Where's the 'dignity' in a drone strike?

I was going to write an extremely long, incendiary piece about how, when it comes to foreign policy in particular, most of Washington's professional progressives tend to elevate rhetoric and style over reality and substance. Frankly, though, it's too damn nice outside to be hovered over a 13" computer screen trying to save the world through a strongly worded blog post. Also, thankfully, liberal reporter Spencer Ackerman has done my work for me with this piece in The American Prospect, wherein he . . . well, I'll let the article speak for itself:

In early 2008, I interviewed the foreign-policy and national-security brain trust of the Obama campaign for this magazine to gain a sense of what a world led by President Obama would look like. There were two big takeaways. The first was something I called "dignity promotion," an inchoate idea that the architecture of international alliances and institutions ought to prioritize human dignity, material as well as aspirational, in order to achieve global stability and prosperity. Implicit in the idea was that Obama would return the U.S. to its pre-Bush role as leader and champion of international cooperation to build a world in which American power and global prosperity were seen as mutually supporting objectives. The second was a meta-point about a path to get there: by confronting what Obama's advisers called the "politics of fear" that restricted what was possible for America to achieve on the world stage.

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On dignity promotion, the administration has racked up real successes and set the stage for several more. Obama has proved that the world is prepared for positive-sum American leadership -- whether it's by restructuring U.S. global economic partnerships through the G-20 instead of the more restricted G-8 set of powerful nations; whether it's resetting relationships with great and rising powers like Russia and China over contentious issues like Iran and climate change; whether it's explaining to the Muslim world that America's commitment to its well-being reaches far beyond securing its cooperation in the fight against terrorism. Dignity promotion, a new twist on the very old idea of liberal internationalism, is still taking shape. But the early evidence is that it's working -- for America and for the world.

Er, unless you happen to live in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen, in which case, well, sucks to be you I guess.

Let me preface my next comment by stating that I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I honestly don't understand how otherwise seemingly intelligent people can be so captivated by a bunch of do-gooder balderdash (yeah, I'm bringing that word back) uttered by Obama advisers at confabs of the international elite to the point that one would praise to high heaven the supposed dignity-promoting agenda of an administration that is not only engaged in two full-scale military occupations, but claims the right to carry out extrajudicial killings of Americans and foreigners alike. I also don't understand how one could claim that prior to George W. Bush the U.S.'s role was that of a "leader and champion of international cooperation," unless one's definition of the international community consists of Western Europe/NATO and the Marshall Islands, given the widely condemned embargo against Cuba and Clinton's cruise missile-ing of Sudanese aspirin factories; more to the point, when the "international consensus" (read: France, Germany, Britain) permits sanctions to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children by barring basic but "dual-use" medicinal supplies and dangerous luxuries like clean water from importation, I'm not sure that consensus much matters -- nor that it's "progressive."

But probably the worst thing I could ever say at all about Ackerman's or anyone else's piece: I think Tom Friedman could have wrote it.

(The whole "dignity" thing and non-sarcastic use of "meta-point" -- I mean, seriously dude?)

That anti-patriotic feeling

Many opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have over the years declared that, while they may have objected to the invasions and continue to abhor the ongoing occupations, they nevertheless support the troops fighting on the ground, an assertion considered necessary to insulate antiwar folks from claims of insufficient patriotism. But while I understand why people utter the cliche, and sympathize with what it is I think most are trying to say -- that the politicians who start the wars are more to blame for the ensuing catastrophes than the 18 year old grunts sent to fight them -- I also think assertions about supporting those who physically carry out the war crimes reflect a very confused, fatally flawed conception of morality, whereby those who order murder are rightly and unsparingly condemned but those who actually do the killing are absolved of all responsibility, as if by joining the military one also abandons all capacity for judging right from wrong.

Granted, military training does consist of dehumanizing brainwashing, with soldiers taught to have no mercy for The Enemy and that, if the life of an American is perceived to be in danger, to shoot first and cover up later. But then those who join the military know this. It's no great mystery what joining the armed forces what it entails: it means killing people whenever one's commanding officer says so. Sure, ads might depict military life as little more than one big American Gladiator episode, but I think most who join are aware they may be asked to murder on behalf of their government in a war, even if they're blinded by a naive, superficial notion of patriotism. And since no conflict the U.S. has fought over the last half a century could reasonably be construed as one of last resort in strict self-defense, the overwhelming odds are those who sign up for the military will be killing people in unjust, illegal wars -- wars that, as John Caruso ably demonstrates, entail daily atrocities like those depicted in the WikiLeaks video making the rounds.

So yes, let us condemn the emperors first, but let us not forget that the we-were-just-following-orders defense has a rather sullied history and was rejected at Nuremberg for good reason. While most soldiers are probably good people who love their children -- not unlike their commander-in-chief -- they are willing participants in an immoral, vicious endeavor; let's not pretend otherwise. As Herbert Spencer once remarked while detailing his own "anti-patriotic" feeling amid a previous Western conquest of Afghanistan, “When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves."

Henry David Thoreau, however, put it best and thus gets the last word:

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts -- a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment, though it may be,

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 

As his corse to the rampart we hurried;

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot

O'er the grave where our hero was buried."

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.

What 'legitimate' violence looks like

The video posted below by the invaluable website WikiLeaks might depict a grotesque atrocity being carried out by U.S. forces in Iraq, but it is useful to note that, while certainly abhorrent and something to avoided when possible, that war crime was legitimately sanctioned by our duly-elected representatives in Washington, who as embodiments of the state are deserving of our utmost respect, as we know from reading The Nation. What would be called "murder" with little hesitation if you or I carried out is -- through the miracle of the electoral process -- transmogrified into the mere bureaucratic exercise of the state's legitimate monopoly on the use of violence, meaning that while one may question the wisdom of a murderous policy that has killed thousands upon thousands of innocent Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, Yemeni and Somali civilians, one dare not question the legitimacy of the murderers, lest you end up like one of those wild-eyed, seditious Tea Party-types.

On to more important things: you hear that crazy shit Glenn Beck said the other day?

Same speech, different day

In a stunning betrayal of his base that comes as a surprise to all, Barack Obama this week chose to side with wealthy oil and gas interests over the environmentalists that helped get him elected and who -- despite the president's call for the same environmentally destructive offshore drilling they denounced in apocalyptic terms under the Bush administration -- will undoubtedly help elect him again when confronted with the specter of a Palin-Beck ticket in 2012. Truly, no one could see this coming.

In justifying his decision to open much of the East Coast and Alaska's shoreline to new oil and gas drilling on the basis of U.S. "energy security" -- one that, naturally, was announced in front of the militaristic backdrop of an Air Force base, as all important national decisions must -- Obama cast himself as the sensible moderate, the non-ideological centrist whose only real concern is what works best for America. It's a familiar approach for the president, and one that grows no less irksome over time.

"There will be those who strongly disagree with this decision, including those who say we should not open any new areas to drilling," Obama said, while acknowledging "there are going to be some who argue that we don’t go nearly far enough." Ultimately, though, "we need to move beyond the tired debates of the left and the right, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place," he continued. Energy issue are "too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again."

If you think you may have heard that speech sounds familiar, there's a reason: you have.

"Now, there will be those that welcome this announcement, those who think it's been long overdue," Obama said in February when announcing the awarding of $8 billion in federal loan guarantees for a nuclear reactor in Georgia. "But there are also going to be those who strongly disagree with this announcement," he said. However, "On an issue that affects our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we can’t keep on being mired in the same old stale debates between the left and the right, between environmentalists and entrepreneurs."

Obama embraced the same formulation last December when speaking about his plan to further expand the war in Afghanistan, another major policy announcement delivered on a military base. "First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam," Obama said, noting that at the other end of the spectrum there are "those who oppose identifying a time frame for our transition to Afghan responsibility." Ever committed to the middle ground, Obama in that same speech -- in the span of two consecutive sentences -- announced both that he was sending "an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan" and that in a year and half's time "our troops will begin to come home" -- his devotion to a policy that results in almost-daily atrocities, but purportedly not one that requires an indefinite military occupation as some on the right would like, demonstrating his carefully concocted image of cool reasonableness and showing why those crazy Norwegians handed him a Nobel Peace Prize.

As I've written before, though, one should beware of powerful people whose decisions have a major bearing on your life claiming to have been freed of all ideological shackles, guided only by goodness and the ghost of Thomas Jefferson, because what constitutes pragmatic, non-ideological commonsense in Washington is shaped by the kind of people who would voluntarily live in a place like Washington: corporate lobbyists and the once-and-future corporate lobbyists we call lawmakers and congressional staffers. The guiding principles of corporatism and imperialism are so widely accepted inside the Beltway, so beyond the realm of serious debate, that after spending enough time here one could be forgiven for viewing bailouts and empire as the result not of a long-standing ideological commitment to the interests of capital and the arms industry, but the inscrutable product of the passage of Time and the flow of History. But it is supremely silly to act as if decisions to hand taxpayer largesse to private interests or to allow multinational corporations carte blanche to profit from drilling in public waters -- or to occupy and drop bombs on poor countries on the other side of the globe -- do not reflect certain ideological assumptions and core beliefs that directly pertain to one's view of relationship of the state to society.

There's another problem with Obama's claimed rejection of ideology: the fallacy, oft-embraced by the Chuck Todds of the world, that being equally despised by whatever it is we're calling the "left" and the "right" these days is a sign of one's essential moderateness, of a job well done, of an intelligence that transcends partisan bickering in favor of pure rationality. Sometimes, though, Occam's Razor applies: it could just be a sign you're an asshole. A federal policy of dropping newborn babies in blenders might anger socialists and Tea Partiers alike, for instance, but only an amoral cretin -- a politician, perhaps -- would claim that outrage as a sign they are doing The Right Thing.

Obama's message to environmentalists

(CNN) -- President Obama unveiled plans Wednesday to open large swaths of U.S. coastal waters in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to oil and natural gas drilling -- a move likely to please the energy industry but upset the administration's environmentalist supporters. 

When this policy was being discussed in the White House, do you think at any point a worried Rahm Emanuel turned to an equally anxious David Axelrod and said, "sure this will please the multinational oil companies, but what'll we do about the environmentalists? What. Will. We. Do?"

No, I imagine a quite confident Barack Obama called up all the heads of the big environmental groups and said something more like, "what'cha gonna do, vote Republican? Yeah, didn't think so."

Barack Obama: He's not your friend, but what if he was?

(Barack Obama discussing his top secret plan for ending the wars)

Imagine you have a friend -- let’s call him Barry -- who seems like a swell guy, a real class act. He’s got a beautiful wife, two kids, gives blood, volunteers at the local health clinic on the weekends, even gives a pretty good motivational speech from time to time. Sure, he slaughters the occasional family here, wipes out a funeral procession there, but unlike some cold-blooded murderer, some monster, he does not revel in the senseless violence. No, he laments every death caused by his regrettable but escalating savagery. Did I mention he plays a pretty mean game of basketball?

Now hold up, most people with functioning brain stems and consciences might say. Nice guy though he may be, the whole killing of innocent men, women and children thing? Yeah, not cool. Kind of a buzz kill, actually. Bit of a deal breaker.

Unless you’re talking about Barack Obama. Then complicity in murder -- and the extrajudicial killing of not just precious blonde-haired, blue-eyed American citizens, but hundreds of Afghans and Pakistanis -- becomes an unfortunate, maybe even a tragic thing, but not bad in a I’m-not-going-to-vote-and-campaign-for-you sort of way.

Dennis Kucinich, for instance, while denouncing the president’s decision to send another 33,000 troops to Afghanistan and questioning the constitutionality of the conflict, confessed to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that while the surge would undoubtedly be a waste of lives and resources, “You know what? To me this isn't even about the personality of the president, whom I admire.” Speaking later to Esquire on why he was voting for a healthcare bill he had ripped to shreds on policy grounds just days before, Kucinich cited a “a higher responsibility” to “my president and his presidency.” The Ohio congressman went on to say that a victory on healthcare was essential so that the power of the president would not be “weakened,” arguing that with passage the “president will have a stronger hand in domestic and international affairs, and that will be good for the country.” Nowhere in his 2,300-word remarks on the need to boost the president's popularity did he mention any of the ongoing wars and military occupations for which his friend Obama is responsible.

At the signing of the bill, he not just figuratively but, with a smile on his face, literally embraced the president.

Michael Moore, meanwhile, in a letter to Obama on the eve of his decision to expand the Afghan war declared that with that one move he would “destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics.” But at the same time, and after the president had already expanded the war soon after taking office by nearly 20,000 troops, Moore implored Obama to “listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking,” adding: “We the people still love you.”

After the decision to expand the war, which brings weekly tales of the atrocities that always accompany military occupations and counter-insurgency operations, there probably are a few more Obamaphiles turned disillusioned cynics -- but Moore isn’t one of them. “You're such a good guy, Mr. President,” he writes in a more recent correspondence.

The tradeoff seems to be this: in exchange for a president that can speak in complete sentences and not embarrass Americans in front of Western European audiences, and who is willing to throw a few more crumbs to the middle and lower classes, liberals will accept a little murder abroad. Oh, there might be an open letter or two, but few are willing to call the current occupant of the White House what he is -- a war criminal with a million dollar smile -- instead going to great lengths to defend this administration, working earnestly to support Obama’s agenda even when it’s entirely at odds with their own stated views.

This isn’t something new, by the way. When the U.S. military was killing Vietnamese by the tens of thousands in the 1960s, many rank-and-file Democrats and the whole of the liberal establishment were willing to put up with a little senseless murder abroad in exchange for Lyndon Johnson’s promise of a “Great Society” at home. Even after pressure from the antiwar movement forced LBJ to give up his reelection bid, the Democratic nominee in 1968 nonetheless was Hubert Humphrey, a bland pro-war liberal. And given the orgiastic glee with which today’s liberals and progressives greeted the passing of a healthcare bill even proponents are lukewarm about, can you imagine how much murder they’d put up with in return for something like Medicare?

Of course, this probably isn’t the trade-off the president's liberal supporters imagine they're making, and I don’t doubt that people like Moore and Kucinich are sincere in their opposition to the Afghan war, if misguided in how to end it. But their view of the president as a man, or rather what they imagine him to be, colors -- distorts -- their views of his policies, resulting in some embarrassing attempts to excuse Obama, The Man We Thought We Voted For, for the policies enacted by Obama, The Man You Actually Got. Sadly, all too many liberals and progressives remain captivated by the former Obama ™, the persona they’ve been marketed these last couple years: the philosopher-king who probably right this moment is sitting by a fireplace, taking notes and sipping Earl Grey while absorbed in his reading of Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, though, it’s a shame it doesn’t really exist.

But this isn’t to say Barack Obama, personally, would strangle to death an innocent Afghan villager, either, or that he begins his day by biting the head off of a cute little kitten (that was always more Cheney’s style). If he bumped into you in the hallway he’d probably say “sorry,” and if he was making a pot of coffee he might even ask if anyone else wants some. But what Obama’s defenders fail to realize is that while he might seemingly be an all-around nice guy who loves his children, someone you could have a beer with if that’s your metric, even nice guys are capable of real evil when they need not experience firsthand the consequences of their decisions. The killing will always be done by somebody else, not the great statesmen -- outside of Iraq, that is -- which is why the study of history can often feel like nothing more than the study of one war after another, each one more barbarous than the one before it. When it's someone else's life on the line, not your own, even the most righteous and well-intentioned will be more inclined to risk it.

And while Obama might seem like a nice, smart guy who tucks his kids in and gives them a kiss on the forehead good night, remember that because of his decisions there are Pakistani and Afghan fathers who will never get to do the same. And remember too that Obama chose to escalate the war on terror within mere days of taking office, when he could have gone ahead and eaten that kitty during a live press conference with Angela Merkel and still have seen a bump in his poll numbers, signing off on a drone strike in Pakistan that killed 18 people before even moving his orthopedic chair into the Oval Office. As documented by the New America Foundation, Obama has continued the bombing ever, dramatically increasing the use of drones in Pakistan -- a country, mind you, with which the U.S. is not officially at war -- killing more than 500 people since taking office, likely many more, a third of them civilians. Weeks later Obama sent another 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, bringing his escalation of that war since taking office to roughly 50,000 troops and at least that many private contractors.

If you’re into peace, love and understanding, well, Barack Obama just isn’t that into you. It’s long past time to stop making excuses for the man and break those last emotional connections. It’s also a good time to remember all those things you were told when you were little about how killing people is very bad, and that, you know, you really shouldn’t do it; at least to my mind, that lesson applies even to powerful people -- taking the life of another not becoming excusable because a simple majority of eligible voters who managed to get off work and bothered to head out to the polls voted into office one of the two corporate stooges allowed on the ballot, or because killing a few foreigners is an unfortunate but vital step to securing a second term.

Getting on my soapbox: Once you come to grasp the basic moral truth that murder does not become acceptable simply because a majority of registered voters lucky enough to be born in the world's most powerful country sanction it, nor is one’s complicity in it lessened by the fact that some 18 year old kid pulls the trigger for you -- that politician’s deserve to be held to the same standard of accountability to which you’d hold a casual acquaintance -- then it becomes a lot harder to maintain the fiction that Obama is not stained with blood shed by his wars. But then I haven’t been reading Daily Kos lately.

The Afghan war summed up in a quote

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."

-- General Stanley McChrystal, New York Times, "Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints"

Why can't we be friends?

A note to progressive and liberal readers: I critique you because I love you. No, really. That I don't comment much on the right-wing Tea Party types is not because I have any sort of affinity for them, or because I'm not well-aware that their idea of "fascism" is giving brown people food stamps, but because most of them are already too far gone and have never shown much interest in opposing war and wanton destruction it brings, their passion for protecting human life not extending to those unfortunate enough to live outside of an American woman's womb. On the other hand, many liberals and progressives -- even the party-line partisans (update: damn, must have been the coffee) -- demonstrate some awareness of the fact that the terrorists want to kill us not because we're free and listen to bad pop music, but because our government has often done some very bad things to poor people in far-off lands. That's why I find it unfortunate that so much of the liberal left has bought into, hook, line and sinker, the myth of Barack Obama, a man that has only expanded the state-sponsored killing. No, he hasn't launched a preemptive invasion of his own, but he's maintained and institutionalized the vast majority of the Bush foreign policy agenda, adopting the same lies about an Iranian nuclear weapons program U.S. intelligence agencies say doesn't exist and even extending the war on terror to places like Yemen, killing numerous civilians in the process.

My purpose in writing isn't to smugly shame those with which I disagree, or to simply mock those so blinded by partisan politics they can't come to terms with the fact their vaunted leader is a war criminal -- though this is a blog, on the Internet, and I can't say I've never given in to the temptation to be more scathing than constructive. Rather my intent is to encourage those on the left to maintain their principles, to not accept a little imperialism abroad in exchange for some paltry "reform" at home. If violence is what you abhor, then by definition the state -- the greatest purveyor of it -- is what you should oppose, even when the man dropping the bombs casts himself as a worldly liberal rather than a Texas hick. I'll have more to say later...

Liberals with guns: scarier than Tea Partiers

I often begin my political science courses with a brief introduction to the idea of "the state." The state is the entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, force and coercion. If an individual travels to another country and kills its citizens, we call it terrorism. If the state does it, we call it war. If a man kills his neighbor it is murder; if the state does it is the death penalty. If an individual takes his neighbor's money, it is theft; if the state does it, it is taxation.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell* is a professor at Princeton University, as so subtly alluded to in the above excerpt from her latest drivel for The Nation, and she's concerned about the "legitimacy" of the state -- a legitimacy she assumes but doesn't explain -- which she notes some backwards reactionaries have had the temerity to challenge in the age of Democratic government. Now, considering that U.S. government imprisons more of its own citizens than any other in the history, with 25 percent of the world's prisoners; that it has more military bases in more countries than any previous empire in history, and has killed millions of people from Iraq to Vietnam; and that its current head, Barack Obama, is openly targeting for extrajudicial killing Americans and foreigners alike, one might ask: why is a liberal magazine so concerned about this state's legitimacy?

Because of the Tea Party movement, you see, whose flashes of racism and disrespect toward politicians is of more concern to Ivy League academics than the "legitimate" state violence they applaud. Tea Partiers, by accusing the current administration of "various forms of totalitarianism . . . are arguing that this government has no right to levy taxes or make policy," the professor writes, apparently under the mistaken belief that most taxes the state levies go to gumdrop bridges and fairy dust health clinics, rather than less wholesome things like aircraft carriers and daisy cutters. Rather than focusing on what the state actually does, though, Harris-Lacewell, like most liberals, would prefer we focus on their shining, abstract ideal of what it could be, while sanctimoniously dismissing those who see no distinction between state-sponsored and private sector murder, an approach befitting the wait-until-you're-called merit-class liberal mentality that dominates the Democratic Party and the progressive press.

As The Nation's house political scientist explains it, adopting an argument that one could never imagine being applied to the left, "When protesters spit on and scream at duly elected representatives of the United States government it is more than act of racism. It is an act of sedition."

Put another way: offenses against the state are inherently more despicable than any offense one could commit against some poor schmuck civilian. An overstatement? Well, no, as Harris-Lacewell herself demonstrates in writing about Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who "is no longer just a brave American fighting for the soul of his country- he is an elected official. He is an embodiment of the state." Yeah, you know, before Lewis just marched in the streets against racism and state-enforced segregation as a (ho-hum) private citizen, but now he chairs a subcommittee -- show him some respect!

Hooting and hollering at an elected official -- sorry, "an embodiment of the state" -- might give liberals at The Nation the vapors, and right-wing protesters who cheered on the Bush administration's abuses of power may not be my cup of tea, but color me unimpressed with the argument that I have more to fear from the talk radio right than I do the incarcerating-and-assassinating state. Now while there's little chance you'll catch me marching against compact fluorescent light-bulbs or Obamacare anytime soon -- though I promise nothing -- I just don't fear a rollback of the Reconstruction period "and the descent of a vicious new Jim Crow terrorism" as much as I fear and abhor the actual, happening-right-now terrorism carried out by my esteemed public officials with the tacit approval of the humanitarian progressives too busy lecturing the rabble on the need to pay taxes and pledge allegiance to their betters in Washington than to challenge their leader's wars. In addition to the hundreds killed without so much as a show trial by hellfire missiles since the glorious advent of The Liberal Ascendancy, agents of the U.S. government have been implicated in several headline-grabbing atrocities, the latest of which involved the pre-dawn slaying of a pair of pregnant women and a teenage girl. That female civilians are being killed at a level on par with Afghan males is no doubt being hailed in the halls of Brookings as a feminist triumph, but it's more troubling to me than the idea of some people questioning the legitimacy of the perpetrators' employer.

Perhaps they shouldn't just be ignored, but until Glenn Beck's followers kill two dozen people in a remote village, I'm going to spend most of my time focusing on those with control over the tanks and nuclear weapons. And rather than seeking to bolster the state and reinforce the idea of some mythical, mystical social contract, I just might seek to undermine this government, so far as I can, for as long as it continues enriching a politically connected corporate elite while imprisoning and enlisting the rest of its population, no matter how "duly elected" our politicians might be as a result of the sham two-party electoral system. When political leaders are engaged in senseless war and widespread human rights abuses -- and the occupation of Afghanistan and the U.S. prison system at home and abroad qualify -- the person of conscience's duty is not to the state but to justice, which usually means opposing the state and questioning its presumed legitimacy.

The proper attitude toward a criminal government is not deference and respect, however much some at The Nation might love a smooth-talking Democrat, but defiance and rebellion -- of the non-violent variety.

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*I originally wrote Maria Harris-Lacewell.

Update: Read the follow-up to this post.

A lesson for Afghans from the healthcare debate

(credit: AP)

The Great Victory over the health insurance lobby now achieved with Congress' passage of a bill that mandates you buy the industry's products, inexplicably popular progressive blogger Matt Yglesias tells us "Barack Obama will go down in history as one of America’s finest presidents" -- barring, that is, some sort of "unrelated fiasco that mars his reputation" (presumably this means "blow job," not "unprovoked and illegal act of military aggression"). Democrats now in power, the victims of the U.S. government's imperial agenda of course no longer serve as useful fodder for the professional liberal class in Washington -- you can't blame their deaths on a bumbling and unpopular Texan, after all -- with Yglesias acting as if Obama's reputation has not already been stained with the blood of his drone strikes and the obsequious partisans at Daily Kos, who once upon time penned tedious 3,000-word jeremiads denouncing George Bush and the GOP for their killing of innocents abroad, now spending most of their days mocking Glenn Beck and praising their historic leader's historic-ness, happily relegating his illegal wars and troop surges to the dark recesses of their fawning, feverish minds.

To regain liberal sympathy, I offer a suggestion: the victims of Obama's wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq should seek to qualify their respective nationalities as preexisting conditions. Or move to Darfur.

Party over principle

When push comes to shove, the party almost always beats principle, as any casual observer of politics can tell you. Yielding to intense pressure from liberal bloggers and Democratic leaders, including President Obama himself – I'll leave it to readers to decide who yields more influence in Washington – Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today announced he will be voting for the Senate healthcare bill, despite its lacking the much-ballyhooed “public option” so dear to the heart of progressive activists.

This shouldn't be that surprising. While certainly one of the more free-thinking members of the Democratic caucus – and one of the few members of Congress to oppose all wars, not just those launched by Republicans – Kucinich, when all is said and done, is still a good party member. After all, despite the heaps of scorn heaped upon the man by smug partisans like Markos Moulitsas for his supposedly ego-maniacal runs for president, both in 2004 and 2008 he ultimately endorsed his party's pro-war nominee, even though his views more closely align with those of the anti-war Ralph Nader, as I noted in this interview (by contrast, Republican iconoclast Ron Paul urged his supporters to vote for Nader or a number of other third-party candidates).

As for the healthcare bill he's now endorsing, here's how Kucinich explained his opposition to the legislation last week on Democracy Now:

I think that we have to ask ourselves why we would have a circumstance where, you know, a week or two before a vote would come, that it would be said that this is going to come down to a single member of Congress, who stands for healthcare for all, Medicare for all, who stands for a public option, who stands to protect right of states, to pursue it, and yet, we should sweep all that aside in favor of a bill that gives the insurance companies a lock on health insurance in America, privatizes the health insurance—$70 billion-a-year subsidy to the insurance industry. 

I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There’s about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, “Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure’s building. Just forget about it,” actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it’s really critical to take this stand, because without it, there’s no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system. 

Something obviously changed since Kucinich said this to Amy Goodman. It wasn't the bill.

The face of modern liberalism

Markos Moulitsas is the founder of Daily Kos and self-satisfied leader of the left-leaning "Netroots" community of bloggers, best characterized by their fervent devotion to the perpetual process of electing "more and better Democrats." When not helping raise money for the same party that endorses locking up hundreds of thousands of Americans for non-violent drug offenses -- and whose rule has brought us progressive achievements like the surge in Afghanistan and the official policy of killing citizens without so much as a judicial rubber-stamp if they travel to sufficiently swarthy countries and associate with the natives -- Moulitsas is busy enforcing Democratic orthodoxy and party dogma, his latest threat of an ineffective primary challenge coming against poor old Dennis Kucinich* for the sin of failing to endorse the White House and congressional leadership's corporatist, pharmaceutical-insurance-complex-boosting joke of a health care reform bill.

"[I’m going to hold] people like Dennis Kucinich responsible for the 40,000 Americans that die each year from a lack of health care," Moulitsas declared on MSNBC this week. Tough words. Now, here's who he promised to support primary challenges against after 189 House Democrats voted to extend the war in Afghanistan, against a measure offered by the dastardly Kucinich, thus ensuring NATO forces will continue killing Afghan civilians at a healthy pace: ____________. That silence is a reflection of an awful strange and morally dubious set of priorities.

Liberals being so proud of their cosmopolitan, humanitarian credentials, in their minds standing in stark contrast to those neanderthal, SUV-driving Republicans, one would imagine they'd place a little more priority on their politicians, you know, not killing poor foreigners in multiple countries with which the U.S. is not even officially at war, and a little less on mandating that all Americans purchase the appropriately demonized health insurance industry's products (idea for solving starvation in the developing world: mandate everyone buy food!). Question the wisdom and morality of that, though, and prepare to face the nastiest epithet a good party-line Democrat can conceive of: Naderite. Hell, it's even worse than being called a Tea Bagger to folks like Moulitsas, defensive tirades and smug derision the immediate reaction toward anyone who dare whisper the long-time consumer advocate's name. Ralph Nader is to Democrats what Judas is to Christians -- partisan politics being very much a religion, sharing all the idolatry and corruption but, unfortunately, neither a hint of grace nor beauty.

As Moulitsas explains it, Kucinich's opposition to the health care bill is "very Ralph Nader-esque" -- you can almost see Josh Marshall mouthing "buuuurn!" As often the case with religion, politics promotes a narrow-minded view of the world and its possibilities, one fraught with internal contradictions like the Democratic tendency of blaming Nader for eight years of George Bush when most Democrats supported and are currently institutionalizing the worst excesses embraced by the former president. To committed partisans, however, the failure of the Democrats to enact the supposed Democratic agenda has only one obvious solution: elect more and better Democrats. Take Moulitsas' smug and revealing "tweet" to those who question singling out Kucinich for condemnation and not the awful health care bill -- to say nothing of the Democrats voting for more war in Afghanistan: "What I'd really like to know is how many Kucinich-bots have contributed to Bill Halter in Arkansas. But that would be DOING something..."

It is kind of a cute, in a way, that a glorified online fundraiser who attacks non-partisans with venom and obscenity usually reserved for Holocaust-deniers and Republicans thinks he has an impact on policymaking, and believes this to be the case because he works to elect former Clintonite non-entities like Halter, whose campaign site informs of you of little more than his square jawline. That he sees this as the ideal means of "doing something" and affecting change proves Rahm Emanuel's assessment of liberals right, if for different reasons, as diverting activist resources to the electoral process ignores the fact that all meaninful change comes not from politicians, but from social movements -- and that the state, once established, exists to quell calls for radical change, not undertake it; to maintain the existing power structure, not upend it. Those paying attention not to rhetoric and politicking, but to policy and its implementation in the real world -- including the Middle East, which seems not be an issue to liberals when its fellow liberals doing the bombing -- are well aware of the essential continuinty in governance despite the nominal changes in power. This is evident to most "Kucinich-bots," I'd assume, but apparently not to Mr. Daily Kos and his devotees, calling into question who are the real mindless drones.

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*I interviewed Kucinich back in 2007 about his run for president, the Democratic establishment, bipartisan militarism and his endorsement of the pro-war John Kerry.

War, brought to you by 'anti-war' progressives

Back when President Bush was in office, VoteVets.org -- a self-styled progressive "pro-military" group dedicated to electing more and better Democratic veterans of foreign wars -- was concerned about a possible military confrontation with Iran, launching a campaign with that photogenic war criminal Wesley Clark that blasted the administration's "sabber rattling" and stressed the need for engagement, warning that tough-sounding accusations and rhetoric only threatened to accelerate "a dangerous slide into war."

Now that we have a new administration, though, the folks at VoteVets appear to have come to terms with saber rattling and fearmongering on Iran, embracing it themselves to further the Democratic agenda in the most demagogic, Liz Cheney-esque fashion possible. Articulate Barack Obama, not bumbling G.W., now president, the group has dropped the inconvenient anti-war rhetoric in favor of running a series of "tough" jingoistic ads designed to sell the public on the imperative of "passing a clean energy climate plan" on the dubious basis that it'll cut in half petroleum imports from bad, swarthy countries like Iran and -- well, no, just Iran, the latest ad featuring the mandatory black and white video of Iranian president and evil incarnate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (boo! hiss!) scheming about how he can use his oil riches "against us." Oh and by the way, did you know AhmadeniNextHitler invented the deadly form of IEDs that are killing our brave men and women in Iraq, and that if you don't support the Democrats' cap-and-trade bill you hate the troops? Just watch for yourself:



Criticizing the White House's numerous unsubstantiated claims of an Iranian nuclear weapons program and coy references to "all options" being on on the table is no longer useful to the primary goal of all good and well-behaved progressive organizations: electing Democrats, the more (but not necessarily better) the merrier. Thus we see ads like this, which besides adopting misleading "energy security" rhetoric to sell a climate bill -- the power sector, the focus of Democratic plans to cut carbon emissions, relies mostly on coal, not oil, meaning cap-and-trade will do little to cut oil imports to the U.S., much less reduce global oil use and the revenues flowing to countries like Iran -- also adopts long-debunked Bush claims about Iran creating EFPs, explosively formed penetrators, specifically to pierce American armor.

As the Columbia Journalism Review noted in 2007, back when this talking point was last in currency, numerous factories that manufacture EFPs have been found by the U.S. military inside of Iraq, and their simplistic design means they can be easily made without the help of an outside state actor. But all this ignores the fact that U.S. troops aren't even being killed in great numbers in Iraq anymore, having mostly retreated to their fortified bases, and that when they were, it was mostly Sunni Iraqis -- not Shiites allied to Iran -- that were blowing them up. And of those foreigners who came to Iraq to fight the U.S. occupation, the vast majority came from Sunni Saudi Arabia, not Shiite Iran, though the blame for all American and Iraqi deaths ultimately lies with those who ordered the invasion of Iraq in the first place. So why the hell is VoteVets not only exploiting fears about Iran in general, but this lie in particular? Marketing.

Groups like VoteVets that are de facto arms of the DNC don't really care about stopping wars, or rolling back the U.S. empire, of course. No, all that really matters to is electing, and reelecting, Democrats, even if that means fueling the flames of the next confrontation. Iran is the enemy du jour, the country viewed least favorably by Americans, most of whom already believe it has nuclear weapons, and thus the best to associate with opponents of the Democratic policy agenda. VoteVets representing Iraq and Afghanistan vets, though, it needs some sort of tie to Iran to justify its sensationalistic use of exploding IEDs and decorated Iraq veterans to sell said agenda: enter the Iran-created-EFPs-used-in-Iraq fiction. Like their neoconservative brethren, that something's not true is no obstacle to its being deployed in a liberal media campaign, the ends justifying the means and other rationalizations.

As evidenced by VoteVets' dusty, neglected campaign at StopIranWar.com, stopping another war from happening in the Middle East ceased to be a concern to the professional liberal movement -- if it ever was more than a fleeting anti-Republican position -- the moment Bush left office. Nowadays, if exploiting fears about the Persian Menace can be used to help Obama and the Democratic Party in some form or fashion, rest assured VoteVets and other Blue Team role players will not think twice about doing so, especially since demonizing foreigners has the added co-benefit of demonstrating one's essential reasonableness and respectability within Washington circles. It could have rather unfortunate consequences for the Iranians, though, but so what? Iran ain't a battleground state (yet).

Conservatism: the heart of progressive reform

Teddy Roosevelt was by any measure a monstrous buffoon, an avowed racist and imperialist who saw war as a societal tonic -- only for the victor, presumably -- and fervently believed in American exceptionalism, empire and the flaunting of military might as the path to national greatness. While donning the mantle of progressive reform, Roosevelt left intact most of the financial trusts he was supposedly determined to bust, making a show of superficial changes to national policy designed not to rein in the power of the economic elite, which accepted and often championed the ostensibly liberal reforms, but to protect their interests from more radical calls for change -- and revolution. It is for these reasons, one can only assume, not because of them that Roosevelt is so fondly remembered by the bipartisan establishment in Washington, defining as he does the political class’ faith in “corporate capitalism” and a more “merit-based civil service” (read: Ivy Leaguers like them) as the key to progress, in the words of former George W. Bush speechwriter and current Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson.

Now Gerson, co-author of the phrase “axis of evil” -- yes, it took more than one person -- is the sort of power-worshipping hack only the Bush administration and the Post could love; the kind of man who could only thrive in DC, typifying as he does the condescending, nose-in-the-air Beltway attitude toward all the yokels who question whether people like them should really be expounding on, much less crafting, policy for a nation of 300 million people. If I spent the time responding to all his tedious, lifeless prose, it would be as lengthy and worthwhile endeavor as spending the rest of my life electing more and better Democrats in the pursuit of Peace In Our Time. But, the dude makes a few good points, inadvertent though they may be, and obscured by heaping loads of smug derision for the so-called Tea Party movement and the “Beck/Paul platform” -- a conflation between Ron Paul, a non-interventionist libertarian, and Fox News’ Glenn Beck, a pro-war demagogue that has accused the former of treason, that displays a rather remarkable lack of attention to detail. The snide dismissal of the right-wing rabble, in this case for failing to worship at the altar the Rough Rider, is indeed so grating it's enough to make one want to head over to the nearest townhall meeting and, in a display of solidarity with the tea partiers, shout “Nazi baby killer!” at the county commissioners -- anything just so as to not feel any sort of sympathy for a stance held by Michael (obscenity) Gerson.

In the midst of heaping praise on former president Roosevelt and claiming those who would question his standing as a great man are engaged in an “ideological scrubbing” of history -- as if “history” is some sort of physical science, the prevailing view of which is not already heavily influenced by ideology -- Gerson does make an important observation: while ‘ol Teddy may have times sounded like a no-good socialist fighting for the common man, “it was Roosevelt's political purpose to avoid a revolution.” Rather than using state power to upend the existing economic order, he sought to preserve political capitalism -- the collusion of politicians and capitalists in the drafting of state economic policy -- and to use the guise of populism and “incremental reform to diffuse radicalism.” Though by no means “laissez faire,” Gerson observes that the use of the state to stave off threats to the ruling economic order and enhance the power of political elite -- my words, not his -- is well within “authentic conservative tradition”, acknowledging the lie of the GOP’s oft-invoked fidelity to the "free market."

The point is well taken: though Republicans claim to their base to represent an ideological counter to the godless Democrats, their "free market" policy proposals are without fail statist in nature. Likewise, while often cloaked in progressive rhetoric, much of what passes for liberal reform is conservative and reactionary in nature, crafted with an eye more toward preserving the status quo than overturning it. Reforms, such as they are, are intended to stave off calls for more radical, systemic change by making the existing power arrangement more sustainable, a few crumbs tossed to the poor and certain politically favored constituencies only so far as is necessary to prevent a couple thousand pitchfork and torch-wielding proles from showing up outside their elected representatives McMansions.

There are those who push for reforms with a genuine desire for change, of course, acting on the honest if naive belief that regulation can be enacted -- and implemented -- along the progressive lines favored by activists and policy wonks. But such reform efforts imply a strong belief in the underlying system and institutions to be reformed, and as historian Gabriel Kolko writes about the so-called early 20th century Progressive Era and the push to regulate various industries under Teddy’s reign, it was “big business [that] led the struggle for the federal regulation of the economy.” To be sure, “well-intentioned reformers often worked with them -- indeed, were often indispensable to them," he notes, but that "does not change the reality that federal economic regulation was generally designed by the regulated interest to meet its own end, and not those of the public or the commonweal.”

In a world of thousands of competing concerns, very few people are going to spend their time learning about, much less lobbying on, any given federal regulation. Attend a hearing about some regulation and, lo and behold, chances are most seats will be taken up by people with a direct financial interest in how the process unfolds. It’s a microcosm of politics, really. A company with a significant financial interest in the outcome of the regulatory process is, not surprisingly, going to care a whole lot more and dedicate both time and money to ensuring it helps shape the final result. Outside a few do-gooders and the occasional crazy, not many are willing to do that. Government regulation is an easy way for established interests to keep out upstart competitors, permits and licenses being much less of a financial burden to a large corporation, intellectual property laws -- laws that forbid the mixing of life-saving but “patented” chemicals and the unapproved use of images and ideas -- a clear example of established financial interests utilizing the political means to ensure a revenue stream, it being a much easier way of making money than competing with rascally new upstarts or actually producing something of some worth for society. Smart businessmen during Roosevelt’s time realized, though, that when the middle and lower classes were getting restless and increasingly receptive to calls for overturning the status quo, “the best way to thwart change was to channelize it.” And what better way to thwart demands for radical change than to channel them to the political system?

Have you followed the Senate lately?

Legislation that would genuinely help the public at large is non-existent, while even “reform” bills that upon reading appear to be anything but can’t seem to make it to the president’s desk. But uch troubles and concerns about arcane Senate rules were not apparent when Wall Street’s $700 billion slush fund was at stake, of course. Recent history in fact demonstrates yet again that when it comes to manipulating state power, the already wealthy enjoy one hell of an edge over those unable to afford high-paid lawyers and lobbyists. This is true now just as it was true during Teddy Roosevelt's time, when the former president observed that the “man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government."

To most liberals and advocates of reform, the best way to address those "special advantages" the state affords the wealthy is -- and this should come as no surprise -- through more reform and regulation; more campaign finance laws, oversight boards and blue-ribbon commissions that experience has shown will undoubtedly be dominated by the same interests they are ostensibly investigating and regulating. The spectacular failure of reform efforts to arrest the trend toward ever-greater concentration of power and money in the hands of a few beckons us to contemplate a more holistic solution to the problem of the state and the influence of capital, but one that, as Thoreau would put it, can only be considered when the masses are prepared for it, when people come to grasp that they can get along just fine without the charlatans and hucksters who claim to represent them -- when violence and power come to be abhorred, not worshiped.

We have a ways to go.

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*Sega video game designers knew what was up: the villain of the Sonic the Hedgehog games, Dr. Robotnik (pictured above), was purportedly based on America's 26th president.

Charles Krauthammer: The war on terror is over

Charles Krauthammer, a Washington Post columnist and prominent neoconservative -- or do I repeat myself -- is a smug and dependable advocate of empire, one who doesn't apologize for the sins that inevitably come with occupying foreign lands for years, decades, but one who revels in them, and indeed wishes to see them be fruitful and multiply. Clearly viewing himself as a towering intellectual force, Krauthammer can always be counted to defend the worst excesses of America's imperial adventures, from indefinite detention and torture to drone strikes and illegal war. No peacenik, he regularly takes to the Sunday morning talk shows and Op-Ed pages in a courageous battle in the propaganda war against the terrorists, so when a man of his caliber, who has never met a war he didn't like (from afar, always from afar), says the war on terror is over, I think it deserves some attention.

While searching though the archive of Krauthammer's columns from 2001 for another post -- and because I clearly have some sort of sick, masochistic desire to spend Sunday mornings reading eight year old editorials on the need to invade Iraq lest the victims of 9/11 die in vain -- I came across this pronouncement contained in a typically self-important piece laying out a checklist of countries real men like Charles Krauthammer would bomb:

The war on terrorism will conclude in Baghdad. How? No one knows. All we do know is that history, cunning and cruel, will demand that if this president wants victory in the war he has declared, he will have to achieve it on the very spot where his own father, 10 years ago, let victory slip away.

Despite emerging "victorious" in Iraq, as Krauthammer has taken great lengths to tell us, there always seems to emerge just one more country begging for a little liberation-by-bombing, just one more Hitler-in-the-making that needs taking out by America's armed forces, which is something to be expected when one's view of the world is formed by the ideological equivalent of a hall of mirrors -- my god, is that a WMD, or worse, a Muslim in the corner?! -- and you get paid by the Neville Chamberlain reference.

Who to vote for in 2010 (and 2012, 2014...)

(Click to enlarge and avoid screwy Blogger formatting.)

Do as we say, not as we do

OMG!!!

Iran is conducting what U.S. officials say is a broad covert-action campaign to influence Iraq's elections next month, pumping money and other assistance to its allies.

When do we start bombing, right? That's David Ignatius in The Washington Post, by the way, describing nefarious behavior the United States -- if there's a flag near by you best be saluting -- would never dare engage in, it being guided by freedom and all that is good. Read on and soak in the lurid details about what those damnable Persians are up to:

Iran provides money, campaign materials, and political training to various individual candidates and political parties [in Iraq].

In other words, the U.S. government accuses Shiite Iran of supporting the Shiite political parties whose leaders were based in Iran prior to the 2003 invasion and subsequently empowered by the U.S. government after it took out Saddam Hussein and the predominantly Sunni Baath Party (and liberated a few hundred thousand other hapless souls of mixed religious background from their corporeal existences). Iran backing the same groups the U.S. installed in power is, clearly, A Very Bad Thing, a point Ignatius need not expand upon. It just is, okay?

There's more:

"Iran interferes in Iraq's political process, urging alliances that not all Iraqi politicians favor, in an effort to consolidate power among parties supported by Iran.

And:

Iran supports de-Baathification efforts engineered by Ahmed Chalabi for the purpose of eliminating potential obstacles to Iranian influence. Chalabi is also interested in Iran's assistance in securing the office of Prime Minister.

Again, for those not in the DC bubble, Iran stands accused of doing exactly what the Bush administration did back in 2003, when, as that radical outpost the Council on Foreign Relations reminds us, former U.S. viceroy of Iraq L. Paul Bremer "outlawed the Baath Party and dismissed all senior members from their government posts." In November of '03, Bremer then created "a Supreme National Debaathification Commission to root out senior Baathists," barring up to 10,00 of the party's top leaders from even appealing their removal.

Ahmed Chalabi, meanwhile, is head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group that -- with the help of some influential neoconservative friends and idiot journalists -- disseminated alarmist reports of Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction everywhere from The New York Times to the White House. So connected was Chalabi back in the heady pre-invasion days that, as the BBC notes, he was "once touted at the Pentagon as a future president of Iraq." That the alleged support he receives from Iran is now a cause for alarm shows a remarkable turnaround in U.S. support; usually we try to hook up our cronies with a few WMDs and torture chambers before we try to overthrow them a decade later (sometimes longer if the victims aren't photogenic, on Twitter, or living on top of coveted natural resources).

More reasons to be afraid and let Israel invade:

"The Iranians are everywhere, all over the place -- overtly, covertly, you name it," says a White House official who closely monitors Iraq."

Or, "says an official of a government that, after invading Iraq and overthrowing those it overtly and covertly aided for decades, has stationed around a quarter million troops and defense contractors in Iraq for the better part of a decade." For the political sages you know they imagine themselves to be, Washington Post columnists display a, how shall I put it, underwhelming awareness of the world around them and how the actions of their government could be considered . . . hypocritical. Take Ignatius' final line:

Iranian meddling has backfired in the past, officials say, and they are hoping that will happen again when Iraqis go to the polls.

Now, if a nation meddling in the affairs of an immediate neighbor with whom it shares a common religion and similar culture has backfired in the past, as may very well "happen again," what does that say about the chances a nation more than 6,000 miles away, which shares little more than an affinity for guns and Michael Jackson with those it occupies, can meddle in Iraq's affairs without that intervention likewise backfiring? Indeed, I can even imagine a scenario where U.S. intervention in Iraq only empowers those with close ties to Iran (I have a vivid imagination), or helps al-Qaeda recruit its next suicide bomber.

It's hard to say whether ignorance or arrogance carries more weight when Fred Hiatt chooses columnists for the Post editorial page, but rest assured possessing the ability to think critically about the American government and its actions abroad is a certain disqualification.

UPDATE: IOZ takes down the arguments, as it were, in Ignatius' column with his trademark, well-deserved invective and expert Big Lebowski references, rightly -- if a tad too kindly -- describing the piece as a "phoned-in hack job":

That having been said, it is impossible to repeat often enough the utter, fundamental, essential, intrinsic, inherent, unavoidable, inarguable, insane absurdity of lecturing a country for taking an active role in the politics of its neighbor and longtime rival when your own nation has invaded that rival, deposed its long-standing government, mandated a new constitution, fortified and occupied its capital city, garrisoned over 100,000 occupying troops, and committed itself to an "enduring" military presence to be measured in decades at least.

Barack Obama and the ideology of power

Barack Obama is an eminently reasonable man. Not an ideologue of the left or right -- you know, one of those people with actual core beliefs and convictions -- he's a pragmatist interested only in what works. Or so that's what he's sought to convey in every major speech and policy decision: President Obama, Mr. Centrist -- his only ideology is his commitment to being non-ideological -- carefully crafting official policy with the help of a panel of wise elders. Consider his speech last week announcing more than $8 billion in federal loan guarantees for a new nuclear plant in Georgia, a move that on the face of it seems to be continuation of the bipartisan corporatist ideology that has dominated Washington for decades, if not since the founding of the republic, but which the president carefully lectured the class actually reflects the fact he has yet again transcended all political labels and beliefs:

"Now, there will be those that welcome this announcement, those who think it's been long overdue. But there are also going to be those who strongly disagree with this announcement. The same has been true in other areas of our energy debate, from offshore drilling to putting a price on carbon pollution. But what I want to emphasize is this: Even when we have differences, we cannot allow those differences to prevent us from making progress. On an issue that affects our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we can’t keep on being mired in the same old stale debates between the left and the right, between environmentalists and entrepreneurs."

For people that praise this man's intellect: how not only tired is this rhetoric, but superficial and frankly incoherent is it -- much like his Nobel (War Is) Peace Prize speech? Loans for new reactors equals progress, according to Obama, and differences -- such as whether using tax dollars to help build expensive centralized power plants on behalf of private corporations is really the best use of limited resources -- mustn't block progress, children. I can't help but wonder, though, if the reason some of the debates have become "stale" is because they might have never been resolved, so the arguments become familiar. Like, just what does one do about all the radioactive waste nuclear power plants produce?

Well, Obama has an answer, of sorts, for that:

As the CEOs standing behind me will tell you, nuclear power generates waste, and we need to accelerate our efforts to find ways of storing this waste safely and disposing of it. That's why we've asked a bipartisan group of leaders and nuclear experts to examine this challenge. And these plants also have to be held to the highest and strictest safety standards to answer the legitimate concerns of Americans who live near and far from these facilities. That's going to be an imperative. 

The technocratic liberal voice inside my head wonders, why no blue-ribbon commission? And are Lee Hamilton and Brent Snowcroft available?

Also, notice the use of "we" above, referring to Obama and the energy company CEOs standing behind him: these businessmen are crafting policies designed to save their industry billions of dollars by externalizing problem of nuclear waste, which probably seems reasonable enough to most in DC but demonstrates the extent to which state policy is crafted with an eye not toward restraining and regulating corporate America, but aiding and abetting it, usually under the guise of restraint of regulation.

Attending an EPA public hearing on some mundane regulation is an eye-opening, ableit tedious, experience: while there's always a few do-gooding environmentalists here and there, most of those in attendance and providing feedback to the regulators are the ones being regulated. The Energy Department hosts day-long symposiums to discuss ways it can further aid the nuclear industry, with panel discussions led by energy company vice presidents and keynote addresses delivered by the CEOs. Debate in Washington, and the reason Obama believes he is acting on behalf of consensus, not ideology, consists of corporate lobbyists and the folks in Congress they underwrite discussing how best to promote growth in their respective industries. After the general shape of a policy is agreed to, then perhaps a few scraps are thrown to unions and other interest groups, but the bulk of most major legislation is supported, if not drafted, by the affected industries. Obama might insist there's no ideology at play in his decisions as if that's a good thing, but neither is ideology usually at play in looting.

The actual experience of most nations -- not the political science theorizing -- I think undercuts the belief that the state is ultimately geared, as most liberals contend, to those few moments when it does genuine good for the public at large, and that it just often fails in trying. Rather, reality suggest that those other moments, those much more frequent moments, when the government instead acts on the behalf of those already possessing wealth and power, provide a much clearer indication of the state's true nature and interests, and on whose behalf it serves. Notice the relative ease with which the government comes to the aid of ailing banks and home builders, compared to the immense difficulty it appears to have assisting uninsured Americans, when all the sudden concerns about filibusters and conference committees come into play. I think there's a message there.

Let's use our imaginations for a minute. Say someone decided to brush their teeth with an automatic weapon. Wouldn't really work out too well, right? After a while, if the person didn't figure it out themselves, you'd probably go up to them and point out that an automatic weapon is actually much better suited to killing people than dental hygiene. In fact, it's really fucking good at killing people -- like, so good it seems designed to do so. Much the same, the state doesn't seem so good at helping poor people, though it excels at imprisoning them them, and it's not so good at maintaining peace -- one of its chief stated aim -- yet it's really good, like our friend the automatic weapon, at killing people, as well as at directing money from the middle and lower classes to the interests of capital -- so good, in fact, it appears it was designed to do so. At least it's worth considering.

‘If only I’d authorized torture instead of jaywalking’

In the world of politics, accepting responsibility for something means little more than actually saying the words: “I accept full responsibility.” Perhaps the Senate Ethics Committee will hold a few hearings, ask some stern questions and issue a report expressing “disappointment” in a politician’s judgment, but unless one’s caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy, chances are a scandal that might sink your or I will result in little more than an awkward press conference for the cronies on top calling the shots. So it is also with the lesser hacks and scribes in the U.S. justice system, where prosecutors are legally permitted to frame citizens and folks like John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- who undisputedly provided contrived legal justifications for the three strikes of torture, indefinite detention, and preemptive war -- get off with a disapproving look from reliable whitewasher David Margolis and teaching gig. A third strike in the service of expanding state power, you see, is different than a third strike for stealing a “24 pack of beer, candy bars, and a package of ground beef”, which is liable to get a mere civilian 25 years in prison. The state needs its army of sub-par legal scholars and second-rate thinkers to justify its acts to its allies and citizens, and will move to protect its assets accordingly, ensuring the next John Yoos can justify killing suspected terrorists' innocent children without fear of prosecution.

Beyond traditional economic classes, the U.S. like most states has a clearly discernible division between the haves and the have nots: the "have" being power, with those in charge of bailing out banks and bombing nations abiding by an entirely different set of rules than those they govern, which is to be expected in a system that invests in a group of mere humans susceptible to the temptations of power a monopoly on the legal use of force and the right to detain and eliminate enemies without even so much as a show trial. And although the treats its own with a spirit of mercy and forgiveness, not wanting to alienate others within its bureaucracies, those that defy it are treated with vengeance and an unflinching commitment to the harshest letter of the law. Indeed, next time you cross the street remember: unless that blinking white dude is telling you to walk, you risk worse punishment than if you’d written in your capacity as an employee of the U.S. government of the president’s inherent authority to torture and kill anyone in the world.

Here are some other things that will get poor schmucks who don’t have shiny badges, fancy uniforms or Ivy League law degrees more punishment than sanctioning war crimes:

*In Washington, DC, “attempting to engage passers-by in conversation for the purpose of prostitution” in the views of a police officer can get someone -- not a politician, mind you -- a $300 fine and up to six months in prison.

*A first time conviction for engaging in a conspiracy to deal crack cocaine can get someone 27 years in prison. Conspiring to sell cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities to finance a Central American insurgency, on the other hand, will get someone a medal and a pretty sweet pension,

*In Georgia, carrying more than an ounce of marijuana can get you 10 years in prison. Teenagers receiving oral sex without first receiving a signed permission slip from Jesus and at least one of the apostles likewise risk spending a decade behind bars.

*And of course, living in a poor area while being black is still punishable by arbitrary arrest and extrajudicial murder in most jurisdictions.

Thoughts on Joe Stack

This might be a terribly narcissistic and insensitive thing to say -- always a good opening line to a post -- but my initial reaction to the manifesto from the Austin man who flew his plane into an IRS building is, shit, I hope I didn't lose a reader. I'll be keeping an eye on the RSS feed.