Obama channels Cheney and McCain | Juan Cole

Obama channels Cheney and McCain | Juan Cole:

"President Barack Obama may or may not be doing the right thing in Afghanistan, but the rationale he gave for it on Friday is almost certainly wrong. Obama has presented us with a 21st century version of the domino theory. The U.S. is not, contrary to what the president said, mainly fighting 'al-Qaida' in Afghanistan. In blaming everything on al-Qaida, Obama broke with his pledge of straight talk to the public and fell back on Bush-style boogeymen and implausible conspiracy theories."

Go read the whole thing, Juan Cole knows his stuff.

two new reads and off the computer...

Headed upstairs with Capitalism Beyond the Crisis By Amartya Sen and What You Can Learn from Reinhold Niebuhr By Brian Urquhart.

Okay I'll probably make a short stop to the couch to watch this PBS show on Ireland... in honor of the day I suppose...

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

Aljazeera English reports on the anxiety in the Arab world about Iran's increased power..

Juan Cole points out that "It is striking that Western anxieties about Iran often depict the regime as "medieval," but what they are really afraid of appears on the contrary to be Iranian modernity."

Chomsky on Obama

very telling...

from UN on the ground...

At least 30 killed in IDF strike on Gaza school; IDF: Troops fired in self-defense

"There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized," said John Ging, the top UN official in Gaza, blaming the international community for allowing the violence to continue.

"I am appealing to political leaders here and in the region and the world to get their act together and stop this," he said, speaking at Gaza's largest hospital. "They are responsible for these deaths."

spineless democrats....

It's time to redefine "pro-Israel"

Americans "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin (31-55%)." Yet Democratic party leaders like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are standing squarely behind the brutal Israeli offensive and the Bush administration has put the blame solely on Hamas and blocked a UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire. So far, only a couple of members of Congress have offered even the mildest criticism of Israel's actions.

that goes double for Obama's silence...

Israel Reminds Foes It Has Teeth

"This operation is an attempt to re-establish the perception that if you provoke or attack you are going to pay a disproportionate price.”

Why the shoe?

Could it be...

One shoe the living?
4 million Iraqis displaced since war began: Oxfam

The report by Oxfam and NCCI, a network of aid organizations working in Iraq, also highlighted other dire statistics:

Four million Iraqis regularly cannot buy enough food.
70 per cent are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50 per cent in 2003.
28 per cent of children are malnourished, compared to 19 per cent before the 2003 invasion.
92 per cent of Iraqi children suffer learning problems, mostly due to the climate of fear.

One shoe for the 151,000 dead?

The authors of the WHO/Iraqi study, published last night in the New England Journal of Medicine, say that the new number, which could be anywhere between 104,000 and 223,000 allowing for misreporting, "points to a massive death toll in the wake of the 2003 invasion and represents only one of the many health and human consequences of an ongoing humanitarian crisis".

I dunno...

but some folks are baffled...

Juan Williams: we destroyed your country, how dare you disrespect our leader!

Because Bush has been such a defender of the views of governments who were being responsive to public opinion

sigh....

good point

Juan Cole on the SOFA 2011 withdrawl date:

Whether the U.S. withdrawal will allow a resurgence of violence is a question we can't know the answer to. But it should be pointed out that, while the United States has been there, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, have died in violence. Entire cities have changed their social complexion through violence. There's been ongoing killing and destruction.

So the U.S. presence has not been a guarantee of social peace in any case.

If you are trying to keep Iran from pushing for nuclear...

Israel Drafting Blueprint for Iran Attack, Report Says
The U.S. should condemn this and bring other global powers together to sit down with Israel to discuss how we can help decrease their need for aggressive posturing with Iran which inflames the middle east and plays into the hands of the terrorists.

Its not even a smart move...

One Israeli defense official expressed doubt that a unilateral Israeli strike could destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities, which are geographically dispersed and some of which are underground.

“We could not risk an operation which would only partially succeed," the official said. "That would leave us open to a nuclear attack from Iran’s remaining weapons stock. Israel would likely need the support, the backing, of forces from a Western ally to successfully carry out the operation.”

global warming

In 2005, the World Health Organization estimated that global warming was already contributing to more than 150,000 deaths each year - 410 deaths every day. The toll could double by 2030. (Juliet Eilperin, ‘Climate Shift Tied To 150,000 Fatalities,’ Washington Post, November 17, 2005; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/16/AR2005111602197.html)

the economic crisis

The centre won’t hold any more

The West dominated world trade and power for two centuries, disrupting the pre-1800 more balanced international distribution of wealth and power. Now, the global balance is shifting to the East, and to primary producers of commodities worldwide

Study on US defense budget by Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

US Defense budget: Options and Choices for the Long Haul

The Bush Administration has requested $611 billion for national defense in fiscal year 2009. This includes $541 billion for the “base” defense budget — $518 billion for the Department of Defense, and $23 billion for Department of Energy and other defenserelated activities. The base defense budget is intended to cover the military’s longterm— essentially peace-time — force structure, readiness and modernization costs.

If approved, the 2009 request would bring the base defense budget to its highest level ever, in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. In addition, the 2009 request includes $66 billion in emergency supplemental appropriations for defense, as a partial down-payment on 2009 war-related costs. Eventually, additional 2009 funding — of at least tens of billions of dollars — will have to be provided to cover war-related costs for the full year.

The 2008 defense budget is the highest defense budget, in real terms, since the end
of World War II. Depending on how much funding is ultimately provided for military
operations, it is possible that the defense budget for 2009 (i.e., including the base
budget plus war-related funding) will end up being even higher.

Notwithstanding the recent buildup in defense spending, and the fact that, by historical standards, defense spending now accounts for a relatively small share of the economy, there is good reason to question whether spending for defense will continue to grow over the next two decades. There is also good reason to question the
affordability of the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) current long-term defense plan.

If it is not affordable, DoD will have to consider, as it has in the past, a range of options for eliminating this mismatch between likely future budget levels and the cost of implementing its existing long-term plans.

Reagan's Defense Buildup Bridged Military Eras
Huge Budgets Brought Life Back to Industry

The Reagan defense buildup was a hallmark of his presidency, a free-spending crusade that lifted the nation's military industry out of the doldrums after the Vietnam War. He created a war-machine economy in a time of uneasy peace, with defense spending in amounts not seen since the heights of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts and sustained for longer than either of those wars.