Paul Jay of The Real News interviews F. William Engdahl, economist and author of the best selling book “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order” who explains US Geopolitical objectives in Afghanistan, in terms clear and simple enough even for US mainstream network television audiences – which is probably why you never see him on television.
Based in Germany, Engdahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s, and is a regular contributor to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, and Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland.
It’s no secret that the far right loathes anyone and everyone to the left of Adolf Hitler. Just try to get into one of Sarah Palin’s Nuremberg-style rallies; you’ll find plenty of evidence for that statement. But a certain branch of liberalism is hated even by unapologetic left-wingers.
In a 1996 column by Adolph Reed, reproduced this week on CommonDreams.org, the progressive writer summarized the reason for his hatred in one paragraph:
during the ’80s liberal opinion gradually accommodated to Reaganism by sliding rightward. Two rhetorical justifications emerged for this adaptation. The Democratic Leadership Council called for a new centrism, jettisoning egalitarian politics and the constituencies identified with it. Additionally, an excesses-of-the-’60s-as-fall-from-grace fable propelled this slide and justified the smug dismissal of those of us who didn’t want to go along. This new liberalism curtly demanded that we grow up and accept the realpolitik; Reaganism was all our fault for going too far anyway.
That evaluation is echoed this week by self-professed socialist and TruthDig.com writer Chris Hedges, who writes:
They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama-as if he reads them-asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.
Robert Scheer blasts Obama for wearing the mask of a reformer while continuing business as usual. Glenn Greenwald reports on the creepy, cult-like devotion of Obama’s remaining supporters, exposing them for the false leftists they are.
Can one really begrudge these guys their bitterness? John Conyers can bitch all he wants about everything from witnesses thumbing their noses at subpoenas to continual waffling by Obamacrats, but at the end of the day he still cannot be counted upon to actually follow through on his frustrated-sounding rhetoric. The tired old man who had the power to start impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for two years and refused sure as hell isn’t going to start playing hardball with Hopey McChangerton now.
The same holds true for the rest of the so-called liberals, who have proven as dangerous to America and the rest of the world as any right-wing, fascist Republican. These are the same people who regularly denounce anyone to their left as “purists,” as though not selling one’s principles for access to power is somehow a bad thing. These are the same people who promote half measures as the only reasonable things to push for, proceed to accept less and less when told no by the powerful, and then lecture us on the left for calling them on it as though we’re made up of children who can’t handle the grim realities of political activism.
Small wonder they earn the scorn of genuine left-wingers. Perhaps it is time for all of us who haven’t thrown away our principles to look upon these pseudo-liberals for what they are: shameless phonies masking their true right-wing ideology.
Markos is a hater! Responding to a fund-raising email from Obama kos says, in part:
Obama spent all year enabling Max Baucus and Olympia Snowe, and he thinks we’re supposed to get excited about whatever end result we’re about to get, so much so that we’re going to fork over money? Well, it might work with some of you guys, but I’m certainly not biting. In fact, this is insulting, betraying a lack of understanding of just how pissed the base is at this so-called reform. The administration may be happy to declare victory with a mandate that enriches insurance companies, yet creates little incentive to control costs or change the very business practices that have screwed so many people. But I’ll pass.
I am no genius when it comes to a complete understanding of the details of this legislation. But I know what a monopoly is and I know you can’t regulate a monopoly no matter how many laws you pass or how many goodies you hand out to mask the fact we are about to give billions of dollars to … a monopoly.
Without a public option, there is no counter to this monopoly. Insurance companies win. The rest of us lose.
I don’t even open the “from Barack Obama” emails anymore. They make me want to lay down and take a nap. kos, on the other hand, opens his:
We will not back down
From: President Barack Obama to Markos
Markos —
As we head into the final stretch on health reform, big insurance company lobbyists and their partisan allies hope that their relentless attacks and millions of dollars can intimidate us into accepting the status quo.
So I have a message for them, from all of us: Not this time. We have come too far. We will not turn back. We will not back down.
But do not doubt — the opponents of reform will not rest. So I need you to fight alongside me.
We must continue to build out our campaign — to spread the facts on the air and on the ground, and to bring in more volunteers and train them to join the fight. I urgently need your help to keep this 50-state movement for reform going strong.
Please donate $5 or whatever you can afford today:
This is so freakin’ obnoxious I can hardly stand it. We are about to get a turd of a “reform” package, potentially worse than the status quo. We have the insurance industry declaring victory, Republicans cackling with glee, and the administration is using that piece of shit to raise money?
~snip~
Democrats are demoralized, and have little incentive to turn out next year. The teabaggers will turn out. If this is how the Obama camp thinks we can energize the base — by promising them a health care pony for $5 to the same Democratic Party that is home to the likes of Baucus, Nelson, Lincoln, Lieberman, and the rest of the obstructionist gang — then we’re in for a world of hurt in 2010.
If there’s still enough time, if it’s not too late, if you haven’t given up, if you can find the words, if you haven’t run out of words, if you haven’t been silenced, banned, exiled because too many Obamabots profusely supportive admirers of Barack at GOS and other bizarre locations don’t want to hear the truth, don’t want to deal with it, can’t bear to look at it, won’t acknowledge it because he is their last refuge, their final sanctuary, the only source of hope they have left in this betrayed wreck of a country.
How many times do they have to see Obama stumble down the side of that Misty Moderate Mountain before these people realize he’s not the Moses of the Democratic Party, before they finally understand he’s not leading us to the Promised Land, he’s just plunging us deeper into the Valley of Centrism Death, where lies and self-delusion reign and the truth is never heard. It shouldn’t be so hard for them to figure out how this is all going to end if progressives back down again, if we take one for the team again, if we let K Street’s bought and paid for hacks pass this healthcare “reform” atrocity.
You don’t have to walk and crawl on six crooked highways for the rest of your life to know where we’ve been and where we’re going next, an IQ of 50 and two functioning eyes are all that’s necessary to confirm that those crooked highways are just an endless corporate tollway to nowhere and that it’s our job to keep paying for the trip.
Obama administration saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues. While I do not know if that is actually the case, or should be, in the absence of criminal charges not being brought for the last 5 plus years, is there any hope left that Yoo will face justice for his actions?
Yoo was represented by the DOJ, and now being defended at taxpayer expense by attorney, Miguel Estrada, who says the case interfered with presidential war making authority and threatened to “open the floodgates to politically motivated lawsuits” against government officials.
While the Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating Yoo’s advice to former President George W. Bush since 2004, which according to the WH has the power to recommend professional discipline or even criminal prosecution, and of course it is now the end of 2009 without action!
The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.
In the current lawsuit, Jose Padilla, now serving a 17-year sentence for conspiring to aid Islamic extremist groups, accuses Yoo of devising legal theories that justified what he claims was his illegal detention and abusive interrogation. The Justice Department represented Yoo until June, when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the suit could proceed. The department then bowed out, citing unspecified conflicts, and was replaced by a government-paid private lawyer. Yoo’s new attorney, Miguel Estrada, argued for dismissal in a filing last month, saying the case interfered with presidential war-making authority and threatened to “open the floodgates to politically motivated lawsuits” against government officials. The Justice Department’s filing Thursday endorsed the request for dismissal but offered narrower arguments, noting its continuing investigation of Yoo.
Over the past couple of days, Andrew Sullivan has linked to and published protests from various individuals who are quite angry that people “on the left” are being so mean to President Obama, and several of them are so upset that they have decided they are “leaving the left,” whatever that might mean. What’s most striking about these valiant defenses of Obama is how utterly devoid they are of any substantive points and how, instead, suffuse with weird, even inappropriate, emotional attachments they are. These objections are grounded almost exclusively in (a) a deep-seated conviction that President Obama is a good and just man who means well; (b) their own rather intense upset at seeing him criticized; and (c) a spitting ad hominem fury of the type long directed by Bush followers at any critics of their leader, and generally typical of authoritarian attacks on out-groups critics.
…
After watching slack-jawed for a few minutes, I quickly realized that there was nothing unusual at all about their reaction to Palin. This was exactly what led so many Bush followers to defend him no matter what he did — as he tortured and invaded without cause and chronically broke the law. He was, like most of them, a “good Christian” who had a nice family and meant well, and thus, while he might err, he was not capable of any truly bad or evil acts. Anyone who criticized him too harshly or too viciously was, by definition, revealing something flawed about themselves. None of the specific arguments mattered. None of it had to do with reason. Like Palin’s admirers, Bush’s were convinced of the core goodness of his character, and they thus loved him and hated those who suggested that there was something deeply wrong in what he was doing.
The similarity between that mentality and the one driving the Obama defenses posted by Sullivan is too self-evident to require any elaboration. Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom see Obama as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual. These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies. But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important. They’re also far more potent. Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one’s life who — like a loved one or close friend or religious leader — must be protected and defended at all costs.
I’ve been thinking about disappointments. And how to deal with them. How to handle that bitter taste. And the sadness.
You must know what I mean. Relationships that wither. Expectations that dessicate. Hopes that die. Plans that collapse. Love that fades away. Friends who pass on. Children who move away. Parents who die. Machines that rust and fall apart. Treasures that rot. Fabric eaten by moths. Politicians who don’t deliver. The list is long. And it’s inexhaustible. It’s about what we want but cannot have. It’s about what we want to get rid of but cannot shed. The Buddha was right. Our clinging makes us suffer. And we cling. Oh how we suffer.
Disappointment is just a particular form of sorrow, of suffering. It’s everywhere and as common as dust. It begins in expectations and ends in rubble.
I could get angry about this. Many people do. But that doesn’t do any good. I could yell about how unjust, unfair, improper, illegal, brutal and stupid it is. I could want to fight and look for a brawl. But that doesn’t matter. The hurt remains. It persists despite how I distract myself.
I could catalog my disappointments for you. Disappointments in love. And in politics, which might be the same thing. Disappointments about health. Disappointments about wealth, fame, esteem. And in all of the other human areas in which I didn’t get what I wanted or expected or desired. Or what I deserved. I could give you, if I haven’t already done it in installments over the past few years, a long list of my many, many grievances. But that’s not why I’m writing now. No. I’m writing now because I want ever so slightly to shift our attention, to shift how we deal with our inevitable and pervasive and continual disappointments.
Which brings me to the blues.
Here’s the cardinal blues idea: things are disappointing and they hurt us in our hearts and souls. We all have these profound hurts. But, and this is the biggest but in the blues, if we’re going to keep our souls and our hearts and our passion and our humanity alive, we need to release these hurts and pound them out and scream them out and see them for the rich, beautiful, human feelings they are. We want to embrace them in all their humanity. We want to embrace that we love deeply and that, sadly, we’re disappointed. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a lover, or a friend, or a country, or a political party, or a group, or an idea. None of that matters.
And it doesn’t matter how much it hurts. Sometimes it really stings. I just want to sing and dance the song of life one more day. I want to celebrate that I’m alive, I’m human, and I feel it deeply, deeply in my heart. Here’s what I mean:
It is said, as individuals, we can achieve all we conceive, if only we truly believe. President Barack Obama once knew this. He lived this veracity. Indeed, candidate Obama’s audacity and accomplishments gave Americans hope. When Barack Obama reached for the sky he realized what no one thought he could. The electorate was energized. People came to expect the country was in for a change. Now, it seems Mister Obama is bogged down by what Eisenhower understood, concerns of the Military Industrial Complex.
The intricacy of the Armed Forces mission does not confine itself to forceful martial escalation. Nothing escapes the wide reach of combative nation building. Lives are lost. Limbs crushed. With bullets ablaze, brains are battered or blown to smithereens. Hope suffers. Hearts are hurt.
Don’t be confused by President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan. Despite the president’s word on Tuesday that a surge of US and international troops in Afghanistan would “allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011,” that date is not a “drop dead deadline”–at least according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates recorded an interview this week with NBC’s David Gregory on Meet The Press. Set to air Sunday morning, both Obama advisers will walk back on Obama’s withdrawal language. While the president did say during his speech that conditions on the ground would be considered before a transition, Clinton and Gates seem to go a step further:
HILLARY CLINTON: We’re not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we’re talking about is an assessment that in January 2011, we can begin a transition. A transition to hand off — responsibility to the Afghan forces.
ROBERT GATES: We’re not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We’re talking about something that will take place over a period of time. Our commanders think that these additional forces, and one of the reasons for the President’s decision to try and accelerate their deployment is– is the view that this extended surge has the opportunity to make significant gains in terms of reversing the momentum of the Taliban, denying them control of Afghan territory, and degrading their capabilities.
