Foreign Affairs March/April 2007
From the date in the title, it apparent that my reading list has gotten a bit long. It is only now that I’ve completed reading a magazine that’s been kicking around my house for four months. It might be considered part of my sabbatical. I chose not to follow the news as closely as I had been. Personal emotions fueled by the unrelenting steam of misdirection, spin and outright lies emanating from the Bush administration combined to leave me confused, angry and depressed. What can anyone do except take a break from the fountain of futility and watch really bad television.
This issue of FA had the usual assortment of articles pointing out all the obstacles in the current Iraq war strategy, proposing solutions and predicting the outcome. There’s increasing focus on Iran as W continues his saber rattling and Amadinnerjacket pounds his chest and thumbs his nose at us. Since the assembly and publication of this issue of FA, the US has started talking to Iran at an ambassadorial level and the focus has shifted to Saudi Arabia’s involvement in supporting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. The administration spins off the Saudi influence in the region and plays up Iran’s involvement in arming the Shiite insurgency. There has also been great deal of oxygen consumed explaining to the American public that Al Qaeda in Iraq and Osama bin Ladin’s Al Qaeda’s are one in the same and that to defeat the one we have to defeat the other and visa versa. There have also been some rather high level meetings between this administration and the Saudi royal family. Cheney took a trip over there a couple of months ago and now Condi and SoD Gates are on their way over. The VP’s trip was all over the Middle East and if I remember correctly, parts of Asia. It wasn’t a rousing success and coverage was a little sparse. Then again Cheney isn’t one to fawn over the press corp. Maybe the whole trip was a junket to cover a negotiation between Cheney and the royal family. Cheney cuts a bunch of detainees loose from Gitmo and the Saudis shift their stance in the region. Maybe throw their support into a Mid East conference that includes Israel. Maybe do what you can about the Wahabi Sin Squads, put them on a leash? And by the way, the American public has caught on that most of the foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudis. You need to stop coddling them. Probably a some other stuff the Saudi’s will pretend to act on and what’s Dick going to do in return? Why carry a shopping list back to the pentagons procurement department. Most of these things have come to pass in the months since Cheney’s overseas visits. The VP skulking around with Middle Eastern autocrats has me a little concerned.
My recent reading of the second have of the issue concentrated on India, Japan, Africa and another essay decrying the inadequacies of industrial nations to prepare for the next pandemic. I’m getting burnt out on that one, as I am on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Sat through the movie “Blood Diamonds” last week which was in part a vehicle to portray some of the horrors that have occurred in Africa since de-colonialization. Really disturbing stuff. I try to understand but the madness goes merrily on. It appears that China is to follow the path that the west failed so miserably at. We fueled so much hatred, jealousy and greed that these waves of violence, civil war and genocide swirl around the continent in some demonic weather pattern. With the negotiated settlement of one battle, there is the instigation of another on the other side of the continent. Clouds of darkness seem to dissipate only to gather and take form in another part of this vast and complicated place. How can I fault the power mad Mugabe of Zimbabwe when we have the Chinese shielding the Sudanese from pressure concerning Darfur? I suppose we keep pouring aid in and try to stop the flow of weapons. This is likely to happen?
There were three or four of the articles that I read today. These were interesting as they are submitted from extreme ends of the political agenda. The first was a thinly veiled propaganda device promoting the kinder and gentler side of the Muslim Brotherhood. I’m an open minded guy, I’m willing to listen to the other side’s point of view no matter how repulsive that ideology, but I’m afraid this was a little over the limit. In the six years since our introduction to Osama and his boys, I’ve heard nothing but bad intent on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Weren’t these the same bunch that merged with a fledgling Al Qaeda and helped give it that international exposure that only an international-underground-subversive-terrorist organization can do for you? Fatwa was issued, acts of terror were are being committed all over the world and these people are acting as infrastructure and conduit for these disgruntled Muslims. Leiken and Brooke out of the Nixon Center (right, left, center politics?, who knows? ) they present the Muslim Brotherhood like some Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club. Sure, a worldwide franchise based on the gathering of a group of like minded city elders to discuss and act in concert to execute an agreed agenda. In the case of the Rotary Club its business and local commerce, for the Muslim Brotherhood its religion and the local regulation of the more extreme elements of Islam. The authors derive their conclusions from extensive interviews with a large pool of members of this organization. There was the inclusion of one line that stuck; there’s a difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. I’m going to side with not trusting the Muslim brotherhood for awhile.
The other article that impressed me was a thinly veiled talking points memo from the White House. It was an idiotic piece outlining a means to increase the defense budget back to its Regan era threshold of 6 percent of GDP. Feldstein, a Harvard Professor of Economics, outlines some paint brush number crunching and says it’s easy to fund as long as we keep the Bush tax cuts in place, privatize social security, and the rest of the neo-con nonsense that’s doing a real good job of wrecking a significant number of lives in this country. There’s been numerous articles written in FA recommending this paradigm or that tactical victory for this strategic position and how the transformation of the military will keep nightmares like Iraq from occurring. It’s all so much fear mongering and industrial defense complex hypertalk. It occurs to me that there was a deal going into the 2000 election that Cheny would run foreign affairs and Bush runs the domestic policy. Bush proposes and gets enacted all sorts tax cuts that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and the VP runs off to the pentagon to start a war in Iraq. It couldn’t be anywhere else but Iraq. This is that Saudi thing again. And Halliburton. And sadly, 9/11. Feldstein goes on, “Dealing appropriately with these diverse enemies…” will require a shit-load of money at the expense of those too weak to protect themselves. The author sets it up as an either-or situation. We can either spend the money on weapons systems to defend our country or we can spend it on our aging population. I mean this is a choice? And besides that, who’s going to serve in this military that this 6 percent solution is going to create? We can’t fill the ranks now. They say we’re meeting our recruiting and retention goals but it’s the National Guard and Reserve that’s fighting the war in Iraq. Double the defense budget. What are we going to spend the money on? A thousand VF-22 combined mission assault/fighter jets? Yeah, a few hundred Abrams tanks, too. Helicopter gunships! Gotta have a bunch of those! Then we’ll need missiles and ammunition and support gear and maintenance facilities and tech support. And parts! Lots and lots of parts! Better yet, a Megatron. You know one of those transformer robots. One minute they’re trucks or school buses or some other benign vehicle contributing to our glorious, continually expanding economy, the next they’re a fifty story war robot with laser beams coming outta their frickin’ heads. Then, when they’re robots like 500 feet tall, they defend our country from Kim Jong Il or Hugo Chavez or anybody we call a super villain. Man, that would be coooooooool!
The 500 billion dollars spent in Iraq could have gone to better use. Not to mention the dead and wounded…
I’ve got a headache… again.
This issue of FA had the usual assortment of articles pointing out all the obstacles in the current Iraq war strategy, proposing solutions and predicting the outcome. There’s increasing focus on Iran as W continues his saber rattling and Amadinnerjacket pounds his chest and thumbs his nose at us. Since the assembly and publication of this issue of FA, the US has started talking to Iran at an ambassadorial level and the focus has shifted to Saudi Arabia’s involvement in supporting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. The administration spins off the Saudi influence in the region and plays up Iran’s involvement in arming the Shiite insurgency. There has also been great deal of oxygen consumed explaining to the American public that Al Qaeda in Iraq and Osama bin Ladin’s Al Qaeda’s are one in the same and that to defeat the one we have to defeat the other and visa versa. There have also been some rather high level meetings between this administration and the Saudi royal family. Cheney took a trip over there a couple of months ago and now Condi and SoD Gates are on their way over. The VP’s trip was all over the Middle East and if I remember correctly, parts of Asia. It wasn’t a rousing success and coverage was a little sparse. Then again Cheney isn’t one to fawn over the press corp. Maybe the whole trip was a junket to cover a negotiation between Cheney and the royal family. Cheney cuts a bunch of detainees loose from Gitmo and the Saudis shift their stance in the region. Maybe throw their support into a Mid East conference that includes Israel. Maybe do what you can about the Wahabi Sin Squads, put them on a leash? And by the way, the American public has caught on that most of the foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudis. You need to stop coddling them. Probably a some other stuff the Saudi’s will pretend to act on and what’s Dick going to do in return? Why carry a shopping list back to the pentagons procurement department. Most of these things have come to pass in the months since Cheney’s overseas visits. The VP skulking around with Middle Eastern autocrats has me a little concerned.
My recent reading of the second have of the issue concentrated on India, Japan, Africa and another essay decrying the inadequacies of industrial nations to prepare for the next pandemic. I’m getting burnt out on that one, as I am on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Sat through the movie “Blood Diamonds” last week which was in part a vehicle to portray some of the horrors that have occurred in Africa since de-colonialization. Really disturbing stuff. I try to understand but the madness goes merrily on. It appears that China is to follow the path that the west failed so miserably at. We fueled so much hatred, jealousy and greed that these waves of violence, civil war and genocide swirl around the continent in some demonic weather pattern. With the negotiated settlement of one battle, there is the instigation of another on the other side of the continent. Clouds of darkness seem to dissipate only to gather and take form in another part of this vast and complicated place. How can I fault the power mad Mugabe of Zimbabwe when we have the Chinese shielding the Sudanese from pressure concerning Darfur? I suppose we keep pouring aid in and try to stop the flow of weapons. This is likely to happen?
There were three or four of the articles that I read today. These were interesting as they are submitted from extreme ends of the political agenda. The first was a thinly veiled propaganda device promoting the kinder and gentler side of the Muslim Brotherhood. I’m an open minded guy, I’m willing to listen to the other side’s point of view no matter how repulsive that ideology, but I’m afraid this was a little over the limit. In the six years since our introduction to Osama and his boys, I’ve heard nothing but bad intent on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Weren’t these the same bunch that merged with a fledgling Al Qaeda and helped give it that international exposure that only an international-underground-subversive-terrorist organization can do for you? Fatwa was issued, acts of terror were are being committed all over the world and these people are acting as infrastructure and conduit for these disgruntled Muslims. Leiken and Brooke out of the Nixon Center (right, left, center politics?, who knows? ) they present the Muslim Brotherhood like some Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club. Sure, a worldwide franchise based on the gathering of a group of like minded city elders to discuss and act in concert to execute an agreed agenda. In the case of the Rotary Club its business and local commerce, for the Muslim Brotherhood its religion and the local regulation of the more extreme elements of Islam. The authors derive their conclusions from extensive interviews with a large pool of members of this organization. There was the inclusion of one line that stuck; there’s a difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. I’m going to side with not trusting the Muslim brotherhood for awhile.
The other article that impressed me was a thinly veiled talking points memo from the White House. It was an idiotic piece outlining a means to increase the defense budget back to its Regan era threshold of 6 percent of GDP. Feldstein, a Harvard Professor of Economics, outlines some paint brush number crunching and says it’s easy to fund as long as we keep the Bush tax cuts in place, privatize social security, and the rest of the neo-con nonsense that’s doing a real good job of wrecking a significant number of lives in this country. There’s been numerous articles written in FA recommending this paradigm or that tactical victory for this strategic position and how the transformation of the military will keep nightmares like Iraq from occurring. It’s all so much fear mongering and industrial defense complex hypertalk. It occurs to me that there was a deal going into the 2000 election that Cheny would run foreign affairs and Bush runs the domestic policy. Bush proposes and gets enacted all sorts tax cuts that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and the VP runs off to the pentagon to start a war in Iraq. It couldn’t be anywhere else but Iraq. This is that Saudi thing again. And Halliburton. And sadly, 9/11. Feldstein goes on, “Dealing appropriately with these diverse enemies…” will require a shit-load of money at the expense of those too weak to protect themselves. The author sets it up as an either-or situation. We can either spend the money on weapons systems to defend our country or we can spend it on our aging population. I mean this is a choice? And besides that, who’s going to serve in this military that this 6 percent solution is going to create? We can’t fill the ranks now. They say we’re meeting our recruiting and retention goals but it’s the National Guard and Reserve that’s fighting the war in Iraq. Double the defense budget. What are we going to spend the money on? A thousand VF-22 combined mission assault/fighter jets? Yeah, a few hundred Abrams tanks, too. Helicopter gunships! Gotta have a bunch of those! Then we’ll need missiles and ammunition and support gear and maintenance facilities and tech support. And parts! Lots and lots of parts! Better yet, a Megatron. You know one of those transformer robots. One minute they’re trucks or school buses or some other benign vehicle contributing to our glorious, continually expanding economy, the next they’re a fifty story war robot with laser beams coming outta their frickin’ heads. Then, when they’re robots like 500 feet tall, they defend our country from Kim Jong Il or Hugo Chavez or anybody we call a super villain. Man, that would be coooooooool!
The 500 billion dollars spent in Iraq could have gone to better use. Not to mention the dead and wounded…
I’ve got a headache… again.