Tag Archives: war

Political Rants

Permanent rule.

I’ve heard a lot of commentary in recent days about the state of affairs in Egypt, in Russia – about the primacy of the military and the intelligence services in the political life of those countries. Not as much about our own permanent government. I’m talking about the national security regime that persists independently, it seems, of what administration occupies the White House or runs the Congress. It’s a little hard to pass judgment on others when we ourselves have accommodated to something less than democratic rule.

It’s not that this is totally new. We had the Vietnam war, for instance, through Democratic and Republican presidencies, fought with comparable levels of savagery. The latest cycle, which started on September 11 2001, just nine months into the new century, seems much more pervasive, opened ended, and unquenchable. We invaded Afghanistan and still haven’t left. We’ve expanded our expionage and “homeland” security apparatus to encompass literally thousands of federal and contract installations, employing millions of people. We are spied upon in a way that makes the cold war East German state seem amateurish by comparison.

Is this the problem? Really?Even something as seemingly simple as closing Guantanamo. It would have enormous symbolic value, of course. But even though the president professes to want it closed, it remains open. Why? Why haven’t those cleared for release been released? Why haven’t the ones determined innocent / not a threat been moved to some residential setting that isn’t a prison cell? It’s almost as if that policy level is beyond the reach of democratically elected officials. We seem frozen in place since 9/11, unable to adjust our course, unable to accomplish practically anything aside from blowing things up, assassinating people, and spying on their ass. Hunger striking inmates are force fed, even though the president – a constiitutional lawyer – knows that that is abusive and wrong. Can’t change it.

We have to take power back from this permanent government, even if it means standing in the street and facing it down.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Into the fray.

The Bush… I mean, Obama administration announced today that it would be providing arms to the Syrian opposition, whoever that may be. Not too hard to see that coming, I suppose. When a man draws a red line, it’s because he’s already all too eager to step across it. The Syrian conflict is like that shiny new car our government and our corporate media (including its NPR/PBS sidecar) just want, want, WANT more than anything. They’re ready to let the old Afghan clunker go, were able to pawn off their Iraqi wreck, and they just keep driving by that showroom lot, looking at that awesome Syrian number.

Already, I have heard more about the numbers of killed in Syrian than I ever heard about the Iraq catastrophe. Again, no surprise. The government and the press meticulously count the victims of official enemies, but when it comes to the corpses generated by our misguided policies, we don’t do body counts. They still won’t put a realistic number on the lives lost in Iraq, hovering around the casual 30K guess Bush made in 2007 or so. I suppose once we have both legs in the mire of this conflict they will stop counting again. But for now, the statistics are useful – they are trying to push the American people closer to intervention, and it’s evident that the effort isn’t working very well. Less than one in four is in favor of intervention.

Not hard to see why. Two wars over the past twelve years, with more than 6,700 Americans killed. The very real probability that our sophisticated and destructive weapons will wind up in the hands of fanatical militants. Skepticism over the case for chemical weapon use by the regime. Who can blame us, right? The scare talk about Hezbollah is probably a bridge too far for most, as well. Frankly, they are engaged in something close to an existential struggle. If their patron Assad falls and is replaced by a Sunni-dominated regime, that puts an enemy on their eastern flank. They already have Israel to their south. Forget religion, politics, propaganda for a minute – if you were one of their strategists, what would you do?

Then there’s the small matter of the overwhelming majority of Americans being against this. But then, we were in favor of background checks, too. So long as McCain is happy, we can pound salt, apparently.

luv u,

jp

 

Political Rants

Big crimes and little ones.

I’m going to do a brief post about false equivalency, and I want to preface this by saying that I am against the Obama drone war and the ongoing program of detainee detention and (I’m certain) abuse. This would be wrong under any president, and no less under this one. In addition to being morally bankrupt, it is strategically incoherent; worse, detrimental to our long term security. We are, in essence, investing in future generations of terrorists, determined to do us harm based on the carnage we have carried out on their persons, their families, their communities.

Bush explosion or Obama explosion?
Bush explosion or Obama explosion?

That said, I also want to take issue with this argument I keep hearing that this administration is as bad as the last one with respect to extralegal killing, aggressive foreign policy, etc. It is bad enough to be against, bad enough to protest, but if we are comparing Obama with Bush II, there is simply no comparison. It was Bush who started both the Afghan and the Iraq wars, one of which we are still engaged in. These actions alone resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, uncounted thousands of abused detainees, both at the hands of U.S. personnel and under the merciless attentions of our grisly allies.

There is a tendency to minimize the crimes of the Bush era. Joe Scarborough, for instance, talked this week about the last adminstration having waterboarded “three people”. This is ludicrous. Of course, the most famous instances were those three high-value detainees he’s referencing, but there certainly were other instances of waterboarding, and many, many more instances of far worse abuses in Baghram, in Abu Garaib, and elsewhere. We like to shrink the past down to a digestible size, but this is just willful ignorance. Make no mistake – If there were an effective International Criminal Court, Bush/Cheney would be in line ahead of Obama. But they would all be in that line.

We can acknowledge that both administrations are dead wrong on this. But when it comes to comparisons, don’t even go there.

luv u,

jp