Blog entry

Four Holiday Gift Ideas for Progressives

David Sirota — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:53:55 -0500

If you're a procrastinator like me, then you are frantically scurrying at the last minute to pick up holiday gifts for friends and family. So let me suggest four great gifts for you or any progressives you know - gifts that make great presents and that also help build and support the progressive movement. Here they are in no particular order:

1. A SUBSCRIPTION TO IN THESE TIMES: For more than three decades, In These Times magazine has been a leading independent progressive voice, featuring news, reporting and analysis from a constellation of progressive movement stars. As Cornel West says, "In These Times is the most creative and challenging news magazine of the American Left." A one year subscription to this monthly magazine is just $24.95. Subscribe here.

2. THE UPRISING OR HOSTILE TAKEOVER: Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but I wouldn't be doing my job as a writer if I didn't suggest my books, The Uprising and Hostile Takeover, as solid holiday gifts. The Uprising, just released this summer, looks at the populist uprising on both the right and left that clearly impacted the 2008 campaign and promises to shape our politics in the next months and years. The Rocky Mountain News calls it "the perfect tome for rebels of all persuasions." Hostile Takeover, released in 2006, examines the corporate forces that still have a stranglehold on our government and that threaten to crush this potential era of change. The late great Molly Ivins says the book provides "handy weapons for progressives to fight back." You can order both books at your local bookstore, or online.

3. THE PROGRESSIVE BOOK CLUB: For an ongoing stream of progressive books at discounted prices, join the new Progressive Book Club, or give a gift membership. You can join online here.

4. SALON.COM PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP: Salon is one of the best progressive publications out there and it's premium membership gets you its full content. Get a premium membership here. It's worth it.

In these difficult economic times, it is more important than ever to build and support a strong progressive movement that helps move our country in a different direction. These are four different ways to give gifts and support the movement at the same time. I hope you'll consider them - and pass the ideas on to your friends. Happy holidays!

Bush Has Not "Kept Us Safe"

Terrance Heath — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:26:57 -0500

After the previous post, it seems appropriate to move delusion to delusion. So, let's look into the case of Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan. In what world does Peggy Noonan reside? And what color is the sky there?

I ask because, though capable of surprising moments of clarity (which I hope to get to in a another post), her latest WSJ column sounds like a dispatch from the mental space to which Noonan decamped during the Clinton years, a place I've wondered about since her bid to let dolphins determine child custody and immigration policy — somewhere unrelated to the world I've been reading about in the headlines lately.

Having been spared the job of defending a McCain Palin administration, Noonan exhales and then begins breathlessly setting up the necessary rhetoric to blame the Obama administration for whatever eight years of the Bush administration's malignant neglect has left us vulnerable to. And that's quite a lot.

From the suburbs of Northern Virginia, Noonan drifts through a Republican Xmas party, lingers with a handsome (unnamed) former Republican senator, jets over to Russia in one paragraph, touches down in Northern Virginia in the next, and then, strangely for a column entitled "At Least Bush Kept Us Safe," she cites several reports which suggest that he hasn't, and that if anything we're less safe than we were when he took office.

Why does Congress prepare such reports? To inform, and to win support for new plans. To show they are doing something. And to be able to say, in the event of calamity—forgive my cynicism—that they warned us. This hasn't been the first such report. It won't be the last. But it comes at a key moment for Mr. Obama, because it gives him a certain amount of cover to be serious about what needs to be done. What's at stake for him is two words. When Republicans say, in coming years, "At least Bush kept us safe," Democrats will not want tacked onto the end of that sentence, "unlike Obama."

By the way, he should both reorder the Department of Homeland Security, that hopeless bureaucracy, and change its name. Homeland is a Nazi-ish word, not an American concept at all. And at this point "Homeland Security" is associated more with pointless harassment than safety. No one knows who came up with it. Probably some guy with two Christmas trees in Northern Virginia.

The reports Noonan mentions are only the latest that ought to make anyone who stops and thinks about wonder what a president and an administration declared to be so serious about the security of the country have been doing for the past eight years. Somehow it doesn't occur to her to ask, if Bush has "at least" kept us safe, how is it that we can expect a biological or nuclear attack by 2013?

The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

The report suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists.

"Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing," reads the report, obtained by The Associated Press. It is scheduled to be released publicly on Wednesday.

The commission is also encouraging the new White House to appoint one official on the National Security Council to exclusively coordinate U.S. intelligence and foreign policy on combating the spread of nuclear and biological weapons.
..."They really have no idea where they are," said Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied small-arms trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."

President-elect Obama has heeded the commission's recommendations, and will appoint a WMD czar. Why this would be a "significant break" with a president and an administration that has "kept us safe"?

Naming a top deputy whose sole mission is to oversee the government's wide-ranging programs to stop such an attack would mark a significant break with the Bush administration, which in resisting such a post has maintained that US efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles and safeguard deadly pathogens are adequate.

A law requiring the position, passed by Congress more than a year ago and signed into law by President Bush, has been ignored for more than 15 months, in part because Bush opposes giving the Senate the power to confirm the official.

But Obama, whose first foreign trip as a US senator was to assess initiatives to lock down nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, believes the programs lack coordination, are underfunded, and need a top official supervising them, according to three advisers with knowledge of the transition team's deliberations.

"I think it is a good idea and will probably happen" soon after Obama is sworn in Jan. 20, said one of those advisers, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations with the president-elect.

This isn't' the first report that says we're dangerously vulnerable to WMDs. The February 2007 GAO found that the military was understaffed and unprepared for chemical or biological attacks.

The reports are by the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative agency, which is typically careful in its language. (Consider the title of one report, the modestly named Management Actions Are Needed to Close the Gap between Army Chemical Unit Preparedness and Stated National Priorities.) But reading between the lines it's clear that investigators, who analyzed preparedness data for 78 Army chemical units, were disturbed at what they found. As one report put it, "Most Army units tasked with providing chemical and biological defense support are not adequately staffed, equipped, or trained to perform their missions."

Particularly in the National Guard and Army Reserve–key to any U.S. homeland response–chem and bio units "are reporting the lowest readiness ratings–meaning that they are not considered sufficiently qualified for deployment," according to the GAO. The reason: critical shortages of trained personnel and key equipment, made worse by transfers to support the war in Iraq.

The bottom line, says the report, is that until the Army develops a plan to address the shortfalls, "adequate chemical defense forces may not be available in the event of a WMD attack at home or abroad."

...All this might have been forgivable in the months after 9/11. But since then, Pentagon funding for chem and bio defense has doubled, and planning for WMD response has become a top priority. So why the disconnect?

Bush ignored a law that he signed? A law to appoint someone in charge of plans and programs to stop biological or nuclear attacks? Attacks of the kind the Bush administration said over and over again were bound to happen any minute if we didn't go to war with Iraq? The Bush administration has had since February 2007 to act on the GAO report, and we still aren't any safer from WMD attacks than we were in 2007? (Or 2003, for that matter?)

How is that keeping us safe?

In July of this year, the GAO reported that the government — that is, the Bush administration — has been lax in securing radioactive material, the kind that could be used in the attacks mentioned above. In fact, the GAO reported that the new requirements to ensure that a person carrying radioactive materials has reason to do so are three years behind schedule. Investigators set up a bogus company and were able to get a license from the Nuclear Regulatory System allowing them to buy enough radio active material for a dirty bomb.

In February, the Senate demanded the Air Force fix the problems that led to a B-52 bomber crew flying from North Dakota to Louisiana with six cruise missiles that were carrying nuclear warheads the crew didn't know were there.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday insisted that the Air Force fix what Defense Department officials described as the U.S. military’s loss of focus in safeguarding its nuclear weapons.

Senators from both parties demanded answers about an incident last August in which a B-52 bomber flew from an air base in North Dakota to one in Louisiana with six cruise missiles onboard that the crew did not know were carrying nuclear warheads, each with destructive power 10 times that of the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima. It took 36 hours before anyone missed the weapons.

Defense Department officials told the panel the incident reflected a waning emphasis on nuclear-weapons procedures across the U.S. military but they insisted the stockpile is nonetheless secure. Committee Republicans, while acknowledging the seriousness of the incident, emphasized the weapons were not in a condition that would have allowed them to detonate.

But Democrats stressed that if military personnel do not know they are handling nuclear weapons, they are less likely to follow procedures designed to safeguard them from terrorists. And even if a warhead could not have exploded in a nuclear reaction, Democrats said, the potentially deadly plutonium inside might have scattered in an aircraft crash.

Going back to 2006, radioactive materials have been poorly managed, to the point that almost anyone can get enough to make a "dirty bomb"? Our nuclear arsenal is unguarded enough a bomber crew can fly from one state to another with nuclear warheads they don't know they have?

How is this keeping us safe?

In May of this year, investigators found gaps in the Department of Homeland Security's port security program; gaps big enough for terrorist groups to smuggle WMDs into the country in cargo containers. (The Bush administration, for its part, actually sought to cut anti-terror funds.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, being released Tuesday, assesses the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), a federal program established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to deter a potential terrorist strike via cargo passing through 326 of the nation's airports, seaports and designated land borders.

Under the program, roughly 8,000 importers, port authorities and air, sea and land carriers are granted benefits such as reduced scrutiny of their cargo. In exchange, the companies submit a security plan that must meet U.S. Customs and Border Protection's minimum standards and allow officials to verify their measures are being followed.

A 2005 GAO report found many of the companies were receiving the reduced cargo scrutiny without the required full vetting by U.S. Customs, a division of DHS. The agency has since made some improvements, but the new report found that Customs officials still couldn't provide guarantees that companies were in compliance.

Security holes noted three years ago remained open earlier this year?

How is this keeping us safe?

Also in May of this year, we've heard that the FBI is "ill equipped" for a terrorist attack.

The FBI is "ill-equipped" to handle the current terror threat, an agent embroiled in a whistleblower case with the bureau, claimed to a congressional committee today.

"My greatest goal today is to be able to get the message across to Congress, to this distinguished committee, that the FBI's counterterrorism division is ill-equipped to handle the terrorist threat that we're facing," Bassem Youssef told the House Judiciary subcommittee.

"We have agents who are highly dedicated within the counterterrorism division who want to do a very good job," he continued. "But they're unable to because they're not given the tools or the assets that they need to actually understand the enemy."

Youssef says the FBI counterterrorism program can't protect the United States from another catastrophic direct attack from Middle Eastern terrorists because the bureau lacks the necessary resources, especially experienced counterterrorism experts who understand native languages and cultures throughout the Middle East and Central Asia.

Youssef said the FBI is "inexcusably understaffed" in its International Terrorism Operations Section (ITOS). According to Youssef's testimony, the FBI's staffing level, at its supervisory level, is only 62 percent of its mandated funded level.

Just this information, taken altogether, paints picture of the Bush administration keeping us anything but safe, and instead — through deliberate policy and through mismanagement — has created a reality in which WMDs are more of a threat than they were in 2003. And while there weren't any WMDs found in Iraq, the policies of the Bush administration have actually provided would-be terrorists with access to the materials to make WMDs and gaps through which to bring them into the country.

And this is without even addressing other problems, like:

sensitive military equipment being sold on eBay,
the military not being ready for a catastrophic attack on the country,
no uniform policy for putting people on its terrorist watch lists,
airport security still stuck at 9/10,
the Department of Homeland Security's goals going unmet,
inadequate disaster plans for dealing with casualties from an attack,
lack of plan for a terrorist cyber attack,

Pending her confirmation by the Senate, would-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will inherit an "under-resourced" state department, poorly positioned to handle its growing responsibilities which — it seems to me, at least — are essential to our security, inasmuch as the state department acts as the diplomatic arm of the government.

"The next president and the next secretary come into office at a time when our economy is in recession, our military is tied down and our reputation is tarnished," said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Diplomatic tools are arguably the one set of instruments that are available. It's a natural moment for American diplomacy."

But the past two years have brought a flurry of testimony and reports questioning the capacity of the U.S. government to carry out its foreign policy. They cite the relative underfunding of State Department personnel, especially compared with the resources that have poured into the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security in the years following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They have criticized State's efforts to convey a positive U.S. image abroad. And they have questioned the training and readiness of the Foreign Service to carry out functions beyond traditional diplomacy, such as advising Third World governments on training police officers, setting up judicial systems and holding fair and free elections.

The secretary of state "lacks the tools -- people, competencies, authorities, program and funding -- to execute the President's foreign policies," according to a report last month from the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Henry L. Stimson Center.

"Today, significant portions of the nation's foreign affairs business simply are not accomplished," the study concluded. "The work migrates by default to the military that does have the necessary people and funding but neither sufficient experience nor knowledge."

How is leaving the state department in a state of disarray, leaving it unable to effectively carry out foreign policy, keeping us safe? We've already seen in the Russia/Georgia conflict the first signs of a world where diplomacy moves right along without us.

How is this keeping us safe?

It's not just the state department either. I posted just last month about government agencies left in disarray and government workers left demoralized in the wake of the Bush administration. Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones, goes even further, taking apart a GAO report that details "a federal bureaucracy that is rife with mismanagement, inefficiency, and faulty communication practices—all of this combining to jeopardize both the nation's health and security."

How is this keeping us safe?

Those federal agencies that are in disarray, and the demoralized employees working in them probably owe their state to a key flaw of conservatism, and one of its symptoms.

The past eight years have been a horror to many federal employees. The Bush administration has rarely missed an opportunity to criticize, cut and meddle, and it dismissed the notion that federal employees need more freedom to innovate and learn. As former vice president Al Gore rightly argued, federal employees are not the problem in poor performance. It is the bureaucracy in which they are trapped.

The Bush administration, however, decided that the best way to reform government was to outsource it. From 2001 to 2005, civilian employment remained at 1.8 million, more or less, while the estimated number of contractor jobs surged from 4.4 million to 7.6 million.

We've seen the results play out in Iraq, where the Pentagon has been criticized for over-reliance on contractors; where record numbers of contractors have cost hundreds of billions in tax dollars (amounting to one fifth of Iraq funding), including some $600 billion in cancelled contracts for projects that were cancelled due to shoddy work or mismanagement, and another $13 billion wasted or stolen in Iraq. Auditors sometimes go easy on contractors, especially if pressured from above to do so, instead of exposing wrongdoing over-billing, etc., and we end up paying $142 million for prisons, hospitals and police facilities that sit unfinished in iraq, and over $100 million for a water treatment plant that sits unfinished in Falluja.

How is this keeping us safe?

Before you answer, consider the consequences of all the above in Iraq itself, where the "flypaper theory" meant we were "fighting them over there to keep from fighting them over here." As recently as October the Red Cross reported that conditions remain "dire" in Iraq.

The Red Cross is warning that despite some improvements in security in Iraq, the condition of the country's infrastructure remains dire.

In a statement issued from their headquarters in Geneva, the Red Cross said it was particularly concerned about poor water supplies.

It estimates that over 40% of Iraq's civilian population still has no access to clean mains water.

The organization says that the health of millions Iraqis is at risk.

Aside from that, Iraq is awash in weapons, since the country has become one of the United States biggest military sales customers, thanks to the Bush administration's efforts. The problem is that those weapons quickly go "missing" and sometimes turn up in the hands of insurgents. Last August the GAO determined that 30% of the arms are unaccounted for.

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq.

Is it any surprise, then that we've spent over $6 billion on private security in Iraq?

How is this making Iraq — and us, since that was a huge part of the case for going to war — safer?

Consider that this is also a country where consultants — like the Blackwater security guards just indicted for manslaughter, or the KBR recruiters recently discovered to be warehousing workers from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Uganda — have operated with immunity from Iraqi laws. Immunity they stand to lose under a new U.S./Iraq security deal, which means that they could land in the same crowded Iraqi prisons that hold many innocent Iraqis.

How is this keeping us safe?

Other reports have shown that, as late as April of this year, the Bush administration had failed to develop a strategy to wipe out bin Laden's Pakistan sanctuary. Thus analysts say al Qaeda is more secure and more potent than even a year ago.

How is this keeping us safe.

To borrow a turn of phrase from Noonan, to ride the bus or the subway in D.C. is to remember that the London bus bombings and the Madrid train bombings are not that far in the past. Already the Mumbai attacks have refocused cities on just what to do in the event of similar or worse circumstances. Safe as Noonan might feeling in her prosperous Northern Virginia suburb, but it is a false security, based on the reality that we haven't had another attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, yet, and the assumption that a lack of any attacks mans that we have been kept safe.

That's why I want to know what world Peggy Noonan lives in, because it's one in which none of the above is true. It's a world where the federal agencies charges with safeguarding the country and its citizens have all the resources they need to carry out their work. It's a world in where our state department has all the resources and staff it needs to carry out the kind of work that improves international relations and prevents the kind of extremism that leads to terrorism from gaining a foothold.

It's a world where sufficient planning has made us less vulnerable both to biological and other attacks, and better prepared for the aftermath of such an attack.

It's a world where we've made sure that dangerous materials are safeguarded against falling into the hands of would-be terrorists.

It's a world in which we've closed the gaps in security that might allow terrorists to smuggle "dirty bombs" into the country.

It's a world where Iraq has not suffered all it has, and where hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have not been handed over to contractors unrestrained by oversight.

It's a world where al Qaeda is not more secure and potent than they were even a year ago.

It's not the real world, where the incoming administration faces the task of rebuilding and restoring what the Bush administration — and conservatism itself — either laid waste or let rot; where we can only hope the work will be done in time, because we are not now prepared.

My high school English teacher refused on principle to wish us luck on our exams.

"I don't believe in luck, people," he said. "Either you're prepared or you're not."

As an adult, I understand what he meant in a way I didn't then. Luck, if you have any, eventually runs out. When it does, you'd better be prepared to handle what luck doesn't stick around for.

Being ready is far, far better than being lucky. We've been lucky, in the sense that we haven't had an attack on American soil in the past eight years. But we are not ready if an attack should come.

Bush has not kept us safe, nor made us safer than we were.

He has left us unprepared.

W's Massive Delusions

Terrance Heath — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:12:13 -0500

In a previous post we explored the spectacle of George W. Bush bungling through an attempt at an expression of remorse — this time over the state of the economy — as only he can. It's what you'd expect from a guy who believed he was on a mission from God, and has watched it go horribly wrong.

He still has to "Keep the faith," and convince himself that all is pretty much as it should be, close enough, or well on its way there.

But the rest of us don't.

So, in one of the many interviews we'll be treated to as we (and W.) wait out the clock, the president's thoughts (such as they are) turn to national security the war in Iraq.

In one interview with Charlie Gibson, in which Bush said he wanted to be remembered as a president who "helped achieve peace," he also said he regrets the WMD intelligence "had been better." (This, from a man who was "very pleased" with the Iraq war outcome just before Thanksgiving.)

"A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein," Bush said. "It wasn't just people in my administration. A lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence.""I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess," Bush said.

When pressed by Gibson, Bush declined to "speculate" on whether he would still have gone to war if he knew Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction.

"That is a do-over that I can't do," Bush said.

(Join the club, Dub'. We all kinda wish there had been better intelligence — heck, any intelligence — during your administration.)

Well, except that it's been pretty well documented that the intelligence wasn't so much the problem as the cherry-pinking of intelligence. In some cases, the Bush administration just told lie upon lie.

Nine hundred thirty-five to be exact.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

You can search the database for yourself. My favorite is Colin Powell exclaiming, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit," during the four days and three nights of preparation — during which 38 pages allegations against Iraq was reduced to six — for his nonetheless preposterous performance at the U.N.

February 5, 2003
Colin Powell addresses the UN in an attempt to sway world opinion in favor of war in Iraq. Powell makes a series of inaccurate statements that will badly tarnish his reputation.

Powell says, "I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al-Qaida." This is al-Libi, who provided information under torture and will recant everything. Powell highlights Curveball's "eyewitness" account when he warns that Iraq's mobile labs can brew enough weapons-grade microbes "in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people." Curveball has been doubted for some time by intelligence agencies at home and abroad. In fact, the senior German intelligence officer who supervised Curveball's case later tells the Los Angeles Times that when his colleagues hear Powell cite Curveball, "We were shocked. Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven."

Powell also says that Saddam’s son Qusay has ordered WMD removed from palace complexes; that key WMD files are being driven around Iraq by intelligence agents; that bioweapons warheads have been distributed to the Iraqi military; that a water truck at an Iraqi military installation is a “decontamination vehicle” for chemical weapons; that Iraq has drones it can use for bioweapons attacks; and that WMD experts have been corralled into one of Saddam’s guest houses. Every one of those claims has been flagged by an congressional intelligence assessment of the speech as “WEAK.”

And, of course, days later Curveball lived up to his name.

February 8, 2003
The Los Angeles Times reports in 2005: “Three days after Powell's speech, the U.N.'s Team Bravo conducted the first search of Curveball's former work site. The raid by the American-led biological weapons experts lasted 3 1/2 hours. It was long enough to prove Curveball had lied.”

But even a quick look at the top ten lies shows that the president and members of his administration went about making statements that had been discredited before they were even spoken; from Bush's October 7, 2007 statement that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program (of which an intelligence agent who was part of the investigation said at the time, "That's just a lie.") to Bush's June, 5 2003 statement that "we found a biological laboratory in Iraq" (which was later declared untrue).

In 2005 Powell correctly called the U.N. fiasco a "blot" on his record.

Even former Bush strategist Karl Rove got in on the ~~revision~~ fun.

In what was a remarkable admission that contradicted -- to a large extent -- the past statements from his onetime boss, former Bush strategist Karl Rove said on Tuesday evening that had the President known Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the United States would not have gone to war.

"In the aftermath of 9/11 the concern was about a tyrant accused of enormous human rights abuses," but who also possessed weapons of mass destruction, said Rove. "Absent that, I suspect that the administration's course of action would have been to work to find more creative ways to constrain him like in the 90s."

The remarks, delivered at a debate in New York on Bush's legacy, came amidst a vigorous defense by Rove on behalf of the war's purpose and outcome. Later he argued that Saddam Hussein was supporting terrorism, poised a grave threat to the region, and had systematically duped the international community into assuming he was armed.

...And yet, his remarks stand in contrast to those offered by the president himself, both recently and in the past. In an interview that aired last night with ABC's Charlie Gibson, Bush declared that the greatest regret of his presidency was "the intelligence failure in Iraq." But he claimed it was "hard... to speculate" as to whether or not he would make the same decision to invade with the correct information.

Back in December 2005, however, Bush did just that, declaring the WMD issue effectively irrelevant when he said that, "knowing what I know today, I would have still made that decision.""So, if you had had this -- if the weapons had been out of the equation because the intelligence did not conclude that he had them, it was still the right call?" Fox News' Brit Hume asked.

"Absolutely," replied Bush.

This kind of dissembling is to be expected from a president and an administrating with years of practice hiding from the truth, whether it's the lack of WMDs or the lack of a Saddam/al Qaeda connection.

Maybe delusion should be classified as a weapon of mass destruction, based on our collective observations since March 2003.

The Politico's Jayson Blair Problem

David Sirota — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 12:01:03 -0500

I woke up this morning, and checked some "news" sites like I usually do. I put "news" sites in quotes because I visited the Politico* - a gossip rag whose ace "reporter" Jonathan Martin told me this:

In the wide-ranging [Meet the Press] appearance, Obama once again gave strong indications that he's backing off his stance on two key campaign pledges - whether to repeal President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and his call for bringing U.S. combat troops home from Iraq in 16 months.

I was pretty stunned at this, so I went to the tape and watched President-elect Obama on Meet the Press. And what do you know, he didn't "give strong indications that he's backing off" his income tax or Iraq pledges. He did nothing of the kind.

On taxes, Obama said, "My economic team right now is examining -- do we repeal that through legislation [or] do we let it lapse so that, when the Bush tax cuts expire, they're not renewed when it comes to wealthiest Americans?" In other words, he didn't say he was considering not repealing the tax cuts, he said he was considering how to repeal them - whether to support repealing them now, or whether to support them being automatically repealed by statute in two years. But the support for repeal is a foregone conclusion.

Likewise, on Iraq, Obama reiterated that it his top priority to withdraw troops from Iraq "as quickly as we can." Sure, he didn't explicitly say the phrase "16 months" - but in way is a pledge to withdraw troops "as quickly as we can" a "strong indication" that he will withdraw troops in more time than 16 months? If anything, Obama's actually suggesting he may bring troops home sooner (I don't think he will, but my point is that if you can draw any conclusion from his statement, it is that, and not that he's "backing off" his 16 month timeline).

Look, Obama has clearly backed off his campaign promise for a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies. I also think that his transition team has offered conflicting signals on whether the new administration's timing for its push to repeal Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Those are concrete, verifiable, undebatable facts, and he deserves to be asked about them. I also think it's fair to criticize Obama for not moving to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy right when he enters office.

However, Jonathan Martin claiming in a straight news story that Obama's Meet the Press interview "gave strong indications that he's backing off" his overall promise to support the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and withdraw troops from Iraq in 16 months is an outrageous lie - a made up fiction by a self-serving "reporter" looking to get his story on the front page of Drudge. Believe me, if Obama had done that, I'd be among the first to flag it (and if Obama in the future does, in fact, back off those promises, we should all call him out on it).

But that's not what he did on Meet the Press. The only thing that happened this morning is that an arrogant "reporter" manufactured a story. Remember, it was only a few years ago that people like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass became national embarrassments for that kind of behavior - now it seems that's what passes for the norm in "political journalism."

* I'm not linking to the story because the entire reason the Politico made up this outrageous lie is to get people to link to the story and build up traffic which it then uses to attract ad revenue. If you want to see the story go to the Politico.

Big Trouble In Little America

David Sirota — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:06:01 -0500

I watched one of the two Best Worst Movies in film history this weekend - Big Trouble in Little China (the other Best Worst Movie is Army of Darkness). Whether brought on by the natural high of a leftover-filled stomach, or the artificial high of Thanksgiving night Maker's Mark, I had an epiphany that this movie is a highly accurate - if artistically absurd - portrayal of a deeply important aspect of how America sees itself in the world.

The main character, Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), is obviously cast as America. Indeed, director John Carpenter pretty overtly wants him to be something of a Western cowboy (for instance, though a truck driver, Burton carries his belongings in a saddle bag). As the Toronto Star praised Russell in its review, "He does a great John Wayne imitation." Meanwhile, David Lo Pan and his gang are the Rest of the World, and more specifically, the Non-Aligned Countries, otherwise known as the Axis of Evil.

The plot casts these Foreigners as having created a terrorist cell in San Francisco's Chinatown. In fact, every Chinese person in the movie - good guy or bad guy - is made to seem like their first and foremost loyalty is not to the United States, but to China ("China is here, Mr Burton!") - a key fear propagated by American pop culture, from the McCarthy witchhunts for communist infiltrators to George W. Bush's domestic "war on terror." And Burton's reaction to their idiosyncracies and local cultures is the stunned/disgusted "no, god, please what is that?"

So how does Burton/America deal with Lo Pan/Foreign Terrorists? He has no plan at all, other than to head to their headquarters and bust in guns blazing. This is not an accident or something looked down on - it's how he rolls and he's proud of it, as evidenced by his repeated refrain that he doesn't need to plan because "it's all in the reflexes."

Everytime he says this, we're supposed to laugh and cheer with him, because this is how we roll.

We don't plan when dealing with foreigners who have different customs and cultures and who threaten our interests - we don't need to plan because planning is for wimps. We're fellow truck-driver cowboys with daggers in pocket of the boots we're wearing over our acid wash jeans - and dammit, "it's all in the reflexes."

While Burton stumbles a lot and makes an idiot out of himself, his lack of planning ultimately works. He defeats the evil foreigners, saves the day and gets the girl (who he's too cool to keep around). The moral of the story is that while America might make some blockheaded mistakes, they're honest ones and because we're the "good guys" we'll end up winning the day. There may be "big trouble" but it's manageable because compared to American power, everything is little (in the movie's case what's little is China, but it could be anything - Iraq, Al Qaeda, etc.).

Big Trouble in Little China debuted in 1986 - arguably the peak of American world supremacy. The Soviet Union was on its heels about to collapse and there were no other superpowers, or emerging superpowers. So, in that sense, the movie was a vaguely accurate metaphorical depiction of the United States at the moment. We could kick some ass without really having to think about it.

That said, the tongue-in-cheek flavor of the film suggests Carpenter is using the Burton character to deliberately ridicule American hubris (and let's not forget the very end of the movie just before the credits roll: the crazy-eyed demon about to get his final revenge on Burton could be the world taking revenge on that hubris). So, in that sense, the movie was actually a prescient warning - one that's more relevant today than when it first came out. China and India are both on the ascent economically and militarily, and the global power game has gone stateless and transnational. So while we still like to see ourselves as the chest-puffed swashbuckling Jack Burton from the film's poster, that's just not what we are - or can be - anymore. Our Jack Burton-ism is no longer the rip-roaring hee-hawin' adventures through the Grenadas and Panamas of the world - we're knee-deep in battles with much bigger and better-prepared enemies.

And so the the question is whether we - and by extension, our our pop culture - can acknowledge that reality?

It seems to me we refused to accept that when we re-elected George W. Bush in 2004 - a President Jack Burton if there ever was one. Remember, it was Bush who looked at terrorists and said "bring it on," and it was Jack Burton who bragged that he " looks that big ol' storm right square in the eye and says, 'Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.'"

But it also seems to me that perhaps we are beginning the process of accepting reality when we elected Barack Obama, largely because Obama articulated a vision of America being far more humble and controlled on the world stage.

Sure, reflexes (ie. how we react in a short-term crisis) are still going to be important. But with our global challenges becoming far more long-term and structural in nature, it's not going to be "all in the reflexes" nor can we afford to just waltz into delicate situations against well-prepared enemies without any other plan than kickin' some ass.

Because of population growth trends, an Asian industrial revolution, and the decline of our empire-level power, the featured film of the day will increasingly be Big Trouble in Little America. We're up to dealing with that trouble, but only if we retire Jack Burton to the Pork Chop Express for good.

GIFT SHOP ADDENDUM: As something of a gift-shop addendum to this post, I wanted to note that you can go pick up all the Big Trouble in Little China paraphernalia that you may want from the Wing Kong Exchange, a website named after the major venue in the movie.

Conservatism: Trashing Government on Its Way Out

Terrance Heath — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:18:49 -0500

Reading the headlines over the past week, I'm beginning to wonder if there's a single agency in the United States government that conservatives haven't left in worse shape than they found it. I've been reading about demoralized government employees, under-resourced departments, and agencies left in shambles after eight years of Republican rule.

A few days after the election I participated in a telephone survey about the outcome. The surveyor, at one point, asked me how I felt about the Bush administration and the congressional Republicans. After a couple of tries at explaining conservative failure, I finally blurted out, "People hate government, and don't believe it can do any good, just can't govern effectively."

After this week, I think I'd probably amend that statement. Conservatives don't believe government doesn't work. They believe it shouldn't. And when they get elected they make damn sure it can't.

In the middle of a financial crisis, we find out that Homeland Security has failed to oversee billions of dollars in equipment purchases.

The Homeland Security Department has done a poor job overseeing the purchase of billions of dollars of equipment and technology since the agency was created five years ago, according to a federal report scheduled for release today.

Senior department officials have "not provided the oversight needed" to ensure that purchases "with important national security objectives" function properly and stay on budget, according to Congress' Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO report is the latest to raise questions about the Homeland Security Department, which Congress has criticized for gaps in aviation security, a faltering response to Hurricane Katrina and slow progress in securing land borders.

The new report levels criticism at a complex process Homeland Security has used to beef up the nation's defenses by purchasing security equipment, including machines that scan suitcases for bombs.

In many cases, programs were delayed or went over budget, including planned improvements in Coast Guard rescues, luggage screening and the capture and removal of illegal migrants.

In the middle of a housing crisis, we find out that HUD has been neglected these past eight years.

The Obama administration will soon inherit a $35 billion federal housing agency that was a weak backbencher during the housing crisis and moved too late to do much to keep millions of families from going into foreclosure.

Beyond the pressing crisis, the Department of Housing and Urban Development also has dramatically retreated in the past eight years from its mission of fostering affordable housing. Pushing homeownership has been the agency's top priority under the Bush administration, and HUD's budget for public housing for low-income families has been cut year after year.

In a pre-election letter sent to HUD employees through their union, Barack Obama wrote: "As we tackle the effects of the current fiscal crisis on Americans, HUD must be part of the solution. The Department's mission -- to promote affordable quality housing and community development available to all without discrimination -- is critical to the well-being of millions of working families."

Experts on housing finance and poverty cheer the sentiments but warn the president-elect's advisers that the long-neglected agency will require hefty amounts of taxpayer money, aggressive leadership and a culture shift of sorts.

That cultural shift will be needed across several agencies, given that federal employees have been demoralized by eight years of conservative rule. (Well, wouldn't you be demoralized working for people who hate the very idea that your job even exists?)

As The Washington Post reported this week, President-elect Barack Obama wrote American Federation of Government Employees in October promising that he would do everything in his power to rebuild the federal service. He also promised to protect collective bargaining rights and to restore funding cuts that have eviscerated the federal government's ability to faithfully execute the laws.

The past eight years have been a horror to many federal employees. The Bush administration has rarely missed an opportunity to criticize, cut and meddle, and it dismissed the notion that federal employees need more freedom to innovate and learn. As former vice president Al Gore rightly argued, federal employees are not the problem in poor performance. It is the bureaucracy in which they are trapped.

The Bush administration, however, decided that the best way to reform government was to outsource it. From 2001 to 2005, civilian employment remained at 1.8 million, more or less, while the estimated number of contractor jobs surged from 4.4 million to 7.6 million.

Contractors are now responsible for tasks that include writing requests for proposals, monitoring contract performance and providing management analysis. Contractors are also front and center in disbursing the $700 billion bailout, in no small measure because the Bush administration made no effort to strengthen the government's core capacity to monitor the complicated instruments that caused the financial meltdown.

And meddle the Bush administration has. Bush's EPA, most recently, has changed air quality rules for national parks, over the dissent of regional administrators. At the FDA scientists charge top health officials with "serious misconduct" in ignoring scientists' concerns about approving for sale unsafe or ineffective medical devices. Meanwhile, despite its claims to the contrary, the Bush administration is moving to move as many of its political appointees into career positions as possible, making it harder for the incoming administration to appoint its own people.

And whoever ends up appointed as Secretary of State is going to face an under-resourced department on day one.

The next secretary of state not only will face the challenge of repairing the nation's tattered image and grappling with an array of global crises and hot spots, but also must solve a problem closer to home: reforming an under-resourced State Department to handle its growing duties, such as rebuilding war-torn societies, coping with worldwide pandemics and working with other countries to curb global warming.

"In the last eight years, we have significantly reinvented and transformed every national security agency except the Department of State," said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "Our core Foreign Service officers and aid officers are not large enough to play the role that's been cast for them, nor do we have the training establishment to prepare them for their roles."

..."The next president and the next secretary come into office at a time when our economy is in recession, our military is tied down and our reputation is tarnished," said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Diplomatic tools are arguably the one set of instruments that are available. It's a natural moment for American diplomacy."

But the past two years have brought a flurry of testimony and reports questioning the capacity of the U.S. government to carry out its foreign policy. They cite the relative underfunding of State Department personnel, especially compared with the resources that have poured into the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security in the years following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They have criticized State's efforts to convey a positive U.S. image abroad. And they have questioned the training and readiness of the Foreign Service to carry out functions beyond traditional diplomacy, such as advising Third World governments on training police officers, setting up judicial systems and holding fair and free elections.

The secretary of state "lacks the tools -- people, competencies, authorities, program and funding -- to execute the President's foreign policies," according to a report last month from the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Henry L. Stimson Center.

Take all that in while you consider the $600 billion the Pentagon paid for reconstruction projects in Iraq that were shoddily done or unfinished (and the way-behind-schedule sewage treatment plant that's over its $100 million budget, and the auditors who go easy on military contractors), the $185,481 we're replacing for a contractor who abandoned it while fleeing Iraq, the $13 billion wasted or stolen in Iraq, the $6 billion spent on private security in Iraq (since we fired the Iraqi police), the utter lack of oversight on the bailout (with $290 billion already spent, and a huge windfall for banks hidden inside), millions wasted on no-bid contracts after Katrina, etc., and you'd be forgiven for wondering there's an effort underway to drain the treasury as much as possible and trash the place on their way out.

(Of course, not without making last minute changes to regulations, and leaving enough of their people behind to make sure it stays trashed.)

This is all being reported just under two months before inauguration. It makes you wonder what we'll learn after the Obama administration moves in.

Never mind rescuing the economy, the next administration may have to rebuild the government at the same time.

"Center-Right Nation" Watch - Feingold's War Opposition Should Disqualify Him From a Chairmanship

David Sirota — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:45:30 -0500

Digby has the goods on Democratic Villagers in D.C. asserting that Russ Feingold's opposition to the Iraq War - which is congruent with President-elect Obama's and the American electorate - should disqualify him from assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Because, in our "center-right nation," everyone loves the Iraq War.

Meanwhile, the New York Times' David Brooks dreams of a Barack Obama presidency whose primary aim is making wealthy suburbanites like him happy, in this a country whose landslide election of a man billed as a redistributing socialist displayed absolutely "no sign" of a "movement to the left."

The Powell Endorsement

David Sirota — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:46:21 -0400

I was on CNN this morning to discuss Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama this weekend. You can watch the clip here. I made the point that the endorsement is far more of a blow to John McCain than a big plus for Obama.

For McCain, Powell abandoning the GOP ship shows a significant portion of the Establishment believes he is going to lose, and that sense of inevitability is going to make it even harder for him to climb back into this race. For Obama, Powell's endorsement gives him a small bump thanks to Powell's incisive criticism of McCain, but it doesn't give him a huge positive boost on deeper foreign policy issues because Powell has destroyed his own credibility with his now-discredited United Nations speech - the one he knew was chock full of lies, the one that led us into the Iraq War, and the one he refuses to apologize for, even as it remains the single most humiliating and destructive act in contemporary diplomatic history.

As I told CNN, what's far more intriguing—and potentially troubling—is what Obama's own embrace of Powell means in terms of policy. Obama used his own opposition to the war—the war that Colin Powell helped start—as a contrast point in the Democratic primary and in the general election. He is campaigning on a promise to end the war. What does Powell's endorsement of Obama say about those promises? According to newspapers this morning, it may actually say a lot.

The Associated Press reports that "Powell will have a role as a top presidential adviser in an Obama administration, the Democratic White House hopeful said Monday." Obama told NBC News Powell will "have a role as one of my advisers" and held out the possibility of a formal White House or Cabinet role. He also asked Powell to publicly campaign with him.

For the millions of Americans supporting Obama because of his opposition to the war, this is disconcerting, to say the least.

As CNN reported yesterday, Powell remains totally unrepentant both about his own critical role pushing us to war. For instance, he claims to have tried to stop the war, five years after giving the single most important (and discredited) speech in building the public case for war. He now claims he wants to see the war end, but it's difficult to trust the integrity of a man who denies even the most basic facts of his public involvement in creating the crisis in the first place. That Obama now seems to reflexively trust Powell suggests not foreign policy prudence from the Democratic nominee, but knee-jerk ignorance - and worse, a potential to abdicate the very antiwar themes he's run on for so long.

Clearly, Powell is in this for Powell. He sees that McCain is losing, he'd like to be relevant once again, and so he's glomming onto the Obama candidacy. And it's obvious that what's pushing Obama closer to Powell is the Establishment noise machine. Though there is no evidence Powell commands any grassroots following, he is revered among professional pundits, reporters and politicians for his supposed Seriousness and Respectability (whatever that means). Indeed, the Wall Street Journal today has a good rundown of how the commentariat is celebrating Powell's foreign policy "credibility" and writing Powell's humiliating behavior out of history. Even worse, Democratic politicians are claiming - without evidence, of course - that Powell has some huge following in battleground states.

As a journalist, it sickens me that our power-worshiping press corps refuses to report the basic facts of Powell's record (though I give CNN's John Roberts credit - he made this point explicitly this morning). Really - once the Establishment graces a figure with the aura of "credibility," is there anything that figure can do (say, lead us into a war based on lies) to have that "credibility" revoked?

That said, as a progressive, I don't fault Obama for trying to capitalize on those fabricated memes about Powell, and use them in the context of the campaign. He's got 15 days until the election, and any short-term boost is a good thing.

What I worry about is the day after the election. I am concerned about a President Obama internalizing that Establishment fantasy about Colin Powell the Serious and Credible Voice - and ignoring the actual fact-based story about Colin Powell, the Most Discredited Foreign Policy Voice In Contemporary American History. We don't need another president who refuses to live in the "reality-based world" - we need a president who matches his campaign promises on critical issues like the Iraq War with an understanding of which voices will be the most reliable in making those promises a reality.

Prisoners of War

Robert Borosage — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:27:34 -0400

On September 29, Congress revolted against the $700 billion price tag of the proposed bailout of Wall Street. The day before, that same Congress passed without murmur—unanimously in the Senate—a $700 billion budget for the Pentagon in 2009. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression has shattered the conservative illusions about deregulation and market fundamentalism. But the equally costly illusions about America’s role as an “indispensable nation” policing the globe go without challenge. We remain prisoners of war.

Most Americans have no sense of the cost and scope of America’s role as globocop. We sustain what Chalmers Johnson calls an “empire of bases” across the globe – over 700 active bases in more than 30 countries. Our navy polices the world’s oceans. We task our military to maintain “dominance” not only in our own hemisphere, but in Europe, the Persian Gulf and Asia. Our intelligence “plumbing in place” engages in covert activities throughout the globe. We are the only nation with the capacity to airlift expeditionary forces rapidly and in large numbers across the globe. We are now devoting some $12 billion a month to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush has declared a “Global War on Terror,” a so-called “long war,” without limits or exits. Our Defense Secretary complains that the military is displacing the desiccated State Department as America’s representatives across the world.

The cost of sustaining this commitment is staggering. The Pentagon’s budget itself represents more than half of all discretionary spending—everything the government does, outside of entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, and interest on the national debt. At $700 billion, it is about equal to that spent by the rest of the world combined on the military. But the actual cost of our military is strewn throughout the budget. Add in the cost of our veterans, the arms aid in the State Department budget, Homeland Security, and more—and actual spending climbs over $1 trillion a year.

Our military has no rival, but we grow ever less secure. There are three fundamental reasons for this.

As carpenters know, if you only carry a hammer, lots of things start looking like a nail. Maintain a global military constantly engaged across the world, and it will find things to do. As one conservative Southern Senator once said, “the greater ability we have to go places and do things, the more likely we are to go there and do them.” Neo-conservatives dream of the military remaking the Middle East. Humanitarians demand that it act to stop genocide or atrocities from Rwanda to Darfur. Global corporations insist that it challenge pirates and rogue states that are posing an increasing nuisance to shipping.

Thus, the fanatics that launched the airplanes against the World Trade Towers are turned into warriors; the very real threat they pose transformed into a Global War on Terror. This not only helps justify the “war of choice” against Iraq, surely the most costly national security debacle since Vietnam. It also distracts us from a sensible strategy against al Qaeda and its allies. As http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2007/RAND_OP168.pdf “>the Pentagon’s own think tank, the Rand Corporation concluded in a recent study

, the very concept of a “war on terror” isn’t only a distraction; it is detraction from a sensible strategy. By elevating al Qaeda into global warriors, it inflates their importance, and aids their ability to recruit. At the same time, it scorns the real measures needed to counter al Qaeda—intelligence cooperation, financial constraints, and alert and aggressive policing. Worse, it undermines the broad challenge that must be made to engage Islam, to rally the forces of moderation, and to isolate the extremists.

The second problem is the obverse: things that don’t look like nails get ignored. America’s priorities are badly distorted. Abroad, as Defense Secretary Gates acknowledged, generals and admirals displace our diplomats. Arms sales dominate our foreign assistance programs. At home, our country is literally falling apart from lack of investment in a modern, energy efficient infrastructure. We spend tens of billions each year to project our military power into the Persian Gulf, but fail to invest in the renewable energy and conservation at home that could reduce our dependence on foreign oil, generate jobs here in the U.S., and help capture the green markets that will be the growth markets of the future. We are a wealthy country, so in fact, we probably could afford to sustain military spending at current levels. But we can’t do so, and slash taxes on the wealthy and the corporations, without starving basic investments here at home, even as we rack up record deficits.

Worse, the military has no answer to the major threats to our security: a growing global indebtedness that can’t be sustained, the rise of India and China as economic powerhouses, catastrophic climate change and the growing resource struggles that will be far more destabilizing than Islamic terrorists, an integrated global economy of ever greater instability. Worse, the attention devoted to military misadventures like Iraq gets in the way of addressing these looming threats.

The third problem is the contrast between the Republic we are trying to secure and the national security state that has been built to police the globe. War augments the power of the executive. War and military threat justify secrecy, covert operations, disdain for constitutional limits and checks and balances. President Bush claims the right to launch preventive war on any nation in the world, to wiretap Americans without warrant, to designate them an enemy combatant and arrest them without reasonable cause, to hold them without review. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, rendition and torture have shamed America during the Bush years. But the lawlessness of the national security state – and the trampling of our own liberties in the name of security – did not begin in 2000. Bush has merely taken to the extreme prerogatives claimed by presidents over the last decades.

But the myths that sustain our military—and the lobbies that promote military spending—are politically unassailable. Both major party presidential candidates pledge to increase the size of the military and project higher military spending in the future. Both support an increased military occupation in Afghanistan, ignoring the history of fierce Afghani resistance to foreign occupation that confounded Britain at the height of its empire, and the Soviet Union right off its borders. The financial crisis and coming recession is forcing a great reckoning in America. But to date, there is no serious challenge to our priorities, or to America’s commitment to policing the globe. The presidential debate on foreign policy featured disputes about Iraq, about Georgia, about Afghanistan, about the economic crisis. But our basic global strategy, our spending priorities went without question or comment.

Economic crisis, like hanging, has a way of concentrating the mind. The financial crisis and the harsh recession likely to follow will spark a fundamental debate about America’s economy. But the debacle in Iraq has not had the same effect on the foreign policy debate. A challenge to America’s global strategy will not come from Washington. It won’t come from the national security managers of either party. It can only come if citizens build a democratic movement willing and able to demand the debate that we need.

"Country First"

David Sirota — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:18:06 -0400

My weekly newspaper column, out today in national papers, takes a hard look at the Republican convention, and specifically, at the notion that the GOP puts "country first." You can read it here.

The meta narrative of the campaign right now is pretty simple: The GOP has made a political strategy out of the old adage that "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." Knowing that the Bush-DeLay-Abramoff scandals (which continued this week) have made many Americans believe the Republicans are scoundrels, the Republicans are doing everything they can to make the campaign into a competition over who can be more hypernationalist. This is the saber rattling of the 2004 campaign on steroids.

The mixture of John McCain stressing his Vietnam record and Sarah Palin consolidating the GOP base with her Bible-thumping record really brings into full relief that old warning that I invoke in the column: namely, that extremism will come to America wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

So what can Democrats do about it all? I'd say two things.

1) Not get rattled, and keep on pushing the change message. I think Barack Obama's team has this right - that while they need to adjust a bit (see #2), McCain's decision to superficially focus in on the concept of "change" is ultimately a very good thing for Democrats.

2) Draw the contrast more starkly than ever. I have been on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News making exactly this point this week. Through issues like NAFTA and the Iraq War, Obama can really show how McCain is not only out of touch with America, but is uninterested in truly putting our "country first."

You can read the full column at the San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Tahoe Tribune, Ft. Collins Coloradoan, Lewiston Sun-Journal, In These Times, TruthDig, Credo Action or Creators Syndicate's website.

The column relies on grassroots support, so if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.