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.
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Closet HIstorian
I majored in history in college--back in the Dark Ages, the 1950's--but decided, in my senior year (1960-61),that I didn't want to go to graduate school in history: why? Because my primary history professor gave a long, detailed lecture, clearly loving all the details, of how investigators determined where and how the Russian Royals, the Romanovs, were executed--eggshells were key. They had been lured out for a picnic,to be shot, shooting range style, in the basement.
I decided, then and there, that I didn't want to go to grad school in History, ergo, I went into the Army, since the draft was rapacious at the time, and I couldn't get a job with my draft status in limbo. My only hope had been to fail the physical, but flat feet no longer disqualified me from the army, and after a faint throbbing of hope, during my physical, my "heart murmur" turned out only to be nerves, and I passed and had to go on to the Army Security Agency, the institution for which I'd been recruited, "if you can cut the mustard," my recruiter Sargent had said. Long story short, I went to Turkey, instead of waiting around for Vietnam, and ended my army career before LBJ ambushed us all, by escalating the war in that country, after campaigning against a "war in Asia."
I've only taught history, when it was a combo course for a Community College, covering US history and the American political system. But I confess, in long retrospect (I last taught 19 years ago), I enjoyed the historical stories, and the details did matter.
It's the story that matters, which is why history is more compelling than dry constitutional facts, but you can hang a lot of facts on a good story.
I must also confess that, as a teacher, I only occasionally told stories, especially when I was teaching college-level Economics. I think I did make it interesting for my students in a maximum security prison--my favorite teaching venue.
Nevertheless, the inherent shape of history permits many stories. I'm trying to figure out how to tell one, now, a little bit of personal and local history, including much suspense and angst. If I can figure out how to shape the story, I can tell it; if not, not. It has to be a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, no matter what hangs in between. A lot might, or will, if I can tell it, truthfully. It could make a good novel, which is, after all, a way of narrating history, without citing dates and names without meaning. Even a contemporary novel, perhaps, especially a contemporary novel, is an historical artifact: take Dickens, for example, writing about his contemporary London. There is no better record of Nero's Rome than the novel of Petronius Arbiter, although no dates or political events are directly recorded.
That is how I'm an aspiring, closet Historian. I want to tell my history, if I can. You might learn from it; you might not. I just want to tell it, maybe just to be heard.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
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!
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!
Monday, March 28, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
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.
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.
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