Quite a few Americans are probably aware of this, but it’s the first time I’ve seen any mainstream news program tackle this vital story about the real reasons and the tactics being used by the administration to take this country into war. I very much doubt that the majority of this country, both Republican and Democrat, know they signed on to American Empire when George W. Bush assumed the office.
I hope hard working Americans enjoy working 7 day weeks (while the terrible French and Germans are drinking their white wine and eating their brie-n-cheese at the beach) because global military dominance is expensive and nobody’s signing on to help.
While the world awaits war in Iraq, little attention has been paid to President Bush’s military budget proposal for next year—less still to a line item that would have attracted enormous notice in more placid times. This is the Missile Defense program, the successor to what, in Ronald Reagan’s day, was called the Strategic Defense Initiative or “Star Wars.” The program’s budget, which was released to no fanfare on Feb. 3, is startling for a couple of reasons.
[…]
…to go with the big boost, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has asked Congress to exempt Missile Defense from the law that requires all weapons systems to undergo operational tests before being deployed in the field. Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking Democrat (and the only lawmaker raising a fuss about this move), noted that the purpose of this law is “to prevent the production and fielding of a weapon system that doesn’t work right.” Yet Rumsfeld, justifying the bypass, said, “We need to get something out there,” in case, say, North Korea attacks us with ballistic missiles soon.
[…]
Finally, if Bush is worried about rogue states and terrorists blowing up Americans, as he has even more reason to be, he should do more to stave off attacks that might take place tomorrow. Last November, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees offered Bush a free ride on this road. It passed an amendment that allowed him to take $814 million out of Missile Defense, transfer it to the Department of Homeland Security, and spend it there in whatever ways he saw fit. Bush turned the offer down.
It vas not in ze plan. Nothing must interfere with ze plan.
Katerina VandenHeuvel said tonight that Rumsfeld should resign. Frankly, I’m not sure he shouldn’t be committed. This is so freakishly muddleheaded that somebody, somewhere has got to get him out of there.
He is actually saying that we should spend massive billions to put up a primitive missile shield that has never worked in the past and we shouldn’t test it further because “we have to get something out there” in case North Korea attacks. Oooookay.
He thinks that Kim Jong Il and others are really, really stupid (like his boss) and they will stop building ballistic missiles if we put up a useless multi-billion dollar erector set in Alaska and just tell everybody that it can blast every offending missile from the sky kinda like in Star Wars. North Koreans are so dumb they can’t even read the Washington Post so they’ll never know that missile defense doesn’t work and that even if it did, it couldn’t possibly stop more than one or two missiles.
So, they’ll send a whole bunch! And soon. Just in case the technology might get better later on.
Of course, if Kim Jong Il isn’t as stupid as Rumsfeld’s boss (actually it’s hardly even possible) so he will likely assume that if they do happen to blast 20 or 30 million Americans away, they’ll be blown into the stone age by our ICBM’s. So, seeing as they cannot possibly be stupid enough to risk that, they will probably not send any missiles our way in the first place.
Kinda neat. I think they should call it Mutually Assured Destruction. (And they should call the untestable missile defense system they are building “Welfare For Rich Republican Contributors”)
Meanwhile, Osama’s probably been making deals with Pakistan and the former Soviet states for spent uranium and other goodies, but we don’t have time for that kind of thing. Micronesia might be planning to unleash a Doomsday machine any day now. We’d better pretend to get prepared by pretending we have a super-duper laser beam bomb annihilator thingy. That’ll stop ’em in their tracks.
The most dangerous result of the years long ascension of the radical wing of the Republican Party is that they have been so successful at turning the Democratic Party into poster children for Battered Liberal Syndrome. (Witness the stomach churning spectacle of Zell Miller rhetorically sharing a big slurpy soul kiss with President Smirk today.) And in doing this they have become so filled with satisfaction and assurance of the rightness of their strategy that they are now convinced that they can dominate the world by using the same tactics of aggression and intimidation.
The problem is that the rest of the world is not the Democratic Party, so cowed by the endless rhetorical violence against them that they will do anything to avoid angering the unpredictable GOP beast. The rest of the world fights back when they are threatened by a bunch of flaccid bullies because they have dealt intimately with some fearsome monsters that would make schoolyard imitators like Junior and the Retreads reach for a Maxi-Depends.
One of the few Democrats who has been mercilessly treated as a punching bag yet remained intellectually honest and fiercely combative against these nasty tactics is Rep. Barney Frank. In this interview he tells it like it is:
Rep. Frank said he does not believe the administration any longer believes Saddam Hussein is a threat or that its tax-cut program focused on eliminating dividend taxes will stimulate the American economy.
“They have broader ideological goals,” he said.
“Those goals are to democratize the Middle East and end the era of social spending on popular government programs,” he said.
Saddam Hussein is actually quite limited in his power, as opposed to some place like North Korea, which has at least some nuclear weapons, Rep. Frank said.
“Saddam Hussein is almost kind of like Gulliver. He’s tied down. Except he’s the Lilliputian and we’re the giants,” he said. “Yes, he would like to do bad things but he’s in no position to do them.”
“The right wing believes that the invasion of Iraq is an opportunity to democratize the Arab world, he said. It believes imperialism is good if the imperialist is good,” he said.
Junior “gits to decide” who’s been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.
If President Bush has his way, some veterans soon will pay more for health care, meatpackers will have to fork over more for government inspections, and visitors could encounter recreation fees at more national parks and forests.
It is all part of a White House plan to increase revenue by billions of dollars next fiscal year through new and higher user fees. Such charges — generated by services the government provides and the businesses it regulates — would pull in $176.3 billion under Bush’s 2004 budget, an increase of $5.9 billion from this year’s estimated receipts.
“Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes,” Bush told the wildly applauding crowd.
Mirriam Webster:
Main Entry: tax
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Date: 14th century
a : a charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes
b : a sum levied on members of an organization to defray expenses
Of course, he did mangle the language, as usual, and say “not over my dead body,” so he can slide out of it on a technicality. Republicans love technicalities. Like “winning” presidential elections with 5-4 votes on the Supreme Court after having lost the popular vote. So, I won’t be holding my breath for him to follow through. Still, it would be nice if a Democrat or two mentioned it, don’t you think? Just to see the Republicans spin like a top?
In light of what is clearly the utter failure of the administration to follow through on any promise other than “tax cuts for millionaires” and “invade Iraq” (like those photo-op pledges to front line emergency workers like the heroic firefighters) Thomas Spencer asks:
Isn’t it pretty outrageous that the Republicans ran that reprehensible campaign for the midterms in November accusing Democrats of not doing enough to support homeland security?
The rule of thumb is that whatever they accuse the Democrats of doing is what they are doing themselves. Projection as political strategy.
“A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits.”
“The externalisation of internal unconscious wishes, desires or emotions on to other people. So, for example, someone who feels subconsciously that they have a powerful latent homosexual drive may not acknowledge this consciously, but it may show in their readiness to suspect others of being homosexual.”
“Attributing one’s own undesirabe traits to other people or agencies, e.g., an aggressive man accuses other people of being hostile.”
“The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest. The would-be adulterer accuses his wife of infidelity.”
“People attribute their own undesirable traits onto others. An individual who unconsciously recognises his or her aggressive tendencies may then see other people acting in an excessively aggressive way.”
“Projection is the opposite defence mechanism to identification. We project our own unpleasant feelings onto someone else and blame them for having thoughts that we really have.”
Thanks to MWO, this transcript gave me a real belly laugh.
Crossfire Monday:
CARLSON: I would say there is a deep strain of unreasonableness in the French culture.
In the wake of 9/11, one of the single best sellers in France is a book, as you know, called “The Big Lie,” that claimed that the attacks on the World Trade Center were all part of a conspiracy by the Bush administration. I mean why should the United States listen to a nation that would buy a book like that?
JUSTIN VAISSE, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Of course. But then why should France listen to a nation that has newspapers like [The New York Post]? I mean that’s outrageous.
(APPLAUSE)
VAISSE: No, I think that — I really think that’s not a good argument to make. And you know you mentioned that Tom Friedman’s column saying that France was isolating itself just, you know, to make — to posture to seem important and all that. But, you know, let me remind you that President Chirac — in France, people are opposed to the war without the second resolution by 74 percent. But in the rest of the world, it is more like in the 90s — 90 percent.
And so of course Chirac is isolated. He’s somewhat isolated. But you know he’s isolated with billions of people. And so I think — you know, I think it is right that somebody is making the point.
(APPLAUSE)
EPSTEIN: Well, you know, I think that it — again, it’s regretful that France has been so public in its I think undermining of the Bush administration. I think that Bush, by the same token — you know Teddy Roosevelt had the adage walk — talk softly, carry a big stick. I think Bush has replaced that with a competing version, which is a diplomatic bull in a china shop…
CARLSON: But just, honestly, just correct the misperception here. This is not simply an effort by the administration to beat up on France. This is coming — there’s a deep wellspring of anti-French feeling in this country, and it’s going to have consequences. This is a bottle of French wine. This is a bottom [sic] of American wine.
(SCORNFUL SILENCE)
VAISSE: It is bigger.
CARLSON: And it’s bigger. That’s exactly right. More forceful. There will be Americans who boycott French products. This in the end is really going to hurt France, isn’t it?
VAISSE: No, I think it is going hurt wine lovers.
And people think a funny liberal couldn’t take down a right wing blow-hard…
“America has been the victim of a horrendous crime, and the barbarians of radical Islam, we know, will again use terror against the U.S. (and against targets in Europe too, don’t forget) if they can. They must be rooted out, and the deep causes of the crime addressed, even as we bring the particular terrorist networks to justice. But this complex task cannot be undertaken if we divide the world into the Manichean simplicities of George W. Bush: Those who are not for America must necessarily be against America. This is not good enough from the leader of the free world — and it’s certainly not good enough before the evil of the threat we face. We need sophistication, wisdom, the widest coalition possible, legitimacy — and, of course, a willingness to use force if every other avenue has been closed. Instead, we hear the language of pre-emptive war (which was outlawed by the Versailles Treaty of 1919) — and this from the greatest and most admired democratic republic in the world, a country that has always prided itself on its respect for law, at home and abroad. Europeans expect much, much more from America.”
Last week Bush careened from restrained but persistent evangelism before a convention of religious broadcasters to casual trash-talking with sailors in Jacksonville, Fla. “The terrorists brought this war to us — and now we’re takin’ it back to them,” he told the troops, leaning an elbow on the lectern, squinting crosswise at the camera, tossing a breathy Clint Eastwood chuckle. “We’re on their trail, we’re smokin’ them out, we’ve got ’em on the run.” One imagined the French Foreign Minister watching this lunch-hour martial spectacle and choking on his baguette.
[…]
The American tradition of wartime leadership seems more subdued. The most memorable images are gaunt and painful: the haunted Lincoln; the dark circles under Franklin Roosevelt’s eyes; Kennedy standing alone, in shadows, during the Cuban missile crisis. This is a moment far more ambiguous than any of those; intellectual anguish is permissible. War may be the correct choice, but it can’t be an easy one. The world might have more confidence in the judgment of this President if he weren’t always bathed in the blinding glare of his own certainty.
Every single elected Democrat should be hammering on the sheer incompetence of the George W. Bush administration. Even if it’s really Clinton’s fault, even if it’s a complicated issue, even if the rest of the world is a bunch of nincompoops who just can’t be trusted, the job of President is to HANDLE IT AND GET THE JOB DONE.
Check out the cool movie tribute to the week-end demonstrations over on blah3.
And, I’ve been meaning to link for a couple of days to this great piece by Zizka on the value of hysteria.
Already we liberals have had to get used to the accusations of treason. Once the war starts, these will get worse. The Bush administration has already made comparable accusations against unccoperative Congressmen. We can expect that to get worse too, and the Democrats seem incapable of resisting effectively. If the war goes badly, God forbid, things will get worse yet; and when the economy stalls on top of everything else, as it seems very likely that it will, we can expect a further escalation of unofficial and official attacks on us.
So yeah, I’m paranoid and hysterical. If you have a problem with that, bite me. In certain periods of history it’s been the paranoids who survived. Are we living in one of these periods?