Bernie Sanders: Progressive, Socialist, or just Liberal?

Is Bernie Sanders a really a Socialist or just another Liberal?

I cannot point out too many times that people tend to see specific a word as representing a specific, real object. But we all have had the experience that one word can mean many things, and that specific things may have more than one name. Words of the day: socialist and progressive.

The Democratic Party Presidential debate in New Hampshire on February 4, 2016 provided lessons in both semantics and real politics. It was a long debate. Anyone who listened to it, or who reads the transcript, might reasonably select different points to emphasizing in reporting on it. Not surprisingly, Bernie advocates believe he won the debate, while Hillary advocates believe she won the debate.

I am not concerned with who "won" the debate. I am not registered in any political party, but I certainly have a political agenda. And I have priorities. I put the environment first, international peace and justice second, and American economic & legal justice third. But I have an opinion about just about every detail of politics, society and culture.

To me the debate was an important read on Bernie Sanders' foreign policy. Hillary Clinton is too hawkish for my taste, but of course she is much closer to mainstream sentiments than I am.

Bernie harps on Clinton's vote to attack Iraq (which was a war crime, if you use the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes). But Bernie's rabble rousing speeches always fail to mention his vote to attack Afghanistan (which was a war crime, if you use the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes). When pointed out, he changes the subject, as he did in the debate. When it is pointed out to his supporters, they usually go back to the Clinton Iraq vote.

In the debate there was a second part to the question. Both Hillary and Bernie were asked, by the moderators: what would you do about the U.S. troops currently in Iraq. Hillary gave a clear answer without hesitation: she would leave the troops there, subject to the situation changing. Bernie tried to evade answering, but when pinned down said, or I should say mumbled, that he would leave the troops there.

Bernie is also for fighting ISIS, preferably with other nation's armies. It is a hypocritical position for someone who claims he has been screaming for 50 years about American job losses. Isn't killing ISIS soldiers a paid job? Why should that skilled labor go to foreigners?

Forgive me if I wax sarcastic. It's the "I'm perfect," from Bernie, "He's perfect" from his chorus of followers chanting that has become irritating. But then I'm from California, in fact northern California, where a Bernie Bot seems to be lurking in every smoke-filled room. No, not tobacco.

In short, when pushed to comment, Bernie was just as hawkish as Hillary. Too hawkish for me.

I was surprised and pleased that Hillary finally started poking at Bernie's allegedly perfect Progressive credentials. I think earlier in the campaign she and her advisors assumed she would beat Bernie easily. She did not want to alienate his followers, as she will need their support in November. But his follows drank his kool-aid, not knowing, as he himself remembers, what a bad little boy he has been these past thirty years.

Hillary pointed out that he voted to deregulate derivatives. Bernie did not deny it, he just went on to change the subject. Bernie Bots would be all over Hillary if she did something like that. They would claim it is proof that she is just a pawn for Goldman Sachs. But in all the commentary I've read today (admittedly just a fraction of what there is), I have seen no Bernie Bot criticizing Bernie for that vote. Maybe Bernie Bots don't know what a financial derivative is.

The Democratic Party is no home for Socialists. I would say the Democratic Party is socialist-influenced. Sanders bought the socialist line in college (so did I). Now, in his dotage, apparently doing something about it is on his bucket list. Great. Do something about it, if you can. I personally favor mixed systems, though I would probably argue about what specifically should be socialized and what should be left to free markets. Also I favor worker ownership of business, not the centralized government bureaucratic ownership of business that Sanders favors. Though I might make an exception in some cases, like localities owning their own utility companies.

So hurray for Bernie, but I've had enough of old white socialist male domination in my lifetime (most of my friends were fellow leftist activists). I'd like to try old white female liberal domination for 4 years, especially since the alternative is Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

I have watched a lot of bullying done by Bernie supporters both on the Internet and in my local area. At the comments section of the New York Times, for instance, you would think 98% of the Democratic Party voters favor Bernie. I've found that if I even hint to many voters around here that Hillary might be the better candidate, suddenly they want to talk. The rabidness of the Bernie Bullies is not something they can turn off. Most people need that personality defect to maintain a leftist stance in America. But bullying does not a Democracy make.

From Kunduz to Paris, with Love

No one wants to be an innocent victim of human violence. The recent attacks in Paris, Mali, Lebanon and elsewhere show that if nothing else is prospering in the world, hate is. But, if you can gain the perspective, these all represent small scale violence by weak players in the world's political and religious arena.

I just received a reminder from Doctors Without Borders about the tragedy at Kunduz. You may recall that Kunduz is a city of about 300,000 people in Afghanistan to the northeast of Kabul, not very far from the Tajikistan border. The Taliban briefly occupied the city in September. The "central" government took it back fifteen days later in October, with help from American troops and warplanes.

The hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders was struck by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship, an awesome weapon of war and successor to the AC-47 used to mass murder peasants during the Vietnam War.

Hospitals, as long as they function as hospitals, are never fair targets in war, the same as trucks and tents marked with Red Cross identification. For details on why the Kunduz massacre was a war crime, see Protection of Medical Services Under International Law.

This is not the sort of incident that happens by accident, nor do the circumstances around the massacre look accidental in any way. This is not a case of stray bullets from the AC-130 missing a legitimate target and then hitting some doctors, nurses, and patients. The Hospital Was the Target.

And that is the kind of thing that is controlled from the White House Situation Room. Whether President Barack Obama was actually in the situation room and made the call will probably become publicly available in about 60 years.

I have no sympathy for anyone who kills civilians, whether Presidents of the United States (or other nations) or freelance Islamists or any other political/social/religious group. So I have sympathy with the victims in Paris, and no sympathy for the perps, including the chain of command above them, right up to the Caliph.

The difference I have with most Americans [Trigger alert: prepare to be shocked by an opinion] is that I don't think the victims of American President Barack Obama (and the many war criminal President predecessors) are in any essential way different than the victims of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or Osama Bin Laden, or for that matter Pol Pot, Trotsky, General Franco or anyone else. The government of the United States was established by violence; almost all governments are. It does not matter to me whether violence is used to establish a republic or an Islamic State, it is wrong because it is violence, and particularly wrong when it is violence against civilians.

In particular, I am not a fan of the French government. To me the French monarchs starting with Charlemagne, Napoleon, the French imperialists who conquered Vietnam and other colonies, Philippe Petain, and the leaders who recently bombed Raqqa are just slight variations on the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi theme.

The American people have no learning curve. They are not told the facts, and if a few people learn a few facts, they are swiftly swept aside by a torrent of daily woes. We could have learned a lot from the Somalia disaster, but most Americans don't even know there was a Somalia disaster, much less how American foreign policy and military stupidity drove that nation to disaster, step by step. Somalians can now choose between a corrupt and inept U.S. puppet government and an al-Qaeda aligned opposition.

Which is not much different than choosing between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There was a time when I thought the people of Mendocino County, California, would find their way out of that trap, but with the Bernie Sanders phenomena, I see that too much marijuana and too-little fact checking, and thinking things through, makes escape impossible. Bernie has vowed to destroy the Islamic State. And how does that differ from every other power-hungry American politician?

It can be tempting to say that the victims in Paris were is some sense fair targets because they allowed their government to bomb Syria in the preceding weeks. This is the type of argument used by the British Empire and the American Empire during World War II to justify carpet bombing Japanese and German civilians during World War II. This argument leads to the excusing (by the perpetrators, anyway) of all killings of civilians.

Every nation should police its own government to prevent war crimes. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama and all their gang should be tried for war crimes and, instead of being hung by their necks like the Nuremburg criminals, spend the rest of their lives in prison. To some extent the American people are to blame for allowing the crimes. But our lack of power to change the system is really no different than the situation of those living under the Islamic State. Hopefully the governments of Syria and Iraq will be able to defeat the Islamic State, but will respect the lives of civilians. And spare the lives of any soldiers that surrender, as per international law of prisoners of war.

Will anyone run for Peace in 2016?

How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
—Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind

When I was a child (in the 1960s) and realized the world was full of lies and liars, I became aware of the vast distance between the rules for goodness I was taught and what was actually going on in the world. The U.S. War against the people of Vietnam was the most glaring example, but it took me considerable time to figure that out.

Even as late as 10th grade (1969) I was conflicted as to whether the U.S. was in the right. I had heard people were against the war, but in my Marine Corps, Roman Catholic, Southern Democrat family and society, it was communists who had started the war. American soldiers were defending the freedom loving people of South Vietnam. You might believe that if you believe Jesus appointed the Bishop of Rome to be Pope and that white people are all that is good in the world. We believed American peace protesters were a bunch of communists.

Here I am, alive and bitching 50 years later. The massive genocide that was the Vietnam War has been replaced by the Bush/Obama war on terror. Some think that it is a war on radical Islam, but a quick check reveals that ultra-conservative Islam is okay if it is pro-U.S. No form of anti-U.S. Islam is okay, not even liberal or moderate. You don't have to be a terrorist. All you have to do is point out the war crimes and crimes against humanity the U.S. has committed and President Obama will put you on his kill without a trial list. You don't have to plan an attack in America or on a U.S.-allied government or local thug; all you need to commit is thought crime.

In fact, a lot of the deaths reported as victories over terrorism are what could be called "false positives." The CIA and Special Murdering Forces go out and ask around Yemen and Somalia and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Libya and Mali and the Philippines, "hey, can you finger any Al-Qaeda operatives around here?" Money is held out. Mohommed is having a feud with Muhammed, it is relatively new, just 3 generations old, so he says "sure, that Muhammed guy is the local Al-Qaeda leader, I overheard him talking to Osama on his cell phone."

The Special Forces report this "intelligence" up the chain of command until Barack Obama says "kill that MF Muhammed." The Predator drones go out and blow up his little village, killing women and children, but not killing everyone. It is a pretty good bet the young men who survive will be looking for an Internet connection to have a meet up with Al-Qaeda.

When you start looking at where Al-Qaeda is now compared to 2001, you will see they are beginning to look like the old British Empire. Expanding faster than a fast food chain backed by Goldman Sachs.

But Obama does not care about killing innocents. Signing off on assassinations makes him feel like God and keeps the Republicans and the National Security people off his back. All those Democrats in Congress with military bases and factories in their districts love the war too. What does it matter if a few Somali women get caught in the cross fire, when it means a Senator can pretend she is keeping jobs in her state?

So what we (peace loving people) need is a Congress and a President that will close down the CIA and Special Forces hit squads, turn Predators into solar arrays, and transfer funds from the Pentagon and Homeland Security to making life better for citizens. Maybe even pay some war reparations.

Where will our candidates come from? In 2006 the nation elected a Democratic Party dominated Congress, based largely on a promise of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That Congress evolved into what we have today. I can only conclude they were (and are) a bunch of lying politicians. They'd tell you chocolate is vanilla if they thought it would get your vote. (And sadly, most good party members would report "tastes like vanilla!")

So we would hope for independent or third-party peace candidates. But we know how that goes. The press mocks or ignores them. The donors don't donate. And the voters, well, I don't think the majority of voters are anti-war. They won't be anti-war until their own cousins are picked off by Predators. Which probably won't be long, but we are talking here about the 2016 elections.

For President we can expect Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. Among the fire-breathing, imperialist, war mongering, lies if her lips are moving candidates, she would be my preference. Just as Barack Obama proved a sorta black man could be a President just like any white liar, Hillary would prove a woman can be President. Not a President I would like, but something lying, greedy, hypocritical young females can aspire to.

The Green Party and the Libertarian Party will each nominate someone as usual. Almost certainly it will be someone with no experience in political office. Sorry, but that is not going to win an election, or even put a dent in the American consciousness.

It gets grim beyond that. Rand Paul might be anti-war, but I don't trust him. Dennis Kucinich probably would not run as an independent; he feels safer in a war-crimes organization like the Democratic Party than out of it. Same for former President Jimmy Carter. The only real, heavy-weight peace candidate of my life-time, George McGovern, died in 2012.

But somewhere out there maybe there is a Representative or big-city Mayor or Governor who would make a credible peace candidate. I'll let you know if I hear of one. But my main hope is that the world's investors will realize the U.S. government is bankrupt and stop lending it money. Then we might finally see some serious reduction in war spending.

Chiang, Diem, Hamid Karzai and Sheikh Mohamoud

Chiang Kai-shek was not a bad guy. He did not lose China to the communists on purpose, any more than the monarchist governor of Virginia Colony meant to lose the Americas to Republicans.

The Communist victory in China during the Truman administration created the mindset in which cold warriors like Joseph McCarthy and John Kennedy came to power. Not losing nations to communism was as important to American politics between 1948 and 1990 as not losing nations to radical Islam has been since 2001.

Chiang was a remarkable guy. Born in 1887, as a youth he was disgusted by the inability of China to modernize and by the depredations of imperialist nations: Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and the United States. Even Japan, which modernized quickly after the U.S. attack on it in the 1850's, was acting like an imperial power in China by 1900. Chiang went to military school in Japan, then joined the Chinese republican movement, the Kuomintang, started by Sun Yat-sen. Showing intelligence, efficiency, and bravery, Chiang became the military leader of the Kuomintang and did much to create a modern Chinese military and government capable of liberating China from foreign aggressors.

Unfortunately, China was more of a mess than Chiang could handle. He came to rely on generals who were more like war lords than loyal members of his government. He married a member of a Chinese banking family who had been educated in the United States. He decided he could not fight all the imperialists at once, converted to Christianity, and increasingly allied himself with the United States. His government became more Fascist than democratic. The man who easily defeated other Chinese warlords found he could not effectively fight the Japanese, even with considerable American help.

The Chinese communists, in contrast, lived among the peasants and workers, in fact most were peasants and workers. They also were not very effective fighting the Japanese during World War II, but they did far more with far fewer resources. When the Japanese withdrew Chiang's troops took over most of the country, but they were unreliable troops. Vast quantities of U.S. aid meant to feed and equip Chiang's troops disappeared into the pockets of Chiang's generals. While there was certainly fighting in China's civil war, for more important movement was troops deserting Chiang's generals and enlisting with the Communists. Ironically, it was Chiang who had given military training to the Communist leaders at the Whampoa Military Academy in the 1920s.

Chiang did not seem to be able to comprehend what was happening. He expected orders to be obeyed. He believed he was reforming China. He was not corrupt, but he tolerated corruption because he did not feel he could risk alienating his warlord generals. He simply was no match for Mao and the Communists. In the end billions of American taxpayer dollars either disappeared or ended up as weapons captured by the communists.

Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon showed a remarkable ability to learn from U.S. mistakes in China and repeat them exactly in Vietnam. After the Vietnamese defeated the French in 1954, the U.S. supported a Roman Catholic Vietnamese political leader, Ngo Dinh Diem. Let's just note that most Vietnamese were not Roman Catholic, a religion associated with their former French colonizers. Although the young Diem moved up quickly through the ranks of the Vietnamese who served the French, in the 1930's he joined a call to create a Vietnamese legislature and was dismissed from office. Diem became a nationalist and rival to Ho Chi Minh. But unable to compete effectively among the Vietnamese, he instead sought help from the United States and the Vatican. It was President Eisenhower who chose Diem to rule South Vietnam, over French objections. His rule was reinforced by hundreds of thousands of Catholic refugees from the north.

Eisenhower sent a lot of money to Diem, who used to to consolidate his control of the south. He imprisoned anyone who disagreed with him. President Kennedy sent in U.S. troops when Diem's could not handle a nationalist uprising against him. As with Chiang, money and arms were used to buy a lively life style for Diem's cronies, and little effort was made to either win the hearts of the peasants or even win the war against their (mostly communist) leaders. In addition Diem discriminated against Buddhists, the dominant religious group. Diem was assassinated by his own followers working with the CIA on November 2, 1963 with the okay of President Kennedy, who wanted to put a more effective leader in place. Kennedy himself was assassinated on November 22, 1963.

In Afghanistan the U.S. chose a different sort of puppet, Hamid Karzai. Born in 1957 in Kandahar, to a powerful, corrupt political family, he was educated in Afghanistan and India, then became a CIA contractor during the Afghan civil war against the Soviet-backed government. When the Taliban took over they offered him a post as an ambassador, but instead he joined the monarchists in opposition in Pakistan, as well as traveling to look for support in the United States. He worked closely with the United States during its war of aggression against Afghanistan in 2001. He was selected as Chairman of a U.S.-backed government, then was appointed President of Afghanistan by American-vetted "leaders."

For over a decade now the U.S. has poured money and troops into Afghanistan. Karzai's family, and a few other upper-level crooks, are now rich. The Afghan Army is, if not quite a joke, not very effective in fighting the Taliban. We can pretty much plan on Karzai & friends taking their loot into exile fairly soon after the U.S. military withdraws in 2014. Unless, of course, President Obama changes his mind and wastes even more American blood and taxes on Afghanistan.

Compared to the immense sums of money wasted in China, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, the nation of Somalia has been a side show. Neither President Bush nor Obama have sent in troops. Instead they have trained, equipped, and bought troops of African nations to do the fighting. Somalia was moving towards a stable governance supported by a majority of the population under the Islamic Courts Union, but that frightened the anti-Islamic U.S. corporate security state. So Ethiopia (a Christian nation), Uganda, Burundi, and lately Kenya were paid to invade Somalia. Meanwhile the Shabab, a very radical Islamic group, became first the de-facto government and later the main armed opposition group.

No one strongman is associated with American attempts to control Somalia. The newly selected American puppet is Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud. Mr. Mohamoud probably has some good qualities. At least he is not a warlord. He was believed to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was chosen by his U.S.-approved fellow leaders as President of Somalia in September 2012. He heads no powerful faction, so is not a likely threat to the clan and militia power bases of the other members of the government. He hails from an area until recently controlled by Shabab, now controlled by the Kenya military.

Mohamoud's lack of clout is revealed in this report from 2011: "Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud remains the leader of the Peace and Development Party (PDP) for the next three years after being elected unanimously by 155 members of the PDP ... [attendees included] members of Hawiye traditional elders" Network Al Shahid, Nasongo Willy, "Somalia: new independent political party leader", April 20, 2011.

Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is being reconstructed with American taxpayer dollars. It gives a nice appearance to things. But without the foreign militaries the government would not even control Mogadishu, much less most of the rest of Somalia.

I don't know if there is any alternative for Somalis other than working with an American puppet and hoping to defeat Shabab, or working with Shabab to drive the Americans, Kenyans, Ethiopians, Ugandans and Rwandans out of the county. Somalia is a mess of truly historic proportions. It is a witch's brew that, a poison pot that was started when Portuguese pirates (well, the official Portuguese navy) started raiding the area back in the 1500s.

The likely outcome in Somalia is probably the same, in a generalized way, as we had in China and Vietnam, and will soon have in Afghanistan. Whether with ballots or bullets, the Somalis will eventually get rid of the foreigners and govern themselves. Meanwhile, America continues its relative decline as a global power, as its economy wilts while it feed its military establishment and its puppets around the world.

Puritanism, Taliban, and Shabaab

"So, now prosperity begins to mellow

And drop into the Rotten mouth of death."

Richard the Third, Act IV: Scene IV

Prosperity is always just around the corner in America. In American History we are taught that the Pilgrims, or Puritans, founded our nation. Because of their high standard of civilization, things were rough at first, but prosper they did. The survivors, anyway.

The Pilgrim paradigm was developed by American educators in the 19th century. Children were taught that Protestant Christianity, the free market economic system, Anglo-Saxon culture, and democratic self-governance were tied in a bundle that marked a high-tide in the history of civilization. America triumphantly expanded westward even as the homeland, Great Britain, conquered the world's largest empire ever.

Puritan Christianity included a number of sects that, in Britain, were more Calvanist than the Church of England (Episcopal Church). Politics, too, was changing rapidly in Britain around the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620. Economic growth fueled by the exploitation of the developing empire and by technological advances was creating a class of business families that sought more political power. This led to the English Civil War (1642-1651), the beheading of Charles I in 1649, and in general to the decline of the power of the old English aristocracy.

The Pilgrims and the larger influx of Puritan Christians who established other towns in what is now the Boston metropolitan area were fairly typical of puritanical social movements in general. They did not believe in religious freedom, and proved it by exiling and executing people who deviated from their sect, including Quakers. They at least pretended to a rigid code of monogamy. Women had no legal rights (except, interestingly, the right not to be beaten by their husbands). Local democracy was possible because they all agreed on almost everything. In contrast back in England, disagreements led to the Cromwell dictatorship, then later the restoration of Charles II.

In England, puritan or not, for the next few centuries the punishment for stealing was execution by hanging. A lucky person might escape the gallows to be exported to labor in Georgia or, later, Australia.

Puritanism is typically a reaction to an excess of corruption. One might say it is an overreaction. Certain puritan ideals, like monogamy and virginity before marriage, may last in cultures for decades, centuries, or millennia. In politics people get tired of injustice and paying bribes to corrupt officials. In economics people react to being ripped off by merchants, or being underpaid or otherwise unfairly treated. Protestant Puritanism was a direct reaction to the corrupt Roman Catholic Church of the late Middle Ages.

We should not be surprised when puritan social organizations arise. Even in the United States today there is no shortage of puritanical energy. The Tea Party can be seen as a puritanical reaction to poor governance, just as fundamentalist Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) in the U.S. are partly reactions to our libertine culture, with its alcohol and drug problems, fatherless children, and unrelenting greed.

The Afghan Taliban ("students" of the Koran) are clearly puritanical. Western propaganda has emphasized their brutality and crimes against women. Why do they still have so much support in Afghanistan? Because the Afghans are not comparing the Taliban to a Saturday at the mall in an American suburb. They compared them, first, to the warlords who ruled various parts of Afghanistan after the Russians exited. Now they compare them to essentially the same group of warlords who try to give the American puppet government the appearance of popular support and democracy.

Aside from the almost universal hatred of Americans that now permeates Afghanistan, with American troops entering a former Taliban area the Afghan "government" also enters. Pretty soon things are back to the old system: theft and corruption. The locals may resent the Taliban for banning music, women may want an education, but no one wants a government that steals. Cutting off the hand of a thief (or corrupt official) sounds barbaric to us, but to most people if that is what it takes to provide security, they will put up with it. At least thieves don't get the death sentence, as they did under the British Empire.

The story of Shabaab ("boys" or Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen) is similar. Corrupt warlords ruled Somalia. The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was set up almost spontaneously by the people of Somalia to provide a just government that would end corruption and theft. But the U.S. corporate security state, in a paranoid phase, decided the "Union" was anti-American because it was Islamic. The U.S. paid proxies to destroy the ICU. The militants of the ICU, mostly very young men, survived as Shabaab and eventually became the de facto government of Somalia by defeating the American proxies. They adopted a puritanical version of Islam that wanted Sharia law rigidly enforced, which had not been true of the ICU. Along with a decline in theft and corruption, however, sexual repression and brutal treatment of opponents was thrown in. Just like the American Puritans.

It isn't puritanism, or even Islamic puritanism, that brings forth the wrath of Barack Obama & crew. The Saudi's are the most systematically puritanical Islamic society. But they are pro-American, so they get kisses from Hilary while the Shabaab gets drone attacks. Nor is feminism required for alliance with the United States. Abortions and even birth control are crimes in many countries, and limited education, employment and property rights for women and not uncommon either. But from Chile to Ireland, as long as the anti-feminism is not anti-American, it's okay.

I believe a little puritanism from time to time is not a bad thing, especially if it pushes the scales to the moderate center. It is better than corruption, rampant crime, and the disintegration of education, culture, and ethics. However, the best puritanism is voluntary puritanism. In any culture people have some individual choices to make, like how much to drink and how hard to work. Puritan choices can be good individual choices. In a democratic society corrupt officials can be voted out of office and corrupt police and judges can be fired or jailed. It is when there are no easier choices for reform that people will turn to violent, dictatorial forms of puritanism to try to set their world straight.

There is plenty of corruption, violence, and anti-social behavior in America. We should clean up our own house rather than bombing the houses of our international neighbors. Instead of rebuilding the Afghan army or the Somali army we should rebuild Detroit and Flint and tens of thousands of smaller American communities that have been harmed by the recession and globalization.

Back to the Pilgrims, they had some admirable traits, but they don't provide an example we should emulate. They did not even start us on the road to America. The Virginia colony was well established long before Plymouth was founded. But the South lost our Civil War, so whatever merit Virginian culture might have had, it was eliminated from our educational mythology in the late 1800s.

More Info:

Al-Shabaab at Wikipedia
Taliban at Wikipedia
Pilgrims at Wikipedia

Ike Eisenhower, Business, and War

Imagine if former President Dwight Eisenhower ("Ike") had been around to advise President George W. Bush during the 2001 crisis, instead of Dick Cheney.

General Eisenhower ran for President in 1952 and assumed office in early 1953. He was conservative, but he was a calm conservative who was willing to leave most of the New Deal intact. He was anti-communist, but unlike many Republicans of his era he did not believe that Democrats were communists, or that it was impossible to negotiate or even cooperate with communist governments. After President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the European theater during World War II, Eisenhower had worked with communists, including Joe Stalin himself, to defeat Nazi Germany in battle.

Senator Joe McCarthy, Ike's own vice-president Richard Nixon, and other Republicans (and quite a few democrats, notably John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey) had made anti-Communism the center of both domestic and foreign policy. The Korean War was basically in a stalemate, with North Korea and the U.S. facing off near the 38th parallel, roughly where they had been when the war began. Red Scare politicians wanted Ike to conquer the whole peninsula.

Although the U.S. refused to officially recognize the then-popular new regime in China because it was communist, Eisenhower opened secret lines of negotiation. After a couple of false starts, sabotaged by South Korea's fascist leader Syngman Rhee, on July 27, 1953 a truce was signed.

Meanwhile the French were unable to muster sufficient military force to crush the Vietnamese independence movement (which had been pro-U.S. until Harry Truman decided to allow the French to re-colonialize Vietnam after World War II). They wanted Eisenhower to bomb the Vietnamese, and almost all of Eisenhower's advisors thought that was a good idea. But Eisenhower, and General Matthew Ridgeway, thought Vietnam was lousy terrain to fight on.

Eisenhower was a big-picture guy who was willing to let subordinates handle details, unlike most recent U.S. presidents. He understood that Communism had an appeal to some people; it was not just something imposed by Joe Stalin. He did not want to bleed America to death fighting peasant rebellions. He also understood that, even at a time when the U.S. economy was riding high (the only major rival at that time being communist Russia, the U.S.S.R.), military spending had a dark side for any economy.

Even so, Eisenhower allowed the French $385 million in military aid specifically for Vietnam, and the continued use of 200 U.S. Air Force advisors authorized by President Truman.

When Joe Stalin had died, Ike had said:

"The jet plane that roars over your head costs three-quarters of a million dollars. That is more money than a man earning ten thousand dollars a year is going to make in his lifetime. What world can afford this sort of thing for long? We are in an armaments race. Where will it lead? ... to robbing every person and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil."

So here is what Ike would have told Bush: send in the CIA. Back them up with Special Forces if necessary. But don't increase the military budget, and don't get involved in a ground war in Asia.

Instead Bush listened to Dick Cheney and crew, the spiritual and mental descendents of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. He enlarged the military budget and invented the Homeland Security boondoggle. At the same time he cut taxes on the highest income Americans to the lowest level since 1933, resulting in the highest annual budget deficits ever. Combined with the Clinton-era banking "reforms," this set the stage for the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The thing was, because Americans saw General Eisenhower as one of the greatest military leaders of the era, he was able to resist pressure for military expenditures and unwinnable wars.

Now we are in the second term of the Barack Obama administration, and another weak President has neither the backbone nor the gravitas to do what is right for America. In 2006 U.S. citizens voted to end the war in Afghanistan. Obama bought peace with the Pentagon by staying at war with the Islamic world. He has extended the war to North Africa. He is even looking to evade his won 2014 deadline for Iraq.

Now "everyone" of importance in Washington, Democrat and Republican alike, believes that more economy-crippling military and homeland security spending is justified. Damn the free markets, what business people really want is guaranteed profit government contracts.

I like Barack Obama's speeches, mostly. When it comes to actually doing the job, I Like Ike.

Agree? Disagree? You can leave feedback below.

Note: The Eisenhower quote above is from page 807 of William Manchester's The Glory and the Dream, to which I am also indebted for many of the historic details used in this essay.

Four Troop Surges: Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan

Today some U.S. troops are coming home from Afghanistan, following the troop surge the Obama administration started there. This followed the successful troop surge in Iraq initiated by the Bush administration. Before that we had the spectacularly unsuccessful troop surges in Vietnam during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.

Apparently it all goes back, in American history, to the troop surge during the U.S. conquest of the Philippines (usually called either the Philippines War or hidden under the rubric of the Spanish-American War). Following the ratification of the Treaty of Paris with Spain on February 6, 1899, in which Spain sold a nation they did not possess, the Philippines, to the United States of America for $20 million, the government and people of the Philippines launched a war upon occupying American troops. The Filipinos were poorly armed (most had only bolos, a sort of machete) and had little military training, else the Americans would have been wiped out. Despite their ability to defeat the natives in any set battle, the U.S. troops (Army and Marines) were not able to hold any territory outside of Manila.

As told in Honor in the Dust by Gregg Jones [p. 165], the engineer of the original U.S. attack on the Philippines, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, was already angling for the Republican Party presidential nomination late in 1899. After talking to officers who had seen fighting in the Philippines, Roosevelt decided that a troop surge was necessary. He wrote to Secretary of State John Hay urging the surge and predicting political catastrophe in the 1900 elections if his advice was not followed.

At first President McKinley ignored Roosevelt's advice, but the "rebellion," or national liberation struggle, continued. Roosevelt became McKinley's Vice-presidential running mate. Many Americans opposed the U.S. becoming an imperial nation, so McKinley and company had to mischaracterize the Philippines independence movement and lie about U.S. aims in the Philippines. [Jones ignores two issues: the needs of the sugar trust and the desire of the Roosevelts & friends to use the Philippines as a domino on the way to conquest of China, Japan, Indochina and the East Asian island]

Roosevelt got his troop surge in the Philippines. Uncounted numbers of Filipinos, including non-combatants, were killed by U.S. troops, who burned whole villages and crops. Torture was used during interrogations, notably water-torture. Enemy combatants — Philippines freedom fighters — were often executed as criminals instead of being treated as prisoners of war. McKinley and Roosevelt defeated William Jennings Bryan in the 1900 election. McKinley died at the hands of an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, in September 1901. Theodore Roosevelt became President.

However, the troop surge had worked. The same parasites in Manila who had sucked up to the Spanish were quick to suck up to their American conquerors. While the insurgency never went away, morphing and splitting to this day, by 1902 it was possible to drawn down most of the surge troops.

So far we have only one good instance of a troop surge not working: the Vietnam War. The two of the main differences between Vietnam and the Philippines were that Vietnam had a long tradition of nationalism long before the attempted U.S. takeover, and the Vietnamese independence soldiers were able to procure large quantities of decent-quality arms from the Chinese and Russians.

If looks, however, like the troop surge in Afghanistan will ultimately be a failure. The Taliban have not been defeated, and almost everyone in Afghanistan now hates the American occupation. There remains to be seen who will come out on top after American troops complete their exit, scheduled for 2014. It may be that the nation goes into another war-lord era, with no central government that is truly in control of the entire country.

President Obama likes to speak of how well things have gone in Iraq, how he brought peace to that nation, and always leaves out that it was George W. Bush who made the unpopular decision to use a surge of troops to give the new, democratic-style government time to get on its feet.

In 2006 the Democratic Party won Congress with a promise of bringing our troops home. In 2008 candidate Obama indicated that those of us who hoped for peace should vote for him. He has managed to make himself both the war candidate and the peace candidate. Expect the war to expand, in the name of peace, in his second term. He will find excuses to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan and continue to use your taxpayer dollars to buy foreign mercenaries to fight U.S. wars against many of the world's peoples.

Tax the American Empire

[Note: much of this article first appeared as Post-Imperial Mendocino County at MendoDay.com]

The American economy, the economic crisis of 2008, and ongoing sluggish growth, cannot be understood without first admitting that we are in a post-imperialist era.

We cannot move the economy forward again without getting out of the double-bind we are in: paying for the trappings of imperialism, without its economic benefits.

The federal government's budget is still deeply in deficit mode, yet has not provided enough stimulus to get us up to even moderate growth. So we are not really out of the crisis that swept over us starting in 2008. Food stamps and long-term unemployment benefits have staved off starvation for most citizens, but hardly amount to a long-term solution.

The idea that the United States of America ever went through an imperialist period will surprise many of its citizens. Imperialism often implies an emperor, but in our case it mainly means being able to extract wealth from foreign nations through the exercise of military and economic power.

There was no clear beginning to U.S. imperialism. Grabbing native American Indian lands was a major way of extracting wealth from outsiders even before 1776. Most historians would say modern U.S. imperialism started with the Spanish-American War in which the U.S. grabbed Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba (we later sort of gave Cuba to its local elite, although the process was not really completed until Fidel Castro came to power). Or you could go back to the Mexican-American War, in which we grabbed the northern half of Mexico.

To understand how we might revive the economy and government, we should focus on U.S. imperialism after World War II. How did we get to that happy situation? From 1929 until just before World War II the United States economy was pretty sleepy . By the late 1940s and into the 1950s the U.S. economy was bustling. Why did World War II make such a difference?

The United States has had some pretty clever leaders. Even in the 1700's many of them wished for our nation to be a Great Power like the British Empire or France. Presidents like James Polk (who grabbed California), William McKinley (Spanish-American War) and Theodore Roosevelt came to symbolize U.S. global ambitions.

It was World War I, by accident or strategy, that became the template for future U.S. success. Under President Woodrow Wilson the U.S. stayed out of the war, selling all the goods our farms and factories could produce to both sides. Then, when Russia had collapsed and Italy, Germany, France and England were exhausted, the President, under pressure from U.S. bankers, found a pretext to declare war.

It was great, World War I. Not that many American soldiers died (just 117,000), but we tipped the balance for Great Britain and France. Germany was defeated. We did not grab any territory to speak of, but we became the world's bankers while leading the world in industry.

The rematch known as World War II went even better. President Franklin Roosevelt rearmed the United States while putting the British Empire even more heavily in our debt. We let the Communists defeat the Nazis and, again, came in towards the end to claim victory and its spoils. English, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Russian factories had been largely destroyed by aerial bombardment. In contrast the U.S. had built many more factories.

As the French and British empires collapsed after the war it was U.S. factories that supplied the goods for most of the world. In the U.S., in the 1950's, most Americans who wanted one could get a job that paid well. An interstate highway system was built, suburbs were built, colleges expanded and filled. The whole imperialist deal was so profitable that even though the U.S. maintained what was by far the world's most expensive military establishment, paying for it detracted little from the economy.

The Sixties were even better, with John F. Kennedy (a Democrat) engineering the biggest tax cuts for the rich in American history. Even those Americans whose race, geographical location, or just plain laziness and incompetence had prevented them from sharing in The American Dream were soon helped by President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society social programs.

The prosperity might have gone on for centuries, but America's capitalists betrayed it. Rival gangs of capitalists pursued opportunities that turned imperialism on its head. It was profitable to keep costs for consumers high in the U.S. It became more profitable to produce the goods sold in the U.S. in other sectors of the world, certain of the "third world" nations like Mexico and Korea, then later China and Brazil. Meanwhile another gang clung to the profits of the military-industrial complex, and even added profits by whipping up a Homeland Security spending bonanza.

As a result American military, homeland security, and domestic budgets had to be skimmed from a thinning layer of middle-class taxpayers. The capitalists received tax cuts, notably special treatment for dividends and capital gains, as well as no taxes on financial transactions. Factory workers, most of them, dropped back into the proletariat, losing their middle-class incomes. Low-paid service work came to make up most of the American economy.

In classic imperialism, as say run by the British Empire from about 1700 to about 1950, the economic idea is to extract wealth from the enslaved nations. The extracted wealth is brought home, and while the rich get most of it, enough is trickled down to the middle class and proletariat to keep them happy and patriotic, or at least not rebellious. It is important to keep the cost of the military used to dominate other nations low enough so there is a net, major profit for the homeland. The Brits were very good at that. They even drafted soldiers from their subject nations and used them quite effectively. The British Empire fell because England exhausted itself fighting Germany, not because the empire itself was not profitable. At the end of World War II, for practical purposes, the Brits had mortgaged their empire to American bankers. We foreclosed.

Starting in the 1990's, and accelerating this last decade, the U.S.A. has done the opposite. You can see from our Trade Deficits that wealth has been draining from the nation for two decades. At the same time we are being bled internally by the military and homeland security industries.

Look at Afghanistan. Where's the loot? We give money to the corrupt government of Afghanistan. We give them weapons. They sell the weapons to the Taliban, who then use them to shoot at U.S. troops. We get nothing out of it. Not oil, not a market for U.S. goods, not slaves or concubines or the usual imperialist loot.

There are only two solutions. One is to tax every nation in the world that we can. That is the classic imperialist solution: give unto Obama the things that are Obama's. The plan probably would not go down very well in most countries. But they would have no choice. Look what we did to Iraq, and most nations don't have the defenses Iraq did.

Taxes should be modest and imposed gradually, so as not to shock the world economy. A 1% sales or income tax on developed allies and a 0.25% to 0.5% tax on less-developed dependents would probably work for a starter. While the rate is low, by taxing some 6 billion people, quite a bit of money would flow into the United States. It would pay for our work as the world's police, and also pay for our education, welfare, bread, and circuses.

The only other solution is to Cut the Military and Homeland Securities budget. Cut it to the size needed to defend us from Mexico and Canada. Something along the size of the New York Police Force budget.
Unfortunately we are maneuvering in is a sea of continued massive stupidity by American capitalists and both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Don't expect those bozos to start taxing England, Korea and Pakistan, or to reduce the military budget in a meaningful way, in your lifetimes.

Expect America to continue to decline. As the empire unravels, our homeland will unravel. To keep military muscle, we will loose economic muscle. If we keep on this course, at some point, our colossus will fall.

Corporate Security State Declares Victory in 2012 Elections

After an extensive analysis of the situation, the United States corporate security state declared a victory in the November 2012 Presidential election, in an internal March 31st memorandum circulated by analysts to key figures.

"We are now that certain that, barring extreme circumstances, either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will be the next President of the United States," a source who saw the memo told me.

But which of the two men did they favor? "We almost always prefer Democrats, as long as they are firm supporters of our security agenda, as Obama is. Democrats are good at heading off troubles among poorer Americans. Throw people a few food stamps and you don't have to worry about them getting very out of line."

Wouldn't any of the Republican candidates have been acceptable? "Mitt Romney was the best of the lot. He really wants to be President, just like Obama, so he'll be easy to control. Santorum gets people too whipped up over religion and morality, which is a security concern. Newt is, well, a time bomb waiting to go off. Ron Paul was a real danger because he would have tried to close down our global empire."

Aren't Democrats cutting the military budget? "Our own analysis showed the economy would crumble under current spending projections. We are reining things in to assure our long term prosperity."

What about withdrawing from Afghanistan? "We decide how to prioritize our missions. The President can help with that, but it is not his final decision. Not if he doesn't want to be Kennedied."

How about Congress? "During an election year in certain districts they have to moo about being concerned about Afghanistan or military spending. We want them to be re-elected. Let them moo."

Not even Norman Solomon, running for Congress in northern California? "Having a couple of people in token opposition in Congress keeps our control system credible. We don't think Solomon can win, and if he does we don't think he'll be a problem. He spent his younger years using nonviolence as a bludgeon against Marxists and Anarchists. These last few years he's been a big help in destroying the Green Party in California. We can work with him. We can show him off as proof that we are a democracy."

So no problems at all? "We are keeping an eye on Derrick Jensen and his attempts to inspire a new generation of eco-terrorists. We keep an eye on Occupy. We keep an eye on a lot of people. But we are not going to overreact to a bunch of amateurs. Frankly, the greatest danger to the corporate security state is that our own people will get too greedy and cause our temple to collapse under its own weight."

I am not venturing an opinion. They have an eye on me. I am just reporting what my source said.

President Obama and Sergeant Robert Bales

Law tends to complexity when confronted with reality, and international law concerning war crimes is no exception.

President Barack Obama is Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America. Sergeant Robert Bales is a member of the U.S. Army who reportedly shot and killed sixteen civilians, including women and children, on March 11, 2012, in the Panjwai district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan.

Rather than being tried in Afghanistan for his criminal behavior Sergeant Bales has been returned to the United States, under arrest, to be tried. This recalls to us of the imperialist right to extraterritoriality, long viewed as an insulting injustice by Asian nations.

It is possible, and often happens, that a soldier commits a war crime against the commands of his superiors. His superiors are not generally held responsible. However, I would argue that the U.S. (& allies) war against Afghanistan is a war of aggression. To quote the lead American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, during the Nuremberg Tribunal of German/Nazi leaders after World War II:

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

To initiate a war is a crime against peace. The initiators are Class A war criminals, to distinguish them from lesser war criminals, like those who follow orders to drop bombs on civilians. Was a crime agaisnt peace committed by President George W. Bush and continued under the Obama administration?

One loophole in the crime against peace idea is the word aggression. Who gets to decide who is the aggressor? If a soldier of country A throws a stone over the border with country B and hits a soldier, does country A then have the right to invade country B and execute people as war criminals? Another way of obtaining the same end, denial, can be based on the clear statements of international law that each nation has a right to self-defense.

Sometimes nations go to war by more or less mutual consent, as the great European powers did at the beginning of World War I. Sometimes the aggressor and defender nation roles are clear, at least to neutral parties. Yet often both sides, or even an obvious aggressor, claims that they are engaging in self-defense, which is not a crime against peace or war crime.

The American government, like most governments, characterizes all of its wars as wars of self-defense.

Recall that the armed forces of Afghanistan did not attack the U.S. No Afghans participated in the attack on the World Trade Center. While the pursuit of the criminals behind that crime was certainly justifiable, a massive war of aggression against Afghanistan was unnecessary and, for that matter, mostly ineffective.

There is another argument claiming that President Barack Obama is not responsible for crimes against peace and the specific war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers and mercenaries in Afghanistan. His defenders say that the current President inherited the war from President Bush. But Adolf Hitler died, and so the National Socialist Party leaders hung by the Nuremberg Tribunal merely inherited his war. What really is the difference, except that Germany lost World War II?

Focus back on Sergeant Bales: was he insane at the time of the shootings, and therefore not to be held responsible? That idea, too, presents difficulties. Just as all murderers would like to be freed on the basis of a plea of self-defense, failing that they would all like to escape punishment by reason of momentary insanity.

We may agree that murder and war are insane, but turning that idea into the operational result that war criminals and murderers should never be punished leaves us with no method to deter future wars and murders.

I believe the only U.S. citizen ever convicted of war crimes was William Calley, convicted for his role in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. While officially Calley's actions were against orders, in reality he was carrying out a policy decided at much higher levels. He took the fall both for his men and for his superiors. Lyndon Johnson was his commander in Chief, though Johnson might have claimed he inherited the war from John Kennedy.

Robert Bales should never have been in Afghanistan. But he was there, he committed his crimes there, and he should be turned over to the government of Afghanistan for punishment. If they decide he was or is insane, fine by me. Afghanistan would be wise to then call an international tribunal, like the one at Nuremberg, to look at the scope of the matter.

The United States could then extradite Presidents Bush and Obama, their top advisers, their top military commanders, and the members of Congress who voted to permit the war of aggression against Afghanistan to be tried by the international tribunal.

Oops, I forgot: in reality we have the Gruel of International Law. The strong convict the weak, not the other way around.

Week Unreviewed

The number of blog entries I mentally outlined and should have written really piled up this week:

An analysis of Barack Obama's state of the union address, probably compared to those of Democratic Party founder Andrew Jackson.

A victory over U.S. imperialism blog, since the Obama administration essentially admitted this week it can't subjugate Afghanistan forever, and will speed up its withdrawal of combat troops. Obama, the peace candidate, yet again. Mitt Romney making a fool of himself by saying he would stay in Afghanistan until the U.S. is bankrupt, or longer.

Why I am not supporting Norman Solomon in his bid to become a congressman representing the northern California coast.

A proposal to ban the use of drones in war, that is to make the use of drones for anything other than observations a war crime. Not that the U.S. or other imperial powers ever get tried for the innumerable (an exaggeration: obviously the number of war crimes committed by the U.S. could have been enumerated) war crimes they have, do, and will commit.

Why the new rural zones forest fire taxes in California are on a per structure basis. Because if they were on a acreage or potential value of losses basis, the timber corporations would have to pay them. Instead rural homeowners will have to pay them. Thanks, Wes Chesbro, timber company pawn.

How the U.S. government policy (often violated) of non-interference in foreign nations became a policy of constant interference in foreign nations, with a nod to Cordell Hull.

How the Obama administration decision to refuse to allow Somali-Americans to send funds back to relatives in Somalia amounts to a crime against humanity.

Why did I miss such stellar writing opportunities? A combination of work and distractions with the fact that on any given day only about 1000 people read my blog. Eliminate the other analysts and pros (CIA, FBI, homeland security, foreign agencies, comedians, political science guys, etc.) and the number probably falls to more like 500 ordinary citizens. The pros never click, it is against policy. It requires about 100,000 daily readers to make a minimal living as a blogger. If I had that many readers, I would probably write every day, and drop the other work I do.

But actually I had a good week. The Last Days of Christ the Vampire kindle edition is now available. My Biography of Andrew Jackson is starting to sell. David Cobb of MoveToAmend.org visited and spoke to a good sized crowd in Point Arena.

I might even get around to writing up some of the above ideas. Next week.

De Facto Governments and U.S. Foreign Policy

On this Christmas day you might want to consider the virtue of our early American republic's foreign policy.

That foreign policy can be summed up in two key ideas: de facto recognition of governments, and non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations, including those with de facto governments.

The best known statement of these policies was made in the Monroe Doctrine. President James Monroe had fought in the Revolutionary War, served in the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation, and played a key role in getting the new Constitution adopted by the State of Virginia. In 1823 President Monroe warned against Spain trying to regain control of any of its former North or South American colonies that had become independent. Partly this reflected a sympathy for Republics and Democracies over the reassertion of monarchies then prevalent in Europe. Partly it reflected the desire of the ruling class of the U.S. to exert influence over a potential commercial empire. But consider it as just principled, sincere policy.

As to the colonies still in the Western Hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine stated, "With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered, and shall not interfere." It is notable, however, that in the Spanish-American War the United States not only interfered with the remnants of the Spanish Empire, but grabbed Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines.

Further, the doctrine with regard to Europe was "not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it."

It makes sense that the founding citizens of the United States of America should see the value of recognizing de facto governments, and of one nation not interfering in the internal affairs of another nation. The Continental Congresses and individual State governments that fought the British Empire during the American Revolution were precisely de facto governments. The British legal system did not recognize them, nor, at first, did any other members of the international community. The Royal governors of the British Empire were the legal, de jure, government of the British colonies, and in certain places, the very real government right up until the King agreed to the independence of the colonies.

Non-interference was also important to our early republican democracy-in-the-making. Monroe, Patrick Henry & their crew were not in a position to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations, but the great powers of Europe had occasional reason to interfere in the relatively weak United States.

Of course, like all general principles, de facto recognition and non-interference have their particular issues in real world circumstance. Before taking on that complexity, it should be admitted that neither principle got in the way of American appetites for land speculation and empire. American Indian nations were interfered with and stomped on with little or no justification. Florida was grabbed from Spain, Northern Mexico was grabbed, Hawaii was grabbed (its native de facto and de jure government ignored). For good measure the de facto government of the Philippines was not recognized, the U.S. preferring to pretend that Spain still held the colony, so that it might be transferred easily to U.S. control.

Basically, the more powerful the United States government (and its economic ruling class) became, the more the U.S. interfered in the affairs of other nations. Bullying of Latin American nations became a regular event as the 19th century wore on (and we ran out of Native American tribes to reduce to ethnic "reservations"), puppets were installed when feasible, and starting with President Woodrow Wilson, U.S. troops were sent in on almost any pretext. In Asia, even before the U.S. program of genocide in the Philippines, we started manipulating the Chinese and forced Japan to provide fueling stations for the U.S. Navy (which needed to refuel on its way to and from bullying the Chinese).

Many Americans wished we had done some interfering with the Spanish Civil War and the National Socialist rise to power in Germany in the 1930's. They argued that if we had supported the Republicans in Spain, World War II would not have happened. That, and Pearl Harbor, was pretty much the end of non-interference. During World War II the U.S. even set up the United Nations to provide a fig leaf of democracy for the new global empire. Internal interference became the rule.

Unfortunately the new bossing-other-nations-around foreign policy of the U.S. has not been used to promote democracy, freedom of religion and speech, and other rhetorical ideals. In every case the sole deciding factor has been the "interests," mainly economic, but sometimes strategic, of the capitalist, imperialist class. Examples could fill a book on U.S. (or global) history since World War II. Just a few:

When it looked like elections would result in parties winning that were not considered "pro-U.S.," the U.S. has installed dictators. South Korea, South Vietnam, and Iran, were major examples in the 1940's and 1950's. Most Latin American countries have suffered at times under U.S. backed military regimes in the last half-century.

Elections are only encouraged when they will get rid of anti-U.S. regimes. This was true in Eastern Europe. The elections held in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been shut down had anti-U.S. politicians won them. We saw that in Algeria in the 1980's. Only elections won by pro-American political parties are honored by the State Department.

Somalia is a rather spectacular case of counter-productive interference in foreign nations. The United States did not like a mildly Islamic regime (the Islamic Court System) so we paid to overthrow it. The result was a de facto government by Al Shabaab fighting a non-stop civil war with a U.S. appointed and financed "provisional" government. The holocaust of the Somali people this past decade can be directly attributed to the actions of the U.S. governments led by Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

But what else would you expect from the new, pseudo-democratic American corporate security state?

Aside from the likely Green Party presidential nominee, Jill Stein, the only current presidential candidate who supports non-interference as a foreign policy is Ron Paul. Hopefully when the election comes around you will be able to vote for non-interference, rather than feeling you have to vote for one or the other of the two corporate security state nominated candidates.

Barack Obama Sanctions Assassinations

Barack Obama yesterday announced he plans to impose sanctions on Iran for the alleged assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Adel A. Al-Jubeir. For all I know Mr. Al-Jubeir is a well-intentioned man, but he represents one of the most oppressive dictatorships on earth. Iran, on the other hand, is a democracy, at least as much as the United States can be said to be a democracy.

Note that President Obama is in no position to express moral outrage. Since bluffing his way into the office of President in 2008, Obama has become the number 1 murderer and war criminal in the world. Why anyone would expect anything less from a graduate of Harvard Law School, where the cooking the Gruel of Law is continually taught to the next generation of vipers, I don't know.

Democratic Party apologists (is there any other kind of Democrat Party activist?) say that Obama inherited his wars from President George W. Bush. They want us to forget that the Democrats won the 2006 congressional elections mainly by playing to anti-war sentiment. The war in Iraq was essentially over by the time Barack took office, but he escalated the war in Afghanistan at a time when it would have been easy just to pull out U.S. troops. Further, he has waged illegal wars against Pakistan and the people of Somalia, while U.S. assassins have murdered alleged U.S. enemies and innocent civilians in Yemen and throughout northern Africa.

President Obama said, "The second thing that we’re going to continue to do is to apply the toughest sanctions and continue to mobilize the international community to make sure that Iran is further and further isolated and that it pays a price for this kind of behavior."

This kind of behavior? Note a few facts: the Saudi ambassador was not harmed. It was a homeland security bureaucrat who actually planned to kill the ambassador. Homeland Security found an unstable, incompetent, greedy man, Mansour Arbabsiar, to claim to be the bagman for the plot. Can the U.S. manufacture evidence to implicate Iranians in the plot? Our physical manufacturing plants have mostly moved to China and Mexico and India, but one thing we can still manufacture is phony evidence. I think they teach that at Harvard Law, or maybe at Langley.

I agree that the ancient principle that all ambassadors are, in effect, sacred cows, is a good one. Peace emissaries would never be able to end wars otherwise. The pragmatic problem is that embassy personnel often use this fig leaf as a cover to commit a wide variety of crimes. The U.S. embassy in Iran existed largely to help murder opponents of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the self-styled Shah of Iran. Just like the employees of the U.S. embassy in South Vietnam existed to help murder opponents of the U.S. puppet dictators in the 1960s during the Vietnam war. And ... oops, this could easily devolve into the historic role of U.S. embassies and the CIA in murdering people who opposed U.S. imperialism. A subject for a 9 volume encyclopedia, not a blog posting.

War crimes are still war crimes even if you are POTUS and no one has the ability to try you and hang you like the Democrats used to hang unregistered potential Republican voters in the Solid South up until around the time Obama was born.

Barack Obama, and his top subordinates, should be tried by an impartial tribunal for each and every one for the numerous assassinations they have carried out in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the globe.

The American people should impose sanctions on the Democratic Party and Republican Party, the two greatest war crimes organizations in the world. Not one cent or one vote until both parties dry up and are replaced by a new politics of peace and prosperity.

See also: Saudi Arabia at Wikipedia

Barack Obama's remarks about Iran on October 13, 2011

Obama Withdraws Slowly from Afghanistan

Ah, to relive my youth, when President Richard Nixon slowly withdrew U.S. troops from Vietnam.

The Bush-Obama plan to impregnate Afghanistan with American values has failed, at least in the short run. No one in Afghanistan cared much for industrialism, capitalism, Christianity, free public secular education, or pork hot dogs. Most of the nation will go back to lamb, poppies, pomegranites, and melons. Why go through industrialization when it's just the painful, pre-apocalypse phase before non-mechanized agriculture?

Once the troops are gone, most Afghanistan families will remember one thing: their dead relatives. The carnage was fantastic. Towards the end Obama's weaponized drones attacking weddings, funerals, and hash fests gave the nation a real Terminator 3 feeling.

Why the slow withdrawal, with its implied ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity? Did anyone tell President Barack Obama that the Nobel Peace Prize medal is not a get out of war crimes trials free card?

The slow withdrawal is Obama's trademark. He has always been a politician without substance, ever since he first ran for office backed by the Democratic Party of Chicago. Like most politicians, he knows he can't please all the people all of the time, and if he took solid positions on important issues, he'd displease most of the people some of the time. He is an artist, for sure, at saying what swinging voters want to hear. "You never wanted me in, baby? Why didn't you say so? I'm pulling out, but slowly, because I don't want it to hurt."

His core Democratic Party voters have been against the war in Afghanistan since at least 2006. He has to withdraw to please them if he wants a second term as President. But he does not want to p.o. the corporate security state people who really run things now. Those drones will be used against the American people, I guarantee you, but not until they are fully tested in Afghanistan. So instead of getting the hell out, which is what most people thought they were electing Barack to do in 2008, he rammed the U.S. in even further during his first two years in office.

Now he can pull out a few troops. The war is over! We won! Stop that media coverage! Barack Obama is both the Victory President and the Peace President.

The truth is in 2012 there will be more U.S. troops (and paramilitary types) in Afghanistan than there were when George W. Bush left office in January 2009.

What could be sicker than that? "Progressive" Democrat Party activists. They will repeat the mindless slogans of the corporate security state as long as there is a Democratic administration. They will do anything for a Democratic Party electoral win. They are a herd of ... I don't want to disgrace any mammal species here ... canaries that sing of disaster in their gilded cages, but just keep going along with the program.

When Nixon withdrew from Vietnam, he was afraid of revolution in the United States. The left in 1972 did not mean the middle of the Democratic Party. To be on the Left in 1972 you had to be at least in Democratic Socialists of America. Preferably you were an Anarchist. If your personality was bent out of shape enough you could be a Marxist, Trotskyist, Maoist or even Stalinist or SLA. We have no significant equivalent to that "New Left" of the 60s and 70s today. Maybe that is just as well, all the groups were too dogmatic to be much good at revolution, much less actual governance. But they made you feel like there were alternatives to snakes like Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.

Then again, we can always hope that between the idiot Republicans and idiot Democrats the U.S. government will reneg on its debts real soon, and implode. I'm sure the corporate security state has its contingency plans for that situation, but they probably won't need them, because the real plan is to order the right people to make the right compromises and muddle through a couple more years of American capitalism in decline.

Yet the War Goes On

It is a strange day when the leading contender for the Republican Party nomination for President puts himself firmly to the left of a Democratic President on the issue of national security. In yesterday's Republican debate Mitt Romney did just that. Of course he hedged a bit, saying that the war was expensive, we had killed Osama bin Laden, and not exactly calling for a total, immediate withdrawal.

Big Brother is indeed watching, and laughing. In 2006 the Democratic Party captured control of the House of Representatives largely by pretending to be against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the war went on. In 2008 the housing bubble popped, so in the election that year the economy was the central issue. Barack Obama won, playing the typical politician who implied he was against the war without saying so. In the meantime President George W. Bush's troop surge in Iraq did have its intended effect, allowing a basically democratic government to function their. President Obama was able to withdraw troops from Iraq, forgetting to give the ex-President credit for the situation.

Attention centered on Afghanistan in 2009, and Obama decided to try his own troop surge their, largely using veterans of the Iraq war. The Taliban has been beaten back in some areas, only to pop up in others.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has a little debt problem on its hands. Between the Bush Tax Cuts (supported by most Democrats in Congress back then, though they would like to only remind their wealthiest donors of that fact), the economic suicide after the bubble burst, and the ongoing hundreds of billions spent on wars, the U.S. has become the world's beggar.

Some Republicans (and here I even include some Republican politicians, for instance Mitt Romney) realize there is a relationship between war spending, national debt, and their own fortunes. Only a few months ago they thought they could just cut back on services (welfare, food stamps, Medicare, Social Security) for Democratic Party constituencies and achieve a balanced budget. Now they are looking at two formerly untouchable gods: taxation and defense spending.

It is simple. Mitt Romney is no pacifist. He is no Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern. But he would rather cut military spending that raise taxes. The easiest way to cut military spending quickly is to get the hell out of Afghanistan.

If the vote were today, I'd vote for Romney, not Obama. I know Romney might be lying, he might continue the war if elected President. But Obama has already shown himself to be a liar, a fraud, and a war criminal.

Hopefully a strong Green Party or Independent contender will emerge, because Romney is far from my ideal candidate. Or maybe there is a Eugene McCarthy out there somewhere, and Barack will get what he deserves: a one term Presidency.

Afghanistan War Loses Support in Congress

“If we’re going to cut programs for children who need milk in the morning, if we’re going to cut programs for seniors who need a sandwich at lunch, if we’re going to cut veterans benefits, then, for God’s sake, let’s bring back our troops from Afghanistan.” Thus said Representative Walter B. Jones in a recent speech in Beaufort, North Carolina. Jones is not a Democrat. He is a Republican, and a very conservative Republican on most matters. His district is likewise very conservative, and includes one of America's largest Marine Corps bases, Camp Lejeune (where I was born and raised).

Congress is beginning to rebel in earnest against Barack Obama's war policy in Afghanistan. Recently Jones and Democrat Jim McGovern of Massachusetts sponsored an amendment to H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2012, to speed the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region. The vote on H. Amdt. 344 (follow the link to see how your Rep voted) to require from the President "A plan and timeframe on accelerated transition of military operations to Afghan authorities." That is pretty tame by my we should have never gotten in standards, but 8 Democrats joined 207 Republicans to vote against it. 26 Republicans and 178 Democrats voted for it. The amendment failed.

What is going on? Why is the Community Organizer President wasting U.S. blood, and $10 billion a year or so in taxpayer money, on occupying Afghanistan? Why are otherwise ideologically pure Republicans turning against the occupation?

I have observed that whether people are left, liberal, moderate, conservative or right-wing, some reality will seep in through ideological filters some of the time. Mostly people buy into ideological and (filtered) factual bundles because they have limited time and knowledge; it is the easy way to go. But push their noses close enough to manure, or roses, and most people can tell the difference, regardless of ideology.

Right-of-center is a bundle of people, but beware of over-generalizing. No every right-of-center person fits the leftist view of being a biblical fundamentalist war mongering anti-immigrant anti-environment racist. Very few, in fact, fit that description. Avoid talking about the Bible and even the fundamentalists can be pretty astute about real world issues.

The people of the United States of America has been in a new world of hurt since the Great Recession began. A good many people who were middle-income learned suddenly what it is like to be at the bottom. To want to work, but to have not jobs available. To need to patch something, but be unable to afford the patching material. To lived crowded in with relatives that, truth be told, they would just as soon see once a year at a family reunion.

The Afghanistan war never made sense to me and my peace movement friends. The U.S. could have saved over $100 billion and many lives by sending in the CIA, not the Marines. In the end it was the CIA that got Bin Laden.

So what is wrong with President Obama? We aren't in community organizing mode anymore. Barack is now in the eye of the corporate security state. He has not visited the grieving parents of the children the U.S. military has "accidentally" killed in Afghanistan. He has not stood as a soldier and watched people watching him, hoping he would step on an IED. He lucked into the Presidency without having any real accomplishments before arriving in that esteemed office. He wanted to be President, and for that he was more than happy to become the most important piece on the military-industrial complex chess board.

Community Organizer has lately shown willingness to take lunch away from American children to appease two bullies, the Pentagon and the super-rich Americans who are happy to deduct heavy taxes from their employee's payrolls but don't want to (and mostly don't) pay taxes on inheritance, dividends, and capital gains.

If you can't smell what's happening here, you have lost your sense of smell. In a contest between Barack Obama and Walter B. Jones, I'd vote for Walter. Hopefully more Republicans will join Jones in the next vote on funding Afghanistan that comes before Congress. After all, the Constitution says Congress is supposed to make policy. The President is only supposed to carry out the laws and policies enacted by Congress.

See also the NY Time article, An Antiwar Republican, No Longer His Party's Pariah

Beauty Queens, Heroes, and Presidents

I have changed my mind about what would be the most important amendment to the U.S. Constitution, were it possible for me to obtain such a boon. I'd amend it to lengthen election cycles. Let the House of Representatives be elected every four years, and the President every six years, with Senators staying at six. Elections under our current corporate security state system seldom change anything meaningful, but they waste a lot of time. Politicians are distracted from governance, while the entertainment value to the public is minimal.

In my Internet Biography of Andrew Jackson I am about to write the first chapter in which he is being taken seriously as a candidate for President. Back then, in 1821, owning and trading slaves, fighting chickens and dogs, and shooting acquaintances when they won't apologize for alleged slights to your honor were not considered to be disqualifications for the Presidency. Especially when you were the general who won just about the only American victory of any importance in a war in which basically the British kicked U.S. ass from Canada to the Carolinas. Even so, Jackson did not win the office until the election of 1828.

The last war heroes to win the office of President of the United States were Dwight David Eisenhower and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Eisenhower, like Jackson, had been a general. Kennedy had been a mere Lieutenant, but he made getting his ass kicked (but not killed) by the Japanese seem romantic and heroic.

Since that time heroes have been out of style. Jimmy Carter had been a submarine officer, but joined up after World War II ended and never saw combat. John McCain, the Republican Party nominee in 2008, had been a war hero of sorts (shot down while bombing North Vietnam in an illegal and undeclared war), but he was beaten by Barack Obama, who grew up between wars. George W. Bush was elected despite dodging the dangers of the Vietnam War.

Nor are heroes lining up to run in 2012. The closest thing is Sarah Palin. If she did not serve in the U.S. military, at least she braved beauty pageants and a husband crazy about snowmobiles. She is not as pretty or as smart as Michele Bachmann, but while both are from the frigid northern regions of our nation, Sarah is about as civilized as Genghis Khan. Elect her President and we might just end up with Canada and Mexico both.

While hardly heroic, current President Barack Obama is still the odds on favorite. His famous lack of political backbone has not prevented him from toughening up since 2009. He increased troop levels in Afghanistan and does not seem to mind killing civilians in that undeclared and illegal war. He has kept military spending up. He even bravely challenged the progressive wing of his own party by keeping taxes on the richest Americans at their lowest level since the Great Depression.

Most of the time a Presidential election is a beauty contest. The corporate security state does not care, very much, who they break bread with. A woman in the White House would be a novelty, but I doubt that would bring any fundamental changes in policies.

Extradition, Canada, and War

Maybe the U.S. won't go to war with Pakistan, maybe we will be too busy in our war with Canada.

The pretext for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was that the government of the country, controlled by the Taliban, refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden when the U.S. government demanded that after the successful al-Qaeda attack on September 11, 2001. I don't believe refusing to extradite a criminal is grounds for war, but the United Nations failed to protect Afghanistan from U.S. aggression, or even to condemn the U.S. Thus the de facto standard for international relations seems to have become that refusing to extradite is an act of war.

Given that, expect war between the U.S. and Canada soon. According to the Associated Press, on Friday the Canadian Court of Appeal confirmed a lower court decision to not extradite Abdullah Khadr to the United States. Mr. Khadr was wanted on the same charges as Osama Bin Laden, terrorism, specifically supplying al-Qaeda with weapons used to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Of course, the U.S. will not actually go to war with Canada over the issue. Nations refuse to extradite people to other nations all the time. It usually is no big deal. The United States itself harbors many people convicted of crimes in other countries. Some times we extradite them, some times we don't. For instance, if some one had been found guilty in Iraq of murder, but the murder had been an act of resistance to the Saddam Hussein regime, the U.S. would certainly have refused to extradite.

If if refusal to extradite a government's allies is not a pretext for war (my position, and seemingly one in accord with international law), then there was no legitimate pretext for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. George Bush and crew, and Barack Obama and crew, are simply war criminals.

If it is okay to fly a few troops into Pakistan to capture a criminal wanted in the United States, why was that tactic not used in Afghanistan in the first place? The CIA could have located Osama while the U.S. engaged in endless negotiations with the Taliban. Then would could have grabbed or killed Osama. We would have violated international law, and the Taliban would have been mad, but we would not be in an endless ground war in a nation not worth conquering.

We went to war against Afghanistan because we are ruled by a cabal of people who profiteer from war. George W. Bush was a failure as a manager of an oil company, but by attacking Afghanistan while most Americans were too emotional about the September 11 attacks to think clearly, he made himself popular. The price paid by the American people was the destruction of America from within by greed running out of control. We did not pay the price until the economic collapse of 2008.

The last time we fought a war with Canada, in the War of 1812, Canada was part of the British Empire, and we lost the war. We lost it rather badly, truth be told (see Life of Jackson: Battle of New Orleans). We launched the War of 1812 with the idea of grabbing Canada and Florida to add to the United States.

So the real question is, does the U.S. ruling class want Canada at this point of our history. If they do, the Abdullah Khadr decision can be used as a pretext for war. Otherwise, it will simply be forgotten.