Tag Archives: mccain

Political Rants

Sand and salt.

Non-stop fun here in the land of the free. No coincidence that this is the week they dedicated the George W. Bush presidential library. Some of the key “decision points” of his presidency were in play this week. Let’s start with a honking big one.

Syria. Bush’s political allies (and many in the “muscular” liberal establishment) have been pushing for wider involvement in the Syrian conflict for a good long while now. This week, unconfirmed reports of the use of sarin gas by the Assad regime surfaced this week, by way of the Israeli and French intelligence services, for the most part. The Obama administration intelligence services seem ambivalent and non-commital on this evidence, but not so Admiral … I mean Senator John McCain and some of his clones, who really really really wants another mid East conflict on his resume of error.

Mac is back
Mac is back!

McCain is once again proving why he would have been a catastrophic president. He affects to believe that creating a “safe zone” in northern Syria and arming the fractious opposition (which includes a strong element of jihadi fighters from the Gulf) will not lead to a broader confilct that will commit us to another long-term occupation of a Middle Eastern state, ignite a broader international war, and generally result in another Iraq-like catastrofuck. I say, let’s just drop McCain on Syria, since he’s so eager to put someone’s life on the line. And if chemical weapons are a “red line”, we should have drawn it before using white phosphorus and depleted uranium munitions in Iraq. If Syria goes to the Hague, they should be in line right behind us.

Seneca Lake. A blockade by activists at the site of a salt cavern natural gas storage site being established by Inergy LLP resulted in arrests a few weeks ago. One of those arrested, Sandra Steingraber, was interviewed on the Capital Pressroom radio program this week along with her attorney. This project involves storing natural gas shipped in from outside the state in salt caverns left from old salt mining operations. Similar facilities across the nation have caused sinkholes, water pollution, etc., and now they want to site this thing on the largest of the Finger Lakes. Steingraber and her fellow protesters are fighting the good fight on this one. Pumping natural gas into geologically questionable formations beneath one of the largest fresh water lakes in the region seems like, well, not a real good idea.

Energy coporations and faulty intelligence. It’s like Bush all over again.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

On accountability.

I suppose I’m old enough to grumble about stuff I can’t control. And right now I’m irritated enough to take a personal swipe at some of the old white men running the country from their comfy chairs in the United States Congress. But rather than sound like John McCain, I’m going to limit myself to saying that the Senate confirmation hearing for Chuck Hagel was pretty disgraceful for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the simple fact that the man was being criticized for the high points in his career – the stuff he got right, for chrissake. The Republicans on the panel hate their old colleague because he’s not bug-fuck nuts enough.

See, this is what happens when you don’t hold people accountable. If someone had paid some kind of price for driving us into the Iraq war, maybe John McCain and others wouldn’t feel so confident about grilling Hagel on a marginal point like the “surge” strategy. Republican House Caucus (Visual Approximation)Even by their reading of it as being an indisputable success (which killed about 1,200 Americans, b.t.w.), it could only possibly be seen as a minor corrective to one of the most heinous strategic blunders in the history of the American empire, as well as a major international crime of aggression that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and massive displacement. If Hagel was against the “surge”, it’s only because their war had gone so badly and that they had proven themselves incapable of managing the conflict.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a huge fan of Hagel. He did the right thing by being outspoken about the war in the middle of the last decade, and I respected him greatly for it. But he will no doubt be a reliable steward of the imperial project, just as Obama has proven himself to be. People have short memories – not so very long ago, when Bush II was in his prime, American power was shaken to its very foundation by their insane foreign policy gambles. McCain himself was right on board with it all. It has taken years to emerge from the hole they dug us into, and yet because they haven’t been held accountable, they behave as though they were right all along. Again … disgraceful.

So, who’s more bug-fuck nuts, McCain or the yargle-bargle caucus in the House? The answer may surprise you.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Empire building.

Not a lot of time on my hands just now, so I’ll just take a few wild swipes at some foreign policy issues.

Benghazi hearings. It’s a little hard to suppress laughter when I hear Republicans complaining about the Sept. 11 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. As only they can do, they are keeping the flame of this ludicrous conspiracy theory alive even though it was cooked up on the fly late in the election season to offer Romney a foreign policy talking point. The Obama administration rose to the bait back then, of course, and probably said way too much about the attack, trying to put the controversy to rest; they’ve been backpedaling ever since, probably kicking themselves for having commented so much in reaction to Romney’s ridiculous embargoed media release on 9/11.

Keep the ball rollin', keep the ball rollin'....
Sen. McCain sings an old favorite.

The fact remains, though, that the attack killed three Americans. Three too many, of course, but the senators who are complaining the loudest – McCain, for instance, and the yargle-bargle caucus in the GOP-controlled House – are directly responsible for many, many American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, based on manipulation of intelligence, including faulty claims extracted through torture. I’m no fan of Hillary Clinton, but I was glad to see her knock it back to them a bit. (Spoiler alert: she voted to authorize Bush’s war in Iraq, too.)

Bad options. As they vet John Kerry to replace Clinton at State, the North Koreans are signalling more missile tests. Talk here is that all options are on the table, but any fool can see that there is no military solution to the disagreement with North Korea. Wipe them off the map? We did that back in the 1950s – that’s an important part of how we got to this point today. Memo to Kerry: This is solvable without resort to pointless killing; that should simply be off the table.

Iran again. Prevention is the strategy on Iranian nuclear weapons? Could have fooled me. We invaded and destroyed countries on either side of Iran, neither of which possessed nuclear weapons. We didn’t attack Libya when they had nuclear capability, and then attacked them when they gave it up. Our “Axis of Evil”, which included Iran, featured Iraq (no nukes; attacked in 2003) and North Korea (nukes; not attacked). If you were Iran, what lesson would you draw from this?

luv u,

jp