Smells Like 1968

The recent attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens was just the highlight of a series of escalating violent demonstrations taking place outside U.S. embassies all across the Middle East and South Asia this past week. The attacks reportedly even spread all the way to the consulate in Channai, India, a country that is supposed to be a steadfast U.S. ally. Clearly, something is afoot in the world that goes far beyond mere popular outrage over an obscure, cheaply made anti-Muslim cinematic diatribe. Those condemning idiot pastor Terry Jones and the producer of the inflammatory low budget film are missing the point, for it is entirely likely that if it wasn’t this movie inflaming passions among the world’s Muslims it would probably be something else. The Jones-linked film merely represents the spark that set off an explosion that has been building up for a very long time.

In order to really understand what is going on in the Middle East right now, one must do what Americans are absolutely loathe to ever do—namely put themselves in the shoes of the average denizen of Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Pakistan. Eleven years ago, a tiny Muslim splinter group nestled in the caves of eastern Afghanistan pulled off a spectacular (and spectacularly lucky) terrorist attack on American soil in part because the administration of George W. Bush was (at best) completely asleep at the switch, and ever since that time the U.S. and its NATO allies have been engaged in a systematic campaign of collective punishment against the population of numerous Muslim countries while continuing to support brutal authoritarian dictatorships from Cairo to Riyadh.

For more than a decade, Muslims have had to stand by largely helpless while many of their fellow religionists, most guilty of nothing worse than residing at the wrong place at the wrong time, have been slaughtered as America has taken its chunk of flesh in retaliation for 9/11. And while it is true that many of the killings that have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan have been at the hands of other Muslims, it was the American invasion and occupation of those two unfortunate countries that destabilized them and created the conditions for the massive amounts of violence and (in the case of Iraq) even ethnic cleansing that have been occurring there.

Looking back over this sad, sorry recent history, the wonder isn’t that our embassies are being attacked but that all this didn’t start happening sooner. It’s like all of the green-on-blue shootings that have been going on in Afghanistan lately in which our so-called military “leaders” are shocked, SHOCKED to discover that after more than a decade of occupation even supposedly friendly Afghanis would like to see us gone and are willing take their chances against the Taliban, who may be brutal thugs but at least look, dress, speak and worship as they do and don’t randomly drop drone missiles on assorted wedding parties.

It is particularly telling that the worst violence to date has erupted in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, three countries where the U.S. either stood aside while their longtime dictators fell or gave them an active shove. While abandoning the pro-Western Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia probably would not have been the U.S. government’s preferred choice of action, we were at least smart enough to recognize that the Arab Spring had gathered far too much momentum to smother. We were just hoping to contain it short of the Arabian Peninsula, and for a while it looked like we might have succeeded without drawing too much popular ire upon ourselves.

Not anymore. The irony of all this is that it is happening on the watch of President Hopey-Changey, who has tried so hard in recent years to play the “good cop” representing America’s brutal foreign policies to Bush and Cheney’s “bad cop.” Obama has just learned that there is an absolute limit to how much sunshine you can blow up the skirts of a certain group of people to try and deflect attention from your bad acts against them before they get fed up and tell you to go fuck yourself. One could make a comparison of how decades of American support for the vile Shah of Iran blew up on the watch of President Jimmy Carter, but Carter at least did more than just pay lip service to respecting human rights.

So where is all of this headed? Time will tell, of course, but we should not underestimate just how ominous these developments are for the continuation of American hegemony in the Middle East and South Asia. Obama’s political advisors must be sweating bullets right now as short of a major market meltdown before election day, which with Benny and the InkJets just announcing the latest round of quantitative easing seems highly unlikely, the one “October surprise” that could unseat the incumbent is the eruption of region-wide anti-American conflagration in the middle of the planet’s most important oil fields. In fact, this whole mess seems to have real “Tet Offensive Potential,” in that it could be the “unexpected” foreign policy event that ends up driving a warmongering Democratic president from power (to also be replaced by a Republican who may be even worse, but that, as they say, is a whole ‘nother story). Obama, it seems, is about to discover that it takes more than just a lot of fancy-but-empty rhetoric and the symbolism of being the first black president to keep blinding people to the unpleasant realities of America’s seemingly endless imperial wars.


Bonus: "I shall not seek...and I will not accept...the nomination of my party for another term as your president"

The War Nerd Explains Why Obama Gets So Little "Credit" for His Warmongering

You almost have to feel for President Hopey-Changey. No matter how many innocent civilians he butchers in pursuit of a foreign policy that in its way is even more bloodthirsty than Chimpy Bush's, he just doesn't ever seem to get the credit as evidenced by the way that Willard tried to used the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens to score political points against him this past week.

So why is that, exactly? Well, Gary Brecher, author of the always entertaining and informative War Nerd column for The Exiled, explains it in an essay published on this most recent September 11th. The whole thing is well worth a read, but here is the relevant excerpt:

When you look back at Obama’s wars, you get a pretty clear idea what went wrong over the last four years. It wasn’t the way Obama’s team handled the wars. Truth is, they did damn well at that, better than I ever thought they would.

The real problem is that they don’t know what world they’re living in. These are people who’ve spent their lives getting straight A’s, collecting gold stars, avoiding mistakes. And they think war is just like all those other little hurdles you face in life.

That’s why they’ll never get credit for any of it. They have this delusion that sanity matters, and they’ve run their wars as sanely and boringly as an exterminator going after termites.

It’s sensible, it’s semi-effective, and it irritates the life out of the 99%. I don’t mean the Occupy 99%, all those “goodhearted ordinary Americans”; that’s a totally made-up imaginary species invented by people just as naive as Obama’s crew. I mean the real 99% of us living our rotten lives out there, mean and dumb and miserable, just waiting for some gore we can really get behind.

Obama just doesn’t understand his job as war chief of this big crazy tribe. A war chief doesn’t have to win; only a wonk’s view of the world would see things that way. A war chief has to look like a war chief and talk like one. And yell a lot. Obama just can’t manage that, and when he tries, he makes us feel stupid. He embarrasses us, trying to sing along to a tune you know he thinks is just dumb.

It’s a shame in a way, because his war wonks did a pretty good job actually running the wars. I like to think of them grumbling about it now, a bunch of youngish dressy-casual technocrats drowning their sorrows in frappucinos at some suburban DC Starbucks, counting off their so-what accomplishments: “We got out of Iraq … not one American killed there this year; we took down Qaddafi without one single American casualty; we killed bin Laden right in front of the Pakistani Army and got away with it; what does a C-in-C have to do to get a little respect around here?”

The answer is: He has to look convincing when he holds our enemy’s head up on a stick and shows it to the crowd, all drippy and drawing flies. That’s what we want, and Obama, with all that creepy self-control, is the last guy you’d pick for that job.

It was obvious, after he ordered the hit on bin Laden. For ten years Americans had been seeing that big long bearded face in their dreams, blasting it on gun-range targets, printing it on toilet paper, waiting for the big day when we could see the bastard in a pool of his own blood.

And boom, at last, Osama was dead. On Obama’s watch. Whoo-hoo! Let the victory parades begin!

Except there weren’t any. I remember real well the weird queasy hush after bin Laden died. Nobody ever tells the truth in this country, so nobody could talk about why Obama never got the cheers he expected, but we all know why. It’s simple: There are two tribes in America and neither one was in a mood to cheer. Obama’s liberal fans couldn’t cheer because they have some taboo about parading around with your enemy’s head on a stick. They think it’s crude or something, “a regrettable necessity”—you know that NYT editorial jabber they use.

And the other tribe, the flyover state white glob I come from, would sooner comp bin Laden a suite in Vegas than give Obama any creds for taking him down. They sulked through it like a confused, hungover Pillsbury doughboy; the way they saw it, Obama got bin Laden on a technicality. There’s always been a lot of Osama/Obama blur in the way they see things, and they might’ve been happier if it’d been Osama zapping that snotty Hawaiian instead of the other way around.

War always comes down to demographics — even this slow cold war we’re having in the US now. And Obama is stuck in the crotch of big demographic forked stick, between the sullen majority and the queasy coastals. The coastals don’t want a war chief, and the sullen doughboys can’t see him in the job.

As for me, admitted antiwar zealot that I am, I really don't know which aspect of Obama is more appalling...that he is as big a thug as Bush and Cheney, or that he is so damn cool about it. But go ahead, Democrats, keep convincing yourselves that he is morally superior to Willard Mitt Romney so you can spend the next four grueling years in just as much denial as you've spent the past four.


Bonus: "And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control"

Well, OF COURSE No One in the Presidential Campaign Really Wants to Talk About Foriegn Policy

Could the insanely stupid presidential campaign get any stupider? The answer to that question appears to be yes after Willard made quite a spectacle of himself by bizarrely attempting to politicize the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, before the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was even confirmed. In its own particular liberal, toadying-to-power way, the Atlantic Wire tried to explain the problem in an article entitled, "No One in the Presidential Campaign Really Wants to Talk About Foreign Policy":

The conservative backlash to the backlash to Mitt Romney's comments on the attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo and Benghazi Wednesday goes like this: You media people said you wanted Romney to talk about foreign policy, and now he is. What's the problem? Well, it's that no one — both campaigns and political press corps included — seems to really want to talk about foreign policy. The debate Romney wanted to get into on Wednesday wasn't a substantive one on actual foreign policy and how to make sure the new governments created by the Arab Spring remain friendly to the U.S. Romney instead wanted a cable news shoutfest about whether Obama made us look like wimps abroad. Instead the cable shoutfest was over whether Romney is qualified to answer 3 a.m. phone calls. You can understand why Romney supporters would like to change the subject. As National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote for Politico this morning:

"The old complaint about Romney was that he didn’t talk about foreign policy. The newly minted complaint about Romney was that he did talk about foreign policy. He gets it coming and going, and everywhere in between."

Lowry writes that foreign policy debate doesn't stop just because Americans die, and that wars and violence have always been campaign fodder. Likewise, a Wall Street Journal editorial is headlined "Romney Offends the Pundits." Subheadline: "Doesn't he know he's not supposed to debate foreign policy?" And The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol says Romney is "right to reject the counsel of the mainstream media," and that he should use a crisis for political purposes.

"Still, the fact remains that the events of September 11, 2012, represent a big moment for the country. Romney is right to sense this, and to seize on this moment as an occasion to explain the difference between his foreign policy and President Obama’s."

It's true that during Romney's press conference Wednesday, every question reporters asked was whether Romney felt bad about issuing a political statement before he knew Ambassador Christopher Stevens had died. But it's not just the timing that has pundits, including Republican ones—not to mention one anonymous Romney aide whose comment was deleted from a New York Times news story—saying Romney mishandled the events. It's also that Romney got one small fact wrong, claiming the Obama administration's "first response" to the attacks was to apologize, when, in actuality, the Cairo embassy had posted the statement in question before the protests, before anyone died, and before getting approval to do so from the State Department.

Then there's Romney's larger statement—a talking point he's promoted for years—that Obama has been overly concerned with the hurt feelings of Muslim radicals who want to kill Americans. For once thing, Obama hasn't done that much IRL coddling -- Lowry describes the "signature Obama foreign policy success," as "killing people." For another, in 2010, Romney himself condemned an American preacher who was going to hold a Koran burning because, "It puts troops in danger, and it violates a founding principle of our republic." But that was two years out from the presidential election, not two months.

The section I've highlighted above is the key point--no one in the campaign wants to talk about foreign policy because then they would have to admit that there is essentially NO difference between Romney and Obama on foreign policy...just as there is essentially no difference between Romney and Obama in terms of kissing Wall Street's ass and propping up the zombie economy by giving out as much "free" money as the big banks are willing to take. As the two potential faces of the American Empire, circa 2013-2017, Obama and Romney are nothing more than a sophisticated good cop, bad cop routine.

As the article states, Obama's signature foreign policy success has been killing people, which will no doubt be Romney's primary foreign policy pursuit should he be elected to replace him in November. It is what should be expected from a declining empire that can feel the sands of history shifting under its feet and knows no other way to try and forestall its inevitable downfall.


Bonus: "Even Richard Nixon has got soul"

Make No Mistake – Obama’s Actions Attacking Libya Constitute an Impeachable Offense

More political theater played out in Washington this week as a restless Congress woke up from an extended hibernation and was displeased to realize that the nation’s chief executive had engaged its military in yet another undeclared war, this time against the Madman of Tripoli, Muammar Gadaffi. First there was the spectacle of ten congressmen, led by the unlikeliest pairing since Danny Glover and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon—Democrat Dennis Kucinich and Republican Ron Paul—suing in federal court to stop the Libyan action until such time as President Obama manages to go through the motions of obtaining Congressional approval. Then there was the orange tinted Speaker of the House himself—looking like the Yao Ming of the Oompa Loompa clan—drawing a line in the sand saying that Obama needed to provide a justification for the Libyan attack by Friday or he would—I dunno, de-friend him on Facebook or something.

All of this expended hot air may have been great grist for the 24-hour cable “news” shows, but as with most such posturing in the imperial capital, it was just sound and fury, signifying nothing. Congress long ago abdicated its responsibility for deliberating on the most gravely serious action any nation can take—going to war. It’s been a good three decades since I took high school history, but if I recall correctly from when we studied the Constitution there was some obscure passage in there about how only Congress can actually declare war.

The last time that particular archaic Constitutional provision has been used was in 1942, when Congress voted to declare war on Romania in the midst of World War Two. Incidentally, that last formal war declaration happened exactly five years before the old Department of War was magically transformed in true Orwellian fashion into the Department of “Defense” in 1947. Coincidence? I think not.

Since that last time a war was formally declared, America has engaged in countless military actions, including major land wars in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan—not one of which was “defensive” in nature. In each of the aforementioned conflicts, the president sought some sort of approval from Congress before committing American troops, most notoriously with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1965 that led to the use of combat troops in Vietnam.

So why no more formal Declarations of War despite there being at least five occasions in the post-World War Two era in which it should have been appropriate? We could probably debate that question all day. Certainly, the abdication by the legislative branch to properly fulfill its duty in this area was a significant early downward step towards this nation’s Constitution being reduced to a “damn piece of paper,” in the words of a recent Oval Office occupant.

There was one attempt awhile back by Congress to regain at least some of its authority in this area. Having been burned by Lyndon Johnson on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Congress decided as the Vietnam War was winding down to try to reassert itself by passing the War Powers Act of 1973, which (according to Wikipedia):

“Requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days with a further 30 day withdrawal period, without an authorization of the use of military force or a declaration of war.”

In all of the bluster coming out of Washington this past week, it was noted that as of May 20, 2011, the 60-day period for the Libyan campaign had passed with no such authorization requested from President Obama. Obama’s argument is that the 60-day limit does not apply because this is a “NATO campaign” and that the use of U.S. forces is “somewhat limited.”

Well, far be it from me, a nobody blogger sitting on the couch in my basement, to argue with a former Constitutional Law professor and his best and the brightest legal team. In fact, I have no desire to engage their argument because their insistence on rhetorically dancing on the head of a pin really doesn’t matter, at least not from a Constitutional standpoint.

What matters is that Congress has a very simple method by which it can reassert its authority once and for all, a method spelled out very clearly within that very same Constitution: it can draft and approve Articles of Impeachment against President Barack Obama. The Libyan campaign is an undeclared war in which the president has not even deigned to ask Congress for approval as called for by the War Powers Act. If Congress really wishes to reestablish the checks and balances called for by the founders, all the silly lawsuits and public posturing in the world don’t mean a damn thing. Impeachment is the one and only option. After all, it was put into the document by the founding fathers first and foremost as a method of reigning in an out-of-control chief executive.

Will impeachment happen? Not a chance. The Republicans are scared to death that it would boomerang on them politically like it did with Bill Clinton, and antiwar Democrats like Kucinich are hardly likely to vote to impeach a president of their own party. Sadly, ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, America’s chief executives have been becoming more and more brazen about blowing off our constitutional safeguards as they pursue the Global War on Terror (or whatever it is being called this week). Bush started it and Obama has doubled down on essentially daring Congress to do anything to stop him.

We the people, who stand to lose the most in the face of unfettered executive power, should demand impeachment, but of course we won’t. Many on the right would rather obsess about the media-manufactured and completely irrelevant Birther controversy, while many on the left would immediately charge that anyone advocating for Obama’s impeachment must be a racist. And so nothing will happen. The politicians will dither and bicker as they always have, American bombs will continue to drop on Libya and that damn piece of paper will take another small step towards utter irrelevance.