Now Begins Month 61 Since 'Mission Accomplished'

Fifty-two American military personnel deployed to the Iraq occupation went to premature graves in April. Male, female, black, white, Latino. The oldest was Colonel Stephen K. Scott, 54. The youngest was Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter, 19.

Those 52 came from Ardmore, Oklahoma. From St. Paul, Minnesota. From Mesquite and Hull and Fresno and Buchanan Dam and College Station and El Paso and Magnolia and San Antonio and Hempstead and Cedar Park, Texas. From San Juan, Puerto Rico. From Littleton and Colorado Springs, Colorado. From Springfield and Perryville, Missouri. From Dover, Delaware. From Bakersfield and Culver City and Fort Irwin and Hanford and Lake Tahoe and San Diego, California. From Oakmont, Pennsylvania. From Boise, Idaho. From Zephyrhills and Clearwater and Jacksonville and Miami Lakes and Coral Springs, Florida. From Sauk Village, Illinois. From New Market, Alabama. From Cudahy and Waukesha and Racine, Wisconsin. From Lafayette, Louisiana. From Mount Airy and Apex and Teachey, North Carolina. From Commerce, Georgia. From Gaylord, Michigan. From Morris Plains, New Jersey. From Sag Harbor, New York. From Burkeville and Dublin and Norfolk, Virginia. For each of these departed, a candle.

If the past is any guide, for each of the Americans who died in April because of the war and occupation, between 50 and 350 Iraqis died. We can't be any more exact than that because every attempted count is called into question. The constraints of the software template for this site won't allow me to post enough candles to mark the passing of those Iraqis even using the lowest probable tally.

Whatever the number, it is horrendous. All the more so because the deaths of the Americans, of the Iraqis, of the other members of the coalition, have all resulted from a war of choice, an unnecessary war, a war of the new imperialism. A war founded and continued to this day on exaggerations, distortions, fabrications, concoctions and lies. A war which a smirking, strutting, absurdity of a president told us 60 months ago was Mission Accomplished.

Progressives should never declare our mission accomplished until justice is delivered to those who lied us into this war. Justice for the 52 Americans who died last month, for the 4065 who have died since March 2003, for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have also died. Without justice, they truly will have died in vain.

McCain, Hezbollah, Arab-Americans and Bigots

From Jake Tapper:

The campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., removed a man from his Michigan Finance Committee today.

It started after conservative writer Debbie Schussel called Michigan businessman Ali Jawad not only a supporter of Hezbollah -- a group the US State Department labels a "terrorist organization" -- but also claimed he was a "key agent of the terrorist group in the Detroit area."

After Schussel started asking questions the McCain campaign removed him from the finance committee for a May fundraiser.

"Apparently he is a well known member of the Arab-American community in Dearborn," a McCain staffer tells ABC News. "He is also a known Republican donor and former Bush finance committee member. When these rumors surfaced he notified the campaign and we removed him from the finance committee. The guy never raised a dime for us and he isn’t even a contributor."

Tapper directed people to Schussel's site—if you want to look for yourself you can get there via the link to Tapper—and then wondered if this wasn't some preemptive move by McCain to deny Obama a shot at McCain for being weak on terrorism.

It's both more complicated and simpler.  The Arab community, its place in Michigan, and its ties to the Middle East are complicated.  However, what's simple is that Debbie Schussel hates Arabs.  The McCain campaign is afraid to offend the far right.  So they ditched Ali Jawad rather than deal with Debbie Schussel.

A disclosure.  I haven't seen him in about 5 years or so, but I once knew Ali Jawad.  That may sound extraordinary, but it's nothing special for someone who's run campaigns in Michigan, especially for one who's worked with the Detroit Area's huge Arab community.  I've brought candidates to meet with him and his political circle, and I've worked with him to elect Democrats, just as my Republican counterparts have worked with him to elect Republicans.

To fully understand what's happening here, one must understand the Detroit area and its Arab community.  There are several million Arabs across the country, most of whom are Christian, with many tracing their families back to Christian Lebanese and Syrians who immigrated to the US in the early 20th Century.  What's different about the Arab population in the Detroit area is the size, diversity and power of the Arab community.  

Lebanese Shiites have lived in the Detroit area since the early 20th century.  In the shadows of the Ford Rouge Complex—one of the biggest factories in the world, which once employed 80,000 men—is the "South End" of Dearborn.  This neighborhood was a mix of Shiite Lebanese, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Maltese, Greeks and Armenians.  In the 1970's, as the other ethnic groups moved away from the neighborhood, the Lebanese Civil War exploded.  Soon the neighborhoods of southern and eastern Dearborn—which borders Detroit—became home to many thousands of Arabs.  These immigrants were mostly Shiite Lebanese, but eventually Dearborn also became home to large numbers of immigrants from Yemen.  Around the same time many Chaldeans—Roman Catholics from Iraq whose traditional language is Aramaic, the language that dominated the region at the time of Jesus—moved in large numbers to other neighborhoods in the Detroit area.  

Today, the Arab population of the Detroit area is somewhere between a quarter and a half million.  The largest groups are the Lebanese Shiites and the Chaldeans, although there are also large numbers of Yemeni, Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians and, since the end of the first Gulf War, Iraqi Shiite Arabs.  Many Detroit area Arabs are Christian, but immigrants in the last 20 years are more likely to be Muslim.

Like almost every immigrant group, Arabs have moved beyond their original neighborhoods and can be found throughout the area.  And everyone in Detroit has a lot of contact with Arab-Americans.  In secular Baathist Iraq, Chaldeans were a semi-protected group that were permitted to sell liquor.  When they began moving to Detroit, they took up the same business.  Today, Chaldeans own almost all the convenience and liquor stores in the area; everyone in the Detroit area interacts with Chaldeans because almost all the corner stores are family run.  And when you stop for gas, you'll be dealing with a Lebanese Shiite, because they own and/or operate almost all the gas stations in the area.  

Arab-Americans lean Democratic but are a key bloc of ticket-splitters.  Because of their rapidly increasing wealth, they have also become an important source of campaign contributions, especially in the $250 to $1,000 range.    This is where Ali Jawad comes in.  He is the head guy in the gas stations owners association.  He also runs the Lebanese Heritage Club, which hosts just about every candidate forum for Arab-Americans, and which regularly attracts every major politician in the area.  He's a major collector of checks, and he's one of the leaders of his community.  

As Tapper points out, Jawad has said things about Hezbollah that make it sound less sinister than one would think a group would be to make the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.  Well, he's not the only person in the area to not condemn Hezbollah; the range of attitudes of Lebanese in Dearborn is probably centered somewhere between ambivalent to fairly supportive.  Many of the Dearborn Lebanese come from a handful of villages in Southern Lebanon, within a few miles of the Israeli border.  Thus, they come from the heartland of Hezbollah.  Their home villages were used by the PLO to stage raids in Israel during the early 1970's—there is often animosity between Lebanese Shiites and Palestinians, for many Lebanese blame Palestinians for destabilizing Lebanon—the area was occupied by Israel for many years, and it was only after years of fierce attacks by Hezbollah that Israel abandoned Southern Lebanon.  In the eyes of many Lebanese, Hezbollah liberated their home villages from Israeli occuption.  

Hezbollah is now the de facto government of Southern Lebanon, and provides social services as well fights Israel.  Many people in Dearborn have family ties to major players in Lebanese Shiite politics.  And Lebanese in Dearborn view Hezbollah with much the same mix of distrust mixed with nationalist pride and identity that Catholic residents or former residents of IRA-controlled neighborhoods in Belfast or Derry view the IRA.  Most Lebanese in Dearborn came here to escape war, but that doesn't mean they don't identify with one faction more than the others.  In Dearborn, many identify  with Hezbollah.  

But whatever their views about their home country, most Arabs in Southeast Michigan view themselves as Arab-Americans, and that's how they're viewed by most of their non-Arab neighbors.  In the Middle East, most would be viewed hostilely by the Sunni terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, because most Arabs around Detroit are Shiite or Christian.  They moved to the US to escape problems back home, and have settled in.  They often hate the foreign policy of their adopted country, but they love being Americans.  And in Michigan, they are political players.

Back in the 1980's, Democratic governor Jim Blanchard was accused of returning contributions from Arab-Americans.  When he ran for Governor in 1990, Republican John Engler—with the help of his Republican party chair Spencer Abraham—did the opposite, and enthusiastically reached out to Arab-Americans.  For each of his three elections he was rewarded for his outreach with votes and contributions from Arab-Americans.  Abraham himself even slid in to the Senate in the 1994 Republican landslide (before losing to Debbie Stabenow in 2000).  But many Arab-American voters still strongly supported Democrats, especially members of Congress David Bonior (then the second-ranking Democrat in Congress), John Dingell (who represented all of Dearborn for several decades) and John Conyers (who now splits Dearborn with Dingell).  Jawad's personal political contributions mirror these community-wide patterns.

I don't know enough about Ali Jawad's background or business practices to vouch for him, but I doubt the McCain campaign does either.  But I do know that just about everyone in Michigan politics, Republican and Democrat, has sought his support, and John McCain's campaign just dumped him because viciously anti-Arab reactionary Debbie Schlussel called him a terrorist (which for her is practically a synonym for "Arab").  

Once again we have a case where a politician shows no problem with dumping on Arab-Americans because of ethnic stereotyping.  It's like accusing Italians in the 1940's of all being tied to the Mafia, or thinking that every Salvadoran that comes in to the US today is connected to a violent drug gang.  

Tapper wondered if the Obama campaign might eventually throw the Jawad association back in McCain's face.  I would hope not, because that would just be validating the claims of one of the most hateful people on right.  She's claimed Media Matters is Nazi-funded.  She claimed the shooter at Virginia Tech was a "Paki."  And she's used the same scare tactics against Obama himself, pushing the bullshit that he was once a Muslim, and that "once a Muslim, always a Muslim,"  and that his comments are heavily lifted from the film Malcolm X.  In short, this woman hates Arabs and hates Muslims.  Hell, she just hates.  And anyone or anything she hates she depicts as part of a scary conspiracy of all Arabs and all Muslims (with the occasional Nazi thrown in to give her predictable hatred a bit of retro zing).  

There are legitimate criticisms to make against McCain and the Republican party in general about being soft on terrorism.  However, in the absence of anything other than the hate-filled rantings of that lunatic Debbie Schlussel, attacking McCain for once having Ali Jawad on his finance committee would not be a legitimate criticism.  The legitimate criticism of McCain is for being soft on hatred and bigotry, and caving to Debbie Schlussel.  It would be wrong for Obama's camapign to dignify her hate.  Furthermore, it would be dumb politics, because it would needlessly alienate tens of thousands of good Americans who also happen to be of Lebanese descent and swing voters in what could be one of the most competitive states in the November election.  

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are Avila, hhex65, jlms qkw, shayera, TruthOfAngels, and ybruti, with Unitary Moonbat shuffling the scrolls

May 1 is a day laden with history, especially regarding the starts of huge things – previous todays have seen the dedication of the biggest maypole ever, the Empire State Building (1931); the opening of the Great Exhibition in London (1851); and, on an even more imperialist note, the Battle of Manila Bay (1898). There was also a time when communists the world over sang The Internationale (choose your language) on what was sometimes known as International Worker's Day.

• murasaki explores pagan May Day celebrations throughout history and calls for increased awareness of climate warming in May Day: Fertility & Regrowth. (Avila)
• kcoe summarizes the purpose of The National Day of Prayer in Exploiting the National Day of Prayer. (hhex65)
• Bogleg says My Long Winter is Over and shows how all of us can end our winters too. (jlms qkw)

• LtdEdishn reminds us that religious conflict in America has sometimes led to violence, such as a little-known event in the 1840's called The "Bible Riots". (ybruti)
• PhilipMoon turns a spotlight on the racist Right in Beyond Terrorists: MI GOP's Support Anti-Semitism and White Supremacist Hate Groups. (TruthOfAngels)

• MPetrelis has some positive news from other countries in Pro-gay advances in Poland and Nepal. (shayera)
• A child speaks candidly while visiting the office of a member of Detroit's dysfunctional city government in brightstar's In Detroit, the Student Becomes the Teacher. (hhex65)

• Vietnam vet goldkeyrealty strongly advises PTSD sufferers to seek help because, as he knows from his own long struggle, It Only Gets Worse! (ybruti)
• Philip Munger brings us some great news from Alaska in Don Young's Toughest Opponent Gets Tougher. (shayera)
• Louisiana 1976 diaries on New Orleans in Incompetence? Or Genocide? But First, Blogathon Announcement..... (TruthOfAngels)

• Drawing from personal experience in the South, YellerDog describes methods of voter suppression in Poll Tax, Voter ID, and the Supremes. (ybruti)
• Growing economic equality is the theme of The Two Americas by Daveparts. (TruthOfAngels)

Enjoy, and please recommend your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

The world is run by #*$@ing idiots

Ah-ha-ha!

I mean, boo-hoo-hoo!

Relax, Celebrate Victory
Richard Perle

From start to finish, President Bush has led the United States and its coalition partners to the most important military victory since World War II. And like the allied victory over the axis powers, the liberation of Iraq is more than the end of a brutal dictatorship: It is the foundation for a decent, humane government that will represent all the people of Iraq.

This was a war worth fighting. It ended quickly with few civilian casualties and with little damage to Iraq's cities, towns or infrastructure. It ended without the Arab world rising up against us, as the war's critics feared, without the quagmire they predicted, without the heavy losses in house-to-house fighting they warned us to expect. It was conducted with immense skill and selfless courage by men and women who will remain until Iraqis are safe, and who will return home as heroes.

In full retreat, the war's opponents have now taken up new defensive positions: "Yes, it was a military victory, but you haven't found Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." Or, "Yes, we destroyed Saddam's regime, but now other dictators will try even harder to develop weapons of mass destruction to make sure they will not fall to some future American preemptive strike."

We will find Saddam's well-hidden chemical and biological weapons programs, but only when people who know come forward and tell us where to look. While Saddam was in power, even a hint about his concealment and deception was a death sentence, often by unimaginable torture against whole families. Saddam had four years to hide things. We have had a few weeks to find them. Patience -- and some help from free Iraqis -- will be rewarded.

The man who wrote this wears custom-tailored suits, and appears on television and gives speeches around the world as a revered Serious Person.

You, who were right about the war even while he was stupifyingly wrong, have Doritos cheese on your shirt collar, and are considered by the Democrats you elected to end the war to be morons for wondering why it hasn't happened sooner.

Happy Mission Accomplished Day.

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