What can one say about the misery, the sheer horror, of what is happening in Haiti right now? It is as if the planet itself has seen fit to kick them in the teeth when they were down. I don’t want to write even five more words before encouraging anyone who reads this blog to donate to relief efforts in any way you see fit. (My personal recommendation would be to support Partners in Health, but choose whichever means you prefer.)

Aside from the devastation and massive human suffering, the most impressive element of this catastrophe is the hypocrisy demonstrated by people in the United States who have been primarily responsible for the immiseration of Haitians over the past few decades. President Obama is correct when he describes how Haiti is “tied” to the United States historically, but he might more accurately have used the term “chained” – a sickening litany of occupation, subjugation, and sabotage that stretches back to the dawn of that nation’s independence. Just to focus on the most recent phase of this ugly relationship, it is important to remember that the Bush I administration supported the 1991 coup that ousted Haiti’s first popularly-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and ushered in a reign of terror marked by unspeakable brutality on the part of the Junta and paramilitary organizations like FRAP.

While Clinton is credited with returning Aristide to power, his administration turned a blind eye to fuel shipments to the coup regime of Raoul Cedras while insisting that Aristide return under conditions that would result in deeper penury for the Haitian people. That was a bitter pill for the Haitian people, who had taken great risks in very dark times to organize the Lavalas political movement that brought Aristide to the presidency in the first place, and subsequently paid a high price at the hands of the U.S.-sanctioned coup regime.

Ten years later, after Aristide had returned to power and had begun steering Haiti away from the neoliberal model that had been strangling it for decades, the Bush administration supported yet another coup, staged in part from the Dominican Republic, that brought a kleptocratic business-based elite back to power which, once again, looted the nation and persecuted Aristide supporters. More help from Uncle Sam. With a severely weakened government, by 2008 there were food riots, and now Haitians live on something like $2 a day.

It sickens me to see the crocodile tears of politicians in this country over the misery that they helped make possible. An even greater nausea comes over me at the thought of W. Bush and Clinton coordinating relief efforts.  But, for the nonce, we can only try to help as best we can, by supporting those groups who will help Haitians not only recover but build their social institutions back up again.

luv u,

jp

President Obama has announced that the “buck” stops with him when things go wrong within the elaborate intelligence apparatus that supports airport security and anti-terrorism in general. But what about with respect to another type of terrorism – the kind we perpetrate on others? Is he willing to accept that “buck” as well? His predecessor certainly wasn’t. Like under Bush II, civilians have been the target of our military in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, and, indirectly, elsewhere. According to the U.N., more than 2,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan during the first ten months of 2009, about 450 of which are attributable to the U.S. and our allies. That number is probably low, since in every conflict the line is deliberately blurred between combatants and non-combatants, but even if we accept it at face value, 450 deaths represents a lot of suffering, disaffection, and anger. I’m not sure how it is any different to kill hundreds of peasants with unmanned drones than it is to blow up buses or passenger airliners – both are indiscriminate, heinously destructive, and criminal. Both shield the true perpetrators. And both seek to advance a political cause through faceless violence. Will Obama take responsibility for that?

It is hard to see how we as a society will ever get beyond our eagerness to resort to killing as a preferred means of foreign policy. Let’s face it – its advocacy is a great way to drum up votes if you’re a tin-pot politician. Has any national leader since Barry Goldwater sacrificed an election simply on the basis of being too much of a hawk? It has an amazingly broad appeal. I can’t tell you how many times otherwise smart people have suggested, nominally in jest, that we drop bombs on this country or that. There’s a cathartic simplicity to it. And since most Americans are blissfully unaware of the degree to which their government has meddled in the affairs of other peoples, opting for military action seems to many an appropriate response in the face of an irrationally hostile world. Why do those people hate us? we’re always asking ourselves. What the hell did we ever do to them? It is as if we are born anew each moment, perpetually free of our dark past and our equally troubling present.

Obama’s administration is, like many of its predecessors, propelled forward into bad policy by the criticisms of some very cynical voices, including some who were primarily responsible for the catastrophic failures of the last regime. It occurs to me that one of the more common Cheneyisms – that we are less safe from attack under Obama – may, in a sense, be grimly true. Cheney, Bush, and his crew nearly destroyed the U.S. empire. They led us into two disastrous wars that drained us of blood, treasure, and international credibility, to say nothing of the death and damage they dealt to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Their idiocy at governing knew no bounds, as the destruction of New Orleans and the implosion of our economy amply demonstrated. This is well-known to the leaders of Al Qaeda, I’m certain, just as I’m sure they are aware that terror attacks (and attempted attacks) redound to the political benefit of people like Bush and Cheney. Ergo, if they attack us, they know we are likely to turn around and elect people who will surely bring this country down, and its empire with it.

Simple strategy – let your enemy destroy him/herself. Al Qaeda appears to know that one. Do we?

luv u,

jp

Thanks to the so-dubbed “underpants” bomber, the T.V. airwaves and blogosphere are all about terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, as if it’s something that just appeared out of nowhere this week. Where the hell has everyone been? I think part of the dynamic at work here is the simple fact that television news people spend a lot of their time on airplanes, and the tightened security that results from these attempted bombings is a real inconvenience to the jet set. (Me? I wouldn’t get on a plane these days unless somebody had a gun to my head.) Not sure if anyone else remembers, but a short time after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, it seemed like a lot of television commentators – the McLaughlin Group springs to mind – were complaining piteously about the demise of curbside check-in. Such an inconvenience. However will our civilization survive? (It has, somehow.) That helps to drive the news cycle a bit. I think my cousin had the perfect response at the time: That’s it, no more planes. If I don’t have to fly, you don’t have to fly. End of story. 

Most of the talk, of course, has been about how this could happen and what we can do to keep it from happening again. There has also been a lot of tough pundit talk about Yemen, as if somehow we have the capacity to mount yet another failed invasion. I think, though, that the central point of this whole episode is barely being discussed at all – the simple fact that, after eight years of war, we are still right where we were when it all started. In essence, people can still walk onto a plane and blow it up, make it crash, etc. – maybe not in precisely the same way as on 9-11, but just as devastatingly, it seems likely. So… what have we accomplished by invading two countries halfway around the world? As it turns out, less than nothing – we have, in fact, made ourselves more vulnerable to attack. It’s a classic supply-side argument, so all you Regan-lovers out there should be able to work this out. We’ve killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, displaced millions more. There are a vastly greater number of people out there who want to see us suffer than there was in 2001. By increasing that pool, we’ve increased the likelihood of attack far beyond what our meager efforts at airline security are able to mitigate. Mission accomplished, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and, yes, now Obama. Good going.

There is also a strong presumption on the part of the Cheneys, the Buchanans, the Lindsey Grahams, etc., against treating terrorism cases as criminal matters rather than through military means. These people seem to have no faith in our justice system whatsoever. Do they really think it’s going to be hard to convict this Nigerian guy? The system is designed to put black people in jail under pretty much any circumstances, thanks in large measure to “conservatives”. For chrissake, it took just the mere mention of terrorism for them to give Jeff Leurs 22 years in a maximum security hell hole when he set fire to 3 pickup trucks at a car dealership with no intention to cause bodily harm to anyone. This case can easily be handled in the context of our courts. The Cheneys and Buchanans of the world are eager to apply the thumbscrew as well, in the full knowledge that to do so is illegal, immoral, unethical… and ineffective. But the desire to resort to torture is such an integral part of their worldview now – it is their way of appealing to the worst in all of us.

When we made this fight against terrorism a “war”, all we did was elevate the status of a bunch of criminals to that of a world power. That obviously hasn’t worked. Let’s try another way.

You’ve heard (way too many times) the facile comparison between legislating and making sausage. It’s the kind of analogy that obscures the spectacular level of dysfunction now most impressively on display in the U.S. Senate. This institution has always been a problem with respect to the popular will, but under the current circumstances, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” has become not the cooling saucer of democracy but a dousing bucket of cold water. There is, of course, no question that the Senate is an extremely undemocratic institution, according the same number of votes and, therefore, the same political power to every state, whether it is home to 36 million (California) or 500,000 (Wyoming). Even if the chamber’s arcane rules allowed for voting on a majority-rule basis, it would be intrinsically unfair to larger population centers – i.e. the kinds of communities that most rely on social programs administered by the federal government.

But it’s far more unfair than that. For one thing, under the rules of the senate, a single member can hold up important legislation and key appointments. And in a political moment such as the one we find ourselves in now, any piece of legislation must repeatedly achieve a 60-vote super majority to gain passage. If you combine the populations of all of the states that have 2 Democratic (or Dem-caucusing independent) Senators, that alone makes up more than half of the U.S. population. Those 158 + million people are represented by 44 out of 100 members. A bare majority in the Senate would require votes representing a far greater number than that. That in itself is remarkably limiting, given the important constitutional role the Senate plays in making and shaping legislation, ratifying treaties, confirming presidential appointees, and so on. When you combine that with the additional requirement that legislation – any legislation – must garner 60 votes to gain passage, this is a significant veto power over the will of the majority.

The current situation in the Senate is such that the filibuster is a constant, a given. So the notion that any meaningful action will take place within its walls – landmark legislation supported by a broad swath of the American public – is beyond contemplation. It would be difficult under majoritarian voting procedures, but the 60-vote minimum requires the inclusion of so many watery centrists and “Democrats in name only” that the guts are always ripped out of whatever is under consideration. This is certainly true of the health insurance reform legislation. This will also be true of any other major initiative. After this year’s experience, I am doubtful that they will even attempt to take up the Employee Free Choice Act… and I’m certain that, if they did, the Ben Nelsons (representing 1.8 million), Mary Landrieus (representing 4.8 million), and Joe Liebermans (representing 3.5 million) will easily thwart the will of members representing twice, three times, and even eight times as many people.

We are stuck with the Senate, just as we are stuck with the Electoral College. But the filibuster rule is something that should be eliminated yesterday.

luv u,

jp

Looks like the bottom is falling out of the legislative health insurance reform effort. Oh, there may be a bill, but the political legs are getting very wobbly. All of the compromises and fall-backs the left has agreed to over the past year have been painted as too radical for the public at large, even though the public at large broadly supports elements like the “public option” and expansion of Medicare to people under 65. In other words, the majority of people in the United States think there should be some kind of government provided health insurance available to everyone, not just retirees, veterans, and people in the United States Congress… but Joe Lieberman and 40 G.O.P. senators don’t want it, so it’s not going to happen. Small wonder that more recent polling by one of the major networks and the Wall Street Journal shows a majority now against the health care legislation under consideration in the Senate. Someone should poll Lieberman and make sure that he’s mostly happy now, since that’s all that seems to matter.

The interesting part is that, in announcing the poll results, the newscasters don’t seem to make that connection. We are presented with evidence of shifting public opinion but no real insight on why the shift has taken place. Why should this news warm the cockles of conservatives’ hearts? The public is unhappy with the legislation that they have been instrumental in bringing about. They have consistently demagogued on this issue from the very beginning. And with their titular ally Joe Lieberman – a man who avidly supported their presidential ticket last year and addressed their national convention, Zell Miller style – they have ensured that this legislation will be, at best, weak-as-dishwater reform, and, at worst, a sop to the insurance companies to the tune of millions of new customers and a federal license to print money, in essence. That is something people clearly don’t want. And that makes the conservatives happy. (In fact, it’s very similar to the type of “reform” McCain proposed during the campaign and what Romney implemented in Massachusetts.) They see it as Obama’s failure, and that to them means success.

Okay, so… look at the poll again. Something like 55% of those surveyed say the country is going in the “wrong direction.” What the hell does that mean? Wasn’t it going in the wrong direction last year as well, under Bush? Are we to assume that this means that a majority wants to elect Republicans, the folks who work tirelessly for the failure of the kind of health reform most people support (e.g. single payer, public option, Medicare expansion)? If this is like most political polls, it’s just a simple question – is the country moving in the right direction: yes, no, undecided. It seems as though, as with support for the war, there is an expectation on the part of those being polled that all one needs to do is vote every two years, sit back, fold your arms, and wait for the change to come in the mail. A portion of that is, I would guess, a function of how disconnected most  respondents feel with the policy…. Yeah, war is bad, but I don’t have to fight it, so go for it. Yeah, being grievously ill without health coverage is bad, but it probably won’t happen to me, so leave everything the way it is.

Part of it, though, almost has to be growing cynicism with a political system that seems incapable of translating the will of the electorate into solid, progressive policy.

luv u,

jp

Obama does Oslo this week. There’s been a lot of commentary on this, including my own, so I won’t add much at this point. Suffice to say, he’s collecting the award the Norwegian Nobel committee gave the people of the United States for electing someone who isn’t totally bug-fuck nuts and for putting the enormous American imperial locomotive back onto its tracks. Yeah, it’s still belching toxic smoke and running people over, but it’s doing it along a predictable line, pulling a bunch of lesser cars behind it, and that makes people a lot more comfortable. Let’s face it – Dubya thought the train was a go-cart. He drove it on the grass, into the middle of the street, through people’s living rooms, etc., to the point where no one wanted to hitch-up their boxcar anymore (except our trusty coal-car Britain and, I don’t know, Palau). Now that choo-choo Charlie has chugged his scrawny ass back to Texas, everybody wants back onto the empire gravy train. So… give the guy a medal. Civilization is saved!

Such as it is, anyway. We’ve got an administration that’s committed to pouring more soldiers and resources into Afghanistan (while slowly drawing them out of Iraq), even though it seems clear that, in a variety of ways, we are funding the very forces we seek to defeat. We’ve got a justice department that is refusing to hold domestic war criminals (or “terrorists,” if you prefer) accountable for their actions, providing legal cover for the likes of John Yoo, one of the primary genius theorists behind the Bush administration’s decision to implement its systematic policy of detainee abuse and torture. We’ve got a state department that has apparently reconciled itself with the ratification of the Honduran coup regime, accepting the results of a coup-administered “election” and allowing the establishment of a dangerous precedent for Latin American military overthrows, 2010-style. And we have a military procurement and contracting system that continues to run amok, allocating billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars for questionable weapons systems, well-connected logistics firms, and gun-for-hire mercenary forces like Blackwater that set new standards for unaccountable criminality.

I think it was Jonathan Turley who pointed out the painful irony of Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel at this time, when his justice department has just filed an amicus curiae brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to drop charges against Yoo. They are supporting the Bush contention that providing good faith and frank advice to the President should not make someone liable to even civil litigation. This is pretty much the same defense used by Nazi jurists and advisors before the Nuremberg tribunal. You are, in effect, defending the logic of war criminals, Mr. President. Let’s talk about it when you get back from Oslo. (No, really… we should talk. Put the medal away first.)

What the hell is this, opposite week? C’mon, Barry. You know better… or you ought to, anyway.

luv u,

jp

Nice speech, Mr. President.

Now explain to me why, when committing 30,000 more Americans to this endless debacle in Afghanistan, you aren’t asking those of us who are not in the military to make some real sacrifices. You invoked the noble acts of some of your predecessors, but they were not reluctant to ask for the able-bodied to serve (even if many had “other priorities”) or the relatively well-heeled to pay more taxes. Why are you so reluctant? Don’t feel as though I’m singling you out. I could, of course, ask this question of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and the sainted Ronald Reagan with equal justice. The difference, I believe, is that you are probably brighter and more worldly than any of them. I know what their excuses would have been. What is yours?

Explain, also, why it is so much more urgent to keep Al Qaeda, violent extremists, the Taliban, etc., from taking hold in Afghanistan than in, say, Jordan or Syria, where literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees are living in squalor, driven from homes they will likely never see again. You and your advisors seem eager to draw dubious lessons from Bush’s “surge” in Iraq, but not so eager to consider the broader implications of massive land army invasions of foreign lands and the misery they generate. If we’re going to pour resources into preventing extremism in the Muslim world, it might be a good idea to start where we’ve made the biggest mess and spend some serious cash on helping those people whose world we turned inside-out (admittedly prior to your tenure) instead of investing in similar mayhem directed at others. Remember – Al Qaeda is more than just a group; it’s a brand, and one that can easily be emulated by disaffected and disenfranchised people anywhere.

You have said that this will not be an “open-ended commitment” to defending the Afghan government. That’s all well and good, but how do we determine when, in the cold light of failure, it is time to leave? Indeed, we do not even seem to be aware of how self-defeating our efforts in Afghanistan truly are. An article by Aram Roston in The Nation described how our practice of contracting out logistical operations is providing a substantial revenue stream for the Taliban. For safe passage through hostile territory, contractors are paying protection money, in essence, to the insurgents. Roston writes:

US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents. 

Now, I’m not a Pentagon analyst, but last time I looked, the Taliban was not a resource-intensive organization like the U.S. military. “Hundreds of millions of dollars” is likely still a lot of money in their world of warcraft. If the claims of these U.S. military officials are even partly true, it sounds to me like we may be underwriting something close to the total cost of Mullah Omar’s war effort. Is your plan going to address this? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to deny them those funds, rather than pour more lives and money into this rathole?

Isn’t this an enormous mistake, Mr. President? Just askin’.

luv u,

jp

Hey, what can I tell you? For a few days, it almost smelled like Obama would resist the call to send tens of thousands more U.S. troops into the hell-hole that is Afghanistan. That cloud of wispy optimism has surely passed, and while the announcement, as of this writing, has not yet been made, it’s clear that something like 30,000 to 35,000 more American bodies will be placed between the religious fanatics, drug smugglers, blood-stained warlords, and underworld entrepreneurs that dominate both sides of the Afghan struggle. To what end? Well, we’ve been promised that Obama will explain his strategy in a nationally-televised address this coming week. My guess is that it will be somewhat reminiscent of Bush Jr.’s address announcing the surge in Iraq – a change of strategy concentrating on the fundamentals of securing and holding territory, investing more dollars in reconstruction, and promoting regional cooperation. Bush’s speech was in the wake of the major disaster that his team had created in Iraq, prompting the U.S. institutional foreign policy establishment to, in essence, reassert itself and save the empire. In Obama’s case, concern for the empire is at the very center of his administration, and the burden of rescuing it will continue to be consigned to our “all-volunteer” military force. Whatever the stated strategy may turn out to be, that is the underlying motivation.

One would hope that rooting out corruption will not be offered up as a goal. I think, after eight years of this war, we are at least owed a little honesty. Corruption is the platform for the Afghan government; it cannot stand without it. Karzai and company are reliant on many of the same characters that ran the country into the ground following the Soviet departure; a patchwork of petty kings profiting on the immiseration of their countrymen and women (and particularly women). Much has been said about how much better the current government is than the Taliban. What doesn’t get mentioned is that the Taliban was a step up from what preceded it; and that what preceded it was bankrolled by us for more than ten years. The Taliban itself is made up of people who benefited from the billions we spent on training the mujahedeen during the 1980s. Just as during that period, it is clear that we are in Afghanistan for reasons that have very little to do with the Afghans themselves. The stated goal is to keep that country from becoming a haven for Al Qaeda and other similar organizations that attack western targets. It seems to me that an important part of that mission is not making thousands of new enemies every month we operate in that region.

Some might think that ending this conflict would be political suicide for any president. That may be so – it’s hard to say for certain, since the country seems divided pretty evenly on the topic. It’s never been a comfortable thing to do what’s right. If stopping these wars cost Obama his job, I would hope he would consider it well worth the cost – I can think of worse things to be remembered for… like driving us into another decade of this pointless death and destruction. But to ignore the political calculus of overseas military entanglements is to ignore history. Absent vigorous anti-war activism right here at home – to the tune of many, many thousands in the streets – all of the prevailing political winds will blow Obama toward increasing deployments of military resources to the Afghan “trap”, as Bin Laden called it. As I’ve said in this blog before (probably too many times), this is one of the perils of empire: our foreign policy is supported by a professionalized foreign legion made up of volunteers and mercenaries (or, if you prefer, “contractors”) and floated by borrowed capital, thereby insulating the vast majority of our population from the actual costs of war.  

If this were still a democracy, as opposed to an empire, we would be right back where we were in 1964-65: on the cusp of a conscription-fueled popular revolt against an unjust war. As it is, we’re… well… next to nowhere.

luv u,

jp