Tag Archives: obama

Political Rants

Twenty Years and Counting … And Counting.

This week marked the 20th anniversary of our illegal and profoundly immoral post-9/11 prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Lord knows I’ve been posting about it long enough.) And though the Afghan war is over, there’s no end in sight for the remaining 39 prisoners captured following our invasion of that unhappy country.

At a time when we should be following through on multiple presidents’ pledge to shut the place down, we’re doing the exact opposite. Biden’s Pentagon is planning another $4 million secret court room in the island compound. Looks like we’re planning on prosecuting some detainees, though under what auspices it’s not clear.

Never the less, let’s look at some of what is clear about Gitmo.

Where the hell is it, again?

Okay, so … the United States has hundreds of military installations around the world, including a significant number in Central and South America. But typically those facilities operate in what we consider to be friendly countries. The reason is simple – our military is an imposing presence, so much so that only a friend could tolerate their presence.

But Guantanamo is located in Cuba, a country that has been under unrelenting attack from the United States since the very early 1960s. You would think we might have packed that place up long ago, but it’s too valuable an instrument of intimidation. Does anyone think Cuba willingly accepts the presence of a U.S. base on their territory, occupying their principal eastern-facing port? It’s a little hard for us to credibly criticize Russia for leaning on Ukraine when we do this kind of shit.

The remaining victims of GWOT

Thirty-nine detainees remain at Guantanamo, of whom 27 have not been charged with a crime. The remaining detainees are basically un-prosecutable by any reasonable standard, as they have been subjected to torture and forced interrogations. The Biden Administration has recently approved five detainees for release, but this means next to nothing. The prison at Guantanamo is a Kafkaesque trap, holding men whose lives mean nothing to their captors.

The fact is, they won’t be released because to do so would have negative political consequences. No president wants to take the heat for releasing “jihadists”, even if none of the detainees cleared for release has ever raised a hand against the U.S. When Obama lost his nerve on this issue back in 2009-10, that was our last chance to shut this dump down. Now the only thing that can kill Guantanamo is us.

What the hell do we do about it?

So glad you asked. We can call our representatives, our senators, our president, and tell them that twenty years is more than enough. Shut that atrocity down now and release the remaining detainees. Recompense them in some measure for the harm we caused them. Represented by a moron? I know the feeling! Call him/her anyway.

luv u,

jp

P.S. just posted an new episode of Strange Sound – the first one in several months. Give it a listen at Anchor.fm or wherever you get your podcasts.

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Towards yet another new cold war

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. As a society, we appear to be stuck in a holding pattern, circling our somewhat fractured collective memory of the Cold War. It seems we long for the illusion of a simple, good guys v. bad guys conflict, and we will stop at nothing to conjure one up again.

The echoes of the previous Cold War still reverberate, sometimes in odd and almost laughable ways. For instance, this week my Congressional Rep. Claudia Tenney called Pope Francis a communist. She is, of course, an unreconstructed Trumpist just visible under a faded coat of John Birch Society lacquer. But putting aside retrograde small-fry politicians mired in the failed policies of previous decades, we face a much larger problem.

Paging Howard Phillips!

Back in the days before the Internet, crazy people could only make their voices heard on radio and direct access cable television. One of those crazy people was the late Howard Phillips, co-founder of the American Constitution party or Taxpayers’ Party. Phillips had a regular show on direct access in the 1980s and 90s where he would rail against China, show scary videos, and look kind of grisly on his best days.

The reason I raise this is that even back then, this mentality was dated. We used to laugh about Phillips’s big map of “Red China” behind his desk, straight from the 1950s. Now he’s gone, but the anti-China rhetoric is still with us. Don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty to criticize about China. But people in glass houses …. etc. The folks that angst over China’s policy towards Taiwan probably don’t give Puerto Rico’s status a moment’s thought.

Barry’s pivot, redux

True to form, Biden is resuscitating some of the worst parts of Obama’s foreign policy while preserving some of the worst elements of Trump’s. Both of his predecessors took aim at China, most notably Obama, whose “pivot to Asia” filled me with both dread and anger at the time. (What’s with the “pivot” language? Clearly meant to conjure up images of howitzers, or some gun fighter turning on his heel.)

This is obviously a priority for Biden, as indicated by the fact that he was willing to put the French government’s nose out of joint in service to their planned confrontation with China. They have continued training exercises, started under Trump, with the Taiwanese military, and extended arms sales. What’s more, their pullout from Afghanistan has freed up additional forces that they can devote to confronting China.

Slow-motion train wreck

Look, folks – this is not good. We are heading for a conflict with a nation of over a billion people The policies we are putting in place will eventually lead to military clashes between our two countries, whether intentional or accidental. That would have catastrophic consequences.

We need to stop this madness before it starts. Make clear to your congressional representatives that you do not want this coming war. Tell your friends and neighbors, even the Trump-ites. My guess is that no one wants this to happen, so the sooner we make our voices heard, the better.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Making the bombs more drop-able.

I don’t know if you noticed this in an otherwise busy week of news, but at some point renowned Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released an a previously redacted classified U.S. government report from the late 1950s.

The document included discussion of the possibility of using nuclear weapons on mainland China at a moment of heightened conflict between China and Taiwan, which China regards (not incoherently) as a breakaway province. This was over the island chain called Quemoy and Matsu in the Straits of Taiwan – disputed real estate that came up in one of John Kennedy’s televised debates with Richard Nixon. (The report, prepared by the Rand Corporation, was among a cache of secret documents Ellsberg had taken along with the Pentagon Papers.)

I would like to be able to say that this was the only instance of the United States threatening to use nuclear weapons in conflicts following the Second World War. Sadly, I cannot. We considered using them in Korea and in Vietnam, then fortunately thought better of it. (I seem to remember Nixon exhorting Kissinger to “think big” when he suggested it.) We also came close to triggering a nuclear exchange by accident, through recklessness, more than once. (See my posts on nuclear weapons for some discussion of this.)

A New Generation of Threat

Another thing I would like to think is that we have gained some wisdom with regard to these weapons over the years. I have yet to see evidence of this. The fact is, we are in the process of investing many, many billions of dollars into “upgrading” our nuclear arsenal. This was a process brought along considerably by President Obama, and of course signed on to by Trump and now Biden.

Part of the rationale for this upgrade is safety. But what the hell is safe about an H-bomb? The thing is just inherently dangerous, is it not?

Good Things Do Not Come in Small Packages

What’s particularly frightening about the next generation of nuclear bombs is the advent of low-yield “bunker buster” weapons. These bombs are extremely destabilizing, as they blur the line between nuclear and conventional weapons. They make it simpler for commanders and political leaders to transition to a nuclear conflict in the midst of some overseas dust-up that they get themselves (and the rest of us) into.

Of course, nuclear components have been used in our conventional munitions for decades. The depleted uranium shell casings employed by our military nominally as a means of penetrating armor have been the source of radioactive hot spots in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. These weapons are effectively dirty bombs we deploy pretty liberally.

We’ve Got Shit To Do

One thing we can do to stop this craziness is to tell our congressional representatives to support legislation restricting spending on the ongoing nuclear “upgrade” and expansion. One piece of legislation in the works is Senator Markey’s SANE Act, which was reintroduced just this past week. This bill would cut $73 billion from the planned $1.7 trillion spending on nukes over the next thirty years. Of course, we need to do more than that, but bills like this one represent a good start on starving the beast. Worth a call to your Rep and your Senators. And your President.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.