Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Political Rants

Stuff and… other stuff.

All right, here are a few wild passes at some current issues.

Leaking the obvious. Now that there’s a concerted effort by telecom corporations to shut down access to Wikileaks and a man hunt underway for Julian Assange, perhaps someone should stop and consider how asinine this vendetta truly is. It’s the internet, for chrissake… if the documents get lifted, they will certainly be posted somewhere. And sure, the cables are embarrassing to diplomats, etc. But are any of the most publicized revelations in the latest Wikileaks document dump at all surprising? Consider…

  • Iranian influence in Iraq. Well, there’s a shocker. Iran has been spending money in Iraq, has relationships with many of its senior leaders. Is it possible that anyone would be surprised by this? Iraq is a majority Shi’a country, like Iran. There are longstanding cultural, religious, and political ties between these two neighboring states, and many Iraqi political figures took exile in Iran during the Saddam years. Speaking of which, Iran was attacked by a U.S.-supported Iraq in the 1980s, in an eight-year conflict that cost them probably a million lives. If I were them, I would be deeply interested in what happens in Iraq…. especially since we’re still the power behind the throne.
  • Yemen. The Yemeni leadership lied about their role in approving drone strikes against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Who would have guessed?

What else? The government in Afghanistan is corrupt? Pakistan doesn’t want us to control its nuclear materials? Colonel Qaddafi is weird? Here’s my shocked face. 

Can you say “Stim”? Republicans claim to be looking for ways to create “growth” and jobs. Hey, Boehner, hey Cantor – stop looking! Unemployment benefits are just the ticket. They are conceded to be one of the most effective ways of creating economic activity, because it’s money sent to people who spend it right away. Analysts estimate that about a million jobs would be lost if the extension is passed. With the official unemployment rate nudging 10%, this is no time to demonstrate what cheapskates you are. So Dems, find your spine for five minutes. And GOP, get the hell out of the way. It’s not only smart economics – it’s the right goddamned thing to do.

Political Rants

Big words.

No time to think, less to write, so this is right off the top of my head.

Food Fights. Those are the words that come to mind when I think of this year’s political campaigns. I remember 2006 being similarly acrimonious, but honestly, this year is worse. It seems like there are nothing but attack ads. Even the nice-nice “Hi, I’m blankety-blank and I want to be your blank” ads have a poison pill embedded in them for the opposition. The California gubernatorial race has descended to an exchange of “He’s a liar!” and “She’s a whore!” in something reminiscent of my junior high lunch room. The New York race is, if anything, even more surreal in its nastiness. I’m anticipating a crush of toxic direct mail in the closing weeks – lookout, mailbox!

Imperial Prerogatives. There has been a lot of reporting on Pakistan the last couple of weeks. Their military closed a crossing to U.S. convoys on the Af-Pak border in response to a range of disagreements, not least of which are disputes over U.S. and NATO (essentially U.S.) incursions into Pakistani national territory. There is a kind of impatience to the reporting, communicating the administration’s and the military’s frustration with Pakistan’s failure to adequately support their seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. It’s reminiscent of the official line during the Vietnam war, when American officials would complain about “sanctuaries” in Cambodia and Laos, while they confidently flew devastating bombing runs out of their own “sanctuaries” in Thailand and elsewhere.

This week starts our tenth year in this war, and we seem – if anything – farther from the end than we were when it started. We are more than seven years into Iraq, and now appear to be fighting in Pakistan. Where does this end? Does anyone still think that we are accomplishing anything besides investing in generations of people who hate our guts? That fact is already manifesting itself in Iraq, where the new legions of Al Qaeda fighters are internal refugees, disaffected and ready for revenge. Our dismal performance in the wake of Pakistan’s recent disastrous floods – barring refugees from the sanctuary of one of our air bases; failing to press our military helicopters into disaster relief operations; and some say worse – will gain us the love of very few survivors. This war itself is a disaster, perpetuated by us. And it is one we have the power to end.

Summers Out. Larry Summers is off to make more millions consulting for the investment banks he defended in the White House. High time, too.  

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Jihad-jitsu.

How are we our own worst enemy? So many ways, it seems. 9/11 – much referenced by conservative politicians – can be seen as an example of extremists using our own flawed technology and screwed up national infrastructure against us. (And with national assets like the Minerals Management Service and a toothless Securities and Exchange Commission, we hardly need Al Qaeda… As Richard Pryor might have put it, we’re kicking our own ass.) 

 Here are, it seems to me, a few obvious ways we facilitate those we are supposedly fighting:

The “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy. This is an unexpected bonanza for jihadi recruitment. It validates much of the propaganda about an America at war with Islam. It demonstrates the depth of our political pathology and our willingness to scapegoat more than 1 billion people because of the actions of a handful of criminally insane zealots. And it does so at the worst possible time, when expectations in the Islamic world are already being deflated by Obama’s Bush-like foreign policy. Jihadi leaders hope that this controversy will drag on, I’m sure, or that the Park 51 center will be forced to relocate in Staten Island so that its detractors, flush with victory, will expand their campaign against Muslims.   

Drone Strikes in Pakistan. Let me set aside, for a moment, the notion that extrajudicial murder, domestic or foreign, is just plain wrong and criminal. This CIA and private paramilitary-driven effort should be named the “Hothead Jihadi Promotion Program.” Every time we kill some functionary in the Taliban, he (and it likely is a he) is most likely replaced by someone younger, more zealous, and less open to compromise. Killing senior leadership means that inexperienced hotheads straight out of Kill! Kill! camp will be making all the decisions. Add to that the fact that we’re also killing hundreds of civilians, thereby generating more and more young people who hate us like fire… enough to, I don’t know, join the Taliban?   

Iraq’s Forgotten Refugees. There are still millions of disaffected Iraqis living in squalid conditions in Jordan and Syria, two of the poorest nations in the Middle East. Their homes have been destroyed, their country is a bloody mess, and their future is grim. We are doing next to nothing to recompense these folks in some way. Where do you think this is headed?

luv u,

jp