Letters to the Editor
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Selective Socialism
McCain, Bush, et al. spend approximately $1 Trillion annually of taxpayer money and borrowed funds on defense and defense-related matters. One can add hundreds of millions more if to include all Federal, state, and local executive branch law enforcement, including IRS, Treasury, USPS, police, prison guards and officials, etc., etc.
Where does this money go?
Of course it pays for lots of goods, but it also necessarily pays for the housing, food, healthcare, retirement, transportation, fuel, heating, cooling, vacations, education, etc. for millions of US citizens.
The catch, however, is that to be included in the Republican largess one must be working within the government, e.g. the armed forces, OR any defense or police related "private" industry.
When one evaluates the socialism of defense, the oligopoly of the "military-industrial complex", the increasing executive power, the Trotskyist origin of neocons, and our own system of Nomenklatura, it seems reasonable, if not downright scary, to compare Republican administration and policies to the USSR.
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Carrots and Sticks
Both Obama and Clinton are eager to portray foreign policy in terms of dealing with draught animals. This cliched arrogance will get us nowhere. Treating a country of 50 million people like Iran in terms of a Jackass will not help us with any of the real problems we face in the ME. Both candidates fall all over themselves in their rush to portray the solutions to our problems as the application of one of the two tools in their diplomatic toolbox. This is really fuckin' juvenile.
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Iraq needs to be discussed looking back and looking forward.
Glenn, Carolyn C and Marcos 22 make great points and emphasize possibly the greatest policy distinction between Clinton and Obama.
One of the great side effects of Bush/Cheney and the right-wing propagandists’ once-again successful effort to get Iraq off the front page is that no discussion of Iraq also means no discussion of their monumental blunders that got us in this situation in the first place. (It never ceases to amaze how successful they can be at controlling the message while being woeful or worse at everything else. The escalation from day one has been about our perception of Iraq, to artificially and temporarily reduce violence there by introducing more military power, bribing insurgent elements and abiding ethnic cleansing with zero regard to the cost of this to American taxpayers and Iraqis.)
Iraq not only needs to be discussed, it needs to be discussed looking back as well as looking forward. The Democratic candidates should be going after the Republicans every day on the disaster Iraq has been and that all the escalation is doing is covering up the mess the Republicans made and keeping us there unnecessarily even more dollars and lives. (I think Glenn had one of his more revolting analogies about this a few months ago.)
This is where Hillary Clinton gets hamstrung; she has never effectively explained her vote simply because she, for whatever reason, has been unwilling to renounce it a la John Edwards. When you accept your own culpability in something that has gone amiss, it makes it easier to look at and talk about the issue more openly and realistically because you no longer have a horse in the race. It makes it easier to go after those such as John McCain who think Iraq was such a great idea that we ought to do more of that.
While acknowledging there would likely be some political price to be paid for such an admission, I'm not sure if Hillary Clinton isn't paying a greater one now. If Clinton had made that simple concession, she would be able to go after the Iraq issue as aggressively as anyone in the race. But, since she still has a stake in defending her position to vote for the war, she is unable to do so and even subordinates such as Terry McAuliffe change the subject when Iraq comes up. To me, this is a clear and important difference between Clinton and Barack Obama, important enough to me to solidify Obama as my first choice.
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so scared - what IF
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're right, that right now, based on poll numbers and so on, the Dems could attack McCain and the Republicans for their warmongering. And then there's another terrorist attack. Then what? They'd get crushed at the polls, is what. My point is that it's a far more complex issue than you consistently make it out to be, one that is, like it or not, fraught with political risk.
Can't ... move ... too ... much ... risk!
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War and its Distontents
In some ways, it is no mystery the Martin Gale thinks that bloodlust is as American as apple pie, because whether it is or not, it has been declared so, relentlessly, in the media for so long that if one ignored public opinion and only watched television, such a conclusion would be inescapable. Dating back to the first Gulf War, wherein the networks willingly abandoned any semblance of objectivity and chose to present war as a triumphant miniseries about American Power and a weapons industry trade show, Americans have been told that their greatness was inextricable from their willingness to exert power through violence. At the beginning of the Iraq war, rather than debating the "merits" of engaging in that conflict, again the networks presented breathless "previews" of the war to come. How glorious it all would be. They even went so far as to announce that, after Mission Accomplished, Bush was unbeatable, Godlike, and the Democrats might as well pack up and go home.
The problem is, they were tragically, repeatedly, and spectacularly wrong. Given the universally fawning coverage of the War party, even in the face of utter defeat and every prediction being proven not just wrong but the opposite of what happened, one must give the American people a great deal of credit to see past the lies and arrive, albeit tardily, at the proper conclusion about this latest, and possible next, war. Imagine, if the media had given a balanced, realistic, perspective about the war and its proponents.... How many people would still support the war? Five percent? Ten?
To assert that another terrorist attack would turn Americans against war opponents is to ignore that the exact opposite occurred in Spain, and assumes that the American people are stupid enough to believe their televisions again. There is ample and growing evidence that they are not. It would also finally puncture the absurd meme that we are "fighting them over there," and bring Bush's score against the terrorists to a shameful 0-2. Bring 'em on, I say. And to argue that Cynthia McKinney's defeat was solely because of her opposition to the war, rather than her other bizarre and histrionic behavior, is just uninformed and overly simplistic.
I think that a general election that pits a staunch opponent of the Iraq war against one of its most maniacal adherents may be just what American democracy needs, and the result would be a sharp stick in the eye of our war-loving media.