Letters to the Editor
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The Prime Directive
McLeary and Drum plainly believe that the end justifies the means.
It's such a useful concept! Face it, no matter how diligently enlightened thinkers have attempted to refute or repudiate this simple precept, it persists as the go-to rationale for persons in power. Its application is universal, and it never wears out.
Like a really good laundry detergent, this maxim has proven safe and effective on even the toughest stains!
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Good thing those 'journalists' don't use the standards of academia
Boy, in grad school I can just imagine how far a paper of mine would have gotten in academic publishing if my method had been interviewing anonymous witnesses who talked about how great the things they were doing were and how wrong their opponents were...
...and then never following up with my own research on whether what they are saying is true or not.
And I can just imagine, then, countering the professors' criticisms on the ground that the anonymous witnesses were right.
Because their first question would be, "How would you know?"
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Because their first question would be, "How would you know?"
And you'd tell "They're experts."
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Fear and our "imperial" foreign policy
One of those central questions is America's role in the world -- whether we want to (and are able to) continue on what is plainly an imperial path, where we seek to exert our will on the world through the use of superior military force.
In his latest article in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria talks about restoring America’s place in the world and, I think, makes some very good observations that before we can even begin that task that we must replace our “foreign policy of fear.”
That policy precludes the U.S. from acting rationally to the threat of terrorism at home and leads to an “imperial path” abroad. He points out how all of the leading Republican candidates are basing campaigns on a “policy of fear” that will lead to policies that go from “bad to insane” and actually reinforce what the terrorists are attempting to do.
Until this “culture of fear” is directly challenged as counter-productive and irrational the faux “war on terror” will inevitably lead to more imperialistic actions and self-destructive foreign policy decisions.
Both the terrorists and the Republican Party want to create an atmosphere of fear and panic that is all out of proportion to the actual threats facing us. How to overcome this climate fear with so many people working feverishly to create more of it is one of our biggest challenges.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19001200/site/newsweek/page/0/
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Pretty soon even Salon won't be able to criticize Iraq policy
They're growing poppies in Iraq now. Pretty soon they'll be growing enough so that the Bush administration is going to say -- just like they've done in Afghanistan -- that now the War in Iraq and the War on Drugs are one and the same.
But look at Salon -- how long has it been since you've published anything in least bit critical of the War on Drugs? Your "drugged up black people going crazy in New Orleans" story was very supportive of the War on Drugs. Your story didn't even differentiate between hard and soft drugs! That was a 180 degree turn from the way Salon used to try educate and de-propagandize people back in the old days.
So once the War in Iraq = the War on Drugs, what are you people planning to do?
It's going to become much more difficult for the left to look critically at this war once the Bush agenda of using the military to dominate the Middle East gets blended in with the Clinton legacy of using the military to fight drugs.
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Re: Klein, Hewitt, Romney, and Our Imperial Adventure in Mesopotamia
It's all of a piece.
Romney is the Corporatist Choice for president, and his upticks in the polls are a demonstration of how fully the corporate media can catapult its own propaganda any time it wants to. Media ownership has decided on Romney. Hewitt's job is to fluff Romney (Medved has also been enlisted in the fluff brigade) during this pre-campaign. And it is working.
I heard part of the Klein v Hewitt dust up, and it was quite a donnybrook with a good deal of hollering and mutual denunciations, made with extraordinary vigor by both participants. There was something seemingly contrived about it, but that doesn't mean it was entirely phony. Klein's standing among the punditocracy has been in decline for years. Like Krauthammer, he is widely seen as little more than a crank, suffered rather than admired. Kicking Klein for writing trash about Romney (if that's what he did, I haven't read it and don't intend to) is a step in formulating a "winning strategy" -- by demonstrating that if a crank Liberal like Klein hates Romney, then Romney must be the ideal candidate for the 28% wingnut rabble who listen to Hewitt. I say the dust-up seemed somewhat contrived because Klein went along with it, doing his part as it were.
So Alter has discovered the Truth, that Iraq is part of America's New Imperium? Good for him. (Actually, I think he's known all along.) But this is a discussion we do not have in this country, in part because our Overlords strongly believe the establishment of American global hegemony and direct imperial administration of overseas territories has nothing to do with us, We The People. We are as irrelevant to this project as the interests of the native peoples of Iraq are, and just as disposable.
Our government, as an institution, has bought in to this Imperial dream and goal, lock, stock and barrel. Party is irrelevant, the bi-partisan decision was made, and there is no sign that any branch of government, or either major party, will go back on that decision any time soon, if at all. They have pledged to fulfill this Imperial goal no matter what, and clearly intend to follow through no matter what We The People have to say about it. They may not have any love for the current Emperor, but from now until Eternity, the Presidency will be an Imperial office. Soon, the sham our elections have been for years now will be accepted as the way they "should" be (note: Our Dems have been singularly disinterested in doing anything about inconvenient election facts, while jabbering quite incoherently about how there are all these problems to be solved... eventually... when we get around to it... about the same time we get around to impeachment... well, never.)
Should the People have anything to say about the revival of American Imperialism? Why should it be a subject of public debate? Go back to the debates of 1846-48, or 1898-1910, our previous imperialist expansion eras. Many high profile voices were raised in opposition to these conquests and seizures of continental and overseas territories. None of them mattered in the least. Once the decision to Imperially expand was made, nothing whatever was allowed to interfere. The USA still holds the continental territories seized from Mexico. Hawaii is a state -- regardless of the Natives. Same with Alaska. We may discuss why the Philippines and Cuba are now independent -- so to speak. But we should also discuss hegemonic plans for Cuba once Castro is gone. And recall that the American military has been operating in the Philippines to suppress Muslim rebels ever since 9/11. Conditional independence, as it were.