Weekend links

* The NY Times reports that US soldiers in Iraq are frustrated that the war is not hitting home, in part because politicians are unwilling to ask Americans to make any sacrifices.

* Knight Ridder continues its excellent Iraq coverage with stories on 1) reconstruction in Baghdad (the lack of it); 2) the shabby state of the Iraqi police; and 3) recent developments on the Constitution.

* "For future historians Iraq will probably replace Vietnam as the stock example of the truth of Wellington's dictum about small wars escalating into big ones," writes Patrick Cockburn in his final dispatch from Baghdad for The Independent. "Ironically, the US and Britain pretended in 2003 that Saddam ruled a powerful state capable of menacing his neighbors. Secretly they believed this was untrue and expected an easy victory. Now in 2005 they find to their horror that there are people in Iraq more truly dangerous than Saddam, and they are mired in an un-winnable conflict."

* As Robert Dreyfuss wonders if Aiham Alsammarae can help the US find a way out of Iraq, Jim Lobe sees growing calls for an exit strategy in response to the worsening of the situation in recent weeks.

* In the NY Times, John Burns reports that the "past 10 days have seen such a quickening of [sectarian] killings, particularly by the insurgents, that many Iraqis are saying that the civil war has already begun" and Dexter Filkins and David S. Cloud observe that, despite American and coalition efforts, insurgents "just keep getting stronger" in Iraq.

* The US military habitually uses indiscriminate force that kills a significant number of Iraqi civilians. This may not be highlighted much in the Western media, but, as this LA Times story attests, it is a point not lost on Iraqis.

* David Swanson describes "How the United States Marked the 3rd Anniversary of the Downing Street Memo."

* "To an extent, America has fallen into precisely the trap that the September 11 attackers believed they were setting," Max Rodenbeck writes in a survey of recent literature on jihadism. "It has created new enemies. It has alienated old friends. Arguably, it has not made the world a safer place, as the recent London bombings showed. The reasons for this failure are multiple," Rodenbeck adds, but the most significant is the inability of "America's giant intelligence apparatus to perform its primary function, that of knowing the enemy."

* Turning away from recent analyses that link jihadism to anti-occupation fervor, Olivier Roy argues in the NY Times that Islamists are driven more by the alienation induced by globalization. "Western-based Islamic terrorists are not the militant vanguard of the Muslim community," claims Roy, "they are a lost generation, unmoored from traditional societies and cultures, frustrated by a Western society that does not meet their expectations. And their vision of a global ummah is both a mirror of and a form of revenge against the globalization that has made them what they are."

* M. Shahid Alam wades through the sticky questions one encounters when trying to define terrorism.

* This needs to be said loud and clear: gunning down civilians like Jean Charles de Menezes is not acceptable, no matter the extenuating circumstances.

* "Fears of an anti-Muslim backlash [in the UK] have been realised in a 500-per-cent rise in faith-hate crimes in the past two weeks," reports the Guardian. "More than 1,000 race and faith hate incidents have been reported to police across the country since the London bombings, though community leaders believe the actual number of incidents is at least four times higher."

* Serene Assir reports from Sharm El-Sheikh following the bombing over the weekend for Al Ahram.

* The Pentagon is trying to block the release of the next round of Abu Ghraib images, no doubt because of their explosive content.

* "The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual," reports the Washington Post.

* Frank Rich's NY Times column this week seems to have opened up an interesting new angle on the Plame story: the Alberto Gonzales "12-hour gap."

* Michael Klare advises, "there is no evidence that President Bush has already made the decision to attack Iran. But there are many indications that planning for such a move is well under way--and if the record of Iraq (and other wars) teaches us anything, it is that such planning, once commenced, is very hard to turn around. Hence, we should not wait until after relations with Iran have reached the crisis point to advise against US military action. We should begin acting now, before the march to war becomes irreversible." See also: "Iran: the next target?"

* Citing Dov Weissglas' infamous remarks, Henry Siegman and Tony Karon warn that Sharon is intending on using the Gaza withdrawal to damage Abu Mazen's credibility and make impossible any sustained negotiations that could lead to a Palestinian state. Plus: Hasan Abu Nimah on why the "road to nowhere should be abandoned."

* Brian Cloughley notes the Bush administration's current whining about and hypocrisy on China.

* The CS Monitor reports that Robert Mugabe is under increasing pressure from African neighbors to reform his policies and stop punitive actions against adversaries.

* The NY Times and WSWS provide rather differing interpretations of what the AFL-CIO split means. See also: Rose Ann DeMoro's list of "The Top 10 Problems with the Current 'Crisis' in the Labor Movement."

* On a related front, the June issue of Monthly Review has a bunch of good articles on the Labor movement in the US and elsewhere. Check it out.

* In his most recent NY Times columns, Paul Krugman discusses the unpegging of the yuan and the attractiveness of Canada's health care system for North American employers, like Toyota.

* Several reviewers have already weighed in on Tom Friedman's new book, The World Is Flat, but John Gray's appraisal in the NYRB is probably the most thoughtful and expansive one to appear thus far.

* Doug Ireland remembers Herbert Marcuse, the great doyen of the Frankfurt School.

* Bill Cosby, meet Michael Eric Dyson.