War with DAESH/ISIS?

Are these the times when even the NYT promotes war? Yesterday, 12/7/15, in ‘Obama Says of Terrorist Threat: 'We Will Overcome It,’ the NYT reported on Obama’s oval office speech.

You’d think the “paper of record” would cover significant points put forward in the President’s address, but you’d be wrong. There was much about what Obama had done and was doing about Daesh*, aka Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL militarily, but no mention of his major, multilateral initiative with Russia, Iran, China, France and Saudi Arabia (number 4 of his points), in which tentative agreements have already been reached on a process to establish a cease-fire between ‘moderate’ opposition forces and the Syrian Government, with the further tentative agreement that the initial result would be an interim government. Without an agreement, no progress against Daesh is possible. Why? Arab Sunnis rebelling against both Iraqi and Syrian Shiite/Alawite dominated governments are not going to fight against Daesh, which is also Sunni Arab, though extremist thugs, until the conflict between the rest of the (Sunni) opposition is at least tentatively resolved.

Russia’s initial solution—backing Assad—won’t bring Sunnis to its side; it can drive them into the arms of Daesh.

American Republicans call for war with Daesh, inching towards US troops on the ground, but that’s precisely what Daesh wants. It would empower it to portray itself as Islam attacked by Infidels, which would make its current successful worldwide recruiting look pale by comparison.

Yes, it would lose on the battlefield, but we’ve been down that road too many times: The US lost no battles in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, but it effectively lost all three wars. Attacking Daesh directly would have the same result, but it could be global; the West, even Russia and China, could be under constant attack of the kind demonstrated in San Bernardino. We might call it Terror by Example, or Inspirational Terror, instead of a Terror Network.

Further, to demonize and alienate Muslims, as Trump and his ditto-heads advocate, would be counter-productive: it would prime Muslims all over the world, including those in the US (relatively well integrated and prosperous up until now) to be even more receptive to Daesh than its small thuggish fringe has been already.

*Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, but it sounds like the Arabic words for one who crushes something underfoot, or one who sows discord, hence it is intensely disliked by Daesh adherents. IS is not appropriate, since it is not a true state, only a conquest gang or a global mafia.

Not Just Conservative Libertarians

Rand Paul's filibuster may have uncovered an issue that resonates with more than his core conservative base. It's the overweening reach of the executive branch, especially the President's use of drones, and his claim that he has the power to kill citizens if he determines--without proof--they are "enemy combatants" involved in terrorism against the US. This is a real danger: any President unchecked could become like a King or dictator, with no limits to his power.

Paul's protest is consistent with the conservative-libertarian view that government must be limited. Progressives, like Democratic Senator, Ron Wyden, who supported Paul's filibuster, could make common cause on the issue of war powers, but not on the government's role in the domestic economy.

Conservatives and progressives might collaborate on cutting back the overreach of imperial powers, and ultimately, on reducing, or withdrawing support from the United States as empire.

Back in the Interwar Period, this impulse was first labeled isolationism; then it was short-sighted. The rising powers of Togo's Japan, and Hitler's Germany had to be stopped: they were determined to dominate everyone. Their hegemony could have created a terrifying world. The dominance of the US after WWII was relatively benign in comparison.

However, US super-power status has been fraying for years, and although the US is still by far the most powerful militarily, and largest economically, trends are against its maintaining preeminence for long. First of all, as Vietnam and then Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated, military might is limited: it cannot impose American control over an unruly world, despite the US spending more on its military than all other major powers combined. Often, our "adversaries" have been able, like a judo master, to use our strength against us.

In Vietnam, the Viet Cong gained a goodly proportion of its arms from a vibrant black market, because of the flood of weaponry sent by the US. In Afghanistan, we created our own enemies: the Taliban and al Qaeda, when intervening against the Soviet takeover. In Iraq, we destroyed a relatively stable dictatorship, a sometime ally (Saddam worked with the CIA until invading Kuwait). Instead, we created an unstable "democracy" naturally allied with Iran.

In addition to the limits to military power, there is America's relative economic decline, caused by the dramatic rise of the BRIC nations, especially China, and by our trade debt. The US will not have the largest economy for long, and will not be able to afford the luxury of its huge military establishment. This is especially true as the US Dollar's reserve status weakens and we have to pay our debts with dollars earned!

It's likely we're seeing the beginning of the decline of the American Empire. I hope we can manage it more benignly than did the Romans, Spanish, or Soviets. So, Rand Paul has a point.

Maybe we can become like Monty Python's post-imperial Britain. We could have more fun!

Life is Complicated For Obama

President Obama claims a number of accomplishments, but some are like finally agreeing to bring US troops home from Iraq. His Defense Secretaries tried hard to keep them there.

Obama can also claim rescinding Don't Ask Don't Tell; he touts his flawed healthcare law and rescuing the economy from collapse, even though the subsequent recovery is like a depression. He hasn't yet raised taxes on the highest incomes, but insists they need to be, not lowered as Republicans demand

How would Obama see himself? I'll bet his greatest disappointment is that despite all his efforts to promote a more civil politics of centrist good sense, his opponents hate him and are doing everything they can to defeat his re-election bid. He also knows that it's not only partisan; it's also racial, plus the Senate and Congress are bought and paid for by the biggest bucks on the planet.

He must love to hear about the sorry parade of Republican candidates, their mishaps and stupidities, but he must grind his teeth to hear Fox's commentators falsifying what's actually happening.

He may, finally, be getting it: he will never reach agreements with Republicans, unless it's to tie the noose around his neck. Boehner and McConnell are subtle, but, secretly, they wish they could lynch this uppity black man.

Why has Obama actually intensified the war in Afghanistan and the drone war over Pakistan? The military and Hillary were for the surge; Biden was for the drone war and against the surge. So, compromise! Have both!

I wonder if Obama credits himself that they got bin Laden: probably. Hillary joked about it. The Republicans try to claim that it only happened because of what George W did before, but they're wrong; Bush closed the bin Laden Section; Obama reopened it.

Obama is a disappointment: he tried to compromise, tried to be the "adult" in the middle, instead of the leftish statesman he projected on the campaign trail. He had progressive ideas, but he's probably more conservative than Nixon, "our last liberal President." Every Republican, however, is to the right of Hoover and even of Coolidge, or Taft.

Yet, it's not at all clear that the majority of Americans are conservative, even many self-identified as such. Most are like the tea partier whose sign shouted: 'Keep your hands off my Medicare', what they want demands liberal, not conservative policies. Except for the crazy religious, most are also socially liberal: hence the abolition of Don't Ask, and the spread of same-sex marriage.

Maybe Obama represents them better than he realizes, in these last years of a tired, crazy, polarized Empire, How many years until the re-play of 476, when the Barbarians took possession of bankrupt Imperial Rome? If Obama is reelected, we'll have a slightly better chance of avoiding that scenario: the Barbarians could be Chinese bankers.


From: MilitaryEducation.org

Full Spectrum Dominance

…is what the Pentagon insists on maintaining--globally! Dominance: on Land, Air, Sea and Space. Among professional American military, the "long war" is an assumption, not just a consensus. Talk about Global Empire!

American Generals don't think much about economics. America is "the greatest nation on earth," so it can afford endless war everywhere. For the Generals, Admirals, Colonels, Majors, Captains etc., it's a great deal. Back home, we may have to scrimp, or worry about losing jobs, or homes, but the more wars there are, the better for the officers and NCO's. Defense industries depend on it and profit handsomely, too. So what, if the rest of America has to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for it!

Defense spending is the largest "discretionary" item in the US budget, always, war or no war. And since WWII, it has always gone up. Why?

Have dangers escalated? No. With the end of the Cold War, the Soviets, the only power that could annihilate large parts of the US, collapsed; it re-emerged as resource-rich Russia, with only regional ambitions. The Chinese were briefly our enemies, during the Korean War, but they also have only regional ambitions, and never had the Soviet's capability of destroying the US.

Media commentators express alarm that a growing and prosperous China is building up its military, but its budget is about one-tenth of ours, even though it is the second richest nation, and the one with the most money to squander: we have huge trade deficits, they have huge surpluses.

So, why does DOD's budget go up every year? Why are we still in Iraq, although we're supposedly no longer fighting, and in Afghanistan, building huge bases, although we're supposed to be "starting" withdrawal next summer?

Excerpts from Woodward's Obama's War indicate that it really isn't his war. It's Petraeus's, and the other Generals'. Obama insisted on an exit date, and Petraeus, and company, have been chipping away at that ever since: if the military has anything to say (unfortunately, it has the loudest voice), we'll be fighting in Afghanistan until at least 2020. And we'll find other enemies, too, even if only a few hundred "extremists" here and there.

In the 1930's, Japan had the trappings of democracy, but it was controlled by the military, using the charisma of the Emperor to rally the nation. Tojo, a General, became Prime Minister during WWII. The victorious allies hanged him. He could be Petraeus's model.

Look for Petraeus to run for President in 2012. If he wins, he'll lead the nation like Tojo, who was probably responsible for the Pearl Harbor bombing--and Japan's subsequent defeat.

The military was also dominant in the late Roman Empire. That didn't do Romans much good against their enemies, the "Barbarians," however--even when they hired Barbarians to protect Rome against other Barbarians: See page: The Fall of Rome.

A Democratic Protest: Three Die

I own land in a remote part of the country, and make my living by farming it. I produce wheat and sometimes opium poppy. I've lived on the land all my life; it's been in the family for generations, just like our neighbors on both sides: they have lived on their land for generations.

Foreign soldiers come. They have lots of guns. They camp out on our land, our neighbors', too; we're too afraid to say anything. We don't want to go to the rebels, because we've thought the new talk about 'democracy' and 'freedom' sounds good. When the rebels controlled, they didn't talk about things like that. They terrified us.

These foreign soldiers say they are protecting us from the rebels. But in a few days, they bring in more soldiers, and then big machines that tear up our precious soil to make big buildings they bring in pieces; they begin to put these together.

But they never asked if they could buy our land! We would have told them we don't want to sell; it is our mother. We have lived on it for generations; she has fed us all that time. They didn't even offer money.

We talk to our neighbors, and they talk to theirs, and pretty soon, someone says: "Let's protest; you can do that in democracies. These foreigners say they are bringing democracy, so we can do this."

We march to what used to be our land, and there are a lot of people, maybe several hundred, marching with us. We surround the people putting up the buildings and torturing our earth. Our neighbor, who speaks some of their language, says to them, "We protest! You are taking our land! We did not give it to you! We want it back!"

We close in on the builders and soldiers. I can't see much of the soldiers' faces because of their helmets. They look very large, and then one of them points his big weapon at us.

But they are for democracy! We are peacefully demonstrating, the way we should in a democracy! I tell our people this, and everyone agrees. So, we don't back away.

Suddenly, bullets and fire explode from one and then another of the soldiers' weapons. My friend falls down. Then the neighbor who speaks some of their language! We turn to run and my son, ahead of me, a fine, strong boy of twelve, he falls, too! I pick him up, but he's dead!

These foreigners are as bad as the rebels! Maybe worse. Maybe the rebels are right: keep the foreigners out. The rebels say they have learned their lesson; they will not govern as they did before.

I am not sure about this, but maybe I'll help them, anyway: to avenge my son.



A re-creation of a recent event in Afghanistan: three people died, one a 12-year old boy.

US Empire Pushes String

How do you push a string? How do you make a nation govern itself effectively, when its history of governance up until now has been tribal, feudal and by self-selected warlords?

Tomes cram libraries on development, development finance, development economics, and political development. Most should be pulped. What we don't know about development could fill many more libraries.

There are many success stories, nations like China, Japan, India, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa and many more, but there are no notable formulas. China has used government directed markets and state promoted industrialization, but it had a very strong, effective political system before its recent successes. India has a lively, if sometimes chaotic, political system: its economic development has been more a mixture of political direction and foreign investment.

Nations like Afghanistan or Somalia or, most egregiously, the Congo, don't have the luxury of established, effective political systems.

Well-meaning Americans and Europeans try to help these nations learn to govern themselves. In the case of Afghanistan, they are doing so while also fighting a persistent insurrection/revolution on behalf of its largely dysfunctional government.

Some of the development success stories, including Vietnam, tell how revolutionary movements, anti-western, or anti-American, created the necessary political foundation for development in their countries: imposed governments did not.

From the era of colonialism until now, western, or "developed" nations have attempted to impose their kinds of governance on "less-developed" nations, sometimes for their own national interest, sometimes for more altruistic reasons. Western-style "democracies" flourished in Europe and Japan after WWII, because there had been long-established and effective governments before the war.

But consider the case of China: the allies supported a weak, corrupt authoritarian government (Chiang-kai Shek), and attempted to counter a revolutionary movement; our attempts failed. The Communist government lurched from famine, to war, to succession crises, but it also established a political system so strong that it could mobilize nearly a billion Chinese to kill off the flies in their nation--mostly by hand! That government still governs, and by adopting western-style economics, has become wildly successful.

Ours is really a post-imperial world waiting to happen: the US can only maintain its world-straddling military by borrowing from China. Yet, it can't create civil societies in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia no matter how many troops it stations in those nations. All it can do is exacerbate tensions, which favors forces of destruction, like al Qaeda.

Yet, the military has gained enough control of American policy that it continues to expand, regardless of economic distress faced at home, or lack of success abroad.

Our foreign policy goals are wildly unrealistic: you can't push a string. Continuing our military-foreign policy abroad will not create international stability; it will only impoverish and bankrupt us.

We have a choice: a vibrant nation without an empire, or a broken nation still attempting to hold onto one.