Why We Fight - Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, we explored some of the many reasons that the United States inserts itself militarily into world affairs. That favored approach to foreign policy is essentially a top-down methodology in which the US interacts with a regime at the government/state level and the effects of that interaction eventually flow down to the people of that country. There are numerous examples from the last hundred years that show this methodology to be flawed and Iraq is only the latest instance. The policy of doing what is right for American interests, and the rest of the world be damned, has not achieved the goals that so many thought it would, namely security and prosperity.

Is there an alternative to fighting wars for US capitalism? An alternative that could not only serve the interests of Americans, but for the rest of the world too? I believe there is and it calls for a bottom-up approach to foreign policy that eschews the status quo needs of corporations. Deal with the people of the world directly. Do not interfere or topple their governments. This doesn't mean we should help people overthrow their governments - it means we should help them improve their lives by becoming healthier and more prosperous, and being sincere in our approach. In other words, a selfless approach to foreign policy. You're probably thinking "wow, this is really pie in the sky stuff." I know, but I'm an idealist and clearly not grounded in reality!

One could argue that the United States already has several government programs that are modeled on this approach. While that is true to an extent, these programs don't represent the focal point of US foreign policy. They also aren't entirely selfless as they are often sponsored by the interests of pharmaceutical companies and oil companies, and thus benefit those entities over the people they purport to help.

The likelihood of such a foreign policy focus coming to fruition is low. Case in point is demonstrated by this article from the Washington Post describing how a report from the US Surgeon General was blocked for political reasons. According to the Post:

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.

This sounds exactly like the kind of focus I was calling for, yet it's been blocked by a bureaucrat with long standing ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney because the document wasn't political. And that is the crux of the problem. Everything must be political in Washington today. If a program doesn't concern itself with keeping Bush and Republicans in power, then it isn't a program worth doing. Maintaining power is at the top of the priority list; somewhere down around 900 on that list is doing the right thing for the world.

Yet doing the right thing for the world might ultimately be the best thing for America. World perception of the US would be far more favorable and our credibility would be restored. Too bad it will never happen.

To Impeach Or Not To Impeach?

I'm currently reading Glenn Greenwald's "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Versus Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency" and it's become even more apparent to me that President Bush must go sooner rather than later. Greenwald's main premise is that the Bush Presidency views all things in a good and evil mentality, and that all decisions are based on this binary system. You are either Good or you are Evil. There is no middle ground and there are no other motivations for actions other than these two simple choices. It's difficult to disagree with the premise as you hear these very words in nearly every speech the president delivers where he puts himself and America squarely on the side of Good in the eternal battle against Evil.

What is beyond frightening is that the leader of the most militarily powerful nation in the world is so much of a simpleton that he believes that Good and Evil are the only forces at work in the world, and hence bases all of his decisions on this black and white criteria. And by placing himself on the side of Good, he is justified in taking any action, including violation of long established laws and usurping powers never intended for the Executive Branch, in his crusade against Evil. By doing so, Mr. Bush has created the paradox of protecting our way of life by systematically destroying it. According to his actions, freedoms and protections afforded to the American people by the Constitution are now luxuries we can no longer afford in the battle against Evil. To an educated person, this makes absolutely no sense at all. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush is not an educated man and he is incapable of any serious reflection on the impact of his decisions on America and the world at large. He simply continues along in his mission against Evil, and believing that we, the American people, do not understand his place in history.

In the midst of all of this, the Democratic leadership in the US Congress has been making some effort to end the war in Iraq with lackluster results. An obstructionist Republican minority and several Democrats of the Republican-lite variety have made this legislative body an unfortunate bystander in the course of history that Mr. Bush has selected for America. Still, the Democratic leadership can't see the forest for the trees. They treat the Iraq war as the only issue on the table, and while it is very important, they are missing the bigger picture. Mr. Bush's vision for a new world order goes beyond Iraq. It goes beyond Iran. It is a global struggle of Good versus Evil and America's place in that struggle. Congress must wake up and deal with this. And the only way to do that is to deal with Mr. Bush himself. He must be removed from office as soon as humanly possible. Every day that he remains in office, his decisions continually damage the world and America's place in it.

While there has been more of a groundswell of public support for the impeachment of the president, there is little to no momentum for this in Congress. Why is that? Well, I received two answers to that question from my own Congressional representative - one explicit answer and one implied. The explicit answer was that "Congress should focus on putting an end to the war." I agree that that is a focus that Congress should have, but as stated above, it's only part of the problem. It also suggests to me that Congress can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Why can't impeachment and efforts to stop the Iraq war go on simultaneously? In fact, impeaching the president would probably greatly assist in ending the war in Iraq as well as his stopping his Good versus Evil approach to world affairs. Seems like a win-win situation to me.

However, the real reason we aren't seeing any movement on impeachment by lawmakers is starkly revealed by this quote from my representative - "Unlike my Republican counterparts, I do not take the act of impeachment lightly." And there it is as plain as day for anyone to see. The Democrats are so afraid that the Conservative spin machine will say that they are politicizing the impeachment process because that is exactly what the Republicans did to Bill Clinton in 1998. If the shoe were on the other foot, do you think the Republicans would hesitate to impeach a Democratic president under these same circumstances? Of course not - we'd be knee deep in impeachment procedures right now. Yet the Democrats are more concerned with how they will be perceived rather than the fate of the nation. That's sad because now they have a perception problem among those people who should be their base, like me. It's simple cowardice, and our nation will pay for it through the continuation of Mr. Bush's legacy. He will continue to apply his simplistic world view on all his decisions. He will continue to break the law in the name of Good versus Evil. He will continue to bleed this country dry of able young men and financial resources. And finally, he will continue to destroy America's legacy and its place in the world. To impeach or not to impeach? That is the question, and the answer is rather obvious to me.

The Disappointment And The Fury

Like many progressives, I'm extremely disappointed with Congress' capitulation on Thursday to the President on funding for the war in Iraq. My disappointment has morphed into fury as I think about how the Democratic Party once again refused to do what's right, and instead chose a political maneuver that only serves to protect them from criticism from the White House. Well, President Bush will criticize them anyway, and the Democrats have merely confirmed their role in Washington as cowardly doormats. Too many of them fell for the bogus argument that not supporting funding means not supporting the troops – an intellectually bogus assertion which I addressed previously.

Of course, being from Massachusetts, I have no quibble with our Congressional delegation. They all voted No on the bill. However, many other Democrats in both the Senate and House chose to give the President what he wanted – a bill with no timetables for withdrawal. Many of these Democrats are truly Democrats in name only and instead would be more accurately described as Republican-lite. How can we possibly trust this cadre of Democrats when it comes to standing up to the White House in the future? Answer: We can't.

Over the years, I've given money to the Democratic Party. Admittedly, it hasn't been a lot of money, but it was some. Shame on me. I've been duped and I should have known better. Well, I won't be repeating that mistake in order to support a party that has no courage, no convictions, and no sense of right and wrong. I can't wait to get that next tele-marketing call from the DNC. The person on the other end of the line won't be a policy maker, but he or she will get an earful anyway.

This whole episode confirms my belief that this country is totally screwed and that there's no way back. It's quite depressing actually. Big corporations own America and its policies. From oil to finance, our government simply acts as their servants rather than the servants of those who actually elected them, and there doesn't appear to be a single candidate out there who is ready to address that situation. As I said, it's quite depressing.

Why We Fight

Why do we fight? It's an interesting question and one that is being more thoughtfully evaluated by the American public as the war in Iraq lingers. It is also a question that is examined by the 2005 documentary entitled "Why We Fight" which approaches the topic based on President Eisenhower's farewell speech warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex and its potential threat to democracy. It's an excellent film and one that I highly recommend especially based on what we know about Iraq today.

So why do we fight? In 2007, one is likely to get a greater variety of responses to that question than if it had been posed in early 2003. Four years ago, the prevailing wisdom was that we fight for freedom, democracy and the American way of life. That's exactly how the Bush administration wanted the American people to respond in the post-9/11 era. The real answers to why we fight were evident in 2003, and in 2001 and all the way back to the 1960's, but they were concealed by a shroud of patriotism and extra-nationalistic purpose for America. Since World War II, many political elites have believed that America's role in world affairs was to spread and protect democracy through whatever means required including covert operations and the use of military force. In the film, Senator John McCain espouses this exact philosophy although he also warns of the dangers of overstepping into imperialism.

With the Bush Administration's waning credibility on the war, that shroud has been removed and average Americans are perhaps for the first time beginning to see the nefarious reasons for American war-making. Fewer and fewer people are spouting the jingoistic arguments of 2003 as credible reasons for the invasion of Iraq. A realization is emerging that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th and that the invasion was unrelated to the War on Terror. "Why We Fight" examines President Eisenhower's prescient warning to the American people about the military-industrial complex and adds a third element to the alliance between the Pentagon and the Defense Industry: Congress. The US Congress has been totally complicit in the dominance of the military-industrial complex in American politics to such a point that there is never a question of whether we should be spending money on the military, but rather how much should we spend and can it be spent in my district.

The conclusion of Mr. Eisenhower's warning was that the emergence of the military-industrial complex would force the needs of capitalism to supplant those of democracy. The needs of corporations, both military and fossil fuel related, now control the foreign policy of the United States. Iraq is the latest and most glaring example of this corporate foreign policy in action with the war creating opportunities for defense contractors such as Halliburton, and opportunities for fossil fuel companies in a country with the world's second largest oil reserves.

Of course, the military-industrial complex has also cemented the image of America as a beacon of good for the world in the collective minds of Americans and that in order to accomplish our mission of helping the world, American forces need to be deployed throughout the world. But has this policy truly been effective? American intervention in the affairs of other nations (Iran, Guatemala, Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, just to name a few) has created more anti-US sentiment rather than good feelings toward America in the last 50 to 60 years. One reason for that is that American intervention has been driven through the needs of US interests rather than doing the right thing for the world. American foreign policy since World War II has been designed to keep America as the dominant world power both militarily and economically without regard for the rest of the world. The ironic thing is that now that the façade of our global mission has been smashed, America stands on the verge of losing its place in the world and the very policy that was designed to keep us there is responsible for our fall. Ah, the irony.

Economically, Asia is poised to displace the US at the top of the food chain. The United States no longer manufactures anything. Electronics, clothing, footwear are all made overseas. Our economy is dominated by financial institutions, defense and oil, and our government's spending reflects these priorities rather than the needs of our society. Eisenhower attempted to tell the nation how much defense armaments cost American society by equating the costs in social terms (the cost of a missile equals the cost of a certain number of new homes for Americans). One can only imagine what our country would look like today if we had heeded Mr. Eisenhower's warning. And what would the world be like?

Part 2 of this post: What's the alternative to fighting?

Supporting The Troops And Supporting The War

I had been meaning to write on the topic of the alleged inseparability of supporting the war and supporting the troops for some time, and now that the Boston Globe's excuse for a conservative columnist has weighed in on the subject, it's given me renewed vigor to discuss this. The fact is that this is just another example of a conservative verbal bear trap that is a non-issue and is easier to discuss than the real issues at hand. With that being said, let's delve into the fallacy of the "issue" regardless.

So, are supporting the troops and supporting the war inseparable and one in the same? Is it possible to support the troops, but not support the war? The latter is the question at hand as the debate in the US House of Representatives has been focused on the conflict in Iraq and what to do about President Bush's plan for a "surge" in troops. Democrats have been tip-toeing around the minefield of anti-war rhetoric and are being careful not to suggest in any way that they don't support US troops in the field. Yet, is that really an issue? Let's remember that this is Mr. Bush's war, and one of his choosing. The troops did not choose to go to Iraq to start this conflict. They are merely doing Mr. Bush's dirty work as ordered. For all we now know about the lying and distortion of intelligence in the run-up to war, it's dishonest to suggest that the military had any say at all in the mission. So this war is not the troops' war, it is Mr. Bush's and his alone.

The conflation of supporting the troops and supporting the war goes back to the start of the Iraq War, if not before, when Americans started putting ribbon style magnets with the slogan "Support our troops" on their cars. The magnets themselves were a brilliant idea and they fed perfectly into creating a verbal trap for any war dissenters. Did placing a magnet on your car mean that you supported the war? Maybe, but the magnet didn't say "Support the invasion of Iraq". No, it said something that no American in a post-Vietnam War era wanted to disagree with - support our troops. That was the brilliance of the slogan. Who in their right mind would not support our volunteer American forces? And by placing it on your car, you weren't explicitly saying that you supported the war in Iraq, but in reality you were.

Now the verbal trap has been sprung. House Democrats are finally able to do something in opposition of Mr. Bush's war, and the conservative spin machine has gone into action so as to put them in a bind. If you're against the war, you're against the troops and you want them to fail. If you cut off funding for the war, you'll be cutting off the funding for our troops and presumably they'll start dying of hunger in the Iraqi desert.

These assertions are ridiculous, of course. One could easily suggest that the best way to support the troops is to get them out of a futile situation in which they have become nothing more than target practice in the middle of a civil war. If there is any failure to be associated with the invasion of Iraq, the blame for it clearly sits in the White House, not with the military and the troops. It's questionable whether the latest stated goals in Iraq are even achievable militarily.

To go further, how can one possibly suggest that supporting the troops entails sending more into Baghdad so that even more of our brave youth can go to their deaths on Mr. Bush's watch? Does supporting the troops mean extending the tours of regular servicemen and National Guard troops beyond their commitments so that they too can continue the facade? Troops who are exhausted and have been separated from their families for an extended period of time that goes beyond what this nation should be asking of them - this doesn't sound like supporting the troops to me. It sounds like supporting the war. The conservatives who cloak their support of the war with the declaration that they are supporting the troops are simply using those troops as human shields to protect their irrational arguments to continue the war. That is dishonest debate, but it is what has become of America since the early '90s.

So in the spirit of being candid on the topic, here is what to do in Iraq. End the war immediately and bring the troops home. History will declare the war to be a failure, but the blame should not lie with the military. For that, pay a visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and ask for Mr. Bush. He's the one you want to see when assessing what has gone so wrong over the last 4 years.

Atheism and Popular Misconceptions

With the war on Christmas over for another year (anyone know who's winning?), it's a good time to review some of the many misconceptions about atheists that exist in the public domain. One of the most popular misconceptions being pushed by the likes of Bill O'Reilly and the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby is that atheists (or secular progressives as O'Reilly likes to refer to them) are trying to eradicate Judeo-Christian references from American public life. A massive secularist-atheist conspiracy against all religion is afoot and it's a terrible threat to our society. Christmas cards that don't mention Christmas, retailers saying "Happy Holidays", and nativity scenes banned from public grounds are all signs of the vast left-wing plot. So naturally, we should expose the men behind this nefarious conspiracy? Ah, but this is where the assertion that such a conspiracy exists breaks down. While religious conservatives may throw out the names of various individuals (George Soros) and organizations (ACLU), it amounts to nothing more than mud-slinging.

It's true that Christmas has morphed into a more secular holiday over the last 40 years, but that hasn't been the work of atheists. In fact, the largest contributor to the secularization of Christmas is one of the tenets of American society today - Capitalism. Capitalism, and more specifically retailers, has transformed Christmas into a gift-giving bonanza for children and family, and has completely de-emphasized the traditional meaning of Christmas. Christmas in America has nothing to do with Jesus - it's all about shopping and Santa Claus. Some retail chains base their whole year on the Christmas season, so why should they restrict themselves to just Christians and Christmas? Why not entice people of all faiths to come in during November and December to shop for their loved ones? Thus was born the religiously neutral "Happy Holidays" - a term of inclusion, rather than exclusion as Bill O'Reilly would like you to believe. Capitalism is blind with respect to religion so the secularization of the Holiday season makes perfect sense. Everyone can now take part whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa or Festivus, you too can shop to your heart's content. The American Christmas Holiday - brought to you by Wal-Mart, Sears, Best Buy, Macy's, Target, and your local mall.

Another popular misconception about atheism is that if religion is removed from society, there will be no system for determining right and wrong. This is a favorite of many religious conservatives in their argument for the necessity of religion, but it is a baseless claim. Many religions teach and promote ethical behavior, but these religions did not invent the standards by which we define right and wrong. At the core of the issue is how we as humans are exposed to the definition and standard of right and wrong, and the answer is through family and community. Families and Communities are our basic units of human interaction. This interaction creates a society and the society defines the standards of behavior that it believes to be correct. Some societies may be religious and some may not be. The standards of right and wrong are applied by the family and community units regardless of religion. When you were a child, who taught you more about right and wrong, your parents or your clergyman? I suspect that the answer is the former.

In his December 13, 2006 column in the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby states that "... without God, the difference between good and evil becomes purely subjective." Reversing that statement says that with God, the difference between good and evil is objective. Yet Jacoby doesn't really tell us much about the objective difference between good and evil other than to cite the ethical standards as defined by Judeo-Christian monotheism as the saving grace for the world (I guess other world religions don't have the "correct" definition of good and evil). "Thou shalt not kill" - that seems fairly objective and probably simple enough to have been adhered to before monotheism became popular, but this is one of the tenets of ethical behavior ascribed to the Judeo-Christian God. However, Jacoby wrote in his column some time after the 2004 Tsunami in Asia that killed 230,000 people that he believed that God sent the tsunami for some purpose, but he didn't know what it was. Was that objective, ethical behavior on God's part? Is it acceptable for God to kill, but not man?

It's easy to poke holes in the arguments of religious conservatives who continue to press for more religion in our lives because they seldom have any basis in fact or logic. However, Jacoby has a moment of clarity when he states "the atheist alternative is a world in which right and wrong are ultimately matters of opinion, and in which we are finally accountable to no one but ourselves." While I don't believe that the difference between right and wrong is a matter of opinion, but is instead defined by families and communities, the second part of his statement is dead on accurate. We are most certainly accountable to no one but ourselves, yet that is a reality that religious leaders don't want you to grasp for fear of it ending their power over millions of people. Do you think it's possible that ethical behavior would improve if humanity learned that we are responsible for ourselves and not accountable to some mythical being defined by ancestors who have long past? Perhaps, perhaps.