Month: December 2006

Well, yes, I was a little harsh on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois), putative presidential candidate and the fave rave of the Democratic net-roots, but then again I believe his position — as expressed most recently in this “Letter to the President” — is rapidly evolving. Obama characterizes the prospect of a troop “surge” as “chiling,” and flatly declares “there is no military solution to this war.” Furthermore, he implies, at least, that a call for withdrawal is in the offing, the standard Democratic rhetoric about “phased redeployment” to the contrary notwitstanding:

We must not multiply the mistakes of yesterday, we must end them today. May this New year bring a turn in our policy away from the stubborn repetition of our mistakes, so we can begin to chart a conclusion to this painful chapter in our history and bring out troops home.

I would add: now! Aside from that, however, Obama’s is the best statement on the war from a presidential candidate to date. His letter is not only clear-cut in its opposition to Bush’s “surge,” it comes out squarely against the underlying principles of our crazed foreign policy. Obama is also heartfelt and obviously sincere, rather than cynically “positioning” himself poltically.

Go, Obama, go!

 

Remember the lost “weapons of mass destruction“? Saddam was supposed to be saving them up for one final blast of malevolence, but, somehow, they got misplaced in the shuffle. The ever-inventive Clifford May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is on the case, however, and appears to have spotted them — in Syria! The source for this “intelligence” is one Olivier Guitta, who describes himself as “a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant in Washington, D.C.,” affiliated with the “Intelligence Summit,” an organization with a record of hysterical predictions and “warnings” that hardly inspires confidence: these are the same guys who told anyone who would listen that the Iranians were going to test a nuclear weapon by March 20, 2006. If it happened, it must have been a very small — microscopic — device, because no one (except, perhaps, the “experts” and “consultants” over at the “Intelligence” Summit) ever detected it.

Now we’re supposed to believe pretend “intelligence experts” when they barf up the same old stories, only this time with Syria (or Iran) inserted where the word “Iraq” used to be. These hacks condemn themselves every time they open their mouths, but the question is: whom do they think they’re convincing?

The WMD cargo cult lives on — and on.

Bob Novak on growing opposition to our crazed foreign policy of perpetual war inside the GOP [via Kos]:

The debate inside the Republican Party is whether the mid-term election defeat was solely the result of unhappiness over Iraq or constituted deeper concern with the drift of the GOP, under both presidential and Congressional leadership. Defeated Republicans who put all of the blame on Iraq are infuriated by White House denials of this argument. In any event, we find widespread agreement among Republicans that U.S. troops must be leaving Iraq at the end of 2007 to avoid catastrophe in 2008.

The decline in the polls of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), as measured against Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), reflects more than declining Republican popularity nationally in the weeks after the election. It connotes public disenchantment with McCain’s aggressive advocacy of a “surge” of up to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq. Unless the additional troops show immediate benefits, President George W. Bush’s determination to put more boots on the ground is feared by Republicans as another political burden to bear.

How long can the neoconized GOP hold up under the brutal assault of public opinion? Let’s hope not for too long ….

Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), a major power when it comes to forging our “bipartisan” foreign policy of global meddling, thinks we are at “war” — “energy war” — with Russia. Over at Dailykos.com, Jérôme Guillet, a Paris-based banker and an authority on Gazprom’s business practices, debunks the “war” hysteria generated by Lugar and his warmongering confreres over at the War Street Journal and the Washington Post. A snippet:

I am sure that a lot of people would be surprised to learn that market driven price increases are “predatory”. Let’s all remember that the issue is that these countries are getting gas at subsidized prices – because Russia chooses to do so in exchange for political advantage. If it feels that it is not getting the political gains it was seeking or expecting, why would it be abnormal to switch back to market conditions? Actually, papers like the WaPo or the WSJ, if they were consistent (yeah, I know…) should berate Georgia and Azerbaijan for selling out politically to Russia for market-distorting, and fleeting, benefits. Paying the market price for gas sends the proper signal to their consumers and investors, and increasing prices will lead, by market mechanisms, to lower gas demand and a better allocation of resources. Right? So why argue that these countries should get subsidized gas? From Russia?

How odd that a writer for a left-progressive site, such as Kos, would understand the market processes of Russian energy production, and its implications, far better than some alleged “libertarians,” such as Andrei Illarionov of the Cato Institute, who, together with Robert Amsterdam — a shill for Russian oligarch-gangster Mikhail Khodorkovsky — describes Putin’s Russia as a “new kind” of state, i.e. a “threat” along the lines suggested by Sen. Lugar.  

The Army Times reports:

The Center for American Progress proposed Wednesday to have a diplomatic rather than military surge in Iraq, and urged the new Democrat-controlled Congress to demand another vote authorizing military operations in Iraq if the number of U.S. troops will exceeds 150,000.

Hmmmm…. What would a vote to reauthorize the invasion and occupation of Iraq mean, concretely? Will the Democrats take back their previous votes in favor?

Well, not exactly. Lawrence Korb, a Reagan era defense official, who worked on the Center’s proposal, suggests a cap on troops to be mobilized from the reserves. Here is the perfect set-up for the promulgation of a myth that we could have “won” if only our hands hadn’t been tied by meddling politicians. Korb’s idea lock sus into the conflict, hands a powerful rhetorical weapon to the War Party — and only underscores the impracticality of any “exit strategy” short of exiting forthwith and completely.

The Empire is in such dire need of new centurions that, as the Boston Globe reports, the Pentagon may go international in its recruiting methods [hat tip: Lew Rockwell]:

The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks — including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer — according to Pentagon officials.

Which brings to mind this passage from Gibbon‘s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

The warlike states of antiquity, Greece, Macedonia, and Rome, educated a race of soldiers; exercised their bodies, disciplined their courage, multiplied their forces by regular evolutions, and converted the iron which they possessed into strong and serviceable weapons. But this superiority insensibly declined with their laws and manners; and the feeble policy of Constantine and his successors armed and instructed, for the ruin of the empire, the rude valour of the Barbarian mercenaries.

History really is the endless repetition of the same mistakes. But then again, they probably don’t teach Gibbon in the schools anymore, do they? In any event, this latest development gives a whole new meaning to “multilateralism.”