EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Report: Toxic Chemicals Found in Thousands of Children's Products
- Move Over, Koch Brothers: A Bigger, Darker Rightwing Funder Is Out to Destroy Public Education
- You and Your Family Are Guinea Pigs for the Chemical Corporations
- After Boston, Eyes-Wide Open Hope?
- The Life and Death of Words, People, and Even Nature
Popular content
Today's Top News
Obama at the Precipice
Tough Guys Don't Need to Dance in Afghanistan
We all know what happened. LBJ listened to the generals and foreign policy experts and escalated, with tragic consequences for the United States and calamitous results for the Vietnamese people on the receiving end of American firepower. Drawn deeper and deeper into Vietnam, LBJ would soon lose his way and eventually his will, refusing to run for reelection in 1968.
President Obama now stands at the edge of a similar precipice. Should he acquiesce to General Stanley A. McChrystal's call for 40,000 to 60,000 or more U.S. troops for Afghanistan? Or should he pursue a new strategy, downsizing our commitment, even withdrawing completely, a decision that would help him focus on national health care, among his other top domestic priorities?
The die, I fear, is cast. In his "war of necessity," Obama has evidently already ruled out even considering a "reduction" option, no less a withdrawal one, and will likely settle on an "escalate lite" program involving more troops (though not as many as McChrystal has urged), more American trainers for the Afghan army, and even a further escalation of the drone war over the Pakistani borderlands and new special operations actions.
By failing his first big test as commander-in-chief this way, Obama will likely ensure himself a one-term presidency, and someday be seen as a man like LBJ whose biggest dreams broke upon the shoals of an unwinnable war.
The Conventional Wisdom: Military Escalation
To whom, we may ask, is Obama listening as he makes his decision on Afghanistan strategy and troop levels? Not the skeptics, it's safe to assume. Not the free-thinkers, not today's equivalents of Mary McCarthy or Norman Mailer. Instead, he's doubtless listening to the generals and admirals, or the former generals and admirals who now occupy prominent "civilian" positions at the White House and inside the beltway.
By his actions, Obama has embraced the seemingly sober, conventional wisdom that senior military officers, whether on active duty or retired, have, as they say in the corridors of the Pentagon, "subject matter expertise" when it comes to strategy, war, even foreign policy.
Don't we know better than this? Don't we know, as Glenn Greenwald recently reminded us, that General McChrystal's strategic review was penned by a "war-loving foreign policy community," in which the usual suspects -- "the Kagans, a Brookings representative, Anthony Cordesman, someone from Rand" -- were rounded up to argue for more troops and more war?
Don't we know, as Tom Engelhardt recently reminded us, that Obama's "civilian" advisors include "Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who is the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Douglas Lute, a lieutenant general who is the president's special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan (dubbed the "war czar" when he held the same position in the Bush administration), and James Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, who is national security advisor, not to speak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency"? Are we surprised, then, that when we "turn crucial war decisions over to the military, [we] functionally turn foreign policy over to them as well"? And that they, in turn, always opt for more troops, more money, and more war?
One person unsurprised by this state of affairs would have been Norman Mailer, who died in 2007. War veteran, famed author of the war novel The Naked and the Dead (1948) as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning report on Vietnam-era protests, The Armies of the Night (1968), self-styled tough guy who didn't dance, Mailer witnessed (and dissected) the Vietnam analog to today's Afghan events. Back in 1965, Mailer bluntly stated that the best U.S. option was "to get out of Asia." Period.
The Unconventional Wisdom: Military Extrication
Can Obama find the courage and wisdom to extricate our troops from Afghanistan? Courtesy of Norman Mailer, here are three unconventional pointers that should be driving him in this direction:
1. Don't fight a war, and clearly don't escalate a war, in a place which means so little to Americans. In words that apply quite readily to Afghanistan today, Mailer wrote in 1965: "Vietnam [to Americans] is faceless. How many Americans have ever visited that country? Who can say which language is spoken there, or what industries might exist, or even what the country looks like? We do not care. We are not interested in the Vietnamese. If we were to fight a war with the inhabitants of the planet of Mars there would be more emotional participation by the people of America."
2. Beware of cascading dominoes and misleading metaphors, whether in Southeast Asia or anywhere else. The domino theory held that if Vietnam, then split into north and south, was united under communism, other Asian countries, including Thailand, the Philippines, perhaps even India, would inevitably fall to communism as well, just like so many dominoes toppling. Instead, it was communism that fell or, alternately, morphed into a version that we could do business with (to paraphrase former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher).
We may no longer speak metaphorically of falling dominoes in today's Af-Pak theater of operations. Nevertheless, our fears are drawn from a similarly misleading image: If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, Pakistan will surely follow, opening a nuclear Pandora's Box to anti-American terrorists in which, in our fevered imaginations, smoking guns will once again become mushroom clouds.
Despite the fevered talk of falling dominoes in his era, Mailer was unmoved. Such rhetoric suggests, he wrote in 1965, "that we are not protecting a position of connected bastions so much as we are trying to conceal the fact that the bastions are about gone -- they are not dominoes, but sand castles, and a tide of nationalism is on the way in. It is curious foreign policy to use metaphors in defense of a war; when the metaphors are imprecise, it is a swindle."
To this I'd add that, in viewing countries and peoples as so many dominoes, which by the actions -- or the inaction -- of the United States are either set up or knocked down, we vastly exaggerate our own agency and emphasize our sense of self-importance. And before we even start in on the inevitable argument about "Who lost Afghanistan?" or "Who lost Pakistan?" is it too obvious to say that never for a moment did we own these countries and peoples?
3. Carrots and sticks may work together to move a stubborn horse, but not a proud people determined to find their own path. As Mailer put it, with a different twist: "Bombing a country at the same time you are offering it aid is as morally repulsive as beating up a kid in an alley and stopping to ask for a kiss."
As our Predator and Reaper drones scan the Afghan terrain below, launching missiles to decapitate terrorists while unintentionally taking innocents with them, we console ourselves by offering aid to the Afghans to help them improve or rebuild their country. As it happens, though, when the enemy hydra loses a head, another simply grows in its place, while collateral damage only leads to a new generation of vengeance-seekers. Meanwhile, promised aid gets funneled to multi-national corporations or siphoned off by corrupt government officials, leaving little for Afghan peasants, certainly not enough to win their allegiance, let alone their "hearts and minds."
If we continue to speak with bombs while greasing palms with dollars, we'll get nothing more than a few bangs for our $228 billion (and counting).
What if LBJ Had Listened to Mailer in '65?
Not long before LBJ crossed his Rubicon and backed escalation in Vietnam, he could have decided to pull out. Said Mailer:
"The image had been prepared for our departure -- we heard of nothing but the corruption of the South Vietnam government and the professional cowardice of the South Vietnamese generals. We read how a Viet Cong army of 40,000 soldiers was whipping a government army of 400,000. We were told in our own newspapers how the Viet Cong armed themselves with American weapons brought to them by deserters or captured in battle with government troops; we knew it was an empty war for our side."
Substitute "the Hamid Karzai government" for "the South Vietnam government" and "Taliban" for "Viet Cong" and the same passage could almost have been written yesterday about Afghanistan. We know the Karzai government is corrupt, that it stole the vote in the last election, that the Afghan army is largely a figment of Washington's imagination, that its troops sell their American-made weapons to the enemy. But why do our leaders once again fail to see, as Mailer saw with Vietnam, that this, too, is a recognizably "empty war for our side"?
Mailer experienced the relentless self-regard and strategic obtuseness of Washington as a mystery, but that didn't stop him from condemning President Johnson's decision to escalate in Vietnam. For Mailer, LBJ was revealed as "a man driven by need, a gambler who fears that once he stops, once he pulls out of the game, his heart will rupture from tension." Johnson, like nearly all Americans, Mailer concluded, was a member of a minority group, defined not in racial or ethnic terms but in terms of "alienat[ion] from the self by a double sense of identity and so at the mercy of a self which demands action and more action to define the most rudimentary borders of identity."
This American drive for self-definition through constant action, through headlong acceleration, even through military escalation, the novelist described, in something of a mixed metaphor, as "the swamps of a plague" in which Americans had been caught and continued to sink. He saw relief of the desperate condition coming only via "the massacre of strange people."
To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of Mailer's analysis here, more emotionally Heart-of-Darkness than coolly rational. But that's precisely why I want someone Mailer-esque -- pugnacious, free-swinging, and prophetical, provocative and profane -- advising our president. Right now.
As Obama's military experts wield their battlefield metrics and call for more force (to be used, of course, with ever greater precision and dexterity), I think Mailer might have replied: We think the only thing they understand is force. What if the only thing we understand is force?
Mailer, I have no doubt, would have had the courage to be seen as "weak" on defense, because he would have known that Americans had no dog in this particular fight. I think he would intuitively have recognized the wisdom of the great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who wrote more than 2,000 years ago in The Art of War that "to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill." Our generals, by way of contrast, seem to want to fight those 100 battles with little hope of actually subduing the enemy.
What Obama needs, in other words, is fewer generals and ex-generals and more Norman Mailers -- more outspoken free-thinkers who have no interest in staying inside the pentagonal box that holds Washington's thinking tight. What Obama needs is to silence the endless cries for more troops and more war emanating from the military and foreign policy "experts" around him, so he can hear the voices of today's Mailers, of today's tough-minded dissenters. Were he to do so, he might yet avoid repeating LBJ's biggest blunder -- and so avoid suffering his political fate as well.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
76 Comments so far
Show AllAnd fewer John McCains.
Interesting that the author avoids pointing a finger at the zionists and neocons who want the US to keep troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan in order to surround Iran.
q
Oh, and he didn't even mention overpopulation! Tsk. Tsk.
"What if LBJ Had Listened to Mailer in '65?" What if Obama had stopped listening to Billy McChrystal, grew a set a balls, and discontinued implementing the Chimp's foreign policy. Peace Prize my ass!
It was expecting too much, but BO should have canned McChrystal right after the general leaked his report. But you got to have balls to do that...
After decades of warfare, Alcibiades convinced the Athenians that it was necessary to attack Sicily in order to finally defeat Sparta during the Peloponnesian War.
The result was military disaster, and the end of the Athenian Empire.
If the U.S. persists in its utter folly in Afghanistan, it will only be a matter of time -- one year, five years, ten years -- before it must finally depart, and, with any luck at all, that could be the final failed bloody adventure for the American Empire.
The empire, and its adventures, are going to get more and more pathetic, but it's going to be a while before we see the last of its imperial blunderings.
As Mr. Astore rightly inquires, Where are the free thinkers? Indeed. They certainly do not appear to be located in the White House or on the talk shows of television. There are very few in the mainstream media who will remind the American viewers of what Sun Tzu once observed:
"All war is based on deception"
One has to wonder if anyone today will recall the words of H.L. Mencken:
"I believe in only one thing:liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone"
The ruling factor in any democracy is the will of the people.
The voice of the people has never demanded that its leadership
start a war.
It is always the leadership, of its own volition, not reflecting
the will of the people, that prepare for and start wars.
Then the people are propagandized to accept the war.
Therefore any country that starts a war is not a democracy.
Port lookout
Excellent comment. Allow me to follow that up by a most relevant observation by Eugene V. Debs:
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose-especially their lives."
That statement is just as true today as it was about a hundred years ago when Debs made that remark concerning the nature of capitalism.
Sioux Rose
LOOKOUT: You're correct, of course. And yet the game doesn't stop there, does it?
For once ensconced in war, then the same "deciders" turn around and curb civil liberties, generally claim more taxes, and in our current case, further police the domestic citizenry all in the "interest" of keeping us safe.
Just as Noam spoke about the manufacture of consent, the manufacture of enemies is equally important to the make-war state. And as a profitable side-effect it also produces a very-effective means for controling the population!
It doesn't matter who we vote for anymore we get George Bush. Our latest is a peace prize winner named ---- oh shit I forgot, it's something like A-Bomb-a or is it H-bomb-a I can never remember. You can bet your sweet ass it will be George Bush policy.
The enablers for Obama that think Obama's foreign policy is any different than Bush foreign policy need to wake up to reality. Anybody who strives to make a major and constructive change would not appoint Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. When soldiers are still coming home in body bsgs in 2012 and unemployment is still 10% or above, Obama will be beaten badly. It's inexcusable for the Dems to think the country would tolerate for 4 more years of bad Bush foreign AND economic policy masquerading as Obama policy. The Dems and Obama are going to get beat like a drum. Time to face the political reality.
Precipice, indeed. Pathetically, self-described War Secretary Gates is driving Air Bus I and instead of taking this Bush Hog (with lipstick) home to his Casa Blanca sty for a second term, is instead dropping The Chipper off the rear steps at Montgomery cliffs. Back to the Future: Obamanation!
FOLLOW THE MONEY! FOLLOW THE ANTICIPATION OF THE MONEY after such and such area is controlled subdued. FOLLOW THE MONEY and the profits on all "defense" armaments that need to be replaced when damaged or upgraded for increasing efficiency in killing "the enemy" and taking over. FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!
WAIGUOREN [CD comment on this essay]:
"If the U.S. persists in its utter folly in Afghanistan, it will only be a matter of time -- one year, five years, ten years -- before it must finally depart, and, with any luck at all, that could be the final failed bloody adventure for the American Empire."
We don't have five or ten years to devote to this insane folly. The DOOMSDAY CLOCK is ticking, and when most everything else is put on the back burner [climate change, green energy, earth- sustainable food production, ... clean air and water ...], it won't matter a damn anymore ... American Empire or anywhere else.
/cm
This is why we have continual nonsense from the financial networks saying the recession is over when it is clearly not. Unemployment at 10% (when it actually is higher) for 4 more years is not a recovery. It's a recession or worse. But these are the players behind Obama. It's almost laughable that Goldman Sachs and others think they can paint a happy face on what is essentially Depression Era economic consequences. But the voters are not going to buy it. Not one bit. The objective of these players are to keep the Wars going and keep regulatory hands off Wall Street. So again, don't expect any change in Afganistan with Obama.
I hate to say this but at least half of the electorate not only believes in fighting in Afghanistan, some of them say that Obama is not going hard enough and those would be the Mccain voters. Recently, I was on a trip to Livermore, CA and I sat down to a political discussion about Obama. Just like most voters in Oklahoma where I live in, those men sounded rowdy when they talk about Afghanistan and the war on terror. I was the lone objector to this war and they drove me crazy. You won't believe these people. I tried to reason with them and tell them about women and children. One of them replied with this "Well, if they wanna help win the war on terrorism, those Afghan women should abort their children !" I tried to tell them that abortion is not welcome in their culture and that they'll get punished possibly to death for this and then the guys laugh and another one of them say "Well, that's killing two birds with one stone !" I tried to tell them that the Afghans will hate us for this but they refuse. Another one of them says "Listen diaper boy, Obama is trying to win the war on terrorism and if he don't shoot hard enough, Sarah Palin will step in and shoot harder. If you don't like that, then move to Europe and go to bed with the terrorists !" These guys are nuts I tell you !
I'm surrounded by wackier rightwingers back here in the Sooner showing their racism against Muslims. If CA and OK can have fiendish racists like them, is it possible that there are millions more like them pressuring Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan even if no one is covering this? How do we stop our home grown madmen? Please help.
"Every country deals with future terrorism but only America declared war against it."
Shift attention to the DAFT law that started this madness. Shift attention to Congress, and you outflank all the anti-Obama hatred.
Congress started an impossible war which will break the US military (try that argument).
The only way to solve this basic war/peace problem is with general public support, and that means giving the 'wacky rightwingers' something, not just trying to convince them that their fears are groundless.
Here in the southernest California desert we see a bumper sticker:
If you won't stand behind the troops, at least stand in front of them.
No amount of wishing for a withdrawal from Afghanistan is going to succeed in garnering support from the many supporters of the military's effort.
No calling for withdrawal from the face of the enemy will succeed.
We need to end the DAFT war at the root, not try to order the troops to stop fighting on one battlefield. That hasn't worked and won't work.
- Peter Pike, try this
Ask your fellow conversationalists if they have read the declaration of war against terrorists? After all, the declaration against Germany in WW2 declared war against Germany and the German government. It was perfectly clear who the enemy was.
The declaration of war against terrorism declared war against enemies to be named later by the President.
The last President announced 'Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda'.
He also announced that the Taliban would be treated the same way (whatever that is supposed to mean).
The current President announced 'Our war is against al-Qaeda and its affiliates'.
Ask these people if they are going to enlist when the President announces the next enemy. Ask them if they want their children to be drafted and sent away to kill and die for Obama's next war.
Tell them that repealing Public Law 107-40 will take power away from 'King Obama' so that he can't do that to America.
Then tell them it's Congress's fault. Repeal the DAFT law, just as we repealed Prohibition when it obviously failed.
And thusly Progressives will garner enough public support to gain their objectives, while focusing discontent on Congress rather than on one man, lessening the volume at which what little discussion takes place, and educating the public about their civic duty to this Republic for which we stand.
Progressives should rally around an idea rather than continue to look for a leader, a single vulnerable person, to give them their wishes.
FYI...
"September 1, 2009, Fifty-seven percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday say they oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan, with 42 percent supporting the military mission."
Corrupt News Network adjustment: around 35 percent support the war, very believable given that 25 percent are blind followers of the Reps. May be yours was just bad luck?
Day after day articles appear about this madness, day after day Progressives moan about the lack of progress toward peace and the further US slide into the abyss. Many are so cynical or downhearted that it seems they cannot imagine any progress as being possible.
8 years of no progress, and 8 years of ignoring Public Law 107-40, the engine that drives all the craziness, the flaw of a law that keeps the US military at war forever against phantoms.
When will the Progressive movement see the connection?
- It's early in 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson faces a critical decision. -
That was right after Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution (Public Law 88-408), right after Congress sanctified the use of massive military force in SE Asia. Congress made the madness possible.
Yet, nobody 'cept me mentions the Congressional legislation that authorizes the use of US military force everywhere in the world (wherever someone finds/creates/imagines future terrorists).
End the DAFT war by repealing the DAFT law, just as we repealed Prohibition when it obviously failed.
Obama wins.
America loses.
Obama wins?
Is this a jab at his Prize?
Has anyone considered that the world was thanking the American people for electing this man and not the guy who sang "Bomb, bomb Iran"?
Things are not great - I totally agree - but the world is glad that we didn't elect yet another man who was gladly trying to bring on the end of times.
I humbly suggest that we stop looking to Santa Obama for our wishes, and stop blaming only him for our disappointments.
Much more progress can be gained from Congress, by way of a tiny little law that Congress intentionally ignores.
The majority of the public does NOT want an escalation to the war in Afganistan. That's just right-wing hyperbole. In the last few months, McCrystal's periodic surge or attempts to escalate the war has resulted in immediate and significant casualties for the U.S. You can almost hear a palpable moan from the country when this happens as it realizes any attempt to amp this war up will have the same result as Vietnam. Some of the country may have wanted this war originally but many have wised up since and realized it's unwinnable. There seems to be a sector of the country that wants it both ways: Continue the war in Afganistan and keep Obama in the White House. Impossible. The political fallout is yet to come.
"The majority of the public does NOT want an escalation to the war in Afganistan. " –(jimjazz)
–I believe what you fail to realize here is that even if 95%of the country opposed escalation, there would still be escalation. America is long passed the time when its political system responds to public desires or pressures. Voting and elections are little more than 'dog and pony shows.'
America's only true 'being,' its raison d'être, is now ineluctably defined by and only through war– which subsumes everything else. There is no countervailing force within the American political system that can challenge it by following the conventions of said system.
Once you have understood that seminal fact only then can real thinking begin. –(Jill Bains)
yes, there is no connection between the populace and the actions of the government, unless you count violent cops harassing protesters...the government is fronting for, and enabling, indeed, IS the criminal, using the young and dim as inspired fodder, and relying on the economically and psychologically dependent populace to acquiesce due to these dependencies...robotics will help them continue, and expand, these efforts, even as human minds increasingly resist their flimsy, wispy persuasions...
the system can only be defeated by killing it...it can only be killed by complete, utter withdrawal...participation, even with change in mind, only strengthens the illusion of viability...
like in Wayne's World, when Wayne's ex-girlfriend threatens he's going to lose her if he doesn't treat her better, and he replies, "We already broke up!" (credit to Mike Myers, of course)...time to get real...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...all the world's citizens uniting to reject the industrial and chemical alteration of our world...local governing...local food and water...local defense...let's get those gardens growing!
You are echoing what I said many years ago: The U.S. has had a military Coup D' Etat only most of the sheeple are so politically ignorant and brainwashed by the whore MSM that they have never realized it. The mind is like a parachute, it only works if it is open; unfortunately, the majority of Americans, politically speaking, have closed parachutes.
The outstanding characteristic of Barack Obama, like the Democratic party itself, is cowardice. Like George Wanker Bush and Cheesedick Cheney, if Obama were told he had to sacrifice his life for "Victory" in Afghanistan, the order to withdraw would be given within five minutes. Obama would never die for Afghanistan or anything else. Obama is a hustler but not an ordinary hustler. The Nobel Pieces Prize now gives him carte blanche to murder and lay waste while envisioning himself as a statue in the park, striking a heroic pose that tells the world he is a man of peace and good will. He has not noticed in the least that the pigeons have shit all over him.
Today on Democ.Now, I heard a snippet of a speech that bo gave, where he actually came out and said that he didnt feel that he deserved the honor. I have to agree with him for once.
The nincompoops are gurgling again. Give over. Get real.
War is never about 'moral' issues. Who did this or that.
Always about the money being made (stolen). These days by corporations, and governments.
Do yourselves a favor, quit being distracted by the B.S..
Although metinks they would be in deep dodo with out these wars to prop up further theft of Earth's resources.
Talk about the lost folks.
God help us?
it would be nice if we could just simply withdraw our forces not only in the mid-east but everywhere around the world - all 2000 bases - only slightly over 1000 officially acknowledged
then we could focus our attention on our own issues and get this country back on track
we could rebuild our roads, bridges, schools, and inner cities
we could provide government run health insurance for all
we could address our immigration problems
we could rediscover ourselves and save countless lives both here and abroad
this is not going to happen, barring a miracle, and though barry obama reads a good teleprompter his track record to date does not support that hope
the "hope you can believe in" that he is selling is the hope that we can kill enough arabs to grab their oil and gas which we need to both use ourselves and to sustain our empire and somehow set up a functional emperium on the backs of the third world
enslavement is our business and as they say: the us is open for business
to maintain our dominance we must crush democracies, support dictatorships and repressive regimes in every corner of the world with any and all subterfuge at our disposal
obama could do this (stop the wars) hypothetically as commander in chief but he is well aware, i am sure, that the last president who took on the military industrial complex wound up with several holes in his head, on national tv no less, in dallas texas november 1963
i don't think barry is up to it - though he promised during the election that he was
so, we are consigned to fight these wars and kill these peasants ad infinitum
we have no other choice if we wish to maintain the emperium over all other considerations as seems to be the case
though we are under the delusion that we live in a democracy these decisions are not taken by the population - the are taken by the oligarchs - in our case the rockefellers and the rothschild banking/debt machine
these are the facts of the case
You certainly outlined a wonderful agenda and we should be doing those things. But I disagree we need "Barry" to do it. He is almost through already and if they should accidentally push this corporate health care bill through he will be DOA for the rest of his Presidency. 3 years isn't long.
Congressmen and Senators are all thats needed, they can close bases, they can stop wars, they can do anything if they want to.
2010 is coming and we do live in a Democracy.
Pax
hi henry: i didn't say we need barry to do anything - i think just the opposite - he is not so inclined and never will be
neither are the senators or congresspeople - which leaves us in a bit of a lurch i think you will agree
the oligarchs have a strangle hold on everything from the food to the oil to the media to the politicians
any recourse we may have will not be there
though practically speaking i don't know where it resides other than a revolution - that's the level of change we need
it doesn't have to be violent but it does have to be dramatic
cheers henry
Astore writes:
"Johnson, like nearly all Americans, Mailer concluded, was a member of a minority group, defined not in racial or ethnic terms but in terms of 'alienat[ion] from the self by a double sense of identity and so at the mercy of a self which demands action and more action to define the most rudimentary borders of identity.'
"This American drive for self-definition through constant action, through headlong acceleration, even through military escalation, the novelist described, in something of a mixed metaphor, as 'the swamps of a plague' in which Americans had been caught and continued to sink. He saw relief of the desperate condition coming only via 'the massacre of strange people.'"
To me, this is a very astute observation on the part of Astore and Mailer. It goes directly to Peter Pike's observation above:
"...Another one of them says 'Listen diaper boy, Obama is trying to win the war on terrorism and if he don't shoot hard enough, Sarah Palin will step in and shoot harder. If you don't like that, then move to Europe and go to bed with the terrorists !' These guys are nuts I tell you !
"I'm surrounded by wackier rightwingers back here in the Sooner showing their racism against Muslims. ..."
As the poet said, These are the hollow men... . They have no "identity" except through seeing themselves as NOT the Other. They are thus a negation they project upon the Other. Incapable of introspection, frozen in a perpetual state of near-infantile consumerism, they find solace in yelling at the TV during a football game, getting drunk, then going home and raping their wives. I've been surrounded by them all my life. They are but one symptom of "American Exceptionalism." Their racism is not confined to Muslims, who are merely the Other du jour. They are the ghosts of Custer's Last Stand.
***
Astore writes:
"What Obama needs, in other words, is fewer generals and ex-generals and more Norman Mailers -- more outspoken free-thinkers who have no interest in staying inside the pentagonal box that holds Washington's thinking tight. What Obama needs is to silence the endless cries for more troops and more war emanating from the military and foreign policy 'experts' around him, so he can hear the voices of today's Mailers, of today's tough-minded dissenters."
What about Sidney Blumenthal, former special assistant to Bill Clinton? After he left the White House, he wrote some incredible critiques of the Bush Administration for both The Guardian and Salon.com (although I haven't seen his by-line in some years now...). I have no doubt that he is familiar with Norman Mailer, the pugilist!
-30-
- "What Obama needs, in other words, is fewer generals..." -
The reason that generals have been and are now preferred is that America is at war. If America were at peace, then peaceful advisers would be closer to power.
Change our status from America at WAR to America, a nation at peace.
End the war by repealing the law that started the madness. At the very least, mention it in public.
Futile ideas such as wishing for the C-in-C to order the withdrawal of troops only invades upon the territory that the generals dominate.
I merely suggest out-flanking them and seeking a battlefield of our choosing, which, after all, is merely the strategy of Sun Tzu from 2,500 years ago.
Senator Diane Feinstein of California has just called for an American troop escalation in Afghanistan.
Who earlier this year introduced legislation to route $25 billion in tax-payer money to an agency that had just awarded her the real estate firm for which her husband is a board member, a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at higher rates than industry norms. She is also accused of profiting through her husband's business, Perini, which has received Iraq and Afganistan contracts. This is a Senator who has a hard time recognizing conflicts or interest, or even the appearance of conflicts of interest. People who do this are called war profiteers. Is it any wonder she wants an escalation in Afghanistan?
Precisely.
Only one of Dianne Fenstein's more scabrous endeavors.
She will also be the first to approve of the bombing of Iran, if she has not intimated as such already.
That she is the not so secret èminence grise in San Francisco politics–putatively the most 'liberal' city in the United States–bespeaks tellingly on the sordid, befouled state of 'liberalism' in America.
Yes, Feinstein is thought of as "the liberal Senator from California."
Feinstein's adamantine will in approving anything benefiting Israel and Zionism is only matched by that of her husband the financier, Richard Blum.
That they see no irony in extracting 'bottom feeding' profit from a collapsed mortgage market when they are already worth a combined billion or more– disgraces good Jews everywhere and gives fodder to anti-Semites– much like the affaire Madoff.
Their mutual war profiting, washes them both in blood, and is beyond the pale. –(Jill Bains)
Actually, Boxer is considered the more lib senator here in California. Not that she's too much better than Feinstein. Feinstein for all intents and purposes is a Republican. Boxer I would consider a conservative Democrat if you were going to slap that kind of labeling on her.
They are both corporate shills.
Blair,
Your distinctions are well taken regarding Feinstein vis a vis Barbara Boxer; I have no quarrel with them.
However, as a resident of San Francisco, it remains astonishing to me that Dianne Feinstein is OFTEN introduced as a 'liberal,' or thought of as such by more people than I would have thought possible. The very same people who without irony think of themselves as 'liberals.'
This travesty reflects more on the corrupted devolution of modern 'liberalism'–which is now little else than at its core– essentially reactionary.
Remarkably, this grotesque cognitive dissonance does not cost Feinstein at the polls as during elections she polls off the charts.
In the ever shifting sands of political labeling Feinstein would properly be called a Zionist Neo-fascist. –(Jill Bains)
Of course she did. She always does. She is in the pockets of military contractors. What I don't understand is how she keeps getting re-elected... Oh yeah, by spineless self-described Democrats.
I don't equate winning elections with voting...winning elections is a multi-pronged effort...votes, and their counting, are only one controllable part...
Feinstein's a war profiteer. And that's a fact.
Her husband, hence she, owns a large share of one of our biggest defense contractors called Pernini.
As if it isn't bad enough that lobbyists bribe Congress to ensure industry profits. The fact thet Feinstein's allowed to discuss and vote on war related issues is bloody outrageous. She's a pig.
Southern CA has been full of military contractors since the 40's & DF $ings their tune.
Sioux Rose
For would-be script writers, Syd Field is considered the designated "guru" of this field. He advises that the writer must understand their story's ending or else they risk "getting lost inside their own paradigm."
I use this intriguing premise as prelude to my opinion on this article because it also fits those who become LOST in the story called war. As Astore points out, it is chiefly generals, or those conditioned by, or for war that get to decide the moves on this deadly chessboard.
For those of us that exist outside the paradigm of war and conflict, we realize that there is a vast gap between the tiring discussions on strategy (as well as policy), and the REAL fuel motivating the M.E. "theaters" of conflict.
While "experts" wax long and sometimes lyrical on who is winning, and why we are there, very few speak of what's more truly at stake as basis for these overseas occupations:
1. the frailty of the US dollar and the need for the U.S. to find ways to control assets necessary to run its engines, domestic and industrial. Military prowess being our nation's forte.
2. Eisenhower's warning was never properly heeded; and thus the MIC is the many-headed Hydra that has grown its tentacles into most state budgets. It is NOT about to be cut, thus must make war as its own raison d'etre (especially in times when unemployment is sky-high).
3. Perkins, Butler, and others blew the whistle on the true role of the US military in foreign lands. What they exposed has never altered. It's about making a few people very rich. Or as Thomas Friendman once stated, "There can be no McDonalds, without MacDonnell-Douglas."
The military is the force
through which US corporations freely extort
the coveted assets of the day
letting nothing like collateral damage stand in the way.
All the talk about who will win, who will lose
further elaborations on strategies the 4-star fools might choose,
are distractions to stun the deluded crowd.
When laws comes to mean nothing, senseless violence is allowed.
SiouxRose -
1. Recently I spent some time with a long time friend who just returned from a tour of infantry duty with the US Army in occupied Iraq. I was intrigued to learn that he (like apparently a good number of other returning American soldiers), had "invested" in Iraqi dinars and euros as a hedge against future devaluation of the US dollar, and/or as a bet that if US oil companies actually succeed in gaining access to Iraq's oil reserves, the value of the dinar would skyrocket. My friend was by no means a sophisticated speculator in the international currency market. It is noteworthy that American soldiers, some with excess US dollars, seem to be already plugged into a network of financial advisory entities that are playing the global currency markets with an eye on petrodollar fluctuations. The Pentagon looks after its own.
2. Ike was dead right about the MIC, of course. My same friend has received offers to market his skills to private, Blackwater-style corporate entitles at an annual salary in six figures if he decides to leave the US military. This is a starkly different economic environment than existed back when I was drafted into the Army back in 1968. The gravy train is running downhill fast, and you certainly can't blame the returning troops for taking advantage of the opportunities the third party contractors are now offering. Thus, we subsidise the priorities of maintaining our overseas imperial military presence.
3. In the 60's and 70's, the peace movement called militarism by its own name, and condemned militarism as something anti-American, particularly if it was motivated by the pursuit of corporate profits. To put it mildly, there has been an enormous cultural shift. Today, the Democrats are terrified of being labeled "soft" on national defense, and the neocons delight in drawing active duty military figures like Petraeus and McChrystal directly into the domestic partisan fray. Like Dwight Eisenhower, Smedley Butler as a civilian and a decorated war hero veteran told it like it was.
Nice poem, Sioux. Keep the faith.
Bill from Saginaw
Sioux Rose
BILL: Your polite manner and nuanced analyses must make you an ideal dinner date or companion! Thank you for sharing your friend's experience.
My daughter bought a condo near Boca Raton for $250,000 which is now worth less than half that amount. I have purchased some property in North Florida which has access to springs (and water) and the kind of peace, quiet, and poetic beauty NOT found in cities. Truth is, the way I am wired, I can't sleep in a crowded, noisy place. It seemed that if I intended to stay in the US, this was my best bet. My daughters think it was an insane move.
As to why there is a far greater acceptance of militarism today, would you agree with me that the idolatry of the macho-figures (Arnold S. being one major icon), added to that of ubiquitous Hollywood images wherein brute force is purposely "sexed up" (think Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, 007, etc), added to the glamour associated with major sports figures... in sum produces a worship of force? In other words these "winning is all," "good guy CAN use force with impunity," images essentially soften a population, and act as covert propaganda. The net effect is an increase in the tolerance of violence.
I can make a similar case for the breakdown of the very PREMISE of privacy. When my step-Mom was cared for by nurses' aids round the clock, these women prefered to watch TV shows like COPS. When I'd visit, I realized it would be unfair to alter their routines, so I'd have to watch some of these shows. They are like passive voyeuristic mini-Roman Arena events. Even shows like "Survivor" or "Biggest Loser" draw people into the experience of watching the private lives, sorrows, and tribulations of others. Small wonder that the younger generation doesn't see much problem with being spied on themselves, or that "big brother" is busily recording all their emails should any step out of line later when such info might prove useful.
We all observe life through our own particular lenses, and mine are cosmic colored. To the extent any society worships Mars and its acts of violent conquest, a net Venus deficit results. I have made this case MANY times in the forum, so I will spare those who don't appreciate the celestial references. Too many minds have been formatted to cookie-cutter specifications so prized by a culture locked into categories, and discussions slightly outside "the topic" trigger their separation of disciplines breach of protocol anxiety.
"Obama at the precipice" " if we don't take action now on global warming" "To big to fail" . Endless threats of what might or will happen if we don't take this or that action, when lessons are REALLY learned after the dreaded event. stop interfering and let the lessons begin. what's the worst that could happen, complete annihilation? Stop thinking that humans are the only form of a superior nature in the universe, and stop thinking that we even deserve to be saved. the belief in superiority by humans is the most likely reason for having to put in an appearance on this planet. most religious and spiritual teachings describe an earth incarnation as a privilege. what if incarnating here was a punishment? would that not explain a lot of the chaos and evil behavior. The belief in separation from the whole gives rise to the fear of the precipice. maybe by not resisting the precipice we will re enter wholeness. Real tough guys remain motionless as the hurricanes of karma descend.
Well, Patti D, I was partly unaware of the conflicts of interest there, but it is no surprise that she has them. Some people are really proud that we have a war economy, I am not, but I am forced to participate in it.
"That a society would be bent on self-destruction seems counterintuitive."
The operative word here is "seems."
Where are all the free thinkers?
They have sold their thoughts to the highest bidder. Capitalism can not allow things that are FREE. It gets in the way of profits.
With all due respect to the wonderful posts here; the United States is finished. The intellectual capabilities of our fellow citizens is 30 years behind where we need to be to tackle the majority of the issues before us. The HOPE we have that there will be an outpouring of support for reasonable, just and democratic decisions is a long dead pipe dream. We have not done our homework for so long that we can't even understand the problem. Cognitive dissonance is something we have created for ourselves. We All have been participating in this sham from day one. We All have been desensitized to violence. Just to survive, we have been forced to accept and internalize the joke that we call Capitalism. By paying taxes, each of us have directly killed innocent people. Our taxes support the psychological poisoning of our kids who join the military, and the paying of generals who produce nothing more than more destruction and lies. What a waste. U.S. citizens know little about the crimes against our people by the Israeli Zionists (neocons) who run our country, and the list is long. Ask a U.S. citizen how many nukes Israel has. And, how many they have admitted having. Ask them about the Liberty. Israel is no friend of the U.S. yet we fight their wars, feed their kids and send them billions in weapons with which they terrorize innocents. But, Americans don't seem interested in what the rest of the world thinks. Don't Blame Obama. Our democracy disappeared years ago. Some just haven't recognized it yet. When more than a handful of us object, we will begin to see the new weapons for domestic crowd control, here at home. Our national security apparatus has its tentacles in every aspect of civil life in the United States. They have the biggest guns and all the prisons. Full Spectrum Dominance should be understood in its greater context. Civil unrest surely has been thought of by these clever idiots. The Military Industrial Corporate Complex has run roughshod over every aspect of civil life. There is no one alive who can stand against them, and remain alive. Common Dreams posters; consider, in numbers, how many enlightened and educated people there really are in the U.S. I don't mean to be demeaning, but I find most U.S. citizens totally ignorant on the critical issues facing us today. Climate change, collapsing fisheries, loss of arable land, peace, justice, the rule of law, international law, torture, evolution, deforestation, crimes against women, clean water, depleted uranium, health care, foreign relations. These are not disjointed and esoteric topics. We all need to be informed for a democracy to work. We are a minimum of 30 years behind the curve. What's worse, is that many Americans seem proud of their ignorance. HOPE? Please! What are we hoping for? That we'll immediately become knowledgeable, wise and educated while watching Nascar, sports, FOX news, Oprah, Dancing with the Stars? Sorry, but I just turned 50 and I see nothing in the offing that suggests we can, or should, expect any change anytime soon. I hope I'm wrong. But I have been paying pretty close attention to these aspects of our society for a long time now. Intellectually, I see the closing down of our society, the loss of liberty and the theft of the fruits of our labor. Slow, deliberate change will never oust the psychopaths in power. Ever. I'm finished with the U.S. But, for those remaining, I would suggest a more plausible strategy for creating the country you want. The U.S. government is a completely and utterly failed institution. There is a near zero chance that it can be changed. The options for real democracy dwindle by the day. The internet may help, but presently, it serves merely as a distraction. At present, the viable choices available for honest change aren't looking too pretty.