Saturday, December 20, 2008

Another Looming Disaster

Disaster fatigue is one of the innovations the occupied White House has made happen. We are desperate economically, and that has overshadowed the international disasters the imitation cowboys have driven the U.S. into. Last night Bill Moyers' Journal explored our policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have created as much distress for this country as the executive branch's welfare for corporations. Unfortunately, the stability of the entire world is threatened as much by them as we are.

Speaking with a former NPR reporter, Sarah Chayse, who stayed after our making war on Afghanistan, the perpetuation of corruption by the government of Afghanistan was brought out. She pointed out that the actual populace is under as much oppression, and as little cooperation, as it had known under the Taliban. Feelings for the U.S. reflect that abuse, and our actions are creating another looming disaster for this country.

BILL MOYERS: Your article in the "Washington Post" paints a devastating picture. The Taliban insurgents are making headway again because the government we support is a gang of corrupt gunslingers, feared as much by everyday people as the Taliban themselves.

SARAH CHAYES: Yes. That's about the size of it.

BILL MOYERS: And this is what American soldiers are dying for there?

SARAH CHAYES: Our democracy is famous for one thing in particular, checks and balances. That was the genius of the American system.

BILL MOYERS: Rule of law.

SARAH CHAYES: Rule of law but also recourse. If one branch of government is abusing you, you've got other branches of government that you can turn to.

BILL MOYERS: And Afghanistan?

SARAH CHAYES: Doesn't. So what we've really done is set up a kind of monopoly on the exercise of power. I mean, it's the opposite of what everything that we consider to be democracy, we've allowed an abusive concentration of power in the hands of, in particular, the executives, be it, in particular, on a local level like the provincial governors and their acolytes. Because we've convinced ourselves and often we have to - by "we" I mean us and our NATO allies - convince our own public opinion that this is a democratically elected representative government of Afghanistan in order to justify the sacrifices in money and troops and things like that. But the Afghans see it differently. The Afghans say you brought these people in here. We repudiated-

BILL MOYERS: You mean the Afghans at the local level-

SARAH CHAYES: That's it.

BILL MOYERS: -people where you work, right?

SARAH CHAYES: Ordinary people.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

SARAH CHAYES: The ordinary population. The people I work with are villagers. They're semi-literate, illiterate, these are really ordinary men and women. And they all are telling me, "You brought these people back into Afghanistan. We had repudiated them in the early 1990s. We knew what these people are. They're"-

BILL MOYERS: Warlords, right?

SARAH CHAYES: Yes. Yes.

BILL MOYERS: The criminal class.

SARAH CHAYES: Exactly. So you brought them in and now you're backing them up. And you are making it impossible for us to make our voices heard and to have any leverage on the behavior of these people. (Emphasis added.)


As we are in so many fields of operations, this executive branch's policies are building more disasters to come in the future for this country.

As this maladministration has in this country's business operations, it has continued blindly in policies that do damage rather than good. That damage is mounting everywhere.

The incoming administration can do well by reversing course in every piece of pro-disaster management the right wingers have gotten us into. It might be concluded that wrongheadedness has kept us on a course that hurts us in every way for eight years. Beginning January 21st, putting on the brakes, making a U-turn, and going in the opposite direction would begin an end to the worst phase of history any of us has ever experienced. While it will be a lurch, it will be the right choice.

Will we survive another month of this destruction unleashed by criminals in our highest offices?

Thirty days.

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Senate right wingers managed to keep the congress from acting to shore up the country's automotive industry. It was obvious that politics was primary in their views, not the interests of those they have sworn to serve. In the Dallas Morning News, that problem was headlined;

Many area dealers say they were deeply disappointed that Republicans they had supported essentially put politics over the economy in opposing loans to GM and Chrysler.

The disasters of the past eight years have hit this country at every level.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

SARAH CHAYES: Rule of law but also recourse. If one branch of government is abusing you, you've got other branches of government that you can turn to.

The whole raison d'etre of the Bushevik regime, their explicit instructions from their bosses and handlers in CorpoRat Murka, upon taking office, was to do demolish to the fullest extent possible the capacity of the people to appeal to any instrument or institution of democratic self-governance to resist or roll-back the wholesale privatization of the People's 'commons,' and to remove any means of appeal.

You do that differently in different places. Afghanistan poses a different set of problems than Murka. But it is the dominant theme of the whole Bushevik reign, wherever they've touched down.

Mission: A-FUUKING-ccomplished...

6:46 AM  
Blogger Ruth said...

It's been their goal, but to date it's been held back by what decent - or at least worried - people still have an oath to uphold and defend the constitution. Tho the number that have held up is not as high as it should be, as the end nears, more and more they are jumping the sinking ship. Mission over.

7:55 AM  

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