America - Love it or leave it

The front window of my employer's shop sports a large banner with some sort of avian device and the slogan "America - love it or leave it." As my partner and I are both conspicuously under-employed and, since upstate, NY has an unemployment rate somewhat above the ever-climbing national average, I must needs grit my teeth, grin and bear it each day as I pass this low-brow piece of political philosophy on my way into or out of the office.

Something about the design of the banner reminds me uncomfortably of early Nazi displays. As I am ignorant of art and its styles, I can't put my finger on what it is, but , in the same way that one can immediately recognize early Soviet poster art (which I adore actually) the love-it-or-leave-it banner seems connected to early (and sinister) Nazi stuff.

My first day of work was quite uncomfortable, because I wondered whether I'd be able to keep my mouth shut if my new boss exhorted me with what I imagined might be a litany of the superiorities of the Bush administration, the Iraq war, corporate control of the media, and how we live in the best of all possible worlds. This never materialized, thank heaven and my co-workers seem not to take the boss' (and his wife's) politcal views seriously. Not that the views aren't serious, but rather that no one in his right mind would waste a thought on such nonsense.

Still, eight months later, I continue to notice the banner every work day and to wonder if social progress is just an illusion, ie that things never really get any better -- at least not for long. As with a house that's just been lovingly restored, one is forced to confront the reality that it could become totally dilapidated again, given time and circumstances.

The reversal of social progress that began in earnest under the Reagan adminsitration shows no sign of having run its course today. And, as with a house whose dilapidations have gone too far to be repairable, perhaps American society has reached the point of no return.

And, at least with houses, people generally agree that a renovated house is better than a ruined one. I'm not at all sure that the American national attitude parallels this belief.

Candidates - how about laying off each other and talking about the issues instead

Here's a quick piece of advice for all the candidates in the 2008 US presidential race: Stop talking about each other and start talking about the issues. I realize this advice is not novel, but it doesn't seem to be getting followed by most of the candidates either, especially McCain and Clinton.

I think it is fair to say that, even the dumbest members of the American electorate (all 239 million, 789 thousand, 499 of them) would rather hear talk of substance from the candidates than the continuous niggling, nitpicking, and criticism of each other that seems to be dominating their speeches.

If the mechanics of such a procedural change are eluding the candidates, let me cover how to go about it in a few easy points:

1. If the media ask for your reaction to what so-and-so has just said about you, simply answer something like "I'm sorry he/she feels that way. Now let's talk about the economy..." Don't allow yourself to be baited.

2. Do not yourself criticise other candidates. Period. When your mouth is open in public, what needs to be coming out of it is substance about the issues and what you as president would do.

3. If the media keep pressing for you to join in a pointless personality contest, state that you refuse to do so and, if they will not let you discuss the issues, then terminate the conversation.

4. Refuse to go on TV or radio interview shows where you cannot speak about issues. If you must go on, for example, Bill O'Reilly's show, threaten to get up and walk out the minute he either talks over you or tries to get you into a fight over what someone has said about you.

If you follow this scheme, we the people might actually learn something about your suitability for the presidency.

Bartender, hit me again -- and make it a double!

The now nearly-continuous media fixation with the Federal Reserve's monthly interest rate-setting meeting and the unsolicited advice it nearly always offers that rates must be lowered (again) should be ringing alarm bells with anyone who has watched the current economic morass in development with their eyes open.

Rather than fix the system, the people in charge seem to be hoping that a continuing supply of cheap money injected into the economy will stave off a total collapse -- at least until someone else is in charge -- and they are probably right. However, it is likely that the longer the drunk continues, the worse the hangover will be.

The aversion to the R-word (ie regulation) by those in charge, coupled with undending pressure from the financial industry and the pundits who report on it to keep lowering interest rates -- at a time when other countries' central banks are doing the opposite -- is a frightening sign of a future economic disaster.

It's Economics 101 that you can't keep increasing the money supply forever without causing inflation; thus pressure to increase intrerest rates, not lower them, will be building up. It is also simple economics that a hugely expensive war, financed by borrowing, rather than by a tax increase, will result in pressure for higher and higher interest rates, because the people and governments who buy US debt obligations will demand higher and higher returns to keep buying them. (Especially, as now, when they have begun to realize that the phrase "backed by the full faith and credit" of the US government might not mean much anymore)

And these buyers of our debt are some of the most powerful nations on Earth -- China, just to mention one. If we were Argentina or Brazil, rather than who we are, the governments and bankers of our creditor countries would be pushing for economic concessions from us to force us to put our fiscal house in order. In the past, our government and bankers routinely drove debtor nations into near-penury and caused real hardship to their citizens by insisting on draconian repayment and economic restructuring arrangements on national debt obligations.

Suppose we in the USA were to be on the receiving end of such an arrangement? What would it be like to live in a country where nearly all government programs had to be eliminated and the bulk of our GDP siphoned off to pay foreign creditors -- possibly for a couple of decades? World wars have started over less.

High price of failure at Middle East Summit

I find myself using the word "fatuous" more and more often as I read nonsense like today's "analysis" by the Associated Press of the upcoming Middle East Peace Summit.

AP asserts that failure at the summit would have a high price because "radical Islamists could gain the upper hand in Palestinian areas and in an increasingly polarized Middle East."

What about the high price that the Palestinian people have been paying since the partitioning of Palestine created a homeland for the Jews on 77% of what had been Palestine? What about the price they have paid as refugee camps -- once thought to be a temporary solution on the way to Palestinian statehood -- have become a permanent way of life for more than 4 million Paestinians (as of a 2005 count)! Or the ongoing high price they have been paying as Israeli settlements squeeze Palestinian territory more and more.

The so-called peace process -- which is not a process and has nothing to do with peace -- has been and continues to be an attempt by the USA, Britain, and Israel to gain international legitimacy for the status quo in Palestine: namely that Israel will continue to expand and the Palestinian territories will continue to be a large concentration camp. The upcoming summit, coming as it does late in the lamentable presidency of George W. Bush, is clearly nothing more than a hopeless publicity stunt to boost Bush's reputation. Having done less than any president in my lifetime to address the Palestinian mess, Bush now wants to go down in history books as having had his own peace summit.

Perhaps he really thinks he can bring peace to the middle east -- that he'll be able to succeed where many better minds have failed -- because of his great success bringing democracy to Iraq.

Restoring Democracy

The fatuous calls for Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf to "restore democracy" are a good indicator of the intellectual level of the mainstream press. You either live in a democracy or you don't. If your civil liberties are dependent on the mood of one man (in this case Musharraf) then you do not have a democracy, even if his current mood is a pleasant one.

Musharraf may be talked into allowing TV stations back on the air, removing riot police from the streets, and allowing Benazir Bhutto to move about unhampered but everyone will quite justly wonder at what point their actions could cause him to "take away democracy" again.

In a real democracy, the rule of law and the stability of its institutions make it highly unlikely that one individual or even a small group could take over and suspend civil liberties in any situation other than a true national crisis. This, of course, is why thinking people in America are so worried about the erosion of our system of checks and balances by the constant onslaught of the Bush/Cheney war against democracy. Because that is how democracy is really taken away -- by weakening the laws that protect us from tyranny. Once those protections are gone, there will no longer be any democracy to take away or restore.

Immunity for mercenaries

I haven't posted to my blog for months because I've been so depressed by the atmosphere of selfrighteous stupidity in the USA that I didn't know where to start. Every day brings events to light that I get myself worked up about and that would be great topics for blogging, but I'm too worked up to write about them!

But yesterday's news that our benevolent government has extended immunity from prosecution to Blackwater employees in Iraq made me so angry that I simply had to write about it.

If anyone needed proof that the fiasco in Iraq was cooked up by and is directed by people with no integrity whatever, this decision should be enough to make it clear. The Bush administration is run by people who will say and do anything to cover up the ongoing disastrous consequences of the war in Iraq and of their involvement in the decision making that led up to and continues to direct the invasion. From the original lies told to justify the war, through Abu Graib, and now the Blackwater disaster, the people in Washington who have caused this mess have either refused to admit what a disaster it is or refused to take responsibility for it. And now, as the Blackwater mercenaries are on the brink of being brought to justice for alleged war crimes, they are immunized by our own government.

There is no precedent nor legal justification for this immunity. Our own volunteer military, whose members fight for their country for much lower wages than the Blackwater mercenaries receive, are not immune from prosection. In fact, the Uniform Code of Military Justice spells out procedures for investigation and punishment of just the kind of cimes Blackwater perople are being accused of. And, while it would be naive to claim that the military's process can't be subverted, at least it doesn't start out by granting immunity to the main defendants! And, in fact, military justice has a pretty good record of identifying and punishing evil-doers in time of war.

Contrast this with what is happening under our very noses with Blackwater -- a team of highly-paid mercenaries given carte blanche to shoot anyone who gets in their way. Sounds a lot like the death aquads that used to roam El Salvador and Guatemala randomly shooting civilians for fun and profit. But then, we supported the governments that paid those guys, so why should Iraq be any different?

The Myth of the Benefits of Leaving Iraq

As one of the people who was against the war from the moment it was proposed, I have watched the late awakening of American outrage with mixed feelings. On the one hand, more people saying the war is a mismanaged disaster is better than fewer people saying it. Yet, the reasons given by people who have finally begun to call for withdrawal are so fatuous:

"The Iraqis just aren't ready for democracy"

"We didn't send in enough troops to do it right"

"The Iraqis will have to stand on their own now - we have done enough"

--- and more along the same lines.

Largely absent -- save from people who were against the war from the start -- is a condemnation of the immoral and illegal US decision-making process that led us to invade a sovereign country and reduce it to civil war. This lack of forthrightness is particularly glaring among Democrat front-runners for the 2008 presidential election -- people who should know better and who should have been leaders in the debate against the war before it started.

Along with the lack of honesty about our role in making Iraq into a disaster area, there is a corresponding lack of realistic thinking about the benefits of a pullout. Received wisdom seems to be that we can just leave and that, whatever happens afterwards isn't our problem. A corollary to this piece of self deception is that the costs of the war will immediately evaporate as soon as our last soldier has left Iraq.

For those of us opposed to the war from the start (sorry to keep harping on this, but I think it is a key fact about the debate on the war), it was obvious and oft-stated that it would be much easier not to go to war in the first place than it would be to get out once we had invaded. It was pointed out by some that the war could drag on for years and cost hundreds of billions and even spill over into the next presidency. All of this prediction has or is in the process of coming true. Yet, here we are now: wishing we could just leave and pretend it never happened.

Here are some facts related to leaving Iraq that we had better start discussing honestly:

* The USA invaded a sovereign country for no good reason in violation of common decency and international law. There will need to be a reckoning for this. My preference would be for war crimes trials for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others. But, whether such trials ever come to pass or not, the American people as a whole owe the Iraqi people reparations to atone for our moral and legal transgressions.

* Before we invaded, Iraq was functional as a state - now it is not
* Before we invaded, there was working water, electricty, a national health system, schools, police, fire departments - these are now in shambles
* Before we invaded, sectarian violence was kept in check by Saddam Hussein's government - tens of thousands of Iraqis have now died and now no one can walk the streets in safety
* Before we invaded, Iraq had an oil exporting business -- this is now largely ruined

I am willing to accept that our military withdrawal will do more good than harm, since we are the hated occupier. But, once gone, we will need to provide massive aid to help clean up the disaster we have precipitated. (This assumes that the country will not totally implode after we go and that there will be any prospect of rebuilding it) To be effective, such aid will run into the hundreds of billions -- just as the military action has already done. In addition, the war's cost to date, which has been financed by deficit spending, will come due for middle class Americans in the form either of much higher taxes or possibly crippling interest rates and will most certainly be used as an excuse not to fund needed infrastructure upgrades here at home. Heaven only knows what the additional costs of reparations will do!