A defense secretary of their own

How bad has it gotten for the US antiwar movement? After the president its most prominent leaders supported in 2008 took George W. Bush's war on terror and institutionalized it, they have been at a strategic loss, unable to kick their dogmatic, electoral-minded tactics to the point that they are now engaged in an awkward campaign to get a conservative Republican appointed to administer Barack Obama's wars. Indeed, after getting a commander-in-chief of its own, the down-and-out antiwar movement is now angling to get its own defense secretary.

The logic behind the leftists for Chuck Hagel campaign -- sometimes unstated -- is not so much that he's a great guy, but that the people attacking him are even worse. And to be fair, they're right. Most of the people blasting the former Nebraska senator hail from the belligerent far right, primarily employed by neoconservative media outlets like the Weekly Standard and Washington Post. Their critique is that Hagel is no friend of the Jewish state, and perhaps even anti-Semitic, because he once made comments critical of its influential lobby in DC and opposed Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon (an undeniably good thing). He's also talked about giving diplomacy a shot with Iran, when the proper line is supposed to be "nah, fuck those guys."

Hagel has also come under fire from military lobbyists for his stated desire to cut bloat at the Pentagon, though it's worth remembering that Bush/Obama secretary of defense Robert Gates pledged the same thing while burning through the biggest military budgets in world history. In other words, the usual sky-is-falling crowd is making much ado about nothing with respect to a guy who, outside of a few maverick-y speeches over the years, adheres to the Washington consensus as much as the next old white guy. Their goal? Maybe a nice little war with a third-rate power and a bit larger share of the GDP. But like executives at Goldman Sachs, they know they're going to be pretty much fine no matter who is in office.

It would be one thing to simply point this out; that yes, some of the charges against Hagel can politely be called “silly.” One can disagree about the wisdom of Israeli wars, for instance, without being a raging anti-Semite, and indeed much of the Israeli establishment would privately concede their 2006 war was a bust. And with politicians talking of slashing Social Security, you damned well better believe it's not a gaffe to say maybe we ought to take a quick look at where half the average American's income tax goes: the military. Such a defense might have some value.

Unfortunately, that's not what the pro-Hagel campaign is doing. Instead, they're billing the fight over Hagel's nomination as a defining battle of Obama's second term. If Hagel wins, the argument goes, AIPAC loses, opening up the foreign policy debate in Washington and increasing the possibility of peace in our time. If his nomination goes down, however, that reinforces the idea that the hawkish foreign policy consensus in Washington shall not be challenged and that even the mildest criticisms of Israel cannot be tolerated. Some even suggest that who administers the Defense Department could decide if there's a war with Iran or not, perhaps forgetting the chain of command.

Indeed, most of Hagel's defenders aren't defending his occasionally heterodox views on Israel and unilateral sanctions (he's cool with the multilateral, 500,000-dead-children-in-Iraq kind), but rather trumpeting his commitment to orthodoxy. The Center for American Progress, for instance, has released a dossier detailing “Chuck Hagel's Pro-Israel Record,” noting his oft-stated verbal and legislative commitment to the “special relationship.” Some of his former staffers have also issued a fact sheet showing that all of Hagel's alleged heretical views are well within the hawkish mainstream.

Further left on the spectrum, it's not much different. The Washington-based group Just Foreign Policy, for instance, has revived Democratic rhetoric from 2004 to pitch the fight over the potential Hagel nomination in black and white terms of good and evil.

“The Obama-hating Neocon Right is trying to 'Swift Boat' the expected nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense,” the group states in a recent email blast to supporters. Neoconservatives have been “making up a fantasy scare story that Hagel . . . is 'anti-Israel,'” it continues, helpfully informing us that the Hagel the neocons make out to be such a reasonable guy is indeed a fantasy. Finally, it ends with an appeal: “We cannot stand idly by as the neocons stage a coup of our foreign policy,” followed by a petition supporting Hagel's nomination hosted by MoveOn.org sure to defeat any military coup.

In a blog, the group's policy director, Robert Naiman, likewise pitches the battle over Hagel's nomination in terms of Obama vs. The Warmongers. “Hagel represents the foreign policy that the majority of Americans voted for in 2008 and 2012: less war, more diplomacy,” he writes, pointing to past statements he's made about the wisdom of a war with Iran.

Of course, the unfortunate truth is that American's didn't vote for “less war, more diplomacy,” as comforting as that thought may be, because they haven't had the chance. In this past election, Obama often ran to the right of Mitt Romney, his campaign frequently suggesting the latter would not have had the guts to kill Osama bin Laden. The DNC ridiculed Romney for suggesting he'd consider the war's legality before bombing Iran. “Romney Said He Would Talk To His Lawyers Before Deciding Whether To Use Military Force,” read the press release, as if that's a bad thing. Obama, bomber of a half-dozen countries, never forgot to mention the “crippling” sanctions he's imposed.

And J Street, the group that just co-sponsored a rally with AIPAC backing the Israeli state's latest killing spree? Ask a resident of Gaza how “pro-peace” it is.

But, in order to create a sign-this-petition! narrative, one often can't do nuance. So Naiman doesn't. In another post, this one highlighting Hagel's establishment support, because antiwar activists care about that sort of thing, he casually refers to former ambassador Ryan Crocker as among the “diplomacy champions and war skeptics” backing the former senator. This would be the same Ryan Crocker appointed by George W. Buish who has said “it's simply not the case that Afghans would rather have US forces gone,” and dismissed the killing of at least 25 people in Afghanistan, including children, as “not a very big deal.”

That should give you a good idea of the obfuscation going on in the antiwar campaign for a Pentagon chief. This is a problem. If you're going to play the role of the savvy Washington activist and get involved in the inside baseball that is fights over cabinet appointments, ostensibly to reframe the debate more than anything – we must defeat AIPAC! – you ought not go about reinforcing adherence to orthodoxy and the perceived value of establishment support and credentials. And you ought not cast as heroes of the peace movement people that really shouldn't be. That's actually really dangerous.

Yet, some would rather play down Hagel's pro-war credentials for the all-important narrative. So we cast him as a staunch opponent of a war with Iran, ignoring his repeated assertions that we must “keep all options on the table” with respect to the Islamic Republic, including killing men, women and children. In a piece he coauthored with other establishment foreign policy figures, Hagel's opposition to war amounted merely to a call to consider its costs – and its benefits.

For instance, “a U.S. attack would demonstrate the country’s credibility as an ally to other nations in the region and would derail Iran’s nuclear ambitions for several years, providing space for other, potentially longer-term solutions,” the senator and his friends wrote. “An attack would also make clear the United States’ full commitment to nonproliferation as other nations contemplate moves in that direction.” Ah, but he mentioned there could be “costs” (though none of those he mentioned were “dead people”). Such is brave, antiwar opposition in Washington.

But that's the cynical game played in DC by some of the would-be movers-and-shakers on the outskirts of the policy conversation: cynically play down a politician's faults to please funders, other politicians and one's own sense of savvy self-satisfaction. It's how the antiwar movement ended up dissolving and largely getting behind a president who more than doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan. People were presented a rosy image of a candidate who was on their side and they concluded their work was done upon his election. The same thing threatens to be the case with Chuck Hagel. Indeed, as The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg notes, “who better to sell the president's militant Iran position than someone who comes from the realist camp?”

When I privately raised some of these concerns with Naiman, he got snooty quick, just as he did with other writers who questioned whether the quest to “defeat AIPAC” should be conducted by stressing why AIPAC should love the guy. To me, Naiman wrote that if I had concerns about the antiwar movement taking ownership of a defense secretary, “There are plenty of organizations that pursue an ultra-left, ideological purist line. Why don't you give them your support and be happy?”

We live in an an age where ideological purity is defined as being uncomfortable with an antiwar organization throwing unequivocal support behind a conservative Republican to head the Pentagon. It's an amazing world.

Rather than engage in the reactionary politics of supporting what one perceives to be the least-evil administrator of war, those on the antiwar left and right ought to be truth tellers. Let's not sugar coat this: The problem isn't just AIPAC and the neocons, but the Center for American Progress and the neoliberals. Dumbing down the reality only serves to bolster one faction of the war party. And it kills antiwar movements.

The summer I became a communist

I've mentioned before how I attended a silly little summer camp in Pennsylvania once that sought to taught me about capitalism -- and in the process undermined my faith in it. Well, I've turned that experience into a proper article for VICE (all caps!) that you should go read I guess.

Naomi Watts hadn't considered that

Before I start, let me explain: I just got a new phone for the first time in years and it has this cool app that lets you listen to all these different radio stations and I thought, hey, maybe I should check one out and wouldn't it be interesting to listen to what the normals listen to and so I put on NPR. Also: screw you.

Anyway, so I was listening to NPR and I heard this interview with actress Naomi Watts about the new movie she's in, The Impossible, recounting the true story of a European family swept up in the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, and I was most surprised to hear the host forcefully pursue the line of questioning: were you at all worried that people would say it's kind of gross and maybe sorta racist to do a movie about the 2004 tsunami in Thailand without having a Thai person in it, at least not one with a personality?

Naomi Watts replied by saying why, that thought never occurred to her, thank you very much, and that really the movie is quite lovely. But she did address it. "A huge portion of those people that died were tourists," Watts said. "But yes, a lot of them were Thai as well."

First, let's be fair. This is a promotional interview for a movie and come on, how many of us can make it through a normal day without saying something terribly inartful. Okay, we can stop doing that now and look at some statistics: Somewhere around 250,000 people perished in the 2004 tsunami. Of that number, less than 2,200 were tourists -- that's the number for the entire affected area -- and somewhere around 5,000 to 8,000 were Thai.

So. Armed with that information, I think we can safely call it INACCURATE to say a "huge portion" of those who died in the tsunami were tourists, much less upper-class Europeans. My suggestion is that the movie's promotional team better prep its stars for interviews like this; when asked in the future if it isn't just a little bit weird to do a movie about a tsunami in Asia minus any Asians, they should probably just say "yes."

The down dog of knowledge

“They’re not just teaching physical poses, they’re teaching children how to think and how to make decisions,” Ms. Eady said. “They’re teaching children how to meditate and how to look within for peace and for comfort."

And that, explains Ms. Eady, is a bad thing. Welcome to our world.

Is that you, Barack?

So, weird: Someone from the White House apparently just got to this little website by searching another website called Google for "Senator Kerry on Iran enrichment," bringing them to a piece I wrote in 2009 about the current candidate for Secretary of State suggesting Iran has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful energy purpose.

I'd say that's as good an indication as any that Kerry's past statements on Iran are of concern to the Obama administration as they seek to get him past the Senate and into the State Department, especially since they conflict with public suggestions from the White House that they're pushing for Iran to eliminate its nuclear program altogether, be it for weapons or energy.

I like this tweet

I like this tweet. I like it for a couple reasons. Here they are:

1. I like the notion of a writer for Slate mocking a column idea for being predictable and trite.
2. I like that the only time cool Beltway liberals really acknowledge the victims of drone strikes is when signalling that they are too savvy to much care about the victims of drone strikes.
3. I like that this tweet got giggles from more apolitical, "straight reporter" types such as Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski. Opponents of state-sanctioned murder abroad are objectively insufferable.
4. I like that dead children in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen can at least get a smirk out of an American journalist.
5. I like that, for all their cynicism, more-pragmatic-than-thou progressives get all earnest when their president -- and he is their president -- displays anything approaching basic human emotion, necessitating displays such as this. You will not ruin this moment. You will not.

Postscript: I wouldn't write such a column for the simple reason that the murder of 20 children in Connecticut should not be about Barack Obama, though some liberals would like it to be.

The liberal presidency

Go read my latest piece over at Al Jazeera, where I argue that his progressive fans are right: Barack Obama really is a liberal.

Bigotry for broadcast

What's it like meeting hatemongers such as Pamela Geller and the folks from Westboro Baptist Church? I tell you in my latest piece for Al Jazeera.

I've got the 12-bit blues

Kid Koala goes to town on a box of blues albums armed with nothing but an SP1200. Check it:

 

Listen to a stream of the full album, people.

Feminism, fully loaded

Over at Salon, film critic Andrew O'hehir takes a look at the new White House-endorsed film depicting the hunt for Osama bin Laden and in doing so ponders a couple of hard-hitting questions:

Does a society that produces female CIA agents (and reelects a black president) gain the right to commit atrocities in its own defense? Is torture justified if the torturer is a university-educated woman, and the tortured a bigoted Muslim fundamentalist? 

The "predictable left-libertarian response," O'hehir writes, is to say absolutely not, that such acts are "immoral and unjustifiable in almost every instance." Oh, but how boring! Morality is relative: isn't that something we lefties go on about? And once you throw in all the "shades of gray" of right and wrong, who's to say a liberal, multi-cultural society with strong, empowered women shouldn't be allowed to attach electrodes to the testicles of some savage who hasn't even read any Betty Friedan?

Or, put more succintly: liberal apologists for mass murder can't be satirized.

(via Oh Tarzie)

God hates Russell Brand

Before the show, Steve Drain of the Westboro Baptist Church asked me just how long I'd been working on BrandX with Russell Brand as I led him from his car to the bare-bones green room we were sticking him in until the taping started.

"Since the beginning," I replied.

"Oh, cool man," Drain said, appearing completely genuine. "That's cool."

And then he went on TV:

 

It can't happen here

The year is 2036. Packs of feral dogs roam the streets of Denver, scouring the destitute downtown for their next meal: probably some poor vagrant bastard, if Those Who Dwell Below haven't beat them to it. A lone scream in the distance pierces the eery silence.

"What happened here?" a young girl asks her father, scanning the hellscape. "Where did all the people go?"

Nothing.

The father turns a dial on the hovercraft, appearing to have not heard the question, his face expressionless. As he brings the vessel to a stop, he takes a deep breath, sighing as he wipes the sweat from his brow. How to explain?

"They -- they legalized marijuana," he says flatly, pressing his temples. "Reefer, Annie. The bloody fools!"

Pam Geller vs. her own words

Pamela Geller doesn't much care for Islam (or, after being interviewed by Russell, BrandX). On her blog, Atlas Shrugs, she daily reports on crimes allegedly committed by Muslims – and only Muslims – wherever in the world they might be, painting a picture for her largely white and scared suburban audience of a world where swarthy Others are hell bent on the global imposition of Sharia law. Fathers, watch your daughters: Muhammed's coming to town and he wants her to wear a burka.

The odd, weird, curious thing about Pamela's Islamophobia, though, is that while she'll own it in front of a bunch of flag-waving Tea Partiers protesting a mosque, she'll back away from it in front of a crowd of young Hollywood liberals. Indeed, the way she spoke during her appearance on BrandX, you'd almost think she didn't want to turn the Middle East to glass.

Here are a few examples of how Hollywood Pamela differed from the attention-seeking jingo we've all come to know and love:

Russell: “Do you believe America would be better off without any Muslims?”
Pamela: “No.”
ACTUALLY. In her book, Stop the Islamization of America – a-fucking-hem – Pamela argues that the threat facing America is posed “not just [by] immigrant Muslims, the problem is the doctrine of jihad and the ideology of Islamic supremacism, which any Muslim anywhere can hold.”

Russell: “Pamela, should we have a war . . . with Iran? Should we do a war right at them?”
Pamela: “No.”
ACTUALLY. On her blog, Pamela has written, “Iran should be attacked today and their people liberated from their misery.”

Russell: “Do you believe President Obama supports jihad against America?”
Pamela: “Only in Libya. . . . [He's] not pro-jihad.”
ACTUALLY. On her blog, Pamela has written that “one thing is for sure: [Barack] Hussein [Obama] is a muhammadan. He's not insane ...........he wants jihad to win.”

SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE: When asked about Anders Breivik – “that bloke in Norway who was a bit mental and he killed children to express himself,” as Russell put it – Pamela, one of Breivik's favorite bloggers, called him a “madman.” However, on her blog Pamela described the summer camp targeted by Breivik as an "Antisemitic Indoctrination Training Center” with a “pro-Islamic agenda,” arguing that the 77 people murdered there were not entirely innocent:

“Breivik was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives, including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole... all done without the consent of the Norwegians.”

Nice lady.

NEWS OF THE FUTURE

Politician Seems Sort of Human, Actually

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, NJ – Stunning onlookers, a prominent politician actually hugged a distraught commoner, displaying a rare and fleeting glimpse of basic decency and even, according to some observers, a capacity for normal human emotion.

“Ugggghhhh,” commented MSNBC political pundit Chris Matthews, ejaculating. "Uggghhhhh."

News of the Future

Some stories from the not-too-distant future: 

Obama Unveils a Stiff(y)

WASHINGTON, DC – In an election-eve address from the Oval Office, President Obama shocked the nation by revealing that the bullet-ridden corpse of Osama bin Laden wasn't dumped into the ocean after all. And then he fucked it.

Apple Releases Something

CUPERTINO, CA -- Computer giant Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) revealed an electronic device that is as sexy as it is pricey – and includes one new killer, must-have feature: the power to assuage liberal guilt. Indeed, when started for the first time, the device asks users to sign a Change.org petition decrying every aspect of the way it was built and sold.

The device, the iSomething, is expected to hit store shelves later this year and retail for $329, a remarkably affordable asking price considering the irreparable emotional and physical damage inflicted upon the poor Chinaman who built it.

Liberals Blame Nader

EVERYWHERE, SIGH -- In comments posted on Internet message boards, liberals placed blame for the Democrats' loss of the White House / win of the White House but loss of the Senate / win of the White House and both Houses of Congress but no filibuster-proof majority / win of the White House and both Houses of Congress including a filibuster-proof majority but fuckin' a man still nothing changes, on long-time consumer rights activist Ralph Nader.

"Boo!" wrote one user, "Markos Moulitsas," in a post accompanied by a .gif of jangling keys.

Liar, liar

"Early this week I got a request from Charlie Davis, Russell Brand's booker for his new show (and soon to be old show) Brand X," writes Pamela Geller, a professional anti-Muslim bigot who sees jihad under every hijab. To make a long story short: "Charlie is a liar."

Ride the pony

Behind the headlines

Each week, we at BrandX pore over all the weird, horrifying and occasionally sexy stories the world has to offer in a quest to make weird, horrifying and occasionally sexy observations about the world in which we live. Often these stories involve butts or some form of penetration – the jackpot is both – and very often they are silly. But often enough, they're only silly in a superficial way; once you dig a little bit, you find there's actually something serious going on.

Take this story out of New Hampshire:



According to the report, a “woman who described herself as an exotic dancer” called police “when a resident ordered a dance, but refused to answer his door when she arrived.” The hilarious thing is that, instead of helping the working woman in question, police mocked her.

“She never danced, so I would be hard pressed to say it was theft of services,” said very funny local police chief Mike Schwartz, who presumably has a podcast. “Now if she was a professional doorbell ringer . . . .”

Wipe the tear from your eye and, just for a moment, imagine you're the woman in question. Maybe the rent's due in a week and you're coming up short. Maybe you have some student loans to pay off. Maybe you have a kid. Maybe you're just like millions of other Americans: working a shitty job so you can pay the utilities on time. But thanks to a client who ordered your services but gets cold feet, instead of getting some extra cash in your g-string, you've just wasted two hours and a gallon of gas. Distressed, you do something stupid: you call the police, thinking they might help.
Instead: “I guess there are some people who would have a better dance than others,” the local sheriff tells the press. “Maybe you were expecting Mikhail Baryshnikov and you got someone looking like Mike Schwartz. I wouldn't answer the door either.”

Know why that's funny? Because the woman in question isn't an opera singer or a plumber or a wedding DJ, in which case ordering her services and then failing to pay for them would indeed be viewed as a crime without controversy. No, she works a job that makes people smirk. She's just a stripper; just a woman who “described herself as an exotic dancer.” And there's no need to show much respect to a person like that, the subtext goes.

What the headline ought to be:

The West goes to pot

In my latest piece for Al Jazeera, I recount how a trip to a Hollywood plastic surgeon led to me embracing alternative medicine and Adult Swim. Check it out.

Never say never

(via BLCKDGRD)