March 20, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
WHAT WE SHOULD LEARN
There is not much good that will come of this war in Iraq. We're responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. We've sacrificed members of our own military senselessly. We've left countless others with wounds that they will suffer the rest of their lives. We've destabilized the Middle East. We've run massive deficits that threaten to cripple our economy. The only good that can come from this atrocity is what we can learn from it. Gary Hart writes about it in this article linked at www.huffingtonpost.com:
Do not manufacture justification for invasions. Plan for all eventualities, including the most unpleasant. Do not pay exiles to tell you what you want to hear. Deal honestly with Congress and the American people. Be candid about possible costs in lives and money. And an endless list of common sense, and Constitutional, dos and don'ts.
The second kind of lessons are less obvious and have to do with the new realities of the 21st century:
First, treat jihadist terrorism more like organized crime than traditional warfare. By declaring "war on terrorism" we made the fatal mistake that it could be crushed using conventional warfare and massed armies. We clearly had the legal and moral right to overturn the Taliban government in Afghanistan that harbored al Qaeda as it planned and carried out the 9.11 attacks. Even so, the democratization of an ancient tribal society is proving hugely more difficult than driving the Taliban out of Kabul. Indeed, it seems set on returning.
Instead, we should create NATO II, an organization combining the intelligence services, law enforcement agencies, and special forces of Western democracies to coordinate the crushing of jihadist cells.
SOME "FAMILY VALUES" PARTY
During the Clinton administration Republicans fought against an unpaid family leave bill. The bill allows people to take a certain amount of unpaid leave due to things like a family emergency. Republicans have fought against raising the minimum wage, or the existence of a minimum wage at all. Republicans opposed Social Security back when FDR proposed it. Now Republicans will fight a proposal for a national sick leave bill. The bill would mean sick leave for employees of any company that employees 15 or more people. We'll get the same old excuse from Republicans that it's harmful to small business. Their definition of "small business" might differ from yours and mine. This article by Bob Geiger is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The Kennedy bill, which applies to companies with 15 or more employees, is a logical follow-up to the minimum wage increase that was passed by the Democratic Congress in their first two months of controlling the agenda on Capitol Hill.
And despite the fact that almost half of all U.S. workers have no paid sick leave -- with 76 percent of the lowest-income workers having no ability to stay home sick without losing income -- Senate Republicans are already signaling that they're willing to fight this at least as strongly as they boycotted raising the minimum wage.
"To extend this type of leave requirement to businesses, as is contemplated by the Healthy Families Act, would be little more than an unfunded mandate on small businesses throughout the country," said Mike Enzi (R-WY), the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, in hearings last month. "In addition, this legislation represents only direct labor cost, and does not account for a myriad of other indirect costs."
Showing posts with label national. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national. Show all posts
Saturday, February 03, 2007
February 03, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT
What do you get if you combine hubris, stubbornness, and incompetence? You get George W. Bush, of course, with his sidekick Dick Cheney. A new National Intelligence Estimate shows that now there is not one, but four, civil wars going on in Iraq. Bush was warned by a number of people of the dangers of occupying Iraq. He never had to attack Iraq in the first place, but PNAC thought it would be a swell idea to take over Iraq, install a puppet "democracy," and control the oil. Now Bush has opened the gates of hell. This column by Maureen Dowd is at www.welcome-to-pottersville.com:
Even after releasing parts of an intelligence report so pessimistic that it may as well have been titled “Iraq: We’re Cooked,” Bush officials clung to their alternate reality, using nonsensical logic and cherry-picking whatever phrases they could find in the report that they could use to sell the Surge.
In the 2004 National Intelligence Estimate, civil war was a worst-case scenario. In the 2007 one, Iraq has zoomed past civil war to hell: “The Intelligence Community judges that the term ‘civil war’ does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent attacks on coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence.”
As John McLaughlin, the former acting director of central intelligence, told The Times’s Mark Mazzetti: “Civil war is checkers. This is chess.”
Far from Dick Cheney’s claim of “enormous successes” and Gen. William Casey’s claim of “slow progress,” the report shows that any path the U.S. takes in Iraq could lead to a river of blood. It says that in the absence of any strong Sunni and Shiite leaders who can control their groups, prospects are dim for a cohesive government, much less a democracy.
WAR A MEANS TO DESTROY MIDDLE CLASS
The United States spends far more on the military than any other country in the world. We neglect pressing needs at home such as health care, education, environmental cleanup, job training, and housing so we can burn money on military expenditures. There were various motivations for attacking Iraq, and for the continuing "war on terror," but the war effectively drains off money that could better life for the working people of this country. Right-wingers don't care about us. They want cheap labor and things like Social Security, pensions, and benefits get in the way of their profits. This article by Margie Burns is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
There is no parallel between the “war on terror” and America’s effort in World War II, and Churchillian posturing by this White House should be viewed with enlightened skepticism. If they really wanted to guide adolescent males around the globe into nonviolent, constructive action rather than into terrorism, they would pursue policies congruent with that objective.
They would also have taken sensible steps at home to safeguard our chemical sector and nuclear industry, borders and ports, steps not taken to this day.
I have now had six years to observe the Bush team (I certainly never took them seriously, except for the harms done, when they were back in Texas), and my working hypothesis is that, when you’re looking at the Bush team, you have to think simple and crude. The real desideratum of this administration is basically to undo decades of twentieth-century shoring up the middle class, meaning loosely 90 percent of the population. The result is cheap labor; the means is global war. The president in his most recent State of the Union address falsely named fighting terrorism – fending off young males who come by various avenues to use guerrilla tactics -- “the defining struggle of our time.”
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT
What do you get if you combine hubris, stubbornness, and incompetence? You get George W. Bush, of course, with his sidekick Dick Cheney. A new National Intelligence Estimate shows that now there is not one, but four, civil wars going on in Iraq. Bush was warned by a number of people of the dangers of occupying Iraq. He never had to attack Iraq in the first place, but PNAC thought it would be a swell idea to take over Iraq, install a puppet "democracy," and control the oil. Now Bush has opened the gates of hell. This column by Maureen Dowd is at www.welcome-to-pottersville.com:
Even after releasing parts of an intelligence report so pessimistic that it may as well have been titled “Iraq: We’re Cooked,” Bush officials clung to their alternate reality, using nonsensical logic and cherry-picking whatever phrases they could find in the report that they could use to sell the Surge.
In the 2004 National Intelligence Estimate, civil war was a worst-case scenario. In the 2007 one, Iraq has zoomed past civil war to hell: “The Intelligence Community judges that the term ‘civil war’ does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent attacks on coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence.”
As John McLaughlin, the former acting director of central intelligence, told The Times’s Mark Mazzetti: “Civil war is checkers. This is chess.”
Far from Dick Cheney’s claim of “enormous successes” and Gen. William Casey’s claim of “slow progress,” the report shows that any path the U.S. takes in Iraq could lead to a river of blood. It says that in the absence of any strong Sunni and Shiite leaders who can control their groups, prospects are dim for a cohesive government, much less a democracy.
WAR A MEANS TO DESTROY MIDDLE CLASS
The United States spends far more on the military than any other country in the world. We neglect pressing needs at home such as health care, education, environmental cleanup, job training, and housing so we can burn money on military expenditures. There were various motivations for attacking Iraq, and for the continuing "war on terror," but the war effectively drains off money that could better life for the working people of this country. Right-wingers don't care about us. They want cheap labor and things like Social Security, pensions, and benefits get in the way of their profits. This article by Margie Burns is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
There is no parallel between the “war on terror” and America’s effort in World War II, and Churchillian posturing by this White House should be viewed with enlightened skepticism. If they really wanted to guide adolescent males around the globe into nonviolent, constructive action rather than into terrorism, they would pursue policies congruent with that objective.
They would also have taken sensible steps at home to safeguard our chemical sector and nuclear industry, borders and ports, steps not taken to this day.
I have now had six years to observe the Bush team (I certainly never took them seriously, except for the harms done, when they were back in Texas), and my working hypothesis is that, when you’re looking at the Bush team, you have to think simple and crude. The real desideratum of this administration is basically to undo decades of twentieth-century shoring up the middle class, meaning loosely 90 percent of the population. The result is cheap labor; the means is global war. The president in his most recent State of the Union address falsely named fighting terrorism – fending off young males who come by various avenues to use guerrilla tactics -- “the defining struggle of our time.”
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