Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Exceptionalism.

When people consider themselves exceptional, they make themselves potentially dangerous. That’s the gist of what Vladmir Putin had to say in his N.Y.Times op-ed piece, and people of many different political stripes here in the United States seem to have taken exception to this. I happened to be at the dentist the morning of its publication; the flat-screen t.v. above my dental couch was playing Fox & Friends, and they were throwing Stalin in Putin’s face. No surprise there. (What else can you expect from a clown parade headed by Michele Malkin?) A lot of t.v. liberals didn’t like it either. Frankly, though, for all of his failings as a leader, it’s not hard to see what Putin was getting at.

Funny story...We have, under the banner of American Exceptionalism, invaded any number of third-world countries over the past century and a quarter. The results have not been positive. (Just ask them.) Putin and others are approaching us as if conducting an intervention; trying to keep us from repeating the same bad behavior, over and over again. You know you have a problem when it takes Russia and China to talk you down. One can only hope that they succeed. This Syria intervention is just a crazy, bad idea, and one that the president seems very attached to. It’s a kind of madness, executive power, and it’s long since taken hold of old Barry-O.

What is kind of amazing is that the notion of striking Syria is really deeply unpopular from the get-go. This is so clearly the case that many conservative Republicans in congress really don’t know whether to shit or wind their watches. I heard one dancing around like a little wind-up toy on the radio a few days ago; they sooooo want to support an attack, but they sooooo need to undermine Obama, and their constituents are pushing them hard. This is the new pacifism: 20-25% of the country is opposed to war with Syria because they are against anything Obama wants, no matter what it is. Half of the centrist-liberal-left spectrum is firmly against it. That leaves neocon Republicans, “muscular” interventionist liberals, and other armchair bombardiers. I guess that means having a Democratic president makes us less likely to intervene in these polarized times.

Whatever keeps this disaster from happening can’t be all bad.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Crossing the line.

We heard more from John Kerry this week. Kerry, who voted in favor of the Iraq war back in 2003, is eager to demonstrate that he “gets it” and that this time is different. There is a post-modern cast to this drive towards war, as if by simply acknowledging past abuses the administration inoculates itself against committing them again by doing much the same thing in much the same way: aggressive war, waged against a nation that has not attacked us, under the banner of protecting the world from a brutal dictator armed with WMD – the “problem from hell,” as U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power termed it. Only it’s completely different now. You see, this time, the dictator used the weapons of mass destruction. Last time, sure, he had used them, but only more than a decade before (when he was our ally). Totally different.

Enforcing longstanding international norms of ironyObama, Kerry, and others have latched onto this trope about defending an international norm that goes back ninety years; one that only Hitler and Saddam Hussein violated. I am grateful for people like retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson for blowing a hole in this line of attack. What, one might ask, is the distinction between using Sarin and using napalm, white phosphorus, agent orange, or depleted uranium? The short answer is that we have used all of the latter four, while our enemies have used the more garden variety poison gas. These are all indiscriminate, deadly weapons, based in chemistry, that can kill large numbers of people. Not that being blown up by fragmentation grenades is any walk in the park. You have to wonder how these people can make so measured a choice in these matters.

And yet, here we are, ready to ride headlong into this burgeoning regional conflict – in some ways, just the latest chapter of the international / inter-faith battle that earlier manifested itself as the Iran-Iraq war, with the Sunni-ruled Gulf states (and the U.S.) backing Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Shi’ite Iran on the other side. The consequences of diving into this fight are highly unpredictable, but Obama and team appear willing to take whatever chances are necessary. They are determined to confront Iran; this is just the means by which they are choosing to do it.

If you agree with me, call your congressperson, your senators, and let them know you think this is a bad idea. There’s a good chance they’ll vote this down if enough of them hear from us.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Red lines, green lights.

By the time you read this, we may already be at war with Syria. That’s how bad this is getting. On Friday, John Kerry laid out the administration’s case for intervention. It’s basically one of credibility – has a strange sound coming from the mouth of John Kerry, I must say, for a couple of reasons. First: that the Vietnam War, which he fought in and ultimately became a vocal opponent of, was often justified on the same grounds. Second: that we have no credibility in any meaningful sense. Whatever chimera of that was lost with the invasion of Iraq.

Obama drew a red line. That is what we are defending. Our action will do nothing to protect civilians in Syria. It will do nothing to tamp down the flames of civil war. Far from it, in fact … it will pour gasoline on the conflict, quite probably enabling it to spread dramatically beyond that sorry nation’s borders. All across the media, there’s this tiresome meme about how we have to do something, something to punish the Assad regime. If we allow them to get away with this, the story goes, it will embolden them to go further and embolden others to follow suit. Obama seems to think it’s just two days of bombing and then off to Switzerland. What’s wrong with this picture?

The notion that it is incumbent upon us to launch a military attack when someone kills scores of people is cracked. If that were the case, we should invade ourselves. We used white phosphorus in Falujah, but even beyond that, we killed thousands there alone in the two battles. Has anyone been held to account? Has anyone been held accountable for anything we’ve done in Iraq … or elsewhere in the world, for that matter? What kind of precedent does that impunity set? Haven’t we emboldened every tin-pot president on Earth to unilaterally attack any country at any time for any reason?

To behave as if there’s a different standard for us than there is for everyone else is just old-fashioned imperialism. That’s what this impending war is … aside from being just plain stupid.