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Commentary By Ron Beasley

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Romney Foreign Policy

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The citizens of the United States are tired of war, George W Bush's wars. Given that I have some advice for the Obama campaign - forget Bain Capitol and go after Romney's foreign policy. Collin Powell gave them the talking points.

WASHINGTON - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday questioned Mitt Romney's choice in foreign policy advisers, saying that some are so right-wing that the advice they give deserves "second thought.

"I don't know who all of his advisers are, but I've seen some of the names and some of them are quite far to the right. And sometimes they might be in a position to make judgments or recommendations to the candidate that should get a second thought," Powell said during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

He gave the example of Romney recently saying that Russia is the "number one geopolitical foe" to the United States.

"Come on Mitt, think," Powell said. "That isn't the case."

The Nation took a look at Romney's foreign policy advisors and it's pretty scary.

Yet though the candidates and their views were often hard to take seriously, their statements on foreign policy reflected a more disturbing trend in the GOP. Despite facing a war-weary public, the candidates-with the exception of Ron Paul, an antiwar libertarian, and Jon Huntsman, a moderate internationalist-positioned themselves as unapologetic war hawks. That included Mitt Romney, marginally more polished than his rivals but hardly an expert. Given Romney's well-established penchant for flip-flopping and opportunism, it's difficult to know what he really believes on any issue, including foreign affairs (the campaign did not respond to a request for comment). But a comprehensive review of his statements during the primary and his choice of advisers suggests a return to the hawkish, unilateral interventionism of the George W. Bush administration should he win the White House in November.

Bush retreads: 

Romney is loath to mention Bush on the campaign trail, for obvious reasons, but today they sound like ideological soul mates on foreign policy. Listening to Romney, you'd never know that Bush left office bogged down by two unpopular wars that cost America dearly in blood and treasure. Of Romney's forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, says, "Romney's likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy if he were elected." On some key issues, like Iran, Romney and his team are to the right of Bush. Romney's embrace of the neoconservative cause-even if done cynically to woo the right-could turn into a policy nightmare if he becomes president.

Yes, when it comes to foreign policy Romney even scares the Koch brothers Cato Institute.  There is every reason to believe that a Romney administration would bring more wars and more tax cuts leading to a ballooning deficit.  No body who is sane thinks that a war with Iran would be anything but a disaster.

If you liked George W Bush you will love Mitt Romney.  That would make a great bumper sticker.

 

Standing On The Edge

By Steve Hynd

I've a post up at The Agonist today wondering if the time has finally come for the West and Iran to either do a deal or go to war. Trita Parsi says it has and I'm inclined to agree.

But if the first order consequences of attacking Iran have been well covered by many, second order and further consequences ar harder by their very nature to predict and have not been well explored in the media. Previous wars in the region have shown that events which interrupted between 4 and 7% of the world's oil supply caused price spikes of between 25 and 70%. Iran accounts for 5% of the world's supply and all the oil flowing through the Hormuz Straits comes to 20% of that supply. At some point, if oil hits a sustained price of over $110 a barrel and before $150 a barrel, the global economy begins to break down. At over $150 a barrel for a long period, we can expect a worldwide economic crash. The current price of oil is around $100 a barrel. The math is easy. here.

I'm torn between coming across as too alarmist and calling the potential oncoming disaster what it is. We don't need Mutually Assured Destruction between Cold war superpowers to cause the downfall of modern civilization any longer. If the world pitches into a massive economic crash right now - with the debt-ridden nations of Southern Europe leading the way - it won't recover in time before global warming and peak cheap oil really begin to bite, causing their own massive economic impact. It may not be an exaggeration to say these talks constitute a threshold.

Prepping to bomb Iran

By Dave Anderson:

Via Gahlran at Information Dissemination:

Today, mentioned in passing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee - without a word or question on the topic from any supposedly well informed Senators - Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert told the Senate committee that the US Navy is going to deploy 4 minesweepers to the Persian Gulf (which will double the number of US Navy Minesweepers in the Persian Gulf) and also send additional mine hunting helicopters to the region. This comes following news earlier this year that the US Navy is working on the USS Ponce to deploy to the Persian Gulf to be a full time Mine Warfare Command Ship....

And here is the charter. Note the timeline. Basically we seem to be in a hurry to get everything in place by summertime.

Other indicators that the US is anticipating a major military campaign by either the US or Isreal in and against Iran would be the deployment of more anti-missile batteries to Bahrain, salvage and naval construction units to multiple points on the western shore of the Persian Gulf, and additional E-8 JStars and E-3 Awacs that would be used to coordinate the anti-ship missile battery hunt. 

Pay attention to those moves as the precursors to a major operation against Iran. 

Your ignorance, their strength

By BJ Bjornson

I couldn�t help riffing off of Paul Krugman�s column yesterday which, like many of his missives, is pretty hard to argue with, and it�s his summation that makes for some good quotable material. After noting that there is little surprise in the Santorum wing of Evolution deniers disliking higher education, he then moves to the more business-minded Romney wing.

But what about people like Mr. Romney? Don�t they have a stake in America�s future economic success, which is endangered by the crusade against education? Maybe not as much as you think.

After all, over the past 30 years, there has been a stunning disconnect between huge income gains at the top and the struggles of ordinary workers. You can make the case that the self-interest of America�s elite is best served by making sure that this disconnect continues, which means keeping taxes on high incomes low at all costs, never mind the consequences in terms of poor infrastructure and an undertrained work force.

And if underfunding public education leaves many children of the less affluent shut out from upward mobility, well, did you really believe that stuff about creating equality of opportunity?

So whenever you hear Republicans say that they are the party of traditional values, bear in mind that they have actually made a radical break with America�s tradition of valuing education. And they have made this break because they believe that what you don�t know can�t hurt them.

Knowledge is power, and the powerful aren�t into sharing.

It's John Yoo's America, We Just Have To Live Here

By Steve Hynd

Attorney General Eric Holder has been explaining the Obama administration's stance on targeted killings without prior trial, including those of US citizens.

TPM:

The Obama administration believes that executive branch reviews of evidence against suspected al-Qaeda leaders before they are targeted for killing meet the constitution�s �due process� requirement and that American citizenship alone doesn�t protect individuals from being killed, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech Monday.

�Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security,� Holder said. �The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.�

Broadly outlining the guidelines the Obama administration has used to conduct lethal drone stikes overseas, Holder said the U.S. government could legally target a senior operational al Qaeda leader who is actively engaged in planning to kill Americans if the individual (1) posed an imminent threat of violence; (2) could not feasibly be captured; and (3) if the operation was conducted in line with war principles.

Such a use of lethal force against that type of individual, Holder said, wouldn�t violate the executive order banning assassinations or criminal statues because such an act would be in �self defense.� In remarks delivered at Northwestern University Law School in Chicago, Holder also said that targeted killings are not �assassinations,� adding that the �use of that loaded term is misplaced� because assassinations are �unlawful killings� while targeted strikes are conducted lawfully.

The bold emphasis is mine. "Due process" now includes being accused, found guilty and sentenced to death by an executive that is judge, jury and executioner and all conducted in the shadows.

Emptywheel:

Hamdi�which Holder invokes for premise that �due process takes into account the realities of combat��specifically says �the threats to military operations posed by a basic system of independent review are not so weighty as to trump a citizen�s core rights to challenge meaningfully the Government�s case and to be heard by an impartial adjudicator.� Hamdi permits for balancing�for the use of things like hearsay, for example. But it explicitly says that the realities of combat don�t obviate a citizen�s right to an impartial adjudicator.

You know. Like a judge.

Somehow, I've fallen through a portal into John Yoo's America.

Update

Adam Serwer:

don't assume that when Holder says "imminent threat of violent attack," he means that you're actually part of a specific plot threatening American lives. "The Constitution does not require the President to delay action until some theoretical end-stage of planning when the precise time, place, and manner of an attack become clear," Holder said. That would introduce an "unacceptably high risk of failure." When he refers to "failure," Holder presumably means failing to kill the target before the attack or plan for an attack materializies, not the possiblity that the government might accidentally kill an innocent person.

If the standards for when the government can send a deadly flying robot to vaporize you sound a bit subjective, that's because they are. Holder made clear that decisions about which citizens the government can kill are the exclusive province of the executive branch, because only the executive branch possess the "expertise and immediate access to information" to make these life-and-death judgments.

ACLU:

�Few things are as dangerous to American liberty as the proposition that the government should be able to kill citizens anywhere in the world on the basis of legal standards and evidence that are never submitted to a court, either before or after the fact. Anyone willing to trust President Obama with the power to secretly declare an American citizen an enemy of the state and order his extrajudicial killing should ask whether they would be willing to trust the next president with that dangerous power.�

Some used to think it was ok to trust a president with that kind of power if he was a Democrat. (I'm not going to quote myself but please, just read the link.)

Keeping people out

By Dave Anderson:

The summer of 1998 was a great time for me.  I had just graduated high school, I was in great shape as I was still lifting five days a week and swimming two or three miles a day, I had a car that (usually) got me from Point A to Point B, my friends and I had very reliably access to affordable and good beer, and chasing girls was almost always fun no matter the result.

I also had some serious cash in my pocket as I was working for the fourth year for my city.  That year, I had been promoted to water safety instructor/riverfront lifeguard.  My base pay was $12.00 an hour, and I could usually count on at least a couple of hours of overtime each week as we were short staffed because any kid with a pulse could find an above minimal wage job then. 

Most of my check was going into the bank as I was preparing to go to an elite university where the annual cost of attendance (tuition, room and board) was roughly the expected first year salary of a humanities' student.  But even with a 70% savings rate, I had a blast that summer.  My 1981 Toyota Tercel's tank could be filled for an hour of take home pay

Now, I am the referee coordinator for my school district's recreational soccer league.  I have spent most of the past week talking to my teenage referees because I need to start making the spring schedule.  I also want to push several of the better kids into doing medium level competitive games as it is an appropriate challenge and those games pay better at roughy $20/hour.

Older teens have it rough today. 

One of the kids I spoke with was interested as he is a smart kid but has not been able to find a job that pays above minimal wage for the past six months.   Filling the tank to his 1994 Mazda Protege will cost him at least two soccer games, perhaps a touch more if he does not have any grocery store loyalty/affinity points lined up.  He just got accepted to the same university I did.  Today, that university charges its freshman roughly the expected starting salary of a computer programmer with a top-3 program BS in CS.  He's hoping to make enough money between March 10 (the start of the preseason) and freshman orientation to pay his car and health insurance and then eke out a living on work study and refereeing the fall season to eat for the rest of the year. 

I'm sure he'll do fine.  He is a very smart kid with a good family able to provide a safety net, and he has both the hard skills and the softer (and far more valuable) people skills to do well for himself. But that conversation brought to mind this recent post by Ian Welsh on the economic trends of the next couple of years irregardless of who wins in November:

What has happened is that the general circle of prosperity has been reduced.  Less people now live in the �good� US economy.  When they drop out of that economy they also use a lot less oil and gas, and even electricity.

I'm just old enough that the cost of entry into the "good" US economy was not too high for most of my high school graduating class.  Tuition was rising but enough financial aid was actually grants or cheap ass fixed rate consolidation loans that college is not a complete backbreaker.  Gasoline was cheap enough that it did not constrain too many actions.  Economic life has not been golden for my high school cohort as we got out of college during the job-loss recovery of 2002-2003 and many of us spun our heels in several McJobs until something that vaguely resembles a career could be built.  And by now, most of the kids who did not attend or complete college have had enough time in their fields to actually be worth hiring due to their learning by doing as well as tacit knowledge.   

My brother is five years younger than me.  His cohort graduated high school in 2003/2004 and college just as the economy imploded from the housing bubble and Wall Street looting via the big shitpile.  Housing is too expensive anywhere the gas costs won't kill you, and student loan debt skyrocketed in just five years. 

Today's high school seniors are looking at educational bills that are ridiculous but are neccessary in order to buy the lottery ticket that might promise entry into the "good life" where even the good life means more of a paycheck goes into quasi-fixed energy costs because there is almost no place where the gasoline/time versus density trade-off favors density too strongly.  Even after they take on massive debts to get an education and probably another year or two of working/interning at subsistence wages to gain experience, there still are not jobs available for them that utilize their training.  They'll be competing for one more McJob against people who are more desperate (as they have kids/a mortage/no more student loan deferrements left) and have five years of similar McJob experience.  

The young referee who wants to do more and better games will probably scratch off an entry ticket, but more of his classmates won't.  And that trend will continue. 

Intervention: We're Doing It Wrong

By Steve Hynd

While news of human rights abuses in Syria are burning up the headlines, it's worth remembering that Libya still has major human rights problems despite Western intervention there, thanks mainly to the plethora of militias run riot. And let us not also forget that Iraq, almost a decade on, still has serious problems with its humanitarian record. Afghanistan's problems post-intervention have never been more manifest than this last week.

The lesson the West took from Iraq and Afghanistan is that it was best to intervene and get out again, rather than try to manage the aftermath. That's why current calls for intervention in Syria, which are often hopelessly unrealistic even on their own terms, usually don't mention any plan to manage the aftermath despite the fact that any such intervention will be destabilizing on a scale comparable to Iraq.

It would be far better to accept the utilitarian principle of "first, do no harm" and not employ military means in pursuit of humanitarian causes at all. After all, the resources involved could be better expended - saving more lives and relieving more misery, fulfilling "for the greatest good of the greatest number" - by non-military aid and development in places where the shooting hasn't started yet.

Real Men Go To Tehran Via Damascus

By Steve Hynd

The CSMonitor's Nicholas Blanford today writes that "diplomats and analysts say Western and Arab officials are mulling an option of military support for the rebel Free Syrian Army," the Sunni main opposition to Assad's Shiite regime. Despite the continued shelling of the Sunni stronghold city of Homs by Syrian government forces, now into its fifth day, the UNSC vetoes of China and Russia as well as military appreciation that Syria is not like Libya seems to have taken a "colaition of the willing" direct intervention off the table. Blanford quotes Andrew Exum of the CNAS think-tank in Washington, a group acknowledged as a primary driver of the Obama administration's foreign and military thinking.

�The Syrians will almost certainly resist any intrusion into their sovereignty, so to execute either a NFZ [no-fly zone] or safe haven would mean a fairly extensive air war to reduce Syrian air defenses,� Exum says. �We should also note that any such air operations would take place in some of the most militarily and politically sensitive air space on Earth.�

Syria has an aging but extensive air defense network provided by Russia, along with the bulk of its other weaponry. It's military is five times larger than Libya's. Both Hillary Clinton and the UK's William Hague have explicitly ruled out direct military action for now.

It may be that the West is already funneling both weapons and trainers to the FSA's rebels. Two days ago Borzou Daragahi, the Middle East and North Africa correspondent for the Financial Times, tweeted: "Wow - Misurata revolutionaries announce combat deaths of three #Libyan fighters in #Syria". That would seem to at least partially substantiate Philip Giraldi's report back in December (well in advance of any UNSC vote) that:

Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian border, delivering weapons from the late Muammar Gaddafi�s arsenals as well as volunteers from the Libyan Transitional National Council who are experienced in pitting local volunteers against trained soldiers, a skill they acquired confronting Gaddafi�s army. Iskenderum is also the seat of the Free Syrian Army, the armed wing of the Syrian National Council. French and British special forces trainers are on the ground, assisting the Syrian rebels while the CIA and U.S. Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause, enabling the fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers.

However, Assad has friends that Libya did not have, namely Russian and China, who have interests in Syria that they can exercise, whereas they did not have the ability to project force in Libya nor supply the regime at reasonable costs. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Assad is ready to negotiate with the rebels but few believe Assad really means it - especially since the shelling of Homs continues - and in any case the rebels are standing firm on their call for regime change. Thus the stage is set for a protracted proxy war between the West and Russia, which has a major naval base in Syria it will not want to give up.

It also sets up a direct confrontation between Shiites and Sunnis in the region, with the neo-whatever eternal bugbear Iran sitting in the background as a clear target. The neocon Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) think tank in particular is being especailly vocal on Syria right now, hoping to drive Western policy towards a showdown with Tehran. They are talking up the FSA:

�I believe the FSA is now one of the drivers of the situation. It is going to shape the outcome,� says Jeffrey White, a military analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and author of a new briefing paper on the FSA. �It has changed the nature of the conflict with the regime, is becoming increasingly identified with the popular opposition within Syria, has shown resilience on the battlefield, and is growing in capabilities and numbers.�

And talking up the notion of proxy intervention.

turning the FSA into a coherent military force will require �coordinated action by the intelligence services of a coalition of the willing,� says Jeffrey White, a military analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The FSA, he says, would need an assured supply of arms and ammunition, especially anti-tank missiles, secured means of communication, advice on how to coordinate operations across different regions of Syria, intelligence on Syrian Army operations and vulnerable military infrastructure.

�The intelligence services of the US, the UK, France, Turkey, Jordan, and other states in the region have the know-how and capabilities to do these kinds of things,� Mr. White says. �It would be important to have cooperation from one or more of the states bordering Syria, especially Turkey, in order to establish base facilities, training camps, supply routes and infiltration routes.�

It's a dangerous route to take.

�Syria is already an arena for proxy competition between Saudi Arabia and its allies and [rival] Iran and its allies,� says Aram Nerguizian, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and author of a report published in December on the risks of military intervention in Syria. �Anything that would involve direct Western intervention would be deeply destabilizing at the regional level.�

Of course, destabilizing the region has long been the neocon answer to the Middle East - as long as it doesn't include Israel. Their stated theory is that a shake-up will mean the emergence of democratic states more friendly to the U.S. Thus WINEP and others advocating covert arming of the rebels have both regime change and crippling Iran in mind when they do so.

"In Syria [sectarian identity] is there. All you have to do is scratch the surface," says Andrew Tabler, a Syria specialist with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of a book on Syria under the presidency of Mr. Assad. "Until now, I don't think you have seen a tremendous amount of organizing along sectarian lines.... But it is natural that the main divide is going to be between Alawites and other Shiite off-shoots versus Sunnis."

The Guardian's Seumas Milne is spot on when he writes:

Already US, British and French leaders are busy setting up a new coalition of the willing with their autocratic Saudi and Gulf allies, satirically named "friends of democratic Syria", to build up the opposition and drive Assad from power.

Intervention is in fact already taking place. The Saudis and Qataris are reported to be funding and arming the opposition. The Free Syrian Army has a safe haven in Turkey. Western special forces are said to be giving military support on the ground. And if that fails, the UN can be bypassed by invoking the "responsibility to protect" civilians, along Libyan lines.

But none of that will stop the killing. It will escalate it. That is the clear lesson of last year's Nato intervention in Libya.

...The overthrow of the Syrian regime would be a serious blow to Iran's influence in the Middle East. And as the conflict in Syria has escalated, so has the western-Israeli confrontation with Iran. Even as US defence secretary Leon Panetta and national intelligence director James Clapper acknowledged that Iran isn't after all "trying to build a nuclear weapon", Panetta has let it be known there is a "strong likelihood" Israel will attack Iran as early as April, while Iran faces crippling EU oil sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Western intervention in Syria � and Russia and China's opposition to it � can only be understood in that context: as part of a proxy war against Iran, which disastrously threatens to become a direct one.

To WINEP and many others calling for intervention by proxy in Syria, greater sectarian conflict and a possible confrontation with Iran are features, not bugs. The former head of Mossad took to the NY Times yesterday to proclaim that "Getting Iran booted out of Syria is essential for Israel�s security" and "The current standoff in Syria presents a rare chance to rid the world of the Iranian menace".

There are without doubt some serious and genuine advocates of the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine who are allying themselves with the regime-changers over Syria, but they are few and far between.

This Is The War That Never Ends

By Steve Hynd

It just goes on and on my friends.

The United States� plan to wind down its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected relies on shifting responsibility to Special Operations forces that hunt insurgent leaders and train local troops, according to senior Pentagon officials and military officers. These forces could remain in the country well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014.

...Under the emerging plan, American conventional forces, focused on policing large parts of Afghanistan, will be the first to leave, while thousands of American Special Operations forces remain, making up an increasing percentage of the troops on the ground; their number may even grow.

Three things.

1) You just knew this whole new "combat mission ends in 2013, troops out by 2014" was election-year spin, didn't you?

2) This is yet another example of how special forces are becoming the mover-and-shaker of the military, with consequently rising budgetary and bureaucratic clout (as well as ever closer ties to the CIA, now run by SOF-fan General Petraeus.)

3) The Green Beret's real mission, no matter what is being said now, is going to turn into refereeing the next Afghan civil war.

With Afghanistan's three major political blocs and three major insurgent groups moving in opposite directions, the country is facing the prospect of total fragmentation. Here's the worst-case scenario: The U.S. military reaches a settlement with the Afghan Taliban that does not address the country's political future, Karzai holds on to power illegitimately while pressing for his own peace deal with the Taliban, non-Pashtuns rise in opposition to both Karzai and the Taliban, and the national security forces fracture along ethnic lines. At the same time, the three insurgent factions turn against one another as the Haqqani network exploits the chaos and maintains a rear defensive position in Pakistani safe havens. Meanwhile, Pakistan's own domestic Taliban resurges and Islamabad faces yet another wave of terrorism and Afghan refugees.

Arif Rafiq's plan to avoid this catastrophic scenario for Afghanistan involves "improving the quality, not the quantity, of the Afghan national army and police" and "the army professionalized to serve as a bulwark against fragmentation". He doesn't explicitly say so in his piece, but it's pretty obvious from there who could form the most stable government. Rafiq's course for Afghanistan most likely leads to a military junta running a U.S.-friendly dictatorship. We've plenty of experience at dealing with those.

The Aftermath of Intervention

By Steve Hynd

The aftermath is never as full of rose petals and candy as neo-whatever advocates of the intervention told us it would be.

(Tripoli) - A Libyan diplomat who served as ambassador to France died less than 24 hours after he was detained by a Tripoli-based militia from the town of Zintan, Human Rights Watch said today. Dr. Omar Brebesh, who was detained on January 19, 2012, appears to have died from torture.

A preliminary autopsy report viewed by Human Rights Watch said the cause of death included multiple bodily injuries and fractured ribs. Photos of Brebesh's body, seen by Human Rights Watch, show welts, cuts, and the apparent removal of toenails, indicating that he was tortured prior to death. Human Rights Watch also read a report by the judicial police in Tripoli, which said that Brebesh had died from torture and that an unnamed suspect had confessed to killing him.

"The torture and killing of detainees is sadly an ongoing activity by some Libyan militias," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "These abusive militias will keep torturing people until they are held to account. Libya's leaders should show the political will to prosecute people who commit serious crimes, regardless of their role in the uprising."

According to the ICRC, there are about 8,500 detainees in prisons in Libya right now, most run by militias with only tangential connections to the central government. Many of these detainees are dark-skinned Libyans or sub-Saharan Africans. Many reliably report having been tortured.

The detainees who reported abuse said guards had beaten them, sometimes on a daily basis. Seven prisoners in two facilities, including women, said guards had subjected them to electric shock. Two detainees who had been at one facility reported beatings on the soles of their feet � a torture technique commonly used during Gaddafi�s rule...Fewer than half of the 53 interviewed detainees said they had been questioned, and none had been investigated by the police or brought before a judge. None said they had been able to speak with a lawyer.

What you won't be hearing is any kind of contrition from those who pushed for the NATO intervention - no, not even a little bit. They're apparently too busy calling for the next one, in Syria, to care what happens in the aftermath.

Hasten the Day

By Steve Hynd

Romney charges that the Obama administration's announcement of a 2013 end to combat missions in Afghanistan and 2014 pull-out date "makes absolutely no sense."

One of the few moderate, sane Republicans left, James Joyner, responds:

Critics who worry that this announcement of a withdrawal severely undercuts our negotiating position with the Taliban are surely correct. They can easily bide their time now that they have a date certain.

So how can a decision that undermines our allies and our own negotiating power nonetheless be the right one? Because the alternative is to continue getting people killed -- not to mention inadvertently killing innocents -- in a fight we can't win.

...As with many other Obama foreign policy decisions, one might have wished for a better rollout. Consultation with our NATO allies and partners on the matter would have been good form. And, after a more than a decade of fighting, a presidential speech rather than a casual announcement by the defense secretary would have been more fitting.

Ultimately, though, hastening the day Americans stop dying for a lost cause is the right call.

The Taliban always could "bide their time" in Afghanistan. They live there. Announce the timetable or not, it's meaningless.

I'm highly skeptical that this announced transition will actually mean the end to Americans fighting and dying in Afghanistan, and even more so that 2014 will see the end to a US military presence there, but I cannot help but concur with James' sentiments about "dying for a lost cause".

Alas, I'm fairly sure that Simon Jenkins is right when he writes that nothing has been learned from Afghanistan.

More alarming about the Afghan war has been its psychology. It has generated some two dozen books on my shelf, and every one of them warns, cautions, criticises, condemns. The Pashtun Taliban should not be underestimated. Defeating them by main force flew in the face of all experience. Pakistani intelligence would offer them sanctuary and support. Nato should not drive al-Qaida, a tiny Arabist cell in 2001, into alliance with the Taliban. The idea that force of western arms could turn a corrupt Muslim statelet into a sanitised, pro-western democracy was arrogant and unreal.

Every warning was disregarded in a classic of "cognitive dissonance".

...Unlike most European countries, sucked into the Afghan vortex by Nato blackmail, Britain and the US were willing warriors, with belligerence in their cultural genes. Discussing "what must be done" to order the rest of the world is second nature to their political class...Which is why this is not the endgame. Britain is even now rattling sabres and dicing with disaster alongside the US against Iran. Such a war would be as catastrophic as could be imagined, and against a country that poses no conceivable threat to western security. The sole reason for going to war against Iran is to go to war against Iran. That is how we went to war against Afghanistan and Iraq. Clearly, nothing has been learned.

If not Iran, then Syria. If not Syria, then somewhere else. It certainly seems correct to say that the US and Britain share some subtextual notion of "manifest destiny" that means they can keep on blithely assuming they have the right and wherewithall to "order the rest of the world" at gunpoint. To truly "hasten the day Americans stop dying for a lost cause" we're going to have to deal with that notion. I confess, I've no blessed clue how.

Climate Denialism: A Future Crime

By Steve Hynd

TP Green notes that Mitt Romney is climbing aboard the denialist crazy train in his search for GOP primary votes, attacking Gingrich in a public email for appearing in a 2008 ad for Al Gore's climate campaign.

Romney�s campaign spokesman Ryan Williams bashed Gingrich as being part of the �Soros agenda� for the advertisement:

"It is interesting to see the latest attack from Speaker Gingrich and his disintegrating campaign. Unlike Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney never sat next to Nancy Pelosi in an ad funded by George Soros on behalf of Al Gore�s global warming initiative. As recently as 2008, the Soros agenda had no better friend than Newt Gingrich. Nice try, Mr. Speaker."

For most of the world, anthropogenic climate change is settled science. We get that putting more energy into the system (a.k.a global warming) means not just an overall temperature rise but also vastly more energetic and unpredicatble weather systems leading to things like unusual cold spells and snowfalls in Winter, or to stronger tonadoes and heavier flooding in areas where such already occur. The evidence is overwhelming and the notion that climate change is some Soros-created conspiracy is just crazy. Anyone who believes otherwise has a reality-map which is so divergent from what is actually happening as to fulfil the primary requirement for a psychosis: a thought disorder in which reality testing is grossly impaired.

But the Republican Party has been bought and paid for by the Energy lobby; the Kochs and Halliburton, Exxon and the rest. Scientific shills for hire take to the pages of rightwing newspapers to push the Energy lobby's agenda and that filters down to the Republican rank-and-file as a gospel teaching to which purity tests apply. Both Romney and Gingrich, along with others in their party like McCain in 2008, have had to shift their public stances on climate change to a full-on denialism under the sway of this psychosis.

I'd understand if the GOP's position was that anthropogenic climate change was real, was happening, but that it was economically unviable to try to halt its progression. I'd disagree but at least it'd be a logically consistent position and the GOP could join the rest of us in talking about how we handle the effects of that change. Instead, their denialist intransigence is shaping up to become the greatest crime against humanity the Republicans have ever backed - and I include Iraq, their many bigotries and their "I'm alright, Jack" economic support for the 1% against the 99% in that statement. If they won't admit there's a cause, they cannot begin to formulate policies to deal with the problems.

Analyst Jack Whipple puts it succinctly:

"Taken together, the decline and eventual near cessation of fossil fuel production and that of many other minerals, disruption in global weather patterns, and the growing food and water scarcity will constitute the third great transition. Unlike the previous transitions in which life arguably got better for some, if not most, of the world's peoples, any upside to this transition seems to pale in the face of what is to come."

While a 2007 report by the centrist think-tank CNAS was rather more explicit:

In the case of severe climate change, corresponding to an average increase in global temperature of 2.6�C by 2040, massive nonlinear events in the global environment give rise to massive nonlinear societal events. In this scenario...nations around the world will be overwhelmed by the scale of change and pernicious challenges, such as pandemic disease. The internal cohesion of nations will be under great stress, including in the United States, both as a result of a dramatic rise in migration and changes in agricultural patterns and water availability. The flooding of coastal communities around the world, especially in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China, has the potential to challenge regional and even national identities. Armed conflict between nations over resources, such as the Nile and its tributaries, is likely and nuclear war is possible. The social consequences range from increased religious fervor to outright chaos. In this scenario, climate change provokes a permanent shift in the relationship of humankind to nature.

The tipping point for that 2.6�C radical change has already been reached.

As TP Green's Brad Johnson noted last year:

The Republican Party is doing its utmost to cripple our nation�s ability to prepare for and respond to climate disasters. At Majority Leader Eric Cantor�s behest, House GOP slashed clean energy investments to pay for emergency disaster relief following the Joplin and Tuscaloosa tornadoes. They cut the DHS disaster preparedness budget, including firefighter funding, in half (after Democrats raised an outcry, some firefighter grants were restored). They have blocked funding for the NOAA Climate Service, and slashed money for critical weather satellites. In states throughout the nation, conservatives are gutting clean-energy programs and attacking climate science, while local emergency services budgets are stripped to the bone.

With the security of our homeland under the clear and present threat of global warming, conservatives are choosing to cripple our defenses, simply to serve the obscene profits of climate polluters.

Climate change is the big anvil-to-be around the GOP's neck. In decades to come, their denialism for so many years will wreck their claims to be the strong party on national security, as it becomes clearer that their intransigence (and being in hock to the energy lobby) for nearly a decade in power under Bush left the US lagging behind others in facing up to the security challenges climate change entails. Mitt and the other GOP frontrunners want to repeat that crime of ommission for another term or two. Meanwhile, many people will die and others will live miserable lives. Their denialism constitutes a crime against humanity "in waiting".

The Enigma Of Juan Williams

Commentary By Ron Beasley

After being fired from NPR I could understand why Juan Williams would take a big bucks gig from FOX.  He had not done any serious journalism for a few years and he was not getting any younger.  The money probably looked good.  I must admit I lost a lot of respect for him never the less.  But as Ed Kilgore points out Williams is not playing by the FOX rules.

When Newt Gingrich turned Juan Williams into the perfect foil during the January 19 Republican candidate debate in Myrtle Beach, SC, ironic symbolism certainly abounded. Aside from the fact that Newt vaulted himself into the lead by beating up on an African-American journalist on MLK Day in the Cradle of the Confederacy, there was the additional fact that Williams is a Fox News panelist who briefly became a conservative celebrity after NPR fired him for on-air remarks deemed insensitive to Muslims. The debate audience didn�t know or care, presumably viewing Williams as just another �race-card� player who needed to be slapped down for suggesting anyone railing against the work ethic of food stamp recipients might be appealing to atavistic motives.

But bless his soul Williams is willing to risk his FOX dollars and call it like it is.

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are �entitlement society� � as used by Mitt Romney � and �poor work ethic� and �food stamp president� � as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the �Founding Fathers� and the �Constitution� also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core �old-fashioned American values.�

The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking �amnesty� and taking jobs from Americans. 

But the code sometimes breaks down.

Last week a passionate Republican told GOP candidate Rick Santorum: �I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not [president]. He constantly says that our Constitution is pass�nd he ignores it. � He is an avowed Muslim and my question is, why isn�t something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president.�

Santorum did not blink. The man who recently said he meant �blah people� � when the world heard him say �black people� � as  he spoke about parasitic Americans who get better lives by taking �somebody else�s money,� did not correct the assault on the truth. Instead he agreed that Obama is attacking the Constitution and said: �Well, look, I�m trying my best to get him out of office.�

The secret code words, the creation of Lee Attwater. They have been used by many Republican candidates on FOX News from the beginning.

Good for Juan Williams - but does he have a future at FOX?

The Rule of Law is for other people

By BJ Bjornson

How nice of Newt Gingrich to remind everyone of how absolutely bugfuck nuts he and his party actually are:

Newt Gingrich on Sunday hammered at the nation�s judiciary system, saying that if a court�s decision was out of step with American popular opinion, it should be ignored.

There�s �no reason the American people need to tolerate a judge that out of touch with American culture,� Gingrich said on CBS� Face the Nation, referring to a case where a judge ruled that explicit references to religion were barred from a high school graduation ceremony. And Gingrich recently has said judges should have to explain some of their decisions before Congress.

Host Bob Schieffer asked Gingrich how he planned to enforce that. Would you call in the Capitol Police to apprehend a federal judge, he asked.

�If you had to,� Gingrich said. �Or you�d instruct the Justice Department to send the U.S. Marshall in.

This particular line of attack has been ongoing since the debate on Thursday, but is part and parcel of the Republicans ongoing assault against �activist� judges, meaning any judge who makes a ruling not in line with their ideology of the day, going back for nearly as long as I can remember from following such things, though even by those standards, Gingrich�s attacks are looking fairly radical.

In order to restore balance between Congress, the White House, and the courts, Gingrich recommended ignoring rulings, impeaching judges, subpoenaing justices to have them explain their rulings and, as a last resort, abolishing the courts altogether.

Well, I suppose once you start detaining people without trial, having courts to run those trials does seem kind of redundant. Still, this kind of idiocy should put to rest any lingering doubts about Newt being any kind of intellectual, though given the competition he�s currently running against, and the quality of the village media, that seems unlikely.

A quiet brushing away of a horrific blunder

By BJ Bjornson

A flag ceremony marks an official end to the US military operations in Iraq. Well, so long as you ignore the 15,000 personnel still based in the world�s largest embassy and who knows how many mercenaries still running around the country.

Still, Charles Pierce notes that there is still an accounting to be made, even if such an accounting seems entirely unlikely.

On Wednesday, the president said that the Iraq War belongs to history. This, of course, is true. So, for that matter, does whatever he had for breakfast that morning. But history is not just all the stuff that happened in the past. It's why all that stuff happened in the past. It's who made all that stuff happen in the past. Until that accounting takes place, the war does not belong to history. Vietnam doesn't even fully "belong to history" yet. Our politics are still fought out over the fault lines created during that previous exercise in waste and treachery. I suspect � nay, I fear � that a great effort will be made among our political elites not to let that happen again here. Nobody will want to be "divisive." We  will move forward. It will not be allowed to affect our current politics, except as a handy tool with which the war-hungry claque in our conservative foreign-policy elite can bang the president over the head a few times.

The Iraq War will "belong to history" in the sense that it will be buried there.

That will not pay all the bills. And until those bills are paid � until the proper people pay the proper recompense for what they did to this country, to that country, and to the world � the Iraq War is not over.

In this, I fear he is right. There will be no real accounting for the crimes that have taken place in Iraq, and most particularly for the crimes of those who led the US into the war there in the first place, no more than they will be held to account for any of their myriad other crimes.

Much like the elites in Wall Street are not going to be held to account for their roles in destroying the lives and wealth of millions, so long as you have your hands on the levers of power, no crime is too big to simply walk away from and tell everyone that they need �to look forward, not back�. The whole mess will get brushed aside and dumped down the memory hole as much as possible, much as it already has.

Little wonder such things keep happening.

Net worth, or why Americans are not as wealthy as they think

By BJ Bjornson

A week or so ago, John put up a post describing the difference between one�s income and one�s net worth, the latter being another way of determine just how wealthy one is. It is a very important concept, particularly for this point.

Building net worth is everyone's safety net for the future.

Or, to put it another way, your net worth is what you use and/or borrow against when you no longer have any income to maintain your lifestyle. It is your security against hard times, and your hope for a decent retirement. If you have little or, as is too often the case these days, negative net worth value, you have no security and little hope for a secure future.

As John noted, most people focus on income when they speak of riches, and when the U.S. is spoken of as one of the richest countries in the world, it is usually by a measure of per capita GDP, or the average income per person based on the GDP of the country, where the U.S. always comes out near the top outside of a group of small, usually oil-rich, countries where the GDP per capita can be greatly skewed by a single great revenue driver.

When one looks at wealth, though, and particularly median wealth rather than average, a very different picture starts to emerge, as this article at The Daily Reckoning points out.

According to the article, the average wealth of people in Britain and the U.S. is $258,000 and $248,000 respectively. Not a lot a difference there, but when you look at the median instead of the average, which tells you a lot more about what the typical net worth actually is. For Britain: $121,000. For the U.S.: $53,000. Less than half, and that�s not an aberration.

What this means, says our Bonner Family Office chief economist, Rob Marstrand, is that �wealth in America is heavily skewed to the rich, with a lot of adults with very little net worth.�

Compared to the typical Japanese or European, the typical American is only half as rich. Half the people in the US have less than $53,000 net worth. You can imagine what the bottom 20% have.

This is a devastating and grim insight. It explains why so much of America seems, well, so poor. Because it is poor. People don�t have any money. They dress poorly. Eat poorly. Live poorly.

This skewing of wealth has been intentional, and it is only going to get worse. There is a generational cost hidden in that data. Take as an initial example the cost of college or university education. This article from the NYT tells a part of the story:

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

. . .

Although college enrollment has continued to rise in recent years, Mr. Callan said, it is not clear how long that can continue.

�The middle class has been financing it through debt,� he said. �The scenario has been that families that have a history of sending kids to college will do whatever if takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt.�

More than just the straight cost of higher education, the less capital (or net worth) you have available, the less money you have to assist your children in pursuing that education. As noted, the only way around that is to add more debt, either to yourself or your children, and the servicing of that debt acts as a drag on your and their ability to create a nest egg of capital to fall back on, or to use to assist their children.

Even worse is the fact that the sacrifices people make to send their children to post secondary schooling no longer pay off the way they used to, at least unless your family is already well-connected.

This kind of drain continues elsewhere. No extra money lying around to help out with a downpayment or cosigning on a car loan, or for a mortgage, or anything else you might want to do to give them a good start in life because you�re still stuck paying down your own debts when they�re ready to get started.

Worse, without a nest egg or retirement income, you�re pretty much forced to depend on them or other family members to look after you when your own productive years end. That at least is nowhere near as bad as it once was, but should the Republicans and others of their ilk get their way and gut or destroy Social Security and Medicare, that problem is going to return to its previous hellishness for the elderly poor.

All of which points to the reasons that social and economic mobility in the U.S. has dropped below where it is for most other first-world nations and why the �American Dream� is now more and more becoming a true fantasy.

Increasingly, the "richest country in the world" is just a place where a lot of really rich people happen to live.

The Rich need the Middle Class too

By BJ Bjornson

Via Kevin Drum, more proof that economics of the very rich don�t mesh all that well with Republican ideology. Not only does Nick Hanauer call for higher taxes on the rich, but he gets to real nub of just who are the �job creators� in society.

I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That�s why I can say with confidence that rich people don�t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

. . .

One reason this policy is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don�t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, I go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.

. . .

I can�t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can�t buy any new clothes or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the tens of millions of middle-class families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.

If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It�s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.

The whole column is well worth the read, and it�s always nice to see someone with wealth acknowledge that a policy of sticking it to the middle class and increasing income inequality is actually cutting their own throats as well.

The only unfortunate part being that there are still far too many vultures out there content to feed on the rotting carcasses their policies are creating. When one of the leading GOP candidates can talk seriously about using the labour of poor children to replace unionized janitorial staff because otherwise they'll be criminal riffraff and thereby increase his inner-party standing, you know things are unlikely to change fpr the better anytime soon.

Creating their own reality

By BJ Bjornson

A nice article from McClatchy on the various ways that the right is working to rewrite American history to suit their particular ideology.

The right is rewriting history.

The most ballyhooed effort is under way in Texas, where conservatives have pushed the state school board to rewrite guidelines, downplaying Thomas Jefferson in one high school course, playing up such conservatives as Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation and challenging the idea that the Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state.

The effort reaches far beyond one state, however.

In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.

The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.

Theodore Roosevelt? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.

Joe McCarthy? Liberals lied about him. He was a hero.

Nothing necessarily new about all that of course, and I�d argue that the effort goes far beyond just history. The right has fully embraced the worldview contained in the now-infamous quote from 2004:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality�judiciously, as you will�we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors�and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Tax cuts increase revenue. �Intelligent Design� (a.k.a. creationism) is a valid scientific theory that should be studied alongside evolution in science class. Climate Change is just a theory that needn�t be taken seriously.

Creating their own reality is now pretty much all the right does anymore. And as with all such made-up realms, consistency isn�t exactly a strong point, such as the Republican policy position of, �We�re against whatever the Democrats are for, updated daily�.

And it�s never about standing up to authority, as the right�s authoritarian tendencies are always out in full display whenever they feel they need to defend police beating, pepper-spraying, or otherwise interfering with the protests of �liberal� protesters. Instead, it�s about debasing the authority of any figures or areas in which reality doesn�t treat their ideology too well.

At one point in time, you could assure yourself that those who led the right were smart enough to recognize the delusions they were feeding to the masses were just that. Unfortunately, the rubes realized they were being taken and have begun demanding true fealty rather then just lip service from their elected officials.

Indoctrinating children to be part of the faithful is just another step in ensuring the Church of the Right remains strong.

We're so screwed, Part 2,347

By BJ Bjornson

Sometimes the news just gets really depressing to read, even when its information you already know. This quite-excellent article from Al Jazeera certainly qualifies. Some excerpts:

"From a climate change/fisheries/pollution/habitat destruction point of view, our nightmare is here, it's the world we live in."

This bleak statement about the current status of the world's oceans comes from Dr Wallace J Nichols, a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences. Al Jazeera asked Dr Nichols, along with several other ocean experts, how they see the effects climate change, pollution and seafood harvesting are having on the oceans.

. . .

In March 1958, when high-precision monitoring began, atmospheric CO2 was 315.71 parts per million (ppm). Today, atmospheric CO2 is approaching 390 ppm.

. . .

The Zoological Society of London reported in July 2009 that "360 is now known to be the level at which coral reefs cease to be viable in the long run."

In September 2009 Nature magazine stated that atmospheric CO2 levels above 350 ppm "threaten the ecological life-support systems" of the planet and "challenge the viability of contemporary human societies."

. . .

At a 2008 academic conference Exeter University scientist Kevin Anderson showed slides and graphs "representing the fumes that belch from chimneys, exhausts and jet engines, that should have bent in a rapid curve towards the ground, were heading for the ceiling instead".

He concluded it was "improbable" that we would be able to stop short of 650 ppm, even if rich countries adopted "draconian emissions reductions within a decade".

That number, should it come to pass, would mean that global average temperatures would increase five times as much as previous models predicted.

. . .

Historically, oceans have been chemically constant, but less than 10 years ago oceanographers were shocked when researchers noticed the seas were acidifying - 30 per cent more acidic - as they absorbed more of the carbon dioxide humans have emitted into the atmosphere, a process that Britain's Royal Society has described as "essentially irreversible."

The oceans are already more acidic than they have been at any time in the last 800,000 years. At current rates, by 2050 it will be more corrosive than they have been in the past 20 million years.

. . .

In this kind of environment, shellfish cannot produce thick enough shells. By 2009, the Pacific oyster industry was reporting 80 per cent mortality for oyster larvae due to the corrosive nature of the water.

"Acidification has the potential to change food security around the world, so I think it's incumbent upon the entire world to recognise this and deal with it," Cooley told Al Jazeera.

Lovely no? And that�s before it starts taking about the other effects of pollution and overfishing on the ocean�s species, including those that we depend on for a not-insignificant portion of our food supply.

Now add to that this story, �Worst extinction ever linked to massive CO2 spill�

Scientists finally know the date � and hence the likely cause � of a massive extinction that wiped out 95 per cent of life in the oceans and 70 per cent of life on land more than 200 million years ago.

. . .

The precise timing coincides with a huge outpouring of carbon dioxide and methane from volcanic lava flows in northwest Asia known as the Siberian traps.

"That led to cascading effect � global warming, aridity in various areas, giant wildfires, acidification of the ocean," said Charles Henderson, a geosciences professor at the University of Calgary who co-authored the paper with a large international team.

"All of these things led to a very inhospitable world."

It would be nice if we learned something from that history, but I noticed one other point that will likely mean this information won�t matter all that much either.

Most affected species met their demise within 20,000 years � a blink of an eye on the geological timescale.

A blink of an eye on the geological timescale (for those of us that accept the world�s more than 6,000 year old), but still a lot longer than those next quarterly profit reports are due, so likely it�ll be business as usual until it�s too late to do anything about the extinction level event we�re causing to the planet�s species, with our own species included.