COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, May 07, 2012

The War Party is Us


Voting for War, Again and Again

Looking at recent history, you would conclude not that the Constitution allows the president to make war, but that it requires him to do so.


Ninety-six years ago, when President Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election, two notable things happened: 1) His campaign used the slogan "He kept us out of war," and 2) he won.
It has been a long time since any president could seek a second term while making that boast. Looking at recent history, you would conclude not that the Constitution allows the president to make war, but that it requires him to do so. Modern leaders don't brag about keeping us out of war but about getting us in.
Barack Obama reinforces that truth more than any president of our era. He owed his victory in the 2008 Democratic primaries partly to his record of opposing the invasion of Iraq—which Hillary Clinton and John Edwards supported.
"We've had enough of a misguided war in Iraq that never should have been fought—a war that needs to end," he said during the campaign. He proclaimed, "Now is the time to start bringing our troops out of Iraq—immediately." His opponents, Democratic and Republican, portrayed him as gullible and weak. But the voters were willing to elect someone who might be slightly averse to war.
Or, rather, someone they thought might be slightly averse. Either Obama's supporters misread him or he misled them. In any case, he turned out to be very receptive to war. Instead of immediately withdrawing our troops from Iraq, he adhered to the very same departure timetable established by President George W. Bush. Not until the end of 2011 did the last American forces make their exit.
In Afghanistan, Obama actually increased our presence, while setting a distant deadline (2014) for ending our combat role. He has greatly increased the pace of drone missile attacks on targets in Pakistan, and he has made them in Yemen and Somalia.
He launched an air war against the government of Libya, which had neither attacked nor threatened us. If this is an antiwar candidate, what would a pro-war candidate do?
So far, Obama has held his fire on Iran and Syria. But that brings to mind the scene in the movie "City Slickers" when Billy Crystal asks Jack Palance, "Killed anyone today?" Responds Palance, "The day ain't over yet.”

Still Republicans are determined to disparage him as a UN-loving, concession-granting, unilaterally disarming appeaser. At least since 1972, they have prospered by painting Democrats as soft on the threat of the day—from communism to militant Islam.
The narrative of this year's GOP campaign will follow the theme of Obama the Wimp. They compare him to Jimmy Carter, who suffered the humiliation of the Iran hostage crisis. Obama, they argue, is rushing out of Afghanistan, letting Iran pursue nuclear weapons, gutting the defense budget and "apologizing for America." He is simply not warlike enough.
The spectacle involving Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng gave Republicans the chance to shift attention away from the killing of Osama bin Laden to an alleged example of mortifying capitulation. Mitt Romney pronounced it "a day of shame for the Obama administration.”

Never mind that U.S. diplomats actually helped Chen reach the sanctuary of the American embassy in Beijing, and that they had no way to prevent Chinese agents from threatening retribution on his family. The particulars of the new controversy don't really matter. What matters is that the default response of American politicians to foreign disputes is breathing fire and belching smoke.
This is partly a cause and partly an effect of a reality that Americans generally manage to overlook. As University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer puts it, "We're addicted to war."
When the Cold War with the Soviet Union ended two decades ago, many people expected to bask in the warm sunshine of lasting peace. The optimism was unwarranted. Every president is a wartime president. Since 1991, notes Mearsheimer, we have been at war in two out of every three years.
Military considerations increasingly shape—and warp—our entire system of democracy and law. Despite the absence of any major threat to our safety and independence, we have become a garrison state, permanently mobilized for incessant intervention. It's a safe bet that whoever wins in November, we will be embroiled in a new war sometime in the next four years.
Romney and Obama may pretend they represent stark differences in America's approach to national security and world affairs. But in this realm, there is no Democratic or Republican party. There is only the war party.
Steve Chapman blogs daily at newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman.







61 comments:

  1. Keep in mind that this video was put together nine years ago. If you want to be informed, watch it and think. Consider it in light of what has happened over the past decade and what the purveyors of war have in mind for the future.

    if you don’t like the truth, don’t watch it

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  2. The article from Reason was written this week. Nine years ago and a week ago. What has this decade done for the USA? Has it made us safer, more free, stronger, richer, more noble? We often hear the red herring that is all about oil. Is that true?

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  3. There has been no decade in American history like the past one. Viet Nam was not even close. The forces that support the war manipulation are determined to drive us into another decade of war until their agenda is met. The eventual consequences are unknown but based on recent events I see no reason for optimism.

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  4. No matter how you dress it up - and "promotion of democracy and liberal institutions, particularly in the Muslim world" is a corker - this is 21st century imperialism. Obama is more pro war than George Bush . Obama has started new wars in Pakistan, Libya and Yemen. He has expanded wars in Mexico and Afghanistan. Set up more troops in Australia. Increased Aid to Israel, helped set up the Iron Dome Defense. Sold a record breaking number of Arms to Saudi Arabia.

    Most people realize that meddling in the affairs of countries does not end well. Im not an Isolationist , I’m a non interventionist . If you truly dont want US troops going overseas, fighting in all these wars, then surely you dont want Israel dragging the US into wars like it tried to do during the Lavon Affiar. Given the chance, they will do it again in Iran. Enough should be enough. Even the Bush Administration attempted to stop Israeli agents from posing as CIA and recruiting anti-Iranian terrorists.

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  5. We had to go into Afghanistan. What we are still doing there is a question. Trying to nation build and keep it from reverting. Iraq is another matter. Saddam invaded Kuwait and George I stopped short of Baghdad as the UN resolution just called for pushing them out of Kuwait. Maybe we should have gone on. At any rate we had a no fly zone up for ever, etc. and George took the opportunity to exit Saddam. If anything perhaps once we went in we now may have taken our troops out too soon, but who really knows. Yemen is filled with al-Qaeda and we just got the guy that blew up the Cole. I think that is self defense. Libya? A few bombing runs with the French and British. I was unaware of a war we are fighting in Mexico. It's a strange kind of imperialism when you set up governments hoping they can make it on their own, as in Iraq.

    Iran is a different situation. Developing nuclear weapons and missiles, and a base in Venezuela last I read, they have declared us to be The Great Satan. And Israel The Little Satan.

    Besides these things, with Iraq being the only really questionable issue, and we are out of there, you have to go back to Vietnam, which was a lifetime ago.

    Perhaps I am blind but I don't see American Imperialism at work these days.

    And we should support Israel because of our shared heritage if nothing else.

    b

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    1. George II took the opportunity to exit Saddam

      b

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    2. .

      It's a strange kind of imperialism when you set up governments hoping they can make it on their own, as in Iraq.



      What arrogance.

      George Bush decides to finish what his father started, and to Bobbo, the fact that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed and that millions became refugees...well...c'est sans importance...as long as an aging dictator was taken down.

      I won't go into the costs in lives and treasure for us and our allies as well as the Iraqis. Those costs have been listed here before. But what did the Iraqis get out of it? Well, the Sunni was replaced by the Shia. The only good I can see (if you can call it that)is that instead of the minority killing, relocating, and persecuting the majority, now it is the other way around.

      Libya? The same arrogance and the same result.

      Imperialism? Naw, there hasn't a decent Emperor since Augustus.

      No, it's merely a self-righteous political class in this country (supported by a portion of the population) with the arrogance to assume that with us being the biggest and the best everyone else in the world deserves to be just like us whether they want to be or not.

      Reminds me of those priests that accompanied the Spanish fleet to the New World, determined to save heathen souls even if they had to kill them to do it.

      .

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  6. In fact, it was a secular Jew, the great German poet Heinrich Heine, who understood that despite its anti-Semitism and other moral failings, Christianity in Europe prevented the wholesale slaughter of human beings. In 1832, 101 years before Hitler and the Nazis rose to power, in the concluding passage of his Religion and Philosophy in Germany, Heine prophesied:

    "Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated the brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane berzerk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sang so often, will once more burst into flames ---the old stone gods will then rise from long ruins and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and Thor will leap to life with his giant hammer and smash the Gothic cathedral...

    Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder...comes rolling somewhat slowly, but...its crash...will be unlike anything before in the history of the world...At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions of furthest Africa will draw in their tails and slink away...A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll."


    from Still The Best Hope by Dennis Prager

    Sometimes this blog makes us seem like Germans, when nothing is further from the truth.

    b

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  7. The deceitful 'shitbird' warmongering Netanyahu has formed a coalition with Kadima and the elections are cancelled.

    How can this be?

    b

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  8. Foreign policy under Romney. Growl loudly, and don't get into land wars -

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/romney-s-new-foreign-policy-for-afghanistan.html

    b

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  9. [Obama] launched an air war against the government of Libya, which had neither attacked nor threatened us. If this is an antiwar candidate, what would a pro-war candidate do?

    The Libyan affair was naked hubris. About the only thing it shared with neoconservative thinking.

    Wars are no longer supposed to begin like this. They are exercises in national interest and self-defense, not personal morality and valor. They are the product of military plans, not proddings from celebrity philosophers. And yet Libya—so far the most aggressive humanitarian intervention of the 21st century—depended not on any broad public movement nor any urgent security threat. There was instead a chain of private conversations: Hillary Clinton moving Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy moving Dmitri Medvedev, and at the chain’s inception this romantic propagandist, Bernard-Henri Lévy. “I think this war was probably launched by two statesmen,” Lévy told me. “Hillary Clinton and Sarkozy. More modestly, me.”

    LINK

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  10. Looks can be deceiving.

    Never trust first impressions.

    Don't judge a book by its cover.

    So much emotional energy expended trying to do the right thing.

    But so many of these neoconservatives just Look Evil.

    Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Bill Crystal, even chubby little David Frum.

    And those early shots of GWB. Not good.

    That Wurmser (?) woman was about the only normal looking one.

    And Fukuyama. But he resigned.

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  11. We have a class in this country that can be broadly described as War Deniers. Their ends justify our being used for their abuse of our means. It amazes me that claims and intentions demonstrated in the interviews made nine years ago and the actual events that followed are startlingly congruent.

    To be clear the Neocons defined themselves. They stated who they were with confidence and pride. Others who were not, including this blogger are justified in declaring their objection to the Neocon’s cause.

    The Neocons proclaimed their goals and were remarkably successful in achieving them. It was a well publicized mission and to a person was done so with a smug self-satisfied arrogance, yet now we have a class that has morphed from their sense of triumphalism to a defensive position and now, in union, is on the attack. Mention the very word Noecon and the sneering begins. The anti-Semitic card is routinely played on this blog, all over Pajamas media and conservative talk radio in particular. Mention “Neocon” and expect the "anti-Semitic" refrain.

    Defy the deniers by questioning the costs to the US of the Neocon’s adventures, and in some cases their deceit and criminality, and the chorus erupts.

    The inconvenience of facts and the malleability of truth.

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  12. Max wrote:

    "The Libyan affair was naked hubris."

    The Libyan affair was a lot of things but as an example of hubris? How so?

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  13. (CNN) - The heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees said Sunday the Taliban was gaining ground, just days after President Barack Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan and touted the progress made in the war on terror.

    “I think we'd both say that what we found is that the Taliban is stronger,” said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on CNN’s “State of the Union,” while sitting with Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan.

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  14. How so?

    The assumption of god-like grandiosity.

    For which BHL is the poster boy (LINK).

    “Elections, discussions with the unions, economic problems—all these problems do not interest him,” he says. What Lévy has instead is “a will to turn politics into an epic, and to abandon everything that is prosaic.”

    One of the things that was - and is - deceptively tantalizing about the Pajamas Media/Neoconservative message is the elevation of the idea over the dirt of heaven and earth that must be moved to get to that pinnacle of imagination. The "bright shiny thing" as Rufus might say.

    I call it hubris.

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  15. Hubris ( /ˈhjuːbrɪs/), also hybris, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.


    They've succeeded in their goals in Libya. They overthrew Ghadafi and the oil flows to Europe again. They may be arrogant but they succeeded.

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    1. .

      How do you define success? Replacing one tribe of thugs with another? Did the killing stop? Did the revenge stop? Is the country any more stable than before? Less dangerous? We've seen this play out in Iraq where al-Maliki is currently purging all challenges to his power.

      Libya happened because of Hillary Clinton. She is the one that convinced Obama to go in. Oil? It might have been an incentive for France and Britian to join in so as to guarantee their domestic companies like BP would get the lion share of the concessions. Merely, the loot of war.

      However, it wasn't oil that motivated the US and without the US there would have been no war in Libya. And it wasn't some guy named Levy. It was Hillary fresh off a classic diplomatic fubar in Egypt, surprised by the Arab Spring, ME foreign policy a fiasco, she needed something to make the US look like a player again, to show we were on God's side, and that we were back in the game rather than some ineffectual second-rate player.

      What better way than to take on a tribal country with no air force and few modern arms that was already on the verge of civil war...

      ...for 'humanitarian' reasons.

      Pure calculation, pure hypocrisy, pure politics.

      .

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    2. yet not hubris!

      It appears the goals were met: Ghadafi was prevented from carrying out his threat to 'kill them all', the west gets its oil, no US boots were put 'on the ground' as we played our 'supporting role' and we are still the big dog in the region, the world.

      Noam Chomsky noted that about the US long ago - the propensity to take on tiny countries that have no hope of winning. Remember Grenada?

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    3. .

      It appears they met their goals?


      Ghadafi was prevented from carrying out his threat to 'kill them all'

      If you have that quote and a direct source I would like to see it. I have tried to find it myself but been unable to. All I can find is other people's interpretation of what he said. The only quote from Ghadafi I can find is something to the effect that if the rebels continue to resist the government, they would be punished (something I would imagine Obama might say in similar circumstances).

      As for the reality, in the beginning, Hillary was quoted as saying 'up to 10,000' people could be massacred by Quadafi. How many people (Innocents? Who is to say one tribe is good and one bad when we know shit about any of them?) have been killed by our interferance.

      As for oil, we had Libyan oil (at least the EU and UK did) before the war.

      No US boots? We pick a sparsely populated country with a rag-tag army, no air force, and a tribal culture and attack it for cynical and hypocritical reasons using the might of NATO as surrogate.

      Savior or bully? I remember Hillary joking, "We came, we saw, and he's dead." Clever.

      As for being the big dog in the region, why haven't we convinced Russia, India, China, and other smaller dogs to go along with us on Iran?

      .

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    4. Hey, I don't want to be cast as defender of US militarism but as shitty little wars go Libya was pretty darn successful and not a rock of hubris sinking the ship of state.

      Gotta go race the sailboat.

      Later dude!

      Delete
  16. Hubris ( /ˈhjuːbrɪs/), also hybris, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.

    Sounds like none other than Barack Obama to me, styrofoam pillars and all. Sea is gonna stop rising, that sort of thing. I got Osama. blahblahblah

    Newest Rasmussen poll shows Romney at 49% O at 44%.

    :)

    It's gonna be a waltz for the Republicans.

    b

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  17. God and France have a special place in their hearts for Libyan light sweet crude. Very Falwellesque.

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  18. I think Gag has it right - the prime mover in the 'wars' has been oil. Afghanistan, on the face at least, was more about revenge, but even it provides a strategic platform to engage in the oil wars.

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    1. .

      Oil might have been a factor for Bush and Cheney (not hard-core neocons by any means). Bush IMO was motivated by a complex set of reasons, Cheney primarily by money and power.

      However, the people Bush had around him, hardcore neocons, were the ones that laid out the blueprint for Iraq and they were motivated by much more than oil. They were motivated by a messianic vision to project American power around the world and at the same time bring everything good about America including democracy to the poor benighted masses starting in the ME.

      Hell, if you have the power, why not use it.

      The utter failure of their vision caused some to deny it while others continue to persist.

      .

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    2. true, and one key to american power is access to natural resources with oil being extremely important.

      Delete
  19. A big question now is will Sarkozy stick with Bruni now that she is 'dishevelled' or move on to greener pastures?

    b

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    1. The French voting for the government dole and the 'rotweiller' over Bruni is a European disgrace.

      b

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    2. Good chance it's the other way around.

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    3. You might be right.

      In fact, probably are right.

      What's Sarko got to offer now?

      b

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  20. Revenge: to exact punishment or expiation for a wrong on behalf of, especially in a resentful or vindictive spirit: He revenged his murdered brother.

    I spy a bright shiny object.

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    1. "The people who knocked these buildings down will be hearing from us."

      George II

      Nothing wrong in that.

      b

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    2. .

      Jeez, Bob. Wake up.

      Our job in Afghanistan ended after the first few months, al-Queda was driven into Pakistan along with their Taliban abettors.

      They certainly heard from us. Now, we are the only thing that keeps the country going. Aid dollars amount to the preponderance of the country's GDP. We provide them with schools, roads, protection for their poppy crops and they still hate us.

      They will be hearing from us? A politician's words.

      Iraq and Afghanistan, what should have been a clear-cut mission, an effective response and then withdrawal, turned into a mish-mash of conflicting goals. And what did we get out of it?

      The US started out the new millenium perceived as the world's hyper-power. Now many in the world consider the US, if not a paper tiger (at least when it comes to effectivness), to at most first among equals. The veneer of invincibility when it comes to managing the 'small wars' that have dotted our history over the past 50 years has been stripped.

      It's better to be respected than liked and perception (regardless of the reality) is a key factor in how we are viewed.

      I'm not saying this very well since I don't think the US has anything to fear from any country in the world; but we are certainly diminished by our wars over the past decade.

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  21. And I agreed, at the time. Talk about effective marketing campaigns. I have always wondered what Gore would have done, without the Neocon influence.

    RE: it's all about the oil

    The equivalent of saying it's all about stabilizing the global economy, the disruption of which would impact small and emerging markets much more severely than larger mature markets. I agreed with the first part but was always skeptical of the second part: this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me so let's do "A."

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  22. Obama attacks Syria with brutal shock and awe avalanche of adverbs -

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-07/obama-hits-syria-with-brutal-blast-of-adverbs.html

    b

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  23. I never said "it's all about the oil". I did say oil was the prime mover. There is a difference.

    I'm not sure what you are trying to argue in that second paragraph.

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  24. The Wurmser (?) woman in the video says it's all about field testing the ideas. The die-hard supporters insist time is required, on the historic scale of decades at least, before pronouncing success or failure of the ideas.

    It seems to me that we have enough information to declare "pre-emptive" military action as failed policy. As I have said many times, too much reliance on the "M" in DIME which strongly suggests that our foreign policy personnel in Washington are not up to the task of engaging effectively with the challenges of the modern world, including but hardly limited to, radical Islamic jihad.

    It's not just Obama who is out of his depth/league.

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    1. Exterminate the brutes and replace them with Swiss, and Swedes.

      And, the Cherokee.

      b

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  25. Egypt Islamist vows global caliphate in Jerusalem
    By OREN KESSLER
    05/08/2012 01:27
    “The capital of the United States of the Arabs will be Jerusalem," preacher tells thousands at Brotherhood rally.
    Safwat Higazi speaking to supporters in Cairo Photo: YouTube

    Egypt’s Islamists aim to install a global Islamic caliphate with its capital in Jerusalem, a radical Muslim preacher told thousands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in a clip released Monday.

    “We can see how the dream of the Islamic caliphate is being realized, God willing, by Dr. Mohamed Mursi,” Safwat Higazi told thousands of Brotherhood supporters at a Cairo soccer stadium as Mursi – the movement’s presidential candidate – and other Brotherhood officials nodded in agreement.

    “The capital of the caliphate – the capital of the United States of the Arabs – will be Jerusalem, God willing,” Higazi said. “Our capital shall not be in Cairo, Mecca or Medina,” he said, before leading the crowd in chants of “Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.”

    Higazi is an unaffiliated Islamist who is barred from the United Kingdom for making statements endorsing terror attacks against Israelis. The clip, from Egypt’s Islamist-oriented Al-Nas television station, was aired last week and uploaded to YouTube on Monday by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

    Members of the crowd carried banners emblazoned with slogans related to next week’s “Nakba Day,” when Palestinians and other Arabs mourn Israel’s creation in 1948.

    “Tomorrow, Mursi will liberate Gaza,” an unidentified man cheers in the video before leading the crowd in chants of “Allah Akbar.”

    “Banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews,” the man repeats, accompanied by drumming. “Come on, you lovers of martyrdom, you are all Hamas… Forget about the whole world, forget about conferences. Brandish your weapons, say your prayers and pray to the Lord.”

    Returning to the stage, Mursi vowed to pray in Jerusalem. “Yes, Jerusalem is our goal. We shall pray in Jerusalem, or die as martyrs on its threshold.”

    Raymond Stock, an American translator and academic who spent two decades in Egypt, said the clip should come as a surprise to no one.

    “This is what the Muslim Brotherhood really stands for: the extermination of Israel – and Jews everywhere – as well as the spread and control of radical Islam over the world,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

    “How anyone can fail to see this boggles the mind – yet its denial is virtual dogma in the global mainstream media, US government and Western academia today,” said Stock, who has translated a number of books by the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz.


    b

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    1. The clip is here-


      http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?ID=269074&R=R1


      Obviously all these folks need is a few more decades of acculturation and the rubbing off of a little western male compassion on their noble selves.

      b

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  26. If it hadn't been for a veto by the Turks Israel might be in NATO by now which I think would be a damned good thing.

    b

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  27. But in the space of roughly two weeks, Mr. Lévy managed to get a fledgling Libyan opposition group a hearing from the president of France and the American secretary of state, a process that has led both countries and NATO into waging war against the forces of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

    It was Mr. Lévy, by his own still undisputed account, who brought top members of the Libyan opposition — the Interim Transitional National Council — from Benghazi to Paris to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy on March 10, who suggested the unprecedented French recognition of the council as the legitimate government of Libya and who warned Mr. Sarkozy that unless he acted, “there will be a massacre in Benghazi, a bloodbath, and the blood of the people of Benghazi will stain the flag of France.”

    Mr. Lévy, a celebrated philosopher, journalist and public intellectual, gives Mr. Sarkozy sole credit for persuading London, Washington and others to support intervention in Libya.

    LINK

    *********

    “God is dead, but my hair is perfect.”

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  28. Evidence concerning Obama's Selective Service records may have been destroyed recently --

    http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/freedom-press-not-free/2012/may/7/question-surrounding-president-obamas-draft-card/

    from Washington Times

    b

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    1. "God is dead, and so is my draft card"

      b

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  29. It's also about what currency you accept in return for your oil. If you don't wanEtta get invaded by the US, please pay with US dollars. Very important.

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  30. China has reached an agreement with Iran to pay for their $20 Billion/Yr of Oil with Chinese Yuan.

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    1. Another off-balancesheet consequence of our idiotic obsession with Iran.

      Delete
  31. .

    According to Maria B., the money honey on CNBC, the EU appears to be coming apart. Whereas, in the past, although there was a lot of complaining, there also seemed a be a consensus that the EU had to be held together. Now Greece has rejected austerity, Italy indicates it won't be able to meet its austerity commitments, the cost for Spain to turn over its debt is rising making it harder for the country to meet its obligations, and France has ellected the socialist Hollande.

    There is talk in France of raising the top tax rate to 83%, tax rate around 74% and a millionaires tax for some. MB says she has talked to a number of people trying to figure out how they can leave the country just to avoid the new taxes.

    .

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  32. Warren joins the exploding cigar faction of the Democrats with the news that the husband of the great-great-great grandmother who might have been Cherokee actually participated in the sweeping military round-up of the Cherokee nations (what would today be called "ethnic cleansing") to the stockades built by the Army in Ross's Landing (Chattanooga, TN today), from which point they were sent out on the notorious Trail of Tears.

    Another bad day for Lizzie Warren, who gamed the affirmative action racket -

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/another_terrible_day_for_elizabeth_warren.html



    b

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  33. Bibi, King of Israel -

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/israeli_media_crown_bibi_king_of_israel_for_bringing_opposition_kadima_into_the_government.html

    A heavyweight team is now in charge.

    We should be so lucky.

    b

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  34. Mourdock is absolutely clobbering Lugar in Indiana. With 21% counted he is up by over 20%.

    Who said the Tea Party was dead?

    b

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  35. From Feb 2012:

    *************************

    THE ROVING EYE
    US wants SWIFT war on Iran
    By Pepe Escobar

    It's a very sophisticated Persian miniature - to be decoded by the Europeans who bother. Tehran is saying; we sincerely want to talk to you; but we won't give up on our civilian nuclear program; and if you keep treating us like dogs, with these sanctions, embargo and now the SWIFT move, we can apply a lot of pressure on your already stricken economies.

    Anyone betting on clueless European politicians and their sherpas understanding this is hardly guaranteed to hit a jackpot.

    Then there's the stupid argument that the recent bombings and failed bombings in Delhi, Georgia and Bangkok represent Tehran's retaliation for the murder of five civilian nuclear scientists in Iran - conducted by the Iranian terrorist group MeK under the orders of the Israeli Mossad.

    If and when Tehran decides to target Israeli interests, it may be able to do it closer to home, and it has the competent operatives to do it without a trace. The notion that Tehran would send Iranian agents to friendly Asian countries such as India and Thailand - and in the case of the Three Stooges in Bangkok openly displaying their passports and even rials - is ludicrous beyond belief. These are patsies; the question is to find out who's manipulating them.

    If the Washington/Tel Aviv-promoted hysteria is already at fever pitch, wait for March 20, when the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in other currencies apart from the US dollar, heralding the arrival of a new oil marker to be denominated in euro, yen, yuan, rupee or a basket of currencies.

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    LINK

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  36. Pepe Escobar (born 1954) is a journalist based in São Paulo, Brazil. He writes a column entitled The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online and is analyst and correspondent for The Real News Network. His article, 'Get Osama! Now! Or else...', was published by Asia Times Online two weeks before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001; in it, he claimed that Al Qaeda was in tatters.

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    1. And the first made-in-Iran 20% enriched fuel rods have been installed at the Tehran Research Reactor - not a bomb factory but a civilian plant designed to produce medical isotopes for cancer treatment; this should allow the Research Reactor to operate independently of any foreign interference.

      Yes, yes, Pepe, it's all about cancer research.

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  37. Obama Does Globalization by Pepe Escobar

    This essay is a companion to my own Globalistan, published in early 2007, which I defined as a warped geopolitical travel book. I argued then that in a context of re-medievalization - the world fragmented into "stans" - we are now living an intestinal war, an undeclared global civil war. Borrowing from Zygmunt Bauman's concept of liquid modernity, I called it Liquid War - and not only because of the global scramble for "black gold" oil and "blue gold" gas.

    Globalistan was essentially a long reportage crisscrossing the world. This text reflects the fact that I spent most of 2008 in the U.S. following the presidential campaign. As far as New Rome is concerned I'm usually outside looking in - the point of view of my dying profession, the foreign correspondent. In this text I'm most of the time inside looking out. Globalistan can be read as an on the ground - and underground - report on the Bush administration wasteland. This text could be something of a last chapter - out of the belly of the beast.

    2009 is the Mother of all celebratory years. The 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 30 years of the Iranian Islamic revolution. The 50 years of the Cuban revolution. The 60 years of NATO. The 70 years of World War II. The 80 years of the Great Depression. The 90 years of the Versailles Treaty. It's as if the world was turning on its gyre as in a psychedelic kaleidoscope reviving modern history in high-speed. And which figure comes out of the kaleidoscope, grinning his cool, calm and collected best to deal with a 1929-style crisis, the new Cold War or perhaps to conduct Versailles-style diplomacy? Barack Hussein Obama.

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    1. Obama is raffling off shout outs.

      At his cool, calm, collected best, Pepe.

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    2. Even James Carville sees the writing on the wall.

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  38. Good to see Lugar gone. Six terms and he thought the country needed him for #7.

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    1. Lugar really really got clobbered. The last polls showed him 10 points behind, and he lost by 20.

      Maybe there is still hope to say goodbye to Orrin Hatch.

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