Where Things Stand...June 28, 2011

June 28, 2011

I'm beginning this ongoing series of posts called 'Where Things Stand' as a way of allowing myself to put down the general 'lay of the land' in terms of politics, economics, foreign policy, social policy--whatever comes to me. It's my personal version of the NYT's 'Week in Review'.  I'm not sure how often I'll do it, but here goes.

The big story for a week now has been the emergence of Michele Bachmann as a candidate for President.  The debate in New Hampshire gave her a huge boost, as she came across as an articulate, intelligent Tea Party conservative.  I can't imagine that she'll get very far in terms of really winning the nomination, but the cat fight between her and Sarah Palin could become interesting, if Palin ever seriously enters the race.

Jon Huntsman entered the Presidency race last week and barely made a splash.  I get the feeling he's getting things in order behind the scenes, which at this point is where they need to happen.  So it still seems like he could have a good fall and winter into the electoral process, what with the debates in which he will participate and the primaries in January.  He does seem to have high-level elite support from the likes of Henry Kissinger, for example, who seems to like having a true (and experienced) foreign policy 'expert' in the Republican field.  But will that help or hurt Huntsman is anyone's guess.  We'll just have to wait and see how things develop.  Romney is clearly the leader now, but I think he has a tendency to shoot himself in the foot whenever he's in a debate or campaigning.  At some point, I think Huntsman will begin to challenge him for the lead among the Republican 'moderates', whatever that means.

President Obama has been dragged into the negotiations on the Debt Ceiling, something he had been avoiding before, which is his tendency.  How that will turn out is anyone's guess.  I don't have a strong feeling either way.  I suppose the odds are that they'll come to a last minute agreement and avoid a formal default.  But even so, something else will most likely come out of the blue--something we don't see now--and clobber the American economy, rile the financial markets, and throw us into an even more severe economic crisis.  And THAT could bring both rioting in the streets AND a most interesting election campaign.  And who knows, perhaps even the declaration of martial law, if it got bad enough.

June has been a horrible month in terms of economic reports, with weakening across the board.  It appears that the 'new normal' in our economic state has truly occurred, as I feared, with stagnancy and decline dominating.  The superrich are still doing fine, while the middle class and those below in increasingly tough shape.  How long can this go on in what seems to be a steady, grinding kind of spiral downward?

'Same-sex marriage' has been approved by state legislation in New York, and the gay/lesbian movement is ecstatic.  Frankly, I'm not sure where I stand on the issue, but I do know that whenever something like this happens, it sets up a counter-reaction, leading to more strength for social conservatives in the electoral process (think abortion and Roe v. Wade).   And that is almost never a good thing, in that it tends to be a distraction from the really important economic and foreign policy issues that confront us (not that this signal cultural issue isn't important;  it's just that I don't think it should be at the center of our political agenda).

President Obama has announced the beginning of a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.  Unfortunately, it will still leave almost double the number that were there when he took office through 2014.  Here's my take: he (and the foreign policy Establishment) want permanent military bases there, and he's working toward making that possible.  Everything else is just an excuse or obfuscation.

At the same time, the war in Libya seems to have entered a very strange state of stalemate, and it could be doing politically for the anti-war movement what nothing else has been able to do: expose the insanity of our current foreign policy.

My favorite recent movie was 'Rabbit Hole', and second, 'The Company Men'.

Finally, here's my favorite blog post: Our War President.

The Vikings Win Again

The Washington Post ran a story on how Sweden has had the best recovery from the 2008 recession of any Western nation:



(Photo by Carl Lindquist, Isle of Ven, 2005)

 This Scandinavian nation of 9 million people has accomplished what the United States, Britain and Japan can only dream of: Growing rapidly, creating jobs and gaining a competitive edge. The banks are lending, the housing market booming. The budget is balanced.

Sweden was far from immune to the global downturn of 2008-09. But unlike other countries, it is bouncing back. Its 5.5 percent growth rate last year trounces the 2.8 percent expansion in the United States and was stronger than any other developed nation in Europe. And compared with the United States, unemployment peaked lower (around 9 percent, compared with 10 percent) and has come down faster (it now stands near 7 percent, compared with 9 percent in the U.S. ).

The overarching lesson the Swedes offer is this: When you have a financial crisis, and Sweden had a nasty one in the early 1990s, learn from it. Here are Sweden’s five lessons for a crisis-stricken nation.

1. Keep your fiscal house in order when times are good, so you will have more room to maneuver when things are bad. The nation [had in the1990s] set a goal of averaging a 1 percent budget surplus over time and held to it — which left the government with lots of flexibility to engage in deficit spending when the economy went south.

2. Fiscal stimulus can be more effective when it is automatic. Sweden didn’t do much in terms of special, one-off efforts to spend money to combat the downturn. There was some extra infrastructure spending and a well-timed cut to income tax rates, but the most basic response to the government was to do what the nation’s social welfare system — lavish by American standards — always does: Provide income, health care and other services to people who are unemployed.

3. Use monetary policy aggressively.  Like the Fed, the Riksbank lowered its target short-term interest rate nearly to zero. But it also expanded the size of its balance sheet more than the Fed did relative to the size of its economy, flooding the financial system with even more cash during the height of the crisis.

4. Keep the value of your currency flexible.  Sweden has declined to adopt the euro currency, and in hindsight that looks wise. The changing value of the Swedish krona was a helpful buffer against the economic downdraft of the past few years.

In the depths of the financial crisis, the krona fell in value against both the dollar and the euro, as global investors sought the safety of putting their money in the most widely circulated currencies. That helped make Swedish exporters more competitive at a time when global demand was collapsing, working as a sort of pressure valve.

And now that the Swedish economy is looking up, the free-floating nature of the Swedish krona could hold a different advantage: Neighbor Finland, which also is experiencing solid economic growth, uses the euro. With other parts of Europe in deeper economic distress, it could face inflation, because the European Central Bank sets policy based on the whole of the 17 nation currency zone. By contrast, Sweden’s monetary policy is based only on Swedish economic conditions.

5. Bankers will always make blunders; just make sure they don’t doom the economy.

Swedish banks didn’t make it through the 2008 crisis without major losses. To the contrary, they had lent heavily in the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which suffered an economic collapse.

Swedish financial officials don’t point to any single magic bullet in their regulatory approach. Rather, the Swedish banking system seems to have held up okay because the pain of the early 1990s was severe enough as to scar both bank executives and regulators, leaving them with little temptation to go into risky real estate lending in the mid-2000s, even when the rest of the world was doing just that.

“After the crisis in the ’90s, it was clear we needed to be more conservative and careful,” said Cecilia Hermansson, chief economist of Swedbank. An aphorism often cited, she adds, has been “burn your tongue once on hot milk and you will start blowing on yogurt.”

I especially loved that last line!! Gotta love them Swedes!

War Weary America

Conservative columnist George Will writes about conservatism and foreign wars:

Elevating the fallacy of the false alternative to a foreign policy, John McCain and a few others believe Republicans who oppose U.S. intervention in Libya’s civil war — and who think a decade of warfare in Afghanistan is enough — are isolationists. This is less a thought than a flight from thinking, which involves making sensible distinctions.

Between wishing success to people fighting for freedom and sending in the Marines (or the drones), there is as much middle ground for temperate people as there is between Buchanan, a sort of come-home-America conservative, and McCain, a promiscuous interventionist. When asked his response to those, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who say there was no vital U.S. interest at stake when the Libya intervention began, McCain said: “Our interests are our values” and “our values are that we don’t want people needlessly slaughtered by the thousands,” as Moammar Gaddafi seemed to threaten to do, “if we can prevent such activity.” Under the McCain Doctrine, America’s military would have just begun to fight, and would never stop.

Americans are, however, war weary — which is a good thing: What kind of people would they be if they were not? U.S. involvement in the Second World War lasted 1,346 days. U.S. fighting in Afghanistan reached that milestone six years ago (June 14, 2005). America is fighting there, in Iraq, in western Pakistan, in Yemen and in Libya. Where next? Under the McCain Doctrine, wherever U.S. “values” are affronted — and those who demur from this global crusade are isolationists, akin to those who, 70 years ago, thought broad oceans and placid neighbors guaranteed America’s security from Hitler and Japan.

Libya, the Latest Folly

Thoughts on our Libyan intervention by Salon's Glenn Greenwald:

The war in Libya is starting to resemble virtually every other war: commenced with claimed humanitarian justifications; supported by well-meaning people convinced by the stated, official objectives; hailed as a short and easy task ("days, not weeks"); and then warped into a bloody, protracted conflict far from the original claims and without any real end in sight. Earlier this week, one of the war's most vocal supporters, Juan Cole, produced a list he entitled "Top Ten Mistakes in the Libya War," including Obama's failure to get Congressional approval, that "NATO has focused on a ‘shock and awe’ strategy of pounding the capital, Tripoli," and that "NATO put its emphasis on taking out command and control in the capital instead of vigorously protecting civilian cities under attack."

Perhaps that's because "vigorously protecting civilians" was the pretext for the war, not the actual aim. Yesterday, NATO admitted it killed multiple civilians -- apparently including children -- by bombing a house in a residential area. It's difficult to know exactly how many civilians NATO has killed thus far because Western armies don't count their victims and the Gadaffi government's claims are obviously unreliable, but whatever is true -- including the fact that such killings are not intended -- they are the inevitable by-product of invading and bombing other countries. The logic of war ensures that almost every conflict becomes more and more about such killing and less and less about the original lofty excuses for why they were started.

It's thus not a surprise that 39 neocons -- hilariously calling themselves "foreign policy experts" (including John Podhoretz, Liz Cheney, Gary Bauer, Marty Peretz, Karl Rove, Marc Theissen, and Bill Kristol) -- issued a letter yesterday urging steadfast support for (and escalation of) the Libya War. Lofty justifications notwithstanding, this is exactly what they favor: long-term, endless domination of the Muslim world through military force and control over their governments. That's what the war in Libya, intended or not, has become.

Our War President

Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations at Boston University and prominent critic of American war policy, has a weird take on Obama's Presidency.  He gives him credit for wanting to do the right thing, but then acknowledges that he just can't bring himself to do it.  Then he admits that Obama won't get his vote next time (join the club).

To my mind, Obama's speech once again showed that he does not really wish to be a "war president." He understands—correctly—that the imperative of the moment is not to rebuild Afghanistan, but to rebuild America. He knows that the outcome of the war in Afghanistan will not determine the course of events in the 21st century. What happens in China or India, Europe or Russia is of far greater importance to our well-being. So there is something fundamentally absurd about a cash-strapped nation spending more than $100 billion per year in hopes of pacifying a country that lacks a legitimate government and that views Americans as unwelcome infidels.

Yet for whatever reason—politics? an unwillingness to overrule his generals?—Obama prefers to temporize rather than to make the tough call. So with his announcement of a barely more than symbolic plan for withdrawal, he allows a mindless war to continue. The presidential election of 2012 will reveal whether his calculation is a correct one. This time around, he won't have my vote.

In the case of Afghanistan et al, I actually think that Obama loves being a war president.  His model, as has been frequently pointed out, is Abraham Lincoln, who was American's greatest war president.  His heart is definitely in it (but he's afraid that the American people aren't). 

I've become to believe, again based not on his words but on his actions, that Obama prefers to deal with foreign policy rather than domestic issues.  Whereas Lyndon Johnson was obsessed with the Vietnam War, even picking the bombing targets, he didn't neglect domestic issues, serving up huge programs like the Civil Rights Act, the Great Society, Medicare.  I get the feeling with Obama, however, that he really doesn't care all that much, despite his speeches, for the nitty-gritty of domestic policy.  He's glad to leave all that stuff to his neo-liberal subordinates to work out, if they can.  He's not going to waste his leadership chits on those things when he can be the great world leader.  That's why he takes so much time and effort with his Afghan (Pakistan, Libyan, Yemeni, etc.) war strategy, huddling with his generals and staff to go over all the options, like some Churchill in his WWII bunker in London.  I would imagine that he knows (though doesn't necessarily clear) the details of every drone strike that he authorizes, and he's authorized many!

Obama is clearly a disciple of Reinhold Niebuhr, and I imagine that he discovered his favorite theologian when he was studying at Columbia University.  After all, Niebuhr taught moral ethics across the street at Union Theological Seminary 40 years earlier and was the most influential ethicist of his time with regard to the Cold War foreign policy.  I first noticed this when Obama--in his unscripted answers--quoted Niebuhr back in 2008 during the campaign when he took part in that discussion in Rick Warren's church, and that impressed me.  And then, again, in his Peace Prize Speech, he quoted Niebuhr more than anyone else.

As a amateur theologian myself (and pastor), I've actually studied Niebuhr quite a bit over the years and considered myself a Niebuhrian for a while (and still do some), especially during my neo-conservative years in the 80s.  What I've come to see is that, paradoxically, Niebuhr's writings gives someone of Obama's intellect the moral worldview to bless war, in all its folly, and pursue it with great vigor.  The Nieburhian trick is that you always do it with protestations of humility, a great deal of hand-wringing, and of course the expression of  your great desire for world peace and reconciliation, though that's always down at the end of the road somewhere, out of sight.

It is no accident that the hawkish Christian neo-conservatives of the last 30 years--people like Michael Novak and Richard John Neuhaus--have all considered themselves disciples of Niebuhr too.  And Novak, for example, was very happy to work at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the heart of the neo-con beast, and bless its work with an outpouring of God-talk.

Of course, Reinhold Nieburh would have been somewhat uncomfortable with the way that Obama ends his speeches: "May God bless our troops. And may God bless the United States of America."   But, that's politics, you know.  Gotta do what you gotta do.

Ps.  One more thing.  I'm coming to believe that our most aggressive and hawkish national leaders tend to be those who did not serve in the military (aka 'chickenhawks).  On the other hand, war heroes like Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, and George Bush Sr. were a little more careful about matters of war, having seen it up close and personal. 

Maybe we should draft Colin Powell to be President.  At this point, I'd definitely be in favor of that!

Lame Speech

Progressive Joshua Foust wrote in The American Prospect:

As pleasing as President Obama’s speech is, how we actually go about this process will matter tremendously. For the time being, all we have is Obama’s inspiring rhetoric and the dramatic shift in focus.

Pardon me? Inspiring rhetoric?  Dramatic shift?  That was one of the most canned and pedestrian speechs I've heard Obama give.  There was NO doubt he was reading that off the teleprompter.  And so blatently political too, as in shifting from national security to all the 'nation-building' that we must/can/will do at home.  Oh really?  With what money exactly? 

There was no dramatic shift...none, nada, zip, zero.  Same old, same old.  More war, more bloodshed and death, more money wasted, more lies and deceptions.

As a writer for FireDogLake put it so well:

Dude, your speech was so lame and wooden you make Al Gore in 2000 look exciting. Pathetic. I could also see your eyes move when you read the teleprompter. You’re losing your touch.  But you lost me long before.

The Drawdown

"We Stand Not For Empire": More Obama Hooey.

Andrew Sullivan (of whom I remain a loyal reader) remains loyal to President Obama through thick and thin.  After last night's latest Afghanistan speech by Obama, Sullivan wrote:

There is, as with the Iraq withdrawal, no triumphalism. But destroying half of al Qaeda's leadership, including Osama bin Laden, as Americans struggle in a stubbornly sluggish economy, is good enough. The longest war in the history of America will come to an end ... in three years' time. It will have lasted thirteen years. And Obama's pragmatism - his refusal to embrace either the Full McCain Jacket or the impulse to just get the hell out of there ASAP - has helped him.

Sullivan is an Obamanian true believer, of which there remain many.  But not me.

Why would anyone believe that Obama intends to end the Afghan War in three more years?  After all the evidence that this is just another political stalling tactic, that's crazy.  The American Establishment and the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Presidential Complex fully intend to pacify and occupy Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, because that's what it sees as being in the best interest of the American Empire. 

And yes, Obama, we ARE an empire, the world's greatest since we inherited the mantle from the British after WWII.  And the Establishment doesn't really want that to end, because it has been the primary source of our massive wealth and power.  Afghanistan does so many things for us: it gives us a place from which to squeeze the Iranians, oversee Chinese activities, prevent Russia from reconstituting its empire, provide passage for Central Asian oil, etc.  'Zbig' called it the lynchpin of our foreign policy in the new century (The Grand Chessboard). 

Forget Al-Qaeda, they're our guys.  That's the big secret that few people get, but it's the key to this whole puzzle.  Truth be told, our covert operatives have controlled them like pawns since we first oversaw their creation in the late 70s and early 80s--that was (again) Zbigniew Brzezinski's big idea.  (Hell, that's not even a controversial statement, everyone admits that, though few people actually remember it now.)  And frankly, A-Qaeda has done very little without our approval (including, in my opinion, 9/11, which very conveniently served our imperial purposes). 

Al-Qaeda--with or without Bin Laden--remains our convenient pawn and scapegoat.  They ramp up fear in our people so that we can continue our imperial ways around the world without populist opposition.  And predictably, Obama used them once again last night as part of the rationale to remain the occupiers and destroyers of Afghanistan.  And he'll use them the same way wherever he needs to around the world.  They're the big 'Boogie Man' that our government uses to scare the American people when they start getting uppity.  In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised that an Al Qaeda 'attack' within the US occurs very soon, so as to pacify and immobilize the increasingly frustrated American people.

The face of Pax Americana--the US President--can (1) never admit that we are an empire, and (2) never act to end our imperial ways, because of the tidal imperial forces that control and dictate his/her actions.  But in the case of Obama, I've come to believe that, far from opposing the empire, he is fully in agreement with it.  I felt that the moment I saw him oohing and awwing over the accoutrements of Air Force One.  He loves it.  And of course, why wouldn't you, if you have no real identity.

We were sold a bill of goods with this guy.  He was supposed to be our black Franklin Roosevelt (Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment), the magnanimous, selfless Savior of our country and the world.  I believed it (although there was always a place in my heart that remained skeptical).  The Nobel Peace Committee sure got sucked into this story line, giving him a Peace Prize before he had even had a chance to do anything to earn it.  At the time, I suggested that he refuse the prize until he earned it.  I hope the Nobel Committee is ashamed of itself now.

I Will Not Vote For Barack Obama Again

After mulling this over a long time, I have finally reach the point where I can say with conviction (and not a little passion) that I will not vote for Barack Obama again.  If I don't find the Republican candidate acceptable, then I will vote for a third-party candidate or I will write in someone that I can support in good conscience. 

Signs of Hope

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com reports on a growing bi-partisan movement in Congress to challenge establishment thinking on such things as our Libya intervention, the Patriot Act, and the Federal Reserve. Now, that's what I'm talkin' about!! (And it's why I supported last election such Tea Party libertarians as Rand Paul.)

When Dennis Kucinich earlier this month introduced a bill to compel the withdrawal of all American troops from Libya within 15 days, the leadership of both parties and the political class treated it the way they do most of Kucinich's challenges to establishment political orthodoxy: they ignored it except to mock its unSeriousness. But a funny thing happened: numerous liberal House Democrats were joined by dozens of conservative GOP members to express support for his bill, and the White House and GOP House leadership became jointly alarmed that the bill could actually pass; that's why GOP House Speaker John Boehner introduced a Resolution purporting to rebuke Obama for failing to comply with the War Powers Resolution, but which, in fact, was designed to be an utterly inconsequential act. Its purpose was to protect Obama's war by ensuring that Kucinich's bill failed; the point of Boehner's alternative was to provide a symbolic though meaningless outlet for those House members angry over Obama's failure to get Congressional support.

Still, Kucinich's bill attracted an extraordinary amount of support given that it would have forced the President to withdraw all troops from an ongoing war in a little over 2 weeks. A total of 148 House members voted for it; even more notable was how bipartisan the support was: 61 Democrats and 87 Republicans. Included among those voting for mandatory withdrawal from Libya were some of the House's most liberal members (Grijalva, Holt, Woolsey, Barney Frank) and its most conservative members identified with the Tea Party (McClintock, Chaffetz, Bachmann). Boehner's amendment -- demanding that Obama more fully brief Congress -- ultimately passed, also with substantial bipartisan support, but most media reports ultimately recognized it for what it was: a joint effort by the leadership of both parties and the White House to sabotage the anti-war efforts of its most liberal and most conservative members.

A similar dynamic asserted itself during the joint efforts by the White House and the GOP Congressional leadership to ensure an extension of the Patriot Act without any reforms. What The Nation correctly described as a "Left-Right coalition" blocked the joint GOP/Democratic scheme to force the extension through on an expedited basis, without any debate. Similarly, opposition to ultimate enactment of the Patriot Act was led by some of the most conservative GOP members of the Senate (Rand Paul, Mike Lee) and some of its most liberal (Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley). Like the Libya War, the Patriot Act was protected by a union of the White House and GOP Congressional leadership against this dissident, bipartisan coalition. Much the same occurred when Alan Grayson and Ron Paul joined with members from the Right and Left -- and against the establishment of both parties -- to pass a bill compelling an audit of the Fed.