Ritter V. Sheehan
Though I don’t always agree with him, I give former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter a lot of credit. As a veritable hero of the American anti-war movement he could simply bask in the adulation offered up by its adherents and play to his admiring audience.
Instead, Ritter continues to rely on that scarce faculty known as critical thinking as he persists in criticizing and challenging that movement to grow up and move from the margins.
His latest piece, which I hope you read, takes some pretty serious shots at Cindy Sheehan who, as far as I can tell has pretty much slid off the rails of any reasonable political thought. Ritter rightfully frets about the self-referential and self-marginalizng factions of the pro-impeachment movement which are increasingly inter-mingling with the peace movement.
He also directly confronts what is often the hooey offered by progressives when they speak of being anti-war but pro-troops. Oh really? I’ll let Ritter make his own arguments but he concludes by saying that Americans need to claim much greater ownership in the democratic and constitutional process and that one of the best ways to achieve this would be mandatory national service including some military training.
Though I reach the same conclusion from a different route I have long argued that such form of universal service is crucial to the strengthening of civil society and democracy.
Meanwhile, back to Sheehan. I’ve been reading on some liberal list-serves how last month Sheehan pulled together a meeting in Philly to explore –omigod– how to unify the the peace, pro-impeachment and the”9/11 truth” movements. The latter, of course, are the certifiable loons who believe the Twin Towers were dropped by “controlled demolitions” set off, presumably, by the Bush Administration. These are the whack-jobs we want more unity with? Didn’t Cindy Sheehan say she was retiring from politics? Can she re-retire, please?
Unfortunately, Sheehan’s efforts have borne some fruit — so to speak. Check out this upcoming event in which the “unity” sought be Sheehan is at least partially reflected. One expert fringe-watcher has extracted some real nuggets from the stew of participants and backers of this horrific event. He notes that speaker Webster Tarpley was a long-time militant in the proto-fascist LaRouche cult. One of the other guest speakers, Ralph Schoenman, has a long checkered history dating back to the 60′s when he was accused of manipulating his then-boss Bertrand Russell into endorsing actions he knew nothing about. Jean-Paul Sarte threw a fit over the way Schoenman tried to hijack an international citizens’ war crime tribunal over Vietnam. Since then Schoenman has been on a constant trajectory away from Earth and is now deep into 9/11 conspiracy crap which he professes on his regular radio show on the ultra-marginal WBAI.
More alarming, Susan Udry, a leading rep from the “moderate” anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice is also participating. What she ought to be doing instead is running away as fast as she can from any association with the pebble-brained “9/11 truth” movement.
Also, Stewart Mott, a very wealthy long-time funder of liberal and progressive causes has also got at least tangential involvement in this freak show. He’s loaning out his Mott House to be used as part of the facilities when he ought to be padlocking it.
This is precisely why we need more folks like Scott Ritter.
August 1st, 2007 at 1:11 pm
If I’m not mistaken, David Horowitz worked closely with Schoenman at the “Bertrand Russell Center” back in the day, a few years before he hooked up with Huey Newton. There’s something very consistent about “apostates” like Horowitz.
August 1st, 2007 at 1:47 pm
You write that Ritter believes one of the best ways for Americans to achieve greater ownership in the democratic and constitutional process would be mandatory national service, including some military training, and that you agree that “such form of universal service is crucial to the strengthening of civil society and democracy.”
As a veteran I also agree wholeheartedly, and therefore I was both proud and delighted when my daughter decided to become a Teach for America corps member after she finished college in 2003. (She taught high school in inner-city St. Louis, and stayed on for a third year there after her Teach for America commitment ended.) I hope my son, who will start his senior year in college later this month, will also decide to do some kind of service before thinking about what to do next — both because I think such service is “crucial to the strengthening of civil society and democracy” and because I think it’s important that each of us, who have benefited so greatly from the incredible gift of living in this country, should give something back.
August 1st, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Let me punch the clock with a few points once again:
The 9-11 nutball movement was given whatever tiny credibility it has by the pityable licence to exploit 9-11 handed to The Bush White House. THAT movement was anything but fringe; it was comprised by the two Republican Houses and about 95% of the media. If it had not been for the wives of some of the victims it’s probable that there would not have been an offical investigation into 9-11 to this day; even one obviously compromised by memebers who were put on the case simply to protect the White House. I find this infinately more distressing than the small and almost enevitable gang of lunitics and profiteers goosing up KPFK fund drives.
I agree with Marc Cooper and Ritter that
national service would be a great way for Americans to achive greater ownership in the Democratic Process. If you are talking about avoiding travesties like Iraq; however, ANOTHER way would be expect, through the media, some accountablity from the massive expendatures on Defence. Maybe an atmosphere where you didn’t have to wave the flag about our troops if you wished to address the billions that were sent to Iraq and simply vanished?
Webb’s work on war profiteering might be a good start. But if we are talking about fridges and nutballs, I’d like to ask Scott Ritter, as a longtime Republican, if he was really SHOCKED by what the fridge of HIS party was cabable of once handed power. If so, he was as nieve as the young hero of an Oliver Stone movie. It leaves him in a dubious posisition to be lording himself over the well meaning Cindy; never the sharpest knife in the drawer and unlikely to draw many votes away from anyone.
August 1st, 2007 at 3:23 pm
>gang of lunatics and profiteers goosing
>up KPFK fund drives
I hate to change the subject and hereby request that we not rehash the general flame war about Pacifica.
That said, WTF is with the prominence this crapola gets in KPFK’s new all-fund-drive format? I have some insight into why conspiracy theories are popular on the left, but why does KPFK lead with this? Is this just a pet peeve of Jerry Quickley or is there some calculation that this is what will raise the most $? Peter, Paul, and Mary, we hardly knew ye!
August 1st, 2007 at 3:59 pm
You know, a few weeks ago I might have agreed with Ritter’s article 100%, but dammit Bush has pissed me off so much lately that I am fumed at Ritter’s assertion that domestic issues here in the US, as well as International problems like AIDS and the environment are not at all linked with the war in Iraq.
Bush has indicated that he is going to veto Congress’s bipartisan bill extending funding for the CHIPS health care program (which provides insurance for uninsured children). To fund this program for five years, according to Paul Krugman, would only cost five months worth of that bottomless sinkhole known as the Iraq War.
Bush’s rationale? “People who are uninsured can always go to the emergency room.” This from the same peckerwood who chastized, with a straight face, his Republican colleagues in congress back in his initial presedential run for not being “compassionate” to the poor. The same turd whose only so-called “business success” was unloading a baseball team at sizable profit only after getting his daddy’s connections to strong arm the taxpayers into socializing the cost of a lavish new baseball stadium.
The same hypocrite who diverts billions of taxpayer dollars each year into the National Institute of Health, which is little more than a research and development arm of the health and disease industry.
I know a few taxpayers who are currently denied care for their kids who would love to see Bush impeached, and rightfully so. And Mr. Ritter, and Marc – these aren’t 9-11 conspirators, Cindy Sheehan clones, blah blah blah. They are ordinary working class Americans.
I defy anyone to look at these people in the face and tell them that they are “nuts” for wishing to see a different president in the White House.
And finally, I am sick of these articles from both the left and right that resort to lazy guilt by association strategies as Ritter does in the aforementioned piece.
The one thing that I would agree with is mandatory national service. In fact, for boys who are healthy, I would like to see at least a year of military service. After all, if you look around at other world leaders, you find ex-war heroes, ex-soldiers, ex-nobel laureates, etc. Here in the US, we get the Einsteins who got their rocks off blowing up frogs in the Texas sun.
August 1st, 2007 at 4:06 pm
We have spent half a trillion dollars on this war, and the resulting interest will probably hike that on the better side of two fold….and if Bush has his way, we will continue this money and blood pit for the next few years into 2009.
Ritter should think about the kids and older Americans who could be helped with that kind of money before asserting that these issues are not related. The fact that this overseas fiasco has been the top priority of the congressional appropriation committee for the last four years speaks volumes.
August 1st, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Go, Dave from KS. Yes.
August 1st, 2007 at 5:13 pm
BobH:
I salute your daughter and let me extend my best wishes for your son.
August 1st, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Love your comments about the 9-11 Deniers, Marc, and I agree with Ritter that the impeachment crowd is trying Hail Mary passes. Aligning with the 9-11 fruitcakes is the ultimate in Hail Mary attempts.
My apologies in advance if the nuts follow my link over here.
August 1st, 2007 at 6:59 pm
The 9/11 conspiracy fruitcakes also end up slamming a lot of working people who would have had to have been complicit if their supposed “inside job” took place. They aren’t honest progressives, just morons who believe whatever they want to believe because it suits their world view.
August 1st, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Not to defend “fruitcakes” and “loons,” but with this administration’s own fruitcakes and loons, it makes you
question their motives and practices, doesn’t it Marc?
It took the surviving wives months to pressure bush to investigate the 911 attacks and why the buildings collapsed.
I read the 911 report and they have failed to explain, with facts, how building 7 imploded. And YES! It’s very important to know why.
The bushies, by just doing the things they do, encourage the “fruitcakes” and “loons” don’y they??
August 1st, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Disagree with your proposal for a draft. And you call the 911 people crazy? A draft, first of all, is slavery and unconstitutional. Just because the “nation” (barf) has the power doesn’t make it right. Secondly, war is obsolete. Were you unaware of the nuclear age? The only wars since WW2 have been viking raids by the US, smashing and killing and stealing peoples’ property.
By praising Ritter’s critical reasoning, you set yourself up at an even higher level, one capable of discerning such things… I reject your whole page here. And by the way– If there was no complicity in the 911 attacks then why the extensive coverup and withholding of so much critical evidence? Let’s have the truth. We never got that with Kennedy. I suppose you believe the lone gunman theory too.
1. Bush must be impeached,
2. Cindy is way ahead of where you are at,
3. 911 has never been properly investigated, and some of the hypotheses of the 911 truth movement have merit. and
4. Scott Ritter is devoted to maintenance of empire. No friend of peace.
Todd
August 1st, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Scott Ritter and Cindy Sheehand have honest differences, and its not a bad thing that Marc brought this to our attention. I agree broadly with Ritter, thoguh I don’t think we should underestimate the importance of figures like Sheehan, and Ritter doesn’t seem to get that – though his critique, again, is prety apt.
To call someone who was nearly destroyed personally due to his opposition to empire a devotee of its maintenance is absurd. Sheehan just needs better handlers.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:13 am
It would never occur to the 9/11 conspiracy buffs that Bush and Co. did not want the attacks investigated because it would reveal (as it did) that they knew something was coming from all their vaunted intelligence but were too busy with the rightwing domestic agenda to do much about it. No, it must mean they planted explosives in all those buildings and only the 9/11 truthseekers got wise to it. Right. And why am I not surprised that KPFK (and other Pacifica stations) continue to lead with that stuff? Talk about your waste of potential progressive resources.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:15 am
The Department of Defense has identified 3,645 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following American yesterday:
FLOREXIL, Camy, 20, Specialist, Army; Philadelphia; First Infantry Division.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:33 am
btw I see that Obama is calling for 7000 more US troops to be sent to Afghanistan, as well as military strikes within Pakistan without permission of that country’s leaders. He obviously has not been reading Rory Stewart’s recent columns on Afghanistan, which everyone here who has not already should do. The US and NATO are in very big trouble in Afghanistan and more troops are not going to solve the problem, any more than they did for the Soviets when they were fighting basically the same enemy. He also has not been thinking much about how US military strikes in Pakistan would help that country’s growing extremist movements. I guess Obama is not going to think outside the conventional box after all. Disappointing.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:20 am
“National Service” is one of thos concepts that has left me conflicted over the years. I like the idea of people contributing to the country but I worry about the undemocratic element of state service. “Ask not what your Country can do for you; ask what you can do for country” has a noble ring. But does anyone here want to “Give” to state run by the likes of Bush and Cheney.
Put it this way. Back in 1969 here was a form of national service – it was called a draft. I suspect Marcv had a very different response to that call for the nation. Ienlistede the prtevious year under threat of that draft. I wouldn’t havbe gone in otherwise – by enlisting I assured a slot in a non-combat MOS. And even though I got to “See the Elephant” in SE Asia it was as a relatively safe eyewitness and not a particiapant in all the “Fun.”
(We had it easier than the current generation in Iraq. No IEDS and fairly safe base camps. From what I see there are no REMF’s in Baghdad.)
I have to say that I aqm glad I spenty time in the Army but I’m under no illusion that I would have done it without the element of coercion. And before I recommend anything like a dfraft I’d sak people my age – like Marc – to think how easy it is to advocate when we’re safe from its strictures and how we felt when it was very real and very close to our lives.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:29 am
As to Impeachment I am a great believer in it as the Constitutional Remedy prescribed by the Constitution. I certainly find several avenues of domestic malfeasance and nonfeasance to be ripe for consideration. Certainly the inaction on Katrina merits consideration as an example ofwhat Madison called the removal for Cause when the Executive shows extreme incompetene. Then there is the Plame affair, the perversion of the DOJ , the Libby Commutation (again see Madison on ther pardon power as away to obstruct the investigation of a President) and the “signing Statements.”
I have stated elsewhere why we should go forward. I’m not as adament as Sheehan but a little pushiness is not unwelcome.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:44 am
[...] FROM MARC COOPER. (Blog conversation goes on over here.) Unfortunately, Sheehan’s efforts have borne some fruit — so to speak. Check out this upcoming event in which the “unity” sought be Sheehan is at least partially reflected. One expert fringe-watcher has extracted some real nuggets from the stew of participants and backers of this horrific event. He notes that speaker Webster Tarpley was a long-time militant in the proto-fascist Larouche cult. [...]
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:56 am
D.C. elites want you to shush on Iraq
Be afraid when the same centrist consensus that has a lousy track record on the war lashes out at partisans.
By By Matthew Yglesias Los Angeles Times
August 2, 2007
The united states is now well into the fifth year of a war in Iraq that has, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, managed to get more Americans killed than 9/11 while alienating global opinion, undermining our strategic posture around the world, arguably speeding nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran and detracting from American efforts against Al Qaeda. The nation’s elites, ever vigilant, have located the source of the problem: Public outrage over the sorry situation.
Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius, for instance, wrote on Sunday that “a good start” in finding an exit from Iraq “would be for Washington partisans to take deep breaths and lower the volume.”
That same day, Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton’s prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, argued in the Post that, in the foreign policy realm, “the fiercest battle is no longer between the left and the right but between partisanship and bipartisanship.” The former, with its hard-right hawks and strident antiwar types, is bad, of course.
Given that the initial authority to use military force in Iraq was a completely bipartisan affair, with backing from the then-leaders of the House and Senate Democratic caucuses, plus the two men who would eventually make up the party’s 2004 presidential ticket, and also the woman who’s currently the front-runner for the 2008 nomination, one might wonder when, exactly, this partisan tussle was so fierce. To Slaughter, though, criticizing people for collaborating in policy fiascoes is part of the problem, not the solution. “In the blogosphere,” she complained, “pillorying Hillary Clinton is a full-time sport.” What’s more, “[Barack] Obama has come in for his share of abuse as well.”
It’s true. I, for example, write a blog where I have criticized Clinton frequently and Obama on occasion, just as Slaughter warns. But what of it? There’s a presidential campaign underway, and they’re both running. What better time is there to pillory someone than when they say something you think is wrong?
The urge to urge calm is hardly limited to the Washington Post. Monday saw a perfect storm of anti-partisan elites, as Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, both scholars at the liberalish Brookings Institution, complained in the New York Times that “the political debate in Washington is surreal” and that “the administration’s critics” — who, unlike Pollack and O’Hanlon, have not had the privilege of recently taking a guided tour of Iraq organized by the very officials conducting the policy the two scholars are defending — “seem unaware of the significant changes taking place” there.
O’Hanlon and Pollack are both Democrats, so their endorsement of current policy and “sustaining the effort” in Iraq indefinitely are examples of the sort of razor-sharp thinking we can expect from Washington if we all just stop and submit ourselves to soothing bipartisanship.
Of course, those of us who read Pollack’s celebrated 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,” and became convinced as a result that the United States needed to, well, invade Iraq in order to dismantle Saddam Hussein’s advanced nuclear weapons program (the one he didn’t actually have) might feel a little too bitter to once again defer to our betters.
Meanwhile, the very elites we’re supposed to trust can’t seem to get their stories straight. Ignatius says everyone’s looking for the exits in Iraq, and we should just calm down. O’Hanlon and Pollack want us to stay put. And as TPM Media’s Greg Sargent pointed out Monday, the optimism of O’Hanlon and Pollack is at odds with the conclusions of Brookings’ own Iraq Index project. It reported July 23 that “violence nationwide has failed to improve measurably over the past two-plus months,” and that — contrary to their enthusiasm about the provision of electricity and other essentials — “the average person in Baghdad can count on only one or two hours of electricity per day,” far less than they had under Hussein. More ironically still, the person in charge of the Iraq Index is none other than Michael O’Hanlon!
Citizens who have come to fear letting the powers-that-be sort things out from above have some sound basis for their anxiety — the bipartisan elite turns out to have a fairly awful track record on Iraq. Indeed, one might begin to suspect that the real agenda here is to try to stifle political debate lest it risk displacing current elites from their cozy positions in favor of some new experts who’ve shown better judgment.
That, though, would be shrill and partisan. Better to not complain and just assume it’ll all turn out for the best.
Matthew Yglesias blogs for the Atlantic Monthly. matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:37 am
This opinion piece in the IHT today illustrates some of the intricacies of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan that neither the Bush administration nor, sadly, Barack Obama seem to appreciate (even if the descriptive parts of this piece are more persuasive than the prescriptive parts.) The latest from Obama is very serious indeed, because it indicates to me at least that in his quest for the White House he will engage in the same kind of opportunistic, head in the sand, ignorant of what is going on in the world rhetoric that Bush, Hillary, and every other leading politician is currently engaged in. The lack of any real alternative vision from Democrats means that America and its foreign policy goals are indeed in big trouble, although that may be just fine to its enemies and maybe even a lot of its friends. For my part, I would hate to see more Americans die in Afghanistan and Pakistan because of yet more bad policy.
The Pashtun time bomb
By Selig S. Harrison
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
International Herald Tribune
The alarming growth of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Pashtun tribal region of northwest Pakistan and southern Afghanistan is usually attributed to the popularity of their messianic brand of Islam and to covert help from Pakistani intelligence agencies.
But another, more ominous reason also explains their success: their symbiotic relationship with a simmering Pashtun separatist movement that could lead to the unification of the estimated 41 million Pashtuns on both sides of the border, the breakup of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the emergence of a new national entity, “Pashtunistan,” under radical Islamist leadership.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are fragile, multiethnic states. Ironically, by ignoring ethnic factors and defining the struggle with jihadists mainly in military terms, the United States is inadvertently helping Al Qaeda and the Taliban capture the leadership of Pashtun nationalism.
In Pakistan, where the military regime of Pervez Musharraf is dominated by the Punjabi ethnic majority, the Pashtun mountain tribes have resisted Punjabi domination for centuries and have fiercely guarded their semiautonomous status.
Yet the United States is pushing Musharraf to bring the autonomous tribal areas under central government rule and is threatening unilateral airstrikes against suspected Al Qaeda hideouts unless Pakistan takes more aggressive military action on its own.
Musharraf is understandably resisting U.S. demands. His military assault on the Red Mosque, where many of the madrassa students were Pashtuns, has touched off Pashtun anger not only in the tribal areas but among his Pashtun generals.
In Afghanistan, where the Pashtuns are the largest single ethnic group, they bitterly resent the disproportionate influence enjoyed by the Tajik ethnic minority in the regime of Hamid Karzai, a legacy of U.S. collaboration with Tajik militias in overthrowing the Taliban.
More important, it is the Pashtuns who have been the main victims of U.S.-NATO bombing attacks on the Taliban, who are largely Pashtuns and operate almost entirely in Pashtun territory. In one authoritative estimate, civilian casualties have numbered nearly 5,000 since 2001.
Under pressure from Washington for action against suspected Qaeda sanctuaries, Pakistan launched operations with gunships and heavy artillery in early 2004 that displaced some 50,000 people, inflicting heavy civilian casualties. The International Crisis Group reported “the use of indiscriminate and excessive force alienated the local populace,” and a Pashtun former law minister reported “seething anger” throughout the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the mountainous, 10,510-square mile border region.
To pacify his Pashtun generals, Musharraf later authorized peace agreements with tribal leaders, bitterly criticized by the Bush administration, under which Pakistani forces suspended military operations in return for pledges by tribal leaders to prevent the use of the FATA by the Taliban as a staging area for Afghan operations. But the damage was done. The FATA population had been politicized and polarized as never before.
The peace agreements were subverted in many areas by aroused Islamist and Pashtun nationalist groups, and have now broken down completely in the angry aftermath of the assault on the Red Mosque.
The radicalization of the Pashtun areas has intensified both Islamist zealotry and Pashtun nationalism.
In the conventional wisdom, either Islamist or Pashtun identity will triumph, but a more plausible possibility is that the result could be what the former Pakistani diplomat Hussain Haqqani has called an “Islamic Pashtunistan.”
At a Washington seminar March 1, convened by the Pakistan Embassy, the Pakistani ambassador, Mahmud Ali Durrani, a Pashtun, commented that “I hope the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism don’t merge. If that happens, we’ve had it, and we’re on the verge of that.”
What should the United States do to defuse the “Pashtunistan” time bomb?
First, in both Afghanistan and the FATA, minimize airstrikes that risk civilian casualties, relying to a greater extent on commandos and special forces.
Second, encourage Karzai to put leading Pashtuns from the large Ghilzai tribes into key security posts in Kabul, replacing minority Tajiks. Ghilzais dominate the Taliban.
Third, press for a civilian government in Pakistan that will implement the 1973 constitution, which gives provincial autonomy to the Pashtun, Baluch and Sindhi minorities. To offset Punjabi domination, Pashtuns want a consolidated Pashtun state that would link the FATA with the Pashtun-majority areas of the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan. The FATA could then participate in Pakistani politics and secular Pashtun forces led by the National Awami Party would be strengthened.
The administration’s proposed $750 million aid program for the FATA would be a colossal boondoggle. Economic aid would be desirable, but aid administered by the hated Punjabi regime would polarize tribal factions, strengthening separatist leaders who would brand anyone accepting the aid as a collaborator with the enemy.
Democracy, in short, is the precondition not only for combating the jihadist forces in Pakistan more effectively, but also for the long-term survival of multiethnic Pakistan in its present form.
Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy and author of “In Afghanistan’s Shadow.” This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:08 am
Thanks, MB for putting these articles up.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:46 am
Obama’s statements, if you actually read them, make absolute sense. Lefists who think any military action against al Qaeda should be off the table need a reality check. Obama said that if there was actionable intelligence against high value targets, he would move against them. He’s NOT proposing an “invasion” of Pakistan as some hysterics – including the Nedra Pickler of the AP, one of the worst reporters on the planet – would have it. But it would be idiotic not to take out bin Laden if it could be done effectively. That is all Obama is saying, and frankly if he wasn’t willing to say that, he doesn’t deserve to be President nor could he get elected. The article MB posts itself proposes “relying on commandos and special forces” includint the Pastun tribal areas on the border regions Afghanistan and Pakistan. What, exactly, is the difference between that and what Obama proposed ? I’d like MB to address that, since he put up that article as some sort of reason to consider Obama “ignorant” and “opportunistic”. Frankly, Michael, I think you’re ignorant and opportunistic on these matters when you make that charge. I doubt that you’ve read Obama’s speech in its entirety. Also, there is nothing in Obama’s speech that contradicts the articles criticism’s of Mushareff’s strategy. Obama spoke one line in the speech that I would want anyone I would consider voting for to make clear.
It’s here – http://tinyurl.com/2ejayo
Here is the key paragraph:
Obama:
As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.
I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.
And Pakistan needs more than F-16s to combat extremism. As the Pakistani government increases investment in secular education to counter radical madrasas, my Administration will increase America’s commitment. We must help Pakistan invest in the provinces along the Afghan border, so that the extremists’ program of hate is met with one of hope. And we must not turn a blind eye to elections that are neither free nor fair – our goal is not simply an ally in Pakistan, it is a democratic ally. (end clip)
Your characterization is nonsensical.
I’m sick of leftist bullshit that glibly mischaracterizes Democrats who actually live in the real world and are willing to shoulder real responibility for national security strategy – responsbilities that segments of the “Left” deride, much less take seriously. Rather than informed analysis, we get totally predictable hyperbole from folks who reside in their bubbles. Dishonesty and predictably disingenuos horsehit that’s rooted in deep-seated and often irrational bias are as bad coming from the “Left” as from Woody.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:51 am
Selig Harrison is a serious Korea scholar, and I’m not surprised at his similar intricacy on South Asia. I’d like to read his book.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:52 am
On national service – in a “new republic” – a post-Imperial America, it should be a part of life. Before that I’m skeptical.
As I say I like much of what Ritter says (and forgive him, somoene without left roots for criticizing “Radical Associations” on Sheehan’s part) but am I the only one who thinks he is just a little bit new age/management theory language?
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:54 am
Reg and Obama, don’t believe in national sovereignty (hey wait jcummings who is against borders is invoking sovereignty – yes I am, in terms of the laws of war, not immigration!)
Obama is a cynical politician trying to run away from the dove image that Hillary tried to paint on him by assuring the Dem establishment (not the base at all!) that he’s willing to kill Muslims for peace.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:55 am
Here, from today’s NYT, is what I consider the offensive proposal by Obama:
“In the second major foreign policy address of his campaign, Mr. Obama outlined a series of proposals to fight global terrorism, including a plan to send at least 7,000 soldiers and special forces troops to Afghanistan, in addition to the roughly 22,000 troops there now. At the same time, he said, he would also increase nonmilitary aid to the country by $1 billion to improve economic opportunities there.”
If he thinks that there is a military solution to the situation in Afghanistan, he has his head as far up his ass as reg does in his hysterical inability to brook any criticism of his hero. Obama does not know what he is doing nor what he is talking about, he is simply trying to get elected. He will prove that increasingly as time goes on, that is for sure.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:59 am
I am just going to add that the same criticism I make of Hillary, that she has to be seen to be “tough” to get elected and will make sure she is, goes for Obama too. I thought he might take a little longer to try to out-Bush the Bushies, but no such luck.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:59 am
Michael, you’re the one talking out of your ass because you still haven’t read his speech. And what the hell is the problem with sending more troops to Afghanistan as part of a broader strategy ?
Typical crap from the Naderist margins. Nothing there…
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:01 am
For what is wrong with sending more troops to Afghanistan, I suggest that bloggers here read Rory Stewart’s series of oped pieces in the NYT on this subject. Stewart, unlike Obama and reg, has actually spent time in Afghanistan.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:04 am
Since you need to pay to get Times archives, and I already have, here is Stewart’s latest. What’s this, he actually is writing from Kabul! And he is actually taking issue with Obama and Hillary on these very issues! Oh, but let us bow to reg’s superior knowledge on these subjects. This is how we got into Iraq in the first place, when well intentioned but ignorant fools like reg forget to use their brains.
July 23, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Where Less Is More
By RORY STEWART
Kabul, Afghanistan
AMERICA and its allies are in danger of repeating the mistakes of Iraq in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and even some Republicans are insisting on withdrawing from Iraq and sending more troops and resources to southern Afghanistan. The Bush administration’s gloomy National Intelligence Estimate last week on the fight against Al Qaeda will only lead others to make such calls.
But they should think again. The intervention in Afghanistan has gone far better than that in Iraq largely because the American-led coalition has limited its ambitions and kept a light footprint, leaving the Afghans to run their own affairs.
Much has been made lately of setbacks and the resilience of the Taliban. But given its history, Afghanistan is doing relatively well. International terrorist training camps have been eliminated (or at least pushed across the border to Pakistan); national wealth has nearly doubled in the last five years; Kabul’s population has expanded from less than a million in 2001 to almost four million today.
It seems ground is broken on another huge blue-glass commercial building every week. The wage for an unskilled laborer in Kabul is now $4 a day, four times that in neighboring Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Millions of Afghan refugees have returned home at a time when Iraqis are fleeing Iraq. The central regions of Afghanistan are safe enough for foreigners to travel alone unharmed.
There are, however, serious problems in the south and east of the country. Taliban forces raid villages and military posts before retreating to safety across the Pakistan border. In Helmand Province, the government is associated with kidnapping, murder and theft. Thirty-five highway policemen were arrested this month, accused of robbing vehicles. This province alone produces 50 percent of Europe’s heroin. Afghans in such areas are justifiably angry.
NATO has tried to solve the problems of the south with more troops. This has only added to the problem. For example, Britain decided in 2005 to bring good government, security, rule of law and economic growth to Helmand Province. At the time, there were few Taliban attacks in the area. The British deployed some 4,000 soldiers last year and more civilian advisers to replace a few hundred international troops who had been in the province since the fall of the Taliban.
The British effort failed. A year and a half later, with 7,000 British troops in Helmand, the provincial government is more corrupt, the streets less safe for citizens, the poppy crop larger and the legal economy and infrastructure more eroded. Worst of all, the foreign presence has provoked a wide Taliban insurgency. Dutch troops in Uruzgan Province and the Canadians in Kandahar have had similar experiences.
NATO’s failures in the south should serve as warnings to those who would intensify Western efforts here; the results were inevitable for fundamental structural reasons. Many Afghan officials are simply not committed to state-building in southern Afghanistan, and many are connected to the drug trade. Narcotics makes up more than half of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product and there is no sufficiently appealing alternative crop for farmers.
Most important, none of the factors that led to success in history’s classic counterinsurgency campaigns are present in the fight against the Taliban. In British Malaya in the 1950s, for example, success depended on direct imperial control of the government, a powerful and cooperative local administration, large numbers of troops, active support from much of the population, a detailed understanding of local culture and politics, control of the borders and strong political support at home.
In Afghanistan, by contrast, the American-led coalition is not the government and has to operate in tandem with an Afghan civil service, military and police force that are at best ineffective and at worst actively undermine coalition operations.
The dominant Pashtun tribes in the south and east are suspicious of foreign troops and are reluctant to side with them against the Taliban, who are from their own ethnic group. Coalition-backed governments have been unable to prevent the insurgents from taking sanctuary and receiving armaments and money from across the porous borders with Pakistan and Iran. American and European voters will not send the hundreds of thousands of troops the counterinsurgency textbooks recommend, and have no wish to support decades of fighting.
Worst of all, an increased foreign troop presence will help the Taliban, who are unable to deliver government services and often live parasitically off the people, and whose best selling point is that they are fighting for Afghanistan and Islam against a foreign occupation. If we commit more troops we will find it very difficult to withdraw them later without losing credibility.
Our best hope in Afghanistan is to continue to manage the country through a light civil and military presence. Southern Afghanistan will remain unstable for some time to come. Although we cannot change this, we can contain the situation. We can prevent Qaeda units from using the area as a base from which to attack the United States, and we can prevent the Taliban from again mobilizing conventional forces or capturing major northern cities like Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif.
This will not require large numbers of troops. If the Taliban tried to raise another conventional army, it would be an easy target for coalition forces and air power. The most efficient and sustainable way to protect American soil from a terrorist attack is not to deploy tens of thousands of troops to occupy rural areas of Afghanistan, but to invest in intelligence to identify the few radicals who want to attack Western targets, and use special forces operations to eliminate them.
We can do much more to show people the benefit of cooperating with the coalition. Projects in hostile areas, where the local population is not working with us and where a minority wants to attack us, are not a constructive use of our limited resources. Our best hope is rather to focus on the many secure and welcoming parts of Afghanistan’s center and north. Efforts to jumpstart local economies led by members of those communities are more effective, more relevant and more sustainable than those dictated by outsiders. We have a great opportunity in the north, center and west of Afghanistan to lead development projects for which Afghans will still be grateful 50 years from now.
This does not mean that we should withdraw and partition the country, or that the Pashtun south is doomed. But only the Afghans have the power to end the insurgency and create a stable and democratic south. It will not be easy. Residents have not yet mobilized effectively against the Taliban. Other Afghan ethnic groups still see the insurgency as a Pashtun problem and would rather not be involved. Twenty-five years of war has left a power vacuum. Politicians concerned with Afghanistan continue to underestimate the power and autonomy of provincial groups and the appeal of tribe and religion.
Stabilizing southern Afghanistan will require uncomfortable compromises. It will certainly take 20 years for Afghanistan to develop an economy to match even Bangladesh, or a civil service or military to match that of Pakistan. In the meantime, the Pashtun areas may remain as wild and unstable as the tribal areas of Pakistan. But Afghanistan on the whole can become more stable, more humane and more prosperous than it is today.
American-led military occupations and counterinsurgency campaigns are unsustainable and counterproductive, not just in Iraq or Afghanistan but in all nationalist Muslim countries. But this is not a call for disengagement.
We need a new strategy that can be applied not only in Iraq but also in Pakistan and wherever else these threats emerge. It should not rely on large amounts of troops and money but on intelligence, pragmatic politics, savvy use of our development assistance and on special forces operations. Rather than throwing more troops at Afghanistan and turning it into a second Iraq, we should use it as a model for a lighter, smarter approach.
Rory Stewart is the author of “The Places in Between†and “The Prince of the Marshes.â€
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:05 am
MB – the fact that you’ve got cummings on your side should give you pause.
“kill Muslims for Peace” – yeah, that sums up Obama brilliantly !
cummings, you epitomize “infantile leftism”, just as Woody epitomizes the right-wing KnowNothings. That you often converge in your resentments isn’t surprising. Unfortunately, Michael Balter has been around longer and should know better.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:07 am
Many commenters call for documentation of every little point with which they disagree. If you don’t want to waste your time discussing what the definition of is is, then those people will justifiy themselves in ignroing the argument. To these people, I thought that this cartoon was appropriate.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:09 am
Obama’s proposal – the issue of troop numbers notwithstanding – is consistent with the issues Rory Stewart raises. I’m not going to get in a google war over details of strategy in Afghanistan. My point is that you’ve pulled charges out of your ass and DIDN’T EVEN READ OBAMA’S SPEECH. If I’m wrong correct me. If I’m right, my point stands as stated and you’re just trying to pick up the pieces.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:10 am
I am going to let the material I have posted speak for itself. I am confident that visitors to this blog will get more out of it than reg’s hysterics.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:14 am
Unfortunately the material you’ve posted – which is valuable in itself – doesn’t speak to the question or criticisms I raised about your predictable hysterics and ill-informed charges. Obviously you didn’t read Obama’s speech prior to calling him ignorant on the basis of…the speech you didn’t read. Kind of pathetic.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:29 am
MB: “If (Obama) thinks that there is a military solution to the situation in Afghanistan, he has his head as far up his ass as reg does in his hysterical inability to brook any criticism of his hero. Obama does not know what he is doing nor what he is talking about”
Obama: As President, I would deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to re-enforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO’s efforts against the Taliban… We must also put more of an Afghan face on security by improving the training and equipping of the Afghan Army and Police, and including Afghan soldiers in U.S. and NATO operations.
We must not, however, repeat the mistakes of Iraq. The solution in Afghanistan is not just military – it is political and economic. As President, I would increase our non-military aid by $1 billion. These resources should fund projects at the local level to impact ordinary Afghans, including the development of alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers. And we must seek better performance from the Afghan government, and support that performance through tough anti-corruption safeguards on aid, and increased international support to develop the rule of law across the country.
Above all, I will send a clear message: we will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared.
(end clip)
Obviously one of these guys “doesn’t know what he’s talking about”.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:50 am
Reg invokign Lenin?
I agree with anyone who thinks that using intelligence resources and other tools to enhance human security by apprehending – and handing to an international authority -al qaida terrorists. I am not for bombing Pakistan.
Reg, if this is the kind of attitude we’ll get from liberals when they’re in power, count me out. Liberalism is supposed to be an exchange of ideas, not accusing rivals of talking out their ass.
You have no problem with American Imperialism, thats fine. Some of us don’t think killing people will help secure humanity against the terrorist threat.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:51 am
Reg – Canadian generals, no conservatives at all, are very doubtful of a military solution to Afghanistan and they should know because they’re doing America’s job for them.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:53 am
i meant no leftists at all. “cummings on your side”…I’m a run-of-themill moderate socialist, well in the mainstream of every industrialized country on Earth. And like most intelligent people, I see US Imperialism as a threat to humanity.
Reg is a Stalinist. Period, and like Michelle Malkin says, he’s unhinged.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:59 am
Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan is no different than Bush’s. More boots on the ground, more dollars to spread around.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:02 am
“no different than Bush”
The all-purpose refrain. Works every time. Certainly put Al Gore in his place.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:20 am
The US Empire has no business meddling in Afghanistan or any other country I agree with Balter and Cummings and reg’s psychiatrist.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 am
I do believe that reinstituting the draft would have the effect of making our rulers more reluctant to deploy our troops wherever the rulers like. However…
When I was a kid I participated in the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps for several years. I did a two-week boot camp on Treasure Island near San Francisco, and spent a week aboard a guided missile cruiser. I was thoroughly immersed in the culture of Tom Clancy and Republicanism. The military experience is a force for conservatization (please forgive the term) for those people who don’t retain their critical-thinking skills. I really think the national political center of gravity would shift even further to the right if we instituted national service. I don’t wish to discount the experience of Europe, where France’s national service continued until the 90s, and France also enjoyed a healthy welfare state. But I think the historical circumstances in France outweighed the influence of whole generations of people putting on uniforms and practicing drill. The military is not like the Scouts. It perpetuates hierarchical socialization and authoritarian respect for power and rank.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:52 am
We think of the military as right wing, but in many nations the military is where the Left makes its long march through institutions. Leftists should make their presence known in the military. The Left needs the military on our side.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
Invoking Pakistan’s “national soveriegnty” to defend the notion that al Qaeda assets hiding among the tribes in “Waziristan” or whatever the hell it is should be exempt from any strategic military action by the U.S., irrespective of Mushariff’s obvious impotence is nonsensical. No more and no less.
I’ll let the titans of strategic analysis – MB, cummings and Sergio ! (and thank you, S, for checking in and confirming just how half-baked this attitude is) – hash out any further details.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:03 am
FYI – an actual coalition, authorized by the UN ! Who knew ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Security_Assistance_Force
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:06 am
# jcummings Says:
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:52 am
We think of the military as right wing, but in many nations the military is where the Left makes its long march through institutions. Leftists should make their presence known in the military. The Left needs the military on our side.
Tell that to some of the Veterans who post on Veterans For Peace listservs.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Carl Webb
Date: Aug 1, 2007 1:02 PM
Subject: [vfptalk] We Support Our Troops When They Shoot Their Officers, ”
To: vfptalk@yahoogroups.com, UFTers Stop-the-War , Black Anti-War Movement , txlaw@yahoogroups.com
And this is wrong somehow?
—–Original Message—–
At 06:22 PM 7/30/2007, Michael Pugliese wrote:
And, Todd, the jpg. photo in the e-mail I sent that
you replied to w/the banner, “We Support Our Troops
When They Shoot Their Officers, ” was taken right in
front of the San Francisco Public Library.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/media/Homepage/ShootOfficers3.gif
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:11 am
And here is a Denver member of Veterans for Peace, on how to reach out to the military. Scroll down to the 17th, http://raimd.wordpress.com/2007/03/
March 17th, Denver Anti-War Protest
The pigs head is str8 out of the revolutionary art of Emory Douglas of the old Black Panther Party. The rest from a vitriolic anti-Zionist artist named Latuff.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:14 am
Reg’s pro-Obama apologetics is a preview of how many liberals will act should a Dem win the WH in ’08. Libs like reg have been waiting 8 years to support imperialist violence by a Dem prez, and it’s sooooo close they can taste it. The Dems’ fealty to AIPAC and related sabre-rattling towards Iran is part and parcel of this (though Edwards is trying to corner the “reason” market when it comes to Iran). Thus reg’s bitchy tone when his hero is taken to task.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 am
It’s not surprising that a marine (Ritter) will suggest national service as a civilizing force; it’s the old joke that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The draft didn’t make LBJ less likely to send troops to Viet Nam, it enabled him in doing so. One reason that we don’t have 500,000 troops in Iraq is that there is no draft.
As an alternative to forced national service, how about the simple alternative of teaching the Constitution? I’m not sure what is required in the public schools nowadays, but I had to pass that class in the 8th grade, and we had another civics class requirement in high school. It would be interesting if the right and the left together would support efforts to educate the whole country about the Constitution, so as to bring the younger population up to speed on what it actually says. When I learn that most Americans have trouble answering how many Senators each state has, it certainly worries me. I fail to see how memorizing the details of the M16 will cure that deficit, and I worry about the effects of making a forced authoritarian system the national model.
That having been said, I agree with Marc and with Ritter that the current circus over impeachment is not going to accomplish anything for the simple reason that we are already well along in the presidential election campaign. The country (and the rest of the world, for that matter) is now simply waiting out the end of the Bush presidency, knowing full well that Bush is largely impotent in pushing any new policies, and beholden to the opposition party for whatever budgetary favors he can get.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
Nice barrel bottom scraping, citing what many in the movement believe are agent-provacateurs in what we will find out was a co-intelpro operation, let alone Frontpage. Pugliese, do you even care about what you’re doing?
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:30 am
Reg – you’ll notie that I don’t have a problem of using intelligence ops, even special ops, to target Al Qaida, though I prefer this be an international force. I do have a problem with rattling sabres with nuclear Pakistan.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm
“Libs like reg have been waiting 8 years to support imperialist violence by a Dem prez”
Screw you. You’re an idiot. Woody in “Left” drag.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:43 pm
“Screw you. You’re an idiot. Woody in ‘Left’ drag.”
Who said I was “left” or anything else, for that matter? But your reply is typical, and I expect to see more of the same when your heroes are bombing other countries.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:52 pm
“I do have a problem with rattling sabres with nuclear Pakistan”
As a characterization of Obama’s speech, that puts you in the same sandbox of mindless nattering as Corliss.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Corliss, it’s a compliment.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Its not the point of whether or not thsi is Obama’s itnent, it is clear to anyone – including well within the acceptable libral mainstream, that Obama was using an opportunity to show the party establishment that he can “break” wit hthe base…indeed that is the narrative being formed around him, as if this should impress people – he’s a neoliberal so he’s “breaking” with the teachers unions, he’s open to changing social security, etc.
Obama thinks that now that he’s built up a fanbase, he can re-assure the establishment. And looks liek his fans will eat it up since they are mesmerized by his charisma and their hatred of Bush which prevents them from seeing that the enemy of your enemy is not neccesarily your friend, in fact he may be another one of your enemies.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Corliss -
Its sadder than that. Its not that reg adn loyal Dems wnat to see imperial violence. they want social reform and I think they are sincere in that. Yet they believe the only way to achieve this reform is a sort of bestiality of Gramscianism – ie achieve “hegemony” and power then one can set the ground rules. In fact in American politics, to rise to the top one has to sell out any principles, but the likes of reg acknowledge that, but prefer this lack of principle to another lack of principle.
I think tis a fair point to make, reg, etc. if you can honestly say, yes these aer all serious flaws with Obama but he’s preferable to Bush. But like with Hillary, you defend him. Why not be critical?
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Would you accept Cuba, Venezuela and many of the other Latin nations killed by US proteted terrorists, invading Miami?
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Why would anybody support Marc Cooper, who supported the war in Iraq, over Cindy Sheehan, or over anybody?
It looks as if the Cruise Missile Left is making a comback.
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2002/Herman1102.htm
Next Stop Pakistan.
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Yes the CML never left. That said, I think Ritter makes good points in regards to Sheehan’s involvement with, say, 911 truthers.
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I just want to briefly echo Bob G’s concern that national service might lead to more military adventurism and not less. Given that the outcome is pretty unsure, it’s an awfully nasty experiment. Like most commenters here, I could get behind a national sevice model that offers other options for those uninclined toward military service.
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Let me make very clear that when I say I am in favor of mandatory, universal national service I do NOT mean I favor a universal military draft. Rather, I (like Mavis just above) favor a “national sevice model that offers other options” — many others, because so many things need to be done. Nor can I agree with Michael Escobar’s comment that “military experience is a force for conservatization.” That may be true in the all-volunteer situation, but when conscripts are added to the mix you see an entirely different story; that, at least, was the case when I was in the Army in the late ’60s. I think that if we instituted mandatory national service the “national political center of gravity” (to use Michael’s term) would stay pretty much the same.
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Michael Balter can correct me if I’m wrong but I believe by law, conscriptees in France may not be sent overseas. That’s what the Foreign Legion is for.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:50 pm
All it would take to get “the military on our side”, would be to call on the right on it’s effortless explotation of this particuliar Goverment Agency. For instance, Bush firing our marginalizing The Generals who don’t tell him what he wants to hear; and then claiming the shots are being called by the Gernerals. Such nonsense would never be critiqued by the likes of Cummings, becuase Mr. Canadian tough judgement doesn’t do Republicans.
I’ve no doubt a lot of service people, including many Gays, are far from right wingers. So why is the nonsensical Military Right ( “We never lost a battle in Vietnam!” “We were spit on by hippies at the Airport!”) taken with any seriousness at all?
Sentimentaility, I guess.
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:18 pm
It looks as if the Cruise Missile Left is making a comback.
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2002/Herman1102.htm
Groan. From another anarcho-communist (smarter by far than the Keating fellow I just noted), a response to Edward Herman’s bilge,
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8327
“Why Does Z magazine support genocide?” Read his Wotld War 4 Report, intelligent anti-imperialism, not Edward Herman’s apologias for Milosevic like tyrants. Where his Herman’s piece lauding Mugabe?
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
http://opensources.davy.us/index.php/b/2007/08/02/martial_law_is_now_a_real_threat
Sheehan on KPFK last Monday noted this conspiranoid hallucination that Bush 43 was just about to declare Martial Law and even cancel ther elections next Nov. From the URL above >…Could a false flag “terrorist attack,†perhaps during the second phase of “Operation Noble Resolve†(reportedly slated to commence in Portland on Hiroshima Day, August 5th), trigger martial law? Following an embedded link in that quote, the, “Reality Based, ” Blog @ http://bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=5D786528F96529A2D79FD597A39C1ABB?diaryId=8058
says that on August 5th Portland will be the target of a False Flag Terrorist Provocation by BushCo.
Get ready for the implementation of NSPD 51, and get ready to eat MRE’s in that FEMA camp,
http://www.google.com/search?q=FEMA+KBR+camps
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Pugliese, you’ve got to learn a bit about HTML tagging, or keep your links down to one per post, or work on crafting clearer sentences, so that they actually distinguish your words from the quotations you provide. Your posts make the eyes glaze over, which is too bad since they might contain some interesting and relevant information. So maybe slow down, catch your breath, and put together a single point at a time. My two pesos.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Nardy. I’m being honest. Stop the bullshit. You don’t really believe a lot of the nonsense you are spewing about my beliefs.
In fact I agree with everything in your post. My opposition to Democrats (who also oppsoe your point of view) shouldn’t blind you to the fac tthat we share beliefs on this issue, and most others (except I don’t trust snake oil salesmen)
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
jcummings continues the spew:
“Obama’s” a neoliberal so he’s “breaking†with the teachers unions, he’s open to changing social security, etc.
OBAMA: “Privatization is not something that I would consider, and the reason is this: Social Security, I think, is — that’s the floor. That’s the baseline. Social Security is that safety net that can’t be frayed, and we shouldn’t put at risk.”
Obama’s speech to the National Education Association below.
http://tinyurl.com/2ncurs
This is offered on the premise that there are some thoughtful people who value honest discourse still attempting to follow this thread. I’m open to discussing any aspect of Obama’s policies. What I find very creepy is the cynicism and dishonesty on display in much of the crap coming from the “Left” in twisting his positions and motives to fit their pre-fab ideology and biases.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Way to take quotes out of context….Obama may be against full privatization but he’s open to changing many things.
The crap coming from the “Left” is a philosophical difference I have with bourgeois centrists like Obama. I would hope people would see through reg’s O’Reilly-Vishinskyism and understand that whether he’s a principled advocate of centrism or (more likely) an Obama cult follower, he doesn’t argue with any courtesy at all, or believe that an idea can eb diffrent than his.
My ideology is not pre-fab and I have clear biases. From my point of view, Obama is unsatisfactory. That being said, what really galls me is people such as yourself who are passionate about so many issues that Obama won’t do a whit about, yet defend Obama so fervently.
Next thing you know he could eat puppies and yo’d be like “who’s to say puppiesw don’t taste good.”
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:02 pm
It is solid mainstream liberal to be against any change in public education and social security benefits except to add more funding and give more power to unions to set education agenda, and fight vouchers.
Obama is not on board with this solid mainstream liberal agenda. He’s a covert neoliberal privatizer who probably really believes what his corporate advisors are telling him.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:08 pm
“he’s open to changing many things”
Horror of horrors. If you actually made any point about what changes and why you disagree with them, your whining might have merit.
“he doesn’t argue with any courtesy at all”
Not with dishonest and/or totally ignorant crap.
I don’t give a shit what you think. But don’t try to badger me into respecting you if I don’t think you deserve it. You think and talk in cliches and soundbites. If there’s an “O’Reilly” in this discussion, it’s you.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:09 pm
“It is solid mainstream liberal to be against any change in public education”
A totally idiotic statement.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Frankly, jc, you remind me of Glenn Beck, with your admonitions about my “Vishinsky” tendencies. He claims Al Gore is doing “Nazi-like” science and Hillary’s healthcare has something in common with the Holocaust.
I’m not joking when I make the point that you’re increasingly sounding like Woody.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Incidentally, every “mainstream liberal” I know here in Oakland PRAYS for major changes in the public education system, including more accountability for teachers. You know NOTHING about this issue or how its perceived and experienced by “mainstream liberals” (the most reliably “mainstream liberals” being, of course, African-American Democrats.) Defending the status-quo bureaucrats of the teachers unions against any change or accountability is totally bankrupt – and a sign of leftwing pathology IMHO, judging by the malign influence of a handful of Trotskyites in the Oakland local. They are held in total contempt by “mainstream liberals” who care far more about education reform than cliched sloganeering by “left” opportunists.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:23 pm
And you are more than welcome to disagree with me. But don’t hide behind stale cliches and half-baked characterizations that betray either ignorance or dishonesty.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:25 pm
sorry this turned into a serial post. I should have gathered my thoughts rather than shoot them out in bits and pieces.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Don’t forget O’Reilly – Vishinksy, O’Reilly, Goebbells, Reg, Jim Jones – all unwilling to put up with cognitive dissonance…take it down a level, dude….
I don’t know of the situation in Oakland, but “accountability” is often code for less job security, while it can be an issue. Education reform often means vouchers. The overriding issue is underfunding, which breeds all sorts of stupidity.
And thank you for your “welcome.” I don’t give you “welcome” to disagree with me, because it isn’t mine to give. I will say that one man’s cliche is another man’s principle. Obama is deviating from a Left agenda. Are you shocked that he’s taking heat – including from many blogospheric liberals?
Obama is a centrist. He won’t do a thing to improve your life.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 pm
I consider this argument closed because I really don’t have time to argue with someone who personalyl insults me yet feels personally insulted when his hero is taken down a notch.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:33 pm
You don’t have an “argument” – only ad hominem and bullshit assertions. You never opened an argument worth having. And you can take that as personally as you want to.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:35 pm
“Obama is deviating from a Left agenda.”
Thank god.
And “blogospheric liberals” are, in the main, a bunch of white boys I wouldn’t expect to be particularly enthusiastic about Obama’s perspective.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Check out Matt Stoller’s recent “bloggingheads” if you think my comment about clueless white boys who dominate “blogosphere liberalism” is unfair.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:41 pm
rlo, France has not had obligatory military service since about 2001. I would have to research it to be sure, but I believe that when it did, soldiers had to go where they were ordered to go and many did serve abroad. I knew a few soldiers at that time and I do not recall them having any choice about it.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:54 pm
The Department of Defense has identified 3,647 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
KESSLER, Jason M., 29, Cpl., Army; Mount Vernon, Wash.; 75th Ranger Regiment.
MADDIES, Stephen R., 41, Sgt, Army; Elizabethton, Tenn.; Tennessee Army National Guard.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:14 pm
This is probably repeating what I basically said before, but bottom line is that Obama is well on his way to becoming a centrist Democrat no different than Hillary or any of the other centrist Democrats, and that process will continue and possibly even accelerate as the months roll by and particularly as he is attacked for “lack of experience” etc. Obama is also allowing himself to be trapped by the wimp-baiting that is increasingly part of the electoral campaign. These days the way a politician shows that they are experienced is by taking the most conventional possible positions on very serious matters like Afghanistan and Pakistan that require new thinking. Our friend reg is in considerable denial on that point.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:23 pm
cummingslite
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:50 pm
MBthanks for the update. I was under the impression that, as aresult of Algeria, deGualle kept them at home.
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:37 am
Looking back over this thread, I can see that the quality of discourse on this blog has degenerated to the point that even Woody now feels comfortable being a regular here again. Let’s try to raise it up in the next round, shall we? That goes for me too, no exceptions.
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:50 am
Michael Balter, am I mistaken in that the FFL was limited to “foreign” nationals joining but that it was led by French Officers? I seem to recall that somewhere.
I’m also enjoying watching that serial poster and ad hominem specialist (and yes reg, I do it occasionally, you do it regularly and often when you disagree with someone) reg get a little reality check from the left. While Obama was absolutely right to say that he would talk to anyone, his taking the position that “nukes” were off the table shows a Kucinich like stupidity about what others in this world are like. Yeah Obama, tell the would be thugs that they don’t have to worry about ‘ole uncle sam, you bet. Reg, wake up and smell the roses bud, your belief in Obama as a candidate is fine, but don’t discount everyone else for every other thought because you don’t agree with it.
And, reg, your comment “Check out Matt Stoller’s recent “bloggingheads†if you think my comment about clueless white boys who dominate “blogosphere liberalism†is unfair,” would quickly be labled a RACIST comment if it was made by Woody or me or jcummings or MB.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:02 am
Not to disappoint you, MB….
Balter: France has not had obligatory military service since about 2001.
A lot of good it did for them before then.
Also, since you guys put so much faith in polls of people who are alive but only know what the liberal news media tells them, if even that, here is this recent Zogby poll result:
Survey shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:38 am
You don’t have an “argument†– only ad hominem and bullshit assertions.
That’s his metier.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:47 am
Given that representatives of both parties are in congress and that the Senate in particular is very nearly 50/50 (especially with Joe Lieberman), it’s always a good idea to look at poll numbers with a little more detail:
A great deal of detail may be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/32sj8u
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:02 am
Frankly, I think the quality of discourse began to degenerate when you made a series of charges – “opportunist”, “ignorant”, “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” – on the basis of having read a couple of MSM news clips about Obama’s speech rather than the speech itself, or obviously even excerpts. If you’re going to make your case by posting long NTY’s oped, maybe you should at least also read a fuller version of what you’re proposing to strike down with that kind of amped up rhetoric. (At that point, of course, the real crazies leapt in and revealed that I’m an imperialist stooge and Obama’s all about “killing Muslims”.)
I don’t regret for one moment my reaction, i.e. that you were pulling most of these charges out of your ass because they fit your pre-fabbed script. It all boiled down to the same-old-same-old about how another Democrat is selling out. Of course, I think there are times in any Presidential election in particular when candidates – with the possible exceptions of Mike Gravel and Ron Paul, but NOT Dennis Kucinich who in a Mitt Romney moment changed his stance on abortion, no less, so he could run on “the left” – pander to particular audiences. But Obama’s speech deserved more consideration than you were willing to give it. At least as much as consideration as you were asking for Selig Harrison and Rory Stewart. Having read a paragraph in the New York Times doesn’t always qualify you to call someone else ignorant or assume you can sum up the flaws in their thinking. The irony is that you approached the question of Obama’s remarks with all of the sophistication and eagerness to paint him as a neophyte of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Of course, I’ve defended Hillary against similiar reductionist critiques.
The merits of whether Obama is right to suggest military action against al Qaeda on “actionable intelligence” in the Pashtun region without an official green light from Mushareff or whether adding several thousand troops to the forces in Afghanistan reduces Obama’s strategy to a simple “military solution” never really got discussed coherently, because it was all about his motives or his alleged “ignorance” coming out of the gate – leaving some of the more crazed charges aside. (I’ll note that it would probably be doing Mushareff a favor if the U.S. criticizes him for inaction against Pushtans and sends some special forces against al Qaeda in Waziristan. Also, ironically, Obama now is being criticized by Hillary Clinton because he didn’t respond to a typically stupid press question about using “nukes” against al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan by saying that a nuclear option was “on the table” – against guys living in tents and caves. Actually,perhaps this is not quite as crazy or irrelevant as it seems, because I think BushCo had actually considered using tactical nukes in some related circumstance. In any event, Hillary has made it clear presidential contenders who aren’t “ignorant” and “know what they’re talking about” don’t make pledges not to use nuclear weapons in counterinsurgency.)
But underlying the particulars of this thread or a discussion of what might be positive, what might be ill-conceived or what might be campaign rhetoric in Obama’s recent foreign policy addresses is a bigger problem IMHO – a profound cyncism that takes itself as some sort of “radical critique” of people who are actually involved in the political process. It’s knee-jerk, it’s posed as “knowing” and it’s ultimately paralyzing to any actual involvement in the mainstream political process beyond standing on a streetcorner (or a comments thread) and holding one’s sign.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:05 am
“inaction against Pushtans”
That should have read “inaction against al Qaeda”
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:26 am
Re Obama’s speech: Although Obama does not agree with Bush on Iraq (not many do these days, both Republicans and Democrats) his prescription for Pakistan and Afghanistan is pretty much the same as Bush administration current policy in its basic outlines. Calling for putting more development money into Afghanistan is not a difference in policy, anymore than calling for putting more troops than Bush currently has there is a difference in policy.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:53 am
I’m ad hominem, eh?
As I said, take it down a level. We have different belief systems. No need to evangelize.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:53 am
Glad to see Randy Paul also defends imperialism.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:00 am
I’m glad Obama took nukes off the table, and hope that you go back on any and all defense of HRC who thinks nukes should be on the table.
None of my critiques in any way implies that I’d prefer to se Mitt or Rudy as president. The point is that if liberals don’t hold a very hot fire to the feet of their chosen candidates then they will simply do – as per Obama – the establishment’s bidding.
As I’ve said since the Harpers’ story I’m far more worries about Obama’s economic stance than foreign policy. I don’t actualyl see him doing what he said he would do yesterday. I think he’s a little more principled, or I hope. But in regards to capital, he’s a tool
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:04 am
What would you suggest ? Withdrawing from Afghanistan and leaving Karzai to fend for himself ? I supported the action in Afghanistan and think the biggest problem there has been LACK of commitment to the mission due to the clearly crackpot intent to shift gears and invade Iraq. I believe this was one of the prime reasons for the failure to take bin Laden out. That, and perhaps the illusion that we could outsource the job of killing bin Laden.
That said, the broader UN-sponsored mission in Afghanistan can’t be achieved by adding 7000 more troops and Obama obviously knows that as well as Rory Stewart. The difference is that he’s taken it on himself to gain access to the power to actually formulate and carry out a policy to try to do what he can to lift us out of some of the holes that have been dug deeper during the Bush years. Thankfully he hasn’t confined himself to the parameters of just writing books and NYT’s op-eds.
Overall, there is a fundamental difference in policy between Obama and Bush. Obama emphasizes negotiation, economic development, what might be termed “constructive engagement” and – most important – limited strategic objectives for any military action. This is a very substantive difference between them and it would impact far more than Iraq.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:05 am
That last was a query of MB…
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:10 am
Glad to see Randy Paul also defends imperialism
To be insulted by a dilettante who’s factually incorrect on a regular basis is a badge of honor to me.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 am
Let me zero in on a big difference between what Obama is saying and what Rory Stewart is saying (btw, Stewart works in Afghanistan and is the head of an organization there, reg seems not to have noticed this. That means that Stewart knows more about the country than Obama does.) Obama is saying send in more troops, Stewart is saying don’t. This is fundamental, because once a president starts sending in more troops, he tends to send in more if the first bunch aren’t enough to “get the job done”–and that has been true of both Republican and Democratic presidents as we all know.
As for Obama going to the trouble of getting the power to do what he is proposing: That is only a good thing if what he wants to do is a good idea. And as far as him actually getting it, he doesn’t have a prayer if he does not distinguish himself dramatically from both Bush and Clinton, and takes seriously different arguments direct to the people. As I said earlier, Obama is already showing us that he thinks right in the middle of the box.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:17 am
And for the record, the author of “the Harpers story” wrote the following, among other more complex observations in discussion on the Harpers website, regarding his article: “Obama is not a mouthpiece for his donors; neither does his voting record mirror the wishes of his contributor list.”
Of course, while its ridiculous to assert that Obama is a “tool of capital”, neither is Obama “anti-capitalism”. Frankly, although I’m very critical of “free-market” illusions and support a fairly comprehensive social-democratic agenda, neither am I “anti-capitalist” in the sense the “pie-in-the-sky” revolutionary leftists of this world would have it. Nor is that a debate I’m interested in at this late date.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:18 am
Randy Paul: Given that representatives of both parties are in congress and that the Senate in particular is very nearly 50/50.
Pathetic. To think that someone who considers himself as being brilliant thinks that 49% has about as much power as 51% in politics. The Democrats have bascially told the Republicans to go to hell because the Democrats are in charge now. Grow up and accept responsibility.
And, handpicking an older poll doesn’t disprove the newest one.
Here is how the “most ethical Congress in history” does its job: Cheaters
When you moved from Alabama, the average IQ of the state went up.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:20 am
I don’t normally trust Wikipedia but I have looked this over and it is consistent with other things I have read about Steward, so I offer it as a probably reliable description of who he is and what he has done. Steward could be all wrong about what he says and advocates–just because he lives in Kabul doesn’t mean he is right–but Obama could benefit from paying a little more attention to someone like him and a little less attention to his advisors, who, unless reg can show us differently, are almost certainly not experts on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Stewart
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:21 am
Stewart, ie, my finger kept hitting the wrong key.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:27 am
“reg seems not to have noticed this”
I know who Rory Stewart is and think he has a valuable perspective. (That doesn’t make him my “hero” on all things related to the complex, problematic Afghan mission. I only worship one man, as has been pointed out by you and several others.) But Stewart is making a blanket assertion and reducing this to an issue of more or less troops in assessing the effectiveness of a military strategy. I don’t see any indication that Obama is thinking about Afghanistan – which has already been bungled considerably – in such reductionist either/or terms.
As for your strategic advice as to what Obama needs to do to get elected, suffice to say I wouldn’t be sending him any more donations or becoming a pest to friends and neighbors if he got rid of his current campaign staff and replaced them with Michael Balter and jcummings.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:36 am
“his advisors, who, unless reg can show us differently, are almost certainly not experts on Afghanistan and Pakistan”
That statement is why I have a problem with your commentary. It’s pretty obvious you don’t know who his advisors are, but you assert that he’s being advised by people who “are allmost certainly not experts on Afghanistan and Pakistan”. If you make that assertion, it’s not on me to prove you wrong. It’s on you to prove that there’s some basis for your conclusion other than that Rory Stewart who live in Kabul warns against any increase in troop levels and apparently considers that the essence of the issue.
You’re pulling stuff out of your ass again. I guess it’s possible that Obama has no advisers who have expertise regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan, although I doubt it. But frankly I’m not going to scramble to round up a list of Obama’s advisors so I can respond to an assertion that’s founded on zilch.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:39 am
My point, as I think most people here understand with the exception of the Obama-besotted reg, is that his advisors are primarily people who are hired to help him get elected by saying what they think people want to hear. In that Obama is no different than Hillary Clinton.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:42 am
Woody,
Considering that you believe that plots of earth vote, I’ll consider your insults a badg eo honor as well.
The poll I cite, by the way is two weeks old. Given the trending of the numbers as evidenced by the history given in the link, anyone with an entire brain would realize that the numbers are still valid.
Continued success in your modeling career: http://tinyurl.com/22qgcc
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:46 am
Harry’s Place blog has a thread on Obama and the Pakistan speech, here @ http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/08/02/obama_lets_invade_pakistan.php
Mix it up with a bunch of mostly European neo-cons and neo-libs leavened with left anti-interventionists.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:01 am
Incidentally, the advisor who is most likely emblematic of Obama’s “big picture” foreign policy perspective – is Samantha Power. We can discuss Power’s views, her qualifications, etc. etc. But the notion that a candidate who would consider Power one of his closest counsels on international relations is just another version of Bush/Cheney’s approach is bizarre. I guess Power is “middle-of-the-box” if we’re talking about a rather large box that has Woody in one corner and jcummings in another.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:02 am
Michael Pugliese, I’m not sure that linking to a thread of ignorant, obnoxious bloggers helps to raise the level here. If you are going to blog here, why don’t you express yourself and tell us what you personally think about the issues of the day?
However, Pugliese did do us one service by reminding us that Obama actually used the phrase “actionable intelligence” to describe what would induce him to go after “terrorist targets” in Pakistan. The fact that he would even use this phrase, when everyone here knows that thousands of innocent people have either been killed or imprisoned based on what passes for “actionable intelligence” these days disqualifies him from being president in my book. Can we not see when a politician is trying to out-Bush the Bushies and trying to act tough when it happens right in front of our faces?
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:05 am
I am not going to get in the middle of this current discussion. Reg and Michael Turner have already pointed out that my behavior fails to match my user name – and I’m trying to get back to my roots. But, for those who would like to craft comments that make use of HTML tags, and wonder how to come up with a tinyurl that compresses the 90-100 character urls, in order to avoid blowing up the thread, the following links might be helpful.
How to Write Good, HTML Version
from the blog Pandagon
http://tinyurl.com/2cfu92
And the Tiny URL was constructed by going to, and following the directions, at TinyURL.com. [Thank you again, Michael Balter]
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:08 am
Samantha Power is the epitome of whats wrong with liberal foreign policy advocates. She is a lover of using American power. She is just a neocon in liberal clothing.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:09 am
My comment is awaiting moderation… ahhh, too bad! It was so insightful.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:10 am
“disqualifies him from being president in my book”
Let’s face it Michael. Nobody who runs as an electable Democrat is “qualified” in your book. Your archeology book is, I am certain, excellent and engaging. This other political “book” of yours, however, is confined to the remainder table and still no one’s buying.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:12 am
Friends at Amnesty International bemoan Power’s book because she picks and chooses genocides to show which ones Uncle Sam could control, blames the UN moer than US and ignores genocide comitted, in Congo etc. by US backed thugs.
More disturbingly, to Amnesty, is that she, like Ignatieff, others, thinks power can solve these problems.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:15 am
I’ve got a lot of work today, so I think I’ll exit before I get the benefit of GMR’s comment. I’m going to predict that it’s on the order of I’m a Kool-Aid drinking partisan, not much different than those suggesting I’m “Obama-besotted”. I could be wrong because Roper – unlike Woody and only every-now-and-then – is capable of surprising me with occasional insight. Just a hunch. I’ll check back later tonight to either verify it or to admit I was wrong. (Something that many who scribble here seem immune to.)
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
I am a lot more interested in seeing an electable Democrat run for president than reg realizes. The problem is that Obama will lose the nomination to Clinton if he continues to play the game the way he is now, so he is not making himself more electable by anything that he is currently doing.
My book is indeed excellent and engaging, which shows that reg is capable of getting something straight once in a while. Now, everybody go to my Web site and click on the Amazon link.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:28 am
MB>…Michael Pugliese, I’m not sure that linking to a thread of ignorant, obnoxious bloggers helps to raise the level here. If you are going to blog here, why don’t you express yourself and tell us what you personally think about the issues of the day?
Last night listened to the Lehrer News Hour on PBS, last segment had an interview with a National Geographic writer who spent 6 weeks in Pakistan recently, including the NWF region. Ground troops, whether Pakistani, British or Alexander the Great has never been able to pacify that region, which he likened to the Appalachians. (Where that “Christian Identity, ” neo-nazi Eric Rudolph who bombed abortion clinics and the Atlanta games in the 90′s hid out for yrs. with the knowledge of many backwoods sympathizers.)
The Left here on this thread, as usual, is putting Obama, a center-left Democrat, into a neo-con box, where if you read neo-con bloggers at NRO, the Worldwide Standard http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp
or a slew of milbloggers, they don’t see him as a comrade in arms, w/the exception of one of the Kagan family and David Brooks (who grooves on Obama being a reader of Niebuhr…another figure misread by rad leftists)
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:37 am
For those who prefer to read an interview w/Samantha Power, and not Z mag. polemics vs. her http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5538
see http://www.irinnews.org/InDepthMain.aspx?InDepthId=7&ReportId=59461
>…Q: Some of the most vociferous criticisms of the US’s approach to international justice are coming out of America. How widespread is the US’s resistance to international justice or is the resistance and refusal led by military and political elite and unrepresentative of regular Americans?
A: I actually don’t think there is much of a vocal or politically relevant constituency in the US for us joining the ICC. The very fact that none of the Democratic candidates in the 2004 election thought it was in any way politically advantageous to mention is testament to that.
There are people here who are harshly critical, and appropriately so, of the Bush administration’s position but we have in this country, unfortunately, a long tradition of not participating in human rights treaties; of not signing them or not ratifying them when we have signed them. I don’t know how long it takes to change a norm, but the norm here is a norm of aversion to this kind of obligation. The phrase one hears here over and over again is that the big fear is that there will be ‘trumped up charges’.
Q: In relation to international intervention, including action to prevent genocide, how do you respond to the charge that however ‘just’ or morally driven a military intervention may appear, there will inevitably be innocent deaths and possible human rights violation in the process?
A: I am essentially a humanitarian hawk in this regard. I acknowledge the charge and accept it totally, and recognise it is something that has to be weighed very, very carefully. I mean the predictable consequence of using force, the reliably predictable, the foreseeable consequence of using force, is that innocent people will die. There’s no such thing as an immaculate intervention.
Look at Kosovo. It’s the definition of war and calling it humanitarian intervention shouldn’t make us lose sight of the fact that it’s war. So then the question becomes: “compared to what?†and it becomes a question of costs and benefits to the intervene, and certainly to the intervener. For example, when one contemplates intervention in Darfur – not in a million years I would not advocate US troops being deployed to Darfur because they would be a ready and ripe target for jihadis and, if it’s conceivable, make Darfur even more dangerous for the civilians there than it is today.
As in Indonesia and East Timor, sometimes you have to create the spectre of a broad-based international coalition in order to stave off the very confrontational intervention that necessitates bloodshed, or which inevitably causes bloodshed. However one cannot be misty-eyed about the cost of confrontational intervention.
[ENDS]
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:45 am
Reg noted the Oakland OEA. I was a substitute teacher in Oakland in the 90′s. The OEA had capable leadership then. I assume the TrotskyISTS (not Trotskyites, that is an old Stalinoid smear term
he is alluding to are Ben Visnick, a supporter of the hella’ obnoxious Spartacist League, who is Pres. of the local and the By Any Means Necessary/ Revolutionary Workers League thugs. See Nathan Newman on these loons here @ http://tinyurl.com/3236yn
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:46 am
Friends at Amnesty International bemoan Power’s book because she picks and chooses genocides to show which ones Uncle Sam could control, blames the UN moer than US and ignores genocide comitted, in Congo etc. by US backed thugs.
More disturbingly, to Amnesty, is that she, like Ignatieff, others, thinks power can solve these problems.
Proof?
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:54 am
A couple quick things that have gotten muddled in the Reg .v Balter 2007 Smackdown:
The Neocon policy does not resemble the strong-military response/presence policy of Hillary. It just doesn’t. The Neocons believed that we ought to invade countries to promote democracy and that destablization could promote long term peace and prosperity. Thankfully that doctorine is dead.
The real matter is what these policies stand for in the real world. Clinton’s gung-ho posture is at least in part just political positioning. (Now I find this pro-military posturing is distasteful and potentially dangerous. Even if it’s mere bluster it damages our country to have leaders bragging about how quickly they’ll use nukes or increase forces or utilize the military instead of diplomacy.) But what we really need to be doing is trying to figure out what kind of foreign policy vision she and the other candidates hold. And I’m not sure why it’s so hard to find this out. Maybe because they’re slippery politicians who find it beneficial to avoid alienating constituents. Maybe it’s thanks to a political press whose primary concern is playing up it’s favorite narratives (Democrats are afraid to use the military, what deft political gamesmanship by Hillary, etc.). Or maybe it’s because they don’t have it all figured out yet. I don’t know.
The way I read Obama’s comments is that he’s trying to take the country back to 2001. Go back in time, make the right decision, unify the country, etc. That’s what Obama would like to do. But that’s not an option. His plan is certainly outdated politically and possibly on a policy front as well. But that doesn’t make him a military adventurist. He’s still, from what I can tell, some one who is generally cautious about using American military power and completely opposed to the kind of invasion and occupation the current administration is so fond of. I’ll have to leave my reading of Hillary’s foreign policy vision for another time.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:10 am
Came to this thread a bit late…forgive me for being a bit snarky, but couldn’t help noticing Michael’s book is titled “The Goddess & the BULL”
…but Julie Near…what a hottie!
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:14 am
Sidenote on Hillary’s foreign policy vision…for all of her hawkishness, one book she read recently, “Ethical Realism, ” by Anatol Lieven, a sharp critique of the neo-cons. A previous book by Lieven, was very hard on AIPAC and Israel.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:19 am
Renewing American Leadership
Barack Obama
From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007
TinyURL.com/2vo96q
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:21 am
oops s/b http://preview.tinyurl.com/2vo96q
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:23 am
Rob, since Julie’s photo is not on my Web site that I recall, can I assume that you are the proud owner of a copy of The Goddess and the Bull?
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:34 am
Unless you are referring to the cover of the paperback edition, in which case the hottie in question is not Julie Near but Tatiana Stefanova. But that wouldn’t explain how you know about Julie Near.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:34 am
From the latest Socialist Worker>..READING BETWEEN THE LINES
Does Obama stand for a different foreign policy?
July 20, 2007 | Page 9 >..Lest anyone think that this kind of interventionism is just campaign rhetoric, one should consider who Obama’s chief foreign policy advisers (and likely authors of the Foreign Affairs article) are.
They include Anthony Lake, a one-time protégé of Henry Kissinger. (Boy, does that sound imcomplete! Lake, quit the Kissinger NSC after the “incursion” into Cambodia, and like another NSC liberal, Roger Morris, had his phone bugged on the orders of Henry K. Lake, in the 70′s was connected to the left-wing think tank IPS. (For a hard right attack on IPS, see, “Covert Cadre, ” by S. Steven Powell…full of the crap vs. Orlando Letelier, Marc should find interesting.)
From the S.W. again>…Beyond them are a number of ex-Clinton advisers, including Gregory Craig. That would be the lawyer who gave Elian back to his Dad in Cuba. Look at any right-wing ex-Cuban blog like Babalu blog and see tons of vitriol vs. Craig as a supposed Fidelista.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:51 am
For those of us at a certain age, Ahem, Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein have been making a bit of a fuss over the fact that Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker has joined the blogsphere.
Takeaway quote from young Ezra:
Takeaway quote from Hendrik:
Ah, yes. He does write extremely well.
Hendrik’s blog address: http://tinyurl.com/3yv9ag
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:03 am
When you moved from Alabama, the average IQ of the state went up.
Given the fact that my brother John came back from Germany at the time I left, you’re probably right, although the bump up was probably de minimis.
He and everyone else in my family is as thoroughly liberal as I am.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
It took you all of that time to come up with a rebuttal.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:21 am
No, actually I missed the last witless turd you dropped.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:26 am
I’m on chapter 7: “At the Trowel’s Edge”
Yes I did peek ahead to the pictures…
Good stuff. I can truly say that I’m ‘diggin’ your book.
Oh yeah, the theme of this thread…Ritter, excellent counterpoint to Sheenan. Thanks, Marc.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:38 am
I’ve been trying to follow this thread and I can’t believe that some people here equate Obama with the neocons. I’m still leaning towards Edwards but Ifind these “Discussions” to be amazing. I can live with Obama – or Hil, or Richardson, or Dodd. And does anyone – other than our friend from the Great White North or unreconstructed Naderites not believe that any of these candidates are not light years better than that pathetic group of GOP wannabees?
I think that given our system the quality of the Democratic field is extraordinary. Maybe, in some Platonic realm, you’ll find perfect candidates that will eschew imperialism and send AIPAC packing. And find a receptive media willing to present clear and rational evidence and weigh the various claims. But that is not our world and it is high timt that people stop making the perfect he enemy of the good.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:57 am
you know Amnesty has national chapters. My friends who are influential in Amnesty Canada have this view of Power. Thsi is anecdotal but I don’t doubt I’ll be able to find hard evidence- though it is true that most human rights groups don’t have files on academics with whom they disagree.
suffice to say, Power is a liberal neocon who should be kept far away from power.
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
liberal neocon nice amagam, there, makes as much sense as john bircher society loons saying, “communazi.”
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
s/b amalgam, leon trotsky used the term frequently to polemicize vs. the Stalinist tic of, “Trotskyite Fascist.” Jordy, waiting for you call call social democrats, “Social Fascists, ” guffaw.
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
http://www.amnesty.ca/resource_centre/news/view.php?load=arcview&article=4012&c=Resource+Centre+News
Sudan: New Darfur deployment must be immediate and fully resourced to protect human rights.
Damn, Social Imperialist liberal neo-cons!
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Thoughts on Iraq from A Liberal NeoCon Who Should Be Kept Far Away From Power:
Although critics of withdrawal do a masterful job of painting a grim picture of the apocalypse that awaits, they offer no account of how U.S. forces in Iraq will do more than preserve a status quo that is already deteriorating into wholesale ethnic cleansing. Although more than 115,000 U.S. troops have been in Iraq for the last four years, about 3.8 million Iraqis have fled their homes and at least 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing each month. It would be nice to think the surge of troops to Baghdad would help to staunch the flow. But with only one-third of the new troops on duty at any given time in a city of 6 million people, they will have no more success deterring the militias intent on carving out homogeneous Shiite or Sunni neighborhoods than U.S. forces have had to date. About 74% of Shiites polled and 91% of Sunnis — the people who have the most to fear from genocide — would like to see U.S. forces gone by the end of the year…
What is needed to stave off even greater carnage than we see today is neither assuming massacres won’t happen nor suspending thought until the surge has demonstrably failed in six months — at which point other options may no longer be viable. Rather, we must announce our intention to depart and use the intervening months to prioritize civilian protection by pursuing a bold set of measures combining political pressure, humanitarian relocation and judicial deterrence…
Many of those who say U.S. troops should stay in Iraq to prevent genocide are the same people who for political reasons refuse to acknowledge the gravity of the calamity unfolding on our watch. The same people who modeled a war on best-case scenarios are now resisting ending a war by invoking worst-case scenarios. (end clip)
Oh, please God – save us from such a person ever advising a President.
(Disclosure – I’m very skeptical of interventionism, which seperates my views significantly from Samantha Power’s. She’d probably consider me an isolationist. Despite the most admirable of intentions, I think she has tended to overestimate the U.S. capability to control catastrophes via military intervention – although the fallout from Iraq has certainly chastened her wing of the liberal internationalist elite. That said, I consider her well within the spectrum of advisers that I’d want a decent, mature, rational President to consult in his inner councils. In most of the particulars she addresses, I would hope that she’s right and I’m wrong. But smearing her as some sort of Richard Perle, David Wurmser or Douglas Feith With a Human Face is as unhinged as it is patently false.)
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:48 pm
real neo-cons on obomba,
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/01/barack-obama-macho-man/
http://www.neoconnews.com/2007/08/01/new-sheriff-in-town/
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I am a social democrat.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:06 pm
The Roundtable discusses Barack Obama’s speech at the Wilson Center. Note the comments near the end by dodd and richardson and biden.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vlog/2007/08/obamas_wilson_center_speech.html
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:07 pm
My friends who are influential in Amnesty Canada have this view of Power.
So essentially you know some people who are involved with Amnesty International who don’t like Power.
As you may know I did monthly new member orientations for AIUSA in the national offices here in New York from 1987 to 1997. I have a framed poster on my wall given to me by the Deputy Director of AIUSA, Curt Goering as well as a thank you letter from him for my participation. I also orgnaized Human Rights Day Commemorations for the New York Group Cluster in 1987-1990.
I’m entirely familiar with how the organization works on the macro and micro level. They probably would not take a position on interventions to the extent that it did not raise issues that dovetailed with their mandate. For example, they did not take a position on the first Gulf War, but did object to the misuse of their reports by the GHW Bush administration to justify the invasion on humanitarian grounds while ignoring the human rights records of countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc., who formed the coalition.
suffice to say, Power is a liberal neocon who should be kept far away from power.
Fortunately we don’t have to worry about you having any real authority outside of your Znet/Counterpunch/WSWS circle jerk.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
You are? My how wide your definition of social democracy is, Jordy! I’m no Sidney Hook SDUSA type of Social Democrat, but, I would peg you as a unreconstructed New Leftist circa ’69 who despises the anti-Stalinist social democratic tradition and the anti-Communist liberals, in toto, as worse than Barry Goldwater who wanted to nuke N. Vietnam.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Better to be a “liberal neocon” than a Smug And Confused Young Man, I would say
Who gives a flip what a couple of AI Canucks say over their post-meeting Starbucks?
One can disagree with or even be alarmed by some of what Power says but that sort of facile labeling really does ape the tragi-comic rhetoric of Third Period Communsts. Y,know those geniuses who equated and conflated social democrats like Jcummings with, um, Nazis until of course the Nazis took over and exterminated them all.
Arguing that the U.S. use its soft power and occassionally its hardware to aid in what are genuine humanitarian catastrophes might be naive or unrealistic to some, but to equate that with the neocon drive to build empire at all costs is just plain dogmatic dumbness.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:26 pm
suffice to say, Power is a liberal neocon who should be kept far away from power.
Fortunately we don’t have to worry about you having any real authority outside of your Znet/Counterpunch/WSWS circle jerk.
WSWS, website of the tiny Socialist Equality Party, descendent of the Workers League, which was aligned with the odious Healyite Trotskyists in the UK. Healy’s party in the UK, was the recipient of monetary support from Ba’athist Iraq and Quaddaffi’s Libya. In gratitude, the Healyites spied on exiled Iraqi Communists and gave intel. to the Embassy of Iraq in London. Leading to the death, to be sure of Iraqi Communists still, somehow surviving in Saddam’s country. WSWS/SEP, also hold to a bizarre theory that leading members of the US SWP, from before the time of Trotsky’s assasination, to the 70′s were really dual FBI/KGB/NKVD agents.
A piece that appeared both on Counterpunch and Z, and numerous other places on the ultra-left and anti-Zionist blogosphere,
http://www.counterpunch.org/lendman12302006.html
Did Sharon Order the Assassination of Arafat?
By STEPHEN LENDMAN
With more than a whiff of the old Protocols of the Elders of Zion, blood libel. Arafat, as was reported recently via a cadre of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, A. Jabril, died of HIV/AIDS. From decades of unprotected sex with men, as was known by all the Arab intelligence agencies and the KGB and Romanian intelligence service.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:30 pm
“….I would peg you as a unreconstructed…”
Gentlement, why don’t we just go to the source, the greatest movie ever…
Brian: Excuse me. Are you the Judean People’s Front?
Reg: Fuck off!
Brian: What?
Reg: Judean People’s Front! We’re the People’s Front of Judea! Judean People’s Front! Cuh!
Francis: Splitters.
Brian: Can I… join your group?
Reg: Nah, piss off.
Brian: I didn’t want to sell this stuff, it’s only a job. I hate the Romans as much as anybody!
Judith: Are you sure?
Brian: Oh, dead sure! I hate the Romans already!
Reg: Listen. If you really wanted to join the P.F.J., you’d have to really hate the Romans.
Brian: I do!
Reg: Oh, yeah, how much?
Brian: A lot!
Reg: [brief pause] Right. You’re in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People’s Front.
Stan: Yeah, the Judean People’s Front.
Reg: Yeah. Splitters.
Stan: And the Popular Front of Judea.
Reg: Yeah. Splitters.
Stan: And the People’s Front of Judea.
Reg: Yea… what?
Stan: The People’s Front of Judea. Splitters.
Reg: We’re the People’s Front of Judea!
Stan: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
Reg: People’s Front!
Francis: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
Reg: He’s over there. [points to a lone man]
Reg, Stan, Francis, Judith: SPLITTER!
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Bet on this: all of the viable Democratic presidential candidates are responding to anti-war sentiment.
Even Hillary is now willing to admit she would not shoot an anti-war ethnic minority lawyer-friend in the face on a hunting trip, by accident, just to get elected.
None, as yet, are directly responding to the anti-war movement’s key agenda items.
It seems far more important to convince all the candidates to respond to that agenda than to focus on which candidate is more likely to.
They’re all left-of-center politicians, after all, and they will drift to where they think the votes and the money are.
To end this war, and more important, prevent the next one, we need a movement, not a candidate.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Yup, great scene from a great movie, thx. Rob Grocholski.
Some more humor,
The Weekly Standard’s Reliable Sources: Male Prostitute Matt Sanchez and Web Weirdo “Throbert McGee” from son of Sidney, “Grassy Knoll, ” Blumenthal. (Allusion to a pb. by Sid on the JFK assasination, “Government by Gunplay.”)
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/58728/
Michael Pugliese, Right Revisionist Opportunist Shactmanite Oehlerite Running Dog, Woof, Woof!
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
There are strong differences between Z, CP and WSWS. The former is more anarcho-communist and left-social democrat, the middle a mixed bag of libertarian and ML, the latter ML-Trot.
Israeli journalist Uri Dan confirms Lendman’s story, though I have a big problem with Lendman and many others ofh is ilk since they link holocaust denying websites.
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:14 pm
but, I would peg you as a unreconstructed New Leftist circa ‘69 who despises the anti-Stalinist social democratic tradition and the anti-Communist liberals, in toto, as worse than Barry Goldwater who wanted to nuke N. Vietnam.
I am a social democrat as in believing in the democratic road to socialism and like Morales, British Labour under Atlee, Allende, etc. – still allows a private sector. In my homeland, where there’s a “social democratic” party, tzhese are mainstream ideas. I realize the phrase has certain connotations.
I am Anti-Stalinist but I will work with them, and hell, what if the Soviet Union didn’t industrialize fast and cruel – would teh Nazis still have lost? Dark question, but worth pondering.
I realize how some language sounds third period, but I personally know of people betrayed at that time and would never say anything to suggest that my view is that. Perhaps liberal neocon is a little much. but so wre the words thrown at me.
In fact, I have admiration for neocons for flatly stating their belief that US power is good. Power needs to wrap it in humanitarian language. So at least Wolfowitz is principled. this is one reason that Regis Debray wrote fondly of Richard Perle….
I digress…
The New Left, as it was constituted at the time, as far as I know, supported LNJ against Goldwater.
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Rob – the only quote that is accurate in that movie script is “Fuck off!” I never say “Piss off!” and I’m no friend of the People’s Front of Judea. Who do I sue ?
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I think that the Life of Brian scene was a direct reference to a particular ultra British sect of whom Vanessa Redgrave was a member.
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I am a social democrat as in believing in the democratic road to socialism and like Morales, British Labour under Atlee, Allende, etc. – still allows a private sector. In my homeland, where there’s a “social democratic†party, tzhese are mainstream ideas. I realize the phrase has certain connotations.
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Yes, the Healyites I noted before on this thread. Ex-Trotskyist, Tim Wohlforth, a real social democrat now (a friend of mine when I lived in Ca.), who loathes
Z magazine for its apologias for Milosevic, co-wrote a book on political cults, with a chapter on Healy’s party that Regrave was a member of. Tim was subject to a helluva load of character assasination by the Healyites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers_Revolutionary_Party_(UK)
Tim’s book, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Edge_%28book%29 Those on thread who lived in the Bay Area in the 80′s should remember another one of the subjects in Tim’s book, Marlene Dixon and her Democratic Workers Party, which at demos/marches mobilized hundreds of members. Had a big role in Wilson Riles, Jr. campaigns in Oakland, Ca. Like all cults they split off the members from all previous relationships w/family, friends, work. Lived in co-op houses, worked 12 hrs. a day or more “building the Party.” Came crashing down in the mid 80′s after leading cadre revolted at Dixon’s alcohol fueled rages.
Click the wikipedia URL, has some amusing quotes from a British Trotskyist w/ a blog, named Bob Pitt, called Islamophobia Watch. Takes great umbridge at even the mildest crits of reactionary Islamists that the UK SWP has aligned itself with after 9-11.
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Against “Conventional Wisdom” -
http://tinyurl.com/323pqb
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:03 pm
“the tragi-comic rhetoric of Third Period Communsts”
Jeez Marc – earlier this week you were criticizing the poor bastards for the Popular Front. What does it take to make you happy ? Could you at least give them some props for running a prominent liberal reformer in opposition to the Democratic Party in ’48 ? Might that have been their brief “even a stopped clock is right” moment in your view ?
(My own belief, of course, is that despite adherence to a bankrupt ideology and some very creepy apologetics, the a lot of well-meaning, dedicated and energetic folks from the CP did considerable grass-roots good during the Popular Front period.)
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Ah Henry Wallace! Dwight Macdonald, then in his anarcho-pacifist phase, wrote a short book on him in ’48 worth tracking down. A taste, cut and paste from Critical Crossings:
The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America by Neil Jumonville, Univ. of Ca. Press.
“Wallaceland is the mental habitat of Henry Wallace plus a few hundred thousand regular readers of The New Republic, The Nation , and PM . It is a region of perpetual fogs, caused by the warm winds of the liberal Gulf Stream coming in contact with the Soviet glacier. Its natives speak ‘Wallese,’ a provincial dialect.”[104]
But Macdonald was careful not to be construed as an unbalanced anti-Communist whose passion made him as narrow-minded and doctrinaire as totalitarian liberals. So he reserved equal derision for those zealots who operated from his own side of the fence, especially “the kind of simple-minded Moscow-baiting The New Leader goes in for (in which any anti-Communist personality or institution, regardless of other considerations, acquires superhuman virtues).” Macdonald issued this warning in 1945, well before Truman or McCarthy roused the intellectuals to any sort of caution. He was simply worried that the brains of those who read The New Leader were being “addled” by “the corrupting influence of an editorial line whose major and often apparently sole criterion of value is anti-Stalinism.”[105]
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I don’t have a copy anymore but, Dorothy Healey
(Marc knew her well, I chatted w/her a few times @ NAM meetings) wrote one of the better autobios. of a CPUSA cadre. IIRC, she, in retrospect thought the Henry Wallace campaign was a disaster that split the CPUSA off from its supporters in the CIO and among left-liberals then being whipsawed between ADA anti-Communism and “progressive” fellow travelling.
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
jcummings say:
“I’m ad hominem, eh?”
No, actually that would make you Canadian.
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Time to pick on Canadian Leftists
who have swallowed whole this conspiracy theory from Swift Boater Jerome Corsi, writing in Human Events and World Net Daily.
http://www.alternet.org/audits/54184/
Debunking the North American Union Conspiracy Theory
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted June 15, 2007.
The North American Union, an increasingly popular conspiracy theory about a group of shadowy international “elites” who are planning to “replace the United States” with a transnational government, is a manifestation of xenophobia that would do the John Birch Society proud.
Just what is the North American Union (NAU)?
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:20 pm
A Canadian leftist blog on this.
http://thevanitypress.blogspot.com/2007/07/spp-and-failure-of-north-american.html
One of the pwoggie orgs. mobilizing against it,
http://www.canadians.org/integratethis/
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:25 pm
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/06/08/DeepIntegrate/
The Plan to Disappear Canada
Seal of the SPP.
‘Deep integration’ comes out of shadows.
Ay carumba. Where will all those Mooses go? Where will I get my Molson Golden? Where will all the elderly folks who hop on buses in Buffalo to get cheaper meds in Canada do?
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:49 pm
I’m glad that Pugliese is posting here as he is a never ending font of wonderful baubles and gems he mines from his daily excavation of Sectaria. Thanks MP and keep it up.
Reg.. well u have a certain point regarding the CP. Ive trashed it both for the Third Period and the Pop Front phases. And on second thought, Im pretty comfortable standing by all that. Indeed, they couldnt be wrong all the time. They werent. They were just beholden to a shifting line instead of critical thought which means if and when they were ever right they were still wrong. My strong distaste for CP by the way is strongly influenced by my experience in Chile where the paryy could only be described as Totalitarian Conservatives. Chileans had a great joke: “Why is the Chilean CP the most pro-Soviet in the world? Because Chile is the country farthest away from the Soviet Union.”
As MP points out, I knew SoCal CP leader Dororthy Healey pretty well (she was the basis for Steinbeck’s young organizer in In Dubious Battle) and while I was never even remotely close to the CP I was sometimes considered one of “Dorothy’s Kids.” Natch, many rank and file CPers were well motivated and did some good work but few if any could overcome the original sin of affilitating with a party that required the abandonment of critical thought.
I also knew and know a number of former CPers from my own generation and none of those are particularly happy stories either. And, finally, it’s some former and CURRENT CPers who are leading and fucking up the major anti-war group UFPJ. But better not to open up that can of worms once again.
As to disappearing Canada. Why not? I spent 20 years there one weekend
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Jim Hitchcock, good for the Dodgers on not letting Barry Bonds get 755.
Shouldn’t we blame Canada?
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:15 pm
My personal favorite of ex-CPers who are still breathing O is Mike Davis. Legend has it that he broke with the party when Dorothy Healy fired him as manager of their bookstore after he threw the Soviet consul out. One of the most inspired eccentrics of the Marxist intelligentsia (a designation I’m certain he’d hate). I would pay serious money to see Davis debate his old NLR comrade Hitchents on any topic that strikes their fancy. That would be more fun than…a Monty Python movie.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Davis puts out about three excellent books a year.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Actually Pugs, the Canuck Left has been talking about a North American union since the 80s.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:35 pm
I.E. I’m against nationalism and protectionism but the idea was the entire reaison d’etre of Conrad Black creating the National Post (which he later sold) – the integration of Canada – already junior partners of US capital – into US capitalism.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Reg.. Mike is an old friend of mine and there are indeed some great legends about him and the CP.
Cummings is right that Mike’s literary output is formidable.. it’s more like 2 books every 3 years not 3 per one/ He also commissioned my first book (Roll Over Che Guevara) when he was consulting for Verso.
I heard that a few years ago he joined the British SWP (even though he lives near San Diego). That’s kinda scary as he’s lot smarter than his cultish comrades.
August 4th, 2007 at 2:05 am
You guys are lame. I totally thought we’d hit 200 by the end of the night. Marc, time to shut down the blog.
Also, SWP, NWA, and PCP
August 4th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Not to quibble with Marc over a minor detail, but I’ma big Davis fan…and in the last year and a half or so he’s done the Avian Flu Book, done Planet of the Slums, No One is Illegal and Buda’s Wagon, the latter three in a space of less than a year.
August 4th, 2007 at 8:47 am
He seems affiliated with SWP USA – ie ISO, who are cultish but not too bad, and do genuinely good work (and are the top of the vast naderite conspiracy)
August 4th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Wecertainly move around on this thread. Now we’re on Mike Davis. Didn’t he get his Doctorate at Glasgow with Suze Wiseman. And I think Marc was responsible for her getting a program at KPFK. She’s a very intelligent Marxist who is a long time critic of the Soviet and Chinese models. I think she teaches at St. Mary”s up in Orinda (?). As to Davis, his “City of Quartz” is an indespensible look at LA that compares well to Carey McWilliams’ classic “Southern Cailifornia:An Island on the Land.” Is he still at UCI?
August 4th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
A Dorothy Healey story told to me by Clare Short, a former staffer @ KPFK. Susan Weissman was in the newsroom with a couple of comrades. Dorothy walks in and exclaoms to Suze, “Did you bring in all these Trotskyites?!”
Weissman is one lefty who still has friendly ties w/ ex-leftist, Stephen Schwartz. See her study of Victor Serge, that Schwartz helped her with.
I assume Weissman went to Glasgow, because Hillel Ticktin, an unorthodox Marxist academic taught there? He edits a very interesting journal, “Critique, ” which from the 70′s onwards published many articles in the anti-Stalinist marxist vein on Soviet type societies, from
Eurocommunists, Trotskyists and left social democrats.
August 4th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
And you can say what you will about the CPUSA but Dorothy Healy was a stong voice for social justice and her radio programs werepretty sane and reasonable. Besides, it is hard at this point in time to remember the allure of the party when she was young. I’m not sure that everyone would have seen thru it then, any more than so many on the Left in the sixtis worshipped China and Mao.
Course it wasn’t always that easy to join the party. The late John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in his essay on his student days at Berkeley in the thirties that he was attracted (they had, he said, the best parties and prettiest co-eds) while working on his PhD but the members there were a snobbish lot and looked down on the “A.P. Giannini Fellow in Agricultural Economics” and graduate of a provincial Ag College in Ontario as insuffiently “toney” for membership. And that, he wrote, ensured that he didn’t spend the late forties and fifties testifying before HUAC!
August 4th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
UK SWP was noted above. Funny story about one of their heavies, Alex Callinicos. Back in the 70′s he lived in a communal household, with folks who were not super serious Trotskyist militants like him. On a Friday night, he come back to the house, tired from some political meeting. Everyone else in the household was tripping on ‘shrooms. For hours they keep on pulling his leg further and further in a long, wild tale. He never figured out what was going on. They told him, Sunday when they were in the standard overlyfriedbraintired state.
August 4th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Clare Short, oops, that is a Uk Labour politico. Meant Clare Spark. She wrote a great book on Melville and US Stalinist literary critics of the 30′s. Verso was to have published it but, they backed out. http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org/clare.html
The C.L.R. James Institute presents:
Hunting Captain Ahab:
Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival
Clare L. Spark
The Kent State University Press
May 2001, Hardcover – 744 pages; ISBN: 0873386744
August 4th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
reg et. al may be interested in Alexander Cockburn and Sherwood Ross’s…..positive assesments of Obama at Counterpunch.
interesting stuff….
August 4th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
“Alexander Cockburn’s…..positive assesments of Obama at Counterpunch”
Couldn’t find it…but now you’re scaring me.
August 4th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
its the lead story about halfway through the piece…(the piece has various subheadings)
http://www.counterpunch.com
August 4th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
A clip from Alex’s piece…
Obama: Worrisome Signs of Sanity Imperil His Bid
Obama’s in trouble with the pundits. First he said in the You Tube debate that he would be prepared to meet with Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro to hash over problems face to face. The pundits promptly whacked him for demonstrating “inexperienceâ€.
Experienced leaders order the CIA to murder such men.
Now Obama has drawn even fiercer fire by saying he would not use nuclear weapons “in any circumstance” to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama told AP Thursday, adding after a pause, “involving civilians.” Then he quickly added, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.” (For more on Obama and nuclear weapons see Sherwood Ross’ story in this weekend’s edition of CounterPunch.)
I’m beginning to respect this man. He displays sagacity well beyond the norm for candidates seeking the Oval Office. He realizes, if only in mid-sentence, that when you drop a nuclear bomb, it will kill civilians. He also realizes that strafing the Hindu Kush with thermonuclear devices in the hopes of nailing Osama Bin Laden is a foolish way to proceed.
Once again he is being flayed for his “inexperienceâ€, first and foremost by Hillary Clinton, the risk taker.
It’s always been part of the hazing ritual inflicted by the pundit class on presidential candidates in America – particularly women –to get them to admit that they are entirely ready to drop nuclear bombs or launch nuclear missiles and thus kill millions of people.
I vividly remember Sen. Harold Hughes of Iowa, a great man, being asked on a Sunday show years ago whether he was ready to run for the nomination. He answered, “When I tell you that if as President I was told that the Russians had launched a nuclear strike, and that missiles were speeding towards America, I would order that we not launch nuclear missiles in retaliation, you will understand that I am not a candidate for the presidential nomination.â€
In other words Hughes was saying correctly that since he wasn’t a deranged mass murderer he could not possibly qualify as presidential timber.
August 4th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
The better answer to the question “would you use nuclear weapons to fight terrorists in Pakistan or Afghanistan” – rather than Obama’s trying to sort it out rationally – would have been, “Are you out of your fucking mind ?”
August 4th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I can’t wait for GMR or Woody to show up and explain – in a gesture that’s becoming “Hillaryesque” incidentally – how it’s “naive” not to keep nuclear weapons on the table as a tool to fight terrorists in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Obama’s “controversial” speech is in text and on video here.
http://www.barackobama.com/2007/08/01/remarks_of_senator_obama_the_w_1.php
August 4th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
My fave Counterpunch piece. (By the son of Frankfurt School scholar of fascism, Franz Neumann)
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann0604.html >…I take a different view. I think we should almost never take antisemitism seriously, and maybe we should have some fun with it.
Ranks right up there with the Alex Cockburn column in the Village Voice after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in ’79 that, “no country ever deserved being raped more than Afghanistan.” Or his Beat The Devil column in The Nation, in the late 80′s when he said there were in the range of only 50,000 victims of the Ukrainian famine of the 30′s. Most estimates are far higher, in the millions.
August 4th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Mandel was perhaps angry because he (along with Dorothy Healey) no longer monopolized opinion on that crucial subject. It should also be noted that Dorothy Healey remained on the air, and though I was friendly to her during my tenure as Program Director, she organized against my reinstatement after I was purged, thanks I am told, to the organizing activities of the local CPUSA. I believe their objection was that there were too many Trotskyists on the air, contesting such matters as the Stalinist accounts of the Spanish Civil War.
Suzi Weissman hosted interviews and commentary on the subjects formerly covered by Mandel alone, and to my recollection, he was to send tapes and that these would be played, but certainly not every week. I do not recall what happened next, but Dr. Weissman will have a clearer recollection. I do remember that all hell broke loose, with a letter-writing campaign in the Bay Area accusing me of all sorts of things. It is true that, after having listened to Mr. Mandel for years (since 1959), I came to suspect that he was an apologist for the Soviet Union, and told Peter Franck that when he called me to inquire about the controversy. That I should have held such an opinion was considered one of my fatal errors.
I have the impression from recent statements by Mandel on the Radical History list that he is now disillusioned with communism. Perhaps he feels he was misled in earlier years. If that is so, then he has come around to my judgment.
Moreover, I was not “an ultra-Leftist.” My training was in science and science education, and my interests in politics tend toward the radical liberal, a position that finds little organized expression these days.
I expect Dr. Weissman to fill in those details that I no longer remember after over twenty-one years.
Clare Spark, Ph.D.
August 4th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Pakistan criticizes Barack Obama
By ROHAN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Aug 3, 6:56 PM ET
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistani officials called
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama
irresponsible for saying that, if elected, he might
order unilateral military strikes in Pakistan against
al-Qaida.
Hundreds chanted anti-U.S. slogans and burned an
American flag in the street to protest the remark.
Obama’s comment turned up the heat on already
simmering anger among Pakistanis about the issue,
after senior Bush administration officials said last
week they too would consider such strikes if
intelligence warranted them.
Further inflaming the situation was a comment by Tom
Tancredo, a Colorado Republican whose bid for the
White House is considered unlikely to succeed, that
the best way he could think of to deter a nuclear
terrorist attack on America would be to threaten to
retaliate by bombing the holiest of Islamic sites,
Mecca and Medina.
U.S. officials quickly distanced themselves from
Tancredo’s remarks.
In Miran Shah, a major town in the lawless region that
borders Afghanistan, about 1,000 tribesmen condemned
recent Pakistani military operations in the area and
vowed to repel any U.S. attack.
“We are able to defend ourselves. We will teach a
lesson to America if it attacks us,” local cleric
Maulvi Mohammed Roman told the rally.
In Karachi, Pakistani’s largest city, about 150 people
chanted slogans against the United States, Obama and
Tancredo at a demonstration organized by Mutahida
Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of six hard-line religious
parties. Protesters set fire to a U.S. flag.
“Those who are talking about attacking our holiest
places are committing blasphemy. The punishment for
this offense is death, and death only,” said coalition
lawmaker Mohammed Hussain Mahanti.
August 4th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Hardline Islamists demonstrating against Obama in the streets of Karachi ?
I’m not supposed to share the secret memos, but suffice to say that our campaign strategy is going exactly as planned.
August 4th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
http://www.juancole.com/2007/08/pakistani-protests-against-obama.html
from one of Cole’s embedded links,
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/08/03/romney_said_obama_comment_on_pakistan_ill_considered/
Romney said Obama comment on Pakistan `ill-considered’
Romney supporter on Obama,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrastosno/879630523/
August 4th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Reg>…Hardline Islamists demonstrating against Obama in the streets of Karachi ?
I’m not supposed to share the secret memos, but suffice to say that our campaign strategy is going exactly as planned.
As I find photos of what Little Green Footballs, Jihad Watch and other blogs of that ilk call, “Islamic Rage Boy,
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017036.php
I’ll post the burning effigies of Obama jpegs. here.
In the meantime, LGF on Sean Penn as “Useful Idiot, ” for Hugo Chavez. http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26544_Thug_Dictator_and_Useful_Idiot&only&headline
Where’s Cindy Sheehan? http://sweetness-light.com/archive/hugo-chavezs-illegal-foreign-agent-cindy-sheehan
August 4th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Pakistani protesters burn a U.S. flag to condemn U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s remarks, Friday, Aug. 3, 2007, in Karachi, Pakistan. Pakistan criticized Obama for saying that, if elected, he might order unilateral military strikes inside this Islamic nation to root out terrorists. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070803/481/kar10208031314
August 4th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Mike Davis Rocks!!!
Please read his Planet of Slums.
A Marxist who knows his religion!
August 4th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
http://images.google.com/images?q=protests+obama+pakistan
http://biglizards.net/Graphics/ForegroundPix/PakistanProHitlerSign.jpg
August 4th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
What was the other contro. over Davis? Remember it being written up in the LAT.
http://www.ocweekly.com/features/features/the-vast-right-wing-conspiracy-against-mike-davis/21408/
The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Against Mike Davis
UC Irvine history prof Mike Davis can’t write a damn thing without the nuts going nuts. This time, the controversy’s over an obscure reference to Winston Churchill.
August 4th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I have spoken to Neumann over the years, and Pugliese is completely missing the poitn and quoting selectively from that piece.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Michael Neumann is a blockheaded idiot. see his e-mail exhanges here with a far right, anti-semitic website.
http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/features.htm
August 4th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Last year, Neumann had a correspondence with an anti-Semitic web site called the Jewish Tribal Review in which Neumann wrote:
My sole concern is indeed to help the Palestinians, and I try to play for keeps. I am not interested in the truth, or justice, or understanding, or anything else, except so far as it serves that purpose…I would use anything, including lies, injustice and obfuscation, to do so. If an effective strategy means that some truths about the Jews don’t come to light, I don’t care. If an effective strategy means encouraging reasonable anti-Semitism or reasonable hostility to Jews, I don’t care. If it means encouraging vicious racist anti-Semitism, or the destruction of the State of Israel, I still don’t care.
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/critiques/A_Nihilist_on_Anti-semitism.asp
August 4th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
More on Counterpunch.
Joel Schalit, former managing editor Tikkun, on Doug Henwood’s radio show on WBAI-FM,
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html
reviewing the Counterpunch edited collection from CP, “The Politics of Anti-Semitism.â€
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2004/2004-January/000421.html
* Michael Neumann (a relative of Franz Neumann, by the way) has more
fun with anti-Semitism: “Undoubtedly there is genuine ant-Semitism in
the Arab world: the distribution of the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, the myths about stealing the blood of gentile babies. This is
utterly inexucsable. So was your failure to answer Aunt Bee’s
letter.†He goes on to dismiss anti-Semitism as more a feeling than a
real threat. “I’m much more scared of really dangerous situations,
like driving.†The book often veers spuriously between this
complacency and a justified dismissal of the abuse of the term
“anti-Semitism†by apologists for Israeli policy without bothering to
take real anti-Semitism very seriously.
* Alexander Cockburn’s piece is full of his typical turns of phrase -
“a torrent of money from out of stat Jewish organizations…American
Jewish money showered upon….outside Jewish money….Zionist
influence on the media….Jewish families are proprietors of some of
the most powerful newspapers in the country….[I]t’s reasonable to
point out that Jewish families control the new York Times and
Washington Post.†Weirdly, AC notes that the “most rabidlyâ€
pro-Israel of all the U.S. newspapers is the Wall Street Journal,
“which is not Jewish owned†– so what’s the relevance of pointing out
the Jewish ownership of the NYT and WP, except to flirt with classic
stereotypes?
* Kurt Nimmo defends Amiri Baraka’s terrible 9/11 poem, with its
passage asking “Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers/To
stay home that day/Why did Sharon stay away?â€
* Jeffrey Blankfort has a repulsive piece specifically aimed at
refuting Chomsky’s line that Israel serves U.S. imperial interests,
arguing instead that it’s the Israeli lobby and its money that’s
hijacked U.S. policy.
* A pseudonymous congressional aide, George Sutherland, likens the
U.S. government’s relationship with Israel to Vichy France’s with
Nazi Germany’s, and Congressional “Likudniki†to “Quislings.†In the
piece, “Sutherland†actually refers to the U.S. Senate as “the
world’s greatest deliberative body,†which Cockburn would normally
have sport with, except in this context.
* Kathleen and Bill Christison, two retired CIA agents, describe
Congress as “Israeli occupied territory,†and refer to the “dual
loyalties†of the Bush administration. They argue that the
once-pragmatic Cheney was transformed by all the Israeli agents in
the Bush administration. “[L]oyalty to Israel by government officials
colors and influences US policymaking in ways that are extrmely
dangerous,†they conclude – as if Bush’s neo-cons weren’t driven by
their own understanding of U.S. imperial interests.
Doug
August 4th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
I’m not gonna defend Neumann’s very politically dumb exchange with those Anti-Semites, which was not meant for publication and was actualyl an argument against their position. This was over four years ago, at least three.
But I respectfulyl disagree with schalit’s conception of Neumann’s essays. There are serious problems I have with many other writersi n that book, and I disassociated myself with that strando f the Left over some of the holocaust deniers who overlap with that ie ziopedia.org and others who are genuine Anti-Semites. I stopped contact with a lot of people over tolerance for that shit.
But Neumann is different completely, and is amember of a Jewish Anti-Zionist group with which I am tangentially affiliated. I think one can challenge his point about Anti-Semitism being a clear danger, compared with other dangers, btu he is not dismissing Anti-Semitism.
There are definitely others in that book who fit that description.
August 4th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
From Avakian to the State Department, these guys have come a long way.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-ozomatli1aug01,1,2798887.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&cset=true
August 5th, 2007 at 8:21 am
“Just like a landmark art work or historically seminal music, Bob Avakian’s delivery and timing is truly inspiring. The only thing more inspiring is the vision and message he presents to us. Avakian is a revolutionary leader whose voice must be heard far and wide today.â€
Wil-Dog, Jiro and Uli from Ozomatli
August 5th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Money talks. Avakian walks.
August 5th, 2007 at 9:38 am
I’m missing Michael Pugliese’s point. Is he trying to accuse Counterpunch of being anti-Jew?
If so, he should really just come out and say so and back it up. It’s a pretty serious charge.
The parade of cut-and-paste innuendo he puts on merely raises questions about his own motives.
August 5th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Michael I believe the controversy with Mike Davis was over his column arguing, after a typically disasterious year in Malibu with fires and mudslides, that we should “let it burn.” That too many public funds were used to allow the pampered rich to live there with subsidies for the (inevitable) disasters.
This enraged the realtors and one, who took the moniker of “Brady Westwater” took the position that Davis fabricated his evidence. He got a respectful audience in the Columns of Jill Stewart – then throwing mud at NEW TIMES and now polluting the WEEKLY for that crowd of Phoenix Know-nothings trying to prove that the Chicago gang at Tribune were enlightened stewards of the public trust.
August 5th, 2007 at 10:52 am
And I’m confused but was that you, Michael, or Claire Spark writing about William Mandel? If the later she “Came” to believe he was an apolgist for the USSR? What tipped her off? His constant defense of the party line? Anyone who didn’t know Mandel was shilling for Moscow had a screw loose. And I like Spark even though some of her presentations were opaque – Academic Speak Desease in an advanced form.
Weissman’s former program “Portraits of the USSR” was much more objective. And I recall that Hillel Ticton was a frequent guest.
August 5th, 2007 at 11:09 am
The term, BB, is Anti-Semitic.
I’ve written for Counterpunch a bunch between 2002 and 2004. Jeffrey and Alexander are not AntiSemites. That said, a few of the writers that have written at that site may well fit that description, though not so much anymore.
August 5th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Counterpunch, has for years been full of the deliberately slippery innuendo dodge of the, “We’re Anti-Zionists not Anti-Semites, ” (how dare you note those pieces on our site and at Dissident Voice, defending the right to free speech of Ernst Zundel!) sector of the far left.
That was Clare Spark’s words not me. (For some reason when I tried to post that with the URL, followed by my weird way of signifying a quote>…, the blog code prevented it.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/25/BAG13FTR9A1.DTL
>…In October, the city of Berkeley celebrated Bob Avakian Day in honor of one of the city’s most stalwart revolutionary sons
August 5th, 2007 at 11:50 am
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/joewezorek/4563280388539980179/?src=hsn#254269
>…Nice discussion of this Ritter fellow.
I remember when he was ‘outed’ for trying to engage relations with a minor on the internet. Indeed, I still wonder what that was all about. Clearly this was smear–but was this based in anything factual?
If Ritter piles on the anti-Chavez/Chavez-is-dictator position, you know the man’s limits insofar as being ‘democratic’ goes.
Marc Cooper epitomizes the mistakes that Allede made in surrounding himself with liberal accomodationists in his cabinent. That Cooper postures as a great anti-facists ally of Allende, and still supports US imperialism speaks volumns of his ethical retardation and ‘democratic’ credentials.
Slave Revolt | 08.05.07 – 1:05 pm | #
August 5th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
You know, this thread is starting to read like a bunch of left sectarians talking to themselves. Wait, that is exactly what is happening. Let us know when it’s over so we can get back to serious discussions. Pugliese, you really take the cake in that regard. Put a check on the ego and give it a rest, will ya?
August 5th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
bunkerbuster ever read any of the numerous contributions to counterpunch by the vile g. atzmon?
harry’s place blog has had tons of posts on that scurrilous jew hating creep, who has spoken repeatedly at the yearly Marxism conferences of the UK SWP.
http://www.google.com/search?q=atzmon+harry%27s+place
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/atzmon_watch.html
>…Atzmon watch
Regular readers will know that over the past couple of years I have followed the public statements of a jazz musician and former Israeli reservist Gilad Atzmon, now resident in Britain. To call Atzmon a crank is to cast aspersions on those gentle souls who believe the USAF is covering up a crashed UFO at Roswell, that a cryptogram in the works of Shakespeare reveals the authorship of Francis Bacon, or that homeopathy is a branch of medical science. Atzmon’s beliefs are a case apart because of their malevolence as well as their stupidity. He maintains, for example, that the notorious Czarist forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, depicting a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, is an accurate depiction of the state of modern America:
American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least.
(Note incidentally, that Atzmon appears to regard it is an open historical question whether the Protocols are in fact authentic! Their forged provenance was established by The Times as long ago as 1921, in three article reproduced here.)
But in his latest comments, published at the weekend on the Al-Jazeerah web site, Atzmon outdoes himself. The Irish historian, statesman and polymath Conor Cruise O’Brien once observed that, so far as debate about Israel is concerned, it is an indicator of antisemitism “if your interlocutor can’t keep Hitler out of the conversation … feverishly turning Jews into Nazis and Arabs into Jews”. Atzmon has long been a particularly boneheaded exponent of that type of reasoning, but now he believes that the Nazis have been unfairly maligned. You think I misrepresent him? Well, consider his words:
To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook. To compare Olmert to Hitler is to provide Israel and Olmert with a metaphorical moral shield. It maintains Hitler at the lead and allows Olmert to stay in the tail.
You think this is merely a metaphorical way of expressing a consuming hatred of the Jewish state rather than an apologia for Nazism? Well, consider Atzmon’s direct description of the Nazis’ aims and conduct (emphasis added):
Now is the time to stand up and say it, unlike the Nazis who had respect for other national movements including Zionism, Israel has zero respect for anyone including its next door neighbours. The Israeli behaviour should be realised as the ultimate vulgar biblical barbarism on the verge of cannibalism. Israel is nothing but evilness for the sake of evilness. It is wickedness with no comparison.
Go and read, as they say, the whole thing – if you you are of strong stomach. Atzmon maintains that: “Carpet bombing and total erasure of populated areas that is [sic] so trendy amongst Israeli military and politicians (as well as Anglo-Americans) has [sic] never been a Nazi tactic or strategy.” If Atzmon had referred to, say, the history of the Warsaw Ghetto as “total erasure of populated areas”, I should have condemned his euphemistic choice of language; yet he denies that such an act of barbarism even took place! Go and read his diagnosis that (emphasis added) “Nazism was a nationalist expansionist movement with extensive yet limited ambitions” – limited indeed to the conquest of western Europe, the enslavement of eastern Europe, and the annihilation of every last Jew.
Why do I bother citing ravings that I would wish to take professional advice upon before dismissing the hypothesis that their author is clinically insane? Because, as regular readers will know, Atzmon has appeared for each of the last three years as a listed speaker at the summer jamboree of the Socialist Workers’ Party, which regards his anti-Jewish bigotry as “fearless tirades against Zionism”. The SWP has its own electoral front called the Respect “Coalition”. You may recall that during the last general election campaign, Respect’s national secretary, John Rees, told The Guardian, “everyone in Respect has a long record of fighting anti-semitism”. Presumably he meant “fomenting” antisemitism.
August 5th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
R.U. Sirius, Michael Balter? Serious discussions, on a blog? You think this is an issue of the The American Journal of Political Science?
bunkerbuster ever read any of the numerous contributions to counterpunch by the vile g. atzmon?
harry’s place blog has had tons of posts on that scurrilous jew hating creep, who has spoken repeatedly at the yearly Marxism conferences of the UK SWP.
http://www.google.com/search?q=atzmon+harry%27s+place
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/atzmon_watch.html
>…Atzmon watch
Regular readers will know that over the past couple of years I have followed the public statements of a jazz musician and former Israeli reservist Gilad Atzmon, now resident in Britain. To call Atzmon a crank is to cast aspersions on those gentle souls who believe the USAF is covering up a crashed UFO at Roswell, that a cryptogram in the works of Shakespeare reveals the authorship of Francis Bacon, or that homeopathy is a branch of medical science. Atzmon’s beliefs are a case apart because of their malevolence as well as their stupidity. He maintains, for example, that the notorious Czarist forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, depicting a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, is an accurate depiction of the state of modern America:
American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world.. So far they are doing pretty well for themselves at least.
(Note incidentally, that Atzmon appears to regard it is an open historical question whether the Protocols are in fact authentic! Their forged provenance was established by The Times as long ago as 1921, in three article reproduced here.)
But in his latest comments, published at the weekend on the Al-Jazeerah web site, Atzmon outdoes himself. The Irish historian, statesman and polymath Conor Cruise O’Brien once observed that, so far as debate about Israel is concerned, it is an indicator of antisemitism “if your interlocutor can’t keep Hitler out of the conversation … feverishly turning Jews into Nazis and Arabs into Jewsâ€. Atzmon has long been a particularly boneheaded exponent of that type of reasoning, but now he believes that the Nazis have been unfairly maligned. You think I misrepresent him? Well, consider his words:
To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook. To compare Olmert to Hitler is to provide Israel and Olmert with a metaphorical moral shield. It maintains Hitler at the lead and allows Olmert to stay in the tail.
You think this is merely a metaphorical way of expressing a consuming hatred of the Jewish state rather than an apologia for Nazism? Well, consider Atzmon’s direct description of the Nazis’ aims and conduct (emphasis added):
Now is the time to stand up and say it, unlike the Nazis who had respect for other national movements including Zionism, Israel has zero respect for anyone including its next door neighbours. The Israeli behaviour should be realised as the ultimate vulgar biblical barbarism on the verge of cannibalism. Israel is nothing but evilness for the sake of evilness. It is wickedness with no comparison.
Go and read, as they say, the whole thing – if you you are of strong stomach. Atzmon maintains that: “Carpet bombing and total erasure of populated areas that is [sic] so trendy amongst Israeli military and politicians (as well as Anglo-Americans) has [sic] never been a Nazi tactic or strategy.†If Atzmon had referred to, say, the history of the Warsaw Ghetto as “total erasure of populated areasâ€, I should have condemned his euphemistic choice of language; yet he denies that such an act of barbarism even took place! Go and read his diagnosis that (emphasis added) “Nazism was a nationalist expansionist movement with extensive yet limited ambitions†– limited indeed to the conquest of western Europe, the enslavement of eastern Europe, and the annihilation of every last Jew.
Why do I bother citing ravings that I would wish to take professional advice upon before dismissing the hypothesis that their author is clinically insane? Because, as regular readers will know, Atzmon has appeared for each of the last three years as a listed speaker at the summer jamboree of the Socialist Workers’ Party, which regards his anti-Jewish bigotry as “fearless tirades against Zionismâ€. The SWP has its own electoral front called the Respect “Coalitionâ€. You may recall that during the last general election campaign, Respect’s national secretary, John Rees, told The Guardian, “everyone in Respect has a long record of fighting anti-semitismâ€. Presumably he meant “fomenting†antisemitism.
August 5th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Sectariana can be fascinating.
August 5th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
You guys have a lot of time to waste.
BTW, did you hear that the NY Times will reduce its page sizes starting tomorrow? Those liberals will ruin the paper by cutting back, just like those guys at the LA Times. Right?
August 5th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Lots of inside baseball here.
Does anyone besides me think Scott Ritter’s piece was pretty goofy, too?
August 5th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Yeah, jcummings, sectariana is fascinating, and it also substitutes for political action in the real world–like building an antiwar movement or any other political movement. Is this what leftists have come to, blowing it out their asses on blogs? Pugliese alone could have rung 100 doorbells with a Mumia petition by now.
The Department of Defense has identified 3,648 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following American yesterday:
HARRIS, Taurean T., Sgt., 22, Army; Liberty, Miss.; 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion, 513th Military Intelligence Brigade.
August 6th, 2007 at 8:05 am
While I understand and agree on your general point about “sectariana”, MB – which can be humorous in small doses but is ultimately mindnumbing – liberals have managed to use the internet to build a stronger network of information and political activism than had they simply mimicked the Jehovahs Witnesses – or the “strategies” of much of the post-civil rights movment Left of our youth – which tends to be wildly overrated in terms of both its analytical competence and political effectiveness by veterans.
August 6th, 2007 at 8:06 am
I do my real world stuff in the real world. I am mainly organizing tenants in both low and middle income buildings in terms of my “”activism” these days…I do what I can to bild a movement.
At the same time, the dungeons and dragons culture of sectariana is entertaining fodder when one is working on a comparison of Bolivar, Robespierre, Toussain and thomas jefferson.
August 6th, 2007 at 8:10 am
reg, believe it or not I don’t disagree – but there is also a peace movement – not in the type of the post-60s style, but a real peace movement. I have said nasty things about the netroots, but from what I see they had real left scholars and advocates at their confab. Hundreds of municpalities and some statehouses have made antiwar and impeachment resolutions. No democrat can appear without being pressured by antiwar base. There is a treat of third candidatese. Therei s a peace advocating Republican with some attention.
The problem I still have is faith that Dems will make a difference – I’d not be angry if they did, but I doubt it – and this is feeding am ore radical conciousenss about the netroots is one reads their comments area.
August 6th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Pugliese – you don’t need to depend on Eustonites to criticize the vile Gilad Atzmon. Anti-Zionist groups and Palestinian solidarity groups won’t touch him with a ten foot pole.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, for one hasn’t.
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=744
UK SWP , at their yearly Marxism conferences (big events, addressed by folks like Harold Pinter and Robert Fisk and John Pilger, no?), hasn’t.
Here in Denver, at Denver University (since Condi Rice got her degree there, I assumed it was a conservative school like say Claremont, nope…leading members of their faculty defended the “scholarship” of Ward Churchill.), Atzmon recently gave a well attended talk to the campus anti-Zionist group.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:38 am
http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon11222006.html
What is to be Done?
Palestinian Solidarity in a Time of Massacres
By GILAD ATZMON
August 6th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Pugliese alone could have rung 100 doorbells with a Mumia petition
Heh, what one saying, “We know he’s guilty of killing that pig, that’s why we support him, but, we have to pretend he’s innocent…like Julius Rosenberg and Alger Hiss!”
December 18th, 2007 at 7:38 am
this picture is disgusting if i came to your country you would be dead i would shoot you eveil paki basterds please emal back
May 8th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
517ac74e92b3…
517ac74e92b30e3f1bc6…
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
[...] I’m going to up and move onto some other topics I promise, but somebody sent me a link to this column of Marc Cooper’s. I really do miss Radio Nation which aired on KMUD for several years until the local political [...]
December 14th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Hey there – Wow, what a great forum
Just registered and wanted to say hello.
December 2nd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Worthless for the brobdingnagian recall, but I’m doting the new Zune, and expectation this, as compartment as the excellent reviews else tally printed, gift assist you end if it’s the option for you.
December 2nd, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Worthless for the large reexamine, but I’m real warm the new Zune, and trust this, as fine as the excellent reviews any remaining grouping change graphical, faculty support you terminate if it’s the moral prize for you.