Obama Forced to Rearguard Actions

When Obama took office, I wrote that by this time he would only have juice for one more major action--an energy bill or immigration bill--in his first term. He couldn't have both and I'm not sure he will get either. The failure to get an energy bill has lasting negative consequences for America's future. Environmentalists point to his commitments to Copenhagen to reduce carbon emissions. On that score he has tasked the EPA with regulating carbon emissions, an act now being challenged by Virginia's Attorney-General "the Cooch".

But the energy bill co-written by Senator Kerry and Lindsey Graham was effectively killed by the Senate when Senator Graham threw a tantrum about the timing of the immigration bill. So far, politics as usual. But there is an extreme energy shortage racing down the track at us. Failure to pass the energy bill, which gave incentives for clean energy alternatives, just turned a European investment fund with $800 billion for American initiatives in this area to look elsewhere. In the short turn, this will kill creating millions of jobs. In the long-run, almost all the world's advanced economies will far-outstrip the United States in the application of alternative energy sources. This means we again lose any competitive edge in advanced technologies, which we have frittered away for the last 20 years.

It simply not possible for a country with only 5% of the world's population to keep consuming 25% of the world's resources. And, contrary to our imperial hubris, the world is not going to allow us to continue as before.

President Obama yesterday campaigned for Patty Murray in Washington. There he sought support for the Senate bill to give tax-breaks to small businesses and loans to small banks to bolster the development of small businesses, which have created 93% of all jobs in the last two decades. He looked forlorn. A simple measure, not worthy of political debate, has been held up by the Republicans , despite a majority who are on the record supporting the bill.

We are looking at a period where little will be accomplished for the rest of the year in Congress. If Republican should win back either house, all possibility of advancing anything to help the American people will come to a standstill. My advice to President Obama and the Democrats is to force the tax issue in September before the mid-terms, force the Republicans to filibuster tax cuts for 98% of Americans while insisting on tax cuts for the wealthy. If the Democrats cave on tax cuts for the rich, then they can at least totally dismiss the GOP's claims to be deficit hawks. If they win, they can at least cement their tax cutting status and campaign on fiscal responsibility.

Today there has been wonderful news leaking from the White House. It is claimed by more than one White House source that President Obama will nominate Elizabeth Warren as the first head of the Consumer Protection Agency. Such a pick will motivate the Democratic base and energize progressives, while the rest of America should be delighted. I actually look forward to hearing the right-wing smear campaigns against Dr. Warren. She has been so open and accessible that any replay of her comments can only generate wide support. Perhaps, Fox can get Andrew Breibart to edit a video to make Elizabeth Warren look like a radical leftist. Good luck. The announcement is supposed to come next week. I really hope these leaks are accurate.

All these small decisions have a major positive impact on the direction of the country. And President Obama has laid down the framework with the major legislation to integrate the small decisions into his over-arching plans. There is probably only one legislative year 2011 left in his Administration before the re-election campaign. If Republicans are dominate in 2011, we will see alot of vetoes on domestic legislation and the usual blunderbuss on war.

The real problem facing the country no one will openly discuss--Our Empire. Chalmers Johnson has just published his latest book Dismantling the Empire--America's Last Best Hope (Metropolitan Books), a collection of essays over the last few years. Chalmers, who voted for Obama, has been critical for the last ten years about America's direction in foreign policy. He is best known for his Blowback trilogy, which argues that the foreign policy issues we are facing are the result of blowbacks from covert intelligence operations gone amok. The whole development of Islamic fundamentalism was facilitated and funded by the United States itself over many decades as a block against communism. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, our covert allies, Pakistan and the Saudis funded and supported these groups for a variety of reasons and now we are paying for it with two wars and another on the way in Iran.

Chalmers Johnson is the President of the Japan Policy Research Institute and has been a consultant over the years for the CIA. What we are seeing now are veteran analysts from the military/ industrial/ terrorism complex warning us of the dire consequences of continuing our foolish ways globally. Johnson retired from the governmenr circuit around the time of Bill Clinton and he has been surpassed in his analysis of today's problems by Andrew Bacevich.

Chalmers Johnson basically believes that the American Century will read 1945-2045 and then it ends. Like Andrew Bacevich, he says we have to start dismantling our empire like the British did or the Soviet Union or the United States will be completely broke, even though it already is. He believes that moment is rapidly upon us when he says we lose in Afghanistan. Johnson felt the turning moment for Obama's role in this was his embrace of continuing the empire with only slight modifications to George W's foreign policy, his maintenance of the Republican guard over the defense establishment, and the elevation of General Petraeus. He thought bringing in Bacevich to have a larger discussion on the future of the military would have been a hopeful sign.

I think in his retirement Chalmers Johnson doesn't realize how lethal the military/ terrorist complex is and how susceptible to fear-mongering the American public is. The fact is the matter is that President Obama is for the empire, something I tell my conservative friends all the time. I also think, despite General Petraeus' lobbying, that we will be withdrawing from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. A little known fact is that over the last two months, the Special Forces have conducted over 3,000 operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Tribal areas of Pakistan. They claim to have killed or captured 2,500 Al Qaeda militants and killed over 350 Al Qaeda leaders. It is the success of the counter-terrorism effort, I believe, that will allow us to withdraw and bury the counter-insurgency doctrine forever. In short, this is the Joe Biden plan on steroids.

But Johnson's over-all point is that our global military presence--this ability to project military power globally 24/7--has generated enormous animosity throughout every region of the world. And military power, when the world perceives our economy as crippled and falling behind other countries in terms of innovation, is worthless. We literally spend on national security per year more than what the rest of planet earth does combined.

We have over 865 bases in more than 40 countries; we deploy more than 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. Each year these bases cost us $250 billion just to maintain. These bases do not include those in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout Central Asia, which are not listed in the Pentagon yearbook. In Johnson's book, he gives a breakdown of the $1.2 trillion , we spend annually on national security matters, which is woven through Defense, State, Energy, CIA, Homeland Security and the other intelligence agencies. Despite a law demanding outside independent auditors for federal agencies, neither Homeland Security nor Defense have complied. We have no idea where these vast sums go or what they accomplish.

Johnson's rather simple point is that we no longer and probably never could afford this giant empire. He points out how difficult dismantling it will be since a good half of these funds go to private contractors, all of whom have lobbyists to preserve their interests. He does us a service by documenting how it was Bill Clinton who got the privatization of national security going and George W just accelerated it. Johnson also points out that virtually none of our overseas bases are necessary for the defense of the United States and how , despite the hype of the best equipped army, our weapons systems are huge, expensive turkeys that were built for strategies to defeat enemies long since vanished--Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union.

The effect on the average American--besides being attacked on 9-11 by our former client--is the constant decline in our living standard, the generation of international animosity, and a level of national debt that can not be sustained.

The real Third Rail in American politics is our national/ terrorist complex. We simply can not debate severe cuts in this area of the budget without accusations about isolationism, abandoning American exceptionalism. As Johnson says, it will soon become dramatically evident we aren't exceptional at all. The small cuts Gates proposes to the Pentagon budget are now being resisted on the Hill and closing a base in Virginia has typically generated protests from our two Democratic Senators. Yet, we can cavalierly talk about cuts in Social Security and Medicare, when the real problem hovers over us. This is a recipe for national suicide.

I doubt whether we will see an informed debate on the extent of our overseas commitments before calamity strikes. With the right arguing Obama is weak because he defends Muslims right to worship, you can only imagine the repercussions if he started a dialogue on dismantling our empire. I don't expect the Catfood Commission to entertain the burden of the military/ terrorist complex any time soon. President Obama himself has increased military spending beyond George W and promised West Point we will have the largest, best equipped military in the world.