The things that might have been

Via a comprehensive enumeration of failed republican policies by Turkana posting at the Left Coaster, I came across a link to this Joe Conanson piece at Salon:

Following the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the new president sent stringent antiterrorism legislation to Congress as part of his first crime bill. The passage of that legislation many months later was the last time he would enjoy real cooperation against terrorism from congressional conservatives. When he sought to expand those protections in 1995 after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, he was frustrated by a coalition of civil libertarians and antigovernment conservatives, who argued that his "overreaction" posed a threat to constitutional rights. Among that bill's most controversial provisions were new powers to turn away suspect immigrants, swifter deportation procedures, and a new deportation court that could view secret evidence. (During his 2000 campaign, George W. Bush won support from American Muslims by denouncing that provision.)

Thanks to an increasingly obstreperous Republican majority on both sides of the Capitol, law enforcement officials were denied new authority for roving wiretaps and new powers to monitor money laundering. All that would have to wait until after September 11, when the Republicans suddenly reversed position with a vengeance.

How can one party forever be so behind the curve? Think global warming.

Indiana Representative David McIntosh, a leading conservative ideologue in Congress, enunciated the typical partisan reaction to Clinton's counterterror proposals. McIntosh insisted on steering the debate back to a phony White House scandal. "We find it very troubling that you're asking us for additional authority to wiretap innocent Americans," he declared, "when you have failed to explain to the American people why you abuse their civil liberties by having FBI files brought into the White House."

Among the most conspicuous opponents of counterterrorist action was former Senator Phil Gramm, who blocked an administration bill to close loopholes that let terrorist groups launder money through offshore banks. The Texas Republican denounced that legislation, since endorsed by the Bush White House as essential in dismantling al-Qaida, as "totalitarian."

Not really surprising that the Phil the missing link from the Savings and Loan scandals to the Enron collapse to the Subprime Meltdown would oppose anything that put money into banks, no matter how dirty the money.

Washington's favorite parlor game: 2002

More from Plan of Attack -- page 87.

When Rice read an early draft, she was pleased that the president would be raising the connection between terrorism and WMD. It was an issue that had been put off of Bush's September 20, 2001 speech to Congress because he didn't want to scare the country any more than it already was. [YET - MG] Calling the connection an "axis" was clever and calling it an "axis of evil" was most clever, she thought.

Rice and Hadley were aware of the secret war planning on Iraq, and they worried that singling out Iraq as the embodiment of the "axis of evil" connection between WMD and terrorism would appear a declaration of war.

Rice was keeping tabs on what was by then a favorite parlor game in Washington: When does the Iraq war start? ... So she and Hadley suggested adding other countries. North Korea and Iran were the clear candidates because both supported terrorism and pursued weapons of mass destruction.

The president liked the idea of the three countries--Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

Hadley had second thoughts about including Iran. The country had a complicated political structure with a democratically elected president, though the real power was held by the religious extremist and ayatollahs. Rice agreed initially and worried that there would be criticism that the president didn't understand that Iran was different, that it had a fledgling democracy movement.

I'm not entirely sure as to who didn't get the memo (about Iran being different) -- did Bush not get it? Did Cheney not get it?


I Read The Best and the Brightest, a few years ago. One theme pervaded - POWER. In reading present day political commentary, I find another theme pervading -- GAMES. So few of the elites have any personal stake in the continuing occupation of Iraq, and the presumptive invasion of Iran. Matters of life and death viewed as parlor games. The decadence and perversity of this environment sickens me.


(book continues, page 88)

Rice and Hadley proposed that Iran be dropped. Hadley said it would be inflammatory.

"No," the president said, "I want it in." Iran would stay. In an interview later, the president recalled he had specific reasons. (MG - someone sent him the memo that Iran, too, had OIL) "It is very important for the American president, at this point in history to speak very clearly about the evils the world faces," he said. "No question about it, North Korea, Iraq and Iran are the biggest threats to peace at the the time." Iran was unique, he said, because "there is a freedom in Iran and Iran is relatively open compared to other countries that are run by, you know, theocratic people, because of the Internet, the Diaspora here from the United States and Iran."

You cannot defend against terrorism

Rumsfeld on the impossibility of defending against terrorism (from Plan of Attack - Bob Woodward, page 35)


In an interview four months after 9/11 [Rumsfeld] said, "The key thought about this is that you cannot defend against terrorism." He had learned that when he had spent six months as the Middle East envoy for President Reagan in 1983-84. "You can't defend at every place at every time against every technique. You just can't do it, because they just keep changing techniques, time, and you have to go after them. And you have to take it to them, and that means you have to preempt them."

This was four and one-half months before Bush formally announced his preemption doctrine. Rumsfeld was thinking of a future when the U.S. should be ready to strike first.


Of course, Rumsfeld extrapolated from the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing attacks which killed 241 U.S. service men - the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since WW II - to Sept 11, 2001. Casualties were growing exponentially.

The Fraudulent War

Just finished reading a fascinating internet book: The Fraudulent War by Richard W. Behan.
It's a rapid read. Here's page 4:

When people who are honestly mistaken learn
the truth, they will either cease being mistaken or
cease being honest.

--Anon.

Highly recommended.

Pilger on ObaMac - merging

A prediction from John Pilger writing in the New Statesman has come true:

As their contest for the White House draws closer, watch how, regardless of the inevitable personal smears, Obama and McCain draw nearer to each other ... “We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good,” said Obama. “We must lead by building a 21st-century military... to advance the security of all people ... Both candidates have paid ritual obeisance to the regime in Tel Aviv, unquestioning support for which defines all presidential ambition ... Like all the candidates, Obama has furthered Israeli/Bush fictions about Iran, whose regime, he says absurdly, “is a threat to all of us”.


On the war in Iraq, Obama the dove and McCain the hawk are almost united ... Obama has now “reserved the right” to change his pledge to get troops out next year. “I will listen to our commanders on the ground,” he now says, echoing Bush. His adviser on Iraq, Colin Kahl, says the US should maintain up to 80,000 troops in Iraq until 2010 ... Like McCain, he would extend the crippling embargo on Cuba.



The American media love both Obama and McCain. Reminiscent of mating calls by Guardian writers to Blair more than a decade ago ...

Pilger has seen this phenomenon of a "media affair" with a candidate for a nation's highest office before -- both in Great Britain 10 years ago, and 40 years ago in the United States, when he was covering Bobby Kennedy's campaign.

The objects of these uncontrollable passions are as one in their support for America’s true deity, its corporate oligarchs ... “Washington lobbyists haven’t funded my campaign,” said Obama in January, “they won’t run my White House and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president.” According to files held by the Centre for Responsive Politics, the top five contributors to the Obama campaign are registered corporate lobbyists.

Since that piece was written, Obama has of course dropped his opposition to telecom retroactive immunity under the proposed new FISA statutes.


In a more recent piece Pilger offers a sobering reflection on the likely arc of an Obama Presidency.

The foregone nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, "marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US history", is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as bullshit on a grand scale ... all subsumed by marketing and “image-making”, now magnified by "virtual" technology ... only those who both control and obey the system can win.

...

Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates. Obama’s difference may be that he feels an even greater need to show how tough he is.

The U.S. wars in my lifetime were all ended by republican presidents: Eisenhower ended the Korean War (which Truman started, and called a police action, in order to avoid the necessity of congress to declare war); Ford ended the Vietnam War (the origins of which can be traced back to 1945 when the first official protest of U.S. military presence in Vietnam was produced by U.S. merchant marines who were offended that their ships were being used to transport Japanese officers to Vietnam to help the French military reestablish control rather than using the ships to transport American troops back to the states; in 1946 the first American soldier was killed in Vietnam, and in 1951 or 52 the first American prisoners of war were taken in Vietnam; by 1954 the U.S. was funding 80% of the French military effort to fight the Vietnamese communists). Ronald Reagan ended the War on Grenada. George H.W. Bush ended the war on Panama and the first Gulf War.


Truman started and escalated the Korean war. Kennedy and Johnson escalated the Vietnam war. The myths surrounding the "Camelot Court" of Kennedy together with his assassination have precluded him from bearing an adequate blame for the escalating the Vietnam war, but when Kennedy came into office, he ignored Ike's warning that the hot spot in South East Asia would be Cambodia, and advised the outgoing President that instead, it was Vietnam that his administration saw as the threat.


Should Obama be elected President, he will inherit the occupation of Iraq. We can only pray that he will not inherit a war on Iran (which makes NO sense for national security). What will he do in Iraq? The mere fact that Exxon Mobile, Shell, Total and BP, as well as Chevron have got their no-bid contracts to start procuring Iraq's oil suggests these companies have enough confidence in the "stability" of the region to recommence drilling there suggests STRONGLY that they have assurances of a significant U.S. military presence for a LONG time -- whether McCain or Obama wins the election.

Let us pray.

You elitist, you - what could be worse?

Everybody's talking at "B" calling him an "elitist" -- which really must be bad, because the republicans always charge the democrats with being the worst kinds of ... well, everything -- traitors, prevaricators, and flip-flop operators. Of course, HRC called him an "elitist" also, so there must be something about the word that resonates somewhere, and gives the one doing the calling some sense of superiority.


Long time ago definition of elitism - Random House Dictionary of English Language, unabridged version. In the dictionary, you have to start with elitism (an "ism") before you can find out just what an elitist (an "ist") is. Of course, the definition is circular, so you have to go to elite so you can understand understand elitism.


Interesting. NOT like going from communism to communist (in the RHDoEL) since communism gets a definition all its own, and so does communist. I digress.

elitism, n.

1. practice of or belief in rule by an elite
2. consciousness or pride of belonging to a select or favored group
-- elitist, n.

elite, n.

1. choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons
2. persons of the highest class
3. a group of persons exercising the major share of authority or influence within a larger organization
4. a type, apx. 10-point, and widely used in typewriters and having 12 characters to the inch
-- adj, 5. representing the most choice or select, best


The American Heritage online Dictionary, 4th edition manages to define elitism without referring to elite:


elitism: noun

1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.

2a. The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class.
2b. Control, rule, or domination by such a group or class.

other forms: elitist


And thus, an elitist has gone from being one who IS of the highest class (back in the days of my youth), to one who is presently PERCEIVED to be superior, and those are quite different things. Perceptions may be false. We know that people perceive things differently for many reasons -- values and perceptions vary by economic strata of birth, religion, education, geography, expectations, and life experiences, among other things.


So, now consider the American Heritage online definition of

elite: noun

1a: a group or class of persons, or member of such a group enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status

1b: the best or most skilled members of a group

2: a size of type on a typewriter equal to 12 characters per linear inch

ETYMOLOGY: French elite, from old French, eslit, from feminine past participle eslire, to choose, from Latin - eligere. See elect.


Okay - it's the French thing all the while.


Certainly, there are only 100 Senators in the United States. Out of 300 million people, that's a pretty small group. I'd have to say, that's an elite group (in the sense that they have the power). So for HRC to call B an elitist ... well, it doesn't track.


Same deal with op-ed columnists, TV pundits, radio talking heads with annual incomes of, say, $1,000,000 or more. By definition, they are elites - wealth elites, political elites. They're calling the shots. If Obama being an elitist is a "bad" thing, is it because he's not one of them (oh, but wait, he already is).

International Political "Cartoons"

One picture says 1,000 words - part I.

You can link to this cartoon from the China Daily to get an idea of how East views West (and East views East). This cartoon tells vividly how the West gets it wrong on China by conflating the Great Panda Bear (whose diet is 99% bamboo and is a highly threatened and endangered species and which many find to be cute - since it is not a danger to humans) with a more sinister looking Brown Bear whose diet, while consisting mainly of roots and fungi, also includes fish and small mammals. Unlike the Great Panda, the Brown Bear is listed as a "least concerned" species.

Note how the cartoon credits "Western Media" with vilification of the Panda, using paste and cut techniques. Cut off the cute head of the Panda, replace with the sinister head of the Brown Bear, thus turning China from a non-threatening, cuddly, safe creature into a ravenous, rapacious, hungry, carnivore. Western Media's propaganda makes China appear to represent the danger that is "in actuality" the danger that Russian poses.


One picture says 1,000 words, part II:

More bears - one of which is Russian, come to us from a Singapore paper. Quite an visual with Bush 43 caught between two bears and a hard place -- being chased by a bear market (hasn't lost the shirt off his back yet, just his shoe) -- going to meet Putin, another world leader, who has the Russian Bear (economy) under tight control. A lot of interesting things going on here.


One picture says 1,000 words, part III:

There is much value in seeing ourselves through the eyes of another -- for an individual human being, seeing ourselves through the eyes of another human being, who may have a less favorable impression of us than we hold of ourselves. Same goes for how the citizenry of one nation views the actions of our government (which in a Democracy ought to reflect the will of the people, although, the U.S. form of government, of course, is a Republican form of government).

This commentary on the Iraq occupation comes to us from Beijing, China. The U.S. invasion of Iraq viewed as a high stakes game of black-jack, and Uncle Sam has lost a LOT of many and all his clothes except his undershorts. There is NO question that he's just about tapped out, but, he while pounding his fists on the table defiantly demands of the dealer "Haven't had enough yet?"

Wow! Initially, I didn't like this cartoon, because it stripped away all the human costs, the devastation, the suffering, and reduces war to ... and then I looked again ... a "game" the U.S. can't win, and couldn't win, EVER; the war game, the invasion game, the occupation game, the imperialist game. And yes, for those politicians who make the decision to go to war, it's truly as sterile as this. They have no blood in it. They have no suffering in it. All about bluster, pride, ego. And war, that smug, unruly, confident, greedy corrupt "thing".

Somewhere, early in my internet reading (circa 2002), I found this description of the face of war: War looks like a baboon's hind quarters.