Tag Archives: Cheney

Political Rants

Ten years after.

It’s been a decade since the start of a war that never should have happened, and we are still waiting for some accountability. More than 4,400 Americans killed – more than the number killed on Sept. 11 2001 by 19 individuals from countries other than Iraq. (Mostly from Saudi, but you get the point.) Estimates are in the hundreds of thousands for Iraqi deaths related to the conflict – Les Roberts’ Iraq Study Group had it well north of 600,000 back in 2006, and that was adjusting for concentrated areas of losses like Fallujah. That puts us in Milosovic territory for sure, and more like Suharto-land. The Serbian leader was brought to justice; not so much Indonesia’s dictator. The difference between those two cases have less to do with the magnitude of the crimes, more to do with the magnitude of their geopolitical allies.

Mistakes were madeThat’s why I have long been a skeptic of the International Criminal Court. I have said this before, shouted it on the podcast, and I will say it again here: until they haul someone from a powerful country to The Hague, the effort will be a meaningless exercise. Iraq is an excellent test case. Given the number of deaths, given the destruction of a society, given the craven nature of the attack and the fact that it was an aggressive war – the most serious category of crime – our leaders should have been indicted at the very least. Nothing. Freaking. Useless.

Not only are the architects of the disastrous Iraq war not being held accountable, they are in fact skating from television program to television program, attempting to rewrite Iraq into a screaming success. They are, in effect, flaunting the law, daring it to come after them because they know it won’t, taunting the cowardly administration that shields them. Even worse, they are working to get us into the next conflict, in Iran, Syria, wherever. Not only aren’t they sorry about the catastrophe they brought upon Iraq and ourselves, they are only too eager to repeat the crime.

To paraphrase the president, are we really powerless in the face of such carnage? I think perhaps, but only by design. American political life demonstrates again and again how powerful the will of the people can be. Look at gay rights. Look at immigration. Our government has worked to insulate us from the experience of war by canceling the draft, borrowing the funds to keep the fighting going, etc. Perhaps we are simply not connected enough to act dramatically.

Perhaps. But nothing ever changes unless we do.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Crying thief.

My guess is that Marco Rubio is speaking now as I write these lines, serving up a fitting introduction for the nominee – or Rominee – of last resort for the Republican party. A speech filled with platitudes about freedom from, I don’t know, the tyranny of a pension or reliable health insurance in your old age, spoken by the son of escapees from communist Cuba. As Ryan put it on Wednesday night, the present-day G.O.P. sees everything to the left of Ayn Rand as sclerotic socialism, including legislative initiatives – like the individual mandate and cap and trade – that they themselves invented only a handful of years ago. (Ryan himself couldn’t even stick to his Randian creed for three minutes, decrying a nanny state where “everything is free except you” then paying tribute to the Medicare his mother purportedly depends on.)

I don’t know about these guys, but that “everything free” part probably sounds pretty attractive to a lot of Americans right now. While they equate Obama with Castro, Barry is much, much closer to them than he is to the bearded one in Havana. Would that he had put his shoulder behind expanding Medicare instead of this republican inspired, Heritage Foundation formulated health insurance scheme they call “Obamacare”. Would that he had committed himself to full employment along the lines of what Robert Pollin is recommending, among others. Those are positions worth defending. The problem Obama has right now is not the Republicans … it is his own flaccid liberalism, hopelessly compromised from the first stage of negotiation.

In truth, the Republicans, led by millionaire Romney, should be easy as hell to beat. They have zero credibility on the economy, no track record to speak of. Obama at least had the Clinton years – what does Romney have? The Republicans crashed the economy; now they want the driver’s seat back. They nearly destroyed the empire it took decades of rapacious interventionism to build. They have an ex-president, a mere four years out of office, that played no role in their convention. Did anyone mention him even once? They appear to think that by disowning the historically incompetent Bush/Cheney and pretending not to remember their tenure that they can induce amnesia amongst the rest of the body politic. They believe that by pointing elsewhere and crying “thief”, they can rob again.

Now that the balloons have fallen on Romney/Ryan (and we have been treated to the spectacle of evident dementia-sufferer Clint Eastwood rambling aimlessly on national television), it’s fair to respond to that question they always ask four years into an opponent’s presidency – namely, are you better off than you were four years ago. Four years ago, we were in free fall, the credit system of the world’s largest economy was shutting down, and hundreds of thousands were being thrown out of work. Four years ago, Bush’s war of choice in Iraq was still killing young soldiers by the dozen. Unless you’re as demented as Clint Eastwood, you probably remember all that.

Yes, we’re better off than we were in 2008. Still not good, but it takes a lot of work to get out of a hole as deep as the one Romney’s party dug us into.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Old wine, new bottle.

The Bush administration is over (for the most part), right? Well, not so fast. Yes, they started two disastrous wars, killing enough people to make Milosevic and Suharto blush. Yes, they shook the empire to its foundations, so much so that they spent the last two years of their tenure under the watchful eye of an imperial overseer (Robert Gates). Yes, their ludicrously ham-fisted foreign policy – coupled with monumental domestic blunders – resulted in the near-total collapse of the American economy, bringing on the first proper depression since the 1930s. But none of that means they shouldn’t be put back in charge again, right?

I think I felt the earth tremble just then. Yeah, nobody wants that … really. And yet there is a very real possibility that many of the same people who ran Bush’s foreign policy – including the most extreme of the neoconservative cadre – could have their sweaty, blood-stained hands back on the levers of imperial power this coming January. The cabal advising Mitt Romney is basically a reunion tour of the nasty little group that started the Iraq war. Ari Berman ticked through their ranks in The Nation this past week. Heading up that group is John Bolton, who could very well end up Secretary of State, but he also has an ear cocked towards Dan Senor (Bush’s former coalition provisional authority spokesperson), Eric Edelman, Cofer Black, Robert Kagan, and many other once and continuing fans of the horrendous Iraq enterprise.

Did they learn anything from their disasters? Not really. The Iraq war is still a good thing, in their estimation. But more than that – it’s important to bear one thing in mind about this crew. They are basically successors to the Reagan team on foreign policy, like Reagan: the next generation (or de-generation). They’ve been back in power once since then, and it was, if anything, worse than Reagan. Every time they come back, they are worse than before. If you thought W’s eight years were hellish, just wait.

Don’t say you’re only concerned with economics. My friend, this is economics.  The Afghan and Iraq wars blew massive holes in the federal budget and are still bleeding us dry ten years later. Romney wants to keep the Afghan deployment going and would undoubtedly get us stuck somewhere else as well. Moreover, he is planning something like a 20% increase in Pentagon spending. That will mean bleeding domestic programs even further, which will take the air out of the U.S. economy (as austerity always does – see last week.)

Elections have consequences. 1980, 2000, and 2004 showed us that. Keep that in mind as you ponder the value of your franchise (and I don’t mean the fast-food restaurants you own).

luv u,

jp