Politics’ regular season has begun once again. We’ve been watching the training camp stuff all summer, and now it’s time to play for the money, I guess. I’m not great with sports analogies, so that’s as far as I’ll go. No, wait – I lied… President Obama had the opening pitch on Wednesday night (okay, that’s really it) and I’d say he did a pretty decent job of explaining what it is he wants to do. It doesn’t exactly comport with what I think needs to happen to bring the United States to a place where we behave like a civilized modern industrial nation, but it’s a bit clearer than it’s been up to now. While my inclination is to support this – particularly if it includes the so-called “public option” – I am a bit concerned about what this will mean for people who have no coverage at all, or just the sort of lousy coverage I used to carry years ago. I’d like to hear more about that interim period during which the uninsured receive “basic” health insurance. That seems a bit problematic, to say the least, in that it sounds like it would insure people who are more prone to illness (i.e. poor families) in the least effective and most expensive way available.

I’m here to tell you, I have had catastrophic policies before. I have also had standard individual indemnity policies. They pay for nothing. As long as you are healthy and lucky enough to remain out of the hospital, you will see not one dime out of these plans. They have enormous deductibles and don’t pay for any preventive care. From the insurer’s standpoint, that’s a great deal, if the insured doesn’t get badly ill. But if you end up in the hospital, they’re on the hook for some major medical costs – that’s why they tend to cap your benefits… to ensure that you don’t get too expensive in the throes of your misfortune. My first plan ever was a Mutual Of Omaha policy (actually, several policies) that worked like this – if you had a partially reimbursable expense (I never actually did, but it was theoretically possible), you pay for the care and they would send you a check…. eventually… maybe. It was kind of iffy, to say the least, and definitely set up to keep the money flowing in one direction – from you to Omaha.

The funny thing was, they were in the process of discontinuing this class of policy, presumably because it was not profitable. I’m not surprised, frankly. Any policy that encourages you to ignore your illnesses for as long as possible, to not receive any diagnostic care or testing, to avoid contact with health professionals who might actually help steer you in a positive direction (i.e. eat better, don’t smoke, etc.), is not going to have particularly good outcomes. People are going to get badly sick, discover illnesses at later stages (when treatment tends to be most expensive), and ultimately cost more than those who receive strong preventive care. That, I think, is one of the traps the Obama health plan might fall into – offering minimal care to people who can’t afford better, even though that approach eventually costs more (and creates greater misery in the process). What the hell, we are the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth. It’s a scandal that almost 50 million people have no health coverage. We need to make certain people get the right kind of care, because it’s the right thing to do. Oh, and it will save money besides.

So, hey… here’s an avid single-payer advocate saying, let’s encourage our legislators and our president to pass a bill that will help those most in need. Let’s put that stake in the ground – then we can start working on putting a stake through the heart of this ludicrous privatized health insurance scam we call a “system”.

luv u,

jp

I’ve heard reports today (Thursday) that the Obama administration is looking very seriously at pitching the “public option” component of their health care plan over the side, possibly to gain a couple of (or, more likely, just one) Republican vote(s) in the Senate – votes that would probably be superfluous without the public option anyway. At this moment, I’m hoping this was just a trial balloon put up by an increasingly pusillanimous White House, but my common sense tells me that’s not the case. The public plan was the ten-day-old soup bone tossed to the left in exchange for their acquiescence to the administration’s decision not to even discuss adopting a single payer system; so, of course, the triangulators we’ve put in charge of our government consider this expendable, just as they consider progressives a block of votes they can take for granted. Stupid move, if true. The public option is all that’s left of meaningful health insurance reform. Without that, we might as well not bother. The balance of the legislation will essentially require everyone to buy private insurance, with subsidies for those who cannot afford it, and that mandate would only benefit big fat private insurers. In fact, it would set things up so that whether the legislation passes or not, they would stand to win.

It doesn’t take a genius to see what this entire debate is about. It’s really just our national political parties bending heaven and earth to protect the profits of private health insurance companies, big pharma, and big private health care providers like Columbia/HCA. From their point of view, the current system works perfectly in that it accomplishes what it is designed to do – make them a lot of money. Over the last couple of years, as this system has progressively failed more and more millions of people, the health business magnates recognized a growing tide of public opinion in favor of reform and have acted swiftly to a.) co-opt it through pre-emptive agreements with the new administration, b.) water down any emerging proposals from congress, and  c.) work to kill through lobbying and astroturf-style phony activism whatever compromised plan ultimately comes out of committee. And, of course, since so many of the players in both the executive and legislative branches partly owe their tenures to fat contributions from the health care industry, this is turning out to be a fairly effective strategy.

No one should expect it to be easy to prevail against extremely entrenched institutional interests such as these. Even so, it shouldn’t be hard to explain to people the basic principles of why a national health insurance plan would tend not only provide better coverage, but actually save money… and lots of it. This is often framed as an effort to “socialize” the health care industry by having the government – and the taxpayers – pay to cover the uninsured, who are more often than not portrayed as a.) lazy, b.) irresponsible, and/or 3.) selfish – a kind of “hand out”, if you will. Here’s the part that, frankly, makes us look dumb: the government (and taxpayers) already insure the most expensive people in the country to insure, namely the elderly (Medicare) and the poor (Medicaid, S-CHIP). Extending, say, Medicare to cover everyone, including young, healthy workers, would make the system better able to pay for itself and provide better care. How good is Medicare, really? Ask mom or grandma… if she’s not too scared to talk to you because Glen Beck told her you may be a socialist.

Seriously, we’ve got elements of socialism right now, like the national highway system, Medicare, and Social Security. Chances are, if we add something similar to that short list, it may well prove as popular as these programs are.

luv u,

jp

I’ll admit to being of an age that enables my most vivid memories of Senator Edward Kennedy to be those of his 1980 presidential campaign. I suppose that is because presidential politics tends to focus the mind, particularly during times of upheaval and uncertainty, which 1980 most certainly was. My late brother Mark, who passed away late that same year, took a keen interest in the campaign – he’d been a strong Kennedy supporter from his youngest days and particularly so with Robert Kennedy’s 1968 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mark, Matt (my Big Green compatriot) and I supported the younger Kennedy against Carter for many of the same reasons I have had for backing  the more left-leaning candidates in that party since working on the McGovern campaign as a pre-teenager. But there was also that Kennedy symbolism, the notion that they represented in the minds of so many a kind of liberal ideal and inside-the-system activism strong enough to attract people who might otherwise take their place on the barricades. As far to the left as we were, we could always manage to give a Kennedy the benefit of the doubt.

Ah, the idealism of youth. Lord knows many times that faith was unwarranted. JFK was, from my personal political vantage point, a marginal president at best, and a positive disaster with respect to many of the major issues of his day. A committed cold warrior, he implemented policies that devastated South Vietnam and kept much of Latin America under the jackboot of military dictatorship, while feeding the military-industrial monster at home. His and McNamara’s policy on Vietnam was particularly craven, setting that nation up for the even greater disaster that was to come under Johnson. That’s Jack. Robert was, in some ways, a more committed cold warrior in the early days. He did seem to evolve with the decade of the sixties, becoming more a voice for civil rights and against the Indochinese war his brother helped ignite. Still, his position on the war was hardly one of pacifism, particularly in the crucial period between 1965 and 1967. Review a few of his speeches, like the one he made at St. Lawrence University in 1966, and you’ll see what I mean.  

On balance, I think Ted made the greatest contribution. He ended up embodying to a certain extent the war skepticism many associated, somewhat inaccurately, with his brothers. I’m thinking particularly of Ted’s vocal opposition to the Iraq war – actually, both Iraq wars – which put him ahead of nearly every political figure who took the podium to eulogize him at his memorial celebration in Boston’s JFK Library. In that way, and in a number of different ways over the course of his 47 years in the Senate, he amassed a record of accomplishment that makes him the head of his family, in my book. Yes, it’s a flawed legacy, one that reflects positions with which I disagree, but he took that Kennedy myth and made it into something tangible. That in itself is worth remembering. Sadly, his best efforts and ours thus far have not been sufficient to save the lives of the more than forty American service people who’ve died in Afghanistan this month alone. 

Tell you what – let’s remember him by ending these stupid wars… like, yesterday.

luv u,

jp

I saw in our local newspaper this week that a bridge will be named for one of the guys from this area who was killed in Iraq. Understandable gesture, to be sure, and I hope it brings some measure of solace to his family. If it does, they should dedicate a bridge to every one of the more than 4,300 sacrificed needlessly in that seemingly endless war. I doubt we have enough bridges to name for all the Iraqis who’ve died as a result of the 2003 invasion. (I don’t know – are there a million bridges in America?) Whenever I hear about these dedications, monuments, memorials to war dead, I can’t help but think of that eulogy Marc Antony delivered in Julius Caesar: “I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him.”  We always hear about how they died “protecting our freedoms,” when really they died because of our ignorance as a nation and our inability to stop this travesty from happening.

This has nothing to do with how soldiers and their families feel about the war and how it has affected them. They are the only ones at war in this country right now – the rest of us are living in peacetime. And when our political leaders climb over one another to ascribing a noble cause to the crime that is the Iraq war, they are merely praising themselves at the expense of the fallen. The war that they started, on our behalf, is still ruining lives day after day, month after month, year after bloody year. Seems like I’ve been seeing that succession of faces at the end of the PBS News Hour each week for as long as I’ve been alive, each one making me feel more ashamed of my failure to have prevented this grievous loss. We should all feel that shame, every one of us who is not in jeopardy of being deployed, who merely sees this war as a tiresome cable show that has gone on a bit too long. And like Antony, we should use our outrage to seek justice and accountability – but most importantly, an end to the killing.

Will this happen in America? I’m growing more than a bit pessimistic. The vast, vast majority of us are too separated from the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan. At most, we wag a sign in the air outside our congressman’s office, or we shake our head at the news, but without the prospect of conscription threatening ourselves and/or our children, there will be no fire in the belly. That is something our political class and our military have long since worked out. They’ve long since adopted the imperial formula for endless war – a foreign legion made up of volunteers, supplemented by mercenaries. And they name bridges after those sacrificed on the alter of our stupidity. So perhaps we need a different kind of monument, one dedicated to those persistent killers that live within us: ignorance and apathy. That’s it – dedicate a bridge to our own foolishness. Or chisel Dubya’s face into Rushmore so that we’ll remember who talked us into this travesty. Anything to memorialize the historic, disastrous mistake we’ve made, so that there’s some small chance we won’t repeat it.

Then again, there’s still the war to remind us.

luv u,

jp

Any of you ever have an elderly parent enter the hospital? How about spending time in a hospital yourself? Well, I’ve had that experience (as millions have) and one of the first things you do is fill out paperwork designating a health care proxy, establishing medical directives (i.e. resuscitate or not), and so on. Basically routine stuff that the hospital needs to know when a loved one is receiving care and may not be able to speak for him/her self at a crucial juncture. Pretty scary, eh? What…. aren’t you scared of that? Because that’s what Sara Palin (a.k.a. the Wassila brain trust), John Boehner (pronounced “boner”), Chuck Grassley (a.k.a. his own grandmother), Newt Gingrich (a.k.a. Captain Yesteryear) and others are trying to make you afraid of: a routine consultation that proposed health care legislation might end up providing coverage for. Not some new federal power to cull the herd. Just funding for the kind of meeting people have with their doctors all the freaking time. Be afraid!

The fact is, your grandma need fear Obama only if she lives in Afghanistan, or maybe Iraq. The only “death panel” we’ve got is the gaggle of advisors who keep these wars going year after year. Just this morning NPR reported on the expanding war in “strategic” Helmand Province, leading with reports of the many pains taken to avoid civilian casualties, including a British air strike called off at the last minute to spare civilians, then proceeding into an interview with a Major General Michael Flynn that talks about a new “focus” on the population, rather than the enemy – looking to understand what they want… after nearly eight years of the U.S. war.  Unaddressed in that interview was the issue of what happens if the people of Afghanistan want something other than what U.S. policymakers want, such as, get your military the hell out of my country. Might have been a good question to ask the general, inasmuch as he and his colleagues are taking such pains to determine what’s in the hearts and minds of the people that are suffering as a result of this blinkered policy.

When I see the air time allotted to the immensely ill-informed protesters at various Congressional town hall meetings, I feel grateful that we live in a nation that allows a voice to dissent… until I recall that, in the run-up to both the Afghan and the Iraq wars, very very few voices of articulate dissent were allowed on the airwaves, and almost as few have been heard from since… even though, in the case of Iraq particularly, the claims of the anti-war movement have been borne out to an extent that no one would have thought possible six years ago.  Seems that only those dissenters who are aligned with major corporate interests can expect to be heard from loudly and clearly. Not that they seem all that appreciative. Hell, here they are at a public forum that allows private citizens to comment, participate, and even debate political leaders, and they act as though they’re being squelched, even though they are, in fact, squelching the opinions of those who disagree with them.

It almost seems like that’s the whole point. Hmmmmm….

luv u,

jp

I haven’t been what you might call a determined dissident over my decades as an adult. Just an occasional participant at rallies, protest marches, etc. There are very many in my own small community who have given far more to the causes they believe in, and I respect them for it. Just as I respect pacifism, as someone who (while no fan of violence) is not a committed pacifist. It does my heart good to see those large numbers of protesters in the streets in Iran. This is a huge moment for them, one that many of the younger people among them, particularly, will never forget. Though the mainstream political and media pundits would probably disparage this connection, it’s something like the massive anti-war actions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which of course our popular culture has shrunken down to something akin to a flower-power postage stamp.  (Just as it has reduced the civil rights movement to Martin King saying “I have a dream.”)

I know that the reason why we see so much of the Iranian movement is because of the fact that Iran is an official enemy and anything that places that government in a bad light is officially a “good thing”. That is also why very little is said about the politics of the Iranian dissidents. (Irony alert: if they had decisively won the election, they would be demonized right now for their positions on Israel/Palestine, U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, and so on.) This doesn’t take anything away from them, but it does say a lot about our political culture. Organized dissent always encounters very strong resistance in this country when it stands against deeply entrenched institutional interests like the foreign policy establishment, the military-industrial-congressional complex (Ike’s original formulation of that nexus), or major industrial groupings, such as financial services, health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, etc. Vietnam War protests, for instance, were strongly condemned from the very beginning, and really only achieved critical mass towards the end of the sixties and the early seventies.

So, what about the dissenting voices heard at town hall meetings across America this summer? Well, David Brooks seems to equate them and their various conspiracy theories (e.g. Obama is going to force people to accept “death counseling” – be afraid!) with the anti-Iraq war movement that pegged the drive towards war largely on the influence of neoconservatives formerly associated with the Project for a New American Century, which, in fact, led the drive for war and regime change in Iraq starting in the Clinton Administration.  Now, I’d say that is a little bit too fact-based to qualify as a conspiracy theory on the order of, say, Obama’s mandatory death counseling. The fact that the neoconservatives associated with PNAC were not the only ones in favor of the Iraq war doesn’t exactly absolve them of all responsibility. But the flaw in Brook’s comparison goes deeper than that. The pre-emptive movement against the War in Iraq was a massive, organic, global phenomenon that grew in the near-total absence of any articulate anti-war opinion in the mainstream media during 2001-2003. These crackhead gatherings at town hall meetings (including one in my own town led by some idiot from Rome who later went on the even more profoundly idiotic Glen Beck’s show) are not anything like a mass movement organized around a coherent goal. They’re just disparate groups of disgruntled conservatives shouting about having been out of power for six whole months.

That said, they’ve got every right to go to these public meetings. I just think people who support the idea of universal health coverage need to attend, as well… and be vocal. And articulate. ‘Nuff said.

luv u,

jp

You’ve been reading my extended blog rants for some time, perhaps. Well… maybe a few of you. Here’s a slight departure. Instead of blathering on about one issue, I’m going to just briefly rant about two or three things. (Yeah, no planning ahead here – let’s just see how far I get).

Beer at the ‘House. Like you, I saw the photo of the president and vice president sitting down with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley. Looked friendly enough, as intended. For me, though, it doesn’t erase that disturbing image of Gates being led out of his house in handcuffs – a man who walks with a freaking cane – in obvious distress. Whoever made the decision to subject Harvard’s Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute to this level of humiliation is, well, let’s say not a nice man. I don’t care what Gates said to the police in his own home. If he didn’t wave a gun at them or try to assault them in some way, there was no reason to arrest him. They were responding to a non-existent crime. They could have just left the scene. They chose otherwise.

Cash for Lunkheads. That the so-called “Cash for Clunkers” program has proven highly popular is not surprising. What the hell – $4,500 towards a new car? Pass the freaking potatoes! It’s a kind of stimulus, and as such is a good thing, but  as someone who drives a 15 year old car that gets in excess of 20-25 miles to the gallon, I feel a bit frosted by the whole thing. I mean, we made a relatively sober decision to buy an economical car 15 years ago, while other folks (plenty of them) bought ludicrous gas guzzlers that helped drive the price of gas through the roof (through increased consumption), not to mention contributed mightily to environmental degradation. So now the gas-hog drivers get a $4,500 check towards a new ride, while I get bupkis (except further incentive to squeeze another year out of my wreck). Isn’t this kind of rewarding stupidity and selfishness? Again – I think they should extend the program, and I see the point of it. But w.t.f., you feds – share the love a little bit. Shouldn’t folks who bought more modest vehicles – who are just as crunched as any suburban truck-drivers –  get some help too?

Bank Holes. The “too big to fail” banks are back in the business of handing out six and seven-figure bonuses to their executives, even after having been put on life support by the U.S. government (i.e. you and me). This is just a thumb in the eye, isn’t it? It’s like they’re saying, “Well… we gambled like a sailor on acid, almost brought the entire financial system down, then got billions from you losers, and we’re still on top. Suck it up!” Meanwhile, they are all inventing new ways to screw their customers until the provisions of the credit consumer protection bill kick in, like increasing minimum payments (i.e. accelerating payment schedules on low-interest debt), raising interest rates, and so on. What to do about this? Good question. How about revoking their TARP aid? How about closing the Federal Reserve lending window (through which they’ve gotten even greater infusions of cash)? How about nationalizing the fuckers? Summers? Geithner?

All right… that’s all I’ve got.

luv u,

jp

While most of the media focuses on health reform efforts in Washington, there’s a lot going on in the area of global empire maintenance, now the responsibility of Mssr. Barack H. Obama, Esq.  There are, of course, the ongoing wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan, with much of the attention focused on the U.S. soldier captured by an Afghan Taliban group. I did hear other news of the Afghan conflict this week – the Physicians for Human Rights call for a formal investigation into the 2002 Dasht-e-Leili massacre perpetrated by Afghan warlord (and soon to be military chief) General Dostum. This killing of hundreds – probably more than a thousand – Afghan prisoners of war was reported on shortly after it took place. The Bush defense department actively squelched any inquiry, even though FBI agents sent to Guantanamo had collected testimony from survivors of the massacre and felt an investigation into a possible U.S. role may have been warranted. Technically, as the occupying power, we would be considered responsible anyway, but given the circumstances it’s hard to imagine some of our forces weren’t at least aware of this war crime.  

Just one bloody chapter in a nearly eight-year-old war that shows no sign of letting up. Our military people keep marching two-by-two into oblivion, just as they have in Iraq for the past six years, and we as a society seem unwilling and/or unable to put a stop to it.  What exactly is the point, here? If we’re propping up a government that gives a major post to a mass murderer like Dostum, how the hell is that different from having the Taliban run the joint? The ever-increasing military presence, the pilotless drone strikes, the bombings… all of this is hardening the populace’s distrust for their American occupiers and setting off a chain reaction of violence that threatens neighboring Pakistan, as well. I have to think Obama knows the risks, and yet we continue. Before we had an arrogant imbecile in control – what’s our excuse now?

I wish that were all, but it isn’t. We’ve got Hillary Clinton dispatched to Asia, speaking of the dangers of purported North Korean nuclear proliferation to Myanmar (Burma), then hopping over to India to celebrate the nuclear proliferation deal that George W. Bush signed with that nation. Double standard? Well, we already had that going for us, obsessing over a possible Iranian bomb while refusing to officially acknowledge the presence of hundreds of Israeli nukes (a largely useless arsenal that will continue to prompt nuclear proliferation efforts in the Middle East). She and the administration have been making relatively encouraging noises on the Honduran coup, calling for the return of President Zelaya, but it seems to be having little effect. Unfortunately, the Honduran military is an institution designed not for national defense, but for “internal security” (i.e. keeping the peasants and workers in line), much like the many other militaries we helped foster in that region. Once you teach the little dog to bite, he may continue to do it, even if doggy daddy no longer wants him to.

If the administration is going to err, it should err on the side of justice. In the case of Honduras, frankly, we owe them. They are struggling with the military straitjacket we put them in decades ago. Let’s help them undo the last buckles.

luv u,

jp

How have you been feeling lately? Good, I hope… because if you’ve been ill, you’re probably discovering how massively expensive it is to get treatment, even if you have health insurance. In America, it really takes a major illness to know whether or not you have what could be termed adequate coverage (and if you’re one of the 47 million who have no insurance at all, the question doesn’t even arise). But the utter failure of this system shows up in the little details as well. Not to bore you with my personal foibles, but for the last five or so years I’ve had dental insurance… which means, in my case, if I have any substantial work done – crowns, for instance – I can expect to pay $1,000 out of pocket instead of $1,600 (assuming it happens no more than once a year). Don’t know about you, but that grand is a little hard to put my hands on, so I tend to throw it on the old credit card and whittle it down month by month. That, in miniature, is one illustration of how people can get into serious financial trouble simply by being unfortunate enough to get sick or injured.  

Okay, I’m probably considered a bad example of what’s wrong with this system. But sometimes bad examples like me can illuminate the problem as much as the good ones do. I’ve got a decent job, good health insurance, okay dental, and generally good health thus far. Not so very long ago, though, I had one of those no-frills policies that politicians (who enjoy superior government-supplied coverage) often recommend for us ordinary folk. And it’s real easy with a plan like that to end up thousands in the hole if just a couple of things go wrong at the same time. At one point, a trip to the doctor and some blood work ran me $500. My plan picked up $0. (That’s right: $0. Never saw a dime out of them.) With a plan like that, even relatively routine preventive care kicks the shit out of you financially. I don’t even want to contemplate what a prolonged hospital stay would do. 

This is the magic of the marketplace. As a prole, I was supposed to be pumping money into the health insurance company at that point, not pulling money out. I know I’ve mentioned this before in these pages, but it’s worth saying again – our mostly-privatized health care system is an example of “lemon socialism”; privatize the profitable part of a business and socialize the costly part. The government provides coverage for the elderly, the poor, the infirm, etc. … all of the folks who require more care. That leaves the rest of us to the marketplace, where these massive private health insurance companies can decide who to cover, whose bills to pay, etc. Young and middle aged workers tend to pay in more than they take out of health insurance – by leaving them out of the government system, we create a situation where that system will inevitably run massive deficits over time.  If we all participated in the same system, the healthy would compensate for the chronically ill, the elderly, etc. That’s the way it works in other industrialized countries – it could work here.

Forget  “Harry and Louise”. I hate to sound like a tin-pot nationalist, but this is America. If other nations can do it, so the hell can we.

luv u,

jp

Obama’s surge strategy is beginning to take shape, and it isn’t encouraging for those of us who question this ongoing occupation (and who have questioned the war since the beginning). The Times of London quotes a U.S. commander as describing this action in terms of a “D-Day Moment”, but in the context of a conflict that has lasted nearly twice as long as America’s part in World War II, this would seem in relative terms more like a second. Also, rather than attacking the flank of the most powerful military force in the world, we are invading a battered, impoverished region of one of the planet’s most miserable nations – a place where people struggle to subsist, and where large-scale conflict will likely result in a major displacement of the population, perhaps approaching the scale of what is now occurring across the border in Pakistan’s tribal departments.

I guess it’s up to all of us to ask, how much more of this? We’ve been in Afghanistan for almost eight years, and we are further from the place we’d said we were going than when we started. Setting aside the basic illegitimacy of our invasion, the simple fact that we’ve been there so long with neither a clear mission nor an end point in sight would be enough to sour the public’s taste for this imperial project. Unfortunately, with the change of administration, it’s as though someone has pushed the reset button. The Bush team fucked it up, the argument goes, so Obama needs to set things straight. As the president said, we took our eye off the “ball” by invading Iraq – thus the crime of invading Iraq becomes a rationale for compounding the crime of invading Afghanistan. We’re acting like a serial killer, one driven on by his/her own twisted logic. Someone grab a bit stick.  (Make mine wintergreen.)

All right, I know… I’ve gotten on my soap box about this before, but the reason why these lousy, pointless wars have so much staying power is that there is NO CONSCRIPTION and NO WAR TAX LEVIES. Our system has corrected for this oversight, which proved the undoing of our last major imperial enterprise – the Indochina wars. By eliminating these two age-old institutional pillars of warfare, we have effectively disconnected the bulk of our population from the costs of warfare. Fueled by borrowed treasure and the victims of economic misfortune, our wars have become self-perpetuating. Afghanistan and Iraq are going to be a great deal harder to stop than was Vietnam (and it was hard to stop the Vietnam war, with the end coming far too late for the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos). This flurry of recent fighting is just another flare up in what has proven a far longer, more difficult campaign than anyone thought going in.  The real D-Day question is, when will our V-E day arrive?

Here’s another question: Will anyone notice that it’s over, other than the poor fuckers who have to fight it?

luv u,

jp