Short American Century

Back on April 5, I posted about my concerns with the erratic behavior of Kim Jon Un.  Like David Horsey, I doubted that he could actually blow up Los Angeles, but he certainly could make a mess of that part of the world.  His behavior hasn't moderated since then, but I think there's still some danger.  It's just that my opinion has moderated a little.  Here's David Horsey's updated column on the issue.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un seems like a fictional character out of a satirical doomsday movie -- maybe a sequel to “Dr. Strangelove.” That fact that this immature brat and his gaggle of grim, aging generals actually rule a country and have the capacity to disturb the international order seems absurd in an era of global interdependence.

In the 21stcentury, humankind should have moved beyond this, but apparently we need a few more centuries of progress before all countries are led by comparatively rational, democratically elected leaders -– or at least by boring, one-party bureaucrats whose main goal is to preserve stability and promote economic growth.

Kim is a throwback to medieval times when young, cocky princes claimed a divine right to lord it over defenseless peasants. The only reason those princes could claim that power, in truth, was because they were surrounded by troops of big guys with swords, armor and horses with a license to kill any peasant who complained too loudly. It really had nothing to do with God’s blessing and everything to do with which family was ruthless enough to take from the poor and make themselves rich. ...

Little Kim’s belligerent threat to start a thermonuclear war that would consume South Korea, Japan and various outposts of the United States is the tough talk of a tyrant in the ancient mold. But Kim is all bluff. He does not have the bombs or the missiles to carry out his threats. His country is a geopolitical pipsqueak and an economic charity case. If the real world powers, China and the United States, chose to make it happen, his regime could be snuffed out.   [Emphasis added]

In my earlier post, I suggested that the US would have to work with the UN to rein Bratty L'il Kim in.  I still believe it will take diplomacy, but not necessarily though the UN.  We will have to partner with China.  Kim Jon Un is part of that country's sphere of influence.  And that is where my thoughts moved to.

Do you remember 13 years ago when Dick Cheney and his Merry Band of NeoConservatives took office?  Their philosophy was that since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US was the only world power and could do whatever it wanted to.  That philosophy was detailed in their Program for the New American Century ("PNAC").  And with that theoretical framework, they justified wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, paid for off-budget by loans from China.  All they needed was a "Pearl Harbor" event, which they got on 9/11, and they were off.

At the same time, our corporate behemoths began shifting jobs and increasing business ties with our largest creditor until now we are no longer the "only world power."  Shortest damned century on record!

So now we have to rely on the other world power to rein in Kim so that there is no conflagration involving South Korea.  I'm not too comfortable with that notion.

Return Of The Crazies

The fallout from last week's elections is beginning to manifest. Yesterday I noted the Los Angeles Times op-ed piece by Mr. Biggs from AEI. Today the New York Times published an op-ed piece written by John Bolton (now also with AEI) and John Yoo (chief justifier of torture). I guess the victories by the GOP means all sorts of things will be emerging from their sub-rock basements.

The target Bolton and Yoo selected was the New Start treaty negotiated by the Obama administration which is awaiting Senate approval. That neocon sympathizers would select this topic is hardly surprising. After all, George W. Bush quite enjoyed poking the Russian bear with St. Ronald of Raygun's plan for a Star Wars Missile Defense System. The fact that the system has failed every test designed for it, including many which were geared so that the system had to pass, doesn't seem to bother these bozos. It's a grand idea conceived by a saint, so any attempt to scale it back is heresy and blasphemy and all sorts of other irreligious things.

Just as Saint Ronald and King George II believed, Messrs Bolton and Yoo continue to assert that the US is in charge of the world and its security. It is the only super power capable of this holy mission. In fact, it is the only super power, so there you have it. That this is no longer the case, if it ever was, doesn't seem to bother these two. Any tinkering with this vision from some alternative reality is an unholy act not to be tolerated.

New Start’s faults are legion. The low limits it would place on nuclear warheads ignore the enormous disparities between American and Russian global responsibilities and the importance of America’s “nuclear umbrella” in maintaining international security. The treaty’s constraints on launching platforms would impede Washington’s ability to use conventional warheads even in conflicts far from any Russian interest or responsibility. There are plenty of other deficiencies, from inadequate verification provisions to leaving Moscow’s extensive tactical nuclear weapons capabilities unlimited.

To save the world from Russki-imposed doom, both men urge the Senate to do its constitutional duty and over-ride the president. Apparently the Unitary Executive Theory only applies to Republican presidents. Republican-lite presidents are not worthy. They suggest that the treaty be returned to the president for a new deal, one that keeps intact all of the nuclear weaponry we have or will have real soon now if only it could get designed and built.

To prevent New Start from gravely impairing America’s nuclear capacity, the Senate must ignore the resolution of ratification and demand changes to the treaty itself. These should include deleting the preamble’s language linking nuclear arsenals to defense systems, and inserting new language distinguishing conventional strike capacities from nuclear launching systems or deleting limits on launchers entirely. Congress should pass a new law financing the testing and development of new warhead designs before approving New Start.

Unfortunately, even the lame duck Senate will not approve the treaty, the numbers really aren't there. The new Senate surely will not, and that's a shame. The treaty was a healthy step forward to further reducing the risks of bombing the planet to cinders. Just as shameful, however, is that while we won't have to listen much to Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell, who were simply ignorant and nuts, we will be exposed to those such as Andrew Biggs, John Bolton, and John Yoo, who are educated and insane.

Shame On President Obama ...

... And shame on us.

What do the UK, Poland, Lithuania, Spain, Australia, Canada have in common? All have official investigations and/or legal cases pending over their countries' role in the CIA's Bush-era programs of kidnapping and torture. One country is noticeably absent from the list: the US.

And that is a shame.

From McClatchy DC:

Arar's case illustrates what lawyers and human rights groups call a shameful trend: While U.S. courts and the Obama administration have been reluctant or unwilling to pursue the cases, countries that once backed former President George W. Bush's war on terrorism are carrying out their own investigations of the alleged U.S. torture program and the role that their governments played in it.

Judges in Great Britain, Spain, Australia, Poland and Lithuania are preparing to hear allegations that their governments helped the CIA run secret prisons on their soil or cooperated in illegal U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects. Spanish prosecutors also have filed criminal charges against six senior Bush administration officials who approved the harsh interrogation methods that detainees say were employed at U.S. military prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other sites. ...

The trend, although it's slow-moving and involves disparate plaintiffs, forums and legal strategies, could represent the end of a reviled chapter of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, which ensnared hundreds of detainees with the clandestine cooperation of dozens of countries. Now, some of those countries, led by new governments or under pressure from their citizens, are trying to pry open those secrets.

"This is the remarkable thing: Other countries are reckoning with the legacy of the Bush administration's torture program, and meanwhile the United States is not," said Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national security program.

"That's part of why we're so concerned. The Obama administration, rather than investigate the abuses of the last eight years, has increasingly become an obstacle to accountability." [Emphasis added]

The first excuse used by the Obama administration for not examining the actions of its predecessors was that we needed to "look forward, not backward." That justification soon wore thin as in case after case the Justice Department under President Obama used the same worn out legal argument to stop cases against the government from proceeding: "government secrets." When that strategy came under fire, the emphasis shifted to the bizarre legal theory that under the Authority to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress, that government body ceded not only its own authority to declare war, but the power of the judiciary to examine crimes committed by the government.

That members of the Bush administration subscribed to the Unitary President theory was no surprise. That members of the Obama administration do so as well is absolutely shocking, especially in light of then-candidate Obama's pronouncements and promises on the campaign trail. Shocking and dismaying.

The question then becomes one for the rest of us. What are we going to do about it? If we continue to do nothing, saving our ire for bailed-out banksters and safety-eschewing oil companies, then we deserve the government we have and will continue to have, regardless of the color of the ties worn by its officials. The "New American Century" will be one in which American democracy lost its soul.

An Overlooked Anniversary

I found it quite odd that the American media let pass the anniversary of the commencement of the misbegotten and illegal war in Iraq this past week. We're now in the eighth year of the mess, American troops are still there, Americans and Iraqis are still dying, and yet almost nothing to note the anniversary came across my admittedly aging radar screen.

During my weekly visit to Watching America I noticed that most of the rest of the world had ignored the ignominious date as well, most, but not all. Egypt's Addostour was a provided a very interesting and quite honest (perhaps dangerously so) analysis.

And so, the alleged “democratic example” of Iraq is brought about on the skulls of more than one million Iraqis, the total victims over the invasion’s seven years according to statistics.

Strangely enough, the elections of Sunday, March 7th, 2010 are deemed as a real victory for the American scheme in Iraq and an example to be followed by countries of the region. Yet, we need to know which victory is meant here and what this democratic project can be, considering most U.S. regional allies have military inclinations. Why does the U.S. not exert any type of pressure on her allies, even on a formal basis, to force them to adopt democracy? Can democracy be falsely built on the corpses, wounds, culture, security, integrity, and oppression of Iraqi people as well as on the usurpation of their country’s wealth, history and civilization, present and future? I do not know how minds and consciences can be convinced with these lies to the extent of propagating them!

...Accordingly, the American plan goes as follows: the U.S. is to paint her Iraqi example as “legitimate” because Iraqis allegedly took part in making it. Then, “dissident allies” will be told that they shall be replaced by this example, already regarded as legitimate by American people, since the dissidents are illegitimate rulers who faked their victory and assumed power via the military coup d’états America backed or overlooked. In other words, the American rule will be “either to do what you are told or we will repeat the Iraqi example whenever and wherever we like!”

...If the U.S. wants to have democratic regimes in the region, all it has to do is to ask her allies of “timeworn” Arab tyrant rulers to let their people live freely and choose their regimes. Thus, these people should understand that their freedom cannot be secured by America or anyone else. They exclusively have the ability and will to restore their freedom; otherwise, they will eternally live under the illusions of American democracy. [Emphasis added]

That certainly does sound like the America that has evolved over the past century, doesn't it? It also sounds like the American "allies" in that area of the world: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and, yes, Egypt. Brave man, that op-ed writer.

I am still concerned that the Iraq War has fallen into the rabbit hole, however. We hear plenty about the War in Afghanistan (President Obama's "Good War", as if there were such a thing), but very, very little about Iraq. Like the period after the invasion of Iraq when the war in Afghanistan became invisible, nobody much cares about Iraq, nobody but the families of American soldiers stuck there or the Iraqis providing various degrees of hospitality seem to be interested. It's as if the American media and the American public can only concentrate on one war at a time, and then only for brief periods of time until the next shiny key is dangled before them. Right now the key is health care reform. How ironic.

In a comment at Eschaton this morning, the Kenosha Kid provided yet another reason why the press has gone silent on Iraq. He linked to a very intelligent article in the Nation written by Matthew Duss on the Cheney family's open historical revisionism being supported by the media. I haven't checked out the list of guests for tomorrow's bobbleheads, but if neither Liz nor Dick Cheney is listed, I will be surprised.

Here's just a snippet of that article (which you should read, seriously):

It turns out, however, that being disastrously wrong on the most significant foreign policy questions of the era is no barrier to continued influence in American politics. Even though their bong-hit theories about transforming the Middle East at the point of an American gun retain about as much popular appeal as E. coli, the neocons continue to impact US foreign policy debates through an entrenched network of think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Hudson Institute), publications (The Weekly Standard, Commentary, National Review), supportive editorial boards (the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal) and, of course, Fox News.

But, of course, we are too dumb, or too busy trying to put food on the table and providing a roof over our heads for that table to appreciate just what's going on.

Aren't we?

Post Platonic Retreat

Ever wonder what the architects of the disastrous administration of George W. Bush administration are doing these days? Well, one of them, John R. Bolton, is currently a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (no surprise there). He also penned this op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, the contents of which are also not surprising.

Mr. Bolton's subject is President Obama's foolish policy with respect to Iran, foolish in Mr. Bolton's eyes because the president has determined that "negotiation" is inferior to what the neocons found to be so useful in foreign policy -- missiles and bombs.

But it is the president's underlying policies that are wrong, not just his rhetoric. Saying that he does not want the "debate" inside Iran to be about the United States is disingenuous at best. Obama's real objective is to launch negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, in the belief that he can talk Iran out of its 20-year effort to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons. He said it during the 2008 campaign, during his inaugural address and repeatedly thereafter.

Viewed in the light of this near-religious obsession with negotiation, Obama's reticence is entirely understandable: He does not want to jeopardize the chance to sit with the likes of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

In fact, everything we know about the regime indicates that Iran, and the Revolutionary Guard in particular, will never voluntarily give up its nuclear program, so Obama's policy is doomed to failure. (Inevitably, of course, if negotiations start, Obama would change the definition of success to include accepting a "peaceful" Iranian uranium- enrichment program, which means Tehran would retain its "breakout" capability to quickly produce nuclear weapons -- but exploring this further Obama failure has to wait for another day.)

Accordingly, it is Obama's policy errors, not his rhetorical ones, that should be opposed. Rhetoric itself is not policy but only the adjunct of policy, albeit often an important one. Obama's reticence reflects his larger misjudgment -- the dangerous misconception that there is a negotiated solution to Iran's nuclear threat that can satisfy both Iran and the United States. ...

Obama's policy, and that of the United States, should be the overthrow of the Islamic revolution of 1979. The massive resistance to the June 12 elections is just another fact supporting that conclusion. ...

...Obama wants negotiations with Tehran, not regime change. Given that the Revolutionary Guard and the hard-line mullahs -- and not the people -- are increasingly likely to be the short-term winners of the current Battle for Iran, supporters of regime change must now make longer-term plans. [Emphasis added]

"Overthrow," "regime change": where have we heard that before? Iraq, maybe?

Here's what we got from that approach to the world: thousands of dead and wounded American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Iraqis later, we're still mired in Iraq. Our economy is in shambles, and we're stuck with an off-budget war paid for on the national credit card that will take a generation to pay off. Our military, stretched beyond its capacity, will take nearly that long to fully recover, even with the recruitment of thirty-somethings to fill the gaps left by a war we're stuck with for at least another couple of years. All because some cowboys in Washington were looking for an excuse to get their war on.

We've seen what "regime change" costs. It's time to see what real diplomacy can accomplish.

[Note: the article has a side bar poll on the issue, one that is crudely phrased. A little "freeping" is still in order.]

Another View of Our Failures

Although I am aware that WaPo op-eds are sometimes paid advertisements, it was interesting to see Mikhail Gorbachev's views on our country there this morning. Like many ex-politicians, Mr. Gorbachev can make a good living by touring with his opinions, and has developed a line that he claims has produced significant applause.

He is observing for his audiences that we need to have our own Perestroika, a shake-up of our systems deeper than the regular changes in personnel that our elections produce. In Russia, there were no elections that had real meaning until Perestroika, and engrained personnel inside their bureaucracy had allowed real stagnation that was stifling the economy. While several commenters and posters seem to think that we have the same problem, I think that they are misled by the misuse of position in our government that the maladministration just past perpetrated.

Our system requires good information, and that's been a major weakness. When a Newt Gingrich can buy his way onto the opinion pages of our major news organs, we are ill served in the system of acquiring information. In Russia, the acknowledged propaganda that the rulers instituted was known for what it was, and underground sources developed. That's what has been happening here, and it has brought about changes that promise to upset the evils that resulted.

To Mr. Gorbachev, the evils resulting have suggested the need for the government itself to be radically changed.

We started with glasnost -- giving people a chance to speak out about their worries without fear. I never agreed with my great countryman Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he said that "Gorbachev's glasnost ruined everything." Without glasnost, no changes would have occurred, and Solzhenitsyn would have ended his days in Vermont rather than in Russia.

At first, we labored under the illusion that revamping the existing system -- changes within the "socialist model" -- would suffice. But the pushback from the Communist Party and the government bureaucracy was too strong. Toward the end of 1986, it became clear to me and my supporters that nothing less than the replacement of the system's building blocks was needed.

We opted for free elections, political pluralism, freedom of religion and an economy with competition and private property. We sought to effect these changes in an evolutionary way and without bloodshed. We made mistakes. Important decisions were made too late, and we were unable to complete our perestroika.
(snip)
In the West, the breakup of the Soviet Union was viewed as a total victory that proved that the West did not need to change. Western leaders were convinced that they were at the helm of the right system and of a well-functioning, almost perfect economic model. Scholars opined that history had ended. The "Washington Consensus," the dogma of free markets, deregulation and balanced budgets at any cost, was force-fed to the rest of the world.

But then came the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it became clear that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich. Statistics show that the poor and the middle class saw little or no benefit from the economic growth of the past decades. (Emphasis added.)

The statement that economic growth passed workers by is indeed true. The diagnosis which would pitch out the baby with the bathwater oversimplifies, to my mind. While Gorbachev, and some of those alienated by the slow progress of change, consider that the entire system is faulty, I see the problem as one posed by the operation of ideology that has placed enemies of our government in positions of power.

With an enemy of the environment running EPA, an enemy of justice managing DOJ, an enemy of labor manipulating the Labor Department, and so on throughout the executive branch, there is no functioning system. The system has been perverted by its enemies, though, rather than by its own weaknesses.

Furthermore, the staff accumulated by these enemies of the state have been operating against the public interest for more than eight years. There are some agencies that need realigning, and one that the administration of President Obama has suggested is an agency for consumer protection of financial institution operations.

I believe that a slowly, methodically, shifting of the government we have into hands that want to and are capable of its operation in the interests of the public is the answer. After all, in Russia, perestroika brought about a system for promoting the public interest, instituting a public voice that hadn't had any place in Russia's government before. Ours was originated with that in mind, and only has been diverted from its purposes by those who wanted to siphon the benefits off to themselves, away from the greater good.

Former President Gorbachev is seeing an effect, and it is a bad one. Behind it, though, is a cause, and he is deluded by the gross misinformation our media has been spreading.

Our government has been subverted, but it can be fixed. An election works more effectively than massive shifts in structure, when it puts public service back into the scheme of things. The main change of perestroika was to give the public a voice.

Cold War victims took late President Khrushchev's promise that he would 'bury us' so seriously that they dug the hole themselves. By empowering those who twisted our freedoms to the purposes of combating our own citizens, we have weakened the best form of government ever brought into being. Rather than scrapping it, we need to put our value system back into it. Freedom from repression, not freedom from protection, is its proper function.

Walk a Mile Barefoot

While with a title like that, you probably think I'm about to tell you that you need to try what it feels like to be on the losing end in this economy. No, I'm harking back to the adage that you will understand some one better if you walk a mile in his/her shoes. I am actually looking at an account of what our Senator Cornyn is facing. Besides, many of us are already trying to swim in the empty pool that the past eight-year maladministration left of the booming economy of the last Democratic terms.

What would you do if you had the task of getting control of Congress back for a party that represents an electorate certifiable enough to believe the ideology that has proved ruinous to this country, not just economically but in every realm of operation?

Did you pick (a) regain sanity and resign altogether? I would, but then, I've been on the side of reality, proven ideals and principles, honor and individuals' rights for most of my life. No, Senator Cornyn will try to increase the number of elected officials from the Gang that gave us disaster. His task: to delude enough remaining weak minded potential voters to throw his country back down the tubes.

In 2010, citing "public anxiety about spending and borrowing" by the Obama administration and the fact that the popular president won't be on the ballot, "there will be some genuine opportunities for Republicans, assuming we get good candidates, assuming we do our job to raise the money."

That's Cornyn's job. So far, he's doing pretty well. He reports his committee's first-quarter fundraising was up 40 percent over 2007, despite the weak economy. ...He also concedes the GOP faces a tough environment.

In 2002, "we had 55 Republicans [in the Senate], and now we have 40." Regardless of the outcome in the disputed Minnesota Senate race, "we're risking irrelevance to being able to affect legislation in the Congress."

Some independent analysts predict that while the party in power generally loses seats in its first mid-term election, Democrats actually could gain Senate seats in 2010.

Cornyn believes the GOP can succeed by arguing that "all power in one party's hands is not necessarily a good thing." He has 18 months to prove it. (Emphasis added.)

Obviously, the previous maladministration proved that point definitively. All Cornyn needs is to point to the disaster the wingers have brought about to show he's totally, completely right, as to domination by his party. We have unjustifiable, unwinnable wars that began ruining the economy starting in 2001 when wingnut leaders decided to wage war on Iraq through misleading the country. We have a destroyed economy. We have lost reputation with other countries that give services such as health care to their citizens, and observe the Geneva conventions. Does anyone need more proof of Cornyn's point?

Oh, right, he's talking about dominance by the party that fought against the insanity.

Today, Josh Marshall says what I think pretty much capsulizes Cornyn's situation in his description of the mockery of government that ex-Darth imposed on this country;

This is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.

This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure -- and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain't Shakespearean.

Thanks, Josh, you nailed it.

Reagan Never Said It

From Shaw Kenawe, a really good lesson on twisting facts. She did a post Sunday on a myth that hasn't held water, about Reagan's starving the beast, the government. That was thought up by Reagan budget director David Stockman, and elaborated by Grover Norquist.

For all those conservatives who believe Ronald Reagan said government is the problem. Think again.


I'd like to hear from my conservative friends what they think of this.


From the Los Angeles Times:


Republicans love to invoke Reagan, but if he’s watching right now, the Gipper is probably “smacking himself on the forehead, rolling his eyes and wondering who in the world these clowns are,” speculates former GOP Congressman (and longtime Reagan backer) Mickey Edwards in the LA Times. Today’s would-be Reaganites believe all government “is the problem,” and that small government is inherently better than big. “This is all errant nonsense,” writes Edwards, “wrong in every conceivable way.”

“In America, government is us,” Edwards reasons. What matters isn’t the size of government, but the limits of its powers. Bush Republicans obviously don’t get this, but Reagan did. In his famous inaugural, he said that “in the present crisis…government is the problem.” But he went on to say, “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work.” A sentiment echoed by Obama in his address.



Reagan wouldn't recognize this GOP

The Gipper may be the patron saint of Limbaugh and Coulter, but he'd be amazed at what's been done in his name.

"The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party." - Mickey Edwards


By Mickey Edwards

January 24, 2009

In my mind's eye, I can see Ronald Reagan, wearing wings and a Stetson, perched on a cloud and watching all the goings-on down here in his old earthly home. Laughing, rolling his eyes and whacking his forehead over the absurdities he sees, he's watching his old political party as it twists itself into ever more complex knots, punctuated only by pauses to invoke the Gipper's name. It's been said that God would be amazed by what his followers ascribe to him; believe me, Reagan would be similarly amazed by what his most fervent admirers cite in their desire to be seen as true-blue Reaganites.On the premise that simple is best, many Republicans have reduced their operating philosophy to two essentials: First, government is bad (it's "the problem"); second, big government is the worst and small government is better (although because government itself is bad, it may be assumed that small government is only marginally preferable). This is all errant nonsense. It is wrong in every conceivable way and violative of the Constitution, American exceptionalism, freedom, conservatism, Reaganism and common sense.


In America, government is ... us. What is "exceptional" about America is the depth of its commitment to the principle of self-government; we elect the government, we replace it or its members when they displease us, and by our threats or support, we help steer what government does.A shocker: The Constitution, which we love for the limits it places on government power, not only constrains government, it empowers it. Limited government is not no government. And limited government is not "small" government. Simply building roads, maintaining a military, operating courts, delivering the mail and doing other things specifically mandated by the Constitution for America's 300 million people make it impossible to keep government "small." It is boundaries that protect freedom. Small governments can be oppressive, and large ones can diminish freedoms. It is the boundaries, not the numbers, that matter.What would Reagan think of this? Wasn't it he who warned that government is the problem? Well, permit me. I directed the joint House-Senate policy advisory committees for the Reagan presidential campaign. I was part of his congressional steering committee. I sat with him in his hotel room in Manchester, N.H., the night he won that state's all-important primary. I knew him before he was governor of California and before I was a member of Congress. Let me introduce you to Ronald Reagan.

Reagan, who spent 16 years in government, actually said this:"In the present crisis," referring specifically to the high taxes and high levels of federal spending that had marked the Carter administration, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He then went on to say: "Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work." Government, he said, "must provide opportunity." He was not rejecting government, he was calling -- as Barack Obama did Tuesday -- for better management of government, for wiser decisions.

The rampant mythology that the right wing worships is generally about as valid as their tax cut demands. Having failed for eight years and leading this country into a financial disaster isn't in the reckoning when the party of hackery gets spouting. Reality based thinking sorts are not in their reckoning, since we don't qualify for the idiocracy.

Admitting to Our Brilliant Plan

It's time, according to my crazy Uncle Harvey, to take credit for the brilliant infiltration that we spendthrift Democrats have succeeded in, taking over and ruining the formerly competent conservative functional Republican Party. Thank you, and I want to remember all those staff who helped, especially the stage manager, the makeup artists, the tireless wardrobe organizers (the DFH t-shirts were a stroke of genius) and mom.

Without all your help, how could we have arranged the brilliant ploy of putting up the front of a pro-business government while arranging to keep down salaries over ten years, sending jobs offshore where workers earn pennies on the dollar, turning health care into an expense that drew off a growing proportion of earnings for working families, and increasing the tax burden on the erstwhile consumer - while sending all those endless offers of great credit so they could continue buying as if their actual realized income were not daily decreasing?

Anyone with a particle of intelligence could see that this would be death for a consumer economy, but of course, we endlessly insisted that this was right and good for business development. To make our ploy all the more wicked and destructive, we opened opportunities for corporations to take profits offshore by destroying the regulations, and even managed to put tax breaks for offshoring jobs through a deluded republican congress. Not satisfied with this destruction of potential for a consumer economy, we gave credit card issuers the go-ahead to allow for warrantless increases in interest on acccounts without any cause so that those consumer dollars could be absorbed in non-consuming costs all the more quickly.

Flush with our deception's success, we gave investment vehicles incentives to offer their mortgage lenders extra bonuses for placing higher and higher interest loans, loans that could be had without proof of affordability, because those could be bundled with other, better, mortgages and sold as if they were AAA rated! and did I mention linking ratings firms with the servicers they were rating? The Genius! More consumer dollars gulped up in unviable mortgages. Oh, and I forgot to thank the advertising firms that sent out all those great offers of free homes! to those otherwise potential consumers. And their moms.

Now as the waters are swirling around the waist of the drowning economy, I have to take special credit for the brilliant gesture of pushing through tax breaks, huge ones, for the banks that buy up other banks. Think of the incredible audacity, anyone with a particle of sense would see that one sinking bank to buy another sinking bank, compounding all the worthless loan bundles they own, would be a final straw that broke the dromedary's back, but no! we insisted, it was pro-business! Hoping against hope that the deluded congressional representatives of the right wing would continue over the cliff, we the insurgent Democrats even pretended to voice concern and responsible alternatives, just encouraging the rampaging right to continue on because it (heh, heh) made us livid. Oh, and did I think to thank the media, for quoting the heads of industry who insisted that they were right on the verge of beating back the threats of the Democrats to make them go offshore by ending the tax breaks and giving some of the country's wealth back to the public? And their moms!

From November:

But George W. Bush has more trouble in store for his successor. And he's piling on the problems in his usual secretive manner -- hoping nobody will notice.

How so? First, the Treasury Department this morning announced that it would increase the size of the bailout of American International Group (NYSE: AIG) from $143.7 billion to $150 billion and it would do so from funds in the $810 billion bank bailout bill. Second, he snuck a $140 billion bank tax break into that same bailout bill that would encourage bank mergers by allowing profitable banks to pay less tax by using the losses from unprofitable ones they buy to offset their taxable income.

Each of these moves is complex but the bottom line is that more of your money is going to bail out the mistakes of a handful of executives without any input from taxpayer representatives.

Yes, yes, I am coming to that. Allright, without those Bush family criminals, none of all this would ever have been possible. While claiming to make this a prosperous country by throwing all the resources toward business, most especially the financial sector, we've managed to undermine the very prosperity we pretended to adore.

It's a beautiful moment. The Republican Party is dead meat. Sorry about all your suffering, the jobs and homes and kids' health and stuff, but you know, you'll all be better for the struggle. Don't you know what doesn't kill you makes you strong? Stop whining.

Next, you'll get me going on about those fanatical wars we threw at you. Our plotting is just nothing if not thorough. We have so many ways of making it look like the Republic Party is incompetent, I can't begin to tell you. If we hadn't taken it over and made it work against its own interests, why right now we might still be continuing as an esteemed honorable country with a surplus, heading for sure disaster under Democratic control. But no, as crazy Uncle Harvey suspected all along, it was us!

Oh, and did I forget the guys at Gitmo! great job, Quasimodo and Co. Keep those '24' manners going, the wingers may never recover.

And their moms.

This Land Is My Land

That border fence your dollars are building to keep out those illeguls will have cost you a lot even if the next administration gets in and acts like responsible adults. The boondoggle that border officials are describing as a 'speed bump', that innumerable tunnels are now bypassing, may be killed soon. But the insanity continues unabated now.

As Rio Grande Valley property owners gird for hearings that will determine how much the government pays for the land it takes to build the border fence, some are struggling to find a key witness — an appraiser.
(snip)
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is trying to complete 670 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. It will not meet its end-of-year deadline, but has promised to have all sections under contract by then.

Some landowners in the Rio Grande Valley, where the project has been delayed by litigation, hope that a new administration will rethink the controversial project. Earlier this month Customs and Border Protection announced it was putting off three fence sections totaling about 14 miles in the Valley to further study their impact on Rio Grande floodwaters.

Richard Schell, another attorney representing border fence property owners, said he usually turned to the firm of Robinson, Duffy & Barnard LLP in Harlingen for appraisals involving litigation, but the government had them sewn up. So far the firm has been included on the government's witness list in only one case in Cameron County. No one from the firm returned calls for comment.

If appraisal work for these cases costs more than $10,000, Schell said one client would have to forego the outside expert and testify to the value himself.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen extended the deadline for naming experts by a month for a group of cases, including those handled by Villegas and Schell. They are scheduled to go to trial in March if Hanen opts for jury trials rather than a court-appointed land commission to determine compensation.

Bud Campana, a Brownsville appraiser not handling any border fence cases, said he was approached by a landowner this summer but was not comfortable with the job.

"The problem with these appraisals is it's a unique circumstance," Campana said. A big part of an appraisal is comparing the property to the sales of similarly affected pieces of land. But there is still nothing to compare the fence to, he said.

Some of the properties are further complicated by issues involving hunting leases, access to the Rio Grande and the value of land accessible — but in a more limited fashion — on the Mexican side of the fence.

"Based on what I've seen and generally heard I think it's a shame the way some property owners have been run over and treated," Campana said.

Once upon a time this was supposed to 'protect' the residents of this country. Now that the Department of Homeland Security has taken it in hand, it has become an affliction and denial of homeowner rights.

The insane idea of putting fence along the stretch of border that runs from Texas all the way to the Pacific Ocean has already entailed any number of disputes, one of them the proposed division of the campus of the University of Texas at Brownsville by that fence. That DHS idea has been shot down, but not before it went to court and cost us taxpayers to defend the ridiculous plans DHS was proposing.

The adult oversight of competent officials would be a welcome change, especially in the matter of trying to fence in vast spaces of land instead of providing legal channels for jobseekers and employers to use.

As I have said previously, Fence This:

Schadenfreude Again

Seeing the right wing defeat themselves has been enjoyable in many ways. It looks as if a leading light from Texas in the coming administration will be Chet Edwards. He is a Democrat who regained his seat after the dastardly redistricting imbroglio brought to you by the wingers in that 2003 purge.

Rep. Edwards isn't just a senior member who will have influence in this administration, he is a reminder. If the wingers hadn't purged out influential members of congress like Martin Frost, Texas would have much more representation in the government.

Now, with a relatively junior congressional delegation, two senators from the minority party and a White House brain trust likely to be devoid of Texans, the state of the Bushes and LBJ, Rayburn and Cactus Jack, Tom Clark and Tom DeLay faces a political future with "as little clout as in a century," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University.

"The days when Texans ran the Congress are over," Jillson said. "And we're not going to have the presidency any time in the near future."

Texas Democrats point the finger of blame at Bush, who is leaving office as the most unpopular president in modern American history, and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, who inspired a redistricting plan that cost several senior Democrats their jobs.

"It comes into clear focus now the price Texans are paying because of the partisan folly of the Tom DeLay-driven, mid-decade redistricting," said Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, the most influential Texas Democrat in Washington. "Instead of Texans being in charge of the powerful Rules, Agriculture and Homeland Security committees, their jobs now belong to New York, Minnesota and Mississippi."

For any of you who may have forgotten, an established practice of redistricting after census was ridden over by ambitious Republican party members who had visions of a permanent majority. They powered the mess through, and pitted Democrats in office against right wing electorates in the 2004 election. For a time, that gave them a majority, but it resulted to my glee in the election of a Democrat to replace Tom DeLay when his misdeeds got so out of hand his party wouldn't stand for him any longer. Redistricting had gone forward in his district on the assumption that he would hold on forever, and a large segment of mixed income, mixed race voters were put into that area. They voted in Democrat Lampson, though in this recent election Lampson was ousted by a Republican.

Under the last eight years, progressive projects did not have support in the nation's capitol. Members of the party in power are likely to redeem that long dearth of support.

"The Bush administration never asked for funding for the Trinity River project, under-funded NASA, did not adequately fund the deepening and widening of Houston's ship channel and spent three years trying to close Waco's VA hospital," he added.

Mr. Edwards will be a key player in such battles, given his place on the House Appropriations Committee. He chairs the subcommittee that funds military construction and veterans programs and is No. 2 on the panel that approves energy and water development projects.

The remains of American ideals that is left in the wake of the war criminals, as Diane delineates this morning in her post, will be hard to take back. The Texans who survived some of its worst battles will be ready to take on that chore. They've taken what the occupied WH and its minions dished out, and came out wiser and better.

The worst elements in our society manage to tear down a lot of the structure we need to survive. There are some of us left, even out here in flyover land. We're going to enjoy building back the shining city on a hill the wingers buried in filth.

PNAC: Major Fail

OK, so it's the weekend, which means I've gone over to Watching America. This week, because of the "financial crisis", the US presidential campaign has to share the world stage with the US bailout, which only makes sense. After all, the Wall Street robber barons worked with multinational corporations, so the entire world is wrapped up in our economic mess, just as it is in foreign policy mess.

Germany's Die Zeit has an article entitled "Socialism, George
W. Bush Style." That ought to grab anybody's attention, not to mention twist the knickers of a whole lot of conservative Americans. The thesis is clear, and not really news for people who have been following the trajectory of American politics since the end of the Cold War.

Under the motto “for a new American Century,” Bush and the neo-conservatives embarked on a policy of unilateral American supremacy. The results can now truly be seen:

America has lost its moral credibility because of Guantanamo and its use of torture; thanks to the Iraq war, Iran has become the foremost power in the Middle East; America’s military has been over-taxed because of this phony, unnecessary war; Bush inherited a budget surplus from Clinton and has transformed it into a gigantic mountain of debt; China is now America’s largest creditor; the dollar is in serious danger of losing its role as the world’s dominant reserve currency; the American financial system is in serious danger of collapsing. This crisis threatens to destroy the entire global financial system and the best solution the Republican administration in Washington can come up with is “nationalization”!

Now, I would quibble that the nationalization is a sign of socialism. I think it's more akin to the fascism of the second and third decade of the 20th Century. I also think a lot of the crisis has been manufactured to further that goal. The semantics aside, however, I also can understand the angst of the rest of the world as it has been swept up in the debacle of the neocon wet dream. For at least the last twenty-plus years (vide the Contract With/Against America), the goal of the far right of our political scene has been to undermine any kind of rational regulation of national and, by the nature of globalization, world economies. As a result "paper" became more important than production, as this article pointed out:

...an underground economy in the banking and financial system was created that successfully bypassed the existing controls and legal limitations placed upon it. Markets took on a life of their own and, not for the first time in the history of capitalism, unbridled greed ultimately proved a recipe for self-destruction.

"Unbridled greed," aided and abetted by a misguided sense of exceptionalism.

There's a recipe for disaster.

And we not only let it happen, by our silence we abetted it.

Voluntary Deaths

In its determination to eliminate government regulation, the administration can count 17 new deaths in N.TX. Those Vietnamese Americans who were killed in an accident here would have traveled safely - if there had been real enforcement of safety regulations for passenger buses. The bus they had rented should not have been on the road.

[UPDATE: Bus crash in NV, at least 20 hurt: Police found tire tread on the roadway and are looking into the possibility that tire failure may have caused the wreck."]

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ordered Iguala BusMex and Angel Tours Inc. to cease commercial operations. The agency issued a second order finding that the activities of Angel De La Torre, owner and president of the bus companies, "in connection with motor carrier operations pose an 'imminent hazard' to the public."

Authorities also announced that an Iguala BusMex bus was pulled out of service at the religious festival in Carthage, Mo., because it was unauthorized to operate.

The voicemail service for Angel Tours' remained full late Sunday.

Bus driver Barrett Wayne Broussard, 52, remained in critical condition at a Sherman hospital. No one answered the phone at his Houston home.

Broussard's driving record includes citations for driving while intoxicated in 2001 and for speeding in May 2004 and March 2007. His license was suspended for two months in 2001 because of the DWI conviction in Harris County, said Debbie Hersman, a spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board.

Broussard failed roadside inspections twice last year, Hersman said. Inspectors pulled his bus out of service both times.

Robert Accetta, the NTSB member leading the investigation, said an investigator will travel to Houston to learn more about the two bus companies.

Iguala BusMex applied in June for a federal license to operate as a charter but was still awaiting approval, according to online records. Angel Tours was forced by federal regulators to take its vehicles out of interstate service June 23 after an unsatisfactory review.

Inspectors are also looking at the mechanics of the wrecked bus and examining its interior damage, Accetta said.

Authorities said the vehicle's right front tire, which blew out, had been retreaded in violation of safety standards. The bus skidded about 130 feet before striking a guardrail. It then traveled nearly 120 feet before coming to rest down an embankment near a creek.(Emphasis added.)

The bus did not belong on the road, and shouldn't have been carrying passengers. No mechanism exists besides the voluntary cooperation of the owner. That voluntary cooperation did not happen, in this instance and in so many others. The pretense that standards are in force for the public good has turned our protections into a dismal farce.

In its reckless elimination of the government it sees as inconvenient, the occupied White House has increased the dangers U.S. citizens face in countless ways. The shameful record grows daily, of the deaths the war criminals have caused.

*********************************************************

Conversation this a.m. with montag, at Eschaton, in comments:

Umm, I don't think so. Even though the motor carrier aspect of ICC is gone (as of 1995, I think), the superseding agency is the FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration), so, someone with interstate routes can still operate under ICC registration, if that was issued when the ICC was active, or with FMCSA registration, if registered after 1995.

There is a category known as Registered Exempt Carriers, which is part of the SSRS system, which allows carriers to apply for USDOT exemption, providing they are licensed in the state in which they principally operate.

One way or another, there should be either state or federal oversight for any commercial passenger carrier operating on public roads, as regards safety matters.

Regulations for interstate passenger carrier maintenance can be found in 49 CFR, Part 396, FMVSS requirements in Part 571, and minimum inspection requirements in Appendix G of 49 CFR.
montag | Homepage | 08.11.08 - 7:17 am | #

[and then my response-

montag, if the regulations on the books were really being imposed on the carriers, it would be a good thing.]

Ah, now you're getting to my point--it's not that safety regulation has disappeared. Rather, it's not being enforced, which is an entirely different matter.

One of my favorite stories as illustration of the problem happened during the Reagan years. Illegal mines in Kentucky were (and continue to be) extremely common. Pre-Reagan, there were 50 mining inspectors in KY. After Reagan came to office, he couldn't get the mine safety office to change the regulations, so, they simply cut funding for 48 of those inspectors. There was one for eastern KY, and one for western KY. Way too much territory for one person to cover, so mining deaths went up.

A lot of agencies with oversight responsibility still haven't recovered from the cuts of the Reagan years.
montag | Homepage | 08.11.08 - 7:30 am | #

Usury is Quaint

Last night's discussion with William Greider on Bill Moyers' Journal produced this gem:

People of great wealth and their institutions like banks naturally have the power to overwhelm people of lesser means. And you can't allow that in a decent society. It won't survive.

The disaster that unbridled greed has brought about is starkly illustrated by the descriptions Greider gives of how total redistribution of power has been.

(Special thanks to Avedon for carrying that quote also, at The Sideshow.)

BILL MOYERS: You have been writing for a long time now that America's moving toward a corporate state. If we become one, can we exercise the self-correcting faculty that prevents us from hitting the iceberg out there?

WILLIAM GREIDER: One of the reasons I think politics is going to change fairly dramatically is that the Federal Reserve, accompanied by the Treasury Department and I think will be accompanied by the Congress, has crossed a very dangerous line in their bailout. They have essentially said, "We will put money on the table, taxpayers' money on the table, for any financial institution or business that is too big to fail." That is, if it fails, it'll send dangerous ripples through the economy.

And we've got a list now of maybe 30, 40, depending on how you count them, that we will be there to save you. I regard that as profoundly dangerous for the American Republic because once you cross that line and you have this special club that's privileged, that has benefits from government that nobody else can get, where do you stop it?

I mean, if I were running a big manufacturing company, I would have quickly run out and buy a subsidiary that's a bank or a financial firm that looks like a bank. And I would then try to get myself on that list. Who wouldn't? What's going on right now it's gotten a little attention - the union SEIU is fighting it, is these private equity firms, which are huge money pots of investors that take over and change corporations and come away with huge profits. The private equity firms are trying to buy into the banks and financial firms.

BILL MOYERS: And what would that mean?

WILLIAM GREIDER: That would mean that this private unregulated equity fund would be participating behind the door, so to speak, in the management of our regulated banks. But it would also, in a pinch, if it's big enough, maybe have a tap into that federal guarantee that if you're too big to fail, we'll be there for you.

BILL MOYERS: Even if-

WILLIAM GREIDER: You see what I'm getting at? And-

BILL MOYERS: I do. This morning in the "New York Times" one of the big stories in the business section is the financial industry is organizing to stop Congress from trying to regulate excessive speculation on oil and energy. They don't want this capacity for exploiting-

WILLIAM GREIDER: Well-

BILL MOYERS: -people's needs.

WILLIAM GREIDER: Well, I could lay us alongside that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which, remember in olden days, was supposed to defend us innocent investors against the guys running corporations. And that's why we have all these reports and so forth and so on. They announced this past week that they're going to go after the short sellers in the stock market.

The short sellers are the guys who say these folks at the corporate headquarters are lying to you or the folks at Citigroup are still not telling the truth about their losses and liabilities. So you see what I'm getting at. It's equivalent to saying we don't want anybody bad mouthing us in the middle of this trouble. And we'll try to penalize them if we can. Isn't that contradictory to the public interest?(Emphasis added.)

The very institutions that were set up to keep economic disasters from occurring are working to produce those very disasters.

The origins of democracy are based in a strong, well designed constitution to construct a rule of law. Destroying the constitution should never have been the object of any public officials. Unfortunately, in the highest offices we have now the enemies of the people of the sort that formerly we warred against.

It's a sad time, and one that hopefully will teach voters that they can't accept lies, and have to see through them. We have to insist on correct information, which very few places besides the internet provide. Greider gives a hopeful message, one that I share.

We have an opening in this crisis for, this is really going to sound grandiose. We have an opening in this crisis for a deep transformation in American politics. I don't say it happens this year, next year, or it's going to take a number of years. But we are in the shock of reality. And people get it everywhere and see the blood in the streets. And you tell them how this worked and who did what to whom, and that's a basis for a new politics.

I don't agree with everything he says, but Greider, like Moyers, looks relentlessly into facts, and puts them starkly on view. What is happening to our once functional government, turning it into the instrument of destruction that it has become, is a dreadful sight. Bringing into the light of day the betrayal of our country is difficult, but necessary. We have to react to it, but can only get better for it.

SMU Hurtles Toward Disgrace

Massive efforts to keep a Presidential Liebury cum "Think" Tank from despoiling the educational atmosphere at SMU failed yesterday. An effort to retain a smidgeon of reputable image was successful, though.

Efforts to block construction of a George W. Bush policy institute at Southern Methodist University failed by a narrow margin at a regional Methodist conference Thursday.

But foes of the institute – a planned part of the Bush presidential library complex – said that they may plot another strategy to keep the issue alive before the meeting ends Saturday.

The vote came at a conference of the United Methodist Church's South Central Jurisdiction, which owns SMU. The showdown was the culmination of months of debate among Methodist ministers and church members.

Roughly 275 delegates spent much of the day voting on a series of proposals related to the Bush library. They rejected, by a vote of 158 to 118, a measure that sought to prevent SMU from leasing land for the institute.

"It was a lot closer than I thought it'd be," said the Rev. Danny Gleason of Louisiana, who voted for the measure.

The delegates later approved a resolution saying they expect the institute to protect SMU's integrity, signaling that they don't want the institute's work to affect SMU's academic independence.
(snip)
Opponents of the institute were considering whether to request that the denomination's Judicial Council – its highest court – consider whether church law would be violated by leasing land to what they have characterized as a "partisan, political think thank."

Sadly, the money involved overcame principles even in the church's operation. There will be a last-ditch effort, but hopes are not high after the marshalled forces of all the people in the Methodist church hierarchy who react against the torture administration failed.

I'll wait and see before I end my mostly historic membership in the Methodist church.

Oh, Please

I guess John Bolton, former UN Ambassador (a Bush recess appointment) and current fellow at the American Enterprise Institute has some time on his hands. In his op-ed column in today's Los Angeles Times, he took the time to rewrite history. The focus of this revisionism was ostensibly to point out that Barack Obama has no real grasp on foreign affairs. The result, of course, is that he inadvertently leaves Democrats a wonderful opening on the issue. Here's some of what Mr. Bolton had to say:

Barack Obama's willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea "without preconditions" is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign. ...

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined. [Emphasis added]

Now, the Bush administration, the one that snuck Mr. Bolton in the back door of the UN while Congress was in recess, the one that couldn't get his nomination past the Senate twice, thereby leaving him off the federal gravy train, has been notable for a rather decided lack of imagination. It couldn't, for example, imagine that in free and fair elections, the people of Palestine would choose Hamas to lead them. Or that Saudi Arabi, Bush family BFF, would refuse to pump more oil at Junior's request.

And as for "failings in foreign policies," well, we have one awfully large elephant labeled "Iraq War" in the national living room as a pretty good example of what happens when a White House believes it can create reality simply by saying it can.

But the part that is especially telling in Mr. Bolton's little screed is the emphasis on Sen. Obama's lack of knowledge about the world. The man for whom Mr. Bolton worked didn't know there were some important differences between the two main strands of modern Islam and that those differences had some important consequences when dealing with the Middle East. Apparently the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party still doesn't realize that. For Mr. Bolton, all that matters is that Sen. Obama has indicated he will speak with our "enemies," rather than bomb them back to the stone age.

Thankfully Mr. Bolton isn't still mucking things up at the State Department and the UN. I just wish the L.A. Times had reserved Mr. Bolton's bloviations for the Letters To The Editor section.

Heckuva Job, Dubya

In an op-ed piece for Pakistan's Daily Times, former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami takes a look at "Bush's New Middle East" and concludes that this administration accomplished the exact opposite of what it had intended for this part of the world.

President George W Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished” in Iraq five years ago was as hubristic as his current assessment that the “surge” has “delivered a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror” is a fantasy. The Iraq adventure is not only the longest and most expensive war in America’s history...the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has advanced a staggering estimate of $3 trillion...but is also the least conclusive. ...

Strategically, the war was an utter failure. A clear case of imperial overstretch, the war strained America’s military, undermined the America’s moral standing worldwide and its reputation in the Middle East, severely threatened its economy, and showed to both friends and foes the limits of American power. ...

If anything, America’s debacle in Iraq has only emboldened the challengers of the status quo in the region. That has also been the result of Bush’s ill-conceived democracy crusade in the Arab world. Bush discovered to his dismay that any exercise in Arab democracy is bound to usher in anti-Western Islamists, be it the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Shia parties in Iraq, or Hamas in Palestine.

The US eventually had to abandon its fantasies about Western-style Arab democracy, but it ironically left the Iranians carrying the torch of democracy in the region. After all, Iran was quick to recognise that free elections are the safest way to undermine the Middle East’s pro-American regimes.

And this administration's failures in Iraq have also had consequences for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which Mr. Bush suddenly remembered this year as the clock began to run on his tenure. He can no longer count on the "moderate" Arab leaders the US has been propping up for decades in the region because their power is being threatened by their own citizens who have discovered that the US isn't the all-powerful bully they had always feared:

America’s inability to inspire the peoples of the Middle East, all ruled by US-backed autocracies, is not exactly stunning news. What is news is that American power might also be losing its ability to intimidate them.

The US is going to be taking gas (excuse the metaphor) for a long time as a result of this administration's imperialistic hubris. The Program for the New American Century turns out to have been a lousy road map.

275 days.

Another NeoCon Down

Here's something to brighten a Monday for those who have to work this holiday: another NeoCon theorist has lost his cushy government job. This article from Hong Kong's Asia News has the story:

Neo-conservative hawks lamented the latest casualty in the "war on terror" last Friday, as the ax fell on Stephen Coughlin's job. The Pentagon decided not to renew the contract of its "foremost" specialist on Islamic law and Islamic extremism when it ends in March, citing budget cuts. ...

Coughlin was presumably the model soldier in the battle of ideas, delivering tough and blunt analysis; and he didn't mince words. From the laudatory statements of his supporters, it appears he was a powerful bulwark against the Islamo-fascist threat currently facing the US mainland. And for his service to the cause of battling Islamic extremism, he became a victim of the type of misguided sensitivity that fears to lift the veil from radical Islamist front groups. ...

This so-called expert, however, actually had little expertise beyond promoting hateful rhetoric in service of the Global War On Terror.

...for all his motivation and zeal, Coughlin is not the Islam "expert" he and his supporters claim he is. In fact, he has no academic background in Islamic law or extremism. A reservist in the US army, Coughlin holds a masters degree in strategic intelligence from the National Defense Intelligence College, with a focus on global terrorism and jihadi movements, as well as a law degree from the William Mitchell School of Law.

Said former Central Intelligence Agency agent Larry Johnson, who has helped script exercises for the US military forces that conduct counter-terrorism missions: "Does [Coughlin] speak Arabic? No. How about Urdu? Nope. He studied Islam where? No clue. But he graduated from an ABA-sanctioned second-tier law school. A good school, but it is not known as a center of Islamic study. Unfortunately, Coughlin's broad-brush approach to Islam is more polemics that scholarship."

What did him in? The very rhetoric that got him his job, especially when it clashed with the current administration's attempt to disconnect the radical movement within Islam and the religion itself.

As reported by Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, Coughlin's recent misfortunes transpired after a confrontation with Hasham Islam, a high-level aide to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who reportedly asked Coughlin to "soften his views on Islam" after the "specialist" emphasized the relationship between Islamic law and Islamist jihad doctrine, a belief which runs contrary to the White House view of Islam as a religion of peace hijacked by extremists.

Poor Mr. Coughlin: used and then discarded unceremoniously by an administration anxious to keep Middle Eastern oil flowing to the US. He may have been discharged for the wrong reasons, but at least he's gone.

A Shameless Return

Thanks to a tip from 1Watt, Hermit in the comment section of Eschaton, I did something I rarely do: I ambled over to the Newsweek site to read an article by Michael Isikoff. In a way, I wish I hadn't. The news stunned me: Paul Wolfowitz is about to return to government service.

Yes, the man who was fired by the World Bank for giving his girl friend a sizeable raise, the man who led the charge for the disasterous war in Iraq is about to hire on with the State Department.

Don't ever say the Bush administration doesn't take care of its own. Nearly three years after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as deputy Defense secretary and six months after his stormy departure as president of the World Bank—amid allegations that he improperly awarded a raise to his girlfriend—he's in line to return to public service. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters. "We think he is well suited and will do an excellent job," said one senior official.

The sad part is that there isn't a damned thing we can do about it: the position does not require Senate confirmation. Nobody will be asking any questions as to his past history on advising the administration on such matters as "disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters."

...his selection has raised more than a few eyebrows within State because he'll be providing advice on some of the same issues that critics say the administration got spectacularly wrong when Wolfowitz was pushing the case for the Iraq War at the Pentagon.

I'm beginning to think that the Neocons would be impervious even to silver bullets and wooden stakes. We know that shaming them doesn't work and nobody seems to have the stomach or the spine to indict.

This is going to be a long year.

More Pearl Harbors ...

...in other words, they may be back.

I made my usual Saturday morning foray over to Watching America and was struck by their featured article. It comes from The Canadian, which describes itself as "a socially progressive and not-for-profit national newspaper, with an international readership. We provide an alternative to the for-profit commercial focused media, which often censors vital information and perspective of potential interest to the diverse Canadian public, and other peoples internationally."

The article is by written by Michael E. Salla, someone with whom I am not familiar, so I can't vouch for his credentials or his hypothesis. I can say, however, that he writes incisively and with a scholar's tone. If he is correct and is accurate, we are in for more trouble. The subject is war with Iran. Apparently the Neocons are still active in Washington, DC, and this is, according to Mr. Salla, their next project.

The Bush administration has covered up and ignored dissenting Pentagon war games analysis that suggests an attack on Iran's nuclear or military facilities will lead directly to the annihilation of the Navy's Fifth Fleet now stationed in the Persian Gulf. Lt. General Paul Van Riper led a hypothetical Persian Gulf state in the 2002 Millennium Challenge war games that resulted in the destruction of the Fifth Fleet. His experience and conclusions regarding the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet to an asymmetrical military conflict and the implications for a war against Iran have been ignored. Neoconservatives within the Bush administration are currently aggressively promoting a range of military actions against Iran that will culminate in it attacking the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet with sophisticated cruise anti-ship missiles. They are ignoring Van Riper's experiences in the Millennium Challenge and how it applies to the current nuclear conflict with Iran. ...

...By deliberately provoking an Iranian retaliation to U.S. military actions, the neoconservatives will knowingly sacrifice much or all of the Fifth Fleet. This will culminate in a new Pearl Harbor that will create the right political environment for total war against Iran, and expanded military actions in the Persian Gulf region. ...

Neoconservatives share a political philosophy that U.S. dominance of the international system as the world's sole superpower needs to be extended indefinitely into the 21st century. In early 2006 neoconservatives within the Bush administration began vigorously promoting a new war against Iran due to the alleged threat posed by its nuclear development program. Iran has consistently maintained that its nuclear development is lawful and in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Since 2004, The Bush administration has been citing intelligence data that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and must under no circumstances be allowed to do this.

The first strategy is to drive up public perceptions of an international security crisis by warning of a Third World War if Iran's nuclear program is not stopped. In a Press Conference speech on October 17, President Bush declared: "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them [Iranians] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." LINK. Bush's startling rhetoric was followed soon after by Vice President Cheney on October 23 who warned in a speech that the U.S. and its allies were "prepared to impose serious consequences" on Iran.

The second strategy has been shift emphasis from removing Iran's nuclear facilities, to emphasizing its support for terrorism. Given widespread military and political opposition to attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities, the Bush administration is now depicting Iran as a supporter of terrorism in Iraq."

The change in strategy was given a powerful boost by the passage of the Kyle-Lieberman Amendment by the U.S. Senate on September 26 which designated "the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization" This would enable the Bush administration to authorize strikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard facilities inside Iran on the basis that they are supporting Iraqi terrorist groups targeting U.S. military forces.

The third and most dangerous strategy used by the Bush administration is to sanction an alleged covert mission that would create the necessary political environment for a war against Iran. This is arguably best evidenced in the infamous B-52 'Bent Spear' incident on August 30, 2007 where five (later changed to six) nuclear armed cruise missiles were found en route to the Middle East for a covert mission.

Ten years ago I would have suggested that Mr. Salla's tin foil chapeau was just a little too tight: not enough blood was getting to his brain. Now, however, after seven years of this administration, I found Mr. Salla's thesis only too plausible. It helps that I recall the brouhaha over Lt. General Van Riper's success at the 2002 Millenium Games by using "asymmetrical warfare" to sink the Fifth Fleet. It also helps that the passage of the Kyle-Lieberman Amendment was so well reported and was so obvious an attempt to amplify the drums of war. And, of course, that the Neocons are still working their agenda comes as no surprise: they've gotten what they've wanted all along with this administration.

Unless this Congress finally digs its heels in and refuses to extend the original misbegotten AUMF to include Iran, we are really in for it.