Someone gave a proper order to a few very current events

Chris Floyd had the honor:

The uprising in Egypt on Tuesday is of infinitely greater importance than the goon show staged by the corporate-lackey-in-chief and the great mooing herd of cud-chewers in Congress the same night. For decades, the remarkably brutal — and rottenly stagnant — dictatorship in Egypt has been one of linchpins of Washington's never-ending effort to "project dominance" over the Middle East. If the Cairo regime falls to a popular revolution, it will send shock waves all through the world-spanning tentacles of the American Empire.

So, while Barack Obama exhorted Americans to suck it up and to firmly grab their bootstraps — "The future is ours to win." and "It [the future] has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle and meet the demands of a new age." — parts of the world were then forcing the American Eagle to retract his claws.

Blowback? Yes, indeed! Expected? Yes, at least by some. Welcomed? Yes, by many, for retrenchment of this kind is both inevitable and timely. It's inevitable because the United States cannot afford to engage forever in wars of conquest and pacification, especially since these will remain wars which it will never truly win. This incapacity can be explained by the fact that both global political and military power presuppose a globally significant economic power by the country that would be a world power. Yet having economic power of this magnitude is something which America can only watch dissipate while this economic power passes eastward from its hands to China and India's. It's timely because, for decades, America's global empire garroted America's modestly democratic institutions while it has also wasted the lives of millions of Americans and millions more of those targeted by Uncle Sam's juggernaut. Americans should never forget that the United States was the Rogue State in the world, one that was too powerful to resist by most of the Lilliputians who confronted it. Fortunately, successfully resisting the Rogue Power has since become a feasible goal for those willing to fight and die for their political project. This is their moment. This is America's descent to a condition of unexceptional existence.

As his speech neared its conclusion, Obama the myth-monger (on which, see this, this, this, this, this) exclaimed, "We do big things." Indeed, America has done many big things over the course of its history. In making this claim Obama clearly meant to convey to his audiences that he was hopeful about the future. Nevertheless, America will fail spectacularly simply because it does so many things in a very big way, as Floyd suggests in his conclusion:

Poor Barack. Not that long ago, he was taking the world stage in Cairo, with a speech that offered a "new start" in relations to the regions — empty words which have long since proved to have been just another part of the vicious deceptions currently being exposed by al Jazeera. Now Cairo is ablaze with the promise of a genuine new start, driven by the needs of ordinary people, not the greeds of the elite. More than ever, Obama looks like yesterday's man, abandoned by history as it sweeps forward, leaving him mired with the goons and the loons, fighting a rearguard action to save the pomps and privileges of a rotting empire.

This article was cross-posted at FireDogLake

A Swedish WikiLeaks documentary video

On the abyss awaiting Uncle Sam

Writing for TomDispatch, historian Alfred McCoy offers a disturbing prognosis of America's near-term future:

A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don't bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration's rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.

But have no doubt: when Washington's global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society, regularly bringing at least a generation of economic privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often sparking serious domestic unrest.

McCoy's essay is a long one, and the whole of it is worth reading if for no other reason than for the interested reader to experience the clarity, realism and good sense present within his analysis, an experience which contrasts nicely with the shock commonly produced by the talk and deeds performed by the arrogant madmen and women who make up America's 'natural aristocracy'. Empires, to be sure, are seldom happy, and not one has proven to be eternal. They tend to end unhappily, usually as a result of a war. The City on the Hill — God's Country — will share in that common fate, and McCoy's essay only depicts a feasible future that would render that fate actual.

As for myself, I only wonder about (fear!) the kind of political system our natural aristocrats, conceited as we know them to be, will produce once they realize they are global anachronisms and worthless in their homeland. I bet the next polity will not be a democracy!

Originally published at FireDogLake.

Another day, another promise broken

Charlie Savage, reporting for the New York Times, states that:

Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.

The significance of this tactic was not lost on Glenn Greenwald, who stated:

So that appears to be a consensus: Guantanamo — the closing of which was one of Obama's central campaign promises — will still be open as of 2013, by which point many of the detainees will have been imprisoned for more than a decade without charges of any kind and without any real prospect for either due process or release, at least four of those years under a President who was elected on a commitment to close that camp and restore the rule of law. [emphasis in the original]

LangDetectde>en YahooC

Guantánamo

Obama affirms civilian authority

Earlier today Barack Obama fired — accepted the resignation of — General Stanley McChrystal, thereby sending a signal to the public at large and to the fractious members of America's military elite that insubordination remains intolerable.

For what it is worth, and it is worth a lot given the undeniable importance of civilian control over the military, it is clear that America's accommodating President acted within the limits of his competence and with the foresight needed to secure the boundary which separates the political branches of the government from the technical powers allotted to the Pentagon. McChrystal's insubordination was neither his first (see this and this) nor trivial given his command. Forgiveness for McChrystal was a legally and political dubious choice which the President soundly refused.

The McChrystal interview is now online

Rolling Stone serves the public here.

As Uncle Sam heads towards chaos

Tom Englehardt believes that "…we've finally entered the Soviet era in America." What might Englehardt mean by this? He wishes to suggest that the elite in the United States has committed many of the same blunders committed by the Soviet gerontocracy as it destroyed the empire Stalin had built. One lesson the prudent would draw from the Soviet experience: Monumentalism run amok can entail a monumental disaster sometime down the road.

A God has cursed it

Afghanistan will never again know freedom

The New York Times provides us with the grim news:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.

The Afghanis have long known bitter war even though their place was believed to be little more than an impoverished wasteland. The wasteland, it appears, can yield a better fruit than opium. It is thus not hard to imagine the fate that awaits Afghanistan now that the Superpower can plunder it without organized opposition. If one believed riches to be a good without qualification, Afghanistan's future will likely debunk that belief.

Four dead in Ohio

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the Kent State Massacre. A state terrorist event, the Kent State victims were shot while protesting the Cambodian invasion authorized by President Richard Nixon or while lucklessly finding themselves in the neighborhood of the crime. Student antiwar protests followed the Massacre and the event solidified civilian opposition to the Vietnam War. The Nixon administration treated the Massacre as a warning signal which dissidents ought to heed.

The somewhat obscure Jackson State Massacre would take place a mere ten days after the Kent State Massacre. Two died and twelve were injured. Jackson State College was a historically black institution in Jackson, Mississippi.

The failed center-left in the United States

Chris Hedges confronts reality:

Guns? Yes! But not a cent for butter

The always interesting Chris Floyd wrote:

The American elite's unbounded, unquestioned, indeed unconscious sense of imperial entitlement and dominance — based ultimately on war, the threat of war and the profit from war — is one of the defining characteristics of our age.

Indeed it is. Immense is the price Americans and others pay to give substance to this illusion:

Yet the ending of the imperial wars and the dismantling of America's global military empire — and its global gulag — would save trillions of dollars in the coming years. Not only from direct military spending, but also from the vastly reduced need for "Homeland security" funding in a world where the United States was no longer invading foreign lands, killing their people, supporting their tyrants — and inciting revenge and resistance.

Demilitarization would provide Americans with a peace dividend now that they need it most:

This would release a flood of money for any number of "new domestic initiatives," while also giving scope for deep tax cuts across the board. Working people would thrive, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable would be bettered, businesses would grow, opportunity would expand, the care and education of our children would be greatly enhanced, our infrastructure could be repaired and strengthened, our environment better cleansed and cared for. In short, people could keep more of their own money while government spending could be directed toward improving the quality of life of all the nation's citizens.

Is this path a realistic one in which common Americans might place their hopes? In part, yes, Floyd argues:

This is no utopian vision. Many problems, much suffering would remain. But it would be a better society — more humane, more just, more secure, more peaceful, more prosperous than it is now. Such an alternative is entirely achievable, by ordinary humans; it would require no divine miracles, no god-like heroes to bring it about.

Whereas American demilitarization and empire disavowal may be intrinsically possible, it need not be feasible:

But such a society is precisely what our elites cannot — or, to be more accurate, will not — imagine. Because, yes, it would "erode" their "influence" around the world to some extent. Although they would still be comfortable, coddled and privileged, they could no longer merge their individual psyches with the larger entity of a globe-spanning, death-dealing empire — a connection which, although itself a projection of their own brains, gives them a forever-inflated sense of worth and importance.

Nemesis follows hubris, though. Unfortunately, common Americans will suffer more from empire's dénouement than will those who now sit at its apex.

Don’t blame me…

I voted for Nader website

Establishment essayist talks turkey about Obama’s war

Bob Herbert of the New York Times recently pointed out that:

A clash is coming [over the Obama administration's Afghanistan policy]. President Obama may be reconsidering his idea of substantially increasing the number of American troops, but no one at the higher echelons of government is suggesting that anything other than a long, hard, tragic and expensive campaign lies ahead — with no promise of ultimate victory, or even a serious definition of what would constitute victory.

According to Herbert, Americans will have another pointless war to endure, one which the elite who authorized and will prosecute the war cannot rationally justify. And, it will likely produce annoying blowback events just as it predecessors had.

Herbert continues:

The public has not been prepared for a renewed big-time, long-haul effort in Afghanistan. And if American casualties increase substantially, support for the war will diminish that much more. There is very little tolerance in the U.S. for the reality of war, which is why the images in the media are so sanitized. The public's concept of warfare, for the most part, is the product of Hollywood movies about the heroics of the so-called Greatest Generation, and video games.

This disconnect between what the public is expecting, or willing to accept, regarding the war in Afghanistan and what the White House and the Pentagon are in fact planning is vast. Americans want their politicians to concentrate on the economy here at home. After the long, sad experience in Iraq, and the worst economic shock since the Depression, they are not up for extended combat and endless nation-building in Afghanistan.

In other words, Herbert believes that American public in general wants its sitting government to produce outcomes which enhance its quality of life. How unrealistic they are! So many Americans despised the second Bush regime because of its inept war-mongering; they could not trust the McCain-Palin ticket to avoid additional disasters. The polls seemed to point to these conclusions. Why is it, then, that America's political elite cannot learn from its experiences? Why do Obama and the Pentagon believe they must compound the mistakes of their predecessors?

We are an empire now….

Writing for his Atlantic blog, Andrew Sullivan augments the Greenwald critique of the Washington Post's recently stated position (see this below along with the link it contains) on torture prosecution by exclaiming:

The longer I have lived in Washington, the more corrupt it appears. That includes large swathes of the press. The cooptation of the Washington Post by the torture-mongers should therefore come as no surprise — and Obama's refusal to investigate torturers is a reflection of his own so-pragmatic-it's-cynical belief that such matters do not really count for much — certainly not as much as a successful presidency. This is not a conspiracy. It's just the kind of elite corruption you usually see in banana republics with no rule of law and a coopted press.

It is surely fortunate — or would unfortunate be the better word to use? — that the United States yet to become a banana republic, for the middle class in the United States will not fare well when it attains this level of development. The signs indicating this fate are there, of course. Nevertheless, the country remains best characterized as a global empire and the only military superpower, and, as such, the arrogance of power has become its normal condition. Denial is an ordinary complement of such arrogance, so the fact that denial is a common feature of American politics follows as a matter of course.

Rule of law or rule by law?

Do we have a choice?

These are questions a reasonable and thus concerned citizen of the United States might ask at this juncture given the abuse of governmental power that is now all-too-common. Glenn Greenwald has often brought to our attention the institutional failures that produce these kinds of abuses. But he truly excels in holding the establishment press accountable for its willing complicity in the commission of these crimes. Most recently the Washington Post, as Greenwald makes plain, joined the Bush and Obama regimes as a defender of the kind and degree of torture 'authorized' by the infamous Bush regime torture memos (.pdf). Should we be surprised that the Post advocates sacrificing the over-aggressive foot soldier that exceeded the limits specified by the Bush regime's torture memos while permitting John Yoo (the principal author of the torture justification), his co-conspirators and the American governmental system as a whole to remain unmolested by the law? No, we should not find this surprising, and I would expect Greenwald also found the Post's position utterly predictable and contemptible. He continues:

That, in a nutshell, is the twisted Washington mentality when it comes to lawbreaking: when political crimes become so blatant and extreme that they can no longer be safely excused (Watergate, Iran-contra, Abu Ghraib), then it's necessary to sacrifice some underlings who carried out the crimes by prosecuting them, but — no matter what else happens — the high-level political officials responsible for the crimes must be shielded from all accountability. In ordinary criminal justice, what typically guides prosecutions is the opposite mindset: namely, a willingness to immunize low-level soldiers in order to ensure that the higher-level criminals suffer the consequences of their crimes. But when it comes to crimes committed by political officials in America's Versailles culture, only the pawns are subjected to the rule of law while the monarchs and their highest royal court aides are immunized.

Greenwald continues by using the rest of his column to debunk the tired rationalization the Post offered to defend those who authorized the whole wretched torture business. He concludes his piece by observing:

If, as appears to be the case, this is the principle by which we're now governed — presidential acts in blatant violation of clear statutes are no longer crimes if a DOJ lawyer justifies it in advance, even using legal reasoning found to be in bad faith — then, by definition, Presidents are literally no longer bound by the rule of law. If the crimes are embarrassing enough, we'll find a Lynndie England — or some obscure, easily demonizable, extra-sadistic CIA interrogator — to scapegoat and punish in order to pacify the citizenry and create the illusion that the rule of law still prevails. But the one thing that remains off-limits in Washington culture above all else is subjecting high-level political officials to the rule of law when they commit crimes. The low-level scapegoating which the Post today endorses is the approach which, by all accounts, Eric Holder is likely to pursue.

The United States — a proud nation, a nation of laws, of a Constitution, of the Constitution. Yet America is not today — if it has ever been — a nation in which every person is equally subject to the law. Rather, the law and the Constitution have mostly been instruments the powerful, the favored and the well-placed used to pursue their peculiar ends. This corruption of the republic is quite evident today. The corruption has lately become so obvious that if the actions of the elite betray their intentions, their sensibilities and their political culture, then it follows that they believe justice is something meant only for the weak.

One might consider this kind of justice an instance of "street justice" — a harsh form of rule originating on Wall Street and K Street.

Department of Defense spies on Americans in America

This effort is likely illegal, but not unexpected when considered in the light provided by the history made since 2001.

Democracy Now exposed the incident this morning:

“Someday this war’s going to end….”

Another secret program

Cheney's fingerprints are also on this one

The New York Times reports that the CIA created a post-9.11 counterterrorism program and that it had withheld information about the program from Congress. The Vice President allegedly ordered the CIA to keep Congress uninformed about the matter.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

This latest revelation directly follows an Inspector General's report which:

…underscored the central role of the former vice president's office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency's program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

It is unsurprising, then, that "Efforts [The Times made] to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful." Why would he wish to take ownership of these legally dubious and ineffective programs!

Accountability

It is not too early to identify Obama administration as a criminal regime

Izzy Award winner Glen Greenwald again takes the Obama administration to task for affirming Bush era notions of justice, presidential powers, due process, etc.

Bill Kristol thinks we’re all stupid

Kristol recently lamented the manner in which the elite treated Sarah Palin since she emerged as a national figure. Now that Palin has walked off the Governor's job, she will:

…be able to make the case effectively that she should be the nominee [for President of the United States], or she won't.

The odds are that she won't — just as the odds at this point are against any one of the GOP candidates. It's a wide-open race. And Palin may not even run. But the panic among mainstream media commentators and the GOP establishment suggests real worry that if she does, she might pull off an upset. Why else the vehement assertions that she's clearly made a terrible mistake? Why else the categorical insistence that her political career is finished? Aren't they all protesting too much?

In other words, "the GOP establishment" and "the mainstream media commentators" have put aside their considerable differences, which usually generate useless conflict and hot air, to oppose Saint Sarah's quest for world domination. Kristol wonders why she has drawn opposition this strong when she compares so favorably to George W. Bush who lacked this kind of opposition as he began his run for the presidency! Sexism, perhaps….

It is to be expected, however, that Kristol would not follow this comparison to the end, as he did not do. After all, Americans, along with the rest of the world, now know the mischief a simpleton armed with barbaric ideology can make when he or she has the power and force of the American state at his or her command. They may have learned that the country and the species cannot pay the bills which are the unavoidable consequences of presidencies like those of Reagan and the Bushes. They may well suspect and even anticipate that sending Palin to the White House would amount to putting another painted clown in the "big chair." Why regress to another Reagan or Bush regime? Why would they want this when multiple disasters loom? Especially when these disasters are covered with Republican fingerprints?

To be sure, Kristol's fingerprints are on a few of these disasters, a fact that might explain his defense of Sarah Palin.