Economics 101

It's not the economy, stupid.

It's the war occupation.

Iraq in the Fog of Invasion and Occupation

The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future

I buy few books these days. (You know what they are: floppy rectangular things that fold out when you put them in your lap?) Budget is one reason; shelf space in my beach cottage another; time spent on the Internet, still another. Because of the last, I probably finish 10% of the books I currently buy.

When I shop in the field of political non-fiction, I have one criterion: how much can the writer promise to tell me that I already don’t know? I don’t look on the flyleaf for the answer.

Once I’m in a bookstore, browsing through a book, where do I look? In the index, I scan it to determine if it’s topically and hierarchically detailed. Next I look for annotated foot notes or end notes. Once I find both elements, it’s a deal-maker and I make the purchase. The only problem is confronted at home: which tome I have to throw out to make space?

Craig Unger’s new book, The Fall of the House of Bush, is my most recent prized acquisition. From the standpoint of data to be mined, this monograph on Busheney’s Iraq experiment is a must-have resource. Absolutely documented with original sources, it is richly endowed with colorful anecdotes, lengthy foot notes, end notes, and a detailed index. Armed with Unger you can unearth long buried bodies. I found a note about a devious ex-graduate school classmate of mine: he turned even out worse than I expected. One small problem is that some notes are a digit or two out of sequence, and a typo here and there renders an incorrect date: all of which could be cleaned up by paying a striking writer half a day to straighten out. But all in all, these few downside quibbles of mine cannot tarnish Unger’s excellent scholarly effort.

On the plus side, I have found many references which will help me fill out my menu of Kool-Aid and Coffee flavors.

Unger especially shines in his description of the early Neocons’ 30-year war against the national security apparatus. He describes Richard Pipes’ Team-B's undermining of the Kissingerian establishment's consensus on the Soviet Union: this group of bureaucratic worms was driven by an apoplectic animosity toward the Soviet Union. For them, the worst (possible) case scenario was reality. At one point they argued that the Soviets had non-acoustic submarine systems and were already deploying them. When challenged that there was no factual basis for this assertion, the Neocon response was that this proved just how secretive and devious the Soviets were. Their combative, full-spectrum court-press to obtain control over American foreign and defense policy was epitomized by a Churchillian quotation framed on the wall above Richard Perle’s desk:

Never give in,
Never give in
Never, never, never, never
In nothing great or small,
Large or petty –
Never give in

Unger is also at his best chronicling the selling of Bush’s unprecedented preventive war against Iraq. In all likelihood much of his scholarship may have been surpassed by the database recently presented by the CPI, at least in terms of Cheney’s warmongers on the public payroll. But Unger is peerless in relating the parts played by would-be journalists, pundits and ideologues led by William Kristol and such. I’ll mine these at a later time.

In his concluding pages, Unger delivers his judgment on the Bush legacy:

Yet through it all, Bush remained unfazed - besieged, but somehow utterly certain, unquestioning, and oddly at ease with himself, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence that he had created the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history. Ultimately, he had a fatalistic approach to his legacy.

Look, everybody is trying to write a history of this administration even before it's over. I'm reading about George Washington still. My attitude is that if they are still analyzing number one, forty-three ought not to worry about it and just do what he thinks is right.

. . . .when it came to the most crucial policies of his administration, choices that cost thousands of lives . . . Bush seemed curiously confused and disengaged . . . .

Even if Bush preferred to think that judgment of his administration would be rendered only many years in the future, with more than fourteen months left in his last term, his legacy was largely sealed . . . . Bush had indeed destroyed his father's legacy. The family's political future appeared to be dead as well . . . Jeb Bush . . . explained it simply . . . Yo no tengo futuro."

. . . . . historians had already amassed enough information with which to assess the damages wrought by the Bush administration. Driven by delusional idealism and religious zeal, Bush, after all, had already made one catastrophic blunder, the true historical dimensions of which have yet to emerge. To fully appreciate its consequences, one cannot overlook the fact that the Iraq War took place in the twilight of the hydrocarbon era, during China's extraordinary ascendancy. Far from safeguarding America as promised, the Iraq war had jeopardized the country's security and with it, potentially, America's access to the Middle East oil so crucial to fueling the most powerful economic engine in history.

Who knows how much stronger America's geostrategic position might be if the Bush Administration had not squandered the incalculable goodwill the United States had after 9/11? Who knows how much better off America might be, if instead of wasting its time and money on Iraq, it had invested those same resources in education or the health care system that was in crisis, or in developing alternative energy resources and a strategy to free the country from its dependence on Middle East oil? Such losses are truly impossible to calculate.

The morning after his final State of the Union address it's fair to judge his tenure by his stewardship. By any standard, the Bush administration has weakened the nation.

Leaving aside the domestic state of the Union:

• Bush inherited a military that had all active-duty Army divisions rated at the highest readiness levels and that was capable of fighting a two-front war. He will leave us with a military facing the worst readiness crisis in a generation, sprawled across two endless fronts of ineffectual and endless occupations and war, hemorrhaging $2 billions a week, two continents away.
• Bush inherited a nation that was respected on the international stage; he will leave behind one reviled by many around the world. In 2001 our USA had an approval rating of 58% (Pew poll of 10 nations). In 2008 it's 39%.
• Bush's cabal of un-indicted war criminals are still at large in our political system and will remain so long after this presidency.
  

The past eight years cannot be annulled. The 21st century cannot be re-started. In the near-term, the best we can hope for is to avoid another Republican presidency. If we can manage that, then the best years for America may be those yet to come. Nevertheless, as Unger argues, the toxic residue bequeathed by Busheney still leaves our future in peril.

No, I did not watch the President's State of the Union Speech...

Did I miss anything?

Oh shit...!

Barack Wins by a Tsunami in South Carolina

And the torch is being passed...
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans . . . proud of our ancient heritage and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Everyone knows Caroline Kennedy is the daughter of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She is also the author of “A Patriot’s Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love.” At the moment she published her column A President Like My Father for today's New York Times, she was still listed on the Hillary Clinton Org site as a supporter.

A President Like My Father

Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.

Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates’ goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.

I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents’ grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.

Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.

I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

Billary: Do You Still Think They Are Re-Electable?

Bumper-sticker of the Day:

Coming to streets near you,
as Republican bumpersticker-of-the-year.

On Fridays We Salute Meritorious Republicans

No! No! Not this guy!This is State Representative Douglas Bruce who represents my home town, Colorado Springs, Colorado. I do not have an affinity for either home town or its state congressman.

Douglas Bruce has distinguished himself in this still-young 2008:

• This jerk was not even elected; he was appointed to his office in mid-term.
• Leading up to his swearing in, he got in a sustained dispute with the House Speaker about the time of his being sworn in.
• On the day he took office, Jan. 14, Bruce outraged the entire body. Minutes after the photo at the top of this thread was taken during a ceremonial prayer, he kicked photographer Javier Manzano, of the Rocky Mountain News in the knees!

No, I'm not celebrating this anti-tax turkey from my home town.

Instead, I'm celebrating all of the Republicans who joined with their democratic peers to pass a motion of censure. The censure motion was carried by a vote of 162-1. So, a whole lot of Republicans felt Bruce

failed to uphold the honor and dignity of the House of Representatives and reflects poorly on the state.

It was the first censure in the 131-year history of the state house.

Mr. Bruce, an anti-tax crusader who was appointed by his party to fill a vacancy, became the first member of the Colorado General Assembly to face censure. Just before he was censured, Mr. Bruce gave a speech on the House floor comparing himself to the main character in the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in which he said Jimmy Stewart plays a rookie senator who is hounded by the press until he physically attacks them. Republican Representative Al White derided him,

You’re not Jimmy Stewart. This is not a 1939 movie. This is today. Your actions were wrong.

Representative Frank McNulty, also a Republican said,

What I find particularly disturbing is that after the incident, Representative Bruce failed to take responsibility for his own action.

This degree of bipartisanship has not been much in evidence since the rise of George Bush, Tom DeLay and Karl Rove.

So, this Friday, I salute Mssrs. Frank McNulty, Al White, et. al., all those Republicans who put the interests of their normally deliberative body ahead of narrow partisan support.

Evidence of War Crimes

The Chain of Custody Is SecureThe Center for Public Integrity has provided a service of inestimable value, deserving of a Nobel Prize for truth. I was not able to get any links to CPI's War Card site to work before now; perhaps because their bandwith was overloaded. But this database is extremely user-friendly and useful. I urge every one to try it, at least once. I know it won't inform many readers and lurkers of my pages because you already know this stuff. But everyone now knows where to refer lingering doubters that Busheney lied us into war in Iraq.The one problem with this site is that it doesn't tell the full story. It details the war crime of the White House stampeding our congress into invading Iraq on the basis of national security. But it doesn't detail Busheney's lies which have kept us there. That war crime continues...