Dogs of War

Glenn Greenwald has the call on Bush's most dangerous speech to date regarding the impending (so the neo-cons hope) war with Iran.

After outlining the mendacities upon which Bush is building the case for war, Greenwald makes the scariest observation I've read:

The true danger here is that even if there would be marginally more political opposition to an attack on Iran than there was for an attack on Iraq -- and surely there would be, perhaps considerably more opposition -- those who favor an attack are still politically strong within the administration. And there simply are no factions which would oppose such an attack that are anywhere near strong enough to stop one. Who and where are they? What are the political factions which have sufficient political strength and who are willing to risk political capital to stop such a confrontation?

By stark and dispositive contrast, those who are pining for an attack on Iran -- from the Weekly Standard to the AEI and various generic warmongers of the Dick Cheney/National Review strain, as well as our most pious evangelical Christian warriors -- are zelaous adherents, True Believers. Bringing about a military confrontation with Iran has always been, and continues to be, their paramount priority.

Where oh where is the outcry against Bush's transparent warmongering?

If you want to nip this lunacy in the bud, please, please, please contact your representatives and let them know you'll support anybody who stands up to Bush and the war-machine.

[NOTE - Here's the text that I sent to my reps. Feel free to copy/paste it and send it to yours:

Yesterday President Bush gave a speech to the American Legion in which he outlined his case against Iran.

I found the similarities between this speech and the rationales given in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to be as disquieting as they were border-line mendacious.

Too many Democratic leaders appear to feel that opposing the President's war-mongering will lead to charges that they are "weak" on defense.

Please let me assure you that I and many like me understand that strong defense does not require an unending series of needless wars and that we are prepared to fully support any politician brave enough to stand up and say so.

I hope to count you as such.

Krauthammer: playing out his contract

More and more frequently people are asking, why should we continue to be subjected to the forcasts of those who were so wrong in their prognostications about the war in Iraq?

A good question, for which I can offer only a hypothesis, they're still under contract.

Such is the only explanation I can give as to why the Washington Post continues to publish the blatherings of folks like Charles Krauthammer.

Today he excoriates those who oppose the war in Iraq for their lack of strategic vision.

The Democratic insistence on the primacy of Afghanistan makes no strategic sense. Instead, it reflects a sensibility. They would rather support the Afghan war because its origins are cleaner, the casus belli clearer, the moral texture of the enterprise more comfortable. Afghanistan is a war of righteous revenge and restitution, law enforcement on the grandest of scales. As senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden put it, "If there was a totally just war since World War II, it is the war in Afghanistan."

And why, pray tell, would Democrats favor a war with a clear casus belli over one which the great strategic thinker Charles Krauthammer favors?

Perhaps it's because the American public, in all their foolishness, thinks that wars should only be fought when we are provoked, that wars are so terrible they should only be fought when our lives are truly threatened, that wars should be fought, not against those who might wish us harm, but against those who have actually caused us harm.

But then, Krauthammer clearly disdains the wisdom of democratic government, clearly preferring that such decisions be left to the philosopher kings, such as himself, who know the truth, regardless of how frequently and how badly they've been wrong in the past.

Anyway.

I could spend much more time reviling the likes of Krauthammer, but instead I'll just post a link to the comments he's garnered. Sad that so many of us fail to bow to the superior mind.

More positive signs for NK Nuke deal

Is the North Korean Nuclear Disarmament deal a positive step towards world peace and rational US foreign policy?

Your CaliBlogger is pleased to provide you with the best evidence that it is: the neo-cons hate it.

The White House yesterday found itself fending off a conservative revolt over the North Korea nuclear deal, even scrambling to mollify one of its own top officials who expressed sharp disagreement with a provision that could spring Pyongyang from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Surely anything reviled by the folks who gamed us into the disaster in Iraq, and are so urgently trying to do the same with Iran can't be all bad.

But what I find particularly revealing is the nature of their criticism.

John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called the agreement -- in which North Korea would freeze its main nuclear facility in exchange for an initial supply of fuel oil -- "a bad deal" that violated principles that were closely held in the beginning of the Bush administration. [Emphasis mine-CK]

Of course I might argue that the agreement is likely a good deal BECAUSE it violates the same Bush admin principles which entangled us in Iraq and are propelling us into violent confrontation with Iran. Like I said, if John (the Walrus) Bolten hates it, it can't be all bad.

And the National Review, a conservative bastion, yesterday slammed the agreement as essentially the same one negotiated by President Bill Clinton in 1994 -- a charge the Bush administration rejects. [Emphasis mine-CK]

I, of course, would point out that those agreements were working reasonably well until BushCorp™ adopted its "closely held" principles of confrontation and swagger in 2001.

Current and former Bush officials said they fear that after six years they are losing control of foreign policy to more pragmatic forces. The shift, they said, has become especially apparent with the departure of Donald H. Rumsfeld, who as defense secretary was often seen as a counterweight to State.

More specifically, conservatives said, they worry that the administration's willingness to bend on North Korea does not bode well for hard-line policies toward Iran, the Palestinians or other issues. Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday called on the United States to demonstrate "the same flexibility, a sensible flexibility" toward Iran's nuclear program. [Emphasis mine-CK]

The neo-cons fear they are losing control of BushCorp™ foreign policy?

Let us pray that the assesment of their own decline is better than any of the predictions they've made about US foreign policy.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the neo-cons were indeed in their last throes?

Democracy v. Empire

Historian Chalmers Johnson is guest-blogging over at TPM Cafe to talk about his new book with the provocative title Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

His thesis is essentially that America's imperial ambitions, like those of so many empires before us, will ultimately doom America to either dictatorship or bankruptcy.

And while I don't entirely share his rather gloomy view (though he makes a compelling argument for it, and is clearly much, much smarter than your humble CaliBlogger), I do like how he formulates the current American dilemma:

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.

His post should, of course, absolutely be read in full to appreciate the depth of his arguments, but the above point well illustrates something I've always felt regarding our current entanglement in Iraq.

That lacking any overwhelming provocation so necessary to muster a democratic country's will to war, we would never be willing to make the very real national sacrifices necessary to winning it.

Many armchair generals on the right have (rightly) criticized the war effort as the result of Rumsfelds determination to do this war on the cheap. What they fail to realize is that Rumsfeld had no other choice.

As we now know to a certainty, Saddam Hussein never posed a level of threat to this country that would unify it in the manner that, say, Pearl Harbor did in WWII. And such unity is a prerequisite for war in a democratic republic.

Sure it's easy to gain support from armchair chickenhawks when their biggest sacrifice is to pop for a frigging yellow ribbon bumper sticker to slap on their SUVs.

But clearly there was never enough support for this invasion to get people to pay more for gas, or even put off a tax cut.

And a draft? Get serious.

So, devoting the level of resources required to both eliminate Hussein and pacify the population of Iraq not only didn't happen, but could NEVER have happened.

And this case in point shows why I'm more optimistic than professor Johnson.

That while the US remains a democracy, however tenuously under the current regime, the major depredations required of aspiring empire-builders (read neo-cons) will prove impossible.

Such thought though should not be cause for complacency. It should instead emphasize the urgency of protecting our democratic institutions from would-be Caesars.

For failure to do so may well doom an American Empire to a fate like those of all the empires before us.