"Farm" life in the an age of economic depression

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Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The U.S. Military as Quagmire Specialists | TomDispatch

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The U.S. Military as Quagmire Specialists | TomDispatch

"The truth is we’re lost in the desert, careening down an unmarked road, odometer busted, GPS on the fritz, and fuel gauge hovering just above E.  Washington can only hope that the American people, napping in the backseat, won’t notice."

Chris Hedges on Realism:

The rise of militarism is a familiar path taken by collapsing states. Militarism arrests social decay. It shoves this decay underground where it cannot be challenged by critics and social movements. Those who launch crusades hold out beautiful fantasies of freedom, liberation and peace. But the impossibility of these utopian dreams always turns these projects for human advancement into squalid justifications for atrocity. Realism, as John N. Gray writes, "requires a discipline of thought that may be too austere for a culture that prizes psychological comfort above anything else, and it is a reasonable question whether western liberal societies are capable of the moral effort that is involved in setting aside hopes of world-transformation."

It is realism, an unflinching acceptance of our stark and severe limitations and an end to self-delusional utopian visions-those that embrace force and those that do not-that we must accept if we are to survive as a nation and finally as a species. We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. We have to stand in the shoes of those we brand as the enemy. We have to see ourselves as others see us. Israel must negotiate with Hamas and end its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank to secure a lasting peace. We must withdraw our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and negotiate with those arrayed against us to find stability. Until this happens we all remain trapped on a merry-go-round of death.

Towards a Democratic Empire

The American Empire has a new PR Rep. Madison Avenue has worked it magic once again. Never underestimate the power of a marketing gimmick.

From Obama's inaugural:

Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred… Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable… our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause… We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense… To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West… you are on the wrong side of history… [and] we will defeat you…

The fear of hegemonic decline is palpable. The ideology of Manifest Destiny is given a new lease on life.

The above is how the interests and values of the ruling class are transmitted to subaltern classes. These are the cognitive bonds that keep us safely within the Matrix. We are batteries. Power source to a Death Machine.

The Problem with Democratic Imperialists

The Guardian reminds us of the true legacy of JFK:

Kennedy... came to power with the complacent 1950's illusion that America's social and economic problems were largely solved. The only challenges lay abroad, with the threat of Soviet Communism and the danger that countries moving away from European colonial control would fail to "take off", as Kennedy's appalling academic guru Walt Rostow warned him. Kennedy won election largely on the basis of a fraud - the false charge of a "missile gap" which Eisenhower had allegedly permitted, leaving the USSR ahead of the US. Kennedy's inaugural was all about foreign affairs, and the only domestic reference (which was added at the last minute) was to say that America was committed to human rights "at home and around the world".

The black struggle for civil rights was already underway and the first Freedom Rides were to start four months after Kennedy became President, yet he seems to have been unaware of them. Later, when the movement became impossible to ignore, neither he nor his attorney-general brother Robert brought in significant reforms or legislation. They had the opportunity to appoint liberal federal judges, but failed. No wonder that the civil rights movement sang a sarcastic verse that went: There's a town in Mississippi called Liberty, there's a department in Washington called Justice.

...

Obama, we are told, has been re-reading books on Lincoln. I would recommend he goes through a forgotten book called The Kennedy Promise, by the British commentator (and one-time Observer reporter) Henry Fairlie. Published in 1973 with the sub-title "The politics of expectation", it is a brilliant demolition of the frenetic Kennedy governing mystique of crisis management and group-think. It points out that the constant talk of "challenges" and the need for US leadership tend to encourage confrontation and war.

That warning is apposite today. In his acceptance speech in Chicago Obama already told us "a new dawn of American leadership is at hand". Let us hope phrases of this kind do not appear in his inaugural address.

Hawks Ascendant

Stephen Zunes takes Obama to task for failing to challenge the reckless and irresponsible foreign policies of McCain and the neocons. Zunes lays out point by point, where Obama could have and should have called McCain's bluster. A language of dissent exists, there are alternative visions of America's role in the world and in history out there. Why won't Obama listen, and lend his voice to chorus? Why must he insist on clinging to a sinking ship?

Fri could have been an important moment in making the discursive shift to a new America. But alas, it was yet another missed opportunity- it was yet another moment in which the cultural, intellectual, and political hegemony of the neoconservative vision/nightmare of American power was discursively reproduced.

Rebert Dreyfuss makes many of the same points.

Alarm Bells, Empire and Obama

The friend of my enemy is my enemy: if NYT publishes an opinion praising Obama's foreign policy stands as sensible, then I know we're in trouble. (The NYT particularly likes his commitment to retaining the ominously titled "residual force" in Iraq, and his commitment to "surge" American forces in Afghanistan.  (Obama's "plan" is here.)

Here Tom Hayden takes the time to actually learn something about Afghanistan so as to better explain why sending more American forces there is not a good idea. And here Howard Zinn offers a more general critic of war and militarism.  

And here Corey B. Walker, Asst Prof of Africana studies at Brown and the author of the forthcoming The Noble Fight: African American Freemasons and the Struggle for Democracy in America offers a critique of American imperialism in both it Democratic and Republican guises. 

Juan Cole, a man with very deep knowledge of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and who is generally very supportive of the whole Obama enterprise offers what he calls a "friendly critique" of Obama's "plan." But while he calls it a "friendly critique," what he has to say is really quite devastating. It reveals the depth of Obama's ignorance (as well as some political and character flaws), and leads me to wonder,  if you really have no concept or capacity to comprehend social, political, and military developments in places like Iraq and Afghanistan why on god's green earth would you expend massive amounts of US blood and treasure to remake them in "America's image"? And if Obama is not motivated by a idealistic/ neo-conservative/ interventionist ideology (call it idealism with a knife) of spreading American values (whatever those are... ) at gunpoint, but he is rather driven by a realist concern for American power and security, then his strategy is even worse, as it reveals deep ignorance regarding the geopolitical forces at work in those places where he'd like to send American forces, and suggests that he really has no idea how to work carrots and sticks to achieve stated geo-political objectives. The danger here is the JFK/LBJ effect trying to prove your tough by beating up on some foreign country for what are essentially domestic political reasons only to be drawn into a quagmire with devastating consequences for your political brand-name (not to mention domestic policy objectives). its not just bad policy, its bad politics.