Beware Pentagon's Imperial Ambitions

An Undersecretary of Defense, Michele Flournoy, can undermine efforts by Obama and Clinton to initiate negotiations with the Taliban. She let slip on purpose that the Pentagon planned to continue Special Operations counter-terror missions in Afghanistan even after most troops withdraw in 2014, and would retain Bagram Air Base to support them.

One requirement of the Taliban, which is willing to negotiate, is that all foreign forces would leave in any final settlement.

Why does Obama countenance such self-serving, aggrandizing behavior by military spokespeople? So, now we're going to have bases and operations in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, after (most of) our troops have "left?"

Does no one in the Pentagon realize that we can't afford to garrison the world? Now we're expanding operations into Libya. While Obama may intend to limit the operation, to step back from US command to US-dominated NATO command of the Libyan intervention, it's likely the Pentagon will push for more money if Qaddafi continues to resist and his military makes mincemeat of the revolutionaries. We'll have to send in "advisors," "trainers," and weapons, of course.

Obama's rationale for intervention makes moral sense up to a point: to protect civilians. The US does have unique capabilities: to blow up Qaddafi's well-armed militias and artillery units, while never touching feet to the ground. Loyalist forces exhibit no compunction at brutalizing and massacring civilians along the way, so, literally, bombing tank units saves civilian lives.

On the other hand, what Undersecretary Flournoy demonstrates, is the Pentagon's insatiable appetite: for more bases, more operations, on into the future. Secretary Gates has made gestures towards cutting the Defense budget, but his underlings make sure that Defense's budget will keep on growing.

A dangerous world is profitable.

So, it is perfectly reasonable to worry that we'll get further drawn into Libya, and that ten years down the road we'll be holding onto bases in that country, even after we "withdraw."

However, something's happening that is cause for guarded optimism: conservative Republicans are beginning to question the unending spending lavished on the military, when they're struggling to find places to cut the Government budget. And conservative/libertarian Republicans are joining with progressive Democrats to question the Libyan adventure.

Why has it been axiomatic until now: cutting budget deficits requires slashing programs that help people who need help, while not touching the lavish Defense budget, which costs more than all other nations' defense budgets combined? Why, also, is there such muted discussion about the other side of the budget deficit: the lowered tax rates for the extremely wealthy, who not only could afford to pay more, but should, since they have gained virtually 100% of the profits from US productivity gains since 2000, and most from the gains accrued since 1980?

Just as in Rome in the 5th Century, it's the military and the super-rich who will bring us down. Maybe we shouldn't let them.

Political False Advertising

Radical Republicans won elections by claiming that they would create jobs. People in the US either fear losing their jobs, or don't have them at all (about 16% when "discouraged workers" and part-time workers are counted). Therefore, people thought they were voting rationally. But despite their rhetoric, the radical Republicans had a very different agenda: not job creation at all.

Of course, it's not just Republicans who do this. Back in 1964, I hurried back from Europe after the Army, because I felt I had to vote for LBJ to prevent the fire-breathing Goldwater from committing us to a "quagmire in the Asian jungles." That's what LBJ campaigned against. Once elected, he escalated the Vietnam War! This was despite LBJ's apparent belief (revealed posthumously) that the war was doomed. Luckily for me, I was never re-called. We then went on to elect Nixon, who claimed he had a "secret plan" to stop the war! He didn't.

In the current situation, we have Republican Congress-people, Senators, state legislators and Governors, who, once elected, have proceeded to carry out radical agendas that have nothing to do with creating jobs.

How does legalizing the murder of abortion providers create jobs? South Dakota legislators proposed this. How does direct state abolition and takeover of local municipalities create jobs? Michigan's new governor has proposed this. How does abolishing collective bargaining among public employees create jobs? Wisconsin's Senate passed this late one night, in a rump session; Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey and other states are in the process of passing similar laws.

How does redefining rape to require proof of violence create jobs? Congressional Republicans withdrew this proposal, but still want to pass more stringent anti-abortion laws. How does cutting spending on services for poor people, and for their children (like the cuts to food stamps and head start), create jobs? These are part of a campaign to bash the poor, the unions, and any government institution unpopular with conservatives. All have been promoted or passed in the US House, despite Democratic opposition. None create jobs; they destroy them.

The measure that began this process was extending the tax cut for those earning over $250,000, which passed in the post-election session of the last Congress. If the Republicans hadn't extorted that concession from Obama and Reid, there would be $600 billion more in revenue, reducing the need for budget cuts considerably.

Their fiscal austerity costs jobs; it doesn't create them. Further, the moneyed won't hire because of lower taxes; they will hire when there is demand for their products or services. Even then, they might hire in China or Vietnam, not the US. They're rolling in money, anyway: they've stolen virtually all of America's productivity gains for themselves since the 1980's.

Justice would demand a fair share returned, but monopolists are like the Roman Senators of the Fifth Century, (when Rome fell): they want it all--and they think they've purchased it--with their new governments.

Libyan Dilemma

Libya is a progressive's dilemma: the arguments in favor of intervention are humanitarian, but nothing is clear, including the goals of the intervention. The UN Security Council endorsed all actions to protect civilians--presumably from their murderous ruler--yet there is no mandate for ousting Qaddafi.

So, the mission, lobbied for by some of the revolutionaries and Sarkozy, and reluctantly agreed to by Obama and others, is vague and easily expandable. On the other hand, there is clearly a need to stop the megalomaniac from massacring his own people.

In terms of Obama's assertion of Presidential power, I deplore its arbitrary exercise, but Clinton did it and so did W. At least Obama did it multilaterally and urged the Europeans to lead. That the US has to do the initial heavy lifting demonstrates that we're the only nation stupid enough to invest in so much war-making capability. Worse is that there is no real exit agreed to, and the Libyan opposition seems to be a feckless lot that any professional military would sneer at.

I share Friedman's worry that Libya is no nation, but a collection of tribes that could murder each other for generations--just like Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Bahrain. So, will that mean that the US and its European allies will be bogged down in another civil war?

We can't afford it.

What Libya demonstrates most of all, is the danger of a budget and a war machine that's good for little else. Money drives both sides. Qaddafi reportedly didn't invest in his army (he didn't trust it), but in his loyal tribal militias and mercenary forces; he airlifted the latter from operations elsewhere. Money also drives the initial US leadership of the intervention: we have a plethora of the weapon systems needed and the skills to use them, paid for by huge Defense budgets like the approximately $750 billion allocated this year.

Trouble is what the empire buys with all this money. Probably, without international intervention, Qaddafi would have prevailed; he would have unleashed terror on his opponents. Possibly more would die than will die from the intervention. But it's not clear that the intervention will prevent Qaddafi's homicidal repression in large swathes of Libya, unless the intervening powers insert "boots on the ground."

By opposing Qaddafi with weapons, the rebels gave him the advantage. Qaddafi relies on elite militias and mercenaries: only if they defect, would armed revolutionaries gain the advantage. If, like the Egyptian rebels, Libyans continued non-violent resistance, they would have been more morally persuasive than the feckless armed volunteers, who run from tanks and artillery. If Libya were more of a nation, nonviolent protest would have united them as it did in Egypt and Tunisia.

Empires on the way down get sucked into conflicts that bankrupt them. Libya may be another one of these.

Libya, The Technological Imperative

The Turkish Prime Minister said he only wanted reassurance that NATO in Libya would be "brief" and would not "lead to an occupation." Congressional Liberal Democrats and some Republicans, both moderate and Paulian, complained that Obama had consulted with Europe, with the Arab League and with the UN, but not with them.

Even Obama hasn't articulated what he's done in any historical context, like Clinton's attacks on Libya before, in retaliation for a terrorist bombing aided by Qaddafi's government. Only now, Qaddafi massacres his own people.

So, the US was (again) in the lead in a military campaign authorized by the UN, edging a bit into mission creep, and this time it was in part because no one else has the military capability to attack a nation anywhere on the globe. Hold that thought.

The US led in the initial attack, even though Obama and Gates were clearly reluctant to engage in Libya, unless others led, because they didn't want to be involved in a 'third war in the middle east," unless they had a lot of cover.

But there is a technological imperative that thrusts the US military (quite willingly, it seems) into the lead of an operation like Libya's. So, we're damned by the huge expenditures we make on defense (offense, really), into being sucked into any mess anywhere in the world--or at least anywhere in the world where oil might be at stake.

The US spends over 3/4 of a trillion on "Defense," while no one else spends more than about 10% of that (the Chinese), and we consider that 10% worrisome. We can't afford such huge expenditures, as the stupid and vicious budget battles in Congress and the states demonstrate, but only a small minority yet says, we have to cut Defense.

Instead of cutting Defense, we cut pre-school and Medicaid, we cut Pell Grants and Family Planning--while restoring tax cuts at an historically low rate for millionaires.

Our huge Defense establishment demands money, but all that money just gets the US into more trouble. We could be sucked into a Libyan civil war, because we were the only ones with the wherewithal to quickly set up a no-fly, no-tank zone (that’s apparently what it's become). And we've already spent several hundred million to a billion dollars, just in these brief few days after the initial attack. This is when Congress is tortuously attempting to find $70 to $100 billion of budget cuts.

A conservative site noted that empires fall when they can't help getting sucked into military adventures they can't afford. Actually, it took the Romans centuries of impoverishment caused by those wars, before Rome fell, but history moves very fast these days.

Unlike Rome, though, there are an awful lot of us, both liberal and conservative, who see it coming: the Fall of Rome II.

Are There More Nukes in Our Future?

Read the accounts of the ongoing nuclear accidents, or catastrophes (yes, plural) in Japan, and you begin to wonder: why use nuclear at all?

The events were explained to a New York Times reporter by someone who is in the business of promoting the nuclear industry. Despite the source, the series of events in Japan make it very clear: humans don't really know what they're doing! Why, in god's name (or names), doesn't everybody go massively into solar, wind, tidal and other renewable power sources? It's obvious, just from the descriptions of what is breaking down--despite massive safety precautions and safety redundancy--that the nuclear people are brewing up a really powerful stew, and they don't have any control--they only think they do--over whether it boils over and makes a terrible mess.

I always wanted my grandchildren to have three heads.

The US gets about 20% of its power from nukes. But nuclear power plants are incredibly capital intensive. The 50's myth of nearly free energy was upended when it became apparent how dangerous nuclear was. So, to build a nuclear power plant will cost billions, usually billions more than first estimated, and a whole security force and apparatus must be maintained to protect it, since it's a terrorist target and threat. Having nuclear power plants festooning the landscape bolsters our security state. After all, they are dangerous, as Japan is demonstrating.

But why should we build more of them?

“The president believes that meeting our energy needs means relying on a diverse set of energy sources that includes renewables like wind and solar, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power,” said a White House spokesman, Clark Stevens, several days ago, remarks made in light of the ongoing nuclear catastrophes in Japan.

Note, Obama also wants to rely on "clean coal," even though most experts say it's an oxymoron, but then Illinois, from which he now hails, is a big coal-producing state.

It's really all about who has the money. A nuclear power plant requires lots of money, but its investors arrange it so they can mint it, once it's in operation. A utility is a regulated monopoly, and so, there is a guaranteed return on capital negotiated with the regulators. Ten percent might be considered a "fair return," so, 10% of $10 billion is a lot more than 10% of $100 million. Big profits, even if expensive electricity.

Coal companies also have money. So do the gas frackers, who want to come drill in my neighborhood!

We'll destroy the habitable planet we inherited, because of money, and the power it wields. Some of the earth will become radioactively toxic, some of it will be desert, and some will be flooded, poisoned or freakishly frozen. Huge winds will tear down puny human habitations, just like the tsunami. End of Empire? What about end of civilization?

Can't we just stop being so stupid?

Bastards and Real Bastards

Qaddafi bombs his own unarmed people and destroys towns in order to retake them; in China, human rights activists just disappear: poof. In Attila, as Told to His Scribes, (Chapter Two to appear soon), Attila makes the case that the Romans were worse than he was: and besides, he learned the brutality from them.

Lying kills more than Qaddafi's bombs, only not so suddenly. The misrepresentation of reality perpetrated on Americans by the MSM will result in a lot more deaths than bombs, from diseases not treated, from air pollution, from unmitigated climate change, from car accidents due to poor road maintenance, even from hunger--so draconian are the cuts justified by these lies. Note: Canada permits no Fox-Canada, because it has a law against lying on air.

The biggest lie is that the deficit is the problem. It isn't; it's a short-term solution and needs to be even larger in the near-term--to overcome lagging demand. The secondary lies are that unions are corrupt, wield monopoly power over governments, and are the cause of the budget deficits that--take a deep breath--caused the recession--which is all Obama's fault, of course. Oh, also: seniors are greedy and Social Security will sink us.

Reality Check: Obama's stimulus did prevent us, and perhaps the world, from falling headlong into another Great Depression, but it was compromised away to death and was much too small to pull us out of recession. What we need now, is more spending for job creation, not draconian cuts. Social Security hasn't contributed to the deficits; its "locked box" has been looted for years by politicians, who borrowed the bonds amassed, and replaced them with IOU's. Now they have to be paid back. Slashing the military, or taxing the few who have ripped off everyone else, could pay off the IOU's: both are responsible for them, after all.

In the ongoing budget battle, Obama does know that the stimulus worked, if not enough, and he knows we need more of it. Yet, right off the bat, he freezes Federal workers' wages, and offers to cut Food Stamps, the program that has expanded exponentially--because people need it to get by.

Obama is a politician. When he saw the election results, he listed rightward--offering concessions like the Food Stamps cuts, because people were angry about spending (due to Fox/Limbaugh lies). But nothing he offers will be drastic enough, unless he accepts the whole GOP agenda. If he does that--

We'll need a new party; we'll nationalize the Wisconsin Movement.

It's either that, or capitulation to our new masters: corporations and billionaires, the epitome of Fifth Century Roman Senators. Less humane than their predecessors, however, corporations and billionaires assume no responsibility for their slaves and serfs, nor for the world they trash.

Wisconsin As Radical Conservatives See It

Public employee unions are sucking us dry. They control government services, exercising monopoly economic power over the rest of us. They threaten to strike, grabbing high pay and high-cost benefits, because governments don't go bankrupt, they just cave--and raise taxes.

Taxes are theft, especially disproportionate (unfair) taxes on anyone who's made something of himself, and never got a hand out. And their money goes to all those good-for-nothings and scumbags who whine that they can't make it on their own.

So, of course Governor Walker cuts taxes on businesses and people with high incomes. He should; he's helping the people who create jobs.

Those liberals and socialists whine about 'inequality;' sure there's inequality: of skill, smarts and sheer hard work. That's why some people do well and others can't seem to get off the government's tit.

Cutting collective bargaining rights for teachers and such, is urgently needed. It'll curb those monopoly powers they've been abusing, demanding those high wages and killer pensions. They're all lefties, too, and the teachers probably would indoctrinate our kids if we didn't watch them like hawks.

That's why we're going bankrupt, these socialist unions are holding governments hostage.

That's the argument.

First of all, among workers of comparable age and education, public employees are paid slightly less on average. Sometimes, their pensions make up some of the difference, but they aren't extravagantly exploiting the people working in the private sector. And they don't hold governments for ransom.

The reason that private sector workers aren't paid more, and don't have good pensions, is not, at all because of the public employee unions. That doesn't even make sense. It's because private sector employers have been more and more aggressive banning unions, so they can pay workers less, and contribute less to their health care and 401(k)'s (preferred by employers to pensions, because they are only present, not future obligations).

While the wealthy do pay more dollars in income taxes than most, those dollars are a smaller proportion of their incomes, so they hurt less. Our tax system, on the whole (including payroll, sales, sin and property taxes) means: the wealthy pay a smaller proportion of their income the higher it gets.

But Wisconsin isn't about money; it's about power. People with money think they should be able to buy what they want with it, including lax regulations in their industry and cheap hard-working workers who don't talk back. They also want Pax Americana everywhere: it protects their overseas ventures and enables high profits from the huge military resulting.

Why do conservatives think people will simply surrender their rights? Because, many already have? The explosion was inevitable: Americans may be gulled, but they haven't been cowed. Yet.

If the Walkers win, contemporary Roman Senators will try to lord it over the serfs, but will Americans let them?

Serfs Or Citizens?

It is striking: in Wisconsin, Scott Walker insists there's a budget crisis--after cutting taxes for businesses, i.e. the wealthy. Following that, he and his fellow Republicans demand cuts to the salaries and benefits of teachers, and other public employees, and also eliminating their collective bargaining rights--in order to make up the shortfall they helped to create.

In Washington, Republicans insisted on cutting taxes on the wealthy, at a cost of $70 billion a year, and simultaneously declared a budget emergency. House Republicans vow to cut $70 billion from programs like Title X aid to women's health, Head Start, public broadcasting, COPS, the police aid program, community development aid, teachers--

Already, in California, high school class sizes will rise to 60 per classroom.

We are eating our young; we are eating ourselves, to feed the fat of the land.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott announced he would cut taxes on corporations by $1.7 billion and would cut education funding by--$1.7 billion!

And now the Wisconsin Rump, the Republicans in the Senate without a quorum (they claim one isn't needed for non-budgetary items), met almost in secret, voted to slash collective bargaining rights for public employees, after recasting the bill to strip it of all budgetary implications!

This is where it gets transparent: the rationale for stripping collective bargaining was to cut the budget deficit. Couldn't be done without it, Walker insisted. Now they've stripped collective bargaining and haven't gotten any closer to balancing the budget. Good job, says Walker.

It isn't about budgets; it isn't about deficits; it's about who gets the money. Republicans, funded by billionaires like the Koch brothers, have been elected by that money to insure that the people with money keep more and more of it out of taxes, while simultaneously looting the government and the nation.

It's been a very sophisticated takeover, of ideas, of communication, of governments, by people who have a lot and want it all. Yes, they are greedy, for money and power. They have taken over the Supreme Court. They have taken over more than half the states governments, they have taken over the US House of Representatives, and they have cowed and corrupted enough of the Democratic majority in the Senate, that we've so far seen from it only limp-wristed "compromise" proposals. Ditto the President.

Finally, though, people are beginning to wake up. Thousands are converging on Madison Wisconsin, day after day. And the same things are happening in states like Indiana, Michigan and Ohio rallying against similar and worse proposals. There have been sympathy rallies all over the nation. Even more encouraging: support for unions and for public employees has risen in the polls, even unionized teachers (approved of by 66%).

Rachel Maddow said: "It's a movement."

It might have to be almost a revolution to stop our contemporary Roman Senators from turning us all into serfs!

If They Were Really Democrats

There's a class war going on, and instead of siding with the so-called 'middle class', Democrats are saying, "Okay, okay, cut that nasty ol' deficit! Okay, okay, don't tax people with money, we'll sock it to the kids, seniors, poor--and public employees."

The Republicans were voted in on a wave of anger driven by the falsehoods of Foxvestia, and Limbaugh/Pravda, and by the billions from people like the Koch's and the executive class controlling corporations like Goldman Sachs and Exxon.

Democrats can't win the deficit-cutting game. Whatever concessions Democrats make, they are only furthering the agenda of the class that wants to destroy them, and wants to subject the rest of us to their maleficent control. That's what Walker's war on collective bargaining is about.

What Democrats should be doing, if they really are the Party of the People-- their perennial slogan--is fighting loudly for tax increases on the wealthy. The wealthy may have lost a bit in the recession, but they've amassed more wealth in the last two decades than all the rest of the nation combined. The wealthy made off with all but about 10% of US productivity gains since the 1970's: those gains have been prodigious. That's why the top 1% earns as much income as the bottom 95%. Wages and salaries below the top have been nearly flat since the 1970's, yet the size of our economy has doubled.

Why have Democrats caved? The debate is completely one-sided: Republicans say, cut taxes, period, and cut government spending on programs that help people not corporations. Democrats only counter with: let's not cut it that much.

The anger propelling Republican wins has subsided, according to polls: majorities oppose high-handed policies pushed by Wisconsin Governor Walker and other anti-union Republicans.

Democrats should campaign single-mindedly on growing jobs. They should point out: the stimulus worked, but not enough; more is needed: to go from 190,000 new jobs a month to 300-400,000, to get people back to work, to get the economy moving again. Democrats should point out that Republican deficit-cutting policies: gutting programs, laying off workers, will actually increase deficits and cut jobs since they will likely slow growth. They will also impoverish the nation in the future. Democrats should argue that tax-cuts for the wealthy will go mostly to speculation and investments overseas, not more jobs.

Instead, Yeats describes the Democrats: "the best lack all conviction," while their opponents "are full of passionate intensity." "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Democrats shouldn't cave; they should organize, speak smarter and shout louder than Republicans--truth and the issues are on their side, if only they'd champion them.

Class War!

A clueless friend of mine, referring to the protesting workers in Wisconsin, said, "It's all about greed!"

Class war: it's what the budget battles at state and federal levels are really about. In Wisconsin, Governor Walker cut taxes, taxes for business, therefore for the better-off, greatly increasing the deficit; at the same time he demanded not only cuts to state workers' wages and pensions, but insisted: collective bargaining rights for most public employees had to go.

Governor Walker's excuse is the budget shortfall, a good part of which was caused by his tax cuts--to the wealthy. Meanwhile, police, who Walker exempted from losing their collective bargaining rights, are fraternizing with the protesters; they sang Solidarity Forever in the Capitol rotunda! They know what's at stake.

Fox News demonizes public employees as greedy, but its commentators, like Hannity and O'Reilly are members of AFTRA, a union for performers in radio and TV; I bet their pay is much better than the teachers they trash as greedy.

Even in New York, the most unionized state, the new Democratic governor, Cuomo, talks about getting tough with public employee unions, to extract pay and pension give-backs, while vowing never to raise taxes on the wealthy!

At the Federal level, not only does the Republican majority target cuts against women's and children's health programs--among other programs benefiting the middle class and poor--but Obama, tries to make nice with the budget cutters by offering to slash food stamp funds in half!

Only a small minority in Congress supported amendments to the continuing resolution (in lieu of a budget), cutting Pentagon spending, yet defense accounts for more than half of the Federal budget's discretionary spending. And the deficit has grown because Republicans insisted on maintaining Bush tax cuts, including "for millionaires." Top bracket cuts will cost about $800 billion, and trillions if made permanent. And the wealthy won't spend; they'll save, or buy stocks abroad.

Over 9% of workers are officially unemployed, another 10% are probably discouraged workers, but the media ignore both. Meanwhile, workers still working are likely to be over-worked and underpaid: they aren't represented by unions.

The Republican onslaught on public employee unions could weaken the union movement even further. Republicans know, but many Democrats forget: killing unions would drastically weaken support for Democrats.

It's war on Democrats, who don't have a clue, but more importantly, it's a war on anyone who isn't wealthy, who doesn't own substantial parts of the corporate system; who aren't the people whom Marx labeled capitalists.

Why don't Democrats know what's going on? Why do the Cuomos collaborate? Some Democrats are also capitalists--or want the chance to be.

Wisconsin, et al are all out war, and if Corpolicans win, even Coporocrats lose and we'll be turning onto the road trod by effete Roman Senators; they sold Rome to the Barbarians in 476.