Author: admin

Peace Now!

The US government doesn’t seem inclined to back off its all-war, all-the-time policy. It’s even got some of us thinking about war too much of the time. Me, anyhow.
It’s time we thought more about peace, isn’t it? . . .Down By The Riverside.

    Gonna lay down my sword and shield
    Down by the riverside
    Down by the riverside
    Down by the riverside
    Gonna lay down my sword and shield
    Down by the riverside
    Ain’t gonna study war no more.
    refrain
    I ain’t gonna study war no more,
    I ain’t gonna study war no more,
    Study war no more.
    I ain’t gonna study war no more,
    I ain’t gonna study war no more,
    Study war no more.

Doing a little research, I learned that there is a United States Institute of Peace! Who knew? Perhaps you did, but I didn’t. And apparently I’m not the only one, judging from the title of this NY Times article from last June: Below the Radar: A Federal Peace Agency

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Smart Power 101

WARNING: There will be a test
Goldilocks was very tired by this time, so she went upstairs to the bedroom. She lay down in the first bed, but it was too hard. Then she lay in the second bed, but it was too soft. Then she lay down in the third bed and it was just right. Goldilocks fell asleep.
That’s beds. Now let’s consider power that’s not too hard, not too soft. It’s just right. What do we call it? Call it Goldilocks power? No, that won’t sell in Peoria. The new in crowd knows what to call it — ‘smart power.’
Here’s Hillary Clinton, the new Secretary of State, in her opening statement at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

    We must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal—diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural—picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy. This is not a radical idea. The ancient Roman poet Terence declared that “in every endeavor, the seemly course for wise men is to try persuasion first.”

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Discipline — What Good Is It?

Pat Lang has pointed out that “the IDF/IOF does not routinely have any professional cadre of well-trained sergeants capable of enforcing discipline.” This factor has allegedly contributed to Israeli soldiers acting badly.
The inference is that such behavior would never occur in well-trained armies.
Or would it?

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Killer Jobs Programs

The economy is heading south and people are being laid off. Congress-critters and governors, and politicians in general, are being asked to come up with “shovel-ready” projects that will put people to work. But what about people that can’t or won’t shovel?
The Pentagon has some jobs programs too. Some of them involve getting into uniform, and enlistments are up. Others involve working for military contractors like KBR. We covered them in the piece about finding newly-unemployed George Bush a job.
There are other Pentagon jobs programs that go right into every congressional district. They include military bases and military procurement. They say all politics is local, and in this time for intensive economic recovery planning congress-critters are interested in military procurement now more than ever.
Remember the peace dividend? Forget it. War pays better dividends, and you need to buy a lot of stuff to fight a war. So if the country is at war, and it is at war thanks to some people who profit from it, and if you need even more stuff to fight wars yet uninitiated, then military procurement has to be high on the jobs program list in every US congressional district.
Call them the killer jobs programs.

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Forging Peace With War

President Obama, Jan 20 2009:

    We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.

This peace-forging, in a poor land where the US brought war over seven years ago, is social engineering at the point of a spear, and it won’t work.
According to Masood Aziz, a former diplomat:

    [Social engineering on a grand scale is] “a now thoroughly discredited approach to development in the Third World. The idea that after spending over $2.5 trillion on aid and social engineering since World War II, the West can create a “wonderful culture” in the Third World is delusional and suggests ignorance of the fact that foreign intervention has a dismal record of success.
    …culture is essential to development and . . . it needs to be protected in its own land and nurtured when in danger–not imposed from the outside. It is now well-recognized that development efforts only work if they are inclusive of human security, which itself embodies cultural and social norms. This “human development” approach–as elucidated by the Noble laureate Amartya Sen–has its focus on expanding human liberty and freedom and respect for the local population in defining their own needs and futures. In this sense, development is a basic human right based on a nation’s deep cultural and social character. When disturbed either by conflict, or by the imported idealism Marlowe seems to suggest, these rights are violated and disaster ensues
    Not understanding what Afghans want–security, education for their children, prosperity and the preservation of dignity–and instead advocating for “greatness” to come from the outside, has grave consequences for both Afghans and the community of nations engaged in this fight..

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One Virtuous Man

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
In the late 1960’s a fellow officer of mine, an African-American, call him Captain Em, was quite upset that Dr. King had come out against the Vietnam War. King, Captain Em stated to me, was fully justified in seeking better civil rights but he had no business commenting upon the foreign policy of the United States, particularly the righteous campaign in Vietnam (which was to result in the deaths of 58,000 US troops, average age of 19, and millions of Vietnamese). I disagreed with Captain Em, but at the time I wasn’t sure why. Now I know better.
What are the responsibilities of citizenship, after all?
Henry David Thoreau, at a time when the US was invading Mexico, wrote about the functions of good citizenship in his essay on Civil Disobedience.

    What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes the petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

Dr. King, like Tolstoy and Gandhi, was familiar with Thoreau’s work, and also was particularly influenced by “Civil Disobedience.” So when King decided in 1967 to oppose the Vietnam War he was prepared for the enmity that naturally came from his regular supporters such as Captain Em. Thoreau had warned him:

    And very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Dr. King delivered his little-known speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.

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Just Do It, George

I know everyone was glued to her or his TV screen watching George Bush’s farewell address, and if you were then you were no doubt struck by a line in his speech that was stolen from Jimmy Carter’s farewell address 28 years ago. (h/t Heather Hurlburt)

George Bush’s 2009 farewell address:

    “And I will always be honored to carry a title that means more to me than any other: citizen of the United States of America.”

Jimmy Carter’s 1981 farewell address:

    “In a few days, I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office — to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president, the title of citizen.”

Now George Bush can function as a citizen! Think about it. And there are things that George (like Jimmy) wants to do.
In March 2008, after U.S. President George W. Bush got an earful about problems and progress in Afghanistan, he said:

    “I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger.”

Well, we’ve got some jobs lined up for George now that he’s leaving office where it will be romantic, you know, confronting danger. Afghanistan! Yes, that storied land of the Hindu Kush and the Khyber Pass can now be a reality for Georgie.
Heck, he’s only 62 years old and with all that mountain-biking I’m sure that even a dummy like him he can handle the easy jobs we’ve found for him.

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Gaza Update

What are the US ‘papers of record’ up to?
The Washington Post has offered balanced coverage:
Israelis Push to Edge of Gaza City
Move Could Signal A Long Urban Battle
But this WaPo essay is ridiculous–
Gaza’s True ‘Disproportion’
Carlos Alberto Montaner
Israelis are being accused of suffering too few casualties in their confrontation with the Hamas terrorists. Those who reason thus usually speak the words “disproportion” or “asymmetry” in an indignant tone. While at this writing close to a thousand Arab Palestinians have died or been wounded as a result of the bombings, the Israeli losses amount to just over a dozen. . .Tel Aviv’s critics — from whom an anti-Semitic stench often rises — do not say whether Israel should increase its quota of cadavers or if it must reduce the Arabs’ quota to achieve the reasonable proportion of blood that will soothe the peculiar itch for parity that afflicts them. . . .This demand for “proportionality” can only be called surprising. . .Israel has not the slightest interest in causing casualties.
The New York Times:
Israelis United on War as Censure Rises Abroad
JERUSALEM — To Israel’s critics abroad, the picture could not be clearer: Israel’s war in Gaza is a wildly disproportionate response to the rockets of Hamas, causing untold human suffering and bombing an already isolated and impoverished population into the Stone Age, and it must be stopped. Yet here in Israel very few, at least among the Jewish population, see it that way.
And this Op-Ed NY Times piece by Rashid Khalidi is good.
What You Don’t Know About Gaza
NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

Get Afghanistan Right

This is “Get Afghanistan Right Week” and here is some information to look at:
We Can’t Afford to Sink Deeper into the Afghan Quagmire
Let’s be clear: the war in Afghanistan is not “the good war.” It is not “the right war,” as President-elect Obama has called it. Nor is it really Bush’s war, considering how many Congressional representatives (Democrats included) initially supported it and continue to favor the Obama administration’s calls for escalation. And yet it’s not quite Obama’s war either — though it could be soon. Right now it’s just our country’s war, and as such we need to be able to discuss it frankly and freely — with open discourse that was absent in the run up to both this war and the one in Iraq.
Taking Down Pro-Escalation Arguments
In this month’s issue of Foreign Policy, Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl lay out a detailed pro-escalation argument. Alex Thurston takes them apart.
Obama’s Got One Thing Right About the Mess In Afghanistan– It’s Inexorably Connected To The Mess In Pakistan
Five Suggestions for Diplomatic Progress in South Asia
It’s not fair to criticize escalation in Afghanistan without offering alternatives, so here are the five things to do instead of escalating.
More good stuff here.
And my previous article Operation Enduring Failure
What do you think?

Trash Talk

Reader D. Mathews has alerted us to a despicable congressman, Mark Kirk (R-IL), who said at a pro-Israel rally: “To misquote Shakespeare, something is rotten in Gaza and now it’s time to take out the trash.”
Here are some visuals of the “trash” that has been ‘taken out of Gaza’, here, here, here, here and here.
Speaking of trash, it seems to me that something is rotten in the US Congress, and judging from its 20% poll approval rating and its 71% disapproval rating I’m not the only one who thinks this way.