Rev. Wright: Shut Up; Sen. McCain: Keep Talkin’

In-and-out blogging today so I can get back to my for-pay work–both topics meant to annihilate any lingering doubt that I might not be totally in the tank for Democrats in 2008 (It’s sometimes hard for me to forget that I once said good things about Senator Lugar.)

Reverend Wright
Reverent Wright knows better than I do which path will best serve his flock but here’s my opinion: If he really wants to promote social justice, if he really wants to help black people in American society, then helping Obama get elected is certainly as viable a plan–if not more viable–than him finding more ways to publicize his obviously antagonizing views.

Yes, I understand, he wants to antagonize; he wants to speak The Truth to The People–such is his obligation under the doctrine of his church. But part of being a good leader is understanding that there is a good time and a bad time for all things, a season, if you will…I read that somewhere. I’m not asking that he not say “God damn America,” I’m asking that he not say it right now. Is the second week of November just too far away? Honestly, one gets the feeling (and I am that one) that this is less about spreading the doctrine of black liberation theology and a lot more about collecting speaker’s fees–striking while the iron is hot and whatnot. If the love of God on Earth is made visible through the promotion of social justice then Wright will surely burn one day for flexing his vanity and working against the efforts of the larger movement.

The New DNC Anti-McCain ad:
Some thoughtful people have chimed in on McCain’s repeated admission that he doesn’t care if we stay in Iraq “for a 100 years” or “10,000.” To some, it seems that to continue to rag on McCain for his statements is purely and illegitimately to take them out of context. To others, like TPM’s Josh Marshall, these attackers are fully in the right because they are “using the senator’s own words.” The release of the new DNC ad has reignited this debate.

I had hoped to chime in on this myself before someone else made the proper defense but Marshall did it today. Basically it might be true that most of the attacks, to a very minor degree, take McCain’s statements out of context. He did say that he didn’t care if we were in Iraq for a 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 years. But he did not mean that we would be continuing the Iraq War for that long. What McCain meant was that we would occupy Iraq indefinitely under a similar arrangement as we have with Germany or Japan and boatloads of other nations, which, given the nature and success of those arrangements, is hardly a controversial policy.

The problem, as Marshall correctly points out is that:

…there’s little reason to believe our occupation of Iraq will ever be like that. We tried this in Lebanon; the French tried this in Algeria; the British even tried it in Iraq. Western countries have a very poor history garrisoning Muslim countries in the Middle East. Iraq isn’t like Germany or Japan, not simply because of the history of the country but because both countries accepted decades-long US deployments as a counterweight to threatening neighbors. The relevant point is that McCain believes American troops should stay in Iraq permanently. His pipe dream about Iraq turning into Germany doesn’t change that.

That’s the crux here, Iraq will continue to be a deadly experiment in imperialist overreach for years into the future and will likely never transform into anything else. So the fact that McCain really hopes that our 10,000-year occupation is a peaceful one is completely irrelevant. Marshall and I both love this elegant restatement of the point from the New Yorkers‘ Rick Hertzberg:

McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal–that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we’ll stay.

So regardless of whether or not you believe that McCain meant that we would have a 100-year-long war in Iraq or not, his policy will result in one, and thus this ad and all others that accuse McCain of endorsing a 100-year war in Iraq are 100% justifiably and correct. The fact that he has deluded himself into believing that that is not the case makes him more deadly, not less. This is a case where the context hurts McCain rather than helping him. Out of context he is merely calling for 100 years of war with Iraq presumably in an effort to secure the safety of Americans. In context he’s strategically incompetent and dangerously naive about national security matters; and his incompetence and naivete will result in a 100 year long war. Vote for him at the peril of your sons and grandsons (and their kids, and their kids’ kids…at least.)

Greenwald and The New York Times

On Sunday The New York Times published an important, and long, story about retired military officers essentially bribed to act as government shills in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Glenn Greenwald has rebuked this story on two accounts:

• The the information in the story is not new and that
• The New York Times, and other mainstream media outlets were critically complicit in the cover up that is now being exposed and the story under-emphasizes that aspect.

A more thoughtful response than I can muster for the moment–both to this story and for Greenwald’s commentary–seems appropriate. On the one hand it seems that David Barstow’s story is important, accurate, and laudable. It is laudable both professionally and politically. It took a lot of hard work and a lot of bravery to run with this story. The Pentagon apparatus employed here is filled with the kinds of nooks and crannies that practically define the phrase “plausible deniability.” Some of those accused of being a part of the war propaganda machine were probably taken advantage of by the Pentagon–that is–they spoke what they believed to be right and true, or they spoke what they knew would be personally profitable and were therefore more than happy to accept the mantle of “defense expert” when the time came. Others were probably duped, as they claim. The fact that the Pentagon’s heavy hand put more weight on some shoulders than on others, does not reduce their role in what was essentially the anti-democratic approach toward selling the war and it was good of the Times to draw attention to what they had done (are doing).

But newspapers aren’t, as Greenwald would want, pure watchdogs on our bureaucratic masters. Watchdoggery is just one role–arguably the most important role–but still just one, and when a paper makes a claim as far, broad, and deep as this one, it needs to make sure that what is conveyed are facts and not theories. So in that regard I think the story is laudable as well. The story seems fair and part of that seeming legitimacy is the consideration that the story was given. The price we pay for consideration is time–and the story is now too late to do much but engender or exacerbate cynicism.

We also have to pay the price of undue restraint and outrage. The New York Times will not go after these base and worthless men with the vitriol that they deserve and thus much of the reading public will think that the compassionate and restrained approach is the appropriate one. They will think it’s OK to shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, what did you expect?” and walk away. Perhaps more importantly, they will forget to associate these men with the intellectual and moral depravity that allowed them to speak well of bad people, to heap accolades on uninformed policy, and to speak lightly not only of the deaths of American solders and Iraqi civilians but also on the importance of military overreach and the huge price we would pay at home–just so they, and they alone, could profit.

Greenwald himself even musters up a little bit of the old “What did you expect” throughout his piece. Greenwald cites a few instances where much of this information was already reported, sometimes even in the Times itself.

This is one of those instances where it is just very hard to argue with Greenwald and one of the reasons I think his blog is so important–but it is also indicative of one of the frustrating things about his blog. It is true that much of this ground had been covered in the Times and in other outlets as well. But it is also true that despite those previous stories nobody has been paying attention until now. At least my impression is that this story has made a bigger splash than previous efforts.

It is also true that if the Times hadn’t run this story, then in a month or two or three when Greenwald once again got a bug up his ass about so-called experts so deeply in the pockets of the war machine they’ve gone pale and eyeless who talk in favor of the war as supposedly neutral sources he would complain that the Times and others routinely refuse to cover this very important story. It’s as if the mainstream media just can’t win at all. If they don’t run a story, then they are helping cover up important information; if they do the story, it isn’t enough or it’s too late.

Greenwald demands that mainstream media sources continue to run stories that he decides are important even if there is a proven lack of public interest in them, claiming that the press kills stories that are important and interesting while they simultaneously force banalities on their readership. And to some extent he’s right when he claims that if the press continues to print an important story it will eventually force 1) people to sit up and take notice and 2) those involved to respond–both of which will make the story “important.” But it’s not like the Times can run a story with this lede:

New York City–For the fiftieth time this month the Times is running a story on how Senator Rockefeller is undermining the Fourth Amendment through his incessant kowtowing to the Bush administration. Informed sources at the nation’s “paper of record” want to know why you idiots aren’t taking the bait on this already.

Greenwald could do that, the Times can’t. So it’s hard to blame them for touting their news as “new.”

Of course, now I’m being unfair to Greenwald and increasing the the supposed condemnatory air in his post, so I will attempt to correct that. By all appearances he seems to have liked this story. He praises the excellent investigative journalism and he applauds the Times for devoting so much space to such an important story.

He seems to be adding to the story, not for the benefit of Times readers but for the benefit of his own. And what he wants to add is this: even though the Times must tell you that this is new information, it isn’t and we must be more aware, we must extend our memories, we must look outside the mainstream papers to get more substantive news. And he wants to add this: running this story now does not act as atonement for its past crimes. At the very least, Greenwald seems to say, the Times should have mentioned its role in helping the Pentagon in this message. He seems to be adding, most importantly, this: the story condemns the officials and it condemns the Pentagon, but it doesn’t fully condemn the press that allowed it to happen.

I get the feeling while reading Greenwald that he would be satisfied with no less than absolute perfection from our mainstream media. And I suppose he should be demanding perfection; our media is our primary tool for holding government officials accountable for their actions, so its dire the system works appropriately. I also suppose by expecting and demanding perfection he will routinely be angry at the realities he is presented with. I also suppose that voices like Greenwald’s act as important restraints on the laziness and intellectual shortcomings inherent in all people, journalists not excepted. But sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that Greenwald isn’t out to make anything better; he’s just out to complain about something. It seems to me that ragging on an admittedly good piece of investigative journalism is a lot like a cop pulling over a speeder in sight of an ongoing armed robbery. It seems to me that while the Times is busy running a 7500 word on a really important story, even if imperfect, there were bigger fish to fry that day.

Absolut Incite

I can only assume that in the marketing department of Pernod Ricard, owners of Absolut Vodka, they figure that no Americans read Quien Magazine where this ad originally appeared.

Honestly, I’m not sure what logic made them think that infuriating what has to be one of their largest markets would be a good idea. What’s even more stupid is that the Right Wing Blogosphere is lit up as each blogger races to lay the blame on “the liberal media” or to associate various Hispanic campaign advisers with the ad concept.

It goes without saying, of course, clearly, obviously, that no candidate for president, past or present has ever advocated reversing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Dana Perino’s Just a Girl

No time for the bloggy today, no time to tell you all the uninteresting facts I learned about Jacksonville, Florida, no time to tell you about the uninteresting beers I drank at River City Brewing near Jackson Landing. So, today, I just give you this awesome quote from White House Press Secretary Dana Perino.

I seem to be in the minority on this, and I probably shouldn’t mentioned it, but for a White House that no longer cares about its personal image, but rather is hoping to keep its political Tourettes in check until November to help out flyboy McCain, I thought that Perino was a good choice. She has a relaxed personal charm completely lacking in the previous appointees, she has a tempered and refined manner of speech, her tone is moderate and crisp, one might say genuinely pleasant. And she has a professional iron shirt that reporters must find infuriating. Nevertheless, I’m not sure what must have been going through her mind when she said this:

Some of the terms I just don’t know, I haven’t grown up knowing. The type of missiles that are out there: patriots and scuds and cruise missiles and tomahawk missiles. And I think that men just by osmosis understand all of these things, and they’re things that I really have to work at — to know the difference between a carrier and a destroyer, and what it means when one of those is being launched to a certain area.

Brava!

Of course, you gotta love that Wikipedia which contains this gem:

In 2007, Perino appeared on the radio quiz show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! known for, in an amusing fashion, embarrassing the guests. Perino told a self-deprecating, humorous anecdote about how she had to ask her husband about the Cuban Missile Crisis after it came up in a press briefing.

Heheh. She could have just watched Kevin Cosnter’s docudramathon, Thirteen Days.

Bush’s Dictator Dance Card is Full to Bursting

Last Thursday I ranted against President Bush’s admonishment of Barack Obama over whether the latter, as president, should have sit-down talks with North Korea, Cuba, or Iran. What I said specifically was that Bush was a pandering, hypocritical ass, or words to that effect. Without getting into the rightness or wrongness of sitting down with the world’s dictators I offer this.

Each year various publications rank the world’s worst dictators and with little variation those lists match up one to the other. About 70 countries are ruled by dictators. The day before I posted about Bush lecturing Obama on proper US foreign policy standards, I showed a picture of George Bush playing dress-up with number 20 on the 2007 list, Vladimir Putin, the rabidly anti-deomcratic president of Russia (soon to be anti-democratic prime minister after his self-appointed successor is “elected.”)

Following is George Bush standing next to, smiling, and–in one instance–apparently frolicking with various members of other leaders from the top 20 of 2007’s worst dictators list. Numbered for your convenience.

For the record Castro doesn’t even make the top 20.

With so many dance partners our lame duck leader is sure to get a little tired…but don’t worry, he has C. Rice to dance when he don’t want to.

Military and Militarism

William J. Astore’s piece in yesterday’s Salon is nothing more than a full frontal assault on American’s proper moral growth away from militarism veiled as an attack on the intelligentsia’s undemocratic elitism. It is not that everything that Astore says is wrong but his failure to understand the attacks on the institution of militarism causes him to comically defend that which is not attacked, to promote that which no decent person would promote, and to ignore the obvious on multiple occasions. The essay is either a poorly constructed piece of propaganda specifically but ineffectively designed to twist progressives’ ideas in on themselves, or Astore is a kneejerk reactionary bent on defending the institution through which he developed his own identity and in which he is therefore emotionally and psychologically invested. In either case, charges of injudicious elitism should be ignored by those who rightfully wish to eradicate the 19th Century twin specters of militarism and imperialism.

Astore most prominent and basic failure is confusing attacks on militarism with attacks on the military. He says that progressives attack militarism but then in order to defend why they shouldn’t do that or how they might better develop their arguments he defends the military. While the two are often found together they are not identical. The belief that force is the answer to America’s problems, that unilateral military intervention can substitute for diplomacy, and that America’s military supremacy grants the American government a moral obligation or universal right to enforce our will on others are all concepts that are worth fighting against. These concepts form the foundation of militarism and–when exercised–imperialism. In terms of policy, militarism has led the American government to spend more money on its military than any other industrialized nation and, while America’s extreme wealth has allowed for our military costs to remain low as a percentage of GDP, that is quickly changing both from an increase in military spending and a decrease in the nation’s raw output. That money could be better spent and any thinking person knows it. Progressives would like to see that money spent on any number of good causes whose benefits would extend from the very poorest to the very richest. Traditional conservatives would like to see that money returned to private citizens in the form of smaller government and lower taxes.

But attacks on the military are not the same as attacks on militarism and for the most part progressives attack the latter rather than the former. In the cases where there are attacks on the military directly, either from the right or the left, the attacks are not directed at the concept of a military but rather on the unfair, undemocratic, and exploitive way it is run. That is to say that attacks on the military are isolated to the military leadership and not to the enlisted men and women that fight the wars.

Most Americans, even those who were not alive during World Wars I and II look back fondly to a time when our default military position was one of non-intervention, to an era when military force was reserved for those moments when military force improved our nation’s strategic standing and fought against legitimate enemies. I have heard no arguments for dismantling or even substantially decreasing the size of the American armed forces. All reasonable parties understand the necessity of a military.

Astore pretends that progressives do not understand or do not appreciate the wide diversity of people represented in the armed forces when it is quite clear, if his argument is to be believed as representing his actual thoughts, that it is he does not understand the nature of that diversity. It is true, as he states that ethnic and racial minorities seem overrepresented in the enlisted ranks. It is also true, although he fails to mention it, that the group of commissioned officers not only do not reflect this over-representation but reverses it. Commissioned officers are disproportionately white and college educated. He also fails to mention the high degree of nepotism that, despite other reforms, the military has failed to abolish. Critics from within the ranks of the armed forces still talk about not knowing the right people and not having the right parents when it comes to trying to make higher ranks. Even the non-elitist military that Astore champions is still famously elitist when it come to the ones who don’t see the front lines of battle. When you combine the top brass elitism with the overrepresented ethnic and racial minorities on the front lines, you’d have to be an idiot or villain to think that progressive attacks on that system are ill placed. A handful of minority generals and colonels do not remove the stink of the racism and classism that permeates the armed forces. Of the 39 active duty four-ranked officers in the United States armed forces, one of them is black (General William Ward) and all of them are male.

But a charge of systemic disproportion, if it happened naturally, is not a condemnatory charge. The fact of the matter, and we all know it, is that within the system individuals make the choices. College-educated people largely do not sign up for the military. This isn’t because we think it’s inherently stupid. It’s not because we’re effeminate. (Although there are educated people who do think it’s stupid and some that are effeminate.) But, college educated people can choose jobs that pay more and risk less. And the reverse is true too. The military isn’t just recruiting from America’s ghettos and farms because those people are any more willing to die. America’s urban and rural uneducated and poor are willing to work for less and often don’t see any other options for themselves.

It is true, as Astore says, that many people long for the challenge and hardships of military life, even of war–war is, after all, a force that gives us meaning. It is true that many young men and women seek a career, or even a short term job in the military in order to help shape their identities. But it also true that many, the majority of soldiers, do not do this. Astore is an idiot if he thinks we haven’t noticed that, with one exception in the last 60 years, enlistment goes down as the risk of dying goes up. He is an idiot if he thinks we haven’t noticed that the military is lowering its educational standards in order to meet its enlistment needs. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education does limit career options. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education does limit the ability to think critically. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education impairs the ability to engage equally with the multi-billion dollar ad campaign that powers the enlistment machine. The military is not just targeting the poor and uneducated because they are more nationalistic; they target them because they are more helpless, both in the larger world, and against the military’s propaganda machine. That is, the poor and uneducated are more vulnerable to exploitation. Astore may accuse rightly accuse liberals of a naturally paternalistic instinct, but it is fair to note, that paternalism in the political sense developed as a reaction to obvious exploitation not the other way around. If people had not be taken advantage of there would not have been a need to protect them.

The military’s ad campaign is buttressed by our entertainment industry. There is no lacking for books, magazine articles, television shows, or movies that glamorize the soldier’s life. Even movies like Full Metal Jacket and Jarhead that offer scathing reproachment of military culture are sufficiently full of depictions of the honor of combat, the meaningfulness of life exposed by proximity to death, and the natural camaraderie of small bands of soldiers to sufficiently inspire people to sign up. But then there are movies like Band of Brothers, the 10-episode mini-series on HBO that are essentially nothing more than advertisements for America’s elite 101st Airborne Division. Astore facetiously claims to be “struck” by how many men he talks to in rural Pennsylvania are moved to enlist after watching all 10 episodes. Despite all the barbarism of war laid out in those specials, Band of Brothers is essentially hour upon hour of stacked indoctrination, teaching the young men that watch it that it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country. Maybe it is, but Astore can hardly be “struck” that young men are inspired to enlist after being having been told that they will be revered and remembered if they sacrifice themselves to patriotic causes. Again, I am not critiquing the claim that it is good to dedicate oneself to a higher cause and to die for it if called upon. I am merely noting Astore’s facetious claim that he was “struck” by it. And I am critiquing Astore’s implication that America’s rural and urban poor are somehow more patriotic simply by virtue of their economic condition and not because of a companion dearth of other opportunities.

It is not that the intelligentsia looks down on the soldiers for being less educated. It is not that the intelligentsia doesn’t appreciate the individuals that enlist with both eyes open. They are criticizing, not the men and women signing on the dotted line, but the manipulative hand that guides their hand. Progressives are out to change the system, to eradicate the militarist regime that needs to find new ways to recruit more vulnerable people to fight and die for illegal and imperialistic wars. A new outlook on how to conduct world affairs means, less wars; less wars means less soldiers; less soldiers means less exploited people.

The lauded “all-volunteer” nature of our army is put into question by the necessities of militarism. Militarism as an institution is cyclical beast. Militarism requires wars and in a world thankfully free of a global government war is not only always possible, but always just a decision away. Societies will never lack for enemies. Someone else is always competing for a valuable but limited commodity; someone else is always strategically where they need to be. So militarism will seek wars where wars are unnecessary. When successful, the military engaged in war has reason to request an increase in its size, its budget, its executive power. When the war is over it can attempt to maintain the size it obtained because it obtained only what was necessary to win the last war; future wars are bound to be harder, fought against bigger enemies with more improved technologies, perhaps even further away.

As if that wasn’t bad enough [and it is] militarism must find troops to fight and die. It is possible that those in power, if they are sufficiently militarist, will find ways to manipulate the governmental and economic systems to create uneducated poor people to fill that requirement. That sentence is not a charge that anybody has ever done that. It is a charge that under a militaristic leadership, someone might. We never know who we might accidentally elect into power. Hitler was elected, you know. Therefore, in order to protect democracy, in order to ensure that justice is provided to all equally, it is necessary to eradicate militaristic tendencies.

Astore’s misplacement of the attack from militarism to the military is, as I said, a shameful rhetorical trick or it is based on his misunderstanding of the nature of those attacks. In either case, that is the larger failure of his article which is peppered with smaller mistakes.

For example, he at one point says that “America tends to trust its military” and he finds the roots of this trust in our knowledge that the “‘have nots’ have access to it.” I doubt that this is the source of this trust. Americans, perhaps shamefully, find little trustworthy in the “have not” culture. What is trustworthy about the military is that they aren’t businessmen or politicians. It is assumed that the leaders of the military are sufficiently aware of the nature of their business that they are restrained in their decision to go to war. Our generals tend to ask for more troops than the politicians provide. The generals tend to ask for strategic considerations that will aid in eventual victory. The generals, it seems, are more inclined to not go to war than the politicians who sit in Washington. And, when generals decide that war is the right decision, it is assumed they make that decision with heavier hearts than a politician coming to the same decision. There are rights and wrongs involved in this decision, but generally we feel that the military is to be trusted in times of war because….that’s what they do and the consequences of failure are far greater for them that might die or be taken prisoner. It has nothing to do with the democratic nature of America’s most undemocratic institution. Or, to put it far more simply, it is not that Americans trust the military, it is that they trust the military more than they trust politicians. That may or may not be the right thing to do or believe, the citizens of Argentina in the 70s and 80s may make a good case for why that’s wrong, but at the very least the military qua military is neither good nor bad but rather is a force without direction. Politicians are good or bad depending on one’s point of view and are therefore inherently untrusted by some section of the population.

Astore also, wrongfully and shamefully says that “For academia and progressives, war is today what sex was to society in the Victorian age, involving as it does emotions nice people don’t feel and acts nice people don’t opt to commit.” This “argument” is embarrassingly superficial and shamefully wrong. If Astore actually believes this I am left with no recourse but to consider him an anti-social madman, probably psychopathic. In case Astore is unaware, there is a substantial difference in the nature, cause, and effects of sex and war, but for purposes of exposing how disgusting this comparison is I will appeal only to the effects of both. Sex, when committed by normal, rational people, no matter immoral and sloppy the act is, results in two very tired bodies and one or two guilty conciousness. Sometimes it results in neither. In very extreme cases sex may result in an injury, and, rarer still, a death. Even rape, which I think is beyond consideration here, while awful results in possibly dozens of indignities, and, if accompanied by murder, a dozen murders.

War, on the other hand–no matter how restrained its execution, no matter how rational the soldiers or generals–results in the deaths of thousands. It results in rape. It results in theft. It result in indignities of every stripe. In extreme cases it results in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; it results in Nanking and Dresden. It results in genocide. It results in the annihilation of cities and cultures.

To say that disparaging war is a relativist cultural artifact of the 20th/21st centuries that will fade away in time is tantamount to wishing for a return to the endless war that epitomized human civilization during the Middle Ages. To simply equate young men’s desire for “taboo breaking” by violating sexual norms and their “taboo breaking” through institutionalized murder is immorally simple as to defy one’s ability to articulate it.

Astore accuses progressives of misunderstanding the fundmental makeup of the military. He talks about the diverse political views (conservative, but not necessarily Republican, he says), the racial and ethnic diversity, the modest gender diversity, and the diversity of motivations for joining. He mentions the educational diversity and the social class diversity. But it becomes increasingly evident that the only “progressives” in his worldvieware also “academics.” He even provides a pathway for his readers to include that all academics are also liberals (and therefore progressives) by stating that of 42 professors at Brown University all of them registered as Democrats (as if Democrats themselves were liberal or progressive, but I suppose I can let that pass.) It would seem that no progressives have made their way out of or exist within the military. It would seem that even he, who is so enlightened to find a place for militarism in the modern world is not a progressive.

He then challenges these academics to force themselves to understand the diverse nature of the enlisted men and women that make up the military because if they fail to do so they will also fail in eradicating militarism.

I guess the first thing that needs to be brought up is that university professors are not the only progressives. For that matter, progressives are not only made up of people with college educations. Astore forgets the populist nature of most progressive policy recommendation. The majority of Americans have at least one “progressive” platform that helps form their overall political ideology. Perhaps they are anti-war, perhaps they are merely anti-Iraq (which is the majority of the population right now–a majority made up of almost every Democrat and over half of all Republicans). Maybe they are pro-union. Most tradesman are pro-union even though they vote Republican. Maybe they’re concerned with global warming or economic sustainability. Whatever it is, progressives are not just a cadre of elite stuffed shirts in universities. The anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle were demanding a progressive global agenda and I doubt that the college professors even made up a sizable percentage of those present.

Also, once again, militarism isn’t found in the enlisted men. Miltiarism is found in the untrusted politicians that make decisions for the military. The upstanding men like Cheney and Rumsfeld that blazed a legal and moral path for contemporary imperialism. Those men (and women) came up through America’s middle and upper classes, largely from white, Protestant families. In the one extremely notable example of a black, female militarist, she rose up through the academic system that is under attack in this paper. I don’t think that, in order to eradicate militarism, it is at all necessary to understand that 20% of today’s enlisted men and women are there wholly by choice–because the more important factor at work in militarism are the desires of a hungry political elite.

In one final flub, Astore claims that women find their gender identity only in biological rites of passage: menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause. Men, have no biological rites of passage, there gender identity is “arguably less secure” he says. Male gender identity is found in “the gaze of other men” and therefore men seek out military life in order to fulfill biosocial destinies. This is such a clear example of a person overreaching his discipline that I probably need to do no more than mention this argument, as I did above, to reveal it for its impropriety. Even if he is broadly correct and I don’t have the expertise to know, I think it is safe to point out a few things. First of all, even if broadly correct it is more precisely wrong. Women find their gender identity in the gaze of other women. And men, surprising, go through puberty–an event …or series of events…that provides a variety of biological milestones celebrated as elements of manhood. If Astore does not know that from his own experiences, I pity him.

More importantly the implication of the argument is two-fold, that man must appeal to his animalistic nature or deny himself. In response to these bio-social demands men join the military to prove their manhood to other men. I suppose there is no denying that this is the case. Not only do armed services commercials make it clear that the military will form boys into men other men seem to abide by, support and reinforce that claim through their actions. However, the extreme argument here is that men must be allowed to kill other men in order to fulfill his destiny, a claim that is patently absurd.

He then says, “The challenge for progressives is to recognize this and then work to create viable alternatives to military service in which masculinity and patriotism can be demonstrated in non-lethal settings.” First of all, I would bet if any group of people in the world recognize the deep normative structures of cultural and biological rites of passage and the roles of identity formation and gender it would be the “academics” that Astore thinks are all “progressive.” Second, how the heck is it the job of progressives, or any other single group to provide alternative rites of passage. Third, where did that “patriotism” bit come from? If we agree that the military does provide such an outlet where both patriotism and masculinity can be expressed at once, on what level is that necessary? Do !kung bushman express patriotism along with their rites of passage? Are men who are clearly masculine, like masons, unproved in their masculinity unless they build walls and houses “for America.” Fourth, what is the female equivalent? Must women menstruate American flags? Do they not require the interplay of femininity and patriotism? Fifth, who says that this whole gender-typing thing is desirable? I’m not saying it is or it isn’t but I don’t think that “butch” women are any less human than girly ones and I certainly don’t favor macho guys to effeminate ones. Sixth, why can’t there be separate activities that allow one to express masculinity on the one hand and patriotism with the other? Seventh, there is a de facto elimination of femininity from the military here isn’t there? Why is that? The clear reasoning here is that militaries are by definition masculine. Women joining the military makes the women masculine and not the military feminine. Which is a clearly circular argument and supports a sexual discrimination currently illegal under American law.

I think I could list problems with this all day and never explore all of them. So I’ll let the first answer to Astore’s challenge be Astore’s own words. What is the non-lethal rite of passage that can simultaneously allow a boy to express his masculinity and his patriotism? Recreate New Deal-esque organizations like the Civilian Conservation Corp. I’m fine with that, but I’m a tax and spend liberal. Of course, if its between paying guys to play chess outside their barracks in South Korea or paying guys to plant trees in recently strip-mined West Virginia, I suppose I’d like the latter. But more importantly, the best alternative to men joining the military, is… men joining the military. Astore has wrongfully assumed, again, that because progressives are against militarism they are against having a military. Maybe it’s not manly to join the Army and not kill anyone but I think that might be the price worth paying. I mean, nobody kills anybody (on purpose) planting trees either and that seems to be OK by Astore’s standards. I’d be perfectly happy with a large and well-armed military that never has to be used.

It is one thing to defend the military, but since the military is not under attack such a paper would be totally unwarranted. It is quite another to defend militarism. In reality progressives are justly attacking militarism and Astore defends the military. The effect of his confusion is that he wrote a paper that reads as a defense of the indefensible and it causes him to make embarrassing analogies and make unjust charges. Progressives do not have to rethink their stance against militarism just because a racially, economically, and politically mixed group of boys and girls sign up to join it. Disliking militarism does not expose progressives and intellectual elites who are denying the democratic nature of the army. Not only is the military itself as undemocratic an institution as can be imagined, the target of progressive attacks is not the military or its constituent parts. It is the philosophy of militarism–which is also different that a basic realist recognition of the necessity of the armed forces–that is under attack.

Terrorists Use Mentally Disabled as Human Bombs

I’m a touch busy today and so I won’t post long, and, in order to break up the monotony a little bit, let’s talk about something other than the horserace

So, you may or may not have heard that last Friday two mentally disabled women (Downs Syndrome) had bombs strapped to their bodies, were led into the very populated Friday pet markets in Baghdad, and had the bombs detonated by remote control.

The discussion of this incident has died down over the week but initial concerns were:

1. As with all these things, how many people were killed and wounded. The linked article above says 98 dead and more than 207 wounded. The initial report I had read said 74 dead and that included the two women.
2. Conservative bloggers were saying that liberals would be overjoyed at this because it was proof that the surge wasn’t working and that liberals would have more evidence to pull our troops out.
3. Concern over whether or not the two women did in fact suffer from a mental disability or whether or not that was a “fact” cooked up by the Iraqi government (or the US forces) to raise sentiment against the insurgency.

In regard to the first point I, don’t have an answer. Certainly more deaths is worse, but in terms of how we understand this event and how we attempt to understand what this may mean about nature of future insurgent/terrorist attacks, numbers of casualties is of less concern than other things.

In regard to the second point, no one is happy that 74 people, or 300+ people were killed and wounded. Liberal or conservative, once we went into this war, which we would not have been able to do without Democratic votes, the hope was that we would win. People that want to keep us in this war are not bad people. They don’t want our soldiers to die. People that want us out of the war are not evil people either, that want Iraqis to die, or for American to retreat, or for us to shirk our moral obligation to rebuild. We are both rooting for what we think makes a better country and a better world.

Regardless of what we want however, the realities of combat, the realities of the nature of the insurgency, the realities of the commitment of the Iraqi government to aid the efforts at rebuilding are all elements of whether or not we succeed, what the costs of that success will be, and what the cost of abandonment of our mission will be. Wars are not won or lost in our heads. The Germans very much wanted to win World War II. Losing had very high costs for them. But that desire to win ran head first into the reality of defeat.

Insurgent attacks are a real cost of this war. Ignoring them is impossible. What we must do instead is understand the cost of this conflict and make a reasoned assessment whether continuing is worth the price. Personally, I think the price of success is infinitely high and it is therefore obvious that no reward can justify the price. Sure, Friday’s attacks are further evidence that this is the case. But that doesn’t make me happy. The fact that the military defense budget expanded again and is likely going to need $200 billion more dollars on top of what they requested is a real fact undermining our ability to conduct this war to a successful inclusion. It’s a fact that will likely lead to our return but that doesn’t make me happy either.

But I have presumed something that I don’t think is so easy to presume, that the bombings are, in fact, evidence of the infinite cost of our involvement in the war.

I think we can look at this attack in one of two ways with very important differences and policy recommendations.

We could take this attack to mean that the “endless stream of martyrs” that Al-Qaeda in Iraq says they have is starting to run out–or has already run out. As discussed here previously, the effect of suicide bombers is that they project an image of an irrational actor in a rational system.  A person willing to risk absolutely everything in pursuit of a goal is a very dangerous enemy. His attacks do not stand up to reason, and as reasonable people ourselves we are prevented from understanding what he will do or what he is capable of. Strategies that work against traditional bad guys, do not work against suicidists.

There is a movement to rename “suicide terrorists” to “homicide terrorists” because it takes the attention and sympathy away from the culprit and places it on the victims, where it belongs. But the phrase and its support is misguided. All bombing attacks that kill others are homicide attacks. The suicide attack is special because it has this added menace in reality, not just in theory. It says something different about the nature of our enemies and therefore affects the strategic options we might choose. “Homicide bombers” does not beneficially add to the discourse or to the strategic prescriptions.

We have always known that the insurgents in Iraq were willing to kill indiscriminately in pursuit of their goals. If they’ve run out of people willing to suicide themselves for their goals, I think we have to consider this, I hesitate to say it this way, good news. It is of course, not good news that the terrorists have moved from very bad to very, very bad. It isn’t good news that they have upped their horrific-ness to this level. But, if it says that they are running low of the public support they need to replenish their pool of martyrs, this may symbolize a very important and positive turning point in regard to our future success against this insurgency.

However. It could also be very bad new, worse news than the bare reading of the facts may indicate. There are two facts that are fairly well understood that govern this second, and opposing, interpretation of this event. 1) Insurgencies, by their very nature, require the support of the common people. Mao-Tse Tung famously called this support the “hearts and minds” of the people–a phrase co-opted by counter-insurgencies over the last sixty years. Insurgencies and therefore counter-insurgencies amount to “battles for the hearts and minds of the people.” Anybody who has read a newspaper since March 2003 has heard this phrase repeated countless times. 2) Over the course of the last couple of years, Iraqi support for the insurgency has been dropping. This has been good news because without this public support it was believed that support would move from the insurgents to those fighting them. Recent reports seem to indicate otherwise. While support for the insurgents has dropped, support for the counterinsurgents has not risen (except in very isolated areas). It could be interpreted that what this event symbolizes is a public statement from the insurgents that they no longer care for or need public sympathy for their cause.

If true, it adds a new face to insurgent/counter-insurgent warfare. There is no doubt that, at least in The West, this event is totally despicable. Reports out of Iraq seem to indicate that they feel the same way. This attack officializes that the terrorists are demons, the worst kind of sub-human. It seems like an event that would significantly reduce the amount of remaining (and already dropping) public support. The planners of this attack would no doubt be aware of that affect and so we can only assume that it was intended. What happens to an insurgency that effectively de-links itself from the people they had previously been fighting on behalf of? In lieu of deep analysis, I point to the types of activities that are going on in other failed states–in the Balkans and throughout Africa. Crimes committed without political motive are not officially terrorism, but just crime. A statement like this, if we can interpret it in the way I’ve proposed, moves the terrorist activities away from terrorism and into just crime, murder for murders’ sake. They still may maintain rhetorically that their aim is to drive out the US invaders but if they do that for their own interests as a special band of brigands it is not really a “political” motivation.

If all of this is true Iraq is degrading further still into uncontrollable criminal factions. The crimes will likely get worse and more public as this band of criminals, now further marginalized, seeks to exercise control only through fear. The crimes will get more despicable and more public. And since they are not linked to any theoretical motivation, no concessions can be offered that will significantly derail their behavior.

Of course, that is just one of two options, and even by focusing on two, I have probably oversimplified. It could be, for example, that the terrorists thought no one would find out that they had done this, that we would believe they were suicide attacks. To be sure, most newspapers referred to the attacks in just that way.

Those Oh so Moral Republicans!

One of the most fascinating topics in political philosophy that I’ve run across is the concept of “dirty hands.” While the basic scenario is important, it is off topic for me today. What is important to me is the fundamental issue at work: politics is dirty and there is absolutely no way to perform well in politics and remain clean. Not every action in politics is dirty and that which is dirty is not always equally dirty. And by dirty I don’t necessarily mean illegal.

At the very least there is, as Machiavelli pointed out, a fundamental separation between values within the world of politics and values within the realm of traditional ethics (I’m being general but I am speaking specifically of Christian values, although any teleological normative system is fine, even non-religious ones…although, in my opinion they are easier to work around.).

The Christian God is pretty straightforward on 1) not killing, 2) not lying, 3) not working on some official holy day of rest and a few other things. The Jesus version of the Christian God is pretty straightforward on being peaceful, forgiving another’s trespasses, picking out the plank in our own eye before noting the splinter in our brothers eye, rich people not being able to get into heaven, being humble in all things, and forgoing personal excesses of wealth.

However, a president (and for that matter congresspeople) have to be ready to send troops into battle. A flick of the pen and self-serving theologians can say that God meant “no killing of innocents” although that is not what the law says and, in this instance, I’m a strict constructivist. But even that rewriting of God’s law doesn’t quite work. “Collateral damage” is factored in to every bomb drop and house raid. The president not only knows that ordering an attack will cause civilian (innocent) death, but approximately how many will die. He knows that many of them are children who have not yet been corrupted by the ideologies of their parents (if we assume that the others are somehow “guilty”of something because of their beliefs.)

The same self-serving theologian could argue that the Old Testament God, the one from which the commandment against killing arrived was pro-war and therefore only meant something like “no killing of one of your own” (since the Old Testament wars were almost only wars against opposing religious groups). But that doesn’t explain our firebombing of Dresden, the Revolutionary War against Britain, the Civil War against the South, and all the “small wars” that took place throughout the very Catholic Latin America (keeping in mind I’m not including the “clearly guilty” and atheist communists we fought against, but rather all the “collateral damage” including the CIA-admitted genocide in Nicaragua.) Even locally, how far removed from the commandment against murder is he when the president allows Americans to die if by “one of your own” God meant to define the restriction in terms of citizenship? Certainly God recognized that there were both sins of commission, like putting a Titan missile into a madrassa, and sins of omission, like failing to properly repair the levees outside New Orleans and failing to put a person in charge of FEMA with some emergency management experience.

God does not let you into heaven based on a balance of good and bad acts. It’s not God’s up there with a spreadsheet tallying lives saved against lives wasted. “You killed or were responsible for the deaths of 3 million Mr. Bush, but, thankfully, but since you upheld 10% of your promise for African aid, you saved maybe, 100,000. But you didn’t go into Darfur like you should have which caused the death of 300,000, but you did…” Even a good president who actually used the power of his office to save lives around the world would have a hard time accounting for the millions of deaths from all the unstopped (or actively supported) dictators of the world. And clearly a president can’t be judged on counterfactuals like, “You didn’t bomb Beijing” which would be as good as saying “You didn’t blow up the planet.” I mean, neither did I, and I didn’t cause the deaths of a 1.5 million Iraqi children through ten years of international sanctions.

So presidents murder and they spend a great deal of time not preventing murders that they have the power to stop. There are political reasons of course. We have this thing called “sovereignty”and this related things called “self-determination.” These things are two political concepts, the belief in which prevents presidents from sending in the Army and Marines to stop every genocide it hears about. But, my understanding is God doesn’t care about our made up laws. There is only God’s law, and a good Christian president would have to disobey international law to follow God’s law.

So just in terms of this one commandment, we have to assume that presidents don’t make good Christians and vice versa. And that leads us to two related points. 1) Any president that claims they can balance being a good Christian and being a good president is a liar or they are stupid. In either case, I don’t want them to be my leader. and 2) Since all presidents are going to have to murder people, I feel like I should elect the guy (or gal) who is going to murder the least people…and stop the most worldwide atrocities.

So how does one make that determination? First I think we have to determine at least some of the important ways that people die as a result of the political decisions of our elected leaders.

Right off the bat (and probably because I’m thinking religiously for the moment), there is the death penalty and abortion. There’s also the deaths related to poverty–preventable illnesses like malnutrition, diarrhea, dehdryation. There is, of course, cancer, heart disease, and automobile accidents which, in no particular order, are the top three killers in the country. There is also murder. And suicide.

Internationally the big killers are the poverty diseases: malnutrition, dehydration, diarrhea–like those that afflict the American poor–but also measles, mumps, malaria, tuberculosis, and a handful of others, nearly all of which we have treatments for. There is of course HIV/AIDS. There are the big-name genocides like those in Darfur and there are big-name human rights abuses like the dowry deaths in India, public decapitations in Saudi Arabia, and the constant disappearances of dissidents in China and Russia. The biggest worldwide killer right now after the poverty-related diseases are the peripheral deaths related to civil wars like the one in the Congo.

Oh! And there is the small matter of those two wars we are fighting which is not only causing the deaths of hundreds of thousand of civilians, it is also killing thousands of Americans to boot. In addition to those Americans killed directly in the war (about 3500) the NY Times has found 121 homicides committed by soldiers that have returned from one of the two conflicts and (probably) 102 Afghanistan/Iraq-related suicides which, as far as I’m concerned are casualties of war as well.

And, while there is no commandment against torture, I have to say that, at the very least, those people who are tortured to death should count as murdered–as should those three “detainees” in Guantanamo who finally succeeded in killing themselves last June.

So, if I have to choose my future president based purely off a standard of not increasing the tally of murdered innocents and with the possibility that he or she might actually try to do something to save those already condemned to death by the current state of the world, am I going to vote for a Republican or a Democrat? Well, those Republican are against abortion, and that sounds pretty Christian…

It sure is hard. Which guy was it that said we should “double the size of Guantanamo?” was that Obama? No. Which candidates are running in support of the war? Which candidates are preventing stem cell research to help cure cancer? Which side, Republicans or Democrats have had more effect fighting crime by reducing poverty? Which candidates are talking about extending health coverage to the uninsured so that people can stop dying of malnutrition in the richest country in the world?

Oh yeah, the atheist, secular demons in the DNC. But don’t forget, they are pro-choice and in the grand scheme of things…ach…you get it by now.

There’s lots of ways to murder in the world, how is that Republicans have gotten the stranglehold on morality by fighting against just one of them?

= American

In the real world we talk about “nations” as political entities. We talk about nationalities and we talk about “nation building.” There’s the United Nations, which is a collection of countries (mostly), we talk about “nationalities” and when we do we almost always mean “what country those people are from?”. If someone asks most of my friends, “What nationality are you?” most of them will respond “American,” not because they’ve given any thought to the concept, but because it’s the easiest answer, and, for the most part, they’d be right because the American government have been notorious experts in the realm of “nationalizing.” What the rest of the world calls “nations” political scientists call “states.” Nations are, and I’m over-simplifying a bit, self-identifying units. The word signifies a group of people that feel they share a living history with other people. Those they share that living history with are fellow members of their nation. States, on the other hand, are identified by law and by recognition of others.

“Israel” for example is a state to most of the world, the United Nations and its members accept its borders as the borders of an entity known as “Israel” and they recognize that the leaders of this “Israel” have the jurisdiction to make decisions on behalf of and to be imposed on only the people that exist within those boundaries. Palestine however is not only not a state (because so few recognize its sovereignty) its people do not accept that the political borders of Israel compose a state known as Israel. As far as Palestinians are concerned, the idea of “Israeli” only applies to the people that called themselves (self-identify) as Israelis and it only includes Jews. Muslims living within the (unrecognized) borders of Israel are actually Palestinians. The artificial political boundaries of Israel are not strong enough to impose an identifiable characteristic.

We talk about the “nation-state.” The idea of the nation-state first started cropping up with force during the Renaissance. It really began to take hold during the 18th Century. Most of the wars that were fought at the time were fought over the idea of how a group of people within an area should think about themselves. After 1648 it was determined by international agreement, that forcing the people of another region to accept the religion of another nation was unacceptable. After that, wars were fought over the shared histories of people. World Wars I and II were largely fought over this very issue. Was the Rhineland French or German? Was southern France French or Italian? Who in Spain was Spanish? Weren’t Polish once Prussian which meant German, or did it mean Russian? Europe was famously carved up during and just after these wars, cementing the idea of the nation-state in the public conciousness. But ultimately the “nation-state” as a concept remained as artificial as the “state.”

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union the various national differences began to re-expose themselves across eastern Europe. Fifty years of forced Russian identity, the people of Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, etc was not long enough to erase the various national myths and shared identities of those people. Across the area known as “the Balkans” various people’s movements fought against the concepts of enforced state identities in favor of national identities. Their efforts to create areas of national homogeny lead to “ethnic cleansing” or, more accurately, genocide. All genocides (or at least all the famous ones) have been related to this idea of creating ethnically pure zones of influences, to bring about a real, perceivable unity between self-identifying nations and artificially imposed states. Since “states” are artificial concepts the “nation-state” as it was conceived is just as artificial. To create a real nation-state something artificial had to happen. Sometimes artifice thrust upon the world is an act of beauty, like a good film. Sometimes an act of artifice constitutes the worst tragedies. There is nothing as violent, brutal, and tragic as man in the service of his politics.

Modern Americans are beneficiaries of the most solidly constructed nation-state in existence. The Native American genocide was not simply an economic movement based on snatching valuable real estate and raw materials from the “savages.” It was an “ethnic cleansing” to create a nation out of the burgeoning state. The British and French colonists did not start a genocide; they were battling for land as an occupying force. The American government began the nationalizing campaign of “the Indian Wars.” The American government enacted the genocide. The result was that the Germans, Dutch, Scottish, Irish, and English that made up America could identify as not-Indian and therefore “Americans.” The genocide brought us together. That’s what we mean when we say “nationalizing.” An immigrant does not “become a citizen” of the United States. They are “nationalized” by living here for awhile, becoming a productive member of our legitimate society (i.e. not our criminal society), and they learn our histories. They learn who are founding fathers are.

As above in the Israel/Palestine problem, when countries have failed to fully unite their national identity with their state identity there arise inevitable problems. Iraq is a state. The Kurds are a nation. The United States of America is a state. The Cherokee (famously) are a nation. What constitutes that living history mentioned earlier is different for each nation. It can include language, religion, norms, beliefs, values, rituals. It is easier to identify the ties that bind people together in some nations than in others. Many nations, for example, share a religion. It is not the only thing they share, but they do share it. But “nations” are often very hard to describe. Like many groups, there are members that are wholly of a group and there are members at the periphery, about to fall into a different group. During World War II for example it was hard for “Americans” to figure out which of two opposing groups Japanese-Americans should be identified with. As citizens of a state, everybody was “American.” As members of a nationality…? Who knew?

Part of the reason lies in concepts of group identity. Groups tend to identify themselves most starkly in times of conflict. During World War II, for example, “Americans” were those people that joined the war effort, either as soldiers or as home front practitioners that willingly and proudly made the extra sacrifices that ensured victory abroad. They participated in scrap metal drives. They planted victory gardens in their yards and in highway medians. They sewed parachutes out of old nylon stockings. Through no fault of their own, the Japanese and Germans that were imprisoned in internment camps, were not “Americans.” The other Americans made sure of that.

After World War II, “Americans” were “not Communists” and “Communists” were “not Americans” and that was all knew on Earth and all we needed to know. Of course, what made one person a Communist was up for grabs and consequently what made one an American as well. It left us wildly in the dark, for example, how to pigeonhole people like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow who used that bastion of Americanism “the free press” to demonize crazed Communist-hunters like Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis).

If nothing else, the idea of a nation relies on the national myth. It relies on the belief in the greatness of common ancestors. In our nation George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine are the root source of our national identity. To a lesser extent (not in reality, but in the common perception) James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Paul Revere and a handful of others share in that reverence. It is a common feature of our political debates that even the most uneducated of us rely on arguments to history. In terms of formal argument, that is, in an argument that weighs the pros and cons of a policy decision based on its logic and effects, an appeal to history holds very little weight. Appeals to history are, at their core, emotional appeals.

The ethnocentric self-identifying “Americans” among us now, in their efforts to marginalize and reject Latino immigrants, in part, rely on the clearly isolationist, xenophobic, attitudes of our shared forebears. To them America is defined by the external characteristics of the rich, white men, of northern Virginia. They spoke English. They were protestant. Their rallying cry at one crucial moment was “The British are Coming!” To these ethnocentrists “Americans” in part were “not British.” They extend that attitude to today, “Americans,” they say “are not Mexicans.” Mexicans speak Spanish. Mexicans are Catholic. Mexicans are short and brown (and for that matter share many external characteristics with victims of our last genocidal efforts).

It is evidence of our American nationality that those who are pro-immigrant also make appeals to our shared forbears. To the pro-immigrant, Washington et. al. themselves were immigrants. They embodied an entrepreneurial spirit recognizable in today’s Latino immigrants. They shared a belief in the equality of men across time and place which encourages the acceptance of modern immigrants as equals on (God’s) Earth, equally worth sharing and contributing to our national greatness.

Are Americans white, European protestants or do Americans embody a “melting pot” of various cultures that come to express similar ideas of what the nation should be; to share a founding myth? The question of immigration…the “problem” of immigration is of fundamental concern to American identity as we have come to understand it. The problem, if there is one, is that the state/nation/country/powerful elite/academics/common man all have different concepts of what constitutes an “American” and if Latinos have a place here. The “problem” of immigration is a problem of identity.

National identities change over time. Americans used to be not-British, then they were not-Indian, then they were not-German/Japanese, then they were not-Communist.But then British people became Americans when British people won the war of Independence. Then there were no Indians to not be. Then we became comfortable with the Germans and Japanese. (And of course, there have been dozens of other things that Americans were not until they were: Black, Catholic, Jewish, Italian, Vietnamese.) Soon we will be comfortable with the Latinos. For the moment we face the tumultuous sea change. We won’t even recognize that our national identity has changed until we are faced with a newer, more important threat to our national identity.

So Long, Suharto

It is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of the second half of the 20th Century that Indonesia remained an abysmally small, weak nation with no US allies within striking distance. Because, if Indonesia had had the ability to strike out against one of our allies, we might have developed the wherewithal to hack him and his followers to pieces like he did to so many of his own people. Instead Suharto lived large off of American and British paychecks and died comfortably. Most people in this country will never know, and many that do will forget, that he was one of the century’s worst dictators, slaughtering over a million of his own people. Many of his victims were communist activists who’s names appeared on lists given to him by the CIA.

But if he had launched an attack against a different dictator, with more money, or access to more raw materials, with a separate and perhaps more public relationship with the US, if that had been the case, then whichever great and glorious “war president” was in office at the time could have proclaimed that in honor of “democracy” and “freedom” and “decency” and “God” that Suharto should be overthrown. He could have been tried for the war crimes he certainly committed and he could have swung from the gallows as a word of warning to future dictators. He could have faced, that is, the same fate as once US ally Saddam Hussein after invading Kuwait.

Instead, after his death yesterday the White House presented a paean to the ex-dictator and mass murderer lauding him for his 30 years of “service” to Indonesia and his genius at improving the Indonesian economy.

Yes, it is true, when you slaughter a million people, you will raise your per capita earnings.

Even the much-vilified Muslim news outlet Aljazeera had very little good to say of the Muslim dictator:

Between half a million to a million people were killed as the army organized Muslim groups and ordinary citizens to take their revenge on the Indonesian Communist Party.

Hundreds of thousands of others were jailed, killed or simply disappeared as Suharto cracked down on opponents and stamped Indonesia’s rule on territories as far apart as Aceh in the west Timor and Papua in the east.

With the blood of as many as one and a half million people on his hands, and allegedly billions of dollars of state funds in his bank accounts, the wily former dictator has never faced court or had to account for his actions.

I’m not saying I advocate the death penalty, even for total pissant bastards like Suharto. I’m just saying that he was allowed to die peacefully and now serves as an example that with the right friends crime does pay. Suharto, along with Pinochet and Trujillo and several others, is proof that America does not go to war to “defend democracy” or “fight for freedom.” Even under the twisted logic of Communist containment, for what world were we fighting if winning against Communism meant that people like Suharto would get rich from American banks and businessmen and be permitted to kill 1.5 million of his own people?

And the American government can’t, even after his death, find the nerve to remember him as he was–a disgrace to humanity, hacked to pieces by machetes for eternity in Hell in the imaginations of every living Indonesian. America’s obsequious eulogy is as disgusting as it is shameful. I don’t blame you Ambassador Cameron Hume, you were doing your job in piling accolades on the corpse that rightfully deserves to be ripped apart and trampled on by the living victims of his 30 year raping and pillaging of the land he “served.” I blame the petty tyrant that gave you the instruction to do it.