Paul Krugman on Rove's Third Term.
Paul Krugman writes that the latest Republican smears on Wes Clark smack of Rove's handiwork and that a vote for McCain would be a vote for the disgraced formed Bush aide Karl Rove.
What General Clark actually said was that Mr. McCain’s war service, though heroic, didn’t necessarily constitute a qualification for the presidency. It was a blunt but truthful remark, and not at all outrageous — especially given the fact that General Clark is himself a bona fide war hero.
Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important — not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.
It was predictable that the McCain campaign would go wild over the Clark remarks. Mr. McCain’s run for the White House has always been based on persona rather than policy: he doesn’t have ideas that voters agree with, but he does have an inspiring life story — which, contrary to the myth of the modest maverick, he talks about all the time. The suggestion that this life story isn’t relevant to his quest for office was bound to provoke a violent reaction.
And the latest smear on Obama -- that he has somehow turned into a serial flip-flopper -- also seems to have Rove's fingerprints on it seeing that has always been one of his favorite lines of attack. Krugman's point, that a vote for McCain would be a vote for a third term of Rove, undermines the Times' editorial board's own editoral claiming that Obama is backtracking.
The editorial claims that Obama is somehow on a "high roller hunt." First of all, Obama never said that he would get rid of high-end fundraisers; what he did promise was to give low-end donors much more of a stake than before. And there are practical reasons for what he is doing, based on past history -- Howard Dean ran a campaign in 2004 that was mostly small-donor based, and it wore itself out by the time the elections came around. By the time the first wave of primaries passed, the Dean campaign was out of money. There is only so much small money to go around, and the fact that Obama had a disappointing fundraising month last month suggested that he had to change course.
Then, the editorial takes aim at Obama for the FISA bill. The problems with the FISA bill are manifold -- even if Obama is right that it does not strip criminal immunity, it is unconstitutional because it amounts to an ex post facto law and it grants special rights to corporations that we would not have. It's not like you or I could break the law and then turn around and ask Congress to give us retroactive immunity. But the editorial still misses the point about Obama -- the fact of the matter is that he has always been a compromiser at heart; he even goes as far to say that President Bush is a good man. Thus, there is nothing surprising about what Obama did, even if he errs on the side of compromise in this instance. Whether the FISA bill actually accomplishes its goal of tracking terrorists while protecting civil liberties is debatable -- Obama says it does while Feingold says it doesn't.
The editorial continues:
The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations — a policy that violates the separation of church and state and turns a government function into a charitable donation.
He says he would not allow those groups to discriminate in employment, as Mr. Bush did, which is nice. But the Constitution exists to protect democracy, no matter who is president and how good his intentions may be.
But as Obama stated in his own speech, from personal experience, there are faith-based programs that work. Under Obama's plan, money would not go towards ideological programs like abstinence programs that do nothing to prevent teen pregnancy; that was one of his main criticisms of the program. But there are plenty of programs out there that compliment the public school system; for instance, we have to remember that in many Black neighborhoods, the church is the center of community life. These churches have played a major role in revitalizing inner cities and keeping youth from falling through the cracks. Obama has always supported funding such programs both in his book and on the campaign trail.
And there is another reality that is changing -- evangelicals, as noted by the Times itself, if the editorial board would care to read their own paper, are shifting away from the lock-step Republicanism that characterized them before. It is not just good public policy to fund faith-based programs that follow government rules that maintain the wall of separation between church and state; it is good politics as well. More and more, you see evangelicals who see environmentalism as a matter of good stewardship or Iraq as a pro-life issue or taking care of the poor as a Biblical mandate that outweighs Rush Limbaugh's whines about people not working hard enough.
As for gun control, Obama has always spoken about the Second Amendment as allowing an individual right to bear arms as opposed to a collective right. Gun control is one of those issues that should be left up to local authorities because there are different dynamics at play. In rural areas, they might not want to have any regulations at all because people like to hunt. But in urban and suburban areas, most people know other people whom they would not trust anywhere near a gun. There are people who are from inner-cities originally who were glad to get away because they were in an environment where they were hearing gunshots on a nightly basis. The problem with the SCOTUS ruling is that there is no cookie cutter approach that can work for the whole country because different communities have different needs.
And Obama, in his book, has always been in favor of the death penalty for child rapists. Now, I would disagree with that because of the fact that death is final and it is still possible to convict innocent people wrongly. It can be argued that DNA advances mean that people could be convicted with a near absolute degree of certainty. But we have not gotten to the point where we can establish such standards. And as Justice Kennedy pointed out in his ruling, children will be more reluctant to testify against child rapists if they know that they would be responsible for their deaths. Juries might tend to acquit and let a guilty man go free if they think that he did it but that it does not warrant the death penalty. But that does not mean, as the editorial implies, that Obama backtracked on this issue; Obama has always taken this position.
Failed Bush Policies Fueling Insurgency in Iraq
It turns out that despair is driving Iraqi women to launch attacks on our soldiers in Iraq and are thus fueling the insurgency. And this state of affairs is a direct result of the failed Bush/McCain policies in Iraq. The limitations of the McCain Doctrine are being shown -- the fact of the matter is that wherever it achieves success in stopping potential bombings and catching insurgents, it turns out to be a pyrrhic victory -- the women, who have nowhere else to go, become insurgents themselves and launch suicide attacks against our troops. And whenever people are captured or killed, there are many more who will take their place.
Before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, women had more equality than in a lot of places in the Middle East. But the deposal of Saddam changed all that, and most places in Iraq reverted to traditional ways as Iraq became a failed state and loyalty to tribe became more important than loyalty to country. So, when the wifes of husbands who are killed in action or who are killed carrying out a suicide attack have nowhere else to do, because of the massive inequality of women in that country, they feel they have little choice but to follow in the footsteps of their dead spouses. And the war drags on.
The subordinate role of women in conservative, rural Sunni families in Diyala makes them particularly vulnerable to pressure, said Sajar Qaduri, a member of the Diyala Provincial Council and the only woman on its security committee.
“Although she is bombing herself and aiming to kill people, I feel these women are really victims of terrorism,” said Mrs. Qaduri, who is a Shiite and whose husband was kidnapped two years ago and has not been heard from since. “Only women in despair, in desperate situations, would do this. Dealing with such a phenomenon is not easy.”
She added: “Our Oriental society is not like your Western society. It seems in many of these cases the women have had their husband killed or sent to prison and she feels she has no choice, she is very depressed.”
Who the hell does John McCain think he is?
The arrogance of John McCain when asked about how his military service prepared him for the Presidency is appalling. Not that he cares for his fellow veterans in arms, let alone the wounded warriors in Iraq, who can't even get basic pensions and care.
Who the fuck does John McCain think he is, claiming that the Presidency is somehow his divine right while his fellow veterans are bleeding and suffering? He can brag all he wants to about purpose, as he does in his latest ads, yet the McCain Doctrine is drifting along without purpose while more and more people are dying and suffering in Iraq.
Instead of supporting our veterans and giving them the care that they were promised when they signed up, John McCain has thrown them under the bus in a grab for the Presidency. I suppose the reason he can't answer these questions is because he can't face up to the fact that he sold own fellow veterans out by voting against a $19 billion plan to help improve treatment at Walter Reed and other places. Who the fuck does he think he is kidding when he talks about "purpose" when he refuses to give our veterans any kind of purpose?
It is pretty sad that 1960's peaceniks treated our Vietnam vets with more decency than John McCain, for all his braggadocio about "purpose" did. John McCain thinks that our veterans are no more than fodder, to be thrown away when politically expedient. Our forefathers took in thousands of Vietnam vets, including John Kerry, who became some of our strongest voices against the war and who helped bring this war to an end. John McCain's choice of corporate welfare and tax breaks for the rich over taking care of his fellow veterans amounts to spitting on our troops. This is the same sort of attitude that led Valentinian III to kill his best general, Aetius, and seal the doom of the Western Roman Empire.
This sort of arrogance and contempt for our troops shows the kind of person John McCain is -- use people for human fodder and then destroy them when he has no more use for them. Only a person who sees people as human fodder would vote to abolish the Federal Minimum Wage. Only a person who sees women as baby factories would appoint radical right-wing judges to the bench and make forced pregnancy the law of the land. Only a person who sees people as fodder for future wars would call for the invasion and occupation of Iran -- something that would require a draft to accomplish.
By his own admission, John McCain simply didn't care about the conditions about Walter Reed. If John McCain's service really prepared him for the Presidency, then how is it that all this happened on his watch? This sort of stupidity may be endearing to his lapdogs in the media, who is the same media that lied about Iraq. But this sort of stupidity has real-life consequences. And John McCain, from the New York Times article, could care even less about the suffering of Iraqi troops, who are in even worse shape than our own veterans:
A number of the half-dozen badly wounded Iraqis interviewed for this article said they had been effectively drummed out of the Iraqi security forces without pensions, or were receiving partial pay and in danger of losing even that. Coping with severe injuries, and often amputations, they have been forced to pay for private doctors or turn to Iraq’s failing public hospitals, which as recently as a year ago were controlled by militias that kidnapped and killed patients — particularly security personnel from rival units.
No one knows the exact number of wounded Iraqi veterans, as the government does not keep track. In a 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service, Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, the American commander in charge of Iraqi police training, said that in just two years, from September 2004 to October 2006, about 4,000 Iraqi police officers were killed and 8,000 were wounded.
Veterans who were interviewed for the New York Times article said that the Iraqi govenment is lying about their treatment of Iraqi soldiers wounded in battle. There are people like Hussein Ali Hassan, whose leg has been amputated, was unable to leave Iraq because of rapidly mounting violence in 2003, who spent $13,000 of his own money to have needed surgery, and who makes barely $165 per month for his 23 years of military service. And here is another more horrifying example:
Nubras Jabar Muhammad, a 26-year-old soldier, was shot by a sniper in May 2007 as he was on duty at a Baghdad checkpoint. He nearly bled to death, losing a kidney and part of his liver, while suffering damage to his right hand. His torso is scarred, and two fingers are locked in a permanent curl.
He says he still has shrapnel lodged in his back, and rarely sleeps through the night. He has trouble digesting food. But the army refused him a disability pension, claiming he was able-bodied, and he was forced to return to active duty after nine months. He says he has already spent about $2,100 of his own money on operations, selling jewelry and a pistol to raise the cash.
And yet, he is forced to serve in the army despite his injuries, just one more piece of fodder for the travesty known as the McCain Doctrine. And on top of that, there are hospitals that are controled by the various militant factions in Iraq, where people have to either try to escape or risk being killed by Frankenstinian methods if they stay. Others have the choice of staying in the army with their war wounds and making $600 per month or leaving and trying to make ends meet on $200 per month.
John McCain has prostituted himself by throwing his fellow veterans under the bus in a quest for the Presidency, and then HE has the gall to say we can't question him on how his service qualifies him for the Oval Office? Given his mental laziness on this issue, the fact of the matter is that John McCain is the perfect man to continue the Culture of Corruption that has taken hold of Washington since George Bush took office. No intellectual curiosity, no attention to detail, and no willingness to supervise the people under him -- these are the hallmarks that will be part of a McCain presidency, as evidenced by his failure to do his job and oversee Walter Reed as part of his duty as chair of the Armed Services Committee.
And the John McCain 100 year Rebuilding Plan for Iraq will likely show similar lack of attention to detail -- lack of planning, lack of oversight, and lack of good people to run the plan. Perhaps he could pick Isaiah Thomas as his Vice President and put him in charge of a nice little 25-year rebuilding plan for the Veterans Administration while he's at it. And then, John McCain has the nerve to turn around and call it "purpose." He can't have it both ways -- if the "purpose" of this country is really to address our energy needs, then why does he still champion perpetual warfare in Iraq? Yeah, sure -- Isaiah had "purpose" as well; look where it got him. Never mind the broken relationships and shattered lives that were left in the wake in both instances -- one thing will be clear in both their minds -- they never did anything wrong.
John McCain may fancy himself a conquerer who can finish what George Bush started. But he is not worthy to kiss the feet of people like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Attila, Genghis Khan, or other such people. The problem is that for all their bluster about Stay the Course (TM) and Victory, the fact of the matter is that they are both cowards who lack resolve -- the conquerers I mentioned were willing to act with great brutality in order to achieve their ends. Bush and McCain both lack the resolve to act with the kind of brutality that the conquerors throughout history did, and they lack the resolve to admit we have done all that we can accomplish.
The days of empire and conquest are over. For McCain to try to follow the footsteps of past conquerors would simply create a holocaust like World War II, where all the world would band together in outrage and stop the American Menace similar to what we did when we turned back the Axis powers. Countries all over the world would put their differences aside and fight the common menace -- us. Barack Obama has already shown courage when he opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq at the outset. This shows that Obama would have the courage to lead us out of Iraq and into the promised land of energy independence so that we will never have to fight another war for oil again.
Senator Obama, let our people go!
Today, Senator Obama spoke about his plan to bring money to faith-based programs. And while there is no doubt that many of these programs work and Obama would do a much more even-handed job of getting them money than Bush ever did, he also talked about faith and our obligations to help others. In that regard, Obama has set standards for himself to follow.
Most Christian denominations teach that when we accept Jesus, we become free from the bondage of sin and darkness. But that freedom comes with a responsibility -- a responsibility to help others. From the earliest foundations of time, we are taught that God rejected the notion that we are not our brothers' keepers, specifically rejecting the Republican and Libertarian notions that we are only responsible for our own well-being and not the well-being of others. The notion that we are not our brothers' keeper has shown its ugly fruits in the horror that was Katrina, where 10,000 people died thanks in part to the tragic non-response of the Bush administration.
The right-wing notion that all we have to do is say a prayer and be saved has been debunked from the very beginning by Jesus' own words, where the sheep are not necessarily Christian and the goats are not necessarily non-Christian. And in that regard, Senator Obama has a very clear responsibility to uphold the standards that he set out for himself today.
The cries of the Iraqi people have surely reached God's ears in the same way that the cries of the slaves in Egypt in Pharaoh's time did. To Senator Obama, we lay this charge -- Senator, let our people go. It may seem strange that I equate them like this. But their struggles are our struggles, and their sufferings, hurts, trials, and tribulations are ours. Nobody else will take them up on this; therefore, we must. We don't have the kind of power that Moses did to call down plagues on Pharaoh's house. But we do have the power to stoke the growing sense of moral outrage that millions of Americans are starting to feel about the Bush policy of perpetual warfare.
If Senator Obama is to become the man of faith that he aspires to be in today's speech, then he must be able to follow a simple policy -- one where his first responsibility is to be his brother's keeper, no matter where that brother happens to be around the world. That applies to this country, where millions of people are still living in poverty and unable to get healthcare. That applies in Africa, which will not solve their problems by themselves. That applies to Iraq, where over a million have died by our hands and millions more displaced.
As he himself said today, he would not be doing what is right unless he is out doing the Lord's work. That does not mean that he therefore has a 24-hour cell phone to God. The commandments are simple and are the same that have been handed down through the ages -- love the Lord and love your neighbor. Everything else is just details. What I would ask is, how is it an act of love to continue a policy which has sent 4,100 of our troops to their deaths with no just cause? How is it an act of love to displace millions of people and create a refugee problem that will dwarf the Palestinian problem?
There will come times in each person's life when they will have to make a critical choice. And John McCain came to a critical choice in his life in 2004 -- should he become John Kerry's vice president and leave a party with which he was publicly disenchanted with? Or should he sell his soul so that he could make one last run at the White House? Sadly, instead of taking the courageous choice and risking everything for the good of the country, he chose the safe way like so many others before him did. Barack Obama will be faced with this choice when he comes to power in January -- should he take the safe path and keep us in Iraq? Or should he keep his promises and get us out of Iraq. Obama should do whatever is expedient -- it doesn't matter when we get out -- one year or three years -- as long as it is based on reality. It is better to have a good plan and get out in three years than it is to have no plan at all, withdraw right away, and make a bad situation worse. What matters is that Obama develop a process for peace and see it through no matter what.
DHinMI writes convincingly that the groundwork is in place for a Democratic landslide similar to FDR's win in 1932. But if Obama continues the occupation or escalates it, he will not be remembered as another FDR, but as another Lyndon Johnson -- someone who started with the good will from an entire country and squandered it all away in a country called Vietnam. The temptation will be there for Obama to continue the occupation -- Petraeus and many of the other people who were part of the Bush administration will still be there. But this is a temptation that he cannot give into. Just like Jesus was tempted to use his power for his own glory, Obama will be tempted to win where Bush failed. Just like Jesus was tempted to throw himself down, Obama will be tempted to use his great gifts to call attention to himself, and totally forget who elected him or helped him to power. Just like Jesus was tempted to gain the world and lose his soul, Obama will be tempted to sell himself out in the name of winning the next election.
The trap that Lyndon Johnson, George Bush, and John McCain fell into was that they hardened their own hearts against all that was good and right and became prisoners of their own fears. In that regard, they were similar to Pharaoh. For Obama to avoid that trap, he must surround himself with people who will not necessarily tell him what he wants to hear, but who will tell him what the reality is. Even Jesus could not do things by his own power, as much as Satan tempted him to. He could only become the type of person that he did because the people gave him that kind of power.
Obama Recognizes What Must Be Done to Save the Planet
David Korten of YES Magazine poses the question of what must be done to save the planet.
Cheap oil provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies, settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us to squander virtually all Earth's resources -- including water, land, forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a brief but raucous party. These include depleted natural systems, unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished resources of a finite planet.
He continues:
Cheap oil also fueled a zero sum global competition for access to resources -- particularly cheap oil -- and for the military superiority required to secure that access. The United States combined the global projection of military power with the global projection of economic and cultural power to achieve unchallenged global dominance as the sole reigning superpower.
Cheap oil is no more and the global projection of military and economic power it made possible is no longer viable. In May 2008 the price of oil hit a new high of $135 a barrel in contrast to the historic inflation adjusted price of $27.00. We are only beginning to awake as a nation to the reality that our reign as a global superpower is coming to an abrupt end. (See the summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine.) If we hold to business as usual, we will exhaust what remains of our power and credibility in a bloody and violent no win-competition to consume the last tree, fish, drop of oil, drink of potable water, and breath of clean air -- sealing our own fate as well as that of our species.
The answer is, yes, Obama does recognize what must be done. John McCain, on his website, has been talking all he can about how much he is committed to the environment. He even frames it as the "Lexington Plan" of independence from foreign oil. But there is a key difference between his plan and Obama's plan -- John McCain has refused to commit to doing what scientists say is necessary to avert global catastrophe. However, Barack Obama has already committed to doing whatever it takes to reduce our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.
Korten argues that in order for us to achieve that goal, we must end war as an instrument of statecraft. And Obama implicitly understands this; as early as 2002, when everybody thought that he was being too radical, he advocated the return of the US to a policy of diplomacy first -- the policy that was followed by Presidents of both parties throughout the 20th century. On the other hand, John McCain would continue the right-wing business as usual policies that have led to the devastation of our economy -- he would attack Iran, keep us in Iraq for 100 years, and abolish the minimum wage so that the only economically viable option for many young people growing up in poverty would be to enlist and fight John McCain's wars.
And what's more, John McCain can't possibly achieve his stated energy goals with his reliance on George Bush's highly militaristic foreign policy. Our ships, planes, and military vehicles are gluttonous consumers of oil as Korten points out; what's more, John McCain's reliance on the Neocon policy of war would render more and more of the world increasingly uninhabitable. That would turn this world into a vicious cycle where more and more wars would be started over an ever-decreasing share of habitable land. Therefore, environmental policy will become a major national security issue for the 21st century.
On the other hand, Barack Obama's stated goal of 80% carbon reduction is doable because he would use war as a tool of last resort. In the meantime, he would not only talk to our enemies like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela, he would also bring other countries around the world to the table so that they could talk peace together. He would restore the Clinton policy of active engagement in foreign disputes in order to bring about historic peace treaties.
Korten argues that conventional warfare, as fought by the US for the last 225 years, is rapidly becoming obsolete with the rise of unconventional methods of warfare such as blending in with civilian populations and the kind of hit and run tactics that we have seen in both the Afghan and Iraq wars. As we painfully learned through Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we can beat the other guy on the battlefield every single time and still not win the war. Part of it is because of a lack of political will.
For instance, the Romans had to kill or enslave millions of people in order to subdue Gaul during Julius Caesar's time. And even then, their conquest was a near thing as they were surrounded by a hundred thousand men fighting for their homes and freedom. In order for us to subdue Iraq, we would have to kill or imprison about 15-20 million Iraqis -- something that the world will simply not allow us to do. We have currently killed about 1 million Iraqis. We face a fundamental choice -- at this pace, we can kill off 15-20 million Iraqis like Julius Caesar did with Gaul within 50-100 years -- assuming no increase in population through high birth rates -- or we can decide that we have done all we can and that the rest is up to the Iraqis.
Korten, arguing from a pacifist perspective, argues that we should first work for worldwide nuclear disarmament, a goal that is shared by former Reagan Secretary of State George Schultz. His second goal is for all the world's parliaments to renounce war as a sovereign objective. The first is doable -- we should build on the efforts of Sam Nunn and John Kerry and Christopher Hill to reduce nuclear proliferation; Obama would talk to our enemies, and that would be one of the main issues he would talk about. Hill, who engineered the deal between the US and North Korea dismantling their nuclear weapons, could be tasked with brokering similar deals with Iran and Syria.
The second objective, however, has to come from the bottom up. And Obama, while not a pacifist, has laid the groundwork for that; last night, thousands of people all over the country in every single state met to help Obama get elected in November. For there to be world peace, enough people have to get together to agree never to take up arms or take the life of another person under any circumstances whatsoever. And it is a basic fact of life that people are more likely to consider only their immediate needs when they are living in poverty; therefore, we must first address the problems of poverty both in this country and then around the world. That is the message that John Edwards preached when he ran for President, and the need to address this problem has not gone away.
Obama, Solar Power, and our future.
Today, Barack Obama showed us the future. He toured a solar plant that powers 75 homes and declared that this is the future of this country.
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