The world's gone mad

Putting aside the peculiar decision of five Norwegians, you know the world has gone topsy-survy when Lou Dobbs, CNN's faux-populist blowhard, is staking out a radical position against the American empire -- calling for "withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and also from their stations and bases around the world" -- while Code Pink's Medea Benjamin is meekly calling for a "responsible exit strategy" from Afghanistan (that is, a drawn out military occupation of that country), arguing the U.S. can't "just walk away from the problem" it created. Benjamin specifically cites the need to protect Afghan women as a justification for a continued U.S. presence, an argument that failed to persuade her when a certain other guy who couldn't talk so good was president.

What a difference an election makes.

As for Dobbs, his entering the anti-war fold could help expand the movement against empire, insofar as there is one, by providing a counter to the easily lampooned ladies of Code Pink, much in the way someone like Ron Paul is able to address conservative audiences more effectively than perhaps someone like Lynne Woolsey or Dennis Kucinich could. On the other hand, I suspect "humanitarian" interventionists and liberals who only oppose Republican military adventures will find it easier to write off opposition to Obama's wars as confined to the nativist Right.

Regardless, whatever his impact on the debate ends up being, the thought of grumpy old Dobbs yelling "war criminal!" while throwing red paint at Hillary Clinton (or Susan Rice, or Samantha Powers, or Dennis Ross or . . .) is reason enough to support his embrace of non-interventionism. The only real downside is that Benjamin's sudden pro-occupation epiphany means she'll probably end up taking over his time slot on CNN.