The parenthetical part of your statement is the crux of our invasion of both Afganistan and Iraq. Nato wasn’t and isn’t as rabid about this intervention as we are by any means, and had to be badgered and blackmailed (threatened with marginalization — hence starvation of resources in a post-Soviet world) to get involved in the venture with us.

Look at Bush’s trend before 9/11 to see his priorities. He tried to sell Social Security to Wall Street. He appointed privatization foxes to watch the nation’s henhouses.

When 9/11 happened, it was too great an opportunity for a Milton Friedmanite Economic Jihadist to pass up. Destabilization is their bread and butter, but you have to invade and occupy to get the payoff. Afganistan didn’t quite work out because, after all, the only raw material of any value there is opium, and I guess we’re not quite ready to start openly venture-capitalizing the hard drug trade.

The only other commodity of worth in Afganistan is right-of-way through it for an oil pipeline, which Karzai signed off on immediately. He should have held out for a better deal, because the Economic Neo-liberalizing of Afganistan is now over, unless someone figures out how to make mega-profits from sand.

Iraq was just the next step in owning the region.

The most revealing moments are when he’s tossed a question that he hasn’t rehearsed for. He’s likely to stand like a deer in the headlights, trying to figure out which script he’s on, and then when he can’t peg it, he tries to make a joke. The joke almost always flops, but still the audience almost always laughs. When was the last time you didn’t laugh at one of your boss’s jokes?

Sad thing is, that formula works. He’s asked a question, jokes while it’s being delivered, to distract from the inherent seriousness of the situation and to prime the audience to expect laugh lines. Then he delivers a stunningly inappropriate response that thinking people automatically try to parse for some sort of buried meaning, even though there isn’t any. While they’re thinking (he doesn’t have that handicapp) he follows it up with a topic-ender — another laugh line, or a psuedo-serious threat to someone, maybe even the questioner. While the stenographers are trying to parse his non-response, he calls on another in the endless sea of raised hands.

The public ends up with a post-partum depression after every press show, and wonders why the baby of responsible, accountable governance is inevitably deformed.

Gives new meaning to “ad nauseum.”

∞

Comment by Keith
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What utter rubbish.

Comment by Charles James Napier — December 20, 2007 @ 2:49 pm
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All perfectly true and a matter of historical record. Which part do you think is not true? When hundreds of thousands or millions of people get killed there is always good evidence that cannot be denied (by reasonable people anyway–some people today still deny The Holocaust when there were excellent records kept, aided by IBM, with the six million names).

There is much money that goes to war that is not in the Pentagon budget. Nuclear weapons come under Energy. Veterans Affairs is not included in the Pentagon budget. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not in the Pentagon budget. Estimates of total cost of Iraq range from $2.3 to $3 Trillion. Military satellites come under NASA. Retirement and disability pay are not in the Pentagon budget. Then there is interest on the debt because we do not have the money.

Iraq spent $1 billion per year on their military, did not have a navy or air force, and did not have nuclear, biological, nor chemical weapons! We disarmed them and bombed them for 12 years before the illegal invasion.

Comment by toasterhead — December 20, 2007 @ 1:41 pm

Many people think that first the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and then we began supporting the radical Islamists to fight them. But this is backwards. First the country had a good progressive government and then Reagan and the CIA, Pakistan and the ISI, and Saudi Arabia began supporting the radical Islamists in order to cause the Soviet Union to invade and get bogged down in a protracted war (like US in Iraq today).

Tell that to all the dead Afghanis who were killed during our invasion and occupation of their country. Don’t you know that plain ol’ good police work could have taken care of OBL?

Nice to know you support death of innocents in an attempt to track down one guy.

Liberal warmonger.

Comment by Minotaur — December 20, 2007 @ 12:41 pm

Actually those who think the Afghanistan mission was “justified” the way it happened are warmongers, liberal or otherwise.

A special-ops precision, no civilian casualties strike was the sane thing to do in Afghanistan and one would think in the realm of capabilites of the most expensive army on the planet. They should have gathererd proper intelligence as to Osama’s location (which could take a while) then come in and get him and all his commanders at some idiotic meeting (of which he was fond at the time).

But noooo! The warmongers had to “show” the world how murderous the self-importantly outraged US, supprted by its warmongering NATO pals, can get (not to mention transferring a few billion dollars to defense contractor cronies here and there). All those expensive militaries gotta be used, you know! So they chomped at the bit to overrun the whole Afghanistan and to “show them”. And then to “remodel” the Afghanistan into some sick neo-con delusion.

And the results were quite predictsble: screwed up Afghanistan, with a NATO-propped up “president” barely holding power in Kabul, the enitre country-side overrun with ever multiplying Taliban and bonus: Osama got away.

Buy you Really Really Showed Them!

Not.

The epitaph of the “War on Terra” will read: Thinking with one’s gonads has its unfortunate consequences.

Yet our Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is working behind the scenes with House Democrats, not to build a consensus for impeachment, but to do just the opposite: to keep others from succeeding in their effort to hold this president accountable by means of impeachment.

With the FISA bill still looming in the Senate, and a new war funding bill passed with no structure in place to Bring our Troops Home, we have to show the leaders of the House and Senate that this is still our country.

Please read the petition to replace Pelosi with a Democratic Representative who will bring impeachment proceedings to the floor. A Question of Privilege under House Rules IX can declare the Speaker seat vacant.

It can be done, it must be done. We have waited long enough.

http://www.petitiononline.com/everyman/petition.html

Naw, I love my kids too much.

Though it would be a nice bit of revenge for the stress they cause my wife to have.

also see: tyranny, imperialism, war-mongering, war-profiteering

Yeah, can’t be wasting good money on something like ensuring my kids and future grandchildren don’t have to take an oxygen tank with them just to go to the park.

We have other priorities to waste money on:

http://nationalpriorities.org/cms/costofwar

And I also can’t believe that Al Gore still uses a jet airplane. If he was so smart, you’d think he would have invented a matter-antimatter powered transporter by now.

Or a TARDIS to go back in time.

You’d think.

Comment by Keith
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What utter rubbish.