Keep Guantanamo Open!

In response to GOP Congressional insistence on including a $200 million Defense appropriation to build new barracks at Guantanamo, after Obama declares he'll try again to close it:

Anything that boosts Defense Appropriations is a good thing, obviously.

It's estimated that 3-8% of released Guantanamo detainees may have returned to terrorism. Even if a third of detainees returned to terrorism--largely in their own countries--would their actions cost more than the loss of credibility the US expends by keeping Guantanamo open? Guantanamo continues to imprison 86 men convicted of no crime, and cleared for release three years ago.

It's about the money. Defense contractors favor their friends: Republicans continue to be their loudest and most effective supporters.

The Guantanamo appropriation is symptomatic of the whole Defense complex. It makes you wonder: who really controls?

Noam Chomsky suggested in a recent article, "Humanity Imperiled," that the US has consistently opted for policies that increase tensions not reduce them. Examples included: JFK not agreeing to a public compromise to the Cuban Missile Crisis, risking nuclear war to achieve a secret deal that appeared as if only Krushchev backed down.

In '73 Kissinger risked nuclear war, calling a high nuclear alert, to warn the USSR not to interfere in the Arab-Israel war; in 1983, Reagan ordered SAC bombers to penetrate Soviet airspace to test their responses--risking nuclear war, again. Last year, Obama rejected meeting multilaterally with Iran to consider a nuclear ban in the Middle East.

A decade earlier, Clinton quashed an Israeli-North Korean agreement that would have stopped North Korean exports of nuclear and missile technology in return for Israel's recognition. Agreements with North Korea by Clinton and later, Bush, were sabotaged by the latter, when he reneged on the agreement and intensified sanctions. Obama just oversaw a US-South Korea military exercise that had mock bombing runs up to North Korea's borders. Each incident elicited a predictably bellicose North Korean response.

The US invaded Afghanistan claiming it was responsible for 911 (most of the 911 terrorists were Saudis, the planning was done in Germany and the US), and then invaded Iraq--Bush's personal vendetta--and upended the Middle East. Now the US is engaged in sub-rosa wars: in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and probably in more places we don't know about.

Is there a pattern here? Regardless of the President, ever since Eisenhower warned against the growing power of the "defense-industrial complex," US policy has favored an increasingly militaristic foreign policy. The military, and/or the industries that batten from it, push the US toward aggression: they profit from it.

Everyone else, worldwide, is impoverished and endangered, including the American Empire. Its overreach, and the selfishness of our Senatorial class, is bankrupting us and helping to destroy the planet, much as Rome despoiled Europe and the Mediterranean, then bankrupted itself through endless wars and the rapacity of the Senatorial class.

Gay Marriage, Drones & Inequality

Social progress seems slow, but in societal terms it's probably moving about as fast as it can: acceptance of gays, even if the Supreme Court can't keep up with the changes in society, is lightning fast.

On the other hand, environmental progress is moving in reverse along with economic equality. War and instability have become more destructive, even if there is no "world war."

Post-Citizens United: corporatist conservatives must punch themselves with glee: successes small: sneaking through "the Monsanto protection act" in the Food bill, and big: persuading the chattering classes inside the Beltway that the deficit/debt is an urgent problem that only can be solved by cutting what they derisively call "entitlements," not subsidies to the burgeoning wealthy.

Our media is so skewed towards the agenda of the wealthy and corporations, that it doesn't seem absurd that we're slashing government spending when unemployment is far too high. Our media is more controlled by wealth and corporate interests than it was in Venezuela before Chavez. He opposed it with state-owned media, and selective de-licensing.

US media excoriated Chavez as a dictator, while he won landslides in at least five elections, elections certified by Carter as freer than the US.

Venezuela may have more democracy than we do, since Republicans work assiduously to deny the right to vote to likely opponents, and a Supreme Court Justice derides Voting Rights Act Section 5 as establishing voting rights as a "racial entitlement."

The US claims it's exceptional; it isn't, except in things we shouldn't crow about, like the highest per capita rate of incarceration, the most expensive and least effective health care system, a falling working wage, soaring inequality, and endemic violence fueled by our wide open "gun culture."

We don't, any longer, score high on educational attainment: almost every other OECD nation has higher college graduation rates: the US used to lead.

Our military is exceptional: the US has the world's most effective killing machine--long before we started using drones. But it still loses wars: Vietnam, Iraq (really), and now Afghanistan.

The size of our military is also exceptional, but that demonstrates another American failing: like North Korea, we spend more money on war-making than on any other "discretionary" government function--we substitute brute strength for sense. We value guns over children, even our own children (100+ days since Newtown and no new Federal gun control law). But the Bible is "brought to you by Walmart," an American company. Exceptional!

The American Empire hasn't lasted long; it's failing progressively and making enemies everywhere. Soon the muscle-bound US will be only the second wealthiest nation.

Targeting immigrants and homegrown terrorists with drones, disenfranchising minorities (those we haven't jailed) and the poor, the US is also becoming almost as authoritarian as China, our successful competitor.