Predetermined

Unsurprisingly, a consensus emerged when given the opportunity.

 

 

I hope those people get what they are asking for, even if they don't understand what they've requested.

Oh, We're at War Again?

I suppose I should say something about this, since it's quite likely that more people will die in the attacks on Libya that started this afternoon than from the reactor accident at Fukushima Daiichi.  But the insanity of getting involved in another conflict in a Muslim nation has left me a tad despondent.

I frequently make fun of people that don't care about politics or pay attention to the news, but that outlook makes a certain kind of sense.  The news is damn depressing.  Why is America involved in another military conflict, when there are still over 40,000 troops in Iraq and over 140,000 in Afghanistan?  Why are we talking about deficit reduction when unemployment is over 9% and underemployment is over 16%?  Why are we talking about cutting Social Security when it makes no contribution to the deficit?  Why are we talking about cutting domestic discretionary spending when eliminating every single bit of it would only cut the budget deficit in half?  And on and on and on.  I keep saying I will pay less attention, but I can't make myself do that.

Compulsive behaviors - I hates them.

There's Not Just a River in Eygpt

There are a whole lot of really upset people.  And who can blame them?  Mubarak stinks.  And he's our - the United States of America's - stinker.  And the Egyptian people know he's ours, and they know why he's been ours for almost 30 years now.  They may, however, be willing to put that at the back of their minds for a while if America is not seen as meddling in the country at this critical juncture.  I have thought from the outset of the riots that the best thing for the US government to do is to keep it's multiple yaps shut.  So far, the Obama administration has been very careful with it language, as Rachel Maddow shows at the beginning of this segment.  That's good.  I hope they continue to resist the temptation to play the heavy here, because it would most likely backfire.

Breaking News Just In: Two-State Solution Still Dead

The most important international news in a few weeks really isn't news, if you've been paying attention to such matters.  Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news organization that is probably the best source of information in the Middle East, has released a set of documents it claims are from parties to the negotiations between the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.  I have no reason either doubt or believe their veracity based on the contents, but the ham-handed attack on Al Jazeera offices in the West Bank by a bunch of goons makes me think they are real.  And the documents do not paint the Palestinian negotiators in a good light.  They show how much the Palestinians were willing to give up in order to achieve peace relative to what international law indicates they should get.  They offered Israel a heck a lot of strategically located land, all of East Jerusalem and most of the suburbs east of the 1967 borders, and reduced the number of refugees from the 1948 war returned to Israel proper to a bare minimum.  And the Israelis rejected the offer.

That rejection just confirms that Israel has never been interested in peace.  The proof has always been plain to see, in tangible form, in the Jewish "settlements" built all over the West Bank, and most densely around Jerusalem.  Some have pointed to the forced removal of Jewish "settlers" from the Gaza Strip as evidence that the same might happen in the West Bank, and thus the Israeli government (which has always consisted of Jews and Druze at the ministerial level) had good intentions.  But the situations are far from similar, mainly because Gaza is so far from the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem, and the land between the Jordan and the sea.  (Gaza is at about the same latitude as the southern half of the Dead Sea.)  The number of "settlers" removed was also a fraction of the number currently living in the West Bank (about 2%).  Relocating the West Bank "settlers" would mean evicting and rehousing 6-7% of Israel's population.  An equivalent number in the US would be almost 20 million, which is slightly more than the population of New York state.  More evidence can be seen in the map contained in the documents, which resembles every map going back to 1967.

My main interest in all this is that America's unwavering support for Israel, even while claiming to be an honest broker, is just plain bad for America.  The backing complicates this country's relations with the Muslim world, severely disrupts its relations with the Arab world, and US leaders look like fools whenever they get rolled by the Israeli government.  The human rights aspects of the conflict - the displacement of Palestinians, the destruction of their property, the confiscation of their land, and the poverty the occupation causes - are also of concern to me.  Lots of other countries treat their subjects like crap, but Israel is unique in that it is the largest recipient of US state-to-state aid, and has been for decades.  Since Israel won't stop its reprehensible treatment of Palestinians while it is on the US dole, perhaps losing the subsidy would change its behavior.  That certainly is an experiment worth making.

For its own sake, the sake of the Palestinians, and perhaps even the sake of the Jewish ethnocracy itself, the US should do whatever it can to put distance between itself and Israel, not just cut aid.  Unfortunately, that's just not going to happen anytime soon because of domestic political considerations.  For a variety of reasons, unquestioning - no, embarrassingly slavish - support for Israel is a bipartisan affair, no matter what it does.  The reasons for the extreme level of support are hotly debated, so I'll just point out that (essentially) stating fealty to a foreign nation is not a prerequisite for a national political office in any country other than the US, as far as I know.  It's a bizarre situation, especially since the relationship is so counterproductive for the US.

Talking Turkey

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Gaza flotilla disaster is how it has strained relations between America and Turkey.  It can’t be emphasized enough how extraordinarily dumb it would be for the US to antagonize Turkey. The country has a number of internal issues that I’m not exactly happy with, most notably the relationship between the Turkish majority (58 million) and the Kurdish minority (12 million). But it’s also a middle income country of 72 million people that has been trending in the right direction both economically and politically for the past two decades. And it has been a stalwart US ally for decades, so much so that the US has positioned nukes there and has two large bases.

I was never pleased how much the rhetoric of democracy and human rights was subsumed by realpolitik during the Cold War. But at least when it happened it made short-term sense. Now realpolitik is being subsumed by a bizarre mish-mash of tribalism, religion(s), campaign contributions, and arms sales. That makes no sense whatsoever. In the long-run, the US needs to have good relations with Turkey, Egypt (beyond the military), and Iran. They will be the regional powers in the future. But the US can’t, because for now it is enabling Israel’s immoral and self-destructive behavior.

Sickening

That's the best word to describe this photo.

It's Over

I think the whole thing is over with. I can't see a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank as it is now configured, and I can't imagine the Netanyahu government halting settlements.

Now the conflict becomes a civil rights struggle.

Shit or Get Off the Pot

That's where we're at with Afghanistan. Here's the background: the security situation is getting worse, the Afghan government is a farce, Bin Laden is still not captured, neither Pakistan nor India will stop meddling, American citizens are tired of war, America's public discourse is juvenile, the President has boxed himself into a rhetorical corner, and the federal government is broke. But the only two options being discussed are more troops (shit), or altering strategy with the current level of troops (continue to sit). A third, withdrawing (get off), was preemptively dismissed. And that was a big mistake.

What (most) Americans don't understand is that their country is operating in imperial overreach territory. Literally. Afghanistan eats invaders for breakfast. Which is truly amazing - or entirely unsurprising - because there is no such thing as Afghanistan. As Alan Grayson put it, it's simply an empty place on a map. It's a label applied to an area not covered other labels, ones that more-or-less corresponded with a political entity.

I admit that, way back when, I was supportive of the invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was there, the Taliban was medieval, and the US did sort of abandon the country once the proxy war with the Soviet Union ended. When Bush started transferring resources to Iraq I worried that the moment for lasting change in Afghanistan - tenuous though it was - would be lost. And it has been.

Now, after six years of tragic stupidity in Iraq, the nation's somewhat bleary focus is back on Afghanistan. But the context has changed. In 2001 there was not a monumental hole in the federal government's finances. It was before the country had muddled through another 7 years of inaction on energy, global warming, health care, infrastructure, education, and a host of other issues. And it was before every segment of the private economy - except the ultra-rich - drowned themselves in debt. The federal budget deficit for FY09 is likely to reach a whopping 10% of GDP. Gross federal, state, and local debt is approaching 100% of GDP. All of which is by way of saying: the US can't afford to shit. Even if the economy were to recover robustly (unlikely), there would still be large structural budget deficit that needs to be resolved. Something will have to give - taxes, spending, or both.

At the risk of sounding like a DFH, I feel our attempt to police the world should be the first spending item to be scaled back. Too many people have come to conflate their own self-image with the country's ability to bomb foreigners. Yet, at home, we treat each other like dirt, forcing people to go to extraordinary lengths to get health care. The mis-allocation is unsustainable.

Thus I believe the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. The people of the non-country shouldn't be abandoned like they were at the end of the 1980s. But instead of attempting to impose security, we should send aid in two forms. One should be cash, distributed at all levels of government and to NGOs. The other should be equipment and supplies - construction equipment, steel beams and rebar, transportation equipment, telecommunications equipment, water and sewage equipment, and medical supplies. We should let the Afghans (Pashtuns, Tajikis, Hazarai, etc.) build their own country as they see fit. Or not. $10B between the two streams per year should be enough, considering that the country's current GDP is estimated to be $20B or $30B per year. It would be a bargain compared to the $65B that has been allocated directly to operations in Afghanistan for 2009.