It was a big week. Hillary and Obama are in. China’s blowing satellites out of space by missile and perhaps threatening an arms race. I couldn’t be here to cover any of it. I was at my work team’s annual meeting/retreat thing in Atlanta. Our days were mostly scripted from 8:00am to 10:30pm or later with workshops, seminars, meetings, group lunches and dinners, and enforced fun and socializing. Combine that with the jet lag feeling of waking up at 3:00am every day on my body’s time and one night of too much drinking and, well, you get the picture. Here’s my quick take on what I think were the three biggest news stories of the last week.

Clinton: She’s the presumptive front-runner for a reason. She’ll be hard to beat, but she can be beat. I think of myself as a pretty die hard liberal, but Hillary represents some of the worst of what I think about liberals. Hillary is the kind of liberal who thinks she knows best for all of us on damn near everything and is willing to legislate it if she can. I’m the kind of liberal who wants individuals to be free to live their lives how they see fit and believes in using government power to regulate industry, taxes, public spaces, and public spending to do enable them to do so. I won’t vote for her in the primaries, period. If she gets the nomination, I’ll vote for her, but I doubt I’ll work for her. In order to win both the nomination and the general election, she’ll have to run a radically different campaign than anything we’ve seen before. I have no doubt she can do that and see some signs already that she is doing it. The money environment just shifted dramatically for the other candidates, too. That was expected, but now it’s here.
Barack Obama is an empty slate for most people. Don’t take that to mean I’m saying he’s an empty suit. I think he’s a smart guy with a lot of charisma. He actually reminds me more of Bill Clinton than any other politician in the Democratic Party. But I think the man-on-the-street exclamations about Obama aren’t backed by any realistic experience with the guy. I think a lot of people are projecting what they want him to be. His brilliant use of rhetoric in public speeches and appearances lends itself to that. I’d also bet there’s a certain level of fake enthusiasm for a black guy by folks who would never actually vote for one.

China can blow satellites out of the sky. The satellites that we use to surveil them, the satellites we’d need to get the pictures of troop and equipment deployment, etc, fly right at the altitude that China has proven itself capable of hitting. We’re not in a new arms race. We’ve been in an arms race with China for years. We were just so far ahead that we weren’t hyping it here. If you look at US policy moves on space during the Bush administration (and possibly further back), you see the clear arrogance of hegemony by our government. I believe that some sort of major showdown between the US and China is inevitable in my lifetime. I don’t know if it’ll be military or economic. I wouldn’t want to bet on the outcome, but I’d put slight odds on the Chinese winning it unless the US foreign policy establishment develops a multi-decade strategy for dealing with China that is as clear and comprehensive as how we managed the cold war. Preferably we do that without as much stumbling and stupidity as we displayed along the way in that one.

For the last few years, we’ve had to listen to self-righteous right wing assholes try to tell us that the war in Iraq isn’t about oil. No more.  Bush must be just about ready to wash his hands of Iraq if it’s finally time to push this law through. If the collaborationist government in Baghdad had any support left among the population, it’ll be gone after this. There’s little chance that this law will be upheld by whatever government(s) emerge from the Iraqi civil war. I doubt that Iraq will be in the same position to muscle their way out of it that Russia has been. There’s no doubt that the oil companies will be able to extort something pretty damn valuable from Iraq in the process.

Seriously, WTF is wrong with this country?

Thanks to Kristine for passing along this article which gives a nice, introductory level overview of how the US’s lower and middle class are among the biggest losers of globalization. The general theme ought to be somewhat apparent to anyone who knows me, reads me elsewhere online or reads this blog closely.

You may have read that Pat Tillman’s brother Kevin has spoken out about the war that took his brother’s life. You may even have seen a widely excerpted quote. I highly recommend reading his short, heartfelt statement about this country, its leadership, and the war. I’ve reprinted it below as it appears at www.truthdig.com.
After Pat’s Birthday

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/

By Kevin Tillman

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

I’m reprinting this in its entirety since it is relatively short.

    Facing Facts on Iraq
The New York Times

    Sunday 24 September 2006

    While Iraq is a central issue in this year’s election campaigns, there is very little clear talk about what to do, beyond vague recommendations for staying the course or long-term timetables for withdrawal. That is because politicians running for election want to deliver good news, and there is nothing about Iraq – including withdrawal scenarios – that is anything but ominous.

    In the real Iraq, armed Shiite and Kurdish parties have divided up the eastern two-thirds of the country, leaving Sunni insurgents and American marines to fight over the rest. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his “national unity cabinet” stretch out their arms to like-thinking allies like Iran and Hezbollah, but barely lift a finger to rein in the sectarian militias and death squads spreading terror across Baghdad and the Shiite south.

    The civilian death toll is now running at roughly 100 a day, with many of the victims gruesomely tortured with power tools or acid. Over the summer, more Iraqi civilians died violent deaths each month than the number of Americans lost to terrorism on Sept. 11. Meanwhile, the electricity remains off, oil production depressed, unemployment pervasive and basic services hard to find.

    Iraq is today a broken, war-torn country. Outside the relatively stable Kurdish northeast, virtually every family – Sunni or Shiite, rich or poor, powerful or powerless – must cope with fear and physical insecurity on an almost daily basis. The courts, when they function at all, are subject to political interference; street-corner justice is filling the vacuum. Religious courts are asserting their power over family life. Women’s rights are in retreat.

    Growing violence, not growing democracy, is the dominant feature of Iraqi life. Every Iraqi knows this. Americans need to know it too.

    Beyond the futility of simply staying the course lies the impossibility of keeping the bulk of American ground forces stationed in Iraq indefinitely. They have already been there for 42 months, longer than it took the United States to defeat Hitler. The strain is undermining the long-term strength of the Army and Marines, threatening to divert the National Guard from homeland security and emboldening Iran and North Korea. Yet with the military situation deteriorating, the Pentagon has had to give up any idea of significant withdrawals this year, or for that matter anytime in the foreseeable future.

    If there is still a constructive way out of this disaster, it has to begin with some truth-telling. Politicians are not going to press for serious solutions when their constituents have not been prepared to understand what the real options are. Republicans will not talk about genuine alternatives as long as their supporters have been primed to believe victory is possible. Few Democrats will advocate anything that might wind up transferring responsibility for this awful mess to them.

    Acknowledging the hard facts of today’s Iraq must be more than a political talking point for the president’s opponents. It is the only possible beginning to a serious national discussion about what kind of American policy has the best chance of retrieving whatever can still be retrieved in Iraq and minimizing the damage to wider American interests.

The intelligence community has weighed in with an authoritative report on the effect of the war in Iraq on our “war on terror”. They’re confirming what everyone who hasn’t consumed the Bush administration’s kool-aid already knows: going to war in Iraq has worsened the terrorist thread and made us less safe.

I’ve said for the last year that I don’t believe that Al Gore will run for President in 2008. I still believed that after the marketing push he did for “An Inconvenient Truth”. I’m not so sure now. After reading this speech, he’s either laying the groundwork to run for President in 2008 or he’s seeking to become a non-political leader, a movement leader, of the type that this country hasn’t seen since Martin Luther King and has only seen a handful of times in its history. I can clearly see a political platform embedded in this speech. But I can even more easily see the case the case that the kind of change he’s going for can’t be lead from above, can’t be the platform of one leader or one party.

There’s an interesting piece in The Monitor that asks whether or not the Bush Doctrine has failed. A variety of viewpoints are presented, but I do think it’s fair to say that the answer to that question is “yes”. The article then goes on to present the case made by some analysts that this conflict may present the end of western military dominance in the region. The basis for this is the notion that there’s a new “islamist” way of waging military resistance that cannot be defeated by conventional military tactics.

Hogwash.

I almost hate to say it, because it would be nice if it were true, but the “problem” here isn’t an end to western military dominance. The problem is the utopian neo-con abandonment of realpolitik for their special brand of faith based foreign policy. Some future U.S. president, wtih our intelligence and foreign policy establishments behind him will find a local proxy. That local proxy and his ethnic, religious, or ideological compatriots will have no difficulty doing the kind of horrifying brutality that sickens us when we can fool ourselves into believing that it’s “isolated incidents” of bad behavior by our troops. It’s what we’ve done so masterfully for a good 120 years or so now.

The American people don’t think of themselves as brutal oppressors and don’t want to think of themselves that way. We can maintain our self-image by letting others do the dirty work. The shift that came with the Bush Doctrine wasn’t preemption. Our whole empire is based on preemption. We just normally do it by proxy.

I have stayed quiet on the goings on in Cuba over the last few days. I’ve done so because the news coverage I’ve seen has been so far afield from reality that I didn’t quite know how to respond. It’s as if the whole media world had started drinking the same kool aid that keeps the Miami Cubans in their oddly excited and delusional state. Finally, I’ve seen an article that addresses things from a more realistic perspective. Given the sometimes delusionally neo-liberal tint of the Monitor, I’m almost surprised that it came from them, but their hard news is usually good. It’s more often the editorial pieces that are crazy from that rag.