Obama's Syria Speech

++Before listening to the President's speech, I read Andrew Bacevich's new book Breach of Tust:How Americans failed their Soldiers and their Country. And sadly, it has to be said that no one has any skin in the Syrian game from the American side, except the servicemen and women who might have to respond. Bacevich does a brilliant job of analyzing the changing military strategies from WWII on and how the divide between the state and the society widened so that there exists no accountability or desire for accountability of the gigantic war machine. 

++Having said that President Obama's speech was surprising in some aspects. I expected an Oval Office War Speech. Instead, it was delivered in the East Wing. Yesterday's flurry of events forced the speech to be about fluid events with two dramatically opposed endings--war or peace. The President made mention of the enormous war-power capabilities which have accrued to the executive branch and spoke how it was better that Congress share in the responsibility. While noting he has the constitutional right to strike, he believed it was best if a President made military actions with the full support of Congress. He distinguished this strike from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya in terms of scale and duration. He also mentioned the history of the use of chemical weapons. My great uncle Paul Demme would have been pleased since he was attacked with mustard gad during WWI and remained badly scarred for the rest of his life. President Obama said it was imperative that the United States act to prevent these attacks again. Then he sequed into the recent diplomatic offers that Syria surrender its arsenal of chemical weapons to the international community. For this diplomacy to take place, he was sending John Kerry tomorrow to Geneva to meet the Russian minister in charge of Syria. 

++So The President requested the Senate suspend consideration of the authorization of military force. 

++I thought the speech was fine basically framing the call for permission to use force as a deterrent to enhance a diplomatic solution. It reminded me of diplomatic gambits from yesteryear.

++Parenthetically, President Obama gave an even more moving speech today at the Pentagon to commemorate the real 9-11 attacks. But sometimes I wish he would pull back from the scripture. President Obama quoted at least six biblical passages, which even the Fundies would be hard pressed to quote.

++So how did the Syria speech go over. The CNN/ORC poll said 69% were favorably disposed to the President overall. 61% support Obama's position.37% oppose.  On the question of whether Obama was convincing on his position: 47% said he did; 50% said he didn't. 

++Andrew Sullivan, who spent the past week in different states of cardiac arrest because he feared Obama had made a blunder, called the talk "the clearest, simplest and most moving presidential speeches to the nation I can imagine."  Read his full analysis at Daily Dish and subscribe to his blog. It is well worth the read. 

++Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast also writes favorably about President Obama's speech and position but says he still has an uphill battle.

++Former Obama aide, John Faureau writes about why this was the man he supported.

++John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post that President Obama shamed the country. 

++Charles Pierce in his blog for Esquire writes a perfect analysis of why Washington doesn't understand Obama because they like "guts" and not someone who engages in the active process of deciding among options. I think Pierce is right on the money because I thought President Obama had an abstract goal to sell and more sophisticated options to consider than the win-lose media could comprehend. 

++John Stewart did a marvelous attack on Fox News caterwauling about Obama "losing" to the Russians. Stewart likened John Kerry to Mr. Magoo who gaffed into a diplomatic solution. Stewart asked," Do we care who gets the credit if there is no war." He cut to videoclips of people shouting they Obama lost. "Who did he lose to? Do we lose if there is no war?"

++Today's drumbeat from the Right is that Obama is letting Russia back in as a major geopolitical force. 

++Marco Rubio and John Boehner spent this 9-11 blasting President Obama for failing to bring the perpetrators of the 9/11 Benghazi attack to justice. No mention he brought the perpetrator of the original 9/11 to justice when their President didn't. 

Saturday Rants

Not to miss a trick or a buck, Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch fame has started his move to "impeach Elena Kagan". He posted his call to wage war against Elena Kagan on World Nut Daily.

Meanwhile in Mexico City, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled in favor of their gay marriage law. Not a great time for the homophobes. The Supreme Court is supposed to rule later on whether gays can adopt children.

Meanwhile in the United States, the Washington Post asks,"Will the Prop 8 ruling hurt Democrats?" I have yet to hear from the howling conservative mobs that all three judges who have ruled in favor of gay marriage so far have been Republicans. Meanwhile, the campaign against Vaughn Walker is that ,of course, he ruled for gays because he is gay and living in a stable relationship. So he wants to get married. This brings me to the importance of Ted Olson's big regret --that the trial was not televised. If we had seen the trial, it would have been a powerful educational moment. Anti-gay forces blocked televising the hearings precisely so they could wage nonsense attacks afterwards. Now the unChristian Right is advocating "intimidating the Supreme Court" so it will not ratify the decision. I think we've seen these tactics before on the healthcare debate where voracious mobs were thought to represent the will of the people.

Speaking of August mayhem, Democrats are vowing this year will not be the August of last year. The Democratic Party has handed out talking points to all members of Congress and candidates to shut down any townhall tantrums. I've been impressed with the quiet coordination of various Democratic party organizations and like-minded organizations for the mid-terms. Democrats have a cash advantage now, despite the various splintered corporate and conservative efforts on the Republican side. The question will be whether organization and a basic message is enough to curtail inevitable losses.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Howard Dean came up with the same math on the Senate I did the other day. Dean had started at a five seat loss for the Democrats, which is where I started months ago. But he's saying that Democrats could cut the loss to 1. The lunacy of the national Republican Party is a big help in eroding their chances.

Has anyone noticed that, with the exception of Meg Whitman and a few other outliers, Republicans are choosing normal GOP candidates for governor races, while letting the fruitcakes win for congress. The Republicans will pick up a number of state houses. I guess the voters felt they couldn't risk real government with a wingnut.

Yes, Dr. Rachel Maddow, Sharon Angle is really a Christian Reconstructionist and it's worth a segment explaining what this retrograde political philosophy is. One of the real charming aspects of Christian Reconstructionists is their notion that there really are first and second class citizens. President Barack Obama is not a legitimate President, not because he was born in Nairobi or on the Moon, but because he's black. You see "real Americans" are like--me--people who are descended from white people prior to the 14th Amendment. We have full rights. Blacks, Hispanics,and White Women are given their rights from government. Historically, the 14th Amendment doe not apply to American Indians, which I'm not sure Christian Reconstructionists know--yet. God gave me my rights, which are superior in quality to those who received them from the 14th Amendment. And, of course, we are a Christian nation but, depending on what faction you belong, Jews are either grandfathered in or left out. Since Jews were also here before the 14th Amendment, this gets complicated. Added to Ms. Angle's funky Christian politics is her John Birch credentials.

Authors Leonard Zeskind and David Niewert are good sources for the sick interplay between Christian Reconstructionists and the White Nationalists.

The leaching of the extreme into mainstream Republicanism has given us the bizarre phenomenon of "popular constitutionalism" or "conservative constitutionalism", which has at its heart the repeal or elimination of those parts of the constitution which are incovenient. Republicans are arguing against the "commerce clause" and congress's ability to pass a national budget in their wars against healthcare reform and deficit spending. Likewise, they are calling into question the government's ability to tax. But what's even more interesting are the assertions about the First Amendment. Glenn Beck, David Barton and even Newt Gingrich are raising questions about the separation of church and state and in Tennessee questions are being raised whether Muslims should be "granted" freedom of religion because they are a "cult". A side issue here are the assertions by the unChristian Right that our laws are based on biblical edicts, despite the very pre-Christian Germanic basis for things like perjury, self-incrimination and all the little details we like in court trials. The minute President Obama was elected,the Tenthers went into a full court press, arguing states could nullify a federal law they disagree with. This movement has spread from its natural home among neo-confederates in the South through parts of the West and Midwest. The most curious event was when Oklahoma tried to meld the Tenthers with the Second Amendment by debating the creation of their own seperate state militia, forgetting that the President is the commander-in-chief of all state militias.

This past week, we've seen the spectacle of three sitting Republican senators argue for holding hearings on the 14th Amendment itself because of the issue of birthright citizenship. Historically, this is fascinating because in the waves of nativism that struck the United States before and other eras of anti-immigration sentiment this never was an issue raised at a national level. Perhaps because other immigrants were considered at least symbolically white. When the 14th Amendment was debated, congress did, however,raise the issue of Chinese children born during the flood of immigrants in the West. And in that debate, Congress decided it applied to them. But now with the issue being Hispanic immigrants, apparently the race card has been raised again. But it is ironic that the focus of debate would be the amendment that freed black Americans and normalized their legal status as citizens.

Did anyone see John McCain's tantrum over DADT and Hate Crime Laws? McCain is threatening to filibuster the defense appropriations bill because the Committee put into the bill the repeal of DADT, pending the survey by the armed services and the President's finding. Apparently, that provisional text wasn't good enough for McCain, who has been campaigning against the repeal of DADT with his letter signed by dead military officers. The emotion in his floor speech suggests there is more going on here. Maybe it was because Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional and his wife and daughter have been vocal advocates for same sex marriage, while McCain made sure his Arizonan voters knew he was opposed. But the whole episode was bizarre.

The Cat Food or Debt Commission has been meeting in secret but we've got some inkling about their proposals. Alan Simpson says that the Commission will be going after ways to cut military pensions and benefits. Senator Tom Coburn raised the issue of going after obsolete military systems and corruption in defense contractors. But he was over-ruled. It seems only live human beings will pay for the national debt and not those things which really add to it.

After reading Andrew Bacevich's Washington Rules, I've concluded that there is very little anyone can do to restrain the Empire from waging war willy-nilly when and wherever it wants. Our service people are no longer responsible to elected officials, even the President. And the President really only ratifies the decisions made by the separate government. As millions who marched against the war in Iraq demonstrated, there is nothing much popular opinion can really do in terms of starting or terminating a war.

But there is one thing--making the taxpayers actually pay for conflict as it is on-going. Basically, the last two wars were unpaid for and no sacrifice was asked from the citizens. Instead, Americans were told to "keep shopping". As I've suggested in posts written months ago, I suggested a VAT tax to pay for our social welfare net. But as recent studies show, there is really not a need for this. But a War Tax on everything we buy until a war is concluded would not only fund it but also remind everyone what we are doing overseas. It would channel public opinion in a politically effective manner, if politicians had to hear citizens protest about that tax in particular. This would have the added charm of putting pressure on politicians who protect themselves by giving the military/ terrorism complex everything it wants. No longer could you protect yourself from being accused of being weak on defense if you were forced to justify its immediate financial costs to the electorate.

Endless War--Andrew Bacevich

West Point graduate, a real Vietnam veteran and professor of international affairs at Boston University, Andrew Bacevich has been warning about America's foreign over-reach for nearly a decade. In August, his book "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War" will be published and no doubt it will reinforce his strong belief that long wars are antithetical to democracy and ruinous to the military.

Today, he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post "Endless War, a Recipe for Four-Star Arrogance", which lays out the deeper issues behind the whole Rolling Stone McChrystal flap. Earlier in the week Frank Schaeffer, a father of a Marine and co-founder of the Religious Right, published a warning on Huffngton Post both to the progressive community and to Americans at large that our all-volunteer military has become a separate culture than our own and is susceptible to the noxious calls from our radical right. He also criticised Democrats and progressives for not taking seriously the separate concerns and responsibilities of our fighting men and women. And then Pepe Escobar weighed in with a humorous piece "Mr. McChrystal. He Dead", which portrayed the sacked general as the Kurtz figure in Apocalypse Now played by Marlon Brando.

A few weeks ago, Barney Frank hosted a panel at the House comprised of Democrats and conservatives on how to cut the military budget over time by about $1 trillion. What I found most interesting were the comments by Lawrence Korb, who was involved in creating the all-volunteer army. He recalled the situation of the Vietnam War and the decision to create an all-volunteer army was for the expressed purpose of not repeating a prolonged conflict. The all-volunteer army was not created to wage war ceaselessly and wherever whim decided.

The idea of the all-volunteer army was to create the best fighting force in the world--which it is. But the dangers of that appear everyday. This week the California National Guard held a conference in San Francisco on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the purpose of educating the public of its pandemic occurence within the community of returning veterans. An important side issue was to encourage lobbying for the National Guard to receive mental health benefits, which they currently lack. On the topside, the Washington Post published an article today raising concerns about the rapid turnover in generals throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan wars claiming their preparation is inadequate for fighting such prolonged conflicts.

Earlier this week I ranted about COIN, the counter-insurgency doctrine which is based on past failures and requires substantial civilian in-put, which is not available either in terms of capable talent or the financial resources. Supporters point to the success of the Surge in Iraq, which enabled us to create the conditions for our withdrawal but not on its failure to generate any genuine political reconciliation among the Iraqis. One of the key components for the Surge, as candidate Barack Obama pointed out, was the Sunni Awakening, which rejected the insurgents. As we have given over military control to the Iraqis, almost all the Sunni leaders of this group have been assassinated by the government. Today, the Iraqi government still has not resolved the issue of forming the next government after elections months ago.

General McChrystal in his Rolling Stone debut criticized Vice President Biden's proposal for fighting on the border of Afghanistan and the nearby Northern Frontier of Pakistan with the aim of eradicating Al Qaeda there. McChrystal called it a recipe for "Chaosistan". But today's admission by CIA director Leon Panetta that there only exists 50-100 Al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan today raises again the issue whether Biden was right. The escalation of the war in Afghanistan has triggered for the first time the Taliban becoming directly involved in training terrorist wannabes against the United States as witnessed the recently convicted Times Square bomber. Are we not creating the situation for permanent blowback from this war?

Back to Andrew Bacevich. he writes that prolonged conflict introduces toxins that inexorably corrode the values of popular government. "Not the least among these values is a code of military conduct that honors the principle of civilian control while keeping the officer corps free from the taint of politics." Over the past two weeks, there have been several articles, most notably in the Los Angeles Times, concerning the peer pressure in the military academies on cadets to become Republicans. Bacevich claims that the whole McChrystal incident should set off alarms--that the military professional ethic is eroding , evident in the disrespect for senior civilians.

Bacevich quotes General George C. Marshall that "A democracy cannot fight a Seven Years War." That was supposedly the genius of creating an all-volunteer force--a standing army, one that is only tenuously linked to American society. Once the Cold War ended, both Republicans and Democrats expressed a greater willingness to intervene abroad. From the Persian Gulf to the Balkans, from the Caribbean to the Horn of Africa, there was little to complain about. The costs appeared negligible--the miniscule casualties in the first Gulf War attest to this. So the role for everyone was simply to cheer and say "We respect your service."

So, with the abandonment of the Doctrine of Deterence for one of pre-emptive war, we entered what Don Rumseld called the "Long War", which is supposed to last 40 years. Remember when the reporter asked Dick Cheney about the polls showing dissastisfaction with the Iraq War. He said,"So what?" The Long War is exclusively the property of the "troops" and not the American people. As Bacevich writes," To be an American soldier today is to serve a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of armed confict without end." As George W. Bush told the Amercan people after 9/11 "Go shopping". The war doesn't involve you.

The problem with this is that soldiers and their familes are left holding the bag. To have the National Guard on perpetual rotation to foreign war zones is obscene. At the same time, the current use of regular service men and women violates everything we know about the appropriate combat periods needed to forestall combat fatigue and more dramatic mental illnesses. In the Vietnam conflict, the British studied American troop deployment and found that our soldiers spent three times the amount in combat recommended by specialists. I can only imagined what it is today.

Bacevich warns that the circumstances of today's military in the United States breeds praetorianism, "warriors becoming enamored with their moral superiority and impatient with the failings of those they are charged to defend.' "Team America" as these officers called themselves, believe they are holding out against " a sea of stupidity and corruption". There is a pandemic "culture of contempt" for those not in uniform. The problem, according to Bacevich,isn't any threat to the constitutional order but the creation of generation after generation of officers like this.

What Bacevich sees as the real danger is, like in Vietnam, the military cracked from the bottom up. The damage took decades to repair and with a military that has demonstrated remarkable durability for the past decade shows signs of coming undone at the top. "The officer corps is losing its bearings."

Bacevich calls on the American people to reclaim ownership of the military. He believes the soldiers need a respite and citizens should insist Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or the country should actually become a country "at war" with all that implies for civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities.

But to quote from other writings of Bacevich, only the officers at colonel level or equivalent can sound the alarms up the ladder. It seems to me the contempt by McChrystal was not in his remarks about Obama, Biden and McCain but rather in his original plan for Afghanistan which required 150,000 additional troops and some $1 trillion more in spending. Only someone truly removed from political reality and the situation of the American society today could have had the hubris to propose such a plan.

The other issue has to do with the development of the endless lists of strategic threats to the United States. We've gone from WMDs, terrorism, narco-terrorism,cyber terrorism, global warming and now, according to Admiral Mullen, the national debt. At the same time, our total national security expenditure is twice the amount of what we paid at the height of the Cold War and equivalent to all the national security expenditure of the entire earth combined. So how much will real security cost? Are we to respond to every imaginable threat national security types can conjure up? Isn't the social and economic well-being of the American people a consideration of national security and stability? And if we face a real threat, will our armed forces be too hollowed out to respond?

I will return to this issue in another post. Parallel to Bacevich's concerns are those raised by former foreign service officers about the need to integrate economics, diplomacy and development into our considerations of national security. While the military carries the burden, our diplomatic service has been eviscerated in recent years through deliberate neglect, which triggered a wave of retirements, and the atrophy of our other tools to deal with these conflicts.