Kim Jong Illin'
Once again, the entire world has it's collective panties in a bunch over the actions of North Korea and their Amazing Steampunk Nuclear program. Perhaps it's time to have a grown-up conversation about this.
First, let's understand the reasons behind this nuclear test. Certainly , having a few nuclear weapons will always serve as an effective deterrent to foreign attack or invasion. Once the international community is convinced that you have the bomb, any saber rattling they do in your direction can be safely ignored as hollow and perfunctory. But the international community was convinced by the first North Korean test, back in 2006, so what is the justification for this one?
It's never a real good idea to try to determine the thought processes of the legendarily unpredictable, some might say unstable Kim Jong Il, but one obvious trend that runs through all of his provocations is a cry for respect. As the leader of an isolated, insular nation with no economy to speak of, unable to feed it's population or influence international events, Kim has found the only way he can demand attention is to act in a warlike, threatening matter. To create the perception that North Korea is a threat, a force to be dealt with as a peer. And right down the line, the leadership of the US, Japan, South Korea and Europe all react as frightened mice, calling him a "threat to international peace and security" and offering to immediately begin talks to find a way to make the big bad Kim Jong Il stop threatening them.
This is nonsensical. Exactly who is North Korea threatening, and how are they doing it? Their atomic weapons have a short history of not being very robust, they have no real method for delivering them outside their own borders and other than it's symbolic nature, they don't really need an atomic bomb at all. For many years now, North Korea has protected itself from foreign attack by effectively holding the 25 million people of greater metropolitan Seoul hostage. Seoul sits right on the DMZ between the two countries, and North Korea has it surrounded by thousands of artillery pieces, rocket launchers, missile batteries and armored assault units. It is accepted as doctrine that before they could be rolled back, the North Koreans will have destroyed the third largest city in the world and killed hundreds of thousands, if not a million civilians. With or without nuclear weapons, this threat is enough to shield them from outside military intervention, and they know it well.
The two nuclear tests they have undertaken have not been particularly awe inspiring for their effectiveness or competence. The first test is generally acknowledged to have been what weapons experts like to call a "fizzle", where the weapon either does not reach criticality or it "pre initiates" and very little fissile matter is converted to energy. The second test, while almost certainly a fission explosion, is being rated in the neighborhood of 4 kilotons, about a fifth of the Nagasaki bomb of the same general design. A pretty large explosion as explosions go, but not even on the scale for typical atomic blasts.
It's time for the rest of the international community to stop panicking every time Kim demands attention. North Korea is a nuclear power, and unless they can be persuaded to give up their weapons, there is nothing in the world that's going to change that. They are a genuine threat to South Korea, and to a much lesser extent Japan, and not at all to America. Considering their geopolitical location, they cannot even be accurately recognized as a regional power. If they want talks, fine, have talks. If they want aid, well, that can be part of the talks. But the US should make it clear that from where we sit, WAY over here on the other side of the Pacific, they are welcome to their nuclear weapons and we aren't going to either attack them for having them or offer them any kind of substantive reward for giving them up. We just don't care. Let China carry that ball for a while...
Memorial Day
Usually on Memorial Day I write an overwrought, maudlin piece expressing support for the struggles of our soldiers home from combat. It is an important issue for me, and one can never do enough to make people understand the implications of a world where you can be under fire one day, in a restaurant in Germany the next and home sleeping in your own bed the day after that. The human brain wasn't designed for the demands of modern combat, didn't develop any mechanism for dealing with a full year of 24-hour-a-day stress and fear, and simply can't adjust to such radically changed circumstances without extreme difficulty.
But this year, I'm feeling substantially less charitable. It's hard to honor our "heroes" who, when engaged with a small group of lightly armed irregulars, call in massive air support and kill dozens of civilians. It's hard to ask people to salute those who risk so much for freedom when we chose to start the war in the first place. It's hard to demand people "honor their sacrifices" when they have laid waste to so much of the world, destroying so many lives in the name of a nebulous and arbitrary agenda. And should we look forward to a future Memorial Day when we unveil a glorious marble monument to our courageous drones?
It seems the world is in a dark, somewhat hopeless place today, and at least some of that can be laid at the feet of the American love of war, our virtual fetishization with all things military. Perhaps it's time for a holiday that celebrates men of peace, builds monuments for wars avoided and calls the roll of those, combatant and innocent alike, not killed in vain. Maybe on a Memorial Day sometime in the future, when a child looks upon a statue of a soldier and asks what it is, his mom might be able to tell him "men used to travel around the world killing and destroying because their leaders told them to". A time when we can look back on the brutality and barbarity of war as a solution to political and economic disagreements as something from an earlier, less enlightened era. When a country's great leaders will be recognized for the health, well being and education of their people and a country's great scientific advancements for curing disease and improving the lives of human beings.
In the meantime, today? A car race, a ball game, a steak and a beer. A warm spring day in the park. Not so much reflection - I've had all the war I can stomach for now, and I fear more is yet to come. The soldiers are still coming home from combat, still watching a surreal world through wary eyes, still struggling to adjust to a world without bombs, without weapons, without deadly enemies around every turn. They'll still need our support and understanding, and we'll still need to welcome them back. But today it occurred to me that much of the honor is gone, and if it ever really existed at all, the time for celebrating war is at an end...
Pink Boxers
I have to admit this made me smile, and I can't deny I not only enjoyed, but appreciated what Secretary Gates
had to say about it. But it's interesting to take a moment and ask ourselves why it's newsworthy.
As much as Americans approve of military solutions to all sorts of intractable problems, worship and even fetishize the military and call for acts of extreme violence from invasions to air strikes with minimal compunction, very few Americans have ever had to come to grips with the realities of life in a war zone. While they are perfectly able to conceptualize, it is well nigh impossible for most Americans to viscerally understand how a family might live day in and day out, being startled awake and rushing out into the dark and chaos to fight or to flee. The easy death, the endless horror, the constant fear, the disease, the destruction, the smoke, the
smell.
Even American soldiers, with their vaunted reputation for taking some of the comforts of home to the front lines of battle, have to live wound tight, on a razor's edge, understanding that at any time peaceful quiet can be shattered by gunfire and explosions, and there can be no hesitation in response. Anyone who has tried to sleep in a war zone has had to make the most careful of calculations - Should I take off my boots? My pants? Where should I put my weapon, my magazines, my grenades, my helmet? Should I keep my pistol in my rack? A knife?
For the residents, of the battle areas, the families with farms and livestock and children and pets, the calculations are harder, and the choices fewer. It seems certain to me that if Americans had a better understanding of the misery, the disruption, the tragedy that is unleashed on regular people every time there is a battle or an air strike, they would be much more circumspect in their desire to see deadly force employed as a routine matter of policy. It is unfair that a nation can unleash so much death and suffering, so much fear and horror, and suffer so few consequences for it. It's all gotten too easy, too mundane.
Perhaps the sight of a young man rushing to the fight with his comrades in boxers and flip-flop sandals can teach us, as a people, a little something about life in war. About what it demands, and what it costs...
Pakistan, The Taliban and Those Pesky Nukes - A Calm Analysis
I'm not sure what the US Government and their stenographers in the media actually want. The seem determined to drive Pakistan from a democratic, civilian government with an active political opposition and a small, militant insurgency to a full-blown civil war. They don't seem to be willing to allow the Pakistanis to work out their political and ideological differences through a negotiated political process, but instead seem to be frothing for bloodshed. It never seems to get mentioned in any of the American discussions, but a nation that is at war with it's citizens, attacking it's own towns and creating desperate refugees has failed at it's primary purpose.
The Pakistanis were understandably resistant to going to war against their fellow Pakistanis, so the US and the Obama administration just kept ratcheting up the pressure and offering more in the way of rewards until the Zardari government and the Army under General Kayani made a craven calculation that it was in the short-term interests of the governing elite (yes, that does include the military and ISI) to kill a few thousand of their citizens in order to keep American aid flowing. It is nothing short of appalling that apparently neither the Obama nor the Zardari administrations can see beyond the next fiscal quarter. That future is grim, but precisely NOT for the reasons the American hype machine keeps shrieking.
Let's be clear. Assertions are regularly made in the American press about the state of Pakistan, her government, her military and her nuclear weapons. In parallel, further assertions are made about the Talilban, their goals, their support and the type of threat they impose on the Pakistani nation. They are almost entirely and uniformly false, and yet the truth so seldom finds it's way into the conversation that one must reach the conclusion that the truth is, to borrow a phrase from Al Gore, inconvenient.
Let's start with the real bogeyman here. The nuclear weapons held by the Pakistani military. And make no mistake, the civilian government has NO access to them, nor the ability to order their release. The military retains the strategic options, both because they don't have faith in the willingness of the civilian government to unleash them, but also, and perhaps more importantly, they don't have faith in the institutions of democracy that might place someone who's ideology is at odds with the Generals in a position of power. The American press loves to describe a frightening scenario where a Pakistani nuclear warhead "falls into the hands" of the Taliban or al Quaeda and is smuggled into an American city and detonated with hundreds of thousands or millions of casualties. Is that reasonable? Should that be the primary concern that drives American South Asia policy? Let's think about it for a minute.
Does anyone else hear that "ticking time bomb" from the torture "debate"? For this scenario to come to pass would require a set of circumstances, decisions, operations and opportunities so far fetched as to be the same kind of science fiction as that legendary time bomb of the hate-driven fever dreams of authoritarians in and out of government. But with America's cultural predisposition to the expedient, our love of action-adventure stories and our utter lack of understanding of Islamic cultures, we have no second thoughts in believing these terrifying stories. And yet...
A nuclear warhead is a large, heavy, incredibly high precision device that is easy to conceptualize, somewhat harder to design and very difficult to engineer. And any loss of precision results in something less than a mushroom cloud. And we've seen too many movies with "suitcase nukes". While a few, highly advanced nuclear weapons programs (the US, Russia, perhaps China, Great Britain and France) have developed the technology for reducing the size and weight of an atomic weapon, those are NOT the weapons we are talking about in Pakistan. That nobody ever bothers to make the distinction, but rather avoids the discussion in order to allow American imaginations to run wild is telling in and of itself. A Pakistani warhead is a large, cumbersome piece of single-purpose technology, designed to be delivered by short or medium range missile against Indian targets. It is heavy, not designed to be portable and requires a great deal of gentle care if it is to be expected to release it's nuclear energy on target. And even then, it's a dirty little secret that the reason a nuclear power wants so many warheads is that many of them can be expected to fail to "deliver significant yield" and it is doctrine to plan to deliver multiple weapons to ensure a single detonation.
But OK. For now, let's assume that Taliban, with Osama bin Laden's evil minions assisting, have commandeered a 300 kiloton Pakistani warhead, perhaps with significant assistance from the ISI. They have the engineers they need to to load it into a 40 foot shipping container and brace it so it is not damaged in transit. They now have a nuclear warhead ready to transport, in an international standard shipping container, in a remote Pakistani nuclear development facility. Has no one noticed? Is there not SOME part of the Pakistani Government, or the Pakistani military, who is concerned, and would prefer this did not happen? After all, even with all the support in the world, this weapon was NOT designed to be delivered in this way. It took time, innovative thinking and creative engineering to get this far. The Pakistanis would have known where the facility was, and they would have known that it was compromised. Even assuming their F16s and helicopter gunships somehow fail to remove the threat at the source, their special operations teams can't find a way to stop this? OK, let's say they can't
Now the time has come for the Taliban and their al Quaeda henchmen to move this weapon to a port. They load the container on a truck and, what, just drive to Karachi? Whereupon they innocently load this container on a container ship bound for Savannah, pay their money and sign the bill of lading? Do the Pakistanis not KNOW their nuclear facility has been compromised and a weapon stolen? Do the Americans not know? This happened in complete secrecy, without having to kill a guard, blow a gate, coerce a manager or trigger a safeguard? Wow, these guys are good. In fact, the whole world would realize that there were rogue nukes on the loose and among other obvious countermeasures, container traffic would be anything but business as usual.
Then there's the matter of device security. What we call PALs, or permissive action links. See, everybody figured out about fifty years ago that, with forward deployed nuclear weapons, the enemy or a rogue ally could seize control of one or several of them and, well, at that point anything's possible. So from combination padlocks to advanced digital security, the weapons have been protected by security devices and tamper proof housings. Do the Pakistanis employ this level of security? We do have to admit we don't know, but they would have the same motivation as the US or Russia or any other nuclear state - to make certain that the weapons didn't end up destroying their own interests. I think it's VERY likely that the way the Pakistani military maintains control of the nuclear weapons is to control the release codes. There is very likely no one, or a very limited number of people anywhere near the development/maintenance facility, who actually have the knowledge to make the bomb go boom. The science of encryption and one-way cyphers is well known, and the Pakistanis have plenty of mathematicians. This would not be a significant challenge to them, and they would be madmen to have no controls on these weapons at all. They are not.
Which brings us to an important cultural discussion. Here in the west, we like to make all sorts of determinations that Islamic extremists are "fanatics", that they have no interest in living, that in order to carry out their nefarious plots they would happily die, even along with their family, their tribe, their mosque and their nation. They are just not like us, you see. We want to live. They WANT to die. And yet, look around for evidence of this. Attempt to demonstrate a case where anyone, Islamic extremist or other, who was willing to see his entire group, the very same group that suffered the grievances he's attempting to redress through violence, utterly destroyed. An individual, traumatized and indoctrinated, carrying out a suicide bombing does not rise to this level. I frequently hear this charge leveled with a particular kind of smug self-certainty at Iran. But yet, with all their power, they seem to be highly circumspect in attacking their enemies, be they Israel or Saudi Arabia. It's almost as if they aren't willing to absorb the certain retaliation that would come from starting a war. As if they actually WERE like us. Human beings, with families and hopes for the future.
Our government and our press regularly tells us things that are not true. It is up to us to think about the claims they are making, and to evaluate them based on facts we know or can logically assume to be in play. The people attempting to shape the discussion, the groups that want to frame the debate, have an agenda. And while your hopes, dreams and desires may coincide with that agenda, they very likely do not. You must take the time to think about what you are being told, and to insist it pass a very basic smell test. You will commonly find you are being manipulated, to your detriment, and that is something you should very much want to avoid.
Liberal Democracy to Authoritarian Police State - The Direct Route
Republican legislators are outraged that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called out the CIA for "misleading" her in briefings over the Bush/Cheney torture policies. Of course, their arguments against Pelosi's statements have very little to do with their accuracy or truthfulness in the sense that they are offering actual evidence that she is incorrect or lying. Rather, they are taking the radical position that it is simply beyond the pale for an American lawmaker to call into question the agency's perfection, apparently because to do so is unacceptable, unamerican and unpatriotic.
Eventually, when historians look back to identify those critical points where the American experiment in representative democracy collapsed, this might well be one of them. When an elected representative of the people, with statutory and constitutional intelligence oversight responsibilities, feels it appropriate to take the position that it is unacceptable to question the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency, he is essentially ceding control of Government from elected political leaders to anonymous, unaccountable intelligence bureaucrats. He is saying that the secret police should be allowed to operate without challenge, unfettered, based on the assumption that they will never take a self-serving or counter productive action because, well, they're the
good guys.
Especially in light of the excesses of the previous administration, I WANT the co-equal Legislative and Judiciary branches to question every agency, demand information on every program, and exercise active oversight to the point of denying funding for questionable programs and lack of transparency. One of the truly appalling things about the Bush/Cheney years was the way the Republican - led Congress was willing to subjugate their power and authority to that of the White House. These are men and women of immense ego and great power. Under the constitution they had not only the power, but the responsibility to make themselves part of the process. Instead, they chose to act as lap dogs, nothing but a rubber stamp, the saddest kind of flaccid third-world banana republic parliamentary assembly, acting as instructed by the party elders, without any ability to influence events. These partisan hacks sold out their country, and their constituents for nothing but some political party platform. They made a mockery not just of themselves as legislators, but of the institution to which they had the rare privilege of being elected.
And now they want to take their craven, anomalous behavior as servants of the party in the name of executive power and make it, not just the way the system is supposed to work into perpetuity, but to make a powerful, independent, effective Legislative branch into some kind of subversive fifth column. For that does seem to be the takeaway from the mindless arguments they are shrieking at increasing volume.
Don't question the secret police. Let the military make the decisions, not the civilian government. Demand more surveillance, more torture, more incarceration, a militarized border, more and more military spending to support more and more wars. The irony is that on political issues there is very little daylight between the Republican party's official positions and that of the Saddam Hussein government. Just as on social issues, tolerance and diversity, the Republican party and al Quaeda have shockingly parallel beliefs and ideologies.
It's a path I don't believe the majority of Americans want to walk. But with the political cowardice and self-interest of the government and the mindless, arrogant, embarrassing idiocy of the press, there seems to be no way to change direction. We're going to be very unhappy with the nation we're creating, and yet we continue to rush headlong into a dark, authoritarian future...
Incredible Sources
Let me ask a very quick question here. Why would anyone ask Liz Cheney about her father's actions as Vice President? I'm not certain but I'm pretty sure she was NOT on his staff or involved in his actions around detainee interrogations, particularly as much of that was classified, but even beyond that, has anyone noticed that he's her FATHER? Asking someone if they think their Dad is a war criminal seems unlikely to result in any valuable data.
As if we needed some additional evidence to allow us to understand the mindless and tragically ineffectual nature of our electronic press, this should serve as a milestone, a stake hammered into the very concept of political journalism announcing, for now and ever, it's wheezing demise. Think about this. The Vice President of The United States of America is embroiled in controversy due to his horrific and very likely criminal behavior. And the press thinks it will contribute valuable insight into the issue to interview his DAUGHTER on her views of his actions. And people listen to her speak, and discuss the things she says as if she has any credible standing to address the matter. It's beyond bizarre. And I know you're going to find the outcome shocking, but Cheney's daughter deems his actions to be completely reasonable, utterly justifiable and undoubtedly legal. Now that you know his daughter thinks his actions were correct, you have a much deeper understanding of the entire affair, right?
Of course, as we sadly view this marker on the grave of electronic journalism, we must recognize, and admit to ourselves, that it is too late. The media cannot be repaired - it is far to broken to ever find it's bearings once again. What we can do, what we MUST do, is help the people who pay less attention and still rely, to their great detriment, upon television and cable news for their view of the world understand that this medium is for entertainment purposes only, and that nothing credible can be learned by viewing it. As long as these hucksters and clowns can be cited as authoritative sources, the discourse in this nation will continue to be hijacked by people with money and an agenda, and our aspiration to live in a democracy will slip farther out of reach.
Imagine how refreshing it would be if one of these television news actors reported Liz Cheney's views on her father's actions, and then looked in the camera and said "but then again, what else would we
expect her to say", shook his head ruefully and added "for a
credible take on Vice President Cheney's actions, let's go to ____________". They could fill in anyone, from someone in government to a former administration official to a constitutional scholar to a torture survivor. It is not difficult to find people who can make a valuable contribution to this conversation. But the suspect's
daughter? That's just laughable...
Who Knew?
So now the torture-loving authoritarian right are all stomping their feet and shouting triumphantly that Democratic legislators including Speaker Pelosi were briefed about the Bush/Cheney torture programs and essentially signed off on them, or at the very least did nothing to stop them.
Please forgive me for being so dense, but I really don't understand this argument, what it means or or what they believe it accomplishes. It seems so simple to me, I'm sure I must be missing something. I believe there is sufficient information available to justify a Justice Department investigation. If Cheney, or Addington, or Bybee are found to have committed a crime, they should be indicted and tried for those crimes. If Nancy Pelosi, or Jay Rockefeller, or Jane Harmen are found to have committed a crime, they should also be indicted and tried. I don't understand how you might wish to live under the rule of law and think anything else.
I suppose they are hoping that Democrats won't want to see other Democrats prosecuted, but I think this exposes the critical difference between a political party and a political ideology. To put it succinctly, a political ideology doesn't automatically lead to a mindless support for a particular party, but rather for politicians and organizations that espouse and advance that ideological agenda. I'm not sure why anyone would support a party no matter what that party did or sought to accomplish, but that certainly doesn't work for me.
There are two interesting things here. First, one has to wonder what the overall strategy among the torture supporters actually is. Their position has been that the interrogation methods weren't torture because the Bush administration lawyers determined them to be legal, so there is no need to investigate what was essentially a "policy disagreement". But if that's the case, why exactly are they crowing so loudly that "Pelosi knew"? If your position is that these actions weren't torture and therefore not criminal behavior, then what point would you be making in trying to demonstrate that your political opponents were complicit? It's oddly inconsistent at best, and incoherent at worst. The other striking thing is that by shrieking that there were also Democrats caught up in these torture authorizations, aren't they essentially leaving themselves in the position of demanding investigations to establish the facts of these allegations? It seems to me they are, and if they are calling for investigations that follow the evidence wherever it leads, then they are taking exactly the same position I am. I'm not sure how you can accuse people of being complicit in a war crime and then turn around and demand there be no investigation.
At the end of the day, I have no idea if ANY lawmaker committed a crime by enabling torture. I don't know what law would apply, and how it might apply. Once again, another reason for prosecutors to investigate. Here's what we can be certain of: War Crimes were committed. By Americans. Under cover of the US Department of Justice. But for me, at least, if an investigation can be mounted, whatever crimes it uncovers should be prosecuted, regardless of the political party membership or ideology of any of the participants. I'd hope that would end this ridiculous charade...
Band Aids
When was the last time you bought Band Aids? Ok, maybe if you've got kids, that's a dumb question. I don't have kids. I'm not sure when, if ever, I've actually ever bought Band Aids before, but it finally came to pass that I needed to refresh the inventory of Band Aids at mikey HQ.
The first thing I noticed is they don't come in those cool metal boxes anymore. That's a tragedy. Those flip-top metal boxes were by far the coolest thing about Band Aids.
I have had this little metal box of Band Aids at LEAST since I was married, back in 1990. So probably twenty years. Who knows where it came from, or who actually decided to buy it, or why. History, lost in the mists, as represented by a metal box of Band Aids. Cultural touchstone, or pointless search for meaning?
Parsing Obama - AfPak Edition
In his remarks after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Zardari, American President Obama said:
"The United States has made a lasting commitment to defeat al-Qaeda, but also to support the democratically-elected sovereign governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. That commitment will not waver and that support will be sustained."
Well, OK then. In light of my strongly held opinion that there is no compelling challenge to American security that requires a large US or NATO troop presence in South Asia, a couple of pieces of this statement jump out at you.
First, what has to be considered the good news. Obama specifically says that the US commitment of support is to the "democratically-elected sovereign governments" of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I'd like to think that contains a pointed message that a military coup or other extra-constitutional transfer of power in either nation would be grounds for the US to re-examine it's commitment of support. This is particularly important in Pakistan, where the military has been and remains the overwhelming political and economic power, and cannot be assumed to be a passive or even neutral player in Islamabad. While the Zardari government is fairly weak and the civilian leadership is fractured between the majority Punjabis and the population of Sindh and it's Urdu speakers and quite reasonably might not be expected to survive, it's important in the long term that the military stay out of parliamentary politics and, if possible, reduce their influence on the government in general. If Obama is sending them a message that American aid is strictly premised on their adherence to their own constitution, and if that is a message they take seriously (much less likely), then that will go a long way towards supporting real democracy and the rule of law in Pakistan.
The second point raises more questions than it answers. If the US commitment is to defeat al Quaeda, and nowhere in that statement do we see a reference to a US commitment to defeat the Taliban, then much of this entire discussion is rendered moot. al Quaeda is a small, trans-national extremest organization that uses terrorist attacks against other nations as its primary tactic. Any fight against al Quaeda should clearly be led by intelligence and law enforcement organizations, with the support of small, covert special operations strikes when actionable intelligence is uncovered.
As I have said repeatedly, the Taliban in no way constitutes a security threat to the United States of America. If a small, local, religious-extremist political/militant movement is a threat to American security, then I could list something on the order of twenty or more we should be fighting with Division-level long term military operations. al Quaeda, on the other hand, is inarguably a threat to the United States, and should be confronted and defeated. But what will it accomplish to defeat the Taliban? Asked another way, if we allowed local religious/tribal/ethnic conflicts in South Asia play out the same way we allow them to play out in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world, how exactly would that endanger American security, and if it does, why don't other similar conflicts do the same?
I don't know how it happens, but I have to believe that Barack Obama is smart enough and thoughtful enough to eventually come to understand that there is no value in spending American blood and treasure in South Asia, and withdraws the vast majority of our troops, all of our combat brigades, and starts putting significant conditions on aid to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. From an American Security standpoint, there is nothing special about these nations or this region that makes it necessary, or even slightly prudent, to engage in counter insurgency warfare to support these marginal governments. There is a place for the State Department, for economic development, micro-loans, public health, clean water and entrepreneurial support, but no reason, NONE, to be fighting the Taliban with American soldiers...
No Tolerance for Intolerance
This is really nice to see. We've gotten so cautious about defining something as wrong, so unwilling to draw a line and say "there is no moral ambiguity here", that we have drifted to a point where everything is just as valid as everything else. And all to our detriment.
No. "Intelligent Design" is not science. Global Climate Change is not only a real threat to all our children, but it follows out of a simple understanding of science. There are things that must be established as facts, and arguing against them should make you a crank at best. When those things are reasonable established tenets of human rights, arguing against them makes you a bigot, and the things you say hate speech.
Which brings us to the UK and their announcement of a small group of people who are not welcome in their country. That short list includes Michael Savage, American Hate Radio host. This is good to see. If Americans cannot find a way to draw a line, to create a limit and say that at some point hatred is destructive to our society, then it falls to other, more enlightened communities to point out the turds floating in the First Amendment's punchbowl. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think we should stifle Michael Savage. I am just deeply disgusted and disheartened that he can sell airtime on a commercial radio station with his Neanderthal ramblings.
But it does seem clear to me that if you put yourself in the position of appealing to the most primitive, ignorant, bigoted and fearful extremists in order to make money, you should expect some rather intensive push-back from civilized nations. And now, today, we see that from those eloquent ladies and gentlemen in the United Kingdom.
It's meaningless, sure. So Savage can't visit jolly old England. I'm sure he'll get over it, and in the near term it provides a thug like him with something else to bleat about. These people thrive on victimhood, and will always look for an opportunity to blame others for what is essentially a
reaction, not a proactive act. But it makes me smile, and here's why. When challenged, these kinds of bugs scurry back under their rocks, crying "First Amendment!" as a magical incantation to protect them from bearing responsibility for their destructive and irresponsible statements. It's way past time for people to stand up and identify them for the enemies of civilization, peace and progress they are, and expose them to the purifying sunlight of disgust and mockery.
The more quickly we, as a culture and as a species, reject this kind of divisive, tribal hatred, the sooner we can begin to see genuine peace in the world. And the government of the UK has stepped up and accepted their responsibility to identify a true enemy of civilization. They are to be commended, and I look forward to others doing the same...
The Specter of One Party Rule
It would be easy to put the National Republican leadership down as brain-dead ideologues, and you would not be that far from an accurate description. But to be honest, they are faced with a very serious dilemma, that is neither simple for them to address effectively, nor would any solution be politically painless were they to find a leader with the courage to enact one.
The basis of their problem is rooted in the nature of the American political system itself. The largest constituency that the vast majority of politicians are required to appeal to is at the state level. Many more run at the district and local level. At this level of granularity, you will find a tendency for people to hold a more consistent set of beliefs and opinions than at the broader, national level. A candidate for US Representative in a district in rural Alabama will have to have a vastly different set of social and political ideologies than a candidate for US Representative in urban Massachusetts would have. In and of itself, this is as it has always been, and is typically not a problem for a national political party or movement. At the National level, a party builds a coalition, employing a significant amount of ideological flexibility across geographic regions in order to represent the largest share of the electorate possible. An excellent example of this is the pro-life and pro-gun "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House and the so-called "centrist" Democrats in the Senate.
The problem for the Republicans has arisen directly out of the Bush/Cheney Presidency. So many of their core issues have been demonstrated to be unworkable, disastrous policies that the people soundly rejected them in both 2006 and 2008. From economic policy to foreign policy, from taxes to immigration, from free-market deregulation to unabashed union-busting, the entirety of the Republican platform has become anathema to a very large majority of Americans who want to see their government work to improve their lives and the lives of their families and neighbors.
But most Republicans in office today were put there by people in the south, the rural Midwest and parts of the Rocky Mountain west who continue to hold ever more narrow and parochial views of what is "American" and what is "socialism", never mind what the word actually means. Overall, in spite of their dominance in certain states and districts, this portion of the population represents only a third of the electorate, and is shrinking at a measurable rate. For any of these elected Republicans to try to take a national leadership role would require them to expose themselves to primary challenges from the far right in their home districts, and probable defeat , either to the Democratic candidate in the general election or the far-right challenger in the primary. The challenge can be summed up like this: The Republican party needs to moderate it's platform and move towards the center in order to be a viable national party, but any individual who does so will be removed from office. When an individual's political survival is pitted against the party's political survival, it takes a rare kind of politician, with a rare kind of courage, to step up to the plate. And not surprisingly, the Republicans haven't found that brilliant, charismatic messiah to lead them out of the wilderness.
Which brings us to Arlen Specter. Now it's arguable that Sen. Specter made the choice he did out of pure political expediency. The remaining Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate is very far right, and likely to nominate the radical Toomey over the moderate Specter. He certainly saw no clear path to another Senatorial term, which is the kind of survival challenge that tends to focus the mind. But even with that, he is an important example of where the Republican party is deficient, and he clearly demonstrates the things they will have to do to regain national political viability. By any measure, Specter has been an effective and powerful Conservative politician. His views and votes, while not as far right as the party might have liked, have been consistently supportive of the worst of the Republican agenda. The fact that he is not sufficiently radical for the right-wing is telling, but one wonders how much he might actually contribute to the progressive agenda. Certainly he was encouraged to make a commitment on health care reform, but overall one wonders if he might make the Blue Dog Democrats look positively socialist by comparison.
Fortunately, the very cravenness of Specter's abandonment of the Republican party might very well serve to moderate his actions, to the benefit of the Obama agenda. He will now have to run as a Democrat in 2010, so he will have to be sufficiently supportive of a progressive agenda to first avoid a Democratic primary challenge, and then to win the Senate seat itself.
The disintegration of the Republican party is not, in general, good news for our political system. A rational and viable opposition party can prevent the party in power from indulging in excesses that might otherwise be inevitable. But that opposition party needs to have a reasonable and viable platform, one that has some appeal and one that might result in better outcomes. To spew madness and discredited policies is neither valuable nor is it supportive of a viable political opposition. If the Republican party cannot find a way to moderate its ideology, indeed, if it continues it's headlong embrace of the most radical rightwing agenda, then another party will have to arise to challenge the Democrats for political leadership. It has become clear that bile, hatred and ignorance will not sustain a national political party in the twenty first century.
Once again, the entire world has it's collective panties in a bunch over the actions of North Korea and their Amazing Steampunk Nuclear program. Perhaps it's time to have a grown-up conversation about this.
