A skeptical leftist's, or post-capitalist's, or eco-socialist's blog, including skepticism about leftism (and related things under other labels), but even more about other issues of politics. Free of duopoly and minor party ties. Also, a skeptical look at Gnu Atheism, religion, social sciences, more.
Note: Labels can help describe people but should never be used to pin them to an anthill.
As seen at Washington Babylon and other fine establishments
Again, this is the list of the most popular posts DURING the last month. Not all were written IN the past month.
No. 1 is an old post from 2014 that's gotten new popularity (and I don't think due to bot-related action). It's about who won the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate. I told atheists Gnu and old alike that Bill Nye the Attention Whore (more accurate moniker for him) did NOT win.
(You can see the Ken Ham photoshopping at the link. I wanted to display another piece of mine instead, about another religious wingnut.)
No. 2 is from the start of the month, telling ESPN's David Schoefield and others to go light on the Shohei Ohtani superlatives about this season because it's only one season, there's the GOAT year of Walter Johnson, consider Babe Ruth (and how the BoSox, pre-sale to the Yankees already) were shifting him off the mound, and more. (I'll have further thoughts after the season is over.)
No. 3 is from the latter half of September, and courtesy an Arkansas hospital CEO, I punk pro-lifers and others, re religious exemptions to COVID vaccines based on fetal stem cell concerns.
No. 4 is also from just a couple of weeks ago and also COVID-related. It's about how Rolling Stone semi-screwed a pooch, but more, got unwittingly screwed by a doctor making an unsubstantiated claim, but how Drew Holden then made unsubstantiated claims of his own in the name of COVID-resistant wingnuttery and trying to own the libs. Dr. Jason McElyea has apparently still not caveated what Rolling Stone picked up from his comments to Oklahoma teevee.
No. 5? Also from last month, about how former Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn likely lied in claiming the Taliban made a no-strings-attached, conditions-free offer to surrender Osama bin Laden. (And, that doesn't totally shock me.)
No. 7? My supportive take on Douglas Rushkoff, a left-liberal foe of tech-neoliberals, saying we need Basic Assets even more than Basic Income.
No. 8, like No. 5, challenged Counterpunch Afghanistan claims. In this case, I rejected the claims of Alex's younger brother Patrick (and the framing behind them) that the Taliban were undisputed masters of Afghanistan now.
No. 9? Back to the coronavirus. I called out Sam Husseini for engaging in horseshoe theory leftist misstatements about WIV and the reality of what gain of function is, and is not.
No. 10? For Labor Day, as federal job benefits expired in states still participating, I wondered about the longer-term future of former restaurant and retail workers who refused to go back to crappy workplaces.
Axios claimed Sunday that Beto was running (for gov, of course). Beto's inner circle denied it.
Meanwhile, for whatever weird reason (well, not weird if wingnut but not wingnut squared Texas GOP members are panicky), Joe Straus for gov rumors have heated up. (Ain't happening, folks.)
Texas Monthly has a detailed dive
into why Texas Hispanics are shifting Republican. Remember, the Census
and other questions always refer to "Hispanics of any race"; it's a
cultural box. And, in Tex-ass, many don't see themselves as La Raza but
as White. It also confirms my own refudiation, with later detailed follow-up,
of a decade-plus in the making of Texas Democrats from Gilberto
Hinojosa on down blindly believing demographics is destiny. The
identification is interesting; New Mexico has plenty of Hispanics who
have been in the US at least as long as the Texans in the Valley. They
may or may not identify as White; they're definitely more Democratic,
but by no means totally so. That said, back to Texas. How do they deal
with racism in the Texas GOP? And, yes, Valley Hispanics, it's real. In a
somewhat related issue, I blogged last month about how demographics is not destiny among young voters.
Colleyville Heritage High School's principal was placed on paid administrative leave earlier
for alleged teaching critical race theory, even though, as a principal,
he doesn't teach. The Grapevine-Colleyville ISD School Board
deliberated his fate Monday night. Per the first link, there's much
additional backstory, not only over race issues, but the principal's
take in the ISD's handling of COVID and other things.
Dr. Alan Braid, an OB/GYN announced via newspaper op-ed Sunday he'd deliberately performed an abortion
that violated SB 8. Pro-life (except for the death penalty) groups
split in their reaction. Texas Right to Life said we're "exploring all
our options." At the same time, its John Seago said this was a "stunt."
Another anti-choice group, Human Coalition, explicitly said it had no
plans to sue; in typical wingnut paranoia, it feared a "trap."
As the withdrawal wound down over the last month, SocraticGadfly had a series of pieces related to history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. First was initial thoughts on the withdrawal. After that, he looked at how the initial 1978 US meddling unnecessarily led to all that followed. Third, he said former Counterpunch publisher Alexander Cockburn was probably lying with his claimthe
Taliban had a pre-invasion offer of a no-strings-attached surrender of
bin Laden. Finally, he rejected claims, and the domestic political
thought behind some of them, that the Taliban would now run wild,
instead saying Afghanistan's future looks complex.
In other international news, Pretty Boy Trudeau's snap election in Canada basically backfired. As compared to the current Parliament, he gained two or three seats, no more. Conservatives and Greens treaded water while the Bloc and NDP both had small gains. The People's Party Canada, largely a vanity project, increased its vote share but took no seats in Canada's Westminster-style election.
In case you're wondering about the Haitian flood at Del Rio? The Trib says
that many of them left Haiti years ago for various countries in Latin
America and have now decided to try to cross. It's not coyotes rounding
up some new flood. My question, and unanswered by the Trib story, is why
are they not staying in Chile or whatever?
People claiming to be part of Anonymous have hacked Epik, the internet host for Parler, Gab and other alt-right and alt-white sites.
Texas 2036 released its poll showing widespread dissatisfaction with the direction the state is going.
The Texas Living Waters Project sees the American Rescue Plan Act as a historic opportunity to invest in our water infrastructure.
Reform Austin catches Ken Paxton in a rare moment of self-awareness.
The Bloggess recommends some horror movies for you.
At Counterpunch, that certainly seems to be the opinion of Patrick Cockburn. He semi-sneered at the idea that ISIS-K and the Taliban were separate entities, even though the animosity between parent ISIS and the Taliban has been well known for years. For real insight about the Greater Middle East, you should start with James Dorsey. Dorsey wrote precisely about this same issue on the same date.
To some degree, Cockburn and Dorsey have different focuses. Patrick, like his brother, the late Alexander Cockburn, is in part trying to flog the U.S. bipartisan foreign policy establishment, and when the backside of the establishment is presented any tool becomes a whip, while Dorsey is focused on the Greater Middle East on its own terms. That said, for all the reflexive anti-Americanism both Cockburns show at times, why can't THEY on occasion do just that? Robert Fisk did. As part of that different focus, Dorsey also looks beyond just ISIS-K to other challenges the Taliban may face from alternative militant groups.
In all that, though, there's some degree of straight disagreement about how much the Taliban have to fear, Dorsey indicates it's more a real thing than Cockburn does. (And, although Dorsey doesn't go into it, this may be another reason why the Taliban put preconditions on surrendering bin Laden. They didn't really want to, because it might threaten their control over Afghanistan; preconditions gave them an out.)
Beyond all that, though, Cockburn can't be troubled, after his beating U.S. foreign policy with a cudgel, to understand Afghanistan much better or much further than the U.S. foreign policy establishment he hates.
In a new piece, Dorsey notes Iran has already cooled to the Taliban somewhat do to its freeze-out of ethnic Hazaris, who are also religiously Shi'ite and who comprise 20 percent of Afghanistan's population. Again, you won't likely find stuff like this in the more simplistic pages of Counterpunch.
Nor will you find nuance on great power or superpower issues at Counterpunch. But you will from Dorsey.
Dorsey writes about all the above in light of Iran's hope to move beyond observer status to full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization this weekend. Membership is by consensus vote, but any group that can include both China and Russia, and even more, both Pakistan and India, can surely make room for Iran.
As Dorsey notes, it probably won't help Iran's isolation much, nor cut sanctions much. After all, this IS a country that, after the election of Biden and some small loosening of relations, asked for all sanctions to be removed before talking about whether it would accept going back to the Obama nuclear control deal while at the same time, this summer, running the most rigged presidential election in its history — an election so rigged that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's Guardian Council booted former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad off the ballot, as well as Ali Larijani.
Dorsey adds that this may not be Iran's goal. Rather, if it gets full membership, since full membership is by consensus, it can then block Gulf Arab states from joining.
He also notes that the application process for the SCO is two years, and that if China, Russia, Pakistan, or the "-stans" of former Tsarist/Soviet Central Asia have concerns about Iran in general or vis-a-vis Afghanistan in particular, they have two years to deal with that.
If Iran IS accepted, that would make Afghanistan totally surrounded by SCO states, another reason to reject Cockburn's thinking that it will "run wild."
Dorsey, who's on a roll recently, offers another reason to challenge Cockburn. At some point, Uyghur mujahideen, or hell, to riff on Reagan and kick Max Blumenthal in the nads, "freedom fighters," are going to flee to Afghanistan. What's the Taliban-led government going to do when Beijing knocks at the door, Dorsey wonders.
This isn't idle speculation. Leaders in the former Afghan government claim Uyghurs gave major help to the Taliban.
It's not idle speculation for another reason. Contra Alex Cockburn, the Taliban has regularly resisted turning over outsiders that have given it assistance.
That said, the rhetorical question cuts both ways. Having seen both the U.S. and the Soviet Union get mired there, what will Beijing do if the Taliban says no?
Via the "Roaming Charges" scattershooting column by Counterpunch's Jeff St. Clair two weeks ago, we get that claim. Specifically, that the Taliban offered to do this before 9/11. Color me skeptical.
That was linked inside the column, to an old CP piece by Alexander Cockburn. Counterpunch's claim, via an Afghan informant, that the Taliban was ready to hand over bin Laden pre-9/11, with few strings attached, seems ... uh, not likely.
First, despite some claims by Kabir Mohabbat about setting up a deal? Especially the ones about the Taliban deliberately making bin Laden a sitting duck? The Slickster had already tried to off him with a cruise missile in 1998 and a RPG in 2000.
Second, per this story and others, like this the Taliban, when it offered to make a post-9/11 deal, had preconditions. Part of that was an amnesty. (No duh.) But, there were other preconditions. One was that Bush prove bin Laden was behind 9/11. And, that it wouldn't be a direct handover to US hands.
The idea that the Taliban would have made him a sitting duck is also laughable. They knew by this time of Clinton's missed cruise missile, first. From that, they had some idea of the relative accuracy of cruise missiles. Also, by this time, even though at one point, the Taliban restricted his movements somewhat, had pinch come to shove, bin Laden would have exploited factionalism either within the Taliban, or between Taliban and other mujahideen, to make sure his movements wouldn't have been too circumscribed.Beyond that, psychologically? If you're attaching conditions still even after the bombing starts? It's laughable to think that the Taliban would have had done a no-strings deal before that.
That said, from all we know from stuff like this, Mohabbat may have had some axes to grind, or self-importance to puff up. In addition, the interview was by Cockburn, who may have been committing one of the two sins that led me to de-blogroll Counterpunch for a number of years. That sin? It's the same as today's allegedly outside the box stenos like Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté — a reflexive anti-Americanism that engages in twosiderism and says that everything the bipartisan foreign policy establishment gets wrong must therefore be right. (Xi Jinping and the Uyghurs is today's obvious example, whether seemingly a sincere belief from the likes of Aaron, or presumable grift/PR flak from the likes of Max.)
Sidebar: Alex's other sin was, IMO, pushing the envelope of anti-Zionism into antisemitism. Now, my knowledge of how much and how readily the cudgel of conflating these two is used by Zionists has grown a lot since then. But .... within leftism and left-liberalism, other people raised an eyebrow at times about him. At a minimum, even when trying to be charitable to him and taking individual comments within the context of an entire column or essay, Alex left himself open to charges like this, and they were leveled not just within leftism and left-liberalism, but by people who were often sympatico with him.
In short, and bluntly, one or both of these two was lying. Both are dead and can't be interrogated.
But, given that Mohabbat's claims have been covered elsewhere, and also here, with no mention of any "unconditional surrender" (or of "I'll get the Taliban to make him a sitting duck for a cruise missile") it's pretty clear who was lying or exaggerating of the two, and it ain't him. Gee, I'm shocked. I'm also "shocked" that this, the "unconditional surrender," is claimed to have been part of a direct quote of Mohabbat.
==
Sadly, brother Patrick hasn't fallen all that far from the apple tree. On Tuesday a week ago, he semi-sneered at the idea that ISIS-K and the Taliban were separate entities, even though the animosity between parent ISIS and the Taliban has been well known for years. For real insight about the Greater Middle East, you should start with James Dorsey. Dorsey wrote precisely about this same issue on the same date.
To some degree, Cockburn and Dorsey have different focuses. Patrick, like his brother, is in part trying to flog the U.S. bipartisan foreign policy establishment, and when the backside of the establishment is presented any tool becomes a whip, while Dorsey is focused on the Greater Middle East on its own terms. That said, for all the reflexive anti-Americanism both Cockburns show at times, why can't THEY on occasion do just that? Robert Fisk did. As part of that different focus, Dorsey also looks beyond just ISIS-K to other challenges the Taliban may face from alternative militant groups.
In all that, though, there's some degree of straight disagreement about how much the Taliban have to fear, Dorsey indicates it's more a real thing than Cockburn does. (And, although Dorsey doesn't go into it, this may be another reason why the Taliban put preconditions on surrendering bin Laden. They didn't really want to, because it might threaten their control over Afghanistan; preconditions gave them an out.)
(Update: In a new piece, Dorsey notes Iran has already cooled to the Taliban somewhat do to its freeze-out of ethnic Hazaris, who are also religiously Shi'ite. Again, you won't find stuff like this in the more simplistic pages of Counterpunch.)
Between these things and more and more CP stuff being paywalled, it may be on blogroll watch.
Some of the Reagan-generated tropes about Jimmy Carter are rightly being revised. He wasn't "bumbling." He was right about renewable energy. (And, he was and always has been maritally faithful!)
But, some of the tropes that were NOT spread are true.
Carter was in many ways our first neoliberal president. His deregulation of airlines did lower prices, but it was not the only cause for that. It did also lead in part to the air traffic controllers strike that happened under Reagan's first year in office.
He deregulated trucking, which led to semi drivers being made independent contractors, and Reagan further pushing that, and using the dereg to push all states into 53-foot lengths and 80,000-pound lengths.
And, his meddling in Afghanistan is more than many Americans realize and many Democrats admit.
We didn't have to try to "pick winners and losers" in who we wanted to oppose the Soviet invasion. We could have just stayed out. Or, we could have tried to organize a non-communist but also non-Islamist opposition. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
John Pilger reminds us that we're reaping what we sowed with our coup in the late 1970s after the overthrow of King Zahir Shah. Behind the US-backed coup? Zbigniew Brzezinski, the biggest Darth Vader of US foreign policy this side of Kissinger. That coup is what led the Soviets into Afghanistan in the first place. More here on Carter-era meddling, and picking the wrong side when we did. And, more yet on how Carter also intervened in an inter-Yemen war when there were two of them, also prompted in part by Zbig. (Blue Anon leaders like Josh Marshall don't want to go back this far.)
Bottom line is that unarguably on foreign policy, and arguably for everything in his presidency, hiring Brzezinski as national security adviser was Carter's single worst decision. Zbig argued for a last arms sale to the Shah. Zbig poo-pooed warnings of how fragile Iran was, especially the warnings of special envoy William Sullivan. Zbig pushed Carter from inside the administration, as Kissinger and David Rockefeller did outside, to push for the Shah to be admitted to the US. Zbig pushed Carter to see post-Shah Iran in Cold War terms, which then led to looking at Afghanistan that way.
Kai Bird, in his new good but not great bio of Carter, gets at the edges of a lot of this, but not really the full meat. And, there's no meat at all on why Carter didn't rein in Zbig more. Perhaps Carter, at least then, was more of a Cold Warrior than he lets on today. Note those other meddlings, like Yemen.
A good starting point is last Friday's "Roaming Charges" scattershooting column by Counterpunch's Jeff St. Clair. A few takeaways.
First, for L/libertarians now fellating Ron Paul? St. Clair reminds us that Paul voted FOR the Authorization to Use Military Force. Oops!
Second, for the Berners, while he opposed invading Iraq from the start, he supported invading Afghanistan from the start.
Third, we're reminded that the late drunken Snitchens, aka Christopher Hitchens, enthusiastically supported both wars from the start.
Now, me.
I supported the invasion at the start. But not with huge enthusiasm, and with caveats, the second of which I publicly spoke about in a newspaper column.
Had I known at the time about the Taliban willing to (allegedly, but hold that thought) talk about expelling al-Qaeda, and maybe even handing over Osama bin Laden, I wouldn't have supported the war.
OK, more on the "hold that thought." We now know that the Taliban was ... "talking turkey." We still don't know how sincere they were, what details they had attached to an expulsion, let alone a handover, and whether those details were unacceptable not only to the Bill Clinton-Democratic foreign policy establishment, let alone the more neocon Bush-Republican foreign policy establishment, but to people outside the foreign policy establishment box, as I was just starting to become at that time. There might have been real and legitimate sticking points. Or, the Taliban might have been stalling. I am not saying either WAS the case; I am saying either COULD HAVE BEEN the case. I've called out Howie Hawkins, Margaret Flowers and the late Kevin Zeese for playing twosiderism with Xi Jinping; we don't need twosiderism with the Taliban, either. (That said, the Taliban offered a deal again after the war started. Part of that was an amnesty request for then; in our hubris, we said no. That piece also makes the no-brainer observation that we could have left after nailing bin Laden's hide to the wall.)
Update: Here's another good big picture timeline of US involvement. That said, from all we know from stuff like this, Counterpunch's claim, via an Afghan informant, that the Taliban was ready to hand over bin Laden pre-9/11, with few strings attached, seems ... uh, not likely. And, Mohabbit may have had some axes to grind. In addition, the interview was by Alex Cockburn, who may have been committing one of the two sins that led me to de-blogroll Counterpunch for a number of years. That sin? It's the same as today's allegedly outside the box stenos like Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté — a reflexive anti-Americanism that engages in twosiderism and says that everything the bipartisan foreign policy establishment gets wrong must therefore be right. (Xi Jinping and the Uyghurs is today's obvious example, whether seemingly a sincere belief from the likes of Aaron, or presumable grift/PR flak from the likes of Max.)
Sidebar: Alex's other sin was, IMO, pushing the envelope of anti-Zionism into antisemitism. Now, my knowledge of how much and how readily the cudgel of conflating these two is used by Zionists has grown a lot since then. But .... within leftism and left-liberalism, other people raised an eyebrow at times about him.
Second, had I known at the time what eventually became evident, that even as the Afghanistan invasion was being launched, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld planned a "pivot" to Iraq, which meant scraping up a thin global coalition of troops plus not always reliable Afghan allies to supplement the thin American troops that wouldn't be augmented, I wouldn't have supported the war.
Per what St. Clair says much later in the piece, any idiot is capable of knowing that the vaunted "boots on the ground" are needed for actual occupation; bombs don't occupy anything. And, under "lessons not learned from Vietnam," the U.S. military still over-values bombing.
A second good read is from John Pilger, who reminds us that we're reaping what we sowed with our coup in the late 1970s after the overthrow of King Zahir Shah. Behind the US-backed coup? Zbigniew Brzezinski, the biggest Darth Vader of US foreign policy this side of Kissinger. More here on Carter-era meddling, and picking the wrong side when we did. And, more yet on how Carter also intervened in an inter-Yemen war when there were two of them, also prompted in part by Zbig. (Blue Anon leaders like Josh Marshall don't want to go back this far.)
Nor, per one tweet of a Friday thread of mine about this issue, do we need conspiracy theories.
That said, I don't buy St. Clair's insinuation that Pat Tillman might have been fragged rather than accidentally killed by friendly fire, even though establishmentarian Tweety Bird Chris Matthews was among people to raise it.
— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 20, 2021
First, for my thoughts on conspiracy theories vs. actual conspiracies in general, go here.
Second, in general, one factor on conspiracy theories vs. actual conspiracies is a, roughly, 20-year lifespan for evidence. If actual evidence supporting a theory doesn't pop up within 20 years, it almost certainly never will, and we can increase our assuredness that it is a conspiracy theory, not a conspiracy.
Take the late 1970s House Select Committee on Assassinations. It found no major new evidence about JFK, RFK or MLK assassinations, and certainly nothing that would support actual conspiracy.
With that in mind, we're approaching the 20-year mark on Pat Tillman. I've seen nothing new to convince me, or even come close to convincing me, he was fragged. If he had been, surely somebody would have leaked a discussion by now.
His planned meeting with Noam Chomsky? Maybe known to a few military friends, but almost certainly NOT to high brass. And, in any case, we don't know exactly what Tillman planned to talk about.
How close the range was when he was shot? Well, even in modern war, sadly, the "fog of war" is real.
==
Back to St. Clair, and other things.
Jeff wonders, of the many Afghan interpreters we're trying to fly out, how many participated in translations of torture sessions. To further his thought, how many deliberately misinterpreted them, just like some of our informants who were settling old grudges?
Didn't the neocons "own themselves" on this war 40 years ago?
If the Mujahideen were the “moral equivalent of the founding fathers” of Afghanistan, as some in the Reagan years proclaimed, then the Taliban must be the Afghan version of the Federalist Society, intent on enforcing an originalist interpretation of Sharia Law. The Taliban session at the next CPAC will be must-see streaming.
Yes.
St. Clair mentions Ted Rall. His infamous "sap and sucker" cartoon, with words like that on the white crosses of a U.S. military cemetery, looks even more disgusting with nearly 20 years of hindsight. AFAIK, Rall never discussed the economic necessity that drove many people into military enlistment in our all-volunteer army, despite being an alleged leftist-leaner of some sort.
==
Biden did fuck up the Afghanistan withdrawal, starting from the premise that he should have known Trump's original withdrawal timetable and plan had no actual plan. Nonetheless, we needed to withdraw and it was right. Why doesn't the MSM interview people like me, Popular Info asks. Besides, we knew a whole decade ago how corrupt Afghan officialdom was, Mondoweiss reports.
==
Beyond rejecting Pat Tillman conspiracy theories, I also reject those by Craig Unger, Michael Moore et al that Afghanistan was "all about the oil," or "oil pipelines," or whatever. Yes, US goverments and US and multinational companies had held talks about pipelines — and even more, discussed possible mining for heavy metals — in years before the invasion, but the relative lack of troops, even in the early days, puts the kibosh to that idea being serious as well. And, since the invasion, other ways to move oil from Central Asia have been developed. Besides, on the pipeline issue, Afghanistan's largely mountainous terrain says that's not realistic, not for major pipelines.
Yeah, the idea sounded tempting about 2003 or so. That's why Moore's problematic movie was such a hit with the people who are today's #BlueAnon. But, while Moore is a great polemicist, and a great auteur, he's not always so great with command of facts.
Besides wingnuts saying it's over, Andrew Sullivan shows again why paying people on Substack ain't worth it (and most brought their cults of fanbois from elsewhere anyway). Sully puts Joe Biden and Ibram X. Kendi in the same breath, sentence and neighborhood. He also deplores Status Quo Joe hanging out the welcome mat for what he says will be a horde of Ill Eagles far beyond what Dear Leader let in during his eight years. Guess Sully is worried the darker skins will lower the national IQ.
With that, on to the roundup.
Texas
MMM, who doesn't want some wastewater oil production brine to be giving a nice "edge" to their aquifer-pumped drinking water? Well, the Trump EPA said states could, and Railroad Commission head cheese Wayne Christian loves the leeway of deregulation and High Plains state Senatecritter Charles Perry loves the idea.
NAGPRA is of little help in reclaiming ancestral remains for Indian tribes in Texas and nationally who have never been federally "recognized." Many Texas tribes, per the link, have never been recognized.
Does Chip Roy have a future in the Texas GOP, the Monthly asks. (Unasked: How much will Texas or national Dems try to "normalize" him?)
Juanita celebrates the Alex Jones lawsuit ruling from the Texas Supreme Court.
The Texas Signal reports on an effort to create a pipeline of Democratic candidates for US Attorney and federal court judge in Texas.
Rick Casey would like to get rid of gasoline-powered leaf blowers.
Lauren Hough tears apart a clueless essay from someone who moved to "Austin" with absolutely no sense of geography, reality, or self-awareness. (Hough herself is un-self-consciously funny in part of her response in ways she probably didn't intend.)
National
Your friendly reminder that Status Quo Joe caved to Mulish Mitch when he was Dear Leader's Veep.
How will Mulish Mitch actually handle an entirely constitutional (shut up, Dersh and Luttig) Senate trial?
Will Status Quo Joe continue the "forever war" in Afghanistan, chewing up Special Forces just like Dear Leader and the Permatanned Mussolini? You know the answer there. Sadly, the person writing the book from which this link is excerpted is part of the mainstream media, which is generally part of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.
Related? Counterpunch reminds us that not only did Trump not end "forever wars," most of his base wanted him to extend them and ramp them up. (DiMaggio rightly notes that many left-liberals and leftists were suckers for Trump's propaganda on this issue.)
The DOJ and FBI declining to charge some Jan. 6 Capitol rioters or insurrectionists, as is under debate, would send exactly the wrong message to them, and to minorities and allies from BLM and related protests who have already seen unequal justice on arrests and policing.
The seditionist who tweeted "Assassinate AOC" is the latest to raise the Nuremburg defense.
Independent Political Report looks at whether actions against the Rhode Island and Alaska Green Parties weren't just dominoes deliberately set up to create momentum for expelling the Georgia GP for entirely different reasons.
Progress Texas makes the case for expelling Ted Cruz from the Senate.
Antiwar activist Justin Raimondo, one of the most vocal voices in opposing not only the Iraq War but the Afghanistan one as well, has died at 67.
Justin was not only antiwar, he was Antiwar as in Antiwar.com, which, as its linked eulogy for him notes, he cofounded in 1995 with Eric Garras.
On Twitter, I noted that he was an "always interesting political thinker and wanderer." And, that he was, though not in ways I'd agree with. Nor do I agree with every antiwar stance of his; I am against more dumb wars than Barack Obama, though I'm not a pacifist.
I was wrong to go along with the mainstream on Afghanistan. Raimondo's successor as editorial director at Antiwar, Scott Horton, in a recent interview with Ken Silverstein, pointed out the options we had there short of a full invasion. Ted Rall is someone else who was right about this.
That said, Raimondo founded the site over Bosnia. And, while non-Serb actors both inside and outside Bosnia were themselves less than perfect, genocide was happening in the Balkans. Just as it was earlier in Rwanda, which we ignored because "darkest Africa." So, I disagree with Raimondo, Alexander Cockburn and others. Could we have done some things better in the Balkans? Yes. Some things without focusing on American empire? Yes. But, we shouldn't have ignored that genocide, nor Rwanda.
Now, that's just the antiwar part of Raimondo.
Outside of that, he was a full nutter, and I'd forgotten that until I wrote this up.
The piece first notes that from childhood, he was a Randian. As in THAT Rand. Ayn Rand. Objectivism.
It adds that he was an anarcho-libertarian in the 1980s.
The piece also notes that he supported Pat Buchanan in all three of his runs for president, in 1992, 1996 and 2000.
You have to have either a high degree of cognitive dissonance or else a high degree of political and personal self-partitioning to be so antiwar-driven that as an uncloseted gay and organizer of libertarian anarchism to support a paleoconservative Catholic (Tridentine mass, maybe even?) who agrees with you on about nothing other than antiwar issues. I mean, Pat is anti-gay, and though Raimondo is not Jewish, Pat's also anti-Semitic and just plain racist. Plus, as a paleocon, as in his take on the Central Park Five, he's perfectly fine with coercive state power if it wears a blue uniform.
So, while I admire the strength of his antiwar activism, and wish that like him, Ted Rall, and some others, I had thought more about Afghanistan as well as Iraq at the time, overall, I shook my head at him for years. Plus, as a Libertarian Radical, I suppose Raimondo supported nutter positions such as people not needing driver's licenses to drive.
That said, Raimondo, and even more, Garras, had Lew Rockwall connections in their political history, too. Here's one sample of Raimondo, and specifically on war issues, being in bed with Rockwell. Garris, like Raimondo, is gay, and like Raimondo, a past backer of Buchanan, too.
Weirder yet, Raimondo jumped from backing Buchanan the last time in 2000 to supporting Ralph Nader in 2004. That said, if you read his defense of that support, you recognize he's at least partially right in calling Nader a "voice of the Old Right."
I know some current or former Greens, like Jeff St. Clair of Counterpunch, were totally butt-hurt at David Cobb getting the nomination in 2004. That said, there was no deck-stacking; it was the bottom-up stacking of state Green Party organizations that was (and still is) the problem. Frankly, outside of nuclear power issues, I don't think Nader was or is all that much of a Green, and he sure as hell isn't an ecosocialist.
Of course, Raimondo had no problem believing in a conspiracy theory or two. Like claiming Trump was a false flag for Hillary Clinton to get elected. We do know she did what she could to help him, but the idea that the Clintons officially, let alone outside forces, "planted" him? Tosh. And, contra Raimondo's "no true Scotsman," the likes of Corey Robin have shown that Trump's in line with much of American conservativism. And Raimondo followed that claim with later butt-kissing Trump. As for his claim that Alexander Litvinenko radioactively poisoned himself? His nuclear smuggling happened six years before he was killed. And Raimondo himself, in a piece linked inside that, noted that Po-210 has a has a half-life of just 138 days.
And, above all, Raimondo, in book length, repeated and developed a version of the canard that Israel knew about 9/11 in advance, while then going on to claim that 9/11 Falsers who claimed the buildings had been rigged to blow up were themselves a false flag. And, from this and other things, he's probably earned his own reputation as anti-Semitic even without taking into consideration his Pat Buchanan endorsements.
Horton is right on spelling out the options we had to a full invasion of Afghanistan.
He's right on that we shouldn't have entered WWI, but doesn't go into details. (The correct answer is not that all war is bad, but that, beyond the idea that wars fought for vague "national interest" are bad, the US had no compelling national interest in this fight and that Wilson's neutrality was fake.)
Then, he totally jumps the shark by blank-check supporting Robert Stinnett's "Day of Deceit," a Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory book. Beyond the refudiations at the Wiki link, the claims that FDR hoped to use Pearl to lead us to war with Germany as well are refuted by two actual facts.
First, we'd been in an undeclared naval war with Germany for six months before Pearl. I am sure Horton is not that uninformed.
Second, on Dec. 8, 1941, FDR ONLY asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Germany was not mentioned, which left Churchill crestfallen. I am quite sure Horton knows this, too.
Meanwhile, a Google search has Horton claiming in more than one place that he's abandoned conspiracy theories. Really? Corey Robin busted you in a Democratic Party related conspiracy theory just a year ago and nearly a full year after you said you gave up conspiracy theories. Robin has since deleted that Tweet, but Bernhard at Moon of Alabama (himself a nutter in many ways) links to it and quotes it.
That said, to the degree Horton has partially given up conspiracy theories, he's had some doozies of his own invention on his record.
And, through uncritical interviewing of Julian Assange's toady and flunky Craig Murray, he's done his bit to help perpetuate the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.
So, in answer to the rhetorical question: "Antiwar — what's it good for?"
Louis Proyect, kind of a nutter at times himself, warned about right-left or red-black alliances, specifically mentioning Raimondo. He also notes there that Raimondo's god, Murray Rothbard, was a Holocaust denier, or at least, a fellow traveler. No wonder Raimondo and Horton opposed any involvement in even Bosnia.
So, what's Antiwar worth?
Good god, not much.
Oh, and Ken? Respectfully but firmly, speaking of uncritical interviewing? Don't let Horton pass on conspiracy theory bullshit unchallenged in the future.
Apparently Barack Obama has learned nothing from George W. Bush. It might be one thing to passively stand aside while Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gets overthrown, or fights off attempts at that.
It's another to actually meet with his potential replacements. What if he's overthrown, but not by one of "our" guys? In that case, we're facing blowback. And, Maliki's indicated he's immune to public pressure. If we felt we had to meet with potential replacements, any idiot would know that doing this on the QT would have been much smarter than a public embrace.
Also, the threats of withholding materials? That usually doesn't work either. If the other party does eventually knuckle under, it's with petulance. That petulance includes questions of why didn't you do this to the other side? See "Palestinians and Israelis."
And, if we're trying to pick winners and losers, sending "advisers" is also stupid; good way for them to get caught up in some sort of crossfire. And, the actual 300 (for now but counting?) is worse than the expected 100. Hell, six months from now, Iraq might make Afghanistan look stable.
To riff on the old Colin Powell "Pottery Barn rule" — If you broke something at a store, don't try to fix it inside the same store.
As the mystery of why Wendy Davis endorsed David Alameel still is unresolved (I'm sorry, both Davis and Alameel are prolifers, so it is resolved) there's another mystery about the Man of Mystery (and Man of Much Money) running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate here in the Abandoned Pointy Object State.
Here's the full book, "Delivering Osama," on Google Books. (No Amazon listing, so it's off the mainstream.) Its co-author, M. Kabir Mohabbat, lived in Houston until his death not too long after the book was written. This issue already started getting airplay on the Great Orange Satan 2 weeks ago. I find even less on Google about the other co-author, Leah McInnis. The gist of the book is that Alameel was part of some group of Americans, many of whom were, like him, foreign-born from somewhere in the greater Middle East, talking to representatives of the Afghan government, which was at that time ... The Taliban!
And, not on occasion, but ...
Regularly!
As in once a month, in 2000, and allegedly violating sanctions against the Taliban government in so doing.
Why? Supposedly, the Taliban agreed to dump Osama bin Laden in a fake safe house and the Americans could then knock him off. However, after three or four such offers, the American government, by this time in 2001 under Shrub but before 9/11, wouldn't do it. So, on exactly what authority, or lack of authority, was Alameel there? If it wasn't under any official authority from Washington, but it was a quasi-official discussion with official Afghan governmental representatives, then he presumably committed a federal felony by violating the Logan Act. This is a huge 'nother reason to make sure he doesn't advance to the presumed runoff round for the Senate nomination. This particular issue is another reason to dig, dig, dig on Alameel, something the lamestream media here in Texas have shown a particular disinclination to do. That digging would not only keep him out of the runoff, but mark him as purely a fringe Moneybags candidate from here on out. Until the likes of Wayne Slater actually start doing a real job on investigating David Alameel, then, the rest of us will just have to fill in the blanks. So, per Fahrenheit 9/11, maybe Alameel had connections with Unocal? Maybe he had some sort of weird connections with Ross Perot on some hostage rescue? Some Ahmed Chalabi-type neocon "player"? I don't know. You tell us, David Alameel. Or, Wayne Slater, Peggy Fikac, or Jonathan Tilove, YOU tell us. This is your job. Stop being the Texas Green Party.
Per The Nation, high-level military brass are saying that targeting children as necessary, as part of the war in Afghanistan, is OK.
“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion “Ced”
Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry
Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for
military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile
intent.”
Who defines what constitutes "potential hostile intent"? I mean, between the word "potential" rather than "actual" and "intent" rather than "action," that's a whole big enough to fly a couple of child-killing Predator drones through.
Beyond that, it certainly seems like Light Col. Carrington is looking for excuses to be more bloodthirsty.
So, will Dear Leader denounce this? Five bucks, or 500 Afghan kids' lives, says no. Why? Beyond the fact that he's redefined "legitimate casualties" from drone strikes, Carrington's casuistry is of the same general level that has led him not only to arguments like that on expanding the drone war, but also expanding warrantless snooping on Americans and more. (Counterpunch has a lot more on all the Afghan kids being killed by drones.)
There is, arguably, a little nuance to the story, more than The Nation allows, although not a lot. At the same time, this is another good reason for us to get the hell out of Afghanistan ASAP. (Which Dear Leader also seems to be foot-dragging on.) Accepting as factual that the Taliban use at least some kids, or people who would be considered kids in any modern, developed nation, for various insurgency missions, this is simply a no-win issue for the US. And, it again puts paid to neoconservative ideas of nation-building. If a substantial minority, not even a majority, not only doesn't want to be "rebuilt," but is vehemently and lethally opposed, there's just not a lot we can do.
So, Dear Leader? You got Obama's head stuffed and mounted on your mantle, at least metaphorically. Why are you sticking around? Is it to divert either America as a whole, or yourself, from domestic issues? Do you still believe some of your "messianic" self-talk? Are you that bloodthirsty? Some combination? Items I haven't mentioned?
And, per the last word in my header, you Obamiacs — how much are you going to try to even halfway defend this? (Appeals to "Well, Romney might have done worse" don't count.)
"There is compelling evidence that at least some U.S. forces or
personnel continue to transfer individuals to NDS Kandahar despite not
only a widely acknowledged risk of torture but also evidence that
detainees transferred to NDS Kandahar by U.S. forces have been subjected
to torture," according to the report.
Don't tell me this isn't known higher up the food chain. Exactly how high, on civilian as well as military sides, is the question.
And, let's see how Preznit Look Forward spins this one, with his constitutional law skills. Let's also see how he spins it on the foreign policy side with Our Man in Kabul, Hamid (Don't Say I'm Off My Meds) Karzai.
So, Dana Milbank, stopped watch time, I guess, is probably right in calling this Obama's "mission accomplished speech." Enough troops will be withdrawn over the next year to reduce U.S. casualties. We'll continue to lie about Afghan National Army development, Karzai corruption levels, etc.
Contra Richard Cohen, whose stopped clock was last right a month ago, this does NOT mark "America's decline." Not unless you believe we should be empire-building.
Which John McCain is, to the point that George Will has soured on him.
Wired and several other sites are breaking the story that University of Michigan Arab scholar Juan Cole, blogging here, and blogging hard against invading Iraq and questioning specific decisions in Afghanistan, looked into using the CIA to shut Cole up in some way.
Of course, this is reprehensible, but not surprising.
And, unnecessary.
As Obama's bombing of Libya, and Cole's hugely uncriticial acceptance of said bombing, shows, all Bush had to do was somehow get a UN fig leaf for invading Iraq and Cole might well have supported it lock, stock and barrel.
Cole is right that these allegations need to be addressed.
As well as looking at the possibility that Team Obama, just as it has adopted many other things from BushCo, is doing similar as we speak.
Beyond that, as an Obamiac, Cole and his followers expecting an investigation from the man who pledged to "look forward"? I hear a petard being cranked up right about now.
==
Update, later today:
I posted a comment broadly on the lines above at Cole's comment-moderated blog. He has yet to approve it, so I noted that on Facebook. And, I tried again, and he wouldn't post that one, either.
===
Update, June 18:
First, another tidbit on Cole: Per a cached version of a blogpost at another website, he's "good" about trying to cover his tracks when he's caught, well, making shit up.
Hell, if Obama is serious about this, we should just name Gen. David Petraeus the shadow president, the foreign policy president or whatever and be done with it.
Yet another good reason to vote Green in 2012.
Surely, Petraeus will push for continuation of counterinsurgency of some sort in Afghanistan, any sort of continued backdoor presence in Iraq and more that we don't even know about.
A Politico op-ed "agrees" to the point of noting Obama is more changed by, than changing, Washington:
President Barack Obama’s nominations of Leon Panetta as defense secretary and Gen. David Petraeus as director of central intelligence demonstrate that the president has abandoned his pledge to change U.S. foreign policy. In fact, these nominations show that Washington has changed Obama far more than he has changed Washington.
Obama long insisted that he wants to reorient America’s focus — moving it away from nation-building projects in the Islamic world and toward Asia. He also insists he wants to trim military spending. But if Petraeus heads CIA and Panetta becomes defense secretary, it’s unlikely either will happen.
As I noted above, Petraeus will certainly push for COIN under some name.
Re Petraeus, Politico also asks if the CIA wouldn't be better served by an East Asia (read "China") hand? Agreed.
Plus, Politico even accuses Obama of "blathering."
In fact, these nominations, combined with other evidence, strongly suggest that Obama views foreign policy primarily as an instrument of domestic politics — an opportunity to give soaring speeches about the grand sweep of history and his view of America’s role in it.
THAT assessment certainly gets no argument from me. That said, it's coming from somebody who works at Cato.
But, I agree with Logan on the need for a China focus rather than "Global War on Terror."
I hadn't gotten myself fully up to speed on the issue, but, Der Spiegel is all over the issue that American media are still (with the exception, overall, of McClatchy) slow to address. That issue is the "kill teams" ... the issue that at least in some military units, soldiers are not just heartless toward but ready to brutally kill Afghan civilians.
First, per one soldier, Adam Wingfield, who was concerned about it, the "kill, kill, kill" attitude sounds kind of common:
There are people in my platoon that can get away with 'murder.' They planned and went through with it. ... Pretty much the whole platoon knows about it. It's OK with all of them pretty much, except me. I want to do something about it, the only problem is I don't feel safe here telling anyone.
Meanwhile, despite Gen. Petraeus' allegedly having concern for Afghan civilians as part of his counterinsurgency, how well is he working to INSIST that message percolates down? Maybe not totally?
Winfield again:
I have to make up my mind. Should I do the right thing and put myself in danger, or should I just shut up and deal with it? The army really let me down out here. When I thought I would come here to do any good, maybe make some change in this country, I find out it is all a lie. There are no good men left here.
What brought this attitude on?
Can we, like FiredogLake, say it's all a "hate industry" at home?
No. To the degree this is hate-based, racial and ethnic hatred have never needed an "industry" to fuel them. If anything, any causal correlation is the other way.
Second, the military trains people to kill. After actual stories (whether close to true or not) that in World War I, very few riflemen actually fired to kill, armies around the world ever since have worked on molding soldiers into psychologically "better" killers. There's not necessarily any ethnic hatred involved. That said, it makes it harder to have uniformed soldiers be the lead on counterinsurgency, especially when their mission is hugely undermanned, putting them on edge in an uncertain countryside all the time.
For the soldiers of the 5th Stryker Brigade, the new COIN strategy was a non-starter, says Audrey Morlock, Jeremy's mother. The Army didn't provide her son with training for this strategy, she says. "For three years, my boy was only trained (to do) one thing -- kill, kill, kill." The Winfields also have the impression that the requirements for the soldiers which came with the new COIN strategy overburdened them. "How were they supposed to protect the population?" asks his mother Emma.
Bingo. Oh, this is yet another reason to note that the British counterinsurgency in Malaysia was far different than what Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal proposed.
So, instead of blaming a "hate machine," let's blame politicians from President Obama on down who still want to believe, and want to have the American public believe, a ground war can be fought on the cheap. Let's blame generals like Petraeus who refuse to counteract many Americans' video game version of war and won't tell the politicians the truth, as Spiegel notes in discussing the Pentagon's fear of war atrocities photos coming to light. And, let's blame Americans who want to believe all this and who, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, aren't being asked to "feel" the cost of war.
Adam Winfield rarely saw the enemy. He and his comrades only saw the Talibans' helpers through their night-vision devices when the enemy was burying landmines -- they hid during the day. For days, the Americans did nothing but carry out senseless patrols. The soldiers became frustrated and bored.
The enemy, says Adam's father, is invisible until somebody gets blown up. "They are fighting against ghosts."
Of course they're going to be skittish, and not do well on counterinsurgency work.
That said, again, let's remember these facts:
1. Americans want to hear lies about the painless, techie nature of modern war.
2. Politicians don't want to upset citizens, nor appear "weak on war"; in Bush's case, it includes continuing to tell lies about what his administration achieved in Afghanistan.
3. The military brass will "sell" whatever it can, while doing another thing in reality, for a number of reasons.
So, you're going to get a clusterfuck.
That's why good liberals who write blank checks of support for the Army aren't such good liberals. That's especially true when a "professional" army, versus draftees, is more likely to produce incidents such as these, in my opinion.
As for Adam Winfield? Does his finally giving into pressure to join the kill team make him murderer or victim of psychological bullying? Or a bit of both?
While glad I've never been in a situation such as his and presuming I never will be, we can't consider him 100 percent innocent. I'm not going to lay down exact percentages, but, we can't totally excuse him.
Stop me if you're hear this one before. Military vets Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl of Center for a New American Security claim that this time victory really is near.
First, per Source Watch, CNAS is a "neocentrist" site — the foreign policy equivalent of a neolib site. (Note John Podesta's presence on its board, as well as neocentrist flaks now part of Team Obama.)
First, it's almost neocon, IMO. If warmonger Tom Ricks is a "senior fellow," it earns that description. And, Mark Lynch may give it a veneer of realism, but at some point, the way the Middle East is right now, he, and others, will have to stand and be counted more on things like ... well, Palestine.
OK, deconstructing a couple of Fick/Nagl claims:
Half of the violence in Afghanistan takes place in only 9 of its nearly 400 districts.
Yeah, and that means the Taliban can move around to new districts.
Next, while decrying kill counts, the duo touts "capture counts" — with the minor problem of not supplying specific figures.
Then:
Afghan Army troop strength has increased remarkably.
What about troop quality? Overall, not just one anecdote.
And, looking ahead at future concerns:
The first is uncertainty about how long America and its allies will remain committed to the fight. The question is still open, but President Obama and the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, have effectively moved the planned troop withdrawal date from July 2011 to at least 2014, with surprisingly little objection.
I guess more and more of the American public wanting to leave doesn't sway the claim of "surprisingly little objection." Especially as a new Gallup poll shows a full one-third of Americans want us to take a minimal role in foreign affairs. But, when your friends populate the Administration...
And, re Karzai, Pakistan and corruption, they claim:
We are establishing a task force to investigate and expose corruption in the Afghan government, under the leadership of Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster. We are also shoring up the parts of the border that the Taliban uses by thickening the line with Afghan forces, putting up more drones and coordinating more closely with Pakistani border guards.
"Investigate and expose" is different than "enforce." The February National Geographic had a great story on opium poppies in Afghanistan. Even people seemingly upright turn a blind eye on more than the occasional occasion.
Shoring up the border with Pakistan, etc? The apparent murders committed in Lahore by purported CIA agent Raymond Davis have probably put a damper in that.
Apparently, peace talks with the alleged Taliban leader exposed as an imposter last week were approved by then-U.S. commander Stanley McChrystal.
And, per the Guardian, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's attempts to blame the British for this is U.S.-originated spin.
McChrystal asked MI6 to develop the contacts, rather than going to the CIA, which was not empowered by the necessary White House directive to enter into direct talks with Taliban officials. The absence of such a "presidential finding" is seen by many diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic as an obstacle to progress towards a political settlement.
Shock me. Shock me more if Dugout Dave Petraeus isn't behind the spin of blaming the British. The fact that Stan the Former Man used MI6 rather than CIA is the technicality wedge for Dugout Dave or whomever to claim this was a British operation.
Meanwhile, here's why we shouldn't be surprised we got punked:
British intelligence is conducting an inquiry into the episode, in part to uncover the motive. One theory is that it was an exercise in kite-flying by the Taliban, to discover what Kabul and the British were offering, without risking a senior figure in the movement. Taliban leaders have been wary about attending meetings with would-be mediators, fearing they are on a Nato hit-list, known as the Joint Priority Effects List. A Nato source said: "If you look at it from their point of view, as soon as they turn up for a meeting, they give us an eight-digit map reference of where they are. This, on the other hand, is no risk."
Of course, Stan the Former Man and Dugout Dave were also too dumb to think the Taliban might actually be worried about a set-up.
