"Expect it pains you," a dear friend wrote after President Obama's war speech at West Point. She sent me a charming little dog story -- knowing these always warm my crotchety old heart -- to salve my pain.
Another longtime friend posted: "As a one-time Obama supporter, it has been difficult not to notice that we, virtually all us old Obama supporters, have been rooked, or not to notice how consistently and persistently we have been rooked. No more love in exchange for getting rooked, Mr. Obama. No deal. For the first and only time, I watched about half of your campaign's life story replayed on HBO's documentary last night. And as I watched, I kept wondering what you were thinking while you fooled us over and over again. Never again, sir. Never again."
We knew it was coming (see my earlier post on Obama's Sinai). But seeing the scalpel coming doesn't ease the pain of an unanesthetized incision.
Lies, deceit, flippant disregard for basic human decency -- we expected these from his predecessor, an empty-headed buffoon whose only qualification for any office was a rich and well-connected family.
But this man was intelligent, articulate, seeming to ooze human compassion from every pore. Yet as we watched his actions, even in the honeymoon interim between election triumph and the harsh realities of the Oval Office, we quickly realized that the new President was not the person we thought we were voting for.
Well, some tell us now, you simply deceived yourselves. You invented a Knight in Shining armor, named him Sir Barack, and voted for him. Quite a bit of truth to this, Mea culpa.
Well, some tell us, it's simply brilliant strategy. He will compromise with the opposition on everything and when the resulting policies clearly fail, Shazam!, Dr. Kidglove will become Captain Marvelous and fix everything. Now that's self-delusion!
In fact, Mr. Obama is what he is: a gifted orator, mundane politician and largely powerless chief executive.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, writes:
"In less than one year, President Obama has betrayed all of his supporters and broken all of his promises. He is the total captive of the oligarchy of the ruling interest groups. Unless he is saved by an orchestrated 9/11-type event, Obama is a one-term president. Indeed, the collapsing economy will doom him regardless of a 'terrorist event.'
"Essentially, Obama is irrelevant."
How sad. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Ethics and a Hawk
Our annual ethical dilemma has begun. The Cooper's hawk is back.
He has emigrated from his home in mountain forests somewhere north of us to hunt prey in our warmer clime. He especially likes to hunt from a perch on our back gate, for our premises attract other birds the year round. We ply them with fruit, bread crumbs and seeds and nectar feeders for the hummingbirds. They nest on our roof and in niches and corners of our house. They hatch their young, feed them, teach them to fly.
They are beautiful and welcome guests. But they are also prey for the Cooper's hawk. He is a princely bird, noble in features and stature. One of the smaller accipiters, he is a swift flier who can dart through trees in pursuit of smaller birds. His speed in flight, his aerial agility are forms of beauty, too.
He visits us every winter precisely because our feeders attract other birds. Are we thus complicit in the murder of the birds he kills for food? Last year I watched a harsh episode of nature next to the little pond beside the desert willow tree: a white winged dove -- probably accustomed to easy meals from the nearby feeder -- fell prey to the hawk and provided it with two days worth of nourishment.
That was an exception. We seldom find evidence of his bird-kills. I tell myself that he feeds far more often on rodents and other small mammals on the desert floor around us. In this part of the country, certain rodents can transmit a terrible, fatal disease to humans. Since the hawk helps control the rodent population, he is, in a sense, like the rattlesnake, a friend of man.
My wife Lois frets over the hawk's annual threat to the birds she so fondly feeds. But we need not feel guilty, say I; we are not abettors in murder. The hawk does what it must, and has a place in the natural order of things. We should be acting badly if we interfered in that order. Let hawks be hawks, sparrows be sparrows, wolves be wolves and fawns be fawns and may all, as species, survive.
I say that's just being pro-life.
He has emigrated from his home in mountain forests somewhere north of us to hunt prey in our warmer clime. He especially likes to hunt from a perch on our back gate, for our premises attract other birds the year round. We ply them with fruit, bread crumbs and seeds and nectar feeders for the hummingbirds. They nest on our roof and in niches and corners of our house. They hatch their young, feed them, teach them to fly.
They are beautiful and welcome guests. But they are also prey for the Cooper's hawk. He is a princely bird, noble in features and stature. One of the smaller accipiters, he is a swift flier who can dart through trees in pursuit of smaller birds. His speed in flight, his aerial agility are forms of beauty, too.
He visits us every winter precisely because our feeders attract other birds. Are we thus complicit in the murder of the birds he kills for food? Last year I watched a harsh episode of nature next to the little pond beside the desert willow tree: a white winged dove -- probably accustomed to easy meals from the nearby feeder -- fell prey to the hawk and provided it with two days worth of nourishment.
That was an exception. We seldom find evidence of his bird-kills. I tell myself that he feeds far more often on rodents and other small mammals on the desert floor around us. In this part of the country, certain rodents can transmit a terrible, fatal disease to humans. Since the hawk helps control the rodent population, he is, in a sense, like the rattlesnake, a friend of man.
My wife Lois frets over the hawk's annual threat to the birds she so fondly feeds. But we need not feel guilty, say I; we are not abettors in murder. The hawk does what it must, and has a place in the natural order of things. We should be acting badly if we interfered in that order. Let hawks be hawks, sparrows be sparrows, wolves be wolves and fawns be fawns and may all, as species, survive.
I say that's just being pro-life.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Come Back, Col. Horton
Someone said of Burke Horton that if you asked him the time of day, he'd tell you how to make a watch.
He was an engineer and inventor. He was also a musician, tennis player and coach, hockey player and coach, retired military officer and an expert on small-force counter-insurgency tactics.
As an Air Force colonel working in military intelligence, he often gave President Eisenhower's daily intelligence briefing in the west wing of the White House.
I've got to assume that in the enormous labyrinth of the world's largest armed force, there were a number of counterparts of Col. Burke Horton on Sept. 11, 2001. I wonder if they were even consulted after the terrorist attacks that day.
I doubt it because our response was all wrong. Massive military force is useless against stateless terrorism, as Burke Horton knew full well. But the civilian leaders of our military, from George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld down through the ranks, were obsessed with Saddam Hussein and Iraq even as they ordered a token military effort to capture the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, somewhere in Afghanistan.
Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic majority issued a report this week saying what we all knew, that bin Laden was vulnerable in December of 2001 in the Tora Bora area near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Gearing up to attack Iraq, Rumsfeld pursued the fleeing terrorist leader with a force of a mere 100 troops through the rugged mountain terrain. Of course he got away.
But the pertinent point in the report was buried: appropriate military power, "from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines," it said.
The point is important because it hints at what would have been a far more effective response to 9/11 than the purely military and essentially unilateral effort that we mounted. Burke Horton would have designed something very different.
First, he would have assembled far more reliable intelligence. The entire world was sympathetic to American sensibilities in the aftermath of the attacks. Horton would have moved swiftly to use that empathy: he'd have tapped every national intelligence service to pool information about bin Laden and his whereabouts and his associates and his vulnerability.
Then he would have mounted a clandestine police action, employing elite military and intelligence units from around the world, supplemented by the very sniper teams and ultra mobile Marine divisions mentioned in the Senate report, especially including Arab-speaking experts in high-mountain maneuvering, to run down bin Laden and his band and bring them to justice.
The Bushhawks' obsession with Hussein and Iraq's enormous oil reserves blinded them to that option, if anyone even presented it to them.
What Dr. Kidglove needs in his faltering administration is another Burke Horton. When Burke was the tennis pro for my group of early bird tennis players at an indoor racquet club, not even a blizzard could keep him from unlocking the door to the club at precisely 5:30 a.m. every day. "How the heck did you get here?" I asked during a record blizzard one February day. He nodded to the corner of the office toward a pair of cross country skis. "A successful operation requires two things," he said. "Provision for every exigency, and a strong will." Burke was 77 when he skied the six hilly miles to open the tennis club door.
Would that someone as steel-willed had this president's ear.
FOLLOW-UP
Michael Graham, a former Air Force counterintelligence officer, writes:
I knew a lot of guys like Col Horton, honorable old soldiers who just wouldn't tolerate the BS the Pentagon is slinging today.
Over the weekend, I read the entire Senate report on Tora Bora. A friend of mine was there at the time and confirms that we could have had bin Laden.
But here's the problem: If we had caught him, it would have destroyed the plan to pin 9-11 on Saddam, thus destroying the "reason" to invade Iraq. Look how much money was made in that little adventure.
He was an engineer and inventor. He was also a musician, tennis player and coach, hockey player and coach, retired military officer and an expert on small-force counter-insurgency tactics.
As an Air Force colonel working in military intelligence, he often gave President Eisenhower's daily intelligence briefing in the west wing of the White House.
I've got to assume that in the enormous labyrinth of the world's largest armed force, there were a number of counterparts of Col. Burke Horton on Sept. 11, 2001. I wonder if they were even consulted after the terrorist attacks that day.
I doubt it because our response was all wrong. Massive military force is useless against stateless terrorism, as Burke Horton knew full well. But the civilian leaders of our military, from George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld down through the ranks, were obsessed with Saddam Hussein and Iraq even as they ordered a token military effort to capture the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, somewhere in Afghanistan.
Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic majority issued a report this week saying what we all knew, that bin Laden was vulnerable in December of 2001 in the Tora Bora area near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Gearing up to attack Iraq, Rumsfeld pursued the fleeing terrorist leader with a force of a mere 100 troops through the rugged mountain terrain. Of course he got away.
But the pertinent point in the report was buried: appropriate military power, "from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines," it said.
The point is important because it hints at what would have been a far more effective response to 9/11 than the purely military and essentially unilateral effort that we mounted. Burke Horton would have designed something very different.
First, he would have assembled far more reliable intelligence. The entire world was sympathetic to American sensibilities in the aftermath of the attacks. Horton would have moved swiftly to use that empathy: he'd have tapped every national intelligence service to pool information about bin Laden and his whereabouts and his associates and his vulnerability.
Then he would have mounted a clandestine police action, employing elite military and intelligence units from around the world, supplemented by the very sniper teams and ultra mobile Marine divisions mentioned in the Senate report, especially including Arab-speaking experts in high-mountain maneuvering, to run down bin Laden and his band and bring them to justice.
The Bushhawks' obsession with Hussein and Iraq's enormous oil reserves blinded them to that option, if anyone even presented it to them.
What Dr. Kidglove needs in his faltering administration is another Burke Horton. When Burke was the tennis pro for my group of early bird tennis players at an indoor racquet club, not even a blizzard could keep him from unlocking the door to the club at precisely 5:30 a.m. every day. "How the heck did you get here?" I asked during a record blizzard one February day. He nodded to the corner of the office toward a pair of cross country skis. "A successful operation requires two things," he said. "Provision for every exigency, and a strong will." Burke was 77 when he skied the six hilly miles to open the tennis club door.
Would that someone as steel-willed had this president's ear.
FOLLOW-UP
Michael Graham, a former Air Force counterintelligence officer, writes:
I knew a lot of guys like Col Horton, honorable old soldiers who just wouldn't tolerate the BS the Pentagon is slinging today.
Over the weekend, I read the entire Senate report on Tora Bora. A friend of mine was there at the time and confirms that we could have had bin Laden.
But here's the problem: If we had caught him, it would have destroyed the plan to pin 9-11 on Saddam, thus destroying the "reason" to invade Iraq. Look how much money was made in that little adventure.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
His Military Masters
The utter intimidation of Dr. Kidglove by the military he ostensibly commands could not be made more clear than by the story in this morning's New York Times.
Alissa J. Rubin reports from Kabul: " An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates for sometimes weeks at a time and without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base."
Kidglove campaigned on the theme of change, promising to reverse the shameful Bush policies of torture, illegal imprisonment, Geneva Convention violations and lies.
His promises have turned into lies to equal those those Bush told, with the possible exception of the fairy tale WMDs in Iraq that have wasted the lives of thousands of United States military personnel.
The Bagram jail, Rubin writes, "consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each lighted by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day, where detainees said that their only contact with another human being was at twice-daily interrogation sessions."
Kidglove signed an order last January to eliminate the so-called "black sites" run by the CIA, but -- oops! -- it didn't apply to this particular torture chamber because it's run by the military Special Operations forces.
Ah, but last August, our kindly torquemadas revised Pentagon policy so that detainees in these black sites could be held there no more than two weeks.
Rubin writes:
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who was detained there and who, like some Afghans, doesn’t use a last name. “They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.”
Mr. Hamidullah was released in October, after five and half months in detention, five to six weeks of it in the black jail, he said.
Two weeks, schmoo weeks, he's only a raghead, right?
Rubin's article refers to "tension" between Kidglove and his military commanders, to whom the President wants to give "leeway to operate."
Operate? What's that mean, "operate?"
“They beat up people in the black jail,” Hamidullah said. “They didn’t let me sleep. There was shouting noise so you couldn’t sleep." Two Afghan teen-agers held in Bagram jail for more than ten months told a reporter they had been subjected to beatings and "humiliation" by their captors.
They were detained because they were suspected of being Taliban terrorists. They weren't. They were just people. When their captors finally learned the truth, the detainees were released.
One of the freed prisoners said he was told, "'Please accept our apology, and we are sorry that we kept you here for this time.’ And that was it. They kept me for more than 10 months and gave me nothing back.”
By that time his family had spent two years' income in a futile effort to learn if he was alive or dead.
Alissa J. Rubin reports from Kabul: " An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates for sometimes weeks at a time and without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base."
Kidglove campaigned on the theme of change, promising to reverse the shameful Bush policies of torture, illegal imprisonment, Geneva Convention violations and lies.
His promises have turned into lies to equal those those Bush told, with the possible exception of the fairy tale WMDs in Iraq that have wasted the lives of thousands of United States military personnel.
The Bagram jail, Rubin writes, "consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each lighted by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day, where detainees said that their only contact with another human being was at twice-daily interrogation sessions."
Kidglove signed an order last January to eliminate the so-called "black sites" run by the CIA, but -- oops! -- it didn't apply to this particular torture chamber because it's run by the military Special Operations forces.
Ah, but last August, our kindly torquemadas revised Pentagon policy so that detainees in these black sites could be held there no more than two weeks.
Rubin writes:
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who was detained there and who, like some Afghans, doesn’t use a last name. “They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.”
Mr. Hamidullah was released in October, after five and half months in detention, five to six weeks of it in the black jail, he said.
Two weeks, schmoo weeks, he's only a raghead, right?
Rubin's article refers to "tension" between Kidglove and his military commanders, to whom the President wants to give "leeway to operate."
Operate? What's that mean, "operate?"
“They beat up people in the black jail,” Hamidullah said. “They didn’t let me sleep. There was shouting noise so you couldn’t sleep." Two Afghan teen-agers held in Bagram jail for more than ten months told a reporter they had been subjected to beatings and "humiliation" by their captors.
They were detained because they were suspected of being Taliban terrorists. They weren't. They were just people. When their captors finally learned the truth, the detainees were released.
One of the freed prisoners said he was told, "'Please accept our apology, and we are sorry that we kept you here for this time.’ And that was it. They kept me for more than 10 months and gave me nothing back.”
By that time his family had spent two years' income in a futile effort to learn if he was alive or dead.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
A Thanksgiving Day
It was Thanksgiving Day of 1943 -- the only one from my childhood that I can truthfully say I remember.
The Herbert Avenue gang was in the Hembergers' spacious yard, tossing a football around, and swapping tales of downing enormous quantities of turkey and trimmings and pie -- especially pie.
Many of us had big brothers fighting in the Great War, kids who had signed up the moment they turned 18, without waiting for a draft notice. One of the big brothers was "Bud" Dougherty. He had been serving aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet when it went down in 1942 in the Battle of Santa Cruz. He hadn't been heard from since and was presumed killed in action.
Bud and the Hembergers' big brother, "Speed," had been stars on an American Legion Junior baseball team that went to the national finals in Pennsylvania in 1940. They were neighborhood heroes even before they went off to war. Now they were gods.
We didn't talk much about Bud when his little brother was around. He was a sensitive boy, the youngest of the Herbert Avenue gang, and the hurt in his heart was too enormous to violate.
We talked football -- Ohio State, mostly, and the Western Hills high school team we all aspired to play for one day .
Whence cometh a wailing and shouting from up the hill, toward the street car stop.
At first it was incomprehensible but as it came closer we could make out: "He's alive! Bud's alive."
It was Bud Daugherty's sister, racing down the Herbert Avenue hill, blubbering and bellowing, "Bud's alive!"
The residents of Herbert Avenue poured into the street. They surrounded Rose Daugherty and hugged her until she caught her breath. She was heading home from work on the Westwood Avenue street car when a sailor with lots of battle ribbons took the seat beside her. "Do you know where Herbert Avenue is?" he asked. "I live there," she said. "Get off when I do."
"I've got to see a shipmate's family on Herbert Avenue," he said. "Tell them their son is OK. He was in a coma for months after his ship went down. When he came out of it, I was in the bed next to him. 'Tell my family I'm OK,' he said, when he found out I was going home."
"What was his ship?" Rose asked.
"The Hornet," the sailor said.
Through tears of disbelief she gasped, "And the sailor's name?"
"Daugherty," the young man said. "Bud Daugherty."
At that moment the streetcar came to a halt at the Herbert Avenue safety island.
Rose began her sprint down the street, shouting out the good news.
She didn't even get the sailor's name.
The Herbert Avenue gang was in the Hembergers' spacious yard, tossing a football around, and swapping tales of downing enormous quantities of turkey and trimmings and pie -- especially pie.
Many of us had big brothers fighting in the Great War, kids who had signed up the moment they turned 18, without waiting for a draft notice. One of the big brothers was "Bud" Dougherty. He had been serving aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet when it went down in 1942 in the Battle of Santa Cruz. He hadn't been heard from since and was presumed killed in action.
Bud and the Hembergers' big brother, "Speed," had been stars on an American Legion Junior baseball team that went to the national finals in Pennsylvania in 1940. They were neighborhood heroes even before they went off to war. Now they were gods.
We didn't talk much about Bud when his little brother was around. He was a sensitive boy, the youngest of the Herbert Avenue gang, and the hurt in his heart was too enormous to violate.
We talked football -- Ohio State, mostly, and the Western Hills high school team we all aspired to play for one day .
Whence cometh a wailing and shouting from up the hill, toward the street car stop.
At first it was incomprehensible but as it came closer we could make out: "He's alive! Bud's alive."
It was Bud Daugherty's sister, racing down the Herbert Avenue hill, blubbering and bellowing, "Bud's alive!"
The residents of Herbert Avenue poured into the street. They surrounded Rose Daugherty and hugged her until she caught her breath. She was heading home from work on the Westwood Avenue street car when a sailor with lots of battle ribbons took the seat beside her. "Do you know where Herbert Avenue is?" he asked. "I live there," she said. "Get off when I do."
"I've got to see a shipmate's family on Herbert Avenue," he said. "Tell them their son is OK. He was in a coma for months after his ship went down. When he came out of it, I was in the bed next to him. 'Tell my family I'm OK,' he said, when he found out I was going home."
"What was his ship?" Rose asked.
"The Hornet," the sailor said.
Through tears of disbelief she gasped, "And the sailor's name?"
"Daugherty," the young man said. "Bud Daugherty."
At that moment the streetcar came to a halt at the Herbert Avenue safety island.
Rose began her sprint down the street, shouting out the good news.
She didn't even get the sailor's name.
10 Million Child-Killers
Don't you just love our government's propensity for euphemism?
We're not a perpetual war machine; we're "a global provider of security."
The phrase was repeatedly invoked this week to defend the U.S. government's decision, announced Tuesday by the State Department, not to join a global treaty banning landmines.
The treaty prohibits the use, stockpiling, production or transfer of landmines. It has been endorsed by 156 countries, but the United States, Russia, China and India have not adopted it.
The signatories to the treaty will convene this weekend in Colombia to review its terms and compliance records. The United States will send "observers" to the conference, a State Department spokesman said, because "as a global provider of security, we have an interest in the discussions there."
That "interest" is a U.S. stockpile of 10 million such weapons and a grim determination to retain its option to use them as it pleases. "We determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed this convention," the spokesman said.
Just who the hell are these "friends and allies," I wonder? All but one NATO nation, and most of our other allies, are parties to the treaty. If most of our allies are pledged not to use the damned things, why are we hoarding 10 million of them?
These antipersonnel devices (another government euphemism) are in fact child-killers. Once planted, the lethal gizmos stay in place long after the conflict that impelled their use has ended -- whereupon civilians step on them and get fragged. Landmines are known to have caused 5,197 casualties last year, a third of them children, according to the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which links some 1,000 activist groups.
Our eloquent President speaks grandiosely about leading the way to a world without nuclear weapons -- a worthy, but impractical, dream at this time. But the many small, practical steps toward a more peaceful world, the things he could do right now with the stroke of a pen, go undone.
Things like signing the landmine treaty.
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, a leading advocate for the treaty, called the decision "a default of U.S. leadership."
You can't hide that behind a euphemism.
We're not a perpetual war machine; we're "a global provider of security."
The phrase was repeatedly invoked this week to defend the U.S. government's decision, announced Tuesday by the State Department, not to join a global treaty banning landmines.
The treaty prohibits the use, stockpiling, production or transfer of landmines. It has been endorsed by 156 countries, but the United States, Russia, China and India have not adopted it.
The signatories to the treaty will convene this weekend in Colombia to review its terms and compliance records. The United States will send "observers" to the conference, a State Department spokesman said, because "as a global provider of security, we have an interest in the discussions there."
That "interest" is a U.S. stockpile of 10 million such weapons and a grim determination to retain its option to use them as it pleases. "We determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed this convention," the spokesman said.
Just who the hell are these "friends and allies," I wonder? All but one NATO nation, and most of our other allies, are parties to the treaty. If most of our allies are pledged not to use the damned things, why are we hoarding 10 million of them?
These antipersonnel devices (another government euphemism) are in fact child-killers. Once planted, the lethal gizmos stay in place long after the conflict that impelled their use has ended -- whereupon civilians step on them and get fragged. Landmines are known to have caused 5,197 casualties last year, a third of them children, according to the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which links some 1,000 activist groups.
Our eloquent President speaks grandiosely about leading the way to a world without nuclear weapons -- a worthy, but impractical, dream at this time. But the many small, practical steps toward a more peaceful world, the things he could do right now with the stroke of a pen, go undone.
Things like signing the landmine treaty.
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, a leading advocate for the treaty, called the decision "a default of U.S. leadership."
You can't hide that behind a euphemism.
Obama's Sinai
As I contemplate, and dread, the likely announcement within days that President Obama will send another 32,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan, an improbable memory popped into my head. It was one of the great newswpaper ledes I have ever read, published in the New York Times when Albert Einstein returned to Princeton from a long sabbatical to think about the Holy Grail of his late career, a unified field theory.
"Albert Einstein," the Times said, "returned today from his scientific Sinai with a new set of laws for the cosmos."
Obama has been atop his own Sinai lately, perhaps suffering a sort of Gethsemane as well, thinking about the thorniest of his inherited problems, the Middle East wars. One hopes against hope that when he returns, his tablet will contain a single law: Thou shalt not kill.
He should announce that he is directing his generals to draw up a plan for withdrawal "with deliberate speed" from Afghanistan and Iraq, and he should dismiss Stanley McChrystal from the group of generals ordered to do so.
Americans are well aware of the arguments for ending our involvements there.
A former tennis partner wrote to me recently: "A million dollars per troop per year! Two-thirds of Afghans illiterate! And we're going to build a nation in 10 years? Give me a break! I read an article a few months ago discussing how we could get some of the Muslim nations to take up the fight there. Not being infidels they are not resented and could do a better job."
That's a plan, negotiated through the United Nations, that I have advocated, too, but as far as I can tell, the notion doesn't exist in the high command that advises the President.
I have come to believe that two forces in the United States have become so powerful that not even a President, not even a very popular President, which Obama once was, can resist them.
One is the oligarchy of finance, a cartel of Wall Street bankers and super-rich mega- corporations whose wealth is based in oil or defense or both.
The other is the military establishment, the Pentagon generals and the civilian hawks from the defense industries.
Ray McGovern, whom I consider the most authoritative voice now writing about politico-military affairs and national security, reminds us, however, that there has been, in recent history, one President who stood up to them: John F. Kennedy.
A month before his assassination, according to McGovern,"during his last visit to Hyannis Port, Kennedy told his next-door neighbor Larry Newman, 'I'm going to get those guys out [of Vietnam] because we're not going to find ourselves in a war it's impossible to win.'
A majority of his own National Security Council was opposed to withdrawal. McGovern recalls that Kennedy sent Marine Commandant Gen. David M. Shoup, “to look over the ground in Southeast Asia and counsel him.” Shoup told the President:
McGovern writes that, "Kennedy concluded there was no responsible course other than to press ahead for a phased withdrawal regardless of the opposition from his senior national security advisers. He decided to pull 1,000 troops out of Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the rest by 1965.
"Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff told James Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, that Kennedy's mind was fixed on Vietnam the day before he was slain. Instead of rehearsing for a press conference that day, Kennedy told Kilduff:
"'I've just been given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam. We're losing too damned many people over there. It's time for us to get out. The Vietnamese are not fighting for themselves. We're the ones who are doing the fighting.
""There is no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life.'"
Nor is Iraq. Nor is Afghanistan.
"Albert Einstein," the Times said, "returned today from his scientific Sinai with a new set of laws for the cosmos."
Obama has been atop his own Sinai lately, perhaps suffering a sort of Gethsemane as well, thinking about the thorniest of his inherited problems, the Middle East wars. One hopes against hope that when he returns, his tablet will contain a single law: Thou shalt not kill.
He should announce that he is directing his generals to draw up a plan for withdrawal "with deliberate speed" from Afghanistan and Iraq, and he should dismiss Stanley McChrystal from the group of generals ordered to do so.
Americans are well aware of the arguments for ending our involvements there.
A former tennis partner wrote to me recently: "A million dollars per troop per year! Two-thirds of Afghans illiterate! And we're going to build a nation in 10 years? Give me a break! I read an article a few months ago discussing how we could get some of the Muslim nations to take up the fight there. Not being infidels they are not resented and could do a better job."
That's a plan, negotiated through the United Nations, that I have advocated, too, but as far as I can tell, the notion doesn't exist in the high command that advises the President.
I have come to believe that two forces in the United States have become so powerful that not even a President, not even a very popular President, which Obama once was, can resist them.
One is the oligarchy of finance, a cartel of Wall Street bankers and super-rich mega- corporations whose wealth is based in oil or defense or both.
The other is the military establishment, the Pentagon generals and the civilian hawks from the defense industries.
Ray McGovern, whom I consider the most authoritative voice now writing about politico-military affairs and national security, reminds us, however, that there has been, in recent history, one President who stood up to them: John F. Kennedy.
A month before his assassination, according to McGovern,"during his last visit to Hyannis Port, Kennedy told his next-door neighbor Larry Newman, 'I'm going to get those guys out [of Vietnam] because we're not going to find ourselves in a war it's impossible to win.'
A majority of his own National Security Council was opposed to withdrawal. McGovern recalls that Kennedy sent Marine Commandant Gen. David M. Shoup, “to look over the ground in Southeast Asia and counsel him.” Shoup told the President:
“Unless we are prepared to use a million men in a major drive, we should pull out before the war expands beyond control.”
McGovern writes that, "Kennedy concluded there was no responsible course other than to press ahead for a phased withdrawal regardless of the opposition from his senior national security advisers. He decided to pull 1,000 troops out of Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the rest by 1965.
"Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff told James Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, that Kennedy's mind was fixed on Vietnam the day before he was slain. Instead of rehearsing for a press conference that day, Kennedy told Kilduff:
"'I've just been given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam. We're losing too damned many people over there. It's time for us to get out. The Vietnamese are not fighting for themselves. We're the ones who are doing the fighting.
""There is no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life.'"
Nor is Iraq. Nor is Afghanistan.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
It's Only Money
China -- actually a single Chinese very high roller -- has bought the Hummer SUV brand for a paltry $150 million.
I'd say "Good riddance" except for the fact that the buyer says he will introduce a new model -- the H4 -- that will get 25 or more miles per gallon of gasoline. Why couldn't GM have done that?
Don't ask.
Hummer's new owner is Suolang Duoji, a private entrepreneur who will personally hold 20 percent of the company. The other 80 per cent will belong to Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, which is owned by Sichuan Huatong Investment Holding Co, Ltd, which is owned by Sualong Duoji.
This sort of thing smacks of one of our superbanks, the too big to fail outfits that we bailed out so they could continue to run the country by pulling the strings on Tim Geithner and Barack Obama.
And sure enough, Morgan Stanley is a financial adviser to GM during its restructuring. Morgan Stanley acknowledges receiving $10 billion in the first go-around of TARP (i.e., bailout) funds.
Morgan Stanley's "advice" to GM seems to have been, "Give away the store."
We gave 'em $10 billion for this?
I'd say "Good riddance" except for the fact that the buyer says he will introduce a new model -- the H4 -- that will get 25 or more miles per gallon of gasoline. Why couldn't GM have done that?
Don't ask.
Hummer's new owner is Suolang Duoji, a private entrepreneur who will personally hold 20 percent of the company. The other 80 per cent will belong to Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, which is owned by Sichuan Huatong Investment Holding Co, Ltd, which is owned by Sualong Duoji.
This sort of thing smacks of one of our superbanks, the too big to fail outfits that we bailed out so they could continue to run the country by pulling the strings on Tim Geithner and Barack Obama.
And sure enough, Morgan Stanley is a financial adviser to GM during its restructuring. Morgan Stanley acknowledges receiving $10 billion in the first go-around of TARP (i.e., bailout) funds.
Morgan Stanley's "advice" to GM seems to have been, "Give away the store."
We gave 'em $10 billion for this?
Monday, November 23, 2009
Dr. Kidglove and the General
Ray McGovern, the former high-ranking U.S. intelligence officer who has been exposing the flaws of our foreign policy for many years now, has called for President Obama to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal for insubordination. He's the NATo commander in Afghanistan who publicly insulted Vice President Biden and defied President Obama's policy initiatives in a speech in London.
McGovern is absolutely right.
McGovern recalled Harry Truman's firing of a far more experienced, far more respected and far more arrogant general -- Douglas MacArthur -- during the Korean war. Good precedent.
I'd like to see it happen again because (1) McChrystal should be fired and (2) it would be wonderful comic relief to see the Far Right go berserk.
In the Truman-MacArthur clash, Col. Robert Rutherford (Bertie) McCormick, owner and publisher of the right-wing Chicago Tribune, personally wrote a Page One editorial entitled, "Impeach Truman." The publisher called the President "addle-pated."
Harsh talk at the time, but tame compared to what would happen at, say, Fox Faux News or the editorial page offices of the Wall Street Urinal if Obama emulated Truman and did the right thing.
Unfortunately, it's a comedy we won't get to watch. Dr. Kidglove will give the general at least some of the troops he wants and we'll remain mired in another costly war we can't win.
McChrystal said the policy Biden was advocating for Afghanistan would lead to "Chaos-istan." He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support." That kind of talk is a NonoStan.
Here's Ray McGovern:
"No more slaps on the wrist for Gen. Stanley McChrystal. In the Truman-McArthur showdown nearly six decades ago, MacArthur had been playing a back-channel game to win the support of . . . Republican congressmen to widen the Korean war.
"Today, Gen. McChrystal is conducting a subtler but equally insubordinate campaign for wider war in Afghanistan, with the backing of CENTCOM commander David Petraeus. It is now even clearer in retrospect that the President should not have appointed McChrystal in the first place, given what was already known of his role in covering up the killing of football star Pat Tillman and condoning the torture practices by troops under McChrystal's earlier command in Iraq.
(In the London speech) "he was clearly out of line in going public at so sensitive a time. Senior generals know better than to do that; there is little doubt his outspokenness was deliberate. McChrystal should meet the same fate as McArthur, and “silently steal away.” Obama should have taken the telegenic general to the woodshed instead of inviting him to confer quietly on Air Force One.
"McChrystal's continuing defiance shines through in the gratuitous remarks by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at a NATO meeting on Nov. 17 in Edinburgh. Siding clearly with McChrystal, Petraeus, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen in the intense debate over sending more forces to Afghanistan, Rasmussen blithely announced that NATO countries will soon order “substantially more forces” there.
"As Denmark's Prime Minister (2001-2009), Anders Fogh Rasmussen was one of George W. Bush's most sycophantic supporters—particularly when it came to the war on Iraq. Although amply warned by Danish intelligence officers of the deceptive nature of the U.S. case for war, he shunned them and outdid himself cheerleading for war. He told the Danish Parliament:
'Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we just believe. We know.'
"As NATO Secretary General, Rasmussen told CBS News, 'I think that Gen. McChrystal shares the same goal I do.'"
McGovern reports that Obama had been warned about Rasmussen even before he moved into the Oval office. Once again he reacted as Dr. Kidglove— "a highly educated, well-spoken wuss on many key issues," as McGovern put it. Obama "did not lift a finger to prevent Rasmussen from becoming NATO Secretary General."
The President has to live with the Rasmussen mistake. But he need not live with the insubordinate Gen. McChrystal.
He should can the man, if only to trigger a re-issue of Gene Autry's recording of "Old Soldiers Never Die, They Just Fade Away."
McGovern is absolutely right.
McGovern recalled Harry Truman's firing of a far more experienced, far more respected and far more arrogant general -- Douglas MacArthur -- during the Korean war. Good precedent.
I'd like to see it happen again because (1) McChrystal should be fired and (2) it would be wonderful comic relief to see the Far Right go berserk.
In the Truman-MacArthur clash, Col. Robert Rutherford (Bertie) McCormick, owner and publisher of the right-wing Chicago Tribune, personally wrote a Page One editorial entitled, "Impeach Truman." The publisher called the President "addle-pated."
Harsh talk at the time, but tame compared to what would happen at, say, Fox Faux News or the editorial page offices of the Wall Street Urinal if Obama emulated Truman and did the right thing.
Unfortunately, it's a comedy we won't get to watch. Dr. Kidglove will give the general at least some of the troops he wants and we'll remain mired in another costly war we can't win.
McChrystal said the policy Biden was advocating for Afghanistan would lead to "Chaos-istan." He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support." That kind of talk is a NonoStan.
Here's Ray McGovern:
"No more slaps on the wrist for Gen. Stanley McChrystal. In the Truman-McArthur showdown nearly six decades ago, MacArthur had been playing a back-channel game to win the support of . . . Republican congressmen to widen the Korean war.
"Today, Gen. McChrystal is conducting a subtler but equally insubordinate campaign for wider war in Afghanistan, with the backing of CENTCOM commander David Petraeus. It is now even clearer in retrospect that the President should not have appointed McChrystal in the first place, given what was already known of his role in covering up the killing of football star Pat Tillman and condoning the torture practices by troops under McChrystal's earlier command in Iraq.
(In the London speech) "he was clearly out of line in going public at so sensitive a time. Senior generals know better than to do that; there is little doubt his outspokenness was deliberate. McChrystal should meet the same fate as McArthur, and “silently steal away.” Obama should have taken the telegenic general to the woodshed instead of inviting him to confer quietly on Air Force One.
"McChrystal's continuing defiance shines through in the gratuitous remarks by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at a NATO meeting on Nov. 17 in Edinburgh. Siding clearly with McChrystal, Petraeus, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen in the intense debate over sending more forces to Afghanistan, Rasmussen blithely announced that NATO countries will soon order “substantially more forces” there.
"As Denmark's Prime Minister (2001-2009), Anders Fogh Rasmussen was one of George W. Bush's most sycophantic supporters—particularly when it came to the war on Iraq. Although amply warned by Danish intelligence officers of the deceptive nature of the U.S. case for war, he shunned them and outdid himself cheerleading for war. He told the Danish Parliament:
'Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we just believe. We know.'
"As NATO Secretary General, Rasmussen told CBS News, 'I think that Gen. McChrystal shares the same goal I do.'"
McGovern reports that Obama had been warned about Rasmussen even before he moved into the Oval office. Once again he reacted as Dr. Kidglove— "a highly educated, well-spoken wuss on many key issues," as McGovern put it. Obama "did not lift a finger to prevent Rasmussen from becoming NATO Secretary General."
The President has to live with the Rasmussen mistake. But he need not live with the insubordinate Gen. McChrystal.
He should can the man, if only to trigger a re-issue of Gene Autry's recording of "Old Soldiers Never Die, They Just Fade Away."
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Rubber Stamping
Back in the day when city rooms had butts on the floor, even the women reporters cussed like drill sergeants, and you could believe a great deal of what you read in almost any newspaper, public relations people thought it would enhance the chance of getting their press releases published if they delivered them in person.
If a flack came in with a handout when my friend Tom Houston was running the Detroit Free Press city desk, Tom would accept the manuscript, ceremoniously open a desk drawer, take out a rubber stamp, press it on an ink pad and stamp the paper "WGAS."
He'd nod to the flack and say, "Take care of it right away."
Never mind that the initials meant "Who gives a shit?"
Can we please put WGAS stamps on:
Anything more about Sarah Palin, her stupid book, her idiotically named kids or her cockeyed views?
Jock talkers' views on Bill Belicheck's decision to go for it on fourth and two?
Any celebrity's latest diet?
Why Lou Dobbs left whatever worthless network he left, where he's going (if anywhere) and his political ambitions (if any)?
What Joe Lieberman says -- about anything?
Sports writing that calls rebounds "boards," asserts that a team "looks to" a particular outcome or refers to "student athletes" without quotation marks?
Any so-called news story that containes the phrase "moderate Democrat" and the names Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana or Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas? They're as moderate as cottonmouths in a swimmin' hole.
Any quotation of the mouthings of Mitch McConnell? Who writes this guy's lies for him? Who taught him to deliver them with a straight face?
The punditry of Charles Krauthammer?
If a flack came in with a handout when my friend Tom Houston was running the Detroit Free Press city desk, Tom would accept the manuscript, ceremoniously open a desk drawer, take out a rubber stamp, press it on an ink pad and stamp the paper "WGAS."
He'd nod to the flack and say, "Take care of it right away."
Never mind that the initials meant "Who gives a shit?"
Can we please put WGAS stamps on:
Anything more about Sarah Palin, her stupid book, her idiotically named kids or her cockeyed views?
Jock talkers' views on Bill Belicheck's decision to go for it on fourth and two?
Any celebrity's latest diet?
Why Lou Dobbs left whatever worthless network he left, where he's going (if anywhere) and his political ambitions (if any)?
What Joe Lieberman says -- about anything?
Sports writing that calls rebounds "boards," asserts that a team "looks to" a particular outcome or refers to "student athletes" without quotation marks?
Any so-called news story that containes the phrase "moderate Democrat" and the names Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana or Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas? They're as moderate as cottonmouths in a swimmin' hole.
Any quotation of the mouthings of Mitch McConnell? Who writes this guy's lies for him? Who taught him to deliver them with a straight face?
The punditry of Charles Krauthammer?
Tax Political Religionists
It is high time to rescind federal tax exemptions for the Roman Catholic church and other religious groups that scorn the constitutionally ordained separation of church and state.
The Roman church's high-handed interference in secular affairs is unrelenting and unlawful. Consider the recent revelation that the top bishop in Rhode Island has instructed his priests not to give communion to Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) because he supports keeping government out of the private realm wherein women make decisions about their reproductive health. Kennedy said the bishop told him "that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I've taken as a public official," particularly on abortion.
During the 2008 presidential election, voters in heavily Catholic southern New Mexico were bombarded with robo-calls from "Bishop Ramirez" telling them that Catholics in good conscience could not vote for any candidate (read Obama) who supported a woman's right to choose.
The anti-woman Stupak amendment to the health care bill in the house -- which prohibits health insurance payments for abortion -- was inserted at the insistence of the powerful Roman Catholic bishops' national organization, in alliance with other powerful fundamentalist religion groups.
These blatant intrusions into secular affairs must be punished under the law. The Roman church and its fundamentalist allies, as they persist in violating the law that gives them exemptions from taxation, must be made to pay the appropriate penalty: loss of those exemptions.
The religious lobby has become too powerful in our political system and must be curbed, along with the military-industrial lobby, the gun lobby and all the other lobbies that send overpaid sleazes in designer suits into every legislative office in Washington with bags of money and veiled threats.
The founding fathers intended ours to be a secular government representing "we the people." Let's begin to restore that ideal.
The Roman church's high-handed interference in secular affairs is unrelenting and unlawful. Consider the recent revelation that the top bishop in Rhode Island has instructed his priests not to give communion to Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) because he supports keeping government out of the private realm wherein women make decisions about their reproductive health. Kennedy said the bishop told him "that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I've taken as a public official," particularly on abortion.
During the 2008 presidential election, voters in heavily Catholic southern New Mexico were bombarded with robo-calls from "Bishop Ramirez" telling them that Catholics in good conscience could not vote for any candidate (read Obama) who supported a woman's right to choose.
The anti-woman Stupak amendment to the health care bill in the house -- which prohibits health insurance payments for abortion -- was inserted at the insistence of the powerful Roman Catholic bishops' national organization, in alliance with other powerful fundamentalist religion groups.
These blatant intrusions into secular affairs must be punished under the law. The Roman church and its fundamentalist allies, as they persist in violating the law that gives them exemptions from taxation, must be made to pay the appropriate penalty: loss of those exemptions.
The religious lobby has become too powerful in our political system and must be curbed, along with the military-industrial lobby, the gun lobby and all the other lobbies that send overpaid sleazes in designer suits into every legislative office in Washington with bags of money and veiled threats.
The founding fathers intended ours to be a secular government representing "we the people." Let's begin to restore that ideal.
Friday, November 20, 2009
A Contrarian Victory
Ron Paul, the nominally Republican congressman from Texas, is sui generis in American politics.
After nine years during which bipartisanship utterly disappeared from our government, Rep. Paul revived it yesterday in stunning fashion.
Paul, who is more libertarian than Republican, teamed with a Democrat, Alan Grayson of Florida, to sponsor an amendment to the sweeping financial overhaul legislation that aims to regulate the industry for systemic risks. It subjects the Federal Reserve to greatly intensified audits and oversight. The amendment advanced on a 43-26 vote of the House Financial Services Committee with both Democratic and Republican support. The vote reflected the widespread and bipartisan populist anger at the central bank's policy decisions and secretive methods of operation.
It was also a sharp rebuke of the Obama administation's economic policies and especially of its top two financial regulators, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council director Larry Summers.
Summers and Geithner were among President Obama's very first appointments, and among his very worst. The debate in the financial services committee gave Republicans an opening to go after Geithner's hide with particular fervor, even demanding that he be fired from the treasury post.
It stung. Geithner snapped back at them that the country's financial mess was "inherited." What hypocrisy! Sure it was "inherited" -- from a gang of Wall Street thugs including then president of the New York Federal Reserve Timothy Geithner.
At the New York Fed he operated in the very atmosphere of clubby secrecy that the Paul-Grayson amendment will terminate. It would allow Congress to order audits of all the Fed's lending programs as well as of its basic decisions to set monetary policy by raising or lowering interest rates.
I hope the Paul-Grayson Odd Couple keep the pressure on this administration for all of its economic policy follies. The worst of them is what former New York Gov. Elliott Spitzer called "continuity." He elaborated:
"They have embraced the Bush Administration view that if you solve the problem of big banks everything else flows from that. They are wrong. Too big to fail is too big. They don't get it. The only two people I know who don't appreciate that are Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Henry Kaufman, Mervyn King -- every major academic has said, we must get rid of too big to fail."
Public exposure of which financial institutions get big bucks from the Fed will put a significant dart in Too Big to Fail.
Perhaps the Odd Couple have a few more darts in their quiver. I hope so.
After nine years during which bipartisanship utterly disappeared from our government, Rep. Paul revived it yesterday in stunning fashion.
Paul, who is more libertarian than Republican, teamed with a Democrat, Alan Grayson of Florida, to sponsor an amendment to the sweeping financial overhaul legislation that aims to regulate the industry for systemic risks. It subjects the Federal Reserve to greatly intensified audits and oversight. The amendment advanced on a 43-26 vote of the House Financial Services Committee with both Democratic and Republican support. The vote reflected the widespread and bipartisan populist anger at the central bank's policy decisions and secretive methods of operation.
It was also a sharp rebuke of the Obama administation's economic policies and especially of its top two financial regulators, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council director Larry Summers.
Summers and Geithner were among President Obama's very first appointments, and among his very worst. The debate in the financial services committee gave Republicans an opening to go after Geithner's hide with particular fervor, even demanding that he be fired from the treasury post.
It stung. Geithner snapped back at them that the country's financial mess was "inherited." What hypocrisy! Sure it was "inherited" -- from a gang of Wall Street thugs including then president of the New York Federal Reserve Timothy Geithner.
At the New York Fed he operated in the very atmosphere of clubby secrecy that the Paul-Grayson amendment will terminate. It would allow Congress to order audits of all the Fed's lending programs as well as of its basic decisions to set monetary policy by raising or lowering interest rates.
I hope the Paul-Grayson Odd Couple keep the pressure on this administration for all of its economic policy follies. The worst of them is what former New York Gov. Elliott Spitzer called "continuity." He elaborated:
"They have embraced the Bush Administration view that if you solve the problem of big banks everything else flows from that. They are wrong. Too big to fail is too big. They don't get it. The only two people I know who don't appreciate that are Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Henry Kaufman, Mervyn King -- every major academic has said, we must get rid of too big to fail."
Public exposure of which financial institutions get big bucks from the Fed will put a significant dart in Too Big to Fail.
Perhaps the Odd Couple have a few more darts in their quiver. I hope so.
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