Helpless, helpless

The United States has, by far, the largest military establishment in the world.  Our expenditures are roughly equal to the next fourteen world powers combined.  China and Russia, together, spend only 30% of what we spend.

That level of expenditure might be justified if our military actually accomplished anything, but it really hasn't been good for much lately.  Some may argue that "lately" goes back half a century or so, but let's start by looking a lot more "lately" than that.

Not even factoring in all the lost lives, and the contributions they might have made to our society, Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to add up to $4 trillion — when you add in the costs of caring for the injured and disabled, and the interest on the debt we accrued to fight in those countries.  Hell, we're still paying the social and psychological costs of Vietnam — and we lost that one too.

Yes, that's what I said.  We lost.

Iraq's Shi'a government — thoroughly corrupt, aggressively purging Sunnis, hostile towards the Kurds, and not even remotely recognizable as democratic — looks like a good bet to become Iran's closest ally.  Afghanistan, as any student of history might have predicted, will return to it's natural condition of tribal-warlord-dominated-failed-state-locked-in-perpetual-civil-war.  Nobody even can guess what will transpire in Pakistan, but it doesn't look too hopeful for the USofA.  Great job, America!

Then there's Syria — not to mention Libya, Egypt, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and an host of other severely challenged not-quite-states — places where even the most ambitious American generals fear to tread.  And, no, we can't get away with invading Venezuela or Bolivia or Peru, and our military is useless against provocations by Russia or China (despite our commitments to Japan, Georgia, and the Philippines.)  What good is a huge, bloated military if you can't even use it?

(Okay, Clinton managed to get the Balkans back to where they were, more or less, before World War I — but, as you may recall, that "balkanized" region was where World War I started.  All Obama does is launch drone attacks, which is kind of like using laser beams against the flies buzzing around those starving babies' eyes.)

Does global capitalism need a powerful army to protect its interests around the world?  It seems to think it does — but why in hell should you and I pay for it?  Let global capitalism hire Eric Prince and whatever he's calling Blackwater these days — and pay for the protection, extortion, and intimidation without putting it's grasping tentacles in our pockets.


Oh — and, yeah...  Happy New Year.

Terminology: the "Democrat Party"

One of the simplest ways to distinguish a rational conservative from a doctrinaire, rabidly politicized right winger is by the way they refer to the "enemy." Reasonable and respectful conservatives (who value good manners) refer to their adversaries as the "Democratic Party." For the others, the locution, inevitably, is the "Democrat Party." Since the 1940s, the noun to adjective transformation has been regarded as less-than-subtle-but-still-deniable slur by most observers — although when used by George W. Bush, it was widely regarded as an indication of semi-literacy. Much the same can be said for its use by Sarah Palin — but when used by John Boehner and Charles Grassley, idiocy is not a sufficiently viable excuse.

Far be it from me to maintain that the Democratic Party — much less the Republican Party — might in any way be truly small-d "democratic." They both could change their names to "the Plutocrat Party," thereby clearing up any remaining confusion and better satisfying truth-in-advertising regulations. Nevertheless, I have a suggestion for such Democrats who have adopted the term "Teabaggers," as well as others who still refrain from references to gay sexual tomfoolery in their policy statements.

I suggest the term, 'Publicans. I doubt that most rank-and-file right-wingers will associate the word with the owners and hosts of British taverns, since few are familiar with British English (and even some of their leaders continue to struggle with American English.) On the other hand, a great many social conservatives, at least, will know the word from their Bibles — where "publicans" refers to private contractors employed by the Roman Empire "who erected or maintained public buildings, supplied armies overseas, or collected certain taxes, particularly those supplying fluctuating amounts of revenue to the state." (Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2008)

It fits. Dick Cheney and his sock puppet W went a long way towards the further privatization of war, not content with the vast size of the military-industrial complex they inherited from earlier administrations. Think of Xe (Blackwater). Think of Halliburton. Think of the privatized toll roads in states like Texas and Indiana. Think of the proposals to privatize Social Security.

Rome, you may recall, came to depend on an outsourced military — while entertaining the plebeian population with gladiatorial combat and FOX news — only to fall into chaos.

Okay, they didn't have FOX news, but I think you get the idea. Rome — replete with corruption, greed, and extreme sports — inevitably fell.

(Well, at least Rome provided bread along with the circuses. The 'Publicans think that's just a waste of good privatized wealth.)

Afghanistan, again...

Well, I sure was wrong about Hillary!

My mistakes include a couple of retrospectively dumb assumptions: first, that a reasonably intelligent person who remembers Vietnam would not want to repeat it; and, second, that since Hillary's chance of ever being President is down in the low single digits now, she no longer feels obliged to be so goddamned butch.

Silly me. It's not as if I never heard of cognitive dissonance theory — it's just that I wanted to think better of her than she deserves. Look back at my pre-election posts, and you can explain it with cognitive dissonance theory.

So, now, the rational elements of the Democratic party find themselves wondering if lining up behind a majority of their constituents and doing the right thing in Afghanistan remains rational if it means lining up behind Joe Biden. Joe Biden is not nearly as butch as Hillary. Joe Biden, unlike his boss, is not terribly adept at working the press. Joe Biden is just... he's just right.

...

Meanwhile, here on Long Island — and, to be sure, everywhere else in the United States — our public schools and suburban neighborhoods are being flooded with cheap, high quality heroin. For some odd reason or another, nobody in the mainstream press seems to be relating that to the vast increase in opium production in Afghanistan in recent years. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just kind of seems like the two might be related.

Some who are familiar with my solution to both the Afghanistan problem and the heroine problem — going directly to the warlords and outbidding all competitors for the raw opium — seem to think it's just my characteristic cynicism in action. Okay, I am characteristically cynical — but this idea can work.

So, over the weekend, I'll send out another batch of fax messages to various Persons in Power, for all the good that will do. Mostly, though, I'll hope that somebody that somebody in power actually might listen to came up with the same idea — and that somebody in power actually listens.

Turning point?

"Comes the revolution," my mother used to say, imitating her grandfather's Yiddish accent, "we'll all eat pitches and krim."

It was my introduction to irony, and, as a young child, I totally didn't get it. We ate peaches (canned) and cream (sour) as often as we liked -- and George Washington had won the revolution way back in olden times. I caught on later, though, in the sixties, when my radical friends and I were busy changing the world -- and it seems that Mom first heard the phrase from great-grandpa back in the thirties, when she and her radical friends were busy changing the world.

A sizable chunk of the population of the United States seems to think the revolution will be starting tomorrow, at the Obama inauguration -- to which I reply, "pitches and krim." Disappointment, I'm afraid, is inevitable. George Washington really did win the revolution -- the bourgeois revolution -- way back in "olden times," and the plutocrats have been firmly in charge ever since.

This is not to say that some revolutionary change didn't take place in the thirties, with the coming of welfare capitalism, or in the sixties, with the expansion of the welfare state and the gains accomplished for civil rights. It's just that the changes didn't match the expectations. They never do.

So what can we expect of Obama? Anybody who's been paying attention can see that while he speaks like an idealist, his actions are guided entirely by pragmatism. He will not expend "political capital" fighting the health care lobby, so we will not have the single-payer health insurance system we so desperately need. He will not stand up to the financial industry, weakened as it is, so we will continue the long-standing practice of socializing losses and privatizing profits. (Yes, taxpayers, you soon will own a shitload of "toxic assets.") He will not instruct his Justice Department to prosecute the leaders of the outgoing administration for war crimes, and he's likely to entagle us in Afghanistan just as thoroughly and painfully as Kennedy entangled us in Vietnam.

I think the best we can hope for is the reversal of some of the catastrophic mistakes of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II -- although nearly thirty years of free-market excess aided and abetted by government is not likely to disappear in eight, despite the clear failure of Milton Friedman/Alan Greenspan economics. Still, all of us can be happy that The Worst President In The History Of The United States Of America will no longer be around to make things even worse.

Is that enough of a "turning point" for you? I hope so.

Why "Warriors?"

When the Washington Post exposed the dreadful conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the military response was to create something called "warrior transition units," intended to quickly and efficiently deliver excellent care to the wounded. The program, understaffed and underfunded, turns out to be yet another example of what veterans of World War II call a "snafu."

The name of the program got me to thinking -- when did soldiers and marines become "warriors?" I'm pretty sure it was a branding decision designed by some advertising firm to bolster enlistments in the all-volunteer army, and I believe use of the term really took off after the invasion of Iraq, when recruiting became more and more difficult.

It makes perfect (advertising) sense, of course. The term "soldier" might lead one to think of Beetle Bailey, Gomer Pyle, or Forest Gump. Soldiers march on parade fields, obey orders, and pull KP duty. It's not an especially romantic image. A "warrior," on the other hand, is more like Conan the Barbarian, or the Mel Gibson character in Braveheart. He's big and bad and scary. No eighteen-year-old boy, raised on movie violence and video games, wants to be Gomer when he can be Conan.

The big problem I see with the "warrior" branding decision, though, is that the military seems to have bought into its own ad campaign. "Warriors" don't get PTSD. When Schwarzenegger is wounded, he cauterizes his own wound with a knife heated in his campfire and fights on until, ten minutes later on, his injury miraculously disappears. Warriors don't suffer permanent disabilities. They may sport a sexy scar or an eye patch, but they always fight to the death. Disabilities, physical or psychological, don't figure into the equation.

The "image" doesn't match the facts, of course. Thanks to better body armor and battlefield medical care, nearly eight American fighters are wounded for every one killed -- as compared to four to one in Vietnam and less than two to one in World War II. Military leaders have these statistics, of course, but still continue to greatly underestimate the numbers who will need treatment -- often protracted treatment -- when they return from overseas.

Will a change in nomenclature make any real difference in the way the military and the VA treat wounded veterans? Probably not -- but I still believe the "warrior" designation should be dropped. Back in 1947, the United States changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense -- a change many considered Orwellian, but which also reflected a real change in public wants and needs following the vicissitudes of World War II. Defense was necessary, but war was something to be avoided.

The role of a "warrior" is to fight wars -- offensive as well as defensive. "Warriors" were necessary to fight Bush's war of choice in Iraq, and the military filled the need with an appeal to the aggressive, anarchic components of the young male psyche. Now that a substantial majority of Americans realize they were conned into fighting a useless, wasteful, self-destructive war of choice by a cabal of greedy, self serving liars, the need for "warriors" is over -- not only in the ranks, but also among the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

If we're going to have an all-volunteer, professional military, the most important criterion for service should be professionalism. No broadsword waving, blood lusting, face painted, testosterone driven refugees from M-rated video games need apply.