, and engaging in torture of prisoners.

b. Leaving both the borders and vast caches of weapons totally unguarded throughout the country, paving the way for the formation of insurgent arming and support.

c. Forget that in counter-insurgency warfare, victory goes to the side that wins the population, something U.S. abuse of Iraqi civilians made impossible.

Numerous military commanders tell Ricks that the Bush administration seemed to completely forget every lesson learned the hard way in the war of their youth in Southeast Asia. Marine General Anthony Zinni, a critic of the war from its start, is quoted, “I have seen this movie. It is called Vietnam." Today an Iraq once devoid of an Al Qaeda presence is now an entrenched home for the terrorist group – with the U.S. in its sights.

Some Things We Can Do

In hawk vs. dove debates of the past, those who advocated an end to the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s, or who criticized the U.S. nuclear weapons build up in the 1980s, were dismissed as naïve and ill-informed. In the case of Iraq it was our leaders – Democrats and Republicans alike – who were naïve and knowingly misinformed.

Our political system is based on a balance of not three powers – the President, the Congress, and the Courts – but four. The fourth is the people, and it seems clear that on Iraq it is time for the people to set the course. We can do that first by educating ourselves and second by taking action. Here are two good places to begin:

Cathy Breen in Jordan: One of my true heroes in this world is a humble woman named Cathy Breen, a friend who lived a decade here in Bolivia as a Maryknoll missionary. In the run up to the War in Iraq she moved to Baghdad, writing fearless and human dispatches about the people whose lives would be taken over by the pending invasion. For much of the past two years Cathy has been living in Amman Jordan, where nearly one million desperate Iraqi refugees have fled. You can read her dispatches here via Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Iraq Moratorium Day: This is a new effort that pledges to lead an “escalating, monthly expression of determination to end the war.” The campaign will begin on Friday, September 21st and continue the third Friday of every month thereafter, encouraging people to break with business as usual through a mix of protest, pressure aimed at politicians, community education events, and more. Here is the Web site for the campaign.

Many readers might ask, what is a Blog from Bolivia doing talking about the U.S. War in Iraq? I have lived abroad a long time now, and I work regularly with citizen groups in almost every corner of the world. Everywhere I am asked what it will take to get the U.S. to develop a foreign policy based on something other than arrogance. They seem almost hopeless that the U.S. can or will change. I tell them there is hope, and it resides in Americans who have a different vision of our country. Perhaps as an American living abroad, I see that in a special way.

Gays and Guns, an Update

Well, there is news to report on two matters I have written about in the last week –Guns and Gays (If you added in God you’d have the GOP political agenda).

A week ago I wrote about how I missed out-there gay people in Bolivia, after more than a dozen years living in San Francisco. Well, I spoke a week too soon. Last night Cochabamba celebrated its first gay parade parade, complete with traditional Bolivian dances performed in drag. Los Tiempos reports that thousands of people participated, if not as paraders, then as spectators.

Way to go Cochabambino gays! I should note that I can hardly wait for the comments blaming me personally for having brought Sodom and Gomorrah to La Llajta. That credit, I am afraid, will have to go to others, Bolivians one and all. And as for those who are upset about our support on the Blog of gay Bolivians, my advice is, really, just get over it. Trust me, your homophobia is far more damaging to gay people than their homosexuality is to you.

Now onto guns and my post Friday about the unfortunate 20-year-old woman from the U.S. who got talked into bringing ammo down by a Colonel stationed at the U.S. Embassy.

Yesterday President Evo Morales brought up the topic in a speech in a small town near Oruro. Lumping ‘ammogate at the airport’ along with two other previous incidents – the bombing of two La Paz hotels by a mentally disturbed U.S. tourist and the arrest of two young Americans taking photos of official cars at last year’s Presidential summit – Morales declared that Bolivia was the victim of “aggressions” at the hands of the U.S. government. Presidential spokesman Alex Contreras went so far, says Los Tiempos, to “suggest” direct participation by the White House in the three “attempts against democracy.”

If we have learned anything about the Bush White House these past few years, the folks running the show are more likely to be amazingly incompetent as they are skillfully conspiratorial, especially about international small fish like Bolivia. The ammo in the airport incident is a case in point. A conspiracy to bring in munitions? This was just a classic example of lame judgment.

The irony here is that what Evo is up to is painting conspiracies from abroad in order to boost his political position at home (not an approach I favor). In doing so he is mimicking the behavior of the Bush White House.

Political BS Bolivian Style: The U.S. is launching attempts against Bolivian democracy by putting 500 rounds of ammo in the suitcase of a 20-year-old woman on American Airlines.

Political BS U.S. Style: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." And oh yes, we also have proof that Saddam Hussein has close relations with Al Qaeda.

Now, for ten points, which of these has had the most serious implications?